More Winter Blues...

The cold isn't going anywhere for awhile! Thank goodness for wood burning stoves. It really makes the house quite toasty.
The comments from the last post made me think I should post more photos!
Speaking to Tom about Forget-me-nots, I said how I love the carpet of blue they make in spring.
I originally planted them in this area near the Zebra iris.

They have since traveled down the driveway and they bloomed in the front walk this year. I think they look great with the tulips.


Here's the gorgeous little Iris reticulata. It blooms very early when most of the garden still is asleep. Sometimes they get covered in snow, but they will still be blooming when the snow melts.

These cuties should be planted where you will notice them so early. I have them along the front flower bed in front of the porch. Out back would be no good since no one ventures there in late winter/early spring. I've had visitors get very excited to realize they were real plants that were blooming. It is fun to see a 75 year old woman act like an excited child over the blooms.

Here's my own clematis that I mentioned to Cogardengram.

When I first saw it bloom. You don't know how excited I got! I couldn't believe my baby was so beautiful.

Here's another blue(almost) beauty that I forgot about. See what winter cold does, makes you forget how wonderful June was! This is Veronica 'Royal Blue' with the polyantha rose 'Marie Pavie'.

Ok, I'll take a break for now. Hopefully I've posted enough to have taken the chill out of the winter cold!

Winter Blues

Virginia Blue Bells

It has been too cold, and the cold is here to stay for awhile. I'm feeling blue. Hopefully this passes soon. My husband told me I need to get planting more seeds! One of my loves is blue flowers. There aren't many true blue flowers out there. There are many violet blue flowers, and I love them too especially campanulas(bluebells,) but they don't make me sigh like true blue flowers.
Mertensia virginica(Virginia Bluebells) is a wonderful spring ephemeral that more people should grow. ( A spring ephemeral is a plant that after blooming in the spring goes dormant for the summer.) It doesn't require much of anything to do exceptionally well. Since it goes dormant during the summer, drought is not a problem. I have mine beneath a large shrub rose that itself is in a semi-shade location. It is well behaved developing in to a larger clump slowly.



Brimeura amethystina

Alpine Hyacinths(Brimeura amethystina) is another true blue that is often unknown to many gardeners. It is a spring flowering bulb. It blooms mid May here. It is diminutive, but at the edge of a walk like in my garden, it is quite pretty. It will reseed if conditions are right. I have more than the few I planted years ago, and I happily saw a new one blooming across the walk this spring.

One more blue to help take away the winter blues...

Salvia 'Cambridge Blue'

This is one heck of a pretty annual. It really shines August to frost like many salvias seem to do. It is drought resistant and performs well in pots. Seed saving is a bit of a pain with this plant, so it is often high priced seed in catalogs or difficult to find in trade. Since the flowers bloom in succession, not all the seed ripens at the same time. Once seed is ripe though, it falls fairly quickly from the plant. So one must check often for seed, but it is well worth the trouble to have seed to grow this plant every year.
Other true blue(or pretty darn close!) flowers I grow:
Anchusa 'Blue Angel'(annual) and 'Loddon Royalist'(perennial)
Forget-me-nots, Myosotis(perennial), and Cynoglossum amabile(annual)
Echium 'Blue Bedder'(annual), and Viper Bugloss(biennial)
Centaurea(Bachelor Buttons, annual)
Nigella(Love-in-a-Mist, annual)
Delphinium
Lithodora
Penstemon
Pulmonaria(Lungwort)
Borage(annual)
Brunnera macrophylla, species and 'Jack Frost'
Iris reticulata
Allium azurea aka Allium caeruleum
Salvia 'Black and Blue', and other Salvias
Veronica 'Crater Lake Blue' and 'Royal Blue'

All this writing about blue flowers has made me feel better! I need to go plant more seeds as my husband said and I might really start to smile.
If you know of any other true blues I must grow, please let me know!

Happy New Year

It seems like mid winter already. There has been lots of cold wind and snow for the past month. I know I must get out there and start setting out my seed containers for winter sowing soon. Some perennial seeds need a cold period or they will not germinate. On another day, I will post pics of this process. It makes difficult seeds seem quite easy.
Hoping 2009 is a wonderful gardening year for you all!

Buffalo-Niagara Tomato Tastefest

I'm a hostess to the Buffalo-Niagara Tomato Tastefest. It is held the Saturday after Labor Day every year on Grand Island. This year we had 96 different varieties of tomatoes.
This is just some of them!


Prizes are given out to winners of various categories. The winners this year are as follows:
Best Tomato went to Stump of the World!
It was grown by Mark Korney. Hilde also grew it, but I made the executive decision that Mark's tasted better.
Second place went to:
Tie between Earl's Faux and Dice's Mystery Black.

Sweetest Tomato went to Sungold.
It was grown by Richard Price.
Second place was a tie between Hugh's and Rinaldo.
Rinaldo was grown by me. This one also got a vote for Best Tasting. This is surprising since it is a paste! (that I and many others got from Bully a couple years ago.)

Tangiest Tomato went to White Rabbit.
It was grown by Julianna(Sorellina.)
No second place, the rest were all single votes.

Prettiest Tomato went to Eva Purple Ball.
It was grown by Hilde Reineck.
Second place went to Plum Tigress.

Ugliest went to Voyage.
It was grown by Tristan Morris our youngest tomato grower there!
Second place went to an ugly cat-faced bumpy unknown.
It was grown by Ginny Barber.

Biggest went to Mexico at 2lbs 2.2 oz.!
It was grown by Mark Korney.
There were quite a few other big ones like Tom's Yellow Wonder and Rose Beauty, but I didn't record who's actually came in second.

Smallest went to Mexico Midget.
It was grown by Mark Korney.
Second place went to Remy Rouge.
It was grown by me.

Craziest Tomato Lover went to Hilde's mom.
She came all the way from Norway!
Second place was Toby Rotella, my father, of Key Largo, Florida.

We have a wonderful time rain or shine. Besides tomatoes, lots of great food is eaten!


If you are interested in attending, please email me.