Mid-Summer Blues … and Reds and Yellows
Posted on Monday, August 15, 2016 · Leave a Comment
It’s been a hot dry summer and many gardeners are lamenting the lack of color in their flower gardens. While it’s true that this is a quiet period for many perennials, there are plenty of flowers that are blooming – and plenty more on the way. Let’s take a look.
First, there are the annuals. Annuals are flowers that only get one chance to continue their genetic line. If they don’t make seeds and get them in the ground, they will die out. Of course, those silly flowers don’t realize that all the big seed companies have plenty more seeds with similar or identical genetic material, and will be selling seeds for flowers just like them next year. But, not knowing that, annuals keep on blooming in hopes of perpetuating their genetic line.
Some annuals need to be dead-headed in order to keep blooming. We have to play the role of the deer or woodchuck or cow that might nip off the blossoms, signaling a need to produce more flowers and eventually seeds. If you don’t cut off the spent blossoms, the flowers will think they have down their job.
Annuals that need to be deadheaded include, but are not limited to the following: bachelor buttons, cosmos, gaura, gazanias, geraniums, marigolds, osteospurmum, pansies of all types, pincushion flower, salvias, snapdragons, sunflowers, verbenas and zinnias. Some of those, like marigolds and zinnias will bloom for long periods of time even if you don’t cut off the spent flowers. Many will branch and produce greater numbers of flowers after deadheading – cut off one snapdragon stem, get six more, for example.
Other annuals have been bred so that they are “self-cleaning.” That means that spent blossoms fall off and are replaced by new ones. Most impatiens are like that, along with some petunias. I have one petunia called ‘Night Sky’ from Burpee that has been blooming constantly since early June and all I have ever done is water it occasionally. What else? Angelonia, Supertunias, Superbenas, Million Bells (Calibrachoa), portulaca, dragon wing begonias, lantana, nemesia, torenia and oxalis.
Cleome Senorita Rosalita
Two of my favorite self-cleaning annuals are trademarked varieties (Proven Winners) and are not available in six-packs or by seed, only in pricier 4-inch pots. But they are worth it. First is ‘Senorita Rosalita’ cleome. Unlike the generic cleome, it has no spiky thorn-like appendages and no cat-pee odor. It is a multi-stemmed beauty about 24 to 36 inches tall with 4-inch wide clusters of frilly pink flowers. A knockout. Another is a euphorbia called ‘Diamond Frost’. This has a mass of tiny white flowers, a bit like baby’s breath, that keeps blooming forever. I have grown it in pots and brought them inside for the winter, and it keeps on blooming! Fabulous.
Then there are the perennials. Yes, June has passed and the peonies and primroses and iris have all finished blooming. But there are nice things now: purple cone flowers, black-eyed Susans, phlox and cardinal flowers are all blooming for me now. They are easy, sun-loving flowers that do well in a vase, too.
A few words of advice about the perennials above: in general, the old standards fare better than many of the “new, improved” varieties. And I say that not as an old curmudgeon who doesn’t like change, but as one who has tested many kinds.
So, for example, I have planted hybrid cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), only to have them die after the first winter – even when the pure species plants I had did not. That said, I‘ve had even my best cardinal flower plants die out after a few years. It is not a long-lived plant. It needs moist soil – it is found along the banks of the Connecticut River and I saw a huge patch alongside an abandoned beaver dam this week.
Similarly, I’ve had much better luck with standard varieties of purple cone flower (Echinacea purpurea) than the new hybrid colors such as peach, or yellow. I’ll stick with the old-fashioned pinky-purple ones, thank you very much.
Phlox is an old-fashioned plant, but many of the new named cultivars really are better. They’ve been bred to resist mildew, which makes so many of the old varieties ugly with spotted brown leaves. ‘David’ is a white one that I grow that is very nice.
Rudbeckia Prairie Sun
I love a black-eyed Susan called ‘Prairie Sun’. It rarely over-winters for me, but I accept that flaw because it blooms profusely from July until October. I generally purchase some every year. It is not a hybrid, so sometimes the plants will self-sow, providing free plants. Right now mine are gorgeous.
In order to have blooms all the time – which I do from March to November – you have to keep on buying plants, trying plants, replacing plants. There is no “quick fix.” So visit your gardencenter and ask what they have to brighten up your garden now.
Read Henry’s blog twice weekly at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. Henry gardens in Cornish Flat, NH. He is the author of 4 gardening books.
Going to Seed … or the Freezer
Posted on Monday, August 8, 2016 · Leave a Comment
My vegetable garden is producing more food each day than I can eat, but I’m trying to keep up with it by freezing, dehydrating and storing the bounty. And of course, I drive around with zucchini in my car, always looking for a willing recipient of some summer squash. But I am also deliberately letting some things go to seed.
We sometimes describe people who are going downhill and not paying attention to their appearances as “going to seed.” That’s an odd phrase, and has negative connotations. But I like letting lettuces and some other greens go to seed. Why? They will come back and produce early greens in the garden.
Once lettuce starts to elongate and get tall, also known as bolting, it starts to get bitter. If you pick it, you will notice white sap in the stem, usually a sign of bitter alkaloids. So you can pull it and toss it on the compost pile, or allow it to produce seed. Or eat it, if you like the flavor.
