White Lily Dreams – A Garden Blog

I got a couple of new vines this week – an Issai Kiwi and a Valiant Grape.

Issai Kiwi

The Issai Kiwi doen’t require a male kiwi vine for pollination, although I’ve heard that it will produce more fruit, which is larger if it does have a male plant nearby.

The Issai can also produce fruit earlier than most other kiwi’s, which can take up to 4 years to get established and produce fruit.

This is a hardy kiwi, and it’s supposed to be smaller, and less fuzzy than store bought kiwi’s.

Supposedly you can eat them right from the vine.

There are a few fruits on our vine, so hopefully we’ll get to taste one this year.

Since I am in zone 3-4 the tag said to plant it in a confined space.

Hopefully it will do ok, I’ve been looking for a kiwi for awhile.

Valiant Grape

I’ve been toying with the ideas of a grape, but with the way I’ve been feeling lately I wasn’t too sure about burying the grape vines, which I’ve heard that we should do here.

After seeing my Uncle’s grape vines, however, I wanted some grapes.

Plus we’re putting up a metal shed, and I wanted a vine to screen the shed a little, and what better way to do it than with edibiles?

After I did some research on the Valiant (which was of course, after I bought it – you can get enough information from the tag, right?) I read that they are hardy up to -70 and can survive in Canada without winter protection.

The valiant is a purple grape, and it’s supposed to be good for red wine, jelly, and eating fresh, which was the most important to me.

We ended up buying some black metal trellises for the grape and the kiwi.

I hope they will be strong enough to support the vines, if they aren’t I guess we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

If you have experience with growing either of these in MN or other Zone 3-4 or colder climates I’d love to hear about it.

I’d especially love to know what your kiwi’s or any kind of grapes or growing on.

I’m upgrading the White Lily Dreams forums, so they’re currently down for maintenance.

Hopefully they’ll be up and working soon, so stop by and say hi, tell us about your garden, or see if anyone has any plants you’d like to trade for – or offer up your extras.

Ok – the forums are back up, and better than ever I hope!

All new members will have their first 3 posts moderated, I hope this will help prevent spam.

If you notice anything funny let me know.

Thanks.

We just got back from a 1 1/2 week vacation to visit my parents at their new home in North Carolina.

After we left we realized that we forgot to show the pet sitter how to fill up the Aerogarden, so I was really worried about it.

When we came home it was completely out of water, but I added some more, and it seems to be doing ok.

Of course, I just realized that I didn’t really check the pump, but it’s not making funny noises or anything.

Since we were gone for so long our pet sitters decided that they should cut the grass in the front yard, and ended up cutting down all of our tulips except for one. I was so disappointed I could have cried when I found out.

Two of them were blooming when we left, and three or four more had blooms coming.

I really wanted to see what color they were!

I also know that the leaves are supposed to stay on the plants until they turn brown, so they can store energy for the bulb, so I’m really hoping that the tulips will survive after being so mistreated.

Our asparagus still isn’t up, although we have about 5 strawberry blossoms on one of our strawberry plants.

The alpine strawberry planter was a little dried out, but I’m sure the rain today took care of that.

The blueberry bush that we just planted also looked a little dry, but it is doing better than I thought it would – it looked a little dry when we planted it, and I haven’t put mulch around it yet.

I should have got some NC pine straw since I hear that pine straw helps provide the acidity the plants need.

Our Snowsweet apple, raspberries, and Carmine Jewel bush cherry are doing really well, although they don’t have blossoms.

I really want to taste a Snowsweet apple because I want another fruit tree, but I don’t want another Snowsweet one if I don’t like the taste of the fruit – I’m an apple snob, what can I say?

I want one that I can eat fresh, because while pies and cobblers are delicious, they aren’t the healthiest things in the world.

The Carmine Jewel cherry grew a lot. I’m surprised at how big the leaves are.

I’m so excited to taste them too.

They are supposed to be sour, but still sweet enough to eat off of the bush, so we’ll see.

Two of the lilacs, the Miss Canada lilac and the Yankee Doodle lilac are also blooming.

Yankee Doodle just had a tiny batch of purple flowers on the side of the bush near the fence, but the Miss Canada had enough flowers so that we could see the pink blossoms from the windows. I was surprised when we went out to look and realized that most of them weren’t all the way open yet. I can’t wait to see them when they are.

How is your garden growing?

We woke up yesterday morning and all the tomatoes in the Aerogarden were leaning a little to the left.

It doesn’t really look like there is any way to prop them up, since the pods are so small, and the rest of the plant is supported in water.

There are about 8 tomatoes growing on the two plants, so maybe we will get to harvest them.

I certainly hope so, I’ll be disappointed if we’ve done all of this work for nothing.

Some of the leaves on the tomatoes did die because they were growing right next to the light, and the lights are as tall as we can get them.

I’ve also discovered that even if the light that says you need more water isn’t on, the Aerogarden might need more water.

We are having to add water every few days, and the light isn’t coming on to tell us we need to – we just happened to check and realized that there wasn’t enough water.

I’m not sure if there is a sensor, and we aren’t letting it get low enough to trigger the sensor, or if the water lights are on a timer.

After I looked I found several reports from people saying their tomato plants, lettuce, or herbs fell over, so it looks like this is a common problem.

Has it ever happened to you?

We went a little overboard and bought 4 lilacs yesterday.

I had been wanting a sensation lilac, but at the same time I was nervous since I’m sensitive to some fragrances, and I didn’t know how I’d handle the fragrance since the lilacs are going on the other side of the fence from my favorite (and only) Moon Valley swing.

Although I’m getting a hankering to move the swing DH likes it where it is, and I’m tired of the grass dying underneath it, so I’d like to keep it where it is for a few more years.

Anyways, we found out that the large sensation lilac was $34.99, and it was only twice as big as the $10.99 lilacs, so I decided that three lilacs were better than one – we also were planning on putting them in front of a big fence, so we really did need more than one.

I picked out a sensation lilac, and told Jeff he could pick out the others since he’d told me he’d wanted lilacs but I wouldn’t let him have them before.

He picked out the yankee doodle lilac, which was my second favorite, and then the Miss Kim, which I thought was pretty, but I’d read a few message board posts from people who weren’t happy with it because the flowers aren’t traditional lilac flowers, so I was a little unsure about it.

If only people would take pictures of the whole tree/bush/flower instead of just the blooms, it would make deciding so much easier.

Then I read that the Miss Kim lilac had burgandy leaves in the fall, so I was sold.

But then I went back and had to look at the Miss Canada lilac, and it is a pink late season bloomer since all of the other ones are purple or purple and white, and didn’t say anything about the blooming period I started wanting that one, and trying to decide if I would trade another one for it.

Then my wonderful husband decided we should get a Miss Canada in addition to the others, since I was torn, and we both liked it, and it was a good thing we did – we had enough room for it when we got home, and three lilacs would have probably looked to bare in the area in front of the fence.

We ended up planting the trees in reverse order of size, because we don’t want them to grow too big and get in the neighbors yard.

Hopefully they won’t look bad since they range in size from 6-10 feet with a 6-10 foot spread, and since they’ll all have different colored blooms, at some different times.

The Miss Kim and the yankee doodle have buds on them now, so did some of the common white and common purple lilacs at the store.

There was one smaller and one larger sensation lilac with buds, but they looked kind of crunchy, and I wasn’t sure that was how they were supposed to look so I didn’t get them.

I can’t wait to see them in bloom, and to smell them!

Now my only question is will the rabbits eat them?

If they will, I’ve got to get some protection up ASAP.