Winter Kitchen Garden Chores.

Nice place to build a nest. Even the most dedicated kitty cat can't get through the mess of rose thorns. The roses will need pruning but that's not urgent yet. The nest will go then - I think they build a new one each year.

This was Jan 1st before I started cleaning up the rose & fruit bed. I felt bad about letting it become such a mess last year.
Looking at this, I wondered if I could get it cleaned up. What a mess.
Over the past couple of weeks, I've pruned all of the roses (mainly on Jan 1st) and raked out the weeds. Charlie may not approve. He likes messes. But he tolerates my idiosyncrasies. Then this weekend, a layer of bark nuggets except the area around the raspberries.
Behind the apple tree, the " yellow everbearing raspberry "Fallgold" was still a mess. These are great raspberries. They started as a small grocery store bare root start. Now they are starting to take over their neighborhood.
My photo is bad. I trimmed off the tops at about the top of the photo. Removed one clump and moved it to a better spot on the opposite side, more in the direction where I wanted them to grow. Pulled up about half of the canes, concentrating on pulling up the scrawniest ones. These are "ever bearing". They bear early summer on the canes that grew last summer and fall. I shortened these a little because they bore at the tips last summer, an once a node has produced fruit, it's done. Below that level, they'll grow branches at each node, and those branches will bear fruit. Once they have done the second fruiting, they are done. So I also removed all of the spent canes from last year. Much tidier now. Now to head off to the bark mulch place and finish this garden bed, so it's ready for Spring. I feel a bit better now.

More:
I hauled another 3/4 yard of medium bark nuggets, spread them on the rest of the middle mini-orchard/rose bed, one side border, and some under a fig tree that I cleaned underneath first. This is already a better and earlier start than next year. Still lots to do however.

For the container gardens, I cleaned up the surface on 2 additional barrels. I planted seeds, a mini-ball shaped carrot ("Parisian Market"), more mesclun, lettuce mix ("Bon Vivant Blend"), a Chinese greens mix. They may not grow, because the seeds were old (1 to 3 years) and because, after all, it's only January. On the other hand, some seeds can last for years (I've blogged on that before, and tested some last year), and it doesn't matter if they take a month or more to come up. Plus, they may be hardier for being planted in the winter and allowed to grow with the weather. Plenty of weeds are already sprouting, and some greens are just a few steps removed from "weed". If they don't sprout in, say, a month, I'll buy some new seeds and try again.

My First Home Grown Cymbidium Flower

At long last, I've re bloomed a Cymbidium. This is on growth that occurred in my care, starting from new growth last winter, and that I re potted at that time. I kept it mostly in full sun for the summer, fall, and early winter. I let it stay outside until freezing seemed imminent, then brought it inside. The flowers last year were darker, almost brown, with a Burgundy accent on the lip. I don't know if this lighter is due to the flowers just being one day old; less sun; or some other aspect of my care. Doesn't matter, I'm excited to have raised one to the point of blooming.

So to celebrate, I get another one? What's up with that? Still, it's more compact, one of the most compact I've seen here. The flower colors are great. Unfortunately, when I removed it from the plastic-lined, basket cache-pot, there was about an inch of water in the pot. Will that mean loss of roots? Early demise? Loss of flowers? So far it looks fine, but I won't really know until the flowers fall off and it's time to re pot.

Really love the coloration. Quite beautiful.

Late January Gardening

It's that "Late January so it's warming up so the buds open then it freezes and destroys the flowers and possibly kills the tree" weather. It's in the 40s and 50s during the day. Inspecting, quite a number of roses have buds at about 1/4 inch long; peaches have buds swelling; daffodils are starting to peak out of the soil. The daffodils won't be bothered by even a hard freeze, but the peaches might. Some observations:

1. Peaches have quite a bit of what looks like freeze-kill on new growth, but overall look OK. Not sure why, but they did still have green leaves at the time of the first freeze. Most of the newest growth is stout and healthy appearing, and buds are swelling. I sprayed with copper micro-cop spray a 2nd time, hoping to have some effect on the leaf curl. I don't know if it will help at this late stage.

2. There was left over spray. Since the apples had a fair amount of fungal or bacterial disease last year, I sprayed them as well. No significant bud swelling on them.

3. Ditto for figs, so I sprayed them and used up the spray. I'm concerned that there is some freeze-kill on branch tips and brebas. Only the coming of spring will tell.

4. Some Chinese Chives are starting to grow, poking up through the soil.

5. I bought a truckload of medium bark nuggets, and spread them on areas that I have cleared so far. The theory this year is that kitty cat won't like it and will leave it alone. My theories are often disproved.

6. The grapes also appear to have some freeze-kill. If there is significant damage, this will be the first year for them to be damaged by a freeze.

What a waste. These great home-grown organic gourmet potatoes and I forgot them until they sprouted and shriveled. I set aside four of the "gourmet white" which had some stout short sprout in addition to the lanky ones, and threw the rest into the compost bin.

It may be too early to try the potato barrels, but not much to lose. I planted them deep, then covered the sprouts completely with potting mix. This time I was less greedy. I think 4 plants is enough for this small size of barrel. So that's all I planted.

Then a screen for the feline beastie so she doesn't use this for litter.

This barrel contained peppers last year, and some mesclun and greens and radishes last winter. These vegetables are limited not by freezing weather, but but gummy soil too cold to work. That's not an issue in the barrels. I pulled out the remaining pepper roots and stems, loosened the soil, and planted:

Radish, French Breakfast
Radish, Cherry Belle
Mesclun, Gourmet Blend. All of these seeds are from "Ed Hume Seeds".
Onion, Evergreen White Bunching. These take a lot longer, but have fresh scallions when the other varieties are not usable.

So there they are, 4 little rows. In a few weeks, I may plant a second barrel. I plan to wait for these seeds to sprout, first.

Another Yamamoto-type dendrobium

The office needed cheering up and there were no orchids in bloom, so I added this one. NOID. Most closely matches the variety on the Yamamoto Dendrobium website, New Century "Happiness". I know that matching to a photo is an imperfect method at best, but it gives me something to work on until I have a better answer. At the very least, it's clearly a Dendrobium nobile hybrid. This one has interesting plant morphology, "Dr. Seussian" shape with very skinny stem at the bark medium surface, quickly widening into a very stout stem. I like the plants that have an interesting shape in addition to nice flowers. This purple color does not photograph true. Looking at the plant, and the photo, the color in the photo is much lighter. I've noticed that with other purple orchids as well. The flower on the Yamamoto orchid site is lighter in color than this plant in person, but very close to the color of this photo.

The Temple of Flora

More correctly, this book is titled "New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus von Linnaeus" by Robert John Thornton, MD published in 1805. Made available online by the Missouri Botanical Garden via Botanicus.org. Beautifully illustrated book. I ran across it while looking for old illustrations of orchids. There is only one illustration of an orchid in this book, but many other beautiful illustrations of many types of flowers. The book itself is a work of art, so I have taken screen shots of some pages here.

Not sure why people insist on calling this work "The Temple of Flora" which really appears to be a subtitle. It sounds more, well, ethereal and poetic. Unless you love the poetry of scientific discourse, as I do.

Of course, if you are a benefactee of Queen Victoria, it pays to kiss up to the boss. It probably also does not pay to not-kiss-up to the boss.

Let's make it really, clear, the boss needs kissing up to.

OK, boss, in case you missed it, your getting the "royal treatment" here.

Whew. No heads to be lost here now.




Living in Victorian England, it's always nice to have some pictures of angels floating around in your scientific text book.
And of course, books being the "facebook" of the time, they had to include the authors face. As do books, and blogs, today.

OK, here is the illustration that I was leading to. I've been trying to find out what a Chinese Limodoron actually is. Haven't found it yet. Beautiful illustration, though.
"This beautiful plant was introduced into our garden in 1778 by Dr. Fothergill, who obtained the seeds from China.

Edit: The Limodorn is Phaius tankervillae. Once I know what I'm looking for, I can find it.