Sunday, April 29, 2012

Sunday Picture: Akebia Quinata and Rusty Garden Lizard

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Saturday is a Projects Day

I have been substitute teaching a lot this year. Politics being what they are, here in Wisconsin; there are a lot of teachers re-evaluating their life choices. One teacher I know is getting his CDL and I moving to India (where is wife teaches in an international school. Another, having her first child at the advanced age at which I gave birth to Handsome Son. All of this subbing, although great for my paycheck, is not so good with just getting everything done in a single parent household. It seems my car is constantly behind on its oil change. The vacuuming is never done, a job I thought I could delegate to Handsome Son who failed to realize we had a busted belt and the roller was not turning. It wasn't until I attempted to follow up on his shoddy performance on his bedroom carpet, that I realized what the problem was.
So today, I have a full day looming large. A day filled with laundry, replacing said belt and vacuuming, cleaning, potting on seedlings, planting seeds indoors and out, and also, in general, sprucing up my home in anticipation of the Commencement of Handsome Son.

I have also taken on a quilting project  for the mother of the manager my Handsome Son's basketball team.  She wanted a memory quilt comprised of squares from T-shirts her daughter had collected from various school and extracurricular activities.  The quilt sits at the top of my to-do list because the mother wants to display it at her graduation party.  The top of the quilt can be seen in this picture.  It gives you the general idea of the project, although unfinished.

Watering my potted seedling like the pretty peppers, pictured here, is also taking up more of my time. I am not sure what sort of harvest we will have, but with five weeks until the earliest plant out date for peppers they will demand a lot of care. One thing gardening does teach is consistency and follow-up. It is so easy to lose an entire crop with one day's indifference to the goal.
These are petunias I have grown from seed without special lights. I used regular shop lights, 4' florescent bulbs. They have been spending most days on the deck (out of room under the lights as I continue to pot on more veggies) that needs it yearly painting (being south-facing), but although frost-tolerant, even these guys have been brought in most nights. As for the beginnings of our local food harvests: There was no maple syrup season to speak of this year. My apricot tree looks pretty sad, its leaf buds and any small leaves having froze; I can not foresee a crop. Not only have the first blossoms of my strawberry plants froze, but additional blossoms as well, all spotting the "black eye" foretelling a sad tale. My very early 'Honeoye' are probably a loss. My neighbor has been putting a frost blanket on his,but as cold as it has been, Dr. Apps reports it has frozen through this safeguard, as well for his earlier cropping strawberries. He does have hopes for 'Sparkler', though. I do not have any 'Sparkler' planted this year. My blueberries, I have 'Blue Ray' and I think ' Northern Blue' like it cold, it seems; and the early variety is loaded with blooms. I may get a quart or two on the small number of bushes here in the potager. The family garden's blueberries, I do not yet know the status. As for the rhubarb, one of the earliest perennial fruits, it has a number of stalks, all very short. There are two flower stalks forming already though, which I will need to yank out. I thought this year to make rhubarb juice using my brother's fancy steamer. Hopefully, adding a fruit juice to our larder, low on juice types Handsome Son will consume. So start your projects people. It is a spring Saturday-- although at 47 degrees here-- it does not feel much like one!

Monday, April 23, 2012

My Dream Garden



I have been gardening nearly all my life, several decades. I have learned from friends, classes, books, the internet, a garden club to which I belonged, and most recently a retired doctor of horticulture and master daylily hybridizer. I have yet to have actually achieved my "dream garden".

In my dream garden, there is not a lot of grass. The grass that does coexist is lush, a little long and does not harbor creeping Charlie, nor quack grass masquerading as its domesticated cousin. The grass does not have grubs actively working its roots. It does not go dormant, dry out, or think about colonizing my garden beds.




In my dream garden, all the daylilies and iris actually bloom every year. Some of my iris don't bloom any given year making it hard for someone who is constantly moving stuff about to not throw out the baby with the bath water. I also have some poorly positioned daylilies in a bit too shady of spots that do not send up scapes. Whoever decided daylilies can tolerate shade was wrong, particularly since I have seen the effect of daylilies that get everything they need to be spectacular (in the garden of Dr. Darrel Apps). Full sun, people!

