|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear (Contact First Name),
It's April, the sun is shining and it's the perfect time to plant your garden. We've got some great
articles on bulbs, just in time for this week's Expert Extraordinnaire, Chris Wiesinger, "The Bulb Hunter". He is THE expert on bulbs for our area! We will even have many of these rare beauties
for sale after his talk. Come in and see us, we are always happy to see you.
Hope all is well and Happy Gardening!
Thanks so much for your patronage. We truly do love our customers!
Tom Tinguely
President |
  Raining
Champs
BY MATT WELCH
Driving down Old San Antonio Road the other day I was saddened to see what looked to be a spilled box of packing peanuts littering the roadside. As I got closer to the mess I realized it wasn't a mess at all, but was in fact a blooming population of giant prairie lilies, Zephyranthes drummondii. I was momentarily confused at the sight, knowing that rain lilies are supposed to bloom after a rain, and it hadn't rained for weeks. But then I remembered a gardener friend once telling me that some potted rain lilies bloomed in her greenhouse after a rain, but were completely sheltered from any rainfall. That led me to think their bloom time has more to do with atmospheric pressure conditions than actual rain, but calling them Barometric Lillies just doesn't hae the same poetic ring. They're not true lilies in the botanical sense, but they are in the lily family, so we'll call them close cousins to, say, Easter Lilies. Texas has many species, occurring in darn near every county. Statewide, there is a plethora of forms, sizes, and colors from small to giant, white to yellow to pink; but they all have one thing in common: rain lilies bloom when it rains. A few years ago I became obsessed with these tiny little roadside barometers and began collecting seed and plants of every species I could find. Here in Central Texas we have two genera and three species, each one unique and garden worthy. The first to start blooming in Spring is the Giant Prairie Lily, or Zephyranthes drummondii. I'm sure you've seen them, they're the bright white flowers that get a couple of inches across and have gray-green strappy leaves coming from the ground. East of Mopac they seem to frequently occur in colonies, whereas out in the rocky hill country you tend to find them in smaller clumps or solitary. Giant Prairie Lilies bloom heaviest in the spring, but tend to pop up all summer long any time we get a couple of days of rain. After the prairie lilies do their thing, the white cooperias kick it in gear. As I write this on the 25th of June, I'm beginning to see this rain lily, Zephyranthes chlorosolen, on the roadsides and in vacant lots. It's the tallest of the Central Texas rain lilies, but not the largest flower. Very petite off-white flowers sit atop a long stem, a good portion of which is actually the tubular throat of the flowers themselves. Yes, I said tubular throat. The best thing about this little lily is her big fragrance, which is rare in the rain lily universe. Finally, the midsummer blues are kicked by our little yellow friend the Texas copper lily, or Habranthus tubispathus var. texensis. Long on name, short on stature, but bold in color, this coppery orangish yellowish flower sneaks in to the roadside landscape looking at 65 mph like a little aster of some sort, easily ignored. But, being the most colorful of our local lilies, copper lilies are definitely worth the effort to find. Like all lilies, rain lilies form a bulb, which makes them particularly adaptable to drought, both in the wild and in the occasionally neglected garden or lawn. Spectacular in mass plantings or singularly in a container or well tended rock garden, rain lilies are easily transplanted and almost as easily grown from seed. Seed should be collected as soon as or just before the capsule opens, and the little black disk-like seeds need to be sown as soon as possible. When a capsule is ripe, I gather the seeds and immediately scrape them into the soil at the base of the mother plant so I can keep up with which seedlings come from which plants. They usually germinate after a week or so and a couple of waterings. Well, I gotta run. Looks like it's about to rain. |
White Flags, No Surrender! 
Thoughts on old plants and new gardeners. by Matt Welch
Driving down a backroad the other day, I noticed some old fashioned white flag irises blooming in an abandoned cemetery, a welcome reminder that spring is finally here. They also reminded me that we, as gardeners and consumers, are a complex bunch. It's no new secret that familiarity breeds contempt, right? We experience such contempt every day as new and improved products invade the markets, making our "old" stuff look, well, old. This causes us to drive really fast to the nearest New Stuff store and just go nuts. Why? Because humans are great at getting bored, and boredom is a desperate emotion convincing even the best of us to pull up stakes and move away from past ideas and objects at breakneck speed. Just look at Coca Cola: first we had plain 'ol Coke, perfect in its mysterious brownness. Boooooring. The came New Coke, followed by a return to Classic Coke, and now the latest - and I'm not kidding - fried Coke. (How we are frying Coke I can't imagine, but I think my fingers just had tiny heart attacks typing fried Coke.) In our industry, the Green Industry, things aren't much different. An attractive plant, new to the market, that survives in the landscape with moderate to no effort will enjoy perhaps years of sales success, followed by a falling-out-of-favor, thanks again to our old friend Boredom. Okay, fine. I can live with that. In fact, most of us make a living because of that, the shrewdest growers keeping a constant eye out for the "next great plant" to add to their inventory, while last season's superstars become industry staple or compost. We grow what the market demands and the bored masses would rather play the odds, putting their money on the hope of something new rather than the certainty of the familiar. Fair enough.
