Some Pretty Pictures from the Glass House

It's that time of year when the tropicals are putting on their respective shows in the glass house.  Since some of them prefer these shorter days and cooler temperatures than those of July and August, it's a pretty awesome place to start my workday!

Clerodendron thomsoniae ("Bleeding Heart Vine") is just covered with flowers right now, and will stay that way until around Thanksgiving.  This particular plant just adores the heat, and will continue to climb toward the sky until it finally fizzles out in late November, at which time we cut it back to about 24 inches, and the process starts again.

The Penta below was taken from the pastel border at the end of the season last year and brought into the glass house.  In one of Christopher Lloyd's books he had mentioned that Pentas make great flowering plants through the winter.  Go figure....he was right!  (It's obviously doing better than the latest Gloriosa lily, which died the same sad death as its predecessors....)

The Cane Begonia "Sophie Cecile" is just exquisite right now, when the blooms are backed up by the beautiful green and pink mottled foliage.  The original cutting for this plant came from Callaway Gardens (I won it in a raffle....really!)

The phalaenopsis orchids are in their glory at this time of year!  The white one below is just one of many that grace the glass house and the Big House for winter beauty. 

Signs of Spring in the Glass House

Clerondedrum thomsoniae took a break for a couple of months, dropped most of her leaves, and looked quite sad. Now that the springtime sunshine has arrived, she's right back to growing a couple of feet every day and showing off those incredible blooms!  Sometimes this is like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, since it grows up and over the ceiling, swallowing anything (and anyone) in its path.

Garden stakes have gotten their new coat of paint, so all looks fresh and spring-like!  This is a very practical means of marking the vegetable garden that I took from Hidcote a couple of years ago.  The stakes are readily available at the home center, and last a couple of years before starting to rot away.  We write directly on them with paint pens. 

Spring lettuces and spinach have been seeded in the hayracks, and move in and out of the glasshouse as weather allows. 

Tulips are showing their tips in pots that will make their way to the front entrance of the house.  The wire cages have worked beautifully against the evil squirrels.  We realistically use tulips as an expensive annual flower in Atlanta, since the winters just don't get cold enough for them to perennialize. 

It's definitely orchid season in the glasshouse!  They hang out looking like the dour sisters all year, and then put on all their party bling in January and February.  Now that they are in bloom, they'll go for a couple of months in this glorious state. 

I'm usually bad about getting photos of things in their "finished" states.  Here's a shot of that same orchid (with another, as well) in its home for the next several weeks.  Despite their reputation for being persnickety, they are really very low maintenance.  And what other flower has a bloom like that?

Sunny and 72 degrees in Atlanta today!  Now THAT is a beautiful thing!

(Please enjoy the photos, and double click on them to enlarge if you'd like. Please don't claim them as your own in a post out there in the internet world, though......Thank  you!)

Winter Chores

One of the best things about winter in Atlanta is that it is generally mild, and the cold snaps tend to be short lived.  Earlier in the week we had overnight temperatures down into the twenties, and we didn't warm out of the thirties for a couple of days.  Now that the sun has returned, the plants (and our old gardener bones) were loving today's 60 degree temperatures!

"Mr and Mrs" were away last week with their children, so we had the perfect opportunity to disassemble lots of the holiday decorations in and around the main house, and it was also the perfect time to do a good cleaning of the glass house.   We started in the potting shed getting rid of things that had outlived their lives or simply hadn't been used in the past couple of years; in the glasshouse proper, it was time to do some hard pruning on some of the tropicals and start shaping them for their spring re-emergence at the pool and elsewhere in the garden.  (The red hibiscus doesn't seem to realize it's winter, though, and continues to bloom its little heart out!)

The glass house still looks somewhat empty, though this is the time of year when it's a favorite reading spot for "Mrs" when we leave at the end of the day.  (It is positively glorious in a snowstorm!)  The first of the seeds are starting to sprout;  this one I like mostly for the story it brings.  A parrot seems to have dropped it at a friend's garden in Coral Gables last year, and the seeds were collected and brought back when I was there in November.  I think it's an iris or something similar, but we'll see soon! 

