February 11, 2018

Welcome to week 12 of the Winter Picture Contest

Weather patterns. They happen all the time. Some are nice; some not.
In Iowa, we are now in a pattern of snow and cold. I guess that is winter.
As of a week ago we had missed out on the snow for most of the winter. I remember winters when snow cover just lasted from December to March. That was normal.
This winter the only snow had been that one weekend we drove to Chicago. That figures.
Well, this past week it snowed Monday. It snowed a little on Wednesday. It snowed on Thursday. Now it is snowing on Saturday morning as I work on this blog.
It is not snowing a lot. Mostly it has been 1-3 inches. But that is enough to make driving difficult. It is enough to make you think it is going on forever.

And it has been cold. Bundling-up cold. Heavy-gloves cold. Friday it reached 22 degrees at one point. Julia and I both commented on how warm it seemed.

Julia has her mittens-for-the-schools finished just in time to deliver them in the next few days.

It think the hardest part of this time of year is how it is always the same. It looks the same. Each day is cold. Each day it either snows or there is snow in the forecast. Each day you have to worry about driving conditions. And then you look at the forecast. It mostly is below freezing. What happened to the 50 degrees from two weekends ago?
Weather patterns.


Here is the winner for Week 11.
It was the toad lily.
In so many ways this plant is a nice addition to the garden.

Here is the full vote, showing the first day's totals and then the weekly totals. The toad lily garnered 4 of the first 5 votes on Sunday morning and never looked back. It was one of the most dominating wins of the season.


Toad lily   14-20
Coneflower   5-11
Amaryllis   5-6
Triumphator 2-4
Dogtooth violet  2-3

total   28-44

The playoffs begin in two weeks. Will it still be snowing then?
At this point we have had 11 weeks to look at the second place finishers.  3 "wild cards" will make it through to the next round.
So far here are the top three:

Week 10 Ruby Spider/Dogwood 33%*
Week 1 Double Bloodroot 31%
Week 3 Iceland Poppy/Cattleya  30%*

Runner ups that are out of the running at this point:
Week 6  Yellow Orchid Cactus 26.1%
Week 9 Red Zinnia  26.0%
Week 11 Coneflower 25%
Week 4- tie for second between Anemone Blanda and Allium 25%
week 7- Hardy Orchid and Pink Poppy 23%
week 5- Tulip trio and Zinnia  23%
week 8- Yellow Hellebore  22%
Week 2  multi-colored Zinnia 20%

* In Weeks 3 and 10  there was a tie for first. Both of those contestants will advance automatically.

Week 12 Contestants

#1 Reddish Orchid Cactus
July 7, 2017

This is another orchid cactus. Their other name is epiphyllum. There have been four in the contest this winter. They really are special. I have put all four right together in the bonus section so you can see them all in one place.
In addition to the plants that are now rather large, I have several epiphyllum that I bought 2 years ago. I hope they might be big enough this coming year to bloom. I tried to get colors that were different from the ones I already had. One of the young plants has leaves in a zigzag pattern. It is to bloom with a white flower. It is something to anticipate.

I also have several plants that I have grown from seed. Harvesting the seed is kind of fun. The oldest were 2 years old this winter. The post that shows the seed gathering is January 3, 2016. It is in the archives. The plants are getting bigger. I think they might have another year to go before they bloom.



#2 Gingerland Caladium
August 5, 2017

I have bought caladium bulbs each year for many years. They grow from bulbs that will die if left in the ground over our winter. In that way, they are similar to many other bulbs such as dahlias, cannas, and elephant ears. While I will store elephant years and do not grow the other bulbs listed, I just get new caladium each spring.

Caladium are really a must for the shade garden. Here is the point. They grow in the shade. (Some varieties will grow in the sun.) They are colorful. Red caladium in between the hosta make a great combination.

