By Carol Cichorski, on May 15th, 2012 Sometimes you change a word in a saying and it is still absolutely perfect. I agree with
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.
I also agree with
The best time to plant a wisteria is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.
It’s easy to pass wisteria by at the garden center when you know it will be many years before it blooms. It’s not easy to pass it by at Morton. It’s darn near impossible. Between the fragrance and the flowers, it was a people magnet this weekend.
Our wisteria is rather sad. Actually, our wisteria gets credit for just being alive. When Daisy gave us a piece from her yard, we temporarily put it in the vegetable garden. We knew it didn’t belong there, but we planned to find a place for it in the sun, a place with a strong support. The operative word is ‘planned’, as that is about all we ever did. Mike finally tried to move it years later, but it had quite the tap root. He dug out as much as he could and transplanted it. That part died. The tap root refuses to give up and this year it got its first bloom.
 We surrender. A plant that wants to live that much deserves to live. We do want it to live – we just don’t want it to take down the fence. It will take a long time till our wisteria is filled with flowers as pretty as this one at Morton, so we have time to think about a stronger support.
Apparently it can bloom with limited sun. Ours is in a rather shaded area, and we are not going to try moving it again.
Speaking about something that is worth the wait…how about this cutie. I bet she was worth the wait too.
Do you want to know what else is blooming in the May garden? To see what other bloggers have blooming on the 15th of every month, visit “May Dreams Gardens – Bloom Day” for our Garden Bloggers’ Bloom day entries.
Looking for a dahlia or plant club sale this weekend? Here ya go:
Rolling Meadows Hometown Plant Sale
I’ll be there on Saturday, May 19th
9 AM – 2 PM
William D. Ahrens Building at 3200 Central Road
Elk Grove Garden Club Plant Sale
Mike will be there on Saturday May 19th
10 AM – 3 PM
Farm House Museum Campus at 399 Biesterfield Road
Central States Dahlia Society Plant Sale
Saturday, May 19th
10 AM – 2 PM
Kinsch’s Garden Center, 301 W Johnson St., Palatine
By Carol Cichorski, on May 11th, 2012 There was a time when my zinnia bed looked like this:
 Pretty impressive, right? They are still short in the picture as it was only July. They quickly grew 3 – 4 feet tall and bloomed all summer. They got lots of sun, and enough air circulation that powdery mildew was non-issue.
But I also really wanted River Birch trees. The Birch won, and the zinnia bed became the home for 3 trees. I love the bark and we really needed some trees in our yard. But, oh, those zinnias. I could not get them out of my head.
So here we go again. Mike made me a new zinnia bed, and it will soon be filled with State Fair zinnias, which we can look at while sitting under the birch you see in the background. I accept no substitutes. Really, I don’t!
By Carol Cichorski, on May 5th, 2012 I welcome you to ‘Zone 5 Favorites on the 5th’. I’ve started posting on the 5th of every month, redirecting visitors to a favorite posting relative to zone 5.
On this 5th day of the 5th month, I could gripe that our brick path isn’t done. But I’m not going to. Never mind that the path was started on April 16th, almost 3 weeks ago.
You might comment that it’s just a path for gosh sake, and we should have finished it already. Ya, right. I have to admit that our brick path has gotten only this far.
It has been 2 steps forward, 1 step back, and then no time to step at all. Even now, its past midnight as I write this, and Mike and I need to be at the Bloomingdale Plant Sale (201 S. Bloomingdale Rd.) to start selling dahlias at 9 AM.
Instead of being concerned that the project we started on April 16th isn’t done, I’m going to be inspired by a completed project. I quote Carolyn, from This Grandmother’s Garden, who says “For six years we dreamed of a beautiful Flagstone Patio where we could sit back and enjoy the beautiful landscape we had created.”
Compared to six years, perhaps I should consider 3 weeks to be just a drop in the bucket, an insignificant ripple in the space/time continuum. With great optimism, I will look forward to the day that my paths and patio are done, rivaling Carolyn’s.
 Photo by Carolyn of This Grandmother's Garden In addition to the inspiring pictures, Carolyn has these articles on the actual process:
The articles get right down to the nitty gritty of building the patio. Carolyn’s handyman is her self-proclaimed ‘honeyman’. You’ve got to like a gal who says he is the “bombdiggity”.
