Get Ready For the Flower Show!

Are You Ready to Be Impressed?

On Wednesday, March 13, the doors open for the Boston Flower & Garden Show at the Seaport World Trade Center. Yes, it's a much needed early taste of spring and just as important, it's an opportunity to see imagination and skill at work.

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is responsible for MassHort at the Flower Show, all the amateur competitions and exhibits at the show (which is owned and run by The Paragon Group). 'Amateur competition', in turn, encompasses floral design, Ikebana exhibits, miniature gardens, a book store, a photography competition, amateur horticulture competitions including plant rooms, bay windows, individual horticulture exhibits, and junior horticulture, talks and lectures.

The Amateur Competitions are found in the Conference Center - the elegant space behind the glassed rotunda at the rear of the Seaport World Trade Center - but you'll find Mass Hort on the main floor as well, including the 'Sowing the Seeds of Change' garden and exhibit.

Numbers are one way to describe the scope of Mass Hort's efforts. You'll find a total of 120 stunning floral designs between Division I (under the auspices of the Garden Club Federation of  Massachusetts) and Mass Hort's Division II. There will be approximately 30 Ikebana arrangements provided by the Boston Chapter of Ikebana International. Those three activities are located in the Conference Center Ballroom and its adjoining spaces.

There are 36 photography entries (located in the Conference Center lobby) and seven 'structures' exhibits for Amateur Horticulture. AmHort Chair Martha Clouse expects about 300 individual entries for this year's 73 classes. Those can be found in the Conference Center's Beacon Hill Suites.

"It is an amazing effort," Carrie Waterman, chair of Mass Hort at the Flower Show Amateur Competitions and Exhibits, says. "Our part of the Boston Flower & Garden Show is the product of hundreds of volunteers working on the show and all the individuals displaying the pride of their plant collections. It's teamwork by extraordinary people who share Mass Hort's mission."

Numbers, though, tell just part of the story. Just as important is the skill and the imagination of everyone who participates.

Take the floral design competitions, for example. Division I's entries are built around the theme, "Coined in the USA" and each entry illustrates a distinctly American phrase. Using garden and exotic tropical flowers, each entry explores the changing landscape of floral design. You'll see historical designs inspired by the Pilgrims in "Blaze a Trail" and the cutting edge of creative design in "Prest-o Change-o". How about a children's birthday party table, titled "Piece of Cake"? Or whimsical door designs reflecting the theme, "Goody, Goody Gumdrops"? As an added bonus, each class of entries is accompanied by the historical source that inspires the name; from a 1936 Merrie Melodies cartoon to a 1962 fashion article from the New York Herald Tribune. 

What's new for this year? Division I Chair Yvonne Capella says, 'creative armatures'. "We're especially

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Gardeners Welcome Spring with a Cold Frame Workshop                              

 Gardeners who wanted to get a jump on spring planting worked to build their own cold frames. On Saturday, March 2, Gretel Anspach, Mass Hort Trustee and Master Gardener, led a workshop on making cold frames. Approximately fifteen people participated in the workshop and learned how to assemble a cold frame for their gardens. With visions of starting seedlings and plants outdoors to get a jump on spring, workshop attendees got busy working as amateur carpenters.
 
With all cuts premade by Gretel, it was a lesson in assembling, drilling, and screwing boards together. Two and one half hours later, participants, newly confident in cold frame construction, were loading their new creations into their cars.

March Horticultural Hints

by Betty Sanders

BettyOnGardening.com

Repot Houseplants Now. Days, even indoors, are getting longer and houseplants feel that too. Now is a good time to report them, removing any soil with salt build-up (the crusty stuff on top) and some of the old soil around the roots. The   pot should be only 1-2 inches larger than the current pot, clean and filled with an appropriate soil mix. Most houseplants are happy with commercial or homemade potting mixes, but I add sand to the mix when transplanting succulents or cacti and small bark chunks to orchid pots. Once they are securely in the new home, water them with a diluted fertilizer solution to help them settle in and get off to a growing start.

Count before you Sow. If you have your vegetable or flower seeds and are anxious to get going, check the packages or online instructions for the best time to start. It is generally not safe in Southern New England to assume the last frost date will have passed before June 1.
Hot weather crops want warm soil (at least 70 degrees) and warm air temperatures. Last year, the Mass Hort Garden-to-Table vegetable garden lost melon seedlings when the temperature dropped into the 50's for a couple of nights in early June. It makes no sense to start tomatoes
in early March and then keep them indoors for three months before they can safely go in the ground. Wait until April to start most vegetables and flowers. 

Soil that is ready to plant should crumble like cake.

Squeeze before you Sow. Traditionally pea planting time in New England is St. Patrick's Day. I think it may be delayed this year. Our three weekends of snow have left the soil covered with a lovely white blanket which, when it melts, will leave the soil too wet to plant immediately. The home gardener's test is to take a small handful of soil and squeeze. If it holds together as a wet clump, or heavens forbid, water squeezes out, you need to wait and hope for sunny dry days.
Seeds put into cold wet soil will rot. Soil ready to plant should crumble apart like chocolate cake. Working wet soil with tiller or spade will destroy its structure. But as soon as it is ready, plant peas and turnips, onion sets and spinach, salsify, cabbage and lettuce.

