Scenes from the Garden

Pink Knockouts and Blaze roses.


With our mild winter here in central Wisconsin, roses are in their heyday, some from two weeks to six weeks early. My climbers, William Baffin, Blaze, John Cabot and the likely Pierre du Ronsard (still not sure on that one), are in full bloom. My Pink Knockouts are also kicking it, too. Giving it up as the last members of the family rosa to bloom, ninebarks, potentillas, as brambles are also adding to the show. Joining in the fray are the early blooming clematis and peonies. The geraniums also are starting to look nice. Enjoy the pictures!

Pierre du Ronsard or Eden rose.

Rose 'Blaze'

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Geranium 'Tiny Monster'

Clematis 'Deronda'

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Dappled Willow - 'Hakuro Nishiki'

Developing the Future Buddy Skills

Since the day my son came home at 15 1/2 telling me he needing to get his temps (as in learning permit to drive a car) ASAP, I knew this day was coming. Yesterday, Handsome Son graduated from high school. And since I did understand he will someday have to operate in the real world as a responsible adult, I knew I had to get off the mark and give him the skills he would need to be that man I want him to be.

I have been referring to his teenage years as his being an adult-in-training and the skills he needs as his "future buddy skills". It's the way men bond, as in, "Hey, buddy! I've got a pizza coming; come over and give me a hand on my deck." Translation: "Hey, I don't have a clue how to build my deck, but I know you might and I'll bribe you with pizza if you give me a hand!" This unknown friend with pizza, I refer to as his future buddy. So he has been learning to use a circular saw, a drill, jigsaw, build a garden gate, a deck, fasten wood deck boards to concrete, what a three-way switch is and how it works, how to prune, plumb a sink drain, install curtain rods, and troubleshoot appliances. You get the idea. One of our more interesting projects was this cotton duck canvas tarp/tent rain and shade screen for the side yard we used for his graduation party. I priced tents from rental places and found the price for a day and a half for the basic size of 20' x 20' to be $180. Wow. And then it hit me with my intensively gardened yard, I don't have a 20' x 20' space. So, it came to me that with my fence set 14' from my house, I could literally run a tarp from fascia to fence. I began pricing cotton duck tarps. For $100, I could get a 14' x 16' tarp (plus $40 shipping) and fasten it with eye hooks and bungee cords and once the hooks are initially installed, I could put up and take down the tarp in minutes and have a great space for outdoor entertaining. So with this latest evolution of my garden space, the landscaping in this area will no doubt evolve to make better use of the space. But a decidedly clever application of tenting, and something my son can add to his future buddy skill set.

A Favorite Blue Hosta

I like the hosta 'Abiqua Drinking Cup'. They take a while to grow so are not often seen at large commercial garden centers, but are worth looking for.

The Family Garden Plot

I'm sharing a picture of this wonderfully textured hosta with you this morning, because there is nothing much to see in the family garden plot which my brother, my sister-in-law and her boys, I, and occasionally Handsome Son garden. While this hosta was still in the process of unfurling its limey leaves, the rest of us were planting 'Contender' beans, which red-headed nephew called a "long process" with an emphasis only a just three-year-old can add. He and his twin were alternately lining up the beans about 6-8" apart in rows rather than hills at the the bequest of their mom with Happy Baby in a carrier up front. We also planted Kidney beans, three types of sweet corn ('Country Gentleman', 'Jubilee', and 'Early Sunglow'). We planted potatoes, 'Superior', 'Red Pontiac', 'Red Norlan', and 'All Blue'. Last year our potato crop was miniscule. About the time the potatoes could start packing on some weight, our crop was top-side being decimated by Colorado potato beetles. The family garden plot is a good ten miles from actually agribusiness type 100-acre plots of commercial potatoes, so I was a bit bemused by their ready arrival the first year on our family potatoes. I'm not squeemish, I went over the crop twice picking off every beetle and larvae I could find to no avail. I recognized the larvae for what it would become early on, and got right on the problem, nothing could be done. I was out-numbered. The timing was bad. Rain kept us from properly preparing the ground which had lain fallow for many years, and it was only rototilled-- a mistake. This year, the plot has been properly plowed and tilled. Our root crops will have a much easier time of it. Over the winter, I spent time pouring over the latest information on how to organically outsmart the potato beetle. The organic people are putting great hopes on Spinosad, a new naturally derived organic similar to Neem. The more I read about it, I'm not sure how it came up with its organic certification. I have my concerns, especially when anything is labeled not to use where run-off into areas with aquatic organism. That's a red flag for me. So I consulted with my dad, a long-time past potato farmer and son of a potato farmer. Varieties make a difference. 'Superior' seems to have some resistance. Also timing might be the issue. I didn't realize that before the advent of big business farming that potatoes were generally cropped as an early and late crop. Early crop were planted as soon as the ground could be worked in the spring, here typically Good Friday weekend. These potatoes were dug around the Fourth of July, just shortly before the beetle really raised havoc in our garden. Other potatoes were planted late May or early June and harvested in the fall. Additionally each crop typically had one of our two rainy periods to pack on the water weight before harvest in times before the big computer controlled walk-around "water monsters" irrigated them. So this year, different varieties, different timing, a location as far from the other as the small plot will allow, better soil preparation. No Spinosad. We'll see.

