The Newsletter for Lazy Gardeners

Gardening Made Easy | Volume # 1 | Nov 2003

Thanks for your kind comments about the new look for the newsletter. Putting html into my gardening mind’s storeroom is an interesting experience. And to the delightful reader who asked if I was really as good looking as my picture and was I “available” – the answers are “yes” and “it depends” :-) I intend to continue adding pictures to the newsletter as I start scanning my slides into the computer. I also added some graphics this month to the perennial site that should make it easier on the eyes and I’ve started adding pictures to pages.

Speaking of the website, let me tell you I added another couple of articles this past month. One was on Daisies and another was on Toadlilies. I also started a brand new website at Water-Gardens-Information It is quite a beginning website but I’ve uploaded a few articles and some pond pictures you might find interesting.

Interesting Link This Issue

This is the official site of the USDA zone hardiness map. While some of you may have this already, I continue to receive questions. So, here’s the source.

Hardiness Zone Map

We Get Questions

I'm glad to answer questions for readers. If you have a question, it helps if you ask them in this way:
1) Hit return on your email browser to get the right email address.
2) Please **delete** all the newsletter text so I don't get it all back and have to hunt through it for your text.
3) Give me your location. The answer to a question often is determined by where the garden is located.
4) Have patience. I'll answer as many as I can in the newsletter but there's way more of you than there is of me and I simply can't get to them all. I'll do my best

Hello Doug,I am a new comer to your e-mail site,I am finding it very interesting,and a big thankyou for it.I have a question for you,hopefully you can come up with a better solution than I have,my roses keep getting black spot on them,without going into detail,I have used many things on them but nothing has really helped.What would you suggest putting on them.I live in Albany,you know that little city right on the bottom of Western Australia.Hopefully you can come up with a cure for me,thanking you,
Lesley.

A: Check out the articles at http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/marticle.html on black spot. The only addition to that article would be the use of compost tea as a spray. The research on compost tea is quite amazing and I’ll be working on articles this coming spring to summarize some of these and give you the environmentally sound methods of garden pest control.

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Another reader asked about “name brands” for some sprays. Right now of course we don’t need any sprays. Hey, its almost winter out there but I’ll have a full source book of sprays and beneficial insects etc online by spring so you can obtain anything you need quickly from the Net even if your local garden centre never heard of the word “environmentally friendly” :-)

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I live in the Chicago area and would like to plant a 3 foot holly hedge along the south side of the house. I have clay soil and sun there about 4 hours a day.

Is winterberry the darkest leaf in a holly with red berries? Will it thrive there? Can I still plant this fall? Where is the best place to order these bushes? How can I be sure I have both male and female bushes before I put them in the ground?

Thanks so much for your answers to these questions.

Muriel

A: Winterberry is a great native holly but it does best with lots of water. If you’ve got lots of water in this area, then yes it will live there.
Can you still plant? As long as the ground is not frozen, you can plant woody shrubs and trees.
Where to order them? Hmmm, probably from a local garden centre that will guarantee them over the winter.
How to sex them? Hmmm, the jokester in me really wants to answer this one!!! :-) However, the gardener says there is no way to do this unless the plants are in bloom. You have to depend on the labeling being correct.

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Doug, I cannot find any information on the care of Lotus blossoms after they flower and began to dry up. My pond has not had a lot of care before I moved in and there is a lot of rotting vegetation in the bottom. Could you tell me how to go about cleaning out and if I will do damage to them if I do. Thank you, Cheryl

A: Well, generally once the lotus blossoms start to fade, you cut them off.

A lot of rotting vegetation on the bottom means a thorough clean up. Sounds like a take the water out of the pond, clean out the gunk type of day. Small ponds are easiest done by bucket and pail. Larger ponds are best done with pumps. The easiest way to do this is to get a sump pump that works *without* a strainer – something that will handle what we call “solids” (i.e. pond gunk) Some pond pumps are built this heavily and will do this job. Otherwise rent one.
Remove any fish from the pond that you want to keep. Stir the water up and get as much of the gunk floating around as possible. Start the pump and simply pump the water/gunk out. Put it onto the vegetable or flower garden if possible.
As the pond water level gets down, start washing the sides and bottom with a jet of water. This will loosen more gunk and it too will get pumped out. (Did I say to put the pump at the lowest part of the pond?) Continue cleaning the sides and bottom until the pump is putting out clear water.
Fill the pond back up for the winter.
You are going to annoy a whole bunch of frogs with this cleanup.
If you have no expensive fish to overwinter in the pond, you might want to leave this chore until spring. It is a tad late for the frogs to find a new home and they’re kind of stupid that way. They’ll simply jump back into the clean pond and won’t find any place to hide for the winter. They’ll die over the winter and you’ll get to clean out dead frogs next spring. (not a nice prospect)

I’m assuming the lotus are in pots and will survive this cleanout. If not, if they are planted in the bottom of the pond, you’ll have to be careful not to harm the growing tips of the banana shaped rhizome. Chop up this growing tip and your lotus is toast. As long as you use a pump and hose to clean out the pond gunk, you should not have any trouble or do any damage.

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Doug, Is it ok for me to trim my mum bushes down, now, for the winter.......they really grew and are flopping all over the place. Also, I have a trumpet vine that has not flowered very well. Can I prune it now, and how much should I prune? I am new to this house and am not up on these particular flowers. Trumpet vine is located on the West side of the house and gets a lot of sun........I did read in one of the newsletters about too much nitrogen being used on the lawn as a cause of fewer blossoms. We have our lawn serviced.........could this be a contributor to the problem? Thanks............

