Making the Cut

Two years ago, when I ordered my first irises for the garden at our new home, I didn’t know I would resume my iris hybridizing hobby. The cultivars I bought were mostly selected for sentimental reasons, and to produce a pleasing effect in the back garden.

Since then, I have been ordering irises based on their relevance to my breeding plans. Still, I want them to fit into an esthetic garden design and mingle with other plants. It’s easy to just keep ordering more and more new ones, but I’m keenly aware of the resources required (time, labor, and water) to maintain a garden, and so I am determined not to go the route of many iris enthusiasts and acquire so many irises that there is room for nothing else to grow and no way to care for them all properly.

Therefore, it is necessary to remove some to make room for new additions. I thought I would write a little something about how I made these difficult choices.

Besides the quality of the irises themselves, I also took into account that I am moving toward a “cool pastels” color scheme in the back garden where these first acquisitions were planted.

Miniature Dwarfs

I had three miniature dwarfs: ‘Alpine Lake’, ‘Cradle Blue’, and ‘Snowy River’. They each have something to recommended them. ‘Cradle Blue’ is the first to bloom. ‘Snowy River’ blooms over the longest period of time, with dainty wildflower-like blooms that I enjoy. ‘Alpine Lake’, though, puts on the most intense display, with lots of flowers opening at once. It was my choice to keep. It having both white and blue in its coloring was a plus as well. (The other two are selfs.) I will keep five rhizomes and replant them in a drift.

Standard Dwarfs

I have five of these: ‘Sea Monster’, ‘Michael Paul’, ‘Rain Dance’, ‘Orange Tiger’, and ‘Baby Blessed’. ‘Orange Tiger’ was easy to eliminate. It has nice orange color, but the stalks are short and the plants small and weak-looking. It hardly bloomed at all in its second year here. ‘Sea Monster’ has interesting color and is a bit more modern-looking than the others, but nothing I can’t be without. ‘Baby Blessed’ rebloomed for over a month last fall, but I found I didn’t enjoy it all that much, tired-looking blooms down in the aging late-season foliage. It’s form is mediocre and substance poor. ‘Michael Paul’ has wonderful intense color and good growth habits, and happens to share a name with Karen’s son, but in the end I opted to keep only ‘Rain Dance’, which not only has a lovely color that fit my color scheme for the garden, but was also the best performer of the lot.

Intermediate and Border Bearded

I have IBs ‘Rare Edition’, ‘Hot Fudge’, ‘Shampoo’, and ‘Obligato’, and BB ‘Butterscotch Blush’, as well as the historic ‘Mme. Chereau’. I’ve always loved ‘Rare Edition’ and it is a fine performer, but it bloomed on too-short stalks this year, as did most of the other IBs. ‘Obligato’ did a great job enduring last spring’s awful weather, but the individual blooms didn’t impress me very much. ‘Hot Fudge’ had small blooms down in the foliage, which made it hard to take much notice of. ‘Shampoo’ was the winner with perfect stalks and nicely shaped blooms. Besides, Karen likes brown. ‘Butterscotch Blush’ is also a keeper: gently ruffled blooms of gold with just a hint of pink blended in, and a lovely clump effecct. ‘Mme. Chereau’ will also stay for her old-fashioned charm and durability in the garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arilbreds

I ordered ‘Loudmouth’ and ‘Loud and Rowdy’, a 2010 introduction of Sharon McAllister. The folks at Malevil gardens remember that I was a friend of Sharon and sent me others of hers as gifts: ‘Mohric Mystery’, ‘Go Big Red’, ‘Honey Not Tonight’, and ‘Navajo Velvet’, as well as Paul Black’s ‘Brash and Bold’. ‘Loudmouth is a definite keeper, delightful, vigorous, and floriferous. I’m also keeping ‘Mohric Mystery’ for its elegant form, nice stalks, and pastel coloring that fits my color scheme. Of the others, I decided to keep ‘Navajo Velvet’ for its strong colors, sturdy tall stalks, and good plant habit. I love the blooms on ‘Honey Not Tonight’, but it sent up long weak stalks that went sprawling in the first win. ‘Go Big Red’ was nice too, but bloomed quite a bit shorter than ‘Navajo Velvet’, and so makes less impression in the garden. ‘Loud and Rowdy’ was pleasant enough and has no real faults, but it just didn’t speak to me. Also smaller than ‘Navajo Velvet’. I have a first-year plant of ‘Brash and Bold’ elsewhere in the garden, so I don’t mind eliminating it from this bed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tall Bearded