Most lettuces are not hybrids, so you can save their seed and get good free seeds. But read the seed package or catalog – or go on line and ask Dr. Google – to verify that the named variety you are growing is not a hybrid before collecting seed, or allowing it to self-sow. Anything listed as “heirloom” not a hybrid. (Hybrids are crosses of two varieties and do not usually breed true).
Lettuce going to seed
Lettuce normally self-pollinates as the stigma (which captures the male pollen) pushes up through the florets. If you want to cross breed lettuces, I have read that you can grow different varieties side-by-side and then tie two plants together when they have bolted and are about to produce flowers, thus facilitating cross breeding. I’ve never tried this, however.
If I want lettuce to produce seeds, I remove any newspapers and hay – the mulch I use – from around it. This allows seeds to fall freely into the soil where it will, generally, not germinate until next spring. Alternatively, one can take plants with dry seeds and shake the seeds out over a new, clean bed for lettuce next year.
I like to let a few other greens go to seed, too. Magenta spreen, amaranth and orach are other edible greens that I grow – but rarely have to plant. All are just one step from being weeds, and can be eaten raw or cooked. Orach has gorgeous purple leaves, and the spreen, particularly when young, has green leaves with pink edges. Amaranth has edible leaves, nice blossoms, and seeds that are eaten as grain in South America. Right now I have one spike of magenta spreen that stands 104 inches tall!
Tomatoes are starting to ripen for me: first the cherries, and now smaller plum tomatoes. In a few weeks those big, juicy heirloom tomatoes like Brandywine will be along – sending me, temporarily at least, to heaven.
I had a garden party recently and my guests were somewhat surprised to see that I have 30-some tomato plants. Although I share some of the fruit, I eat it fresh (3 times a day) and freeze the rest. I freeze whole tomatoes in zipper bags and cook with them all year.
To make these “red rocks”, all I do is wipe them clean and fit them into freezer-grade plastic bags. I place them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. When I want to make a soup or stew that calls for tomatoes, I just run a few tomatoes under hot water in the sink until I can easily rub off the skins. Then I wait a few minutes for them to soften, and cut into pieces for the soup pot.
Imperfect tomatoes I often make into tomato paste and freeze in ice cube trays until frozen, and then in zipper bags. I remove any imperfect spots and then core the tomatoes in the sink, squeeze out the excess seeds and juice, and puree in the Cuisinart. Then I boil down the puree for a few hours in a heavy enamel-clad cast iron pot. When I can literally stand up a spoon in the mix, it’s done. I leave it out all night uncovered to cool and to evaporate a little more moisture before spooning it into those ice cube trays.
Kohlrabi
Kohlrabi has done very well for me this year. I started seeds in the house in the spring, and transplanted them into the gardening early summer. This worked better than planting seeds in the ground, as there was no thinning to be done and the plants are perfectly placed.
I peel raw kohlrabi and cut it up in salads, or cook it in stir-fry or stews. The purple variety I’m eating now is so pretty I’m going to use it as a centerpiece on the table tonight. Oh my, the pleasure I get from my garden!
Read Henry’s blog twice weekly at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. Henry gardens in Cornish Flat, NH. He is the author of 4 gardening books.
Are Blueberries For the Birds? Or For Us?
Posted on Monday, August 1, 2016 · Leave a Comment
I gave a lecture and slide show recently about good plants that support our feathered friends. I talked about good habitat for nesting and safe places to rest while avoiding cats. But when I showed plants birds like to eat, some gardeners were surprised when I showed blueberries: they didn’t want to share. Many of those same people buy black oil sunflower seeds in 50 pound bags every month all winter. But share the blueberries? No way. If you don’t want to share, let’s look at the options.
Years ago when I was in the category of “blueberries are for me, not the birds” I developed an easy netting system that kept the birds off – but I no longer use it. Netting allows the birds to see those ripe berries, taunting them if you will, and some will get caught in the netting trying to get in. A friend recently reported finding 3 dead and rotting birds in the blueberry netting of a friend who was away. I haven’t used nets in years.
But let’s assume you want to net and are willing to check the nets frequently for caught birds. I suggest using tall plastic hoops that will allow you to drape wide swaths of netting over the bushes and easily slide it off to pick.
Row cover over blueberries
Buy 10 foot lengths of PVC pipe that is ¾ inches in diameter. For smaller bushes, cut some pipes in half and glue them to full length pieces to produce 15 foot long pipes. For large mature bushes, use 2 full lengths. Every 10 feet of a row of blueberries needs a hoop. Just bend the pipe to make a hoop, and push into the soil. I kept the netting in place with hair clips, the kind with 2 rows of teeth and a spring. On the ground I used landscape staples to hold the netting down and keep birds out.
I called my buddy Chris Dye of Noda’s Blueberry Farm in Meriden, NH (www.nodafarm.com). He said they bought a noise maker to keep the birds at bay. It’s called a Bird Gard Pro. (http://www.birdcontrolpro.com).It makes random bird distress and predator sounds to keep birds away, protecting about an acre of berries. He has a 12-volt car battery to power it, and it sits up 10 feet or more in the air. Aside from the sounds of distressed birds, which would make me loony in no time, the cost would prevent me from getting one: $229.95. Of course, blueberries are his business, so he has to protect the 2 acres of berries they grow.
