Eranthis hyemalis, or Winter Aconite, looking like jaundiced little choir boys.
Plant of the Week
The Winter Aconite is up at bat, just in time for the end of the baseball strike. This early spring bulb has the botanical name of Eranthis hyemalis, but Winter Aconite is slightly less of a mouthful. Native to Europe, as many bulbs are, this tiny bright fellow will naturalize where happy, which is apparently not my garden, but I continue to try and to plant bought bulbs each spring. In the photo above he was bravely opening a bit to temps in the low 50’s, but see below for his reaction to snow. The butter cup like flower closed up like a clam shell but he won’t be any worse for wear and returning warm weather will make his little yellow face appear also.
Winter aconite naturalized under some trees at The Stanton House Inn in Greenwich, CT. I had already chose him as my Plant of the Week, and got lucky with this healthy stand by the parking lot. My meager population is not camera ready yet.
Guest: Stephanie Rose
Stephanie Rose has had a gardening journey the likes of which few would know. Many people think of gardening as a chore (ha! poor folks!) but she uses it as her therapy as she battles a debilitating illness. Stephanie’s latest book, “The Regenerative Garden”, is coming out soon and you can pre-order it here on my Amazon Storefront.
Stephanie Roses’s latest book, “The Regenerative Garden”
The “Regenerative Garden: 80 Practical Projects for Creating a Self-sustaining Garden EcoSystem”, is filled with gardening ideas and projects that would not only make you happy in the garden, but they would make the earth happy too. Stephanie organizes the projects into different levels of complexity, but even doing one on its most basic level will improve your garden and ecosystem.
Images from Stephanie’s cheerful Instagram feed
In Stephanie’s book you can “Discover how to work with nature, instead of against it, by employing permaculture techniques to create a garden that is not just more beautiful and productive, but also more resilient.”
Links:
Stephanie’s Website Garden Therapy
You can learn things like Herb Garden Skin Care, Creative Garden Art and Botanical Beauty and lots more by enrolling in Stephanie’s online courses.
Coffee Time!
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Playing Around the Garden
In this episode I mention a bunch of different tips and ideas about early March gardening.
Dethatching the Lawn
From left to right: before dethatching, during and you can see the thatch, and on the right you can see the type of wire rake that works well.
I may have doing at that a little early by raking mine in February, but high summer and late fall seems to be the only times you really shouldn’t. Thatch is a layer of organic material (dead blades, old leaves and sticks) that can be good for your lawn, but a thick layer of thatch would keep it from taking advantage of rain and sprinkling.
Cut back Liriope in late winter. The serrated edge of a soil knife is the perfect tool for this.
You could hire it done or rent a big old machine to do it, but a nice wire rake is effectual, not too stressful for grass, and satisfying.
Cutting back Liriope
Liriope is a useful and really common landscape plant. It is also almost carefree. I like the variegated types myself, but no matter what type you have, I recommend chopping away all the foliage in late winter before new growth starts. That way, all you look at all season is fresh new growth.
Pruning Climbing Roses
Growing climbing roses on a trellis like our daughter and son-in-law do is perfect for getting them trained correctly. You want to train a few main canes to grow horizontally and prune the growth coming off of the horizontal canes very hard in late winter.
You can clearly see my pruning cuts on the cane that right above the trellis. Cut back to a node and leave only 2-3”
Remember the Pro Tip …
that I mentioned on the podcast: if you are growing a climbing rose up a vertical element such as a tuteur or lamp post, twist the canes to have them be less vertical. They will flower much better for you!
Lavender Pruning and Care
I had a local gardener, Beth, write in about the planting and pruning of lavender. Lavender is a Mediterranean plant that loves heat, sun, and very sharp drainage. Around here in Charlottesville we have trouble growing it in our heavy clay soil.
When you plant lavender and you know you don’t have the soil that it would take to grow it well, add gravel to the bottom of your hole— 3-4” should do it and that way its roots will never sit in water.
In terms of pruning lavender, I prune it in mid-fall, taking away the flower stem all the way down to its foliage but not into its wood.
These photos are from today, early March, and the one of the left shows how I had pruned the flowers away last fall, but there are some bits that didn’t make it through the winter that should be pruned now.
I inherited a lovely old plant with woody ‘stems’, more like trunks, that are over 1’’ thick. I think the big one in the photo at right may have to be sawed away— not much beauty left on it.
You can take away flowers in fall or now, late winter, or early spring. If you prune in fall, you might want to go back and check the plant again in early spring to take away any bits that didn’t make it through the winter.