Flowerscape

Plant and Gnome Nursery

Eamon — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:05:53 +0000

You have to like a man who starts a mail order nursery called Plant & Gnome and who assigns himself the title Chief Executive Gnome. It’s just part of Chris Higgins’ dry, British sense of humor, which he’s transported, intact, to West Virginia.

Chris came to Charleston in 1998, after meeting his wife Shana in Ireland. A native of Glenville, Shana was working as a volunteer on an organic farm. Chris was working for a large tree nursery in Ireland. In Charleston, he went to work for TerraSalis Garden Center, but when their daughter Claire was born, he decided to stay home with her. A year later, he started a plant nursery in Glenville. A year after that, son Seamus was born.

Chris has a nice selection of inexpensive, starter-sized trees, shrubs and perennials, that he sells through his website: www.plantandgnome.com. He also attends a few fairs and festivals each year. You may have met him yesterday at the Garden Festival at the Cultural Center in Charleston. He also sells plants at the WV State Folk Festival in Glenville in June and the Stonewall Jackson Jubilee in Weston in September.

His best plant selection is naturally, on-line, and the website is easy to negotiate. He likes plants with interesting bark, twigs or sticks, plants that berry, plants with fragrant flowers with long bloom times or bloom at unusual times of the year, and plants with interesting foliage.

He likes white flowering plants in summer and he loves plants that make a garden interesting in the bare winter months of the year. He’s been surprised by how much hardier some plants are than they’re rated for. Chris has found some beautiful, large crape myrtles growing well in Glenville, which is zone 5. The hardiest of crape myrtles are rated only to zone 6. There are also some nice seed-grown large Southern magnolia trees in Glenville, again, only supposedly hardy to zone 6.

Chris is hard-pressed when asked to name his top five plants, but he gamely has a go at it anyway. Japanese fantail willow is a childhood memory plant for him. He loves the early spring pussywillows and the contorted branches. He also says it’s longer lived than most of the willows in our area.

Any variety of oak leaf hydrangea is on his favorites list due to the long bloom time, the beautiful fall burgundy foliage and the ability to hang on to its leaves into early winter. He likes the peeling bark on paperbark maples. His current favorite evergreen is Chamaecyparis nootkatensis ‘Pendula’, a graceful, weeping evergreen tree. As for perennials, he likes the blues–summer blooming Agapanthus ‘Headbourne Hybrids’, another plant that’s hardier than rated, and fall blooming monkshood, both having blue flowers.

I got a couple of interesting plants from his nursery, one I’ve grown before and one that’s new to me. I’ve grown winter honeysuckle before, but lost mine inexplicably. I’m trying again as this is a shrub that blooms in February and March, and has intensely fragrant flowers with a strong lemon scent. It gets quite large, about seven feet tall and as wide, and does well in a range of soils in sun to part shade. Despite my loss, I’ve found it to be a tough plant in other people’s gardens and a reliable bloomer. It’s a late winter spirit lifter, like witch hazel and snowdrops.

The new to me plant is a Fragrant Abelia, Abelia mosanensis. The abelias I know have tiny shell pink flowers and bloom for months on end from late spring well into fall. They are common sights in interstate medians as you head south to the beach. I’ve not known any to be fragrant.

I’m interested to try a plant that Chris describes as having a “sumptuous fragrance”. Its pink flowers bloom in May in sun to part shade. In summer, it has glossy green foliage that turns a bright orange-red in fall. He says that even the greyish-white winter stems are attractive. It will get five feet tall by five feet wide at maturity.

There are many other interesting plants to try from his nursery. Plant and Gnome also sells interesting cut branches for floral crafts and Christmas wreaths in late fall.

Roses and Tree Peonies

Eamon — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 12:20:48 +0000

March has certainly blown in like a lion. The snow is flying as I write this and it seems as though spring will never come. There are only a few robins about when we usually have flocks of them. And not much is daring to bloom in the garden yet.

Touring gardens on the one nice day last week, I noticed a lot of damage to rose canes. We had days of unseasonably warm weather this winter, followed by days of frigid weather. This up and down cycle froze the rose canes and has turned many of them black.

Climbing roses and old shrub roses with very woody stems seem to have fared better than younger shrub roses or hybrid teas whose canes are newer or more tender. Fortunately, we mulched the roses in our gardens late last fall, mounding the mulch over the crowns of the plants, so we should have some live, short canes above the graft, under this mulch.