I will finish my hardscape projects, like this dry stone laid path, the beginnings of which can be seen here.


And I would have some nice statuary and garden art.





My dream garden would have lots of roses, clematis and peonies. They wouldn't be sad sorts of roses, clematis, and peonies with just a bloom or two. No, they would be so over laden with blooms that the weight of spring rains bear the blooms to the ground. Overblown and lush, their millions of petals would carpet the ground.


Sunday, April 22, 2012

Best Azaleas for Central Wisconsin


Azalea Northern Lights 'Mandarin'


Original Azalea Northern Lights


Azalea Northern Lights 'Rosy'


Rhododendron 'PJM'

Source of Funky Art: Repurposing

If you are a less artistic type, but still want to add pizazz to your garden this season, you may want to borrow art from other areas of your life. (I dislike using the same fairies, gnomes, squirrels everyone else has. Dragonflies are popular, and not quite so over used as frogs, making this dragonfly platter with an Asian art feel perfect on which to meditate in a Zen garden.) About a decade ago, I moved to my tiny house here in central Wisconsin. I had a nice blue fish serving platter (which if you scroll down you will see in a previous blog hanging on my fence behind some yellow tickseed and blue spiderwort. I have always liked looking at it, but seldom used it in my kitchen. Did I want to keep it? I'm afraid it lost the quarter toss against my plain white rimmed serving platter. So ten years ago I bought one of those plate hangers and took a nail and put it on display in my garden. I expected it to look the worse for wear or crack in half from Wisconsin winter. That is not the case. It looks like I hung it there yesterday. Takeaway: Ceramic platters can may great garden decorations! I have had a number of shabby chic rusty items fair not half so well and crumble away to bits in the same length of time. Just to give you an idea of some of the really artsy ceramic platters that are out there waiting to serve up summer on a fence, or as a butterfly or bird feeding station; I went to the Pier One web site and did a search for "platter". (Disclaimer: I have never gotten anything from Pier One, nor is this an advertisement for them. You can search the world at large! Have at!)
Any macro flower, animal could be cool.
I came across this fish bowl in my platter search. Not sure why it came up, but I thought, "Wow, a cool, although a bit pricey, container for a terrarium garden!" The number of different ceramic pieces that popped up was amazing. It is all up to you, pick your color, theme, and style and have some fun.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Adding Funky Garden Art to Your Garden

