A few of you have been sharing some of your garden pictures with me.

BUT

You have to make them a little smaller to send to me. If you shoot at your camera’s maximum performance some of those pics are coming in at 3 and 4 mgs each. My mailbox groans under the weight of them and the system won’t handle the larger files.

In fact, just today my system started refusing email because yesterday somebody sent several honking great files by attaching them to this newsletter. And I wasn’t checking my mail yesterday.

I’ve just purchased my first digital camera and I set the image size to the smallest going (I actually read the manual):-) so I can upload those files to the net to share with you.

So – PLEASE KEEP YOUR DIGITAL IMAGES LESS THAN 100 K when you send them to me.

I’m working on a way to share all these files with each other but each file has to be less than 100K.

So – get out to your gardens and start taking pictures. Work them on your software so they’re less than 100K.

Then when I tell you about my picture sharing plans – you can send them to me.

Do NOT send them now. I have no space to store them. Plus I’m going to make a specific address for you to send them so it won’t jam up the mail system.

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Want a tip?

Every Friday morning, I get a report from my search engine provider that tells me what searches have been done on my websites. I look at what has been searched for and what searches were likely successful and what ones were failures. The successes I celebrate and the failures I mark up on my to-write list. I tend to write the articles from the searches before anything else. So, if you want to see your question answered a little faster, do a search first.

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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. The article on compost tea is here.

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

Your Questions Answered

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Last year, I was given some already planted bulbs in pots. These seemed to be on death's door and I revived them enough to get long narrow leaves. Then, last month, stalks appeared that ultimately grew higher than the leaves, resulting in flowers that lasted about a week. Now, it seems as though bulbs are appearing on top of the stalks. They are green right now. Can these be cut off the stalks and planted or should I leave them on the stalks for now? I live in Houston, with the hot summer quickly approaching. I would appreciate your advice on this matter.

Thank you, Rob

A: We’ll see a lot of that shortly. The green bulbs on top of your potted bulbs are actually bulb seed pods appearing on top of the stems. Inside those green pods are whack of seeds. How many depend of course on what kind of bulb you have.

Planting bulb seed is pretty easy. The first thing you have to do is keep growing the bulbs. The pods will eventually turn brown and start to crack. The seeds are now ripe.

Treat bulb seed just like any other perennial seed. You can get directions for sowing perennial seed at the www.gardening-tips-perennials.com website

And then you can start your very own bulb farm!

It really doesn’t matter what kind of bulb you have, the process is the same. Let the seed mature. Then plant it.

I note if you simply cut off the green pod, you’ll have a green pod buried in your garden. But nothing will come of it except that you’ll feed a few ants and beetles at some point.

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Re compost tea

I got a few queries asking how much compost to put in an old pair of pantyhose. I guess it depends on the size of the pantyhose and I’m not going down that road.

Me? I use a shovel full. That’s all you need to get the bacteria and fungi going.

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Doug, about hollyhock rust. You can tell what I'm needing to know from the subject .. does the rust problem with them spread to other plants in its growing area, inclusive of shrubery?

A: Hollyhock rust has pretty much decimated the entire hollyhock breeding industry (did that a long time ago) and it continues to be a major problem today.

Rust is a plant disease but just about every major plant group has its own specific rust. Hollyhock rust, geranium rust etc. They do not move from one plant to another so hollyhock rust will not infect other plants or shrubs.

With hollyhock rust, lime sulfur is as good as it gets (chemical or otherwise) for controlling this problem. Spray every 10 days or after a rain to keep it at bay. Feed the hollyhocks with compost and compost tea to keep them growing well. A strong growing hollyhock will often keep pace with the rust. It is only when the plants get weak that they peter out.

Mind you, it does look ugly no matter how hard you work at it.

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Sorry Doug, I have to disagree on the water retaining gels, or polymers. They have made a world of difference in my hanging baskets, which no longer dry out within a day. I use them at twice the recommended rate in potting soil and have never had a rotting problem.

A: I had several folks write back to say that they had improvements when using the gels.

The reality is that it depends on the soil you’re using in your container. If you’re using one with a lot of perlite, then the drainage is going to be faster and gel will add a little water holding capacity. These are favoured by mass growers because it is easier to automate and grow a basket with fast-draining soil that one with slow drainage. If you are using a soil with more peat, then the gel will hold the water and rot the plants.

