The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

After all the anticipation, after the long time between holidays, March 17th has finally arrived. This is the feast day of the Patron Saint of gardeners. We as gardeners love the color green, to me it represents abundant plant life and vitality.

The reason why this day has been made a Saint’s day for gardeners was lost centuries ago. The most common explanation is that in Europe, where this tradition began, March 17th historically has had good weather. So many people sowed the first seeds of the season into their gardens. Here in Southern Michigan mid-March is early even for cold tolerant crops. By the way, green beer is a modern invention and really has nothing to do with this Saint.

Born in 626 AD, in Belgium, Saint Gertrude of Nivelles was a devout Christian even at an early age. At ten years of age she refused to marry a nobleman and devoted her life to her religion. When she was only twenty years old she became Abbottess of her monastery in Nivellis. She lived to be only 33 years old, probably due to overwork exacerbated by her austere living conditions.

Saint Gertrude is also patroness of travelers, she was known all over the continent for her hospitality to travelers. She gave especially generous assistance to Irish missionaries who often traveled through the area. She was friends with Saints Follian and Ultran and helped them establish a monastery at Fosse. Curiously, Saint Gertrude’s sister, Begga, was also canonized a Saint, her feast day being December 17.

Saint Gertrude’s popularity grew during the middle ages and she was particularly beloved in Belgium, Germany and Poland. In addition to gardeners and travelers, she eventually became patroness to herbalists and people who love cats. Often her name was invoked against mice or other rodents whenever an infestation was discovered.

Many times, pictures of Saints have no identifing name on them because artists would use symbols to identify their subjects. If you see an old statue or painting of a woman, standing in a garden, carrying a staff with a mouse crawling up, that’s Saint Gertrude!

So… Happy Saint Gertrude’s Day!

Bob

Ye shall not possess any beast my dear sisters, save only a cat.

Saint Gertrude

Did you get a chance to go outside today?  I did. 

The snow was melting rapidly this morning as the temperature began to rise up to 70 degrees.  It was a great opportunity to check out how things fared over the winter.

My first stop was the bee hives.  All 8 hives had made it through the winter.  I always expect one or two of the colonies to not survive the winter, so this was a pleasant discovery.  The bees were joyfully taking their first spring flight in the 70 degree air and basking in the sun on the side of the hive boxes.

My next stop was the vegetable garden, as regular readers of this blog know, we have around 125 raised beds.  Most of the beds were still frozen, some had snow-melt water on the surface because the soil had not completely thawed.

One bed, much to my delight, still had growing spinach!  Every spinach plant in that bed was alive and making new growth.  What makes this all the more surprising is the fact that this bed was not mulched or covered in any way!  Of course I just had to taste some, so I picked a few leaves… they were delicious…and super-sweet.  I mean almost sugary!  Apparently, the spinach plants, as a winter survival tactic, had increased the amount of sugars and other nutrients in their leaves and crowns.  This kept the individual plant cells from forming ice crystals and bursting their cell walls.  These will make the most nutricious salad of the season.

Last fall we had covered 4 beds with home-made plastic “mini-greenhouses”.  These, of course, were the warmest of the garden beds.  I stuck my soil thermometer in several spots to depth of 5 or 6 inches and found that the soil temperatures ranged from a high of 44 degrees F near the center of the bed to a low of 32 degrees at the corners.  Actually, the corners were still frozen at a depth of 3 or 4 inches.

Hey, 44 degrees is good enough for me! :)  I cleared out a few frozen bib lettuce plants leftover from last fall, raked the surface level and sowed new lettuce seeds. Lettuce is a cool weather plant and is able to germinate fairly well when soil temperatures are in the 40′s.  Since this particular bed will be protected by the bed cover,  the planting will have a good chance of producing a successfull early lettuce crop.  If not, I’m only out the cost of a few seeds.

The seed I used was a mixture called “All Star Gourmet” from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.  This mix contains 4 different green leaf lettuce varieties and 4 red leaf.

If all goes according to plan we will be harvesting our first outdoor lettuce in a few weeks. 

And so, another season begins…

Bob

Yesterday afternoon, while working in the greenhouse, I was listening to one of my favorite radio programs; “Science Friday” on National Public Radio. Each week, for two hours, the host Ira Flatow and his guests discuss current scientific developments. The second hour on Friday was devoted to gardening. Gardening actually does involve a large amount of science, for example, the absorption of minerals, the creation of sugar during photosynthesis and the exchange of minerals and sugars during the growing processes.

Ira’s guests on the gardening segment were: Tanya Denkela author of The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food and David Ellis, Director of Communications for the American Horticultural Society and editor of ” American Gardener Magazine”. They were later joined by writer and radio producer Dan Charles author of Lords of the Harvest, a book detailing the development of the first generation of genetically engineered crops.

A lot of ground was covered in this segment, it hardly felt like an hour had gone by. You certainly don’t have to be a scientist to enjoy this program as Ira makes sure the information is presented in a way we all can understand.

I’m hoping Ira Flatow will present more programs on gardening from the scientific viewpoint. For me, it was a nice change of pace from all of the lighter gardening programs we hear on the radio. If you missed Friday’s program, it will be available via podcast.

I listen to “Science Friday” Fridays from 2-4 pm on WUOM 91.7 FM public radio from the University of Michigan.

Today, the first of the Butterfly Weed seeds we sowed last week sprouted. This event was the culmination of a five week process that was needed in order for them to germinate.

Asclepias tuberosa gets the name Butterfly Weed from the fact that butterflies love these plants as much as people do. Monarch butterflies often visit this plant because it is in the milkweed family.
This hardy perennial produces dense clusters of blossoms ranging in color from yellow to orange to red that appear in June and July. They make a good cut flower.

As you might have guessed, there is a down-side to growing these garden favorites; that being the five week process I mentioned earlier.

It all starts with a four week process know as “stratification”. It is during this period we try to mimick winter and the early spring snow melt which is needed before the seed is able to geminate. This happens fairly often in the plant world and is needed by many hardy perennials.

We start out by placing the seed between two sheets of wet paper towels. The paper toweling gets placed into a Zip-Loc bag, then the whole thing goes into the crisper of the refrigerator. There the seeds are fooled into thinking the winter is ending and the warm spring will soon be here.

Last week, after four weeks, the seeds were removed from the crisper. We sowed the seeds on the surface of our planting mix without covering them because, in addtion to stratification, they also need sunlight to sprout. So, now, they have the 70 degree warmth they need to begin growing in the greenhouse.

Not all seed catalogs or nurseries for that matter offer Asclepias seed or plants. It may be due to the difficulty in the germination process. There is still time to order seeds if you want to try growing them yourself. We got ours from Stokes Seeds . Park’s Seeds offer them as well.

By starting the seeds this early we can be sure they will blossom this season instead of having to wait until next year. The seedlings will be planted in the garden in May along with the rest of our flowers.

Bob