I love it when a box shows up at my door step with “Perishable – Live Plants” printed on the outside. I received such a box yesterday! In it were several items I had ordered in January including…

• Meyer Lemon Tree, Improved. I saw this in the Park’s Seed catalog and remembered seeing one on a garden show. It is a dwarf lemon tree that produces full-sized lemons, and it will live happily as a potted plant. Mine came in a 1 gallon container and is about two feet high and has a couple of little tiny lemons on it, though I’m not sure they will make it through the trauma of shipping and repotting. I am now looking for the perfect pot for my new lemon tree.
• Blueberries – I got 3 Sunshine Blue blueberry plants to put in one of the raised garden beds, where I can control the soil pH. Blueberries like acid soil.
• Strawberries – Last fall I ripped out the strawberries I had because they were a no-name variety I had picked up at Frank’s several years ago. They were the scrawniest little berries. This new variety is called Ever Red, and is an everbearing strawberry. I chose everbearing instead of June bearing because I didn’t want to be over loaded with strawberries once a year. I’d like to have a few berries to pick throughout the summer.
• Cannas – I chose two varieties that are good as potted plants. One has a striped leaf with yellow flowers. The other has red flowers, but is a dwarf variety. I plan to start these soon, along with a couple of Elephant ear bulbs I bought a few weeks ago.

Activity is definitely increasing in the garden. Tomorrow, I plan to “finally” plant the early vegetable crops. It seems so late to start these, but the weather has not cooperated.

Check out the link “My Garden Plants” under links on the right for some new pictures.