Mums look awesome with stone. Who'd have thought?

by Susan Harris
I may get called an “experienced gardener” but I’m no plant snob and I actually prefer the more common plants.  They’re usually cheaper and easier, and I like trying to use them in unique ways.  Plus, if they’re annuals, like most mums, I get to try different ones every year.  And as the season winds down, mums are just soooo colorful.  Check out these examples of mums used in fun ways.

I asked Behnkes’ Sissy McKenzie about mums and she advises buying them NOW for the best assortment of colors, sizes and bloom types.  Colors available include red, yellow, lavender/pink, bronze, and more.

Mums with Japanese maples at Brookside Gardens

Sissy’s Design Tips for Mums
Mums are the divas of the fall garden!  They can be mass planted to make a colorful edge to any garden.  They can be used to accent a flower bed or to set on a door step for a brilliant show of color.   They also make wonderful companions to your fall decorations, adding color around pumpkins, corn stalks, gourds – they add great texture and color to any decorations.

Mums also make excellent container plants, decorating your deck, front porch or pool area.

Sissy’s Mum-Growing Tips
Mums are a full sun plant, so remember at least 6 hours of sunlight is important to the health of your plant.  Mums need to be regularly watered and feed once a month to keep their leaf color.

Potted mums outside Behnkes in Beltsville

Seen in a Japanese garden.

Mums Up-Close

Photographers love using their macro lenses on mums!

Photo credits:  Mums with stone.  Massed with bamboo screen.  In Japan.  In collage:  upper left,  upper right, both lower photos.  Brookside and Behnkes photos by Susan Harris.

by Mary Ellen Gaspard, Behnkes in Potomac

Last week’s night-time temperatures in the low 30s had the Potomac store staff scrambling to tuck in our tender young plants under their blankies!  We’re not out of the cold weather woods yet, either; our frost-free safety date here in zone 7 is around Mother’s Day.

However, while summer annual plants may suffer from a hard frost (temperatures of 32F or below) without a light cover like an old bedsheet or even newspapers, there are many cool weather loving plants in their prime right now.

Flowering color is a major desire after a long winter, and we have a wonderful assortment of beautiful pansies (if someone calls you a pansy, that’s a real compliment since these prolific bloomers have been known to bloom through light snow!), dianthus, ranunculus, snapdragons, Pot n’ Patio asters, Easter Bonnet alyssum, diascia and more, in full blossom and ready to bloom for you for weeks to come.

Perennial phlox is in full, gorgeous spring bloom in a carpet of color.  Also flowering for you are camellias, ornamental cherries, and other spring trees and shrubs.  All these can be planted NOW, even if spring temperatures seem more like winter from time to time.

If edibles are on your spring wish list, lettuce show you our awesome selection of cool weather veggies, including Brussels sprouts; broccoli; white and yellow cauliflower; white and red cabbage; an assortment of greens including collards and mustard greens (which have pretty red veining); and a variety of lettuces including Butter Crunch, Red Sails, Salad Bowl combination, and Mesclun Mix.  Greens you grow yourself taste so much better than the bagged and boring stuff from the grocery store!

This is also a good time to plant our hardy herbs, such as chives, parsley, rosemary and thyme, but wimpy basil wants to sit on a sunny indoor windowsill until outdoor temps remain at 50F or above.

Fruits, including strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and grapes are growing fast and are also ready to plant now!   Strawberries can perform for you right from a pot in the sunshine on your porch or patio, or out in the garden.  Blueberry bushes are leafing out and will give you fat, juicy berries in early summer, then provide colorful foliage in fall.  Blackberry and grape vines are looking for your fence or one of our classy trellises to climb up.

Limited space?  Try combining edibles with flowers in your pots! Red sails lettuce complements pansies, ranunculus, and dianthus in the pot shown.

Don’t forget to pick and eat the lettuce, so it will keep producing for you, and use a pansy flower for a lovely spring ornament on a dinner plate or serving platter.

So don’t let cloudy days and chilly nights make you run for cover.  Many plants love our cool, damp spring weather, so grab your jacket and enjoy them!

Marian Parsley has one of those loooong histories with Behnkes that I keep hearing as I’m interviewing the staff.   In her case that means starting at Behnkes in 1980 at the tender age of 21 after her family moved here from Pennsylvania looking for employment.   Her first job was in the production greenhouse planting up annuals, and she remembers that the 9 or 10 women who worked there were segregated back then – by which soap operas they liked to listen to!! (We’re talking “As the World Turns” and “Days of Our Lives”)

Fort Washington Lighthouse

Other highlights?  Definitely having her husband Bill Parsley as a co-worker -  he worked here for 30 years himself.  And together they lived for a while in the little brick house at the back of the Behnkes property, where a long string of Behnkes family and employees have lived over the years.  It’s now home to operations manager/webmaster Larry Bristow.

Life after Work

Marian and Bill Parsley have two daughters, a 25-year-old who works with autistic children and a 21-year-old still in college.  And do they have hobbies?  Oh, yeah.  Together, they tour lighthouses, actually competing in lighthouse-touring challenges who knew??~!   They took home a prize  recently for arriving at the Fort Washington Lighthouse first.    Did you know that there are 28 lighthouses in Maryland?  Yeah, me neither.   For lots more about local lighthouses (familiarly called “lights”) go to the Chesapeake Light Society.

And on her own, Marian loves to bake (she used to make birthday cakes on the side) and do crafts, especially cross-stitch.

So, does she garden?  Which in her case would be the proverbial “busman’s holiday”.   No, she says, “I just want to see my husband once in a while.”  Okay, Marian, that’s an excuse even us gardening diehards could support, so you’re forgiven.

Supertunias

What’s Happening in Annuals
Marian attends the trade shows, keeps up with new introductions, and says what’s happening in annuals is better breeding – for lasting longer blooms and more tolerance of heat anddrought.  Excellent!  The growers are also growing annuals “more naturally” – meaning at lower temperatures that are more like our actual outdoor growing conditions.  That way the plants have an easier time adapting to our gardens than they did from overheated greenhouses.

Asked about particular brand-name annuals, Marian says Wave and Supertunia petunias are top-sellers and are actually asked for by name.  Both perform well, while Waves, grown from seed, are less expensive than Supertunias, which are grown from cuttings by Proven Winners.  Marian buys exclusively from local growers, by the way.

Tips

• Annuals DO need fertilizers, but the fertilizers can be organic – like those made from fish or seaweed.

• Marian suggests planting pansies now (until the ground freezes) for two whole seasons – coz they bloom on warm winter days and definitely come back for more blooming next spring.  winter days.

Photo credits:  Supertunias by The Brit. Pansies by  N. Houlihan, taken in Portsmouth, NH. Posted by Susan Harris

Jazzy Ursula Garden Mum

This new garden mum is an improvement over the current Ursula color, producing a more distinct coral. In warm weather it is a strong coral, turning nearly red in cold weather.

Like the other Ursula group of cultivars, it has a good dome-like shape, perfect for containers or planting out in a formal bed.

Behnke’s also has a nice selection of ornamental cabbage, kale, snapdragons and ornamental peppers now, for your Fall Color decorating. Pansies will be available in a couple of weeks.

by Larry Hurley, Perennial Plant Buyer

Or, perhaps we should say Tuin Up; I believe Tuin is Dutch for garden. By mid-summer, much of your garden is feeling a little dragged out. Hot days and warm nights are tough on plants as well as people. A little pruning back can be just the ticket to rejuvenate annuals and perennials. I’m not your guy for vegetable garden hints, I have a shady yard.

Let’s start with hanging baskets. A couple of things happen over time, both a factor of the concept that, if a plant is still alive, it’s trying to grow. (That which doesn’t kill it, makes it longer.)

Hanging Baskets: Basket plants should be sheared or selectively pinched to keep them in proportion to the pot. Petunias, for example, will trail down the side of the pot, growing and flowering from the ends of the stems, until you have flowers at the end of 18 inch long stems with few leaves or flowers at the top around the basket.

The best thing to do is selectively cut off about 20% of the stems each week or two right at the edge of the basket. As those stems recover and start to grow and make flower buds, you cut the next 20%. Over time, you keep the plant to a manageable length and it never looks like it was cut back. For an upright plant, do the same thing–just pinch random stems back from say 12 inches long to 4 inches long, once every week or two.

As the basket ages, the plants roots slowly fill the soil in the basket. The soil settles, washes out of the pot, decays…at some point you have more roots than soil. Roots don’t hold water like soil does. If you find you are watering a couple of times a day, it may be time to put the plant into a larger container– maybe no longer hanging– or in the ground.

Echinacea Trial garden

Perennials: The best reference is The Well-Tended Perennial Garden, by Tracy DiSabato-Aust. She tells you how and when to cut back or shear plants in your perennial garden in order to control height, or to prepare the plant for another surge of bloom if it’s a rebloomer like most of the summer-blooming perennials are. Tracy is a landscape contractor in Ohio, and the book is written from practical experience and for the average gardener.

Annuals: Cut off old flower heads to encourage rebloom (deadheading) or cut back the plant part way to encourage bushiness and branching (and eventually more flowers). If you are happy with how they look, don’t do anything. Vinca and Supertunias probably don’t need any attention at all.

Herb Container. Photo by Larry Hurley

Herbs: Continue to pinch off the ends of the stems to encourage bushiness. With basil, remove flower buds by pinching out the flowering stems. If you have a few strong stems that have not gone to flower, take a 3-inch- or-so long tip cutting (the end 3 inches of the stem) and put it in a glass of water so that the bottom inch or so is in the water and the top is in a sunny window. It should root in about 10 days. In two or three weeks, you can plant it back outside while your older basil flowers and declines. The water glass should be dark; dark colored, or wrap it in foil. You can do that with coleus, too.

Weeds: Pull them out, they are just going to get bigger and meaner.