But as I drove down that country road the other day, the little patch of irises got me to thinking about a different kind of success, the kind that comes not from being the flashy new plant on the block, but by thriving for years and years...or in the case of that cemetery iris, for centuries and centuries. According to Scott Ogden's book Garden Bulbs for the South, this modern day Methuselah is an iris hybrid of unknown origin, most likely somewhere in Africa, and maybe as early as the 700s. AD. The Moors were known to plant them on the graves of fallen Muslims as they moved toward Spain, and Spain is where the species was named. Then, when the Spanish moved into America through Florida and Mexico, they brought the irises with them to plant for the same morbid reason as the Moors, which explains their prevalence throughout the southern U.S. Despite its incredible story and undeniable success on several continents, that iris, I albicans still fails to win the hearts of the general gardening public. Friend and heirloom garden guru Greg Grant tells me that the White Flag iris is the most common yet most commonly ridiculed iris of the south, a fact that at first glance is perplexing. I mean, here we have a beautiful and seemingly marketable plant, a perfect plant; one that is evergreen, drought and moisture tolerant, spreads steadily but is sterile and non-invasive, thrives in sun or shade, loves any type of soil, and has been around for over a thousand years. It doesn't make sense, but then I picture the eager weekend gardener, a warrior with a hoe, his car loaded down with flats of immaculate plants whose glossy and colorful labels have painted a jungle in his mind. He's feverishly scraping Bermuda grass off last year's composted flower beds, pulling up dried roots and faded plastic stakes, and dreaming. This year will be different.
I raise my glass to you, sir, a tall glass. Of fried Coke. |
Spring Speaker Series - April
selected daytimes and evenings under the Oaks at The Great Outdoors
April 11th 10:00 am "You Say Tomato" Jill LaVigne, Great Outdoors Veggie Expert We all want to grow our own food, and even though it's easier than you might think, there are lots of tricks to turning your garden into a grocery store. Join our own Jill LaVigne as she unleashes 20 years of veggie gardening experience, teaching us all the best ways to pack the pantry with nutritional, homegrown produce! FREE!
April 11th 7:00 pm "Tough as Nails: Great Bulbs and Great Stories From  the Bulb Hunter" Chris Wiesinger, Owner, Southern Bulb Company. We are also honored to be hosting Chris Wiesinger. He was dubbed "The Bulb Hunter" by a NY Times article honoring him for his dogged commitment to uncovering lost treasures. Our own Texas Heirloom Botanicals Expert Extraordinairre will be giving his very popular talk on Heirloom Bulbs for Texas. This is not about those bulbs you see in magazines that don't work for us in Texas, but the tough, beautiful, often rare bulbs that will thrive despite neglect in our crazy Central Texas climate. He will be bringing many of the bulbs for sale after the talk. This is one talk that you don't want to miss! Admission $5 Light Refreshments Served
April 18th Earth Day! 10:00 am "It's hot! It's steamy! It's dirty! Yes,  it's humified compost! And it's good for you and the Earth!" Patrick Van Haren, Sunergie. Patrick and his partner, Allan Dyer, have started their local venture just south of Austin. The compost is primarily composed of non-fertilized hay and they hope to be 100% organic by the end of the year. While other composts utilize waste ingredients and mechanical mixing or reduction methods, humified compost relies on a specific mix of ingredients and a controlled three phase biological process. Humus is the most active ingredient in our soils, and can only be produced through biology. Humified compost makes use of special inoculants and biological strains to produce this high quality. This humidified compost will be available for sale on the day of the presentation. FREE
April 25th 7:00 pm "Staghorn Ferns" Laura Joseph, President, Austin Area  Garden Council.Join area fern expert Laura Joseph as she displays and discusses one of the world's most fascinating ferns. She will also demonstrate care, culture, and how to mount the ferns on wooden display plaques. Proceeds from this presentation will be donated to the Zilker Botanical Garden. Admission $5 Light Refreshments Served | |
|
|
|
We hope you are enjoying our monthly newsletter, if there is a topic you'd like to see us write about, please let us know. We are your locally owned, independent Austin business and we thank you for your patronage!
Sincerely,
Tom Tinguely
The Great Outdoors |
 2730 S Congress Ave
Austin, Texas 78704
512-448-2992
www.gonursery.com
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Offer Expires: April 30, 2009 |
|
|
