"The Port Gardener" Archive
by Elizabeth O'Connell

From February, 2001:

    Over my years of gardening, I've discovered one truth - the best of my gardening is done in January and February. This winter gardening is the least fatiguing, most rewarding garden work I tackle all year. And best of all, it energizes me for the spring and summer tasks ahead.

    The most awaited moment of my New Year celebration isn't toasting the New Year or watching bowl games on TV. The Rose Parade? A nice warm-up for the main event.
 
    The festivities start when I settle into a comfortable chair with a pen and the first of my garden catalogs. With reckless abandon, exotic, colorful plant names are circled, sometimes by the page. By the end of my first examination, a stack sits on the floor beside me. The pile tilts up at a precarious angle because dog-eared pages swell the upper corners. And wonder-of-wonders, almost every day's mail brings more catalogs filled with candidates for the garden.

    Hardy to zone 6 with cover? - No problem. Only grows in zones 7-10? - Surely there's room in the garage for one more tender plant to limp through the winter in a container tucked against the wall. In the warmth of the living room, toasting in front of the fireplace, any number of new varieties and plants can be showpieces. You can have them all. Every bare spot in the border fits the exact needs of the lovely specimens the catalog photographers have caught at the height of their glory. Colors always harmonize; nothing needs spraying, pruning or deadheading.

    When you garden in January and February, no heavy rains drown your plants; no peony heads bow down after torrential rains. There are no droughts. No rapacious ants, voracious aphids or rampaging caterpillars devour February plantings. Bambi and Peter Rabbit never come to dine. This is the wonder of winter gardening - all can be perfect in the imagination; the possibilities, endless and spectacular.

    By the end of February, however, reality uproots this garden. We really do live in zone 5 (or 4 if you're outside the mild embrace of Lake Michigan). Not another plant can be jammed into the south facing windows anywhere in the house, and your spouse and children rebel against clambering over more pots as they exit the car.

    The ugly subject of budget also raises its head. Other family members will, surprisingly, argue for trips to the movies, video games and soccer supplies. One-by-one, the dog-eared pages are straightened, catalogs are removed from the pile, dreams are reined in by reality.

    By the time order sheets are inked in, the item numbers of seed packets fill the lines. No exotic bulbs or bare rooted trees and shrubs will arrive on the doorstep this May.

    My garden will be filled with new plants in the spring. They'll have grown from the seed packets and traveled here from the gardens of friends. The aphids and caterpillars will come, too, along with the rabbits and their friends. No zone 6 plants will shelter here. No more pots will join the ones dragged from the garage in April.

    With hard work, my garden will be bloom in June and July. It will be real, with flaws, failures and unexpected triumphs. It won't be the garden I have in January and February - the one where everything is perfect, no plant falters or grows out of its place, no storm ruins the perfection of a blossom, where imagination not work is needed to make things grow. But those imaginary beds will inspire me to do the hard work in April and May that will improve my real plantings. One day, perhaps, the reality will equal the imagination that inspired it.

From March, 2001:

     My garden started this afternoon for the 2001 season.  At least I hope it did.  Three flats of seedlings, about 150 potential plants, are now tucked under lights in the basement, full of my hopes for more exotic flower box and pot-garden selections than I used last summer. 

      Ignorance is said to be bliss, and that's been true of my efforts to grow plants from seed.  I never realized it was supposed to be difficult so I just plunged in with little idea what I was doing.  My mother's method of putting an avocado pit in a pickle jar with toothpicks produced a "tree."  So I started an apartment window garden out of seeds that fell out of my cereal box one morning.  Empty waxed paper yogurt containers were at hand so I punched a drain hole in the bottom, dumped in some potting soil and waited.  How hard could it be? Sure enough, something green sprouted in a few days and those cups of impatiens bloomed endlessly for months.

      Thirty years later, my method is a little more sophisticated.  I use APS (Accelerated Propagation System) trays these days that are expensive (about  $10 for a forty-cell set) but have lasted a decade and are still going.  The system consists of a reservoir tray you fill with water, a capillary mat to wick water to the soil, the actual planting tray for the seedlings and a clear "greenhouse" cover that holds in humidity and warmth for the tiny plants.

      If I were more organized, I'd clean my trays in the spring after I decant the dozens of little seedlings in each flat.  But I'm busy in the spring, and the used trays are flung into storage, untended.  Before I think about planting this year, I have to haul these tray systems from storage and clean all of the parts with a mild Clorox solution and rinse.  Then,  the only thing left to do is moisten a good quality soilless seed starting mix and fill the trays.

