New Infrastructure - Mini-hoophouses

One of the problems I have had over the years has been coming up with a good way to suspsend insect barrier row covers over china asters and snapdragons. China asters are terribly susceptible to aster yellows and need row covers to keep out leafhoppers which transmit the disease. Snapdragons have the bad characteristic of dropping the lower flowers as soon as they are pollinated. To get nice, long spikes, snapdragons need to be grown in a greenhouse or covered with rowcovers to keep out pollinating insects.

The row covers used for these purposes need to be suspended with some structure because if the row cover is allowed to "float" on the flowers, they can be bent or broken in high winds or when it rains. In the past I have rigged up supports using pvc pipe but have always had problems with the row cover tearing on the corners of the support. I have also had problems anchoring the row cover to the ground. I can't bury it the way some vegetables growers do because once the flowers start blooming, I need to lift the cover a couple times a week to cut the flowers.

Most often row covers are supported using little wire hoops but I didn't think these would work over a 4 foot wide bed containing plants more than 2 feet tall. I finally had the idea to adapt designs for do it yourself hoophouses. The materials I used were 2 foot sections of 3/8" rebar and 8 foot sections of pvc pipe. After squaring up the bed, I set the rebar ever 2 1/2 feet along each side of the bed and pounded them in so only about 6" stuck out of the ground. Then I bent the pvc pipe and slid each end over a rebar stake so they arched across the bed. To add stability, I joined pieces to make a 25 foot piece of pvc and attached it under the top of each arch.

The row cover can then be stretched over the entire frame. The cover is gathered and twisted together at the ends. Because I will be lifting the cover frequently, I decided to just weigh down each end with a big rock.

Seed catalogs sell fancy (and expensive) pegs for holding down row cover but I read that you can just use ground staples on top of a piece of wood.

I put all this together in a couple hours today. I wanted to set it up now so I can see how it performs before I actually put in the plants.

New Infrastructure - Coldframes

Over the past year I have become more interested in growing vegetables. I'm already growing so many flowers that it doesn't seem like it should be that much more work to grow some of the stuff I most like to eat - leafy greens, peas, tomatoes, radishes, peppers and so on. Partly this is to be eating better, fresher food and partly it is to try to eat more locally.

While investigating eating locally, everything I read kept mentioning Eliott Coleman's book "Four-Season Harvest" which I finally purchased. I built a couple 4'x8' coldframes based on Coleman's design. I glazed mine with sheet fiberglass instead of glass or polycarbonate because I already had it. The frames are made from 2x12 and 2x8 lumber with a 4' piece of 2x2 lumber in the middle connecting the front and back.

The frames for the covers are made of 2x2 lumber and are not hinged to the frame. This makes the frames much easier to move around. The covers are edged with 1x3 inch lumber so they fit snugly like the cover of a shoebox.

I built the coldframes with the plan of growing some greens for winter harvest, but then realized I can start using them before that. I am going to try placing them over one of the beds I use for lisianthus and try planting out the lisianthus directly into the beds in mid-April. Hopefully this will bring in an earlier crop of lisianthus.

2009 Delphiniums Part 2

I have always been careful about not frittering money away on things, a good virtue to have these days. Since leaving the exciting world of data processing last year, I've become particularly careful, buying clothing at thrift stores and asking myself, "Do you really need this" about every discretionary purchase. However, I do still sometimes indulge my passion for plants, especially when I can justify it as a business expense. This is not always good for the bottom line but delights me and hopefully my customers, too.


After hearing from Terry Dowdeswell of Dowdeswell's Delphiniums in my last post, I decided I had to send off for some of their seed. Terry had mentioned 'Green Twist' as a good cut flower and it was one of the ones I was most intrigued by so that is what I ordered. It only took about a week to get the seeds from New Zealand and they generously gave me a bonus packet of another good cutting variety, 'Morning Lights'. Here are pictures from Dowdeswell's website:





The seed plus shipping cost $26 for 100 seeds. That sounds pretty steep when 'Clear Springs' costs less than $4 per packet for 500 seeds. But, when I figure in the fun factor of ordering seeds from New Zealand and growing a couple varieties no one around here has ever seen, I think it's a bargain.


I love my job.

