The Saffron Experiment

I do not write a gardening blog and I am no expert gardener. Although I don’t have a completely black thumb, I did in fact set a new record this year for the shortest time I ever kept a rosemary plant alive. The poor thing started dropping leaves within two days after I got it home, so I’ve been buying rosemary all summer. Fortunately, I do have an excellent gardening resource in my family: my mother. She is now a Certified Master Gardener, having just completed her program last spring at the tender age of 61! I’m so proud of her, and I call her all the time with questions about my garden.

In spite of my amateur rank, I still enjoy trying to grow my own herbs and vegetables, and I’m a big lover of bulb plants. Every fall I assess my flower beds to see what needs to be divided or replanted. This year I’m starting fresh with a new flower garden, and I’ve been looking around at different places online and at local nurseries trying to decide what I would plant this year. My mother recommends White Flower Farm in Connecticut as an excellent source for bulbs as well as information on planting and growing many different kinds of flowers, so I’ve been studying their website. I stumbled across their Fall bulbs selection and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw the saffron crocuses (which are completely sold out for 2007).

For some reason I have always thought that I could not grow my own saffron flowers because they only grew in parts of Asia and the Mediterranean. Not so! Read more

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