Plants and Flowers

The cabbage start to form heads in early spring and the plants look healthy and vigorous. The better choice for early spring is Early Jersey Wakefield with its distinctive pointed heads. Except for the Wakefield cabbage you can also plant a Savoy variety which has dark green, crinkled and blistered leaves.
Brussels sprouts often went into the garden at the same time as the early spring Cole crops. If you have suspicions that your plants may not have enough time to mature, you may plant them earlier than usually to see if they produce a better harvest in autumn.

Fall planted garlic grows tall with extremely thick stalks. To prevent weed growth in spring you may spread over the garlic bed a mulch of shredded leaves.
Very popular artichoke plants sometimes do not survive the winter and need replacement that you can find at a local greenhouse. Young plants are growing comfortably and may share a bed with lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower.

Growing your own tomatoes plants from seeds allows you to choose from a great number of varieties. If you are going to transplant your sapling, you should start six or seven weeks before. Starting earlier make no sense, as they will overgrow for transplanting. It is a good idea to use peat pots so that the roots will be disturbed as little as possible when transplanting. The saplings need some moist, but should not be soaked, they also need a lot of sunlight.

If you have no wish to face problems with tomato diseases, try growing disease resistant varieties. VNF varieties carry resistance to verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt, and root-knot nematodes. Celebrity and First Lady II are good disease resistant varieties. You can try some varieties at once to find the one you like best.

If you are purchasing the transplants, choose saplings with straight, strong stems about the size of a pencil. And they should have 4 to 6 leaves and no blossoms. Be sure to check carefully for signs of insects or disease both on the plants and soil.

Not many climbers can grow in the dark, but the following climbing vines will do well in gardens that don’t have a lot of sunshine.
There are two deciduous climbers that turn red in fall: Boston ivy and Virginia creeper.
Virginia creeper is extremely strong and can grow 10 feet a year when established, and reach up to 30 - 50 feet tall.
Boston ivy grows the same way, as the previous climber do.
Both are self-clinging climbing vines for shade with suction cup holdfasts.

Climbing hydrangea is an attractive deciduous vine with beautiful clusters of large white flowers in midsummer.
This one is slow to establish, but will grow 25 feet tall or more if it has a good wall to climb. You can, of course, pruned it to keep smaller. This one is lovely climbing vine for a shade garden, but will do well in sun too.
Akebia quinata is one more fast-growing deciduous climbing vine that does not need full sun to thrive. It has attractive glossy leaves and small purple flowers, which appear in mid-spring. It can create a nice screen and will grow 30 to 40 feet if allowed.

The notion “climbing roses” is a little bit deceptive, because roses actually don’t climb that way the true vines do. They are just rose varieties with long, arching stalks that can grow about 10 feet tall.
These flowering plants may grow into big shrubs, hooking with their thorns into anything they can manage: a fence or any tree. But you can direct them to climb by tying the canes to a support post or latticed trellis. The gardener should wear long sleeves and leather gloves to protect from the thorns.
Canadian rose breeders have developed hardy shrub roses named after famous explorers. From the “Explorer” roses some are good climbers for sunny pspots: ‘John Cabot’ with its fragrant red double flowers, ‘Martin Frobisher’ with fragrant light pink flowers, and ‘William Baffin’, with deep pink, double flowers that have no scent.

The next climbing vines are another nice way to add variety to your garden:

Large-flowered clematis is deciduous vine for sunny garden that climb up to 8 - 12 feet using its twining stems and tendrils. Depending on the species or cultivar of the plant, it may flower from late spring until first frost.
There is abundance of flower colors including white, blue, violet, purple, pink and red or bicolor.
Most species prefer full sun and moist but well-drained soil. However, some grow well in part shade too.
Pruning depends on the variety, but many of them bloom on the current season’s growth and should be cut down almost to the roots in early spring just before new growth starts. Prune plants that flower on previous year’s growth immediately after blooming.

Wisteria floribunda (Japanese) and Wisteria sinensis (Chinese) are healthy twining vines which can grow to 25 - 30 feet.
Both are popular for their long dangling clusters of fragrant blue flowers in spring and have woody stems that need very sturdy supports. The flowers of Wisteria floribunda are longer than those of the Wisteria sinensis.
Wisteria needs moist, well-drained soil and full sun for the best growth.

