New perennials for fall 2013
As usual, we're putting
in a bunch of new perennials over the winter. The unusual part is
that over half of them are homegrown. As I've mentioned
previously, we set out five figs
in late July, four started from cuttings and one from a rooted shoot
found under our Chicago Hardy tree. I didn't blog about it, but I
also set out an Issai hardy kiwi at the same time, a bit later in the
summer I planted out a couple of Poorman gooseberries from our nursery
bed, and last week I transplanted five seedless grapes (Reliance,
Thomcord, and Marquis) to their new homes as well. Over half of
these new plants came from cuttings a reader sent us --- thank you,
Brian!
With so much bounty
coming our way for free, my annual $100 perennial budget stretched in
some interesting directions. We'll be adding a new variety of red
raspberry (Taylor) in the spring, and will be giving hardy kiwis another
shot with an Anna plant from One Green Word, as was recommended by another reader.
Last year's store-bought apple rootstock (Bud 9) will be stooled this
year and will let me graft new dwarf trees in spring 2015, but in the
meantime, I bought another five rootstocks of a larger variety (M7),
three of which will be grafted to new varieties, one of which will
expand Kayla's orchard, and one of which will go into our nursery bed to
be stooled in 2015. Five OHxF pear rootstocks will be spread out
in a similar manner (although I'll probably give Kayla two of
those). And, since I still had some cash left over in my budget, I
splurged on two named varieties of hybrid hazels --- Jefferson and Eta
--- since my previous hybrid hazel is from a few breeding generations previous to that.
So many exciting possibilities! What are you adding to your perennial garden this winter?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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