'Hanakisoi' Gets Her TIme in the Spotlight

I have had some surprising casualties of this past winter, our mildest one on record; a variegated pink silene, white baby's breath, blue flax, some iris crisata, an azalea 'Mandarin Lights', miscanthus 'Purple Flame Grass, closed bottle gentian. All have been in my garden for years. I had thought a long stem red rose had also expired. A rose propagated from a dozen roses given to me on a Valentine's Day that was extra special, my son's first-- or maybe second-- depending on how you count, as he was conceived on Valentine's Day nineteen years ago. Just the other day I notice growth at the ground and vowed this year to make another rose from this special plant. This is a rose that I had dug up and brought with me from the house in IL and was now at ten years in its new home, and established plant. Likewise Japanese tree peony 'Hanakisoi' is an established beauty, now taking its place in the spotlight.

Clematis 'Josephine' is Queen

Clematis 'Josephine' is queen of my garden today, even if a few other vignettes and blooms are giving her a run for the money.

Although the Japanese tree peony 'Hanakisoi' is kicking it, too! Both of these stunners need a couple years to establish themselves in the garden and like to be planted a bit deep or heavily mulched. The clematis obviously needs a structure to entwine itself upon and a bit of encouragement to do so. Not visible is a green cage I allow my peony to grow up through.

My Mother's Favorite Annual

My mother looks for it each and every year. Some years she finds one, other years, no. So far this year, not found. The Love Lies Bleeding, a dreadlocks sort of amaranth is one of her favorite annuals to pot up.

Broken

Some days I feel there is something just so wrong going on with our society. We are more divisive, less tolerant of one another, and we live in what seems to be an increasingly violent and short-tempered world. I tended to believe we were just becoming more global. A bus goes off a hillside in the Andes, we hear about it. A village is flooded in Myanmar, it is news. Some terrorist is able to perfect an underwear bombing scheme... REALLY? I substitute teach during the school year, and this year I often feel the end of the regular school year can't come soon enough. I'm teaching summer school, this year, and I am really excited about it. I'll have the same students for each of four different hours of the day for twenty days. I get to teach fractions, percentages, and proportions (which I just love manipulating). Fractions are somehow like art or music. They are beautiful for themselves. It's my favorite part of math. And I get to do a class of my own devising, "Life Before Electronics: Exploring Hobbies". My goal with LBE is to expose kids to something not non-stop, not computer-aided. I want this 45-minute block of their summer school to be self-directed. I'll guide, but I hope the kids will feel relaxed enough to explore some of the live-long hobbies I have so enjoyed. So many students say they are bored or have nothing to do when I see them in the course of the regular school day. Or when asked their hobby, reply with, "Playing video games?" Like it counts. Yesterday, I subbed for Art. For a couple of my longer classes we were able to walk the couple blocks over to high school and take in the whole school district art show. There were probably 2,000 items on display. Some of the students finished in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes? I was there twice, and I couldn't take it all in. My two later classes having short 30-minute art classes were left to work on finishing projects from the previous class or upon completing those, sketching. So, it being art, I brought along my own sketch on which I have been working. I believe modeling good things helps. When I teach music, I bring my clarinet. In preparation for my Handsome Son's Graduation, which is being referred to here as "Commencement" as it is the same day as my father's 79th birthday and we are celebrating a new year for him and a beginning for my son; I have been trying to get my house and yard "in order." Redecorating the living room has been a slow year long project, a major part coming with laying carpet a couple weeks ago. With the laying of carpet came a new furniture layout and the realization I needed a sofa table. But not any sort of reasonable sofa table, given my tiny house, a trapezoidal sofa table. I am into Gustav Klimt and have two of his prints on my living room walls. I thought I would try my hand at incorporating the feel of the organic and decorative detailing into a painted piece for this sofa table. So I am working on my sketch at the front of the classroom. The students are busy chatting and drawing, for the most part. Every so often, I get up and look over the shoulder of the budding artists, some with much more talent than I. Every so often there is a child crying out for attention, slapping his ruler against the table, testing it, the table, and my tolerance for this annoying and potentially destructive behavior. Today, I was able to quell the ruler slacker with eye contact and a Vulcanian raised eyebrow. Other days, I am not so lucky. And then I hear it. Cra-a-ack! And again. Crac-a-ck! The slow cracking of pencils. Lined up on the back counter are a few boxed of miscellaneous markers, crayons, and colored pencils. Four boys stand together, but instead of searching out a favorite shade of cerulean, charcoal, or lime green, they are looking for the longest and most elegant of the pencils still remaining at this point in the school year and two at a time, breaking them in half. They are not looking to see if they have my attention. They are completely enthralled by the sound of their dominance over a box of hapless pencils. What is so broken with these particular boys that this behavior is so absorbing. The rest of the class realizes I am on the move now. When I reach them and peer over their shoulders I realize they have broken not 4-6 pencils, but maybe 50! They are sent back to their tables. My somewhat carefree mood goes slightly dark. "What possesses you?" I look at them as a group. "Such destructive behavior!" In a class, where they can chat with their tablemates, express themselves, move around the room, and have endless sources of inspiration, mindless destruction of a box of hapless pencils seemed the preferred activity.

The World Needs More Tulips

Parrot Tulip It is a dreary weekend here. Between Thursday and Friday nearly five inches of rain fell on central Wisconsin. As I write this we are under a flood warning as it has rained a lot every day since, too. So I am indoors. Unlike Zooey Deschanel, I am not dancing and ordering out tomato soup on my iPhone4S. I'm pretty sure an iPhone4S couldn't get service here anyway, and it would probably pick out the same restaurant for tomato soup as Zooey's because I'm pretty sure it is not on the menu of any of the restaurants around these parts. Anyway, I have a long list of indoor projects to work on in preparation for Handsome Son's big day. Yesterday, I spent an incredible amount of time cleaning out and moving stuff out of my kitchen and painting merely a quarter of it. There are so many cut-outs, windows, I don't think I could lay a roller strip down anywhere. It is a very time consuming room to paint. This morning, instead I am working on gathering pictures from my laptop for a large poster size collage of all my son's achievement and milestone as a "brag wall". According to his dad, these are all the rage back in the small town his nephews and nieces are growing up in and in the greater Chicagoland area as well. I am not doing very well on this. I get waylaid...a lot. I have nearly 11,000 photos and video clips loaded on this laptop. Along with the ones of Handsome Son, and those I have taken for the village website, are oodles of garden pictures. Looking through them and comparing them to my garden this spring, I realize my world needs a lot more tulips. Tulips are a short-lived return on your garden dollar. Times being what they are, tulips are one of the things I have scrimped on. Some varieties, do indeed perennialize. Others do with a little help. I have had great luck with both red and yellow Appledorn perennializing. Years ago when my son's father and I first bought the house in Elgin I planted 25 yellow and 25 red Appledorn. Twenty years later, they are still there, in the hundreds each. Others that perennialize well include parrots, species tulips, and green tulips. Three years ago I picked up about 50 white Darwins on a deep discount. I typically do not have good luck with Darwins perennializing, but there they were nestled among the daylilies with at least 50 blooms yet again this spring. Others need a bit more help. Triumphator and lily-flowering tulips fall in this category. They are best dug up every couple years, divided and replanted. I have had good luck with many tulips once they have gone dormant, with digging them up, storing them until fall and then planting them out. I had an area I called the Tulip Walk when I lived in Elgin that I replanted all the stray tulip bulbs I came across when I weeded and gardened through the summer. I stored them in an ice cream pail on a hook in the garage. When they rebloomed in the spring they formed a beautiful tapestry of all colors, shades, and bloom times. So through this summer I will check my computer for pictures of tulips to find those lurking that did not bloom. I will dig them up and store them, replanting them in the fall. And I will pick out one more sensational tulip

and buy 100 or so and plant a Conga line of tulips along one of my curved bed lines that will make my heart dance in the spring.

