The crown of thorns blooms continuously, making it a favorite during cold, dark days.

Suspend an avocado pit in water for a little new growth during winter’s gloom.

Accidental Gardener

By Ross Collins, the accidental gardener

On the plus side, the gloomiest time of north country winter is over. That would be Dec. 21, the shortest day of the year, also my birthday. Coincidentally, perhaps, after my birthday our world starts to brighten. We can make a positive reframe of that. Sort of. Writing in January 1974, my mother Dorothy mused, “mid-January is enough to send the gardener into a case of the gray glooms.” Okay, it’s not December, but still. Whatever houseplants we have inside show little enthusiasm. “Most of the indoor plants, which should give us a little solace, produce little new growth,” Dorothy wrote. “They’re just biding their time, waiting until the skinny rays of the winter sun lengthen and widen as we move toward spring.”
While she didn’t mention it, I do know Dorothy occasionally included in her houseplant collection a crown of thorns (Euphorbia milii). I have one now that’s more than 30 years old. It has bloomed continuously. Even in the gloom of winter, a cheery pink accent to the pale greens and browns. Carefree, perfectly content if you forget to water.
But to be honest, we can’t expect much gloom-chasing from our houseplants. Still, all is not frost. “Cheer up,” Dorothy suggested (though without an exclamation point). “Do what you can. Visit the library or the bookstore and get yourself a new garden book. Or read the seed catalogs that are coming in nicely now.”
We still get a few seed catalogs by mail, but most have gone online, and that’s where many of us today go for ideas. It’s not an unrewarding plan during cold and dark winter evenings. The cellphone beckons. Like my mother, I appreciate lily bulbs. For years I enjoyed choices from McClure & Zimmerman, as also did my mother. I was less than pleased to receive email indicating that good old M & Z had been subsumed into Jung Seed, the name itself retired. But it seems like most of its bulbs are still available. My mother also ordered from Holland and van Bourgondien. And, of course, when she could, shopped the local nurseries.
But surfing the internet to treat garden glumness has its limits, just as poring over seed catalogs in pre-internet days. Dorothy had an answer! “If you are tired of reading books and catalogs, you might try a ‘kitchen garden,’ she wrote, “or help your children grow one.”
That is, you can start vegetables in water glasses. Don’t snicker. “They can be pretty enough to dress up the living room.”
Most of us are familiar with the toothpick-speared avocado pit suspended in a water-filled cup. Keep the lower half inch in water, and expect sprouts in two to six weeks. Less common is a carrot top garden. Suspend a half dozen cut-off carrot tops in a quarter inch of water in a shallow container. The carrots will produce new full and fern-like growth, said Dorothy. Or sweet potatoes! Find a firm potato, untreated with sprout inhibitor. (To find out, Dorothy said to ask. Not sure at Hornbacher’s whom one should ask.) Prepare same as avocado. “The potato will produce an attractive green vine which will climb round the window or on a support you may want to put up.” Also a less-common option: garlic. Yes, suspend a clove in water, and “the green shoots can be clipped from time to time and used in salad.”
Some perky optimism here, but in a half century of gardening, I can not recall a single time that my mother ever tried a water-suspended kitchen garden. The spring catalogs, however, she perused with intensity.