Gardening in the shade can sometimes be challenging.  Many of the plants that are available require at least some sun.  So, what bulbs can one grow that will thrive in shade?

Lycoris is one bulb that can easily be grown even in a woodland environment. These bulbs are not only beautiful, they come in a wide range of colors.  You can get various shades of yellow, pink, red, white and even orange.  Planted in a mass these lilies can really brighten up what might otherwise be a rather dull area.

Other bulbs that can thrive in shade include daylilies, especially those wild orange ones.  I like the doubles better than the singles of this variety but either way they are hardy and will make a nice mass under a large tree.

Caladium also likes shade and does very well planted under a tree.  I like these plants for their combination of colors.  Anything that isn’t one solid color I find makes a wonderful addition to the garden.

For spring blooms, lily-of-the-valley makes a wonderful flower for a shaded area as do cyclamen, which prefer to be grown under shady conditions.

Here is a listing of other bulbs that you can plant with success in the shade.

Begonia

Erythronium

Fritillaria

Galanthus

Hyacinthoides

Leucojum

Muscari

Narcissus

Scilla

Of course, you will want to plan your garden so that you have blooms throughout each season.  Let’s take a look at a sample garden that can achieve just that.

For spring blooms I would suggest planting some Narcissus, Cyclamen and Fritillaira.  There is a black Fritillaria that is simply beautiful.  With some bright yellow Narcissus and white or pink Cyclamen this would certainly be a site to behold.

Then as these blooms fade you might want to try some Begonias, Lilium and Caladium.  Not only would this give you additional color but the new blooms would help to hide the fading blooms and foliage of the spring plants.

For fall color I would try the following bulbs.  Some varieties of cyclamen bloom as fall approaches.  A vivid red would be especially nice with the colorful leaves that should be beginning to fall.  Lycoris is also a fall bloomer and would make an excellent final show to a spectacular display.

For late fall or early spring blooms I would suggest you try a few Hellebores.  These are obviously not bulbs but would grow nicely in with them and are one of the best winter blooming plants I know of.

So you see, even in shade it is possible to have an outstanding bulb garden full of color year round!

Have you been wanting to get your hands on my chocolate e-book titled The Allure Of Chocolate? If so, now is your chance to get it as an e-book from my website at http://www.exoticgardening.com

It is full of culinary recipes, beauty recipes, household recipes and even a recipe that will satisy Fido’s chocolate cravings safely!

If you love chocolate, don’t miss this e-book. For those of you on a diet, there are low carb chocolate recipes too! There is sure to be something to satisfy every choc-o-holic! It would make a great Valentine’s Day gift for someone too!

Stop by, check out the interactive chocolate channel filled with lots of fun chocolate quizzes and games and get your copy of The Allure Of Chocolate today!

How wonderful it is when you see new seedlings popping their tiny heads above the soil. It is an exciting moment, especially when you may have waited months, or sometimes years, for that seed to break dormancy.

The latest round of success here at Exotic Gardening Farms has been King Protea. Mind you, this is not the first time I have attempted to grow these beauties. I have had some protea germinate only to lose them a short time later. This time I am getting a nice rate of germination and so far, so good. The young seedlings seem to be getting stronger with each passing day.

I have had these seeds sitting around for at least two years. Everytime I decided to germinate them, something would happen that would halt the plan. So, right before Christmas I decided nothing was going to stop me this time and I prepared the smoke water with Jerry’s help. I soaked the seeds for 24 hours, then planted them in a mixture of gypsum, peat, perlite and vermiculite. I used cardboard egg cartons for the containers! Then I put the egg carton in a sealed plastic tub and waited. Over the past two weeks there have been three seeds germinate and grow. As they germinate I am cutting the individual cell off the egg carton and planting it in a small peat pot making sure that the roots of the protea are not disturbed and then moving them into the living room under a grow light.

Protea has been on my wish list for a number of years. I simply cannot tell you how thrilled I am to finally be able to get tiny plants. I know it will be a long wait until they bloom and keeping them alive may be a bit tricky but I am up for the challenge.