Then I called Riverview Farm in Plainfield, NH and talked to Nancy Franklin. She and her husband have a huge fruit operation – apples, blueberries, raspberries, pumpkins and more (http://www.riverviewnh.com/). Nancy said that their berries are mostly late-season varieties, especially one called ‘Elliot’. By the time they are ripe, many of the bird culprits are getting ready to migrate and have changed their feeding habits, and are less of a problem. So they share a few, but don’t lose too many.
One problem with late-season berries whether blueberries, raspberries or strawberries is a new pest that arrived a few years ago: the spotted winged drosophila, a foreign fruit fly. Unlike our native fruit flies, this one attacks good fruit, not rotten fruit. So I don’t recommend any late season varieties until someone develops a predator insect that will control this new pest.
Birds evolved to avoid large predatory birds like owls and hawks. So you can buy a plastic owl and put him out in your blueberry patch, but birds aren’t stupid. Unless you are going to move it from tree to tree, they’ll figure out it’s not real.
Birds don’t like shiny things, either. I’ve known gardeners to hang old music CD’s they no longer enjoy in the bushes. The wind blows them, and they shine light at the birds. But then again, in time, they might start rocking to “Grandma Got run Over by a Reindeer” instead of flying away.
I also have some Nite Guard Repellent tape. This is shiny tape designed to scare birds with movement, noise and light (http://www.niteguard.com/). At $15 for a 100 foot roll, it is affordable – and probably helps.
Clothes pins keep the row cover in place
I have a bumper crop of blueberries ripening up now on my 7 bushes. I attribute that to the fact that I have been spreading agricultural sulfur around the bushes for a few years, getting the soil very acidic. Soil pH is very important, and you can add sulfur any time. But don’t add acidic fertilizer now (Holly-Tone, for example) as that should be done in early June. Fertilizer now would stimulate new growth which could easily be damaged in winter.
So this year I decided to put Reemay or “row cover” over my bushes. It’s a light-weight agricultural fabric designed to keep bugs off crops. I keep it in place with ordinary wooden clothes pins. It only cover the top of the bushes, or a little of the sides, but birds flying over won’t see it. And if my resident robins want to go on the ground and pick up berries, why not? There is nothing to harm the birds, and it is an inexpensive, quick–to-install solution. So put me in the category of “willing to share – a little – with the birds.”
See Henry’s twice-a-week blog at www.dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. He is the author of 4 gardening books, and a lifetime UNH MasterGardener.
Have Patience: Good Gardens Take Time
Posted on Monday, July 25, 2016 · Leave a Comment
One of the things I have learned over the years is that a garden needs time to develop and reach its full glory. The late children’s book author and illustrator – and gardener extraordinaire – Tasha Tudor once told me, “You need patience. It takes twelve years to make a garden. Everything that’s worthwhile takes time.” That seems a bit too long, but it does take time – years, in fact.
New shade bed
Recently I’ve been working on a shade garden that needed a pick-me-up. It has always been great in the spring with daffodils, snowdrops and scilla. There are lots of wild flowers and perennials, too, starting with hellebores that blossom beginning in late March and that have glossy dark green leaves all summer. Then come the primroses, anemones, Brunneras and finally hostas. All are green and pleasant now, but not dramatic. There wasn’t enough contrast for my taste. I have lots of groundcover – spotted dead nettle, or Lamium maculatum – that provided green and white foliage – but it’s somewhat boring right now.
So I created a new 3-foot wide curved bed about 30 feet long that replaces some of that ground cover and adds life to the wider garden area behind it.
I started by preparing the soil. It’s a shade garden, which means that there are a lot of tree roots in the space I wanted to plant. I defined the new bed by stretching out a garden hose defining a gentle curve. Using a pointed spade, I cut a sharp line into the soil 8 inches deep all along the hose, and then parallel to that 3 feet back from it.
Next I used a 4-tined weeding fork to pull the ground cover from the soil. This is a nice Italian tool made in a factory that has been making them the same way for generations. I got mine from Howland Tools in Shelburne Falls. MA (http://www.howlandtools.com). The curved12-inch long tines comb through the soil, finding and lifting roots. It’s like a 4-tined rake with extremely long tines. Some also call it a potato fork.
Tree roots were plentiful in my new bed so much of the soil’s fertility had been taken up long ago. The trees also suck water out of the soil, so removing roots helps in the short term (though I know they will return). I added organic slow-release fertilizer (one called Pro-Gro) and lots of compost – a couple of inches of it everywhere. I mixed it into the soil with that weeding fork, and then watered it repeatedly. Extra dry soil takes a long time to absorb water.
Since I like to plant according to the cycles of the moon, planets and stars, I consulted my Stella Natura calendar (www.stellanautra.com) and waited for a day auspicious for planting flowers. As it turned out, that was also a rainy day – the first in a long time here.
So what did I plant? In the middle I planted a perennial known as spikenard or Aralia cordata, one called ‘Sun King’. It gets to be a big plant, maybe 3 feet tall and wide, and has brilliant yellow-green leaves and does well in shade or part shade. Nearest the spikenard I wanted contrasting foliage, so I planted a black-leafed bugleweed (Ajuga reptens ‘Black Scallop’) and a glossy, dark green-leafed European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum).
