July 05, 2006
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The Know, Hoe, Sow, Grow and Show Guide | Volume # 5 | July 5 /06 |
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I hope you like the new look to the newsletter. You’ve been asking for pictures – you got ‘em. You’ve been asking for shorter choices – you got ‘em.
There are a few more changes coming – more pictures… more articles… and more ebooks for you to download are also on the to-do list.
Summer is here though and I’m trying to spend some time on the boat and in the garden so I hope you’re doing the same – enjoying life in whatever way touches your soul.
If you can’t see the pictures – it is because you have to be hooked up to the Net to read the newsletter and see the pictures. I deliver them to you from my server not as an attachment in this newsletter.
Have a great gardening week. Remember – more to come.
Let me know what you think.
Doug's Blog is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/DougGreensGardening
Doug's lens is at http://www.squidoo.com/beginning-gardening/
You can download free subscriber ebooks Right now, there's one on "A Dictionary of Gardening", "Plant Thugs" and "Gardening with Children".
Picture of the Week
IMPORTANT BONUS for my readers. I’ve just uploaded this ebook and it will stay at this reader introductory price for the next 4 days. When I come into the office on Monday morning – the first thing I’m going to do is raise the price of this ebook and start promoting it on my rose pages. (Well, actually the first thing I’ll do is get a giant cup of coffee but the second thing…) You folks are the only ones who are eligible for this introductory pricing as nobody else knows about the ebook. So if you’re interested in growing roses without winter protection, and having them survive, this ebook describes how to do it. And like all my ebooks, it is unconditionally guaranteed. You’re happy with it or I refund your money.
Please do a search here. Search Here If you don't find what you're looking for - HIT REPLY ON THIS NEWSLETTER TO ASK YOUR QUESTION (that's easy isn't it) Your email address will get through my spam filters.
I've searched your back issues for a clue to my problem, but no luck. I have some catmint that is on its third summer in my garden and a few of the plants have dried up and died in the past couple of weeks. Some of the others are showing signs too - a few dried up stems. They get plenty of sun, the soil is clay, but it was mixed with peat moss and top soil prior to planting 2 years ago. I live in central MN, so it's a zone 3-4 area. I cut the 2 dried up ones back to get a better look at the base today. I found some small, red bugs, some cobwebs, and under the root ball or crown of one of the plants the dirt seemed to be hollowed out. I think I might have some rodents (moles?) tunnelling in my garden area too. Is that the culprit? Thanks for your help - love your newsletter!! A: Could be. I also find that slugs just LOVE the peat moss in the potting soil and often they’ll tunnel down and chomp away undisturbed. (That is until the plant starts dying and the gardener gets really annoyed). But the root damage would be my first guess for the problem. Get out the watering can and the compost tea or fish emulsion and give ‘er a blast.
*** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** Hi, Doug, couldn't find the answer to my question so, I have a variegated weigela about 4 years old. Every winter the entire inside dies and the bottom outermost branches live. The old branches flower but I always end up cutting out all the center branches. They grow back up really well but do not flower.. It's supposed to be hardy to zone 4 and I live in zone 5a so they tell me. What could be the problem? Thanks for your help. Sue A: Well, it could be that this really isn’t hardy into a tough zone 4. I don’t care what the tags say on this plant, it never did all that well for me and the darned variegated one was always the worst of the lot. Now I did see a gorgeous one in Montreal a few weeks ago so perhaps where we grow it in our gardens is the issue. You didn’t say but I bet this plant is exposed to the winter elements – my .02 would be to dig it up and replant (in the fall after the leaves are off) in a more sheltered spot. Lots of compost around the shrub.
*** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** We planted two Honeysuckle last year; they established well, started off really strongly this spring. In mid May, I noticed aphids had curled the lead leaf in, concealing hundreds of aphids. I opened up the leaves, and manually squashed these aphids. But they were also thick between the individual florets on many flower buds. I used the water jet advice, which got some off, but I couldn't get the ones between the florets. The problem is that by now, many of the leaves have turned yellow and are dropping off. The aphids never got very plentiful on the leaves. Do the aphids spread a disease on these vines? It looks as though I may be loosing the plants. I have not fertilized at all, and have kept them watered. I love the flowers, but.... A: For the record – honeysuckle are simply aphid traps. If you have honeysuckle – you’ll have aphids just as sure as day follows night. If you didn’t get them all off with the water – you didn’t use a strong enough jet of water. :-) And yes, the leaves will all curl up because the aphids are sucking the juices out of the leaf and the leaf will yellow and die under that intense population pressure. Not a disease although aphids will carry some plant diseases with them.
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I got asked several times this week about compost bins and tumbler systems. Which one did I prefer? The answer to this is that I’ve never found one I prefer or would recommend yet. Any small composter I’ve ever tried simply rots the material rather than turning it into great compost. Other than my worm farm that is sitting under my desk.
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I recently purchased a house with two mature box woods on either side of my front door. Although they are beautiful the odor is overwhelming. Is there anything I can plant around or near them to eliminate the cat urine odor they put off? A: Heh, heh. Well for sure you can plant any number of fragrant plants. I’ve made an ebook listing them all and if you do a search on any of the websites for fragrant plants, you’ll get listings of perennials and bulbs that will do the job.
*** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** Your news letter is the best one I have found on the web. Have miniature roses, echinecia and shasta dasies that are blooming well, but many of the blooms are distorted and on some there are missing petals. The roses end up with a brown center. Suspect my problem may be thrips in the buds, but do not know what insecticide is best, nor how I can get it in the buds when they first form. I have also had a problem with some of my 2nd and 3rd year echinecia wilting badly and then dying. We have had adequate rain, but the plants look as if they are unable to take in moisture and can be pulled from the ground easily. Hope it is not a disease that will continue to spread. Thanks for your advice. Bob in Kingsport, Tn A: Distortion in the buds is a key sign of thrips to be sure. Given it is across several different plant families, I’d put my bets on your diagnosis. Having said that, you shouldn’t have wilting too badly (particularly in Echinacea) from root damage from flower thrips. You might have two things going on here. First little factoid. Plants that are weak tend to be attacked by insects before healthy ones. So whenever I see a plant in my garden that is infested, I know it is struggling. It is not a question of the insects weakening the plant but rather the plant is weak and the insects gather round to share in the increased levels of sugar produced by stressed plants. So – if your plants aren’t doing very well – it is time to give them a shot of what’s good for them. And naturally we’re talking compost, compost tea and perhaps some fish emulsion. You want them well fed and every possible micronutrient available to them for their health. Get the soil and plant health right and the insect problems slow down. Second. Thrips can be controlled by spraying soaps, neem, rotenone just before and at bud formation (when the females are laying eggs). They are also controlled by predator nematodes going after the in-ground stage. You can also hang sticky blue tags (baby blue) next to your plants much like the yellow ones often recommended. Thrips prefer blue.
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I'm a new subscriber--and I'm hooked! I love the wealth of your advice. I searched your site but couldn't find anything on this. It may be a dumb question, but here goes. I garden in central Vermont. Mine is a small garden, so I need to use short plants. I love bee balm, but the regular cultivar is too tall. If I pinch it back a few times, or cut it back, will it go on growing and bloom on shorter stems? If so, is this a general principle I could follow with other plants, such as lamb's ears and nepeta? Could you speak generally about cutting or pinching plants back to control their size? Thank you so much for all your help! Marty A: Marty – in principle you’re right. If you pinch back a plant, it will grow bushy and spread out. The devil though is in the details. And the major detail is in the timing. With a mum for example, the plant that most of us pinch back. We want to have this done by now or in the next week or two at the latest so the plant will recover and provide a full canopy of leaves and buds for fall blooming. With perennials, what most often happens is that the plant will get much more bushy for sure but if you mess up with the timing – you won’t see flowers. This isn’t a problem and we’ll often recommend you pinch first year plants to get them to bush up and grow nicely giving you massive flowers the second year. In general, an early spring pinch will be fine for most summer blooming perennials. It is far too late now to do this. If this were my problem – I’d be looking for the shorter varieties of beebalm and nepeta. Rather than grow the taller ones, I’d plant the short ones. I wouldn’t grow lambs ears for love nor money as I think it’s an ugly plant anyway. :-) For the most part – you can find short or dwarf versions of many perennials, annuals, roses and shrubs for smaller gardens. You may just have to search them out a bit.
The Carex family contains approximately 1000 species of grass like plants growing in temperate and arctic regions. This is a tough plant but different species thrive in different kinds of garden situation. In general, Carex occur in damp woodlands, bogs, or water margin situations and will perform best in this kind of garden setting. They are also very useful pot or container gardening plants particularly if you’re looking for a waterside container or a container that sits in the shallow water of a small pond.
Growing Hydrangea shrubs properly is one of the great woody or shrub challenges for the home garden. And here’s what you need to know to get them to bloom, keep them blooming and enjoy them for many years. To begin with, you can get the info you need to grow climbing hydrangea vines here. And after that, if you live in a cool climate (USDA zones 4/5) then you need to know what kind of Hydrangea you’re trying to grow. Why? Because some Hydrangea buds are not winter hardy into USDA zone 4 but the leaves and stems are perfectly hardy. You can grow them all you like, but you’ll rarely see flowers.
The bleeding heart is one of the finest of shade perennials and many of us were first introduced to this plant in our grandparent’s gardens. I know my grandfather had a massive clump of them in his backyard and while they were in bloom, they were magnificent.
The first is Dicentra spectabilis(the Latin name for bleeding heart) and its varieties.
No dig gardens are once again popular and getting a lot of attention. But for an “old-timer” such as myself, all I can say is “what goes around – come around” :-) I am fortunate enough to have a rather large gardening book collection and many of these books go back well into the 1800’s. We have had cycles of gardens without digging for some time now. The most famous of no dig gardens was Ruth Stout’s deep mulch system that this well-known organic gardener of the 1950’s promoted through her magazine articles.
Japanese iris (Iris ensata) are beardless iris and are one of the last iris to bloom in the garden – about a month or so after the bearded iris and Siberians. Quite a few folks have problems growing this plant so here’s the details of how to succeed. As with growing any miffy plant, it is really knowing how to handle a few small details that will allow you to succeed.
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Parting Words
“Gardens are a form of autobiography”
Sydney Eddison
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