Third installment in my series 10 Ways to Beat Garden Withdrawal in Winter…
#8: Visit a conservatory to see gardens under glass. Unfortunately, Boston is lacking a large botanical conservatory. (It had a chance with the Darwin Project, but that project fell through.) But there are a few smaller indoor gardens in the area that are worth a visit during these cold and grey winter months.
Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston, MA: Their orangerie is a lovely spot to find yourself in the winter with lush palms and flowering citrus. Worth the 45 minute trip from Boston, especially when combined with cross-country skiing around nearby Wachusett Reservoir.
Wellesley College Botanical Garden in Wellesley, MA: A small collection, but worth the free visit if you are in Wellesley. The fern room is splendid.
Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston, MA: Everyone loves the courtyard in this place, but it drives me nuts that you can’t actually walk into the space to experience it from within. I am sure this is for good reason (crowd control or conforming to Isabella’s rules), but it destroys the potential for plant-human interaction that make spaces like these so enjoyable.
104 days until 2010 planting begins….
Speaking of seed catalogs… the Seed Savers Exchange Catalog arrived yesterday… and it is dreamy. So well designed and with such great photos.
Second installment in my series 10 Ways to Beat Garden Withdrawal in Winter…
#9: Order free seed catalogs. And then fall asleep with them in bed. And dream about parts of the world where people are lucky enough to garden all year. And wake up feeling OK about the fact that it is so cold outside it might hurt.
120 days until 2010 planting begins….
First installment in my series 10 Ways to Beat Garden Withdrawal in Winter…
#10: Buy tropical plants for inside the house. Like this lovely orchid (x Miltassia Charles M. Fitch ‘Izumi’) that I just got from Mahoney’s in Allston. If only we could heat the house better so it would feel a bit more tropical.
As we flirt with single digit nighttime temps, the garden has definitely gone into hibernation.
I guess I should rename my blog to 28 (mostly empty) pots. Many of my plants are dormant or dead from the two rounds of frost we’ve had, so the roof garden is looking pretty sparse these days.
I’m already looking forward to when the seed catalogs arrive and I can start planning next season’s garden.
I am all about hanging on to warm weather these days. So for about $25, I have made a really cheap season extender for the veggie box. I mounted some PVC pipe to the sides of the box with copper pipe straps. The PVC is bent across the box to form supports for clear sheets of plastic. This setup ends up resembling and functioning like a mini greenhouse.
We’ve had some pretty chilly weather in the past two weeks, but this contraption warms up in the day from the sun and protects the winter greens from cold temperatures. If it keeps working, we should have a new batch of radishes and arugula by the end of the month.
After 3 months of waiting since the figs appeared on our fig plant, we have ripe figs! There wasn’t a tag on the plant when we bought it, but we think we have Brown Turkey figs. We ate the first two figs today with one of our favorite blue cheeses, Valdeón. Delicious.
The growing season is definitely coming to a close as Fall settles into the Northeast. But the garden is still an exciting place. The garlic has been planted. The winter greens are really taking off. Our figs are finally (!) ripening (photos coming soon).
