My favorite weeding tool.

The gardening season is ON, which means we’re all busy weeding, or we will be after this blessed rain has ended.  Here are some of my favorite ways to reduce the job..

• Remove the weeds as soon as you see them.  If you don’t, they’ll accumulate and possibly become an overwhelming job.  Even worse, they’ll be harder to remove AND they’ll seed around.  We’re talking hundreds or thousands more weed seeds in your beds.
• Ditto removing weeds from the lawn before they go to seed – because the wind will carry them to the beds.
• Mulch is our friend.  A good 2-3 inches will prevent the germination of weed seeds that land on the beds, while also helping to retain moisture.  But back to the weed-prevention reason.  I recommend against using compost as mulch because it’s the perfect medium for weed seeds to germinate in.
• Plant close together or at least let the plants grow together.  This makes it difficult for weeds to thrive or get sunlight.
• Use weed-free soil.  I’m a fan of amending the existing soil but if there’s NO topsoil (post-construction, for example) and you’re bringing in garden soil, bagged soil will be weed-free, a good start.
• If you have bare soil for a while, planting a cover crop like clover, vetch or annual ryegrass will create a weed barrier, and you can later dig the plants into the soil, where they’ll be used as fertilizer.
• Water only the plants you want watered, not the entire bed.  Drip irrigation or hand-watering around the base of your plants means depriving weed seeds in other parts of the beds of needed water.
• Corn gluten meal can be applied to lawns in February when the forsythias are blooming to keep weed seeds (in fact, all seeds) from germinating, and it can be used in beds, too.  If used any other time, it won’t prevent weeds but it will add Nitrogen to your plants.  As a weed preventer, I’m told that it works partially in the first year, close to completely by the third year.
• If you compost yard waste, compost it completely before adding the compost to your beds – to make sure the weed seeds are killed.  A good compost thermometer will ensure it’s hot enough.
• Love some weeds.  A weed is really just a plant that’s growing where you don’t want it to, but hey, they’re free and they’re there already.  So I give weeds a close look to determine if I really can’t stand them in my garden or if, like the evening primrose and clover in seen below, I actually like them and can let them stay.

Dandelions are another weed that people are giving a second look.  I’ve come to like them in bloom, especially whole fields of them, but when it comes to the plain foliage, I’m not quite there yet.

Tips I Ignore

• Some sources suggest installing black plastic or landscape fabric under the mulch but I don’t like the look of either, and eventually it seems that they always show.
• Herbicides work, but I only use them for plants between bricks or growing in other other tight spots where they can’t be dug up.

Wood poppies arrived in my woodland garden as weeds. Love them!

Posted by Susan Harris.

Something that gardeners sometimes disagree about is whether to clean up their beds in the fall or wait until spring, and I was interested to learn that horticulturist Carol Allen is in the clean-up-in-fall school.  In fact, her garden is free of dead leaves and all mulched over by the end of December so that in early spring her garden is ready for prime time!

Well I’m with Carol on this one, and here’s one reason why:  I’d rather not look at dead, brown leaves all winter!  Especially close-up to the house, I’d rather see a scene like the one below, post-leaf-removal.

Cleaning up also inspired me to add some ornamental kale to this high-visibility spot.  I love how this purple variety looks with the chartreuse Creeping Jenny groundcover.  I used five of the same kale here because in such a small space, any more would look busy to my eyes.  I keep reminding myself that in my new small garden I need to keep it simple.

Besides aesthetics, another reason to remove leaves is to keep wet leaves from killing certain plants – the ones that like to stay dry.  That includes, in the photo below, Lamb’s Ears and all my groundcover Sedums.  So while I’m waiting for all the leaves to drop to do the big clean-up in this spot, I at least unsmothered these dryness-loving perennials.

In the lower part of this photo are plenty of leaves, but they’re on top of perennials that can handle it, like black-eyed Susans.

Want more reasons for doing fall clean-up?  It removes diseased plant parts that may winter over, and spots for garden pests like mice and voles to winter over, too.

Posted by Susan Harris.

Horticulturist Carol Allen gave another of her extremely helpful talks the other day at our Beltsville store, and below is an expanded version of what she said.

Vegetable Garden

• Remove and deeply compost debris all spent vegetable matter, except for anything that’s badly diseased, which should be removed but not composted.  Before putting old plants in the compost Carol chops it all up with a machete on an old stump – that way it decomposes much faster.
• Remove and deeply compost any weeds.  “Deeply compost” means putting the material it where it’s hot, inside the bin or pile.  It’s important to remove weeds now because insect pests will use them as cover to overwinter.
• Plant fall/winter crops, or allow to stay in the garden these cool-weather crops: Swiss chard, carrots, radishes, kale and collards. They should be mulched, and to extend the season you can create a pseudo-cold frame by mounding straw alongside the rows. …or use dry leaves to form a protective mulch around them.
• Plant cover crops, especially in spots where you’ve grown such nitrogen-depleting crops as tomatoes and corn. Carol grows Austrian Winter Peas as cover crop because it’s a legume, so produces its own nitrogen.  The tips taste like English peas.  Yum! Cover crops protect the soil from winter wind and rain and after being turned into the soil in March (as a “green manure”) they put nutrients into the soil, becoming the fertilizer for your late spring and early summer crops.
• Prepare the spot for your early spring crops, like peas, by adding whatever amendments it needs and turning the soil.  This preparation NOW is important so that in March when the soil is wet and hard to turn without creating compaction, your garden will be ready for planting.  So amend, turn and mulch now because in March it’ll be too late.
• Prepare straw bale cold frames or other cover for crops that will winter over. As above: Swiss chard, kale, collards, carrots, parsley, etc.
• As a general method of productive vegetable gardening, Carol recommends lots of successional crops, and crop rotation to break the pathogen cycle.  If you don’t have enough space in teh ground to move the crops, you can use a container for them.   Tomatoes, especially the patio or smaller types, grow just fine in pots.

Perennials in this local garden are left in place until they flop over or get crushed by snow.

Perennial Beds

• Cut down perennials as they die down (when they’ve become yellow and dry. For Carol this is a gradual process of removing things as they’re spent, but generally it’s all done by about January 1 in her garden. Great ones to leave up as long as possible include Amsonia hubrichtii for its bright orange yellow fall foliage, and any perennial parts that remain green. For some perennials that pop up late in the spring, like Butterfly weed, leave a marker or leave the stalks to mark the spot. For some perennials like purple coneflower or black-eyed-susans, Carol likes to leave 4″ stalks standing to protect the crown during winter.
• Gardeners who choose to leave all their dead perennial material standing through the winter for wildlife can just cut it all down in March.  Many of them will then self-seed around the garden, which may be a welcome or unwelcome event, depending on the plant and how full the garden is.
• Remove spent annuals and deeply compost them.
• Remove and deeply compost weeds, too.
• Mulch after leaves have all fallen and been removed.  Carol generally mulches in December.  Mulching before the leaves are removed means disrupting the mulch in the leaf-removal process, so it’s easiest to wait a few weeks until that’s done.
• Divisions? Most perennials should be divided in spring, and a few in the summer (like iris). Now’s not the best time but could be done if necessary.  Tough-as-nails plants like daylilies and hostas seem to handle some fall or winter disruption just fine.
• Get those bulbs planted!

Trees and Shrubs

• Prune clean any storm damaged branches so they can start to heal.
• All other pruning should be done by July 4th! Late summer or early fall pruning can trigger late growth that will not have time to harden off before winter. If it’s a spring bloomer, you have cut off flowers! Winter pruning is O.K. for some, if you need to and is a good time for corrective pruning on fruit trees. ….but best for blooming material is right after bloom. Maples and cherries, prune in summer as winter-spring pruning the tree will bleed.
• Mulch after leaf fall and removal, never piling mulch up against the bark of trees or shrubs above the root flare.
• Don’t feed now.  Plants should be fed when they’re actively growing, not now when they’re going into dormancy.  (What IS growing now?  Lawn.  See below.)  So hold off on the Hollytone until March when new growth has started.  This goes for vegetables too – best to feed the beds when new growth has started in the spring.
• Asked about shrub roses, like Knockout and others, Carol suggests pruning them as needed throughout the season, after each flush of flowers, but to do the major pruning in February or March after the new growth has started to appear.

Lawn

• Keep  falling leaves off of newly planted grass.
• Fertilization season is now over.  It needed to be done by Halloween.
• If your lawn has lots of broadleaf weeds, apply a pre-emergent broadleaf weedkiller in October-November.
• Mow lawn to a winter height of 3 to 3.5 inches.

General

• Clean and sharpen tools, paint handles, etc.  (Carol paints her tool handles vibrant yellow so she can find them when dropped in the garden.)
• Secure pesticides and other liquids in a frost-free area.  NOT in the tool shed.
• Keep dry products in moisture-free area, and that includes unused fertilizer.
• Secure row covers, frost blankets, and similar items in mouse-proof containers.  That includes potting soil, where Carol has been known to find nests of mice, with babies.
• Inventory items that were in short supply, like stakes and gro-rings.
• Go over your notes and add any information that will help you make a better garden next year!

Posted by Susan Harris.  Photo credits:  Susan Harris, except for the photo of Tools.

Horticulturist Carol Allen shared her love of bulbs with customers at one of our free seminars, starting with this declaration: “Bulbs deliver, big-time!”  Then she went on to give us tips, lots of tips, and these are just some of them.

Buying and Storing Tips

• The bigger the bulb, the better, especially if they’re growing where we’ll see them up close, because the larger the bulbs, the more flowers it produces.   When grown en masse to be seen from a distance, go ahead and buy smaller ones in bulb to save money.b.  Amar7yllis, same thing.
• The earlier you buy them, the greater the availability.
• Plant them within six months of purchase, and in the meantime, store them in a cool, dry place.  Refrigerators will do the trick.

Grape hyacinth

When to Plant 

October is the best time and Carol hopes we get ours in the ground by Halloween. (The exception being lilies, which should be planted later to prevent premature top growth.) Then she confessed to having planted daffodils after Christmas and they bloomed just fine (though later, up to two weeks later than if they’d been planted in the fall).   If you can’t get your bulbs in the ground this month, go ahead and plant them late – as long as they’re still firm and not discolored.

Snowdrops.

How to Plant
Plant them to 2-3 times height of the bulb – and that means from the top to the surface of the soil (darn – deeper than some of us were hoping).  If the soil is loose, bulb planters work fine.  Otherwise, no way – they won’t be able to cut through rocks and hardpan clay.   Carol herself uses a trowel or perennial spade, creating a large hole for up to a dozen bulbs placed the correct distance apart, which is faster than digging individual holes for each bulb.  What about feeding them?  Our soils are rich in phosphorus, which is what bulbs need, so Carol doesn’t generally add fertilizer when she plants bulbs.

Besides planting at the correct depth, the most important thing to remember about planting bulbs is that they hate clay – because good drainage is a must!  So if you have clay soil, your bulbs are in danger of rotting.  The solution is to mix well rotted wood chips into the soil – they’re the best clay-buster there is.  She recommends amending clay soil as deep as 16 to 20 inches.   Also excellent for this purpose are pine fines, which are available in bags at garden centers.

Purple allium.

Design Tips

• Avoid single lines.  Use masses or drifts, in high numbers.  As an example, Carol said that for a 3 x 6-foot bed she would use approximately 20 daffodils.
• Daffodils look great among hostas because the hosta leaves hide the dying daffodil foliage.  And she agrees with the standard advice about letting daffodil leaves die in place, rather than cutting them off or even tying them up. Those leaves need sun to restore the bulb for the next season.
• For naturalizing in a lawn, small crocuses, and scillas, winter aconites, and anemone blanda (Grecian Windflower) are great.  Their blooms are long gone before it’s time to start mowing.
• For naturalizing, plant daffodils 6″ apart.

Squirrel and Deer-Proof Bulbs:

• Yes, there are plenty of bulbs that go unbothered by squirrels and deer and they are:  daffodils, hyacinths, alliums, fritillaria, iris, scilla, snowdrop, grape hyacinth and winter aconite.
• When planting other bulbs in squirrel-infested spots, try dipping the bulb in a critter-repellent, or placing wire on top of the hole, just under the mulch.  (And I’ve had good success  protecting tulips by sprinkling red pepper flakes on top of the bulbs, just below the mulch.)

Winter aconites.

Tips by Type of Bulb

• Carol declared:  “I would not be without snowdrops,” noting that they’re perfect around the roots of trees.
  

  ‘February Gold’ daffodils

• Winter aconite she calls “winter sunshine”.  (Indeed – see photo above.)  They, like anemone blanda, are hard little bulbs that need an overnight soaking before planting.  Winter aconite seeds can be removed from the seed pod and scattered for more bulbs in a few years.
• For more early sunshine she loves ‘February Gold’ daffodils (photo right).  Another small daffodil that’s a favorite is ‘Jetfire.’
• Her favorite alliums are the ones that look like fireworks, like the  christophii, purple allium shown here (also known as ‘Star of Pershia’).
• And surprise – now’s a great time to plant fall-blooming bulbs, like colchicum.  They’re critter-proof!

Fall-blooming colchicums.

Photo credits:  purple allium, yellow tulips,  snowdrops,   winter aconite, grape hyacinth, colchicum, February Gold daffodils.  Posted by  Susan Harris.

I recently attended an “open garden” event held by the Takoma Horticultural Club, during which I grabbed these photos of USDA-trained horticulturist Wendy Bell, whose talk about conservation landscaping we reported here on the blog.

Above, Wendy and Viv’s house is full of charm, and a great backdrop to Wendy’s lawn-free front garden.  She’s quick to tell visitors that this type of garden isn’t for the low-maintenance crowd, that it’s actually more work than a typical lawn.  (Remember, typical lawns in Takoma Park aren’t the perfect, golf-course type, but the barely good enough type of lawn that gets very little care.)

Note how much drama is added to the garden by one rather small Japanese maple.

Above, the view of Wendy’s front garden from her driveway.

In the back yard, lawn has given way to a raised-bed vegetable garden surrounded by a wood-chip path.

Tucked behind the garage are two really dramatic plants – a hardy banana that winters over just fine in the ground, and a high-yield fig tree.  I asked Wendy how long it took the banana to get that large – because I WANT ONE – and she said just two seasons.

Above are examples of focal points, starting with the signature bottle tree in Wendy’s front garden.  Very Southern!  And on the left is a bit of canna drama found in the front yard of Wendy’s next-door neighbor, horticulturist Margaret Atwell.  When not tending her plant-packed garden here in Takoma Park, Margaret works as the rosarian at the  U.S. Botanic Garden.  According to Holly Shimizu, director of the USBG, Margaret’s also in charge of the containers arrangements there, which Holly brags about to anyone who’ll listen.

Above, Margaret’s equally charming , super-colorful house.

A mulch-covered path across Margaret front garden.

Just one of many great combinations in this garden – the bark of a crape myrtle with a variegated Carex and sprawling hydrangeas underneath it.

Above, part of Margaret’s curbside garden.

Posted by Susan Harris.