This particular variety is Gingerland. 10 bulbs were given to me as a promotion in 2016. I liked them, and they have now become a staple. The bulbs arrive about April 1. I pot them up and grow them inside until maybe mid May. By then they have sprouted. They want the ground to be 70 degrees. Hint- the ground does not get to 70 degrees until the temperature has been quite a bit above 70, for a while. Sometimes that can be as late as June 1.

More caladium pictures are in the bonus section.


#3 Fall Blooming Crocus
September 9, 2017

Fall crocuses are another requirement for the fall garden.
They are a splash of color at a time when the color of high summer is fading.
This clump is a mature clump that might be 10 years old at this point. It might need dividing.
The time for that would be after the bloom in the fall- well, too late for that now. Maybe they can be divided in late spring, after their spring foliage had died back.
Many of the fall crocuses have spring leaves, which produce no flowers. I am reminded of naked ladies, or surprise lilies as they are also called, which do the same.

If you order fall crocuses from bulb companies they will send them to you in the summer. It really can be instant gratification. You plant them in August and they bloom a month or two later.

Spring bulbs have little or no competition from other plants.
These fall crocuses are getting crowded by hosta that just get bigger all the time.
Planning where to put fall crocuses is not as easy as thinking about where to put spring flowers.
But there are some fall crocuses that bloom very late. That can affect the calculation.

#4 Little Yellow Iris
May 2, 2017

Yellow-what a great color. I really must have that color competition one week. All the yellow flowers would compete with all the blue flowers. How about red?

But this is a little bearded iris. The smallest are called "dwarf miniature" iris.
I love them because they come early in the year and you do not have to stake them. The tall beard iris are nice but can fall over if not staked.

This picture makes me think about all the spring flowers. Some years in the garden by mid- February the aconite and snowdrops had started to bloom. Not this year. I think I can say with some assurance at this point, we will not have an early spring.


#5 Late Lily with Butterflies
August 12, 2017

I believe this is Lilium speciosum rubrum. It is an old lily, having been introduced to England from Japan in 1830. It has been in our garden since 2002. I was younger then. I added lots of lilium from 2001-2006. I compulsively wrote down the names and source and location where I planted them.(The last piece of information is particularly helpful for later identification.)  I then got plant labels which have mostly stuck around. I still have one of those lists of lilies acquired during that time, which allows for this identification. This is about the latest lilium to bloom. The butterflies are a wildlife bonus, and symmetrical too. 


There you have the contestants for week 12.
Vote early. Vote often. Send me you comments in one form or another. Hearing from you makes it easier to get through this time.

Bonus Section

Here are the four epiphyllum from the contest this winter.





Here are more late lilium.

These are on the east side of the house. They get morning sun, with filtered sun the rest of the day. Many of these lilium are fine with half sun. Others, such as the Oriental lilies do not last a long time.

This is the picture from which the contestant with the butterflies was cropped.

This is a single Gingerland clump. I buy the biggest bulbs I can get in the spring. That would be the jumbo bulbs, if they are available.

I keep the caladium in pots for a while, some time moving several to a single big pot. This allows me to move them around, or to decide to splash them into some new bed in August.

The red dots do look photoshopped. But no, they are real.

Here was one of those new beds this past summer. 

I do realize that almost every bed can do better with a reset every 10-15 years. I have actually been doing that these last few years, particularly since I have had some part time help in the garden.

The white variety I get is called Candidum. Several each year get a little pink tint. It is one of those plant mysteries that are so appreciated.

A caladium with the sun behind it is one of the many garden marvels, particularly in the early morning.

Julia's Recipe

Brussel Sprouts: Who Knew?

I did not have brussel sprouts until about 15 years ago around Thanksgiving. I was looking for a green vegetable, not green beans, not broccoli, certainly not peas. I think I came across a recipe for roasting brussel sprouts. Actually it may not have so much a recipe as the suggestion that roasting brussel sprouts would be a good idea. And it was. We eat them from time to time during the fall and winter. Roasted, of course. 

