The Blah Season –
A long, long time to Crocus Bloom in April

It's mid January here at DragonGoose Farm and very cold. A couple of weeks ago, the DragonGoose Cider masters, Melanie and her Dad, Alan, finished packing fify-odd gallons of cider in our freezer –  a total of 91 gallons for the season. Alan still does the turning of that screw by hand and it took a week for his shoulders to recover.  We do have some Galas and Jonathans and Fortunes left to sell for eating fresh, but the apple selling season is essentially over and the cider selling season has arrived.

We're nearly three months before the first signs of spring. We're now in the Blah Season, or the Stick Season as they call it in New England –  leafless trees and shrubs. We do have snow out there. Too much, if you ask me -- but then, I don't ski. At my age, I have no urge to start learning. I do have several inches of garden catalogs to go through, which is a blessing. In fact, I've already begun.

There's one shrub I'm very interested in planting. If you recall, I did a page on winter color here on the farm –  colorful fruits and berries that brighten up the winter landscape. A treat for the birds, too, some of them. And now's the time to think about increasing those shrubs and trees pictured on that page to brighten up the snow. I saw a picture of a  shrub called Beauty Berry (Callicarpa americana) covered with berries. It was on a favorite web site earlier today. Evidently the berries appear toward the very end of summer and last until March. The photo at right is from the  US National Park site of American plants. 

The shrub is native to the east coast, namely Maryland, so it would need a spot that gets enough water here in much drier Utah, and in a spot that's not out in the open without surrounding and overhanging trees and shrubs. I would guess it would also need a spot receiving some shade during the hot afternoon sunshine.

There is some evidence that the skins of the berries have a small amount of  toxic ingredients that are rendered harmless upon cooking, but  according to folks who haave tried them, the taste is fairly awful, so no worries for yours truly who has enough fruit to process already.  The birds eat them when there's nothing else, though one gardener reported that cedar waxwings really go  for them. 

Many of the most beautiful blossoms in the garden are out and out toxic, such as anything in the lily family. I've read at least three murder mystery in which the weapon of choice had been the water in a vase of lillies of the valley. Because I've had  grandchildren and the children of workers here on DragonGoose farm, I worried about this. But if a gardener decided to plant only non toxic plants, there wouldn't be too much to choose from. For instance, daffodils -- the bulbs are highly toxic, which is the reason I planted literally thousands of them because they were less likely to be eaten by the crowds of voles we had when we first moved here in the mid  nineteen sixties. Nor would they be dug up or pulled up by the deer and eaten, although they do nip off the green tops when they first appear if we happend to forget to close the gate, or if the power goes off the electric fence.

First sign of spring at our house – Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)

Part of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae), winter aconite is native to Asia Minor and Europe. The yellow cup-shaped flowers start appearing here as the snow pack  begins to melt, often coming up through it. In summer, the plants go dormant, the foliage dying back. We let the browning foliage stay until the seeds get well distributed – or scattered around by me – before raking out the bed.

The winter aconite corm is poisonous, so the voles avoid them, thank heavens. This patch you see to the left is slowly spreading over the oval-shaped garden directly across from the main house, blooming under the bare canes of the roses there, and a young maple and struggling 'Star Magnolia' (Magnolia stellata). We have several smaller patches that come up in the brick herb garden, directly west of the house. And I believe our daughter, Melanie, has some, too, around The Granary.

The soil in both these spots are humus-rich and well-drained, but not dry, which is good for the propagation and health of these plants.

The flowers first appear in the sunniest spots just before our clumps of snow drops (Galanthus nivalis) start braving the snow in the parlor garden. Because of their ground-hugging habit, winter aconite would be a good choice for a rock garden or a  woodland garden. It would carry the yellow color over of Forsythia blossoms nicely, too, although we've given up on Forsythia here; the winters are so cold that the blossoms are confined to a low collar of them around the stems which had been covered with snow. And Forsythia without blossoms hasn't too much going for it. Winter aconite also combines well with the purple petals of our masses of Lenten Roses (Helleborus orientalis).

