Now is the Time to Plant Acorns
Posted on Tuesday, December 10, 2019 · Leave a Comment
You may think that the planting season is over. Not for me. I recently planted 8 giant red oaks. Or, I should say, potentially giant oaks. I planted eight acorns. I’m hoping that at least one will begin growing next spring, and that it will eventually provide shade, food for wildlife, and beauty for all who happen by.
This is the season for planting acorns. They need an extended cold period in order to germinate, come spring. That cold requirement prevents them from germinating now, and being killed off before getting established. Most nut trees, including most oaks, have a tap root that grows deep into the soil. Red oak (Quercus rubra), I have read, has relatively shallow roots. Still, if you want an oak, plant your acorns where you want a tree. Don’t move them once they have started growing if you can avoid it.
Here is what I did: Before I planted the acorns I inspected them carefully to see if there were any signs of insects boring into them, but saw no holes. Then I put them in a bowl of water to see if any floated. Any that float should be discarded, as they are probably not viable. Of the 10 I put in water, two floated and went to the compost pile
Next I went outdoors to plant. I looked for a place where a young oak would get plenty of sunshine – six hours a day is adequate – and where a big tree would not be competing with other trees. According to my favorite tree expert, Michael Dirr, a mature red oak will grow to be 60 to 75 feet tall and nearly as wide at maturity. I did not have an area quite that wide to dedicate to an oak, but I found a spot where it will fit between two maples along my property line.
Oaks do well in well drained, acidic soil. Red oak, because it has a relatively shallow root system, can be prone to drying out when the trees are young, so I am prepared to water my seedling until it is well established if the summer is hot and dry.
I raked off leaves and snow and loosened the soil in a 2-foot wide circle with a hand tool. Then I pushed acorns into the soil and covered each with an inch or so of soil. Then I patted down the soil and covered the area with leaves. I placed a nice metal name plate in the middle of the planting zone with the date I planted the acorns.
If more than one of my acorns grows, I will have to choose the best to keep. Yes, I could keep more than one for a while, but brother and sister trees will compete for sun, water and nutrients, so the extras will need to be weeded out.
If digging in frozen ground doesn’t appeal to you or if the squirrels are watching your every move, acorns can be collected in winter, stratified in a refrigerator for a minimum of 30 to 60 days, and then planted in the spring. Store them in a paper bag in the vegetable drawer to keep them from drying out. By spring, the squirrels will have better fish to fry (like the tender shoots of my hostas).
Red oak nuts may need help opening their shells if they have been stratified, or preserved indoors, because they do not go through multiple freeze and thaw cycles. Simply score the acorn with a knife or rub it with 80-grit sandpaper until the kernel is exposed.
Not all acorns will germinate the first year, which makes sense from a Darwinian point of view: If a drought or a forest fire kills off some seedlings this year, others will be able to pop up the next.
One of the best oaks for suburban areas is the pin oak (Quercus palustris). It is smaller than many oaks (still, it grows to about 60 feet), with shallow fibrous roots that can thrive in the heavy clay often found in the disturbed soil of subdivisions. It prefers acidic soils, so it does well in the Northeast.
Pin oaks grow more quickly than many oaks, often adding two feet of height or more per year, and they have a profile that is handsome year-round. Like all the oaks discussed here, they are hardy in zones 4 to 8 or 9.
The white oak (Quercus alba), is majestic and can live 500 years or more, attaining heights of 100 feet. It does best in deep, moist, well-drained soils. It is susceptible to anthracnose and other diseases, but thrives in the wild from Maine to Florida and as far west as Minnesota and Texas. It is worth planting where space permits.
The chestnut oak (Quercus prinus) is handsome, with deeply furrowed bark and a nearly globe-shaped form that is striking in winter. It can survive in dry, rocky places that would be eschewed by other trees.
Being a gardener means, among other things, being optimistic. Having a long view. And being a little silly – after all, surely most people seeing me digging in the frozen soil would consider me a bit daft. I don’t care. Planting acorns in winter is more fun than sitting at a computer any day.
Living Christmas Trees: Good Idea or Bad?
Posted on Wednesday, December 4, 2019 · Leave a Comment
I know people who say we shouldn’t be cutting down trees just to brighten our homes for the holidays. Trees are, after all, sequestering carbon and making our environment cleaner, greener, and all that. I disagree and will cut a fresh tree from my neighborhood tree farmer. I say Christmas trees are a crop like corn: planted, then harvested and then more are planted the next year.
If you want to have a live tree inside the house and plant it outside afterward, you can. I’ve never done it, but I’ve talked to people who have. Here’s what I’ve learned.
First know that chances of survival are only 50-50 or thereabouts. Planting a tree in New England in January is not easy. For starters, the ground will probably be frozen. And keeping a tree hydrated and happy in the house is a challenge, even for an attentive tree steward. But let’s see how you can improve your odds
Want success? Think small. A six-foot tree will have a big, heavy root ball, and will be harder to move and harder to plant. Think three to four feet tall, maximum, and even smaller if you can. The best? A tabletop tree.
Buy a fir or spruce that has been grown in a plastic container, not one that is recently dug up or wrapped in burlap. Place the tree in the coolest part of the house – and never near a radiator or woodstove.
I suggest that you think where the tree will be planted after the holidays before you buy one. Too many times I’ve seen a huge blue spruce towering over a nice little ranch house, blocking out the sun from the big picture window. Why? Because the tree was small and cute when the owner of the house planted it, and he never thought about its ultimate size.
