On plants and pots



Hanging pot lined with paper
and filled with opsoil

I've always wondered about these lined planters that are available for purchase; and last year bought the one on the left to hang in my vegetable garden area.  I put a saucer on the bottom to help retain the water and filled it with potting soil.  Alas, the material on the sides of these are like a colander; so everytime it rained or got watered last summer, the water ran through it like a sieve.  Needless to say, the plants in it didn't grow very well.  The garden center this year suggested lining it with plastic punched with holes; but I decided to use several layers of paper instead.  Conventional garden wisdom is to always use potting soil in planters - I've never really understood the reasoning behind this - so I used purchased topsoil this year.  I think it holds water better than potting soil, and doesn't dry out so quickly.


I bought some large planters for my front steps - and also filled them topsoil.  Rather than buy annuals, I used a variety of plants that I had in my garden.  The large plant in the back is a ninebark that was in the wrong place - so I cut it in half and put one in each of the two containers.
I wanted the containers to match our front door that was painted spring green last year.  The pot was a little light, so I sponged some of the door paint on top.  I love how it looks.



 Last summer I bought a Colocasia bulb and planted it in the garden.  It took a while for it to come up, but was beautiful when it did.  I dug it up to save for this summer, and it was quite a challenge because of it's extensive root system. I was trying to think of where to put it this year, and was thinking of using a pot, but was concerned that there wouldn't be enough room for it's root system.  But lo and behold, a concrete pot that I was on the front steps broke while being lifted, and the bottom fell off.  So I now had a place for my bulb to grow in a container, but with room for it's roots.

 Found another use for a broken pot - this one fell out of my hands while I was trying to move it.  It had a nice clean cut, and it seemed a shame to through it out.....





So it found a new home as a backdrop to my hellebore!

Planting and Pruning

Spring Planting Begins...

Spring vegetable planting has begun in the bed my husband created last year for a mother's day present....and the leeks I planted last year in the holes of the cement blocks overwintered nicely.  After several years of planting vegetables willy nilly, I am reverting to the traditional straight row crops.  Not really sure why, but it does make it easier keeping track of things.  Root crops are going to be the mainstay of the garden this year, I think. The garlic I planted last fall is coming up nicely, and I planted some onions that were starting to grow in the cabinet.  Opposite the leeks I've put in shallots - which I love to cook in the winter in my triple onion tart - and they are so expensive.  Will plant carrot seeds soon.



Cut Stems of Azaleas blooming in window box

Was very surprised to look out the kitchen window the other day and see that the azaleas that I had put in my "winter" display were blooming! They've been there for over four months and have had almost no water due to the dismal amount of rain we've had. Overall, all the greens in the window box look amazingly fresh for having been sitting there all winter...I think being in the shade makes a big difference.

Mounded Hydrandea Plants

I've noticed several hydrangea shrubs around that were cut back by landscaping crews this fall into mound shapes.  Of course, I was muttering under my breath about how they had cut off all the flower blooms and would be sorry come this summer.  However, lo and behold, I've been reading Michael Dirr's Hydrangea book (great read-terrific information) and was quite surprised to learn that this technique might not be all that bad. As it turns out, there are flower buds along the entire stem which remain dormant unless the tip is removed.  The bottom line, according to the book: "as long as the flower buds are not totally eliminated by cold, flowers will be expressed even when the plants are severely pruned". (p.178)  I am looking forward to following these various specimans to see if this holds true...we certainly didn't have a cold enough winter to kill all the flower buds.

Gender confusion on Inkberry

A couple of years ago, I was designing a garden for someone who was interested in creating a nature-friendly landscape in her backyard.  One of the plants that I chose was our native  Inkberry shrub - Ilex glabra "Shamrock".  The dark colored berries (actually drupes) are  a valuable food source for birds and small mammals in late winter. 

However, lo and behold, the five shrubs I planted produced no berries, even after two years.  It suddenly occurred to me that (duh!) since Inkberries are dioecious (separate male and female plants), the females needed a male for polination!  Why didn't I think of this before?  Thus started my quest for a male inkberry.

It seemed to be an easy enough task...just go back to the nursery and buy a male plant.  Not so easy, as it turns out.  It seems that Inkberries are primarily hybridized and sold for their foliage value - bright shiny evergreen leaves - and not so much for their fruit.  Most nurseries don't even sell males - or even know which Inkberry is a male.  A check of the Ilex glabra section in Dirr's Manual wasn't much more help...of the 20 odd cultivars listed, nine are labeled as being female; eleven have no gender mentioned or have an undetermined sex.  A recent internet search continued the confusion:  the cultivar Nordic 'Chamzin' is listed in Baileys Nursery catalogue as being a male; Weston Nurseries lists 'Chamzin' as having black berries.  Sylvan's Nursery doesn't list the sex of any of their Ilex glabra cultivars; interestingly enough all of the Ilex verticillita cultivars are clearly labeled as male or female. 

I mentioned my confusion to Sue Gordon at URI, and she initially thought that males would be present in sufficient quantity in nature to provide the needed polination.  However, she has come to the conclusion that the nursery industry, and the native plant nursery industry in particular, needs to pay closer attention to this.  She has started propagating male plants; and is making an effort for other nurseries to join in the cause.

The flowers on all Ilex species are small, fairly inconspicuous and somewhat similar which probably leads to the confusion.  Male flowers, it seems, occur in clusters (see photo above) while the female flower is generally found singly on a stem.  Other than that, the only real way of identifying a female is the presence of berries.

Gardening with a busy life - even in 1906

An issue which is commonly heard amongst people who garden is the desire to make their garden lower maintenance.  We all tend to lead very busy lives, and certainly don't want our gardening hobby to demand too much of our time.  I, for one, have thought about days gone by, when life was slower and people seemed to have more time for things like gardening.

Or, did they?  As I mentioned in my first blog post, an interest of mine is gardening history.  I was very surprised when a 1958 garden book talked about the need for low-care gardens because of modern life with both mother and father working.

More recently, I was browsing a 1906 book entitled, Houses and Gardens, by a well-known British architect, and artist and furniture designer, M. H. Baillie Scott.  Scott grew up in a farming family, and after becoming an architect eventually joined William Morris and John Ruskin in the Arts and Crafts movement.

It is clear that Scott is drawn to the simple, natural look in the landscape as well as interior of the house. But interestingly, he repeatedly talks about the need for a lower maintenance garden; particularly for those who don't have professional gardeners.  His solution? Less lawn, and a garden that follows Mother Nature:

"...the best type of garden would be one which maintained it's beauty with a minimum expenditure of labor"

"...the whole situation seems to point to the natural or wild garden, with those departures that may justify themselves by their usefullness or beauty, secured without undue cost of maintenance."

"A garden is expensive to maintain in proportion to it's artificiality and in the extent to which it includes mown lawns, bedded-out flowers, and clipped hedges."

"I do not wish to under value the beauty of a well-kept lawn; but it will be well if the smaller householder....should realise that [a lawn] implies a certain cost of maintenance, and that a garden can be formed, and not a bad garden, either, without any mown grass at all."

Interesting...and still good advice for us over one hundred years later.

Really Natural (and Easy) Pest Control

Anyone who has been to my garden lectures knows my philosophy of the importance of appreciating the role of insects in our garden.  I refer to the work by entomologists Frank Lutz (of the N.Y. Museum of Natural History) in the 1930’s and later by Gary Hevel (of the Smithsonian Institute) in the 2000's who spent years collecting insects in their NJ and Maryland backyards, respectively.  Both of them found thousands of different insect species during their study period, a number which is probably astounding to most of us.

An entomologist with the USDA, Eric Grissell wrote a fascinating, informative and comical book on the topic, called Insects and Gardens.  Not only is it enjoyable to read, but you will never look at an insect in your garden the same way after reading it.  I highly recommend it for all gardeners.  He has a new book entitled Bees, Wasps and Ants: The Indispensable Role of Hymenoptera in the Gardens  which I am looking forward to reading.

The essential thought of all these entomologists is that if we learn to appreciate the insects who come to our garden (along with the myriad of other creatures above and below ground that make up our garden ecosystem) we can have them help us in our control of unwanted pests. 

I have had two experiences with using insects (unwittingly) for predator control in recent years.  The first time was when we were selling our house, and my beautiful honeysuckle was covered with aphids.  Before I had time to buy some insecticide, the lady beetles descended on my plants and took care of the job for me.

And the second time was last week, when I noticed the new growth on my roses was covered with aphids.  This time, I thought about hosing them off, a method I heard about at the Arnold Arboretum.  But once again, before I had a chance to do anything, the aphids disappeared…I never saw who devoured them this time.

On the Sustainability of Development

Today’s Providence Journal has an article summarizing the research of students at Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies on the causes of the historic flooding in Rhode Island last spring.  Their conclusion is that the flooding was human induced, following centuries of deforestation and urbanization along the floodplains of the affected areas.

                Coincidentally, yesterday I attended a workshop hosted by RIDEM and CRMC on the new Stormwater regulations, which have been designed to minimize both flooding impacts and environmental degradation from storm water runoff from new impervious area.  The workshop began with a presentation from NOAA’s Northeast River Forecast Center on the same topic - the causes of the March 2010 flooding.  The presenter reported the same conclusion…the flooding was precipitated by a series of storm events but was primarily caused by urbanization in the floodplains.

                The town that I grew up in New Jersey often had flooding in the low-lying areas of the downtown until the Army Cory of Engineers came in and widened and channelized the beautiful stream that ran through the town park.  It eliminated the flooding but destroyed the steam habitat.  I remember hearing as a young girl that the Native Americans in that region avoided this low-lying area because they knew of the flooding potential.

                At the storm water workshop yesterday, there was a presentation of two possible subdivision scenarios on a real parcel in Smithfield.  The original design had an average lot size of 3.3 acres with 3200 linear feet of road.  The alternative design reflected the avoidance of significant environmental impacts by reducing lot size and road length.  Instead of an average 3+ acre lots, the house sites would be about half that size.  The resulting reconfiguration of the subdivision would lead to the preservation of over 50 acres of open space in one large area.  The presenter commented, however, that the marketability of the smaller lots would likely be difficult because they no longer were “estate” size lots.



Suburban Sprawl



                Rhode Island is already one of the most urbanized states in the country.  As long as what little undeveloped land we have is continued to be developed and people continue to demand large lot sizes, our natural undisturbed areas will be lost forever.  Isn’t it somewhat ironic that “green” home construction is the big buzz word in the high-end residential market?  How often are these “green” homes built in areas where precious habitat has been destroyed in order to accommodate this development?  How green is that?

                It is easy to blame the introduction of plants from Europe and Asia for the loss of native plant species.  But as Peter del Tredici says in his book, Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast, “spontaneous plants have become the de facto native vegetation of the city”.   As much as we tout the inherent adaptability of native plants to our area, there must be a reason why introduced plants have managed to out-compete natives in so many areas.  Could it be because disturbed areas bear little resemblance to the native habitat and environment which once existed?

                If we are interested in a really “green” effort, it would seem that we need to make some hard decisions about where we live and how much land we preserve as habitat for our native flora and fauna.  It is really the only truly sustainable solution to preserving what we care about.

Some benefits of a lot of snow

           As much as many of us dreaded the heaps of snow we had in January, I discovered a pleasant surprise a week or so ago on my south facing garden.  The lettuce seeds that I planted last August, and which really didn’t amount to much by the cold weather, had survived under that nice thick blanket cover and were ready to hit the ground running as soon as the temperatures were over 45 degrees.  After discovering the first plant, new ones have emerged over the last week.  I should be able to make a nice salad by the time I would ordinarily be just planting!

                Why is that?  Well, the nice thick cover of snow that we had for a good six weeks or so kept the ground under it at a steady 32°, and kept things nestled underneath protected from the nasty, chilling winds and ice we had.  I checked the USDA hardiness zone map to see what the equivalent zone would be with a low temperature of 32° - and was surprised to discover that it would be Zone 10a!...which is Naples, Florida and Victorville, CA according to the National Arboretum.  So while the rest of us were dealing with the arctic wintry weather, our little plants under the snow were enjoying a nice respite in the southern weather!

                Of course, other things that were above ground far enough to get pelted by the snow (but not covered) really took a beating.  I’ve never so many broken limbs and split branches.  Good business for tree care companies, I suppose…