I have two of Gus Seligmann’s irises that I introduced in 1983: ‘Catchy Name’ and ‘Satan’s Mistress’. I would be keeping these for sentimental reasons in any case, but ‘Catchy Name’ actually performed better than the other TBs in this bed, with many blooms and tall sturdy stalks. The others, ‘Enchanted Mesa’, ‘Azure Whir’, and ‘Summit Angel’ had blooms that were pleasing enough, but bloomed on stalks no taller than the medians, looking quite out of proportion. This is something that our warm weather makes irises inclined to do here, but I prefer to keep the ones that develop tall stalks in spite of the weather. I also have ‘Beverly Sills’, which did not bloom in 2011 and put up to scrawny little stalks this spring. It’s clearly not established itself here, but I decided to be kind and give it one more year to settle in.

 

Horticultural Societies: The End of an Era?

After being away from serious gardening for a decade, I recently joined (or re-joined) some excellent plant societies: the American Iris Society, the Species Iris Group of North America, the Aril Society International, the Median and Dwarf sections of AIS, the British Iris Society, The North American Rock Garden Society, and the Scottish Rock Garden Club.

Most horticultural societies date from the early decades of the 20th century, or spun off from such groups a few decades later. For nearly a century, these organizations have provided remarkable services to the horticultural world. Besides being “clubs” where people can socialize with others who share their interest, they have brought order out of chaos by overseeing the names of cultivars, spreading information on how to correctly identify species, promoting plant breeding and propagation, helping finance botanical expeditions, and serving to promote the best “finds” and “creations” of specialist growers to the general gardening public. For most of the 20th century, the publications of horticultural society were effectively the sole source of detailed information on the plants they promoted. They were also the principle conduit through which specialist nurseries reached their public.

Today, most such organizations are in a state of decline, in some cases perilous decline. Memberships are shrinking, and with shrinking memberships come shrinking resources (financial and human) to carry on the crucial functions of the organizations. One sometimes hears this attributed to some particular society program being poorly run, or some particular decisions of a governing body being poorly conceived. Such comments, I feel, largely miss the point. This is a universal phenomenon, not a particular one. I think its cause is obvious: the internet.

During the 20th century, horticultural societies operated on a single core principle: membership dues in exchange for information. If you wanted to know what the best new irises were, where to obtain them, or how to grow and breed them, you had to join the iris society and receive their publications (or be close friends with someone who was a member). The societies were the gatekeepers. Once involved, members would find other things the society offered: the judging program, conventions, discussion groups, and so on. But the basic equation was “pay your dues to learn about irises”.

The internet has completely undone this basic equation. The plant societies are no longer the gatekeepers. I can go on line and learn more about irises than I can from a decade of society publications. Don’t misunderstand: the publications are excellent and I enjoy them immensely. It’s just that they are no longer a unique source of information. They are a supplement, and a comparatively expensive and inconvenient supplement in comparison with online resources.

I don’t know of any group that has not recognized the importance of a vibrant online presence in attracting the attention of potential members today. Projects like the forum of the Scottish Rock Garden Club and the AIS Iris Encyclopedia have become phenomenal resources and hubs for enthusiasts around the world. But although embracing the internet is necessary to keep the horticultural societies relevant, it is not sufficient.

Why do I say that? Because having a vibrant online presence cannot, in itself, reverse the trends of declining membership. If the online resources provided by the society are open to all, then the basic problem remains: there is no need to join and pay dues to get the information. If the resources are made members-only, then the society shuts out the very people it intends to attract: potential members. If there were no alternatives, people could be lured into paying dues for access to a web site. But there are, in fact, plenty of free alternatives. Some are of dubious quality, of course. But the basic point remains. Today, if I have a question about irises or rock gardening or plant breeding or species identification or anything else, I  can have my answer in a few minutes without having to “sign up” for something (which many people resist on principle) or pay for anything.

I don’t see a clear answer. Maybe we should just recognize that we are approaching the end of an era, and let the dinosaurs die off, their archives surviving as reminders of a very different era, when information was a scarce resource. Alas, these societies do more than provide information. The American Iris Society maintains the cultivar registration database, operates an important judging and awards system (flawed, perhaps, but vital nonetheless for promoting the many different types of irises), and sponsors various scientific and horticultural projects. It would be sad indeed to return to the fragmented condition of the 19th century, where there is nothing beyond individual gardeners and commercial nurseries to foster our love of particular plants.

