PLANT INFO Environmental Edition, Mary Lovings, Editor Horticulture Edition, Gail Berthe, Editor Landscape Design Edition, Jackie Fulmer, Editor Volume III, Number 13 Horticulture Edition June 2018 June is here! Drought seems like a distant memory; suggestions of a strong hurricane season has been announced and another opportunity to excel in the garden has arrived. Do your plans for ambitious gardens frequently become less ambitious when the day you planned to work in the garden are squashed by rain and wind or freeze warnings or unusual humid heat but we do soldier on and surprise miracles give us continued pleasure and hope for the perfect climate for our horticulture plans! Let s look at some of the possibilities Late freezes were certainly a part of this years experience. What an unusual cycle of prolonged warm weather I had beautiful iris blooming in November which might not be too surprising if you are growing remondent (reblooming) iris, but I m old fashioned and the idea of seeing iris or azaleas in bloom in early autumn just doesn t seem right to me, but remondant (reblooming) day lilies or hydrangeas are ok! Logic really isn t necessary when beauty is the subject! This year a whole bed of beautiful blue iris bloomed in October/November! I was quite sure that was the last of this bed of iris until 2019 wrong. March arrived with a beautiful display from the same group of iris in fact former Redbud District Director, Emily Wilbert cut four perfect specimens to take to the Griffin Iris Show three blue ribbons and one white! (the white ribbon was a roof iris of no special beauty. Maybe Emily felt sorry of it!) The point of this story is the amazing ability of plants to adjust to whatever weather is given to them. Not always, but more times than not plants will amaze us with their ability to adjust to weather conditions. I can just hear you remembering when a favorite plant did not survive an unusual weather cycle, but consider if your plant was on the edge of the appropriate climate zone or did you have the patience to wait and see what happens. If all else fails do you have the courage to put the plant back in the ground and wait for it to return to beauty! It does happen, and I m sure some of you have experienced this. 1
What about having a plant just appear from nowhere? This happened to me this year! When we first lived here I tried to grow poppies California poppies, Eschscholzia california. You ve never seen such uninspired poppies and an even less inspiring rebloom! This year produced one beautiful poppy not a California poppy but Papaver somniferum or the opium poppy is a unique specimen (not to be grown in quantity!) There it was by the side of the pump house, probably close to 3 feet tall with a couple of lovely bright red flowers in bloom and several pods ready to produce more flowers as time progressed. Needless to say I m letting it grow to maturity and hopefully spread some more seed for the next years beauty. The garden is so full of beauty we should all be happy as Kings or Queens! paraphrase of an old statement! Winter did come this year with a vengeance only to return to warm weather and once again freezing weather yet the garden flourished. The next problem has been the rain. Days on end of rain!! With patience the crops are growing and the flowers are blooming AND THE WEEDS ARE LOVING IT! How can we handle weeds (consider the fact a weed may very well be a flower which has migrated to a less appropriate location). Weed Control for the Dedicated Gardener!! Now let s consider serious weed control many, many considerations to this topic and my frustration has been great, as yours has also been taxed to the limit especially this year! Flower Garden o Options Patience and persistence absolutely necessary Daily maintaining and monitoring to eliminate new weeds Explore various controls; consider the value to your garden; and use the most logical method routinely. Controls can be a mundane as pulling every new weed which enter the flower or vegetable bed (remember a weed is any plant growing where it is unwanted/nuisance) 2
Controlling weeds effectively! Fine Gardening is the source and Barbara Pleasant is the author of this information. The Happy Gardener has amended some of the information. o Barbara Pleasant states that a garden needs weeds!! Weeds are the healing remedy for sites that are sick. (The Happy Gardener s experience when we moved to Georgia 26 years ago was to purchase a nice house with a horrible lawn no grass other than barnyard Bermuda grass. The rest of the lawn was either weeds or hard pan clay. We decided to keep it properly cut, a couple of rounds of fertilizer and centipede seed and that was it for the next 25 years! The weeds broke down the hard pan clay, the centipede and Bermuda traveled to the bare ground and within just a few years our lawn was as almost as good as any bodies! Lots of landscaping with shrubs, trees, and flower beds and five of the seven acres are acceptable the other two acres are wooded.) o Let sleeping weeds lie! The goal here is to not disturb the soil which brings up more weed seed. (Rather than ignoring the weeds why not clip them off at ground level [without disturbing the soil] and cover them in mulch or a container with a nice plant You also must keep in mind some weeds are perennial their roots are more of the problem than seeds. Germination of weeds or lovely plants cannot happen without light keep the light from the soil and weeds will not germinate. Mulch, Mulch, Mulch! It insulates the soil from temperature extremes, locks in moisture, keeps weeds at bay (no light) prevents soil compaction. (One caveat mulch in the spring AFTER the soil has warmed and in the fall AFTER the soil has cooled. I wish I had a $1.00 for every time I ve given this advice! If you mulch before the appropriate time it is difficult for perennial plants, shrubs and trees to react with the proper growth cycle.) o Two inches is a recommended depth for the mulch 3 inches can deprive the soil of oxygen o Some gardeners like to use light shield of fabric to cover the soil and then covering that with mulch. This can be successful with larger areas of bare soil such as around trees or areas between a 3
building and the shrub or flower bed. (I use broken down card bored boxes behind shrubbery which is on the side of the garage.) This is then covered with mulch. BUT mulch can and probably does contain weed seeds. Do not let the weed seeds germinate and grow into the soil. Rake over the mulch to keep the freshly germinated weeds at bay.) o Organic mulches such as pine straw or wood chips are common. Compost and manure are another organic option. (Inorganic mulch is not recommended by the Happy Gardener! Ground up old tires does not make a suitable ground cover and all the artificial coloring is not going to change the situation. I hope I m not offending anyone, but that is my opinion and advice!) o (Ground covers such as low growing plants can be excellent mulches! Consider the herb thyme, aguga, creeping sedums, lamium, to name just a few.) Weed When the Weeding Is Good! o If you re a new gardener (or an aging gardener) or you re working in a wild and weedy space the first season will likely be a rough one. Commit (and stick) to a weeding schedule, and don t take on more space than you can manage. If you have more weeds than you can handle, keep weedy areas mowed until you re ready to conquer them. This is a direct quote from the Fine Gardening author, Barbara Pleasant. The italics are from your aging Happy Gardener! o Pull up weeds when the soil has had a really good rain like the last few weeks here in Georgia o When the soil is dry cut the weed just below the soil surface and then cover the disturbed soil with more mulch probably just brush the disturbed mulch over the disturbed soil. o What should you do with the pulled up weeds? Hot composting is the answer put the cut weeds in a black plastic trash bag, secure the top, and put them in the sun for a few days. OR if you have an 4
old Crock Pot put the weeds in the pot outdoors and turn the heat control to the low setting. The weeds will be solarized in a few hours! Lop off their heads o When the weeds can t be removed, chop of their heads! See the picture. o Cutting back weed before they set seed eliminates the seed maturing. Basically it starves the weed to death! Mind the gaps between plants o Tightly planted beds leave no room for weeds! o Remember the weeds must have light to grow tightly planted flowers block out the sun hence no weed seeds! o Word of caution: when planting specimens that are prone to foliar disease such as bee balms and phlox do not plant them too close together. Water the plants you want, not the weeds you ve you got! o Drip irrigation is an excellent source of hydration for the garden and for tree roots. o Drip irrigation gets the water to the roots your plants o Drip irrigation is the most effective hydration method if it is done in a correct way slowly so that the water can be absorbed and does not run off the planting bed. According to the author of the Fine Gardening magazine When soil is healthy and well fed, weed seeds sense that they are out of a job and are less likely to appear! o Conservation of our precious water resources is an everlasting requirement. Waste not, want not is a old slogan, but one we must continually observe. The Vegetable Garden o Choose the best place for your vegetable garden good sun exposure, as close to your home as possible, and water must be easily available 5
o Suitable soil preparation is essential o Healthy soil will produce healthy plants o Gently turn the soil. Too much tillage destroys soil structure. If this is your first time garden you may want to use a tiller, but after the first time use a spade or garden fork. o Use lots of organic material compost, leaf mold, well-rotted sawdust or composted animal manure. o Compost is a most important factor to successful gardening. It improves soil structure, texture, aeration, and water retention. Compost mixed with clay soils lightens the clay soil; sandy soils mixed with compost retain water a little better, but the best soil is a combination of clay and sandy soils. It will contribute to erosion control; soil fertility; proper ph balance; and healthy root development in plants. o The garden layout should have beds that are separated by walkways to avoid stepping in the planted area. o Choose plants that you will realistically eat. No sense planting broccoli if no one in the family will eat it! Make plans that include plantings to include in the garden after the spring crop has finished. (We visited a friend s beautiful vegetable garden the other day almost every planting was ready to bolt the lettuce, the broccoli, but the strawberries were still producing we were encouraged to pick a few strawberries and they were so good. He was in the process of doing a second planting of summer vegetables.) o Arrange the garden to agree with the southern exposure the tall crops should be planted on the north side and the west side of the garden to prevent shading the smaller plants. o Water the garden as often as need to maintain a uniform moisture supply. (see the information about watering in the flower garden information.) o An inch of water once a week is probably enough for heavier soils. Sandy soils will require more water. Water early in the morning to avoid wind and to make sure the plant foliage is dry quickly. This information is edited from Google and from the Happy Gardener s experience. (Truthfully, developing a vegetable garden was one of my most important plans for retirement and a more stable home base. After battling hard 6
pan clay, barnyard Bermuda grass, deer, extreme heat (after living in Buffalo, NY for 15 years) we decided a big garden was pretty silly for the two of us, and that was the end of the vegetable garden.) NGC Gardening Study School, Course 1, August 3-4 2018 Gardening Study School, Course 1 is announced to begin on August 3-4 and will be held at the Research and Education Garden in Griffin. This is the perfect opportunity to acquire horticulture knowledge in the setting of a research garden and under the guidance of GCG professors and experts in the various horticulture subjects to be covered in four two day sessions spread over 7 months--august 3-4, 2018, November 2--3, 2018, January 18-19, 2019 to February 8-9, 2019. The central Georgia location offers new students, and refreshing Certified Gardening Consultants an excellent opportunity to learn new horticulture skills, complete the four course requirements to become a Certified Gardening Consultant, and to refresh existing skills in the Research and Education Garden at UGA Griffin. Emily Wilbert, former Redbud District Director is the coordinator for the four session course. More information will be available in the very near future. As a Certified Gardening Consultant who accomplished my certification in Griffin several years agp this was an excellent learning experience in a quiet, dedicated community. The Happy Gardener highly recommends this course for all gardeners. It is not necessary to be a member of Garden Club of Georgia to attend. In fact it is a wonderful chance to learn more about the excellence of the GCG experience. I look forward to learning with you in August. Happy Gardening, Gail Berthe The Happy Gardener 7