Bloom time: April-August
Light: full sun
Height: 2-3 feet foliage, 5-6 feet flowers
US Native: yes
New York Native: sort of; the USDA puts its range a bit into the hudson river valley; I don't think it makes it up to Albany, but it's definitely in the ballpark.
Edible: yes
According to the USDA, this is code for a variety of Yucca. Why they don't call it yucca, I don't know. But I never thought of yucca as something that would grow in the northeast, so I guess I've learned something. It's nice to know that something grows here that isn't the same shade of green as everything else.
The USDA says yucca provides minor amounts of food for birds. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plant Information Network says it's edible: leaves can be used in salads, fruit can be cooked and eaten after the seeds are removed. According to Native American Ethnobotany, it has medicinal uses, can be used to intoxicate fish, and can be used to make soap.
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Because of my abiding hatred of lawn mowing, I have a vision of eliminating most of the lawn and replacing it with perennials. Sure, perennials require care, but it's not the several-times-a-week care that a lawn requires. I've also learned that mowing is backbreaking, but weeding is therapeutic.
So, over the next n entries, I will try to compile information about perennials. Why is this necessary? Because the information I want is never in one place.
I'm going to take as a starting point this Month-By-Month Gardening New York[/a] book that I purchased to help me figure out how to garden in New York. The book sucks. The authors are big on showy European plants that require lots of care. The word "organic" comes up once or twice, but by and large they're into chemicals. They don't mention native species, and they recommend many plants that are classified as invasive in the many parts of the US, despite the fact that we really should not be sticking any of them in the ground on purpose.
I read somewhere that New York doesn't have any invasive plant laws; that is, they won't fine you if you have invasive plants in your lawn. But these people take it as a license to recommend plants that are illegal in Massachusetts, which is a 10-15 minute drive from here, and Connecticut, which is only slightly further away. It's irresponsible, but the rest of the gardening establishment isn't any better. So, I'm going to go down their list of perennials, try to find information on them, and figure out what I could put in my yard without having to rip it out immediately because it turned out to be a bad thing.
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So, tomorrow is supposed to be the last frost date here. I've finally found out what that means. There's a pdf at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/fre ... efrost.pdf that gives more detailed statistics for different levels of frost at different dates. So, here's Albany:
Spring:
Temperature, Probability, Date
36: 90% May 06, 50% May 21, 10% Jun 05
32: 90% Apr 21, 50% May 07, 10% May 24
28: 90% Apr 10, 50% Apr 23, 10% May 05
Fall:
36: 90% sep 12, 50% sep 24, 10% oct 6
32: 90% sep 19, 50% sep 29, 10% oct 10
28: 90% oct 03, 50% oct 19, 10% oct 28
Freeze Free Period:
36: 90% 145, 50% 126, 10% 107
32: 90% 163, 50% 144, 10% 126
28: 90% 192, 50% 175, 10% 158
So planting stuff after the alleged last frost date (50%) is bad if it doesn't like frost, since there's still a 10% chance of more frost two weeks out. Funny how no one tells you that in gardening books.
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I'm absolutely lousy at keeping a gardening journal. One of the reasons for starting a blog was the irrational hope that it would help me get organized. It didn't. Partly, it's the wrong tool. I found a great gardening social network site that has more appropriate journaling tools. I'll probably show up here and periodically bitch about the weather and talk about gardening in general. But I'll keep my actual gardening journal information over at myfolia.com.
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I have more sprouts today. A second cilantro has shown up. Two bell peppers sprouted... actually, 4 did, but 3 are in the same pot so at some point I'll have to sacrifice two of them. A ton of Thai chilis sprouted---I put a lot of seeds in the pot because they were so old I didn't think many of them would be fertile. At some point I'm going to have to pick and choose and cut a bunch of them off at the ground. I'll leave it a few days, though, since the nicest looking ones are all on the edge of the pot and are therefore apt to have roots only on one side of the stem. I'm not sure how much of a problem that will be.
I'm growing increasingly convinced that one of my volunteers is a tomato but that the others are all peppers. I'm going to have some kind of pepper overkill this year. But that's fine, because I can roast them and freeze them. Ripe bell peppers are always crazy expensive, and I love them. Green bell peppers are always much cheaper, but so gross tasting I have trouble imagining they're from the same plant. I can let them all ripen and not care that the plant might bear less as a result. And I'll probably kill some of them between now and fruit time anyway.
I looked up germination times on my previous post. It seems to be OK that the lavender hasn't sprouted, but what's with all of the other flowers? My lone nasturtium has a few more leaves, and is even taller, but not a single other one has peeked out of the dirt yet. Ditto for the marigolds, butt the two that have come up are so tiny that I feel less threatened by the others failure to show up.
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