George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Landscape Improving, Stage Three

November 5th, 2024

   A landscape is never ever really “done,” as any experienced gardener will tell you.

George looking for a spot to cram in a to-be-moved plant.

   However, the never-ending waltz of caring for a yard – and especially the amply landscaped variety – fits into one of three stages.

   Stage one is the beginning of the line – or the end of the line, as the case may be, for the previous “landscape.” This is when you’re taking out plantings that are hopelessly overgrown, just not doing well, or outright putrid (often one that a gardener has inherited from a non-gardener).

   This work can range from surgical removals, weeding, and selected whack-backs to the wholesale clearing of a bed.

   Stage one can also include tackling a new garden or landscape from scratch, which usually involves getting rid of grass or a weed-infested area.

   Stage two is the re-do part – the phase where novices think the project is done. In reality, it’s just the initial phase of the re-do – a time of getting your best guesses in place and then watching to see what happens.

   Stage three is the longest phase and involves ongoing reaction to the changes that inevitably take place. To use a writing metaphor, it’s the editing stage.

   No matter how well you or your designer knows plants and how well the phase-two planting was done, you’re going to have do at least some editing… and re-editing and re-editing.

   That’s because a lot can go wrong.

   Weather insults are a big one, such as the spot drought that kills water-wimpy selections or the wind storm that blows down a tree just as it was coming into prime.

Here’s what a new Cornelian cherry dogwood tree looked like the day after a deer found it.

   Animal damage is another big problem, especially if deer are lurking anywhere nearby. They might eat anything when the food supply dwindles, including plants low on their preference list and ones they’ve left untouched for years.

   Other times a plant that was supposed to be a winner (or is a winner in most yards) just doesn’t like your yard or the specific soil or spot you gave it.

   Sometimes a bug or a disease comes along to wipe all or part of a particular planting.

   Sometimes a plant gets bigger (or smaller) than you thought.

   Sometimes the conditions for which you plant-selected change, such as when a nearby tree grows enough to create expanded shade or when a big tree comes down to turn shade into sudden sun.

   These are the kinds of things that continue to happen over time, causing gardeners to have to rethink beds or areas of them. In other words, stage three is an ongoing phase of “spot re-do’s.”

   This is the stage that drives non-gardeners (and non-gardening spouses) crazy.

   “Isn’t this garden ever going to be done!?!?” they ask.

   For the rabid gardener, though, stage three is the best phase.

   It’s a time of fine-tuning, of being creative, of making the garden better and better as the failures and also-runs morph into successes.

   Besides, what would rabid gardeners do if the landscape work were ever completely gone?

Keep An Eye on Those Boxwoods

October 22nd, 2024

   If you’re growing any boxwoods in your yard, you might want to make a note to check them starting next spring for the latest deadly threat facing our top-selling shrub.

Here’s a box tree moth caterpillar in action on a boxwood.
Credit: Hannah Nadel, USDA

   A new bug called the box tree moth officially entered Pennsylvania this fall.

   The state Agriculture Department confirmed reports of the bug’s find in two cemeteries in Erie County and promptly put a quarantine on boxwood sales in an effort to contain the bug to that county.

   The caterpillars of this east-Asian species are potential boxwood killers, as most of Europe has been finding out since their arrival there in 2006. They can chew leaves to the point where there’s little left but bare twigs – “see-through boxwoods” as Ohio State Extension entomologist Joe Boggs calls the remnants.

   According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the first box tree moths showed up on this side of the Atlantic in Toronto, Canada, in 2018. Sometime between August 2020 and April 2021, a nursery in St. Catharines, Ontario, inadvertently shipped infested plants to six U.S. states – Connecticut, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, and South Carolina.

   New York was the first state to confirm the moth there, followed by Michigan, Massachusetts, and Ohio. September’s Erie cemetery find was the first evidence that the moth had spread into Pennsylvania.

   So far there’s no evidence the bug has made its way into south-central Pennsylvania, but Ag Department officials are asking gardeners to be on the lookout and to report any sightings.

   If you see any caterpillars feeding on boxwoods between April and October, report it to the state’s Bad Bug program by emailing badbug@pa.gov or by calling toll-free 888-253-7189. Or sightings can be reported to any county Penn State Extension office.

   “Box tree moth caterpillars are green and yellow with white, yellow, and black stripes and black spots,” says Penn State University entomologist Dr. Michael Skvarla in an Extension Service post. “They are the only caterpillars in the region that feed on boxwood, so finding them on the host plant is distinctive.”

   The caterpillars are about an inch-and-a-half long and have shiny black heads.

   Skvarla says box tree moths likely will have two generations a year across most of Pennsylvania – possibly three in the warmer Philadelphia area.

The Mini-Meadow Flourishes… Then Flops

October 8th, 2024

   For a while there in late spring, my backyard mini-meadow looked like it was hitting the reputed third-year charm.