Balsam fir (Abies balsamea) is one of the classic Christmas trees. In the wild it will grow to be 45 to 75 feet tall with a spread of 20 to 25 feet. This is not the tree to place close to the house. There are a few cultivars that are supposed to stay small, but mostly such trees just grow slower than the standard varieties. In 40 years, a dwarf may no longer be a dwarf.
Blue spruce ( Picea pungens) is another good-sized tree in the wild, 30 to 60 feet tall with a spread of 20 to 30 feet. There are spruce that stay small, I have read. ‘Blue Kiss’ is one that, after 40 years growing in Ohio, is reported to be only 8 feet tall and 10 feet wideBut that’s still enough to block most windows. So choose the location well. ‘Fat Albert’ is one that is designed to stay low – and wide.
One thing you could do to keep the ground from freezing solid would be to buy a bale of hay or straw now and use it as insulation. Just spread a thick layer of it over the soil at the site where you will plant your tree. Between now and January it is likely we will have some very cold days. And unless we have a thick layer of snow, the top few inches of soil can be frozen solid by the time you want to plant your tree outdoors. Yes, you can break up frozen soil with a pick ax, but do you want to? Or you can dig the hole when you buy your tree.
I would also buy a few bags of topsoil now and store them in a warm basement. Then if the soil is frozen when it’s time to plant, and you hack out a hole, you can backfill the hole with soil that is not in frozen chunks. You will want some bark mulch or wood chips to spread over the soil once the tree is planted, too.
Instead of keeping a live tree in the house for a month, the way many of us do with cut trees, think about having it indoors for just a week or 10 days. That will reduce the stress on the tree considerably. Keep the soil lightly moist, but not soggy.
When the time comes to plant your tree, be sure that you dig the hole the appropriate depth. Never plant a tree in a hole that is deeper than necessary. Look for the trunk flare, that part of the tree that would be above ground if growing in the wild.
Keep the trunk flare above ground and do not cover it with bark mulch. To do so is to consign your tree to an early death. The bark will rot if covered with soil or mulch, and the tree will decline in 6 to 10 years. Many trees come in the pot with the trunk flare covered with soil, so you may have to expose it when you plant. And don’t forget to water your tree after you plant it, even if it is below freezing outdoors.
One nice thing about buying a cut tree that reaches the 10-foot ceiling in my house is this: after the holidays I will cut off all the branches and use them to provide some protection for less hardy plants that might be harmed by cold winter winds. I will layer them over perennials that are “iffy” in my climate, or use them to protect roses or other shrubs that might be damaged by the cold.
So go ahead and buy a live tree for the house if you wish, but please don’t hold your nurseryman responsible if your tree doesn’t survive the winter.
Holiday Gifts for the Gardener
Posted on Monday, November 25, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Bad news: I hear you can’t depend on Santa to deliver presents to your favorite gardener this year as he is vastly overworked – and pretty cranky. Last I heard, he is planning on give coal to almost everyone over the age of eight. But here are some of my recommendations that you could give to your favorite gardener.
Tools are always good. I recently bought a harvest knife, a Barnel BLK730. This is a lightweight curved blade on a wooden handle that is great for cutting back perennials and grasses by pulling it through a clump of vegetation. Best yet? The price. Only $7.10 from OESCOinc.com or 800-634-5557. This is a tool supplier in Conway, MA that has an amazing assortment of good tools.
Also from OESCO I borrowed two “anvil” type pruners to try out. I always thought that anvil pruners were just low-cost pruners sold in big box stores for $10 or so. But these pruners are made by a German company, Lowe (with 2 dots over the O, not to be confused with Lowe’s, the American retailer), and cut very well. Their blades are sharpened on both sides, and are thinner than the blades on by-pass pruners so they take noticeably less effort to cut.
For people with small hands, I like the Lowe mini-anvil, L5.127 for $40. It weighs just 6 ounces and cuts stems up to 5/8 inch in diameter. For bigger hands like mine, I like the Lowe Ergo Anvil L8.107 for $64. These weigh just 8 ounces and compare with my Felco 5 pruners that weigh 11 ounces.
Of course every gardener needs a good weeding tool. My favorite is the CobraHead, and has been for years. They now have a mini-Cobrahead which is designed for smaller hands. Available from CobraHead.com or 866-962-6272 or at your local garden center. It has a single curved tine like a steel finger that will tease out roots from below while you tug a weed from above.
Last summer I installed a garden during a dry time, and used a watering kit from Gardeners Supply called “Snip and Drip” (Item 8587044). I loved it. It comes with hose, soaker hose, and all the fittings needed for watering a small garden. I ran soaker hose around each shrub or cluster of perennials, then regular hose to the next planting. The fittings are easy to install and go together quickly. The basic kit costs $52.95 from Gardeners.com or 1-888-833-1412.
A good wheelbarrow is a nice present, though pricey. My favorite is the Smart Cart (
www.smartcarts.com or 207-591-4250). It is great for heavy and bulky loads. The axle is centered under the load so that it feels light to the touch and turns easily on its two wide 16-inch diameter wheels. It has a tubular aluminum frame and a big plastic bin (7 cubic feet).
You can easily remove the bin from the frame so that you can wash the dog in it, or carry compost in the back of your car. My model (with wide wheels) is rated for 600 lbs; the wire wheel version is rated for 400 lbs. At $299 with free shipping, it is a lifetime investment. I’ve had mine for about 20 years, and never had a problem.
If a wheelbarrow costs too much, you could get a small blue plastic tarp. My partner, Cindy Heath, loves hers to drag away weeds. Go to your local hardware store and get a six by eight foot tarp for under $10. Not perfect for everything, but very economical.
Books are great present, too. Go to your local family-owned bookstore and pull some gardening books off the shelf. Find a chair, sit down and have a look. It helps if you know what the recipient of your gift is focused on – shrubs, perennials, learning to compost, etc.
A book I liked this year is Mini Meadows: Grow a Little Patch of Colorful Flowers Anywhere around Your Yard by Vermont gardener Mike Lizotte. (Storey Publishing, paper, $16.95). It is full of practical easy ways to get more flowers to attract pollinators – and supply the table with bouquets.
A wonderful book by Vermont garden designer Julie Moir Messervy and architect Sarah Suskana is Outside the Not So big House: Creating the Landscape of Home (Taunton Press, $34.95). Wonderful photos, lots of good design ideas.
I start a lot of seeds each spring, and I’m tired of buying disposable plastic 6-packs. Gardeners Supply has an alternative: heavy-duty planting trays that can be washed in the dishwasher and re-used for years. Called the GrowEase system, there are two sizes: the 24-cell tray with 2-inch deep cells and a 15-cell tray with 3.5 inch deep cells. Both come with clear plastic domes and self-watering wicking systems.
As I get older I look for ways to save my knees, back, and energy levels. There are lots of kneelers on the market, and I’ve found one I like. Also by Gardeners Supply, it allows me to kneel just a few inches off the ground on a padded shelf, and has very sturdy side handles that allow me to use my arms to push myself up to a standing position. It weighs 9 pounds, and is very sturdy. Flipped over, you can sit on it. Item 40-009.
Santa may be cranky and unresponsive this year, but we don’t have to be. Send me your ideas, particularly for books you like – I need winter reading. Enjoy the holidays!
Tips for Extending the Life of Your Tools
Posted on Friday, November 22, 2019 · Leave a Comment
By now most of us have put our gardens to bed – or done as much as we will this season. The morning of the first snow storm I finished cutting back the perennials in my last two flower beds. Whew, just in time. The vegetable garden has long been cleaned up, weeded and mulched with fall leaves. Only the kale is still standing, and I will continue to pick and eat it.
What I have not done, and am betting you have not done either, is to get all my tools ready for winter. It’s always one of the last thing I do before my annual hibernation. This is a good time to work on your tools.
First, anything with a gas engine needs to have fuel stabilizer put into the gas tank to keep the engine from getting clogged up with gunk over the winter. And if you can buy gas without ethanol in it, that stuff is better than ordinary gas. But stabilizer really cuts down on the hassle of starting your mower or chain saw, come spring. The bottle will tell you how much to use. Run the engine for 5 minutes after you add it.
It’s time to clean off the dead grass that accumulates under the deck of your lawnmower. If possible, tip your mower on its side to clean off the gunk with a putty knife or gardening tool. Or just reach in through the place it shoots out the grass and scrape off as much as possible. What you don’t want is accumulated gunk that holds moisture, causing your mower to rust.
I know that some mowers also have ports where you can attach a hose to blast the grass off (my riding mower came with one) but I find they don’t really do the job – especially if you don’t do it every time you use the machine.
In the past I have had mice nest in the air filter of my riding mower. Now I put a handful of mothballs in an old sock, and place it over the air filter and that deters them.
As a man of certain age – past 70 that is – most of my tools have wooden handles. Yes, I have tried those new-fangled fiberglass-handled tools, but don’t like them. Some of my tools were used by my grandfather and/or my parents before me. I treasure them knowing that 3 generations of sweat has seeped into the wood, giving the tools a nice dark polished look. That patina is enhanced by an annual application of boiled linseed oil.
Late each fall I take some time to polish the wooden handles of my hand tools and sharpen the blades, where appropriate. Using medium to fine grit sandpaper I rub out any rough spots or potential splinters on the wooden handles. Then I polish the handles a little more with some fine steel wool and wipe them clean. Lastly, I use a paintbrush to apply several coats of hot linseed oil and let it soak in. That keeps the handles from drying out. A well-oiled handle rarely breaks or gives splinters.
My father always painted some red “Rustoleum” paint on the metal parts of garden tools to make them easier to find and to identify them as his. I found one of his old shovels in the back of the barn and saw that the handle was dry and cracked – I had not used it or maintained it in years. I sandpapered the many rough spots before polishing with steel wool and the applying 3 coats of linseed oil. I just kept reapplying the oil until it stopped soaking in.
A wire brush is a good tool for cleaning up the metal blades of tools – I use one to get off rust. After that, I use a rag with a little linseed oil on it to oil the metal. Something like WD-40 would work, too, and even get off some rust, but I don’t particularly want to introduce chemicals and petroleum products to my soil next spring – even in small quantities.
Hoes and shovels work best when kept sharp. You can sharpen them on a bench grinder or with a rough file or a whetstone. I have a grinder with a stone wheel, but rarely use it – it’s too easy to take off too much metal. Before sharpening a tool, study the angle of the blade – hoes and shovels are only sharpened on one side (the inside) and all you need to do is mimic the original angle, drawing the stone or file over the blade in consistent, even strokes.
