Garden Inventory | Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’

This Austin rose, from the same January 2022 batch as ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, struggled a little starting out but has made up for it over the past year. Aesthetically, it’s probably my favorite out of the three, though it’s a close race since they have all been charming in different ways.

Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’ (ruusu) is the last of my roses to bloom in the spring, but it makes up for it by offering big cupped blooms on stems that don’t seem to droop as much as the others. This plant had a little trouble in the start, shriveling in its pot despite having received a good soaking upon arrival. I was almost ready to email for a replacement when a new shoot appeared from just above the planting line. It has recovered well since then, gone through two flushes of blooms, and donated flowers for several vases over this past year. This particular plant is significant also because it marks the grave of my son’s late gerbil, so it is one of the few plants that will never be moved in the cutting garden.

Not too many notes yet, since these plants are still young, but I look forward to seeing how these little roses fill out over the next few years. They have already done a lot of growing in this season alone and changed my mind about how difficult keeping roses in our climate might be.

Final count:

  • Rosa ‘Scepter’d Isle’ – one rapidly expanding shrub

In a Vase on Monday | 16th October 2023

A mixed vase this week with something old and something new. The white dried hydrangea is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ (I asked the person who planted it this time to make sure since Google was giving me too many different options), and the new little pink blooms underneath it are Hydrangea paniculata ‘Living Angels Blush’. Some aronia leaves help reinforce the autumn colors and perk up the faded white flowers. Apologies for the bad lighting, the vase is sitting in the front hallway, and I’m afraid of moving it at this point in case it shatters the flowers!

This is a post for Rambling in the Garden’s In a Vase on Monday meme!

Six on Saturday | 14th October 2023

Here’s a trip outside my garden, for a change of pace! This past week, we took a field trip to Turku to visit the Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum. It is a small section of the city with 18th-century wooden buildings preserved as a historical museum and a place to demonstrate traditional handicrafts. While there were no formal gardens, the many planted courtyards and larger park surrounding it were still very pleasant to stroll through on a brisk autumn day.

1. A path leading out to the park, where the trees are changing colors very nicely.

2. Sod roof houses! I love the look of them, even if the grass is looking a little more scraggly with the cold weather. They must be amazing and lush in the summer.

3. The tobacconist’s courtyard had a little sample garden of different types of tobacco. The flowers on the two bigger plants looked so similar to the flowering nicotiana in my garden! I knew they were related, but it’s still fascinating to see a big plant in front of you.

4. A little bed of yellow flowers that’s mostly gone over but was cheery next to all the darkened wood walls. Our hometown also has an 18th-century wooden quarter, but our buildings are actively inhabited, so they are painted bright colors and renovated inside. The difference between the two places is interesting.

5. A big old elm in the children’s playground. I haven’t seen one in quite a while. I think it’s an American elm? Not so good at trees.

6. Finally, a selection of pretty postcards and a little pastille case that I ended up getting from one of the souvenir shops! I like framing them and have a collection of various botanical prints all along our house staircase.

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!

Garden Inventory | Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’

The very first David Austin rose I bought was ‘Fair Bianca’, back when I was in Southern California. It was a small perky shrub, happy to live in a stoneware pot in our very sunny front yard. Although that garden had towering hybrid teas and extravagant floribundas growing along most of the walls, ‘Bianca’ was the first rose that I chose for myself. Its shape and scent set it apart from the others and I’ve been wanting to grow more varieties ever since.

More than a decade later, we bought a house in Finland with plenty of room for a rose garden. It would take a little longer still to set it up, but in January of 2022, I placed my first order for roses straight from the David Austin online store. Sadly, ‘Bianca’ would be discontinued by then, though I still keep an eye out for it whenever possible. Instead, I went with three that topped the list for being fragrant and floriferous, and those are the ones I’ll be writing about in the next few posts.

Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ (ruusu) was the first rose in my basket that year and it has been the first to flower each spring since. It’s put on a good amount of growth this year and I look forward to seeing how big it gets in subsequent years since most bloggers seem to agree that it’s extremely vigorous.

