Gardening Basics: Simply Put – Summer Watering Tips

By Larry Hurley, Perennial Plants Buyer

Summer is finally here! I say “finally” because it’s felt like August for a couple of weeks now.

Make sure to provide water to your gardens, containers, and plantings around the house.

Here are my recommendations:

1) Lawns: Don’t worry about the lawn. Our lawn grasses will tolerate drought by going dormant (turning brown). When it rains, they will green up again. If you feel compelled to water the lawn, then provide an inch of water a week, preferably at one watering over a period of a couple of hours. This is to provide a thorough watering without a lot of run off. Frequent light watering result in shallow rooting. Infrequent deep watering is better.

2) Hanging Baskets: Hanging baskets in the sun are not the happiest of campers right now. You may find that it’s difficult to water frequently enough to keep them looking good. Move them to an area with afternoon shade, or consider perhaps taking them down and planting the plants into a larger on-the-ground container, or even into the ground.

3) Containers: Check daily, water as needed. If the soil feels moist, let it go a day. I have some ceramic containers in the shade that only need water once a week, even in this heat. Terra cotta containers in full sun may need daily watering. If a pot (or basket) gets very dry, the soil may shrink away from the side of the pot. When you water, the water runs down the side of the soil ball instead of penetrating the dry soil. That will call for repeated watering over a period of a couple of hours to get the soil wet enough to swell back to contact with the container. If it’s small enough, you can set it in a tub of water for an hour to rehydrate.

4) Newly Planted Perennials, Trees and Shrubs: check them daily. How frequently they need water depends on what you have planted, and where it has been planted. Plants in the shade may only need water every four or five days. Newly planted shrubs in the sun may need water every day or two for awhile. Remember that initially, all of the roots are in the soil ball that came with the plant. Even if the surrounding soil is moist, if the soil ball dries out, the plant wilts. As in the description above for containers, if the soil ball is dry, water may not penetrate it easily.

Wand

The absolutely best way to water is to use a water wand (a hollow pipe attached to the hose with a “breaker” on the end. A breaker is like the end of a watering can that breaks the water stream into many small gentle streams.) All professional garden center and nursery people use water wands. (Except for management, which thinks it has earned the right to spray plants with a thumb over the end of the hose once in awhile.)

The reason to use a wand is that it lets you get the water exactly where you need it—into the hanging basket, or at the base of the plant at the soil ball. While spritzing the foliage with water may make you feel good, it doesn’t do much for the plant. It absorbs water from the roots, not the leaves, so apply a gently, soaking stream of water to the soil ball area. Twenty seconds ought to do it for smaller plants.

5) Established plants: It’s a tricky call. Shallow rooted plants like azaleas must have regular watering in hot weather. A good soaking once a week should be enough. Personally, I have invested (tens of) thousands of dollars in my garden over the years, so I am going to water during dry spells.

Nelson POPPY Sprinkler

In this weather, if it hasn’t rained heavily for a week, I start up the sprinkler and water one piece of the garden very early each morning while it is still cool, over the course of a week, for about an hour to an hour and a half in each spot. Other horties will water by hand with a wand, selectively: say, all of the hostas, letting established trees fend for themselves.

Soaker Hose

Another tool in the aquatic arsenal is the soaker hose, which sort of oozes water out along the length of the hose; the advantage is not losing water to evaporation, a big problem with fine mist coming from a sprinkler in hot, dry air. These can be wound through established plantings, or are good for along the rows of vegetable gardens. I have used them and they work. I personally find it hard to monitor how much water I am using, and you may water a shrub while the hosta a foot away upslope is bone dry. So, let’s say they work well in specialized situations.

Rain Barrel

6) Gray Water, Rain Barrels, Eco-Stuff: Fine. If you have a small area to water that is easily watered by hand then save the water from the clothes washer, shower with a bucket, gather rain water in a rain barrel, and use it.

Every gallon helps; it’s a function of how big an area you need to water and how much time you have to do it. The rain barrel also helps reduce runoff during storms, so it has that additional benefit.

7) Behnke’s Sells Everything You Need for Watering: From the rain barrels, to watering cans and hoses, and water wands in numerous decorator colors. This is the season, now is the time.

Watering Cans

Garden Hoses

Gardening Basics Simply Put – Hanging Baskets

Hanging baskets, they’re not just for hanging anymore. By all means, do hang them, but consider that basically, it’s a big pot full of colorful flowers or tropical foliage. You can remove the hanger, and set it on a pedestal for an instant “container” plant, or if it happens to be upright instead of trailing, you can set in on a table for a centerpiece.

Another option: take it out of the basket and plant it in a decorative container, or even in the ground for an instant specimen plant. For most basket plants, this will be fine. This works for anything I can think of except for fuchsia. Basket fuchsias are trailers; upright fuchsias, sold in standard pots, are better for planting out.

Basket care:

Light: shade plants will flower better with a couple of hours of early morning sun. Sun plants will do better if they get some shade in the hot afternoon. This is more to keep the pot cooler than for any aversion to sunlight. Hot pots dry out faster and the roots on the sunny side of the pot may heat to the point of partial dieback.

Water: Big plant, small pot.

Your basket will be fine initially, and your primary responsibility is to check daily for water needs. Just lift the pot; if it’s heavy, it’s good for a day. If it’s light, water it. Remember that with any container, that if the plant gets very dry (very light) the potting soil will shrink away from the side of the pot, and most of the water you are applying is just running down the side. In that case, set it on the ground and water it thoroughly several times, 10 minutes apart. Or, set it in a pan of water for an hour.

Baskets that typically need less frequent water include geraniums, trailing geraniums, portulaca, fuchsia, petunias (when the basket is new). Lantana and impatiens dry out pretty quickly.

As the weeks pass, and the plant grows, something funny happens. The roots slowly replace the soil. Some of the potting soil decays further, and some gets washed from the pot with the frequent watering. The plant’s roots don’t hold water like soil does. The result is that you will find yourself watering more frequently.

At that point, say mid-summer, you should either repot it to a larger container, or plant it in the ground. Or, go on vacation and blame the neighbor who was supposed to water your plants while you were gone. [To make life easier for the helpful neighbor, take the baskets down and place them on the ground in light shade, preferably near a water source. That way, the baskets won’t need water as frequently.]

Pruning/Pinching:
As it gets straggly, cutting it back selectively will make the plant more attractive. What I mean by “selectively” is cut back the shoots to different lengths, not straight across like bangs. That way, when it starts to grow again it will look more natural. If you cut back a couple of shoots every two weeks or so you should be able to maintain it without it ever looking like it has been trimmed.

With the frequent watering, your plant’s foliage will yellow after a couple of weeks if you don’t fertilize. I would use Miracle Gro or a similar product occasionally, or Osmocote. Follow label instructions but better to err on the low side. You want to keep the plant green, but it’s not the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The more growth you push with fertilizer, the sooner you will confront the “too big for the pot” problem discussed above.

Simply Put – April Showers Bring May Flowers

… Go the lyrics to the song, more or less (from 1921; Googled it). We in the plant business love April showers, as long as they fall on a Tuesday evening. We likes rain on weekends about as much as Gollum liked Frodo.

What do you have to look forward to in April?

This is a big time for lawns. As the forsythias bloom (blooming now, bushes with big masses of yellow flowers), the soil is about the right temperature for crabgrass seed to begin to grow. If you are a lawn fanatic, you need to do your crabgrass treatments now. If you didn’t fertilize your lawn in the fall when you do most of your lawn feeding, and it’s a cool season lawn (one that is green now) you can still do a quick application of spring lawn food. If you have a warm season (zoysia grass) lawn (brown now) you don’t fertilize until it greens up in a month or two.

Early April is still chilly (off and on, this weekend is going to be a warm one) and it still makes sense to be planting cool season vegetables and flowers. That includes broccoli, lettuce, and pansies. Wait a few weeks before you plant the warm season stuff outdoors—tomatoes, geraniums, impatiens, marigolds— and look at the long range forecast for night temperatures. If it’s going to be in the 30’s or 40’s, you don’t gain much by early planting. Basil and peppers are best planted mid-May or later.

Think bigger. Early April is great for:

· Cleaning-up of last year’s dead plants, and mulching your walkways if they happen to be soil walkways like mine are. Hold off on mulching beds until the soil warms up a bit more. In that case, mulch when or after you plant.

· Planting trees, shrubs, and perennials. Generally, anything that is displayed outside at the garden center is safe to plant now. Plants that are under cover in greenhouses may still be too tender to go outside unless you are prepared to cover them if the night temperatures dip into the 30’s.

· Shop early for spring bloomers. You may as well enjoy the entire bloom period at your home instead of buying it after it’s already flowered for a week.

· Fertilizing shrubs: you can go ahead and apply your Holly Tone or Plant Tone around your evergreen shrubs. As soon as the ground warms up, the soil bacteria will start to break it down and make it available to your azaleas and so on.

· Plant containers for your deck or patio. Mixed containers or single specimens. If you use tender plants, you can move the container inside for a day or two if you need to because of cold weather.

· Keep thinking about the birds. They are getting ready to hook up and build nests. Maybe you can bribe more into nesting in your yard if you provide a water source (bird bath) and continue to feed them. Remember that birds mostly feed insects to their chicks. Long-term, you will have more birds if you plant native trees and shrubs, which support native insects such as caterpillars and the birds that feed on them. You’ll have more butterflies , too.

Simply Put – A Chance to Learn, A Time to Buy

It’s still a little soggy out there for planting, but it’s a great time to buy plants and supplies, and to gather information. Stop by our Beltsville garden this Saturday and get answers to your gardening questions at our Spring Showcase. If you want to learn how to improve water quality and reduce runoff to the Bay, Carole Ann Barth of the Chesapeake Conservation Landscape Council will be on hand to answer questions about home-landscape Rain Gardens.

If you are a new vegetable gardener, who better to pose your gardening questions to than the Prince George’s County Master Gardeners? Master Gardeners are passionate about gardening, and love to answer questions. They can help with pruning and other topics as well, and can tell you how you yourself could become a master gardener. Note that the garden center has a great selection of cool-season vegetables to choose from, along with some herbs for your kitchen. This will give you props to wave around as you play “Stump the Master Gardeners.”

