Fragile Fern

Just what is it that makes us feel Spring is coming? I had a real feeling of it yesterday, so took K-dog for a walk and thought about this interesting question as we stumbled about in the ice-covered snow. There's not much snow right now, but what there is, is covered with a crust of ice so you stay on top of it for two steps, then you crash through the next. Add in the fact that much of my path is at a sharp angle (sideways, I mean) and you can see why we were stumbling about. Kip didn't have as much trouble as I did of course but even he took a few lurches. At one point he walked easily up a large boulder, and then slid back down! We went down to the rock wall where the Fragile Ferns are. I half-way thought there might be visible fiddleheads, but of course it is much too early yet.

The light is brighter, that's one sure sign Spring is coming. On the other hand, while I understand the maple sap has been running for several weeks, I see no sign of the buds on the trees swelling yet, nor do I see that red flush over the marshy areas that are always first signs of Spring around here.

Springtails, those weird tiny black bugs also called Snow Fleas, are another Sign and there were plenty of those. They hatch in their multitudes on warm days, covering the snow with black specks. I wonder what eats them. Apparently they spend most of their time underground and are one of the partners in a complicated three-way deal involving underground fungi, and Pine roots. I've heard that many Fleas means many mosquitoes, so we'll see. Not so many Fleas as usual this year.

When we got to what I call Fern Rock there were of course no fiddleheads yet. Here's a picture of the rock

showing them in early May. It's amazing how this small fern can grow in only a crack in a vertical rock face. If you look just right of middle, you can see a small plant all by itself in only a crevice. This rock is pretty well vertical, so how does rain get in? Maybe it trickles down and is slowed and diverted by the lichens. Come to think of it, the picture does show an area of rock above the little plant with less lichen cover, and a trail of moss below it.

Fragile Fern, Cystopteris fragilis, is one of the very first ferns come alive in Spring. It's called Fragile Fern because it goes dormant in dry times, but fragile it is not. It occurs all the way into the Arctic Circle, so it has to be tough. It's botanical name makes more sense. 'Cystopteris' refers to the sori, which start with indusia that look like tiny bladders. As the spores mature they push out the side and the indusia rupture and wither. Mature spores are black, and you can always tell a Fragile Fern by the black spore dots. In the picture below (bottom right) you can see the immature sori, and above it some mature ones. Note that some of the sporangia, which hold the developing spores, are already empty, and thus look brown. So the pinnule in the picture has some sporangia still holding spores, and some that are empty. The spores develop fast so it can be tricky to get some for propagating.

Mind you, this fern is not hard to propagate. Cuttings of the rhizome work quite well and are easy as get if you can find a Fragile Fern growing on a rock (instead of in it!) or even in the ground as it sometimes does. Spores germinate readily and the sporophytes develop rather quickly. That said, the plants I have in the fern propagator right now are a year old. They have matured enough to have fertile fronds! Don't know how they'll react to being planted out this summer. They will have skipped a whole winter..... sort of like some of us like to do.

Fragile Fern is great in the rock garden, usually staying under 18" high, and fine in dappled shade or even full sun, as long as you either keep it watered or stay philosophical when it goes dormant.

And it's a sure sign Spring is here.

Trilliums on a Snowy Day

Snow day today! It's snowing steadily and we are supposed to be getting a fair-sized accumulation. So far there is about 10cm down, so I am going to considering my path to the Studio (all 30 feet of it) totally impassible, and have a Snow Day!

(For those who caught it, yes, I am fully bilingual when it comes to measuring systems. I mix feet and centimeters to suit myself. Very Canadian.)

I have some Trillium seeds from the Trillium-l seed exchange ready to put into pots. The best instructions for germinating Trillium seeds are to give them 2-3 months of warm, that is, damp and warm, conditions followed by 2-3 months of cold ditto. As soon as they arrived, I put the seeds along with a bit of a lightly dampened mix of peat and perlite into little baggies, and put the baggies in an airtight container on my desk. Today I'll move the seeds into pots of the same mix with a bit of soil added, cover them, and put them on the floor at the back of my plant shed, covered with a thick blanket of pink insulation. They should stay cold without freezing like that. Then, when the snow starts to melt, I'll move them outside to warm up naturally as Spring arrives.  If all goes well they should form tiny rhizomes with a single root. Only next Spring will they put up a green leaf. And this first leaf won't look like a Trillium leaf although once you know what they look like you can recognize them. They look like little green flags! Look at all of them at the base of these clumps of T. grandiflorums:

(No points for spotting the Dandilion.)

The year after that they will put up 3-parted 'real' Trillium leaves and in another year to two they should bloom.

