Gardening for Pleasure: Late March Update

So...what's coming up in my flower garden? The most exciting thing is an early spring flower that has put out just one blossom so far—a scrawny looking iris reticulata. I call it my snow iris! It is deep royal blue and tiny; the whole thing is less than 4 inches tall. Bravely poking up through the melting onion snow, it is a thrilling spot of color in a sea of brown and tans. "Onion snow" is a light snowfall in early spring, which some believe can be considered a fertilizer for just-coming-up onion plants. If you like lots of reliable and cheap early spring color, you should have planted some crocus last fall in the purple and yellow shades generally seen. They also come in white and lavender. Snow crocus are also seen in shades of cream and with tiny pale blue flowers. Another early blooming choice is the winter aconite. This small bloom only comes in a lovely buttercup yellow, has four petals and grows low to the ground. It opens around here soon after the snowdrops open. 

A non-bulb flower that is blooming in my yard now is the pimpernel, blue flowered version. Its blossoms are tiny—like .25 of an inch across—in a sky blue with tiny petals. They are so small I am not sure if they have 5 or 6 petals. It is not a bulb, but an annual wildflower, meaning it grows back from seed each spring. It is a real treat in the early spring garden. 

The pussywillow bush is in bloom; the silvery catkins are lovely to view. Soon the catkins will grow big and furry yellow with pollen. When I was little I often took a bunch of branches in to school for my teacher. Now I take them to my mom in her assisted living room.

Lots of daffodils are popping up. Their leaves are showing, but there are no blooms yet at my house. The earliest will be the miniature tete-a-tee daffs, which in my chilly yard only get five or six inches tall with blooms about an inch or so in size. Very dainty and sweet too! Next to bloom is Jetfire, with smallish blooms with orange trumpets. The flowers last a long time, which I love.

I also get some anemones, which are small flowers in lavenders, blues or whites. They have a fair number of skinny petals, sort of like a small zinnia, and are low to the ground. I expect to see some any day now.

So, on to thoughts for getting the veggie garden going. This is the start of the season for planting peas like sugar snaps or snow peas. Traditionally, they are planted on or around St. Paddy’s Day, but this year I am waiting a week—maybe two—until the ground warms up and it stops snowing! It has been a chilly March to be sure. Some people sprout them inside and then put them into the ground once they start to get their first leaves. They do get some roots before those first primary leaves appear. Other things to plant early are onion sets and various types of lettuce. I just started some butter crunch lettuce inside. The problem with planting outdoors in March is that the seeds often rot in the cold wet soil. Sometimes I have had to plant things a second time, as the first planting never showed above the soil level.

Inside you can start a variety of vegetables and flowers. I have some tomatoes just coming up and I am starting radicchio, which is a bitter red green, as well as savoy cabbage, a favorite of mine for soups and Italian dishes. I like to start them in a warm location and then move them to my basement under a plant light. Be sure to put the light close to the plants and move it up as they grow.

In the next blog I will write about starting a garden bed, raised or not! It doesn’t have to be a complicated project. I will try to point you in the right direction for a successful first garden.