Hand-painted (by me!) clay pot filled with summer annuals: althenaria, heliychrysum, cream marigolds, and alyssum. Garden art is so much a matter of personal preference. I see it as jewelry for the garden, like a gorgeous ring fluttering on a well-manicured finger or earrings glinting from delicate earlobes. Garden art should enhance, not be your garden. One of the best things about going on Garden Walks in the summer is seeing how other gardeners accomplish this accessorization of their gardens. Last summer, I went on a Garden Walk held by the Outagamie Master Gardeners. One of the gardens featured had gardeners whose style could be categorized only by the the word "funky". Since taking pictures and posting them in my blog about the walk, I have come top realize how big a search magnet the work funky is when connected to garden art. If I ever do a book about garden art, it will decidedly have the word funky in the title. When it comes to placing art in the garden, big botanical gardens are not a lot of help. They can afford or have donated to them the works of award-winning sculptors and have the scale and budgets to display huge ceramic and Italian clay pots and the machinery to haul them about and the glass houses to store them come fall. For me, washing out and lugging my beautiful large ceramic pots into my grow room for the winter is truly a chore. I much prefer the cold-weather formula concrete cemetery urn and bird bath I can leave out in all forms of Wisconsin weather. I have made the mistake of leaving clay pots outdoors on my deck filled with soil only to find the bottoms cracked off from the spring freeze and thaw cycle.
Esher-ish ceramic piece found at the Haeger factory outlet store in Dundee, IL a couple years ago. When I first bought it one winter for $20, I thought to use it on a pedestal of dry-laid 6" chimney brick topped with a 16"-square gray cement paver (instant art!) Garden art should illustrate you and your garden's individual style. For me, it also has to be on the cheap. There is a local Garden Walk which titles itself as a "Garden and Art Stroll". Too often, however, it seems the art is merely garden-themed, rather than intended for display in the garden, and/or of such value I could not consider placing it in the garden at the mercy of the harsh elements. I found I enjoyed the beautiful Haeger ceramic to much to expose it to winter's extremes.
A local dump find (our rural version of dumpster diving), this wrought-iron shabby chic garden bench with blue and white fabric covered cushions plays up my blue spiderwort and yellow tickseed. I do believe artists who also happen to garden have the best art in their gardens. Two of these artists have also written books to which I find myself often turning for inspiration for possible funky garden art I might actual be able to create myself. The first is Keeyla Meadows, author of Making Gardens Works of Art, and Fearless Color Gardens. Keeyla is great with color, and working with stone and bits of glass. Her book has lots of takeaways for even the marginally artistic among us. The other is A Garden Gallery, written by George Little and David Lewis. Little and Lewis are a gardener and artist team who live and garden in the Seattle area. The pictures in this book are from their own garden and feature a lot of concrete works, particularly cast giant concrete leaves, and how to introduce water into a garden. Needless to say, one of their favorite colors is a royal blue, straight from a primary school student's paintbox.
This beautifully painted pot succumbed to WI's freeze/thaw cycle after two seasons. The acrylic paints did not do enough to seal the porous clay as I had hoped. An amazing artist friend who also blogs has this mosaic sculpture in her garden. She has named it aptly, Lola. So this year, I hope to do more with what I have in my garden, by placing some great funky items in my yard, other than just the shabby chic metal chairs painted raspberry pink or adding wrought iron phoenix birds to my new wooden gate. I might even plant my ceramic fish with the tail and mouth which can both be planted.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Same Garden, at Different Times


Star of my current garden show: Crab apple 'Red Jade'. It has pink buds that open white and hold their half inch dark red fruit through winter for the birds in the Spring.

View toward the house, April 17, 2012.


View of the front sidewalk, April 17, 2012. It is these clumps of tulips third year, and without any real decrease in bloom power.


Sidewalk, August, 2, 2011

House, August 2, 2011

Monday, April 16, 2012

Spring In a Holding Pattern


Daffodils


'Honeycrisp' apple tree in bloom.


Bells of Ireland and heirloom peppers looking nice.


Peas and garlic in the potager.


Strawberry with a "black eye" showing this blossom has been frozen.


Frozen tips on the dappled willow


Petunias from seed for pots



Heirloom tomatoes

It seems spring is in a holding pattern. After the warmest March on record, and possibly one of the drier ones , too. Spring doesn't feel like it is going anywhere. My apricot bloomed five weeks early. We had a number of days with pretty cold temperatures. I think my apricot 'Moorpark' has mis-stepped and picked the wrong time to bloom. I am pretty sure it froze hard enough I will have no fruit. A few of my earliest buds on my very early variety of strawberry 'Honeoye' have "black eyes". A sure sign those berries have frozen also. I have heard the Door County cherry and apple growers are worried. The California fruit grower have has cold weather and hail; a harbinger of a lost crop.

The first year I owned the house here in central Wisconsin, I drove up from IL with a trunk load of plants to transplant and found the ground frozen solid on April 5. I have carrots "up" this year, not just planted. Yet I think fruit will be in shorty supply this summer.

I do have some beautiful daffodils this spring and a scattering of tulips they appear to have perenialized. My petunias started from seed for possible pot fillers for my Handsome Son's Graduation are looking nice. The heirloom tomatoes and peppers are doing great, too.

It seemed my rhododendron PJM bloomed for just forever this year, rather than a flurry of hot days the end of April (the flowers have long since gone by this year).
I have a dappled willow which I keep closely pruned. The early spring new foliage makes this shrub look like a pink and pale green brocade, hence the name 'Hakuro Nishiki', dappled brocade in Japanese, or dappled willow in good ole American-speak. This year, I can see some spring foliage has froze.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Japanese Tree Peonies and Your Grandmother's Peonies



So I am working in the yard today. I am spreading wood chips and cutting nice clean bed lines. As I cut the bed line past the apple tree a see a small plant. It's a single leaf, really, growing right where I need to cut the bed line. A seed from my Japanese peony 'Hanakisoi' has germinated, right where I need to cut the bed line.

