Protecting the Garden from a Freeze

My heart sank when I saw it. The forecast two Tuesdays ago showed 35 °F seven days out.

The day before, Magnolia and I had planted beans and squash because when I looked at the two week forecast, there was nothing below freezing. But models update overnight, and my worries that the early spring we'd been experiencing would be nipped before the last frost date appeared to be coming true.

Throughout the week I continued to monitor the temperature, and after a couple of days, Time and Date was saying that we were going to have a low of around 21°F Tuesday morning. Talk about gut wrenching. Other weather apps and websites weren't claiming that yet, but their forecasts would drop over the coming days until we received an official freeze warning.

I had felt this pain already a few years ago in 2023 when Pam Penick was coming to shoot our garden for her book Gardens of Texas. We had two days of 26 °F after several weeks of warm weather. The Baptisia (wild indigo) had already emerged, the persimmons had flushed out, and my azaleas were in full bloom. All of them and more got burned. The Baptisia failed to flower correctly that year, and I even lost most of my blueberries. I can weather these events if they happen once every 10 years, but after having this just happen three years ago, I was ready to take matters more into my own hands instead of waiting and seeing.

Protecting plants isn’t new to me. Season extension has been an interest of mine since my teenage years. As a gardener in Tennessee where the season was shorter, I played around with covers, double covers, and other strategies to protect plants. I was mainly focused on trying to extend the end of the season into the winter (one year I got spinach to survive 9 °F!), but we can also extend the season by protecting plants in the spring. And, it’s not just limited to the vegetable garden or seedlings. There are other methods we can use to protect plants from cold weather.

So after catching the red eye back from speaking in Seattle and getting home around 8:00 AM last Sunday morning, I went outside to set about protecting what I could after a short nap. I got everything in place so that I’d be ready Monday night. Three forecasts I looked at Monday evening showed 29 °F, 27°F, and 21°F. My guess was we would be 24 °F.

I awoke Tuesday morning to find that we were 24.6 °F. Boom! While it felt great to know our area well enough that I could guess the temperature, I dreaded what I might find outside.

However, I was delighted that my season extension efforts mostly paid off. Here’s the different approaches I used this week along with if I would repeat them.

Covering vegetables with frost cloth and Christmas lights (absolutely yes!). It’s funny. In a bit of fleeting optimism, I had put my floating row cover up just before I saw the first hint of a coming cold front. I dragged it back out, and put the frost cloth back up over my luscious potatoes (seriously, the best crop I’ve ever had!) and the beans and zucchini that we had just planted. But, this time I added five strings of Christmas lights around the tender plants. Years ago when we had a late frost, it was enough to protect my tomatoes, and I figured it would work again. I have to give credit to Lindsay Kerr, who gave me the idea of using the Christmas lights years ago. One of the issues we have in Texas is if we wait until we’re frost free we run the risk that we will have a hot summer that will slow plant growth.

The success of this method with the beans and zucchini also has me rethinking when to plant my warm-season crops during the yearly tug of war between winter and spring. Usually I try to wait to plant warm-season crops until the last absolute frost date, maybe even two weeks past that. It was what I practiced in Tennessee to optimize plant growth based on weather. But in Texas, we are racing to get plants to grow and yield before we get so hot in the summer. I'm now considering jumping the gun and extending the season in the other direction—starting earlier in the spring under cover to help get crops going before the heat arrives.

I might also look at attaching the Christmas lights directly to the hoops to keep them suspended up off the ground. I just have to watch to make sure wherever I put them doesn't risk ripping the fabric.

Potatoes are still alive the morning of the freeze with the floating row cover and Christmas lights.

Zucchini seedlings made it with the Christmas lights.

A few days later, bush beans have emerged well.

A few days after the freeze, the potatoes look healthy. Note a few brown leaves where the foliage touched the frost cloth.

Covering blueberries with blankets and Christmas lights (absolutely yes!). I threw two strands of Christmas lights on two blueberry shrubs, and then covered them with old blankets. The recommendation with blankets or other coverings is that it has to cover the plant all the way to the ground. However, the blankets weren’t that big, which meant they were suspended on the plants with a gap at the base. The Christmas lights were able to produce enough warmth that it protected them! The two blueberries I lit and covered are still in flower now a few days later, and the fruit appear just fine. There’s another blueberry bush that I did not cover as a control a few feet away, and the fruit have turned brown on them.

After removing the blankets, the blueberries looked fine with the Christmas lights.

A few days after the freeze, bees are still working the blueberry flowers.

Running an overnight sprinkler on the persimmons (maybe, but probably yes). Water can be an effective means to prevent plants from freezing. As water goes from a liquid to a solid, it releases latent heat, and that heat is enough to protect plant tissue. It’s not just large scale farmers who use this method. My great-grandfather would go out in the middle of the night and run a sprinkler on his strawberry patch to protect the flower buds from a late freeze. Around 10:00 PM, I saw the temperature had already dropped to 32.4°F, so I went outside and turned the water on. To my dismay, the water in the hose had already frozen. I turned it on and noticed a slow trickle out of the sprinkler. There was enough water moving through the hose that it was able to melt the ice, and after about two minutes or so the sprinkler was running. In the future, I'll probably try to start it a little bit earlier.