Tulip 'Ballade'

Tulip 'Queen of the Night'

Lily flowering-tulip

Planting Oak Trees

Last September, just before Labor Day, on the first day of school, my village suffered an extended power outage from a storm that blew up suddenly and a nearly horizontal path through the county. We are underpopulated, very rural, my village of 713 people includes in that total an assisted living care unit and what used to be referred to as a retirement home, but seems to have more of the nearly totally bedridden and those suffering from Alzheimer these days than anyone else. In other words, we are last in line for getting power restored when a large percentage of the Fox Valley is without power. Some were without power for a week. Although trees fell on power lines and limbs sliced through roofs in the village, our residents were unharmed. Hardest hit was our village-maintained cemetery, Oak Hill. We lost several limbs off large white pines on the perimeter and a couple oaks, one in particular nearly three feet in diameter. The debris from this large oak alone covered possibly a quarter of the older section of the cemetery. As our Village Maintenance Department Supervisor said during a board meeting, "We need to plant some more oak trees at the --- Hill Cemetery." So planting oaks he did, yesterday. With oak wilt running through central Wisconsin and whole groves of these trees being decimated, oaks are getting a bad rap in the minds of many as a planting tree. Most of the oaks around self-seeded. With the increase in deer browse from herd pressures, there are not a lot of oaks coming up to take the place of these majestic trees. Oak Hill Cemetery is an old cemetery dating from before the establishment of our village. The oak that was felled in last Labor Day weekend's storm may have been its naming tree. We felt we had no other choice in regards to replacements but more white oak. Through my horticulture connections, I was able to get five nice six foot tall oaks bare root. Oaks are sometimes a difficult tree to transplant. Oaks bought bare root need to be "sweated." These oaks are typically dug in the fall and held in cold storage. Cold storage induces dormancy. Sweating these bare root oaks breaks the dormancy. Sweating is done best by spraying the oaks with water and packing the roots in some sort of material (sawdust, mulch, compost, straw, marsh hay-- my favorite is compost) that will hold moisture so the roots do not dry out during the sweating period. Then the entire tree is wrapped tightly in plastic to provide a humid environment. These sweating oaks are kept in a building or under controlled condition at 50 to 70 degrees (F) and out of direct sunlight. I like to use the large corrugated cardboard box looking very much like an "oak coffin", in which they were dropped-shipped, but you may need to improvise. Once the sweating process begins, I feel very much like the caretaker for something out of Twilight, checking the coffin for sign of life in a thing that can only be thought of as undead. During this time, allowing the oaks to sit in a pond of collected water, freezing, or allowing the oaks to dry out will all ensure the oaks will not only be undead, but not break dormancy and be truly dead dead. Once the bud have begun to swell, they are ready to plant. When the buds swell they will increase in size and you may see some color from white to a light green line running along the edge of the scales on the buds. This sweating is necessary for all members of the rosa family, which includes fruiting trees, roses, and brambles, but also members of the genus quercus and acer (oaks and maples). It is fairly quick for the roses, pears, plums, and apples; but takes a bit longer for oaks and maples. It is best to plant during periods of high humidity after the chance of a hard frost is low. In central Wisconsin, this is mid-May and October. Before planting soak the roots in warm water for at least a half hour and no longer than 12 hours. Plant so soil level will be at the beginning of the root flare. At Oak Hill, they are planted with a bit of a depression around the tree and the drip line is free of grass, a good idea in an area where the predominate soil type is sand. Keep your oak well-watered through the growing season and after the fall hard freeze until the ground freezes and you will be well on your way to having your tree survive.

Finally Friday: Clematis 'Josephine'

My clematis 'Josephine' is coming into furious and floriferous bloom. There are almost more buds than I can count. 'Josephine' is an over-the-top clematis which when seen other gardeners cannot seem to believe it could possibly be hardy here in central Wisconsin. This beauty should be commencing its bloom in time for my Handsome Son's big day! A few notes on 'Josephine'. She blooms twice on new and old wood and the blooms on the old wood are double, so prune only for shape. Bury a couple leaf notes below the surface when planting it. Go for the east or west side of a building when planting and provide something for it to crawl up. Planting next to a foundation will provide alkaline leeching into the soil and help with the proper pH for clematis. Clematis like their water and fertilizer,a good 10-10-10 will do. Mulching your clematis heavily is always a good idea, particularly if you are not sure if it has been planted at the proper depth or if your clematis is an inherited one.

Pinch, Pinch, Pinch: "Please Pinch Me!"

