When to Plant Flowering Annuals in Zone 5

I got a good question from a friend about when to plant flowering annuals. Our last average frost date for this area is around April 29th (though it has been getting earlier the last few years). The date we could get frost is as late as May 15th or so, but that doesn't happen that often. For seeding indoors, for things like flowering annuals it'd be good to wait until at least April 1st to be sure the energy you put into sowing indoors makes a safe transition into the ground.

It's a really good question, cuz i relate to what she's really saying. She's saying, "I'm sick of winter, can't I do some kind of gardening?" Especially with nice weather, it's easy to want to get your hands dirty!!! Here's what I do if I just can't help myself and it's this early. Just plant up a little tray of something, knowing there's a chance you might toss it. Some marigolds, or heck even just bluegrass is a joy at this time of the year. And who knows, maybe those marigolds or whatever you plant now might get really leggy, but they might make it ok. This is supposed to be fun, right? Either way, a little container sprouted for fun feeds that gardening need :)

Summer Garden

Typically, the weather's been so awful or I've been so busy that I don't see my gardens for weeks at a time once July and August get going. But this year has been a nice mix of rain at the right time and making time to enjoy. Just sharin'.

Cleome Fireworks

Isn't it a happy coincidence that right at the time of the year when we're about to have the 4th of July and fireworks, the Cleome starts to bloom?



This plant even looks like a bursting rocket with trailing smoke and burst of color at the top.







Planted en masse they look like the grand finale at the end of the night.

Favorite Forgotten Herbs

What’s not to love about plants that are largely drought tolerant, thrive in neglect, often beautiful or interesting to view, and also delicious and fragrant? Herbs are so easy to grow in most parts of the country, but for specific information on growing them, you might enjoy Iowa State University’s publications on herbs: Cilantro, Garlic, Growing & Using Basil, and Growing and Drying Herbs.

Today, I'd like to talk about some of my favorite herbs that are often forgotten while we’re planting our basil and parsley.

Lavender
There are many types of lavender available, depending on how you’d like to use them. There’s the traditional English Lavender, Lavandula angustifolia, grown for it’s dark purple blossoms that are mildly fragrant. They’re just right to strip and add to a bowl of sugar creating lavender sugar for tea or baking. Or you might like the more fragrant Lavandula x intermedia 'Provence' grown for the French perfume industry. These deeply aromatic flowers make perfect sachets for drawers and closets. Lavender is a zone 5 plant and will often die back to the ground over winter in our area; sometimes dying out altogether. But a plant worth replanting!

Sweet Woodruff
I’m so fortunate to get to tell you about this often unknown herb that’s an important part of May Day celebrations in parts of Germany. Sweet woodruff, sometimes sold as Galium odoratum sometimes as Asperula odorata is a low growing herb different from most as it loves partial and deep shade. The flowers and leaves of this plant have a sweet, toasty vanilla smell and arrive just in time in the spring to be added to the traditional May Bowl on May 1st. The May Bowl is filled with a sweet white wine, sliced strawberries, and sweet woodruff to taste. Be sure to drink it in a couple hours or, like too much vanilla, the sweet woodruff will make the wine bitter.

Dill
Those of you who have dill, and who love dill like I do, appreciate the many endowments of this ferny plant. As if the bright, minty zing of dill weren’t enough to demand its planting, dill reseeds itself each spring with a verdant carpet of green that’s easily tamed back to the area you’d like to keep in dill. Dill grows quickly, rewards with usable leaves almost immediately, and even the seed are delicious for breads and with meats. I think dill is a beautiful and fascinating plant; so upright and springy, but when cut becomes soft almost immediately. During winter, remaining stalks add winter interest.

Think of some of the forgotten herbs this spring (there are many others) and make your yard, your way.

May is Pumpkin-time

Springtime is in the air and we turn our thoughts towards... pumpkins. Yes, it's time to start thinking about them, specifically, pie pumpkins.




Benefits
The pie pumpkin (technically a fruit for you 'sticklers' out there) was almost lost to gardeners after the 1950s. Amy Goldman notes in The Compleat Squash : A Passionate Grower's Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes, and Gourds that with the advent of refrigeration, Americans no longer needed this vegetable for it's storage prowess. Commercial growers turned their wiles to jack-o-lantern cultivars. But the pie pumpkin is more than a storage king, it's a storehouse of beta-carotene, potassium, and fiber; a versatile performer in the kitchen; and most importantly, DELICIOUS.

Growing
Pie pumpkins are traditionally sold under cultivars such as ‘Sugar Treat,’ ‘Small Sugar,’ or ‘Sugar Pie.’ If you've grown those before, try an heirloom pie pumpkin like ‘Winter Luxury:’ a lace-skinned, eight-pound little gem with transparent, golden ocher flesh and delectably sweet. (If it doesn’t break your heart to cut one of these orange trophies open.)

Gail Damerow recommends in her book The Perfect Pumpkin that you plant pumpkins when the soil is regularly 70 degrees. Plan a space about ten feet in diameter, but feel free to grow other crops in that area that will be ready for harvest before the pumpkins spread (such as lettuce, cabbage, and green beans).

Pumpkins are heavy feeders and love compost-rich soil. Keep your pumpkin’s soil moist, but don't get the leaves wet as this will encourage powdery mildew or other diseases. Your pumpkins will be ready to harvest in September or October depending on the cultivar you choose and the growing season.

Cooking
Don't confuse the pie pumpkin with those gorgeous, orange giants you carve up for Hallowe'en; they're watery and stringy at best. The pie pumpkin is much smaller with yellow-orange, dense flesh that should be devoid of any stringiness.

Everyone has a favorite pie or bread recipe made with baked pumpkin, but pumpkin is more versatile than its luscious, mashed flesh. It's scrumptious diced and baked with apples, raisins, pecans, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. You will be amazed at how tasty pumpkin is cut julienne, sautéed quickly with butter and onions, or stir-fried with onions and red pepper flakes. MMM!

As you plan your garden, don't forget this rewarding member of the cucurbit family. It's another way to make your yard, your way.

Love of Soil

There's nothing more essential to gardening, of any kind, than soil. While there are many things we call soil: rocky bonsai soils, dusty cactus mixes, plastic bags of store-bought potting soils – there is nothing for the gardener that matches the soil of their native garden plot.

Because whether they are the coal-black soils of my childhood in northern Iowa, or the tans and browns of my home in eastern Iowa, those natural soils all share one quality that I believe every gardener appreciates, at least once a year: the smell. The dark, fragrant, complex scent of soil, especially as soil wakes up from winter, is a perfume that cannot be compared to the sweetest rose, fresh-baked bread, or the richest chocolate. If soil were rare, humans would mine for it deep into the earth simply to allow us to run our hands through it and release its bright perfume on being turned over.

Newly-opened spring ground unleashes a heady, transporting vapor on the gardener, as if Nature herself has put-the-coffee-on for visitors. Energizing, refreshing, eye opening, the first invigorating whiff of soil in the spring whisks me off my feet and I wake up as if from a long winter of sleep. It pulls up the corners of my mouth, then smiles back at me, and says, "The earth is alive again and we're just waiting for someone to come grow with us!"

If it were nothing else, the aroma of fresh soil is a call to action, a decree of happiness:

“Today is a new day, a new chance everyone is invited to enjoy!”

The cheery urgency of that smell can, at least for the moment, remind us of all the good things in life, and make all the frustrating things seem smaller. With such a mood-altering fragrance in the air how can one focus? How can one keep a mind on business, once this intoxicating invitation is made? Good luck trying, and good luck growing.