Winter Woody Ornamentals

I'm not talking about Christmas trees or Yule logs either!This one's about shrubs.

I am a big fan of flowers…bright disks and rays and beards and panicles in spring and summer show. I can’t get much more excited than when my first Echinacea blooms or the Ironweed emerges in purple drifts. And a big show-off Bearded Iris can’t be ignored. But fall is when I really notice shrubs. I’m not talking about evergreens right now; hollies, boxwoods, yews and laurels  are great helpers in the yard and garden. They give us year round color, and stability in the visual scheme. But right now is when I notice the subtle textures, colors and promises of deciduous shrubs.

A Calycanthus (Carolina Sweetshrub) at a Nashville garden is a bare twiggy thing right now (late November) but has crunchy pods of seeds at its tips. The seed just reminds me of next year’s delicate magenta flower.  If you prune a little right now, you’ll get the sweet tangy aroma from the cuts in their wood.

The Witch hazel leaves are yellowing, but I know their flowers are imminent. This is part of the fun of a garden in winter; like Helleborus, Witch Hazels flower in December and January. Their cousin, Fothergilla major, saves its blooms for spring, but is turning a gorgeous yellow and orange on its last leafy legs. I like the shape of this shrub too: a smallish upright branching plant, which like the Calycanthus has a lovely spring flower. It’s a 3 season plant.

Cotoneaster is bronzy colored and full of berries, Rhododendrons are glossy and green with next year’s buds curled up tight.

This Viburnum snowball bush is getting ready for winter now.  Sure, it will be a show off in April with its huge round hydrangea-like ball of flowers. But look at this color right now:  rich  brick red and yellow.

Oak Leaf Hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia) situated in sun are a deep purple red.

And of course there are Crape Myrtles (Ligustrum) which really are more tree-like, but I have a few that I keep pruned smaller for my convenience. The leaves are gone, but the smooth sand-colored trunks catch and reflect the winter sun and give a sculptural effect.

The appeal of shrubs in fall is more are more subtle than the maples, poplars, and oaks showering leaves down on our yards now but I like their gentle bits of color and shape. I appreciate the details that we overlook at other louder times of the garden year.

(See the easiest to understand description of why leaves change color, here:   http://biologicalthinking.blogspot.com/2012/11/natures-crayons.html#links)
 

(Pictured, in order: Fothergilla major 'Mt Airy', Snowball Viburnum, Hydrangea quericifolia 'Pee Gee')

There are Flowers in Your Future

This is it! The perfect time for planting, when the sun is shining, the air is cool, the ground is still workable, and winter rains are on their way. Winter is when most deciduous shrubs and flowering perennials go dormant. That is, the plants are not creating new stem and leaf growth, they are at rest, most of their activity is in their root systems. A perfect time to put a new shrub or herbaceous perennial in the ground. Transplant shock is milder when the plant is ‘sleeping’. The owner   -that’s you-   doesn’t have to water as vigorously or worry about the brutal heat of summer.

Yes, you should water as soon as you plant, and water your plant several times in the first two weeks. Right now, November 2 in Nashville it’s very dry and no forecast for rain, so water for the next couple of weeks.

What about the cold you say? “It’s too cold for that sweet little tree.” Nope, the ground is an insulating ‘blanket’ for all the plants. Just keep it watered if we have dry weeks.  Now, your plants in pots…different story…you should bring them into the house or garage, especially if they are tropicals (e.g., ‘houseplants).

After you’ve planted your tree/shrub/flower…a little mulch won’t hurt, but a little goes a long way. Use no more than 3 inches of mulch on your flower beds and around trees. Repeat after me:  “Mulch Volcanoes Kill”  - see this link, sweet and simple:

http://www.maine.gov/agriculture/pesticides/library/ppt/Master_Gardener/mulch_volcano.pdf

A LOT of mulch is not a good thing. It’s bad. Don’t do it. Just because ‘they’ do it…doesn’t mean it’s good horticultural practice.

Back to planting:

Plant your spring-blooming bulbs now and into December: crocus, hyacinth, daffodils, tulips, frittallaria. Yes, the ones at the Homeowners Depot are just fine, and affordable. Follow the depth planting instructions. For most bulbs, dig a hole this deep: the diameter of the bulb times 3. Example: the crocus bulbs are about  ½ to 1 inch wide, plant them 2-3 inches below the surface. You don’t need to water these, they will be fine on their own.