A: Yes, trim mums back now. Shouldn’t be a problem. They may not live the winter anyway (you don’t say where you live or what kind of mum you have) as most mums (yes, even the so-called hardy ones) are not overly dependable in their hardiness in zones 4 and 5.
Trumpet Vine – you don’t say how old it is or how big it is. If its in the full sun and growing like mad and is more than a few years old, then yes, excessive nitrogen from lawn feeding can retard the blossoming while encouraging heavy leaf growth. If it is a young plant, only a few years old, then it might not have the root strength yet to throw blossoms. Once it does though, you’ll have all the baby trumpets you could ever ask for. This is a weedy vine.

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Mary asks, “Do you have any tips on getting rid of voles?”

A: Read the article on moles and voles at http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/marticle.html

My Books

In case you wanted to see how I set up my book on designing and planting a perennial garden to bloom all summmer, I put together a webpage that describes the contents of the book.

Every year, I am fortunate enough to grow the All America Award winning plants in my trial gardens and this year was no exception. There are several new introductions for 2004 that you might watch for next year as they have been widely tested in all manner of gardens across North America (including some here in Ontario). All these varieties are seed started so you can obtain them from your favourite seed catalogue although I note they will not likely be in seed racks because they are so new. Many garden centres will also carry some of these new introductions as well.

A bedding plant winner that is sure to be a hit in containers and borders is the annual baby’s breath ‘Gypsy Deep Rose’. This plant showed several improvements over other annual baby’s breath varieties. To begin with, the flowers were either double or semi-double and they bloomed in a deep rose rather than the pale washed out pinks of others I’ve grown. Each flower was up to 3/8 of an inch across, this is much bigger than typical seed started cousins. It is a short plant for the front of a garden, only growing ten inches tall and spreading to fourteen inches wide. It does prefer full sun but grew acceptably well in a light shade with mid-day sun. As I said, it will grow well in containers and will be a good plant for the edge of the container. As with all the annuals described here, plants grew better with weekly feedings during the growing season.

‘Queeny Purple’ is the shortest hollyhock as well as the first purple hollyhock you’ll be able to purchase by itself and not part of some unknown mix. If you sow this plant in February or March under lights, it will bloom the first year; not only that but it will bloom all summer once it gets started. The blooms are a semi-double or powderpuff form with frilly edges and measure three to four inches across. Remember that ‘Queeny Purple’ is a dwarf, only reaching twenty-four to thirty inches tall in full sun so it goes in the middle of the flower border, not toward the back with its taller cousins. It is best suited for growing in the garden (not containers) and I’ll have to let you know next year whether the seeds overwinter to self-sow like its taller cousins.

The other bedding plant that will catch your eye next spring is ‘Limbo Violet’ petunia. It is a single petunia, excellent for containers because of its very compact growth habit and large flowers. While other petunias tend to become vines as they age, ‘Limbo Violet’ becomes more mound-like and only spreads ten to twelve inches across. The flowers on the seven-inch tall plants are three inches or more across and they completely cover the plant making this a very attractive show plant. The blooms were not all that showy this year in the abundance of rain although they did recover better than other petunias in the trial gardens. They require no pinching or other forms of garden maintenance that automatically moves them into my favoured plant status.

There are few things in the garden nicer than melons and the smell of a sun warmed melon means summer vegetable gardening to me. ‘Amy’ is a new melon introduction in the so-called “canary” line of melons. These are bright yellow on the vine making them quite an attractive plant to grow and ‘Amy’ has no netting or markings, simply a clear yellow orb waiting to be eaten. ‘Amy’ has a small seed cavity surrounded by pure white flesh and I have to tell you this flesh is firm and sweet. In a normal year, you can expect to have mature fruits in seventy to eighty days from planting but you do have to give it some room. These vines can spread at least six feet in all directions. I note that next year, I’m going to grow this one up a trellis to save garden space.

Another spreading vine that you’ll want to try is watermelon ‘Sweet Beauty’. There are few things nicer in the garden than picking fresh watermelon. This variety has consistently firm crisp texture and good sweet flavour. The average sized fruit is five to seven pounds and is considered an “ice-box” type. This means that you had better eat it all up when you cut into it as it doesn’t keep or store well. Get it good and cold before cutting and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with its flavour. Expect it to take eighty days for fruiting and in the full sun it should expand about ten feet from the planting hole. This is not a small plant for the feint of heart but one that will provide enough fruit for an average family.

There are three other plants that won AAS awards for 2004 but while others sang their praises, I have been a bit more muted. I’m not a squash fan so it doesn’t surprise me that I am not jumping up and down over ‘Sunshine’ the new winter squash. It is a colourful thing, bright orange with a sweet flavour according to those who eat such things. Unfortunately, the growing season is around ninety-five days (approx 100 days from seed sowing) which puts it on the outside of my garden’s window for producing good fruit. While this does not disappoint me, if you are a squash grower, then I would take a pass on this variety just because of its long growing season.

I do have to learn how to grow celosia because for many years I have killed these plants. I must be holding my mouth wrong or something when I plant them because these two varieties just won AAS status in the trials. If you like celosia, let me suggest you search out, ‘Fresh Look Red’ and ‘Fresh Look Yellow’ for your garden next year. They looked good in one AAS garden I saw this summer and ‘Fresh Look Red’ even won the coveted gold medal. You apparently do not even have to prune or pinch off spent blossoms on these varieties, they simply continue to bloom and cover up the old with the new. Grow these, if you can, in full sun and know that they will reach twelve to eighteen inches tall with a spread of twelve to twenty inches. Blooming all summer, they also make excellent cut flowers as well as excellent container plants.

Those are the AAS 2004 award winners that you’ll want to try in your gardens next summer. Do look for them in your favourite seed catalogue.