The next morning the tree was covered in ice (header image). Would I do this approach again? Most likely. It sure is nice a few days later to see verdant leaves and emerging flower buds on the persimmons. The one issue, though—and it hit me around 2:00 AM lying in bed—is that the weight of the ice on the plants could be catastrophic. I actually lost a couple of small branches on one tree. The loss didn't disfigure it in any meaningful way because I've been pruning them healthily over the years, but it's something to consider. Am I willing to lose a portion of the tree due to ice load just to save a year’s crop?

A few days later, the persimmon trees I sprayed are still green with minimal leaf damage…

…while the one I didn’t spray water on looks rough. It should rebound like they did a few years ago.

A gash on the persimmon tree from the ice load. This damage makes me question if I would spray them with water again.

Protecting Baptisia with autumn leaves (no). Baptisia alba (white wild indigo) is a crucial primary plant in our spring garden. After the 2023 freeze, the blooms failed to form right, and it’s absence in the upper layer in our garden was quite apparent. So, I built chicken-wire cages about 19 inches wide (5 ft round) and filled them with leaves. I was inspired by colleagues further north that encage their bananas and other tropicals with autumn leaves, but I would not do the leaf cylinders again. They were too thin. I don't think there was enough insulation, and some of the Baptisia were already emerged 12-to-18 inches. I'll go back and inspect each Baptisia clump. I'll cut off anything I think was frost damaged, because I already know the inflorescences that had emerged are gone. That will help to encourage the plants to direct their energy into the buds that were more protected down near the base. In some cases, I may actually have to cut the entire plant back and hopefully force some lower dormant flowering buds out.

The Baptisia shoot on the left is damaged and blackened from the freeze while the right one looks ok.

Covering Baptisia with a tub and Christmas lights (absolutely yes!). There was one Baptisia plant that was too tall to cover with a cylinder at all. For that one, I got a leaf collection tub, put twinkle lights underneath it, and that plant made it through just fine. So in the future, instead of doing the leaf cylinders, I'm going to get 5 gallon buckets or some type of tarp teepees. I can put stakes in the ground around the Baptisia, drape the covering over them, put Christmas lights underneath, and run extension cords through the garden connecting everything. I know it sounds complex, but it makes buying those 20 strands of Christmas lights on clearance the day after Christmas worth it!

Covering the nursery plants with tarps (absolutely yes!). I do this already, but I wanted to mention it for those of you unaware. Even when we have steep dips in temperature during the winter, I’ll cover my seedlings with a tarp. They made it through just fine.

Bringing tender plants inside (absolutely yes!). I also brought tender plants like tomato and basil seedlings and my Sanseveria inside the garage overnight. No question I would do this again.

If we continue to have warming springs with sudden eruptions of cold further south, season extension will be crucial to protect plants. One night can ruin so much, but it still amazes me that plants can make it through with no damage.

Weeks like this one are a reminder that gardening is always a delicate dance with nature. You can cover, wrap, water, and light your way through a hard freeze, and sometimes it works beautifully. But the plants that worried me least were the ones I'd chosen well in the first place. Take these Lupinus subcarnosus (sandy-land bluebonnets) below. Sure, they looked rough Tuesday morning, but now they look fine.

That's the quiet power of plant selection.

If you want to go deeper on that idea, I'd love for you to join me Monday, March 23 2026 at 6:00 PM Central for my next Botanic Bootcamp session—The Power of Plant Selection. Click below to learn more and to access a discount code.

Lupinus subcarnosus (sandy-land bluebonnet) shrugged the freeze off.

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Keep Growing

The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Summer

This summer hasn’t been too bad weather-wise here at Ephemera Farm.  I actually had to look at our weather station to see how many days we’ve broken 100°F.  Even this morning was 68°F.  

Normally, there comes a point where the spigot from the sky turns off, but this year that hasn’t happened.  We’ve had a regular amount of rain, minus a dry spell here and there. We have no drought, but there’s been an outbreak of fungal issues and weeds.  

Good years are just as helpful to evaluate the garden and see what thrives as bad years.  What can stand up with abundant rain and wet soil?  What flops?  What has clean foliage?  And, what looks like trash? I’ve learned every summer there inevitably will be the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some year, the categories plants fall into changes. Other years, it’s pretty consistent being good, bad, or ugly after July and August.

There are some plants I’ve learned go dormant regardless of the moisture level.  Early on as I was learning what would grow well in Texas, I assumed that plants prematurely halted growth with the summer dryness, but seeing decline followed by dormancy in wet years has changed my thinking.  

Take Baptisia for example.  Every year no matter how much rain we get, Baptisia alba (white wild indigo), Baptisia sphaerocarpa (yellow wild indigo), and Baptisia australis var. minor (dwarf wild indigo) usually go dormant in early August.  Phlox ‘Minnie Pearl’ (phlox), Stokesia laevis ‘Peachie’s Pick’ (Stokes’s aster), and Clematis reticulata (netleaf leather flower, header image) show a similar pattern. 

Baptisia alba

Stokesia laevis ‘Peachie’s Pick’

Phlox ‘Minnie Pearl’

While I know Piet Oudolf says brown is a color, too, this early in the season to have blacks and browns amongst so much green isn’t welcome.  We still have 90 days until frost and our show of asters, sunflowers, and salvia to come.  So, where the necrosis detracts, I prune it out to freshen the garden.  

Some plants fade okay like Monarda stipitatoglandulosa (Ouachita bee balm) and Eryngium yuccifolium (rattlesnake master).  For the former, the brown seed heads are supported on mostly still green plants, and for the latter, there is still a good amount of green in the leaves and inflorescences.  

