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If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me if it would be an early spring this year, well, I’d have a lot of dollars. The truth is, who knows. But March always makes me nervous.

Every season that I start thinking it will be an early spring, Dad helpfully reminds me of March 1958. He was 14 years old and it had been a warm winter that year as well. Snow was not forecasted, but by the late afternoon of the 19th a heavy, wet snow was accumulating quickly. Icy tree branches snapped power lines. The heavy snow collapsed porches, sheds and barns; my Dad’s family’s barn among them. Dad remembers measuring about 48” of snow at his home.

Mom’s family had a dairy farm. The ice and wet snow blocked roadways preventing the milk trucks getting around. My grandparents had to dump at least a week’s worth of milk. Finally, they had cleared enough snow to drive the tractor and farm wagon laden with milk cans to the Buck to meet the milk truck on 272. Mom also remembers her older sister’s boyfriend was snowed in with them for about five days. They were without power for nine days and had to melt snow and cook on the fireplace in the living room.

My most memorable snowstorm was March 14, 1993. It was my junior year in high school and official reports measured 18” of snow. This storm wasn’t a wet snow like ‘58, but heavy winds caused massive drifting. Here in the Southern End, where open fields have no windbreak and many roadways are below the level of the fields, drifting was a major problem. This storm left thousands without power, made roads impassable and thrilled my brother and I with a full week of snow days and a marathon Monopoly tournament.

What is this March bringing? Last week we planted all our hanging baskets for Mother’s Day sales. Some of my workers sported bare arms and shorts as the sunny weather warmed the greenhouses. My daffodils are halfway up, the witch hazel is flowering on schedule and I’m seeing jonquils and crocus blooming in sunny city gardens. Another early favorite, the Lenten rose or Hellebores, are emerging and starting to bloom. A few local greenhouses are open, showcasing blooming pansies.

We did work on the flower beds around the farm last week. Cutting down the perennials, ornamental grasses and raking up the remainder of the leaves. It was a fun job as we discovered what plants were starting to wake up. This a great time to do a little garden clean up.

St. Patrick’s Day is next week. This is the date conventional wisdom says to get early peas and onions in the ground. Lancaster County frequently gets an “onion snow”, a light snow that melts quickly after the onions have sprouted. Also called a “sapling bender” according to the Farmers’ Almanac, this late precipitation is usually the final snow before spring arrives. We haven’t had much white stuff so far this winter 2019-2020. I’m just hoping we don’t get a repeat of ’58!

 When I get the same question twice in one week I have   no choice but to write a column about it. As my sister-   in-law was cleaning out her summer flower pots she noticed big tubers at the bottom of her containers. She wondered if they were safe to eat. The next day I was in at the local post office and Donna, one of the mail carriers, had a bag of Show and Tell. She pulled out the biggest sweet potato I had ever seen! She too wondered if they were edible.

The answer is yes. Sweet potatoes were introduced to the ornamental market in 1992. The first cultivar, ‘Blackie’, was a cast-off from the USDA tropical vegetable breeding program. Its large deep purple leaves and vigorous trailing habit was certainly eye-catching, and it is still a popular cultivar in the market today. The following year, famed plantsman Professor Allan Armitage of University of Georgia popularized a yellow-leaf variety that came from University of North Carolina’s vegetable breeding efforts. ‘Margarita’ also is still widely available.

The summer of 1997 I was working at a flower breeding company in Chicago and by then they too were tinkering with sweet potatoes to improve their flower-garden worthiness. The original varieties have very vigorous growth and will grow well in beds or containers. Use caution what you pair them with as they have a tendency to smother more delicate companions. Recent introductions have shorted the nodes, or space between leaves along the stems and expanded the leaf shapes from highly lacy to heart-shaped. Lime green and dark purple are still the most popular colors, but red and bronze have joined the color family.

Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family and are not related to potatoes at all. They are native to Central America in tropical regions. They grow best with sun and adequate moisture. The easiest way to control spread is to limit watering. They are a high fiber food also rich in beta carotene and when baked have Vitamin C as well. We have found that the flavor of ornamental sweet potatoes is milder than that of the commercial vegetable. They are delicious roasted with a bit of butter. But really, what doesn’t butter make more tasty?

If you want to keep some to sprout next year, keep the tubers in a cool dark place. About 2-3 months before you want to set plants outside cut tubers in half and stand upright in a jar of water. Over time the eyes will sprout into “slips”. Change the water frequently to prevent scum. Once these are about 3” tall remove them and put them in a new cup of water to root. They root readily in water, similar to coleus. Once the shoots are rooted, you can put them into the soil and harden them off outside. YouTube is full of helpful videos. It’s a fun experiment, but a lot easier to just buy new ones.

So yes, go ahead. Eat your ornamental sweet potatoes. They are delicious!

The end of September we found ourselves in Orlando, Florida for 10 days. Ostensibly, the trip was to celebrate the birthdays of our two children born 2 years and 364 days apart. We briefly visited a few friends in coastal Georgia and St. Augustine on drive down.

The last time we were that far south the kids were much younger and they didn’t pay attention to the landscape. This trip they noticed and commented on cotton fields with pillowy bolls waiting for harvest and the plethora of saw palmetto and palms that take the place of more familiar birch and maples along roadways.

In Florida, I was struck by the shrubs. Colorful Croatan specimens and variegated schefflera hedges surrounded our hotel, which are houseplants here at home. Annuals like Mexican petunias, lantana and plumbago are winter hardy in Zone 9 and were plentiful. My husband must have asked me everyday WHYwe ever moved away from Florida. “JULY” is the answer to that question.

Always impressive are the colorful plantings around the Disney parks. Their horticulture budget must be staggering. Beds of begonias, pentas and colorful coleus brighten areas around the attractions and serve as part of the scenery. A friend of mine did a horticulture internship in Disney many years ago and said they did their planting and bed maintenance overnight, so guests never saw anyone working in the gardens. I’d rather be sleeping at 2am, but the flower beds looked amazing.

No area in Disney does a better job featuring plants than Epcot. Each country area has stylistic landscapes to emphasize their theme. Japanese gardens, English knot gardens and even the evergreens in Canada help you gain a sense of the place. The Land has a peaceful boat tour chronicling the various ecosystems and farming styles on Earth and culminates in a display of exotic food types from around the world. The greenhouse dome area demonstrates hydroponically grown lettuces and herbs. There is even an aquaponic display using the fish farm waste from catfish and tilapia to grow microgreens in a symbiotic system. I loved it. My kids politely tolerated the lessons.

We took the Amtrak Autotrain home. It is such a romantic way to travel. We boarded just outside of Orlando Monday afternoon and found ourselves on the outskirts of DC the next morning. The kids loved that the seats folded down to make beds and eating in the dining car.

We had a wonderful trip, but I was happy to come home and sleep in my own bed. My asters started to bloom while we were away, and there was a decided nip in the air. A few rains eased our minds about a too-dry fall. I was starting to worry that the leaves would dry up and fall off bypassing beautiful fall colors, but some of our early trees have started to turn.

Visiting Florida was fun, but there’s no place like home.

Driving around Southern Lancaster County, the corn harvest is ahead of schedule. But I’m seeing wilting leaves on shrubs, and trees. Perennial beds without irrigation bloomed early and are looking tired. Last year’s record rainfall makes it seem even drier this year. I checked the recorded totals and wasn’t surprised.

Our moisture was fairly normal this year until summer when the rains slowed in June and July, and never picked back up again in August. A light shower was very welcome today. We were 4” below normal for September precipitation and 6” below 2018’s September recorded rainfall.

A farmer friend reminded me of the old saying “A dry year will scare you to death, but a wet year will starve you to death.” In a dry summer the seeds of beans and corn don’t fill out fully but will mature more quickly. The primary challenge in a dry fall is getting seeds to germinate. Dad wrote several weeks ago about planning grass seed. Usually fall is a great time to replant a lawn as the ample rains help the seeds to sprout. Without supplemental irrigation, little grass germinated this fall.