Other plants I dug up and moved there were barrenwort (Epimedium spp.), two sizes of goatsbeard (Aruncus spp.) and a medium-sized green and white hosta. All were plants I had elsewhere. I matched the planting so that each side of the gardenwas a mirror image of the other – or as much as one can do with plants.
I spaced the plants based on how big they will be in 3 years. That means 2 or 3 feet apart for full-sized perennials. Of course that means the garden looked a little sparse when first planted, so I got a few annuals to fill in. I also planted some forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) to transplant into empty spaces. That’s an annual or biennial with early spring blue flowers that grows everywhere in my gardens, hundreds of them. Thousands, perhaps. It’s a great filler.
The day after planting my flowers I went up to E.C. Brown Nursery in Thetford, Vermont to see about some shrubs to add to the mix. I got two pagoda dogwoods (Cornus alternifolia) to plant behind the newly planted border. Pagoda dogwood grows well for me –it’s a native shrub that often pops up in shady places.
Why did I need to buy two more? They had some with variegated-leafed specimens with green and white leaves. Leaves with some white look good in dark, shady places. These understory trees are small, and will take 4 or 5 years to get to a size where they’re dramatic. But that just goes back to what Tasha Tudor told me: Everything that’s worthwhile takes time. And maybe she’s right, maybe I’ll still be tweaking plantings in thisgarden for the next 12 years.
Henry is the author of 4 gardening books. Read his twice-weekly blog posts and see lots of photos by going to https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy
How to Lead the Eye and the Visitor Through the Garden
Posted on Monday, July 18, 2016 · Leave a Comment
Garden clubs often enliven the summer by asking members to open their gardens to members and friends for an afternoon. For some, this is a terrifying day – they fear people will criticize their design, notice the weeds, make fun of the garden whimsy. For others, open gardens are fun. People walk through, talking plants and sharing ideas about how to create special garden spaces with plants that are right for the terrain. Clearly the second group of gardeners have more fun.
There is a group of gardeners in Lyme, NH that encourages garden visits: they call their events, “Pardon My Garden”. They acknowledge that few of us ever have a “perfect” garden, no matter how hard we work or how many weeders we employ. My garden isn’t perfect? So what. Gimme some ideas. I love the concept.
But let’s say you wish to open your garden to a group, or just to have a garden party for a dozen close friends. How do you get people to move around and find the special places and plants you have, especially if you have a large space? I think that hardscape is the answer: paths, archways, arbors, pottery, sculpture, stonework and water all will attract the eye and draw a visitor forward. Let’s look at these.
The most ambitious is to create paths. Public gardens use them to keep the foot traffic from killing the grass, and to direct people through the gardens. Often the walkways are covered with gravel and edged with steel or aluminum strips buried vertically in the soil. These pieces of edging often come in 20 foot sections and are serious work to install. I’ve done it, but it’s not easy.
A marble bench and umbrella plant call out for visitors
In home gardens, paths between beds and from one part of the garden to another generally are grass. Sometimes people put down ground bark or wood chips to define paths, though I prefer grass. And flat stones work well, too, for short paths.
The only trouble with stone paths is that it’s tough to mow around stones if they are raised up at all. So if you install flat stones, be sure to dig out enough soil so that your stones will be even with the ground and you can mow the spaces between and around the stones. Sure, you can use a string trimmer to do the job, but that is slower – and hard work.
Wooden archways and arbors invite visitors to pass through them – to see what’s on the other side. I have made them out of bentwood and out of cedar posts. I have grown clematis, scarlet runner beans and wisteria on them. All are lovely. One word of advice if you are custom-making an arbor: design it so that your lawnmower goes through easily. Or make one that will allow an adult and a Labrador retriever to go through together – even if you don’t have a dog. Four to five feet is good.
Pots of plants catch the eye
I recently weeded out a dry shady garden that has a nice piece of exposed ledge. I realized that I rarely noticed the ledge. I want visitors to pause and look at the unusual palette of plants I use in front of the ledge, too (now that the weeds are gone). What did I do? I moved a tall blue ceramic planter that I had on my shady deck down to the ledge. I have a vine with green and white leaves spilling out of the vase. It really brings the eye to that space.
If you have gardens on different levels, stone steps are great. Line them with plants that have interesting foliage that looks good all summer. People just want to walk up steps to see what is at the top (like the bear going over the mountain in that kids’ song). I put in steps a few years ago and they are a constant source of pleasure for me.
Stone steps draw visitors up to a new level
Fountains, pools, ponds, streams are good visual attractions, too. I am blessed with a natural stream, and find I am drawn to it daily. I keep the edges mowed so that weeds don’t obstruct the view.
Places to sit call out to visitors. I made a bench with a piece of white marble some years ago. Even though it is not a particularly comfortable place to sit (it’s hard, stone is cold, and it has no back) – it draws me across the lawn. It is enhanced by an umbrella plant (Darmera peltata) I planted in 2009 to honor my late sister. It is a dramatic plant: it has leaves 16 to 20 inches in diameter standing up nearly 4 feet tall.
My Adirondack chairs also beckon to me, and to visitors. I got wooden ones and painted them magenta. Even from a long distance, they stand out in contrast to the greens everywhere else. I gravitate towards them.
