Signs of Spring

We have had a very mild winter – Dec 2011-Feb 2012.  Camellias and Japanese apricots have bloomed nonstop for us.  Now with a few daffodils and hellebores in flower we get a week of wind and a blast of artic air coming in from Canada.

I was quick to retrieve my unplanted, container-grown shrubs and group them next to the northside of our house and mulch them in well.  Some shrubs that get purchased in the winter have a way of stockpiling until spring rolls around; this is not in there best interest I know.  Seeing the terminal buds showing green, I knew that their roots were growing and they were vulnerable to freezing temperatures. Though we garden in Zone 7a, the recent night temps have hovered in the teens, viz..though not reaching average minimum temps of 0-5 F. Thank God !

It would be great to have a blanket of snow for a couple days, just to see the beauty of winter; however, we are comfortable with an early spring and look forward to turning the soil again in the vegetable garden.  ( The urge or necessity to put my bass boat in the water comes to mind with every mild, sunny day! Water draws me much like an unruly twig shooting out of a wellgroomed hedge.)  I do have a passion for gardening but a warm day on the lake trumps a walk in the garden, I must admit !

I saw a new planted of ‘Crimson Candles’ camellias beginning to bloom this week and must get one.  They are very floriferous and have 2-inch double crimson flowers- no the usual look of japonicas.  I acquired two new trees….the  sweet heart tree and seven sons tree. The Shooting Star hydgranea has been a conversation piece at my garden club presentations.  I should be receiving a commission from the breeder for extolling the accolades on this unique cultivar if the Bigleaf/lacecap species.

 

 

Citrus and Christmas

Written in 1994 by a lover of the Dancy Tangerine:

“On the night of the winter solstice, I approach the venerable old tree,
living shrine of the sacred genes.  With snippers in hand I begin
harvesting the fruit.  With each little snip, the cool breeze from the
lake becomes more and more perfumed with thymol and limonene, an
olfactory flashback to holidays past and future.  The tangerines are at
their peak, nearly explosive with aromatics; just handling them is
enough to release a little peel oil, compounding the orgy of promising
aromas, harbingers of gustatory gratification.

Gently I carry them into the house.  Holding one up to the light,
I savor the characteristics of this cultivar, the variety that I value
above all others.  The indescribable but unmistakable color, somewhere
between red and orange, more tantalizing than the glint of gold.
I offer obeisance to these noble oblate orboids, and break one open
as an oblation.  The rind is thin and tight but easy to peel, and soon
the interior glory is revealed: the articulated segments, the hollow
axis, the mysterious bits of stringy “rag.”  Two segments at once, gotta
have it, I bite down and the juice sprays onto my eagerly waiting tongue
and palate.  Ah, the complex completeness of it all; a chemical orchestra playing the finest
sensory symphony.
Lord, curse the citrus breeders who create varieties that are hard
enough to roll down conveyor belts and be dropped into boxes, varieties
that look good but taste like sugared cellulose, cultivars that can be
waxed and sit on a store shelf for three weeks and still look attractive
enough to trick someone into buying them.

What is Christmas without citrus….juicy tangelos and navel oranges. I love Christmas and its meaning…..the true gift: the Christ child born in Bethlehem.

Remarkable Roses

I was blown away today, so to speak, not by the autumn wind but by the color in Witherspoon’s Rose Garden in Durham, NC.  With every Piedmont, NC resident focused on the vivid tree foliage that now surrounds, the fact that roses can be so incredibly beautiful in October seems to pass us by.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I wheeled off I-40 and stopped in to say “hello” to some ol’ friends and take a peep at their display garden. I had worked with THE rose man, Bob Witherspoon, in the 1980′s when I served as the horticulture agent in Durham. Bob could get you excited about the possibilities of a rose bed and he had the knowledge to jump start a passing interest. Clearly, roses have come a long way since that time, and most gardeners have added Knockout roses to their home landscapes despite their fear of the dreaded blackspot leaf disease– yes, it can reak havoc on a bed of tea roses!