I started out with about 35, maybe 36, brussel sprouts mostly about the size of golf balls or ping pong balls. I rinsed them well as they appeared to have had some kind of hard journey on their way to my local Hy-Vee.

I trimmed the ends off and peeled off the leaves that looked damaged or had any blackish spots. After cleaning the sprouts up, I sliced each one in half lengthwise and dropped the halves in a smallish deep bowl. I ended up with 4 cups of halved brussel sprouts.

I added 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the little deep bowl and tossed the sprouts around. Then I dumped them onto a rimmed baking sheet with a non-stick silicone baking mat (you could use parchment or aluminum foil if you are mat-less). I turned all the sprouts cut side down and sprinkled them with kosher salt. I used 6 big pinches.

I baked the sprouts in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes, no turning or shaking or moving them around needed. After 20 minutes they had some nice browning, both on the top side and on the bottom side.

While the sprouts were baking, I mixed up a sauce, suggested by Alton Brown: 1/2 teaspoon each red pepper flakes, toasted sesame oil and fish sauce. The little bit of sauce is barely visible in the stainless steel bowl. A. Brown suggested chopping up a few peanuts as well, shown in the little bowl. I put the roasted sprouts in the sauce bowl, tossed them around, poured them into a serving dish and sprinkled on the peanuts. Done and delicious. Although there is not much sauce, it makes an impact. Too much sauce would make the sprouts soggy.

Here are the sauced and peanut-y sprouts. You could leave out the peanuts with no real impact. I think you could use tiny amount of chili-garlic paste or Thai curry paste instead of fish sauce. I would use toasted sesame oil which is flavorful, although I don't have experience with exotic oils; maybe avocado oil or walnut oil would also pack a flavor punch.

Or you could forego the sauce altogether. We usually eat our roasted brussel sprouts plain; that is, roasted with olive oil and salt. If you go the oil-and-salt-only route, you could add other vegetables for color and difference in flavor. We have added a few small carrots at the first step - peeled and cut into pieces roughly the same size as the sprouts. I suppose one could add beets or parsnips instead of carrots. Eat your vegetables and enjoy them while you're at it.

Odds and Ends

Animal plants!
We had a toad lily and a dog tooth violet last week. I wondered what other plants had animal names.
Here is a list of other such "animal" plants thought up in the last week, with help from some of you. There are a lot.
I have placed an asterisk for plants in our garden.
bearberry 
bearbreech*
cowslip
cardinal flower
catmint
catnip

cattail

dogbane
dogtooth violet *

dogwood*

elephant ears*foxglove
goatsbeard
hens and chicks *
lambsquarter (actually a weed. We have it and then we pull it up.)

monkey flower

monkey grass

pussy toes

rattlesnake  master

Wake robin*

sheep sorrel (yet another weed.)

skunk cabbage

spiderwort

Ruby Spider and an entire community of spider lilies*
tiger lily
toad lily*
turtlehead*

Plants with names of mythical animals

green dragon
snapdragon

fungi with animal names

oyster mushroom
hen in the woods
lion's mane mushroom


Plants with names of insects
fleabane
begger tick

Thanks for all the input in putting this list together.

I have written about growing tree peony plants from seed. I have four plants grown from seed out there under the snow at the moment. It took forever for them to germinate. In fact I finally just threw them in the garden and forgot about them.
Well I read something interesting about tree peony seed in a garden magazine this week.
Apparently if you harvest the seed very early, before they have dried out, you can plant them right away and they will germinate the next spring. If you wait until they are all dried out, they will take two years to germinate.
That is the strange garden tale of the week (assuming it is true.)

Days until
March 20  the first day of Spring  37 days
March 29  Opening day of baseball season  46 days

April 15- many plants might go outside  63 days
November 6 Election day  268


I close with this nice view of one of the garden glass balls. With the snow it and all its friends have hats.

Drive carefully.

Warmer times will come.

Philip and Julia