Prune Now, Plant Later

Last weekend, hundreds of gardeners took home plants from the nursery. I hoped they weren’t planning to set them out that day, but I know some of them did. Many of those plants are no longer with us.

The last average frost date in Denver is May 10. I usually wait until Mother’s Day weekend to set out plants, and then keep buckets handy to cover them in case it snows. Cardboard boxes work well, also. If you live outside the Denver area, find out when your average last frost date is. Set out the plants after that.

It seems to be an unusually chilly spring. So cold, in fact, that my winter-sown seeds haven’t sprouted. I have brought the trays indoors and set them in the sunniest places in my house.

While waiting for the frosts to be over, prune the roses and give them Mile High Rose Feed.
If you already have plants you have not set out, keep them in a sheltered area: a porch on nice days, indoors if it freezes.

Plants: A Difficult Medium for Color

I saw some art by middle and high school students on display at the Denver Public Library at 14th and Broadway in Denver. The artists used media I never used in school—folded paper, window screen, plastic plant leaves, and something that allowed them to make big ceramic spheres. I didn’t notice any watercolor, though. Watercolor was an art staple when I was a kid, maybe because it was cheap. I did some fair watercolors when I was young, but I didn’t like the way the paint bled and ran, faded, and warped the paper. It was hard to control.

Many years later, a cold, sparkling winter scene inspired a color scheme for my front yard: blue, green, and white. Then I saw a pre-planned garden with some yellow in it, too, and ordered it. Then California poppies broke out of their cement cell by the house and appeared all over. By the next year, a riot of color broke out: orange poppies, purple coneflower (which is really pink in my yard), and golden sunflowers joined the commotion. Of course, I could have weeded out the squatters. But the reason I replaced the front lawn with flowers and bushes was to have more color and less work. Plants, even more than watercolor, are a hard medium to control.

Some people search for a plant color at the nursery as if they were choosing a shade of paint. Unlike paint, plant colors can change rapidly. They change with the seasons. The rose ‘Evelyn’, for instance, is apricot in summer and pink in the fall (or maybe the other way around). They change color in the transition from bud to blown. Take a rose from the hothouse to the garden, and its color can go from delicate to bright under the Colorado sun.

The advantage of these difficult media: watercolor paintings are mostly white and soothing to the eye; likewise, plants are mostly green and equally soothing. Plant something green or white between two clashing colors, and it will soften the effect. Loosening your grip on ultimate control of the plants will feel softer, too.

Rose FAQ

I just returned from Tagawa Gardens, where I enjoyed helping dozens of customers select roses. Some commonly asked questions among the customers:

Can I set the plants out now?
No, wait until around Mother’s Day (for those in zone 5). For now, harden the plants by setting them outside in a sheltered area (like a porch) until then. Bring them in if it freezes.

What roses can I grow that are very cold-hardy?
Canadian roses, hybrid rugosas, Buck roses, some of the old garden roses like Austrian Copper, Harison’s Yellow and Rosa glauca.

What are some very fragrant roses?
The English roses, many old garden roses, hybrid rugosas. For modern rose lovers, Sheila’s Perfume, Perfume Delight, Double Delight, Scentimental, and Mister Lincoln offer good fragrance. I discovered one today that could make me a hybrid tea fan: Papa Meilland. It’s a dark red hybrid tea with a deep damask fragrance.

Do you think these two colors will clash?
It’s a matter of personal preference. First, remember that most of each plant will be green, so planting a yellow rose next to a red one isn’t the same as wearing a yellow top with red pants. Second, lighter colors don’t clash as much as intense ones. Finally, if you have a formal garden, color coordination is more important than if you have a more informal garden.

What is a good thornless rose for an arbor?
Zephirine Drouhin is a great thornless climber. America isn’t very thorny; I’ve heard both good and bad reports of its performance. Veilchenblau is a terrific, nearly thornless purple rose, even though it doesn’t bloom long. Don Juan has been around for awhile; it’s a deep red rose that isn’t overly thorny.

How should I plant roses?
Dig a big hole, about 18" wide and deep. Put a little phosphate in the bottom of the hole to promote blooming, if you like. Mix the soil with some cow and compost, which is well-rotted cow manure and organic matter. (Someone couldn’t understand what this was until I made a mooing noise.) If there is a bud union, plant it three inches below the surface of the soil. Mulch the rose with, say, several sheets of newspaper and wood chips on top. If you use bark, add some more nitrogen to your fertilizing program. Water the rose well.

When do I prune the roses?
Now.

How do I prune roses?
The method described in many books and magazines is used by people who grow exhibition roses. They’re more interested in size and quality of blooms, not quantity of blooms. Prune lightly to get more blooms. This year, I am going to try the easy-care method of simply cutting the bush one-third to halfway down. But I won’t do this to the climbers. They need to be allowed to grow tall.

How should I feed the roses?
I recommend Mile High Rose Feed. It was designed by rose growers in the Denver area for roses for our kind of soil. It takes only three applications per year.

Holy Guano, Batman!

This editorial in the Wall Street Journal talks with wonder about pricey designer gardening aprons, Birckenstocks to “protect your pedicure,” and even imported bat poop (market price: $4 a pound).

I don’t know who buys these items—it isn’t me or my gardening buddies. Now, I am all for looking nice and buying good quality products, but I don’t think my plants suffer because I wear old jeans, tennis shoes, t-shirts, and drugstore sunscreen, or use tools from the local hardware store while caring for them. The best gardeners I know would rather spend their money on good plants than boutique horticultural artifacts.

Why Plant Once-Blooming Roses?

What kind of plant is undesirable because it blooms for only a few weeks or a month every year?

1. Rose
   
2. Spirea
   
3. Lilac
   
4. Forsythia
   
5. Golden currant
   

All of the above plants, except for most modern roses, have a short bloom period. Yet once-blooming roses are singled out for rejection. True, many roses bloom all summer. So why choose a once-blooming rose?

Once-blooming roses are much different from the hybrid tea roses most people are used to. Hybrid teas have florist-style blooms on, in most cases, smaller, upright, tender plants. They are bred to be beautiful cut flowers, like gerber daisies or carnations. The once bloomers, on the other hand, make better garden shrubs. They tend to have a vase-shaped or rounded shrub form; they look more like the other shrubs in the garden than they do hybrid teas. Most are bone hardy. Consider that gardeners were growing them long before there were chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and that the pioneers brought them West. In early summer, hundreds of blooms cover each bush. Some blooms are single like an apple blossom, others are fully double like roses in a Redouté painting, and still others look like an anemone. Most are fragrant. On some plants, the blooms give way to hips (fruit) that stay on the bush all winter, providing color and nourishment for birds.

I wouldn’t trade the once-blooming roses in my yard for everblooming or repeat-blooming ones. Even most shrub roses can’t take their place. One of my favorites is ‘Alba semi-plena’, an ancient rose used to make rose oil. It’s unaffected by the weather and grows in a spot in my yard where nothing else would grow. Add fragrant white flowers, red hips, and evergreen stems to its list of attributes, and it’s hard to think of a plant that could take its place.

More Ways to Save: Recycle your Office Wardrobe

Although I could probably get away with wearing dowdy, er, casual clothes to work, I'd rather look and feel like a success. I've only begun to realize that doing so would give me some items I could recycle in the garden. Even if you don't sport the dress for success look, you might have some of these items, or you can get them cheaply. The cheap grocery store hose works just as well as the expensive department store brands. And dress shirts and leather bags sell for a few dollars at thrift stores.

Ruined panty hose: use them to keep the covers on the seed trays. Tie the ends together and wrap the hose around the seed tray and cover like an elastic cord on a box of chocolates (i.e., put the hose under the tray and slip it over two diagonal corners).

Ruined dress shirts: sun protection. You’ll still need to use sunscreen, though, since the fabric doesn’t block nearly all the light. But it helps. If you doubt that the sun damages your skin, compare the inside of your arm (the side usually in the shade) with the outside (the side usually in the sun). Or just look up a photo of Bridgette Bardot.

Ruined leather bags: use the leather to make elbow patches on denim jackets.

Wall Street Journal or Denver Business Journal, etc.: all right, this is more of an accessory than wardrobe. Nevertheless. use the paper in place of peat pots. If you want to grow some plants from seed, but they don't transplant well, try lining a pot with a piece of newspaper before adding the soil and seeds. When the plant is big enough, transplant paper and all. Peat pots don't tend to rot around here, but a single sheet of newspaper might do so in one season.

Make a Decision!

Show tunes aren’t in the repertoire of many young people. So when American Idol contestants, young singers vying for a multi-million dollar recording contract, had to sing Broadway tunes Tuesday night, they gave widely varying reasons for choosing the songs they sang. They didn’t have long to deliberate—they had one week to learn the song and perform it on live national television. In contrast to their quick decision making, I’ve seen customers at nurseries take an hour or more to choose the perfect rose. I believe in planning, but there is a point where it turns into paralysis by analysis. Let’s take some inspiration from the singers, make our decisions and get on with our lives.

"I closed my eyes, put my finger on the paper, and the song I was pointing to was the one I chose." –Bo Bice

This is the adventurous approach. Since nurseries have lists of plants they stock, you can ask to see a copy and try this method for yourself.

"I was already familiar with the song."—Constantine Maurulis

If you already have a plant you like, try planting a few more elsewhere in your yard to convey a rhythm. Consider professional landscapes. They don’t have collections of plants, they have groups of plants. The groups are repeated, like a chorus in a song.

"My mother suggested the song."—Scott Savol

If your mother or grandmother doesn’t have any suggestions—and what are the odds of that?—just ask a good gardener in your neighborhood.

"The song conveyed a feeling I had had once in my life."—Nadia Turner

A few other singers also said that they chose songs that struck a chord with them. Likewise, gardeners sometimes see a plant that captures their imagination. If this happens to you, take the plant home, learn about it, and grow it. However, if you love plants as much as American Idol judge Paula Abdul loves singers, you may end up buying more plants than you can fit into your car.

Gaining Ground on Weeds

The battle has already started. Even if you haven’t engaged them, especially if you haven’t, the weeds are advancing. When I bought my house, the former driveway area was full of goatheads, crawling weeds whose prickly seeds can send shooting paint into the most callused heel or paw. Being inept at killing weeds, it took me years to get rid of them. If I’d known then what I know now, I could get rid of them in one season.

There are many ways to kill or prevent weeds—I’ll cover several. The old driveway would have been a good place to use herbicide. Some people think any herbicide must be harmful. But how harmful is it to expose your skin to two or three straight hours of sunlight while you hack or pull weeds? Not only can sun exposure lead to skin cancer, but too much of it will turn you into a human Gucci bag, to quote fitness expert Bill Phillips. Wanting to be safe, though, I e-mailed Texas A&M University about Roundup, an herbicide. I heard back from horticulture professor George McEachern: "Roundup is one of the safest ag chemicals we use." Consider also that not all plant-toxic chemicals are man-made. To quote The Undaunted Garden: "[Tree of heaven and black walnut] ...actually secrete substances from their roots into the soil that stunt the growth of plants other than themselves..." Here are some more means of stunting the growth of weeds:

Preventive measures:
Put down several layers of newspaper and cover with mulch. To put in plants, just poke a hole in it. The newspaper will disintegrate in a few years, adding organic matter to the soil. This is better and cheaper than plastic sheets, which tend to tear, or plastic fabric, which allows weed grass to grow through it.

Apply a pre-emergent fertilizer to prevent weed seeds from sprouting. Don’t use this anywhere near bulbs, though, since it can kill them.

Killing weeds mechanically:
Use a hoe; they come in various shapes and sizes for different gardeners and different purposes. You can also use a long, narrow tool with a double-pointed end to dig up tap rooted weeds such as dandelions. This is a good tool to use when the weed is very close to a plant you don’t want to harm. Of course, there’s always the weed wacker if you just want to keep your weeds short.

Killing weeds chemically:
I bring the dog inside for a few hours, get a bottle of Roundup concentrate, mix it according to directions, and zap all the weeds in a few minutes. I use a piece of cardboard to protect plants I don’t want to harm. Again, just follow the directions carefully. The concentrate is cheaper than the ready-to-use bottles, where you’re paying for about 99% water. I’ve tried using vinegar on weeds, but it never worked for me. One thing I’d never use to kill weeds: salt. It may be natural, but it poisons the soil.

Digging for Information

Check out the section called Dig in the Rocky Mountain News. It’s a pull-out section on gardening, which comes out every Friday. It has a great article by Rob Proctor on starting seeds in trays.

The City of Gardens

The beautiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps more so. --Victor Hugo

Tonight I met a woman who just moved to Denver from Pakistan. She said the city of Lahore, Pakistan is known as the city of gardens. Even though the citizens are not materially wealthy, every patch of ground has a flower growing from it.

City plantings are not only beautiful but useful. The plants keep the soil on the ground instead of blowing through the air or sliding down a hill during a rainstorm. Trees help keep us cool. Certain plants even improve the soil; the legume family, for instance (sweet peas, beans, locust trees, etc.) adds nitrogen to the soil. Densely spaced plants help keep out weeds—there’s nowhere for the weeds to grow. But my favorite thing about public plantings is that they give a lift to the spirit.