Since I was too busy to write a blog last summer, I probably should have a look back at it and refresh some summer memories. After all that is what we all need, isn't it? :-) At least I do. Now that there's cold and monochromatic outdoors, I really miss the gentle weather and all the vibrant colours of summer!

I wasn't sure where to start, so I just decided to start with one of my lovely favourites, Aquilegias! They have at least two common names like granny's bonnet and columbine. Which one you prefer?

A pale pink Aquilegia, probably from Touchwood Aquilegias.

Some of my columbines are known cultivars, but most of them are not. And I love them! I have bought the seeds from seed shops and hobby gardeners, and I have collected the seeds form the plants I have encountered. I have bought some plants and I have transplanted some from my mother's garden.

All the seeds I have sown have been well labeled, but for some reason those labels have a tendency to disappear. And even if there were labels on the ground by the plants, I can't remember the names any more now that I'm looking at the pictures in the middle of the winter. But quite many of my plants have been sent as seeds by Carrie Thomas. You can find her Aquilegia seed list on Touchwood Aquilegias. She has the most impressive collection of cultivars I have ever seen.

Some of the blooms were injured by insects as they were 

among the first plants to emerge from the ground early in 

summer and there wasn't too much to eat for those nasty little creatures.

Double blossom 'Firewheel'.

Semi-clematis type Aquilegia. Some blossoms look funny like this. 

It hasn't decided whether to be traditional or clematis blossomed.

This one has a clear identity; large simple clematis blossomed.

This could be some sort of alpine columbine.

(At least I remember planting some of those in this

flower bed.)

This one looks like the midnight sun.

These funky twirly blossoms are semi-doubles. 

 Both are spurless double clematis flowered cultivars.

'Black Barlow' on the left  and 'Miss M. I. Huish' on the right,

if I recall it right. Could be vice versa though... Both  of them

seem black purple when you see them outdoors, so I brought

them indoors to have a clear distinction between the colours.

This is an unnamed cultivar that comes true from seeds.

I have collected them form my mother's garden, and I was

the one shoo originally gave her the seeds I had received

in a seed swap some years back. Truly lovely pink.

I'm not sure what is this. Could be Miss M.I. Huish.

Another beautiful shade of purplish pink.

There are certain types of flowers that I don't really like. Daisies are among them. I don't know why, but they just don't really impress me in any way. And most of them smell bad too. But Among those daisy-lookalikes there are some species that are exceptions. Like coneflowers (Echinacea). They bloom late into autumn staying bright after most perennials have passed their blooming time.

The only thing that I don't like about them is that they never make seeds here. They are so late that sometimes they don't even get to bloom before it's fall. So you need to choose a nice sunny warm spot for them and then water them throughout the summer, because warm and sunny spots are often too dry for coneflowers.

A few years back I had no idea how many different varieties there are of coneflowers! I had only seen the dark pink ones and my mother never encouraged me to have those either. She kept telling me they would never bloom.

Last year I bought some coneflowers in pots in the spring. I planted them along the wall, because it was the sunniest place I could think of. Only one of them bloomed (probably the one I watered most) while the rest of them just made leaves. A couple of them hated the heat and kept wilting and coming back all summer. This is the one that bloomed right next to tiger lilies. Needless to day that the lilies loved the hot and sunny place they were given.

I only ordered two kinds of plants; 'Summer Cocktail' and 'Hot Papaya' and this doesn't really seem to be either of them. But I still loved the vivid colour of the bloom. The plant was growing right next to the path leading to my front door, so I walked past it every day, and it really made me smile.

During the summer I was sowing numerous kinds of seeds, Echinacea among them. The seeds sprouted well and I got lots of little Echinaceas (the common type) and planted them in the garden. I'm not sure how old they'll have to be before they bloom, but that I will see that later on. Maybe this summer, maybe next. If they are still alive. I'm not sure if I should be hopeful about that after the autumn since the cold came before snow.

But since I love so much this "not-hot-papaya" of mine, I thought I would look for more brightly coloured Echinaceas for my garden. You can not believe how difficult that is. I haven't been able to find many places in Finland that would sell anything but the common 'Magnus' or alike. I recall seeing 'Green Envy' in some mail order catalogue one year, but that's in the past. I tried having a look at the foreign garden stores as well. Yes, some of them have some new colourful varieties, but the prices were so high I just decided that I could live without them.

