Peonies

   
     This is the month of the peony -- the show off plant of late spring. Peonies are to perennials what tulips are to bulbs. In bloom they are spectacular, but they are also a royal pain.

      The two  major complaints about herbaceous peonies are that ants love them more than we do,so we have to  be careful bringing them inside. Secondly, they flop. A rainstorm occurs like fate shortly after the flowers are in their glory and the next morning all of them are in the mud.

      But who can resist the appeal of my neighbor's house when his peonies are in their glory.

     To have any hope of your herbaceous peonies lasting past the first rain, you have to support them and there are plenty of alternatives available in most garden centers.

     But the ultimate answer is planting tree peonies. An expensive relative of the herbaceous peony, these shrubs, because of their woody stems, do not flop. And they have some of the most spectacular blooms anywhere.

      If you are passionate about peonies, you can extend their season by picking different cultivars. But start by adding a few tree peonies. In addition to their other virtues, they also bloom at a different time than their herbaceous cousins.

Tulips

     By now the warm up acts are beginning to leave the stage. Time for the tulips to make their appearance. Tulips are indeed the prima donnas of the bulb world. Their size and variety and the intensity of their colors are unequaled. But like the diva's in the opera world, they can be a lot of trouble.

          For one thing, not all of their fans are human. Squirrels  love tulip bulbs, especially newly planted ones. It is usually a good idea to stake some netting or wire mesh over your tulip  bed during its first year. Just leave it there until the first  shoots come up in spring.

   

          

     Tulips also demand a lot  of food. I personally do not molly-coddle my flowers, so the ones you see here  are survivors. But it is not unusual to find half  the bulbs in a bed not flowering three years after they were planted. Those trying to plant full, formal beds usually end up planting tulips as annuals rather fertilizing over and over.

          Once the show is over tulips leave quite a mess. At one time or another most of us have tried to snip off the leaves once the bloom  was done only to discover that  we had no flowers the following year. That ugly mess of leaves is still gathering sunlight and restoring the bulb  below ground. It cannot be removed without injuring the plant. Traditionally tulip leaves  were braided for the rest of the season. Try that once. I bet you won't do it again.

     The easiest way to deal with ugly leaves is to hide them behind something else. If you plan your bulbs to grow behind a nice perennial like a hosta, the tulip will have the stage to itself early in the season and then be able to hide behind its cousin as it tries to prepare itself for next year.

     For this week, though, our only duty is to enjoy them in their splendor.

April Fools

Magnolia buds

     Just after my last post we got another six inches of snow, burying all the snow peas I had sown. I suppose they got their name for a reason.  I sowed seed for my other cold weather vegetables like spinach and broccoli as soon as the snow melted.

     But April is the month we get carried away and forget that the average last frost date for Chicago is April 28. Last year the Big Box stores had brought in tomatoes and other very tender plants in April -- over a month before it made any sense. All it takes is a few warm days and our longing for spring to be here overcomes our common sense.

Scilla

    We can plant trees and shrubs. In fact, they will have an easier time if they are planted before they fully leaf out. We can also divide and transplant perennials as soon as they poke their heads out of the ground. We can even plant a few hardy annuals like violas and pansies.What we should not try to do is to plant tender annuals and perennials until  we are past the danger of frost and the soil  has had a chance to warm up a bit.


     You can also finish tasks from last month -- pruning trees and shrubs, cutting ornamental grasses down to 5-6" to make room for new shoots, and removing dead foliage from your perennials.

     Now is a good time  to start your compost pile, and it may be a good time to get your rain barrels in working order. More on them later.

Crocus

The Pace Quickens

     Spring arrives this afternoon, and, for a change, there are actual signs of its existence in Chicago. Exhibit "A" is the crocus above.

     For organic gardeners, this flower is a signal that it is time to make  use one of the more effective weapons in our rather skimpy arsenal -- corn gluten. A completely organic fertilizer, gluten also acts as a pre-emergent weed-killer. It completely ignores established weeds. It only goes after weed seeds and only when they begin to germinate. Applying it too early or too late will have no effect. So we use the crocus as our signal flare.

