I’ve started harvesting tomatoes (insert juicy grin here) so life is good in the small veg patch.

But bulb season is right around the corner and let me remind you that www.flower-garden-bulbs.com is my bulb website for finding answers to many common bulb questions.

And a great resource for finding hard-to-find bulbs is found atright here. If you’ve considered finding something unusual, here’s a great starting point. Good luck resisting these catalogs!

And its official. The new rose site is being developed at www.learn-rose-gardening.com and the organic gardening site is up at www.organic-gardening-tips.com They are both pretty new yet but they come with big plans. As always, your questions and searches determine what I write about. :-)

That’s eight websites now being stuffed with gardening answers (no more are planned!):-)

You can access them all from a search engine box on any of the sites. Through the marvels of modern Internet software, they are all linked together in one network of answers for you. How cool is that? :-)

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The contest is still on to give me the botanical description of the flower for Echinacea ‘Doppelganger’.

It is *not* the name of the plant as many of you have entered. I’m looking for the botanic description of the flower as a botanist would use to describe to another botanist.

The flower for ‘Doppelganger’ is a two-story flower – the second growing out of the first. :-)

Pro’s feel free to enter. Have at it folks.

When you enter – tell me which one of my ebooks you’d like to send. First correct answer wins.

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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.www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/askagardeningquestion.html

Your Questions Answered

I planted four calla lily bulbs in 1997 right next to the house on the south side. I never dug them up in the fall. They have been beautiful every year. This year only one survived the winter. What should I do to make sure the one remaining survives the winters without digging it up?

A: In MI – a heavy mulch, removed in the spring and a heartfelt prayer to St. Fiacre the patron saint of gardening would be in order.

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My cabbages are splitting. Help!

A: The easiest way to stop cole crops from splitting is to use an old-timer’s trick. Drive a shovel, straight down beside the cabbage, to cut off half of the existing roots. This will stop the cabbage from rapid uptake of water (causing the splitting) and overgrowing. The cabbage will not get a lot bigger but it will continue to grow slowly until you’re ready to harvest it. But it will not split and ruin the crop.

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I have two oval paver flower beds inbetween two cement steps coming down our front walk, Impatiens do the best in these ovals and always are real high and beautiful, people drive past to see them every year. This year, I have a problem with one oval bed, some of the impatiens are curling up and then I finds stems cut off and laying there, its not rabbits, we thought cutworms and we treated with Sevin spray, to no avail I am losing the whole bed to this problems slowly but for sure.We thought stem rot but the soil is never extremely wet. Can you help before I lose the whole works. Thanks, Donna

A: Identifying problems from afar can be tricky, however… Donna says that it isn’t a rabbit type of pest. Here’s the deal. If it is an upper branch that is coming off – then it isn’t cutworms, they tend to work on the stems that come out of the ground. They do not travel out of the soil to cut off upper branches. You could have chipmunks taking a bite. You could have a small green caterpillar (very, very hard to see but a Sevin bath would have destroyed them), you could even have slugs doing their thing up there.

The trick is to look at the stem at ground level. If you see a browning at the soil line and if that main trunk is girdled a little – then I’m betting on stem rot of some kind. Or slug damage combined with stem rot. It doesn’t matter whether you think you’ve not overwatered, :-) If the plant gets rot because of a cool night sequence or the water trapped below the leaf canopy or ??, it is still rot. Overwatering is one of the principal methods of creating rot but it isn’t the only one.

Isn’t gardening kinda interesting that way? Even if you think you’re doing it all right- Mom Nature can reach out and getchya. :-)

You’ve also run head on into the oldest lesson known in the gardening world. No matter what plant, be it vegetable or flower – you need to crop rotate. If you continue to grow the same plant in the same patch of ground year after year, sooner or later a problem is going to happen that is specific to that plant that appears without rhyme nor reason. The problem will simply reach out and grab that plant.

Do You Want to Grow Lavender?

What to do now though is the interesting question. 1) I guess I’d control for slugs with one of the iron phosphate organic products. 2) I’d put the sevin in the garbage can because all you’re doing is wiping out the good guys along with the bad guys and obviously not doing anything. 3) I’d get some natural fungicides onto the stems of those plants. A dose of lime sulphur, available at all garden shops, will stop any kind of root fungus *without* damaging the roots of impatiens. I’d repeat this as per instructions on the label. 4) I might even be tempted to put an anti-pest spray (containing bitrex) if those top branches are being broken off and there’s no sign of stem problems 5) If I wasn’t sure about insects on the plants themselves, I’d spray with insecticidal soap – keep it within label amounts or you’ll turn your flowers purple. 6) I’d soak the area with clear water to ensure the plants were not overfed with nitrogen – making them susceptible to damage and insect attack. 7) After soaking, I’d feed with fish emulsion to put the nitrogen back into the soil in a beneficial manner and I’d keep doing that on a weekly basis at the ratio indicated on the label – do not exceed this amount. 8) I’d contact St. Fiacre (see above). 9) In the fall, after all plants are removed, I’d be working in as much compost as I could. 10) Next spring, I’d find a new plant to grow and rotate impatiens in there every second year.