The Lenten Rose

The Lenten Rose (Helleborus orientalis), blooms from February to early April, depending on the zone. Ours shows its blossoms in March, often when the snow is still with us. All the plants we have originated from one speciman that Melanie planted in the brick herb garden when that spot was solely hers – before her Dad renovated the granary for her as her small house which gave her a nice space to have a big garden of her own. The renovation project of Melanie's house, The Granary, can be seen here.

The foliage of the hellebores is dark green and leathery and blends well with the hostas among which Melanie transplanted many hellebore seedlings; there are mats of them under the hellebore's leaves and they transplant easily and thrive well. She did this one spring several years ago, moving many of them into the hosta bed. They make a nice bridge in that  area while the hostas themselves are gathering their wits together to emerge later in the spring.

The flowers nod toward the ground as you can see in the photo to the right, and I've decided not to bring in other colors for fear of cross hybridization muddying the color. Melanie has different colors, however, and we haven't seen any problems. However, The Granary is some 100 feet away from the main house's garden.

The Lenten rose blossoms last a long time, keeping their color into early summer, though they do fade as the days get hot. Incidentally, all parts of this flower are toxic also. The lovely blossoms are not something one would want to sprinkle on top of a spring salad, for instance, like the flowers of chives. I don't know why these early flowers have to be so toxic (there are more, keep reading). It might have something to do with the evolution of these very early blooming plants – saving them, that is, from extinction by wildlife hungry at the end of a long winter and willing to eat any vegetation available.

Early Miniature Iris
The corms of the early miniature Iris (Iris reticulata 'Cantab') are also said to be toxic to animals. I have read of puppies digging up and eating their weight in early miniature iris without effect, however, but puppies and flower gardens are not a good mix in any case. Iris reticulata 'Cantab' is a variety of miniature spring iris that is bluer than the purple species. These iris plants stem from a couple of bulbs planted by Melanie in the brick herb garden many years ago. The plant occurs wild in and around  Turkey's Caucasus mountains and environs. It's been extensively cultivated in other parts of the world and Iris reticulata 'Cantab' is the species of miniature iris which is found most often in local nursery outlets and in catalogs.

They bloom very early in the spring, along with the hellebores and after the winter aconite. They have a lovely fragrance, with flowers large compared to their overall size. They're easy to grow and come back year after year, and given enough room, will multiply nicely. As I look at the picture of them here, it's evident I should move at least half of them out of the restricting block they're growing in now. We have so many iris on the farm, that it's easy to overlook these tiny harbingers of earth's awakening.

Drama Queens of Spring – Swaths of Crocus

There isn't much that can beat an entire twenty-foot spread of lavender-dominated crocus (Crocus vernis). We planted these shown below two years ago which gave us a fairly nice show the next spring. Then, last year, having another year of settling in, we saw a much better show. This spring we have great hopes of seeing a lot of lavender when the snow decides to give us a break (what a winter this has been!). We bought this batch from White Flower Farm.  Depending on how they look this spring, we'll fill in the bare spots in the fall.

Crocus is often called the Treasure of Spring. Though we have many different spots of welcome color as the snow starts melting back off the beds, there's nothing that gives drama to the coming of spring as a generous swath of brightly flowering crocus. It assures us that spring is here, it's really here, look!

Crocus corms are easy to plant and do best in full sun. This placement isn't difficult to achieve, since even under a grove of trees, by the time crocus emerge and their blossom open, the trees and shrubs above them are still empty of shade-giving leaves.

And the spots under trees and around shrubs affords good soil for these tiny corms that enjoy growing in the type of humus-filled soil that the trees and shrubs produce with their leaf litter. The soil should also be well drained; crocus don't much like to find themselves water-logged. Sadly enough, voles and squirrels love their little corms, in which case, our crew of cats come to the rescue, keeping the voles in line. And though this place has grown into a near-forest of trees, we don't seem to have squirrels (yet). This happy situation is why I decided to finally put in the number of crocus corms that would give us a bright showing in the spring without fear of losing half of them into some little critters' stomaches.