We won’t remove the mulch until the weather settles and the buds on rose stems start to swell in late March or early April. Then we’ll see what’s underneath and cut back to live wood. It’s possible we’ll all lose some roses this spring that didn’t survive the winter.

Tree Peony Tips

I don’t have any tree peonies in my garden, but I have admired them and taken care of them in other peoples’ gardens. They are stunning shrub-like plants when mature, easily reaching four feet tall and as wide. In May, they can be covered with large blossoms that make beautiful cut flowers.

I didn’t know this, until my friend Tom pointed it out, but named varieties of tree peonies are all grafted plants, much like hybrid tea roses. A young scion of the named variety is grafted onto the roots of either tree peony seedlings or herbaceous peony roots.

This is significant when you’re planting new tree peonies in your garden. If you’re planting bare root tree peonies, you must plant the graft union (the fat part where the named variety is joined to its roots) a good four to six inches below the soil surface. That way the named tree peony can develop its own roots and ensure its chances for survival.

Planting bare root tree peonies is best done in the fall, when soil temperatures and abundant winter rain and snowfall, stimulate good root growth.

For the same reasons, transplanting tree peonies can be difficult, and according to Tom, is often unsuccessful. It should not be attempted in the spring. We have moved well-rooted tree peonies successfully in the fall by digging a big root ball for each plant and moving them immediately into a well prepared, organically rich new site. We waited for the leaves to drop before we attempted moving them. We watered them in well and fall rains did the rest.

If you can find them, well-rooted, potted tree peonies can be planted in the spring. Be prepared to pay a premium price for them. They are, however, very long lived as well as spectacular in bloom. Be sure to site them in well-drained soil, give them four to five feet of space, and plant them where they will get morning sun and some shade during the hot part of the day. They prefer a neutral soil between 6.5 and 7, so add lime if your soil is too acidic. Loose, rich soil, full of organic matter, is critical for good bloom.

Tree peonies are woody and do not get cut back for the winter. Buds form in late summer for next year’s bloom. While gorgeous in bloom, tree peonies are not particularly attractive during the winter months, so don’t site them in a visually prominent part of the garden.

You must also be a patient gardener to grow tree peonies. Bare root plants may not bloom for several years after planting. Potted plants may have blooms when you buy them, then plants may be stingy for a few years as they root into your soil.

Once established in the garden, they require little maintenance and have few pest problems. Keep them watered, deadheaded and remove withered leaves in the fall.

Learning From Our Mistakes

Eamon — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:29:27 +0000

On a winter’s day, many gardeners are making plans for the spring season. I’ve been searching my memory and looking out the window at garden mistakes from seasons past that I don’t want to repeat. Perhaps some of you can learn from my errors. Hopefully, I will too!

1. Order/buy seeds for the year, not just the season. When I pull my early vegetables out of the garden in late July, I’m always anxious to start something else in that space. Last year, I trotted down to the garden center in August for some kale and turnip seed for a lovely fall crop, and was shocked to find there was none. That seed was sold out much earlier in the season, well before the appropriate planting date.

I could have ordered some at that moment from a seed company, but by the time it came and I managed to plant it, I would have been well past the mid-August planting cut off.
This year, I’ll buy all of my seed in February or March and have it on hand to use the moment I pull my spent plants out, while I have the time and I’m in the mood.

2. Prune boxwoods at the appropriate time of year. If you want to reduce the size of boxwoods, the ideal time to cut them back hard is in early spring once the danger of freezing is past. If you want to control the size of boxwoods, the ideal time to trim them is in June, so new growth has time to harden off before winter. If you want to tidy up stray tips on boxwoods when the growing season is finished, it’s good to do this in late November or early December, when it’s too cold for boxwoods to make new growth.

Knowing all this, why did I trim one of my boxwoods in September? Trimming during warm weather stimulates tender new growth. A September trim does not give the new growth enough time to harden off before cold weather sets in. As a result, the tips on this boxwood have frozen. My husband, gazing at the plant from a distance, asked if it was a new variegated variety. The plant is green, the tips are white. “Yes, it is,” was my reply. “Until early spring.”

