Port Potager

If you’ve noticed I haven’t written at all this month, I apologize. And if you didn’t  notice, well, I can only assume that you were as consumed with current events as we have been. It has been an incredibly long — and, to our minds, disorienting and sad — week. None of that has been made any easier by the fact that we are still without heat. I mentioned it in passing in my previous post , and our furnace is still broken. This is no fun at all.  So far we have managed to muddle through with space heaters borrowed from generous friends, and the house hasn’t dipped below 50 degrees inside — yet. We are still anxiously waiting for National Grid to send a crew to put in a gas line so we can switch from oil to natural gas. This will all be incredibly expensive, though we do live in a state with an excellent rebate program for energy-saving upgrades. But if we have to replace a furnace, we figured we should at least get a better fuel choice in the bargain. In th...

We've been on a springtime weather roller coaster here the past several days, bouncing from balmy to brisk and back again. It was another big weekend in the garden, with lots of bed prep and planting (leeks, onions, carrots, parsnips, radishes, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, and potatoes). My hamstrings and hands are still sore, but we got a lot done. It would be a shame, though, to focus only on the to-do list without enjoying all the little changes that spring brings to the garden. Here's what's blooming: Bulbs are up in the perennial border, and these blue glory-of-the-snow get better each year. We inherited them and they have naturalized nicely. There are also some darker blue Siberian squill, which are just starting to come up. We removed the spills from the sugar maple now that sugaring season is done. The wound should heal over by autumn. More blue! These sky blue muscari bulbs are in the cutting bed, but I never actually cut them down.  ...

The bulbs are in a fairly shady spot of the cutting garden, so they are late bloomers. Not sure if they will get enough sunlight to return next year or not, so I am enjoying them while they are here! Tulips. Keeping the leaves on make a pretty decent frog for holding them upright and in place. Tulips, daffodils, Jacob's ladder, and allium. The Jacob's ladder ("Bressingham purple") smells wonderful! A small vase for Tiegan: tulips and daffodils. More tulips. Even more tulips. This shows the evolution of the plain tulip bouquet in the previous photo. As some older blooms faded over the course of the week, I removed them, cut the remaining stems a bit shorter, and added some hosta leaves around the edges to fill in the gaps and push them closer together so the whole thing looks like it's still full of flowers. And ... tulips. We are having a week of heavy downpours each night, and I wanted to bring these inside before th...

It is 61 degrees this afternoon in Newburyport, and tomorrow it is supposed to be even warmer. Spring! It's sometimes hard to jump into gardening tasks in just the couple hours of daylight I have left when I get home from work (especially when there's an activity to drive a kid to in the middle of that time period), so today I just took a quick tour around the garden. Tomorrow I should be able to actually get something done. In the meantime, here's what there is to see: Our fruit trees are starting to bud! This is one of the apples, but they are all looking good. As you can see, there is a bit of snow from last week left in the yard, but I expect that to be gone tomorrow — it's not supposed to drop below 40 tonight. In the perennial border, we have our first official flower: a little Siberian squill. Only one of its several flower buds has opened, but I say it still counts.  I also came home to an open cold frame. Good thing Kirk remembered to open...

Earlier this month I got a giant box in the mail. The fall-planted bulbs arrived! Here in all their un-planted glory are 100 tulips, 250 daffodils, and 300 Siberian squill. That's a LOT of bulbs! For a refresher, you can check out what the flowers will look like when they come up in April here . As excited as I was to get these in the mail, it was hard to motivate myself to get them planted. The weather was actually too good to do it over Columbus Day weekend — we were out enjoying ourselves doing other things. On Monday of the long weekend, though, I finally made myself get out there and start digging, with the help of Kirk and a young friend of Jonas' (who was a quite interested and very helpful). Daffodils need to be planted about 6 inches down, so that means driving the spade or hand trowel to the hilt. I am too cheap to buy a special bulb-planting tool that won't get much use, so this was pretty labor-intensive and kind of hard on the hands. After many bulbs ...

Today after work (sigh-inducing side note: summer vacation is over and I have to admit that I am not actually a full-time gardener), I put the finishing touches on the perennial border design. The summer plants are all in and doing well, but in the fall I need to plant the bulbs that will come up first next spring. This is actually a great time to get this done, because the perennials are all still quite compact in their first year, and that allows me to see very clearly all the spaces in between them to tuck tulips and daffodils. The idea is that these bubs will come up in early spring, and then their dying (but unclippable) leaves will be covered over by the perennials that are just coming up. I may have to fill in some of spots left by no-longer-flowering tulips with some annuals like pansies or snapdragons, but that will be a game-day decision in May. Anyway, I don't have any photos to show yet, but I can show the website photos of what I am buying from the Netherland Bul...