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If a seed package say's " Matuers in 87 days" does that mean from the day it Germinates or when you see the fruit begin developing

A: Good question. Generally, it means from the time the seed germinates. **But the “days” part doesn’t refer to what we think of when we say “day”.**

A single maturation “day” (1 day of the 87) contains a certain number of “heat units” created by the sun.

If we have a cloudy day for half a day and only get half of the heat units we expect, then that one day of our time is only half a day of crop maturation time. So as a general rule of thumb is that a plant that matures in 87 days needs 87 full days of sunshine to do so. Any day with rain or heavy cloud that reduces the sunshine doesn’t count as a full maturation day toward the 87.

This is why your vegetables that you think you should have at day 87 take longer than 87 days.

But the beauty of these ratings is that it lets us compare vegetable varieties. We know that a 67 day tomato is going to ripen before an 87 day tomato. (And note that the difference between them is not necessarily 20 days – it could be longer than 20 days if the time between the first one ripening and the second one ripening is cloudy – or to really shake things up, it could be even shorter if a cloudy cool season suddenly turned hot and sunny.)

The comparison allows northern gardeners to pick vegetable varieties that ripen in shorter times so they can get a crop. Peppers with long day ratings historically need a LOT of heat units to ripen and if you’re in a zone 4 or 5 trying to ripen a long day pepper, depending on the season you may run into frost before you see fruit. Watermelon with their 85-90 day ratings are a tough one – this is why northern gardeners should be picking the lower day rated plants.

And yes, seed racks tend to have the larger fruited varieties that we see in grocery stores – the long day unit plants because they sell better than the smaller fruits that ripen faster.

I hope that helps. Pick the day ratings appropriate for your area.

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When do you cut down the brown eyed susans - or do you (for the fall)

A: I’m getting a fair number of questions about when to deadhead and when to clean up the garden. There are some articles up on the website about this but let me refresh the information.

When do you deadhead? You deadhead when the individual flowers are fading. This keeps the clump looking good, keeps the clump of flowers healthy and disease at bay. This is an ongoing activity in the garden. A little deadheading every day will keep the garden looking very fresh and green even through drought.

When do you cut the plants to the ground? You cut plants to the ground in the fall after all growth has stopped and the frost/winter has knocked the life out of them. It is the housekeeping of the garden. You cut perennials to the ground to remove the dead and dying foliage from the garden. This removes any fungal spores that overwinter on leaves and leaves the garden in the fall as would like to see it in the spring.

The only exceptions to cutting back in the fall are plants such as lavender and dianthus that overwinter on top of the soil rather than regenerate from below the ground every year. And your ornamental grasses that you want to have for winter interest. There is also some anecdotal evidence that says that grasses survive better over the winter if not cut back until first thing in the spring.

Hope that clarifies the matter. :-)

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Some of my parsley plants turned yellow and died. When i applied gentle pulling pressure, the tops of the plants came off as though something hac eaten through the root just below the soil line. What can i do about this?

A: Sounds a bit like a sclerotina rot – a fungal rot that attacks parsley root when the weather is cool and damp or you’ve overwatered. High nitrogen levels producing tender growth combined with overwatering or cool soil temperatures can lead to rot.

So – watch the fertility levels. Compost is good but don’t add anything else to the herb bed. Watch your watering.

Move your garden to a warmer location – like Arizona! :-)

Do not plant parsley in the same spot next year.

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I have some daylilies in my front garden that are struggling. They are producing flowers but the leaves are a lime green/pale green color. I have tried to fertilize but that isn't working. I called a local nursery and they suggested that I may not have used enough fertilizer (10-24-10) so I added more. Now I'm noticing that the leaves are now spotty and the tips are crusty brown. I'm at a loss. I don't want to lose them but I don't know what to do to save them. HELP!!!!!

A: There’s a good article up on the websites about yellowing leaves and what creates yellowing leaves. Everything from overwatering to underwatering – from feeding too little to not having enough sunshine can create this condition.

