Some tree peonies waking up very early in 2013

This year some of my tree peonies, mainly the ones that sprouted last year are waking up very early, even earlier than they did last year so I hope they know what they are doing. I do have a few set to sprout this year which are coming up early however those are not nearly as developed as these.

These are mainly Chinese tree peony seedlings. 

December peony buds, and buds for other plants 2012

With November and early December, temperatures will often fall withing the ideal vernalization zone of 40F to 45F which causes many plants to develop their buds in preparation for spring. For my climate, vernalization usually occurs once in the late fall, and then again by early spring as the plants produce the growth hormones needed for flowering, and overall vigor for the following year.

Here are some pictures of the tree & itoh peonies. The buds for the herbaceous peonies still haven't popped out of the soil yet so I didn't take pictures of those. They don't look like much now, but some of these may have enough energy stored from this year to produce flowers next year. They usually start swelling more by the beginning of March when daylight gets noticeably longer and temperatures start to rise.

Here are just a few of my tree/ itoh peony buds. It would be a very long post if I posted pictures of every one of them.

Growing Ensete Ventricosum Maurelii by the window

I decided to get a jump start on my Ensete Maurelii so that I can have bigger plants to bring outside by the spring time. I purchased these guys 3 weeks ago, and they have since put out a couple of leaves. The only thing I hope for is that their pseudo-stems stay healthy and strong, and giving them light from a south facing window will hopefully be enough.

There are 3 plants total.

November 13th 2012: They looked kind of skinny when they came out of the box.

Getting new bamboos on my road trip

last weekend, I happened to be in the area of a fellow bamboo collector so I got a few bamboos from him. I acquired phyllostachys Shanghai III, phyllostachys prominens, phyllostachys huangwenzhu inversa, and another cultivator of phyllostachys parvifolia. It was already getting dark by the time I got there so the pictures may be a bit blurry. Here are the groves.

Phyllostachys Shanghai III: This one behaves and looks just like Dulcis, except it may be a bit more vigorous with straighter culms.

Pictures of my garlic in the fall of 2012

Garlic tends to grow a little bit in the fall. The foliage is usually hardy enough to make it through our zone 6a winters without much damage, and they come back much stronger by March. I grow around 2000 cloves each year not including the bulbils that take 1.5 years to reach full size.

Here are some of my garlic beds

Overwintering the bananas and other plants for winter of 2012/2013

This year I'm overwintering all the bananas with barrels that have their bottom cut out. The steps are.

1. Cut off all the excess foliage which can't survive the winter anyways
2. Shrink wrap all the trunks
3. Add additional insulation if necessary
4. Stick a cut open plastic barrel over the entire banana stem
5. Fill the barrel with leaves
6. Add additional leaf bags with leaves if the stem is too long
7. Shrink wrap the entire set up to keep it stable

Here's the musa mekong giant which was much easier to over-winter since it is still very small.

Progress of the musa mekong giant "itinerans"

I tried purchasing musa mekong giant last year however they never made it through the winter when I tried planting them outside. The appeared to still be alive by the spring time however too much moisture in the spring must have killed them out so I ended up ordering a couple more of them from eBay this spring. Here's the links to when I tried them last fall.
http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-banana-plants-musa-mekong-giant.html

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2011/10/fall-update-on-banana-plants-2.html

I bought them as tiny plants in 2 inch pots some time in April of this year to replace the ones I lost last fall.

3 May 2012

Plant 1 on the right, and plant 2 on the left.