Trillium grandiflorum is easy to grow in Ontario. They aren't very fussy about soil, but they do need enough sunlight and decent drainage. They won't 'do' in deep shade or a soggy spot. Other than that, just remember that they are Spring Ephemerals, which means they will be up early, will bloom early, and will go dormant in the summer. I had a fellow a couple of summers ago, came with his wife to buy some of my pottery, who was determined that he wanted to have a White Trillium in his tiny garden behind his row house. Always the helpful beaver, I sent him home with a nice three-stem potful. The next Spring they were back. I asked him how the Trilliums worked out.

"Oh, he said, "they died.".

I was kind of surprised, and asked him when did they die.

"August. First they got shabby-looking, and then they died."

I reminded him that they go dormant, and asked him if they had come back this Spring.

"No. I planted some geraniums there instead, they're good and give colour all summer long".

I was able to restrain myself.

Toronto Gardens (link on the sidebar) has a thought-provoking blog about ethical questions relating to native plants. One that they touch on but don't go into detail about, is the often dubious origin of native plants being sold at nurseries. Since many of the more interesting natives are slow and/or tricky to propagate, they are dug from the wild, potted up, held for a few weeks, and sold as 'nursery propagated'. In my opinion, this is bad and wrong, on a number of counts. Where I lived before there were a lot of Wood Lily, Lilium philadelphicum, around. One day they were all gone, and there were holes where they had been. Somebody dug them, and there were far too many for any garden so we know what happened.


I have a hunch the problem isn't as wide-spread in Canada as it is South of the border, but we still need to be careful when we buy plants.

Here's a picture of a nicely round-petalled form I am encouraging in my garden. This is one of the best forms I've seen and it came up in my Sampler Garden. I moved it to a better spot and I'm hoping it will become a large clump. When it does, I'll divide it and eventually build up a bit of a stock of them. It's fairly large, too, and will have real presence in the garden. You saw it here first!

Cinnamon????

Cinnamon.... or Not

There has been some discussion lately on one of the Lists I read about using cinnamon to deal with fungi, algae and other such nasties in seedpots. The first thing that got my attention is that the cinnamon you buy at the grocery store is not cinnamon. Apparently it's a mix of cassia and other things finely ground, with a bit of cinnamon oil added. Apparently real cinnamon is very sharp and not a bit like what we like in our apple pies. Who knew? Anyway, even the stuff I have in my spice rack is supposed to kill algae. I've just sprinkled tiny pinches of it on the surface of the fern tray that is currently suffering an algae attack. We'll see what happens!


Seed-starting Mix

Mixed up another large batch of  mix for seed-starting. I bought all the bags of African Violet Soil the garden store had, plus a large bag of vermiculite and several bags of what they call 'Seed Starting Mix' which is really just finely ground peat moss and perlite. I mixed everything together in a large plastic feed bin. These bins are sold at the Farm Supply and are great for lots of things. They're about the size of large garbage pails, but shorter and wider, have polyprop rope handles, and are made of quite sturdy plastic. Unfortunately they don't come with lids, but most of the time that doesn't matter. I have several parked behind the house right now and I dump my kitchen compostables in them while the snow is too deep for me to get to the real compost pile. In the spring it will be easy to wheelbarrow them to the pile and dump them. Anyway, my super mixture filled the feed bin. I watered it a bit and covered it with a piece of plywood, and I'm ready to fill pots for seeds or transplanting seedlies. Some of my ferns are ready to go into larger pots so that will be today's entertainment.

Commercial seed-starting mixes tend to be all peat and additives, and I find it doesn't work well for me. The mix itself soon separates into a thick layer of dry peat on top of a potful of smelly wet whatever, with, of course, a dead plant in the middle.  I did hear that the mixes contain wetting agents which are supposed to solve this problem, but some of my seedlies and fern babies need to stay in their pots for months, and the wetting agents only work for a few weeks. Might be true. In any case, I have found I have much better success with African Violet Soil mixed with some inorganics. Used to be able to get a product called Turface which is a lot like ground-up terra-cotta pots, but I can't get any this year. It was heavy, which helped keep small pots from tipping over, and it helped a lot with drainage. I'm hoping the vermiculite will do that. Perlite works, but floats too much.


Toronto Gardens


Found a great blog! It's two sisters writing about their gardening life in the East Toronto area. I've listed it on the side under Toronto Gardens - take a look. It's so good I even signed up as a follower!

