George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Dealing with Winter’s Wrath

May 23rd, 2014

We’re far enough along in spring now that it’s finally become apparent what croaked from our brutal winter and what was merely set back.

A formerly beautiful variegated ‘Goshiki’ osmanthus that’s now winter toast.

I think that overall, most plants are going to recover, despite the worst winter in 25 years for plant damage. (For more on that, see the post I wrote on what caused all of the botanical destruction.)

Way more leaf browning and dropping happened this winter than usual, but I’m seeing a majority of denuded branches pushing out new leaves in the last couple of weeks.

In the case of hydrangeas, butterfly bush and crape myrtle, most of them survived, but the top growth generally died. That means you’ll have to cut off dead branches back to the new growth that (hopefully) is emerging from around the base of the plants.

It’s taken nearly 2 to 3 weeks longer than usual to determine what’s dead and what’s not because of the cool, slow start this season.

Normally, even the last of the spring waker-uppers is back to life by mid-May.

When the latest emergers finally poke out their new shoots or leaf buds, that’s a sign that everything else that’s alive should be showing new growth as well.

Just as forsythia is a good indicator shrub at the season’s beginning, crape myrtle and nandina are good indicators at the back end.

Black locust is one of the last trees to leaf out, and hardy hibiscus is one of the last perennials to show its face. If you’ve got a fig, that’s about as late to leaf out or poke up new shoots as anything.

When you see those plants back to life, you should be seeing life in other plants damaged by winter.

Of course, the indicator plants also could be dead. So even in a late year like this, if nothing is happening by mid-June, you can figure your lifeless plants are, as Garden Talk radio host Bob Carey terms it, “toast.”

This branch has failed the bend/snap test.

Other death signs are that your leafless branches will snap instead of bend. And when you scratch off the bark, you’ll see brown, not green.

If all of those check out, it’s time to throw in the towel and think about a replacement – either now (if you keep the replacements well watered through summer) or at our next good planting window (right after Labor Day through October).

So what do we do now with our winter-ailing plants?

Here’s a case-by-case rundown:

Things That Suffered Foliage Damage Only. These are plants (primarily evergreens and especially broad-leaf ones) that suffered winter “windburn.”

Unable to take up new moisture from the frozen ground to replace that being lost through foliage, windburned plants first show browning around the leaf edges or needle tips. In more severe cases, the leaves completely brown and eventually drop.

Roger Swain and Gardens of Maine

May 20th, 2014

Back when TV ran real how-to-garden shows, PBS’ The Victory Garden was the archetype.

Roger Swain, speaking at a past Pa. Garden Expo.

For 15 years, the show’s chief professor was Roger Swain, a down-to-earth, white-bearded soil sage most recognized for his red suspenders.

Each Saturday, Roger would dig a little, teach a little, prune a little and cajole a little.

It was a nice mix of neighborly chat and instruction that left viewers with a lot more gardening acumen than when they first sat down.

Bathroom makeovers and house-hunting in Brazil apparently are more popular (or at least more profitable) topics these days, and Roger is no longer on the airwaves.

He is, however, still pruning and digging and talking to gardeners, mostly at garden shows around the country. For several years, he drew faithful crowds at Harrisburg’s own Pennsylvania Garden Expo.

Though people seem most drawn by his down-home charm, Roger also happens to be brilliant. He’s got a Ph.D. from Harvard, has written five books and for many years was the science editor of Horticulture magazine.

He’s an interesting fellow, and that’s why I thought it might be fun for local gardeners to spend an afternoon with him on his New Hampshire farmette.

That’s scheduled for Sun., June 29, as part of a 5-day gardener’s mini-vacation to New England that Lowee’s Group Tours and I have put together.

The exclusive visit with Roger is sure to be the highlight, but we’re also going to see the up-and-coming Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (which Trip Advisor readers score the highest of any U.S. public garden), the ritzy grounds of New York’s Mohonk Mountain House, Boston’s Tower Botanical Gardens, the native plants at the New England Wildflower Society Gardens, and the underrated Stonecrop Gardens in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Seven Gardening Mistakes to Avoid

May 13th, 2014

This is the year everything goes just fine in the ol’ landscape, right?