Today is a gorgeous day with temperatures hitting almost 60 degrees F. I decided to go out and clean the bunny cages and work on cleaning the chicken coop some more. It has been a very rainy fall and winter here. Our chicken coop sits below ground so when it floods, the coop gets flooded too. The front of the coop where the water enters had turned to mud and I am glad to finally be able to get that out. First it was too wet, then it was frozen!

The coop droppings are being used in the bird garden because that ground needs some improvement and the chickens will dig through the droppings and help spread them. I already have plenty of compost for the vegetable garden this year and will get more when the goat and horse stalls get cleaned.

I didn’t notice any buds on my trees in the bird garden yet but it is still quite early for that. I did notice the ducks are finally beginning to lay. We put the chicken coop light on a timer last night so they would get eight hours of dark. We read that helps with egg production. Tomorrow Jerry is planning to make some laying nests out of five gallon buckets. I want to get that old bathtub out of the coop that we put in last year because it is more of a hassle than a help.

Come spring I am hoping he will get a duck house built. Those little buggers are so messy with water and in my opinion food hogs! They are cute and great for bug control but they really need their own coop.

The goats went out today as did the horse, Beauty. She rolled and is now a muddy mess. Oh well, she will clean. It was so funny watching them all run as fast as they could. They are calling for rain later today so they won’t get to stay out long but at least they will get some exercise.

Tuilp, the cashmere goat, is fluffing up. I combed her yesterday and did harvest some cashmere. It is a grey/brown color and very soft. I also brushed Gizmo and Prince. I got a bit of white angora from Gizmo and some grey angora from Prince. They will need brushed again in about a week.

I don’t know if the mating between Gizmo and Snowball accomplished anything as she has not had babies yet. I keep watching and hoping.

I do still have brussels sprouts and cabbages in the garden. I plan to plant some lettuce seed and transplant the cabbages around the 16th of this month so I can get a head start on the growing season.

I don’t know about you but I am ready for spring to get here.

2008 is here and with it rolled in the year for garden revivals! Gardening is the new *hot* trend this year! Yes, it is true. According to the ASLA – the American Society of Landscape Architects 2008 will see a demand for great rooms and energy efficient landscapes.

If you don’t already have an outdoor kitchen, this would be the year to add one. If you do, choose another type of great room – from an outdoor bedroom to a living room!

“Homeowners are reconnecting with their outdoor space, often in creative and imaginative ways,” said Perry Howard, FASLA, President of ASLA. “It’s no surprise that people want to take elements that work so well inside their home and recreate them outside.”

Making your yard more energy efficient is the other big gardening effort you will see happening in 2008. From the installation of watering systems, which will reduce the cost as well as the excess use of water, to planting more native plants and less grass, gardeners and non-gardeners alike will be implementing energy efficient plans into their landscape.

Get on board now! Late winter and early spring is the perfect time to begin planning or updating your garden! After all, no one wants to be left out of the hot new trend that will emerge in 2008 – gardening!

I have a slew of new gardening informational articles that will be posted on the site by the end of this week. These articles will include everything from legends of fire to herbal recipes and my favorite topic chocolate.

Now that 2008 is here my goal for the Exotic Gardening Website is to get more people to use the forums and make it a one stop shop for gardening information. So drop by, take a look around and let me know what you would like to see on the site.

Is there a particular plant you would like to know more about? Do you need to know how to germinate a specific seed?

Remember the more information you share with me the more I can provide you with the ultimate website for truly obsessed plant-a-holics!

 Happy New Year!
Sheri

The staff of Exotic Gardening would like to wish all of our readers a happy, prosperous and flower filled 2008!

The posts have gone down some since the holidays have arrived. It has been a busy time here at the farm. Tulip, our cashmere goat is fluffing up and will be ready in a few more months to be combed. I can’t wait until I get my first cashmere harvest!

The angora bunnies will need plucked soon too. I have been mixing their fiber with wool. I haven’t decided yet what I will make out of the yarn once I spin it – maybe socks, maybe a sweater.

There is no snow on the ground here. Many plants still have green leaves even though the ground is frozen. The hardy Eucalyptus seems to be doing fine. We didn’t get it covered this fall so I am thrilled.

Soon it will be time to start seeds in the greenhouse. I have yet to get my winter seed sowing done. I hope to get to that soon. It would be really great if I could buy peat pots locally right now. I hear it will be about two more weeks before they start arriving in stores.

