ProfessorRoush promised all his readers this year, that he would post as he gardened; keeping you alongside for a year on the prairie. Well, March 10th here, and this picture represents my first garden activity of the new year; the indoor planting of 3 anemic Walmart-sold daylily starts, Hemerocallis 'Final Touch'. There are two other miserable starts of Hemerocallis 'Naughty Red' in the pan beside these. These are not what I really wanted to start the garden year with, but the five starts were only $10 total (well, $10.90 with tax). Apparently I'm so desperately starving for the touch of dirt, even that of mere packaged potting soil, that I could not resist these spare excuses for live plants.It must have been the 45ยบ weather and sunshine that thawed out my gardening core, even if it hasn't thawed out the earth. Our last snow is gone now, except for a few small remnants in deep shade, but the garden is a swamp of muck; puddles of melt water and two-inch-thick messy mud over still frozen subsoil. There will be no digging nor drainage of the snow melt until that ground thaws beneath.
The starts above are safe for the present in the basement window, where I hope they will green up and survive until the ground thaws and the risk of frost is gone. That will be sometime in late July, likely, at the rate things seem to be warming.
With luck, the worst of it is over. We'll probably get some cold still, but not like we've had. Now if it would only dry out! The ground has been frozen still so the rain is just pooling on the ground right now. I took a day down to Kansas City today since the high school is on Spring Break and impulsively bought a clematis. I guess it will live under lights until it warms up more?
ReplyDeleteI'm in the same boat with Walmart plants. I went to two quality nurseries today, and neither had any crocossima corms, which Walmart has. Sad, really. I didn't want the mixed variety there, but the traditional "Lucifer" variety (...Lucifer growing in a monastery courtyard down the path from some Painted Ladies -sweet peas, if they ever get in the ground], the irony isn't lost on me!), but beggars can't be choosers.
May drier, warmer days come your way!
'Lucifer' at the monastery...let us not advertise that fact, eh, Br. Placidus?
ReplyDeleteHe knows my weakness... a desire for English garden plants that are doomed from the start. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!
DeleteNice post.Keep sharing. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete