The Know, Hoe, Sow, Grow and Show Guide | Volume # 5 | July 20/06

Good morning folks (or whenever you’re reading this) :-) I had some questions last week about the difference between a blog and a newsletter. Did I answer questions over at the blog? The newsletter – what you’re reading right now is where I answer questions. To ask a question, simply hit return on your email software and ask. I’ll do my best to answer but with the number of questions I get – I can’t guarantee it. And no, I do not answer questions from the blog. Folks can comment on what I post, but I write the blog for the heck of it – for the fun of sharing what I’m doing rather than trying to pass along information about gardening. You can sign up for the blog newsletter. It is different than this one. And you do it at the blog at http://doug-greens-gardening.blogspot.com There’s a place on the right hand side of the screen for that. You’ll be notified every time I put up a note or picture. You’ll also note the return to the older style of column – with an article right here in the newsletter. I’ve kept the pictures and blog though. Doug's Blog is at http://doug-greens-gardening.blogspot.com Doug's lens is at http://www.squidoo.com/beginning-gardening/ You can download Right now, there's one on "A Dictionary of Gardening", "Plant Thugs" and "Gardening with Children". Picture of the Week Feature Blog Post of the Week You Can Keep Roses Alive All Winter With No Protection Want To Ask a Question? 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. New Articles This Week Growing Garden Phlox – P. paniculata http://www.beginner-gardening.com/growing-phlox.html Growing Spearmint in the herb garden http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/growing-spearmint.html Growing Borage in the Herb Garden http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/growing-borage.html Growing Astrantia – a plant for mid-summer blooms http://www.water-gardens-information.com/astrantia.html Growing Astilbe – a standard for shade http://www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/growing-astilbe.html Growing Liatris – a unique blooming and hardy perennial http://www.flower-garden-bulbs.com/growing-liatris.html Your Questions Answered Hi Doug! I have what I think are Shasta Daisies- tall, with (used to be!) big flowers. Well, this year, they are blooming all malformed, misshapen, and sick looking. I saw an earwig....could they do that damage? Is there any way to save them this year? Thank you! –Betsy A: The damage in this case was most likely done in the bud before the flowers opened. While earwigs could do this damage, I’d be more inclined to look at thrips or slugs (dining on the buds) or some wandering pest that had lunch. In any case, the plant itself is likely fine but you’ll have to control the problem next year when you see the buds starting to form. A regular soap spray or dusting with diatomaceous earth should do the trick. *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** Hi Doug, good idea #1 actually relates to my query: my girlfriend plants stonecrop in front of her daisies for support. It works very well, looks good too. My problem is falling-down flowering perrenials, every year the same ones too, mallow (wild, not false) perennial geranium (get huge!!! no wonder, yet..) a very leggy, small-flowered yet lots of them, as in thick, yellow daisy (lost the tag) and the sweet williams...also huge and thick, yet one rain fall and they're down on the ground. My soil is sand, augmented a bit. I wonder if the problem is nutritional? Good idea #2 is from a landscape archetect...if you have weeds, you don't have enough plants! That's true. Thanks so much, best, Deborah Do You Want to Grow Lavender? A: The trick of using other plants to support floppy ones is a good idea that has been a mainstay of the perennial garden since.. well, since we’ve had perennial gardens and I’m always happy to remind folks of it. The only problem you have to watch for in something like this is to get plants that are matched (roughly) in size or one will “eat” the other and cover it over. This can also lead to disease problems if the leaves are shaded, touching and damp. Idea number two about covering the soil is also a good one and often recommended – great idea but again, do ensure the plants have enough space to grow. Your plant floppiness is usually one of several things. Too much fertilizer will create floppy plants. And not enough light will create floppy plants. Overcrowding (not enough light) will also create floppiness as the plants head for sunlight. Perennial geraniums and sweet William hardly require any feeding – a shovel of compost across the top of them in the spring is all they’ll need. I can’t speak to the light. Good luck *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** My question is regarding a catalpa tree which I grew from seed. It is now seven years old and about six feet tall. It bloomed this summer. . However now the leaves are wilting and dropping at an alarming rate. I suspect this is verticilium wilt but I am loathe to give up on the tree altogether. Should I wait until all the leaves have dropped and see if it puts out a new set? Or should I call it quits now. I really have no other ideas as to what is affecting it as there are no other visual clues. Pauline A: If it is verticillium – you’ll be able to tell by cutting into a branch and seeing if there is a brownish discoloration in the sapwood. If so – you have verticillium. If this is the case, then this fall – when the leaves have fallen off and the plant is fully dormant (Late October in USDA 4) feed with a high phosphorus and potassium plant food (not now – too late). In the very early spring – as soon as the snow is off the ground, feed with a higher nitrogen food (something like a 20-5-5 or something where the first number is much higher than the other two). The extra feeding in the fall will help the roots and prepare the plant for a growth spurt and the nitrogen in the spring will put the gas to it. **IF** you can get it to grow, it *might* outgrow the problem. Otherwise, there’s nothing you can do for it. I also note that folks who just want to get their trees growing should follow the above recommendations for fall feeding but ignore the spring nitrogen feed. The tree puts most of its spring growth energy on in the late fall when it is storing carbohydrates via the root system. A fall feeding thus gives you a boost of growth. The nitrogen is like feeding candy – it’s high octane growth stuff for late spring and early summer growth. BUT – it can produce excessively thin growth in a healthy tree. In this case, we want a ring of new growth around the sickly layer and we don’t care how we get it. So the nitrogen feed will help the plant wall off the sick layer and produce a new layer of good cells. In a healthy tree, we want regular, steady growth – not the accelerated growth we’re looking for to help this particular tree in this particular disease. (In other words – don’t try this at home with a healthy tree) :-) *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** Do You Want to Grow Vegetables? I have had a great time searching and learning more about growing basil, my favourite herb ever! However, I cannot find anything specific about pests. Something is eating my leaves ferciously! I picked some quickly to give to a friend. When we opened the baggie, there were a couple little spiders, but I don't see them on the plant. We are in a developing subdivision and bordering our lot is nature's garden - all the crazy weeds, daisies, etc that mother nature sprouts in big mounds of dirt:) Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks, Doug, I just love your site. It's been a God-send for a new gardener like me. A: What’s eating basil? Darn near anything will take a chomp of this. It could be slugs, earwigs, the odd passing beetle, grasshoppers – the list is endless. The good news is that it isn’t spiders. Dust with diatomaceous earth. That will take care of most problems with no residual problem for you. Follow label directions. And wash it off before eating it (although it doesn’t harm humans or pets) *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** what to do if your forsythia bush of 3 years does not flower but looks healthy and green? A: Hmmm. Bribe it. Whack it with a broom (seriously, I read that in an old book if a plant doesn’t’ flower or fruit – hit it with a broom) You’re either feeding it too much – it is too young and not enough sunlight or it has been a cold winter and you have tender varieties that are bud blasting. Or a combination of all three on a very young plant. Recommendation – read the article at http://www.beginner-gardening.com/forsythia.html and have patience. :-) *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** My biggest problem of the year is Japanese beetles and the awful infestation on my roses and rugosas during this time of year. I have put out insecticide in the lawn and around the beds of roses but they still find their way to the plants. Is there anything that can be done to reduce the damage they do. They are worst on my roses, but my rose of sharon, plum tree, Boston ivy and weeping cherry also get hit pretty hard. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to help all of us wanna-be gardeners! A: No problem. Read the article at http://www.beginner-gardening.com/japanesebeetles.html *** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** *** * ** Is Your Garden Fragrant Enough? Hi Doug, I am obsessed with Wisteria, I've seen it for the first time at a friends house, she gave me some seeds to plant. I have planted them singularly in a cup of soil and they have spouted a single stem with leaves on them. By the way, I intend to plant them in pots, unfortunately I have no ground, everything I plant is in pots. Please tell me what do I so with them now. thank you fran A: Well, I wish you good luck. Growing in a pot is no problem if you use a large enough pot (something in the 16-18 inch range is fine. Use a good quality artificial soil and feed regularly. Water to keep damp and give it a part shade – part sun location out of the wind Do not allow the vines/pots to get below 5F or the roots will winterkill (you don’t say where you live) and you’ll have to let it get cool enough to go dormant though (around 40F for 3-4 months) so it will regrow and set flower buds. It can be done – good luck. From My Garden To Yours Ah, midsummer is almost upon us and if you don’t count my vegetable garden, the gardens are growing quite nicely. The tomatoes have taken a major growth spurt after this last fertilizing so I have to assume the soil is coming alive down there. So with all those flowers, it looks like I’ll have a good set of fruit and canning season will indeed arrive here on my small plot of ground. There was a discussion last week on the garden writer’s Internet listserv about the decreasing number of vegetable gardeners out there. The statistics are that many folks grow fresh tomatoes but little else in their vegetable garden now. With local markets starting to produce more and more organic produce, there is little need for folks to do all that hard work. I know the dedicated gardeners out there will harrumph and tell me I’m wrong on this but look around at your neighbour’s gardens. Most will not have a large enough vegetable garden to feed themselves for the summer, never mind the winter. Sales of vegetable seeds to consumers are down and the overall numbers of bedding plants being grown seem to be slowing down in numbers. On the positive side of course is the expansion of the organic vegetable growing at the wholesale level and here the push is on for organic seed in large quantities. So don’t weep for the seed growers just yet. Tomato Growing Secrets For those of us growing some of our own, the challenge right now is to continue watering to avoid any stress on the plant and to give those rapidly growing vegetables as weed free a garden area as possible. I also fed my tomatoes again this past week but that’s because my ground is poor and I want to see those red globes grow a little faster. They’re already shorter than most years although coming along nicely. I did run a bit of a garden trial last month to see what would happen on one section of poor ground in the shade garden. There are only impatiens growing in this area and while the soil is not bad, it has never been gardened so it is lacking in plant food other than the spring application. Last month, I split the area in half and fed one half with a commercially available product called Acti-sol. (www.acti-sol.ca) a made in Canada fertilizer product that is essentially dried and pelletized chicken manure. The other half continued to receive the normal watering and fertilizing available to the rest of the garden. Let me tell you the growth rate difference is already noticeable after about three weeks and I expect to see this continue right through the rest of the summer as the Acti-sol does its thing. The interesting part of this is that the other impatiens aren’t suffering, it is simply the well-fed section is outpacing them in growth. This makes sense to me and when I saw it work so dramatically, I used the leftovers on my tomatoes. While I didn’t need a reminder of how dramatically a mid-summer feeding can improve the growth of annual flowers, it was certainly fun to see it happen. I do have one more jug of the stuff (it comes in packaging that resembles cardboard milk cartons) and part of it has been reserved this week for the slower impatiens section while the other part is going on my banana tree to boost those massive leaves and some other annuals here and there through the garden. I also chatted this past week with a garden centre manager who told me that the slightly more expensive organic fertilizers were a “tough sell”. He and his staff believed in them but consumers seemed to prefer to save a few bucks and buy the artificial stuff. Even though plants will be healthier with the organics, folks weren’t willing to spend a few dollars to achieve that health. They’d rather save the money in fertilizer and then come running back to buy even more expensive chemicals to spray for the pests the chemical fertilizers attracted. Go figure. Given the research data that conclusively points out that organic produce has more nutrients than vegetables produced with chemical fertilizers, this surprises me. But then again, perhaps if vegetable gardening is less important perhaps saving money is more important. If I was still feeding kids, I’d sure want them to have the best nutrient levels possible. Need some good water garden construction pictures? But this week was also my week for controlling a few pests in my own garden. A caterpillar or ten decided the roses made a good lunch-bar. I had never tried water jets on caterpillars so… I launched a major hose attack at the roses with a very strong jet of water. Blew the caterpillars right off the darn things. I have no idea where they went because as of about 5 days later, they haven’t climbed back onto the roses and I don’t see damage anywhere else yet. Once again, my trusty garden hose has saved the flower-growing day. This is a lot easier than mixing and spreading chemical (or even organic sprays) around and is so much friendlier to boot. Plus it waters the flowerbeds at the same time. I just have to decide to put away the hose after I spray to keep the place neat rather than leave it lying around looking for a pest to wash. It is far too much fun blowing pests off plants when I see them (and far too easy to keep the plants pest free) so I confess you have to step over the hoses most of the time. I’ll put them away next week. Maybe.

Parting Words “All gardeners know better than other gardeners” Anonymous Do You Want to Grow Lavender?