For those not blessed with cats, protecting the planting from voles and other rodents, a scattering of moth balls is suggested by some garden sites, because squirrels and voles aren't too fond of the smell. Whether the smell of moth balls invades the spring air to an off-putting extent around the blossoms ... well, I don't know.

Some gardeners like to plant crocus corms in grass, lifting small pieces of the grass and tucking the corms underneath to be covered again. The grass has to be left unmowed after crocus bloom, however, because the foliage of things like crocus (narcissus of various types, too) have to be left to ripen and brown before being mowed down. This necessary practice isn't always attractive in more formal or small gardens.

The Genus Narcissus


I've planted tulips, in fact many tulips, all over, as soon as we moved onto the farm, but after many years of blaming their non-survival  on things like cold winters and drought, I'd discovered field mice and voles. The bulbs, I discovered, were eaten almost as soon as I put them into the soil – not only by voles and field mice, but in later years, dug up and eaten by deer. We hadn't been bothered with deer at all when we first moved onto the farm – voles and mice were enough –  but after a particularly bad winter, we had an influx of them into the river bottom below us. The does had been driven down by the snow, you see, and then, having given birth to their fawns here, settled in to stay. After over ten years of trying various suggested tricks to protect tulips from depredation by hungry animals, I gave up and turned to narcissus which are poisonous enough that wildlife avoid them.

Now that our vole population is down, thanks to the army of stray cats we've accumulated (where do they all come from?), and the electric fence that keeps out the deer, I've tried planting tulips again, and they've survived to give us bright and cheerful, often dramatic splashes of color, which is very nice. But our spring flowers are still dominated by the many shades and types of the genus Narcissus, an outline of which follow:

Trumpet daffodils, the large cupped of this group has long been called weather-proof because of their strong stems and ability to withstand fairly awful spring weather –  for instance, 'King Alfred'

Long and short cup daffodils, a very old fashioned looking type of narcissus. These and our Trumpets make up the most of our thousands of daffodils blooming at DragonGoose Farm

Double daffodils, such as our side hill full of 'Sir Winston Churchill' which also are extremely fragrant. Some days, when the breezes and humidity are just right, a person driving a car with open windows coming up our drive can smell them as they go by the hill below our south orchard

Triandrus daffodils, which have more than one stem with one trumpet each and each flower with petals slightly swept back

Cyclamineus daffodils, my favorites, which have swept back petals, some extremely swept back, a fragrant clump of which are
pictured below left in April, the white and pale yellow Narcissus cyclameneus 'Jenny'

Jonquils, noted primarily for their scent, some very floriferous with more than one flower per stem

Tazettas, which produce many blossoms per stem. We have clumps of these under a group of tree peonies along our side porch

Poeticus daffodils which have large white petals with a shallow cup of a contrasting color, often called 'Pheasant Eye'

Then there are the Split Corona Daffodils which have a busy looking center, no trumpet, often fragrant, and looking something like a hibiscus blossom

And finally, the many species daffodils, of which we have a few of their hybrids

This is probably more information about narcissus than you might ever want. As to myself, I've just ordered daffodils of every kind available through the years without reference to what type or where they came from and only recently have tried to sort them all out. Especially, I wondered why some of our daffodils were fragrant and others not. And now, of course, I know.

Long suffering gardeners – here's to the coming of spring,

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Photos - Header-StevenCannon, BeautyBerry-National Park Site of American Plants, all the rest, Joan Shaw

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Back to Searching for Winter Color

Back to A Friend Writes of Obama's first Year

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More on spring flowers
Spring's Slow Awakening

Spring Beauties

Early Spring Roses

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Online Sources for bulbs and plants

Wayside Gardens, South Carolina
White Flower Farm
Dutch Gardens
Van Bourgondian
Breck's Bulbs
Select Seeds

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Books on bulbs and gardening
Taylor's Guide to Bulbs

Annuals,Bubls & Perennials

Down to Earth with Helen Dillon

Western Garden Book

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Click to enter American Rose Society site

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All contents copyright (c) 2000-2010 by Joan K. Shaw.  All rights reserved.