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.

Perennial Asters

There are many aster species but the ones most commonly used for cut flowers today are hybrids derived from Aster novi-belgii (New York aster) and Aster novae-angliae (New England aster). These are North American natives and you have probably seen their white or purple flowers in fields and along roadsides in autumn. While originating here in North America it is the English who really love perennial asters and all the well known cultivars were developed in England. Because their bloom coincides with Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael (September 29th), these asters are known in England as Michaelmas daisies. I'm a bit of an Anglophile and maybe that's why asters have always been one of my favourite flowers.

Red 'Crimson Brocade' asters with chrysanthemums.

Like chrysanthemums, late bloom and frost tolerance make perennial asters useful in the border and as cut flowers. Unlike warm coloured chrysanthemums, asters only come in cool colours - pinks, purples, blues, crimsons and white - with contrasting yellow or orange centres. If you are careless when combining chrysanthemums and asters, these colours can be a problem (think bronze and hot pink), but if you are a little careful, you can create smashing combinations like pale blue and yellow or bronze and dark purple.

Good filler flowers are always valuable and asters make especially nice fillers because of their range of color and season of bloom. In addition, the flowers are held atop multiply branched stems, so a single cut can yield a bouquet's worth of flowers. I sometimes create a bouquet by starting with a single big stem of asters and then filling in with other, larger flowers like lilies and dahlias.

New England Aster

Aster novae-angliae or New England asters are among the easiest to find and grow, but are less desirable as cut flowers because they close at night. This is not very noticeable outside but if cut and brought inside they may look like they are starting to shrivel and fade. Some of the better known tall New England varieties are the purple 'Hella Lacy', light pink 'Honeysong Pink' and dark pink 'September Ruby'. Monarch butterflies flock to 'Hella Lacy' so you might want to grow it for that reason alone.

New York Aster
Better as cut flowers are Aster novi-belgii or New York asters. They are tough perennials and make beautiful long lasting cut flowers but they are a bit more difficult to find and grow. The taller New York asters usually need to be staked. Fussy gardeners should also realise they are prone to powdery mildew and will usually drop the lower third of their leaves by the time they bloom. This doesn't really matter to me and I never bother to spray them with anything to prevent it. However, if growing them in a perennial border it is probably better to position them toward the back so this won't be noticed.

In The Gardener's Guide to Growing Asters (published in England, naturally) Paul Picton describes more than 280 novi-belgii cultivars. Of these, most of the commonly available ones like "Professor Anton Kippenberg' and 'Alert' are short. I've been able to locate only a few of the taller ones such as the fully double blue 'Marie Ballard', the dark red 'Crimson Brocade', and an unknown medium height lavender pink variety mistakenly sold to me as 'Fellowship'. I hope to add several others this year but they may not show up in bouquets for a year or two while I build up stock.

Other Asters
I also grow a hybrid aster called 'Little Carlow' with small 3/4" lavender-blue flowers. The plants are 3-4 feet tall so the flowers are the only little thing about 'Carlow'.

Lavender 'Little Carlow' asters with orange lilies and agastache.

Asters should be divided every few years, though the tougher ones will keep going even if you don't. Divide asters in the spring when the new shoots begin to appear. Experts recommend starting new clumps from individual new shoot taken from the outside of the old clump rather than splitting the old, woody center into pieces. I usually pot up the individual shoots in 3" pots and baby them along in a semi-shaded area for a few weeks before planting them back in a bed. I divide my New York asters every year and plant the divisions about 9"-12" apart. The new plants bloom at the usual time in the fall and a group of 6-8 can make quite show.

Cut asters when a third to a half of the flowers are open. The stems are woody and it is best to re-cut the stem under water when you get home.

Winter Reading - The Essential Earthman

The weather is just starting to get unpleasant so this is a great time to settle in with a good gardening book while the wind blows and the snow piles up. I've literally got about 15 feet of gardening books but aside from a handful of reference works, there are only a few I re-read over and over.


One of my favorites is Henry Mitchell's The Essential Earthman, the first of three collections of 'Earthman' columns Henry Mitchell wrote for the Washinton Post. Mitchell, who died in 1993, knew a great deal, but was still one of us - an ordinary but passionate gardener. He hated pretense and showing off, saying, "Gardening is not some sort of game by which one proves his superiority over others, nor is it a marketplace for the display of elegant things that others cannot afford." Deborah Needleman describes him as the anti-Martha Stewart, saying, "He would have hated her, and she would be appalled by him."

Earthman is full of cultural information about choosing and growing daffodils, dahlias, irises, water lilies and so on. It also contains some of the best guidelines for designing gardens I have ever read, including:

• Keep the center open
• Plan with severe formality then plant informally withing these formal bounds
• Give space to reflecting water
• Pay more attention than seems reasonable to foliage color and texture

But, Mitchell gives you permission to ignore his advice by noting that, "it is more important for the gardener to be enchanted than for critics to be pleased".

I also think the book is really funny, but not all of my friends agree. Earthman is filled with quotable observations like:

• Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.
• There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners.

and my favorite:

• Flowers are of course a sexual display unmatched in the living world and anybody who does not respond a little probably has no blood in him.

I'm not sure if new copies of The Essential Earthman are currently available at brick and mortar bookstores but you can get used copies very reasonably through various Amazon re-sellers. Check it out for yourself or that special gardener on your shopping list.

Zinnia (Zinnia elegans)

elegans (ELL-eh-ganz) Elegant

Zinnias really are easy to grow and they make nice cut flowers. After trying a few different kinds I now only grow Benary's Giant Series, sometimes called BluePoint strain. They are quite mildew resistant have the largest flowers. My zinnias are not necessarily all that large because they grow best with good fertility and plenty of water and I can't always provide those conditions at the farm.

Zinnias can be started ahead and transplanted quickly before becoming pot bound but that doesn't seem to work much better than just direct sowing them. They cannot tolerate any frost so they shouldn't be sown until all danger of frost has passed, usually around June 1st here in SE Michigan. I usually plant mine about 6 inches apart in rows a foot apart but that is probably a little too close.

You can find seed for Benary's Giants at Johnny's, Stokes and other mail order outfits but I have never seen them in retail seed racks. They come in 13 different colors including three different reds (Scarlet, Crimson and Deep Red). The other colors are Bright Pink, Lilac, Salmon Rose, Carmine Rose, Yellow, Orange, Coral, White, Purple and Lime Green. I usually grow White rather than Lime Green because the White is quite greenish itself and is more robust than the Lime Green. I also really like Orange, Salmon Rose, Purple, Crimson and Scarlet. I probably should just buy packets of mixed colors but am always thinking I want more of one color or another.

The flowers should be cut when the center petals are still unfolding and before the yellow stamens appear in the center. The first flowers are on fairly short stems but the plants will re-bloom repeatedly throught the summer with longer stems. Some growers succession sow zinnias. I have done this a few times but have not noticed that the flower quality for the later sowings is much better than the re-bloom on the first sowings.

Just because they are cheap and easy to grow does not mean zinnias are not impressive, people are always asking me what they are.