Bloom Day-November 2010 and Greenhouse Talk

From In the Garden

One really fabulous thing about blogging is the blogger has both a pictorial and written record of her garden. I find myself going back to look at older posts more and more as the growing season wanes and we enter into a somewhat dreary period for the garden. The Bloom Day posts are such good posts to help to remind me of how the garden was and where it might need to go. Such was the case for me when prior to preparing this post I decided to look back at last November's post. Surprisingly I found that on the day I posted that post (November 15th) we had not yet had a hard freeze. That is not the case this year. Our first hard freeze came to my garden this past Saturday, November 6th. My garden is fairly well protected by a great overhang of tree leaves but even that was not enough to protect the tender plants. Most of my plants are gone and I'm ever so sad to see them go-especially the huge stand of pineapple sage I had growing by the vegetable garden (picture below is just to remind me of how it looked:( But! All is not lost because I have a greenhouse-more on that below. The freeze was well forecast ahead of the time and I was not only expecting it but I was prepared for it. All tender plants were moved into the house or the greenhouse, summer vegetables were cut back, cuttings for next year were safely tucked away, and the winter crop of flowers and vegetables have all been planted. Whew!

From In the Garden

So let's move on to what is blooming and how the garden is doing today shall we? The camellias are the stars of the show in my winter garden. Right now two of the fall blooming Camellia sasanquas are coming into full bloom. The butterflies (yes-there are some still around) and bees love these late blooming camellias, in addition to the asters and mums now blooming. The camellia pictured at the beginning of this post graces the north end of my deck. It is a double pink, and has been slow to grow but is finally filling out and getting large. We'll look at the queen camellia at the end of this post. I've posted about it many times but wanted to show the double today. As I look back at previous posts I found camellias were the Plant of the Month for November 2009. This year they have been slow to start and were set back by a hard freeze-but not stopped. They may yet be the Plant of the Month for November once I've evaluated all plants blooming this month.

From In the Garden

Mums are blooming wonderfully. Despite over two months of drought you just can't stop the mums. They had been a bit set back by the drought but quickly recovered once we received some rain. The yellow button mums along with some reds, purples and Sheffield mums are all in full bloom. This particular clump pictured used to be about 20' long by 4' feet wide but I had to finally thin them out because the stand was a bit boring. This mum is a mainstay here and I have it in all of my gardens. It does okay in shade and shines in sun conditions (where it can be found here such as in this garden).

Now we move to greenhouse flowers. I can tell already I will have tons of blooms all winter as long as I can keep my greenhouse going-that is the challenge since it is my first year. So far so good. I'll explain.

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Oxalis-sweet plant!

From In the Garden

Proven Winners 'Slightly Strawberry' mallow. This particular plant was part of a box of free plants provided by Proven Winners for me to trial and write about. Now that the growing season is over I feel comfortable talking about a few of the plants that came in my wonderful box of goodies this past spring. Being an in ground gardener more than a container gardener nearly all of my trial plants (not yet offered to the public except in limited quantities but these plants will be available in the Spring of 2011) went into the ground. I tell you this season was a pretty hard season for most of the plants due to the drought. I do not usually baby my annuals and the majority of the Proven Winners plants were annuals. Some did well and some did not do so well. 'Slightly Strawberry' did okay and survived the summer with no help from me. I have decided to see if it will winter over and plan to plant it out in the garden again next summer. I tell you I did not expect it to be so darned pretty! It simply adores the greenhouse conditions as you can see. It grows along side another Proven Winners introduction (not new to the market) called 'Diamond Frost'. Diamond Frost simply rocks and I would not garden without one or two in my garden so it too gets greenhouse treatment in the winter.

From In the Garden

Pineapple sage cuttings with duranta in the background. The huge 3-4 foot plants in the garden bit the dust during our hard freeze of November 6th but these babies are doing fabulous in the greenhouse.

I also winter over a few more plants in the greenhouse which are blooming but not pictured. They include impatiens and geraniums. Ferns, a few houseplants and some vegetables round out the greenhouse plants. I'll talk more of them later.

From In the Garden

I think it is only appropriate to talk of the greenhouse since it is such a big part of my garden now that the outdoor growing season has ended. I was extremely concerned about heating the greenhouse. I had read where ceramic heaters are good for greenhouses but the one I purchased for that very purpose did not work. It would cut off within two minutes and I had to be present in order to turn it back on. I was at a loss as to how I was going to heat the greenhouse then I looked around my garage and found a little 1500 watt radiant space heater (you can see it on the floor of the greenhouse in the above picture). It has done the job in flying spades! I have the exact setting where I want it and it cycles off and on all night keeping the greenhouse a toasty 45 degrees-my specified temperature. I chose 40-50 degrees for the temperature range of my greenhouse because that is the general range my unheated garage stays at during the entire winter. I've successfully wintered over plants in there for many years so I figure it should work for the greenhouse as well. This heater does not have a precise thermostat but fiddling with the heat dial was not difficult.

Can you see the rain barrel in the far left corner? This rain barrel is actually a repository for water I get from a garden hose. It makes watering all of the plants so much easier for me because the water source is right there. I simply fill up my watering can and water a way. Another benefit of having a rain barrel in the greenhouse is that it provides passive heating during the night. It is my theory the water and barrel heat up a bit during the warm days and when the sun goes down some of that heat is released back into the greenhouse. So far I can't tell if it works well or not but I think it does work, at least a little bit. Even when I don't run the heat in the greenhouse it generally stays about 7-10 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. Not bad!

One other extra thing I did to the greenhouse in preparation for the winter was to insulate better. I had done a lot of preparation in setting up the greenhouse back in March, but the Solexx panels are just not very thick and don't hold in heat well. Enter bubble wrap. I had read where many greenhouse hobbyists wrap their greenhouses with bubble wrap. I researched online and found a source that sold the large bubble wrap in four foot widths-a perfect width for me. I ordered it and taped it to the entire inside of the greenhouse-less the door. I had to tape the bubble wrap to the outside of the door due to it interfering with the opening and closing of the door if it was inside. Air is a really great insulator and I think the bubble wrap makes a huge difference with holding in the heat from the space heater. I am relieved the heater does not run all the time and so far, with low temperatures of below 30 degrees, the insulation and heating methods I have employed have worked. I am pretty glad too because I was seriously considering just putting the plants in the garage and not worrying about it. Mr. Fix-it and I both agreed this was not an option. I have a greenhouse so I must use it and I tell you it is better for me and the plants to be in the wonderful humid and warm environment of the greenhouse than to be in the dark and drafty garage. Had enough of greenhouse talk yet? I have so let's move on to one last camellia.....

From In the Garden

I believe this one is 'Jean May' (even if it isn't it is for me because my mother's name is Jean). It grows on the northern end of my home and is really really tall and large. It is simply splendid on this November Bloom Day....

in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team,

In the Garden