A Series of Small Things Makes a Garden

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh -

Ah, Vincent, truer words were never spoken. Just as the truly great gardens are not built in one day on a whim, my Central Florida garden has been a labor of love over the last 20+years with some years bearing more of a lasting imprint than others.

The last post was about my garden being a passion to which I’ve set my mind.

Now I have a passion to plant a salad bar and that’s totally do-able in My Central Florida garden at this time of year.

We’ve had quite a warm January with some days in the mid- and upper-80’s. Even in Central Florida those are temps you just don’t expect in the middle of winter.

But there are some growing things that will relish the cool temps, namely Salad Bar Stuff.

Those “stuffs” include all types of greens such as lettuce, spinach, onions, peas, sweet peas, you get the idea. Most of these seeds you can plant about anytime during the winter here in Florida since the ground doesn’t freeze, although right about now I’d love to see a heavy frost or even a short-duration hard-freeze to help kill off some of the weeds and unwanted bugs.

Fortunately, as of 1/27, our weather has turned cooler, so these fresh salad favorites should do well for my Central Florida Garden.

Gardening is an insatiable passion, in my Central Florida Garden.

Gardening is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. -Karel Capek

This time of year, as the Christmas lights go dark and the color-saturation of the holidays dims, I find turning to the garden plan is a most welcome labor of love.

Poring over seed catalogs, surfing the internet for online nurseries, taking colored pencils to the copy of the homestead survey anew absolutely makes my toes curl….

Even as the year winds down and we gardeners take a welcome rest from the riot of gardening to-do’s, the prospect of a new palette, a new layout, and new plants calls to us during the winter season’s dormancy.

As for me and my garden planning process, I have already started a tray of delphiniums seed. Here in my Central Florida garden, we treat these beauties as annuals. The next tray to start is foxgloves. They sometimes reseed (they’re biennials) and regrow, but they’re not reliable as a true biennial here in Central Florida; it’s just too warm for these traditional English Garden babies to take hold and persevere through the summer monsoons and sub-tropical winters.

One of the new entries to this year’s plan is a type of hydrangea that is SUPPOSED to grow here in Central Florida. I ordered 10 baby plants online; they arrived looking rather disheveled, but mostly alive, except for one of the teeny plants.  I potted up the baby plants which were just shipped in liner capsules and then shrink-wrapped with the top and bottom of the “envelope” left open for ventilation. After potting, I set them outside in an area protected from the still-too-hot sun and kept an eye on them so they wouldn’t dry out.

The cuttings started making progress in their nursery location until WHAM!

Something, somebody, some critter ate off ALL the new green growth.

I’ve moved the now-denuded baby hydrangeas, but the damage may be too extensive to save many. The nasty marauder even stripped the baby bark from the plants, so I can only hope that they will survive. But I am one of those gardeners who doesn’t give up, so I’ll keep on keeping on with their care and feeding until the plant-god convinces me they’ve given up the ghost.

The variety’s botanical name is Hydrangea macrophylla “Harlequin” which is also in some areas referred to by the common name of Raspberry Parfait. It may be that the varmint that annihilated them heard that common name and decided that it was too good-sounding to pass up! We will see what happens and also see if I can clobber that critter’s appetite for the baby plants in My Central Florida Garden!

And speaking of baby plants, I just received my first seed/plant catalog in the new year. It sets me off on a tangent from what my plan had been – to keep a fairly simple color palette of red, white, and yellow which shows so nicely against the dark brick buildings and dark-stained 6 foot fencing. 

But, it’s only a tangent. I do love the look of a cohesive, orderly, and even logical landscape as the great garden and landscape designers have done in the past. 

So, at least for now, I will continue with my present color palette, even though I will try some new varieties in My Central Florida Garden.