So the quick answer is, “It depends.” I hate to always be saying that there are no “fixed” answers to gardening questions, as many chemical suppliers would have us believe. So – if you add polymers, it depends on your soil.

To my way of thinking, it is far easier to use a container soil that works without polymers than one with. And yes, you may have to experiment a little bit. I’m doing some basic work this summer with straight peat growing and peat/compost container growing. I’ve done some reading on this and am looking forward to the practical results. Naturally, I’ll pass them along to you this fall after the trials are done. I started this when I checked out the predatory pricing of artificial soils in our local big chain garden centres. Darned if I was going to pay those prices when I know what the wholesale price is. ;-)

Polymers in garden soil. Regardless of some votes to the contrary, I still say that compost is cheaper and better for the long term health and growth of the plants. My opinion is that if you bring your soil to life, if you add organic matter then the polymers become an irrelevancy. Mulching is a far better thing to do for your plants than add some goop that doesn’t really help soil structure or feed plants.

And I just did a simple trial of “compost” available in the garden centres. I purchased several different manufacturers products at different locations. For the most part, the contents of the bags were badly composted manure with manure smells. I wasn’t impressed. It is better than nothing but real compost, made at home will beat this stuff any day of the week.

And yes, I’ll be writing a lot about compost and putting it up on the web in the upcoming months. Eventually there will be an entire organic gardening section over at www.vegetable-gardening-tips.com .

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My hosta got frostbitten in May. Can I cut them down and will they come back? Thank you very much

A: One of the very interesting things about established perennials is the amount of abuse they’ll take. In the nursery industry, once a perennial has overgrown a pot, it doesn’t get transplanted upwards to a bigger pot. Nope, most of them are simply whacked back to the pot level and asked to grow again.

They do. Sending up nice bushy growth.

There are only a few that won’t do this but generally, if your plant dies to the ground in the winter, it can be cut back almost to ground level and it will resprout. Conversely, if your plant doesn’t die to the ground (lavender) then do not cut it that way.

That assumes the plant is healthy. If the plant was weak or struggling, then it may not have the energy needed to throw another shoot.

This for example, is how we mostly kill dandelions. Cut the root in half with a hoe or spud in the early spring, the dandelion puts up new growth. Cut it again as soon as the new leaves unfurl and before they can start putting new energy into the root. The new growth will use up another 50% of the available carbohydrates to grow new leaves. Cut it again. There’s not usually enough energy reserves to produce another top growth and the root dies off or winterkills.

But one time for perennials and weeds is a no-brainer. It’s coming back. (most of the time) LOL!

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I have a Ivy vine growing up a Poplar tree in my backyard. I like the way it looks but I am concerned that the vine will damage or kill the Poplar tree. Should I be concerned about this or will they coexist well if left alone?

A: Hmmm, well the poplar tree will live 20 to 30 years. The ivy will take 20-30 years to kill off the tree. (give or take a few). Sounds like a draw to me. If the ivy seems to be winning, you have the upper hand and can always do some remedial pruning of the ivy trunk’s at ground level.

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yes, I am wondering how to bring up the ph level in soil, I added feritizer ( to much) and killed my flowers and the level is to low?

Also what is the ph level suppose to be

A: OK, this is one of the most interesting of current gardening questions and it will drive many folks just nuts. LOL!

We’re talking soil chemistry and I do not want to paint myself as a soil chemist. I’m learning more about this almost every day now as I study the subject but man, it can get complicated.

Let me try to simplify matters for you.

If you use chemical fertilizers, then you tend to create acidic soils. (the soil pH goes down) The way to change this is to add an alkaline material such as lime. (wood ashes are very alkaline).

Generally, the recommendation is to add two pounds of lime per 1000 square feet of garden to bring up the pH .1 place. (wood ashes are even more alkaline than lime so you have to be very careful how you add these to the garden.)

Now. If you’ve added too much fertilizer and you’ve killed your flowers, it isn’t about the acidity or alkalinity. It is a problem with too much nitrogen. You’ve added too much of this substance and the plants have been “burned”.

The solution to excessive nitrogen is to water the garden. Nitrogen is water-soluble and watering will dissolve the nitrogen and take it down and out of the root zone. It will take at least one inch of water to dissolve the normal level of nitrogen in the soil. You’re going to have to apply two to three inches to drive excessive amounts out but there’s no recommendation that can be given because we don’t know how much nitrogen you applied.

