Emailed August 25, 2010. To subscribe, click here.
To reprint any of this material, simply credit www.oldhousegardens.com. © 2010
Friends of Old Bulbs Gazette
Old House Gardens, 536 Third St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103, (734) 995-1486
“I know a lady, a member of the church, and a very good sort of woman, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent that, in going through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keeping the Ten Commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. I asked her which one, but she said, all of them: one felt like breaking the whole lot.”
-- Charles Dudley Warner, 1829-1900, from My Summer in a Garden (1870)
Has Our New Catalog Reached You Yet?
We mailed our beautiful new catalog last week, and the ordering frenzy has already begun. Thank you!
If you don’t have yours yet -- and you’re an active customer, having ordered from us anytime since fall 2008 -- don’t worry. Bulk-mail can be slow and unpredictable, especially to the West Coast. Letting your mail-carrier know that you’re eager for our catalog may help.
If it still hasn’t arrived by Sept. 1, email us and we’ll send you another one by first-class mail. Sometimes, somehow, they just disappear.
Remember: It’s All Online Now!
For everything new this year, go to oldhousegardens.com/NewBulbs.asp .
For 44 bulbs and 4 samplers you won’t find in our print catalog, go to oldhousegardens.com/display.aspx?cat=webonly&page=1 .
For fall-planted bulbs, go to oldhousegardens.com/cat.asp?CatID=1 .
To search by color, zone, animal-resistance, fragrance, bloom-time, and more, go to oldhousegardens.com/Search_Request.aspx .
4 Sold Out, 4 More Added
A word to the wise: Four of our rarest bulbs are already sold out -- ‘Beauty of Bath’, ‘Black and White’, ‘Insulinde’, and ‘Paeony Gold’ -- and others are going surprisingly fast. In other words, save yourself some grief and order now!
The good news is we just added extra-rare ‘Lord Balfour’ hyacinth and three unusual glads -- cute little ‘Towhead’, glowing ‘Allegro’, and freckled ‘Sunbonnet Sue’.
How Winter-Hardy Are Your Glads? Our Readers Report
Although most experts say gladiolus won’t survive winters north of zone 8, our customers kept telling us that theirs were returning like perennials in zones 7, 6, and even 5. So we asked our readers, “Have your regular glads survived zone-6 or colder winters? And what do you think made that possible?” Many replied (thanks!), and now you can read what they said along with our conclusions at oldhousegardens.com/Hardy-Glads.asp.
Although warmer, shorter winters are probably the biggest reason why so many glads are surviving in colder zones, other important factors seem to include reliable snow cover, winter mulch, deep planting, good drainage, micro-climates, plenty of sun, and the time-tested vigor of heirlooms. To add your two-cents to the discussion, email charlie@oldhousegardens.com. And if you’d like to experiment with glads as perennials in your own garden, we suggest starting with the tough little one our readers recommended most: ‘Atom’.
Can Regal Lilies Ease Arthritis Pain?
“Don’t sub any other flower,” Janet Weymiller wrote on her order for 25 regal lilies, “because my mom uses the petals in an arthritis remedy that really works.” We’re not doctors, but we know that flowers have been used medicinally since ancient times, and Nature is constantly surprising us, so we asked Janet to tell us more.
“This remedy really does work!” she emailed us. “It doesn’t cure arthritis, of course, but it takes the pain away. My mother grows regal lilies (in her New Albin, Iowa, garden). When they bloom and the petals start to turn brown, she takes them off the plant and cuts them up into chunks. Then she puts the petals into a glass jar and covers them with rubbing alcohol. She lets them sit for one month, drains off the liquid, which turns brown, and rubs the liquid onto the sore arthritic spots.”
The remedy was suggested to Janet’s mom by a local doctor who learned about it from a patient from Russia. Although we’re intrigued and hope it works, please remember that we are NOT doctors and are NOT endorsing it in any way.
Our New Path: Urban Bulb Farming
As you may know, for years we’ve been searching for a small farm to move our growing business to. Unfortunately, everything we found was either too far away, too far gone, or too expensive.
