George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

2024 Philadelphia Flower Show Theme Is “United by Flowers”

December 5th, 2023

   The world’s biggest and longest running indoor flower show, the Philadelphia Flower Show, is set to bloom next March 2-10, and the 2024 theme will be “United by Flowers.”

“United by Flowers” is the theme of 2024 Philadelphia Flower Show.
Credit: Pa. Horticultural Society

   Show officials say visitors can expect a “massive, immersive, and flower-filled entrance garden,” plus large-scale floral creations and gardens designed by florists and garden artists from Philadelphia, the United States, and around the world.

   Lowee’s Group Tours and I will be running five day trips to see the 2024 show, leaving from a choice of five different locations. Now that I’ve mostly retired, these are the only garden trips I’m still doing.

   We leave for Philadelphia later in the morning than most bus tours (avoiding the rush at opening) but also stay longer (giving you less-crowded time to see the show later in the day).

   The bus drops you off at the main entrance, and you’ll have ticket included and in hand so you can hit the flowery ground running. I’ll give you show-seeing details and other show insights on the way down.

   As with last year, the first three day trips – Mon., March 4, Tue., March 5, and Wed., March 6 – leave from Sam’s Club (Silver Spring Twp.) at 9:30 a.m. and from Weis Markets (Linglestown) at 10 a.m., arriving at the show around noon. Departure is 6 p.m.

   On Thur., March 7, pickups are at 9 a.m. at the South Middleton Twp. building in Boiling Springs and at 9:30 a.m. at Sam’s Club in Silver Spring Twp. Show arrival is around noon, and departure is 6 p.m.

   And on Fri., March 8, pickups are at 9 a.m. in Springettsbury Twp., York County, and at 9:30 a.m. at Clearview Bowling in Mt. Joy. Show arrival is around noon, and departure is 6 p.m.

   Prices for each of the trips is $99.

   More information is posted on my Talks and Trips page, or you can book directly through Lowee’s website. Lowee’s phone is 717-757-9658 and email is ckelly@lowees.com if you prefer to go those routes instead.

Gardening In Smoke and Wacky Weather: Lessons from the 2023 Gardening Season

November 28th, 2023

   Now that another gardening season is in the bag, it’s a good time to look back and see what lessons we can draw from it.

A smoky haze settles over Hersheypark in June.
Credit: Dan Gleiter/PennLive

   The 2023 gardening year was another one that brought us lots of twists and turns, not the least of which was more erratic weather and feast-or-famine rainfall.

   But the year’s biggest curveball was a new one – gardening in a smoky haze.

   Vast wildfires in Canada brought a substantial smoky haze in June, followed by spotty repeats throughout the summer.

   That was more of a problem for gardeners than plants. The smoke threatened air quality enough that it wasn’t a good idea to be out there fertilizing the veggies, doing battle against weeds, or chasing deer away from the hostas.

   However, there’s some evidence that wildfire smoke and ash can harm plant growth.

   One 2018 study published in Nature Communications claimed that ozone and aerosols – two pollutants commonly in wildfire smoke – can interfere with plant growth as far as hundreds of miles downwind.

   Dr. Lew Feldman, director of the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, points to research showing that even short-term exposure to smoke (as little as 20 minutes) can slow plant photosynthesis by destroying chlorophyll (the light-capturing green pigment in plants) and slowing plants’ uptake of carbon dioxide due to fine ash clogging leaf pores.

   Dr. Mark Jeschke, agronomy manager for the Pioneer crop-seed company, also points to the haze itself, which can block sunlight.

   “Much like a hazy cloud cover, smoke reflects a portion of incoming sunlight, reducing the amount of light available to plants,” he wrote in a paper on wildfire smoke’s potential effect on crop yield.

   On the other hand, blocking some light can be a benefit on days when full sun and extreme heat might otherwise stunt growth. Coincidentally or not, our average temperatures for June (the peak of wildfire smoke) were 2 degrees cooler than normal even while the northern hemisphere as a whole recorded its warmest summer in 174 years of national record-keeping.

   Another potential benefit is that fallen ash contains potassium, calcium, and magnesium that can fertilize plants once incorporated into the soil.

   The bottom line is that it’s hard to determine whether the smoke this summer was a plant harmer or a wash between the pros and cons.

   As Jeschke concludes: “Determining the actual impact of wildfire smoke on crop yields is extremely difficult for a number of reasons, including the multiple, competing effects involved and the difficulty in isolating the effects of smoke from other influences.”

   If we get a smoky repeat in 2024, researchers recommend that concerned gardeners rinse their plant leaves to head off ash-clogged pores and to wash produce well to remove any smoke-carried residue.

   Five other lessons to ponder from 2023:

Is It Too Late To…

November 14th, 2023

   Most of the gardening questions I get this time of year begin with the words, “Is it too late to…” or “Can I still…”

   Mid-fall is a confusing, kinda-over/kinda-not time in the garden.