Also check out her poetry and lovely photography. Carolyn may not be a zone 5 gardener, but one visit to her site and you’ll see why I send you there to celebrate Zone 5 – Favorites on the 5th.
I’ve invited other zone 5 bloggers to join me for Zone 5 – Favorites on the 5th. If that’s you, please leave a comment so everyone will know you are part of the gang.
If you are a reader hungry for zone 5 sustenance, please follow the blogger’s links to feed upon their favorite postings.
By Carol Cichorski, on May 2nd, 2012 I noticed that not every one of you showed up for Mike’s presentation last night, but I’m still going to share some dahlia growing secrets with you. Sure, you could have learned more if you were at the Lake Zurich Garden Club meeting, or at Mike’s presentation at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, but all is not lost.
Here are some tips for planting dahlias:
1 – What are you waiting for? Get that tuber started. In our zone 5, there could still be frost, so plant it inside for now. When it sprouts, start giving it some sunlight. It can go outside as long as the weather permits. If you want to start it outside, that’s ok too, but the ground is still cold, so planting in a pot indoors will expose the plant to warmer temperatures which will hasten the development. If you plant outdoors, watch the weather report. If it freezes, you’ll lose any sprouts that emerged unless you cover them at night.
2 – Don’t have any tubers to start? That’s even better. Get to a dahlia sale and buy an established plant. It will flower sooner anyway. There are sales in the Chicagoland area throughout May.
3 – Put a stake behind your plant right away. Better yet, plant the stake first so you don’t put the stake through the tuber or root system. That would be cruel. Mike uses half-inch rebar painted green. You can see by the picture below of Bodacious that this is not a wimpy plant. Do not use a wimpy stake.
4 – Tape a name tag to the stake. Use an ink that won’t fade in the sun. Mike has good luck with black Sharpies®.
5 – Dahlias love sun. Make sure they get at least 5 to 6 hours.
6 – When the dahlia gets about a foot tall, tie it loosely to the stake. If you get a lot of wind, you may want to do this even sooner. For gosh sake, don’t choke the poor thing.
7 – To fertilize or not to fertilize, that is the question. If you ask 10 dahlia growers, you’ll get 10 different answers. Mike traditionally puts in 1 tablespoon of Osmocote at planting. He puts the Osmocote in the bottom of the hole and mixes it in with the dirt at the bottom. Next he puts the plant in, and fills in the remaining soil. He has used Miracle Grow once a month and other chemical fertilizers, but is using them less and less and less and trying to go organic.
8 – Soak the plant the day that you plant it. Mike puts water with a little Miracle Grow in a bucket, submerges the entire pot, and watches the bubbles come up as it happily absorbs the moisture. When the bubbles no longer come up, set the plant in a place where it can completely drain. You now don’t need to worry about the plant drying out for at least a week.
9 – Want more information? Try the American Dahlia Society or the Colorado Dahlia Society.
10 – Stop reading this. Go and start those dahlias.
By Carol Cichorski, on April 24th, 2012 The wheels in my brain are turning. This is always a scary thing for Mike. He sees steam spurting out, fire spewing, and moving parts everywhere. I promised him a life of naps and homemade pierogis. Perhaps, just perhaps, that isn’t exactly what happened. He has yet to see a homemade pierogi. On the plus side, who needs the calories anyway? Exercise is much better for you. With this project, he will get exercise.
We had contractors out last year bidding on building us a patio and some pathways. We already have the bricks. Oh boy, do we have the bricks. You may remember these 15 pallets of bricks from postings last year.
That was when we learned that even with our own bricks, it would be $5,000 to $7,000 to have someone else do the work. That is not going to happen. So this brick pathway is going to be Mike’s initiation into doing some of the work himself. He hasn’t done anything like that before, but his motto is “figure it out”.
First, I have some figuring out to do. I need to know exactly what area I want him to work on. That is pretty easy – right in front of the barn shed doors. The steel plate in front of the doors is less than lovely. The surrounding grass is a problem, especially when it comes to cutting it. Though the lawnmower is right inside the barn, the shape of the area is not good for an easy mow. Brick will suit our low maintenance goal better in the long run. In the short run, there is a lot of work to be done.
