On a warm spring day, honeybees emerge from their hives searching for the first taste of nectar from the earliest spring blooming plants. Their legs are covered with orange pollen as they fly through a bed of snowdrops, stopping at each bloom to feed. Sitting in the garden, listening to the sound of buzzing wings and watching them methodically visit the flowers is a welcome sight after a particularly brutal winter.
Daffodils are a legacy plant.
Once planted, they persist for decades, often seen blooming alone, years after the home they were planted by is gone.
In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s properties in Butler County were purchased to create Lake Arthur in Moraine State Park. Muddy Creek was damned in 1968, and the lake was full two years later.
Last spring, while kayaking I saw some daffodils in the forest on the South Shore of the lake. As I walked around the area, a foundation was discovered. This property was bought all those years ago, thinking it would be under water, but ironically would have been an amazing lake front location.
This year I made a point to paddle there again and enjoyed a shore lunch with the company of those daffodils, which were at their peak.
Being obsessed with daffodils, I think I was able to identify the variety as ‘Van Sion,’ one of my favorite heirloom cultivars. The double flowers have a unique fragrance which can only be enjoyed during their brief blooming period.
‘Van Sion’ is the first daffodil I ever recognized in my first garden back in Ohio during the 1980’s.
I can’t help but wonder who planted the Lake Arthur daffodils and if they ever realized the flowers continued for so long without any help from the gardener. Did they come back when the lake was full to see their former home?
Daffodil Hill
I often tell the story of my introduction to daffodils as a child visiting the graves of my grandparents at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. It’s the home of Daffodil Hill, created in the 1940’s and something my mother always talked about.
When creating a version of the hill in my own garden, in memory of my grandparents, hundreds of bulbs are added each fall.
Planning is Everything
It's all about planning to create those drifts of flowers and for most of the rest of the garden. Look at what’s blooming in your landscape, take a photo or draw a map so that it’s easy to figure out where to plant when the time is right. In my daffodil hill, I’m putting thin green stakes in the ground to earmark planting areas.
Getting a plan together for the garden in general should be one of the fun parts of the hobby. Although even the best laid plans will change as the seeds sprout or when plants are nestled into the cool soil.
It's a good idea to map out this year’s vegetable garden to know which seeds or plants to buy. Crop rotation is also a consideration, it’s always better to move last year’s crop to a new location each season, when possible.
This is the time to direct sow seeds of cool weather crops like lettuce, peas, radishes, carrots, beets, Swiss chard, arugula and other leafy greens that don’t care about frost.
Local nurseries will also have flats of these plants, to get a jump on the season.
Succession Planting
It's great to use both plants and seeds to extend the harvest. Summer temperatures will cause the cool weather crops to go to seed, called bolting and then something else will be planted in its place.
This is called succession planting and it’s another way to plan for the garden. What will go in the ground when the lettuce is done? Maybe more lettuce, or maybe beans that love warm weather. Gardeners are only limited by their imagination. It’s an exciting puzzle to mull over each season, planning makes the job easier.
Pansies are one of earliest flowers for the garden. My annual plan for them never changes. Containers are filled with the cheery blooms and will put on their show until July 4th, when it becomes too hot for them. They are replaced with annuals, which are half price at the nursery. When frost is on the horizon the pots are planted again with pansies, which can grow all the way though winter if the season is mild.
Next month, when there’s no chance of frost left, the tender crops like beans, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and other vine crops are planted.
Planning Tomatoes
This is another instance where planning for succession planting will make for a successful garden.
Tomatoes in particular will be helped by this type of planning. The first crop is usually planted the third week of May. Leaving room for later plantings will help produce disease free plants.
When tomatoes are exposed to nighttime temperatures below 50 degrees, often accompanied by cold rain, they are prone to early blight and/or septoria leaf spot. These two diseases can confound gardeners. Under those cool conditions, fungal spores which are always in the soil splash up on the foliage. When the leaves stay wet for a day, the spores work their way into the plant. Later in the season, when things get hot and humid, the diseases manifest themselves. The leaves at the bottom of the plant turn yellow with brown spots and work their way up the plant. It doesn’t usually kill the tomato plant but slows it down and defoliates the plant too.
Putting a plant in the ground between June 15th and July 15th gives the tomato what it longs for, an Italian summer, with warm soil and air temperatures. This is where planning is also crucial, as the tomato season is shortened with the late planting.
In that case gardeners need to choose a tomato that puts on fruit quick. Varieties like ‘Sungold,’ ‘Early Girl,’ ‘Fourth of July,’ patio tomatoes and most other cherry varieties would work. Planting a giant beefsteak that late in the season doesn’t allow enough time for the tomato to ripen.
Last year a gardening friend challenged me to hold a late planting competition. Two listeners of my radio show and myself planted a ‘Sungold’ on July 31 and everyone harvested tomatoes by the end of the season.
This succession planting and planning works for the entire garden. When thinking about vegetables, three different plantings from May 15 through June 15 will keep the cucumber beetles at bay as two of the three plantings will be off the cycle of the beetle.
Five or more plantings of lettuce will keep the harvest coming, two more bean plantings do the same and it works with lots of other plants too.
Take some time and make a planting plan for this year and it will make the garden much more successful and who knows, in 50 years someone might be asking, “I wonder who planted those daffodils?”
Doug is taking gardeners to Sicily and Southern Italy for a wonderful 13-day trip this October!
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He’ll visit Palermo, Monreale, Agrigento, Valley of the Temples, Piazza Armerina, Giardini Naxos, Taormina, Strait of Messina, Winery Tour & Tasting, Matera, Sorrento, Positano, Pompeii, enjoy a local farmhouse lunch and visit many other places.
You can find all the details at his website.
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Host of "In Doug's Garden" on CBS KDKA-TV Streaming
Host of the Talking Trees podcast for The Davey Tree Expert Company
Consultant for Farm to Table Buy Fresh Buy Local
Columnist for Pittsburgh Earth Day's "The Green Voice"
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