Author: Lilac

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More Good Gardening Books – Part II

In the last post, TheGardenLady wrote about Edible Landscaping, the American Horticulture Society’s pick for one of the top four best gardening books for 2011. To see the other books that the American Horticulture Society thinks are the best books for 2011 check out their website.They also list their gardening book winners for the past few years.

When looking at books, there are two authors whose books are always excellent. First there is Michael A. Dirr. Dirr is a professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia and the author of twelve books. Dirr has received the highest teaching and gardening awards from the University of Georgia, American Society of Horticultural Science, American Horticultural Society, American Nursery & Landscape Association, Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Southern Nursery Association, and Garden Club of America. His most famous book seems to be “Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs: An Illustrated Encyclopedia,” but I recommend any of his books for any garden lover.

Another author with excellent books for gardeners is Dr. Allan Armitage (see here) who mostly writes about herbaceous perennial plants. His most recent book won the American Horticultural Award for best gardening book in 2011. This book is:

“Armitage’s Vines and Climbers” by Allan M. Armitage Timber Press, Portland, Oregon

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The Rose Parade in California

Rose parade 2010 Pasadena, Calif. by Sunriserjay

A dream of this GardenLady has been to one day go to the Rose Parade in California. It sounds like the most beautiful parade in the world. I want to see in real time so many flowers floating by in one parade; how floats can even by made of flowers. This is one parade, I believe, that seeing on TV can do justice to it.

horn of plenty by donielle

A master maker of rose parade floats is Fiesta Parade Floats (see here), a company that has a “67 percent winning rate for their floats averaged over the past twenty years”. I would love to be a volunteer working on one of their floats.

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TheGardenLady’s Morning Glories

Morning Glories – Full by Knowsphotos

My morning glories (Ipomoea) are in their full glory. Their heart shaped leaves make a dense bower and there are dozens of light blue flowers. ‘Heavenly Blue’, my favorite color for morning glories, are opening daily with hundreds of buds waiting on the sidelines to open for many more days of blooms. I just hope we don’t have an early frost that will kill the unopened buds. The leaves and flowers are flowing over my arbor and also in a mound next to a tree. I hoped these mounded morning glories would climb the tree, but they had a mind of their own. This mound of flowers and the arbor covered in flowers are both in front of my house.  See this photo:

Morning glory vines are also climbing up a “No Parking On This Side of the Street” sign at the bottom of my property. This latter location did not make my local township police happy. I tried to keep the vine off the face of the sign. But the police cut half the vine last year and this year again. Last year I thought it was the deer who tore the vine and blamed the deer. This year, I realized the vine destruction was from human intervention. But even these vines continue to produce lots of flowers and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the police will see the beauty of the flowers as all the people walking by my house have and not cut them back any further.

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Why I Like Garter Snakes in My Garden

Garter Snake by Atomische • Tom Giebel

One day a friend sent me a photo of a tiny frog on one of her plants. She wanted to know if she should get rid of it. The other day when I was raking, I was raking with a young man who helps me once in a while on my grounds. (These are jobs my sons used to do for me. But where are they now when I am getting too old to do it by myself? Married and living far away so that they no longer have to do these chores and pretending that since they moved out the trees must have stopped shedding more leaves.  Why else wouldn’t they be rushing over to help me rake so that l wouldn’t have to spend money to hire another youngster :-)? )

While raking the young man saw a snake and asked me if he should kill it. He said that he didn’t like snakes. l gave him a resounding, ” NO do not kill the snake!”- just as I told my friend that her frog or toad was something she is lucky to have in her garden.  This summer I saw the first toad in my garden. I used to try to coax toads to live in my garden by bringing in toads from a friend’s backyard. She lived close by so I thought our environments were similar. But the toads always seemed to hop away. At least, I never saw them around. But I always wished that toads or frogs would adopt my garden. In the spring one of my favorite night choruses is of spring peepers that are singing in the property that is behind my property.  This is what I believe my friend found on her vegetation.

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How to Protect Tulips from Deer

Red tulips at my place by Per Ola Wiberg ~ Powi

What is it about tulips that make them so special? Over the years I had felt so frustrated that I couldn’t grow tulips because the animals would eat them. I used to drive by homes that had rows of tulips and wonder why the deer ate mine but not theirs. And then the next year, their tulips, too, disappeared.

One day, I went on a tour of Derek Fell’s garden. Derek Fell is a famous photographer of gardens and flowers among other subjects.  See here. He had opened his property for tours. Derek Fell lives in deer country yet when I visited he had a huge display garden filled with tulips. There was no fence around the entire property, just a low fence around the tulips. I hope my memory serves me about the fence. But a low fence would never keep deer out of a tulip bed. I was amazed. That was when he told me that he used Liquid Fence as a deer and rabbit repellent. It was then and there that I became a believer and started using Liquid Fence on all my plants. And last year, I was rewarded with the tulips I planted the previous fall. They all produced beautiful flowers. Not knowing what to expect, I had bought the cheapest small bulbs that year so that I would not waste money if they were eaten. Wonder of wonder. Here I had tulips flowering once again after a hiatus of at least 30 years. I could not be happier.

