Flower show tix available; tomatoes are up

Fans of Deering Oaks and the duck pond are in for a real treat at this year’s Portland Flower Show, to be held March 9-12 at the Portland Company on Fore Street. The city’s Parks and Recreation Department have collaborated with Friends of the Parks to put together an exhibit featuring the 1987 duck house, which was removed from the pond in the 1990’s. The duck house, which was auctioned off to Smiling Hill Farm for $1, has been donated back to the city by Smiling Hill owner Roger Knight, and will be back in the Oaks this year. The duck house will be the center of a floor exhibit including flowers, grass, and educational displays about the Oaks.

Show ticket prices this year range from $9 (senior advance purchase) and $10 (adult advance purchase) to $12 at the door. Children under 12 are admitted free with an adult. For more information,

"The Soul of Gardening," 2006 Portland Flower Show

I planted dozens and dozens of flower, vegetable and herb seeds indoors over the last two weeks, and the

Early Cascade tomato seedlings

were the first to emerge. The gardening season has begun.

If you don't like the Maine weather, wait a minute

Sure enough, winter came back with a vengeance this weekend, with gale force winds and bright sunshine causing havoc with plants that had started to emerge from dormancy. Fortunately, most of my vulnerable perennials were well mulched, but after a sad experience last year with flowering shrubs that were slow to awake in late spring (clethra, hydrangea) and poor flowering, I decided to wrap my Nikko Blue macrophylla hydrangea in advance of the predicted low temperatures of 4 degrees last night. I should have done it the night before, because the wind chill was off the scale. Not sure this will do any good, but at least there is some protection for the fragile buds, which drop off when touched.

Maine Garden Day, the annual gardening conference of Maine Cooperative Extension, has opened registration. This event at Central Maine Community College in Auburn is always a sell-out. Registration materials are online at
http://www.umaine.edu/umext/york/MG/mgbrochure.htm or click on link at right under "Flower Shows and Garden Events".

Winter gardening on the Hill

Absolutely amazing--the Montauk daisy in my yard has broken bud and is leafing out. This is one of very few perennials that didn't get a layer of straw mulch in December, topped by evergreen boughs. So I mulched it in hope of saving the buds that remain from the freeze that is sure to come with the full moon this week. I suspect that forsythia cut for forcing would blossom very quickly this year--the willow trees are already showing yellow bark.

Yesterday I inspected the plants in my two salad garden cold frames. The chard, spinach, claytonia and scallions have wintered over nicely and are started to grow again as the days lengthen. I opened the frames last night to allow the rain to water them, and planted some early spring crops: mache and scallions. More to come this week. The crops are covered with Reemay as Eliot Coleman recommends, and in a frame made from hay bales with wooden storm window tops. My neighbors have been harvesting carrots, lettuce, and other crops all fall and winter from their cold frames; normally these crops would have frozen even in the cold frame at this time of year, with the exception of the spinach.

Organizers of the Munjoy Hill garden tour, Hidden Gardens of Munjoy Hill, have announced July 9 as the date of this year's event. To volunteer to help with the tour, with publicity, or in other ways, contact Jaye Gorham at 774-0768 or jgorham@maine.rr.com.