      Learn from my mistakes.  Label your seed flats well.  I've had some very odd looking plants that have sprung up from trays swearing they were tomatoes when they were obviously petunias.  And yes, you will have disasters.  Seeds will refuse to germinate, or seedlings will be overcome by mold or mildew (although cleaning your equipment with a disinfectant lessens these problems).  Yes, whatever you really wanted will germinate poorly or not at all, and ALL of the things you only wanted a few of will thrive.  But what a small chance to take for such a huge reward;  better or different varieties of tomatoes or basil or flowers than you can buy, the gift of green and growing things in the snow and gloom of winter even if you have to sprout them on the warm top of the fridge or cram them into sunny windows.

      Even if you're just gardening in your apartment window, seeds will sprout in paper cups with plastic wrap for a cover.  Six plants may be all you need for a single window box or patio container.  You can grow geraniums, petunias (why pay $20 for one plant in a hanging pot this summer?), impatiens, herbs, tomatoes.  Seeds are inexpensive and widely available.

      That I've managed to wait into March to begin my seedlings may be a new sign of maturity (or more likely the result of a late February vacation).  In most years, the gloomy days that dominate February start me poking seeds into starter mix far too early in the season.  It's soothing to see signs of plant life by Valentine's Day and sometimes we enjoy impatiens flowers downstairs on an early Easter morning.  But the downside to the spirit-lifting signs of early spring are May efforts to crawl over and around monster 2 gallon petunias stuffed all over our small greenhouse and the garage because it just isn't getting warm enough to plant them out yet.  I'm sure we'll reach that point again this year since cucumber and tomato seeds have already been planted but the pleasure always outweighs the bother.  I'd advise filling a paper cup and starting some seeds today - you may find it's more fun than you ever imagined.

Seedlings just starting to sprout, three days after planting. Small plants on left are "Sungold" low-acid cherry tomatoes, large seedlings on right are cucumbers.

The author uses the Accelerated Propagation System (APS), sold by Gardener's Supply Company.

From April, 2001:

    Since spring bulbs are now breaking out of the ground, it’s a good time to mention the Garden Club’s 2001 project.  In the past few years, we’ve donated money and labor to help landscape the city pool, the library and Rotary Park.  This year, however, we’re going to try something we hope will be easy, low maintenance, and have lasting appeal.

    Beginning this fall, the Garden Club will begin a “Daffodil Project” here in Port.  It will start with planting thousands of daffodil bulbs in Rotary Park as a demonstration project.  If our funds permit, we’ll also plant at the public library and Judge Eghart House.  The city has also agreed to commit some of its landscaping funds to daffodils this fall, and those bulbs will be planted at the north entrance to the city and locations downtown.

    Daffodil Projects, as many people know, have become popular in many places in Door County in the last few years.  St. Louis, Missouri has the largest plantings of this type (use our web link to look at their efforts), with millions of bulbs in the ground over the last 20 years.  At the height of the season, the results are stunning.

    The Garden Club is proposing this project for several reasons.  First, as city budgets tighten, the maintenance of our existing municipal landscaping is a major job.  To increase plantings anywhere without the budget and personnel to maintain them is foolish, and, in the end, an eyesore and waste of the initial investment.  It’s far better to keep what we have beautiful than to expand and let everything fall into a wasteland.

    Second, daffodils are a good investment that give you lots of “bang for the buck.”  These bulbs aren’t eaten by deer and other wildlife, they’re long lived, multiply readily, bloom and last well in our climate, and, best of all, give their welcome display early in the year, then die back, and disappear instead of requiring deadheading, pruning or other year-round care.

    Third, this is a low cost effort that we hope the community will join.  If people are interested, the club in partnership with the city, would provide bulbs to the public at low cost by purchasing in bulk.  These would be inexpensive to the individual and a yearly pleasure in the spring.  The only string attached to the offer: plant the daffodils where the public could see them -- in your front border, around your mailbox, at the base of your front lamp post.  The only care you’d need to provide the bulbs is thinning every few years.  This is the equivalent of getting more bulbs for free, however, so it’s not a burdensome task...

    The Port Washington Garden Club has pledged $2200 this year to purchase about 5,000 bulbs.  No, we don’t have all that money yet. You can help us get there by coming to our plant sale (Saturday, June 16, 9AM-Noon) and our 2001 Garden Walk on Grand Avenue (Saturday, July 14, 9AM-3PM).  Yes, we promised to plant all 5,000 bulbs but if you’d like, you can help with that, too.  Just drop us a line here at the web site.

    Do consider planting daffodils or other spring bulbs at your home or business.  It’s a small gift we can give one another when warm weather seems like it’s never going to get here to the lake.  It’s a preview of the lovely blooms of summer that gets better and better with each passing year.

*** As a follow-up to last month’s column, I report 131 seedlings potted and crowding our greenhouse and grow lights in the basement.  I expected more but had complete crop failures with the sky-blue delphiniums I wanted, lilac petunias and one type of fuchsia.  Maybe it’s not as easy as I think... 

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