Then I remembered that hey,  I have been growing these from seeds earlier, so maybe there are some seeds available of newer cultivars as well! I'm not sure if there are, maybe yes, but the best I could find after a very short search was eBay. Again.

I have been shopping at eBay shops gardeningbylee and moustic2307. I realise that the seeds sold on these shops are openly pollinated and may look nothing like the mother plant, but the good chance is that they will look exciting nevertheless. And if I wasn't able to get the correct plant when buying them in pots, then I probably don't really mind what the seedlings will look like as long as they look "different". And even if they don't they will look happy and colourful in the autumn anyway. The only way they could produce a big disappointment was if they didn't sprout at all or proved to be something completely different. What I mean by this is something different than Echinacea. Yes, this happened to me once... These seeds were a bit pricey considering there's no guarantee of the result, but I can live with that. I just won't order anything in the future if they all will grow to look like the common coneflower in my garden.

Here are the pictures that helped me choose the seeds I bought from eBay shops gardeningbylee and moustic2307:

It looks like some or most of these photos were from coneflower.com even though used by the eBay shops. Thanks to whoever took the pictures. They are here as reference to the shops selling the seeds. 

The cultivars (or as they were informed) are from top left to right :
'Tomato Soup', 'Tangerine Dream', 'Supreme Cantaloupe', 'Sunset', 'Secret Passion', 'Secret Affair',
'Raspberry Truffle', 'Pink Double Delight', Meteor Yellow', 'Marmalade', 'Hot Papaya', 'Gumdrop',
'Guava Ice', 'Glowing Dream', 'Flamethrower', 'Firebird', Colorburst Orange' and 'Champagne Bubbles'.

There were lots of other varieties to choose as well, but as the result is likely to be something else than the mother plant, I thought these were quite enough. These are going to fill my garden completely for a few years. Or will they? I have been told that these plants are quite short lived. I'm hoping that this isn't true.

In any case, I will be reporting about the result as soon as I see them. And probably even about the progress along the way.

This is definitely the time of the year to buy some seeds for the next summer. Usually I start buying seeds as soon as they appear at the shops and when the first seed catalogs arrive. So I have been doing that for a couple of weeks now.

But seed stores online exist all year round, so I have been purchasing seeds even during the summer and in autumn. Today I have been shopping on eBay. I like buying on eBay, because sometimes you find a cultivar that doesn't exist at your local stores. I do buy online at "real" seed stores as well (such as RaraVäxter or Plant World Seeds) so it's not exclusive in any way. Actually I have been buying seeds for year online as well as at supermarkets, garden centers and practically from anyone who is willing to sell seeds at all.

Last summer I bought seeds from some Finnish hobby gardener online. They were all perennial plant seeds, so it will remain to be seen if they come true from seed. I know it's more than likely that especially Aquilegias will be something else than the mother plant. My favourite find last year was Touchwood Seeds and all those Aquilegias I wish to have in my garden next summer unless all the little seedling die during the winter. I kept sowing Aquilegias all summer last year, so I haven't been buying any new Aquilegia seeds yet. Now I'm interested in different poppy cultivars instead, both perennial and annual species.

I had some lovely annual poppies in my garden last year. Perennial cultivars were a disappointment, because all the seeds that were supposed to produce pink poppies turned out to be orange. Even the Papaver orientale cultivar I bought as pot plants, proved to be orange and not burgundy that they were supposed to be. But the annual Papaver somniferum cultivars were spectacular! Not all of the seeds grew up to be what they were supposed to be (especially those bought from various eBay stores) but some of them were even better than expected.

Today I have been shopping on an eBay store called Southern Seeds and this is what I bought:

 There are oriental poppies, Bellis, annual poppies, larkspur, zinnias and California poppies, Gaillardia and Monarda. I hope they will be as spectacular as promised and that the seeds will be fresh. The amounts were quite small, like 25 poppy seeds per bag, so if the viability rate is low, I won't have too many plants. Bellis is a biennial plant, so I will only be able to observe the result the following year.

