Imbolc + Hints of Spring
The daffodils are blooming in the neighbors’ yard.
Our bulbs are younger — only a year old — and are about a week behind. They’re bright sprigs of green against the brown ground, buds swelling. They’ll bloom before the week is out.
From left, aquilegia, daffodil, wild rocket (arugula), cardoon, sedum Autumn Joy.
All around, there are hints of spring. This is the magic of Imbolc, the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Traditionally, it’s the beginning of spring — that time of year when the days are lengthening and plants emerge, stretching toward the light. The weather may still be cold, but something has changed. Winter is not quite as fierce. Imbolc is the bud before the bloom.
Imbolc is a traditional time to start seeds. On February 1, I started seeds for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and roselle — warm-weather crops that need a long wake-up time and warm temperatures to germinate. They’re housed in seed trays in our south-facing windows in the living room, where they will stay until the weather warms. The tomatoes will go to the greenhouse first, as they’re more temperate than the peppers, eggplant or roselle, which sulk in any amount of cold.
I also sowed seeds for fast-growing, cool weather crops: winter lettuce, kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, mustard greens, bok choy and tatsoi. Normally, I would have these overwintered greens still growing in the garden … but this year we saw extreme cold in December. For about a week, we had temperatures near zero with wind chills of negative twenty or more. Those temperatures are far outside our normal range, and our typical garden greens all died. The only survivors were in our small cold frame, a 4-foot by 8-foot box we fill with fresh mushroom compost each autumn.
The cold frame provided shelter for some of our favorite winter greens: from left, Lunix lettuce, tatsoi, Rouge d’Hiver Lettuce.
Our few overwintered greens have given us delicious relief from typically heavy winter fare, and they will last into March. By then, the seeds sown last week will have quickly grown and will provide us with spring greens before the more temperate spring lettuces, spinach, chard, orach and other greens can be sown in April.
In the greenhouse, I’ve also sown seeds of my three slowest-growing crops: leeks, onions and celery. They will slowly mature in the greenhouse until March or April, and will go into the garden while they’re still small. The onions will mature at the height of summer. The leeks won’t be harvested until autumn. The celery will fall somewhere in between.
The greenhouse is cheery and green. Seedlings wave whenever I open the door. Verbena bonariensis, mugwort, honesty, rudbeckia, echinacea, mugwort, bee balm, sea holly, wallflower, showy evening primrose, snapdragon, dianthus, foxglove, and panicum and pampas grasses have been steadily growing all winter. They’ll be ready to plant out in April. Some will go into the jewel garden I started last year — where the goal is to have at least one plant blooming or at its best every single month of the year.
Others will go into a new cutting garden we’re building at the top of our terraced vegetable garden. The pampas grass — I’ve sown an entire tray of it — will form a hedge separating the garden from the road (and giving us a little more privacy). Pampas grass will grow to 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide, but buying upwards of 20 plants for this hedge would cost an incredible amount of money. A packet of 500 seeds cost $6.99. Ideally, I’ll be able to grow enough plants to extend the hedge the entire length of the vegetable garden. It will not only offer privacy, it will serve as a windbreak and barrier to the neighbor’s wandering dogs, offer habitat to wild animals, and add year-round beauty and the sinuous whispering sounds of grass to the garden. Not a bad trade for 7 bucks.
Inside the hedge, the cut flower garden will be home to zinnias, bachelor’s buttons, scabiosa, sea holly, panicum grass, snapdragon, celosia, amaranth, tithonia, and sunflower. I also grow dahlias: Cafe Au Lait, Rock Star, Darkarin, Dark Spirit, Milena Fleur, Crazy Love and Bluebird. This year I’m also growing some dahlias from seed … excited to see what germinates!
The pampas grass will hedge the east side of the garden. Downslope, facing west, roses will serve as another windbreak and a visual separation for the cut-flower garden. I’ll be planting Windermere, Munstead Wood, Tuscany Superb, Lady of Shalott, and Gertrude Jekyll.
My last major cut flowers, ranunculus and tulips, reside in two of the vegetable garden beds, where they’ll be replaced by late-season vegetables like sweet potatoes and peppers. Ranunculus won’t overwinter here even in a good year, so I must buy the corms each year to plant in very early spring.
Tulips are perennial, but the bulbs don’t reliably bloom each year. I buy fresh tulips each year to place in pots for a guaranteed beautiful show in spring. Last year’s bulbs are then placed in garden beds — where they’re cut flowers if they bloom (and no great loss if they do nothing). When I dig up those bulbs to replace them with vegetables, I save the largest bulbs. Those I sow in a tiny wildflower meadow (about 15 feet by 25 feet) on the slope above the chicken coop. There, the tulips are fully left to their own devices. If they bloom, they’re a beautiful wonder and surprise. If not, that’s fine.
The wonder and excitement of spring is already here … even if the cold weather is, too.