From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
first published February 28, 2008
Tomorrow is sync day, a.k.a February 29th—the day that exists because our pokey earth didn’t have the foresight to take exactly 365 days to orbit once around the sun. Instead, the laggard decided to take 365 and 1/4 days to do it, which screws up our Gregorian calendar. Now, a quarter of a day might not seem like a big deal, but it adds up. In fact, if we didn’t make the correction and sync ourselves up with the solar calendar every four years, we’d eventually find ourselves planting annuals in December and harvesting our corn in March.
So now that you’re thinking of leap years in terms of gardening, here’s another reason to love them: they provide the perfect excuse to break with convention. I mean, come on!— according to custom, a girl can even ask a boy to marry her on February the 29th. Hmm… experience and my size 13 foot dissuade me from weighing in on that one, but I will say that the breaking of gardening conventions is something I always recommend.
It seems to me that we are often so bound by convention in our gardens that we have a difficult time breaking out of the mold. In fact, I’m always talking to gardeners who tell me stories that begin with “Oh, I always plant my petunias (or begonias or marigolds etc.) in the same spot every year.” And although I think it’s a good idea to grow what one has had success with over the years, it is equally important to break the habit now and again and try some new garden plants.
Consider this. A couple years ago, only a few people had ever heard of ornamental grasses. Today, one doesn’t need to venture far down any street to come across a yard with an ornamental grass or two. And at some point, the first gardeners who planted those grasses had to break with tradition and risk becoming pariahs by replacing a few of his or her marigolds and petunias with so-called ‘weeds.’
As a salute to that kind of thinking, I think that this leap year, gardeners should challenge themselves to be a bit unconventional. Where to start? Well, how about planting entire pots with bedding plants that don’t flower? Here are a handful of plants whose outstanding foliage colour might make you forget about blossoms all together.
Red Abyssinian banana
Bananas on the prairies? Why not. If you want a truly exotic look in your containers, this red-leafed banana just might be the ticket. They don’t require any special care but are best not transplanted before June due to frost sensitivity.
Dinosaur kale
Unlike bananas, this ornamental kale is one of the most frost-tolerant bedding plants you’ll find. Its unique, wrinkled foliage is remarkably reminiscent of Dino the dinosaur’s back…not that I still watch cartoons or anything. Dinosaur kale is edible as well, but purportedly more bitter than regular kale.
Haight Asbury hibiscus
Haight Asbury was the epicenter of flower power in the 60s, but rather ironically, Haight Asbury hibiscus is noted for its brilliantly coloured, variegated foliage—not its flowers. Its bushy growth habit makes it a great feature plant.
‘King Tut’ grass
King Tut is a papyrus grass (think ancient Egypt and scrolls) that can grow nearly two metres tall in a single season. I use it as a focal plant in containers and find that it grows wonderfully inside my house over the winter. It’s long, straight stems yield mop-top growths with tiny brown seeds. King Tut is very easy to grow and seems to do well dry or wet.
Succulents
Succulents come in a wide array of colors, heights and textures and are drought tolerant to boot. Last summer, I grew a mixture of succulents in a planter that I watered exactly once and then let Mother Nature do the rest. It really is amazing just how tough these plants are.
Hopefully, this will encourage you to take up the leap year challenge. Really, there’s nothing to lose. After all, even if your neighbours perceive you as being slightly mad, you can just blame it on the leap year. Anyway, think of the alternative—I’m certain that choosing the wrong plants is a lot less problematic than choosing the wrong man.
The Rachael Ray Cookware Set is a ten-piece of pots, skillets and pans, for doing all the basic chores in the kitchen, from frying an egg, making pasta, to preparing that gourmet meal with special French sauces and wines.
This ten-piece cookware set comes in three colors of porcelain enamel in orange, green and blue, Hard Anodized black (with orange handles) and stainless steel (also with orange handles).
The ten pieces that come in this set are the most commonly used pieces of kitchen cookware:
With silicon handles that are oven safe up to 400 degrees F and nonstick finish, the glass lids allow the cook to maximize observation and heat, recommended to be washed by hand, with a limited lifetime warranty, measuring 23 x 13.5 x 12.6and shipping at 20lbs.
For a complete set of the most important pots and pans, with glass lids in the kitchen, Rachael Ray Cookware Set is the perfect ten-piece, that will hang well, and look good!
Hits & Misses: Tissue culture & gray mould
Question of the Week: What can I do to get my plants off to a good start this year?
Science & Technology: Plants at work
It isn’t a great revelation to say that flowers and Valentine’s Day go together like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But having flipped though Paisley’s Illustrated Language of Flowers, I was surprised to learn that the old Valentine’s flower formula of roses equal I love you, is just the beginning of the inextricable relationship between flowers and feelings. In fact, the moment you venture beyond roses, a whole unspoken language is revealed. For example, did you know that endive (Cichorium endivia) means “frugality”? And really, that should come as no surprise because anyone who would give his or her significant other a bouquet of endive probably still has the first dollar they ever made. The variegated tulip (Tulipa spp.), on the other hand, means “beautiful eyes” and is bound to put any guy onto the starting line of the romance all-star team. Of course, if all stories I’ve been hearing about forgotten Valentine’s Days are true, I would say that the most appropriate flower for a lot of men would have to be Love Lies Bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus), which appropriately means “hopeless not heartless.” Hmm…it could just be the romantic in me, but to my way of thinking, if you have a heart, there’s always hope.
Amaranthus caudatus a perfect pick for hopeless romantics.
Hits & Misses
Hit: Tissue Culture
I’ve never seen as many wonderful canna lilies as I have this year. And they’re not just beautiful, either—they’re incredibly vigorous, too. The reason for their outstanding performance can be attributed, largely, to one thing: tissue culture. Tissue culture is a propagation method that involves harvesting the tiniest tips of plants and then growing the tips into disease-free transplants. Worldwide, cannas are gaining notoriety for being infected with viruses, and the old propagation method of simply digging and dividing roots just accelerates the spread of the disease. Tissue culture circumvents the disease problem and assures growers and gardeners that the cannas will be clean. In my opinion, tissue culture is the only way to go.
Miss: Gray Mould
Fuzzy-leafed cuttings can be a bit of a pain to root. This year, a few of the geraniums succumbed to disease because their leaves didn’t dry out thoroughly enough between the frequent mistings we gave them. Diseases such as gray mould love that environment. Warmth and moist geranium leaves are all it needs to become established, and it can multiply very rapidly under these conditions. The solution? Simple. Ensure that free-standing foliar water is kept to a minimum.
Question of the Week
What can I do to get my plants off to a good start this year?
One of the first things that my mother taught me about growing plants was that watering is one of the most important tasks. The second was that a sturdy water wand with a flood nozzle is essential. The gentle but high-volume shower of droplets delivers a good soaking, without bowling over plants. A high-quality rubber hose is a must, too. Vinyl hoses crack and are difficult to handle, while a good rubber hose remains supple and easy to move around the garden. And if you prefer to water with a can, I recommend investing in a good galvanized metal one, such as a Haws model. Besides being durable, they are perfectly balanced in your hand and have long spouts to make reaching plants much easier.
Science & Technology
Plants at Work
A simple way to increase employee job satisfaction is to add plants to the working environment. According to research from Texas A&M University, employees who worked in offices that had plants and windows reported higher overall quality of life scores. In fact, the no plants/no windows group was the only one that stated that they felt miserable. Hats off to the Texas A&M University researchers for a scientific approach to the plants-equal-happiness equation, but I can’t say that I am surprised by the results.
Did You Know?
Ethiopia’s national flower is the canna lily.
“Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.”
–e.e. cummings