In the beginning, though, I wasn’t so sure that it would even survive. The roses arrived in March, which is still the dead of winter for us. Having never ordered bare-rooted plants before, I couldn’t help being worried by their denuded state, despite having done enough research to know they should be fine. My hot water canner got called into service as a soaking container since there was nothing else big enough after the baby tub went into storage. Then the plants got potted up and placed by the windowsill, where they stayed until temperatures were warm enough for them to transition outside about two months later.

Gertie was by far the easiest to maintain during that early period and ever since, sprouting eagerly in its pot and eventually giving me flowers before they were even planted into the ground. It remains very fuss-free in the garden as well and I cannot recommend it enough, thorns and all. I was able to cut stems of highly perfumed roses to take inside for weeks during the first flush, and the autumn flush has been just as generous. Overwintering involved nothing more than mounding up some extra mulch and compost around the base of the plant at first frost. Depending on how tall it manages to get (and based on the reports, I’ve every belief it will be quite a bit), I might be adding some more of this rose to the mixed hedge in future years.

Final count:

  • Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ – one rapidly expanding shrub

In a Vase on Monday | 9th October 2023

It hailed overnight yesterday. That’s not to say that we’ve had a frost yet — it’s been chilly at night but not quite cold enough to upset all but the tenderest of tropicals so far. The temperatures have been fluctuating like crazy, though. The hail melted as soon as the sun rose, but it was still enough of a warning to let me know it’s time to start mulching the perennials and pulling up those summer tubers.

So we’ve come to the “last call vase” portion of the year. When I’m okay with cutting just about anything that hasn’t set seed (and some things that have), knowing that they’ll have a better chance of making it a week inside than out. You can see that the ‘Moonwalker’ sunflowers below have already taken a bit of a beating from being whipped around in the wind and weather the night before. The golden birdfeeder sunflowers are doing better, but they were also on shorter plants. In my optimism, I cut a big dahlia that looked like it might still open, but have since learned that dahlias don’t do much after cutting. So that will probably get removed later today. A couple of ‘Prairie Sun’ Rudbeckia, a little red bedding dahlia, and bunches of viburnum berries round out the bunch. I’m rather sad that the dahlia won’t open, because its big orangey-pink pouf would have been a nice stepping stone between the yellows above and reds below. Maybe next time.

This is a post for Rambling in the Garden’s In a Vase on Monday meme!

Six on Saturday | 7th October 2023

These pumpkins are not from my garden. I purchased them from a local farm and they are now sitting in my classroom, waiting to be turned into jack-o-lanterns by my students later this month. I’m including them because they are such gorgeous pumpkins and I wanted to have some on this blog, even if my own vines were quite dismal this year. If you’re curious about what’s happening in my garden, here are six things now!

1. I have started cleaning up the unruly stand of weeds and baby plum trees that has been plaguing the view from my kitchen window for years. Before I expanded the vegetable garden, it was just a slight eyesore. With the new row in place, it also became a potential source of weeds and blocked a pathway, so cleanup time it was. As usual, I forgot to take a “before” picture for before/after comparisons until I was well into the task. So to the left, you have a “one-quarter into the process” picture instead. On the right, is the current situation. I will finish pruning the trees in late spring since I didn’t want to make any major cuts to the trees we’re keeping, lest they get fungal infections.

2. I have been ogling this Fiskars ergonomic bulb planter all year. My bulb order arrived this past week and I finally had a reason to purchase it! After destroying two flimsy hand-held bulb planters, I was ready to upgrade. Walking out of the store, I felt like I was carrying a medieval weapon — this thing is a meter long and made of heavy steel. It has enough heft to bludgeon any unsuspecting muggers that might come along…. while you’re planting daffodils in the cutting garden at your house in the countryside. As you do.

3. Whilst pulling weeds and planting bulbs, I found a hiding anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), winter sown back in January of 2022. I hadn’t seen any sign of them since, so thought that they had all died out. While two little plants aren’t a very impressive survival rate, I’m happy that they’re there and hope that they come back stronger next year.

4. In perhaps an even more dismal showing than the agastache, here is the single nicotiana that actually survived to maturity from an entire packet sown this spring. It’s having a second flush of flowers, probably because of the increased rain. While I appreciate its efforts, I’m not sure if I’ll be planting these again.