Monarda stipitatoglandulosa

And, then others like Symphyotrichum oblongifolium ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ (aromatic aster) look rough in these wet years.  The tips are green, but there’s a good amount of foliar dieback inside the plant.  I’m considering applying an organic fungicide next year to see if that would help.  

I have also focused on planting the good—more visually appealing plants at this time of the year to fill the gap.  We have height from the verdent seed capsules of Lilium formosanum (Formosan lily) that finished blooming just a few weeks ago, and the rains have spurred on a second flush of Hymenocallis occidentalis var. eulae (summer spider lily) blooms.  

Hymenocallis occidentalis var. eulae

Silphium perfoliatum (cup plant), Physostegia virginiana (obedient plant), and Boltonia diffusa (doll’s daisy) all look stellar with no issues with foliage.  Silphium has bloomed all summer, Physostegia got started flowering in mid-July and still goes, and Boltonia foliage haze is just starting to show some of its darling flowers.  

Boltonia diffusa

But, there are still gaps. The spring is so verdent with good ground coverage.  I keep thinking that I’ve done a good job closing the gap, but then August comes and I’m wondering why is everything bare under this Baptisia?

Part of the gap could be I’m losing plants.  My dense clumps of Pycnanthemum tenuifolium (narrow-leaf mountain mint) have slowly been disappearing, and I’ve lost two Stokesia.  My suspicion is voles, which is odd for them to go after mints.  But, I also ponder if I have a root fungal disease that is becoming problematic.  I go to pull on the Stokesia, roots are still in the ground, but it looks like they’ve just rotted.

If you have any ideas of the cause, please pass them along.  For now, I’m planning on what to plant in these spots when cooler weather arrives. It won’t be long now.

40 Lessons from 40 Years

I turn 40 this coming week, and life so far has been a fun ride. I thought the first 30 years were great, but the past 10 years have been marvelous. We got married, bought a house, and had a kid (let’s be honest, that’s been the best part!). My passion for plants has been recognized with features in The NY Times and Horticulture magazine, and I’ve been asked to give 70+ lectures around the country. And, I have a garden now that I can call my own. Sure, at times it’s a bit weedy or a bit hot and dry as it seems to be each year around my birthday, but it is such a joy to be able to walk outside and see ideas growing into existence.

I saw where thought leader Justin Welsh had shared for his birthday a list of lessons learned over the years. So, here’s 40 ideas that I’ve learned in my 40 years that I use on a regular basis in my planting practice.

1. Pulling soil off the top of the rootball and putting it in the bottom of the planting hole can help to reduce introducing weed seeds to new plantings.

2. On weeds, one year’s seeding means seven years weeding.

3. If your garden has coherence, complexity, legibility, and mystery, you’re off to a great start.

4. Beth Chatto told me about right plant, right place when I visited her in 2010. It was an eye opening way to think about how to plant.

5. Foliage (and sometimes seedheads) lasts longer than flowers.

6. Steven Pressfield’s Resistance finds us in the garden, too. It’s easier to see once it has a name.

7. Every plant has its moment. Learn what that moment is and ask how can you help it shine?

8. Check your biases against a plant (unless it is invasive as all get out). You may be overlooking some great ones.

9. The landscape tells a story. Listen and ask what can you do to tell it better?

10. It's okay to let go of plants that don't thrive.

11. “Stress is an asset.” — Thomas Rainer and Claudia West

12. Be the bison and introduce disturbance to your garden.

13. Maybe we should focus on making plants healthier to resist pests than kill them as messengers (From Eliot Coleman in The New Organic Grower).

14. Flame weeding is very helpful for keeping the kitchen garden clean. Safety first!

15. Keep growing. Even 1% better compounds.

16. Plant in communities and layers, not in isolation.

17. Having your own spot to trial plants before you use them on a larger scale is priceless.

18. Simplify.

19. It’s ok for things to get eaten. Remember you’re supporting biodiversity. Ok, except by deer. Motion sprinkler for the win.

20. Make edges. Where two habitats meet is where magic happens.

21. Automating watering is smart and even better if it is drip.

22. Have a way for capturing ideas and memories in the garden—a notepad, an app, photographs, and/or a recorder. Some of your best ideas come to you when weeding.

23. Visit gardens and make friends with people in other areas. You’ll be surprised what you learn.

24. Stress and disturbance have led plants to evolve three growth strategies—competitors, stress tolerators, and ruderals. Once you learn the traits, you can’t unsee these three strategies.

25. Mother Nature hates bare soil. Cover it yourself, or she’ll cover it for you.

26. Spinach survived 9°F under cover for me. Some cool-season crops are quite hardy and can survive winter cold with season extension.

27. Compost and leaf mold are two of the best free things on the planet.

28. With clean lines you can let things go a little wild.

29. Explore natural areas and look for lessons that you can bring home to your garden and your designs.

30. When all else fails, add more grasses and sedges.

31. Emulate nature.

32. “Brown is also a color.” — Piet Oudolf

33. Collect seed when you have the thought. Don’t say I’ll do that tomorrow. They’ll be gone.

34. Design with winter in mind first.

35. Plants have a natural way they arrange themselves. Try to visualize their arrangement in your head and ask if they look right?

