Vindicated

Thank you, Associated Press. I know that I haven't talked about it here, but I've secretly spent the past month or so feeling like a complete gardening failure because of the lack of fruit set on my orchard trees and other fruiting plants.  Strawberries were first, lousy this year in both number and size.  Two cherry trees in my yard bore nothing.  The blackberries were a mediocre crop at best.  And, looking at the peach and apple trees, I've got one apple tree ('Winesap') with about one-third the normal number of apples and my 'Jonathan' and 'Gala' trees are completely apple-less.  And I can count 6 peaches on three trees.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush is quite upset, particularly at the loss of the strawberry crop, and I have caught her sneaking in produce from afar.

I have been trying to assuage my guilt about not harvesting a decent fruit crop by blaming it vociferously on our late frost this spring and the on dry fall and winter of last year. I have been avoiding entry to the part of my garden that includes the orchard. And I've been avoiding talking to other gardeners about their fruit harvests, fearful that I'll be proven inadequate by comparison and laughed at.  I was considering, for a time, wearing a scarlet "G" on my chest, the very symbol of gardening shame. Recently, the gardener's refrain of "it will be better next year or the one after that," has been constantly running through my head.

But this weekend the local paper ran an Associated Press story out of Lawrence, Kansas, and there it was in black and white; "A few days of subzero weather in late February has decimated the fruit tree crops in northeast Kansas, sharply reducing the apples, peaches...."   Ahhh, thank you Experts. near and far, for making it all better for the amateurs. They've officially blamed my lack of fruit on a phenomenon called "winter kill," below-zero temperatures that destroy the developing ovaries.  More importantly, I now know that everyone around here is in the same boat and we are all now free to commiserate and moan and gnash our teeth together, rather than hiding the knowledge of our insufficiencies in the closet with the family's eccentric Aunt and the funny Uncle. 

In the same article, the Experts blamed the strawberry loss on a different mechanism; a cool and wet spring followed by a sudden heat that scorched them just as they were ripening fruit.  Me, I don't care why it happened anymore, I just care that something or somebody other than the garden caretaker was to blame.  And I can tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush that it wasn't my fault and show her the article.  She'll believe that, won't she?

Honoring Hollyhocks

I went to bed last night to the sight and sound of lightning and thunder from a storm 30 miles to the west.  We didn't get any rain from it. I awoke this morning at 5:45 a.m. to the same western lightning and thunder and hurried outside to put some inorganic fertilizer (I know...so sue me) on a few new pet roses. And then I ran into town to fertilize the K-State Rose Garden.  All the time wondering when the lightning, now easily within my horizon, was going to stop me in my tracks.  I had to worry about the lightning, but I needn't have worried about getting rain.  We didn't get rain. The radar showed it raining on us but nothing was reaching the ground;  I guess it was boiling off  in the early morning heat.  The storms just fizzled out in the face of the  104F temp predicted today.  It is going to be a long week of  plus-100 temperatures in the garden.

While I was at the KSU garden this morning, in between dodging the lightning, I had to admire the wisdom of a real gardener, one with a degree in horticulture to add to his experience, who planted the small island bed in the center of the parking lot.  It is filled with hollyhocks and flanked by low airy grasses on the edges. There is no water to this bed (pictured at right) other than the meager July rains and what can be hand-carried to it, but here it is, happy and healthy and the hollyhocks beginning to bloom.  The bloom above is a closeup of one of those single hollyhock blooms, beautiful in its simplicity, intricate in its color shading.  And the grasses around the bed are framing it well, transitioning to the taller hollyhocks.

A variation on that theme was a corner bed in the same parking area, pictured at left, daylilies planted at the feet of the hollyhocks and taller grasses to the fenceline, but no less water-wise or harder to maintain then the island bed pictured above.  I believe there are a number of lessons to take to heart here;  1) Choose the plant for the site.  2) The plants our grandmothers grew still have a lot going for them.  3) Step outside normal landscaping plants and practices when you can. 4) Visit your local botanical garden or University garden or the garden of a professional as often as you can because they are full of ideas.  5) Get a degree in horticulture if you really want to garden...because I'm quite impressed at the brilliance of this hollyhock plan and I would probably have never thought about it, amateur that I am.

Pet Daylily

In the midst of Garden Blogger's Bloom Day at May Dreams Garden, I will add a photo of my favorite daylily, 'Beautiful Edgings'.

At first glance, 'Beautiful Edgings' is just another cream daylily, but a closeup look at this one will reveal its beauty;  ruffled edges blushing pink, a diamond-glittered surface, and a perfect large blossom.  'Beautiful Edgings' is a diploid, released by Copenhaver in 1989. And awards?  You name it and 'Beautiful Edgings' has won it; Honorable Mention, 1999; Award of Merit, 2002; President's Cup, 2002; Lenington Award, 2006.   Although the Award of Merit is the most prestigious listed here, I would highlight the Lenington Award which is given to daylilies that grow well over a wide geographic area. 

I grow 'Beautiful Edgings' in a prominent spot right at the "edge" of my front walkway and I wait for her bloom every year to tell me the daylily season has hit the half-way mark.  Sometimes, when the air is not so hot around her, the colors in the blossom are more vibrant, but I'll take what I can get in this July heat.  'Beautiful Edgings' reblooms and is semi-evergreen, if you live in a zone where you care about the growth habit.  I don't because all daylilies are dormants in Kansas for all intents and purposes.