Challenge: Six plants I can't live without!

My favorite garden writer/blogger Country Gardener - has extended the challenge to write about the Six plants you can't live without.

You would think that would be rather easy - but it is too difficult to really narrow it down, so I have picked the following (after I stopped thinking too much about it because that kept me awake last night!):

My very favorite flowering plants provide hope and promise at the first signs of spring. All the spring flowers are beautiful, yet the Snowdrop (Galanthus) is my favorite.

The European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is the national tree of my native Denmark and a late spring day in the forest is just like the picture - maybe with an added carpet of wild anemones. The light shining through the canopy is like a magic lamp as the leaves are stretched out in almost vertical blankets. During the summer the leaves turn a darker green and in autumn the golden brown is like nothing else. Did you know that the leaves are edible?
I believe that the Nordman fir (Abies nordmanniana) is the cadillac of Christmas trees. I love its shape - open with almost horizontal branches that on older, larger trees will curve gracefully. They have a couple of very large specimens at the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens.

Another favourite bloomer is the Siberian Iris (Iris siberica). I have quite a few of the above blue variety and even though each flower is short lived, it blooms for awhile during late spring as the buds open along the stems. After flowering the grass-like foliage stays fresh and green all summer.
I never liked most rose bushes - I think the plant itself is ugly - but those flowers!! There are many beautiful (and also some climbers whose "frame" is good looking too), but I will choose the floribunda rose Iceberg (Rosa 'Iceberg') which was bred in Germany in 1958 and marketed under the name "Schneewittchen" which means Snow White. The buds have a light pink tint and the flower is almost completely white. It blooms all summer and the foliage is a healthy dark green. When I am ready to put in a rose garden, this one will be the first on my list.
Not much as soothing with the ability to make me feel good as my meadow (hey field) with different grasses, clover, trifoil, ox-eye daisies and more. That's not really "A plant" so the ornamental grasses will make up number six.

I can't pick just one, but here is a lovely summer pic of the early plumes of my Pampas grass (I think - but I don't know for sure) on a sunny summer day last year.

Thank you Yvonne, for challenging us - this was fun.

Garter snake release

Days are getting warmer and we are having some nights without frost. Time to release "Isicle" the snake in the bucket (the bucket covered with cloth, secured with heavy elastic string - I am not a snake person, really) in the garage.
Lately "he" has been spending more and more time outside his black hiding saucer and he seems more alert, so we decided to let him out yesterday.Looks like he is really eager to explore the world again.
We released him on top of the berm - approximately where we found him in the snow in January.
Ready to go - gone! I am sure though, that I'll meet him again.

Tough Love!

I can watch seedlings grow! I just love to see the new leaves unfold - to "study" how different the cotyledons and then the first leaves look. Heuchera and Helenium are so tiny. In the greenhouse we now have seedlings of:
Aruncus dioius - Goatsbeard
Euphorbia
Aster puniclus - Purple stemmed Aster
Sanguisorba officinalis - Great burnet
Salvia nemerosa
Agastache foeniculum - Giant blue hyssop
Verbena bonariensis
Helenium flexuosum
Heuchera villosa
Monarda fistulosa
Betula pendula

Two years ago we laid out my first perennial bed. I bought plants at fall nursery sales - just to see most of them die over the first winter.

Last year that bed was used as a parking spot for some shrubs for most of the spring and summer and now I really want to get the perennial bed started. The size of the bed is approximately 4-5 x 35 meters, so I need an awful lot of plants and decided to grow my own from seeds. And then, when I am at it, I might as well plan for yet another bed.

Perennials are not always as easy to grow from seeds as annuals are. I knew that I would be very busy and wanted to make my odds for success good, so I carefully picked plants that are fairly easy to germinate and grow and two weeks ago I transplanted my first seedlings from the "seed sprouting set-up" under lamps in the office to individual pots in my small and drafty hobby greenhouse.

When we (unexpectedly for me) had a couple of very cold days last week, I was afraid that the small space heater (placed in the greenhouse to keep night temperatures above freezing) wouldn't be able to keep up. What do you then do with 750 seedlings?? You put them in the back of the pick-up truck - in two layers - and park it in the frost-free garage for two days. Temps around 8-10 Celsius and very little light!
I am not sure, but I think that because of the low temperature the plants didn't seem to have any setback because of this "treatment" and are now happily growing in the greenhouse again. Getting ready for transplant are Phlomis tuberosa, Lobelia siphilitica, Papaver anomalum 'Album', Digitalis stewartii, D. parviflora, D. ferruginea and Thalictrum pubescens, Echinecea purpurea 'Alba', E. purpurea 'Primadonna'.
So far, so good - cannot wait to have the beds planted!

Repairing the willow tree!