The frustration is parallel to what we are experiencing with regard to brick-and-mortar bookstores. I love them, don’t want to see them go, but don’t see how they can successfully face the economic realities of the information age and survive.

The only glimmers of hope I see are in the examples of societies that offer tangible benefits, beyond information: seed and plant exchanges, for example. If the only way to obtain a choice species that is not available commercially is through a plant society, enthusiasts will join. I don’t know if this single strategy is something that can, by itself, keep the societies relevant into the future, but it’s at least a model of the kind of thinking that will be needed. To survive, horticultural societies must move beyond the dues-for-information paradigm that propelled them onward through the 20th century and find a new paradigm.

If I knew in detail what the new paradigm is, I would shout it far and wide. But I don’t. I’ll wager, though, that by the middle of this century horticultural societies will be either radically different than we know them today or gone altogether.

Video: Planting Seeds of Specialty Perennials

Here’s my second excursion into the world of video. This time, I’m planting seeds I received from the seed exchange of SIGNA, the Species Iris Group of North America. I share my method of starting seeds of plants (like irises) that require a period of cold stratification in order to germinate. Enjoy!

Video: Starting Flower Seeds Indoors

I got a new camera with video capability in December. I think it would be nice to make videos to share my iris bloom season in the spring. I’m a complete novice when it comes to taking and editing video, so I figured I should start learning as soon as possible! This weekend, I put together a 9-minute instructional video on starting flower seeds indoors. Nothing really novel or profound here, but it did give me a lot of practice with the software!

Enjoy.

 

Follow-up, two weeks later: Here are the Johnny-Jump-Up seedlings, growing happily under the lights.

Hardiness Zone Ratings: Helpful or Not?

Anyone who becomes interested in perennials quickly encounters the USDA hardiness zone map, which is ubiquitous in books, catalogs, and nurseries. The idea is that the minimum winter temperature in a given location can be used to select plants that will survive most winters. Of course, there are usually some caveats given about snow cover, microclimates, and so on. And not all nurseries list the same zone rating for each plant. I’ve seen a couple that seem to rate anything they don’t know about as zone 9!

People apparently take this system very much to heart. It may be the only information a catalog gives to indicate the plant’s requirements – it’s obviously regarded as a terribly essential datum. Perhaps it’s our love affair with numbers, or the sense of security that comes from “knowing” which plants will survive and which ones won’t. Experienced gardeners, of course, know that you can lose some plants rated for a colder zone and successfully overwinter some rated for a warmer zone. I started wondering how useful these hardiness zone ratings really are. How well does the zone rating actually predict survival?

Last year we had one of our coldest winters on record. The temperature dropped to -18 Fahrenheit at the beginning of February (with no snow cover), and the lows stayed below zero for a number of days afterwards. This is about the lower limit of hardiness zone 5. A simplistic interpretation of the hardiness zone ratings would imply that most plants rated for zone 5 or lower would survive, and that those rated for zone 6 or higher would perish.

What really happened? Well, I made note of how many of each particular plant survived in my garden: 0 if none survived, 1 if all survived, and, for example, 0.5 if half of them survived. I also used a 0.5 if the plant survived, but was so damaged that it was effectively set back a year in growth. I then plotted this “survival rate” for each plant against its hardiness zone rating. (It’s a limited amount of data, but I intend to add to it each year.) The result is interesting:

The best-fit line running through the graph demonstrates that there is in fact a trend in the expected direction: higher zone ratings correlate with reduced survival. But the scatter of the points themselves makes an even stronger point: for any given plant, the hardiness zone rate is a very unreliable predictor of survivability. There were zone 2 and 3 plants that fared no better than the zone 7 plant!

In William Cullina’s excellent book Understanding Perennials, there is an explanation of the mechanisms that plants use to survive freezing temperatures. Truly tender plants (think of tomatoes or basil) simply cannot survive prolonged temperatures below freezing, because the water in their cells turns to ice and expands and destroys the cells. Some plants have chemicals in their cytoplasm that act like antifreeze and prevent freezing, even down to temperatures as low as 20 degrees. But to survive colder temperatures than that, the antifreeze strategy alone is inadequate. At lower temperatures, the cells will freeze, and the plant needs specially designed cells that can freeze without being destroyed (by shriveling to make room for the ice crystals, or by having particularly tough cell walls). If a plant can survive losing its top growth, that is also helpful, because the soil temperatures do not swing as low as air temperatures, particularly under an insulating cover of snow.