Let’s say you want to replace an area of your lawn with ground cover, or place ground cover plants between stepping stones. Stepables ground cover plants may be what you are looking for. Sandy McDougal of Sandy’s Plants in Virginia will be at Beltsville from 10 to 2 to answer questions about Stepables or any of the other of the thousands of perennials she has grown over the years. We will have an assortment of Stepables in stock.

If you are like me, you may find it’s easy doing some activities in the garden, but not others. I, for instance, have a hard time getting up once I get down on my knees to take time to smell the flowers; or pull the weeds. Laren and Naudia from Allsports Physiotherapy Associates of Greenbelt will be on hand to show you how to make garden exercise less painful and more productive.

What’s the best organic fertilizer for your garden? Find out more about Espoma brand organic fertilizers and other products. You have probably used some of their fertilizers over the years, such as Holly Tone or Plant Tone. Espoma will have an expert here to answer any questions you may have. We also will have a representative of Leaf-Gro, organic compost made right here in Maryland. Ever wonder where all those leaves you bagged up last fall go to? Think “Leaf-Gro.”

If you want to discuss the landscape of your dreams, or want to have someone come to your home to offer landscape advice, then stop by the information tables sponsored by Behnke Nurseries’ Landscape Department and Behnke Nurseries’ Garden Advisor.

If you can sit still on our first warm Saturday, and you are a hard-core plant collector who dreams about new and unusual plants, consider attending the lecture at Behnke’s at Beltsville presented by by Oregon nurseryman Sean Hogan at 10AM, sponsored by the Four Seasons Garden Club. Our woody plant manager says that the slide list is so unusual, that we can pretty much guarantee that we won’t have any of them in stock. Very cutting edge. We are very lucky to have Sean available to speak; he is a nationally known speaker and author.

Something fun for kids and adults, BUMBA ~ Bowie-Upper Marlboro Beekeepers Association, will be here and if the bees are behaving will have a demonstration honey bee hive. Learn about bees, beekeeping, honey, pollination and all things honeybee!

A special food vendor will be on hand for the event, with heavenly sandwiches available from Sweet Saviour-y BBQ. Our first shipments of perennials have arrived, so if you have been waiting for Hellebores, heucheras or creeping phlox, they are now in stock. Woody plants are rolling in now as well with many trees and shrubs along with fruit trees and berry bushes, and we have our full complement of seed and seed-starting supplies. Plus, beautiful cool-weather loving pansies are in. Spring, it would appear, has sprung.

Simply Put – A Few Seed-Starting Hints

For vegetable gardeners, one way to make vegetable gardening cheaper is to start your own plants from seed, rather than buying pre-started plants. Depending on the plant, some seeds may be planted directly in the garden, while others are best started ahead of time in pots.

The seed packet will tell you if you are not sure. (It will say something like “sow directly in the garden when all chance of frost has passed.” Or, “start indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date.”) It’s been a long time since I have grown vegetables, being blessed with both a non-vegetable-friendly shady yard, and a workplace full of pre-started plants.

Examples of vegetables that are usually sown directly in the ground:

• Radishes
• Carrots
• Beans
• Corn

Frequently, these are large seeds that germinate reliably and quickly (radishes, beans), or seeds that are difficult to transplant (carrots). And usually relatively cheap seed, at that.

Examples of vegetables that are started ahead of planting in the ground:

• Tomatoes
• Peppers

These are plants that have a long time from seed to harvest, so you can get an earlier harvest by starting the plants ahead of when they should be planted out. Some large seeds—pumpkin, squash, cucumbers– may be directly planted or pre-started to avoid certain animal pests (e.g., crows, squirrels) from eating the seeds.

If you are only going to plant a few tomatoes, and you want a selection of sizes and colors of tomatoes, then it may be better to just buy the plants, as the seed is relatively expensive. Look at the prices and think about what you want to do. Make a garden plan (map) in advance, look at your space, and decide how many plants you need/have room for.

Information on planting dates, and numerous videos on starting transplants and other topics may be accessed from the University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC) website.

The key to starting seed indoors is being able to provide enough light. Vegetables are full-sun plants. A fluorescent light fixture several inches above the plants, run for about 16 hours a day provides enough light, or an unobstructed south-facing window in a cool room. On mild days they can be set outside for more light, but initially in a protected area so they don’t sunburn.

Okay, so maybe starting plants indoors is actually a fair amount of work and you want to buy the transplants anyway. A lot depends on how dedicated you are to the hobby. If you just want a couple of pots of cherry tomatoes on the deck, or a pot of mixed herbs, then by all means, buy the transplants. If you are planning a large vegetable garden, then you will save a lot of money by starting some of your own plants.

* Behnkes has ALL the seed starting supplies you need to succeed…light fixtures, heating mats, bio-degradable pots, Jiffy seed starting greenhouse kits, watering cans, and much more. Visit one of our retail stores or shop for your seed starting supplies online.