Don't Do 90%

"I feel sorry for people who do 90% of what it takes to be successful." —Thomas Sowell, Economist

In school, doing 90% means an A-. In real life, it more often means a D or an F. I heard about a couple who worked and saved for years to build their dream home. They bought some land in the country, bought building supplies, and got to work. But a puzzling illness overtook them during construction. The cause: poisoning from the treated lumber they were using. They couldn’t file a homeowner’s insurance claim or sue anyone—they were out of luck because they shouldn’t have used treated lumber to build a home. They did 90% of what it took to build a home.

Gardeners sometimes do just 90%, too—even members of garden societies. I’ve known them to do or fail to do little things that sealed their plants’ fate. Even professionals make obvious mistakes: how many new homes do you see with blue spruce trees—so cute when they’re little—planted a few feet from the front door?

Let’s talk about you. Let’s say you’ve done 90% of what it takes to have a great garden: you have done your homework and decided which plants you want and where they will go. The last 10% is deciding when and where to buy them, planting them, and getting them established. I can’t give advice on every type of plant and climate, but I can offer some general guidelines to help you get from 90% to 100%.

Where to buy: Experienced gardeners can find good deals at the supermarket and box stores. But if you are a new gardener or new to your area, it’s worth a few extra dollars to go to a good nursery. The selection is better and the staff can give you local advice from their own experience. As plant lovers, they tend to take good care of their stock. That’s rarely the case at stores that sell everything from nuts to motor oil at blowout prices. Just remember: nurseries are businesses. They stock what people will buy, not necessarily what people can grow.

When to plant: This will depend on your climate and the kind of plants you are getting. Knowing your zone will help, but local advice is best—ask a neighbor, local garden society, or nursery staff. For example, I just learned that sweet pea seeds should be planted at Thanksgiving in southern California. Here in Denver, they’re planted around St. Patrick’s Day.

Planting technique: I love to save time and effort, but this is not the place to cut corners. The way you plant will help determine whether you’re walking around this summer with a drink or a shovel in your hand. Soil is that important—and it’s hard to fix once the plant is in the ground. First, know what kind of soil the plant needs. Many books tout rich loamy humus, but some plants, especially Western natives, don’t like rich black soil—it’s like putting monks in a mansion. Whatever kind of soil the plant needs, till it until it is fine and loose. Dig a hole much larger than the pot so that the roots will spread. Roses, for instance, call for a hole at least 18" wide and deep, preferably 24." You may want to fill the hole with water and let it drain so the plant doesn’t dry out. Remove any fiber pot; they take too long to rot in much of the West. Water the plant, but remember that most plants, even roses, don’t like wet feet (i.e., soggy soil).

Speaking of roses, many of them are grafted, meaning that the top of the plant has been attached to a different set of roots. You can tell by looking for a knot just above the root system. This knot, or graft, should be planted about 2" below the soil. If the plant freezes to the ground, there will still be some of the top part of the plant to grow again. The plant that would grow from the roots wouldn’t look like what you bought.

Getting your plants going: at planting, mulch the plant with something appropriate for it to help keep the roots cool and moist. Even xeric plants need extra moisture the first year; they’ll be hardier after they have a large root system. Don’t overwater, though. In general, deep watering is better than a light sprinkle. Your watering should be appropriate for the plant type, soil and weather.

Roses: Beyond the Tea

Over the past few foggy, snowy days in Denver, some people’s thoughts have turned to growing roses, of all things. I don’t know what inspired it, but it’s a good time to start planning. I can’t give advice for all roses and all areas, but I’ll give some general guidelines on selection.

Newbies often want to grow hybrid teas. Full disclosure: I’m not a big hybrid tea fan. Ever notice how catalogs show just the blooms of hybrid teas, and not the whole bush? The blooms are gorgeous but I can hardly smell them, and most hybrid teas look about alike to me. The rest of the plant is very upright and hangs on to its dead brown leaves all winter, making it ugly seven months out of the year. What I love are old garden roses: wide, leafy bushes with blooms brimming with petals and fragrance. Some set hips—little red fruits—in the fall, making the bush colorful all winter.