3. Plant aggressive, not invasive plants, as groundcover. What’s the difference between aggressive and invasive? A lot of hours of digging, spraying and heartache, as you watch choice garden plants being strangled by the invasive that you can’t eradicate.
Have you ever planted dwarf bamboo or goose-necked loosestrife in a mixed border? I have. Try digging either of those out, after you’ve let them have their way for a few years.

They start out innocently enough, making a pretty show, spreading a bit, but not too much. After a year or two, they make impressive stands, but are still gorgeous and pretty close to where you want them. By the next year, they begin to run and there’s no stopping them. Underground rhizomes are everywhere and are tough as iron. An herbicide has to be applied repeatedly to kill the invasive plants

The little-leaved forget-me-not is an aggressive groundcover, filling empty spaces quickly with its prolific seed. It is however, easy to pull out with your hands and a trowel, where you don’t wish to have it. It may come back from seed, but the seedlings are easy to pull or spray. Aggressive plants have their place in gardens; invasives do not.

4. Remember that plants grow towards the sun. If you have a large shrub planted between a building and a sidewalk, like a tardiva hydrangea, and the plant will have a diameter eight feet wide at maturity, don’t position the plant four feet from a sidewalk, even though that is half of eight.

On paper it makes perfect sense to do so. In reality, the plant will not grow towards the shade of the building wall. It will reach towards the sun, which happens to be shining right on that sidewalk. And soon, the hydrangea will join the sun on the sidewalk and people won’t be able to use the sidewalk anymore.

If you like trees with straight trunks, don’t plant them close to an existing forest that will shade one side of them as they grow. I love my sweet bay magnolia, but it’s a leaner for that very reason.

It’s perfectly sited for viewing from my office window and serves as a perch for the songbirds that visit the seed feeder hanging outside the window and the suet feeder dangling from a magnolia branch.

But as you drive up to my office you see a very crooked tree, reaching for the sun, leaning away from the mature trees along the creek bank. The nearby crabapples, far enough from the mature trees to get sun from all sides, are straight as arrows. I focus my gaze on them as I drive up to the office, and only look at my magnolia from its best angle. That should happen to all of us!

Managing Vistas

Eamon — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:30:39 +0000

I drove out to White Sulphur Springs last weekend on a gorgeous, warm, sunny day. I make this trip frequently, so I have my favorite vistas picked out and slow down to enjoy them. I love the change in seasons in the mountains. Now, stripped bare of leaves, the brown-grey of bark and the deep rich greens of pines, hemlocks and native rhododendron stand out on the hillsides.
I took I-64 out to White Sulphur and stopped at the Sandstone Visitor Center for the first time. It is run by the National Park Service and the building is beautifully designed and constructed, using dressed native sandstone and wood. The surrounding garden, not at its best now, is composed of native plants. I’ll have to stop there in the spring and see the garden again.
On the way back I drove on old Route 60. I love the wild hairpin turns in the road, the lonely stretches of forest, and the native rhododendron thickets. If you grow sad looking rhododendrons, take a spin along 60 to see what they’re supposed to look like. They must be a stunning sight in bloom.
While at a luncheon in White Sulphur Springs, I met a woman who has amazing vistas to look at daily, as her family owns a large farm in Greenbrier County. Vistas, she told me, can be a real problem when designing a garden.
How can a garden be integrated into a vista and yet be visually important enough to be noticed? That’s a good question.
Years ago, my husband and I visited the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. The house is enormous, a 60 room stone mansion in the English style, elegantly built in the 1920′s. The surrounding gardens were designed by Jens Jensen, a well known naturalistic designer who popularized the Prairie Style of gardening. Gardens are informal and wandering, trees are given space to mature to perfection, natural features are incorporated into the gardens.
The gardens are complex, but look simple, easy, flowing.
The back of the house faces Lake St. Claire, a vast, watery vista viewed from a large stone terrace. No gardens competed with the water view. There was, however, one large evergreen tree between the terrace and the water, off to one side, yet definitely in the line of view. It was a spruce I think, a bit misshapen from the wind coming off the water. Standing alone, it looked like a specimen in a Japanese garden. It was tall enough to be in scale with the massive house and it was positioned to frame the view, not block it. Whether intentional or accidental, the lone spruce was a brilliant stroke.
If you have a great vista from your garden, it’s all about getting the scale correct and framing the view. Little bitty perennial beds and tiny terraces will be lost in the vista. The gardener needs to think big when confronting a big space.
I’ve been working on a garden for almost ten years that sits on top of a hillside and commands a fabulous view of the surrounding countryside. A 200 foot long, four foot wide perennial border framed the top of the hill when I first saw it, and the plants in the border were three to four feet tall at most. The border should have been spectacular, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t compete with the view.
We shortened the border down to 90 feet long and made it 15 feet wide. Behind the perennials, which we massed, we added shrubs in a variety of heights from four feet tall to 10 feet tall, with the tallest plants on either end to frame the view.
Now, you look at the border and beyond the border at the same time. Colored foliage, boldly colored flowers, brightly colored stems all make big statements that draw the eye. A collection of bird feeders on posts covered in clematis vines are rhythmically positioned through the border. They draw the eye upwards and outwards as the shrubs do.
Garden hardscape, such as fencing, pergolas, and terraces can all be used to frame views and create perspective, along with the plants. The first step is to decide what you want to focus on and so you can screen out what you don’t.

