George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

The Great 2020 Seed Surge

June 16th, 2020

   Two tenets of gardening that really fell out of favor in the last generation were growing vegetables and starting plants from seeds.

Seeds have been such a hot item this year that some catalog companies stopped taking orders for awhile.

   Both were victims of convenience.

   Why dig, sweat, lug, and get dirty trying to grow your own food when you can just go to the store and buy whatever you want?

   And why try to decipher the mysteries of seed-starting when the greenhouses are full of ready-to-plant flowers to grab and go?

   What a difference a pandemic makes.

   Short on cash, stuck at home, and a bit stunned at the sight of empty grocery-store shelves, a lot of people suddenly realized this spring that maybe growing some of their own food and flowers isn’t such a bad idea after all.

   Vegetable gardening is a particularly hot item again… seeds to grow them even more so.

   Seed companies saw such a huge spike in sales this year that they ran out of varieties and couldn’t keep up with orders. Some mail-order seed companies fell so far behind that they stopped taking orders to catch up.

   So if you didn’t get everything you wanted this year and found that it took your orders weeks instead of days to get to you, you weren’t alone.

   Renee Shepherd, founder of one of my go-to seed companies, the California-based Renee’s Garden, said many companies got hammered with orders that were eight to 10 times the amount of a typical year.

   She hasn’t seen anything like it in her 35 years in the home-garden seed business.

   Vegetable and herb seeds accounted for most of the surge.

   “Home garden favorites, such as tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers, have been especially in demand,” Shepherd says.

   The “out-of-stock” notes that appeared on so many varieties this year didn’t result from a seed shortage, says Shepherd, but a seed supply problem.

More Trips Nixed

June 9th, 2020

   Three more garden trips that I was going to lead this year through Lowee’s Group Tours are now off, victims of the lingering coronavirus pandemic and the uncertainties it’s brought.

We’ll have to wait another year to visit the Abels’ Lancaster County Pheasant Run Farm.

   Both of our June day trips – the June 18 trip to the new Delaware Botanic Gardens and Mt. Cuba Center and the June 19 trip to two Lancaster County home gardens and two Lancaster County plant shops – won’t be happening.

   Neither will our “big trip” of 2020 – the planned 17-day gardener’s bucket-list vacation to Australia and New Zealand with an optional four-day stay on the Fiji Islands on the way back.

   The good news is that we’re going to reschedule all three of those trips in 2021.

   We’re looking at Mon., May 17, 2021, for the Lancaster County trip, which includes visits to the 1-acre, no-lawn “Gardens of Oz” of Dr. Dennis Denenberg near Manheim, the colorful grounds of Vivian and Bob Abel’s Pheasant Run Farm Bed and Breakfast in the serene Lancaster County countryside, and shopping visits to two of my favorite bargain-priced Lancaster County plant haunts – Black Creek Greenhouses (annuals/perennials) and Conestoga Nursery (trees/shrubs).

   For the trip to the two Delaware gardens – neither of which has reopened yet this year (Mt. Cuba is opening June 17) – we’re looking at next June 25, which is a Friday.

   And for the Australia/New Zealand trip, which is being operated jointly by Lowee’s Group Tours and Collette Vacations, we’re looking at moving that one to Oct. 3 through 19 of 2021. The plan is to keep the same itinerary, just a year later.

   Last month, we postponed another trip that was to go out May 2-9. That one was to visit great gardens of Niagara and Toronto, Canada, with a day at the Rochester Lilac Festival on the way back. It’s been rescheduled for May 8-15, 2021.

   Tentative details on each of the rescheduled trips are listed on my Talks and Trips page.

   Additional information and bookings are available by calling Lowee’s Group Tours at 717-657-9658 or toll-free 1-888-345-6933 or by emailing CKelly@Lowees.com.

Mystery Balls

June 2nd, 2020

   One of the odder things you’ll sometimes see in nature this time of year is little green balls about the size of Ping-Pong balls.

Find one of these in the yard? It’s an oak apple wasp gall.
Credit: Linda Fortney

   Sometimes they’re very light-weight and papery with white fibers inside. Other times, they’re spongy – almost like over-ripened, mini green apples.

   People usually don’t know what to make of them. Are they some kind of seed pod? Maybe a weirdo fungus? Maybe some sort of fruit-like plant part? Something involving aliens?