Amazingly, it has a single leaf and a nice 4" taproot coming out of the large seed and it comes free of the dirt very easily. I transplant it into my potager and mark it with sticks. I have collected seeds the last two years, and tried a couple different ways to germinated them without success.

Nature will find a way.

Japanese Tree Peonies are typically not grown from seed, except by hybridizers. I wasn't sure they were even self-fertile. There some intersectional peonies arising from crosses between the typical old-fashioned herbaceous peonies and the Japanese tree peonies. I do have two Japanese tree peonies, a white one which I thought had died this past mild winter possibly because I had moved it a half dozen times the last two years, and the beauty 'Hanakisoi'. Most likely, it is a cross with the Duchess du Nemours herbaceous peonies growing just across the path.

Japanese tree peonies are typically propagated by grafting buds onto the roots of herbaceous peonies. They need to be planted below their graft so the grafts eventually grow their own roots. Planting too shallowly tempts the herbaceous peony to try to grow foliage and flowers of its own, too.

The seedling has nice purpley-red edges to its lone leaf. I'm not sure how long it will take to bloom on its own, possibly up to five years. I'll have to find it a spot of its own eventually, unless I attempt to graft it and jump it ahead in its flowering cycle. I'll have a while to wait otherwise!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

What You Are Looking For...


A blue aster and goldenrod 'Fireworks' share the autum spotlight in this one-year-old drain field cutting garden.


Before picture of drain field July 7, 2009.


Drain field after pictures taken October 7, 2010.



I often check the stats part of Blogger to see what keywords brought my readers to my blog. Of course, the next part of my mental process wonders if they found what they are looking for. As I substitute teach school, I know that a lot of times students are just looking for a picture for a presentation. Gardeners may be looking for an example of a plant not the picture being marketed by the seller of that plant. Or like myself, I look for inspiration.

So today's blog article is the answer to questions I think it is possible the searcher was searching for...


Can I plant a tree in on my drain field? Which tree can I plant on my drain field?

NO TREES GET PLANTED ON OR NEAR THE DRAIN FIELD. NONE! NADA! I did this beautiful bee/and bird cutting garden that has a lot of structural components for a drain field, but as a homeowner you just can not plant a tree on a drain field. I know those mound systems and even the systems level with the surround area can be a huge expanse of your yard, but no tree near there. Even those of you on city sewer systems should think carefully about placement of trees where roots can run into the connection points in underground sewer lines. I sit on the Sewer Committee here in the Village and we have the line camera scoped and have to deal with tree roots all the time. I have had a very candid talk with a Master Plumber here in the Village as well. It can cost you a couple hundred to several thousand dollars, if you have to repair the damage done to lateral that are on your property that connect to the sewer main lines.

No trees.

(Okay, now the list of trees that are the very worst for your project: maples, elms, willows, and white pine.)

Next question: Where can I find a smokebush 'Nordine" in a 5-gallon size?

Smokebush 'Nordine' was first developed by the Morton Arboretum in Illinois. It is reputed to be the most cold hardy of the smokebushes with the best purple color. I think you will have luck with it growing back from winter kill even in zone 3 and 4 where it is not particularly cold hardy. All you lose those years is the smoke; something gardeners in the UK willingly give up for the intense color of the new foliage of this plant. The more common cultivar marketed these days is 'Royal Purple'. A little more intensely purple, I'm not sure there is any difference in their hardiness, particularly once it is in the ground a year or two.

Now here's the think about smokebush: They do NOT transplant particularly well. The bigger they are the harder they are to transplant. Also they are definitely better transplanted while dormant. Typically, they emerge from dormancy late, sometimes as late as June here in central Wisconsin. I would not buy a smokebush bigger than a gallon size. Watering weekly is also a enormous factor in establishing a smokebush, which can be fairly drought resistant once established. Luckily, they really do grow quite quickly. I almost always have some tip die-back, yet always have "smoke". I regularly prune to the ground a few of the older shoots, too. I have seen smokebushes more the size of small trees, as large as 30' tall (There's one at Boerner Botanical Gardens in Milwaukee.).

