The Weekly Gardener 2018: Volume 12

By Francis Rosenfeld

Collected articles from theweeklygardener.com - January through December 2018.
For current articles visit The Weekly Gardener blog

I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born this way: All Year Garden and The Weekly Gardener, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might find it useful in their own gardening practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francis Rosenfeld
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463332177

Francis Rosenfeld

I started learning about gardening from my grandfather, at the age of four. Despite his forty years' experience as a natural sciences teacher, mine wasn't a structured instruction, I just followed him around, constantly asking questions, and he built up on the concepts with each answer.As I grew older I applied this knowledge, experimented with new plants and learned a few things from my mistakes. That was fifteen years ago, and since then I was blessed with a thriving perennial garden. Half way through the journey, the micro-farm concept developed, a yearly challenge to figure out how much produce twenty square feet of dirt can yield.I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born this way: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might find it useful it in their own gardening practice.The blogs contain many stories (I am a writer and couldn't help myself), but also practical information about plant propagation, garden maintenance, working with your site, making preserves and keeping the yard welcoming for beneficial insects and local wildlife.

Book preview

THE WEEKLY GARDENER 2018

by Francis Rosenfeld

© 2018 Francis Rosenfeld

Smashwords Edition

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Week 1 -January 1st - Gracefully Asleep

Week 2 - January 8th - Remember Spring

Week 3 - January 15th - Winter Landscape

Week 4 - January 22nd - In Black and White

Week 5 - January 29th - Cottage Gardens

Week 6 - February 5th - Periwinkle Blue

Week 7 - February 12th - Daffodil Gardens

Week 8 - February 19th - Any Color Sky

Week 9 - February 26th - Finally Spring!

Week 10 - March 5th - Starting a Vegetable Garden

Week 11 - March 13th - Green

Week 12 - March 20th - Spring, Sort Of

Week 13 - March 26th - Designing With Color

Week 14 - April 2nd - You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

Week 15 - April 9th - A Timid Start

Week 16 - April 16th - April Schedule

Week 17 - April 23rd - I Know, Right?

Week 18 - April 30th - The Beautiful World

Week 19 - May 7th - The Golden Hour

Week 20 - May 14th - Tiny Wonders

Week 21 - May 21st - In the Garden

Week 22 - May 28th - A Week of Rain

Week 23 - June 4th - Simply Charming

Week 24 - June 11th - Just Roses

Week 25 - June 18th - Summer Solstice

Week 26 - June 25th - Bright Summer Days

Week 27 - July 2nd - The Essence of Summer

Week 28 - July 9th - Show Me

Week 29 - July 16th - Garden Variety

Week 30 - July 23rd - Touching Sunshine

Week 31 - July 30th - Summer Heat

Week 32 - August 6th - Patterns

Week 33 - August 13th - In Summer, When It Rains

Week 34 - August 20th - Fresh Greens

Week 35 - August 27th - Late Summer

Week 36 - September 3rd - Fall Green

Week 37 - September 10th - Purple Harmonies

Week 38 - September 17th - Earth Tones

Week 39 - September 23rd - The End of September

Week 40 - September 30th - Sunny and Warm

Week 41 - October 8th - The Garden Path

Week 42 - October 15th - Wrapping Up the Season

Week 43 - October 22nd - Creature Comforts

Week 44 - October 29th - In November

Week 45 - November 5th - Leaf Season

Week 46 - November 12th - Roses for All Seasons

Week 47 - November 19th - Icy!

Week 48 - November 26th - Under the Weather

Week 49 - November 3rd - Garden Storeys

Week 50 - December 10th - Sugarplum Dreams

Week 51 - December 17th - Simple Elegance

Week 52 - December 24th - Denver in Winter

WEEK ONE

January 1st - Gracefully Asleep

One Sunny Day

The year started frozen like the arctic landscape, and then the temperatures spiked into the fifties and dropped back below zero again.

During this short period of warm weather I picked a sunny day to take pictures of the winter garden and spend some time with it, since I always miss it during the cold season.

There isn’t much to see in the garden in winter, a few resilient evergreens that just won’t quit, colorful berries that look even brighter against the snow, a few plumes of grass shivering in the wind, fluffed up cardinal birds perched on naked branches, painted sunsets, and quiet, such quiet.

The weeds had a field day, quite literally, and it’s going to be interesting when the weather warms up and I finally get to do the spring cleaning, but that’s a worry for another season. For now I’m happy tending to my indoor garden, whose plants are, for the most part, natives of the southern hemisphere, and for this reason are just now starting to bloom.

