The Newsletter for Lazy Gardeners

Hi guys. There’s lots goin’ on even though I’ve been a little slack at writing the newsletter. I have a new garden, almost a new job, a new car and things are starting to look pretty good.

The new garden is because I moved from a one bedroom apartment with a ten square foot garden to a three bedroom townhouse with a twenty square foot garden. I planted the front yard the other week but given that they’re all perennials, they look pretty sticklike and won’t come into their own until next summer. But, all the new stuff it there!

The new job is because I’m about to go back to full time garden writing (and write books and this newsletter much more often – yeah!!!) and quit my nursery job. Not only do I get to garden a bit more, but I get to write about it more often as well. Needless to say, I’m pretty pleased by this. And yes, this means I’ll be able to answer more of your questions more often.

The new car is “Folly” my 1977 Triumph Spitfire. After a major engine renovation, she hit the road last week and it reminds me of the little boy saying to his father, “Dad, when I grow up to be a man, I want a Triumph Spitfire.” The father answers, “Son, you can’t have both.”

New house, new garden, new-old car, about to be new job. Life gets better and better. Hang on folks, its going to be a great ride.

About This Newsletter

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I have the choice of doing it in html and/or text. Due to the time it takes to do html, I’m going to do it in text for the immediate future. But, I’ll do it. Once I get back to full time writing, I’ll revert back to html and fancy stuff. OK?

Questions

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Trying to figure out where you live? State, etc. I live in Hayden Idaho. First time in my life, 67 years, have I had a terrible garden. Don't know what is the matter. I'm not the only one in the area. Just now getting cukes and zucchini. Have you ever grown ground cherries or crocus sativus? I will catch you later. Kay

A: Kay it was a terrible year for a lot of vegetable growers. Cold, wet and rainy. That will do it for most veggies. Ground cherries are easy, treat them like tomatoes (same family) and you’ll have bumper crops. Never grown C sativus. It is way too tender for my zone 4 garden (it’s a z6 plant) and as a sterile cultivar, I’m not sure I want to grow it anyway. (grin) And, don’t live in a State. I live in a province – Ontario, Canada to be precise. Eh?

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I have 2 questions -my raspberry bushes have not bore fruit for 2 years I transplanted them from an old country garden in Lynn to down on the Paul rd in Elizabethtown on the river side. They have at least 7 hours of sunshine and I water when I water the garden. I prepped the garden with organic mix and compost and let it sit a couple of weeks before planting then I trimmed down the canes and let them come up the next year normally not expecting berries until the 2nd year because of the transplant. There is a bark mulch under them but not thick just to keep the weeds down. They show thick growth and alot of healthy leaves but only a gew flowers is this going the right way or are they just done. Second question is I have a huge yew bush out front and I would like to trim it down about 3ft will it fill back in or will this just make it turn orange and die off? I realize it will take a couple of years to fill back in if it will but will this hurt it? Thanks for your help, I enjoy the newsletter and have learned many good things to use in my garden.

Shelley

A: The berries might have been hit by a frost to knock back the flowers. It is also not unusual for them to bear very lightly after transplanting for the first few years. Yields will increase dramatically once established. That’s always assuming they are not totally virus infected or disease ridden. Often the old canes are pretty badly infected and this will take up much of the energy of the plant. You’ll have to check out raspberry diseases on the net to see pictures of the problems and then see if you have those problems. Yew are one of the few evergreens that will take a severe pruning and recover. You can cut a yew in half (from the top down or the side in) and it will recover and regrow. Yes, feel free to prune it as heavily as your conscience will let you. You can do this because the buds on the old wood never mature, they stay immature (they must drive Triumphs too). When stimulated by pruning, they start to grow. Other woody plant buds mature when the plant gets larger and die off. Don’t cut back a cedar or it will simply pack it in or worse, sit there and look ugly.

* * * * * * I have a friend who has dug out some bulbs and rhizomes as well as Gladiolus bulbs from a neglected garden where she is presently residing and hopes to transplant those where their new house is being built. The problem I see and I told her it wasn't a good idea to do that is that there is lots and lots of horsetail plants adjacent to that neglected garden.

I would appreciate your comments on this if you answer e-mails that is. Thanks

A: Ahhhrrrggg. I hate horsetail. But, if you’re careful and don’t take any soil along with the bulbs, you can do it.

Personally, I’d really want those varieties before I’d go and do that kind of digging. Much easier and less of a hassle to simply purchase the plants. Horsetail loves sandy ground and once established, it can be a serious pain in the anatomy. It took me many years to remove it from the main parts of my alpine garden and I know it was lurking under some evergreens waiting for me to sell the farm and move on – leaving some other unsuspecting gardener to face this scourge.

