How a New Gardener Got Bamboozled by Catalog Shenanigans

Of all the seed and plant catalogs that pile up on my desk this time each year, Klehm’s Song Sparrow  is my favorite with Baker Creek coming in a close second. The gorgeous, color photography is what hooks me in both cases.

Though I admit that the fact that I can get actual plants rather than just seeds makes Klehm’s close to my heart, too. Some years, I just don’t feel like firing up the seed-starting setup in the basement. I want that spring miracle of small boxes showing up at the door filled with seedlings smelling of wet peat and dirt.

When I was just starting out as a gardener, I didn’t think much about the difference between catalogs. While most have actual photos and detailed plant information, others use illustrations at least some of the time. Catalogs in the latter group are not always to be tossed in the recycling bin straight away, but I learned after some painful planting mishaps that some were not to be trusted.

Some Things To Know About Japanese Beetles

For five years now I’ve fussed over bare-root sprigs and cuttings of Virginia creeper, nursing them into the lush vines that now cover three arbors and a couple of fences at my house. This week, I started ripping all those vines out because, sadly, Japanese beetles just love Virginia creeper. For a while, my husband and I thought we could live with the damage the beetles do —all those green leaves reduced to lacy brown ghosts of their former selves. But when scads of beetles and showers of the dust-like poo they leave behind started raining down from the arbor into our hair every time we shut the back gate, well, goodbye vines.

For those who aren’t familiar with Japanese beetles, they are actually quite fetching little bugs. Dime-sized with shiny purple-green bodies, they almost look like something a wacked-out artificial intelligence researcher would create in a sci-fi film. First spotted in 1968 in Minnesota, as well as on the East Coast, Japanese beetles have since plagued eastern states, primarily, while slowly making their way westward. Larvae, or grubs as they’re usually called, feed on the roots of turf grass and adult beetles feed on a wide variety of ornamental plants.

Perennials That Bloom and Bloom

Are you busy ordering up this year’s plants for the garden? If so, consider some of these long-blooming perennials that look great long past summer’s dog days.

• Hollyhock mallow ‘Mystic Merlin’ (Malva sylvestris ‘Mystic Merlin) offers up 2-inch blooms in shades of purple, mauve, and blue from early July until frost. Unlike traditional hollyhocks that bloom on a stalk, ‘Mystic Merlin’ produces flowers atop bushy foliage that can grow 4 feet tall. Zones 4 to 8.
• Blanket flower ‘Fanfare’ (Gaillardia ‘Fanfare’) is no ordinary blanket flower. Each flower petal on this compact plant flares out like a miniature trumpet in hues of red, orange, and yellow. Blooms last from late spring through fall. Grows 18 to 24 inches tall. Zones 3 to 9.
• Yellow corydalis (Corydalis lutea) really pulls its weight in shade gardens. Lacy foliage is topped by dainty golden flowers. Blooms from late spring through fall. Grows about 15 inches tall. Zones 5 to 7.
• Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (Geranium ‘Rozanne’) was named Perennial Plant of the Year in 2008. Violet-blue blooms top masses of finely textured foliage and last from early summer to frost. Grows 16 inches tall. Shear back in mid summer to increase bloom. Zones 4 to 8.

Cut back tall perennials to keep them looking great

As you can see by the title this column is all about shearing and how taking time to do it will keep garden plants from doing a face plant in late summer. But first, I want to send out a little public service announcement. As you may know, when shopping for perennials you want to look for plants marked as being hardy in our unbelievably cold Zone 4 (-30 degrees F) climate. Otherwise, you can’t count on seeing them the following year.

Some gardeners are willing to take a chance on a Zone 5 plant they really love like Japanese maple, say, or butterfly bush, figuring if it dies it dies but if it lives — great! But you shouldn’t have to take a risk if you don’t want to, and that’s exactly what’s happening when we buy plants with misleading tags. Truthfully, no season goes by that I don’t see some mislabeled plants at garden centers, even really good ones. But this year I’ve been hearing from many gardeners that there are a LOT of mislabeled plants out on shelves, particularly at big-box stores where plants are often shipped in from the South. 



Success With Bare-Root Perennials

It’s that time of year when the mailbox is full to bursting with plant and seed catalogs. If you’re thinking of ordering some bare-root perennials, great! They are a wonderful way to add plants to your garden without busting your budget. They can sometimes be a little temperamental, though, so let me offer a few tips for success.

When your plants arrive, open the box right away so you can inspect everything. Bare-root perennials are usually shipped in small plastic baggies filled with sawdust or a bit of peat moss. Roots should be white and firm. If you’re looking at plants that are yellowish or brown, or if they feel dried up or mushy, send them back for a refund. It’s not worth planting anything in that shape.

New plants for 2011

Whether you have room for something new in your garden or not, it’s hard not to at least peek at the plants that are introduced each year. I’ve drooled over much of what I’ve seen on tap for 2011, and here is a roundup of the things I fell for that are suitable for our Zone 4 climate. If you’d like to see more of what’s new for 2011, go to the websites of any of the nurseries or growers I mention here. You can also just type “new plants for 2011” into a search engine, like Google, and you’ll get all kinds of results and photos.

From our very own Bailey Nurseries, located in Newport, Minn., we have Hydrangea arborescens (‘PIIHA-I’) Bella Anna, a new hydrangea in Bailey’s Endless Summer collection. Honestly, I’m not a big fan of many of the poofy-headed hydrangeas in this collection. But Bella Anna stands out in my mind for being only 3 feet tall, having unusual pink blooms that last from early summer through fall, and for being able to withstand severe pruning and our harsh winter weather.



Tips for dividing plants all season

Come early June, people are always asking me if it’s “too late” to divide plants and move them. This fear no doubt stems from all the articles and books out there that offer details on dividing that are so over the top in their precision as to be reminiscent of that Monty Python skit where the teacher (John Cleese) instructs his students to move their clothes to the lower peg “… after lunch, before you write your letter home, if you’re not getting your hair cut, unless you’ve got a younger brother who is going out this weekend as the guest of another boy …” It just doesn’t need to be this complicated.

While it is true that most perennials do best when they’re divided in early spring as new growth begins to emerge, that isn’t always the time when gardeners can get outside and work. It’s also hard sometimes to know what something is when all you can see is a bit of it. For these reasons — as well as the simple fact that a garden is always a work in progress — I, and most of the other gardeners I know, divide and move plants around all summer. We’re just careful to baby the plants a bit more than you would have to if you moved them earlier. (More on this in a minute.)

Shade Gardening

When my husband and I moved to our current house, I felt like a novice gardener all over again. Having lovingly planted and tended gardens in full sun for years, we had moved to a place where I would be gardening in the shade and I had no idea what would grow there. Five years later, I’m still learning through trial and error what does best in my dimly lit yard in which some spots hold water like a sponge and others are as dry as parchment thanks to three big oak trees. Though I miss having a vegetable garden and rows of raspberries like we used to, I’ve come to love the shade in all its cool, blue-green, understated beauty.

So I’d like to share what I’ve learned in the hope that other gardeners who are struggling with shady gardens, or even shady spots in the yard, might also find ways to see a lack of sun as a virtue rather than a curse. Let’s do the hardest thing first. Deep breath — OK, now let go of the idea that bloom is a vitally important part of a garden. I know how hard this is. What’s a garden without flowers, right? Well, I’m here to tell you, all is not lost without them.

Using Vines in the Garden

In the interest of full disclosure, before I go on to extol the virtues of vines, I’ll admit right now that I’ve had some trouble growing them in my own garden. At our last house, I tried growing a trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) on an arbor in my front yard. Our neighbor had a beautiful one with bright orange flowers entwined around the fence in her backyard. It bloomed all season and had a thick, gnarled stem that anchored it securely to the ground by her garage.

My trumpet vine, however, was puny and didn’t grow much at all over the four years I carefully wound it around my arbor as it grew. I fertilized it. I talked to it. I pruned out the dead stuff after each winter. And, still, it never took off and, one spring, it just didn’t come back at all. 



Coping With Hail Damage

I’ve been gardening for many years, so I guess I should count myself lucky that only one hailstorm has ever come my way. To be honest, though, as I look out at my shredded garden, which was pummeled by marble-size hail (not small marbles, the shooters) on May 31, I don’t feel very lucky. And that’s the big reason why I wanted to write about this topic.

In the big picture, having your garden flattened by hail is a small problem when you consider all the bone-crushing things going on in the world right now. But I admit, I could barely speak as I watched chunks of ice fall from the sky and squash my tomatoes and peppers, rip limbs from my shrubs, make mincemeat out of my hostas, and tear all the flowers from my newly blooming bleeding hearts and Virginia Bluebells.