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Some Things to do in the Garden in October

october garden 33678 by flora.cyclam

I am getting ready for winter and thinking of next spring. Are my readers also doing the same?

I did my first major raking. Living with so many trees, this raking will be ongoing until the last leaf has fallen. But I never throw any leaves away. They are always saved. I don’t leave any leaves on my street. I greedily collect those, too, for composting. I hope you have compost bins for your leaves.

I just planted over 60 tulip bulbs for next spring. Now I have to hope that no varmint eats the bulbs. Unlike daffodil bulbs, tulip bulbs are not poisonous so animals may want to dig them to eat. But the vision of tulips in bloom, is worth the risk. Last year I only lost a few tulips. I have been talking to nursery people to ask what they do to safeguard bulbs and have been told that they put in red hot pepper flakes in the holes with the bulbs. They buy the cheapest giant economy size of pepper flakes for this purpose. I used up my old bottles of pepper flakes and also put in some moth balls into each hole with the bulb food. Then I sprinkled Tabasco sauce or hot chili oil plus stale ground black pepper on the ground after I covered the bulbs with soil. Hope that will detract those cheeky chipmunks.

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How TheGardenLady Identifies Plants

ForageSF by Jaymi Heimbuch

What does one do if one does not know the name of a plant that has no label or tag on it?

Two friends came to me this week with just such a request. I am pretty good at identifying plants that grow in my temperature zone 6 and try to recall the Latin name as well as the various common names of these plants. I also pride myself on being able to identify many of the native wild flowers or plants in my area. But there are so many flowering plants in the world, that it is impossible for any person to be able to name them all.

For a scientific account on the number of plants in the world, you can read this article. One of the sources I use says it lists 15,000 ornamental plants in the book. So though I know a number of tropical plants or plants that grow in different temperature growing zones, there are too many for me to really know. But when friends come to me and ask me to identify a plant, I am challenged. Then I am like a bulldog with a meat bone tenaciously trying to find the name of the plant in question.

tibouchina urvilleana by nestmaker

This week one plant that was fairly easy for me to identify was the Tibouchina urvillieana- Princess flower or glory bush because I had seen it before.  See here.  This gorgeous flower is a native of Brazil but is a noxious weed in Hawaii. In our temperature zone 6 it has to be taken in for the cold weather because frost will kill it. It will grow in zones 9-11 and perhaps zone 8. If grown indoors, grow Tibouchina in a soil-based potting mix in full light with shade from the hot sun. During the growing season water it freely and feed it a balanced liquid fertilizer monthly but water sparingly in the winter. If you grow it outdoors, grow it in moist fertile soil in the full sun.

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Don’t Always Blame the Deer

I Blamed it on the Deer by mtsofan

TheGardenLady wrote a column about deer and specifically said: Any person who is knowledgeable about deer will never tell you there is a plant that deer will not eat.

Deer will taste everything and will eat anything depending on how hungry they are. Deer have favorite plants. The plants that deer love they will eat entirely to the ground UNLESS you have a fence or you spray your plants with a deer deterrent.

Some people will tell you that deer don’t eat their sweet pea flowers Lathyrus odoratus yet other people will tell you they love to eat their sweet pea flowers. Deer will eat sweet pea flowers. Because a plant is poisonous to humans does not mean it is poisonous to deer. Perhaps your deer have enough other plants that they prefer eating in your garden. Deer have their preferences.

But remember, there are other garden pests who enjoy your garden. Rabbits love many of the same plants deer like and they often like many plants that are not deer favorites. So do not blame the deer for all the eaten plants in a garden. For example, rabbits love sweet pea flowers. For a list of the plants rabbits prefer check out this site:

 

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Helping Plants when Stressed by Weather Challenges

Bee Balm, Stressed | 199/365 by mfhiatt

Someone said that this summer has been the wettest on record-at least on the East Coast. Meanwhile parts of the US have had one of the longest, hottest droughts.  I believe the heat level is a record. The challenges for farmers and gardeners are huge. I often wonder if my parents could have become farmers if they had to overcome such weather hurdles. And the challenges for plants with this strange weather is enormous.

Plants of any kind, including trees, are under a great deal of stress with these weather extremes. Even when plants survive, stress makes the plants more vulnerable to disease and insect attacks. For those readers of TheGardenLady who want to learn more about plant stress and what is happening in the research on plant stress at a very academic level check out this.

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Hurricane Irene’s effects on the TheGardenLady’s property

Hurricane Irene Reaches New York City by NASA Goddard Photo and…

My heart goes out to all of you who are suffering from the after effects of Hurricane Irene. (This is a list of the names for storms) I was lucky.

The only problem on my property was the downing of lots of small branches and lots of black walnuts. If the electricity had not gone off for 3 days, from the looks of my property only, I would have thought this had been a relatively minor storm. My stream did not flood. The bottom of my property did not flood. No trees nor limbs of trees came down. And I didn’t get water in my basement.

But I know a lot of people suffered. A lot of people still don’t have electricity. Those who didn’t have electricity and had floods in their basements now have to contend with mold and the smells associated with dampness. Even those who had electricity, so much water poured in that their sump pumps could not pump it out fast enough. The thought of such a mess is depressing.

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