I messed up the html coding on some links last week but I was amazed at how many of you managed to find the Plant Thugs ebook anyway. For those of you who missed it, here’s the url www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/plantthugs.html And yes, I did check this one before I sent the newsletter – my finger ran away with me last week before I could check the links.

I’m fascinated by where the ebook has gone to – so far 6 different countries and a ton of states and provinces (I’m not counting those) I won’t announce the book again, you’ll have to find it through the perennial site or newsletter archives (hint: use the search box)

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COMPOST! Is that loud enough for ya? :-) That’s the answer I’ll give to each of you that asks what can I do to make my garden better this year? What can I do to start a good garden? What can I do to improve the health of my plants? You are going to get really, really tired of me saying it. LOL!

More is better. And even more than you think is necessary is better than just “more”.

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Some of you were with me when I had another website that was a paid-subscriber site.

If you did pay for that site, would you send me a note by replying to this newsletter (delete all the newsletter stuff) and confirm that you paid your membership dues to that site.

I have something I need to ask you.

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Articles this week are up – several new summer bulbs including ranunculus, creeping Charlie at beginner-gardening.com, a new list of grass plants that I’ll be writing about, perennial asters, articles about onions and cucumbers.

More bulbs, waterside plants, vegetables, shrubs, vines and compost pages are coming into view on my ToW list. Stay tuned. :-)

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New Articles for You

All my new articles are listed here. Click on the archives link at the site to see others.

Want to ask a question? Click here to ask a gardening question.http://www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/askagardeningquestion.html

Your Questions Answered

One of the things I’m not able to help you with is the question, “Is my plant alive because it hasn’t come up yet?”

I have the same plant in several parts of my garden (remember that my garden is quite small) and I have Hellebores up and blooming in the warm sections where the afternoon sun hits and they haven’t even shown their faces in the cold sections where it is shaded all day.

Your garden is like that – different climates within feet of each other and the biggest suggestion I have right now is that it is WAY too early for panic. Even in the warmer sections of the South, plants are still emerging this spring. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t alive. Just because it is later than normal, doesn’t mean it is dead.

I NEVER give up on a plant until the end of June. (I have my doubts earlier than that – but never give up hope because I’ve seen trees leaf out late, perennials arrive really late like debutantes for a ball, and seeds take several years to germinate.

There are some specialized (very rare) plants that sometimes take a year off growing and live underground.

The garden isn’t a regimented thing – it runs on Garden Time rather than clock time. And the plants will come along when they’re ready to grow (or not) depending on their needs. Not ours.

Patience.

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Love your newsletter. I live in the Franktown area and have a 3-4 foot blue spruce. How do you keep the spruce looking blue? I've noticed that each year the blue seems to be fading. What can I do to keep it looking blue?

A: Unfortunately, these plants have minds of their own and plant marketers have allowed gardeners to make some assumptions. The first truth here is that blue spruce naturally go green in the winter time. They all do. Nothing for it I’m afraid.

They “blue” back up again in the spring and the extent of their coloring is determined by the variety and the soils in which they live. There are some “blue” spruce from seed that you will have a very hard time seeing any blue on.

Non-organic gardeners will toss a little aluminum sulphate onto the soil to increase the “blueness” in the plant. Organic gardeners will toss a little peat moss around the plant to slightly drop the acidity and accomplish the same thing. Organic gardeners know that if they add too much aluminum to their soils that it will bind to the root hairs of the plant and slowly kill off those root hairs.

Lazy gardeners will buy the best blue hybrid spruce on the market and feed it compost – allowing it to go blue by itself all summer.

And green in the winter.