36. Plant native when possible.

37. It’s your garden, and it’s ok to garden differently.

38. Maximize the seasonal interest.

39. If you roll hoses in a figure 8 shape, you can reduce kinks.

40. “Laughing brains are more absorbent.” — Alton Brown

Winter Preparations

The other day I wrote January 17, and I paused. “Is the first month of the new year already half over,” I thought. It was. My how time flies. I had hoped to accomplish so much thus far. But, having a head cold the first half of the month has slowed me down. And, then there’s the outside cold of the past week. We ended up being 8°F here with the slightest dusting of snow, our 8b temporarily becoming 7b for a few hours.

We prepped and covered what we could, and things seem to have made it through fine here. Cold nights before the extreme freeze helped plants acclimate. But, now I turn my gaze to winter preparations for the coming growing season. Author of Good to Great Jim Collins talks about productive paranoia, the approach of doing what one can in the time allotted because uncertainty lies ahead.

How to know where to start? Some tasks I know to do from experience. I know to prep the potato bed for planting soon because I’ve done it so many years in early February. I know to start cutting back the vegetation to make room for the rising blades of bulbs like Leucojum and Narcissus that I noticed breaking ground the other day.

I also use this down side of the calendar to move and divide perennials since we get hot and dry here quick. But, it can be hard to remember what I said needed to be relocated in May or where I said we need more of a plant in July, especially now that plants are dormant. On some their top growth has already collapsed or rolled away like tumbleweed in a stiff wind.

I find it helpful to keep a running list of tasks to remember on my iPhone notes app. Notion and Google Docs are also useful tools. I label the note “Winter 2024”, and I jot down all the ideas I see in the garden that need to wait until winter. Move this here. Thin that there. I be sure to include the date so that I know when I had the thought. Occasionally, past me even included a photo to help future me understand what to do.

Just a snippet of my winter to do list that I accumulate throughout the year in the iPhone notes app.

But, not everything makes it on the list. I find winter a good time to note tasks that have gone unnoticed during the growing season in the haze of hauling hoses and sweeping the soil of weeds. Sections of the fencerow need to be cleared of privet to make room for better natives. And, now that the turf has bleached beige in the yard from frost, I notice all the green tufts of Carex albicans (white-tinged sedge) that I want to move into the beds for a groundcover.

I’ll admit I still have some tasks that are stragglers on the to do list from 2023. And, 2022, and probably earlier than that if I’m being honest. I still have some daffodil bulbs to get in the ground that I got last fall. I’ve been waiting for top growth to perish in a spot where I want them to go, and now that the ground has been laid bare, they shall find their home. They should still bloom, albeit a bit later, but their cycle should be more normal next year.

I’m also firming up my final seed orders, too. Just this week someone in town told me how wonderful ‘North Georgia Candy Roaster’ winter squash had done for him. It had evaded squash vine borers and thrived in our Texas heat. And, then I get sucked into looking at seeds and remembering that I need to check my “Plant Wish List“ note and order Lablab purpurascens (purple hyacinth bean) and ‘Seminole’ pumpkin.

And, in that time, the sun has sunk lower, and the to do list hasn’t shrunk. Oh well. Trying that winter squash is now one less item I have to put on my 2025 list.

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LEARN FROM THESE SIMILAR POSTS

Freeze Warning

I woke up, walked to the kitchen, and my heart sank. The thermometer showed 26°F.  Kudos to Time and Date for calling it 24 hours earlier at 27°F.  The National Weather Service had forecast a low of 31°F, and now they were reporting 25°F.

I knew it was coming. About three weeks prior, I saw a tweet from the NWS Climate Prediction Center warning that we were going to have a particularly bad cold snap around the 20th of March. I just didn’t think it would get this cold. With it being the last day of winter, I suppose it was the season’s last hurrah.

My heart sank even further when I walked outside and saw many plants limp with frost, their foliage water-soaked in appearance. We’ve had light freezes in years before on the spring garden with little impact, but 26°F is the lowest I’ve seen.

The garden before the freeze

The garden had looked glorious this spring, the best it’s ever looked really.  Growth was burgeoning, and many plants were two-to-three weeks ahead of schedule due to the warm weather we had up to that point. The same day that we had the freeze my Day One app popped a photo up of March 19 last year, and the persimmons were not even leafed out. And, now, their already emerged leaves were limp and had turned a putrid green.

I had kidded with Karen that with the plantings looking so good it was time for something to go wrong. History has taught me that any time I’m proud of the garden there’s a flood, a boar, an armadillo, a drought, or some other disaster on the way. Pride goeth before the fall—and now the freeze.

I rallied once the sun came up, and I watched in bewilderment as most plants shrugged it off. Trillium ludovicianum (Louisiana trillium), Lupinus subcarnosus (sandyland bluebonnet), Penstemon digitalis (foxglove beardtongue), Phlox pilosa (downy phlox), Sporobolus heterolepis (prairie dropseed), Halesia diptera (two-wing silverbell), Spigelia marilandica (Indian pink), and more seemed unphased. It amazes me how we can drop below freezing and fully leafed out plants can survive.

But, I wasn’t taking any chances for the second night. I had gone into this cold snap thinking it would be a good learning experience. But, after seeing Baptisia alba (white wild indigo) that is such an anchor in my garden wilted and burned, I realized what a gut punch it would be to loose all of them. I’d have to wait an entire year to see flowers again.