Okay, you know all those bushy plants you see in your garden centers? You take them home and the next year they are LAN-KY! One spindly stem with a single flower? Well, I am here to tell you a secret! It doesn't have to be that way. Nope. Most likely the plant you bought was on a chemical product to make it branch and grow bushy. I'm not a chemical girl. The big growers use these chemicals because it is effective and achieves their goal of bushy plants, it is cost effective, and the whole plant is affected, they don't miss any growing tips. The home gardener can achieve the same results, mechanical. Pinch, pinch, pinch. Here in central Wisconsin, you want to pinch back a great long list of plants so when they do bloom you get multiples and bushy plants. I pinch nearly all of the Plants on this list through at least the third week in June. Some, like goldenrod 'Fireworks' and turtlehead, I continue to pinch into the first couple weeks of July. Here's the list! Pinch away! You'll see multiple shoots coming from the leaf axials in just a few days to a week of so. You'll be glad you did when you are rewarded with multiple blooms! Turtlehead - Chelone (all) Goldenrod 'Fireworks' Asters (all) Phlox (all with the exception of subulata or creeping phlox) Beebalm - monarda Nepeta - catmint Calamintha Sedum (can be pinched, but the effect which causes branching changes the basis look of the plant) Do not pinch lilium species, echinea or coneflowers, liatris, astilbe, daylilies, hosta, geum, and iris. Trimming back panicum and miscanthus as they start sending up fresh growth can make them denser. I'm sure there are more that can be added to the "Please Pinch Me" list. Let me know if I missed your favorite!

Blueberries in Bloom

Growing blueberries in Wisconsin can be super easy or incredibly difficult. There are places in Wisconsin where a gardener can literally plant them in the ground and walk away (Wisconsin Rapids through Tomah). Other places, this part of central Wisconsin-- not so much. A clue for you, if Ocean Spray or one of the other big cranberry producers is growing cranberries in your area, you're a lucky gardener when it comes to blueberries.

The rest of us, buckle up for the ride.

The biggest problem, other than pricey plants(!), is generally the blueberries for sale in your big box store are not necessarily the ones best suited for your growing area. I have had the good fortune to be able to discuss blueberry growing with a doctor of horticulture and one of the larger blueberry farmers in the Midwest. Without getting in the difference between high bush and low bush blueberries, when it comes to cultivars, choose those with the words "blue" or "north" in their cultivar name. Good examples are 'Blueray', 'Northsky', or 'Northern Blue'. Another cultivar, which is really a selection of the native wild variety found here in Wisconsin is 'Friendship'.

'Friendship' has a lot going for it; hardiness, disease resistance, good wild blueberry taste, and yield. The down side is the berries are smaller.While blueberries can self-pollinate, it is recommended you choose a couple varieties with overlapping bloom times for heavier yield.

Blueberries are strange as I have seen some cultivars with ripe berries, while other are coming into bloom. Nor do the berries ripen all at one time. The berry production seems to be spread over a fairly lengthy time frame. For these reasons, you need to set out a number of plants to provide enough berries at any given time, if you intend to preserve them or make a pie. In the family garden, I planted 20 plants of two varieties. In my own potager, I have six plants.

After you have chosen your plants, you need to think about your soil. Freely draining soil with lots of organic material is best. Blueberries like water, too, although do not care for wet feet. Counter-intuitively, blueberries could do as well in a swamp as a hilly ravine.

Acidity of the soil is the next hurdle for the would-be blueberry gardener. Here in central Wisconsin, the rain actually has an alkaline pH. The very water from the sky is working against the pH you need to build into your soil to support blueberry culture. The acidity that is the same thing that azaleas need to thrive, and your hydrangeas need to be blue is necessary to blueberries. Without this acidity, it is difficult for blueberry roots to extract the elements from the soil it needs to survive, putting your blueberry plants in a constant state of stress.

I have had some luck with azaleas by over-fertilizing them and careful watering. It is possible the home blueberry gardener could have good luck the same way. It is much easier to work a lot of organic material into your planting area beforehand and top-dress seasonally with the same spaghum peat moss. Some gardeners may not prefer the esthetic but mulching with a four-inch layer of pine needles each year is also helpful. In the picture above, I am also taking advantage of the natural acidity of the cellulose in shredded paper by using my caged blueberry area as my shredded paper composting area.

Here in central Wisconsin, rabbits are an issue. Deer, however, can be just as bad. There is a country road winding back and forth not far from here through a cutout in a hill with the Blueberry Hill Road. When I was a child, I would pick blueberries on this hill. Now, I would be hard put to find more than a couple plants. Increases in the deer herd and its browse of these plants through the winter has all but decimated these plants. So a fencing and netting (birds, should you get to the berry-producing stage) is vital.

Unless they yet freeze, always a possibility it seems in central Wisconsin, my blueberries look like I may just have a few batches of blueberry muffins in my future from these bushes I planted last spring.