2009 Delphiniums

I just took the delphinium flats out of the fridge where they have been for the past 3 weeks. This year I am growing 200 'Aurora' as well as 200 of a new one called 'New Century'. I'm not sure they are any better than 'Clear Springs' which is what I usually grow. Both 'Aurora' and 'New Century' are hybrids so all the plants of a particular color should look identical. On the other hand, because 'Clear Springs' is open pollinated, each plant is slightly different and that means you sometimes find interesting surprises like nearly turquoise blues or whites with faint green markings in the bees.

I recently read the delphinium section of Hardy Perennials by the English garden writer Graham Rice. In most parts of the USA, delphiniums are short lived perennials so our only option is to obtain seed grown plants. In England it is a different story. England's climate allows delphiniums to be long lived perennials so many individual cultivars (i.e. clones) of delphiniums are available, with names like 'Giotto', 'Summerfield Miranda' and 'Tiddles'. There is a Delphinium Society, special RHS medals for delphiniums and annual RHS trials at Wisley where you can view all the latest delphimiums. I don't know why this seems so eccentric to me, it is really no different than our Hemerocallis, Dahlia and Hosta societies which also have display gardens, medals, and so on. I guess I'm just not enough of a fanatic about any one plant to want to belong to a society devoted to it.

Nevertheless, if I ever have some spare time and space (I can dream, can't I?), I'd like to order some delphinium seed from New Zealand where some of the recent English medal winners have originated. You can check it out here: New Millenium Delphiniums. Of course, these New Millenium delphiniums will not be the dwarf 3-5 foot varieties I grow for cutting, but the 5-8 foot monsters which require a stake dedicated to each flower spike. If anyone decides to grow some, please send some pictures and I will post them here.

Project Grow's Heirloom Plant Sale

One of Project Grow's annual fundraisers is an heirloom plant sale. The sale is actually two events held in May. The first is over Mother's Day weekend as part of the Matthaei Botanical Gardens plant sale and the second sale is a Project Grow only event the following weekend in front of People's Food Co-op in Ann Arbor. The sale offers several varieties of basil and peppers, but it is mainly about heirloom tomatoes. The seed strains for these tomatoes are maintained by a hardcore group of Project Grow volunteers who are passionate about tomatoes. Each year they grow dozens of varieties and then save the seeds of their favorites. You can buy these locally raised and selected heirloom seeds at People's Food Co-op, or you can visit the sale and buy plants. Here is a list of the 51 varieties of tomatoes that will be available at this year's sale:

Cherry

Bicolor Cherry

Brown Berry Cherry
Gajo de Melon
Isis Candy
Lemon Drop
Nell’s Green
Peacevine Cherry
Snow White
Yellow Pear

Paste
Dunneaux
Hogheart
Orange Banana
Pirkstine Orange
Polish Linguisa
Purple Russian
Saucy
Speckled Roman

Saladette
Aviuri
Black Zebra
Cosmonaut Volkov
Costolutto Genovese
Ethel Watkins Best
Glacier
Green Zebra
Olga’s Yellow Round Chicken
Pachino
Stupice
Tiger’s Paw

Patio
Burpee Quarter Century
Macrocarpum Lutea
Pixie Red Rock
Principe Borghese
Red Russian

Oxheart
Aunt Astrida’s Latvian Oxheart
Cannestrino di Lucca
Orange Russian 117
Orange Strawberry
Ukranian Bullsheart

Beefsteak
Aunt Lillian’s Yellow
Aunt Ruby’s German Green
Berkley Tie Dye
Prize-winning Bicolor
Black Krim
Caspian Pink
Cherokee Purple
Coustralee
Evergreen
West Virginia Hillbilly
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Magnum
Pineapple

Project Grow Community Gardens

Last Fall I became involved again with Project Grow, Ann Arbor's community gardening organization. Founded in 1972, Project Grow is one of the oldest community gardening organizations in the country. Their main endeavor is running about a dozen community garden sites in Ann Arbor. Plots at the gardens are large, about 25 x 30, so you can grow enough food to actually feed a small family. They rent for around $120 per season, but there is a sliding scale for people who cannot afford the full price. In addition, Grow is involved with providing gardening opportunities to children, seniors and special needs gardeners at the Discovery Garden at Leslie Science Center. They also run a program for organic gardening certification at Washtenaw Community College, and hold numerous classes and events. You can read all about them at their website.

Special Events

I occasionally am asked to make up special one time bouquets for people. Here is a big bouquet I made up for one of my customers this past summer.