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From My Garden To Yours

I spent this afternoon planting next year’s front perennial garden and after I had finished, it was an impressive sight of twigs, a few gnarled leaves, disturbed soil and plant tags tentatively poking their heads out of the ground. Given that I’m supposed to be a gardener, I had some thought it would look a lot better than it did. The neighbours seemed impressed as they strolled by to see what this crazy guy was doing all afternoon but really, planting in the fall is such an act of faith. You put this twig with a small bunch of roots in the ground and believe, with all your heart, it will blaze forth next spring to amaze and impress your flower starved soul. Those plants had better look good next spring because they sure look ugly now.

One of the ugliest were my peony bushes. I moved two into the garden. A pale yellow called ‘Clare de Lune’. This is a hybrid of the yellow species P. mlokosewitschii and ‘Mons Jules Elie’ a superb double pink. The colour of ‘Clair de Lune’ is a soft butter yellow and it is wonderfully fragrant. Reaching only twenty-eight inches tall, it is short for a hybrid peony but when I saw them blooming this summer, I knew one would grace my garden this fall. The other was an unnamed red peony that I fancied this past summer and a friend gave me a division. This is the perfect time to transplant peonies; they do appreciate a fall transplanting and will move better now than next spring. The down side is that I wound up cutting off quite a few of the ratty looking leaves and the plant looks extremely abused at the moment. I’m sure it will forgive me next spring.

I also transplanted a lavender bush from its pot into the garden. I don’t have an overwintering location for potted perennials so it gets to take its chances in the sunny garden area. Just in case it survives, I put it next to the driveway where I could rub my hand against it next summer to send its fragrance into the garden. There’s little sense having fragrant plants if you don’t put them where you can smell them. I’m in the process of moving all my potted perennials into the garden for overwintering. Even if they look good in their pots, they are being moved. A Silene doicia ‘Valley High’ was rudely yanked from its pot and put in the ground. This variegated plant had shocking purplish pink blossoms for an extended time this summer in the container and I’m looking forward to seeing how it does in the garden next summer.

I have been looking for some good fall colour for this garden so I picked two plants that should give me some interest. I planted an ornamenetal rhubarb called Rheum ‘Ace of Hearts’ and while it will have flowers in late spring, the leaves have a green top and reddish purple underside. So, when the fall winds blow, I’ll get a green and purple flashing in my garden next year. Some wag might suggest that any flasher streaking about in the fall would have a reddish purple bottom but I wouldn’t as this is a family oriented gardening column. I planted a Solidago ‘Leraft’ right next to it so the yellow of the Solidago (or goldenrod) would contrast with the reddish purple of the Rheum. This goldenrod has soft lemon-yellow spikes and only reaches twenty-four inches. I enjoyed it in my container garden this summer but I note that like most goldenrods, the bottom leaves were destroyed by botrytis or leaf spot fungus. This plant’s bottom skirts need to be hidden behind something taller that will hide this ugly defoliation. I’ll let you know whether this combination works out or whether the garden fashion police picked up the red streaker.

I didn’t forget the ornamental grasses either. I planted two Hakonechloa today as my token grass planting. This is a Japanese plant and while the first one I put into the ground was the green species, the second was a brand new introduction called ‘All Gold’. It has tremendous golden leaves and only gets to about 18 inches tall in full sun. It is a very bushy plant and did fairly well in its first containerized year. I have great hopes for its survival (it might be a bit tender) and I planted it in the place of honour at the front of the garden to encourage it. I needed grasses that are a bit on the controlled side rather than grasses that eat the rest of the garden and the Hakonechloa fit the bill.

Fall is the perfect time to dig and divide daylilies and today was the day for daylilies. If I planted one, I planted a dozen. All were brand new Trophytaker and Ever-Appster breeding because I want a long season of bloom next summer. While an old-fashioned daylily blooms for 21 days, these newer hybrids typically bloom for two or three months. My all time favourite is ‘Scentual Sundance’ a sweetly fragrant yellow and I made sure it had a place of honour where I could catch a whiff of perfume next year.

I hope you’re picking up the drift of my planting. The vast majority of the perennials I installed today had several things going for them. They were either fragrant, they bloomed for a long time or their foliage was extremely interesting. In my small garden, a plant has to do double duty. I don’t have the space for short, single season bloomers that fade into dull green for the rest of the summer. But the most important thing about today’s gardening was demonstrating that I did indeed have faith that the mess I made today would transform itself into rare beauty by next June.