Strawberries. Late March is the time to set out your strawberry plants. If you didn't prepare the bed last fall, do so as soon as the soil can be worked. Or, start a new raised bed by creating a bed 8 (or more) inches deep with a mixture of good soil and aged manure or compost. The soil should be tested and have a ph of 6 or less, as strawberries do best in soil that is slightly acid.

Make the holes 12 inches apart and about 8 inches deep; then, create a small mound of soil in the hole. Fan the roots over the mound so they are spread throughout the hole. Be certain the crown of the strawberry is placed so that it half under the level of the bed and half above when the soil has been firmed in place. This way it will not be likely to rot or smother. Water thoroughly and mulch. Plant rows three feet apart. Heat-treated shredded straw makes an excellent weed free mulch that also keeps developing berries clean.

Roses. It is too early to remove the protective mulch you put around your roses last fall but, as soon as the soil is ready to be worked, it is the right time to begin planting dormant roses. Dormant or bare-root roses come with the roots exposed and need to get into the ground early. Dig the hole wide enough to spread the roots out, deep enough to plant the bud union (the bump where the hybrid variety you want is grafted onto a hardier rootstock) two inches below the level of the bed. Creating a soil mound and draping the roots over it will allow you to check the height as you work. Half-fill the hole with soil, patting it down with your hands. Add water and, when it has settled, continue filling the hole. Firm it again, add more water and make certain the bud union is still 2 inches below grade. Then create a saucer using soil to form a lip just outside the root zone. Now you can water your new rose without the water or soil running off. But don't feed the rose until the roots have had some time to establish themselves.

Get Ready. Send your mower and tiller in for tune-ups now, if you didn't in the fall. Finish sharpening your pruning tools; we will have a lot of clean-up including pruning to do after the snow has melted. And look for new ideas, plants and products at the Boston Flower & Garden Show.

You can catch Betty at the Boston Flower & Garden Show on Wednesday, March 13. She will be speaking in the Lecture Hall at 12:30 p.m. on 'Life Cycle Gardening'. Look for more gardening hints at BettyOnGardening.com.  

By Neal Sanders

Leaflet Contributor  

The small box arrived in the mail from White Flower Farm in early December.  In the box was a large, dull bulb in a pot, hidden by a small pad of Spanish moss.  The instructions said to place the pot in a sunny window, keep it watered, and wait.

We waited through Christmas and the New Year; the bulb did nothing.  It wasn't until the end of January that a green nodule peeked up a quarter inch.  It was a leaf.  Then, a fatter nodule began to emerge.  A flower stalk.  More weeks followed.

Finally, the last week of February - twelve weeks after the bulb arrived - we were rewarded for our patience.  Amaryllis 'Red Peacock' opened its first flower: a huge, double scarlet bloom with a thin white accent line running down the middle of each petal.  The red is so startling that it is visible from across a room.  And, wonder of wonders, what has bloomed thus far is just the beginning of a show that will go on for weeks.  Four more flowers are just beginning to open on one stalk, and a second stalk is just now rising out of the bulb.

Amaryllis 'Red Peacock'

When we garden, we take a leap of faith that, sometimes, waiting is the right thing to do.  We could have purchased a red amaryllis, already in flower, from a store; but that's not gardening.  The pleasure is in seeing what comes from our efforts.  Everything else is just 'accessorizing with plants'.

Just as 'Red Peacock' was opening its first flower, a truck came down our driveway bearing a large box of seeds from Johnny's of Maine.  It is not yet March yet we are already taking the first of a series of leaps of faith that we believe will lead to a summer's worth of vegetables.  This first leap is just an economic one: we have paid for some seeds. 

Those leaps will get higher and harder as time goes on.  We will plant in May having no guarantees that we won't encounter a Memorial Day frost, or that we will not have a re-run of a few years ago when it rained incessantly in June, washing out our first vegetable crop.

We garden by experience.  We sense that this season will start earlier (or later) and that this week - whatever week that is - is the right one to put those seeds in the ground.  We can eliminate much of the risk by starting seeds indoors (or purchasing them as plant sets).  Sometimes, as with tomatoes, the length of the growing season virtually demands that we dispense with starting with seeds in the ground.  But, on the whole, we play the odds.  At heart, gardeners are gamblers.

We are also savers.  When 'Red Peacock' has strutted its last bloom, we will follow a different set of instructions and store the bulb in our basement.  It will take at least a year, and it may take several, but we will try to coax a new set of blooms out of the bulb.

Many years ago, my wife told me that buying roses for Valentine's Day

First they were pots of hyacinths

was a waste of money.  I asked what she would rather have.  "Hyacinths," she said.  And so, for a dozen years, I have brought home pots of blue hyacinths.  For a week or longer, they fill the house with perfume.  When they become ungainly, they're cut and placed in a vase where they provide further enjoyment.

But in the spring, those hyacinth bulbs get planted in our garden.  A year later (sometimes two), the hyacinths bloom again, and again.  After a dozen years, we have a bed that has a startling number of blue hyacinths in it.  Visitors look at the bed and see a pleasing array of flowers.  I look at it and see memories of Valentine's Days past - and leaps of faith taken.

Hyacinths in beds in early spring