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I just bought 2 large christmas rose in the white magic variety. One of them still had aprox 8-9 flower heads gone green. The garden shop told me to cut them off so more life would go into the plant. My question is-are the pods in the center of the flower actually seeds. If I stick them in soil now (late April) in a shady moist location-will a plant come up next Dec or Jan. Thanks, I'm a beginner who would love to know. Kitty

A: Hey Kitty – I’m torn with this advice. You know, I’ve given it myself on more than one occasion but when I’ve run garden trials on it, I’ve gotten mixed results. I can’t really say that cutting off blooms makes the plant establish that much better in practice. In theory, I’d never argue against this advice but…

If I were you, I’d cut off all but two or three and I’d let those seed pods develop into mature seedheads. I wouldn’t stick them in the soil but rather let them mature and split themselves to spread their seeds around the mother plant. You’ll find new tiny plants there next spring. Sticking the pods underground is just as likely to rot them as anything. Let them mature and spread themselves (much easier on the gardener when the plant does the work.)

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Hi, I had a couple questions about two of my perennials. I am concerned they may have died off over the summer. One is a spiked gayfeather/liatris species. Apparently it dies off to the ground every fall. I am concerned my is dead for good, because I don't see any new shoots coming off it. Does it start growing late?

I have some shasta daisies that I think also died. There is no sign of any new growth, while the other plants -- day lilies, hollyhocks, irises -- are already sprouting. Do these grow late as well?

I live in Zone 5, as you can probably gather by my location.

Thanks for your help -- hope to hear from you soon.

A: OK – let’s hear it for patience. While I would never take a bet against that liatrus being dead – that is one tough plant. Shasta are also a little on the reticent side when compared to those other plants.

Patience folks, patience.

Ask me in September if your plant should have appeared by now. LOL!

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I keep reading about the benefits of adding compost to your garden. My question is what is the difference between compost and bagged manures(cattle,cow and sheep). Is one type of manure better then the other? I have perennial beds which I would like to topdress. Should this be done now? What manure/compost to use How much? Should it be turned into existing soil or just left on top? Lastly if composting is to increase the fertility of the soil, does that mean I can skip the chemical fertilizers on my perennials eg. roses, clematis, delphiniums, lilies, daylilies, foxgloves during the rest of the season?

I always enjoy reading your responses and respect your opinion/ take on gardening issues

Thanks

A: What’s the difference between the sheep and cattle manure? The label on the bag. LOL They’re all cattle manure. We don’t have enough sheep farms to make all that manure – and sheep tend to run out on pasture while cattle are raised in confinement lots where they collect the manure.

How much? As much as you can afford. Up to 1/4 inch if you can do it.

When? Now. Scatter it around the plants with a shovel. Don’t bother digging it in – the worms will do it for you.

And by all means skip the chemical fertilizing. Chuck extra compost around the delphiniums (greedy little critters) but the rest will be fine with regular amounts.

Chemical fertilizers tend to disrupt the life cycle of beneficial bacteria and fungi – those are the guys we want to feed. I’ll have lots more to say about compost in the web pages in the very near future.

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I would appreciate knowing your opinion on what (if any) perennial seeds can be planted (see my seeds below) around Day Lilies that I just put in the ground .. or should I be patient and allow the day lilies to consume this perfect *all-afternoon-west-sun* garden spot over the years ...??? seeds i have now: cleome, celosia, hollyhocks, four-o-clocks, coneflower Cheers,

A: You know, I’ve always been a firm believer in filling up the garden with plants you enjoy. So if the daylilies are small this year, then fill in around them with plants you like. When the daylilies expand, give them their due and move the other plants somewhere else or don’t sow seeds there. But yes – plant what you like.

Just imagine that a plant will grow to four feet wide – do we not plant in that three feet of space the first year while it is establishing itself (leaving it bare soil)? I don’t think so! :-)

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From My Garden To Yours

So what’s going on in the garden right now? The twenty-foot square garden is springing to life with the Hellebores coming up. I have a Pulmonaria throwing its variegated leaves and I expect some blooms in the next two weeks at this rate. The robins are ringing away and eating the leftover seeds on the Sumac in the backyard. I pruned this tree this week so that it looks rather Japanese and quite attractive. It no longer looks like a weedy bush but rather something you could invite to your garden. I’ve always liked this plant for its contortions and ease of growth. Yes, it is a bit of a self-sower and weedy thing but if you pull the shoots and new seedlings, you can have a very fast-growing small tree that looks rather oriental by pruning it into interesting shapes. It can be almost instant shade in the small garden.

