The anticipation I experience waiting for this garden to pop full of blooms during the winter and early spring compares to little else. All winter I watch from the window, wondering about those little plants I planted in fall. Will they survive the whipping winds and below-freezing temperatures? The snow? Yes, they do survive, they really do. This scenario plays out in my mind every year. Perhaps the scariest thing I do in January is to go out and take a closer look just to see what is going on in this garden. It’s always the same; I am met with frozen, tattered plants that look like they will never live to produce a bloom. Panic sets in. Then I remind myself that the most valuable part of the plant at this time of year is the root stretching and going deep underground, hiding away snuggled in rich soil and protected with mulch. My heart leaps for joy every year when I see the first little green shoot pushing up next to that tattered plant.
The blooms of this black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia ‘Indian Summer’) are often larger than your hand.
Pincushion Flowers
There are so many aspects of a hardy annual garden that are empowering to gardeners: you plant when little else is going on in the garden; it is cooler; rain is more frequent, eliminating watering chores; and the act of fall planting introduces a new feeling of anticipation for spring. Waiting for this group of flowers to jump into action in spring is so exciting. I find myself snooping around the garden just looking, wondering and waiting. I could stay out there for days cuddling these plants – even though they don’t require it! I know that for the rest of the winter they are ready and waiting to perform for me. That is just one of the many reasons I love to garden.
Once you understand this fascinating, easy, and beautiful group of flowers, I think you will be hooked too.
Three
WHEN TO PLANT: FOLLOWING MOTHER NATURE’S CALENDAR
When it comes to hardy annual gardening, nothing has a greater impact on success than the timing of planting. With dismal results, many of us have been planting hardy annuals just at the very time when most of them should be bursting into bloom. I think the confusion around when to plant is deeply rooted in the word “annual,” because we commonly associate it with flowers we plant in spring to bloom through the summer – the tender annuals. How did we lose our understanding of hardy annual flowers and when they should be planted?
One of the most fragrant and beautiful sweet peas – ‘High Scent’.
It used to be common practice to include hardy annuals in the garden. In the 1950s, most homes had a vegetable garden out of necessity. The mother of the house usually tended the garden and she often indulged her fancy for flowers as well. This close connection had the gardeners so in tune with the garden that they planted and reaped in almost every season.
A favorite on our farm for its large blossoms, sweet pea ‘Geranium Pink’.
On the kitchen bookshelf next to the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, you would find the Better Homes and Gardens Garden Book (published 1951). Both were homemaking staples of the day. The garden book featured advice on planting hardy annuals in the fall, winter and early spring. Obviously, the cool-season planting I describe is not a new concept at all – it is merely being rekindled.
This strong tradition of a home garden diminished over the intervening decades as supermarkets began offering more and more fresh vegetables, making it unnecessary to “grow your own.” Lost along with the homegrown vegetables was that little flower garden and our knowledge of how to grow and tend it.
Today, with the revival of the home garden, hardy annuals are beginning to show up again in landscapes. They are rejoining the vegetable garden and the cutting garden. The romance of these old-fashioned favorites stirs the memories of yesteryear.
Over the years, when I brought my sweet peas to sell at a local farmer’s market, I knew exactly what to expect. It never failed that a customer would come along and lift one of our sweetie bouquets to her nose. She would close her eyes, breathing in the fragrance, and say, “Ahh…my grandmother always grew sweet peas. I haven’t thought of that fence of flowers or that fragrance in years!”
So while new to us, planting in what might seem like an awkward season is really just a discovery of something old made new again.
There are hardy annuals suitable to plant in every garden, each with its own set of rewards. Gardeners just have to find where their gardens fit the cycle. Those gardening in the lower half of the 48 states enjoy the most flexibility in planting times, while those in the north, with colder winters and cooler summers, benefit from blooms lingering longer into summer.
When you plant will depend on where your garden in located on the hardiness zone map. To learn what “planting time” options you have, first find where your garden falls on the hardiness zone map found on page 138. The next necessary step is to find the expected first frost date in fall and the last frost date in spring for your area. The local Cooperative Extension office will be able to provide this information.* Once armed with the hardiness zone and expected frost dates, you can easily make a plan and mark a calendar with your fall, winter, and/or spring “planting time” options.
Planting window timelines:
• Fall planting is 6-8 weeks before your first frost date.
• Winter planting is when ground is not frozen.
• Early spring planting is 6-8 weeks before your last frost date.
*To locate the Cooperative Extension office near you, visit http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/
Sweet Peas
A great way to get started is to choose flowers that are winter hardy in your winter hardiness zone. Chapter 5, “Flower-by-Flower,” includes the winter hardiness for each flower. So, once you know your hardiness zone, you can flip through and find flowers that will survive with as little fanfare as possible in your zone.
Marking the Calendar
The process of incorporating hardy annuals into my garden became much clearer when I notated all the key dates on our family’s day-to-day calendar, the one I look at every single day. Because the seed-starting and planting are at non-traditional gardening
