Winter Witch Hazel

Just when winter couldn't get any more bleak, look at what started to bloom this past week! Witch Hazel (Hamamelis family) is the star of the winter garden. It explodes with flowers in mid January to early spring and keeps its blooms long after you have been distracted by other fun goings on in your spring garden. When the sun is out, you'll smell the sweet scent of the blooms from a number of feet away - it often turns heads as people wonder where that sweet smell is coming from.

The plant itself is very hardy - it grows well in many zones, depending on the species. It's very cold and drought tolerant (once established) and has wonderful fall color and growth habit. There are many varieties available on the market now, with the main distinction being an American or Asian species. Check out Paghat's fantastic description of American witch hazel here.

Many of the witch hazels you see around the Northwest are the intermedia species, which is actually a hybrid of two other popular Asian species: the mollis and the japonica. Yellow seems to be a common color, but my favorite is certainly the orange witch hazel 'Jelena.' Unfortunately, my first witch hazel was a Jelena that ended up dying, probably because I didn't remove all of the clay from the root ball when planting. That was an expensive and sad mistake!

Witch hazel is one of those plants that has a long and storied history worth knowing about. To me, one of the most interesting things about witch hazel is the origin of its common name. You might be thinking to yourself that it refers to a witch as in Sabrina or Tabatha. It most likely actually refers to the age-old practice of "water witching" or "dowsing" - when someone would walk holding a forked branch of H. virginiana witch hazel to locate underground water sources. "Wych" is an Anglo-Saxon term that means "bend," which is exactly what the branches do when you walk over an underground water source. Again, Paghat has a wonderful description of the origins of the name and uses of witch hazel. Keri's grandfather used to 'witch' wells in the Yakima valley in Washington state, so the practice has always been fascinating to me. We just returned from her grandmother's wake last week and were looking through pictures of her grandfather standing in a mountain of water shooting upward from the ground at one of the locations he found. Amazing. If we ever run out of rain in the PNW, stop by and we'll pull off a branch to find some water.

Images from a winter walk in the Washington Arboretum last year:

Tabletop Dahlia

Dahlias are a flower party all by themselves

Consider floating a bloom in a shallow bowl or vase for a one flower show you and your friends won't forget. The bloom will last surprisingly long without any special treatment - no refilling of the water, no clipping of anything. Just enjoy for about 5 days or so.

Happy fall!

Awesome Agave

I can't take credit for planting this beauty, but am I glad the previous homeowners did! This is a yucca filamentosa in full bloom this past July. It's a type of agave that will grow in northwestern climates and blooms every year, unlike other agaves that will bloom once every 100 years (!). It's a wonderful architectural addition to the garden and is very low maintenance. When it blooms it's a show-stopper. The blooming stalk in these pictures is about 4 feet higher than the plant, and since the plant is perched on a 3 foot high wall garden near our driveway, the blooms tower above my head to about 10 feet high. Awesome!

Loving Your Lavender (by pruning it once a year)

Our 90 pound Riley demonstrating lavender in need of a haircut (in another month after this picture was taken) (this is the awesome Hidcote 'giant' variety; read about the dwarf variety HERE)

In Seattle's neighborhoods, there are many people who replace their water-sucking lawns with wonderful, drought tolerant, low maintenance plants. Lavender is an excellent choice for this situation. However, many of the lavender plants you see in these gardens are an overgrown mess of twigs and bare wood, with spindly little flower stalks throughout the year.

You can avoid this demise of your beautiful lavender plant by walking out to it once a year and giving it a haircut. It's the best 10 minutes you can spend pruning a plant, compared to the love your lavender will lavish on you next summer.

After lavender blooms in July-ish, enjoy it for another month or so, until the flowers start to look a bit dreary and dry. Use a sharp pair of garden shears to clip the blooming stalks down to the first bunch of new leaves. The goal is to maintain a "mound" shape, so if you want to prune down to the second bunch of new leaves to keep this shape, feel free.

Your lavender will sprout beautiful new, healthy flower stalks next summer, and maintain it's orderly shape indefinitely.

Beware: If you have not been maintaining your lavender and it's already an overgrown mess with a lot of woody stems - you will need to remove the plant and start over. DO NOT PRUNE INTO THE HARD WOOD OF A LAVENDER PLANT. Similar to other evergreen plants, like juniper and cypress, it will NOT re-grow from old, woody branches.

For more info:

HERE's a great article

Avoid A Hedge Pruning Disaster

Please DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Unbeknownst to the well meaning gardener who butchered the juniper in the picture above, this plant will never grow fresh 'leaves' from the old exposed wood you see here. It will remain a barren scab of a has-been border plant forever.

People plant these evergreen shrubs for many reasons, but don't usually take into account how big or unwieldy they will get in 10-20 years. So out come the pruners and the nightmare begins.
The only solution is to remove the whole plant and take it as a good lesson about 'right plant, right place.'

Remember this: Evergreen shrubs will not re-grow from old wood - if you prune them, only prune a few inches down on new wood. If you prune them too hard, and expose the old wood (as in pictures above), go get yourself a backhoe or back brace, get ready for a workout, and look forward to a trip to the nursery for a replacement plant.

Workin' The Farmer's Market

One of my favorite ways to spend part of a Saturday or Sunday is working at a Master Gardener clinic booth/table answering people's home gardening questions. This is the Master Gardener way of 'paying back' the Master Gardener program for training us in basic horticulture and diagnostics. We volunteer our time to answer any and all gardening questions so that the University extension folks can focus on research and the really tough questions that we can't answer. By the way, the website has some fantastic fact sheets and tips for diagnosing pest problems.

Today's market crew. Our stand was a bit makeshift today, but we did alright. 