What about hand tools? Now most have plastic handles that require no maintenance, and edges of steel so tough that sharpening is not required. But it makes sense to wipe off accumulated grime with a cloth and get any dirt off the blades before retiring them for winter.
Cleaning up my machines and tools is not very high on my list of fun things to do on a Saturday morning. But I recognize that doing so will extend their lives and, for wood-handled tools, add to my enjoyment of them next spring. So have at it. Your grandchildren may use some of your tools one day – if you keep them well maintained.
Henry lives and gardens in Cornish Flat, NH. Reach him at
henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is available to talk to your garden club or other group.
A Late Fall Garden Chore: Pruning
Posted on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Fall is here, and winter is not far behind. I’ve seen some snow and scraped frost from my windshield. The sun is slow to get above the hills in the morning and quick to disappear in the afternoon. The sky is often gray and gloomy. These things take their toll on the spirits of gardeners like me. As an antidote, I plant bulbs and prune. Both lift my spirits. I’ve finished planting bulbs, but I’m still pruning.
First, what should you prune now, and what should wait until spring or summer to prune? Anything that blooms in spring or early summer has already formed the buds that will flower next year. Lilacs, forsythia, crabapples, magnolias, rhododendrons, viburnums and many more are ready to bloom when the weather and length of day dictate blooming.
Many gardeners refuse to prune spring blooming woody plants now. It’s true that if you prune then now you lose blossoms – but that does not stop me. Trees and shrubs get messy fast. Ignore them for a few years and they are as untidy as an unmade bed.
In my opinion, it’s better to lose a few blossoms than put off a job that needs to be done. When the lilacs are blooming I am planting veggies and flowers and fixing the mess moles made of my lawn. I have no time to prune them then.
On the other hand, I do not prune evergreens now. Pines, hemlocks and spruce I prune right after they finish their new growth in July. If you remove it each year, you can keep evergreens roughly the same size, if you wish.
I like to be sure that the lowest branches of a tree are high enough off the ground so that mowing is easy. That said, I have a huge Merrill magnolia that blooms with a thousand huge white blossom each year in late April. It has two low branches that make it difficult to mow there, and I have been considering removing them for at least 5 years.
Finally I have decided to remove those two low culprits, but I will wait until after blooming next spring. And who knows, I may change my mind before I get out the saw.
I like to prune when trees are bare of leaves because I can see the bones of the tree. I can see branches that reach through the middle of the tree to grab some sunshine on the other side. I can see branches rubbing up against other branches, or branches that have died and have not yet fallen. All those I will take out.
My late sister, Ruth Anne Mitchell, loved to prune. Her trademark move was to sit down under a tree or shrub and look up through the branches, preferably when they were bare of leaves. She claimed she could see the clutter in the middle of the tree that way, and decide what to take out. Me? I like to circle a tree or shrub several times, looking at it from every direction.
Where you cut a branch is very important. There is a swollen area at the base of each branch called the branch collar. The bark there is often wrinkled. Cut the branch just past the branch collar, leaving the collar on the tree.
Why is that important? The collar is where the tree naturally heals itself. If you leave a long stub past the collar, the tree will have to wait for the wood to rot back to the branch collar before healing, potentially leaving an open wound for years. Conversely, if you remove the branch collar and cut the branch flush to the tree, you leave a much bigger wound than if you do it properly.
A properly pruned tree gets sunshine on each one of its leaves every day. Pruning opens up the canopy to sunshine and allows breezes to dry the leaves of dew or rain. For trees like lilacs and apples that are susceptible to fungal diseases, it’s important that leaves dry out quickly before fungal hyphae (root-like structures) penetrate the leaves.
One last chore: if you planted a new tree this year, you may wish to protect the bark from rodents that chew the bark under the snow. Meadow voles living under the snow can girdle a tree and kill it. Surround the tree with metal mesh called “hardware cloth”. Get the kind with just quarter-inch spaces, not chicken wire. Surround the trunk from the ground to 24 inches.
Many gardeners avoid pruning the way children avoid the dentist. The way your dog views visiting the vet. But instead, think of pruning as going to a really, really good hair stylist. You are giving your tree or shrub a fancy haircut, not performing surgery – even though there are such things as “tree surgeons”.
Tips for Forcing Bulbs for Indoor Blooms in Spring
Posted on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 · Leave a Comment
It might be nice to take a week in February or March and travel to the Caribbean. By then most of us are tired of snow and cold. But if that is not in your budget, perhaps you need to plant some bulbs in pots for spring forcing. I do it every year, and it brings joy to my heart just when I need it.
First, the basic concept: bulbs need a certain time in a cold, dark space to get ready to bloom in spring. But you can create that in a pot, and trick them into blooming earlier than they would outdoors in the ground. When you bring your pots into the warmth of the house, those foolish bulbs think it is spring – in February or March.
Each type of bulb needs a different length of rest in a chilly place in order to bloom. Small bulbs need about 8 weeks, daffodils 12 weeks, and most tulips do best with 15 weeks. Tulips should never be brought up into the warmth of the house before February or they might just produce foliage, but no blossoms.
The hardest part of forcing bulbs is finding the correct spot to place the pots. Ideally, you will have a place that is 35 to 45 degrees. A place that is usually below 50 degrees and above 32 degrees works best. If you have a garage that is usually above freezing, that will work fine.