Outside, we've been topdressing the vegetable beds, giving the earthworms a couple of months to work their magic before we start planting summer crops.  The winter brassicas and such are continuing to provide kale, chards, and other greens.  We pull the snapdragons from the patio containers for the coldest part of the winter when they aren't blooming.  After a brief respite here, they'll bud out again and go back to the area around the house. 

Carmen, the weeding machine, preps everything prior to the topdressing, and also takes great delight in clipping the Creeping Fig that grows on the garden wall.  She is also the one who does such perfect squirrel-proof packaging for the potted tulips that will go up nearer the house when they start to sprout. 

Spring Comes Early to the Glass House

These guys clearly don't know that it's only in the 50's outside, and is dropping down into the 30's at night...Just give them a little extra daylight and the warmth of the glass house, and they are confident they are back in the tropics!

Some Tough Characters

It's been a tough year for containers, but they're hanging in there!  Pansies and violas are especially cold TOLERANT, but not necessarily snow lovers.... (this Euonymus only looks good in the winter when the scale is dormant.....it goes in the trash in spring!)

One of the most pedestrian cultivars of Pansy (Delta True Orange) is also one of the best in this sort of weather! 

The Euphorbias showing off winter color 

Each time there is a snow casualty in this hanging basket, another piece of cut greenery goes in.  By March it will look like an FTD arrangement! 

Aaahhhhh.......in the greenhouse the clerodendron is blooming! 

Lettuces, mesclun and spinach are all showing up for late winter salads! 

I tend to use pretty huge photos, so if you click on them they look a whole lot better usually...

Some More Photos of Snow and Ice

I needed to go to the Big House yesterday to water things in the greenhouse and knock the accumulated snow and ice off the boxwoods.  I was feeling a little like Christopher Lloyd gingerly making my way over the icy steps!  As difficult as it was to get around the garden, "Missus" had managed to get birdseed to all of the feeders while the gardener (me) took a couple of snow days off.  Even in floods and snowstorms, nature's creatures still eat well at the Big House!

This variegated boxwood looks like it has become the perfect little whipped cream conehead!

The view across the woodland garden hardly looks like Atlanta 

Crataegus "Winther King" has been the star of the photo show with all of this winter's snow. 

I always think of Nandina as a Southern plant.  It certainly doesn't look that way in this shot. 

It's hard to imagine that the pond will be filled with tropicals in a couple of months! 

Thuja "Rheingold" is not looking happy!  Something tells me she's going to need some clever corseting with some discrete wires for the spring. 

In the greenhouse, this ancient Rex begonia doesn't care about the snow outside! 

Fresh Thai chili peppers, anyone? 

A little cycad and some "Toe Tickler" grass in pots seems the quintessential greenhouse photo! 

The Greenhouse, Continued

I got several comments via this blog and email about the post I did about the greenhouse, so I thought I would add a couple of other things.

Temperature is a big deal.  We have three thermostats in the greenhouse, which I think is fairly common.  One controls the gas blower heating system (which looks like something you'd see in a warehouse or an old gas station!); the second opens the louvers to allow hot air out when it gets too hot; the third takes that process (cooling) one step further, with a huge exhaust fan.  Everyone thinks about needing to heat the greenhouse in winter, but very few people consider how hot these buildings can get, particularly in warmer months.  We maintain a temperature of around 60 degrees in winter, and tweak that occasionally.  As spring approaches, we gardually open all of the doors and allow the plants to start hardening off in what basically becomes a giant cold frame.

In a similar vein, we do a lot of moving of pots to keep them in their optimal light conditions. Not as big a deal in winter, but in summer, many things will simply fry if they're not shaded.  Before summer comes, we'll be installing some shade cloth panels in various parts of the ceiling to control light more.

The television show is called "Growing a Greener World," and is produced by Blue Ridge Public Television, out of Roanoke, VA.  It's on lots of PBS stations, but (of course) not in Atlanta, so once the episode is edited and ready, it will be available on their website.  I'm guessing that is months away.