5. The corn has finally been producing ears, though I’m not sure how they will fare with the falling temperatures. Then again, the weather has been anything but predictable this year, so I’m letting them carry on until the bitter end. If nothing else, some of them will be small enough to stir fry as baby corn.

6. An experimental bed of fall-sown baby lettuce mix, to see just how late I can keep it going. I’ve got a plastic cover for this bed when it gets cold enough, but suspect the main stumbling block will be when our sunlight dwindles to only a few usable hours per day. Still worth a try, though!

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!

Garden Inventory | Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’

Alright, storytime! So not far from where we live, there’s an island with three nuclear power plants. The government has been conducting research projects there to find uses for the heat in the wastewater as the cooling system circulates it out of the plants. After all, we’re five degrees of latitude from the Arctic Circle and can use all the heat we can get, no matter what the season. So back in 2001, they ran plastic pipes carrying the heated water under a field, then planted it with grapes and other warm-season crops, effectively providing them with frost-free growing conditions all year round. They are also using the heat for small-scale fish farming. The projects are still ongoing, as far as I know.

Now, a decent percentage of the town population (yours truly and the previous occupants of our house included) have either worked on the island, currently have work associated with it, or have friends and family who have. That’s why cuttings from those experimental grapevines are now living in our garden.

Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’ (viinirypäle) is a vigorous blue grape of Latvian extraction. It is very cold-hardy, withstanding temperatures down to -40°C, and enthusiastically productive. I suppose even with heated ground, it’s not bad to hedge your bets. Our plants must be nearing two decades old by now, and are in the prime of their lives.

I am not a particularly experienced pruner, so these vines have had to deal with my attempts at learning over the years. Mostly, I just try to keep them neat and ventilated. I made the mistake of allowing them to go unpruned last year and the greenhouse vine has now escaped its confines, insinuating itself into the shrubbery and trees beyond. The vine trellised to our outbuilding has engulfed its supports and most of the wall as well. We have meters and meters of vine, it’s insane. My plan for early next spring is to prune both vines back hard, around the same time as the apple trees. I’ll use the abundance of woody materials to construct a decorative garden hut next to the vegetable beds, hopefully big enough for kids to play in.

Did I mention that these things produce a LOT of grapes? They’re pretty tasty, too, with a hint of blueberry. However, there’s no way our family can eat that many grapes. They are also individually on the small side with plenty of seeds, which makes them not as appealing to kids, despite being very sweet and juicy. Mostly, I steam juice the fruit and can it for use over the winter, often mixed with apple or berry juice. This year, I plan to make grape jelly for the first time. They also make a nice rosé wine and our grapevines’ parents are indeed being used for that purpose. We’re not really wine drinkers, though, so juice it is.

The other thing I always forget to try with these plants is stuffed grape leaves, which I like at restaurants. Hopefully, a note here will remind me next year. Anybody got a good recipe?

Final count:

Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’ – 2 sprawling vines, one in the greenhouse and one threatening to consume the left side of our outbuilding

In a Vase on Monday | 2nd October 2023

I was going to skip today because of so many repeats, but realistically, I only have a few more days to post before I’ll be forced to skip for lack of materials. So here we go!

Two small bunches next to each other because I don’t have a big squat vase to fit all of them together. The first Chinese asters and lonely white phlox are joined by the dahlias and godetias, which show no signs of slowing down. It’s interesting to see how different the colors look in natural and indoor lighting. Those asters are just so ridiculously bright and cheerful, I hope I can get an entire bouquet’s worth next week.

Do cuttings rooting in water count as being in a vase? Maybe, maybe not. I’m enjoying having all these little jars of herb cuttings lined up, though, so they’re in this post, too. I knew the mints would root fast, but didn’t expect the thymes to be right beside them. The others seem to be dragging their feet in comparison but are probably doing just fine.

This is a post for Rambling in the Garden‘s In a Vase on Monday meme!

Six on Saturday | 30th September 2023

The great thing about doing garden work once autumn fully sets in is knowing that places you tidy up will stay relatively tidy for a while. When you’re out there pulling up all the dead plant material and come across some weeds, you can just tell them “Y’know, can we just… not?” and they’ll usually be very agreeable to your suggestion. The mornings are getting chillier and they’re just about as ready to wrap things up as I am.

