Forgive me – it’s spring.

April 06 2010-04-29

It has been difficult to find the time to write anything at all for this blog.  I am not answering emails or opening letters.  John and I are still in the middle of a 40-year long argument about whose job it is to answer the telephone.

This argument actually predates our marriage.  While courting me, he refused to telephone, preferring instead to trust his cryptic communications to the post office.  I only put up with him because I knew that eventually, there would be gardens.

Spring has come with such a rush.  Our first plant order arrived last month, and we’ve barely looked up from the potting tables since.

Because the weather has been so very warm, the timetable for many of our annual chores has been accelerated.  We have removed winter’s protective plastic coverings from the hoop house, exposing several hundred plants to spring’s prevailing temperatures – weeks and weeks earlier than ever before.  .

Already I have begun hauling plants from the greenhouse.  This job usually waits for May.

The plants stored outside under the snow have decided to begin growing.  The pots are greening up.  There are thousands of them, and survival this year has been exceptionally high.  But most need dealt with – split, transplanted, their soil refreshed, watered, labelled, counted, priced, tagged.  At night, I can hear them calling me.

I suppose it sounds like I’m complaining.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

At night, when staff leaves, I take off my potting apron, grab a beer, pruners and scissors and begin making sense of the gardens.  The hellebores (Lenten roses), hepatica and omphalodes (navelwort) are now in bloom. There is much raking and weeding to be done.

John has already sown the tomatoes, and I hope soon to post the list on our website.  We are growing over 50 varieties of heirloom tomatoes for 2010.

Do check out our new, improved website at www.wild-things.ca.  –

NINA -

Tomato Tomato

March 17 2010

You say tomato. And we say terrific.

Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes…what a concept.  We grow between 50 and 75 tomato varieties each year, the great majority of which are heirloom, also called heritage. We grow them because they taste good. It’s as easy as that.

Some heirloom varieties date back hundreds of years. Curiously, that doesn’t stop some visitors here from asking if our tomato plants are genetically modified. Perhaps that’s because of the incredible array of shapes, colours and sizes which the old-fashioned varieties come in.

Tomatoes are supposed to be bright red, uniform in size, blemish-free, shipped across the continent in a box, gassed for colour and sort of tasteless. Right?

Well..how about banana-shaped, pear-shaped, heart-shaped, tiny as marbles or bigger than grapefruits? How about white, orange, yellow, red, purple, black, lime-green, striped or streaked?

Colour and shape aside, heirloom tomatoes deliver taste. That’s why gardeners for generations have collected their seed. And that’s why gardeners today seek them out. We try to have the first plants ready for the middle of May. Here’s just a partial list of what we’re growing this spring:

Black Russian, Cherry Brandywine, Gold Nugget, Hawaiian Pineapple, Lime Green Salad, Red Fig, Nile River Egyptian, Amazon Chocolate, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Stupice, Henderson’s Pink Ponderosa, Champagne, Lillian’s Yellow, Halfmoon, Clark’s Early Jewel, Speckled Roma, Sicilian Saucer.

John

OPALKA

CHEROKEE PURPLE

BIG RAINBOW

BLACK-KRIM

Brandywine

RIESENTRAUBE

YELLOW-PEAR

Petal Pushing

The next time someone calls and asks me my occupation or my position in our company, I’ve got an answer.

I’m a petal pusher.

I push plants.  Beautiful, beautiful plants.  I hang around nurseries and beautiful gardens, especially my own, sidle up to potential victims and whisper hoarsely: “Pssst.  Yeah. You. Want to buy a dirty plant?”

I choose my victims carefully.  Children and women are very susceptible.  I like to start them first on gateway plants.  Plants, such as Rudbeckia (Black-Eyed-Susan).  Leucanthemum  (Shasta daisy) and Echinacea (Coneflowers).  These are all easy to grow.  They require little care, little maintenance.  They’re inexpensive.

It all seems so pleasant.  So very easy.  So harmless.  Place plant in the earth.  Add sun.  Add water – rain will do.  Wait for flowers.

So easy.  So simple.  So safe.

And my innocent victims trust me.  They plant the plant.  They watch it grow.  They see the flowers.  And they begin to believe that they can do this. They can grow a garden  They believe they are in control.  They can handle just one more. They can stop anytime.

They come back to the nursery and now, cunningly, I move them a step or two  further along the garden path.  “How is your garden doing?”  I ask.  Their eyes light up.  They don’t know it, but they are in the first throes of addiction.

“You like that Rudbeckia, do you, Little Suzy?” I ask.  “Have you ever heard of Salvia?  Imagine spikes of deep blue flowers blooming with your orange Rudbeckia?  Wouldn’t that make a lovely garden?”

They agree, and walk away happily with a new plant.  And it worked just the way I said.  It bloomed.  It was beautiful.  It was easy.  They like it.

But then, they start to need it: their fix.  Orange and blue isn’t enough anymore.  They crave pinks and reds and purples and yellows.  They want sky blue and royal blue and gentian blue.  They want tall plants and short plants.  They want flowers in spring. Flowers in summer.  Flowers in fall.  Daisies and hollyhocks and bellflowers.  Native plants and plants from China.  They want vines and shrubs and trees. They want plants for the rock garden, plants for the sun, plants for the shade.

I know when they’re hooked.  They come back, twitching to get to the new plants.  Soil is embedded under their fingernails.  They speak furtively about compost and mulch and clay.

And then, when I think they are ready, I introduce them to Hosta.  This was my plan from the beginning.  Hostas are the hard stuff.  The opiates of the plant world.

Hosta addicts don’t understand the space-time continuum the way ordinary people do.  Hosta addicts all believe that they have about 500 acres tilled up and ready to plant.  Hosta addicts believe they have a team of professional gardeners waiting at home for them ready to do their gardening chores.  Hosta addicts believe there is always room for one more.

Now, I’m not an addict myself. Just a pusher.  I do have a hosta garden or two or six.  But I can stop anytime.   I am realistic about those 8,000 hosta varieties.  I don’t need them all.  Just a few.  Just a few more.

I like to buy myself a few hosta to celebrate my birthday.  I like to buy a few hosta to celebrate John’s birthday.  I have a dog and two cats, and they also have birthdays.  The dates are uncertain, so I celebrate them several times a year. There is also Christmas. And New Year’s.  And Canada Day.  And Victoria Day.  The August civic holiday.  Our anniversary.  Your anniversary.  And Mondays.

Mondays were made for buying hosta.  My calendar even lists every Monday as Hosta Day.

I have no remorse. I want you to be frivolous and silly.  Grow them all.  Blow money on the newest, hottest flower.  Yes.  Dare to risk it on beauty.

Because even the most venal can learn from gardening.  And gardening is about beauty.  It’s about the lessons learned from the plants, and the soil, and the birds singing, and the feel of the day in your muscles and the aches and pains and the memory.  It’s about the senses – all of them engaged at once.

It’s got sex.  Rock and roll.  A link to our ancestors.  A link to those who are coming.

“I gardened here.”

And if that’s all you could say for yourself at the end of a life, it seems to me that you are also saying: “I have touched the earth.  I have been touched by the earth.”  Because in your first attempt to mould nature, you learned to be moulded by nature.  And nothing was ever the same again.

So bring on the hosta.  Bring on the addicts.  Bring on spring.