They Should Have Called it Yellow

By Steve Hutton

The second season of the year, the one between winter and summer, is for some strange reason called Spring.  Looking at the landscape over the past five days I have decided they should have called it Yellow.  After an easy winter that stayed way past the March equinox – the beginning of spring – we finally got warm, then hot, weather the first of this week.  Half the plants in the area’s yards immediately showed their gratitude by erupting in yellow flowers.

Of course, all these plants are exotics, which is to say that they are native to other parts of the world.  Except for skunk cabbage and red maples and a few other early-flowering plants, our natives are just beginning to wake up.  So, we have come to rely on daffodils, forsythia, winterhazel, Cornus mas and officinalis, and other foreigners to say (actually, shout – there’s nothing subtle about these shades of yellow) that’s its spring.

Me, I’m glad.  Subtlety, after a winter that’s lingered way too long, is not what I’m looking for.  This will come in due time, when the woods turns its hundred shades of green, with shadblow, redbud and native dogwood lighting up the edges.  When the forest floor is begins to quake as ferns emerge, spring ephemerals quickly bloom and fade, when bloodroot and trout lily cover road banks–this is true botanical spring and my favorite time of the year.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy Yellow.  It’s like having dessert before dinner, which is something we should all do from time-to-time.

Vegetable Garden Update: March

By Kyle McKean

With the recent whipping winds and cold snow we’ve just had, it’s hard to imagine the taste of a perfectly ripe, still-warm-from-the-sun tomato, but somehow that taste never leaves my memory.  A juicy slice of tomato completely defines the feeling of summer for me.  Earthy and fresh, wet and fragrant.  It’s amazing how the smells of a season can completely transport you to a time or a place.

As I’ve been working in the garden these last few weekends, preparing it for spring planting, it’s hard to remember how the warm soil feels because the earth is still crunchy and a bit frozen.  Pulling the last dried tendrils of cucumbers from a trellis makes it hard to envision the bright green plants weaving their way throughout the fencing.  The shriveled, dried peppers that I find sprinkled in one bed are far from the vibrant, crisp fruit that will hang in a few months.

Anytime I spend in the garden, memories come rushing back.  There is something so innocent about little bits of lettuce sprouting up while the air is still cold and it never ceases to amaze me when tiny melons start forming and peas begin to appear — the taste of each so raw and sweet.  I can’t wait to hand my daughter, not yet two years old, the first bean that we determine is ready for picking.  She’ll look at it curiously as if she’s asking, “Momma, can I really eat this?”  I’ll nod back at her with a smile and watch as she experiences her first tastes of our garden.  Crunchy and a bit bitter, but full of texture and memory to her young palette.  What will she think of a warm slice of tomato or a moist piece of cantaloupe?  Sure, she’s had these foods before, but not yet from our garden. These are the memories I look forward to making!

Kristen’s Garden

By Kristen Smith

April Showers bring May flowers, though it seems May was much more like April this year, with lots of rain and some not as warm temperatures as we had in April.  At least we were blessed with some absolutely gorgeous weekend weather  – leaving all the rain to fall during the work week.  There are so many blooms this month I don’t quite know where to begin.

How could I not begin with the Knock Out® Roses, of course!  Pictured here is Double Knock Out® growing aside Pink Knock Out®.  These have been in full color for a solid two weeks now and have received many nice compliments.  The Drift® roses will be coming on very shortly.  Red Drift® is already in bud and bloom and Peach and Coral Drift® soon to follow.  I love these compact, mounding blooming machines for their applications along walkways and at the front of borders.

Double Knock Out® next to Pink Knock Out®. Drift® soon to follow.

It is true what they say –plants sleep their first year, creep their second year and leap their third year.  Here is a picture of my Clematis ‘Belle of Woking’.  I planted her almost exactly three years ago, and while she is not blooming profusely yet (this is the only flower so far), Her tendrils have leapt about 10’ in the air.  I’m hoping she will reveal some more blooms next year.  She is planted on one side of the trellis along the garage wall.  On the other side is a climbing rose, Cancan.  She is leaping indeed with high kicks – this is her third year in the ground.  I hope next year they will begin to grow together and complement each other in color and bloom time.

Clematis “Belle of Woking”

Cancan is a climbing rose.

I love my shade areas and just wish I had some more established beds in the shade.  Carolina allspice has been blooming almost a month now.  I love the sweetly fragrant blooms that look somewhat artificial.  I can’t say the plant habit is all that attractive and I wish it were in another location other than smack up against the Southwest corner of the house, but its location is close to the back door where its sweet fragrance wafts into the kitchen on a clear breezy day.

Carolina allspice.

I love Hosta!  I think if I had more shade I might become a Hosta collector.  I have one that is absolutely stunning now.  As good as I am with remembering names of all sorts of other plants, I never seem to remember Hosta names –they just don’t stick, maybe it is because of the zillions and billions of cultivars on the market.  Ferns are looking good right now, too.  I have many Autumn fern around the south side of the house.  The area is so poorly cultivated and seldom visited, but one day I’d like to plant more ferns there.

The vegetable garden is coming along. The cherry tomato plant have been planted and staked – they are creeping along waiting for those hot, hot days of summer ahead.  Alas, all the old seed I had of carrots, beets, spinach, and parsley did not make it! I waited weeks and weeks thinking that maybe something would emerge.  Finally it was time to cut the loses and plant something else.  Pepper plants and some herbs went in the ground this weekend.  It appears the only successful sowing I had this year was  lettuce. There will be plenty of evening salads on the menu soon.

I’m not looking forward to the sweltering days of summer ahead with blistering sunburns and biting insects.   These are the days when gardening is saved for after dark when I can cover myself from head to toe with clothing and hope that my neighbors don’t call the cops because I’m rustling in the bushes trying to water, weed, or prune!  I hope our last month of spring remains calm and mild.

Welcome to our blog!

By Steve Hutton

It was an easy winter here in southeastern Pennsylvania.  Probably where you are, too.  A few days ago, on an atypically warm day (typical for this year, though), my wife and I went for a walk on our usual circuit.  It’s a couple of miles down a country blacktop where we often don’t see a car the entire time.

Early spring unfolds slowly, and a very early spring even more so.  And very early spring was much in evidence.  The skunk cabbage in a low, boggy area that had been trying to come up for over a month was in flower, roadside daylilies were starting to poke through the soil, and a Cornus officinalis near an old barn was just beginning to show color.  But the true treat of the walk was hearing the first spring peepers of the year in the saturated muddy floodplain of a small stream at the bottom of a cow pasture.  Seeing spring evolve is a wonder, but hearing it evolve is glorious, and the sounds of redwing blackbirds and spring peepers are the best ways to hear early spring, even before it’s officially spring by the calendar.

With all this came an obvious thought:  It’s a perfect time to start a blog.

Our blog will periodically feature postings from four colleagues at The Conard-Pyle Company.  Jacques Ferare and myself (two guys, old, grizzled) will be joined by Kristen Nemeth and Kyle McKean (two women, young, vibrant) and will post from our own unique perspectives and passions.  We will cover a range of topics, from practical gardening tips to musings on whatever moves us horticulturally.

We hope you enjoy it! We’re looking forward to sharing and interacting with you.