Stay tuned, we will be back next year with lots of great posts about flowers, gardening and of course, our farm and wildlife habitat!

Sheri and the staff of Exotic Gardening

In 2004 I received seeds of an Arabis. I promptly planted them, put tags with the plants and waited patiently to see how many would germinate.

The plan had been to make a map of my garden and log the botanical names of each plant as it was put in the ground. The plan did not work and I resorted back to tags made of old plastic blinds.

In 2007, my plant finally bloomed. The tag had got lost somehow that winter. I know it is an Arabis. I have three choices of what it could be according to the information that was sent with the seeds. It could be Arabis alpina ssp caucasica white, Arabis bryoides white or Arabis pumila white.

Does anyone know which one it actually is?

The seeds came from the North American Rock Garden Society seed exchange so I went back to their book to see what seeds of this variety, with white flowers, that were sent out that year.

I sure hope someone knows the answer to this!

Happy Holidays!

Sheri

What a grand suprise I had tonight when I opened my greenhouse door – the very first bloom on the Zantedeschia aethiopia Green Goddess I grew from seed was waiting for me!

I was so excited I had Sarah stop decorating the Christmas Tree to come and see the bloom! Angel, my yellow lab, followed wondering what I was so excited about! Poor Sarah had no shoes on and had to leap over the wet ground to get into the greenhouse to see the flower. She was not quite as excited as I am, but hey, she has yet to grow her first seed to the flowering stage!

I began germinating these seeds in damp paper towels on January 23, 2006. I had four seeds and ended up with four plants. The seeds took approximately 21 days to germinate, with the first seed showing signs of germination on February 6, 2006.

That spring I planted two of the seedlings in the ground and left two in peat pots in the greenhouse pretty much neglected. The ones I planted in the ground I fertilized and then mulched that winter with pine needles. I then covered them with plastic hoping they would survive here. Needless to say, last spring they did not come up at all.

In the corner of my greenhouse in a flat the other two seedlings were still setting, so I decided to pot them up with a Clitoria. They grew like weeds this summer. When fall came the planter went into my greenhouse. I had no idea when they would finally bloom. I simply cannot tell you how excited I was to see my first bloom tonight. It is a lovely green as you will see from the photo. The other plant appears to have a bloom getting ready to open on it as well.

The only fertilizer these plants received was a time release fertilizer that I put in the soil this spring when I potted them up. Other than that the plants have received nothing but water.

It is cold here in Indiana – and drab! Where is the sun? The skies are so grey. The ice that has been covering everything almost matches the drabness of the sky.

All of us have been sick recently which only adds to the winter depression that is going on. We drug the Christmas tree out of the attic the other night. It is standing but needs to be fluffed. Jerry is good at doing that. Sarah can hardly wait to decorate the tree. She has had so much fun sorting through the ornaments.

As for me, I have been planting seeds in between being sick. Those little green leaves poking up from the dark soil remind me spring is just around the corner. Soon winter seed sowing will begin and I will be up to my eyebrows in seeds, soil and watering chores.

So far, in my AeroGarden, which I love, I have shungiku and cress coming up. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Aerogrow, check it out at http://astore.amazon.com/exoticgardeni-20/detail/B000RLT5F8/002-7324806-4009621

This is the neatest aeroponic product that I have tried so far and it is simple. Even if you don’t have a green thumb you can use this to grow fresh herbs, flowers, even vegetables!

I tell you if you don’t have one of these, get one! This would also be a great gift for that green thumb on your list!

Speaking of great holiday gifts, if you love plants or know someone who does, check out my 2008 Calendar on Lulu. The link is http://www.lulu.com/content/1586118 and help support a starving artist this holiday season! HA!

Back to the seeds, using the old fashion method of putting seeds in soil to germinate, I have four other varieties of seeds that are up! They are Murraya koenegii, Rhodochiton astrosanguineas, Plumeria jamaicensis and Mucuna pruriens.  With any luck I can baby these along until spring time when they can begin to enjoy the great outdoors with the other tropicals.

Speaking of other tropicals, I think it is time for me to go and see how they are doing. Maybe I will find I have some new blooms to help brighten the season!