A few days of sub-freezing temperatures are not a problem. What you want is for the bulbs to send out roots in the pot, which they will do in November and December in your garage or on the steps out of your cellar through the bulkhead. I suppose you can also put a blanket (or a trash bag full of dry fall leaves) over the pots to keep them warmer in the coldest part of January.
Each fall I fill up a wheelbarrow with potting soil and compost, a 50-50 mix. I generally use the potting soil that I used in summer for annuals on the deck. The mix should be fluffy, contain no roots, and be lightly moist to start the process. I fill the pot one third full, place my bulbs, and then fill to within an inch of the top of the pot.
When buying bulbs to force, look for packages that say “Good for Forcing” or “Early Season Bloomers”. “Darwin” tulips are generally good forcing, and are for sale at garden centers and grocery stores. Early daffodils force better than late season varieties.
One year I ignored my bulbs for forcing until it was time to take them out of my cold basement. I had very few blooms. Why? Because they dried out. I should have checked the soil once a month, and watered lightly. Bulbs don’t want to sit in soggy soil, but they can’t grow roots and get ready to bloom if the soil gets bone dry. It’s a balancing act. The soil should be lightly moist.
Outdoors mice and squirrels can be a problem, as they consider bulbs good high-protein, high-calorie meals. I’ve read that during World War II, some Dutch farmers ate their tulips to keep from starving. Rodents think along similar lines. Daffodils and alliums are not of interest to rodents.
I live in a home built in 1888 and despite my best efforts, a few rodents sneak in and out at will. So I have to protect my indoor bulbs from them. I do this by placing a plate over the top of a round pot, or cutting a piece of wood to put over rectangular ones. This keeps the mice at bay.
Come spring, bulbs will start to grow and push up out of the soil. Still, I label each pot with the date it was planted and what is in the pot. That will allow me to bring up early bulbs before the tulips.
You can plant 2 layers of bulbs in larger pots. Set your large bulbs, the daffodils, tulips and alliums, near the bottom of the pot, but be sure to have 2 inches of soil below the bulbs. Add soil mix and then plant a layer of crocus or glory-of-the-snow ( Chionodaxa luciliae) so that they are near the top of the pot. Bring out the pot into the warmth of the house when it is time for the larger bulbs. The little bulbs will bloom right away, followed by the bigger ones which can take 3 to 4 weeks to bloom.
Can you re-use forced blooms? Sure. Keep them in a sunny windowsill and water as needed until the soil has thawed outdoors. Plant them in the spring just as you would in the fall. They might need a year or more to recover from their indoor adventure.
Paper whites, a type of daffodil commonly sold for forcing in pots of gravel and water, don’t need the long chilling period of other bulbs. They are not hardy in our climate, however, so don’t bother planting them outside in the spring. They can go right in the compost pile.
There is something very satisfying to me about being able to have tulips and daffodils blooming in my house while snow is still on the ground. I know I will have hundreds blooming in May, but having a few early ones indoors helps me through the gray days of mud season.
Think about joining Henry on a Viking River Cruise from Paris to Normandy and back next June. E-mail him at
henry.homeyer@comcast.net for details.
Fifteen Flowers That Bloomed in October in My Garden
Posted on Tuesday, October 29, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Witch hazel November
Despite frost and short days, my garden produced plenty of flowers in October. I look for plants that will perform in the shoulder seasons – March, April, October and even November. Here are some I love that are blooming still, or that bloomed earlier in October.
- My ‘Knockout’ roses were still blooming in late October. This trademarked variety has me completely loyal to them. They start blooming in June, and continue until Halloween or later. Not every bush blooms every day, but some do. Most are not fragrant, though that has its advantage: they don’t attract Japanese beetles or rose chafers.
- Seven Sons Flower tree (Heptacodium micinoides). The small white flowers on this tree are delicate, and slightly fragrant. It’s fast growing, small tree that needs annual pruning – it can grow stems up to 7 feet long in one season, though it shouldn’t get taller than 25 feet or so. Hard frost damages the flowers.
- Witchhazel (Hamamelis virginiana). This understory tree has small curly yellow blossoms that really aren’t obvious until late October when the yellow foliage falls off. The branches of mine are loaded with blossoms now, and will look good well into November. Not a showy plant, but a welcome treat at this time of year.
- Disanthus (Disanthus cercidifolius). This large shrub has spectacular purple foliage, more dramatic than the reds of burning bush (Euonymus alatus). And if you get up close for a look, it has little half-inch red blossoms in October. Quite a worthy shrub, but not well known. Even though I’m in a cold zone 4, and this shrub is said to be only hard to Zone 5 (minus 20), I’ve had it for several years.
- Autumn crocus (Colchicum speciosum). This is my one
Colchicum
bulb plant for October. It is similar to spring crocus, but many times larger. I was given a dozen bulbs 20 years ago, and now I have just one left – the others seem to have disappeared. It displays its foliage in spring which then disappears. In October large pink (or white or lavender) blossoms appear. Floppy, but wonderful. I shall buy some more next summer.
- Fall monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii ‘Arendsii’). You may know the June-blooming monkshood (Aconitum napellus), but this late bloomer is a treat that blooms in late October. It grows to be 4 to 5 feet tall, and has an intense blue-purple hooded flower. Also called wolf’s bane because the sap was used allegedly used to poison wolves in Russia by spreading it on meat that was left out for wolves.
- Blooming with my monkshood is a pink-magenta phlox. Unlike the other phlox I have, this one starts late and just keeps on blooming. I wish I knew the cultivar name, as it has little mold or mildew, too. A good cut flower.
