The Weekly Gardener: Volume 11 - 2017

By Francis Rosenfeld

Collected articles from theweeklygardener.com - June through December 2017.
For current articles visit The Weekly Gardener blog

I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born this way: All Year Garden and The Weekly Gardener, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might find it useful in their own gardening practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francis Rosenfeld
• Release date: Jan 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370841165

Francis Rosenfeld

I started learning about gardening from my grandfather, at the age of four. Despite his forty years' experience as a natural sciences teacher, mine wasn't a structured instruction, I just followed him around, constantly asking questions, and he built up on the concepts with each answer.As I grew older I applied this knowledge, experimented with new plants and learned a few things from my mistakes. That was fifteen years ago, and since then I was blessed with a thriving perennial garden. Half way through the journey, the micro-farm concept developed, a yearly challenge to figure out how much produce twenty square feet of dirt can yield.I started blogging in 2010, to share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born this way: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from my grandfather, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might find it useful it in their own gardening practice.The blogs contain many stories (I am a writer and couldn't help myself), but also practical information about plant propagation, garden maintenance, working with your site, making preserves and keeping the yard welcoming for beneficial insects and local wildlife.

Book preview

WEEK ONE

January 2nd - Again, January...

Garden Journaling

I sat out in the garden yesterday, steeling precious moments between rain falls, a rare treat at this time of year. I’m so relieved that I got the extra week at the beginning of December, which allowed me to finish up the yard cleaning. It would be really depressing to watch the habitual pile of slimy, rotting debris that I can’t touch for another three months.

As it is right now, the garden isn’t in disarray, it’s just sleeping. The veggie patch is clean, the planters are clean, the trellises are clean, the flower beds are…well, not so much, but that is a concern for spring.

It is important to watch the garden during the dormant season to make a clear assessment of how much room is still available for planting. For instance, even now, when the perennials are dormant and many of them have died down to the ground, if I throw a needle in the sunny border it will not reach the ground. I’m guessing that means I’ve reached full capacity.

Of course the wilderness tries to take over it every year, and I can tell you from previous experience, the wilderness is relentless and rapacious. It’s an endless struggle.

I guess after so many years and so many tries I’ll have to admit that hybrid roses don’t much appreciate my garden. The once blooming shrubs are thriving, but all the noble roses are dead. I could blame the weather, the soil, or the hand of destiny, but the end result is that I’m slowly growing my stock of Dr. Huey.

Maybe if weather gives us a break, the French lilacs and the Great Southern magnolia will bloom this year, it’s been a while.

Planning for Spring

Usually by this time I’m already overtaken by cabin fever and dreaming of beautiful summer days, but this year, with the exception of a few days of brutal cold at the beginning of the month, it seems weather forgot winter exists.

I hesitate to mention this because I don’t want to jinx it; for sure the second I write the words another freeze from a place that will remain unmentioned is going to be upon us, but so far the temperatures have been in the fifties and sixties, mostly accompanied by rain.

I am a bit weather confused right now, because I don’t know if I’m waiting for spring or still ending fall, but no matter.

Some of the spring planning took place a few months ago: the bulbs are planted and I propagated some of the existing perennials.

What really needs work this spring is an area in full shade where the roots of a mature tree make lawn survival impossible. I’ve been planning to replace that hopeless patch of patchy grass with a shade garden for a while now, but I never got to planting it, and in the meantime a good portion of that area got taken over by wild shrubs and weedy volunteers.

I can already picture the lush leaves of hostas and hellebores, mixed with many other, hopefully less common shade perennials, like Solomon’s Seal, tricyrtis, bergenia and monkshood. Of course, cleaning the area takes precedence, I need to dig out clumps that have grown so big they are peeking out through the branches of the crab apple tree.

Another shade garden. I’m going to become an expert in shade soon.

Little Stars

Through interesting circumstances, now I have something that approximates full sun exposure in a small portion of the back yard. Lavish sunshine always conjures the image of that dreamy rose, you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones you only see in gardening books. Hundreds of petals, fragrance, perpetual bloom, the works.

Now, I know better, because I managed to kill eight or nine of them by planting them in this spot. They were fragrant, too. Besides, if I add one more plant to that flower bed it’s going to burst.

Fragrance

If you are planting for fragrance, don’t forget the annuals: stock, nicotiana, petunias, and sweet peas. I neglected planting annuals in the last few years, for two reasons. The weather was uncooperative and the flower beds are jam packed with well established perennials.

I’ll try to find some room for them this year, even if I have to plant them in pots. The purple petunias I had on the balcony last year scented the whole back yard for months. But so did the garden phlox. But so did the petunias. I’ll add some annuals, I’ll find room somehow.

WEEK TWO

January 9th - Warm, Warmer, Warmest

Rain

It’s rainy and warm, a lot more like March than January. I worry a little bit that the bulbs are going to emerge ahead of their time, I can already see leaves and I’m pretty sure winter is coming back. In fact, the end of the month already promises to bring back lower temperatures, although still above average.

I could fall back on the regular gardening activities for January, if you can call them that, but the catalogs haven’t started arriving in the mail yet, so I have to make do with potted plants on the window sill.

There is also a fragrant hyacinth on the table right in front of me. Every year I get one and after it finishes blooming, I plant it in the garden. I noticed they tend to fare better than the fall bulbs, in part because the squirrels have more difficulty digging them up.

I visited the plant nursery, with the excuse of looking for African violets, and, as expected, it is way too early for garden related purchases: no plants or seeds yet, just dormant shrubs and trees. I did find the violets, of course.

I guess I’ll have to wait patiently for the Amaryllis and the paperwhites to bloom in a week or two, maybe.

Winter is such a bore! What is the point of a season during which you can’t spend time outside? I bought my favorite gardening book again, one which I had and lost, I can’t remember when. I guess I’ll brush up on the theory for now.

Medicinal Herbs

The first time I saw an herb garden in a public park I asked myself what was the point of it? The fact that it occupied a small nook in the middle of the rose garden, at a time when all the roses were in bloom, didn’t help its cause very much. I know better now.

Of course, I selected the herbs for my own garden according to their flowering habits, unfair as it may seem; nobody grows herbs for their blooming prowess.

The one good thing about herbs is that they pretty much take care of themselves. They weather drought, heat, freezes, they’re the ultimate set it and forget it plant.

They enjoy clay soils, dry, hot weather and plenty of air movement, if you want to pamper them, but they’ll grow anywhere, as long as they have sunshine. The Mediterranean darlings, like French lavender and rosemary, will not survive harsh winters outdoors, but most perennial herbs won’t be affected even by subzero temperatures.

They tend to grow enthusiastically once established, and they need to be hard pruned on a regular basis to keep their foliage healthy and flavorful.

Be mindful of the spacing requirements, herbs grow up to five time their original size and they will end up smothering each other. They need good air movement, otherwise they develop black spot and powdery mildew, especially during long stretches of rainy weather.

When you harvest herbs, always pick the fresh, young top growth. Don’t feel tempted to pick the broader leaves at the base, the plant uses them as energy storage and their flavor is not that great anyway. By picking the top growth you encourage the plant to leaf out more, instead of growing leggy.

I don’t know if herbs protect their turf (some plants release natural herbicides into the soil to eliminate the competition), but I noticed that the herb patch stays relatively weed free.

As far as flowers are concerned, they bloomed more than their counterparts in the flower border last year. Keep in mind that some herbs bloom, ripen and die, so if you want to keep calendula and basil alive until the end of fall, don’t let their flowers go to seed. Even herbs that don’t die down after blooming, like lovage and dill, will put all their energy into their offspring instead of the foliage.

For Sun

For years I’ve been trying to find a balance in the perennial flower bed that would provide continuous bloom through all the warm season, and it’s not an easy thing to do. The bulk of bloom happens mid-spring, early summer, and then I’m left with sedums for two whole months.

Daisies belong to this problem. It’s not that I don’t love them, which I do, it’s just that their bloom is often overshadowed by roses, lilies, and every tall annual with large flowers, like zinnias, for instance, and they fade just when their bloom is needed most, in August.

And Shade

I’m sorry I misjudged hostas. Speaking of the late summer slump, they’re always there to save the day; their bloom is sometimes just adequate, it is often enthusiastic, but they never disappoint.

One thing about hostas, they are shade plants, and their foliage absolutely needs it, the sun can scorch them to nothingness on hot summer days, but if they never see the sun at all, they will not bloom, I learned that the hard way. If you are looking for interesting foliage for a spot in deep shade, by all means give them a try, but for flowers they’ll need part sun or light dappled shade.

WEEK THREE

January 16th - Evergreens

Purple Sage

Please admire the mighty sage, which took over the herb garden during the summer, before I trim its expansionist habits. It bore clusters of lavender blue flowers last year, so pretty to behold that I ignored good gardening practices and didn’t prune it, and now I’m looking at the consequences. The marjoram didn’t last a month, and I really, really wanted to have it in the garden, so lady sage will be encouraged to behave itself this spring, so that it maintains an appropriate size, stops crowding the thyme and does not sprawl all over the lawn.

Sage is easily propagated by wood cuttings, so I’ve heard, but I never actually tried this method myself. I did try starting it from seed, and can attest to the fact that it isn’t an easy plant to propagate this way. This method does work, however, if you’ve got your heart set on using it. As a matter of fact, I think we might be looking at the seed started plant, but I can’t be sure.

It really likes clay, as you