Paperwhites, Pot Shards, and Glittery Kale

Eamon — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:06:21 +0000

Paperwhite narcissus, those sweet scented indoor bulbs, are grown in pebbles and water on many windowsills and tables at this time of year. These beautiful plants tend to grow too tall and flop over. Last year I read that adding alcohol to the water could prevent the stems from stretching too far. But how much alcohol? No one knew.
The new issue of The American Gardener magazine reports that Cornell University did the research to quantify the alcohol needed without harming the plants. Here’s how to get compact paperwhite narcissus:
Plant the bulbs in a bowl of gravel and plain water and after the bulbs have sprouted roots and one or two inches of shoots, carefully pour out the water. Then mix one part 40 percent distilled spirits such as gin, vodka, whisky or rum, with about seven parts of water to make a 5 percent alcohol solution. Put this solution into the bowl so roots are well covered, and replenish as needed while the flowers develop and open. Plants will be up to half as high as they normally would get and won’t require support.
If you don’t have hard liquor in the house, you can use rubbing alcohol, but you will have to mix it differently. Use one part rubbing alcohol with 10 parts of water. Measure carefully, because plants, like people, can overdose on alcohol.
Stroking the leaves of the plants several times a day is also supposed to keep the plants from growing too tall and flopping over. Most important is to keep the plants in bright light. In a dark room, plants will be floppy no matter what treatment you give them!
No More Drainage Material in Pots
Years ago, when potting up houseplants, I made sure I always put some gravel or shards from old clay pots into the bottom of the new pot to increase drainage. I didn’t want my plant drowning and declining in health.
Back then, all potting soil was actual soil, that got heavy when wet and packed down as time went on, decreasing the amount of air that plant roots could receive.
With the advent of lightweight, soil free potting mixes, I no longer thought it was necessary to add drainage to the bottom of the pots, since the mixes don’t pack down easily.. I always use pots with good drain holes, adding more holes if the existing ones are inadequate.
Now a friend has sent me an article which gives me another reason to skip the drainage material in the bottom of pots. Written by Linda Chalker-Scott, a horticulturist at Washington State University, the article says that nearly every gardening book or website erroneously tells the reader to add a layer of gravel or other coarse material in the bottom of containers to improve drainage, prevent creatures from entering the drain hole and to stabilize the container.
“Nearly 100 years ago, soil scientists demonstrated that water does not move easily from layers of finer textured materials to layers of more coarse textured…Additionally, one study found that more moisture was retained in the soil underlain by gravel than underlain by sand.”
What this means is the more big stuff you have in the bottom of your pot, the more difficult it is to drain the pot! So if you’re still using pots shards and gravel in the bottom of your pots, it’s time to stop. Use soil free potting mixes, make sure your containers have good drainage holes and your container plants will be very happy.
Glittery Kale
To my surprise, I’m actually starting to like some of the dyed and glittered up poinsettias. Kroger had pretty pots of light pink poinsettias dusted with gold last week that I thought looked great.
Growers are considering dying and sparkling up other plants now. I saw a picture on line of some ornamental kale dyed bright shades of pink, red, purple and blue with every leaf powdered in glitter.
“Ugh!” was my response. Poinsettias are indoor plants in our climate and need to look well in our decorated homes and offices. Ornamental kale is an outdoor garden plant for fall and winter. Perhaps some avant-garde artist will make dyed kale a thing of beauty in an off-beat garden, but for the rest of us, I think the muted purple or green leaves of ornamental kale look great paired with the brighter colors of mums and pansies. Hands off my kale plants!

