Week # 5- December 26, 2021-

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays 

It was sunny on Christmas day, here in Iowa City. 

The temperatures were above normal.

We walked in the afternoon and watched for eagles.

There was no snow. There was not any ice on the river.

There were not many eagles either, since they had open water in all the rivers in the area.

There were not many people out either.

It is that time of the world.

Winter will come at some point. But in Iowa City it was 60 degrees on Christmas Eve.  It was 50 on Christmas. We know winter has to come. It should come. We are in trouble if it does not come. On some level I want it to come. 

As it gets colder, I have discovered that there are emerging descriptions for the temperatures we are experiencing.

There is "shipping weather."  I order plants through the mail. I would do that if available all year round. Plants cannot be safely shipped when it is too cold. One company back east will ship when, for 4 days in a row, the highs are above freezing and the lows are above 20. This has now become known as "shipping weather." There is currently "shipping weather" for the next 2 days. Then it disappears.

Then there is "pumpkin carving weather". I will carve and hang up pumpkins when I know they will freeze and stay frozen. I have about seven pumpkins in the garage waiting. If there are days in the 10 day forecast when the temperatures are above 40, that is not good pumpkin carving weather. We have not had pumpkin carving weather this month. So far. But in a few days I think we will be there. Maybe over next weekend. Of course there is a race between that window opening up and the pumpkins rotting in the garage.

Then there are "leaving the dormant plants in the garage" temperatures. The garage under the house is not heated. (We also have a back garage. That really is my big potting shed.) The interior garage will be about 20-30 degrees warmer than the outside. Right now I have amaryllis plants in there, being dormant. When it gets down to 0 outside, then temperatures in the garage can get below freezing. At that point the amaryllis have to come in and huddle under the stairs to the basement. No light for them.

Some people just watch to see if it is going to snow. I have other measures.

Mystery term of the week:

Do you have any idea what "Guttation" is? It is a plant thing. The answer is down in the Odds and Ends section. I already have my mystery plant term picked out for next week.

Last week in the contest

The winner was the bright colored crocus. 

It was a three way race all week. The crocus just edged out Fiamma with Monsella a close third.

Wild card standing:

Phlox and daylily combo: 29%

Fiamma 28%

Double red tulip 27%

Tiger Kitten 24%

This week- Week #5

#1 Double Bloodroot 

April 17, 2021

The double bloodroot is a success story in the garden. I started with a single plant in 2008. I added another one in 2009. It spread and by about 2015 I had a nice sized clump, large enough to even move a part of it to another location. There must have been 20 flowers. 

All the plants then died. They just did not come up at all the next spring, 2016. I was devastated.

However, I found someone who would sell me replacement plants at wholesale prices. I bought about a dozen. More importantly I planted them in about 4 different locations. They have all survived. So I now have decent sized clumps in all of those locations. The biggest one had about 30 flowers in 2021. 

A few facts about bloodroot and also double bloodroot.

Bloodroot is from North America. It was used by the people who lived here first, both as a medicine and a dye.

Double bloodroot is sterile. 

For that reason it spreads by runners.

Perhaps for the same reason it blooms for a much longer time than its wild cousin.

It is also bigger.

The genus is sanguinaria. It is in the same family as the poppy.

The botanical name for bloodroot is sanguinaria canadensis.

The botanical name for double bloodroot is sanguinaria canadensis Multiplex.

It is called bloodroot since the rhizome has a reddish sap. That can be used as a natural dye.

Other facts: The single bloodroot is in fact native to the various places in this country, including Iowa. We try to go each spring to Ryerson Woods, just south of Iowa City. It has about the most wildflowers of any public park in the area. "Floriferous" is a term that applies to those woods.

It is particularly nice to go every weekend in the spring to see the flower sequence. Bloodroot is among the earliest flowers.

#2 Beauty of Livermore 

May 30, 2021

If there is a better red in the flower world I cannot think of it. This is Beauty of Livermore, the oriental poppy.

We saw this flower up the street on College Street maybe 30 years ago. The color was stunning. We looked for it in plant stores and catalogues, without success. That was before camera phones so it was sometimes difficult to describe. (It is remarkable how camera phones now figure into our lives. Certainly they are quite helpful in gardening.)

But we finally identified the plant and got some for the garden and it has stayed around.

It would like more sun. It comes back but does not particularly spread.

This is your third poppy in the contest. Since this is only Week 5, and you may remember I try to balance the field, you can imagine that there are more to come in the next 8 weeks.

The genus is Papaver. The species is P. orientale. 

A few facts about this plant.

It has a long tap root, so it does not like to be transplanted.

It goes dormant by July 1, disappearing completely. This was a character trait to allow it to survive dry summers where it came from. That would be the Caucasus part of the world.  It does come back up in the fall, for some additional growth. It does not bloom a second time. The fact it reemerges is helpful in letting you know where it is. You would try not to plant directly on top of it. 