Cullina also describes how the timing of cold weather can effect hardiness. No plant is fully hardy when in active growth. Plants must prepare for cold weather in the fall and then return to growth in the spring. If the timing isn’t right, the plant can die from an autumn or spring cold snap, even if it could survive much lower temperatures in mid-winter.

The upshot of all this, in my view, is that the concept of hardiness zones gives a completely unwarranted false precision to a matter that is really pretty hard to quantify. Especially when we start talking about zone 5a or 5b, it seems like what some of us in the sciences refer to as “sharpening the marshmallow”. I think gardeners might be better served by a much loser set of terms, such as “tender”, “semi-hardy”, “hardy”, and “extremely hardy”. About the only solid advice I’m inclined to give people about selecting perennials is “If you live where it’s below freezing a lot in the winter, it’s probably a waste of time to try anything rated for zone 8 or higher.”

Mostly, we just have to live with the fact that we don’t know what will survive any given winter.

Full-Circle Gardening

Mid-winter is a philosophical, almost mystical time, for a gardener in a temporate climate. Casual gardeners no doubt forget about gardening entirely at this time of year. Our local nurseries all close from Christmas to New Years – presumably because hardly anyone would show up if they stayed open.

For the plants in the garden, this is essentially a dormant time. They wait in quiet slumber for spring to come, completing the cycle of activity and rest that is common to all living things. This is the time that connects the end of one growing season with the beginning of the next, completing the circle. I might use this space to write about all the fascinating things that plants do in winter, away from our active notice. But instead I’ll share some thoughts on two different ways a garden can move from year to year.

The first way might be called “reinvention”. In this model, trees, shrubs, and perennials are expected to survive the winter and maintain the basic framework of the garden. Annual flowers and vegetables die at the end of the season and are replaced anew from seed the following spring. If the garden is relatively new, we may acquire new perennials and trees as well. We may even cycle through perennials every few years, as the allure of new plants compels us to send the current residents on their way to free up space.

Starting over each spring is truly a great deal of fun. Since I was a teen, I looked forward to the arrival of the garden catalogs in January, and the long hours of temptation and anticipation they provided. There’s always a new tomato to grow, an new iris to collect, a new batch of violas to be set out. When I was young, this was what a gardener’s winter was about!

The second way of bridging the seasons might be called “recycling”. In this way of doing things, most (if not all) of next year’s plants come directly from last year’s garden, either perennials that we have kept going, or annuals and vegetables raised from last year’s seed. We can let desirable plants reseed in  place, or – if more care is needed – harvest and save seed for replanting next year.

Recycling your garden reinforces a mindset of sustainability, taking us back to a time when there were no new plants or exotic seeds from far away to provide garden novelty each year. Recycling your garden can offer an alternative to the increasingly commercialized garden industry, which is threatening the biodiversity of our food crops by narrowing the once enormous range of local heirloom varieties down to a small assortment of hybrids obtainable only as new seed each year from commercial sources. I recommend gardeners all acquaint themselves with organizations like the Seed Savers Exchange that are working hard to preserve heirloom flowers and vegetables.

I’ve made a conscious choice to move more toward a recycling garden each year. I’m starting to save vegetable seeds, to encourage ornamentals that reseed themselves, and to explore perennial vegetables, such as asparagus and walking onions. I like the change in mindset involved: the plants in my garden become less disposable commodities, and more like long-term resources.

That said, I think there will always be a place for reinvention in my garden. Gardening is my hobby after all, and it would lose some of its interest if there were no exploration of new plants. Furthermore, my garden is still a new one, and experimenting with new plants seems altogether reasonable when new ground is brought into cultivation. Still, I cannot but reflect that the “reinvention” paradigm has led many a gardener down a perilous path where the need for acquiring novelty outstrips the space, time, and money available. I’d like, in a few years’ time, to reach a state where the garden I loved the year before returns from its own roots and seeds in spring, and changes are modest and measured.