Yes, yellowing leaves are a symptom of underfeeding and the fastest and safest way to solve that problem is to use a fish food emulsion at the correct mixing level. The foliar effect (feeding through the leaves) and the root uptake will solve a wide variety of yellowing leaf problems (yellow leaves could be a minor nutrient deficiency as well).

Whacking extra chemical fertilizer to a plant comes with some downsides – one that you’re likely seeing is overfeeding. The new growth points are heavy in salts with a likely watering problem and wham – you have brown tips.

I’m assuming you’ve got these plants in full sunshine in decent soils.

If this was my garden? I’d water thoroughly to drive any excessive water from the soils. Unless you’re on clay (you don’t say) and you have excessive water now (another reason for yellow leaves). Then I’d make compost tea and a weak dose of fish emulsion and using a watering can, I’d pour this mix all over my plants – soaking the leaves and the ground. Then I’d simply wait and see what Mom Nature has in mind for those plants.

Yellowing leaves are a stress symptom. Find and remove the stress.

From My Garden To Yours

In the old days. Do you remember stories from your parents that started that way? You know the ones I mean. In the old days, we had to walk to school. Usually through blinding blizzards, flooded fields while fighting off vicious attacks from massed Fenian irregulars. In the old days, we had to cut our meat from the living flanks of dinosaurs before they noticed. In the old days, things were tough; or at least a lot tougher than you soft young kids had it now. Dinosaurs indeed.

In the old days, I would never consider growing Helenium in my garden. But then a nursery sent me a trial plant and it has just bloomed. OK, so maybe it isn’t a dinosaur and maybe I have to take a good look at this family of plants because this Helenium ‘Chelsey’ daisy is very attractive with its burnt orange, crimson and yellow bicoloured petals and dark eye. You can see pictures of this plant at www.plantspotters.com and while it is going to be hard to find this year, it will be freely available at better garden shops next year. If you think the description of the petal colour is a little “imprecise”, it is because the darn plant keeps changing the colour so poor garden writers can’t be precise. Mind you, the gardener in me loves this because this makes ‘Chelsey’ an exciting garden addition rather than just something else to throw in the garden. The petals are non-drooping (in the old days, the petals used to droop) and the stems are thick and sturdy so they don’t bend over like they used to. While Helenium autumnale is both the originating species and a North American native growing to 5 feet tall, the new varieties coming from Europe are only 30 inches tall and sturdy plants.

With a spread of twelve inches, this is a restrained plant. At least it has been this year; we’ll see what it colonizes out to next year. It is going to be quite hardy as it is rated a USDA zone 4 and blooming starting now in July and running through August with those amazing bright colours. Yes, our native Sneezeweed has turned into a princess. This princess though still needs a few things done properly if you’re going to grow her well. She wants full sun, and although you might squeeze by with a bit of morning shade, it is really a good idea to give as much light as you like. The big key to success with this plant is providing it with adequate moisture. This plant likes wet soils; no, this plant demands them if you want to succeed with it. It will not grow well with dry soils and tends to winterkill. I know that these daisy type plants often demand a bit of dry conditions to thrive but this is not one of them. Give this plant constant moisture and it will love you and bloom accordingly. Give it a rich, organic soil (think pond side here) with regular doses of water and this plant is going to be a star performer.

You can also find varieties such as ‘Coppelia’ that has yellow to bronze petals with chestnut brown center eyes. ‘Kanaria’ is pure yellow with broad grey-green leaves and both of these varieties are 36 inches tall. ‘Moerheim Beauty’ has burned orange flowers that are attractive even as they fade but it is listed as 48 inches tall. Something a little on the weird side is ‘Autumn Lollipop’ that almost has no petals at all on the flower (they’re tiny) but looks like a big brown flower centre that turns yellow when mature. ‘Bruno’ has deep crimson mahogany flowers on brown centres and is a 48 inch tall plant. And if you like the old varieties, you might search out, ‘Flammenspiel’ or ‘Dancing Flames’ (same plant) with its flame-orange blooms that age to yellow.

If you’re looking for shorter, you might search out ‘The Bishop’ with its deep golden-yellow flowers, clumping growth and earlier bloomtime. It only grows 24 to 36 inches tall depending on location and how much you feed it.

And finally, if you can find a ‘Chelsey’, I’m told that a part of the licensing fee (it is a patented plant) goes to the Red Cross Disaster Fund in memory of British journalist Terry Lloyd who was killed in Iraq. This is a great plant and a great reason to buy it. And that’s not in the old days.