It is related to but not the same as the opium poppy. A long time ago, after I had been weeding this plant, I did set off some drug detection machine at the prison when I was there to visit a client. The next time I visited they have removed the machine.

These poppies are listed as deer and rabbit resistant. 

I could find nothing on the internet about the development of this cultivar.

#3 Siberian Iris, with water drops

 May 28, 2021

Siberian Iris come in so many great colors. Particularly with all those water drops, this picture jumped out at me.

#4 Lupines with spurge 

May 19, 2021

I love this picture. As I tried to get back to sleep at 3:30 in the morning, I thought about writing this post and writing about lupines. 

Lupines are wonderful. I have grown them for years. Some gardeners have difficulty growing them. I have suggestions. 

First you need to find the right location. This is true for most plants. Lupines want sun but not necessarily hot summer sun. They bloom in the spring and then limp along during the summer.

The second tip is to add new plants each year. I do this by growing some from seed each winter. I then add those seedlings to the carryover plants and the seedlings that grow naturally. One reason I get seedlings naturally in the garden is that I let the plants go to seed. Sometimes I just do not have the time for deadheading.

Lupines are considered "tender perennials." That means you should not expect a particular plant or clump to last for years. 2-3 years may be the most to hope for.

But are they wonderful.

More about lupines.

The genus is lupinus. 

The seeds are a food source, which is something I did not know. Well, they are a "legume." Legumes are in the plant "family"  "Fabaceae."

We sometimes knew lupines as being in the "pea family." Well that means "legumes."

Lupine flowers turn into sort of beans, which contain the seeds. Duh.

I guess both the beans and the seeds are food sources, going back  thousands of years. Who knew?

Bluebonnets are lupines and are the state flower of Texas. There are tree and bush varieties of lupines. There are prairie varieties. 

I can remember fields of lupine high in the Rockies. Mostly those are white.

Most lupines I grow are called Russell hybrids. The name comes from George Russell, a plant person from York, England.

Here is wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupinus_polyphyllus

The species I grow is polyphyllus, which comes from North America. It went to England in the early 1800's where it was hybridized a century later. Then it returned, but changed.

The  ground cover in the background of the picture is euphorbia cypress, or cypress spurge. The question that shows up on the internet is not "whether" but "where" is this considered "invasive".

https://www.gardenia.net/plant/euphorbia-cyparissias

But this spurge does not have deep roots. It is therefore easily removed. For that reason I do not consider it invasive. I can pot it up in the spring. 

It remains of interest all year. 

It blooms in the spring.

#5 Purple orchid 

January 1, 2021

This orchid is name Bc mackai mayumi. "B" stands for Brassavola and "c" stands for Cattleya. It is one of those mixed up plants.

It helped usher in 2021, allowing this picture on the very first day of the year.

It then  bloomed for a long time.

Some person at the orchid group described it as an orchid weed. If "weed" means it grows and blooms like crazy, I should find some more "weeds."

Orchids remarkably bloom about the same time each year. I brought this particular plant up from the basement yesterday. The first bud had just opened. It should be in full bloom in about a week. It can then usher in 2022.

There you have the contestants for week 5. December is almost over. My house plants have been inside for over 2 months at this point. Actually as I think about it, some have been inside for almost 3. We are almost at the half way point. 

I hope you are enjoying the contest. Voting was down this past week, which happens over the holidays. I ask you to each find another person to vote this coming week. Let us have the turnout that shows that 2022 will be a good plant year.

Bonus pictures

Bloodroot

These are the wild bloodroot with the pictures being taken at Ryerson Woods.

April 3, 2021

I like the brown background in early spring flowers. Sometimes it gives you the feeling of how alone are the flowers. 
Count the number of petals. It looks like 8.

April 3, 2021

The first double bloodroot bloomed that same day.

This is the double bloodroot, with more  petals than you could count.

April 3, 2021

April 4, 2021

Look at the number of petals on this flower. Look at the shape of the flower.

Look back at the wild version.

This is very much not the double bloodroot in the contest. Rather it is a hybrid I got at Joe Pye Weed gardens. It is called "snow cone."

Bloodroot goes with almost everything in early April. Here it is with  the great perennial "lambs ears."

April 12, 2021

Look at this wonderful picture from 2020. The bloodroot was blooming at the same time as the squill.

Cypress Spurge extras

This is a different spurge. 

This is from the end of July. It does fill in so you do not have to worry about weeds.

This is from September.

Lupines

Right now

This is a little lupin plant, on Christmas Eve, wanting to grow right now. It should wait. Remarkably the cold will not kill the plant, even it is temporarily wake up.

Eggplant report

When the garden season ended at the nearby rented garden plot, which was October 15,  I dug up an eggplant that I had grown. I put it in a pot and had no expectations. I think in the following weeks I wrote that somethings just do not transplant. 

