When things don’t grow the way you expect
I’ll admit that I am still pretty new at growing perennials. I’ve tried to make up for the many years of experience that I lack with careful planning. But, as I have been learning, you can plan out every single detail of production and the only thing you can truly be certain of is that things will not go as planned. (This is true in normal years too, not just when we’re in the middle of a global pandemic.)
Last spring, our Elegans and Guacamole hostas were looking great. Since they are two of the earliest varieties to emerge of the hostas we grow here, they had put on a lot of growth and promised to be beautiful plants. Then, just like clockwork, right after we had finished up our big spring perennial planting in late April, we were hit with a frost. Since it’s hardly unusual in our climate to have frost in April, and even early May, we keep our frost blankets ready to cover any green material that isn’t under plastic. But our overwintered Elegans and Guacamole hostas, which were under plastic in the polyhouses, were affected in a way that I never expected, and they didn’t recover for the rest of the season. The Guacamole foliage became twisted and stunted, and remained an almost chlorotic-looking shade of green for the rest of the season. The Elegans developed brown spots all over the foliage that was impossible to fix by pruning out the bad leaves. So, we took them out of inventory and planted fresh crops.
Also last spring, we were low on Alchemilla inventory. We potted up some bare root liners in March so we could have them ready for late spring sales. I eagerly waited for them to start filling out after they put out their first few leaves. Little did I know then that they would stop growing after putting out about 3-4 leaves, and they wouldn’t be full enough to sell until fall.
Then, this February, we planted 1,500 Plum Pudding and Palace Purple Heuchera in our heated greenhouse. We started out with great plugs and they were growing smoothly until about three weeks ago, when they, without warning, “decided” to start stretching vertically. This was no doubt due to some condition in the greenhouse. Was it lack of air flow, or did the temperature rise too fast? I still don’t know; all I know is that they looked strange and we had to prune them all back.
And did I mention the time that our Pumila Astilbe grew to be over 3’ tall? Or the two seasons in a row where half of the Phlox ‘Cleopatra’ we planted came up with twisted stems? Or how about the fact that we planted Sedum Rock n’ Grow™ ‘Bundle of Joy’ and ‘Pure Joy’ on the same day last May? Even though the plugs were the same size, the ‘Bundle of Joy’ grew into beautiful, full, flowering plants, and the ‘Pure Joy’ started blooming when they were ½” tall and barely grew any taller even after I pinched them back.
These are only a few examples of experiences I have had, from the past two years, of perennials growing unpredictably. I anticipate there will be many more over the course of my career. But, in the end, plants are living things, and it would be a mistake to expect them to always perform the way that you want. Although that makes it frustrating at times, I think it also helps to keep our jobs interesting. And if there is anything that we can count on in this industry, it’s that changing circumstances and unpredictability will keep us on our toes.