April is the month for cleaning up. I’ve been cleaning up the town house and gardens and while the neighbours are raking lawns and bagging up the debris, I’m relaxing with my mulched gardens. I have to confess I don’t understand why folks bag up the lawn rakings and old leaves so they can go to the dump. These make excellent compost material and in my humble opinion, should be returned to the garden through compost. They’re half broken down as it is after a long winter.

I know that some garden writers say to remove winter mulch. I’m too lazy for that. I think if I went to all that trouble to lay the mulch down on the garden, then nature should take it away by decomposing it. This works out better than you might think, with nature enjoying doing this kind of decomposing work and me watching and enjoying the benefits of having better soil and healthier plants. Mind you, if you are a neatness person who likes order and symmetry in the garden, you may want to remove the winter mulch. The soil will indeed heat up much faster without mulch on it but it will get much warmer in the summer time as well and it will use much more moisture without a mulch cover. I’m hoping there’s a good worm population in my gardens that will enjoy eating all that mulch and will create super soil in the process.

Spreading compost is a superb idea right now. Every plant in the garden will benefit from compost and you simply can’t add too much. The old estate gardeners would even lay down several inches of manure on the gardens in early spring. I can just see the neighbour’s noses when a manure spreader rolled up your driveway; so you may want to hold that idea. But compost is good and the more the merrier.

If you’re doing vegetable and annual flower beds, the end of April is a good time to do the digging. I used to turn over the soil beds in April but not make the final smooth bed with a rake until planting time. The turning-in of overwintered plant debris and compost is a good back warm-up to other important summer pursuits like golf and sailing. And while digging, you can remove any large weed roots that you missed last year or rocks that grew over the winter.

If you stake your perennial plants, now is a good time to insert the stakes in the ground. I really liked using old Christmas tree branches for perennial flower stakes, as they would tend to disappear as the foliage grew up around them. They looked much more natural than chunks of wood with string. I don’t stake perennials much any more, preferring to plant them next to other plants that accomplish the same thing. I do stake my tomatoes but wait until I plant them to do vegetable staking.

Bare root roses will be leaving the nurseries in droves right about now. Remember to give them a soaking for a few hours in a pail of water and never allow those roots to dry out (even for five minutes) or the performance will suffer. Avoid buying roses that have already started sprouting in their packaging if you visit the larger garden centres. These never grow well if they’re really advanced and that new soft package-growth will be burned off by a late frost. And yes, there’s at least one more hard frost lurking out there – pessimist that I am.

If you have fruit trees or had problems with small ornamental trees last year, now is a perfect time to get that horticultural oil spray onto the tree to smother out insect eggs and knock back fungal problems. Spray when the temperature is hovering around 40F and it is not going to freeze for a few hours. You want the water in the spray to evaporate and not freeze on the bark. When the water evaporates, the thin layer of oil that is left can do its thing effectively. Do not spray if the buds have started to swell or open up on your tree. Horticultural oil will burn many young tender leaves and it is not recommended for many evergreens like Blue Spruce. Read the label before spraying.

If you want to control crab grass on your lawn this year, apply natural lawn herbicides containing corn gluten (they’re available in most garden centres now) when the forsythia are in bloom. There’s little point in adding any kind of pre-emergent herbicide (chemical or organic) before or even after that given that the crab grass and the forsythia start growing at roughly the same time. Dandelions and other garden weeds can be controlled with a new horticultural vinegar that has just appeared on the market. Check out www.natural-care.ca for more information.

It’s gardening time.