Dear Readers:

You guys are great! The tag lines continue to pour in and there’s a ton of superb thoughts there. I’ve decided to increase the number of runner’s up because I already know I can’t pick out only three or four. And there might even have to be more than one winner because I might not be able to make a decision there either.

I have NOT yet picked out a winner – I’m still accepting concepts for the tag line contest – the lines that above that talk about Gardening Coach and Helping You Garden. Entries should be on the url You can enter here as they all go to a special mailbox after you enter them. I don’t want to lose a single one!

Yes, you can enter more than once but the deadline is July 31.

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And if you have a gardening friend and want them to receive their own copy of this newsletter – please tell them about it – and suggest they sign up themselves at http://www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/freegardeningnewsletter.html

To comply with spam laws, I can not sign up individuals without their permission. I would lose my hosting service if I did that. So I can’t sign up individuals directly.

But you can tell your friends for us.

New Articles for You

All my new articles are listed here. Click on the archives link at the site to see others.

Articles this week include: square foot gardening, naturalizing bulbs, growing wisteria, perennials for cut flowers, drying rose flowers, container water gardening, growing daylilies, coriander, thyme, and planting roses among others.

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

Your Questions Answered

our sweet corn has grown to only about 3 feet tall and it is already starting to tassle out. Will they continue to grow and produce ears, or what is wrong? this is really weird.... we don't know what we have done wrong..... weve been keeping them watered very regualarly..... please advise what we can do if anything, or if we need to be worried or not. THANKS!

A: I’m getting a variety of this kind of question at the moment, essentially saying that something has gone wrong with the plant. What is it? :-)

Any plant that behaves differently such as this – or short tomatoes – or ?? is essentially under stress at some point.

In the case of short corn, before the V5 stage (5 leaves) the corn is putting most of its energy into developing roots and underground support systems. At the end of May (roughly) stem elongation starts to come along and it is determined by a few things such as light/shade relationships, daylength and temperatures. You’re likely looking at cool temperatures in May as the causal factor – the cool temps are thought to stop the cell walls from expanding as fast as they normally do. So the bad news is that you have short corn.

Do You Want to Grow Vegetables?

The good news is that as long as you continue to provide the corn with adequate water to fill out the cobs, adequate food to do the same – you’ll get a regular harvest. Mind you, that’s assuming good heat and temperatures along with sunlight and enough leaf surface on the plant to produce the energy for corn production. (If your corn is too stunted and doesn’t have enough leaf surface, it won’t produce enough energy to produce kernels.)

The other good news is that shorter corn is easier to harvest. You don’t have to reach up to pick it. :-)

Cool May temperatures will have made pollen sterile on tomatoes and peppers so while the blossoms will come along, they won’t be pollinated.

And irregular watering of peppers and tomatoes will be causing all kinds of blossom end rot now (the end of the peppers and tomatoes goes black and soft)

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I just planted a Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus) plant. On hot days, the leaves looks like is dying. I know that these plants love the sun. Why does it look like that, Is it because it was not planted proper

A: This wilting is a simple cause. The plant is losing more water than it can replace. You often see this in new plantings at this time of year. The plant has come from a shaded nursery environment (protected from the hot sun and wind) and is now out on its own. The roots simply can’t pump enough water up to the leaves as the leaves sweat it out in the hot spells. You’ll likely see the plant recover each evening.

This isn’t a function of planting or watering enough (although it could be not enough water).

If it recovers at night, simply keep watering to ensure it has enough. Sooner or later the roots will get out of the pot zone and it will start to stabilize itself. I had a similar situation with some perennials two weeks ago – they were wilting during the day and standing up at night.

I did spray them with an antidesiccant to stop them from wilting – available at garden shops, this stops the leaves from sweating and assists in mid-summer transplanting (among other things) If you do a search on www.simplegiftsfarm.com for antidesiccant, you’ll find all the things I use this stuff for in propagation, etc.

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I seem to find a variety of conflicting information regarding submerged plants. For instance I have a book that list cabomba caroliniana as hardy to zone 5, other places not hardy. There seems to be much confusion over whether sagittaria natans and sagittaria sublata (dwarf sagittaria) are the same and whether they are tropicals or hardy to zone 4 as my book lists. The same hardiness questions arise with anacharis, hornwort,, milfoil, ludwigia and hydrophilia. I am new to pond plants and am confused by all the conflicting info. Can you hset me straight?

A: Great question. The two Sagittaria have been indistinguishable in my aquarium and in the ponds. Mind you, while the texts say there is a difference it may very well be a problem at the nursery production level. The nurseries have got the plant screwed up. After all, we’re talking about differences in height mostly so production nurseries will never let the plants get to maturity before division/propagation. It doesn’t take much to mess up a production labeling – and it happens more often than you might think of in all nurseries. And even more so when the plants come from offshore like many of these oxygenators do. I can remember one time when one of my daughters (the name shall be kept secret to protect the guilty) was quite small and wandered back from playing at the end of the greenhouse with a fistful of plant tags. Mostly broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower tags. Now, you tell me how to distinguish between those plants at the seedling stage. :-)

But yes, there’s a botanic difference in height between these two plants, I don’t think I’ve been given the right one by my suppliers.

And here’s a kicker for the question. Many of these plants have a worldwide distribution, that is, they grow naturally around the globe. A plant such as milfoil comes in different species. One of those species Myriophyllum heterophyllum is a hardy North America species but others are not native. So, the answer is if you get the hardy N.A. species, you can take it to zone 3 in comfort. If you get another, you’ll have different results. The name milfoil is common to them all. And to make things interesting, you can buy all of them in local stores. It depends on where the store gets its supplies from which plant you’ll be given.

The absolute best book on the market (other than the one I’m writing right now of course) :-) is “The Encyclopedia of Water Garden Plants” by Greg and Sue Speichert. Published by Timber Press. If you have a pond and you want to ask a question about plants, this is your book. I have very few books that sit right behind my desk ready for quick reference. This is one of them.

It tells you the difference between many of these different plants and gives critical growing information. I highly recommend it.

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My dad has small white flies that are appearing in his cedar trees in enormous amounts. They have not been present all the time only in the last 2 to 3 years He has been spraying it with a soap solution but to no avail He would like to know what they are and how to get rid of them besides chopping them down

A: Sounds like whiteflies. :-) This pest is often found in large numbers and trick to controlling them is to spray regularly with insecticidal soap and spray *under* the leaves. By regularly I mean every three to four days. If you only spray once every two weeks, you’ll never get these guys as they’ll outbreed your spray. There is a wide range of organic material that is available to kill off this pest so do not chop down the trees.

Soap is one of the easiest and most effective.

I’ll be starting an organic gardening site soon now and many of these pest problems and alternative controls will be discussed and highlighted.

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I have a8 foot high woody hydrangea growing nicely on a lattice and up against the southeast side of my home. It's been growing now for 4 years and look prolific. It has, however, never bloomed! There are overhanging maples 25 feet away which may cut down on the number of hours of direct sunlight. Is that the problem or should I be feeding it?

A: This is still small for a Hydrangea vine and I wouldn’t be too upset with it not flowering yet. The old story with these guys is “it sleeps, it creeps, it leaps” when it comes to describing the three year average wait until you see it really start to produce. If you’re on yr 4 – the advice is simply have some patience. The part shade shouldn’t be a problem. And compost is always a good thing. Remember Doug’s first rule of gardening, “you only have to feed your plants if you want them to grow, to flower or to produce fruit.”.

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We planted some holly hocks last year and beautiful blooms Now this year the plants are blooming a yellow star like flower is this normal. The blooms last year were white. If you are able to help me this would be appreciated Thanks Tom

A: Hollyhocks are a short-lived biennial (sometimes perennial for two or three years) And they will often throw sports and interesting flower combinations depending on their genetic makeup. Do not expect the seedlings to have the same makeup as the adults. Given that the plant normally dies after flowering, the new blooms you’re seeing are likely from another plant/seed and variability is expected.

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From My Garden To Yours

One of the things about gardening is that it is a prime medical method for preventing hardening of the attitudes. If you aren’t learning something about your garden almost every week, then you’re not spending enough time out there. In my case, it has been an almost humbling summer season so far.

Want a Healthy Lawn?

The tomatoes are doing well. The garden soil that I double dug and added incredible amounts of peat moss and compost to is producing a decent sized plant with fruit on the two lower sets. I’m watering them regularly and they’re doing well. Touch wood, this has been a success. Now the rest of the garden is not getting this passing grade.

I started with soil that reminded me of one of my big old perennial gardens; it is more ditch remnants than garden soil and I can’t even pretend it has any form of nutrition or organic matter. I dug it up and added compost as well as several batches of compost tea but the plants are struggling. I didn’t add nearly enough organic matter and as I investigate areas of the garden where the plants have died, I can see soil resembling concrete garbage more than garden soil. In the areas where the soil has improved enough to grow plants, the nutrition levels are simply not high enough to grow great plants. The microorganisms are not fully alive or functioning down there. This may be because there’s not enough food to support those critters and it may be because the water I have to use is city water – treated with chlorine. So every time I water my garden, I’m killing off some of the fungi and bacteria I want to use to improve my garden soil. This is a brand new problem for me to solve and I’m thinking my way through it. On the face of it, it would appear I’m going to have to water with de-chlorinated water if I want to bring on the organic life in the garden. Either that or regularly add more compost tea to replenish the microorganisms.

Not only that but I got a lesson in garden tools in the past few weeks. As many of you know, I’ve used one set of pruning shears for the past thirty years in the garden but I was at a presentation of some ergonomically designed tools made by Fiskars and brought some of them home to trial. I also had a chance to talk to some other garden writers about their reactions to these tools and I can tell you, their response was overwhelmingly positive.

My hand pruners are very intriguing. Not only do they have a patented gearing but one part of the handle swivels when you make a cut. These are a joy to use. I took them out to the garden, had a great old time pruning and deadheading and was in danger of reducing some plants to mere twigs of their former selves before I reined in my enthusiasm. After all these years, I’m changing my tune. Not only are they easy to use but the so-called plastic they are made of isn’t really plastic but one of those space-age composites that you can fire bullets at. Mind you, not that I’m interested in deflecting bullets with the hardened steel blades or handles but I note they can make a nasty cut if you get a finger in the way of those jaws. So the Felcos are in the closet and the Fiskars are by the back door. Will wonders never cease?

I also got to play with a weeder. This was interesting and while I’m still thinking my old-fashioned dandelion “spud” is simpler to use, this tool works. You place the jaws over top of the weed, step on a projection on the bottom to drive the jaws down and then simply lever the weed out of the ground. It does take a little too much soil for my liking but if you’re removing dandelions from lawns, you could fill up the holes with compost and kill two birds with one job. The nice thing is this tool works.

But the crowning touch was the long-handled pruning shears. I don’t own one of these as the writers at the conference were fighting over the few sets available. (I wasn’t about to get into a fight over possession of a sharp tool when the holder looked like she was about to use them on my fingers.) This set of hand-pruners has a long handle that reaches into the middle of thorny rose bushes to do the pruning. Now if you’ve ever tried to prune an old-fashioned rose bush, you know how mean those things can be. Their thorns fight back and gardeners have invented special long gloves and other protective devices to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. These pruners reach in and snip off branches with ease. I used one to cut easily through a half-inch hardwood dowel as part of the demonstration. It was a one handed squeeze and those pruners were up to the task. One of the women with arthritis said that she didn’t think she’d have the strength to close the handles with her smaller hands. This didn’t make her want to offer me her set and so all I can tell you is that this is a super tool and I’m going to get me one next year when my roses get big enough to have to prune.

Always assuming I fix the feeding problem before then and the roses get big enough to prune. But it has been a good week of learning about new things in my garden. How’s yours treating you?