   Actually, these mystery balls are none of the above. They’re plant deformities called “galls,” grown by plants in reaction to an assault by bugs, most often tiny wasps or mites.

   The little green Ping-Pong balls are a particularly curious gall known as the oak apple wasp gall.

   They grow on oak trees, look like little green apples, and are caused by wasps (hence the name).

   When they’re hanging on twigs, it looks like you have an oak tree growing apples. In landscapes, people often don’t notice them until the tree drops them into the lawn or garden beds.

   Either way, galls usually aren’t as bad as they look. Other than the occasionally large infestation, they’re fairly harmless to trees and require no treatment or sleepless nights.

Top 10 Native Trees for Home Landscapes

May 26th, 2020

   A lot of gardeners are trying to lean native in the landscape these days.

A multi-trunk American fringe tree in bloom.

   Trees are one of the easiest ways to do that because, fortunately, many native Pennsylvania and U.S. tree species are as functional survival-wise and wildlife-friendly-wise as they are beautiful and “well behaved.”

   If you’re planning to add a tree or three to the yard, here are my top 10 favorite native trees.

American fringe tree

(Chionanthus virginicus)

   The unusual late-spring, shaggy white flowers of American fringe tree make this small native tree a prime candidate for the question, “What tree is that?” when people see it in bloom.

   Nicknamed “old man’s beard,” the tree can be pruned to a single trunk or left to grow as a more irregular multi-stemmed tree.

   Grows slowly to 15 to 18 feet tall and wide in full sun or as an under-story tree partly shaded by taller surrounding trees. Leaves turn yellow in fall.

River birch

(Betula nigra)

   This fast-grower is typically found growing along river banks or similar damp areas in nature, so it’s a good choice for damp areas in the yard (although it’ll also tolerate drier soil).

   River birch is best loved for its cinnamon-colored peeling bark and the arching habit of its multiple stems (three or four trunks are ideal).

   Grows 35 to 40 feet tall, 20 to 25 feet around in full sun or part shade. Leaves turn yellow in fall.

‘Wildfire’s’ fall foliage.
Credit: Pa. Horticultural Society

Blackgum ‘Wildfire’

(Nyssa sylvatica ‘Wildfire’)

   The straight species of blackgum (also called “tupelo”) is especially spectacular in its flaming scarlet fall foliage, but the variety ‘Wildfire’ adds the feature of red new foliage in spring.

   Birds love the small black fruits. Makes a nice back-yard shade tree.

   Grows 50 to 60 feet tall and 20 to 25 feet wide in full sun.

Is a Decent, Chemical-Free Lawn Really Possible?

May 19th, 2020

   I got an email from Cathy in Camp Hill wondering what to do about her 70-by-70-foot lawn that’s so overrun with weeds that there’s barely any grass left.

When a lawn has more weeds than grass, it’s probably time to start over.

   “I’m die-hard eco-friendly,” she says, “and I really don’t want to use anything toxic to the birds I feed or the insects they eat.”

   She also says she has “dogs who like to eat soil for fun,” and she’s allergic to corn gluten meal, the main non-chemical way to prevent new weeds from germinating.

   “I really don’t want to resort to Chemlawn and injure wildlife, but I plan to sell the house in six years and need to have the lawn under control by then,” she says.

   With her current “lawn” consisting mostly of nutsedge, plantain, creeping charlie, crabgrass, smartweed, and a dozen other common lawn weeds, Cathy’s trying to figure out where to even begin.

   “I’ve tried hand-pulling weeds and failed,” she says. “At this point, it’s 99 percent weeds and 1 percent grass and clover. So there’s no catching up by hand in an area of this size.”

   She’s thinking about tarping the lawn in quadrants from June to August, hoping to smother the weeds. That would clear the way to rototill and plant grass seed in September.

   “Is September enough time for the new lawn to get established before winter?” she asked. “Any way I can just seed over the killed plants when the tarp is removed without rototilling?”

   This is a tough one… but one I thought I’d share because I think an increasing number of people are trying to reduce or avoid chemicals in pursuit of the long-esteemed green-carpet lawn.

   The short answer is that it’s possible to grow a so-called “organic” lawn, but the reality is that 1.) it’s not going to be a weed-free carpet, and 2.) it might require some compromises to keep things from spiraling back out of control.