Next question....

What is a good companion plant for akebia?


Akebia in almost any garden much farther south than here in central WI is a THUG! I regularly find mine 30 feet away, running along my fence or up an arborvitae. When I was living in IL in grew into the garage through a crack between the wall and roof that a mouse couldn't have entered! The best companion for akebia? A pruners!

That said, I really like my akebia quinata. I can have a fence only 6' tall here in the village. My neighbor's kitchen windows look right into one of my bedrooms. The akebia has jumped up on top of the fence and made a nice hurdy gurdy mound of itself another couple feet tall. Privacy. It nearly evergreen, even here in the frozen north. I would always grow akebia where it can climb AND you can see what it is up to! However, the bottom part of the plant is not always so rambunctious, so when you look for a companion plant I would be thinking of something to plant at it's base. Mine is underplanted with a mounding hosta 'Fried Green Tomatoes'. Any plant that has a strong upright structure will just be a secondary climbing aparatus for akebia's plan for Total World Domination. Other good combinations might be some of the ground hugging Wave petunias, which would provide color after the bloom of akebia has passed.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Hollyhocks!


One of my earliest floral memories is of hollyhocks. They grew against the lime-washed barn of maternal grandmother. there were doubles and singles of incredible shade of pink, red, and white. I think they attracted me, unlike many flowers, being a tall child they bloomed right a eye height. Of all the flowers my grandmother cut for table arrangements, hollyhocks were not among them.

As an adult, I realize hollyhock don't make it into many gardeners gardeners. They are at their best in hot, dry years. Given our wacky spring, we may be on our way to one of those.

The hollyhocks of my adult life do not compare well to those of my girlhood. Many suffer from rust and mallow flea beetles. Others are biennial growing one year, blooming and setting seed the next, then not returning to bloom the third year.

I've started growing some species from seed, a rugosa hollyhock that grows to only 4' tall, is truly perennial; however, it comes only in pale yellow. The upshot is that I have yet to see any sign of rust on it, and although one year out of three, mallow flea beetles did attack some foliage, its bloom more than made up for it. After clipping back these holey leaves it was quick to send up another flush of foliage at its base. Another comes in shades of pink, a fiddle leaf, and may be the species of the hollyhocks of my girlhood.

Most of the biennials sold commercially these days are for the most part from the rosea species.

If you want to grow truly magnificent hollyhocks, do your research and then grow your favorites from seed.



Sunday, April 8, 2012

Underplanting and Groundcovers: Some Examples of Their Uses


Here we have a faux rusty heron "underplanted with daylilies and gayfeather. This particular gayfeather is most likely the liatris 'Kobold'. Although the daylily and liatris are hardly natives they give that visual effect.




Here lambs ear stachys 'Helen von Stein' in the foreground and calamintha 'White Cloud' at the mid-range edge a sidewalk path. The species lambs ear is a bit more hardy here in central Wisconsin. This picture is from the Olbrich Garden about 100 miles south and a nearly a zone warmer. The regular lambs ear will bloom, unlike 'Helen von Stein'. The bees do love its pink blooms and it does make a good companion plant for roses as well.


Another picture of the 'Helen von Stein'. Notice the broader leave, a rademark of this selection. Here it give structure to the riot that can be annual nicotiana. The lambs ear brings its color and rhythym to the task of fronting the border.


In this picture, we get a bit better look at the white, frothy, and deer-resistant calamintha edging a path.

Underplantings and ground covers like good clean bed lines are a hallmark of a well-pulled together flower border. They can balance a color scheme, and pull together the most inconceivable collection of plant. Their rhythmatic appearance can lead the eye. If scented, rubbing by them can bring enjoyment of a garden to a whole other sensory level. Ideally they can cover the ground thickly enough that other plants, primarily weeds, have a hard time competing, making the gardener's life a bit easier.