Last year I started to experiment with growing "homemade" willow trees in pots. This "Harlequin" or "Belgian" tree I made from rods of Salix koriyanagi 'Rubykins', the one year growth of which is a pale greyish-green colour. This is how it looked just after I had made it.
32 rods are woven in a harlequin pattern and the fresh willow rods will root and start to grow. As they grow all shoots appearing on the "trunk" are removed to keep the woven pattern clean.

By June most of the rods were growing and the crown of 'Rubykins' was a beautiful fresh green with coppery tips on the shoots.

Some of the rods had not rooted, but the "big picture" was still pretty during the summer.

I was prepared to replace the dead rods this spring and yesterday the tree was fixed. At a closer count it turned out that almost half of the rods had not rooted and had to be replaced. The dead rods had dried out, shrunk, and changed to black or a light straw colour. The growing ones had increased in diameter and also changed colour. Now they are multicoloured olive green and different shades of rosy-brown.
I replaced one rod at a time by carefully pulling the dead one out and weaving the new one down towards the pot. In the image to the left the new rod is almost at the bottom where it has to be pushed about 25 cm into the "soil". (As a gardener can imagine, there is not much soil left when 20+ willows are growing in one single pot). The other image shows the tree after the full operation has taken place.

Now I really hope that the new rods will be able to compete with the already established ones. Only time can tell!

January 2012:

The repaired tree looked OK most of the summer with someof the new rods growing. During the following winter though, most of the new rods died as they couldn't compete with the established rods. So, even though the planter was fairly big, if you want to make sure that your tree will stray strong and healthy you must transplant it to your garden by the end of the first growing season.

Harvest

Willow rods are harvested during the plant's dormancy, between November and April during which time the bark sits tight on the rods.
When you coppice (cut off close to the ground) the willow plants they will throw long, straight rods without any branching, ideal for weaving and other willow works. Here is my first row of Salix 'Americana' with one year old rods after it's second year in the field.

I just harvested those yesterday and they delivered between 5 and 21 rods per plant, each rod being 120-180 cm in length.

When the willows are planted close together the shoots are competing for the sun and thus forced upwards. The first year after planting in the spring the number of shoots are limited and often they are quite branched too - that differs a lot depending of the variety. Over the next few years the rods will increase in both number and length and there will typically be less branching as well.

You can see the base of some of my 'Americana' here. Next year I should be able to harvest more and longer rods.

This year I cut my willows by hand with shears as I only have a small field. Now it looks like this. I'll be looking out for new shoots soon!!
More to come about my harvest soon!

The Greatest Garden Pest

The garden and field seem dormant - at times covered by a blanket, or even a truck load, of snow - during the winter season, and you feel good that at least some of last year's garden pests won't make it till spring.

Almost all my garden experience is from my past urban gardens where aphids and various kinds of viruses made up my "garden enemies", ruining some of the beauty during parts of the gardening season.

I never thought that a cute little cottontail would become my enemy #1, the one that frustrates me the most.

The little Fragrant Snowball Viburnum (Viburnum x carlcephalum) grew by 30-40 cm last summer, nearly doubling it's size and I was very happy as I love this shrub with its fairly long lasting, very fragrant white/pinkish balls in spring and its season long glossy, dark green leaves. This is what it looks like now: All growth from last year, every last shoot and bud that was ready for spring GONE.
The Pink Lady quinces (Chaenomeles x superba 'Pink Lady') were not only chopped down

but the bark at the base got a good chew too. Well, at least they left some "fertilizer" behind!
Unfortunately, even during the rest of the year when there's an abundance of food in the fields and natural areas around our property the rabbits still LOVE my garden. They don't understand that it's mine!! They love munching on the tender new shoots on garden plants in spring and the veggie garden all through the seasons if I don't fence it in.
Maybe I should get a hunting license!

The good snow

The very first blooms in early spring seem so tender yet unbelievably strong as they often bloom through some snow and frosty days. Mid February now and as this winter has been extremely cold (and long it seems) there's no signs in my garden of even the very tip of the first Galanthus elwesii - the snowdrops that I love. I am afraid that I'll have to wait a LONG time still!

I have a point to make about the other snow that I really don't love - though it has to be my garden friend.

The daffodil - Narcissus Martinette - decided to show it's dark green shoots already in the fall with lots of leaves. I really don't know why! Here's what they looked like on January 5 At this stage we had several extremely cold nights -20 to -30 Celsius and not until later did we get a lot more snow.

This was on January 29 and they are completely covered - just the outline of one mugo pine is visible.

Since then most of the snow has disappeared - and look at what the frost did to the Martinettes on the parts that were above the snow during the hard frost!

All those tips are dead, but everything below that snow is still green and alive. HAVE to condition myself to LOVE that snow!!!

SOOO looking forward to this sight (photo from April 30, 2008):