This project needs to be done in tandem with others that will make good use of the rental equipment and good use of the dirt that is generated.
- To justify renting a sod-cutter, I will also get a zinnia bed and an extra 18″ of garden around the edge of what we call the ‘front 40′.
- To use up the dirt, we’ll add some to the zinnia bed and to one of the dahlia beds. More importantly, we’ll build up an area by the pond that really needs it.
See how quickly ‘pretty easy’ becomes ‘big project’!
By Carol Cichorski, on April 19th, 2012  Oh yes, we will have dahlias for sale. The big advantage to buying them at one of the sales is that you are getting a plant, not a tuber. This puts you way ahead of schedule compared to planting the tuber outside in mid-May.
It’s the same concept as annual flats – sure you can plant seeds outside in mid-May, but then you wait so long for them to look like anything. Dahlias purchased at a sale will start blooming some time in August and continue through frost.
They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, with plants typically over 3′ tall. You can plant them among your other plants, or have so many that they get their own garden. In our case, that would be two gardens. Yes, two gardens of just dahlias.
Some of ours are already outside hardening off.
 Mike started them inside in the middle of February. He starts with a million tubers (ok it only seems like a million). They get potted up, and they start sending up shoots. Each shoot becomes a plant. We were up to about 325 last week, and expect to have about 500 total.
Envious? You wouldn’t be if you saw our electric bill. On the other hand, you would be if you saw his two dahlia gardens in the fall. I cut flowers pretty much every day, and still there is an abundance of blooms on the plants.
Take a look at the picture below. You can tell this is a man’s garden – I guarantee you there are no cannons in my part of the garden.
Local plant sales that will have dahlias include:
Bloomingdale Garden Club Plant Sale
Mike and/or I will be there on Saturday, May 5th
9 AM – 2 PM
Bloomingdale Village Hall at 201 S. Bloomingdale Rd.
Central States Dahlia Society Plant Sale
May 5th & 6th
10 AM – 4:30 PM
Chicago Botanic Gardens
Rolling Meadows Hometown Plant Sale
I’ll be there on Saturday, May 19th
9 AM – 2 PM
William D. Ahrens Building at 3200 Central Road
Elk Grove Garden Club Plant Sale
Mike will be there on Saturday May 19th
10 AM – 3 PM
Farm House Museum Campus at 399 Biesterfield Road
Central States Dahlia Society Plant Sale
Saturday, May 19th
10 AM – 2 PM
Kinsch’s Garden Center, 301 W Johnson St., Palatine
If you are looking for sales outside of the Chicagoland area, let me recommend the Colorado Dahlia Society website.
By Carol Cichorski, on April 15th, 2012 Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world. ~Virgil A. Kraft
I bring you the beauty He has brought to the garden I tend.
Candytuft
Coral Bells
PJM Rhododendron
Lungwort
Red tulips and pansies
Senetti Blue Bicolor (annual)
Pachysandra
Hyacinths
Pansies
Rock cress
Do you want to know what else is blooming in the April garden? To see what other bloggers have blooming on the 15th of every month, visit “May Dreams Gardens – Bloom Day” for our Garden Bloggers’ Bloom day entries.
Do you want to know where and when Mike will have dahlias for sale? Our first sale is May 5th. More details coming soon.
By Carol Cichorski, on April 9th, 2012 Pinkeye and invasive plants have something in common – you don’t want to share them. Any more details on Pinkeye would constitute TMI, so let’s just say having it this weekend did keep me away from the grandchildren, but did not keep me out of the garden. There I spent the afternoon dealing with invasive plants as I continue aiming towards a low maintenance garden.
We hope to get together with Mom, our kids, and these two next weekend. By then, I should be all done with the contagious Pinkeye.
The invasive plants that got booted out of the garden are gooseneck loosestrife and monarda. I’m not going to show you a picture of them in bloom, because you would want them. The gooseneck is aptly named, as its delicate white flower has a beautiful arching shape. Monarda, or bee balm, is a plant we had admired again and again, then finally got last year. It tends to be a very large bush-like plant covered with flowers. There is a reason it’s large – you can’t keep it small.