Raising Cacti and Succulents from Seed

I’m mostly an outdoor gardener. I have a few houseplants (nothing special, the kind you can get at the grocery store) around the house, and I have grow-lights for starting vegetable and flower seeds in the spring. I recently bought a varied assortment of succulents, including a few cacti, for dish gardens in my office at work to replace plants that died when the heating system failed. They will better reflect my current gardening interests than the old spider plant, schefflera, and pelargonium did.

But today I want to share an indoor gardening activity that has turned out to be very fun and to hold my interest better than the generic houseplants: raising cacti and succulents from seed. This is something I’ve done various times over the years. Many people who are not avid gardeners find even the concept of growing cacti from seed startling and even bewildering. We just don’t think of them in that context.

I couple years ago, I ordered a packet of mixed cactus seed from Park Seed, described as a hardy blend. They germinated easily, and although I lost of few over the first few months, I ended up with a happy little assortment:

As you can see, they are all different and interesting. They are almost two years old now, and they enjoy life on the window sill, potted in cactus mix, where I water them once a week. Once they have grown to a suitable size, I will plant them out in the outdoor cactus garden by the driveway. I’m guessing that will be a couple more years, at least. This is not an activity for the impatient, but in the meantime they are fun to look at and make nice conversation pieces.

Last year, I ordered some iris seeds from Rareplants.de in Germany (they have since relocated to the Canary Islands). As a gift, they sent me a packet of seeds of Aeonium hierrense. This tender succulent is a native of the island of El Hierro, and the description on their website says it can eventually grow to be 1 meter across! The packet supposedly contained 50 seeds (they appeared as a fine powder, the individual seeds too small to be seen). They sprouted readily, and I soon had well over 100 (probably more like 200-300) plants! I transplanted about 40 of them, a few to individual pots and the rest to 9-cell plastic inserts:

I’m fascinated by the variation the seedlings are showing in leaf color and markings, as well as size. If these do indeed grow to be a meter across, they will be very impressive houseplants indeed! And it seems I have plenty to share with friends.

Although the seeds available from general gardening sources are very limited in variety, there are hundreds of interesting offerings available from specialist growers and from the seed exchanges of groups like the Cactus and Succulent Society of America. For serious hobbyists, such sources can form the basis of an extensive collection of rare and seldom-seen plants, each carefully identified as to botanical name and place of origin. As a nonspecialist, I’m often just as happy with a mix of seeds from different species. The lack of information and precision is made up for by the simple fun of not knowing exactly what you’ll get and watching each seedling develop into its adult form.

Today, I came across CactusStore.com and am tempted to put together an order: several hardy cactus species for the outdoor cactus garden, and some mixed seed of different succulent genera (lithops, echeveria, aeonium, etc.) just for fun.

For the nonspecialist, it is certainly simple to just go the local garden center and pick out cactus and succulent plants that have colors and forms that appeal to you. Nevertheless, one doesn’t have to be a serious collector to enjoy raising them from seed. The process provides a whole different level of connection with the life cycle of these fascinating plants. There is a special kind of reward in patiently watching as the seedlings grow into mature plants that just can’t be replicated by buying plants that have been grown commercially in a nursery.

Update, January 28: I did order some more cactus and succulent seeds to start inside. Here are some of the seedlings, three weeks after planting!

a mix of Aeonium species

Escobaria vivipara

Two species of Echinocereus

A mix of Lithops species

Welcome to the Garden

Welcome to Telperion Oasis, Tom Waters’s gardening blog. The Winter Solstice seems a nice time in the cycle of the seasons to begin a gardening blog. There is snow covering the garden now, and I’m spending lots of time indoors looking at gardening books, back issues of the Scottish Rock Garden Club journal, and visiting seed exchanges and nursery websites.

Winter is a time of anticipation, planning, and reflection. The collection of irises I obtained for my breeding program is essentially complete, and I’m looking forward to seeing them all as established plants in coming years. I’m also dabbling in rock gardening, having built a modest berm in the garden last year. It will be interesting to try out different rock garden plants and see which can handle our hot and windy spring weather.

Although winter cold can threaten the survival of plants in the garden (I lost a number of things last year when the temperature dropped to -18 F at the beginning of February), it poses less threat here in northern New Mexico than does summer. It is a time of trust and faith. The plants are dormant or nearly so, and gradually melting snow provides some valued moisture to the soil. Perennials planted last year that come through the winter will be established and settled, ready to come into their own next year.