- Rudbeckia I have 2 varieties that bloom well into October. ‘Henry Eiler’ is just finishing up. A 5-foot tall plant with petals with gaps between them give it a distinctive look. And then there is ‘Prairie Sun’ which blooms from late June until now. It has a green eye, instead of a brown one.
- Globe flower (Trollius europaeus). The bright yellow flowers are a complete surprise, as it should bloom in early summer. But this year it is in full, glorious bloom in the last week of October. Go figure.
- New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracnesis). This is a tall purple flower that looks a lot like a New England aster. It can reach 5 to 6 feet tall in moist rich soil, which it likes best. I now grow it in dry soil, as it got too big in moist soil. It bloomed well though mid-October for me.
- New England Aster (Aster novae-angliae). Another tall fall bloomer, I have pink and purple varieties that often reach 5 to 6 feet tall. Monarch butterflies love to get some nectar from the flowers before heading south.
- Canadian burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis). A native plant of the wetlands, this tall flower appears as a dozen thin bottle-brush flowers on each stem, in clusters. I have 3 or 4 other species in this genus that bloom earlier in summer.
- Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale). This flower was named after Helen of Troy, a woman so beautiful that it said she launched 1,000 ships. I have it in various colors: yellow, yellow and rust, orange and brown. It can be 5 feet tall, or as short as 2 feet, depending on where it is grown and the cultivar. It does fine in ordinary garden soil, but thrives best in moist soils. Sneezeweed does not make you sneeze – it was used as snuff in earlier times.
- Pink Turtlehead (Chelone lyonii). This tall pink flower blooms for 6 to 8 weeks with multiple hooded pink flowers on tall stems. Bumblebees love this flower, though it is a challenge for them to crawl inside for pollen. It finished blooming in mid-to-late-October.
- Fountain grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’).
Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’ looks good much of the winter
Most of us do not think of grasses as having flowers, but they do, of course. This 6- to 8-foot tall grass has wonderful fluffy panicles a foot long or so. They move well in the breeze, and many stay erect through much of the winter.
So if you think that flowers finish blooming in September with the last of your daylilies, think again! Buy some of the plants I mentioned next spring and plant them. October flowers can be spectacular.
Henry is available to speak to your garden club or library. Reach him at
henry.homeyere@comcast.net or P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.
Now is the Time to Plant Garlic!
Posted on Thursday, October 24, 2019 · Leave a Comment
The easiest crop I grow every year is garlic. I plant it in October, mulch it well, and harvest it in early August. That’s it. If it’s well mulched, I don’t even have weed the bed more than once or twice. Not only that, I use this year’s harvest to plant next year’s crop, so it’s free. Each year my garlic crop gets better as I use the best of this year’s harvest to plant next year’s crop. My garlic is well adapted to my soil and climate.
If you want to grow garlic but don’t have any for planting, you can buy some “seed garlic” on-line, or you can check with a local farm stand for garlic you can plant. Don’t use grocery store garlic. Much commercial garlic has been treated with chemicals to prevent sprouting. And most grocery store garlic is the wrong kind for planting in New England – and some of it is from China. I avoid anything grown in China, due to concerns about toxic chemicals used there.
There are two basic categories of garlic: soft neck garlic and hard neck garlic. Grocery store garlic is usually soft neck, the kind you see braided and hung up in Italian restaurants. It is less hardy than hard neck garlic, a bit bland and less interesting to cook with.
Hardneck Garlic ready for planting
Here in New England we should plant hard neck garlic, which has a stiff “scape” or stem that starts in the middle of the bulb, and grows up as the stalk and produces a flower in July. The fresh scapes can be cut and used in sauces or omelets.
To plant garlic, begin by selecting a bed in full sunshine. Weed it well and make sure the soil is loose and fluffy. In a bed 24- to 30-inches wide I plant 3 rows of garlic. I make furrows with a hand tool or hoe and add some organic fertilizer which I then stir into the soil.
Divide a bulb of garlic into individual cloves for planting. Mine vary from 4 or 5 cloves per bulb up to a dozen. Most have 6 or 8 cloves per bulb. I plant my cloves a hands-width apart, which is about 5 inches. I push each bulb into the soil so that the bottom of the clove is about 3 inches deep, or with the tips 2 inches from the soil surface.
Place your garlic cloves on the soil to establish space before planting
When I plant the second row I stagger the cloves so that they are not lined up with the first row. In the third row I match the cloves with those in the first row. Staggering the bulbs insures a little extra space between bulbs. When all are in the soil I push soil over the cloves and pat the soil down with my hands. If your soil is sandy or a heavy clay, adding some compost before planting is good.
The last step is mulching your bed. You can use straw or mulch hay. Straw should not have any seeds, but it is much more expensive to buy – usually more than $10/bale. Mulch hay is just hay for cows that got wet and is no longer tasty to them. It should be under $5/bale.
Take a section of a bale and shake it over the bed. It will fall apart and spread out. I put 8 to 12 inches of loose hay or straw over the bed. By spring it will have compacted to 3 inches of mulch, and the garlic will grow right through it – though weeds won’t. The mulch will keep the soil warm for a while this fall, which is good. The garlic needs to grow roots and get established before the soil freezes.
Garlic grows through th mulch, shown here in May
Sometimes garlic will send up a green shoot in the fall. When this happens, gardeners write me, asking if their garlic will suffer if it grows in the fall. Nope. The frost will kill the greenery, but not harm its potential, come spring.