Climbing vines give additional height, texture, color and first of all even romance to your garden or summerhouse. Climbers, especially flowering ones, make a great addition to your flower garden if you have a fence or gratings for them to clamber over. They look particularly effective in pergolas.
The most popular climbing vine is Clematis, with many varieties of magnificent flowers.
One of the best features of climbing vines is their ability to hide all the stuff you’d rather not to see, like road outside your garden or a neighbor’s garage.
You can easily create your own style in your garden using trellis, an arbor, a rustic willow or wrought iron support, a fence, or any other constructions. Just make sure that the support for your climber is strong enough and harmonizes with your garden design.
Climbing vines either twine around their supports or hold fast to upright surfaces. There are also vines that grasp with tendrils or petioles, such as clematis, or those with thorns that hook onto supports, as climbing roses do.
When looking for a climbing vine, choose the right one and put it in the right place: sun lovers in sun, shady ones in shade and choose the moist soil for a vine that requires it.

When buying tulips, avoid bulbs that are soft, mushy and choose large ones. As a rule, bulbs are sold by size: smaller bulbs are cheaper, and they produce smaller flowers. Note that bulbs of species types are naturally smaller than hybrid tulip bulbs.
Do not buy bulbs from stores that keep them in hothouse conditions. Such storage can ruin next season’s blooms. Bulbs should be cold-stored until shipping.
Plant bulbs in a well-drained place in the flower garden. Remember that damp soil promotes fungus and disease and can even rot bulbs. Plant them deeply, about eight inches deep.
After flowering you should remove faded blooms – this will direct energy of the plant into strengthening the bulb, not into producing seeds.
It is well to plant bulbs between groups of large perennials with strong foliage, such as peonies or meadow rue daylilies. The foliage of the perennials will hide dying bulb leaves.
Fertilize your plants in the fall, but if you have forgotten, apply a high nitrogen, fast-release fertilizer in spring with the first sprout.
You can also dig the bulbs out after flowering to free the way for summer annuals.

Have you ever happened to plant wonderful tulips and then found that they’re not so beautiful in some years.
These flowers are perennials, so what’s wrong with them?
Their mountain habitat is in Turkey and other central Asian countries, so tulips do the best in similar growing conditions, that is cold winters and hot, dry summers.
If they are growing in damp, humid and fertile garden conditions, a lot of hybrid varieties look marvelous the first some years, but then their flowers get smaller.
Careful gardener can avoid such problems by choosing tulip species and varieties that acclimatize well. Another way is to plant bulbs more deeply. The deeper you plant and the better drained your soil, the more staying power tulip bulbs will have.
When purchasing the bulbs, choose those labeled as good for “naturalizing”. This information can usually be found in catalogues, or on the pack of bulbs.
At 6 inches tall, species are smaller than hybrid types, so grow them at the edge of flowerbeds, in front gardens and in rock-gardens.

The most popular perennial varieties:
Single Early Varieties: ‘Keizerkroon’, ‘Christmas Marvel’, ‘Couleur Cardinal’
Triumph Types: ‘Don Quichotte’, ‘Golden Melody’,
‘Kees Nelis’, ‘Merry Widow’
There are also so called Darwin Hybrids, which are all in red, rose, orange, yellow, and two-tone colors.
Lily Flowered Varieties: ‘Aladdin’, ‘Maytime’, ‘Ballade’, ‘White Triumphator’, ‘Red Shine’

The beach strawberry or Fragaria chiloensis is perennial herb. This plant most actively grow in the spring and summer period. The beach strawberry has green leaves and small white flowers, with bright red fruits with seeds. The greatest bloom is usually seen in the early spring, and fruit and seed are produced in the spring and continue until summer. The beach strawberry has a medium life span comparatively with most other herb species and a moderate growth rate. This plant typically reaches up to 10 inches high.
The beach strawberry is not commonly available, but a lucky gardener may find it in nurseries or garden stores. This herb can be propagated by seed and shoots. It has rather slow ability to spread through seed production but shootings take roots easily. It likes warm weather conditions and ca not tolerate temperatures below -33°F.
Beach strawberry has moderate tolerance to drought and insufficient water conditions.