January Chill

It's been pretty cold for the last couple of days. Minus 27C and supposed to get even colder tonight. Brrrr. But it's not cold in the plant shed! It was a treat to go up there this afternoon and inspect the orchids, several of which are coming into bloom for the first time.I bought them as small plants at the Ottawa Orchid Show in 2009. I can't afford the large plants and anyway I would worry about killing them as I don't have that much experience with orchids. The fun part of buying seedlings is that you never quite know what you are going to get, and you could get something really nifty, but of course the down side is that it is equally possible that what you'll get will be something dull. I bought six, and all of them have grown well. One bloomed in December with a gorgeous, and very large, white flower with a yellow lip. I've managed to lose the label so can't tell you the name, but it was some sort of Catleya cross. Today there is a similar one with several large frilly lemon yellow blooms just starting to open, and these two:

Slc. Hsin Buu Lady

Lctna. Lawless Gloriana

The red one is a bit twisted on the stalk, just like the leftmost of the yellow flowers. Not sure what causes this. I tried not to change the plants' orientation once the flower buds appeared, but maybe I did. Or maybe they will still straighten out, or maybe it is because this is their first flowering and they will be better next time. Anyway, they were a nice treat on a cold day!

Happy Newish Year

First, Dear Reader, Happy New Year! All the Best to you for 2011! May all your garden favourites flourish... may the weeds take a breather.... may it rain when you need it... all those good things I wish for you in the coming year!

Well, it's been busy around here. I took a couple of weeks off over Christmas (off from work, not from thinking about plants) and between the naps, cups of tea, sudoku puzzles, naps, snacks, more puzzles, more cups of tea, rests and so on, I'm just about worn out.

Luckily, seeds are arriving soon. I've ordered all I could from both the North American Rock Garden Society  and the Alpine Garden Society. Some will be the quick germinating sorts, which I won't start until later, but the others I plan to pot up and put on the floor in the plant shed, which I used to call my greenhouse but which is now too dilapidated for that name, to stay cool for a couple of months. It stays pretty close to 40F down there and is pretty dark. Then in early April I'll put them up where they'll be warmer and hopefully they'll germinate. Can't offhand remember what I asked for, but I'm sure they'll be interesting. I know some Solidagos are coming, and two Violas (lanceolata and Selkirki) which I have been looking for.

Now these violets illustrate a problem. I want to have them, because they are known to be native to my area. But if I get seeds from, as in this case, Britain, they won't be the local form. Does this matter? I feel it does, so will keep these violets, should I get them to grow, in the cultivated garden and not let them into the woods. Some day I may get the local forms, and those I will allow in the wild area.

Amaryllis are starting. I have a huge new one coming on in the Studio. It's called 'Bolero', and is the biggest 'Ryll I've ever seen. The stem is a good 3' tall and the flowers are 10" across and there were 5 on the first stem. The second one is just opening and promises 5 more. A photographic challenge for sure! Of course I have too many Amaryllises. It started with buying one for Christmas, then somebody gave me one, then a friend said, 'Ah, Lis likes Amaryllis' and gifted me with several more.... before I knew it there were over 50 of them. Of course I had to purchase a few of the really nifty ones, too. 'Giraffe', for example, is so different it's a hoot. One mistake I made last summer: I planted several bulbs of the same varieties together in large pots, thinking I'd have a great show. Unfortunately, the bulbs went dormant at different times, creating a watering problem, and now they are re-starting at different times. One of three in one pot is about a foot high while the other two are rock-solid dormant. Won't do that again!

First Real Snow

Good thing I finally got those seedling ferns and wildflowers tucked away for the winter! It's been quite cold the last couple of days and today it is snowing. Real snow, the kind that spreads its tailfeathers and stays.

What I did, which worked very well the last couple of years, is put the pots down on the ground between a row of rocks at the base of the Daylily Wall and some large cedar logs. Then I piled all the fallen leaves within rake reach on top.Sort of an above-ground cold frame.

Rooted cuttings such as Trailing Arbutus (Epigea repens) went there too. I've had good success with them, and some other things like Partridge Berry (Mitchella repens) by leaving them in their rooting pots over winter and planting them out once they show new growth in the spring. Planting them in the fall never seemed to work before.

I'm quite enjoying the feeling of the garden being put away for the winter! I'm looking out at my Hillside, where the Yucca leaves are sticking up bright green in front of the brown-gold grasses, looking quite picturesque, and the best part of it is, I don't have to go out there and do anything!

As Harvey here says:
 
'Tis the Season!

Hope yours is a Merry One!

The Fun Continues

Pretty much as expected.

The wheel on my wheelbarrow quit because I put too many rocks in at once. My trusty rubber boots developed a worn-out-boots hole in the heels. I can't find the pry bar anywhere. I have poison ivy rash on both arms, and my chin.And my dog, Kip, rolls his eyes when he sees we are headed for the rock-digging area.

But! I do have a large pile of rocks ready for further building, and two sides of the mini-grotto done. Whoo hoo!