George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Lessons from the Brits

June 4th, 2019

   Nobody on the planet gardens better – and enjoys it more – than the British.

One of the scenes from London’s 2019 Chelsea Flower Show.

   England, in particular, is the world’s hot spot for great gardens. Most every town or city there has at least one public garden, adding up to hundreds across a country that’s smaller than many of our states.

   The British appreciate plants so much that ordinary people somehow seem to know plants by their botanical names, and even English alleys, graveyards, and restroom entries are adorned with flowers.

   I’m just back from leading a 10-day trip to see gardens of England, and I’m hoping some of this British green-thumb enthusiasm will rub off on America.

   See George’s photo gallery of pictures from the gardens of England and the 2019 Chelsea Flower Show

   We have lots to learn from the Brits when it comes to gardening.

This is the red-themed double herbaceous border at Hidcote Manor gardens in England.

   One lesson is that gardening and plants should give us pleasure and satisfaction. We tend to look at gardening as work. They seem to view time in the garden as a creative pastime that, although takes some effort, isn’t really work.

   The British also don’t seem to be quite as attached to the lawn as we are.

   They have no problem digging up grass to make garden beds, flower-surrounded sitting areas, and the best of all British garden features, the double herbaceous border.

   A double herbaceous border involves planting wide, parallel beds of assorted perennials and grasses that bloom in symphonies of changing color throughout the season.

Tropicals for the Summer Landscape

May 28th, 2019

   The heat and humidity of a typical Harrisburg August is enough to make it seem as if we’re living in the tropics.

Bromeliads grow nicely in the ground in a Harrisburg summer.

   If that’s the case, we may as well grow with the flow.

   Plenty of tropical plants do nicely here as summertime in-ground, landscape plants.

   They think they’re at home.

   Yet we limit our use of tropicals to houseplants or, at best, in summer pots alongside the petunias and geraniums.

   Hardly anyone here sticks a croton or a copper plant in the ground.

   Actually, most so-called “houseplants” grow well in our May-to-September landscapes.

   Two caveats:

   1.) If you plan to keep tropicals more than one season, you have to dig them and pot them for inside storage once the late-season temperatures dip into the low 40s.

   Frosts and near frosts will kill most tropical natives. But most are up to double-duty as winter houseplants before going back outside the following May.

   Note: Hose off or spray your tropicals after repotting so you don’t take bugs into the house.

   2.) Be careful about light. Even a tropical that prefers full sun can wash out in color or drop leaves if it goes directly from inside to full sun outside.

   The solution is to acclimate the plant to increasing outside light over a 7- to 10-day period or to plant it outside in shade or part shade.

   Tropicals appreciate going into warm, real soil where their roots are free to roam. You may notice them thrive like never before.

   Life in a pot is stunting. Species sold as houseplants are good at tolerating that, but none of them prefer it.

   Nonetheless, if you’d rather not unpot and plant tropicals, go ahead and sink them pots and all. At least it’ll cut down on how often you have to water compared to potted tropicals sitting on the deck or porch.

A “Meadow” of Annual Flowers

May 21st, 2019

   Hardly anyone plants masses of in-ground annual flowers anymore.

The “meadow annual” look.

   For one thing, it’s expensive since $4 plants in four- and six-inch pots have largely supplanted cheaper six-packs.

   For another, most people don’t want the planting work and watering time that so many new plants require.

   I’m not even sure most people like the look of one big mass of, say, red geraniums or pink petunias.

   I like annual flowers, but for the above reasons, I’ve been tinkering around the last few summers with a different way to use them other than in containers – a style I call the “meadow look.”

   This involves interplanting a mix of eight to 10 different annual-flower varieties instead of massing out just one or two choices.

   I pair the varieties so that they look good next to each other and repeat the pairings to give a tad of organization to the bed.

   A few of the flowers are the pricey divas. But most are the much cheaper 4-packs and 6-packs as well as two or three varieties that I direct-seed.

   The result is a front border that gives me color all summer long at a fraction of the cost of a traditional mass planting.

Weird Veggies

May 14th, 2019

   I’ve seen a lot of vegetables in my day, but while looking over the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog, one odd picture grabbed my eye.

The jelly melon.
Credit: Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

   It was a full-color shot of what looked like a fat, orange, warty, bloated cigar.

   The plant was called a “jelly melon,” also known as the African horned cucumber, a vining crop native to Africa.

   “The pulp inside resembles lime green Jell-O,” the catalog description read. “The fruit has a sweet-sour, banana-lime-tropical taste. Good juiced and sweetened.”

   Sold.

   Sucker that I am for anything new and different (and especially weird), I had to try growing jelly melon.

   Turns out the jelly melon wasn’t all that great… sort of a seedy version of a soft cucumber.

   But nonetheless, experimenting with such oddities is one of the best parts about growing your own edibles.

   You can stick with the usual red tomatoes and green cucumbers if you want, but you also have the more adventurous option to grow just about anything you can get your seedy little hands on.

   Grocery-store produce sections are offering way more choices than even a decade ago, but it’s still only scratching the surface of the possibilities.

   For a few bucks’ investment, it’s doable to grow the world’s arguably tastiest watermelon (a variety called ‘Ali Baba’ from Iraq), a burgundy-leafed radicchio from Italy, a purple sweet potato, or a potato-like South American staple called jicama.

   Not all of the off-the-beaten-path stuff works out, of course. Some of it just doesn’t like our climate or soil or the way you look at it.

   But a big part of the fun is trying… just to see what’ll happen… just to find out what that jelly melon tastes like… just to see if the potato flesh really is blue like the picture.

Don’t Feel Bad about Your Lousy Lawn

April 30th, 2019

   This is the time of year when your lawn is going to look about as good as it’s going to get.

This kind of lush green carpet doesn’t come easily.

   But don’t feel bad if it’s not measuring up to the ideal that marketers conjured starting in the 1950s.

   Sporting that pristine green carpet takes a lot of effort, input, and expense.

   As if I have to tell you, much can wrong with a lawn in central Pennsylvania.

   So many of our yards have lousy soil to start with. It’s often clayish, shale-laden, or just a few inches of barely-passable “topsoil” spread on top of graded, packed subsoil.

   Grass is a plant, and like any plant, the roots need to penetrate the soil, have adequate oxygen and drainage, and be able to mine enough nutrition from the soil to feed the top growth.

   The compacted hardscrabble lurking in so much of suburbia makes all of that iffy. Odds are you have one big strike against you before you ever plant your first little grass seed.

   Then there’s the weather. We’ve always had erratic swings, but like most of the world, our extremes are getting “extremier.”

   We can get long strings of dry heat at triple-digit levels, or like last year, incessant soakings.

   Winters can hit 70 degrees one week and go under zero the next. Spring seems to show up, only to nose-dive back into winter.

   Like people, grass does best with gradual change and predictable conditions. Our weather has been more of a wild ride lately than ever.

   The simple fact that a lawn is made up of one kind of plant – cool-season grasses – is another big strike.