Like so many invasive plants, if I had gooseneck loosestrife where it could not escape, perhaps it would have been a good thing. I did not. The long runners weave their way through the roots of other plants, making it hard to remove. If you leave just a little bit, it will come back with a vengeance. I had already tried restricting the loosestrife by putting it in a large container in the ground. That didn’t work and I am just not willing to go there again. I basically took out everything in the entire area trying to remove the roots in one piece. I don’t expect total success, but I did make a gallant effort.
The monarda, though just a year old, had taken over an area about 3′ in diameter. Its roots are close to the top, yet I still had to extract the iris and Asiatic lilies that it had encroached upon. I’ve now done a bit of research and it looks like I may be in for the same long-term battle I’ve been having with the gooseneck.
I made smarter choices for replacements. The Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea I got at the Garden Writers Association last summer had come through the winter well. I put it in the back, where it can grow to its 6-7′ height. I’m looking forward to blooms like these. They start out white and change to pink/red.
I put the two Baby Lace Hydrangeas in front of that one. They will be about 3-4′ tall. 
Ok, so it doesn’t look like much just yet, but part of the gardening experience is anticipation. I’ll fill in with annuals this year and wait for the show!
By Carol Cichorski, on April 5th, 2012 I welcome you to ‘Zone 5 Favorites on the 5th’. I’ve started posting on the 5th of every month, redirecting visitors to a favorite posting relative to zone 5. Last month we visited This Garden Is Illegal for Tomato Tastings 2011.
This month I’d like to take you to Digging, but I can’t. Digging won the award for Best Gardening Blog from About.com. My thanks to those of you who voted for me. I would take you to Digging, but alas, we can’t go to a zone 8 garden from Austin, Texas today — that is not exactly zone 5.
We’ll trek over to A Way To Garden instead. Margaret’s blog is from zone 5, and took second place. I have chosen her posting on pruning lilacs. My lilacs are blooming, as you can see, so the timing is perfect. She even has tips about making the cut stems last longer. I wish my camera could have added fragrance to the photo; the flowers smell so lovely. Better yet, stop reading this and go cut some lilacs for your house.
I’ve invited other zone 5 bloggers to join me for Zone 5 – Favorites on the 5th. If that’s you, please leave a comment so everyone will know you are part of the gang.
If you are a reader hungry for zone 5 sustenance, please follow the blogger’s links to feed upon their favorite postings.
By Carol Cichorski, on March 31st, 2012 This is about all of those great pictures that I haven’t taken. Because now I can! This is for all of the times I would have liked to brighten a picture. Because now I can! And about all of those times I wanted clear and crisp detail. Because now I can! And I can select my focus area, blurring out other areas, as you can see below.
There are advantages to having a son who is a professional photographer. Though I do wonder how we have reached a point in our lives where I am getting his hand-me-downs. In this case, its a very old digital camera, professional quality none-to-less. In its day, it probably went for $4,000. Now it wouldn’t cost much more than the little Canon Sure Shot I use for most of my pictures. I love the ease of use and small size of my Sure Shot, but there is a trade off. See paragraph one if you have a short memory.
 Walking around with the Canon EOS-1 is impressive, and a chore. I’d say it weighs about the same as a bowling ball. The batteries don’t last long, and like the camera, they are huge. The pictures will be even better when I get a zoom lens and I learn how to do the settings. Still, when I took it to the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, I was SOMEBODY. It screams “Don’t mess with me – I’ve got a big camera, a speaker’s badge, and a press badge. I am a Blogging Goddess.”
The up-side is the quality of picture and what Kevin can do with it. The format is TIFF, not JPEG. His LightRoom program works well with TIFF files. I certainly can’t say I’ll use the big camera all the time, or that I’ll be able to spend the time to learn LightRoom myself, and then spend the time to edit the pictures. That sounds more like Kevin than me.
Here’s Kevin when he held the leading role in a local production of ‘Singing in the Rain’.
 Photo and creativity by Kevin Penczak
Gotcha! This is really Kevin working his magic to create something not quite real. You can see how its done at KevinPenczak.com.
Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter. ~Ansel Adams
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