Our transplanting crew is back to work, and we had gorgeous weather for our first week. We’re transplanting everything! Seedlings, bare roots shrubs, perennial divisions–everything! And in between the transplanting we get to take breaks and catch up with each other’s lives.
The weekly seedling report: Monarda citriodora is germinating, and Baptisia is ready to transplant! Baptisia has blue flowers in early summer, is deer resistant, and attracts butterflies. It’s one of those perennials that gets better every year.
Baptisia sp.
We checked the cold frames yesterday and pulled out some plants that needed attention. Lemon verbena is not winter hardy in Colorado, but in its native South America, it’s a tree. I know this because I once sat under a lemon verbena tree in Golden Gate State Park in California. It was so fragrant! And these flats of lemon verbena are fragrant, too, even though they don’t have leaves at the moment. I brought one in a couple of weeks ago and it’s starting to leaf out, as you can see in the bottom picture. By May, when we open, they’ll be lush and lovely. Lemon verbena keeps its fragrance longer than any other lemon scented herb. Pick a leaf, tuck it into a book, and a year later it will still smell lemony! They’re good for tea, or to make a simple syrup.
Lemon verbena, dormant after the winter.
