George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Weird Weather and the Other Meaning of St. Paddy’s Day

March 14th, 2017

To most people, this Friday’s St. Patrick’s Day is a time to celebrate Irish heritage, usually with shamrocks, green clothing and green beer.

St. Patty’s Day is the traditional pea-planting date.

But to gardeners, the occasion means green of another sort – time to plant the peas.

That’s not going to happen this year since the prevailing color is now white. When gardens aren’t buried under a foot or so of snow, lots of vegetable gardeners use the March 17 St. Paddy’s milestone as the semi-official start of the gardening season. They know peas are about as cold-hardy as any edible, capable of sprouting around here even in the sometimes-frozen soil of late winter.

This year, though, who knows what’s going to happen? We’ve already had April in February, when buds and shoots progressed to the point of opening way too soon by the time winter returned with a snowy vengeance.

Having magnolias in bloom and leaves sprouting on the hydrangeas the first week of March might be good therapy for winter-haters, but it’s risky behavior for plants. Those nights down into the teens last weekend look like they spelled doom for at least some buds and plant crowns. Too bad the insulation from the snow didn’t happen before the cold nights punished the bare leaves, buds and crowns.

Most of our winter-hardy plants are pretty good about protecting themselves in winter.

Perennials die back to the ground, bulbs keep their flower-producing shoots underground until the time is right, and tree and shrub buds stay tight and dormant until longer days and warmer temperatures trigger growth.

Most plants are “smart” enough not to start growing when we get a warm spell for a few days here and there in winter.

But what happened this year is that we got sustained warmth that went on for weeks – much of the time into the 60s and 70s and even close 80 in late February.

That was enough to trick plants into developing to where they’d normally be in late March. Even the grass turned green and started inching up as February handed off to March.

What Basement Lights Can Do

March 7th, 2017

Don’t overlook the lowly fluorescent shop light as a way to hold down your plant budget.

Overwintering tender plants are happily alive under my basement lights in February.

This cheapo lighting is good enough not only to start seedlings but to grow cuttings, overwinter tropicals and specimen annuals, and to get a jump on tender bulbs – all in the basement no less.

Not many people take advantage of this… or know it’s possible.

Local gardener/reader Jeff Kosakowski was reading an article on how I start seeds every winter in my unheated basement and got to wondering if that idea also would work for his tender plants.

Jeff emailed me that up to now, he’s been making a seed-starting mess in his den while storing his tender plants in sleep mode in the basement over winter.

“Every year, I haul them down to the basement, then bring them out around frost-free time and let them grow on the deck,” Jeff says. “I would love to get a head start. Also, I order a bunch of bare-root plants each year and would like to give them a head start in the same way, if you think it will work.”

I’m sure both will work because I’ve done it.

A dark, cold basement seems like the last place a plant would be happy, but it actually offers a few benefits.

One is that most non-plant-geek spouses will be a lot happier with the potting mix and watering cans in the basement instead of the living room or den.

Second is that seedlings and overwintering plants do better in the cool, 50-ish-degree temperatures of an unheated basement… better than the warmer, drier confines of the living quarters.

The cool temperature holds down the growth rate and keeps it more in balance with the artificial light you’re giving them from your fluorescent lights.

Upstairs, it might seem warmer and brighter, but winter light is low enough and indoor temperatures high enough that plant growth is often faster than the light can support. That’s why you’ll see room-temperature tomato seedlings usually getting long and “leggy.”

Not in My Yard, Deer

February 28th, 2017

Winter is the time when we pay the least attention to our landscape plants, but for deer, it’s prime time.

These four-legged eating machines can down 7 pounds of vegetation per day.

This is slim-pickings season for the deer food supply, a time when deer look around and realize that the best selection is that line of arborvitae along your property line or those azaleas around the patio.

Much of this stuff is actually pretty tender and tasty, although it still flummoxes me that any animal can eat stems with thorns (roses) or leaves with piercing spines (hollies).

To a gardener, there is no faster way (short of a tornado) to lose a landscape than when a couple of these four-legged eating machines find the yard.

These voracious vegetarians can eat 7 pounds of plants a day, and they carry the mistaken impression that all of those azaleas and arborvitaes you planted are dessert.

The bad news is that a hungry deer will eat almost any plant rather than starve.

The good news, though, is that deer are fairly picky eaters up to that point. If you lean toward their least-favorite choices, that can limit damage. (Read about an interesting deer taste-test study that Penn State’s Deer Research Center did.)

Researchers and publications have deer-resistant plant lists. Unfortunately, deer don’t read those lists, so your selection brilliance can suddenly flame out in one winter’s night.

Fruit-Growing That We Can’t Do

February 21st, 2017

Here in central Pennsylvania, we have our cherries, peaches, pears and apples. And glorious these tree fruits are as they tastily hand off to one another throughout summer.

Here’s a sight you don’t see in Mechanicsburg in February — oranges ripening under a blue sky.

While hiding out from winter last month in Florida, I had a chance to see a whole different kind of tree fruit in action – citrus.

Florida can’t do cherries, peaches, pears and apples because of the lack of winter chill time, but we can’t do oranges, grapefruits, tangerines and tangelos because they don’t like our little “inconvenience” called freeze.

Citrus is a fascinating crop, as I found out while touring a citrus farm in Polk County to the southwest of Disney World.

For one thing, most citrus crops – and especially oranges – hit peak harvest from December through March. That’s a time when our peaches and apples aren’t even thinking of flowering, much less fruiting.

But the most striking feature is the fragrance. The scent of an orange grove in flower is a scent to behold.

The perfume wafts over the whole grove, very similar to the sweet scent of gardenia (another worthy plant our freezes make all but impossible).

Let George Design Your Garden

February 7th, 2017

If you’re pretty sure you’re going to foul up planning or re-doing your gardens this year, I’ll be happy to bail you out with a design.

Working on a color-coded scale drawing…

Up to now, I’ve offered sketches and scale drawings as an add-on option for the on-site Garden House-Calls service I’ve been doing for 17 years.

This year, I’m adding a cost-saving, design-only option for those interested just in a drawing. Get me the measurements, snap a few photos, and fill out my three-page questionnaire on preferences and goals, and I’ll get you a design.

Since you’re doing more of the work and saving me a visit, you pay only for the drawing time.

I’ve found that a fair number of my customers are mainly interested in a specific game plan for what plants to put where. They don’t necessarily need or want a full-blown, 2-hour, $250 visit with an information packet, ideas, care tips, trouble-shooting, question-answering, etc. etc.

With the drawing-only option, you pay just for the design time at $50 an hour.

I’ll give you an estimate up front based on the size and scope of the area to be drawn. To give you an idea, I can usually design a house-front in 2 to 3 hours, the entire way around a house in 5 to 6 hours, and an entire yard in 8 to 10 hours.