Tips To Heal A Storm Damaged Garden

Eamon — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:13:30 +0000

A major storm tore through the Charleston area recently, that prompted a long e-mail from Charlie Nichols. Nichols writes that he and his wife “have been addicted to gardening (organic vegetable and flower, plus minor fruits) since our marriage 34 years ago. We had the place here on Little Tyler Mountain looking as nice as one can living on top of a hard clay soil.”
Now the Nichols’ are looking at a storm damaged garden and are wondering how best to salvage plants. I thought I’d answer his questions in this column, since many of us face this problem at some point in our gardening lives.
“We lost our 25 year old Bradford Pear that was the most gorgeous tree on our lot. It bloomed beautifully and the sparkle of the leaves at sunset in autumn could bring tears to your eyes. The Bradford landed astraddle the water garden and into our Burning Bush (dead center).”
Nichols has cut the damaged branches out of the burning bush, “but should we just trim the burning bush to the ground or will it fill back in? If we prune, when?”
The burning bush will fill back in, but it won’t do so until next year. New growth is finished for this year. I would certainly not shock the plant further by cutting it back to the ground. I would leave the plant alone for now. Fertilize it well in early spring with a good quality slow release fertilizer. Once it puts out next year’s spring growth, prune the plant for shape.
The loss of the Bradford pear also “exposed all the shade garden to sun now. What is the best method: Plant a new tree and if so what type, or should we just expose the water garden and make the shade garden a butterfly garden?”
There is no way a new tree can create instant shade broad enough to protect a shade garden. No matter how fast a new tree grows, it would take years for it to shade enough area. Here’s where you have to make lemonade from the lemons the storm brought. Turning the shade garden into a butterfly garden makes the most sense, especially if you have an appropriate garden spot for your shade plants.
“Our herb garden was shaded from the hot evening sun by the Bradford and I hate to think of moving the herb garden from so near the house. It is so convenient to be cooking and just take a stroll to the herb garden for rosemary, basil, thyme, chives and salad greens.”
Herb gardens, including all the herbs Nichols mentions, thrive in full baking sun. Herbs prefer a dry soil too. During the driest, hottest times of the year, this garden might require some extra watering, but other than that, it should be fine.
Salad greens, however, prefer afternoon summer shade to produce well. In spring and fall, full sun is fine. Perhaps the summer salad greens can be grown in a large container in a spot not too far from the kitchen that gets afternoon shade.
“The wind also took out the top on a 30 year old wild cherry tree that feeds the birds, including our wild turkeys for the last 10 years. This tree was 40 foot tall and has lost the top 15 feet of two out of the three upright branches. Should we top the tree or should we just trust nature to take its course with jagged top?”
One the one hand, the tree is totally out of balance now and it makes sense to reduce the remaining branch to the same height as the other two to give it a balanced look, and to keep the tree from being top heavy in one area. On the other hand, you want to leave as much growth on the tree as possible since more leaves equals more food production for the tree and it has already lost a lot of leaves with the loss of two major branches. This one is a tough call, and I’d call a professional arborist to come in and make an assessment.
“The wild cherry fell on the blueberries managing to hit all four. It damaged the new growth that would have bore fruit next year. How hard should we prune them back?”
There’s nothing you can do about the lost crop. Clean up damage, and once broken stems are removed, leave the plants alone. In early spring, fertilize them with an acidic slow release fertilizer, to encourage lots of new growth and a nice crop for the following year.
“Lastly, being 53 years of age I have only another good 30 years to see all this back (one hopes), but the striving with Mother Nature will make every day interesting.” Spoken like a true gardener, Charlie! We wish you all the best in your new garden endeavors.

