Welcoming the Earlies

If you love a particular kind of flower, you often wish that its season would last longer so that you can enjoy it all summer. Daylilies are most often a July flower, and so we fans wait patiently through the parade of the beautiful spring and early summer blossoms, the tulips and peonies and irises and all the others, keeping track of the progress of our scapes and buds.

More and more hybridizers are focusing on season extension, both on the front and back ends; some nurseries specialize in these types of cultivars. We’ve been trying to acquire more of these Earlies and Lates, ultimately hoping for a June-to-September daylily garden.

This year, an unexpected delight: two of our first 2010 seedlings opened as Earlies, one of them the first post-Stella daylily and a red-purple one to boot. Most early daylilies seem to be in the yellow-orange range, so this was doubly pleasing. To add to our pleasure, both of these seedlings are keepers: nice form, good increase, branching and bud counts (especially for first-year seedlings), and opened very well. Neither of them breaks new ground in the daylily world in terms of color and pattern, but that’s fine; we’re just trying to grow new hardy daylilies with beautiful faces that will thrive in Northern gardens.

The first one pictured, red-violet, is a cross between Intelligent Design and Sailing at Dawn; the second, buttery gold with the cranberry eye, is the offspring of Hold Your Horses and Brown Lasso. After they’re done blooming, they’ll be moved out of the seedling bed and into a “keeper” bed, where they’ll be evaluated for another year, to see how they handle being moved and how well they continue to increase. Then, if all goes well, they’ll be available the following spring. It’s a long process, one that forces me to be patient. But the rewards of seeing these beautiful new blossoms for the first time makes it all worthwhile!

Simple Spring Salads

A change in the weather back to cool temperatures here may not be good for newly-planted tomatoes and melons, but it’s been just right for extending the spring salad season. Lettuce grows really well for us here, and so we plant many types, staggering the sowing so there’s always something ready. After growing up in an iceberg-only home (was there any other kind available in the grocery stores back then?), the seemingly-infinite number of varieties available is amazing … and of course I end up buying way more seeds than I can ever use. Some favorites: Blushed Butter Cos, Red Sails, Buttercrunch, and Olga Romaine.

Nonetheless, lettuce is just the start. At this time of year we’re still adding sorrel (but we’re getting to the end of that now, as it sends up its seed stalks), dandelion greens, salad burnet, spinach, violet leaves, chives, baby kale, and tossing in bits of oregano, thyme, lemon balm, whatever appeals at the moment. There’s lots more out there that could be used, of course, but a quick run through the garden in the morning provides plenty for the supper salad. With all those interesting flavors, there seems no need for anything beyond a tasty homemade dressing.

Looking ahead, as the weather gets back to summery steam, I’m now sowing more heat-resistant Batavian varieties of lettuce. They’ll go in a section of the veggie patch that gets some afternoon shade, and maybe we’ll put some row cover over them as well to help mitigate the heat. Batavians have thicker leaves and a different texture than the spring lettuces, and while I prefer the spring greens, we’re happy to have fresh-picked lettuce all summer long.

Trees

Trees always seemed to me to be outside of the world of gardening … at least, my world, I guess. Oh, they’re all around, and particularly beautiful in spring bloom or fall colors, but mostly I thought of them – when I thought of them at all – as either 1) something to keep my sun-loving plants away from, or 2) creating shade gardens that seemed particularly challenging. Oh, and 3) expensive to purchase, and therefore out of my budget range.

Now I’m becoming increasingly entranced by trees. There are the utilitarian ones I’ve planted over the years – apples, for instance; the more I learn about them, and the whole subject of grafting onto root stock, the more intrigued I am. We inherited a number of ancient apples with this farm, totally neglected for years; they look like venerable elders to me. One in particular, way out in the back field, is so battered, scarred, and split open that it’s hard to believe it’s still alive … but not only is it alive, but still blossoming and bearing fruit.

This tree makes me think of several people I know who are in their 90s, still vital and engaged with life … as if they’re all saying, hey! I’m not done yet!

Several years ago I joined the National Arbor Day Foundation, after getting one of those offers in the mail … I think it was $15 to join, and they’d send a dozen or so young trees. Twigs, was more like it; a small bundle of the most unimpressive little sticks with bare roots, which seemed utterly ridiculous to me at the time. But I followed the directions and planted them in a nursery bed.

It’s been perhaps five years now, maybe six; nearly all have grown, and have been moved to various parts of the yard. And a few of them have done astoundingly well. Here, for example, is an Eastern Redbud that I transplanted two years ago into one of my gardens… and I left the mower in the photo for perspective.

I love to wander through garden centers and nurseries, looking at the trees; but the price tags are still prohibitive to me. Wouldn’t it be great if we could purchase a much smaller version, and then nurture it ourselves? My heart’s desire is to plant two maples in our yard, knowing that our 50+-year-old willow is past its prime, and not wanting a totally empty expanse when it goes. But at $150-200 each, maples are mighty pricey! So this spring, I’ve been digging and potting some of the little maple seedlings I find around the edges here; nothing to lose, and if they grow even half as well as those little twigs that came in the mail, I’ll have some nice small trees in a few years.