And ultimately, for gardeners, plants are the ultimate call. Have a magnolia in bloom? We all will walk to it. Roses? We want to sniff them – even if they are largely scentless, as most new roses are today. And even if your garden will never be on a gardentour, creating a draw will please you and your family.
Mid-summer Tasks in the Garden
Posted on Monday, July 11, 2016 · Leave a Comment
By now my gardens are well established and most plants are doing well. But there are tasks, both in the vegetable garden and in the flower beds, that need my attention.
Weeding is key in both areas, and recent rains make doing so easier as the soil has softened up. If you have very dry soil where you are, you might want to water well before weeding.
Mulched Onions
Why worry about weeds? I know gardeners who don’t do much weeding in their vegetable gardens. One even told me that if he weeded too much the deer would find his vegetables! But weeds anywhere in the garden are going to spread seeds soon – whether in the walkways or up close to your tomatoes. And seeds will come back to make more work now – and in the years to come. Many weed seeds act like time release capsules, some germinating now, some later, some 5 years down the road.
Weeds compete with your plants for moisture, soil nutrients – and even sunshine as they get bigger. I use a CobraHead hand weeder (www.CobraHead.com). It’s shaped a bit like a curved finger with a sharp pointy spade-shaped tip about an inch across. It easily gets under weeds so that I can pull from above (with one hand) and from below (with the CobraHead) at the same time, or tease long roots out of the soil without breaking them.
Thinning your carrots, beets and other root crops is an urgent job if you haven’t done so yet. Like weeds, vegetables growing too close to one another will compete for sun, water and nutrients. Carrots and beets should be at least an inch apart by now. And in a month, you need to thin them to 2 inches apart. Pulling the sharp tip of a CobraHead alongside a row of carrots will loosen the soil, sever a few side-growing roots, encouraging those that go deep. And scratch in some organic fertilizer now, too. It will help you get bigger carrots.
By the way, you can transplant carrots as you thin them out. Poke a hole deep enough so that the carrot will not bend, drop it in, press down the soil, water. It’s not a 100% reliable technique, but I hate to kill plants and have found it works most of the time. Do it in the evening, so they will have all night to recover before the hot sun hits them.
My onion patch was recently weeded, but I know that weeds will be along soon. So I mulched my onions with grass clippings. I find they work better than straw or hay in tight quarters like the onions. And green clippings may add a little nitrogen to the soil as they break down.
Leaves with early blight need to be removed
In many gardens the lower leaves of tomatoes are starting to yellow and develop dark blotches, sure signs of early blight. Although this blight is not immediately fatal, it reduces crop yield. By the end of August stems are often bare of leaves. You can minimize it by pruning off the affected leaves and all lower branches that touch the soil or are near it. Work on your plants when they are fully dry as the disease spreads more easily when leaves are wet.
I use scissors to remove the leaves, dipping them frequently in a glass of rubbing alcohol to sterilize them between plants. I wash my hands in a bucket of soapy water between plants. To see an in-depth article about this procedure along with many pictures, go to https://dailyuv.com/news/851634.
I always plant my potatoes in June, even though many gardeners start planting them in April. I do this as I ‘ve found that I have fewer potato beetles by planting late. Maybe they’re all at my neighbors’ gardens. But do take some time to check yours to see if any beetles are eating the leaves. Look for larvae, and for orange egg masses on the underside of leaves.
When you plant your potatoes the roots will grow down below the seed potatoes and the new potatoes will form above them. Now is a good time to add soil over the developing potatoes. This is known as hilling them. I plant mine using a post hole digger, so it’s easy to fill in above my seed potatoes, just pushing the soil from mounds next to each plant. You can also use a hoe and scrape soil from the walkways. Don’t worry if some leaves get buried. They won’t complain.
In my flower gardens I am mainly weeding and cutting back flowers stems that have already blossomed. Weeding gives me space to plant new flowers – even though I have an extensive palette of plants, I constantly go to garden centers to see new things, or plants I once had that have disappeared. (Yes, I kill a lot of plants, we all do).
Cutting off spent flowers is good. Important. It takes a lot of energy to produce seeds. By pruning back the spent flowers, your plants have more energy to develop good roots and strong stems.
So get outside and enjoy summer and pull some weeds. You garden will look better and you’ll feel better, too.
Henry is a UNH Master Gardener and the author of 4gardening books. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com. Read his twice-weekly blog athttps://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy.
Freeing Up Prime Real Estate in the Garden
Posted on Monday, July 4, 2016 · Leave a Comment
As a gardener I find that inertia is my enemy. I plant things, and then just let them remain (whether I like them or not) – even if they take up a lot of space. I removed two such plants this summer. First, I cut down a pie cherry that produced blah-tasting fruit and not much of it. Next, I had a huge patch of lovage, a celery relative that over the past 20 years had spread to take up an 8-foot piece of prime real estate just outside my kitchen window.
My Sour or Pie Cherry Harvest, 2015
I cut down the cherry, which was 15 feet tall and had a base diameter of about 3 inches, by lopping off the branches and cutting the trunk 2 feet above the ground. I knew that it would be easier to remove the stump if I left a section of trunk that would give me leverage as I rocked it back and forth, loosening the roots.
My young helper, Adam, did the digging and root removal – I’ve found that paying a helper for some of the heavy lifting makes sense at my age. I get to enjoy the garden more this year, now that tasks I don’t want to do still get done. I recommend it.