So this spring we revisioned our future and headed off on a different path. Inspired by our friends at Detroit-based Urban Farming, we’re expanding our efforts to turn under-used land in the center of Ann Arbor into micro-farms for heirloom bulbs.
We actually started doing this many years ago when we noticed our neighbor Mark’s abandoned vegetable garden and asked if we could plant a few bulbs there. He agreed, loved the results, and kept asking us to plant more till now our trial garden fills almost every inch of his sunny backyard.
Since then we’ve dug up, added tons of compost, and planted three more micro-farms within a few blocks of our office, thanks to the generosity and community spirit of Ken, two friends who prefer to remain anonymous, and -- just this spring -- Tess and her mother Lavinia. And we’re looking for more.
Of course we’ll still get most of our bulbs from our growers overseas and the 22 small farmers we work with in 15 states (now including the Goetz family of Riga, Michigan -- welcome!). But urban farming will allow us to save more bulbs and grow our business while we help to green the planet. What could be better than that?
ADS Offers Rare 1930s Daffodil Yearbooks on CD
Fans of historic daffodils will be happy to hear that four rare volumes of The American Daffodil Year Book from 1935-1938 are now available on CD. The 300-plus pages of text include a wide variety of articles such as “In Praise of Old Daffodils,” “Daffodils in Texas,” “Naturalizing Narcissi,” and -- our personal favorite -- “A Daffodil Parade in Michigan.” Even better, the full 325 pages are completely searchable. That means if you want to find references to, say, ‘Argent’ or fragrance or daffodils for the South, just type those words into the search box and voila!
A collaborative effort by the American Horticultural Society and the American Daffodil Society, the four-volume CD is available from the ADS website for just $10 -- and worth every penny.
High Heat Stresses Your Bulbs, Too
High heat has plagued much of the country this summer. Some bulbs like it, but others suffer. Dahlias, for example, have struggled or failed in many gardens where they usually thrive. That’s because they come originally from the mountain plateaus of Mexico where days are hot but nights are dramatically cooler. When nights are too warm, dahlias just can’t grow well. Some varieties are more sensitive than others and can even die. The good news is that if you can keep them going till temperatures cool (which has to happen sometime, right?), they’ll kick back into gear and bloom gloriously till frost.
Glads may develop kinked stems in unusually hot weather as they sag a bit during the day, unable to fully replenish the water evaporating from them, and then grow upright at night when evaporation slows. This is most often a problem with glads like ‘Atom’ that have thin, wiry stems. To help, keep your glads well-watered and protect their shallow, wide-spreading roots from disturbance. Tiny sucking insects called thrips proliferate when it’s hot, too, and can leave glad leaves and blossoms mottled, or even prevent buds from opening. For tips on control, see oldhousegardens.com/Thrips.asp
Heat affects flower color, too. Deep-colored lilies such as ‘African Queen’ may be paler in high heat, bicolor dahlias such as ‘Deuil du Roi Albert’ may bloom temporarily as solids, and the rosy tones of ‘Kaiser Wilhelm’ and others won’t develop fully until the weather cools.
Of course some bulbs love the heat. In many gardens this summer, cannas, tuberoses, and rain lilies have been especially happy -- and we hope you’ve been enjoying them.
Eat and Learn at Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival
Thomas Jefferson was a life-long gardener, and every September Monticello celebrates his garden legacy with a Heritage Harvest Festival. This fun, family-oriented event promotes gardening, sustainability, local food, and heirloom plants. Co-hosted with Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, this year’s festival offers 40 tastings, workshops, hands-on demonstrations, garden tours, and exhibits on Saturday, Sept. 11. Learn more at HeritageHarvestFestival.com.
Did You Miss Our Last Newsletter? Read It Online!
July’s articles included goodbye to cannas, best summer beer, hottest June ever, a modern finger-in-the-dike poem, and more. You can read all of our back-issues -- by date or topic -- at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives.asp .
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