Deer Resistant Plants, Hydrangeas and Baptisia

Eamon — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:00:47 +0000

White and Yellow Light Up the Shade
I’ve always been in favor of using white flowers in shade gardens, where they light up the darkness in summer. A lecture I attended last winter by garden writer Cole Burrell got me thinking about using more yellow in shade gardens. Yellow flowers and foliage suggest sunshine where there isn’t any shining naturally. There aren’t many yellow summer flowers that will grow well in shade, but there are lots of yellow foliaged plants that prefer at least some shade during the day.
New Uses for Nepeta, Panicum?
I’m a big fan of nepeta, or catmint, a reliable perennial with tiny gray-green leaves and multitudes of lavendar flower spikes. It makes a beautiful edging plant, and if sheared back after bloom, it blooms again.
Now I’ve read that nepeta is a great deer deterrent, repelling them with its aromatic foliage. I mix boxwood into flower borders to help repel deer. I’m convinced they dislike the smell and so avoid eating or even hanging out near the plant.
I’m thinking about adding nepeta for the same purpose. Nepeta prefers full sun and well-drained soil. Poor drainage in the winter is a death sentence for the plant. Otherwise, it is pest and disease resistant and likes a dry soil.
Panicum, or switch grass, is another great disease-resistant perennial for West Virginia gardens. It’s an upright, sun-loving grass that doesn’t need to be staked and has airy seeds heads in fall. Some varieties turn bright red as the season progresses.
If you grow enough panicum in your garden, you might be able to power your car with it. It seems that ethanol can be made from panicum. It’s also a plant that can act as a water filter. In Canada, they’re experimenting with panicum pellets as stove fuel to heat houses.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this beautiful ornamental could be a great cash crop for West Virginia farmers someday?
Blushing Bride
I’ve been very impressed with the performance of the blue Hydrangea Endless Summer. It is an excellent repeat bloomer and produces a lot of flowers for a newly planted shrub.
There’s a white flowering cousin to this plant called Endless Summer Blushing Bride. Its pure white blossoms mature to a blush pink or blue, depending on soil acidity. Dr. Michael Dirr was the breeder for this hydrangea as well, and it reportedly reblooms even more prolifically than the original. I’ll be on the lookout for one to try.
Blue Pearls
An article in the New York Times discussed a baptisia that Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, North Carolina, is selling. I’ve grown Baptisia australis for years. It’s a tall plant with blue-green leaves and blue flowers in spring. It blooms beautifully with peonies and iris and pests and diseases don’t bother it. It has a long tap root and is very drought resistant. Flower arranging friends tell me the foliage is wonderful in a vase.
Plant Delights staff has been collecting seeds of the native Baptisia minor, a similar plant that is more compact. They’ve made a selection called ‘Blue Pearls’ that is extremely floriferous. A mature clump of the plant can produce more than 50 flower spikes in spring. Impressive! I’ll have to order a plant and see if it lives up to its glowing catalogue description. If any of you have tried this plant, e-mail me and let me know.

Is It A Weed or A Plant?

Eamon — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:20:13 +0000

Two basic gardening questions arrived via e-mail this week concerning how to manage a new garden and how to deal with plant failure.
When you move to a new garden, the general rule of thumb is to observe it for a year before making major changes. It may have assets that weren’t apparent when you bought the house and garden, like spring flowering bulbs or fall berrying shrubs. It may have deficits that weren’t apparent when you bought the house and garden, like a light pole being screened by a big evergreen tree you plan to take out.
But what if you can’t tell a plant from a weed in the garden and don’t want to fertilize and water the weeds while you’re deciding what’s what? This is true both for beginning gardeners and for those moving here from a completely different climate zone.
A walk around the neighborhood will tell you who is a gardener and who isn’t. Knock on the door of a gardener, introduce yourself, explain your dilemma, and ask if you can bring a few leaf samples over for identification. Gardeners are usually incredibly generous people and are happy to share information.
If the gardener is stumped, the staff at a good garden center can help. Just don’t demand a lot of time during the busiest season of the year. And if you’re going to take staff time, make sure you buy something! You’ll be far more welcome there the next time you need information.
The Gardener’s Weed Book by Barbara Pleasant (Storey Publishing, $14.95 paperback) has line drawings of 70 common weeds, including their blooms, seed pods and root systems. It also gives advice on controlling the weeds. I’m sure there are also websites with colored photos of weeds.
I’m familiar with a lot of weeds, but I don’t know them all. If I can’t remember if I’ve planted something new or it’s a weed coming up, I usually let it get to flowering stage and then decide what it is. If a weed, it gets ripped out before it sets seed and throws itself all over the place. If it’s a running plant in a flower bed, I don’t care what it is. It’s a weed as far as I’m concerned and out it goes, well before flowering time!
The other garden question involves a pyracantha that once thrived in a garden. It was pulled out many years ago, but now the owners want a pyracantha in the same site again and new plants keep dying.
From the description, it sounds like the pyracantha has fireblight, a disease that makes the leaves look scorched. It is very difficult to control fireblight and it often recurs the next spring when weather conditions are right. Some pyracanthas are resistant to this disease and some are not.
If you have a plant that won’t thrive in specific location, my general rule of thumb is to pick a different plant. Many people incorrectly plant rhododendrons in full sun in clay soil. The plants invariably die. Then they buy new ones and plant them in the same place, even though rhododendrons prefer afternoon shade and loose, organically rich soil. There may be nothing wrong with the spot. The gardener has just chosen the wrong plant for it.
If a plant has disease problems in that spot, pick a plant from another plant family when trying to get something going there. Pyracantha is in the same family as crabapples and cotoneaster and these plants can also have fireblight problems. A climbing hydrangea does not, so it would be a better choice to climb a chimney.
Why repeat failure in a garden, when you can turn failure into success by being more flexible in plant choices?
Tempering Enthusiasm with Information
I saw a beautiful new-to-me small flowering tree while travelling in Ohio last weekend. The tree had long fragrant white blooms that smelled sweet, like the blossoms on a fruit tree. I’d never seen this bloom before.
The tree was indeed in the fruit family, a European Birdcherry, Prunus padus. It seems to be a fairly common tree in the Midwest and is hardy to zone 3. Flowers are followed by black fruit in summer.
New foliage is bronzy green, fall foliage is yellow. It sounded like a winner until I read the tree is susceptible to black knot disease. I’d rather have a plant that doesn’t have disease prone tendencies. It’s always good to temper enthusiasm for a new untried plant with information. You can be sure someone else has tried it and can set you straight.