Oct 25, 2011 couldn’t have been a more perfect day for a walk in a rose garden (75 F and sunny.)  A prime opportunity to evaluate the foliage of modern rose varieties, following a typical Tar Heel summer.  Witherspoon’s had done their homework…routine spraying, fertilizing, grooming and ample irrigation. The roses were flowering to beat the band and I was flitting around the garden, pencil in hand, trying to make some notes for future reference. It was near impossible to find ”just a few” noteworthy varieties, as I was feeling overwhelmed by the sight of so many near-perfect selections.

Fortunately my wife was with me, and she so aptly picked up on the fragrance factor. I followed suit and soon we were going round and round about which ones we rank highest for our garden.  It was exhausting, but I think we narrowed it down to 20 varieties that were outstanding that day.  (I must say that ’Pink Peace’ and ‘Brigadoon’ caught my eye….and any yellow flowered variety.) I hate being nailed down on selecting roses cultivars as roses are such incredible flowers…truly, horticultural wonders !

Importance of Trees

After researching the archives from the early Moravian settlers upon arrival to the 100,000 acre Wachovia tract, now the city of Winston-Salem, NC,  it is evident to me that there would have been a second “lost colony” were it not for the diverse hardwood forests of the piedmont region. Virtually, every natural resource the early frontiersmen needed was found in our Tar Heel state.

This early colony founded Bethabara and later Salem in the 1750′s and soon realized they needed a forester for sustainability and good stewardship of their woodland acquisition. Christian Reuter was not only America’s first forester but was a skilled surveyor and botanist. I find it intriguing that he busied himself with his job and proclaimed that it was his calling to serve God through his profession. How inspiring!

The finest lumber for construction was found in Wachovia: yellow poplar, white and red oaks, hickory (the most abundant tree) and walnuts (the most valuable tree). The forests provided nuts and berries; cedar and locust for fencing livestock; streams for water which was pumped through bored-out shortleaf pine logs to the town square, still operational today. No doubt the sourwood, red maple and gum trees supported a fledgling beekeeping industry in the colony. Peach and cherry trees were cultivated for winter fruit and myriad deserts. The hard wood found in dogwood and hornbeam trees was a constant source of handles and crude tools in the wilderness. Even the unsightly sassafras offered a “cure for what ails you.”

As autumn approaches I have a renewed appreciation for our forests and the natural resources we often take for  granted. With every colorful leaf that falls, I remember the settlers and their quest to etch out a place in the backwoods to build a nation and serve their God.

Moonvine showtime

What is fragrant, intriguing, and best enjoyed in the garden at dusk?  ( Hint: it is not a bat wearing Old Spice cologne.)  Moonvine is a noctural member of the morning glory family.

After a couple of years going without annual vines on a garden trellis, I found some seeds in a Charlotte store for spring planting.  From previous experience I learned to soak the seeds a couple of days before sowing them. Despite the extra seed handling required I didn’t get 100%  success…but 2 out of 3 seeds making vigorous, garden worthy plants may not be too bad after all. 

Moonvine likes a hot spot and average soil with plenty of head room when the plant explodes in all directions by midsummer.  I like this carefree, pest resistant beauty; a no frills tender vine. By August, huge, saucer-size blooms grace the evening, lasting until midmorning when they wilt in the heat. Don’t expect the sweet scent of perfumed flowers to fill the air though- unlike daphne and gardenias - their fragrance must be appreciated up close.

I most love their pure white flowers and the stark constrast with other late summer perennial blossoms. The slight trouble in keeping the rangy twining shoots tied to a trellis is worth the casual effort.

I keep hoping to discover an exotic moth exploring the moonvine trellis for a taste of its nectar, but I am convinced that NC is not a natural environ for this type of symbiotic relationship….and that’s the downside for the scientist in me.  

Happy gardening!