November isn’t the best month to plant, but it’s not impossible either.

   It’s a time when frost usually has killed the summer vegetables and annuals and slowed the growth of everything else, yet we can still string together some very nice November days in the 60s and 70s. That’s when it seems as if we could/should do something other than erect burlap barriers and go hunting for lanternfly eggs.

   Here’s a rundown to help you figure out what can still go on the November honey-do list.

   Q: Is it too late to plant trees and shrubs?

   A: No, but your odds of success go down in November.

   Cornell University did some ground-breaking experiments (har-har) on this question years ago and concluded that fall-planted plants survive best when they go in the ground at least six weeks before the soil temperature hits a root-stopping 40 degrees at the root level.

   In our area, that normally translates into late October.

   If the weather stays warm and damp in the coming weeks, your odds go up. If it gets very cold soon or the soil is dry when freeze time arrives, the odds go down.

   I’d definitely wait until spring to plant winter-tender fare such as crape myrtle, nandina, hardy camellia, and cherry laurel. But if you get a great end-of-season bargain on a reliably cold-hardy plant, that may be worth the risk. (You probably will sacrifice any warranty, though.) Keep the soil damp until it freezes if rain isn’t doing the deed for you.

   Q: How about perennial flowers?

   A: Same deal. Hardy ones? Decent odds. Borderline ones? Spring is better.

   We’re in USDA Winter Hardiness Zones 6B and 7A, so anything on labels rated for Zone 5 or lower is plenty cold-tough.

   Watch November-planted perennials over the winter for “heaving.” Since your plants won’t be well rooted planting this late, the root balls are more susceptible to getting pushed up by freezes and thaws.

   You don’t want the tops of the root balls sticking up, where cold winter wind can kill the unprotected roots.

   Tamp heaved plants back down ASAP, and surround the plant with two inches of bark or wood chips if you didn’t already do that at planting.

   Q: Can I still plant grass seed?

Giving Up Already? Not So Fast…

October 31st, 2023

   Are you one of those gardeners who already has buzzed everything to the ground and packed away the trowels for the season?

Lots of life and color is possible in the fall garden… if you plan for it.

   Not so fast.

   As the sage philosopher Yogi Berra once pointed out, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

   And in the garden, it ain’t over until it’s really cold and the ice and snow are flying. Regularly.

   Diehard gardeners know that some of the year’s best times in the garden are in mid fall – especially those warm days that inevitably pop up after the season’s first killing frost.

   The way our weather has been going these last 10 or 20 years, the so-called “gardening season” now can stretch into mid-November.

   The season’s first frost might knock out the summer vegetables and annual flowers, but many perennials bloom on, the trees and shrubs are holding fall-foliage color later than ever, and early-November temperatures typically reach into the 50s – if not higher.

   Yet a lot of gardeners do a “fall cleanup” when the first leaves turn, set out the obligatory mums, pumpkins, and straw bales, then call it a year.

My Mini-Meadow Year 2: The Weeds Are Winning

October 17th, 2023

   I planted a small meadow on a bank in my back yard for two main reasons:

George’s mini-meadow as it looked in “peak form” of July 2023.

   1.) I was looking for a low-care, low-cost way to cover a tough site that’s not easy to work.

   2.) I liked the idea of adding diversity to encourage pollinators and beneficial insects. That’s why I picked a seed mix of 27 mostly native species – one specially geared to thriving in the Northeast.

   Two growing seasons are now in the bag from my May 2022 planting, and the result is what I was afraid would happen – the weeds are winning.

   Despite my extensive effort to clear the bed of existing seeds and then cultivate new ones before seeding the meadow, my second-year mini-meadow has been about a 50-50 mix of weeds of wildflowers.

Read more on how George planted the mini-meadow

   I’m dealing with some real thugs, too – mostly aggressive perennials like thistle, hawkweed, mugwort, tawny daylilies, and oxalis. These are stalwart enough to squelch most of the fledgling meadow species that came up from my seed mix.

   The worst of the bunch, though, has been goutweed (Aegopodium podograria).

   If you’re not familiar with this one, it’s a carrot-family spreading clumper with toothed, green leaves that form in groups of three. It typically grows about a foot tall but can reach up to three feet tall when given a few years of unchecked spread.

   Goutweed (sometimes called ground elder or bishop’s weed) was one of the perennial weeds that had been growing for at least 10 years on the six-by-20-foot bank section that I’m trying to tame.

   I grubbed out every piece of it that I could find with a mattock and trowel before planting… as I did with the many other villainous squatters that I inherited.

   But the problem with goutweed is that, like thistle, it’s a plant that seems to retaliate with vengeance when you attack it.

   Just yank off the leaves, and the super-powered roots send up multiple new shoots all along the radiating rhizomes.

   If you dig and leave behind even a tiny root fragment, that fragment gets aggravated enough to prove to you what a big mistake you just made.