Garlic has many uses. Not only will it scare away vampires, it is an important ingredient in many dishes. And it can be used medicinally. Vermont herbalist Rosemary Gladstar is famous for her fire cider recipe. This concoction is used to help prevent colds and other winter plagues. It contains garlic, raw apple cider, horseradish, hot peppers and other natural ingredients. It can have quite a kick, depending on how you make it.
Fire Cider book cover
Rosemary Gladstar and a group of her colleagues and students have put together a lovely book called, “Fire Cider! 101 Zesty Recipes for Health-Boosting Remedies Made with Apple Cider Vinegar” published by Storey Publishing in 2019. Nearly every one of the recipes includes garlic. The book also tells the tale of how a company tried to trademark the name Fire Cider, though recently, I have learned, the upstarts lost in court.
What else is garlic food for? Here is my recipe for garlic bread, which is good with almost any dinner: Crush 2 to 3 cloves of garlic in a press, and mix with a stick of butter that is soft and slightly warm. Add 3 tablespoons of grated Romano or Parmesan cheese and ½ teaspoon of tarragon, and mix with a fork. Slather liberally on sliced Italian or French bread, wrap in aluminum foil, and heat in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Consume! This has no calories if you use your own garlic.
If you don’t have a vegetable garden, plant some in a flower bed. The scapes in mid-summer are curly and stiff, and great in flower arrangements. So get some garlic, plant some, eat some and stay healthy!
E-mail Henry if you are interested in joining him on a Viking Cruise from Paris to Normandy and back next June. He’s at
henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.
It’s Time to Plant Bulbs for Spring Blossoms
Posted on Thursday, October 17, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Leucojum
This is the season for planting bulbs – from mid-October until the snow flies. Actually, I’ve shoveled snow off a bed to plant bulbs in November, and they did fine. Bulbs have everything inside them needed to succeed their first year. If you want them to keep on thriving, they will generally need plenty of sunshine, good drainage – and you must not cut off the foliage before it starts to die back.
That said, there are exceptions. The small bulbs like snowdrops, crocus, scilla and glory of the snow are fine in the shade of deciduous trees. That’s because they will bloom early and re-charge themselves before the trees get dressed in leaves that will shade their beds. No bulbs that I know of thrive in the shade of pines, hemlocks or other conifers.
Deer can be a problem for some sorts of bulbs. Tulips are tasty to them, and many a gardener has wept tears of frustration when the deer ate their tulip buds the night before they were to open. Repellents can work – my aging corgi, Daphne, is still a great deterrent – but there are commercial repellents as well.
Garlic, soap, coyote urine and nasty repellents made with rotten eggs and blood meal can keep deer away – unless they are really hungry, or just plain mean. If deer are a problem, you can protect bulbs with wire mesh. No need to build an 8-foot fence, just build a dome or cage over them using chicken wire.
Squirrels, mice, voles and chipmunks can eat bulbs. Some folks buy cheapo hot pepper powder to sprinkle in the bulbs, but it is probably only good for one season. You can put sharp cinders or oyster shell meal (sold at feed and grain stores for chickens) into the hole at planting time. Alternatively you can feed the rodents all winter, or catch and deport them in a Hav-a-Hart trap. Peanut butter with a sprinkling of sunflower seeds will attract them to your cage. They can’t resist.
In the past I have always planted 25 to 50 bulbs in a hole at once. I dig to the appropriate depth, loosen the soil at the base, add some fertilizer and scratch it in. Usually I just use a slow-release organic fertilizer like Pro-Gro, but there are mixes made specifically for bulbs, often called Bulb Booster. I place the bulbs in the hole, pointy end up, and fairly close together. I plant bulbs closer than the directions say – and no bulb has ever complained.
I recently attended a presentation on bulbs by a Dutch expert, Jacqueline van der Kloet. She proposed random plantings. She showed slides of wheelbarrows filled with bulbs of various types, sizes and bloom dates. She mixed them together and then tossed them out onto a flower bed for planting. Her people used trowels to plant every bulb individually. That seems like a lot more work, but the look in spring was interesting.
Daffodil bulbs planted in a 36-inch oval hole, ready to cover with soil
On a recent Sunday I gave random planting a try. We had 25 daffodils, 150 crocus of various types and 6 big alliums. The bed for the bulbs was about 2 feet wide and 10 feet long. The soil is very rich and fluffy, so planting was easy. Even with a fruit tree and 4 peonies in the bed there was room for the bulbs. We will plant annuals in that bed, come June, so we may inadvertently disturb some of the bulbs when we do that.
Instead of using a trowel to plant, I pulled back the soil with a curved hand tool with a single-tine called the CobraHead weeder. For crocus, planting was easy: they only need to be 3 inches deep. To get down 6 inches for the daffodils and allium, I needed to use my fingers to keep the loose soil from falling into the planting hole as I prepared it. Still, it went along quite quickly.
Most bulbs don’t like soil that is constantly wet. Much of my property is on the flood plain of a little stream, and in winter and spring does stay quite moist. In the past I have had good luck in the moist areas with Camassia (Camassia sp.), Summer Snowflake (Leucojum aestivum) and some daffodils. I have done tulips there, too, but in raised beds to improve drainage.
Camassia
Camassia is a lesser known flower, generally in shades of blue or white. The stems are about 18 inches tall, with many florets along the top part of it. They bloom in May or June and hold up well on the stem and in a vase.