 

 

Straw Bale Gardens

While in a hurry to plant some early white potatoes in late February this winter, I decided to try my hand at gardening in a couple of surplus bales of wheat straw left from a November cookout…bales can double as seats by the bonfire.  I recall seeing an old lady in our neighbor plant tomatoes in such bales back in the sixties. (I guess that makes me the “ol man” now. Oh well.)

I googled instructions online and began the process promptly. Step one” arrange the bales with the twine parallel to the ground. Step two:  dig three holes in each bale and pour in cottonseed meal, some 10-20-20 and compost; next, thoroughly soak the bales with water.  By mid-March I dropped a pound of Yukon Gold seed potatoes in the “prepared holes” and let nature take its course.  By May, I was watering once each week and enjoying the lush foliage cascading from the bales. At least once in the growth cycle I applied a drench of Peters soluble fertilizer for an extra shot of nitrogen to keep the leaves rich green.

In early June the foliage yellowed and I pulled apart the rotted straw to gather my harvest. The potatoes were smooth as silk and CLEAN.  There were 2 large, fist-size potatoes per plant and a couple of small ones–perfect for boiling with a mess of green beans.  I must say I was a bit disappointed with the overall yield but this was just an experiment to grow a crop I found was not economically feasible considering the low cost of buying potatoes.  Clay soil is best left for growing sweet potatoes in my opinion.

An added benefit of the remaining spoiled straw was for mulch;  my tomato plants appreciated the mulch in July when our drought set in. As for next year, I will probably try the experiment again in spring and attempt a circular designed bed of straw bales, leaving the center open for compost and soil mix. I saw this arrangement in a gardening magazine and thought it was a good idea. This may be an alternative method to avoid prepping  a new space that is devoid of topsoil and replete with heavy clay.  Raised bed gardens come in myriad forms besides wooden boxes piled deep with soil mix.

Happy gardening!

Summer Color Borders

Horticulturally speaking, July and August are the two months that separate “the men from the boys.” The game is on…insects, drought, blights, mites, and a plethora of other pests and 4-legged critters.

When I look at our garden border in July, I’m rarely dissapointed with my decision to choose some native perennials for the summer flower show. Clearly, there are lots of new flower varieties on market, but the old mainstays are solid plants. Here are a few we depend upon for hardiness/heat tolerance : Goldsturm rudbeckia, garden phlox, crocosmia, Oriental lily (Stargazer), daylily ‘Stella d’ora’ ,  Texas star hibiscus,  hosta (for flowers and variegated foliage),  coralbells, nippon daisy (a late-blooming shasta daisy, liatris, Brazilian blue sage and my favorite- purple coneflowers. The biggest problem this year was an early outbreak of powdery mildew on the phlox….I depended on pruning to deal with the fungus, a real mistake this season! One mildew resistant zinnia, also a dwarf, is the Cherry and Apricot Profusion selections….though annuals, they work well in the front of a perennial border in the spot we once reserved for monkeygrass.

In the fall I plan to add a few special plants that petered out in the perennial border—namely, Mongolian aster, ginger lily, dwarf cana, elephant ears and Mexican sage (for fall blooms).  I discovered the Japanese mums over the last decade and look forward to the color they provide in October.

Grooming perennial flowers is not that challenging; you must be willinging to lopp them back occasionally, mulch and toss them a little 10-20-20 periodically to keep them growing. It’s hard to pass up the season to take cuttings on mums and other perennials. Four-inch tip cuttings root easily in a mixture of equal parts perlite and peat moss or vermiculite.  The daylilies can be separated now to share or increase your collection.

If you share garden flowers with a friend, by all means keep the plants labelled correctly. Cultivar names are lost over time; hopefully we can remember the flower color, and that’s a drawback when you want to locate a specific variety at the nursery. We all do this….so my trick is to make notes in a gardening book or journal that I plan on keeping. My personal copy of The NC Gardener’s Guide has lots of cultivar names written into the page margins and provides me with a ready resource for a plant search.

Happy Summer gardening!