George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

What a Dead Plant Can Teach Us

August 30th, 2022

   A plant dies, and the pessimist says, “There goes another one! Me and my black thumb should just quit.”

What lessons might these two browning arborvitae trying to teach?

   A plant dies, and the optimist says, “If I can figure out what killed it, my next try is sure to thrive!”

   I must be an optimist (at least when it comes to gardening) because I’ve always accepted dead plants 1.) as an inevitable part of gardening, and 2.) a learning experience.

   Dead plants can teach us a lot. But since dead plants don’t talk, it’s up to us to investigate what caused the demise.

   If we can figure that out, it’ll not only make our second try more successful but make us better gardeners in general.

   Sometimes it’s bad luck or a one-time fluke, such as a storm-ripped tree branch that flattens a new evergreen or a girdling death from an out-of-the-blue buck rub.

   We didn’t do anything wrong, and a simple retry might be all that’s needed.

   But most of the time, a demise is due to something about the site or the care (or lack thereof) or the particular plant you’ve picked for a particular site.

   In the best scenario, the cause of death is obvious – for example, a new shrub that’s turned brown after a month of drought and no watering by you.

   The lesson is also obvious – if you pay more attention the next time (or are lucky enough to get better cooperation from rain), even the same plant in the same spot should do fine on try No. 2.

   Since so many things can kill a plant, though, more often the cause of death takes closer examination.

The Many Ways I Could’ve Failed on My Driveway Bank

August 23rd, 2022

   Did you ever feel like the deck was stacked against you on a yard project?

My driveway bed as it looks late spring 2022.

   All the time, eh?

   For me, I got that feeling when I started tackling the 60-foot-long, steep bank that lines my driveway.

   This area was a mess when we bought the place.

   Earlier owners obviously gave up because what we inherited was a forgotten tangle of weeds, flopped-over ornamental grasses, dead shrubs in various stages of decay, and layers of fallen leaves that had been piling up and rotting for years.

   Yet the area was big and prominent – readily visible from the street and the first view when entering our home land.

   I’ve been working on it for four years now, and although it’s not completely “solved,” the driveway bank is at least now more of a “landscape” than a “wasteland.”

   I thought it might be helpful to others of you facing challenges – at least this particular kind – if I went over some of what I did to overcome the problems, which include awful soil, big tree roots, runoff issues, weeds, varying degrees of shade, and above all else, deer.

   Any one of those could’ve caused big-time failure.

   Here’s how I sidestepped failure (so far)…

Fixing a “Messy” August Garden

August 16th, 2022

   Gardens can still look reasonably good this time of year if you’ve stayed on top of maintenance, policed for pests, and kept things watered.

August gardens sometimes can look a bit, well, “unkempt.”

   However, strings of 90-degree days and other life matters have a way of eating into garden care, leading to August yards that, well, aren’t always at the top of their game.

   No need to give up and pull the shades until frost, though. The situation might look worse than it really is.

   A few hours of focused course corrections can bring many botanical messes back into quick order.

   Seven issues and how to fix them:

Floppy plants

   Staking known floppers like sedum and asters from the outset is the best strategy, but if you didn’t do that, corral them now by inserting three bamboo stakes around plants and tying them with green jute into a “straitjacket.”

   Flopping perennials that already have bloomed can be cut back or cut down nearly to the ground, especially ones that have browned or been attacked by bugs or disease. (Catmint, daylilies, iris, peonies, salvia, yarrow, and beebalm are good examples.)

“Dead-heading”

   This gardening term means pinching, snipping, or pruning off old flower heads after they’ve finished blooming.

   This not only neatens the garden quickly but may encourage the plant to rebloom. It also keeps plants from wasting energy growing seeds that you don’t want.

   Dead-heading makes the most noticeable difference on big-petaled species and/or species that hold their flowers high on the plant, such as roses, hardy hibiscus, peonies, coneflowers, and tall garden phlox.

Lanternflies: The Grownups Are Here

August 9th, 2022

   Though the spotted lanternfly has been annoying a lot of central-Pennsylvania gardeners for two or three years now, not everyone has experienced the misfortune yet of hosting this new Asian import in their yard.

Spotted lanternflies often congregate in numbers like these.
Credit: Penn State Extension

   Be ready. You may be about to meet them for the first time.

   Lanternflies morph into their adult form starting in late July and really become noticeable in August and September.

   This is when they become gray flying insects, about the size of a pinky tip, with black spots on the wings. When they go to fly, they open a second set of wings that reveal a distinctive red-orange color with black spots.

   Although they don’t technically “swarm,” they do tend to show up in rather large masses – enough to almost blanket the ground in some cases.

   One oddity about their behavior is that they can be really numerous in one area one year but then seemingly disappear the next. Or they’ll be all over one neighborhood but not in another one nearby.

Three different life-stage looks of the spotted lanternfly.
Credit: Penn State Extension

   I think that a lot of gardeners/yardeners are going to experience adult lanternflies for the first time this year because a lot of people earlier this summer were wondering about strange new little crawling and hopping black bugs with white spots.

   A few weeks ago, the mystery was little crawling/hopping red bugs with white spots and black trim.

   Both of these were the nymphal stages of the grownup lanternflies we’ll be seeing this month.

   Since the nymphs don’t look much like adult lanternflies, it’s no wonder first-timers didn’t make the connection. But once you’ve seen the nymphs and the adults in action, both stages are pretty memorable.

That Fertilizer Question…

August 2nd, 2022

   One question I get a lot – and can’t answer very well – is when and how much to fertilize plants.

Do we really need to use all of these?

   It’s another one of those gardening questions where the only truly accurate answer is, “It depends.”

   Factors include the nutrients already in your soil, the time of year, the weather, the particular plants, your expectations, and a handful of other environmental and plant-performance variables.

   It’s really impossible to make a blanket recommendation to always fertilize Plant A with Product B at Time C.

   Although some plants really do benefit from supplemental fertilizer at least some of the time, I’ve always believed that gardeners fret about fertilizer more than necessary.

   The bottom line for me is that if a plant is performing reasonably well, it doesn’t need fertilizer.

   Most of the time, plants are able to mine the nutrients they need from the soil – especially if the gardener has been adding nutrition from organic toppings such as compost, leaves, and/or mulch.

   That’s particularly true with trees, shrubs, evergreens, and even most perennials. These have efficient root systems (at least in reasonably friable soil) and may never need any help from your store-bought bags and bottles.

   If that’s not true, ask yourself, “How did plants ever manage to survive before Miracle-Gro was invented?”