The Greenhouse

                               
Recently I was interviewed by the producers of a public television gardening show, for an upcoming episode about greenhouses.  All in all it was a fun experience, I discovered that it takes as long to film five minutes of finished programming as it does to grow a zinnia from seed to bloom!

In any case, there were several things we discussed that day that the interviewer felt were worth sharing.  I would guess that many readers of this blog have experience with indoor growing, so it's probably repetitive information; if not, however, feel free to use whatever you might find interesting and helpful in your own gardening adventures!

Many people assume that “a greenhouse is a greenhouse is a greenhouse.” In the same way that plants have different requirements during the outdoor growing season, their needs during the winter vary widely. One of the greatest challenges with the greenhouse is maintenance of differences in light, moisture levels and temperature.


With the possible exception of real tropicals, most plants need a winter dormant period. In the greenhouse, we try to duplicate the winter conditions of the particular plant’s native habitat. One of my first projects upon buying a non-hardy plant is researching the conditions of that plant’s native habitat, so that we can duplicate that as closely as possible.

We do our best to water the greenhouse plants with room-temperature water, though that isn’t always easy. We use a well for irrigation at the Big House, so in winter (even in Georgia), what comes out of the tap is icy cold. That can be a “death sentence” for a tropical plant!

Pests are a real issue in any greenhouse, and need to be handled quickly. If there is any one job that takes the most time in the greenhouse, it is the treatment of pests, with the most gentle (but effective) methods we can employ. We generally start with mild dish soap, then will progress to alcohol, fly paper traps, etc.

Whatever the size of the greenhouse, we always need to look at the cost-effectiveness of overwintering plants. Certain jasmines, for example, are (in my experience) “scale magnets” and something that we just don’t overwinter; some of the tropical hibiscus plants are also just not cost effective to overwinter in many cases. For the amount of space that they require (and their inconsistency in staying attractive), it is often less expensive to buy a great new plant in the spring.

A greenhouse of any size is both fun and challenging for a gardener, and one that I would encourage anyone to try if given the opportunity!

Winter Projects at the Big House

The weather has been very odd today; waking up and going outside, I was prepared for the usual chill, but it was eerily warm.  Later in the day the sky looked like a giant bucket of gray paint being slowly stirred.  One could literally see the clouds churning as it prepared for the crazy rains we got later today.

It was the perfect day for Patti and I to get some holiday things done for the house, as well as catch up on the progress of plants we're overwintering in the greenhouse.  Wiring tuteurs with lights to put into the containers around the pool, a boxwood wreath for the gate to the wall garden.....

In the greenhouse, this is the time of year when things look rather sad; many are still adjusting to being yanked out of their pots a few weeks ago for the winter season indoors.  The bougainvillea is getting too big to keep moving back and forth, so once it finishes adjusting, it will start getting trained up and across the glass roof of the greenhouse.  Since only the lateral branches really bloom well, that's a great way of making shade.

The "Betty Marshall" brugmansia got cut down in late October, and the pieces are starting to root in the bucket of water.  Once they're rooted better, we'll put them into pots to start growing out for next summer.  By going through the process now, we keep the plants "young" for next year, and will usually have blooms by June 1 at the pool. 

The cannas were taken out of the koi ponds this year, broken apart, and repotted.  Hopefully we'll be able to put them out already with some good foliage in late April, giving them a head start on the blooming season.  (Something tells me Patti has hidden a "mystery plant" in that front pot.....) 

Dichondra totally fried late this summer, so it's been chopped back and is just starting to peer over the edge of the hanging baskets again.  This one, "Emerald Falls," really earns its name! 

The shade lovers below are jammed into that trough for the winter months.  We'll separate them out into lots of different containers in spring again. 

Preparing for Winter

It's that time of year again when the tropicals need to come inside for the winter.  Some of them will go back outside next summer in containers; others, like the banana above, are simply too big to (1) move without a crane, or (2) fit in any of the existing containers.  This banana grew from a one gallon pot in May to its current size (about 6 feet) sitting at the pool.  I put it directly into the ground in the greenhouse, where I'm hoping it will live permanently.  In that particular spot, it's very sunny and it's directly under the peak of the roof, so there is about 20 feet of clearance.