Removing the cherry tree means that an existing row of peonies will get full sun for much of the day – instead of filtered sun. That will give me more blossoms next year, and probably bigger ones. I’ve planted a new peony and two peach-leaved bellflowers flowers (Campanula persicifolia) where the tree was, and have room for more things. Most of my gardens have moist to soggy soil, but the tree was on a terrace with well-drained soil. So it’s a good place for the bellflowers, as they don’t like soggy soil.
Fern-leafed peony in bud
The peony I planted is a relatively rare one, the fern-leafed peony (Paeonia tenuifolia). I got this from Cider Hill Gardens in Windsor, Vermont. It really does have fern-like leaves, which is rare in peonies. But the reason I love it is that it blooms in May, before most others, and it is bright red. A vivid red that will stop traffic – foot traffic, anyway, in my garden. It is a relatively delicate and I lost one after a hard winter. Maybe it’s best in Zone 5 or warmer. It is not a hybrid, and it has been crossed with other peonies to get early-blooming hybrids.
Outside the kitchen window, in prime viewing space, I have planted 3 delphiniums, another red peony (‘Nippon Beauty’) and an Angel’s Trumpet (Datura spp.). All three do best in full sun, though the Angel’s Trumpet can do fine in part sun.
Of the plants I installed outside the kitchen window, I‘ve had the worst luck with delphinium. I buy them, and they have not performed well for me – meaning that after the first year they haven’t come back. I’ve crowded them in the past, and they’ve gotten less than full sun.
But this time I will do it right: full sun, rich soil with added compost and plenty of slow-release organic fertilizer. These plants will bloom later this summer, and once they are finished blooming, I will cut them right to the ground and scratch in a cup of organic fertilizer around each plant. They may then bloom again in the fall, or maybe not. They should return and bloom next year. I’ll report back to you on that.
The peony will do fine, and will outlive me. I have a peony my grandmother grew, and she died in 1953. My mom dug it up, moved it to her house, and I got it from her in the 1980’s. Peonies move best, by the way, when they are starting to go dormant in the fall. The roots go deep, so be careful.
The trick for peonies is to plant them in rich soil and at just the right depth. If the “eyes” or buds are planted more than an inch below the soil surface, they will not bloom after the first year. So if yours aren’t blooming, clear away some soil until the eyes are at the right depth.
Angel’s trumpet, often referred to by its botanical name, Datura, is my replacement for the Oriental and Asiatic lilies. I can no longer grow the lilies because of that dastardly lily-leaf beetle. The red beetles cannot be controlled by hand-picking, and I refuse to use systemic poisons that kill the beetles. But Datura produces plenty of big white upward-looking blossoms. Once it starts to bloom, it continues blooming until frost, which is much longer than the true lilies bloom.
One word of warning: the seeds of Datura are poisonous – psychotropic, I have read. But they have spiny outer coverings, so I don’t worry about toddlers picking and eating them. And it the squirrels do? Darwin would approve.
So have a look around your property. Is there a tree that is producing shade that you don’t want? Get someone with a chain saw. It’s not a crime to kill a plant, especially if you are planting others to replace it.
Henry’s blog is at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
It’s Not Too Late to Start an Herb Garden
Posted on Monday, June 27, 2016 · Leave a Comment
Garden centers are mostly sold out of flowers and vegetables by now, but there seem to be plenty of herbs still for sale. Now that you have (hopefully) gotten your veggies and annual flowers planted, this is a good time to plant some herbs.
My vegetable garden –where I have always grown herbs – is somewhat remote from my house and down a set of stone steps. But this summer I have an herb garden between my car park and wood pile – just 10 steps or so from the house.
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So how do I grow parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (and others not included in Simon and Garfunkel’s song) in a spot that sounds so inhospitable? I am growing them in a wooden container called a VegTrug that I got from Gardeners Supply (www.gardeners.com). It’s big and deep: six feet long, 2 feet wide and up to 18 inches deep in the middle of the V-shaped container. It is on legs and stands 30 inches high. Very nice, no bending over.
Filling up the VegTrug with appropriate planting mix is important: you can’t just dig garden dirt and shovel it in. The soil would compact and the plants wouldn’t thrive. But it takes over 400 quarts of soil mix to fill this behemoth. To buy that much potting mix would be pricey.
Getting the mix right is important: you want your mix to stay fluffy, hold water and offer nutrients. But if you just used a standard commercial potting mix, your growing medium would need weekly infusions of liquid chemical fertilizer. Adding compost introduces organic matter and beneficial microorganisms that work with the roots of your plants to share nutrients from the compost and organic potting soil.
I buy good quality compost each year that a local contractor makes from cow barn scrapings that he turns and aerates and makes into lovely light-weight compost that is relatively weed free. I mixed that compost with peat moss, “Moo-Grow” (an organic potting soil), organic fertilizer, limestone, perlite and vermiculite.
Vermiculite is a fluffy material made from heat-expanded mica that holds water. It is used in most potting mixes, though you might not notice it. I also added perlite, another heat-expanded mineral. It looks like Styrofoam, but is great for containers: it has a neutral pH, holds water and air, does not deteriorate or compress. I used a total of 6 quarts of each in my VegTrug. Perlite and vermiculite go a long way.