     Corn gluten is not exactly heavy artillery. If you love Round-Up, you will not like gluten. While it may be killing weed seeds, the weeds around it are producing more. Only after several years of sustained applications can you begin to see a noticeable difference.

     On top of that, gluten does not just kill weed seeds; it likes to kill all seeds. If you were planning to plant flower seeds this spring, you cannot use gluten in the same area. To be safe, many gardeners apply gluten only in the fall, using spring solely for planting.

     The other thing that a crocus can tell us is whether or not our soil is ready to be worked. This is a product of soil moisture and soil temperature.

     I can plant cool weather crops like peas and spinach right away -- provided the soil is not too soggy. And here we get to the famous mud ball test. If you dig soil to the depth of the shovel blade you can grab a handful from the bottom of the hole and make a ball with it. The soil is dry enough when the ball won't stick together. If it keeps its shape, the soil is too wet. Digging in soggy soil will  ruin its structure.

     Our vegetable garden is helped by the fact that we always use raised beds. These help the soil dry up faster at this time of year. Later they will help raise the soil temperature as well.

These new beds built yesterday are at right angles to
 the ones from last year to help mix the soil and keep
it healthy.

     If we can find enough time, we hope to plant parsley, sugar snack and snow peas,  spinach and fingerling potatoes this weekend. Broccoli is next. No, no tomatoes yet. You can't have everything.

The Spring Lurch

This galanthus had  been buried under the snow until a few days ago.

     The Mid-West can never get spring right. Chicago, as usual, lurched from  the third coldest February in recorded history to instant 50's and even 60's before we could catch our breath.

     This does not mean, however, that we can actually do anything to prepare for spring. The ground is still too cold and wet to work and our first blooms will  undoubtedly be nipped in the bud by winter's final revenge. March in Chicago exists to build character. Some of my friends would like to see a bit more evidence of mine, but I will toughen up eventually.

     Besides whining, our main chores this month include finishing the cleanup that got interrupted last fall. We can also begin spring pruning of all the trees and shrubs that we didn't bother with last year. Pruning  is one of those invisible tasks that reward you over and over again down the years. And,especially at this time of year, it is actually fun! Please don't quote me.

Groundhog Day

The Storm Begins
View from my Office

     I thought that Groundhog Day, with its ephemeral hopes for spring, would be a good time to start up my 2015 blog. Unfortunately, Chicago groundhogs were buried under two feet of snow, so my timing was not auspicious.

     As usual, my first heads up came, not from Chicago news stations, but from my friends in North Carolina. Do you detect a note of glee in all these long  distance warnings?

     Chicago got 19.3 inches of snow in 24 hours -- the fifth heaviest snowfall since 1880. Wan had to be at work on Monday, so instead of spending my Sunday blogging about the springtime ahead, I spent it with her trying to get a head start on digging out her car. We ran my car up and down the drive and then parked hers by the back door.

     I knew we should really go back out around 6 pm and do the whole thing over again. But did I? No. Instead I asked Wan if she thought I should brave the blizzard once more. Feeling sorry for me, she said, No."

    You know the result already. I stayed warm and dry on Sunday night, but come Monday morning Wan's car was buried worse than before. Still stuck an hour later, Wan finally called work -- only to find out that there was no place to park at the job in any case.

     We spent the rest of the morning digging out once more. All my thoughts of spring had long since departed.

Where is the Global Warming?

Map shows 2014 vs. average 1951-80 temperature over the globe. Bar chart
 below compares each year since 1880 with 20th century average.

          As we emerge from the latest cold spell I asked myself  "Where is all this global warming when we need it?" A recent report in the  NY Times provides the answer. Globally, 2014 was in fact the hottest year since record keeping began in 1880. Of all the areas inhabited by humans, only a spot along the Angola/Namibia border and the American Midwest were cooler than average.

     While our TV stations were reporting on the "polar vortex," they were mostly leaving out the other half of the picture. The southerly kink in the jet stream that sent frigid  Canadian air as far south as Alabama has been paired with a matching northerly kink further west that has brought tropical air north. This has not only scorched California; it has also brought a heat wave to Alaska  and the arctic that has  melted the ice out from under the polar bears' feet.

     Perhaps Chicago's weather is not so bad -- even in January.