So, right before sunset we set about covering up what we could. With 27°F predicted again that night, Karen and I scavenged anything that could potentially trap heat. Recycling boxes were brought from the garage, trash cans were flipped over, floating row cover was erected, pots and tubs were brought out, and sheets were placed over plants.  I kidded with her before we headed inside that I liked my new garden art installation.

The next morning, a similar scene of water-soaked foliage and limp plants greeted me. I waited until the thermometer hit 32°F to begin uncovering plants, but a few hours later, most things defrosted from the cold yet again with little to no freezer burn.

Now, a week has passed, and I can safely say that most plants made it through the freeze well. The persimmons and peaches are gone, our Chionanthus virginicus (fringe tree) white flower show is now black, and my Baptisia sphaerocarpa (yellow wild indigo) lost some blooms. What possibly helped save us on most other plants was that were were cold approximately 36 hours before the freeze hit. Had we gone from 76°F to 26°F things might have been more dire. But, cold acclimation increases the sugars in plant tissues to make them more resilient to freezing.

I’m left wondering what can we gardeners do to prepare for events like this? My biggest concern is that data shows a warming trend with plant growth occurring earlier in the spring. I remember how terrible the April 2007 freeze was. Here’s a few thoughts.

CHECK AT LEAST THREE WEATHER FORECASTS. I like the National Weather Service, Time and Date 14 day forecast, and Carrot weather. I compare the three forecasts to get an idea of what to expect for the coming week. And, be prepared that it might dip lower than what is predicted. I recall reading where Johnny’s Selected Seeds said anytime the forecast showed a temperature below 42°F, they covered plants.

LEARN THE LAY OF YOUR LAND. Get an accurate hobby weather station and start learning how temperatures change across the lay of your land. Know where the frost pockets are, and where things tend to stay warmer. Also, compare your temperature with the local weather station to have an idea of what is predicted versus the actual temperature you experience on a regular basis.

PLANT DIFFERENT CULTIVARS. Various cultivars of the same species begin growth at different times. For example, many fruit trees have different chilling hours requirements that influence when they flower. My ‘Tropical Beauty’ peach is toast for the year because it had already formed fruit, but my ‘Sunraycer’ nectarine 20 feet away was just starting to bloom when the cold hit. So, it is best to plant a diversity of varieties to lessen the impact. Mark Diacono in A Year at Otter Farm warned that when gardening for food, anticipate 3 out of 10 crops each year will fail due to weather woes.

PLANT LATE EMERGERS. My Baptisia purpurea var. minor (dwarf wild indigo), Eutrochium fistulosum (hollow Joe Pye weed), and Amsonia hubrichtii (Arkansas bluestar) haven’t even emerged from the soil good yet. So, learn what plants are later to emerge if frost is a concern.

TRAP HEAT. I learned from my teenage days of extending the season that soil radiates heat that it absorbed during the day at night, and by covering it, I could trap some of that heat to keep plants above freezing. That’s why freezes are rare on cloudy nights, but occur frequently on clear nights below or near 32°F. If you cover plants, the cover has to be all the way to the ground. Otherwise, heat can escape. Eliot Coleman also noted in The Four Season Harvest that there is evidence that covering plants also helps to protect them from desiccating winds.

WATER BEFORE A FREEZE. If a plant is experiencing drier growing conditions, it can be more susceptible to freeze damage. Watering before a freeze can help to lessen the effect, and the water can help to absorb more heat during the day if done early enough. Also, water releases heat as it freezes from a liquid to a solid. My great-grandfather used to run sprinklers on his strawberry patch all night when a hard freeze was expected, and the energy released during phase change would keep the flowers and fruit just above freezing.

Whether you still have some frosts to go or you won’t see another freeze for eight months, I hope the tips and advice I shared above help you protect your plants from cold damage. And, your heart from sinking.

The Colorful Twigs of Winter

In the winter I feel my perception of the garden is elevated.  Like when I can’t see because it is dark and all my other senses are heightened.  I notice things that I might otherwise overlook. The catkin swelling on an Alnus. The first sliver of color showing in a Magnolia bud. The swirl of foliage appearing from Pedicularis. These little things are celebrated in the dearth.

The garden is a bit more barren this year after the cold snap we had a few weeks ago. Gone are many of the flowering annuals that overwinter—snaps, pot marigolds, stock, and honeywort. Even pansies and violas took a hit. It’s a bit depressing in thinking about that time wasted planting them. Even some of my shrubs suffered. We are without flowers this year on Edgeworthia chrysantha (paperbush).

I learned long ago that color on growth organs like leaves can be more reliable than flowers. The same applies to the woody tissue, too. Colorful plant stems have long been an aesthetic I’ve gravitated toward in the winter time.  As a kid I marveled at the red maple regrowth along fencerows where they were cut every year to prevent them from reaching the power lines above. Their fresh shoots were rich with hue in winter and looked like they could be coloring pencils if cut and sharpened. And, I long wondered why they were so vivid until I discovered the color is solar protection and helps the plant deal with excess light when the sun is low in the sky.   

Cornus amomum ‘Cayenne’

Vaccinium ashei ‘Powder Blue’

Salix ‘Flame’

I do have a few favorites. I love the red-twig dogwoods. Oh, how I have longed to be able to grow Cornus sanguinea that I see en masse in plantings in England where one has to do a double take to make sure the planting isn’t on fire.  But, I have so far killed at least two of them here in Texas.  Mom and Dad still have a ‘Winter Beauty’ (aka ‘Winter Flame’) outside my window back home in Tennessee that grows quite well (header image). 