American Wisteria and Growing Fruit Trees

Eamon — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:50:15 +0000

I think wisteria is one of the more problematic plants in our gardens. Even if your neighbor has one in full bloom, yours may have no blooms at all. Who can say that about forsythia?
If your wisteria plant was started from seed, the vine may never bloom, according to an article in the New York Times. If your seed grown plants do bloom, it may take them as long as five years.
Then there’s the problem of spring freezes. A good mid- to late season freeze will kill the buds on the wisteria. Result: no flowers this year. Is there something you can do about that?
The Times says yes. If you’ve bought your wisteria in the last ten years or so, there’s a good chance it’s a Chinese or Japanese wisteria, which blooms early in the year. Native American wisteria, Wisteria frutescens, blooms later in the season and often reblooms, so chances for flowering are greater. The American wisteria is also a less aggressive plant. If you’ve ever wrestled with the runners from the Asian vines, you’ll appreciate this quality. The Times gives two sources for American wisteria: Bloom River Gardens (541) 726-8997 or www.bloomriver.com, and (828) 738-8300 or www.we-du.com.
Correct pruning will also help flowering, whether Asian or American wisteria. Often a vine will make too much foliage at the expense of flowers. Here’s what you should do: “Once the danger of hard frost is past, count three or four leaf buds out from the older branches and cut the younger ones there. Be ruthless: you will be cutting off far more than you will be keeping.
“Most flower buds grow on thick little branches near the trunk and main stems. They are round compared with the leaf buds, which are longer, almost pointy. When in doubt, wait a month or so, until the flower buds look like tiny grape clusters.”
Flowers are equally important on fruit trees and if you’re planting any this spring, here are a few things to remember. All apple and pear trees will bear more fruit if they are cross-pollinated. This means that you need two different varieties of apples or two different varieties of pears, so bees can bring the pollen from one variety of apple or pear to another. Apple pollen won’t do your pear tree any good, so planting one apple and one pear tree is not helpful.
The two varieties of apple must be planted reasonably close together. As Lewis Hill writes in the excellent book “Fruits and Berries for the Home Garden”: “Although bees can and do travel much farther, as a rule the busy little fellows should not be forced to fly more than several hundred feet to bring about the mating of these blossoms.”
The apple varieties must also bloom at about the same time. Just like daylilies, daffodils and peonies, there are early, mid-season and late blooming varieties. Fortunately, the majority of apple varieties are mid-season bloomers. The Trees of Antiquity catalog, (805) 467-2509 or
www.treesofantiquity.com, has a detailed bloom time list for apple and pear varieties.
What if you only have room for one fruit tree? Hill has a suggestion on how to “pull a fast one on nature”:
“If only one pear tree is in bloom, we drive across town to an abandoned farm where a big ancient pear tree is blossoming away, borrow a few flowers, and bring them home. We put them in a bucket of water under the tree and the bees take over from there.”
And the sooner the bees get to the flowers, the better. Hill says that fruit tree flowers that are pollinated soon after they bloom seem to be more resistant to a light frost than the “virgin blooms. The pistil, which carries the pollen down the flower, is delicate and easily damaged. Apparently if pollination has already taken place and the pistil is no longer needed, the bloom can stand a lower temperature than if it were unpollinated.”
It’s only the pollinated blossoms that bear fruit. So when you hear the bees buzzing in your fruit tree, don’t panic. Instead, be grateful.