Living up north means there's not much time for gardening. Not because one is too busy but because the summer is too short. The growing season 2012 here started on the 8th of May and ended on the 15th of October. Growing seasons are expected to become longer during this century due to climatic change, but I'm not sure if that's something worth celebrating. I'm actually surprised to know that the growing season has been a good 5 months, because it really feels more like 3 months to me.

The place where I live is just as north as southern Greenland or Alaska. Let's face it, this is far too north for gardening in most parts of the World. But thanks to the North Atlantic Golf current, the weather here is not as cold as in Siberia. I actually live in the European hardiness zone 4 or the Finnish growing zone 5.

You can find this map and learn more about hardiness zones at the Free Independent Sun.

Apparently this means that the average annual minimum temperatures here are between -28,9 / -34,4 °C or -20 / -30 °F degrees. February usually is the coldest month of the year, and even though this year has been mild, last winter was not. I can grow various plants up here, that manage to survive the winter, but don't bloom. I can also grow plants, that don't only survive the winter, but bloom as well. However the growing season is too short for them to form seeds. 

But the survival of the plant does not depend only on the length of the growing season or the average minimum temperatures alone. You can look for a spot where the microclimate is suitable for a certain plant, like a warm spot close to the southern wall of your house with plenty of sunshine and with protection of winds. But the protected spot can be hazardous in winter, when snow falls from the roof and breaks the branches of the tree. This place might be perfect for some perennials though. But there's not much snow close to the wall either, so there no snow cover to protect the ground and the roots.

Some plants that usually are afraid of cold, may do well under the protective cover of snow. The parts on top of the snow may get frozen each winter, but the parts below the snow stay alive and continue growing the following summer. Of course this means that the plant will never grow too large or maybe not even to the height you were hoping for. There's no point planting a tree and expecting it to do well under these conditions though. It may stay alive for a few years, then get tired and eventually die. Usually they don't survive the first winter. Another problem occurs every now and then; this winter the freezing temperatures of -20 °C degrees arrived before the snow. So there was no protection for the plants before the cold cast its spell over them.

Frost heaving is one problem more. Plants can't start growing before their roots are free of frost, not even if the temperature of the air is nice and warm. This is why evergreens may die during their first winters especially if they have a shallow root system. When the sun starts heating the air early in the spring and their leaves start evaporating, the plant dries out because the roots can't get any water from the frozen ground. That is why it's advised to protect these plants from the spring sun or maybe moderately water the ground with warm water to make it melt faster. I have some Rhododendrons growing beside my front door, so I have been shovelling snow on top of them to keep them protected as long as possible.

I have planted some less hardy plants in my garden, and I'm not sure if I can expect to find any of them alive when the spring arrives. But I thought I'd never find out if I didn't plant any of them. Who knows what kind of a surprise they will offer! I have been told that magnolias can't be grown this north, but I have read that there's a specimen of Magnolia x soulangeana growing in the botanic garden of the Oulu University, and that it has survived. I have been informed, that Malus purpurea 'Kadetti' can not be grown here, but I have seen one growing in front of an apartment building, and surviving several winters already. I have also been told that Taxus can not been grown here unlike the one I just saw the other day.

Of foreign plants we tend to favour Canadian cultivars here because they are usually good and proven and survive the winters well. We grow Canadian crabapples, blueberries, roses and what not. Also Russian cultivars do well over here; plums (Prunus domestica) and honeyberries (Lonicera caerulea var. edulis) for example. Of course we have our own local cultivars as well. I have a damson plum (Prunus domestica subsp. insititia) 'Silvast' in my garden, several Finnish roses like Rosa pimpinellifolia 'Ruskela', Rosa majalis 'Tornedal' and Rosa pimpinellifolia 'Juhannusmorsian' and a sour cherry (Prunus cerasus) 'Arttula' as well as Finnish Rhododendron cultivars. But surprisingly many garden plants originating from milder climatic conditions can be grown over here as well. Peonies are a good and bold example among them.

Rhododendron 'Helsinki University'

I'm a hardiness zone stretcher myself, so I plant anything that could be even remotely hardy in the local conditions and just see if it survives or not. Oh, don't tell me they're all going to be dead when the spring arrives! I won't even listen to you. If they show no sign of life before the autumn arrives, then maybe I will consider them dead. Or just well dormant.