I have made do with Cornus amomum ‘Cayenne’.  My friend Jason Reeves of UT Gardens in Jackson, TN recommended this silky dogwood to me. He shared how this selection was found by Dr. Michael Dirr in a swamp in Virginia. In its first year here, this eastern US native is thriving.  The winter color is a little lacking compared to Cornus sanguinea, but beggars can’t be choosers. From where I sit writing, the red pops against the dark mass of what’s left of Helianthus angustifolius. Both like the wet spot.

I also discovered that the new stem growth on Vaccinium in winter can be very attractive.  After plants drop their crimson foliage, we are left with stems that turn a muted red. ‘Powder Blue’ is one of my favorites that has winter color in the stems and glaucous leaves that turn a brilliant red in autumn. 

And, of course, I have loved Salix ‘Flame’ since I set eyes on it many winters ago at the JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, NC. It hasn’t quite decided if it likes it here yet, but I think I can coax the few I have into establishing well so their stems become a source of warmth in the landscape. 

Most of these plants benefit with a yearly or every other year cut back as the color is most intense on new growth (except the blueberry since cutting that back would remove the flower buds for spring and the delicious blue orbs that follow).  I use what stems I can in holiday and winter arrangements, and then cut the rest of the plant down right before buds start to break. 

And, it won’t be long now. Red maple tips are already swelling. Soon the landscape will wake, and I’ll have plenty of sights to see. But, for now the bright twigs of winter will help me see through the dark.

A Hard Stop

We had a hard stop for our growing season this year.  The bitter cold that rushed down dropped us to 9ºF with a few more nights in the teens. 

The day before the front arrived I ran around covering tender plants with tarps, blankets, leaves, and leaf cages. A week later they seem to have made it through just fine, but plants I didn’t cover were not so fortunate. The landscape looks bleached. The vegetable patch is done, save for the carrots, but they now need to be dug before the delicious sugars start being redirected into regenerating top growth.  I picked what I could of the cabbage, broccoli, and kale before the cold arrived.  They are all now turning to mush. 

I suppose that the story the landscape is telling this year decided it was time for a chapter break instead of a comma. I do love to extend the season and keep it going, but it does feel refreshing to have a bare slate garden for the new year.  

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I’m reflecting back on 2022, a year that has been good to us.  We have lived here in our log cabin for five years now, and I now know this place better than I ever have. I can predict how the light will move and irradiate a certain group of plants through a gap in the trees. I see how the water runs and where currents can be an issue.  I remember where the first frost will settle and the first spring beauty will bloom. And, I have built a hefty list of plants that do well in our little valley. There is a peace that comes from knowing a spot of earth and guiding it towards a better future.

And, now looking forward to 2023, I’m planning what comes next.  I see many peers in the creative community going through their end of the year reviews.  What went well? What didn’t go well and can be made better? We in the green industry can do the same. But, where to start? There have been several moons and many more sleeps since the clock struck midnight 364 days ago.

I have tried to get better at capturing ideas this year to remember and reflect. I used to walk around with a Field Notes in my back pocket, jotting down ideas and sketches, but now I find my phone more convenient.  I can take photographs of beds, circle and scribble notes on them using the edit function, and save them in an album for later. 

I use the iPhone’s Reminders to track what needs to be done in the garden.  I will either walk around with it open and type as needed or tell Siri to create a reminder for my garden list, and then dictate whatever needs to be done.  Once inside I can filter through them and move those with more importance to the top.  And, I can set deadlines or due dates so that when I need to pull those seeds out of the fridge from stratifying in 1 month and 11 days it pops up on my phone when needed. 

For capturing ideas that I see online I have a few options.  Day One journal app is great for not only documenting what happened in the garden that day but also screenshotting ideas that I find like a surprising plant combination or adding plants to a wish list. I think it is now a monthly subscription as I subscribed early on and got grandfathered in. Other options include the free apps Evernote, Trello, Google Docs, and Notion for capture. Each can be used in endless ways from tracking seeds and cultivars to storing notes and research about plants.  Notion is my current favorite for its quick sync across multiple devices and its customizability.

Of course, it can be overwhelming to see so many items on a to do list but remember, small steps. One or two things done a day or a week can move you forward faster than you think on a gardening project or goal. There’s also the grace of the short days of winter.  We are inside more starting the new year and planning what needs to come next.

Sometimes I feel like E.B. White who listed a plethora of tasks in his 1941 essay “Memorandum” with most sentences starting with “Today I should…” or “I ought to finish.…”

I suppose he was employing the Getting Things Done methodology before it was vogue, this idea of emptying your mind of all that has to be done because how can you have ideas when your brain is too busy trying to hold them?  He jumps from task to task to task, each one leading him to another thing he has remembered needs to be completed. Just one example, he must rake the brush that was left in the field, and today would be good to burn it since it rained recently, but before he burns it he needs to research is it better or burn or let rot into compost. I chuckle and think how often my mind goes in these items in a series loops, too.

Of course, it is a bit tongue in cheek because there’s no way he can get all the things done that he needs to today.  But, listing them is a good first step. 

He closes with “I’ve been spending a lot of time here typing, and I see it is four o’clock already and almost dark, so I had better get going.” 

I should, too.

