Comments for PlantsWise

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Tovah Martin

Tovah Martin — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:23:18 +0000

Thank you, Corey! Hear that everyone? Mark your calendars, warm up your clicking finger and have it poised over the order button. This will be a race for the Festival hyacinths — let the best bulb fanatic win. I promise a new blog soon — I’ve been on the road lots, you’ll see the fruits of my labors on the newsstands coming up soon!

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Corey

Corey — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:14:30 +0000

I just checked Van Engelen’s website and they state they will have their updated list for Fall 2012 ready on May 14. Let’s see if they continue to carry the Festival hyacinths! I received excellent bulbs (hyacinth, narcissus and allium) from them last year.

Comment on About Tovah Martin by Tovah Martin

Tovah Martin — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:42:24 +0000

Way Cool!

Comment on About Tovah Martin by Beryl

Beryl — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:06:33 +0000

Hey Tovah! Love your blog, I just produced a piece on building a terrarium and I thought you or your readers might just enjoy it! It was so fun to make and I learned so much about plants and mosses. So fascinating!
Anyway, here is the video! Let me know what you think: http://youtu.be/_H-q6KgVmj8

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Tovah Martin

Tovah Martin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:53:02 +0000

Talk about discovering buried treasure, Matt! A hyacinth that you can live intimately with! And to think that it just found its way to you, like a character in a Charles Dickens novel. I’m game. Making a note to order both ‘Purple Voice’ (what a name!) and ‘Queen of the Violet’. It’s worth a fling. I was just lecturing at White Flower Farm last weekend = and even though most foxtail hyacinths look overpumped to me, they have a border of the combinations that they sell and they were sumptuous. But what I really liked best was the ‘Festival White’ in their white border. Even as it faded, it looked smart. As a forcer, though, I would go with the foxtail types. Thank you for your kind words, Matt, they mean the world to me.

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Matthew Di Clemente

Matthew Di Clemente — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:52:44 +0000

Dear Tovah,
Thank-you for your beautiful blog and books! I am at this moment smelling a hyacinth formerly unknown to me which I believe is called ‘Purple Voice’. I say I believe it is ‘Purple Voice’ because I purchased it among dozens of other purple hyacinths of the typical ‘Blue Pearl’ sort but it came up …different. It is a more vibrant, warmer, pink-purple. Could it be ‘Queen of the Violets’??
Why I wanted to mention this plant is because it has a different fragrance. It is spicy, refined, begs to be sniffed again and again. Its fragrance is perceptable among the chorus of other hyacinths blooming today. It totally different from the strong ‘Blue Pearl’ type hyacinths, and the merely green smelling pale pink sort. I thought you might enjoy this one for forcing. I know you have a love/hate relationship with the scents of certain bulbs.
I was hoping you could confirm the spicy sweet hyacinth as “Purple Voice”, but if you cannot, perhaps you will try it out this fall. I will be ordering at least a few, and will take special care of the bulbs that I have for comparison. One last note – their unique coloration makes an electric combination with the more traditional “Blue Pearl” type.

Best wishes,
Sincerely,
Matt

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Tovah Martin

Tovah Martin — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:40:27 +0000

Being the optimist I am, I would say that maybe this will be the year without lily beetles — except that they’ve already converged. I found a swarm ravaging my fritillarias…

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Corey

Corey — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 01:29:52 +0000

Lily beetles…I feel your pain. I am dreading the day they make it out here!

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Tovah Martin

Tovah Martin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:04:44 +0000

No, the reason why you didn’t hurl a species tulip at that squirrel is because you knew he’d just catch it in his greedy little mouth, gobble it up, and go looking for its buried kin. LOVE Burnett’s quote — wonderful! And I’ll recite it to the bulbs this summer when they should be getting busy having “little ‘uns.”

Using your comparison with petunias and other bedders, it seems to me that bulbs are a very economical way to garden. And gardening isn’t a luxury, it’s survival. Granted, sometimes it seems as though I’m throwing money to the wind with hybrid tulips = but that’s my one indulgence. Alas, lilies are no longer in my stars thanks to lily beetle. I love them, they used to love me, but now we’ve got a triangle going with the beetles…

Comment on Hyacinthus ‘Blue Festival’ by Corey

Corey — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:03:20 +0000

Tovah, I am flattered by your kind words and encouragement, especially since you are one of my all-time favorite garden writers.

I find it so strange (in a good way) that we all seem to have bulbs on the brain lately. This past weekend I started to reread “The Little Bulbs” by Elizabeth Lawrence because, although I enjoy my big, eye-popping daffodils and hyacinths, it is probably the so-called minor bulbs that I love even more. Even before I decided to do the Blue Festival/Tete-a-Tete combo, I decided to put in small clumps of three of my favorites here and there: Eranthis hyemalis, Chionodoxa sardensis and Scilla siberica. No more than 50 tiny bulbs of any one kind (budget constraints…sigh). But I am delighted to see that the survivors are busy ripening seed pods. I am thinking of putting in several hundred of each this fall.

In terms of rodents, the bane of my urban existence at the moment is squirrels. They destroy and eat everything in sight, yet people around here keep insisting they are cute and continue to feed them, on purpose! I probably couldn’t throw a hybrid tulip bulb in any random direction without hitting at least 5 of them at any one time. (In case you are wondering, a species tulip bulb might be too precious to waste on throwing at squirrels.) That was another reason for choosing hyacinths and daffodils. Squirrels hate them–foliage, bulbs, flowers and all. And an enemy of my enemy is my friend…

As for alliums, I must admit that I have a true, insane, utter weakness for them. They are one of my top 5 plant genera. I also planted them by the hundreds last fall (shhh…don’t tell anyone!). Supposedly they are generally rodent proof, but it seems that some species have less of the repellant “onion” scent than others. A case in point, Allium christophii. This lovely species is only very mildly onion scented at best. I was shocked to find that the evil squirrel brigade had discovered my A. christophii and were digging up the bulbs, chewing off the basal plates and discarding the rest. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I don’t know how they got to them since I tried to bury them deeply (at least 6 inches). Now, had they even thought of touching any of my newly planted lilies, I would have started breathing fire!

I was reminded, while reading “The Little Bulbs,” of a passage from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden” that says of bulbs:

“They’re things as helps themselves. That’s why poor folks can afford to have ‘em. If you don’t trouble ‘em, most of ‘em’ll work away underground for a lifetime an’ spread out an’ have little ‘uns.”

Now, if only more people, rich and poor alike, could afford to have bulbs we would be living in a very different world!

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