Poppies - not a good choice for North Georgia gardens?

Perhaps your Poppies are doing well and I suppose that could be because they are in a sheltered sunny place. Mine are getting ample sun, but "sheltered" is almost impossible to achieve in my garden. So, for that reason I wonder if they are, in general, a good choice for North Georgia gardens. It's windy in March in this place and sturdier plants may be a better option. It's hard to beat these colors, though!

So far only two are in bloom; when I bought a flat last fall, the grower told me they were "mixed colors". Now we'll soon see what the others look like!

Daffodils

The photograph representing the title was taken March 6, 2011 at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens, where fields of daffodils welcome visitors in late winter.

Now blooming inside the SBG conservatory.

Barbara Barker & The Dirty Dozen

Yesterday, I attended a workshop by Barbara Baker, author of Container Gardening for Health. The workshop was about growing herbs in containers, and it was good, but it was the book that clinched the value of the workshop for me.

I had heard about and paid attention to The Dirty Dozen list before, but, as is so often the case in our busy lives, pretty much forgotten all about it. If you need the same reminder I got from Barbara yesterday, here it is:

Peaches
Apples
Sweet Bell Peppers
Celery
Nectarines
Strawberries
Cherries
Lettuce
Grapes (imported)
Pears
Spinach
Potatoes

These are the fruits and vegetables that have been identified to have the greatest pesticide residues (after washing!).

I don’t know about you, but I am going to investigate how I can organically grow a cherry tree and some peppers in containers. We’ve all got to start somewhere!

White Helleborus

I didn't know I had white Hellebores in my garden until the other day; I thought I only had pink ones. Delightful enough, but finding a white one (one, so far!) makes me treasure this plant even more.

This is what it looked like on Saturday.

And yesterday . . .

. . . and today! Isn't it a gorgeous flower?

Last night's storm has really cleared the air. The sky is as blue as can be today. The temperature about ten degrees below yesterday's, but still very pleasant for the first of March.

As Spring Approaches . . .

It's an almost unbelievable phenomenon -- here we had a brutal winter (even snowed in for a week in January - that had never happened before in all my decades in Georgia) and now we are ending February with spring-like weather. What will March bring us?

The Hellebores are continuing a great presence in my garden. I read somewhere that they are an old, tough species of plant, having been known to grow, virtually undisturbed, in the same location for 40 or 50 years.

You will have noticed in plant nursery catalog that a Hellebore's flower is frequently photographed with the fingers of someone's hand underneath it. Logical! They grow low to the ground, with their faces turned down. So, other than cutting them, this is the only solution.

Last year, having received this bounty in 2009 from a gardening friend 50 miles away, only one plant bloomed (one bloom!); this year, that plant has several stems with multiple flowers. And a second plant has now gotten into the blooming act as well. I'm delighted!

Hello, Hellebores!

Today is the first day of the year that, with 67F, we can be outside without coats, hats and gloves, so it was time to go exploring in my garden. And sure enough . . ., covered in 6 or more inches of show less than two weeks ago, I found three Hellebores reaching for the sun today!

Needless to say, there are better Hellebore picture galleries to look at, but at least I'll have a few blooms of my own to photograph soon.

In some parts of my garden, the Daffodils are also beginning to pop out of the ground. Can Spring be far behind? Well, yes, actually, it can. But there are hopeful signs in my garden this 29th of January, 2011!

Catalogs

Pity the companies whose catalogs land in my mailbox the same day Renee’s Garden’s arrives; they will be lucky to get a quick glance.

What makes Renee’s Garden’s so outstanding? Well, first of all, it is pleasing to the eye. It is also well-organized. And . . ., I guess it does not hurt that a seed packet is bound to accompany it. Great marketing tactic!

From last year, one of the garden flower seeds I liked best was Cerinthe ‘Pride of Gibraltar’. Not having heard of Cerinthe before (remember, I am still a relatively new gardener . . .), I had no idea what to expect. Well, this plant made itself at home in my garden and persevered as others wilted in our hot summer of 2010.

In the vegetable category, the lettuces were my masterpieces and made welcome appearances at my table – both in Spring and in Autumn.

So, what am I ordering this year? More lettuces, of course, also an arugula, and a white lavender I have not tried before. There is an Alyssum mix I’ve got to have: ‘Summer Romance’, and I am confident that the Zinnia ‘Bling Bling’ will be an asset to my garden this year – keeping my fingers crossed that the humidity keeps itself in check! And, I am going to test Renee’s Garden’s ‘Easy to Grow Container Herb Garden’. Many of my neighbors complain of having been born without a green thumb and I hope my trial of this combination of cilantro, basil, chives, dill and parsley will set them straight; I can’t wait to take my containers to them as a welcome to our local garden club.