To make my soil mix I used a 5-gallon pail to measure, adding roughly 2 parts of compost and 2 parts of Moo-Gro potting mix to one part of peat moss. I stirred up that mix in a huge garden cart. I added half a cup of limestone per bucket of peat moss to counteract the acidity.
Once the ingredients were mixed, I add Pro-Gro, an organic bagged fertilizer. I used a total of 2 quart containers of Pro-Gro in the 100-plus gallons of soil mix I made. I added one quart of Azomite, a source of diverse mineral micronutrients, in the total mix. Azomite is optional. You could add rock dust instead, if you can get some very fine rock powder from a tombstone maker or a rock quarry. Or you can leave it out altogether.
It is important to get the ingredients well moistened before adding them to the VegTrug. I did this by adding water from my hose to the mix, and stirring with a shovel. Dry peat moss can be very hard to moisten; I wet it, stirred it, let it sit, and repeated until it seemed evenly moist.
So what am I growing? In the middle, where the soil is deepest, I have a tomato plant, one I started from seed called ‘Summer Sunrise’. The seeds came from the Hudson Valley Seed Library (www.seeedlibrary.org and is suited for container growing.
What else? I have about a dozen lettuce plants, 3 flat-leafed parsley plants, 2 kinds of sage, a rosemary and a thyme plant. I dug up a chunk of chives from my garden, cut it back and planted it in the VegTrug. Marjoram and a nasturtium are doing well – the latter has edible flowers, and will flow out and over from the VegTrug.
I planted dill and arugula by seed – both are up and doing fine, though I also bought a small pot of dill at my local Food Coop – another good source for pots of herbs. Lastly I planted a 4-pack of small basil plants. Everything is thriving!
Watering is important for containers. This VegTrug has shallow soil near the edges, deeper soil towards the middle, so the edges dry out quicker. I find I need to give it 4 to 6 gallons in hot, sunny weather. It only gets sunshine from 9am to 3pm, but that seems adequate.
So whether you invest in a VegTrug from Gardeners Supply or just grow some herbs in pots on the porch, go plant some. I am so delighted with my herb garden I know I will plant it again every year. And the collection of herbs in this nice cedar container is pleasing to the eye as well as the taste buds!
Read Henry’s blogs at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. You can sign up for an alert every time he posts something, usually twice a week.
Dealing with Drought or Watering 101
Posted on Wednesday, June 22, 2016 · Leave a Comment
When it comes to watering, Mother Nature generally does it best. But as I write this, we haven’t had any rain in over a week and the soil is dry. Bone dry, and I am watering my vegetable garden most evenings.
In general, I don’t like overhead watering systems. Yes, they do mimic a rain storm, but they waste a lot of water, and water the walkways and weeds as well as the plants. So long as the soil is not parched, I like to water plants using a watering wand.
My watering wand is a 30-inch long aluminum tube with a watering rose on the end and a shut-off valve that allows me to increase or decrease the flow of water. I like those made by Dramm, a company that specializes in watering devices and has figured out how to deliver lots of water while not disturbing young plants.
In the vegetable garden, I walk up the rows directing the water around my tomatoes or irrigating the lettuce. The wand allows me to spray water close to the ground level – it’s not falling from waist high, the way a nozzle on the end of a hose would.
But in times like this, an extended period of hot and dry weather, I know I need to water each bed entirely, from side to side. Why is that? Imagine taking a sopping wet kitchen sponge and dropping it in a bucket of clean kitty litter. Then pour more litter over it. What happens? In five minutes the sponge would be dry. All the moisture would wick away. Your soil is a bit like that litter. It will absorb the moisture that you gave to the roots of your plants. So you need to soak the soil around your plants, not just at the rootball.
If you’re going to plant anything now, water the soil deeply several hours before doing so. It is easier to drench an empty bed than one with tiny seeds that might wash away, or little seedlings that can be harmed by a deluge.
Another effective way to keep plants moist in times of drought is to mulch. Mulch will keep the sun and breezes off the soil so that moisture does not evaporate so quickly. In the vegetable garden I cover most everything with newspaper – four to six sheets thick. I generally put the papers in a wheelbarrow and soak them first so they are less likely to blow away as I spread them out. Then I cover the papers with a thick layer of mulch hay or straw.
Straw is supposed to be seed-free, while hay is not. Straw is the by-product of threshing a grain – oats or barley, perhaps. But it comes from far away on a truck and costs about $10 a bale. Mulch hay, on the other hand, I can buy from a local farmer for $3 a bale. The hay is grown as feed for dairy cattle, but if it gets ruined by rain and the cows won’t eat it, it’s sold as mulch hay. Since I use 5 to 8 bales of mulch every year I rarely use straw.
One of the great things about the newspapers is that they keep most of the hay seeds out of the soil – or at least until late in the season when most plants are big and less threatened by weeds and grasses. I know that my earthworms love to eat the newspapers and maybe they eat the hay seeds, too.
I get e-mails from readers every time I suggest using newspapers in the garden. “What about the inks?” they write. In the old days inks were dangerous – they contained heavy metals. But now the inks are made from soy products. And yes, the paper making process might leave some stray chemicals in the paper itself, but I haven’t seen anything scary about it. I have read that one should avoid glossy colored inserts to the paper, or magazines. Cardboard is fine.
