May hurtled by while we waited for balmier weather. The gardens grew, and so did the weeds, and here we are in June, choking on pollen. Outside the iris, hesperis, and many vast Rhododendron roseum elegans cast a magenta aura. A vase of gardenias sits on my dining table, a metaphor of luxury in my house I never would have imagined. The flowers come from the plant I acquired in 1966 or 1967. A milk carton offer promised a plant for a quarter, just cut out the label, so I sent for two. The two tiny plants were quite dissimilar and one eventually bit the dust. The remaining plant has survived many ups and downs. An offspring propagated from it, planted outdoors in Chilmark, proved to be root hardy this past winter.
Amsonia tabermontana. The beautiful ice blue milkweed relative roots deeply and is best planted where it is to grow.
COMSOG
I paid a visit to the Community Solar Greenhouse in Oak Bluffs last week to make good on my longstanding intention to give the support of my membership to this project. Surprisingly, a wide selection of large, healthy tomato plants is still available, also beautiful peppers, eggplants, rosemary - as well as ornamentals. I left with assorted tomatoes, all of which are now installed and looking happy, their root balls planted deeply for additional stem rooting.
Gardens & cooking
The chef Amanda Hesser, in an op-ed piece in the May 31 New York Times asserts, '...cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth.' I am pleased about so many new Island vegetable gardens. Some new growers will inevitably meet disappointment, but many are about to commence one of the most absorbing activities I know of, one that educates and creates opportunities for learning, cooking, eating, and sharing.
A spring narrative of our vegetable garden is the battle of the cutworm. By the time the creature has pupated and flown off as one of several species of dingy moth, the damage is long done. Moth? Now I make a knuckleheaded connection, those cutworms are caterpillars. The ah-hah moment: Bacillus thuringiensis!
Particularly difficult for me to establish are crops of Swiss chard, whether planted as plugs or direct sown. (This might be an indication of the value of Swiss chard in every garden: even cutworms recognize its nutritiousness.) I have done night patrol and constructed collars and other protection. Today I Bt (Bacillus thringiensis) almost the entire garden, instead of just the weekly application to the cole crops.
Amsonia: blue star flower
The big three - iris, peonies, and poppies - steal the show in early June perennial gardens on the Vineyard, but they need company. A less common perennial, amsonia, provides the fill-in presence, height, and icy blue color that augment the above-mentioned plants and contributes long-season interest in the garden.
Members of the milkweed family, Apocynaceae, amsonias are native to North America and adapt without fuss to the garden. Amsonia grows in a bushy clump, individual stems arising from the crown, with height ranging from one to three feet. Two species of amsonia to look for, both usually available in the trade, are Amsonia tabermontana and A. hubrichtii.
A. tabermontana's stems are clothed with lustrous, alternate, willow-like leaves, while A. hubrichtii's are narrower and more feathery. They are topped with panicles of starry pale blue-to-whitish flowers. These are followed by showy seed heads and finally, in autumn, the leaves turn a showy and warm golden yellow.
Full sun to partial shade and deep, moist shade are ideal, says Allen Armitage in 'Herbaceous Perennial Plants: a Treatise on Their Identification, Culture, and Garden Attributes,' (Stipes Publishing Co., Champaign, Ill.). No support or pruning is necessary unless amsonia is grown in shade, where it may need support or pruning. Propagation is by seed or terminal cuttings taken during spring.
Ascendant trees?
We who live in temperate climates take great pleasure in observing the spring growth of many trees and shrubs. In this phase the tender new growth has a delicacy and charm specific to the season, and none more so than what I think of as the queen of the woodland, the regal American beech, Fagus grandifolia. I love the appearance of the pendant new growth floating gracefully in the slightest air current, dripping spring greenness.
In contrast, the hickory, Carya glabra, is the brusque and robust yeoman of the woods. Its bronzy spring foliage bursts upward from vermilion bud scales; together they stand out distinctively against the languid beeches. In my area of the Island it appears that these trees have been quick to take advantage of the gap left by oaks reeling from the depredations of the caterpillars, and are ascending to occupy the main roles in the local woodland scene. The seed bank that has lain in the soil, for who knows how long, now senses an opportunity: I am finding far more beech and hickory seedlings than I usually do, including even the vegetable garden.
Pollen: the culprits
We have a while yet to go before the pollen factor subsides below the nuisance level. The chief sources of pollen currently are, I believe, autumn olive, which is also divinely fragrant, and the pines and oaks. Autumn and/or Russian olive, Eleagnus umbellata and/or angustifolia, are the spiny, silver-leaved, small trees covered with clusters of creamy to white flowers and berries in autumn. They become a noxious weed with time for, as Michael Dirr observes in 'Manual of Woody Landscape Plants,' (ibid.) birds spread the seeds everywhere. Autumn olive's berries are red, those of Russian olive yellow.
Hummingbird feeders
A reminder on the subject of hummingbird feeders: the sugar water solution (four parts water to one part sugar) can quickly host mold organisms. Check the feeders often, wash them, and change the contents.