In zone 4 and below, hybrid teas are expensive annuals, while many old garden roses will live there for decades without coddling. Even in zone 5, with professional care, some hybrid teas are short lived. If you insist on a hybrid tea, try a Buck rose. They were developed at Iowa State University by R. Griffith Buck and had to survive Iowa winters unprotected to pass muster.

Some people are enchanted by tree roses, those grafted wonders shaped like lollipops. For zone 5 or below, these are expensive annuals unless you ... No. I won’t say how to overwinter them. Unless you have a colonial house or a chateau—curiosities out West—they’ll look out of place in your yard. Try instead a chunky shrub rose, maybe ‘Carefree Wonder’ or ‘Hansa’, for your ranch house, or ‘Blaze’ for your bungalow, or a damask or alba rose for your mining town Victorian, or a David Austin for your Victorian in the city, or ‘Golden Wings’ or ‘Sally Holmes’ for your hacienda. They’ll suit the character of your house and they won’t need to be pampered.

Character is what to look for in a rose. Better to get one that suits your home and climate than find dead black canes next spring. There’s a huge variety out there beyond hybrid teas. Give a few of them a try this year.

Me and my Tax Dollars at Work

Being a planner, I consider all possibilities, think several steps ahead, prepare, and then pull the trigger. Now that it’s time to either order plants, or know what to buy at the nursery, I’ve got all the money I need to...pay my federal taxes.

What I was going to spend on beds is now going to the feds. But I haven’t declared a moratorium on gardening. Being a planner, I have a Plan B: garden cheaply.

Moving plants around my yard last weekend instead of ordering new ones saved money. The irises, tansy, and yarrow may actually benefit from being thinned.

Sometimes cheaper is actually better. Certain plants are better planted by scattering their seeds than by transplanting them from (more expensive) pots. In such cases, the seed packets usually say "does not transplant well," or there is no advice for starting them indoors. I scattered seeds of love-in-a-mist (nigella), borage, and opium poppy (papaver somniferum). Cosmos and sunflower would work well in a sunny area.

Other seeds need to be started indoors long before the last frost. To grow them, I cleaned up some old seed trays and moved the fluorescent light fixture from the garage to the basement, hanging it a few inches above the trays. Verbena, convolvulus, creeping thyme, and dusty miller (cineraria maritima) are in the works.

Since I had looked forward to planting Jerusalem artichoke, I’ll see if I can get some from my neighbors. As a trade, I’ve started preparing for transplanting the sucker of an old garden rose I think they’ll like.

I doubt if I’ll ask my parents for plants, though, since I ask them for help only in emergencies—and this is no emergency. Running out of gardening money is just an inconvenience.

I'll Have a Lawn Again

I saw a web site today on songs about physics. I especially liked the one to the tune of "Deck the Halls" about a guy falling out of a plane, somewhere over south Maine. Not to be outdone, I quickly wrote & sent them a song I called "The Clearness of You" inspired by an especially articulate engineering instructor from my college days.

I call this song "I'll Have a Lawn Again." It's based on Sammy Hagar's "I'll Fall in Love Again."

You do what you want to do
I’ll leave it all up to you
In time, I’ll have a lawn again
A green lawn growin brown
Aeration should have turned this thing around
Looks like, I’ve been fooled again

Chorus:
Oh but it’s all right with me now
I’ll get it back somehow
And with a little rain I’m bound to win
And I’ll have a lawn again
I’ll have a lawn again

And you’re always sitting inside
Even dandelions start to die
I’ll have to water just at night
So I guess I think I’ve got it made
Oh but then I guess I’ll be afraid
Of water cops and water fines

Chorus

Here’s something to compare it to
Like the English gardens out in Kew
The sunlight there doesn’t bake
Funny how it doesn’t grow
When you’ve only had a foot of snow
Put back the mower, you need a rake

Chorus

A Tomato with Flavor

Visit the grocery store and you can find organic tomatoes, hydroponic tomatoes, tomatoes still on a bit of vine—every kind of tomato except one that tastes and smells like a real tomato, the home-grown variety. If you’ve never had a home-grown tomato, there’s no way to describe the taste and smell except by analogy: store-bought is like a postcard, home-grown is like being there.

Besides the great taste, there's pride in growing something yourself. I’ve found that tomatoes are among the easiest plants to start from seed. You don’t need a greenhouse or a grow light, just a seed tray, potting mix, some seeds, and a sunny, sheltered place outdoors to put the tray. Yes, outdoors, in a few weeks if you’re in zone 5: it’s called "winter sowing."

Fill the cells in the tray with the potting mix, plant the seeds according to directions on the packet, water, cover with a bag or tray cover, and set outdoors. Once the seeds sprout, make sure they have some ventilation. You can bring them in during especially cold nights, but I usually set them back outside the next day.

By mid-May, winter sown tomato plants are a few inches high—a fraction of the size of the tomato plants for sale. But they’re hardy and they quickly catch up to the big $5 plants from the store. A few years ago, my father planted some of my winter-sown tomatoes along with some tomato plants he bought. The winter-sown ones stood up to weather that ruined the others. He didn’t think the tiny plants would amount to much, but once the weather turned hot, they grew fast and started setting fruit.

After what you believe is the last frost, plant the tomatoes in full sun, spacing them according to the directions on the packet. They’ll be tiny then, but they’ll grow. Dig a big hole and loosen the soil so that the roots have room to spread. If you have really sandy or heavy clay soil, add some compost to it. Once they’re are planted, keep some pots or buckets handy to cover them in case it snows. Don’t overwater, since tomatoes seem to like it just a little on the dry side; I find that two soakings per week suits them.

A few years ago, I had tomato plants that looked great, but weren’t setting fruit. I knew tomatoes grew well during hot days—and it was very hot that summer—but they also needed cool nights, below 70 degrees. I’d planted them close to the house; a spot farther away might have been cooler. Once the nights cooled off, tiny green fruits appeared.

Once the days cool off as well, you can cut off the tomato plants from the roots and hang the vines inside for the fruit to ripen. They may look like the ones on the vine in the store. But yours will have something those don't: flavor.

Easy to Grow!

I feel a twinge of envy every time I see tall grass swaying in the breeze. I confess: I have a hard time growing grass. Never mind that grass covers much of the earth, or that 100 years ago, my lot was probably covered with prairie grass. My ornamental grasses grow a few blades about ankle high, then they die.

Growing a buffalo grass lawn was the hardest gardening project I ever took on. I e-mailed a nursery in late 2000 about planting one. "By summer 2002," they replied, "you’ll be enjoying a lush, low-maintenance lawn." It wasn’t even a lawn by 2002, and wasn’t exactly "lush" until 2004. And even though it looks good now, it still doesn’t look like the photos in the catalog.

I am not alone in finding an "easy to grow" plant hard to grow. One of my next-door neighbors is a great gardener. When he wanted to grow some flowers in a hot, dry spot, I suggested California poppies. For me, there had been only two steps to growing them: scatter seeds, enjoy blooms. But they wouldn’t grow for him. Even though they’ve reseeded abundantly in my yard, I’ve never seen one in his.

There’s another great gardener who has problems growing an "easy" annual. I think of nasturtiums—the aforementioned annual—as the vine that ate California. I’d grow more of them myself if they didn’t clash with the flower colors in my back yard. Lauren Springer, though, says in The Undaunted Garden that her nasturtiums "never amount to anything." Ms. Springer has a master’s degree in horticulture and grows 1,100 species of plants.

This makes my grass problems less frustrating. I have given up on grass (except for the lawn) to grow other plants. Just yesterday I planted seeds of Liminanthus, or poached egg plant. I’d never heard of it, but the package read "Very easy to grow."

In Praise of Laziness

"Good mathematicians are basically lazy." —Monica Fleischauer

So said my Calculus II teacher, Mrs. Fleischauer. I think she meant that good mathematicians don’t make extra work for themselves. It sounds obvious, but look around at how many people who make work. How many people work long hours at prestigious but crummy jobs for a little status? How many people can't say no to anyone? But since make-work in the garden won’t give you status or make you popular, it shouldn’t be hard to give up. Here are a few chores you can scuttle:

Regular spray program. The best rose growers I know never spray. One of the blessings of living in the arid West is freedom from the bugs and diseases that bedevil plants in the Midwest and South. If you have some plants that are prone to certain diseases, and you don’t want to give them up, spray them as needed.

Heeling in bare-root plants. This is where you plant bare root plants in a trench if it’s too early to...plant your bare root plants. If the ground is soft enough to heel in, why not just plant your bare-root plants? If it’s too early, why did you have them shipped so soon?

Pruning with surgical precision. This isn’t too time-consuming if you prune just a few plants. But do you think that the caretakers of big gardens do this?

Regularly fertilizing native plants, or those very well-suited to your soil and climate. Think about it.

Blunt Advice

The book He's Just Not That Into You is such a hit that recently, all copies in the Denver Public Library system were checked out. The premise: if a man doesn’t call a woman, it’s not because he lost her number, was called out of town, or hooked up with his ex. It’s because he’s not interested. Isn’t that simple? I’d like to see some books called Why You’re Still Just Living Together: Didn’t Grandma Tell you about Free Milk and Cows? Or one for men called Fat, Fifty and Rejected: Stop Chasing Hot 30-Year-Olds and you Might Find Someone. (As if that one would fly off the shelves.)

The blunt advice genre is a fresh antidote to all the excuse making we’ve had for the past 30 or 40 years—as long as it’s done with humor. So here are a few titles meant to be amusing. Just remember: many a truth is spoken in jest.

You’re Just too Stingy: Good Rosebushes don’t Sell for $5
Time to Unclench: Constant Pruning and Daily Watering will Kill your Roses
Your Grass is Crunchy because you Haven’t Watered it Enough
High Water Bills: You have too much Lawn
Get Off your Duff and Garden: Gardens Don’t Thrive on Neglect
You’re Not in Kansas Anymore: Ferns and Azaleas Don’t Grow in the Desert
You’re Not in Kansas Anymore II: Your Neighbors Hate You because your Place is a Dump

Vintage or just Dated?

Vintage looks are au courant, but it’s a fine line between "vintage" and "dated." Certain plants and garden sculptures are vintage or heirloom, but landscapes are either up to date or out of date. You can do a little or a lot to update your place. More on that later. A few dated looks:

• Beds of all one plant, made popular during the Victorian bedding craze. Wake me when it’s over. Wait, Queen Victoria has left the throne.
  
• Shaggy junipers by the foundation. Sure, it’s low maintenance and evergreen, but it’s also a dust and pollen catcher and cover for burglars.
  
• A variety of hybrid tea roses in a row. Cut flowers from the florist roses aren’t that expensive anymore. And there are so many great shrub roses that make better garden plants.
  

How to update your look:
The annual beds are the easiest. Find a plan to suit the site in a book or catalog and copy it. The junipers are much harder, especially if they’ve been around since the Eisenhower administration. When my parents and I mucked them out at their place, and finally got down to the stump, my dad dug down deep and split the stump with an ax. It took a lot of elbow grease, but it made room for a mixed border that’s now a show stopper. Sprucing up a row of roses is easier. You can try two different plans. Plan one: move the roses so that they are in clusters of three, keeping the most similar ones together. Plant the hybrid teas 18" to 24" apart. Plan two: kill or dig up the grass around the roses and put in some companion plants that have small flowers or nice foliage. Admit it—you didn’t like trimming and mowing the grass around the roses.

Mile High Rose Feed: Good News and Bad News

First, the good news via an e-mail I received from Christie in Colorado in 2003:

Dear Lori, I emailed you about two months ago about purchasing the Mile high rose feed. I have to let you know how impressed I have been. I live in Colorado on the western slope about 6,000 ft high. I am in the piñon/juniper area and haul my own water plus have the worst soil I can think of. I have lots of rugosa roses, floribundas, species and a few miniature roses. Most of them are 3–5 years old and I have given them generic fertilizers over the years.

This year after giving them the rose food I am amazed—huge growth, masses of blooms including one species rose that has never bloomed (five years old) now has hundreds of buds and blooms. I have never seen this much result from one application of fertilizer and plan to do another in about two weeks. Thank you so much for developing this food. I and my roses love it. –Christie C.

Mile High Rose Feed works—that’s the good news. The bad news: it isn’t for sale where Christie lives. (I mailed a bag to her a few years ago, but now, I typically work six days per week in the spring and hardly have time to keep up my own place.) So I suggested a substitute product: Yum Yum Mix from High Country Gardens in Santa Fe, available by mail order. Does anyone have any experience with this product as far as growing roses? If so, please post a comment.