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February 6, 2009
Winter Gardening Blues
In November, I was looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas and a respite from gardening. I was spending too much time watering after turning off the drip irrigation after a hard frost in mid-September. The rest of my garden time was spent weeding, thinning and deadheading., which are not my favorite garden tasks. Then January came and I began longing for the 2009 gardening season.
The first thing that happened was that all those catalogs began arriving. If you want to see what is new in the seed world check out the MG Blog for an updated 2009 catalog list. A new one that I received was particularly fun, Terroir Seeds. They were Underwood Gardens from the east coast but now are based in Chino Valley. Ideas began to multiply about what to order and plant for 2009. I also started to read some of the long neglected gift garden books (being too busy to read them during the garden season). I finally finished "Tulipomania" which is a wonderful book to share on my Arboretum garden tours in the spring, and began to re-read the "Zen of Gardening". It is a great book to renew your courage for gardening in our challenging climate and has some nice plant lists for the arid west.. At hospice we are planning a rock garden in 2009 so I read David Wann's section on rock gardens and then began to review a few more about that topic.
As I was doing this I began to realize I really garden year round, even if winter doesn't involve much digging in the dirt. I usually spend time after the holidays enjoying and caring for my paper whites and amaryllis that neglected to bloom on time. This year I had something even more exciting to do. My good friend Betty Marcus gave me a mushroom growing kit for Christmas. I planted them the 26th of December and have been harvesting for the last 3 weeks - salads, mushroom soup and stuffed mushrooms. My crop is finally beginning to diminish.
Another winter project is repotting my house plants, many of which have outgrown their containers or have soil/pots filled with minerals from our soil. Sometimes I need to get rid of those pesky winter mealy bugs and white flies. This December, we got 2 new kittens in the house and I ended up re-potting a few more plants than usual because they dug them up to plant where they wanted them.
Another winter activity can be either getting your greenhouse ready for planting or finishing the interior of a new greenhouse like my friend Jacki Hainsworth. All my old garden friends (Mary Lou Parliman & Carol Daily) have greenhouses now, but they also have had husbands who helped them build them. Unfortunately my husband is into model trains not greenhouses. Some day it will happen - a real greenhouse.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a statewide MG conference in Casa Grande. County programs throughout the state shared how they are organized, and reviewed special MG projects like ours at Olivia White Hospice Home. I got some great ideas for fund raising and how to improve our MG program (more later). The Arboretum at Flagstaff started their docent training at the end of January and the Master Gardener Program the first week of February. These are both great opportunities to wet your appetite for the gardening season. In addition on February 26-7 the annual Xeriscape Conference is in Albuquerque, NM. March 22-26 offers the International Master Gardener Conference in Las Vegas. Although many of the sessions are directed towards desert plants, it is a great place to meet gardeners from all over the US and many other countries. When I went two years ago I got many wonderful ideas from other gardeners about growing plants, lots of freebees from the Marketplace, and I learned about a variety of ways that MGs organize. I even met P. Allen Smith and visited his farm outside Little Rock.
In April or May I usually make my annual pilgrimage to Santa Fe. Santa brought me a gift certificate at High Country Gardens, and I usually also visit Agua Fria Nursery and Plants of the Southwest. In case you may not be aware, Santa Fe is at 7,000 feet and most of the plants at these nurseries are draught tolerant, high elevation plants. If you don't want to travel, you can began looking around Warner's, Viola's or Native Plant and Seed to begin planning for 2009.
If you are itching to get those hands in the dirt, come out and volunteer at the Arboretum. We have begun planting seeds for the 2009 season already and the horticulturist can always use help. It is not only fun to start gardening, but it is a beautiful quiet place to work in the winter.
Last but certainly not least, you can join our core group of gardeners at Olivia White Hospice Garden. Our first planning meeting was in January and we will continue to meet monthly until April when garden clean-up begins (weather permitting). Check out the MG Blog for meeting place and times.
Needless to say there are plenty of opportunities to alleviate those "winter garden blues". Oh and I forgot, if you want to see plants growing head to the valley. The desert will soon be in bloom with wildflowers from all this rain, and the Desert Botanical Garden has their annual spring Butterfly Exhibit (March 7-May 31) and a special traveling show (throught May 31) of Chihuly the glass artist until May (reservations required).
"The gardening season officially begins on January 1st, and ends on December 31."
- Marie Huston
What have other gardeners been up to this winter? Please write and share your winter ideas. Send them to me by e-mail (included or as a word processing file) and I will add them to the blog. maxmaddy@infomagic.net
Loni
Posted by maxmaddy at February 6, 2009 4:54 AM