Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Plant Sale Shall Soon Beginneth

Our plant sale will finally begin tomorrow. We had a great crew of over 20 volunteers here this morning working on the tagging of herbs and vegetables (see above). Kudos to Janice and Marianne for organizing our helpers and keeping everything running smoothly. The weather was windy and cool but with plenty of sunshine. Many of our helpers were signed up to help until noon but stayed well past 1 pm to finish up. The Grumpies were also here and helped with the sale and did some mulching and carpentry work as well. Jenny spent the day working on labels for the fern garden while Larry worked on water features and string trimming around the gardens. Dr. Gredler ran some loads to the dump and did some mowing as well. I stayed out of Janice and Marianne's way and worked on signs and other plant sale details.
In my wanderings thru the Fern & Moss garden today, I saw this neat combination of emerging ferns. Nice burgundy foliage of emerging Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum 'Burgundy Lace') with Korean twin-shield fern (Diplazium conillii). We all rave about spring blooms but there is nothing more exciting then seeing ferns emerge and "unravel". There are a lot of neat ferns in that garden and some are just starting to emerge. Nice shot at the bottom of wild hyacinth or quamash (Camassia leichtlinii 'Blue Danube') that we plant in fall. This native (Pacific NW) bulb is an edible root crop utilized by Native Americans of that area in the past. As a garden plant, this bulb (as big as a daffodil bulb) should be planted 6-8" deep and needs lots of water. There are different varieties and species but I keep coming back to 'Blue Danube' and it's clear blue blossoms (opening from bottom to top) on a sturdy 24"-30" plant.


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