All of those plastic containers behind the banana tree are floating plants that we took out of the koi ponds on Friday.  They are really marginal for winter hardiness in Atlanta, so I'm going to try overwintering them inside.  They multiply faster than hellebores or cleome, but for some reason the garden centers charge $4 to $6 per plant, and I need at least fifty of each (water lettuce and water hyacinth) to look like anything. We'll see what happens.  They're going in a prettier container, with a water circulating pump, so hopefully we won't have bug issues. 

The bourganvilla, above, also came out of one of the containers at the pool. They do beautifully here in summer, but aren't winter hardy for us.  I'm hoping to leave this one in the greenhouse permanently, as well, and that it will start to climb up toward the ceiling.  For anyone who hasn't had success with this plant blooming, the secret we learned this year is to keep it jammed in its original pot (from the garden center), and put that pot into the container you're using, along with any other plants.  It likes to be rootbound, and  fertilized at least once a month to bloom heavily. 

Alocasia "Portadora," above, is a favorite of mine.  I'm afraid it's at its ultimate height for a container plant here.  I'd love to see it grow bigger, but I don't have any other convenient spots in the greenhouse where I can put it directly into the ground.  This is one of three that I have from the original bulb purchased two years ago, so it's worth the $25 for the bulb.

A Day for Catching Up at the Big House Garden

Today was one of the first really blistering hot days we've had this year, but which I'm sure we'll have many more of as the summer goes on.  It was a reminder that summer is coming to Atlanta, and it's the price we pay for having such mild (usually....) winters.  I'm still more than happy to put up with this heat than the winter snows of New England.

Chuck and I got an early start at the Big House garden, when the air was still cool and damp (low 60's).  It's always fairly quiet in that garden, but for some reason on Sundays it seems particularly so.  We were each doing our own thing in different parts of the garden, so it was an opportunity to just enjoy the garden and the quiet.

Even though this is a time of year when things are visibly growing every day, we're at the point now of having a little bit of time to step back, clean and organize.  The greenhouse is 99% empty, with just the last of the plants there that live there permanently.   The huge alcocasia and begonia are each planted in "elderly" containers that can't be moved.  They are both pretty major background players in winter, but seem a little lonely now.  Next week we'll do "the big clean" of the greenhouse to get rid of any winter funk that might still be around.

This was also my morning to start some ruthless thinning in the perennial bed in the walled garden.  When it was installed four years ago, the wish was for "instant full," AKA lots of invasives.  Today was time to tear out lots of hooligan rudbeckia, New England asters that are completely out of control, verbena bonarensis and the like.  By 10:30 this morning, the sun was up and it was already getting a little unbearable in those beds.

At the pond, the koi are loving the fact that the water is now safely above 70 degrees, and they're at their most active.  As much as my logical side says, "They're just fish," I find it very entertaining that they will immediately come up to me when I walk up to the edge of the ponds.  I think it's something about their association of food with the fat guy with the blue shirts.....Anyway, I got a few new plants installed, a giant blue lobelia and a dwarf cattail in the bog (that's the only cleaning system....we're chemical free), and a pretty awesome tropical water lily called "Starbright" in the big pond.  It was my own little version of swimming with the stingrays to walk in the pond, having the big fish fully comfortable approaching me to see what I was doing.  I think they were all a little disappointed I was only bearing flowers today......

The Dwarf Cattail and the Blue Lobelia for the bog, above, and the new apricot water lily called "Starbright," below.

Cold Weather Gardening

This week's cold snap has put a bit of a damper on the gardening chores that normally get done at this time of year. Since the garden at the Big House is so flower-intensive, it's a blessing that we're able to do some things in January and February.

This week we got a bunch of pruning done (clip for a couple of hours, defrost for 15 minutes, clip for another couple of hours, etc.), and then spent one full day thinking about the warmer weather to come.

When the wind is howling, these are the days when I fully appreciate my job. What a treat to spend some time in the glass house potting up brugmansia cuts, repotting orchids, and such. We typically will buy some things for summer containers at this time of year, pot them up and let them grow out for a few months, so they're lush when they go into the containers in April.