I had decided it was dead but I left it in the pot. I then brought it inside and put it under the big light in the laundry room. 

It lived, but was having its struggles. 2 weeks ago I discovered it had a bad case of aphids. Gardening is not always pretty. So I sprayed it, gave it a systemic for bugs, and some vegetable fertilizer. It is recovering.

Julia's recipes

Chicken and mushroom and barley soup

This recipe comes from Milk Street magazine, and it uses an unusual (for me) combination of ingredients. But the ingredients are pretty standard - no canned borlito beans or aleppo (or sichuan) pepper or guava nectar, none of which are in my pantry.  I had frozen cooked chicken and frozen stock on hand which made this a quick-to-fix dinner.

The ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil;

2+ cups cremini mushrooms, rinsed and quartered or halved;

3/4 (or so) diced onion;

2 teaspoons ground cumin;

1 teaspoon ground turmeric;

1 tablespoon regular flour;

1 cup quick barley;

3-4 cups cooked chopped chicken (or turkey);

2 quarts stock OR 1 quart stock and 1quart water;

1/2 cup heavy cream OR 1/2 cup sour cream (not shown!);

salt and pepper.   

I started by prepping the vegetables. I cleaned and diced the onion (not tiny pieces, but not big either), and then I rinsed the mushrooms and cut them into halves or quarters depending on their size.

I heated the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat until it began to shimmer. Then I added the onion and the mushrooms and a big pinch of salt. 

I cooked for maybe 5 or 6 or 7 minutes on medium to medium high heat until the vegetables began to look cooked (translucent for the onions and shrunken and brownish for the mushrooms). Then I added the cumin and turmeric and some pepper and the flour. 

The action shot below is stirring the dry stuff into the onion and mushroom mixture. 

Action shot of stirring! If you don't have ground cumin, use whole seeds if you have them. If you don't have turmeric use a bit of curry powder. Or leave it out. Mostly it is for color. 

After the spices had been mixed in, I added the barley and the stock and a quart of water. 

Quick barley is just that - done in less than 30 minutes (once the stock had dissolved and come to a simmer). Pearl barley, also a common grocery store product, takes about 40 - 45 minutes to cook. 

If you don't have stock, use better than bouillon to make some. If you don't have cooked chicken, use 1-2 lbs. of chicken thighs - skinless, boneless and cut into small chunks. If using raw chicken, add it with the barley and stock. It will need to cook. 

I brought the barley and stock to a boil and then turned it down so that it simmered. 

When the barley was tender (maybe 25 minutes), I added the chopped up cooked chicken and let it heat through. 

Then I took it off the heat and stirred in a big dollop of sour cream. I did not have heavy cream but I did have sour cream and it was just fine. 

The recipe suggested garnishing with chopped mint and/or dill. I did not do that. But you certainly could if you wanted to. Or another green thing like parsley or basil. 

In the bowl. We had this around Thanksgiving so there were dinner rolls on hand. Always a plus. And salad and berries with yogurt. 

Odds and ends

The storm that came through Iowa 10 days ago has now been officially labeled a "derecho."

Mystery plant term    

I have lots of house plants. I guess that is something of an understatement. They almost all go outside for the summer. I only really look at them close up when they are inside. I have often noticed that some of them get little beads of liquid in various places. 

Sometimes it is on the edge of a leaf. Sometimes it is on the stem. It occurs on orchids, on crotons, and most recently on the flower stalk on the sansevieria at the office. I never knew what that was. I was afraid it was something bad.

To the left there is a stem of a cattleya orchid flower, after the flower was finished.

Here is that wonderful bloom stalk from the sansevieria at the office.

I also knew it was sticky. It would eventually drop off. I would find the wood floor under the plant sticky in the spring when I would move the plants.

I was a little afraid it was something related to tiny bugs.

So I looked it up on google. "What are those little water drops on a houseplant?"

Well, it is "Guttation."

Guttation is the appearance of little droplets of liquid on the leaves of plants. Some people notice it on their houseplants and expect the worst. Although unsettling the first time it happens, guttation in plants is completely natural and not harmful.

For more information see

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/houseplants/hpgen/guttation-in-plants.htm

It basically is plant sweat.

Water is pulled up from the soil to nourish the plant. At some point there is evaporation and then there is a vacuum and the plant exudes this liquid. I think this is where physics and botany collide. 

Most articles say this is nothing to worry about.

It is sticky, so you might need to wipe up the floor around the plant at some point. It very much is not just water.

It is almost 6 in the morning. That is post time. It is dark. There is cold weather coming. That is expected and will seem the correct thing to happen.

The days are  getting longer. Sometime soon we will notice.

It is about time to start some seeds.

Shirley poppies. Iceland poppies. Lupins. 

For 2022.

Be safe. 

Philip