The mini-meadow the third week of May 2024.

   About half of this six-by-20-foot experimental plot on my sunny back bank was in color for about three weeks in late May to mid-June.

   It was splendid and by far the best performance since I seeded the bed in May 2022 with a mix of mostly native species from the American Meadows seed company.

   Then the Shasta daisies and sweet williams that were looking so good finished blooming. The blossoms and flower stalks browned and flopped over.

   Worse yet, nothing was filling in to pick up the slack from the fallen neighbors.

   With the goutweed and assorted other weeds underneath that had elbowed into the planting, it turned into a mess by early July. It stayed pretty forlorn the rest of the summer, too.

   If this garden had been out front, I probably would have got a cut-the-weeds notice from the local code enforcement officer.

   After the three weeks of spring glory, that was it for the 2024 show.

The mini-meadow the third week of June 2024.

   The cosmos that gave a fair performance in the second half of 2023 was a total no-show this year. Even though I left last year’s cosmos plants alone to reseed themselves, not a one sprouted.

   Neither did the melampodium that I planted into the bed last summer. Those reseed themselves in my front-yard and mailbox beds, but none reappeared in the mini-meadow.

   And I got no-shows from the sunflowers and butterfly milkweed seeds that I scattered this spring in an effort to beef up the original seeding.

   Granted, it was a hot, dry summer, but watering and weeding to baby things along goes against the idea of a meadow in the first place – a bed that’s supposed to care for itself.

   After three full growing seasons, I’m beginning to verify what a lot of gardeners told me from their own experiences – that most of the original seeded-in plants disappear to leave just one or two dominant species and that weeds eventually win the battle.

So How Do Those Controversial New Purple Tomatoes Grow and Taste?

September 24th, 2024

   I’ve been eating dozens of bioengineered purple-fleshed fruits of the new Purple Tomato for two months now, and so far I can report that I’m not taking on any snapdragon characteristics.

The Purple Tomato really is purple inside and out… not just purple-skinned.

   I say that facetiously because this first-year variety is controversial for being the first bioengineered or “GMO” (genetically modified organism) vegetable being directly marketed to home gardeners – one that gets its purple color from genes inserted from a purple snapdragon.

   It’s been a wild first year for the Purple Tomato, which went on sale in late winter and promptly sold out its entire 2024 seed supply in four weeks – 13,000 packets worth. That was despite a high price tag of $20 for a 10-seed pack.

   Then the company selling Purple Tomato seeds, California-based Norfolk Healthy Produce, got into a dispute with Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds over a very similar new “incredibly sweet” purple cherry tomato that Baker Creek was touting on its catalog back cover.

   Baker Creek called its Purple Galaxy introduction “the first – and the purple-est – non-GMO purple tomato in the universe,” a claim that struck a chord with the many gardeners who are roundly anti-GMO.

   However, when Norfolk pointed out that Purple Galaxy likely was its own patented Purple Tomato in disguise, Baker Creek did further testing and then yanked Purple Galaxy from its inventory before actually shipping any.

   A Baker Creek statement said the company was “unable to conclusively establish that the Purple Galaxy does not contain any genes that have been genetically modified.”

   Baker Creek said it had acquired its seeds from a hobby breeder in France – where GMO vegetables are banned – and claimed that its original testing showed none of the common markers for GMO.

Prime Time for All Things Lawn

September 10th, 2024

   Whether you’re trying to start new grass or whip a sad lawn back into some semblance of decency, the weeks between Labor Day and early October are the year’s best.

This lawn could use a little attention.

   The warm soil, cooling temperatures, and more frequent rain add up to ideal grass-seed sprouting (usually).

   It’s also the perfect time to fertilize, which helps a lawn bounce back from the punishing hot, dry summer months.

   And it’s prime time for a host of lawn-improvement jobs, including aerating, “top-dressing” with compost, and dethatching.

   Here’s a rundown on what to do in three main lawn scenarios:

If you’re starting a new lawn…

   Early fall follows late-summer sprouting with good conditions for young cool-season grasses to establish roots. Fall-started grass then has a second good growing season in spring before having to face its first main challenge of a hot, dry summer.

   Grass grows best when it’s lightly tamped into loosened soil and then kept consistently damp until the seed is up and growing.

   The five-step process:

   1.) Test the soil. This tells you what kind and how much nutrition to add (if any) and also whether you need to adjust the acidity level of the soil (a pH between 6.5 and 7 is ideal).

   Garden centers and county Extension offices have do-it-yourself Penn State soil-test kits for $10. Or get a kit online at Penn State’s soil test lab.

   2.) Invest in quality seed. You’ll pay a little more, but grass varieties are available that perform far better than cheap seed against adversities such as drought, bugs, disease, and poor soil.

   Penn State University’s findings on the best-performing grasses in Pennsylvania are posted on the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program’s website.

Read George’s article on how to pick the best grass seed