The Blessing of Seedheads

Today looks cold enough to snow with the low gray sky. I’m more used to this weather in February than I am November. The forecast said the high won’t break 50ºF today. Alas, the only thing falling from the sky will be rain.

I do a final walk around before the clouds burst. We’ve now had a few frosts, one hard one this past weekend. Looking out over the garden, most of the flowering plants are now done. I’m afraid even my late flowering ‘Halloweenie’ glads (Gladiolus dalenii) that haven’t bloomed yet (and with their tardiness in past years I’ve joked should be named ‘Thanksgivingie’) are going to get hit with more freezing temperatures we have coming this week.

So on this walk I’m thinking of frost-proof winter interest I have for the next few months in the garden. I’m counting my garden blessings if you will to see what at the end of the season I can appreciate.

Seed heads are at the top of the list as they have such a prominent presence in the winter landscape. They are skeletons of the past that, a glimpse of what the garden once was in the height of its empire.

Near the house Helianthus radula (rayless sunflower) still looks spectacular as the black stems pop against the froth of Eragrostis spectablis (purple lovegrass, header image). On the other side of the lovegrass rise the black buttons of Pycnanthemum tenuifolium (narrow-leaf mountain mint). It is one of my favorite perennials for its multi-season interest in the landscape. I make a note to pair more blacks with the winter foliage of the love grass for next year.

There are also some Lilium formosanum (Formosan lily) in the bed that rise up and have started to release seeds from their brown chalices. I just transplanted them to that spot this spring, so their height is much shorter. I quite like their more diminutive nature.

Pycnanthemum tenuifolium

Lilium formosanum

As I walk further along the bed, I see the spherical seedheads of Hyptis alata (clustered bushmint). They will last the rest of winter, though I have to be careful whenever I remove them come spring because they are loaded with seed that I’ll be weeding for months afterwards if they spill.

Hyptis alata

Nearing the orchard, I startle some Dark-eyed Juncos. They are the first I’ve seen this year, and I’m delighted the cold fronts have brought them back to the garden. They dart under the glimmering split-beard bluestem (Andropogon ternarius). Even on a sunless day, the plant still shines. The clumps are now in their second year, and I realize the site I put it on is too fertile as some have lodged and thus made an even better hiding place for the juncos and other little brown birds mixed in the flock. Next year, I’ll have to cut them back in mid-summer much like they do when mowing the roadside to help keep it shorter for lasting winter interest.

Andropogon ternarius

There are still a few Baptisia alba (white wild indigo) in the orchard beds. For us they start going dormant in late August or early September. It’s always a hard call for me to ask do these dead twigs stay or do they go. But, I seem to always err on letting them stay. Some have already blown away with their tumbleweed action, and I have found them next to a fence or in the ditch by the road. It’s a creative approach to seed dispersal.

Another Baptisia, yellow wild indigo, is nearby in the front of the patch and has more spherical fruit, hence the epithet sphaerocarpa for the round (sphaero-) fruit (-carpa) it forms.

Baptisia alba

Baptisia sphaerocarpa

Vernonia baldwinii (western ironweed) also looks good in its last moments. I have found they have staying power into the winter with their feather-duster seed heads. The pappus is such a nice light tan and pops against the dark stems.

Vernonia baldwinii

A flock of winter birds is once again startled as I make my way back toward the house. I think how seedheads are not just a blessing for me. I know that the winter birds enjoy them, too. That’s why I admire them while I can before they and the wind spread the seeds. Such thoughts warm my soul, perhaps as much as the corn chowder I’ll have tonight after a cold autumn day.

An Autumn Entrance

The past several weeks have been brutal with the lack of rain. I feel all I’ve been doing with my gardening time is hauling hoses. Every day I find something else wilting from the lack of any water.

And, then I found where an armadillo dug up some plants, and a buck decided to obliterate the bark on my prized Prunus mume ‘Dawn’ (flowering apricot).

These valleys in the gardening experience are so frustrating.

However, one thing I have taken delight in is Karen’s growing interest in gardening. From cut flowers to growing milkweed for Monarchs, she has really blossomed as a gardener. She has been so proud of her design of the side entrance to the house, and it has looked great under her stewardship this fall.

We made a stop at Blue Moon Gardens a month ago and loaded up on some autumn color after picking up pumpkins at Trader Joe’s. The pumpkins and two mums provide seasonal color, but there are other plant gems tucked in here.

Most plants offer colorful foliage. We have a few houseplants in the mix like the variegated Dracaena trifasciata ‘Laurentii’ (snake plant) and a gold splashed Codiaeum variegatum var. pictum ‘Petra’ (croton). Even I integrated my three year old silvery Cissus discolor (rex begonia vine) into the display by allowing it to clamber over the railing. And, then of course we have her mixed batches of succulents, many propagated from our wedding favors from 2016.

The black pearl peppers pop against the foliage of Capsicum annuum ‘Onyx Red’ (ornamental pepper). A few volunteer seedlings of Celosia argentea var. plumosa ‘Dragon’s Breath’ (celosia) returned from last year. It colors up a brilliant red in full sun, but with some shade it has more green in the foliage.

A few planters that offer fall color by our side door entrance featuring Capsicum annuum ‘Onyx Red’, Celosia argentea var. plumosa ‘Dragon’s Breath’, and Euphorbia × martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’

We moved a few celosia into a larger pot, and in the back we stuck a plant of Euphorbia × martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’ (Martin’s spurge). ‘Ascot Rainbow’ was discovered as a branch sport by David Glenn of Ascot, Victoria in 2005 and has since spread around the world as a variegated Euphorbia with incredible color that intensifies as winter progresses and then blooms.