1. The second aisle of the vegetable garden has been covered in bark mulch, making everything much neater-looking. It might be hard to see in the back of the picture, but there are metal rose arches over the end of each pathway, anchored into the beds. Those will be covered in runner beans next summer, though I’ll probably be adding more supports to prepare for all the beans we want. Also new are two wooden whisky half barrels to replace the big green plastic tub that my mints are currently growing in. Given how much I clipped for tea this year, it seemed a good idea to double the amount and grow a lot of cuttings indoors over the winter.

2. The mixed packet of Callistephus chinensis I randomly flung into the cutting garden didn’t die after all! I seeded them in the middle of the June dry spell, so I didn’t hold out much hope for them. Then last week I was surprised to find them while doing some long overdue weeding, already in bud. So I have asters this autumn! The very first plant I ever grew as a child was an aster. The last time I grew these was for my bridesmaids’ bouquets nearly twelve years ago. Wow, that makes me feel old.

3. Japanese ginger (Zingiber mioga) is looking very healthy. Apparently, it is quite hardy, so it’ll be moved to a vegetable garden bed when I start pulling sunken pots for overwintering in a few weeks. Perhaps with a bit of extra mulch, just to be safe. The shoots and flowers are edible, so we should be able to harvest a few next spring.

4. This is not the Phlox paniculata I expected when I planted it, but it is the color that I got. At least it’s not more of the bright pink we already have in the raspberry bed. In keeping with the developing theme of “unexpected things in the garden”, it earned its spot today.

5. I did not plant this clematis. I had been considering getting a clematis next spring, however, and that was apparently enough to make this appear. Upon consulting my list of legacy plants, this could possibly be Clematis ‘Blue Angel’. In which case, it’s been hiding from me for over a decade. I’m going to guess it’ll survive until next year when I can dig it out of that mess of weeds and find it a better place to climb.

6. Rose ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ has big plans for next year. This four-foot watershoot popped up just this past week and I think one of the other roses is following suit. Hopefully, it won’t get too damaged this winter.

Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!

Garden Inventory | Pyrus communis ‘Pepi’

Pyrus communis ‘Pepi’ (päärynä) is a pear tree originally bred in Estonia, so it does great in our cold winters. The fruits are abundant and ready to harvest pretty early for a pear — usually in early September. I’ve read that this is a smaller variety and that pear trees grow slowly, to begin with, both facts which seem to be pretty well-represented here. It is the only tree I don’t have to harvest with a ladder, giving it a special place in my heart.

Unlike the other fruit trees that came with the house, this one is relatively young, having only been planted a few years before we moved in. That still makes it well over a decade old, however, and it has grown remarkably little in that time. Besides being cold-hardy, Pepi has also been super healthy, never having any foliar or insect problems. There was originally another garden pear planted with it, for cross-pollination, but that one died early on and a wild pear has grown from the rootstock to replace it. (That’s the giant green tree directly behind Pepi in the first picture, if you’re wondering).

I also planted a “family” pear this summer, which grows three different varieties on different branches. One of those branches grows ‘Pepi’. That’s the sapling in the last picture. It has not fruited yet, so we will see how that turns out in the following years.

The pears from this tree are sweet and soft… when they are picked on time and ripen successfully. My timing is still a little hit or miss in this regard. In theory, you’re supposed to start tasting them in late August and pick them when they’re sweet and start to get a blush. In practice, most times I’ve run out with a bucket when the first few are falling off the tree. Most of them are good at that point, but there will be several that are a bit overripe and have started turning brown in the middle. Ick.

This year, we ended up with only a few large fruits, due to the double whammy of our pruning the tree last year and wonky pollination issues from this year’s dry spring. Thus, I ended up with a handful of large fruit that I picked too late to be very tasty.

When you do get to them on time, though, Pepi pears are best for fresh eating. They are quite sweet and smooth, though I can’t say I’ve tasted enough different pears to be able to differentiate flavors. I’ve also juiced these in the past and preserved them as canned pear sauce.

Final count:

  • Pyrus communis ‘Pepi’ – 1 smallish tree and 1 branch of a multi-variety tree