The best overall pH for soils is around 6.5 This will grow the widest range of flowers and plants.

Hope this helps a bit.

From My Garden To Yours

If you’re saving my columns and not using them to line your birdcage, then I hope you saved the last two and this one as well. I’ll return to other topics next week but I wanted to add a few last thoughts to the topic of compost tea and composting in general. The first is to emphasize bit of information. And this is an important point. If you are using city water, you have to fill the bucket the day before or better yet, a few days before you make compost tea. City water is treated with chlorine to kill bacterial and fungi. This is a good thing, except that we want to encourage beneficial bacteria and fungi to grow and chlorine doesn’t make a distinction between good bacteria and bad bacteria.

I had a “duh” moment myself last week as I filled up my bucket and was about to dump in the compost. I got a whiff of chlorine and thought, “Right, dump this compost in there, feed it, aerate it and then wonder why the garden doesn’t grow well because all you’ll be pouring on is coloured water.” You can tell I spent too many years on the farm with a well and no chlorination. So, I filled up my bucket and turned on the aeration but didn’t add the compost. I let it merrily bubble away overnight and by the next day, I couldn’t smell chlorine so I made tea. The chlorine gassed out and disappeared in that time. I added compost, lemon juice for the citric acid and a bunch of molasses and let her brew away for 8 hours. Later that night, I poured it liberally over the plants using a watering can. Mind you, I had to take the nozzle off the can as the chunks of compost plugged up the nozzle pretty quickly. I could have strained it but that seemed like a lot of work compared to taking off the nozzle.

The other thought that I want to share with you is that there is a tremendous amount of research going on right now with compost tea and the use of compost. But, and it comes with a big but, there are a few things you really have to understand when it comes to the realistic use of compost and compost tea. The most important thing to understand is the quality of your compost tea will depend on the quality of your compost. If your compost has a lot of bacteria in it but few fungi, then your compost tea will reflect this. If your compost is heavy on a particular strain of fungi, then your compost tea will reflect this. The purpose in writing this is to point out that compost tea is not a standardized product.

You can take a jar of chemical plant food and a teaspoon of this product will provide the same amount of nitrogen in Ottawa as it will in Oshkosh. This is not true of compost and compost tea. There is a tremendous variation in the numbers and the composition of bacteria and fungi in tea and compost and I personally wouldn’t want it any other way. The compost tea will have different microorganisms in coolish April than it will in warm August. And the garden requires both.

I mention this because some gardeners and well-intentioned garden writers will describe how to use compost tea to fight everything from powdery mildew to grass fires. They will ascribe properties as diverse as creating good gardens to creating world peace to the use of compost tea. Compost tea is not a magic bullet. But it is great gardening.

Let me give you an example. If you grow grapes, you know that downy mildew can be a major problem. Some folks suggest spraying grape vines with compost tea to combat the downy mildew but unless there is a specific bacteria or fungi in the tea that fights off the downy mildew the compost tea will be ineffective. Researchers are identifying the predator microorganisms of these problems and adding them to the teas in trials. We know that some growers are adding Bt (Bt is a commercially available caterpillar specific bacteria) to their compost teas and effectively spraying for caterpillar problems. What the researchers are finding is that the results of adding specific bacteria and fungi work much better than just plain compost tea (that often has no impact at all on specific problems). They are also finding unexpected results; for example, when compost tea is sprayed on grapes at least weekly, the brix level (the amount of sugar in the grapes) roughly doubled over unsprayed grapes. Compost tea has unexpected (but positive) effects on the fruit itself.

Compost tea is a tremendous tool for gardeners wanting to improve the overall health of their garden and garden soil. Made properly, it will have positive effects on all plants. But it is not the cure for every disease or problem in the garden. The interesting thing from my perspective is that while it will not “cure” a problem, it may very well make the plant healthy enough that the plant fights off the problem by itself. If you’re looking for a healthy garden and healthy products from that garden then compost and compost tea are definitely the quick method of choice.

And yes, you do have to use compost as manure will contain pathogens that will usually outnumber the good guys in brewing up tea.

And I’m off to fill up the bucket again so I can brew up another dose this coming week. I really want my sandy vegetable area to be alive when I plant my tomatoes. And pouring on compost tea is the fastest way I know to turn this sand fill into productive garden soil.