Preparation for Spring

A young friend of mine recently asked my advice on starting a vegetable garden this spring, particularly wanting to know how much sun vegetables would need. To have a successful garden you need at least 6 hours of sun. More is better, of course. Most suburban lawns don’t get this much sun, so there’s a first challenge!

I told her another important issue is soil preparation. If you don’t amend the soil, you are wasting your time and money! Most of us don’t have either to spare. The soil in East Tennessee is clay-like, but it can easily be amended with peat moss or compost. Given the time, you can make your own compost. Here is a good how-to on composting:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/dirt-the-movie/composting.html

My husband and I moved into our present house on the top of a ridge in 1997, and all the good soil had long ago washed down the hill. What was left was a mixture of rocks and clay. In the spring of 1998, we started on the landscaping and vegetable gardens. Here’s one of our beds:

It's at the back of the driveway, and is 23 feet long, 4.5 feet wide, and 22 inches deep. We call it the spaghetti garden because of its shape--looks like it would be good to grow spaghetti! You can see some spinach emerging. I planted it last fall with the help of the grandchildren.

 

We worked very hard on amending the soil. After we put in the railroad ties, we dug out the existing soil, sifted it (yes! we really did), and chopped in peat moss since we didn’t have any compost at that point. This has produced an excellent garden. Each subsequent spring, my husband tills in additional organic material to make it better.

Here is another lantana cutting from the greenhouse:

  

 Here's dreaming of warmer weather!

The Seeds Have Arrived

It continues to snow in East Tennessee, so the warmth of the greenhouse feels good! A few more cuttings have bloomed.

Lantana

Geranium

Pentas

The geranium is special. My late mother-in-law grew this. She had admired it at a local church, and asked for cuttings. I rooted them for her, and she grew them that summer. In the fall, I made cuttings to over-winter. After her death in 2003, I’ve kept it up.

Meanwhile, the seeds have arrived! I’ll wait until about 6-8 weeks before I plan to start them. The average last date of frost locally is April 2, so I usually start my planting early to mid-April. Thus, the seeds need to be started early to mid-February. I'll be working on that soon.

Starting Seeds

It continues to be snowy this week, and I am thinking about seed starting for spring planting. I have ordered my seeds from parkseed.com, although they haven’t arrived yet. I like to start unusual plants which can’t be easily found for sale locally in the spring. I have ordered a Magellan zinnia collection which consists of seven packages of 25 seeds apiece of various colors of dwarf zinnias. These plants grow to about a foot high. I like the dwarf better because you don’t have tall plants falling over during the summer. I also have ordered Crystal White Zinnia. Its 1-2 inch blooms looks like a daisy. This particular series of plants doesn’t need deadheading, which saves a lot of time. As a matter of fact, the National Garden Bureau has declared 2011 The Year of the Zinnia. Zinnias can take the heat and humidity of our summers. In general, the hybrid varieties available from seed retailers are mildew resistant.

The greenhouse is full of cuttings I made last fall. Here are a couple of bacopa that are in bloom. The cold, snowy days of January are good to spend in the greenhouse!

Repotting amaryllis bulbs

A snowy January day is perfect for repotting my amaryllis! The bulbs have been lying dormant since mid-October. I bring in the pots containing the plants as frost approaches and put them on the shelf in the garage. They remain there without water until time to reawaken for spring.

Here’s what an amaryllis looks like in bloom. My bulbs are either red, pink or red-striped.

I gather all the pots from the garage, a new bag of potting soil and get to work. I pick up the first, shake the bulb out of the pot and remove all the old soil, saving it for the compost.

Some of them have babies on the side. I snap them off and add them to the pile. The roots should stay on the bulb.

After I have done all of them, I inventory. I have 7 large (3-4 inches in diameter), 47 medium, (2-3 inches) and 15 small (about 1 inch). All of mine are offspring of bulbs I have purchased several years ago. If you take care of your amaryllis bulbs, they can bloom year after year.

I start repotting the bulbs in fresh soil-less mix. I add a few grains of slow-release fertilizer to help strengthen the bulb. Be sure to cover the fertilizer. The larger ones get their own pot, since they have the best chance of blooming. The smaller ones are grouped into a pot. They can grow in strength and perhaps bloom another year.

After all are potted, they get watered and go into the greenhouse to start putting out foliage and perhaps blooms. It’s a treasure hunt to check them each day for progress. The strap-like leaves appear from the center, and the bud stalks from the side. Usually, when an amaryllis blooms, I give it away. It’s a nice, cheery gift in the late winter gloom. When all danger of frost is gone, I take them out of the greenhouse and place them on an area of my driveway that gets morning sun and dappled afternoon shade. This location is easy to water. There they live happily until the fall and the cycle starts again.