Today I was at the Ballard Farmer's Market clinic with Jen and Jeff, and despite the occasional thunder storm, we had a pretty fun day. There were a number of questions about fruit tree and vegetable problems. Must be summer ;). Below are some pictures of today. 

Jen with our box of goodies (a.k.a. reference books and handouts)

Jeff sharing his infinite wisdom 

(he's a veteran MG, after all, Jen and I are lowly interns)

My favorite part of working this clinic is coming early to watch the farmers set up their stands. Jeff and I compared it to working bees humming their way through a routine that has been well polished through experience. I learned today that recent studies have shown that it is no more expensive to shop at your local farmer's market than to shop at a chain supermarket. Now that's music to my ears. What a wonderful way to spend part of a weekend - browsing (and buying) beautiful produce, listening to street musicians, eating fun foods, visiting with neighbors and learning news ways to cook interesting new foods. That's my kind of weekend!

Carrots anyone? The ones on the left are 'purple haze' - I'm growing these too, but haven't harvested any yet.

Have you ever seen such beautiful fava beans...I know...you're thinking of Anthony Hopkins right now...but I'm thinking cover crop!

Okay, so this isn't a picture of plants or produce, but the Loki Fish guys and gals are a local favorite for salmon. Today I bought the best looking sockeye salmon I've ever seen - 2 days off the boat in Alaska - yum.

Dante's Dogs - he's got the best hot dogs in town and is expanding his business quickly these days. Today I had one with sauteed onions, sweet sauce, grain mustard and cream cheese (!) - it was excellent.

A "Daily Hoe" Picture Gets Published

Seems the folks at Schmap! travel guides (I know, I had not heard of it either), liked the photo I took of the pumpkin fields at Remlinger farms in Carnation, Washington last fall. It's in their travel guide now. Cool :)

 

Leaping Clematis

The first year you sleep,

The second year you creep,

The third year you leap!

This is a saying that befits plants such as clematis, which take a while to get going after they are planted. The purple clematis I planted our first summer in Seattle is now in its third year and 'leaping' along the fence. It's not quite as full as I had hoped it would be by the third year, but it's getting there. I wonder what they do in the fourth year?

One of two sides

...and by the way...clematis can be pronounced either "CLEH-ma-tis" or "Cle-MAH-tis" - the first is the British pronunciation, and the second is more common among Americans. I switch between pronunciations depending on who I'm with and how snooty I want to sound - you kind of sound foolish using the British pronunciation around non-gardeners (apologies to our British readers).

Help! We're Drowning In Raspberries!

Well... we knew this time would come... this is what happens when you properly support your raspberry vines and splay them horizontally so they get the most yield (aka.biggest crop, aka. most berries, aka. raspberries as far as the eye can see!). I discussed pruning and training raspberry vines in an earlier post, and now we're reaping the crop. It's official! We're drowning in raspberries! Berries love the Pacific Northwest - we actually have the highest rate of berry production in the world! 

Perfect!

For some reason, the berries on the east side of the trellis were at least 1.5 inches long. I didn't do anything special to them, so we're trying to figure out why they are so much bigger than the others. This wasn't the case last year...

The ones that are darker purple with a slight "dusty" look to them are perfectly ripe. They should almost fall off in your hand without much pulling. Resist the urge to pull harder!

Perfectly ripe and falling from the hull. This berry fell off a few seconds after I took this picture.

Raspberries as far as the eye can see - as long as you move your eye low and look upward - raspberries like to hide under leaves and some of the best ones can be found in the shaded inner part of the stand.

Today we picked at least 7 pints of berries, with more to go and 8 jars of jam already put up two weeks ago. Whew! I'm freezing them, pureeing them, and canning them as fast as my two hands can work! These will be spectacular eating come winter...a reminder of the sunny Seattle days of June/July.

Washed and ready for making jam

Jars of freshly canned raspberry jam ready for gifts and storage

Pulping the raspberries to separate the juice from the seeds. Add a little sugar and fresh lemon juice and you have fresh raspberry coulis.

Raspberry coulis ready for freezing

As for the rest...bagged and ready for freezing with some fresh blueberries from our garden

It's amazing how many berries can be produced by just a 4 x 8 foot area!

Shopping on Fourth Street

After our weekend adventures in the Sierra Nevada, I spent the day in Berkeley and Oakland yesterday and enjoyed the spoils of shopping on Fourth Street in Berkeley. Seems I've been gone too long from the Bay Area since this was my first time going to the Builders Booksource store. Woooooooow is all I can say. It took me over 2 hours to get out of that store - 

they have the most complete collection of quality landscaping, gardening, and home improvement books I have ever had the joy of perusing. Instead of breaking the bank and carrying 50 pounds of gardening books home with me on the plane, I was restrained and just wrote down the titles of the books I want at some point in the future. Although I did walk out with a copy of "Elements of Garden Design" which I will post more about once I have a chance to read it. 

After the bookstore, I wandered across the street to "The Gardener" - an upscale boutiquey sort of store that has been there for a while now. I always like window shopping and seeing what kitschy things they have for sale ($8 European carrot seeds or $15 'Gardener' soap anyone?), but usually don't walk out with anything. It just feels too high-end and decorative to be a functional gardening store. You're more likely to walk into a terra cotta pot from Italy or a designer tablecloth than a decent selection of plants or tools. 

This time, however, I picked up a cute echeveria for my friend Julie, as a thank you and a gift to celebrate moving into a new exciting phase of her life. It was a great table setting for our meal at Tacubaya - the best Mexican food I've had in a long while.

It's always fun to spend a few hours in the world of garden shopping - and really makes me wonder about career changes...

The Gardener on Fourth Street in Berkeley