After the harvest, farmers replant a cover crop for over the winter. Be it barley, wheat or Timothy, all those seeds need moisture to get established. Lack of rainfall creates a double whammy- seeds don’t germinate, and soil hardens making it more difficult for delicate roots to take hold even if a few seeds manage to sprout. Extremely dry soil creates a crust, so when it does finally rain, moisture doesn’t soak in, merely creates runoff washing away seeds. Our dry fall is also browning up pasture land earlier than normal, and depleting hay supplies.

Our friends in the Midwest have the opposite problem. If you remember, across Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Illinois there was massive flooding this spring. Fields lay wet or underwater past when the corn and beans would normally be in the ground. Most farmers did manage to get a stand going, but it is at least three weeks behind schedule. Heavy rain this fall is preventing the machinery from getting into the fields. Harvest across the Midwest is way behind.

You often see farmers here harvesting with lights in the evening at 7 or even 9pm. I asked my friend if it was to avoid the heat of the day- and she said no, again it is partly a moisture issue. In the morning the dew clings to the stalks and ears and makes trouble for the equipment. In the afternoon and evening it is drier. Anyone whose left wash too long on the line, knows moisture returns in the evening. So until about 9pm you can still run the combine. Its also partly a traffic safety issue. Many farmers have fields in multiple locations and drive from field to field, or to grain storage over the highways. With more cars on the road today, large farm equipment must share the road. In the evening, the flashing lights of heavy equipment are more visible to other motorists.

Its harvest season in Lancaster County. Share the road and pray for a little rain.

The heat of summer is (hopefully) now behind us and my attention turned to the two containers in front of my house. This summer I planted them with butterfly-loving pentas, petunias, summer snapdragons and trailing fan flower in a color scheme of red and white. I added time release fertilizer to the soil and gave them a shot of liquid feed about once a week. We were away a week in August, and I wasn’t always Johnny On The Spot with the watering can, and they got a little too dry more than once. It is time to replant them for fall.

The white Angelonia is still looking good, so I may leave that in as a tall focal point. Fall is ubiquitous for mums so one might find its way in as well. Pansies are a great cool season crop that will last through the winter. I’ve had pansies and violas still look great the following spring season. Other flowers like asters or coreopsis will add blooms in a range of colors but many not survive the winter in a container.

The problem that plants in containers have is lack of insulation. Air surrounding the pot will freeze and thaw the roots over the course of the winter when temperatures fluctuate. This is especially true in dark colored pots on very sunny days. For a plant to survive the winter in a container, it needs to be two zones hardier than the zone you are in. Here in Lancaster County we are in USDA Hardiness Zone 6, meaning that our winters rarely get below 0F. Plants need to be rugged enough to survive Minnesota seasons to overwinter in a container here. Hostas, sedum, arborvitae, and hollies are all in this group. On a side note, hydrangeas and roses, which are popular choices to grow in decorative in containers over the summer, are best planted in the ground in the fall.

Back to my pots. Foliage and texture are more important considerations than flowers in the fall and winter. Fine texture from grasses or sedges and bold textures from the colorful leaves of coral bells, ornamental cabbage and kales create exciting contrast. I particularly am drawn to ornamental cabbage and kales. They are closely related to their edible cousins cauliflower and broccoli, but selected for their colorful rosettes. As the nights cool the color accelerates. Cabbage and kale also last well into the winter. Their main problem is cabbage worms and sometimes aphids. Insects are less of a problem as temperatures dip. I also really like coleus for fall as the multitude of shades from rusty reds, dark purples and lime greens mix well with mums and other flowers. They are particularly frost sensitive however.

Fertilizing is less important in the fall. I usually don’t even bother to fertilize my containers after the middle of September. Soon it will be time for the local fairs, pumpkins and mums will abound and we’ll close the book on another gardening season here in Lancaster County. But not just yet.

Edit to add: I eneded up completely redoing my pots with small perennials and some scavenged berries.