The Cap Theory of Garden Clean-Up

Looks good in hat

Lose the hat, lady

Let’s face it: Not everyone looks good in a cap. The young lady at right, for instance, has always looked good in hats. Her mother, at left, not so much. (And, why is she kissing a dog?) I think about caps while cleaning up the garden in fall, and today was a perfect day for garden clean-up in Minnesota: warm temperatures, sun, no wind and the ominous threat that this will not last lingering in the air.

So here is the Cap Theory of Garden Clean-Up: Any perennials that would look good in a cap of snow should be left standing. Plants like sedum, Joe Pye weed, yarrow, coneflower, and some rudbeckia provide the perfect landing pads for snowflakes, making them a bright spot in the otherwise monotonous tones of winter. Other plants that might be left standing are those with interesting color and texture, such as grasses or Husker Red penstemon, which as bright red stems. Cut down any plants that look flat or soggy after freezing, such as hosta (yuck — nothing is more unsightly than a hosta after a freeze) and daylilies. Today I also cleaned up a lot of Clara Curtis daisies, some Mexican hat, and a scraggly looking Walker’s Low nepeta. Because they may carry powdery mildew, the phlox also got cut back.

Coneflower, looking good in snow cap.

You don’t have to cut plants back in the fall  at all — and many years, I have just not gotten around to it. But with beautiful weather, it’s fun to walk around the yard, shears and pruners in hand, deciding what would look good wearing snow this winter.

Read Full Post »

September Garden

While many gardens fade after mid-August, mine often looks better in September than it does at other times of the year. It’s not something I’ve planned, but a happy accident of having a few fall bloomers, annuals that don’t take off in Minnesota until mid to late summer, and early bloomers that make an encore appearance in September. This clematis bloom, for instance, was a complete surprise. I bought this ‘Bee’s Jubilee’ clematis at Donahue’s Greenhouse in Faribault way back in May. Since it was its first year in the ground, I did not expect blooms at all. But yesterday while out picking my ga-zillionth raspberry, I noticed it, peeking around the pergola. It’s very pale and pretty and I’m looking forward to seeing more next year.

In addition to the surprise clematis, I’ve getting another flush of bloom on my roses out front (this grasshopper posed nicely on a bloom, though grasshoppers are not my favorite part of September), some daylilies are putting on a last show, a few Goldmound spirea are sprouting their second round of blooms, buckets of zinnias and cosmos are still looking good, and that’s in addition to all the lovely fall plants such as Autumn Joy sedum, black-eyed Susan, and a gorgeous Joe Pye weed that is attracting bees from all over town to my meadow area.

That’s not to say some areas are not looking a little — umm, let’s say, tattered. The beautiful hollyhocks from early this summer are faded, ratty and begging to be cut down (it’s on the weekend chore list), and some tall rudbeckias I planted last fall are in deep lean mode now. And, of course, the Grandpa Ott’s morning glories have taken over big swaths of one bed (pulling those before they seed is another job on the weekend list). I just heard an unofficial weather report that the warmth of the past week will not last much longer, so now is a good time to get out and appreciate the garden’s last blast of beauty.

Read Full Post »

Magnificent Mum

Way back in May, I posted about a Mammoth™ mum I bought, then neglected for several weeks. (See sad photo at right.) Well, look at that baby now! While it’s not as large as it will be in a two or three years — Mammoth mums top out at 5 feet across and 3 feet tall — it’s a striking element in one of the backyard beds, with pink Clara Curtis daisies behind it and the pointy flowers of Mexican hat threaded through its stems. It just goes to show how resilient plants are — I’m suddenly thinking of the line from Spamalot, “I’m not dead yet!” — and how if we give them just a chance, they will grow and be beautiful.

Read Full Post »

Mexican Hat and Black-eyed Susan Vine

Because I edit a garden magazine, I’m constantly tempted by new plants — whether they are new on the market or just new to me. This year, I’ve planted two “new to me” plants that have brightened up different spots in the garden.

On the front porch, I put a Black-eyed Susan vine (Thunbergia alata) in a pot. Despite the common-name reference to a favorite prairie plant, this vine is tropical. It was easy to grow from seed and once out on the porch, it started to climb its support. Vines grow 5 to 10 feet long and can be used as a trailer in a window box or hanging basket or as a climber on a trellis. The 2-inch-diameter flowers come in orange and yellow shades and contrast starkly with the deep black eyes at the plant’s center.

In the July/August issue of Northern Gardener, native plants columnist Lynn Steiner recommends Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera) for its diminutive size, attractive foliage and bright flowers. This is a tough plant that preforms well in dry conditions, sun or light shade, and has an unusual, sombrero-shaped bloom that inspired the common name. When I saw some plants on sale, I bought three. They seemed to struggle a bit at first in the bed, which has plenty of shrub roots, but they’re blooming now and seem to be establishing themselves.

Read Full Post »

Getting on the Baptisia Bandwagon

Baptisia is a perennial heading up the popularity charts — and having planted several tufts of it in my re-designed front-yard bed, I can see why. Baptisia australis is a North American native (as far north as Iowa) that the Cherokee tribes used for dye and to cure tooth-aches. Its use as a dye is understandable when you see the deep-blue to purple flowers that grow on the plant.

Recently, baptisia — more commonly called false indigo — has been the subject of considerable research at the Chicago Botanic Garden, which has introduced two hybrid varieties of baptisia. For their research, the Chicago horticulturists bred Baptisia australis and Baptisia sphaerocarpa to come up with hardy plants with striking flowers. I planted Twilight Prairieblues™, which has a deep purple almost maroon colored flower. (The photo is of mature plant I saw on garden tour recently.) Starlite Prairieblues™ is also hardy and prolific, with plants sending up as many as 100 bloom stalks each season, but its flowers are a lighter blue.

Read Full Post »

Best Perennials for Northern Gardeners

Today I dropped in on the Perennial Festival at Gertens in Inver Grove Heights. MSHS is participating in the event which includes several seminars each day, including one by horticulture editor, garden writer, and Bailey Nurseries production guru, Debbie Lonnee. After perusing the tables at Gertens, Debbie pulled out her 15 favorites among relatively new perennials. I didn’t get the full list down (though you can, if you go to Gertens Sunday at 11 when she will be making the same presentation) but here are a few that I remember — several of which are in my own garden.

• Monarda ‘Coral Reef’ — Debbie named this plant, which was developed at the Morden Research station in Canada. That’s the same place the Morden roses were developed. This bee balm has a striking coral flower.
• Polemonium reptans ‘Stairway to Heaven’ — I love this spring-blooming variegated Jacob’s ladder, too, and Debbie offered a good hint. This plant needs a decent amount of moisture to keep it looking good all summer.  I’ve got it in a sandy bed and need to add more humus to hang on to moisture.
• ‘Lady in Red’ lady fern — For shade gardens, ferns add the perfect upright, feathery accent to hostas and heucheras. ‘Lady in Red’ is striking because the center stem in each fern leaf is a bright cherry red that stands out in the light of a shade garden.

Other plants she suggested were Geranium ‘Rozanne‘, Sedum ‘Maestro’ and lilies of all types. For more on great plants, check out Debbie’s talk tomorrow. Other talks will cover fruit growing (1 p.m.), shade gardening (2 p.m.), and rain gardens (3 p.m.).

Read Full Post »

The Micro-View, Part 2

Small flowers have their own ways of attracting attention. Case in point, the Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’, (left) a hardy geranium I just planted. The blooms on this plant rise up above the foliage and remind me of a kid in school raising his hand, “call on me, call on me.” Or, consider the lovely bell-shaped flowers of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Jacob’s ladder. This plant makes its delicate statement in the spring, then fades away. The flowers are a soft shade of lavender, but the foliage is what makes Stairway to Heaven stand out in the garden. What plants inspire you to take a close-up look?

Read Full Post »

Bloom Tuesday: The Micro-View

While I’m not always — maybe, not ever — pleased with the big picture in my garden, there are tiny moments of beauty that surprise and delight me. Lately, more of those moments have occurred as spring is fading toward summer and more plants are blooming and growing. With the good weather we’ve had this past week — unlike friends and family in the Twin Cities, we had a decent shot of rain Sunday night — finding and appreciating those surprises has been pure joy.

Take, for instance, the bloom in the photo above. Last year, I bought a peony at the Dakota County Master Gardeners plant sale in May. Since peonies are best planted in the fall and I wasn’t exactly sure where I wanted to plant the peony, I put it in a big pot to hold it through the summer. For fun, I added some petunias and a vinca vine. When fall came, the roots were all entwined, so I just put the entire root ball — peony, petunias, and vinca — in the ground. Lo and behold, when the peony came up this spring, the vinca came with it and the vinca is now blooming.

This variegated plant appears to be a type of Vinca minor or common periwinkle. While it can be invasive in some parts of the country, it seems to be OK for Minnesota. The U of M even recommends it in its Best Plants for 30 Tough Sites book. In any case, discovering the flower — hiding under the peony foliage — provided a wake-up-and-look-around moment for me last week. And, we all need more moments like that.

Read Full Post »

A Peony in Bloom

Yesterday I noticed my tree peony has started to bloom already — in fact, it went from just slightly open to fully in bloom in a few hours Saturday afternoon.  My other peonies — all the herbaceous type — have a few tight balls on them, but no sign of bloom.  I bought this one (sorry, I don’t have a record of its name) a few years ago at the very end of the peony season (fall), planted it in the cold and hoped for the best.  It made it through its first winter and seems to like the moderately sunny spot where it is planted.

Unlike herbaceous peonies, tree peonies develop a trunk-like stem and do not die to the ground each winter. They bloom on old wood and can get as tall as 5 feet. They also have a more striking foliage than herbaceous peonies. Each of the leaves is edged in purple. While my plant has been in the ground two (or maybe three) years, it is still dainty.

An article on tree peonies is in the current issue of  Northern Gardener and in it, writer Margaret Haapoja says most experts recommend some winter protection for tree peonies this far north (oops, I better do that this fall!) but otherwise they are not difficult to grow. They need four to six hours of sunlight and a moderate amount of fertilizer.  It takes them five or more years to reach full size. That’s OK, though, because like other peonies they are long-lived. Most peonies will out-live the person who plants them by several decades.

Read Full Post »

What Not to Plant

If you come across a plant that looks like this…do not plant it right away.

The specimen at left is the root ball of a Mammoth™ mum I purchased at a grocery store recently. Mammoth mums are a newish variety out of the University of Minnesota that reach a size of 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide by the end of their second season. I’ve had visions of a row of Mammoth mums along one side of my driveway for a couple of years but have never found them in the stores in spring — which is when this variety is best planted.  So, when I saw the grocery store had Mammoth mums — and at a pretty good price — I bought one with the idea of trying it in a back garden before investing in a row of them.

After buying the plant, I got involved in a rather mammoth move of my college-age daughter, which required two trips to Chicago within two weeks of each other and way more stairs than I want to count. (Note to self: Discourage young adult child from renting fourth-floor walk-up apartment, unless professional movers or strong men are involved.) As a result, the plant sat in my holding area for longer than it should have.  The root ball was probably bad enough when I bought it, but after two additional weeks in the pot, even with regular watering, it was a tight, dry mess and clearly needed some work before planting. I’m not sure that this is the official method for loosening a super tight root ball, but it’s what I’ve done in the past.

After removing the plant from the pot, I set it in a wheelbarrow with water up to the top of its dirt. I added a little fish emulsion and let it sit for about 30 minutes. Longer probably would have been better. While the root ball soaked, I dug a hole wider and slightly deeper than the plant and its dirt. With the root ball thoroughly sodden, I ripped the tight half-inch or so of roots from the bottom and discarded the clump. Then I plucked at the roots that were left, pulling as many out and away from the plant core as possible.  After this root pruning, I planted the mum, firmed dirt around it and poured some of the fish emulsion water in the area.

Mammoth mums have had a somewhat tumultuous history on the plant market, but I’m hoping that this one will grow well and in a couple of years, I can plant my driveway row.

Read Full Post »