How do you know when you’ve watered enough? Dig down in the soil. It should be dark and moist for 6 inches after watering. In general, plants do fine with an inch of water a week, either from the sky or from your hose. But if you are using an overhead watering device, you probably will not get an even distribution of water. Put out cat food cans all over the garden to catch the water to see if areas got less water.
If you see your plants starting to droop, you know they’re thirsty. Today my bee balm, a perennial flower, is wilting. I didn’t rush to water it as soon as I saw this, as I know the plant is resilient and the roots are well established. Tonight, if I have time, I might give that bed some water. But if I saw my tomatoes wilting, I’d water right away. They’ve only been in the ground for about 3 weeks, so the roots are not extensive yet.
Always try to keep water off the leaves of plants. On a hot sunny day, drops of water can act like a magnifying glass, burning spots on leaves. And some fungal diseases require moisture in order to penetrate leaves and infect plants.
Watering is not rocket science. Keep the soil from drying out, particularly if you have seeds in the ground waiting to germinate. But don’t turn your soil into mud, either. Plants did fine before we invented hoses – but hoses sure are handy in times like this!
Read Henry’s twice-a-week blog at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. He is the author of 4 gardening books and a children’s chapter book. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
How to Create a Secret Space for Children
Posted on Monday, June 13, 2016 · Leave a Comment
My sister Ruth Anne and I spent a lot of time on my grandfather’s farm in Spencer, Massachusetts when we were young. Grampy grew the most fabulous cukes, carrots and tomatoes – and flowers that would almost make the “faint of heart” swoon. I loved my time there.
One of the best features, on a hot afternoon, was a huge oval of forsythia bushes that enclosed a space where we could hide from adults and stay cool. I recently re-created such a space for my grandkids.
Kids like to have places that are secret and private. These days “helicopter parents” are said to be the norm. Even if you are not one, you might want to grow plants that will allow you to be nearby in case of emergency, but allow children the semblance of privacy.
So here is what I did: I planted 3 fast-growing willows about 10 feet apart. The one I planted is called ‘Hakuru-Nashiki’. At this time of year the leaves have pinkish tips, with white and green on them. Each of my shrubs had 3 stems when I bought it, and grew taller and wider each year. Now, 10 or more years later, they form a single mass of foliage about 15 feet tall. But the center of the planting is rather empty – a perfect place to make a “kid’s cave”.
To start, I entered the thicket, pruners and loppers in hand. I removed anything dead, or anything that was a potential “eye-gouger” – for me, or for a child. It didn’t take long to create a little cathedral with a domed ceiling full of brightly colored leaves.
Next I weeded out the floor of the space: there were ferns, brambles, some grasses and weeds. The soil was moist and most plants pulled easily. I didn’t bother pulling the grasses, but came in with my push mower and mowed them down.
I wanted to leave some vegetation around the edges of the space so that one could look out, but still feel secluded. There were some big iris plants growing along the stream edge that provided a screen. Years ago a friend offered to let me dig up some “nice yellow pond iris.” Little did I know, but that was an invasive iris, Iris pseudacorus. I tried digging it out, but like many invasives, that’s not possible. Even a scrap of root will grow back. It has spread, both by root and by seed. I have given up trying to get rid of it. It did make a nice screen for the edge of this new cave.
I like the willow as the structure for this hidey-hole. The branches arch up, touching at their apex. But other plants would work, too, but leave an open sky above. Lilacs, would work, for example, but take longer than the willows. And forsythia, I know works fine.
Common ninebark is a very fast growing shrub with a very dense habit that easily gets to be 8 to 10 feet tall. It blooms now, in June. I have a cultivar called ‘Diablo’ which has reddish foliage, but there are others including some with standard green leaves and a bright yellow-green leafed one called ‘Dart’s Gold’.
Ninebark will grow in sun or partial shade, wet or dry, good soil or bad. A cluster of these would create a nice enclosure. Each spreads 3 to 6 feet. My mature Diablo is only 18 inches wide at the base, but is over 6 feet wide at the top – which is 8 feet off the ground. I will prune it back, as I do each year, after it finishes blooming.
Don’t want to wait for shrubs to get big? Make a teepee of 8-foot poles tied at the top, and plant vines. Scarlet runner bean is a nice one and your kids can eat the beans! Morning glories are nice vines with colorful flowers. Purple hyacinth beans have lovely purplish leaves, and brilliant flowers, but take a long time to germinate. I would buy plants already started at my local garden center for those.
Many years ago my friend Emily Cromwell and her husband Mark Woodcock built a sunflower fort for her boys, Moe and Carlos when they were 4 and 6 years old (they’ve both graduated from college now, I believe). They marked out a rectangle in the lawn about 8 by 10 feet. Then they removed a 2-foot wide strip of sod all along the rectangle. They loosened the soil, and then planted 2 rows of sunflowers – with the help of the boys. They planted big sunflowers near the inside of the fort, shorter ones on the outside.
The nice thing about a sunflower fort is, for you helicopter parents, that you can see right in. But for young children, it will still seem like their own private space.
Kids spend too much time indoors. Create a special place to play, to read, to dream – and they will be outdoors of their own volition.
Read my blog posts at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy.
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