Potato Growing Tips

Eamon — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:11:49 +0000

With St. Patrick’s Day only a week away, many of you will be getting ready to plant your seed potatoes. In West Virginia, that’s the traditional planting date.
It’s been many years since I’ve grown potatoes. I used to grow good old faithful Kennebec potatoes, large white potatoes, which are good bakers. One year, I tried growing red skinned potatoes, and made a plate of mashed potatoes that my then picky eater son wouldn’t eat. When I wrote about this in a column, a reader shot back something to this effect: “No wonder, he won’t eat them. You can’t make mashed potatoes out of red potatoes.” I was a bad cook and a bad mother, because she was right. After skimming through Wood Prairie Farm’s seed potato catalog, I now know why.
There are a lot more potato varieties than I ever imagined. Wood Prairie sorts potato varieties based on texture, from soft moist to firm dry. The soft, moist potatoes are delicious when sauteed, steamed or covered in cheese, au gratin style. The firm, dry potatoes are best prepared baked, fried or boiled. In between these ends of the texture spectrum are creamy mid-dry potatoes for baking, steaming, and cream soups; mealy dry potatoes for baking, mashing and frying; waxy moist potatoes that hold their shape in soups and stews and are good for potato salad and boiled potatoes; and waxy mid-dry potatoes that are all purpose, good for baking, boiling and potato salad. The red potatoes I was growing were probably waxy moist, the Kennebecs, firm dry.
Potato texture is based on relative moisture and starch. The first characteristic rates the potato’s density to the density of its water content. A low solids potato will be moist, a high solids potato will be dry.
There are also two types of starch in potatoes, Amylose and Amylopectin. A potato high in Amylose will be mealy or floury when cooked. One high in Amylopectin will hold firmly together when cooked.
If you want to try a number of preparation techniques when cooking potatoes, it’s a good idea to plant smaller amounts of different varieties. Wood Prairie Farm (www.woodprairie.com or 1-800-829-9765) offers fifteen varieties of organically grown seed potatoes.
They also offer some tips for growing potatoes organically, to which I’ve added my own:
*When selecting a potato patch, don’t forget to rotate your crops. Don’t plant potatoes where you’ve grown them or another nightshade (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants) the year before.
This helps control disease problems.
*Potatoes love fertility, so incorporate lots of organic material into your soil. If you’re using barnyard manure, it must be fully composted or aged first. Regular spraying of potato plants with liquid seaweed or liquid fish emulsion will promote plant health.
*Warm seed for a day or two or sprout them prior to planting. Cut tubers into blocky pieces containing at least two eyes.
*Plant shallow for fast emergence, about two inches deep for our area. Then hill soil around your plants, two to three times during the season, beginning when plants are four to six inches high. Alternately, you can keep covering the plants with a deep layer of straw, making harvesting easier. If you use straw, be sure you use enough so that no sunlight reaches your growing potato tubers. Sunlight turns the skins green and green skins are toxic.
*Regularly hand pick and control insect pests. Keep a jar of rubbing alcohol or soapy water handy and drop potato beetles in.
*Check your potatoes’ growth every few weeks. You can begin harvesting when tubers reach marble size. If you want to store potatoes after harvest, wait until the green leaved tops are completely dead before digging the tubers. Tubers need a moist, dark cellar that stays between 40 and 50 degrees for successful storage. If you don’t have a suitable storage facility, harvest potatoes regularly through the growing season and enjoy them as a summer treat.
If you’ve never grown potatoes, skip buying a 50 pound bag of seed potatoes, even though they’re relatively inexpensive. Start small. Five pounds of seed potatoes plant about 40 to 50 feet of row, enough to help you decide if potato growing is in your future.