The foxgloves, like just about everything else in the Atwell garden this year, are lookin’ good. Photo by Tom Atwell The gardens this year have been lush, early and fast. As I get older, slower and softer, it gets harder to keep up.
Because we never really had winter this year, blossoms of crocuses and iris reticulata started popping up on our snow-free property as early as March 8 – when it is still technically winter and a time that I once considered the best of the skiing season. An early April snowstorm melted quickly and didn’t slow production a bit. Last year’s cool, rainy weather limited our vegetable production and muted the beauty of our flowers.
So this year, I was hoping for an active, successful gardening season. And I am in luck: both the flowers and the vegetables have done wonderfully so far. Encouraged by the early blossoms, I planted lettuce in a cold frame on March 10, and we were eating home-grown lettuce in our sandwiches by mid-April.
As a test, the same day I also planted lettuce outside the cold frame. A few of the seeds sprouted, but the greens never became large enough to eat. We planted beets and carrots in the cold frame about the same time, and we expect to be eating those soon.
The Andromeda bushes bloomed prolifically this spring, outshining even the forsythia. Photo by Tom Atwell The highlight of the early-blossoming shrubs was the Andromeda (heath family Ericaceae), along with rhododendron and mountain laurel. The Andromeda was in full,.