Making a frugal cottage garden - the beginning
seed starting, propagating elderberry, and my hellebore driving me mad
the hellebore fiasco
I caved and bought a hellebore plant. Anything that blooms early in Maine is worth a splurge because we are the last to experience spring. While everyone around the globe posts about their tulips and daffodils, we are brooding and stomping around in slushy muck while making futile attempts to chisel away at our rock solid wood chip pile. Anyway, I justified the high price tag ($30) by comparing it to a $150 session of therapy. A steal in comparison!
So about this hellebore plant. I bought one because these are very difficult to start from seed since they require the freshest/tenderest seed BUT they reseed themselves profusely. The one issue is, it despises the sun like a vampire. I had it on my covered porch after I brought it home and 2 hours of sunshine later, a third of its leaves had burnt to a crisp! I gasped and hastily moved it under the dappling shade of a bare magnolia tree. To my horror, I awoke to even more singed leaves. I have written about my house’s amazing south facing orientation, but now I’m feeling cursed with the lack of shade. Ok, I do have shade in the back of the house but I refuse to plant it next to the propane tanks and the generator where it will most definitely struggle to fulfill its sole romantic purpose.
But this stubbornness is literally killing the poor plant. After being shuffled around here, there, everywhere by this maniac, what once was full of life with a promising future (of providing vitamin-D-deficient-souls with springtime hope) is now struggling with a few wimpy leaves left. Do I just tuck it next to the generator at this point? The anguish keeps me up at night. Eep! There goes another leaf, fried 😱.
But let’s move on from this tragedy.
elderberry propagation
My first foray into hardwood propagation is going very well so far. I cut some suckering branches off of my friend Monica’s elderberry bush in the beginning of February and have been trying to propagate them in a bottom heat propagator that I built. Thank you Monica for letting me butcher your bush each year for various experiments! This is a great way to get TONS of plants from a single plant. And apparently it’s easy to do for vigorous shrubby plants like willow and forsythia.
A bottom heat propagator is a box with a heat source on the bottom filled with loose growing media. The point is to encourage roots before shoots. The main reason why hardwood and softwood propagation fails is that the plant dries out faster than it can replenish the water. The plant literally breathes out moisture from the stomata on its leaves once it leafs out. By keeping the tops cold and dormant we can suppress the cutting from leafing out because it thinks it’s still winter. However, the addition of the bottom heat wakes up the stem cells locally and encourages roots to grow.
Since I have this in my unheated garage, the ambient temperature hovers around 40 degrees F right now but the bottoms are nice and toasty at 75 degrees. In a couple of weeks, I already started seeing swelling which is a great sign! It means the stem cells are forming and ready to convert into root cells. In some of the cuttings, I’ve already seen root hairs form.
Now I know elderberry is a very easy to root plant like willow. But last year I failed miserably doing it the way everyone suggested by sticking cuttings into soil and letting them be. They just dried out and died. So let me do this over-the-top experiment, ok?
driveway gardening - a hot, sunny microclimate
I despise my driveway. I do not know why the previous owner thought it was a good idea to put in an asphalt 6 car driveway but they did. In an ideal world, I would place cars behind the house but there’s not much I can do about it. There is the option of getting it jackhammered out but Anthony will think I’m a lunatic and it’s also not a priority financially so the next best thing I can do is garden on it. Therefore, Anthony and I built a massive raised bed (3’ x 12’ and 20” deep to be exact). Thank you Rowen who writes Field Notes who inspired me!
I filled it half full with wood chips and the rest of the way with 50:50 compost and loam. I actually made a bed with half wood chips like this in Austin, Texas and the asparagus thrived in it. I watered it a total of 3 times that summer which is quite something because we had many weeks of 100+ degree weather. The wood chips act like a sponge and hold and release water well. Way better than a fresh log which tends to be dense and moisture wicking until a few years in, once the fungi finally take hold and start the breakdown process.
Because this spot gets full sun and the driveway radiates heat, anything I planted in containers here dried out and scorched last year. I’m hoping that with the depth of the bed + wood chips + deep mulch, I’ll be able to grow flowers and herbs without much hassle. We shall see! My gut tells me this is a prime spot for hot peppers. I will report back on how this goes at the end of the season.
seed starting and my challenge for the year: fava beans
In mid March I started these seeds: celery, antique shades pansy, chives and green onions, hot peppers, fava beans, sweet peas, and rhubarb.
And just this past weekend I started: fama white perennial scabiosa (very excited about these), butter lettuce, frisée, husk cherry (the household favorite), broccoli, kale, and swiss chard. I also direct sowed favas.
This upcoming weekend I plan on starting the process of waking up my dahlia tubers, sowing sugar snap peas, starting all of my summer flowers (nigella, phlox, didiscus, scabiosa, calendula, cosmos) and more brassicas.
This year, my focus is on growing a lot more flowers and attempting a new crop: fava beans. All of the Europeans seem obsessed with them which has me intrigued, plus I loved eating dried favas in Japan last year as a crunchy snack. Why have I never seen them sold here, in the US? I don’t know many people who know what they taste like. A fellow Midcoaster, Nancy Harmon Jenkins who lives here and also in Tuscany writes about a Tuscan favorite dish: cacio e bacelli (aka cheese with fava). I must try this deliciously plump bean, with chunks of pecorino cheese. I dare you to go read her other post about fava beans on her Substack and see if you can resist buying some seeds. I could not.
This time of year I’m so eager to get sowing all the seeds but our last frost date isn’t until mid May so I have to resist. I’m following the MOFGA vegetable and flower calendar. But my crocuses started blooming and the daffodils are putting on lots of green growth each day and I can just taste spring in the air.
I find that the best way to create a cottage garden is to start everything from seed. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than buying seedlings and you aren’t limited to the varieties the local nursery carries. Johnny’s Seeds is a Maine company and is my go to seed source. Whoever curates their seeds has very good taste in color.
Soon enough I’ll be frantically running around hemming and hawing about where to plant all of the bareroot fruit trees that are coming in the mail from Fedco, Edible Acres, and Edewood Nursery. I’m quite stingy normally but when it comes to trees, I may be a borderline addict. At my first job, I remember my boss had a shoe buying addiction and had a giant shoe stash in her trunk that she always drove around with to hide from her husband. I very much feel her pain. Anthony might kill me when the orders come rolling in…
Recently discovered your Substack and so enjoy your writing! Sending spring your way from this southern Ohio garden gal 🫶🏻