A closeup of the variegation on Euphorbia × martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’

I grew ‘Ascot Rainbow’ in my 100+ container collection back in grad school for reliable winter color. It really does go through a myriad of hues, intensifying as the weather gets cooler and what little winter sun we have shines bright.

A photo from a January day 10 years ago shows the rich color that Euphorbia × martinii ‘Ascot Rainbow’ can turn in winter.

It’s amazing how a cultivar returning under my care brings back so many memories. The smell of winter in Raleigh. The constant noises of apartment living. Piling snow around the pots during a freak snow event to protect them from freezing temperatures that night. Somehow I lost it in the move, but now the memories come flooding back.

Karen asked why I don’t do more pots. She thought that maybe they were a bad practice or out of vogue. I was just burned out on container gardening. Having lived in an apartment for six years in grad school and a rental house three years here in Nacogdoches, I was mostly done with containers and ready for some in the ground growing. And, really, I was mostly done with watering (though I chuckle writing that with all the hose dragging I’ve had to do lately).

In grad school I didn’t have a hose, so I had to craft some tubing with fittings that would hook up to my shower head to fill two trash cans outside. And, then I would dunk watering cans to water pots every other day during the growing season unless it rained. Every pot had a saucer to help hold the precious water. And, for many years that was my life.

Once we bought our house, almost everything went into the ground as I and my plants said goodbye to nomad living. My houseplant collection dwindled as I only kept the plants that were precious and would need to be moved back and forth inside or that wouldn’t do well in the ground here in Texas. And, honestly, I haven’t thought much about containers since.

But, I have forgotten how good these pop up gardens are for the creativity they can cultivate. The thing I loved about containers were they were a miniature lab, an experimental place to see how things do. They had a modularity about them where if something looked bad, it could be swapped out or moved around.

And now that I have someone to help water and care for them, there are even more opportunities to create magic.

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The rains have returned, the mums are petering out, and we are about to move the houseplants inside. We got our first frost of 28°F this week, four weeks early. Karen has already started talking about what we should do for the coming holidays in this space.

I can’t wait to see what she creates next.

Bringing Daffodils In

Last Saturday was one of the rare days I actually donned more layers as morning progressed into afternoon.  Shorts were replaced by pants, then long sleeves went on over the t-shirt, and then I put on a rain jack to shield against the blustery wind, which would soon be accompanied by a cold drizzle.  I was hoping for warmer weather over spring break, but alas, it turned off chilly.

Before heading in, I decided to pick a bucket of daffodils. I never know how they’ll take the freezing temperatures, so I wanted to bring in what I could just in case the next morning they were all frozen and laying on the ground. The forecast for the night showed a low of 28°F, but I knew that we would register even colder. (In hindsight, I was right. I woke the next morning to 23°F.)

Daffodils are some of the first flowers to grace the house in bulk in the new year, and we now have several posies sitting in bottles on a rustic metal tray. Over the past few years, I’ve been accumulating types that grow well here.  Some have come from back roads and old homesteads, others from friends and companies who have promised their success in Zone 8B.  

First is the short, soft yellow Narcissus pseudonarcissus I wrote about recently. More have been opening as the month has progressed.   Also present is Narcissus jonquilla, or jonquil named for the thin, rush-like (Juncus) foliage.  The tiny flowers are incredibly fragrant for their size.  Their offspring Narcissus × odorus sits between the two. It is a vigorous hybrid that wouldn’t win any awards for the frequent misformed corona and odd number of petals, but its heterosis is welcome in my garden. My patch of over 1000 bulbs will bloom for weeks, and the thin foliage isn’t too overbearing in the landscape after flowering.

Narcissus pseudonarcissus

Narcissus × odorus

Narcissus jonquilla

I also have a few selections that do well here in east Texas. One is a lovely Narcissus tazetta, likely ‘Grand Primo’, that sports white petals and golden-colored cups that fade to an off-white (banner photo, second from left).  Like the jonquil, the fragrance is intense. As I sit here writing, I keep catching a whiff of Narcissus, and it’s probably a blend of the jonquils and ‘Grand Primo’. Another selection is the double Narcissus incomparabilis var. plenus, which is also known as “Butter and Eggs” for the scrambled white-and-yellow petals. Their scapes are usually not strong enough for the hefty flowers to be held upright, so it’s worth picking them and putting them in a bottle.

I have two cultivars that are fairly easy to find on the market. ‘Carlton’ features large, bright yellow petals and a similar colored corona, and ‘Ceylon’ has an orange cup perched against warm yellow petals.  ‘Carlton’ has a tendency to flop in rain, so I prefer the more stolid ‘Ceylon’.  The orange is a bit of a challenge to pair with companions in late winter, but I’ve realized they will go well under the ‘Flame’ willows I’m propagating.

Narcissus incomparabilis var. plenus

Narcissus ‘Carlton’

Narcissus ‘Ceylon’

I’m glad the cold forced me to bring them inside. I’m always hesitant to pick some because I know the minute the flower leaves the plant, its demise is only a matter of time. But, I forget how much fun it is to bring the outside in and to have little bottles of sunshine on a gray, dreary day.