I haven’t begun planning for spring yet, although some of the seed catalogs have already started coming in the mail. I’m just taking a little time, one sunny day, to watch my garden just be, a little languid and untidy during its off season, gracefully asleep.

Memories of Fall

The sedums’ color transformation didn’t go all the way to dark brown last fall, as it usually does by the end of the season, so they looked almost radiant in the morning sun of an unexpected sunny day in January.

Sedums are staple landscaping plants, and for good reasons: they are extremely hardy, have a generous blooming season, are relatively long lived and can thrive in any soil.

You can grow sedums in the shade, but they really need sunlight to thrive, even if it’s only for a few hours a day, or dappled through rare tree foliage.

Their clumps grow very large over the years and eventually hollow in the middle, signaling to the gardener that it’s time to divide them. You can do that at any time if you want to propagate them, even though standard gardening practice recommends dividing them in spring, but you don’t have to, because they’re prolific self-seeders and you will always find babies around the mother plant at the beginning of the season. Don’t worry if the new plants look tiny when you plant them, by the time fall rolls around they will be fully grown.

Plant them in shallow beds, that’s what they like, and don’t fuss around them too much, their stems are sappy and break very easily. Hail, heavy downpours and strong winds are very damaging to sedums for this reason, otherwise they are real troopers: they don’t even notice droughts, need very little feeding, and love heavy alkaline soils.

Fuzz

The pampas grasses have overwintered gracefully so far. It’s very early, of course, and by the time March rolls around they will be all mopey and wet, but for now they look ok against the snow background.

Gardeners differ on their opinion about when it’s best to trim the grasses, fall cleaning or spring cleaning. The professionals do it in the fall. I leave them on until spring, for two reasons: winter interest (which means I don’t want to deal with this task in the fall), and winter protection - they offer wildlife some shelter from the cold and the wind and help keep the soil temperature slightly higher to help the surrounding plants.

Last Herb Standing

For those thinking about growing sage, it’s the toughest plant in the herb patch and very easy to care for. Like lavender, it doesn’t stay green in winter, but it doesn’t lose its foliage either, its leaves turn a delicate shade of purple-gray.

Unlike lavender it is comfortable with cold winters and will not skip a beat even after temperatures drop below zero. Sage is not a nice neighbor and will take over the herb patch if you don’t prune it regularly, but do so after it finished blooming, it has such pretty flowers.

WEEK TWO

January 8th - Remember Spring

Three More Months

I'm looking out the window at yet another installment of snow, trying to remember spring. The plant catalogs have arrived and they are starting to form a nice little pile on my coffee table. I should start picking seeds, the seed trays are soon to come out of the garage and into the living room.

Every now and then the weather softens a bit and then I get to go out into the garden and it feels like a gift, I can't even tell you how I miss spring. With three more months to go, cabin fever kicked into full gear.

The indoor plants are doing their best to cheer me up, they're all in bloom, even the asparagus fern which blooms randomly throughout the year, I haven't figured out the pattern yet, and whose tiny white flowers are followed by bright red berries, round as beads.

It's hard to remember spring when the light dims to dusky levels in the middle of the day and the frozen dirt is harder than rock. It's January, I guess it's supposed to be cold.

The snow keeps sifting from the colorless sky in a slow steady rhythm, covering the ground with a thin powdery layer; the tree in the front yard projects bare branches, dark as cement, on the milky snow clouds. It shivers in the icy wind every now and then. Even watching this from behind a window feels cold. I'll go back to my burrow and stay there until the magnolias bloom.

March

What a crazy month: you're looking at blue skies, not a cloud in sight, and two hours later you're buried in snow.

March tricked me so many times I'm embarrassed to confess. Every year around the twenty fifth temperatures rise into the mid seventies and you can't even imagine a reason why they would be going back down again. This weather pattern is so predictable it should have its own name. Don't be lured into a false sense of security, winter will bite again, usually on April's Fool, one has to appreciate the irony.

Despite the fact that lately nature got into the habit of changing gears from winter to summer without stopping through spring, there will be frosts in April. In fact, I guarantee right now there will be frosts in April, especially if your enthusiasm gets the better of you and you decide to plant your frost tender seedlings early. Weather is so devious that it will bring frosts in May, just to show you that trying to assess its patterns is a fool's errand. A couple of years ago I planted at the end of April, long after the last day of frost. A week later I was running through the garden putting plastic covers over all the plants.

What I'm trying to say is don't trust March, but there is no reason why you shouldn't enjoy it. The spring bulbs are starting to bloom, the leaf buds are opening on the trees and the perennials start coming out of dormancy. These plants are programmed to withstand a frost or two and will go through them like champs, the delicate tomato and pepper seedlings will not. If