The longest day of the year has come and gone (yesterday) so we’re in high summer and the main gardening season is upon us. My tomatoes put on a growth spurt last week and the tiny green worms arrived on the roses (heavy sprays of water and some soap seems to have knocked them back for the moment) and it only took them 24 hours to do some serious damage to the ‘Knockout’ rose in its container. Ah well, I’ve put some more fish emulsion on it, pruned it back a bit to get rid of the tatty holey leaves and expect to see new growth in a week or so.

If it was easy to garden, everybody would do it. :-)

Got a new book delivered to me this week. “Creating and Planting Alpine Plants” written by Rex Murfitt (an accomplished nurseryman) and published by a friend Betty Mackey at www.mackeybooks.com . It has just about all the information you need to start and grow a rock garden if you’re a beginner but it doesn’t have any color pictures. The pics are black and white so you have to overlook the lack of stunning color and just read the text for inspiration. Murfitt knows his stuff and you can get the book through Amazon. Betty also published his trough gardening book and this is a gem of a book if you want to container-grow alpine plants. If you search amazon for Rex Murfitt, both books will pop up.

New Articles for You

All my new articles are listed here. Click on the archives link at the site to see others. Here’s an article on perennial columbine

Annoyed with rabbits in the garden

Do You Want to Grow Vegetables?

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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what makes the peppers turn a light color green and seems to look bad when they are in cow manure and lime and fish fertlizer.we live on the coast maybe its the cooler weather?

A: I’m really glad you wrote with this question and I hope you take this the right way. (I mean my comments in a positive way – not negative but I recognize they could sound bad)

Ah, here’s another possibility for yellowing leaves and one sometimes a little perplexing. It is quite possible the cool weather is lightening up the foliage. If it has been quite prolonged (say a month or more of dull lighting – you might see this). You’ll also find some articles on the website(s) about yellowing leaves if you do a search.

However, my guess is the cow manure and fish fertilizer have finally hit the roots and we’re seeing a little too much nitrogen and some burning of the roots. Depending on how much lime was added, we could see some burning there too.

All in all, my first guess would be kindness killing our plants.

Let me make some points here that I think we all can remember.

Fresh manure is not something we want to use on our gardens. There’s way too much potential for growth problems there. If the nitrogen count in the manure is too high, we’ll simply burn off the crop because the fertilizer level will do terrible things to tender feeder roots. We want to compost manure before we use it.

Lime. Why are we adding lime to the garden? Did you do a soil test that said the soil needed lime? You don’t say so I have no idea. Lime changes the pH (acidity) of soils and unless you’re trying to grow vegetables in a very acidic ground and you want to remove the acidity, you won’t require lime. (Lime makes the soil alkaline) Veggies tend to do very well on slightly acidic ground to begin with (6-6.5) so lime (without a soil test) has the potential to do some harm rather than good. If you’ve added too much lime and that has started to influence the pH of the soil and move it into the alkaline range, then your peppers are going to be unhappy.

Fish fertilizer. This stuff is dynamite. I love it but I measure it carefully. If you screw up the measuring of this stuff, you can add a lot of nitrogen very quickly. Again, a little is good – a lot is bad.

So, we’ve combined a little manure, a little fish fertilizer and some lime and our efforts to be kind to our plants may have indeed made some problems in the soil.

You don’t say whether there was any weed and feed applied nearby or other spraying – that will turn a pepper into yellow leaves faster (or almost as fast) as a tomato will turn.

If you do find yourself overfeeding – then soaking the area with water will dissolve and drive the nitrogen out of the plant root zone. You can save plants that way when you come inside and say, “oooops!”. Go right out and water like heck.

As a second and unrelated note to this question – I tested several bags of “manure” this past spring expecting to get composted manure like I used to see in the bags. What I got was barely-out-of-the-cow manure.. compressed and most of the water removed but certainly not completely composted. I wasn’t impressed but I couldn’t argue – the bag said “manure” and that’s what I got. At least it didn’t moo at me.

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Some type of bug is eating leaves off my Holly Hocks. How can I stop this from happening? Hope you can help Gabby

A: OK – you want me to help eat the leaves off your hollyhock? :-)

Stopping the pest is largely a function of figuring out what pest is eating your plant. I do NOT believe in nuking a garden to stop a pest or two on a plant.

There are several options for you. You can spray with insecticidal soap (follow the mixing directions and amounts on the label) and this is a fast knockdown that will kill most bugs (good and bad) on your plant if it touches them.

You can dust with rotenone – this powder (do NOT breathe it and do follow the label directions) will last one to two days and is a general knockdown product as well. It will kill almost every kind of bug in your garden (again – good and bad) so we tend to go lightly with this kind of thing. But it works.

If slugs – then read the page on slugs (do a search) but these darn things will strip a plant to its bones almost overnight and I can hardly wait for readers in the PNW and West Coast of Canada to write in about the banana-sized slugs they have out there.

But and it is a BIG BUT – the first step in any control programme is to find out what’s eating the plant. Go the garden and look under the leaves and spend some time out there watching what’s happening. End of sermon and lecture. :-)

p.s. I currently have tiny green worms eating my rose. :-( They got blasted with soap yesterday.

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I have grass growing in my raised flower bed. I need to kill the grass, but not the flowers. Any idea how I can do that? I've pulled the grass, I've put weed prevention stuff down, but it keeps growing back.

A: Grass grows. Get used to it in the garden. Grass needs to be constantly pulled. Get used to that as well. :-)

Killing the grass and not the flowers is simply pulling the grass out.

Chemical controls are 1) never recommended by this writer and 2) way too variable even for professionals trying to control grass in nurseries. Different plants respond in different ways to chemicals and there’s just too many variables. Flower nurseries have a heck of a time if they grow many varieties in a small location and try to control the weeds with chemicals. So – nope – there’s no recommendation for that.

Do You Want to Grow Lavender?

Weed prevention “stuff” doesn’t stop grass – it is normally recommended for broadleaf weeds like dandelions. And depending on what you’ve used, it can stunt some flowers as well. (I’d prefer an organic control such as corn gluten as long as I wasn’t trying to start flower or vegetable seeds in the area – if I was installing started transplants – the gluten would work well on broad leaf but not established grass plants.)

Keep pulling. If grass or other weeds get ahead of you then your option is to renovate the garden bed. In the fall, in mid-Sept, dig up all the good flowers you’re keeping. Put them in the shade. Then turn over the soil in a double digging system that I’ll have posted up on the web next week, adding a shovel of compost for every three shovels of soil you dig and turn over. Mix the compost into the soil. As you dig, remove all weeds, roots, rocks and anything that isn’t soil.

Clean off the roots of the plants to take away all grass roots and other invaders hoping to hide from you. Replant your garden.

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I'm so in love with the gorgeous blue morning glory vine that i got plenty of seed's and planted them all along my fence. They have grown very well except its all foliage and no flowers....whats the reason...were the seeds bad???? I'm still waiting for it to blossom. The vine has been lush and growing for the last month, do you think it will flower anytime????? looking forward to your responce. thanks and regards shireena

A: All foliage and no blossoms on morning glories is a common problem early in the season. The vines are spending so much energy trying to grow they have none for flower production. They’ll start blooming soon enough when the season starts to mature some of those vines. The only reason that they would not flower at all is if you overfed them or planted them in very rich soil so they are pushed to produce green growth all summer rather than relax and try to produce some flowers.

Advice: relax – water well but don’t feed the monsters. You’ll see flowers.

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No question, just a comment. I also had white spots on my petunias and also my nicotania. They were potted and on my deck. Turned out I was accidently spraying them with "off" when I sprayed myself!! No more spots now that I'm more careful!!! (Thought you'd get a laugh from this). Joanne

A: Man, this is a great comment about how we accidentally mess up our gardens. We don’t need help from the pests, we can do it all ourselves. LOL! THANKS for the note.

p.s. I’ve done similar things in the greenhouse with hot tea and coffee and I know a LOT of folks spray around weed and feed products and then wonder why plants aren’t doing so well.

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What is the best way to harvest dill (for cooking purposes) to promote further growth? Helen in New Mexico

A: If you want to use the leaves or emerging flowers, then keep snipping them when they are young. If you want to use the mature seeds, you have to wait until they turn brown and then give the plant a bit of a haircut down to younger growth (this is usually too late in the season to do anything and once the plant sets seed, it usually is “done”).

From My Garden To Yours

I note this last little bit of heat has brought more perennials up through my mulch. I can’t believe it but it now seems that almost all my coneflowers are alive or at least what look to be coneflowers are sprouting in the garden. No idea why they’re this late but it gives me hope. The herbal Sorel ‘Profusion’ has also just appeared and normally by this time I’m harvesting the darn thing. It doesn’t look too happy with me so perhaps it really didn’t like the move last fall. I’m letting it develop some good top growth and not taking any harvest at all this year to let it recover its strength. Those sour-apple tasting leaves will get a rest (well, maybe one leaf will make it into a salad later this summer) but I chose this variety because it doesn’t set seed.

The flowering right now in the garden is being taken care of by my Iris. I only have three iris of note but all are quite lovely. The small Iris setosa arctica is a dwarf iris, suited for the rock garden or very small garden. I grew it for several years as a container plant where the June blooms and grass like foliage the rest of the year were appreciated. Last year, I gave it its very own container and while it was in bloom, moved it to the front of the garden where I sat. Once finished, it was moved to backstage and then knocked out of the pot and planted in the ground last fall. It has responded this spring with an excellent show of new growth and is almost covered with blossoms and buds. The lavender flowers with white veins are attracting the attention of the neighbours and several have asked about this showy little plant. As I said, this would be an excellent iris for a rock garden and could be divided every two or three years to produce an excellent little colony. The seed can also be sown directly in the garden and should bloom in its second or third year if watered and cared for.

The second iris is Iris pallida ‘argentea variegata’. If you ignore the name for a moment, this is a green and white striped leaf iris with a very fragrant light-lavender flower. It grows and acts just like the more common bearded iris although the flower is smaller. I like the plant because of the variegated foliage and the fact that this is an easy iris to grow. It hasn’t yet fallen over in a wind like the old-fashioned bearded iris used to do. The flower fragrance is a light floral scent that I think is quite attractive (and I can be seen taking a sniff just about every morning as I wander and drink my coffee).

The Japanese iris – Iris ensata – are not yet blooming but they currently live in pots in my water pond. After they bloom in a few weeks, the pots will be removed from the pond and allowed to dry out a little bit between waterings. I added compost to the tops of the pots and they seem quite happy with this. My favourite in this line is the variegated leaf variety (interestingly named ‘Variegata’) with its dark purple contrasting flowers. I was quite pleased that all four of my plants from last year survived being knocked out of their pots and buried in the vegetable section for the winter. I dug them up this spring and repotted them. I have some great pictures of a robin doing the spring cleanup on these plants. He took all the dead foliage along with the mud (they were potted back up and sitting in the pond by this time) to construct his nest. After he had finished, I topped up the pot soil with compost and topsoil. Somewhere in our neighbourhood is a very exclusive Robin condo constructed of Japanese Iris leaves.

I’m also pleased to report the geraniums are thriving in the garden. Not the annual pelargoniums but the perennial geraniums. While the only one flowering at the moment is Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Variegatum’ with its typical purplish flowers and variegated leaves. The variegation seems to be disappearing at the plant matures but I’ll have to see what happens later in the summer. I have several others that are worth searching garden centres. Look for the lovely ‘Hocus Pocus’ a bronze leaf plant with quite showy violet blue flowers. This one surprised me by being very late to emerge but it seems to be making up for its tardiness. I also am looking forward to ‘Bertie Krug’ with its bronze leaves and pink star-shaped flowers giving a flower display in another few weeks. The only plant I’m not sure survived is ‘Rozanne’ one of the longest blooming geraniums to hit the plant market. The violet purple flowers of this plant are produced over several months. I have two hardy geraniums I can’t yet identify and I’m hoping this is one of them. Thankfully, Geranium ‘Splish Splash’ a variegated leaf plant with speckled leaves is nowhere to be seen this spring. I thought the leaves on this plant looked diseased rather than variegated and was prepared to dig it out and give it away. I think it died and saved me the trouble.

The last thing I want to mention is that I’ve just started doing a little watering as I checked under the mulch and found the soil to be drying out. Do check your soils if you’re mulching and don’t assume the soil is fine because you can’t see it. Pull the mulch back and if dry, water heavily. Remember you have to get the water through the mulch to the soil and the mulch will absorb some of it.