Summer snowflake has tall white flowers that resemble snowdrops on steroids: they are on stems that are 12 to 18 inches tall, and each stem has 3 or 4 flowers. I got 25 bulbs about 20 years ago, and now have a huge clump each spring. They bloom in mid-May for me.
Ms. van der Kloet recommended two varieties of daffodils that do well in damp soil: Jenny and Thalia. Thalia I have grown: it’s a nice white one, and fragrant. My recommendation for gardeners with moist soil? Add lots of compost to the soil, including under the bulbs, and raise the beds as much as possible. Even 4 to 6 inches will help. But if you have truly soggy soil, your bulbs may rot, so experiment before planting in large numbers.
Winter is long, and I want something to look forward to. Spring bulbs are worth every penny I spend on them. And if a few get eaten by rodents or succumb to soggy soils? So be it. I will always have plenty to enjoy.
Henry Homeyer is a gardening coach, speaker, and consultant and is the author of 4 gardening books. He can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.
Putting the Garden to Bed
Posted on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 · Leave a Comment
Pardon me for saying so, but it’s time to get ready for winter. That’s right. A few days ago (or was it weeks?) we were swimming in the ocean and lounging in the sun. But we’ve had frost, and I’ve seen serious snow as early as October 15. Here are some of the things on my list:
Clean up the vegetable garden. Harvest the last of the root crops, pull the weeds and mulch everything with leaves. The key here is this: pull the weeds.
Annual weeds will die with the cold, of course, but most have produced seeds by now that will guarantee that their progeny will appear next year. When you pull them, try to avoid knocking loose the seeds. Be gentle.
This knife has a serrated edge and is great for cutting back flower stems
Perennial weeds and grasses have serious roots that are hard to pull, and will survive the winter. If you can get them out now, you will have less work next spring. In the spring the soil will be wet, the air cold. We will still have some nice warm days for weeding before winter.
Use a good weeding tool to get all the roots out. I like the CobraHead weeder to tease out the roots and comb though the soil. It’s a simple hook that slides through the soil easily and lifts up scraps of root. You can suppress weeds in the spring by putting down old newspapers and covering them with straw or leaves.
Insect pests and fungal diseases can be minimized next year by getting rid of plants this fall. Tomatoes generally have at least some leaf blight, and squash family plants often have both insects and fungi by the end of the summer. Potato bugs may have visited your plants. So get rid of these plants by putting them in the household trash or by adding them to a pile of brush you will burn after snowfall. I suppose you could drag them off to a far corner of the property, but I know that potato bugs, at least, will hike a long way for a free lunch.
Most perennials were cut back in this bed
Clean up the flower garden. This entails cutting back most flowers and pulling weeds. I say cut back most flowers, but suggest leaving a few tall flowers for the birds – they like seeds of sunflowers, black-eyed Susans and purple coneflower, among others. Those tall plants also provide a little winter interest for you silhouetted against the snow.
Instead of cutting back your perennials with your pruners, try using a serrated knife. Next yard sale you see, stop and buy a steak knife. They work great. Grab a clump of stems and saw them off. I suppose one of those folding pruning saws would do it, too – but wear gloves and be careful using one. They are very sharp.
I’ve used hedge clippers, too, for fall cleanup, but often old clippers don’t do a good job on heavy stems; things get stuck between the blades. I have a pair that works well made by Barnel, their B1000L hedge shears. Available from www.oescoinc.com.
Should you rake the leaves out of your flower beds? That all depends. If you leave the leaves, they will help suppress weeds in the spring, and will eventually decompose. Still, many gardeners like the look of a clean flower bed. The choice is yours. Me? I generally leave them.
Another fall task involves improving the soil, particularly in the vegetable garden. Adding a layer of compost after weeding is always a good plan. Add an inch of more of compost and stir it in with a tool, and it will stimulate your soil to become more biologically active by adding and feeding soil microorganisms.
Many garden centers sell compost by the truckload for a price considerably more reasonable than by the bag. Dairy farms often sell aged manure or hot-composted manure (which is even better). Some will deliver it to your garden. If you keep your raised beds in place each year, just add the compost to the beds, don’t waste it on the walkways.
Fall is a great time to get your soil tested. Your state Extension Service offers this service, just go on-line and download the form. If you have never had soil tested, pay extra and get tested for heavy metals if you grow edibles. Houses built before 1978 (when lead was banned in paint) often have lead in the soil nearby – which is dangerous. A good soil test will not only tell you if your soil is deficient in minerals, it can tell you if it has adequate organic matter and a soil pH that works for your plants.
For a more in-depth soil test, you can do a test with Logan Labs (https://loganlabs.com/) and for a fee of $30, talk with a soil scientist about the results.
Mulch on a vegetable garden will keep down weeds in the spring
Last, rake the leaves, or better yet, chop them with the lawnmower and then rake them up. Chopped leaves are fantastic mulch, and a real boost to your soil. Earthworms love them, and will bring the organic matter down into the soil. When you cut the lawn at the end of the season, lower the blades a little because long grass is more susceptible to winter fungal problems.
There are plenty of other tasks to do in the garden, so play hooky on a sunny day and get back out into the garden. You’ll never regret doing so.
I now have pricing for the Viking River Cruise I hope to lead from Paris to Normandy and back next June 19 to 26. E-mail me for the details at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. This could be great fun, and I plan to do some gardening talks in the evenings.
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