Missing Monarda, Ghastly Goutweed & Morning Coffee In The Evolving Garden

What's Growing On At The Farm This Week

Friends, as a way to mark the many funny, frustrating and hopeful moments characterizing the growing season, I’ll be publishing some columns simply covering what’s currently happening on the farm. I hope these columns also provide space for you to share what’s growing in your gardens too.

I’ll continue my series on the 3 gardening interviews helping me stay grounded, in my next post.

Well hello Spring. I see you’ve finally reached the Adirondacks.

And hello gigantic load of farmwork. How I had forgotten about you over the Winter?

Oh the invasives.

In addition to swelling lilac buds, willows leafing out and daffodils everywhere, we’re also seeing that less welcome sign of Spring - our first spottings of mugwort, ground elder/goutweed and Canadian thistle.

Mugwort (left), goutweed (center) and Canadian thistle (right)

While we may take a more relaxed approach to other plants considered weeds, these three will colonize an area and make it unusable. Removing as much as possible as soon as they emerge, prevents a season-long (or even years-long) headache.

Anyone else grappling with goutweed? If so, leave a comment. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll do a “how-to” post on the process we’ve developed to slowly but surely remove it.

Diving into the decorative garden re-design

I’ve gotten stuck into the decorative garden redesign I talked about in my last post and - surprisingly - am enjoying it.

Not much to photograph as I’m mostly just reworking the paths atm. But my son and I did set up a seating area overlooking our pond. We had coffee there Friday morning (well I had coffee and he sat with me) and it didn’t matter that the planting isn’t there yet, it was lovely to simply sit and listen to the birds.

The Delhpinium that… didn’t.

In other news, I’m continuing to check on all the perennials we planted last Fall.

• Hydrangeas? Happy.

I was so impressed with the Incrediball Blush I grew in my personal garden last year, we decided to grow them commercially. Fun FactL Incrediball Blush was one of the top-rated hydrangea in the Mt Cuba Center hydrangea trial.

Phlox? Fantastic.

These plugs - Phlox "Bright Eyes" - were eaten by squirels just before I was planning to put them in the ground. I coaxed them back to life (first pic) then planted them out last Fall. I wasn't sure if they'd recover but they seem to be growing as if nothing happened.

Pycanthemum muticum? Already showing a tendency toward taking over the world (as it does)

BUT remember the delphinium I mentioned in my last post? I’d hoped that maybe they hadn’t ALL died? That maybe some would emerge if I was patient? Well… here are the delphinium rows this AM:

Folks, I got like 30 plants. Out of 375. Sigh.

Thankfully I’d already ordered more plugs on order for this Spring anwyay. Plus this past week, I ordered seed, stratified it and started 5 more trays in my grow room. Not my favorite plant to start from seed - tricky germination. But hey - who doesn’t need a good garden Hail Mary sometimes?

The strange case of the missing monarda punctata.

Of all last fall’s tranplants, I worried least about Monarda punctata. I’d not grown it before but Monarda Punctata is one of several monardas native to the Adirondacks. So I had little concern about the plugs surviving our winters.

Some Monarda kept foliage over the winter. Other plugs died back and are now sending out new growth.

And indeed I was correct - mostly. Snow melt confirmed that the monarda was happy in its new homes - except one section where all the plugs seemed to have vanished. “Well,” I thought, “You can’t win them all” and promptly started 70 more plants in the grow room.

Then, a week later, while planting out Asclepias “Cinderella” I picked the row next to the missing monarda section, plunged my trowel into the soil and what pops out? A just-starting-to-sprout Monarda plug.

What the?

Then I realized - I’d put the “Monarda” row stake in the wrong row.

Apparently, I’d placed the “Monarda” stake in the empty row next to the one in which I’d actually planted the Monarda. Blargh. Well that explain why I thought a whole row was gone.

The good news - the found monarda is doing well and is now properly labeled. The bad news - I have 70+ mondarda punctata starts sitting in my grow room w/ no space to plant them.

How about this - a free tray of monarda punctata to the first person to share their own gardening goof - prreferably one that beats my monarda mistagging incident.

And finally, a shout-out to Plumpy and her 10 Plumpettes.

We have 10 ducklings brooding in the grow room since mid April. My 6-yr old daughter has named them “The Plumpettes” in honor of her favorite duck in our current flock - a mild-mannered Pekin named “Plumpy Duck.” According to her, Plumpy needs the Plumpettes so she can have more friends.

Pic 1: The Plumpettes on the day they arrived. Pic 2: My youngest attempting to snuggle a Plumpette but mostly getting scratched. Pic 3: The ever-chill Plumpy Duck relaxing in the field.

The catch? The Plumpettes are pretty high-strung and not very focused on establishing meaningful relationships with really, well, anybody.

Next week, when we put The Plumpettes on pasture for the first time, we’ll see how Plumpy actually feels about 10 high anxiety besties being foisted upon her. (I have my doubts but do not share these with my daughter).

What’s on for the rest of the week?

• I’ll be potting up my dahlias.

• I’ll continue hovering over my dubious delphinium trays for any sign of hope

• I’ll be dodging the solid sheets of rain predicted for the next 7 days to plant the last of our foxglove and snapdragons plus the trays of astrantia arriving in the post today

Happy Spring Gardening friends!

Narcissus “Flower Surprise”