You can still plant pansies, too, and ornamental cabbages if that’s your thing. Put on a light sweater and enjoy some of Tennessee’ best weather ever out in your own God’s Little Acre.

Blooms & Buzz

Here are some late summer flowers and their insect friends. In the last few weeks I have been stung about once a week by some sort of critter. A wasp reacted when I was cleaning some daylilies where it must have been hovering in the morning shade. I ran my lawn mower over a yellow jacket nest  and you can believe they did not like that, but I was lucky to escape with only one sting. The visual must have been amusing: Dance of the Yellow Jacket Attack. And finally I was opening a gate and brushed aside a gorgeous plume of goldenrod and got nailed hard by a bumblebee. Can I get a break? For sure I'm watching more carefully now where I put my hands, and tools. The yellow jackets are particularly disturbing to me, they build nests in the ground in a hole, you feel them before you see them, they hover around very busily all day and they will be with us until the first hard frost. That section of the grass will remain unmowed for now.
We need all these critters though.
Yellow jacket larva feed on many crop-damaging insects. Bumblebees and wasps are pollinators, and many wasps and yellow jackets eat aphids, which is always a good thing in my  book.

Here are some bumblebees on  Sedum 'Autumn Joy' in my yard, and a monarch (?)  butterfly caterpillar on some parsley (Petroselinum) at the Demonstration Garden at Ellington Agricultural Center (both in Nashville!). Oh and just a snap of some Spireas in full late summer bloom at a private garden.

PS Though I have never had an adverse reaction to an insect sting I always carry a first aid kit at work, with some benadryl in the meds section.

Its Summer! What to do, what to do.

It seems like it’s been summer since about April 1. June was unusually warm, July was downright brutal, and now we have August which is normally our hottest and driest month of the year in Nashville.

Had enough yet? I went to the Adirondack Mountains in New York for a week, and highly recommend becoming very wealthy so you can spend a whole summer up there. However I love Tennessee and our beautiful  Springs and Winters. I love coming home to see my sunflowers in bloom and the beautyberry bush starting to put out fruit.

It was still hot when I came home, so my garden “TO-DO” list is pretty short and is headed up by:

1. Stay inside in the air conditioning after 1 PM. (Remember that I work outdoors, in gardens, so, by 1 pm I have been outdoors for 6 or  more hours.)

2. Don’t prune heavily on most plants during heat/drought stress.

Light trimming of these will be alright: yews, privet, hollies, and Knockout roses. But don’t prune hard on most shrubs; removing a lot of foliage will cause further dehydration.

3. Fertilize thoughtfully.

Shrub roses: don’t fertilize your shrub or knockout or hybrid roses after about August 15. A flush of nitrogen-induced growth can create tender new leaves that can be stressed by early hard frosts. Our typical first frost date is Oct. 15, so 6-8 weeks is a safe window. Same thing for nitrogen fertilizer of many evergreen shrubs (privet, boxwood, yew, holly); don’t fertilize after August 15^th. Wait until winter when the shrubs have gone into dormancy.

Fertilizing shrubs:  It is alright to fertilize lightly with a slow release and/or organic fertilizer after dormancy begins. During dormancy (winter) the plant is primarily active in its root system, not the foliage, so phosphates are appropriate. From late October through January,  applications of an organic or slow release fertilizer on shrubs is fine, especially a phosphate fertilizer.

  4. Watering

Moist, even, watering of shrubs, perennial flowers, and lawns. An average rainfall for continued plant health is one inch per week.* The soil stores a lot of water for a long time. Middle Tennessee was in an unusual drought for most of the summer. We are almost up to normal rainfall levels now, after the July rains.  Let the soil dry out just a little between watering, a couple of days. Most plants don’t like ‘wet feet’, as it leads to fungal diseases in the roots.

* How do you know if you’ve watered enough? With a sprinkler, set out a tuna can, run your sprinkler, start a timer or watch your clock. When the can is full that’s the amount of time you need to run your sprinkler . Every 3 or 4 days. In the morning. Not at night. Not in the hot afternoon.

With a soaker hose system, place the tuna can under a section of hose, measure again as above. You can remove the tuna can once you know your time measurement.

5. Don’t worry about leaf drop with your trees.

It’s typical in August to see a bunch of leaves, especially hackberry leaves, on your lawn and driveway. Don’t  run out and look for something to spray or inoculate. Don’t  do extra watering. In August there is quite a bit of NORMAL leaf drop. Especially  hack berries, and tulip poplars, redbuds, and river birch. This is normal leaf drop in August for ‘sustained growth’ trees. The  tree is not abnormally stressed.

Also, some trees will drop twigs and these are some likely causes:  2011 cicada damage, and squirrel twig chewing or twig girdler damage. None of these conditions require treatment. Maybe just some lawn mowing. (Again thanks to David Cook for the recent  informative diagnostic lecture.)

6. Plan your fall. Again in the air conditioning, with the Olympics on TV in the background, plan for fall activities such as applying a  pre-emergent herbicide, garden cleanup, and doing  fall fertilizing.

7. Continue deadheading (or ‘debudding’) your repeat bloomers : Echinacea, brown eyed susan,  roses, zinnias, dahlias, catmint, even Salvia

8. Control mildew diseases with liquid copper  or a stronger  fungicide. Garden phlox is still prone to powdery mildew with the high humidity.

9. Control unwanted vines and weedy  brush with hard pruning and glyhosphate applied to the cut end.

10. Do a soil test.  First because you really can benefit from learning about the pH levels of your soil. It's easy and cost $7 plus your time to take it to the soil/plant/pest lab at Ellington Ag Center. http://soilplantandpest.utk.edu/soil/index.htm

The First Cut is....permanent

Pruning plants can be intimidating, yet many of our shrubs, trees and flowering perennials are very forgiving. But I’ll start with the advice I learned very early from a gardening mentor:
“Think twice, cut once”.
(This is akin to the amateur carpenter’s motto: "Measure twice, cut once. Measure once, curse twice.")

So let’s think about why to cut, aka, prune a plant. Pruning is done for health, safety, and beauty. Health of the plant, safety of the people and homes nearby, and the beauty of the plant. (By the way, I use the term ‘pruning’ to talk about selective cuts of individual branches/limbs etc. I use ‘shearing’ to describe an overall haircut, taking a few inches off the whole top or sides of foliage, as in shearing a hedge.)
Pruning decisions about health and safety are mostly objective, driven by plant culture requirements, the need to protect the plant from pests, and (for safety) the need to protect your vehicles and home and self from injury.
Beauty is always subjective. If I want my Forsythia to look like it’s sprouted a couple dozen rooster tails, and you want yours to look like a glowing compact yellow ball, that is just fine.
Why would you prune for health? You might prune to open up interior air circulation, as with boxwoods and shrub roses. Or to remove a dead or diseased limb, to keep problems from spreading to the rest of the plant. Or to keep limbs from crossing, rubbing on each other and creating a wound.
Safety mainly refers to the pruning of shrubs and trees, rather than flowers: removing limbs that are in the path of a walkway or that may rub against the gutters of a house.
As for shrubs, I have pruned my quince for shape and size, pruned my crape myrtle to remove damaged limbs and twigs, and in the case of a cherished but small dogwood, to remove limbs that keep hitting me in the head when I bend over to weed, or push the lawn mower. Last summer I thinned my Forsythia by about a third, removing some of the oldest stems, for rejuvenation.

On to flowers. Annuals typically don’t require much pruning so let's talk about perennial flowers.
In the late winter or early spring (February, March here), I cut back the old leaves of perennials/ornamental grasses (e.g., monkey grasses, prairie grasses like miscanthus and pennisetums), as well as the previous year’s leaves of hellebores. If I kept roses, I would prune climbing roses now as well. In summer another helpful cut for perennials is “deadheading” which is snipping off the fading blooms (of roses, coneflowers, phlox, catmint, verbena, daisies, etc). This keeps them from going to seed, and therefore, producing more flower blooms.
A little more info at:
http://www.hortmag.com/weekly-tips/cultivation/all-about-deadheading-flowers
Then I cut back the fading leaves of many perennials in the late autumn to tidy up the garden.

Simple pruning rules for shrubs -
Think twice, cut once.
Never remove more than 1/3 of a shrub when pruning. It can cause the plant a shock, since plants rely on their leaves for nutrition, photosynthesis, and respiration.
If you’re unsure, never prune anything harshly from July to December (in middle Tennessee)
For shrubs that flower once a year (Forsythia, snowball, quince) prune shrubs immediately after flowering. Some shrubs are repeat bloomers, like butterfly bush (Buddleia) and some Spireas; you can prune or shear them lightly after their first bloom, and they will come back with another round of blooms.
Use a decent quality sharp tool. Use the right size tool; if you are struggling to cut a thick stem with your hand pruners, move up to the next size tool, loppers. If a limb or branch is too thick for the loppers, use a pruning saw. You can keep your blades sharp by using a bastard file or diamond file, or take them to a hardware store for sharpening.

NOW:
Prune Crape Myrtles now up through about Easter. Prune Forsythia after the blooms are gone. Cut back winter beaten Helleborus (Lenten Rose) leaves.
Shrubs which can you prune almost any time of year: Privet hedge, yews, hollies, Euonymous, red tip Photinia. But again, use some discretion. If it’s 95 degrees and you cut a plant in half….it may not survive.

It's the first day of Spring, get out there, and think twice.

Rain Gardens ...get educated!

Davidson County Master Gardeners and the Cumberland River Compact are conducting a Rain Barrel & Rain Garden Workshop on Saturday March 10, 2012 9:00 a.m. - 12 N

Rain Gardens are gardens that kill several birds with one stone. Great metaphor: does anybody have an alternative phrase that doesn't talk about beating down birds? Send it my way.
So, Rain Gardens are simply an arrangement of plants that can 1) control or ease flooding in your yard/parking area/ neighborhood, 2) help reduce water pollution in local water systems by providing layers of filtration and 3) make a lovely garden to look at and provide bird habitat.

Rain barrels are of course just the smallest of any cachement to save some of the free water from above and store it until you want it a little later.

Saturday March 10, 2012 9:00 a.m. – 12 Noon
Saturday April 28, 2012 9:00 a.m. – 12 Noon
Where: The Demonstration Garden at the UT Regional Office at the Ellington Agricultural Center 5201 Marchant Drive Nashville, TN 37211
Cost: $60 per household, cash or check only and payable upon arrival the day of the workshop. (This includes you taking home a finished rain barrel.)
Registration: Pre-register for the Rain Barrel & Rain Garden Workshop by calling (615) 834-7143 to confirm your choice of workshop dates as well as number of attendees.



http://dcmg-demogarden.blogspot.com/2012/02/seeds-for-sale.html

http://www.cumberlandrivercompact.org/

http://www.12000raingardens.org/index.phtml (interesting project in one town)

Crocus

About 3 years ago we planted several dozen crocus in our lawn. These have been starting to show up for about a week now. Not particularly early, as our yard warms up slowly.
Crocus are pretty easy way to get early spring color...plant the bulbs in the fall (a typical bulb-planting rule is to plant the bulb at a depth that's the same as 3x the width of the bulb). Just plant them and walk away.
Easy: they multiply, they return year after year, the squirrels don't seem to eat them. But the deer will nibble on the flowers.
One of the easiest gardening projects there is!

A Mild Winter Day

...was perfect for exploring Bell’s Bend Park for the first time last weekend. There are several miles of walking trails along this mostly flat meadowland near the river. The subtle rich colors of the meadow, and the hills in the distance made a comforting Tennessee scene.

But winter offers more challenge to the identification of favorite wildlfowers; with less vibrant color and fewer leaves, I had to focus on height, location, shapes of dried seed heads.


Pictured: Broom Sedge, Milkweed,Queen Annes' Lace, Ironweed, Goldenrod.

Visit the 808 acres of Bell’s Bend Outdoor Center (a Davidson County metropolitan park) by taking Briley Parkway off White Bridge Road, north to Exit 12, Ashland City Hiway west-ish, left on Old Hickory Boulevard. No crowds, fantastic visitor’s center, good programs led by the staff
naturalists.
LINKS
http://www.nashville.gov/parks/nature/bbnc/index.asp
http://www.beamanpark.org/