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The garden grew overnight!

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Yesterday I told you about how lightening puts free nitrogen in the air and that often after a good storm that includes lightening you’ll notice that your plants have grown.

Well, the storm that I was referring to occurred about about 4 a.m. on Thursday the 10th of May, and here it is the 11th of May and when I look out at my garden everything is a mass of green and or blooms.

I wish I had a before and after picture to show you of my messy garden. You see, I haven’t finished trimming, pruning and pulling out all the dead tangle of old plants that died off last fall so there’s lots of graying dead plant stems and leaves throughout half the garden. Up until today that was clearly visible in many areas of the garden but when I look outside today the lush green vegetation of the super charged plants are hiding a good portion of it.

I went out and took a photo at about 2 pm this afternoon .. you can see in the left flower bed that I still have a lot of work to do to make it look really nice … but the plants sure have grown in just one day.

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What do you think?






Delicate Chionodoxa blooms

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Chionodoxa

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Last Saturday, when I surveyed my garden, only a few flowers were blooming. The crocus were still blooming, but they’ve since stopped, and the lovely blue iris, and the hellebore that I showed you earlier this week was blooming as well. The only other flower that had made an arrival was the Chionodoxa.

Chionodoxa are delicate spring flowers. I have bluish purple ones as shown above, white ones and pink ones. Of course the only once that had made an appearance were the purple ones. Most were not yet open.

Now, one week later, the garden is alive with green leaves and flower buds. I think all of the Chionodoxa are blooming, and so are some of the hyacinths and daffodils. I must admit that I haven’t gone out to take a close look so there could be a few other nice surprises.

I did have one tulip blooming in my front boulevard garden bed, but it met an untimely end. I’m telling that story over at Tricia’s Musings.

What’s blooming in your Garden this week?

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Paperwhites love a little drink of Gin

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Now here’s a few tips that you might not have heard of or thought of before:

If your forced paperwhite Narcissus, are flopping over there is a remedy – an odd one at that. Researchers at Cornell discovered an old home remedy for top heavy paperwhites that will help keep them in place – give them a good stiff drink. That’s right, put a little bit of gin in the water and watch their heavy heads lift. You can use an assortment of alcohols for these boozy plants – vodka, rum, tequila and whisky all seem to work equally well.

Another tip to steady your paperwhites as they grow is to start them in plain water until the roots begin to show and the stems are a couple of inches in length. Once they reach this stage, drain the water and use an alcohol/water mix by mixing one part liquor to seven parts water. Continue to water them with this 5% alcohol mixture and they should stay upright and happy. Use the alcohols mentioned above for best results. This mix stunts the growth of the stems by a third to one half but doesn’t affect the size or production of the blooms.

You should also keep your paperwhites in a bright, yet cool room as they will grow at a slower rate in the cool room. The prefered room temperature would be closer to 60 degrees than 70 degree’s F. You can also place the bulbs in a container of pebbles, water or soil rather than growing the bulbs in a water filled container. Maintain the waterline below the bulb level or they may rot. Water the roots, not the bulb. This holds true for Amaryllis and hyacinths as well.

Also, apparently bulbs started after the new year will grow more quickly and and be shorter plants than bulbs started in December.

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