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, don’t count on everything. Every year has its own new set of curveballs. But things ought to go better if you at least avoid these seven common gardening miscues as the 2014 season finally gets under way:

1.) Not improving lousy soil. Most of us aren’t blessed with good enough soil that we can just dig a hole and plant. Our “soil” is more like clay, shale, rocks and/or compacted subsoil.

Before planting, improve your planting bed by working 1 or 2 inches of organic matter into the top foot of loosened existing soil.

Good choices are compost, composted leaves from the borough or township, mushroom soil, rotted horse or cow manure and/or bagged planting mix or peat moss from the garden center.

You’ll end up with slightly raised and well drained beds that plant roots adore.

2.) Planting too closely. This includes planting plants too closely to one another as well as too closely to the house.

Determine the mature width of your new plant and space according to that – not its current size.

Spacing rule of thumb: Add mature widths together and divide by two, then plant no closer than that. (Example: 8-foot holly beside 4-foot spirea. 8+4=12, divide by 2, equals 6-foot minimum spacing.)

To space from houses, simply divide the mature width in half. (Example: 8-foot holly should go no closer than 4 feet from the house.)

Mulch Bargain? It’s Not in the Bag…

May 5th, 2014

I got an interesting question from a reader who was floored by how expensive it was going to be to have someone mulch his landscape.

Bulk mulch is a lot cheaper than bagged. Do the math…

This guy has a pickup and usually goes out to the home center and gets 30 bags of mulch at $4 each to cover his beds 2 inches deep.

That’s a fair amount of lugging, so he asked his lawn-mowing service for a quote on how much they’d charge to do the deed for him. The estimate: $60 per cubic yard.

Figuring he needed 60 yards because his 30 bags were 2 cubic yards each, he came up with a total of $3,600.

“Am I missing something?” he asked me. “Or is the cost of delivery and labor simply that much that the cost jumps from $120 if I do it myself into the thousands? Or is the mulch that much better?”

The answer lies in a common confusion that throws off a lot of people this time of year when they’re trying to figure out the most economical way to get mulch on dirt.

The bugaboo – if you haven’t guessed – is that most of those mulch bags at the store hold only 2 cubic FEET of mulch, not cubic yards.

Mulch sold in bulk is typically measured in cubic yards.

It takes 27 cubic feet of mulch to equal one cubic yard, which means you’d need 13½ of those 2-cubic-foot bags to make just one cubic yard (27 divided by 2).

It helps to picture it this way. A cubic yard is 3 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep. To build that cube, you’d have to lay out three rows and three columns of 1-by-1-by-1-foot cubes, then stack two more layers on top. Three times three times three equals 27.

In other words, bags holding 2 cubic feet really don’t go that far compared to what you get in a dumped pile of bulk mulch.

The labor to lay mulch isn’t cheap, but it’s also much more expensive to buy mulch by the bag than in bulk.

That’s why the cheapest route is to buy in bulk and lay it yourself.

Veggie-Gardening without the Garden

April 29th, 2014

   No land? No tiller? Bad back? No time to weed? Too pooped?

A vegetable “garden” in pots.

   None of those are excuses that rule out vegetable-gardening if you’re not locked into the notion that you have to dig up a big rectangle of lawn to do it.

   It turns out that most veggies grow very well in pots – and without nearly the work of in-ground gardens.

   Some of the best home-grown veggies – namely, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and eggplants – grow readily and sometimes better in containers.

   Almost all small crops, such as lettuce, beets, carrots, onions and radishes, also perform well as potted crops.

   About the only exceptions are space hogs, such as corn, rhubarb and squash, and that’s mainly because of the pot sizes and support needed – not because they “don’t work” in pots.

   In fact, it makes most sense to lean toward compact varieties of any crop for pot culture.

   You’ll find more choices than ever before because breeders have been focusing on compact varieties since a trend toward edibles-in-pots began picking up steam several years ago.

   An ideal pot variety is one with short “internodes” (the space between branches), a tight growth habit and a heavy yield over a long period of time.

   Look for those traits when you pick your varieties, or look for labels that highlight varieties that have bred specifically for pot growth.

   Beyond that, here are five “secrets” that’ll maximize your pot-growing success: