Here at C'Side

Birds In Winter

2012-01-15T12:42:00.000-06:00

Birds at feeder in winter

Wow- We finally got some winter last week. As much as I hate shoveling snow it’s nice to get some insulating cover over our plants.. It really helps to protect them from the cold, drying winds and keeps moisture from evaporating from the ground. This is especially important for the broadleaf evergreens that don’t go dormant. If they dry out they will drop the buds that they set last fall and you won’t get any blooms this spring. I noticed that my climbing rose has finally dropped all its leaves and is fully dormant. It is now safe to prune as are any other trees or shrubs that need it.

There are lots of birds that stay around here over the winter including sparrows, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals, juncos and even gold finches. Most people are surprised that the gold finches don’t migrate since they don’t see them. Actually you do see them its just that their plumage has turned from gold to brown, the better to blend into the environment and avoid predators.

Heated Bird Bath

If you are feeding the birds, make sure you are using a bird feed that is high in energy seeds. These would be black oil sunflower seeds and peanuts. Nyger thistle is also high in energy. Black oil sunflower also has thinner hulls and is easier for the birds to crack open in addition to being high in oil. Suet cakes are also very high in energy and good to put out in winter.

Bird Bath Heater

With this cold weather, any open water has probably frozen over and is not available to the birds. In addition to feeding the birds, you should also put out fresh water. My neighbor Dave has a bird bath out during the summer and the birds use it all summer long. Water is equally important in the winter however. Using a heated bird bath or a bird bath heater will keep the water from freezing in the bird bath. The bird bath heater sits in your birdbath while the heated bird bath is all one unit-- heater and bird bath combined.

Poinsettias-Not Your Grandmother's Poinsettia!

2011-12-18T12:29:00.000-06:00

Poinsettias are a traditional Christmas plant due to their red foliage. They are part of the euphorbia family and have bracts rather than flowers. The flower is the yellow part in the middle of the bract. They can be a tricky crop to grow up in the northern climes mostly due to the need to regulate light. They need to be trimmed to promote a full shape and because in real life they can grow to be over 10’ tall their growth needs to be regulated. Here at Countryside our poinsettias are grown at our growing facility at Garden Valley under natural light. At night all natural light must be reduced, even lights from street lights can throw off their natural inclination to bloom when receiving equal amounts of light and dark. If we have lots of cloudy days so that they are getting more dark than light it not only keeps them from growing but also keeps them from coloring. This year’s crop looks really nice.

Jana from the greenhouse staff is
ready to help you select the
perfect poinsettia

Poinsettias are really a desert plant native to Central America. The Aztecs used it to make a reddish-purple dye and it was long known as a “Christmas” plant even before it was noticed by Joel Poinsett, the US Ambassador to Mexico in the 1800s. A botanist by training, he sent samples to his home in the US and began breeding them. The rest, as they say, is history.

Poinsettias aren't just red anymore

According to National Geographic poinsettias were the top selling potted plant in 2001. 75 million were sold at a wholesale value of $256 million. Today there are 5 major breeders of poinsettias, the most well known of which is the Paul Ecke Ranch of California. 2/3 of all poinsettias came from the Paul Ecke Ranch in that year.

Kim helps Jean McDaniel select
poinsettias for her house

Through breeding programs there are now over 100 different varieties of poinsettias from which to choose. There are bract color differences (red, white, pink, speckled) leaf color differences (dark green to even a lime green color) and even bloom time differences. My personal favorite pink.

Poinsettias make a great hostess gift and can brighten up a dreary winter with their bright flowering bracts. They should continue to stay in color for many weeks. When you bring them home place them where they will get indirect sunlight for about 6 hours a day. Since they are a desert plant they prefer the soil on the dry side- water only when the soil feels dry and the pot feels light in weight. Don’t panic if the leaves start to drop. This is a natural reaction of the plant to a change in growing conditions. It has gone from our sunny greenhouse to your darker house and is under some stress. Though you may be tempted to water it, don’t. Try finding a room with a little more sunlight.

More Fall Chores

2011-11-29T21:07:00.000-06:00

These pictures are from Wilt Pruf

One of the last chores for the season is prepping broad leaf evergreens for winter. Broad leaf evergreens sounds like an oxymoron. Most evergreens with which we are familiar are the needled variety, such as firs, pines and spruces. These are trees that have adapted to drier climates by having needles instead of leaves. The needles are green and still undergo photosynthesis but have a lot less surface area so that the moisture inside doesn’t evaporate as quickly.
Broad leaf evergreens are shrubs such as azaleas, rhododendrons, boxwood and holly. They really aren’t adapted to our climate or soil but yet we still plant them so we do have a little work to do to keep them happy. Because of their broad leaves that stay on the plant all year they are really susceptible to our drying winter winds. The wind flows over the leaf and just dries them out. This is really damaging for azaleas and rhododendrons because they set their flower buds in the fall. If they get stressed during the winter the first thing they do is go into "survivor" mode and drop the buds in order to protect the rest of the plant.

Azaleas at Uncle Bill's house in MD

To keep this from happening you can wrap the shrubs in burlap or apply an anti-transpirant. There are several anti-transpirants on the market. The most widely available are Wilt Pruf and Wilt Stop. These are organic polymers that make a waxy coating on the leaf so the moisture stays in the plant. You can apply it now and then again around Valentine’s Day. These products can also be used on fresh cut Christmas trees, wreaths, roping and porch pots and they do the same thing as on live shrubs: they keep the moisture in so they last a lot longer without dropping their needles. You can also use these products in the summer when planting or transplanting. The polymer coating helps the plant retain moisture and reduces transplant shock.
Be sure to water your needled evergreens, as well as your broadleaf evergreens, when ever the temperature gets above freezing for an extended period of time. All evergreens continue to undergo photosynthesis and transpire during the winter and they need to replace the water they have lost through this process.

The Northern Lights is the tall
yellow plant in the middle

Here is something to aspire to. This picture on the right was taken at my great uncle's house in Maryland. There they have the right climate and soil conditions to grow great azaleas without really trying. Because of our alkaline soils and harsh winters it is really hard for us to grow broadleaf evergreens, especially azaleas. They do not reliably flower because of the stress during winter. If you really want to grow azaleas try the Northern Lights series. These are azaleas that are deciduous. They survive our winters because they go dormant and drop their leaves. Are they as stunning as the ones at my uncle's? In a word no, but that is the trade off.

Fall Leaf Cleanup

2011-11-19T20:42:00.000-06:00

The last little tomato

I was up on my roof last week blowing leaves out of the gutters with my leaf blower. After I was done I spent a minute looking out over the neighborhood and my own garden and contemplated the summer. Neighbor Ed’s garden was a huge success I would say. Now there isn’t much left except the stems from his tomato and pepper plants and maybe a stray watermelon. I have one little green tomato on my plant that probably won’t be there much longer, especially if we have a hard freeze like they are predicting.
Leaves are a real problem this time of year. So many of them and what do you do: burn them? Bag them? Hope they blow into the neighbors yard? My neighbor down the street rakes them all on to his garden and lets them decompose over the winter and then tills them into the soil. This adds organic matter and nitrogen.

Before the mower...

I am doing something a little different. I have been blowing the leaves onto the lawn and then running them over with the lawn mower. The mower chops them up into dime sized pieces and does a good job of spreading them around. Over the winter they will start to decompose and next year the worms will slowly move the organic matter down into the soil.

Neighbor Dave has been mulching and bagging and so far he’s had about 15 bags of leaves out for the trash guy to take. I haven’t had any bags. I feel pretty good that I have kept a similar amount of leaves out of the land fill and here in my own yard to add to my own soil. I suppose you could make the argument that I used up some gas and caused some pollution by running my lawn mower but I would have been mowing the lawn anyway.

...after the mower

So why is it important to add organic matter to our soil? Well, no matter if your soil is heavy clay soil or sandy and well drained, all soil can benefit with the addition of organic matter. Organic matter breaks up heavy clay soil making it better for plant roots to move through the soil and become established. When soil is too sandy, organic matter helps it retain moisture. Organic matter also slowly changes the soil pH to more acidic, which most plants like. Our soil tends to be too alkaline, which reduces the plants’ ability to take up available nutrients. Adding organic matter to the garden or to perennial beds is easy because we can top dress with compost but getting it into the soil of an already established lawn in more difficult that’s why mulching leaves and leaving on the lawn is a good idea.

I haven’t yet put a winterizer fertilizer on my lawn and I will probably do so next week. The major holidays are a good reminder for yard chores and Thanksgiving is the reminder for winterizer. Putting fertilizer on in the late fall may seem odd since the grass is going somewhat dormant but it actually gets the lawn ready for spring. And Thanksgiving is probably a good time to ready the mower for winter as well.

Fall Chores

2011-11-02T20:08:00.000-05:00

Nursery in Lake Como, Italy

I went to Italy last month and as usual I am always interested in seeing what the local horticultural industry is up to. We were in the Naples area and on the train between Naples and Sorrento I noticed numerous greenhouses and hoop houses (like Houses 5-21 at Countryside). Even speeding by at however fast the train was going I saw long stem roses and carnations. It was hard to resist the urge to get off the train to try and find the growing operations. Another crop I noticed growing was chrysanthemums. Our chrysanthemum season is about over but theirs was barely started! I did a little research when I got home and learned the Italy is the third largest producer of cut flowers. They also purchase 5% of all cut flowers. I did stop at a little nursery in Lake Como up by the train station and took a few pictures. I tried in my terrible Italian to explain to the woman working there that I also worked at a garden center but I don’t think I was successful.

Always on the job!

Well, when I left it was the last of summer but I came back to fall and fall chores. If you are still mowing be sure to lower the mower deck a little bit each time you mow. Leaving the grass too long over the winter encourages disease as the grass flops over and doesn’t get good air circulation. It’s not too late for a last feeding of winterizer for the lawn. You could even wait until later this month to do it.
If you are really in the mood for tidying up in the garden, you could cut back the perennials but don’t cut them all the way to the ground. I always like to leave the stems until spring. This gives the snow cover something to stick to and provides insulation through the winter and protects the plant against crown rot.

Rose Collars

Rose Cone

For you rosarians, we recommend using rose collars rather than rose cones. You can put the rose collars on now. They go around the base of the plant and then you fill the collar with top soil. Contrary to popular belief, this does not keep the plant from freezing. What it does is once the ground has frozen it keeps it frozen so that the plant does not undergo a freeze/thaw cycle. Sometimes in January or February we have a bit of a warm up and this can fool the plants into coming out of dormancy. Then we get a hard freeze that shocks the plants and can kill them. If you use rose cones, wait until the rose is fully dormant before pruning it back to fit the rose cone over it. Sometimes this isn’t until after Christmas. If we do get a warm up, remove the rose cone or remove the lid if it has one, so moisture doesn’t build up inside the cone.

And one last thing... Friday, November 11^th is the Countryside Wine Tasting. This is a great event, not to be missed. The Countryside staff will all be there to kick off the holiday season with you. Here's a link to the website with information about all the upcoming holiday events.

Tulip Time

2011-09-25T21:28:00.000-05:00

Crocus are one of the first
bulbs to bloom in spring

It’s officially fall; the days are getting shorter, the temperature is falling and things in the garden are slowing down. I haven’t mown my lawn in over a week, when at the height of summer it was a twice a week chore. Sometimes I am actually relieved when this time of year rolls around.
But, it is not too early to think about next spring and it is the perfect time to plant bulbs. Bulb sales have been declining for several years and it’s mystery to me why. One of my gardening friends thinks it’s because we want instant gratification. We don’t want to plant something now and then have to wait six months before we see it bloom. Well, what ever the reason it is too bad because bulbs are a wonderfully versatile plant in the garden.

Fritilliaries are deer resistant

You can pack a lot of blooms in a small area by "layering" the bulbs, or planting them at different levels based on their requirements. A good rule of thumb is to plant a bulb at 3 times its height. Smaller bulbs like crocus need only be planted maybe 2-3 inches down in the soil while the bigger bulbs such as daffodils or allium need to be planted deeper. And it seems to just work out that the smaller bulbs bloom earlier than the bigger bulbs. There are even bulbs that bloom in the fall! The saffron crocus is one of them, colchicums are another.

The bulb industry has a new ad campaign to show you just how easy it is to plant bulbs. It is called Dig, Drop, Done. Dig the hole, drop in the bulb, and you’re done. You should also be sure to water thoroughly but that doesn’t really go with the alliterative dig drop done theme. I like to naturalize my bulbs, either in the flower beds or in the lawn. I just randomly toss the bulbs in the area I want to plant and then plant them where they land.

Daffodils in bloom

You can fertilize if you like but it really isn’t necessary. The bulb itself has all the energy it will need to grow and bloom the next year. The best time to fertilize is in the spring when you first see the foliage poke up from the ground. After the blooms have faded, resist the temptation to cut back the foliage. This is how the bulb produces and stores the energy needed to bloom next year.

When you buy bulbs make sure to purchase the largest bulbs possible. The bigger the bulb the more energy it has to produce blooms the first year. The bulbs should be also be firm and not bruised. Soft bulbs are dead and will not bloom next spring.

Fox in the neighbor's garden

Yesterday while walking in the neighborhood a fox ran in front of me on Pomeroy Street. He ran into someone’s side yard and sat there long enough for me to take this picture with my phone. He jumped up on a retaining wall and then saw me and took off.

Applying Chemicals

2011-08-07T20:17:00.000-05:00

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. We suffer through drought and heat, and then record rain. The other morning it felt decidedly fall-ish and now the humidity is almost unbearable. I’ve got loads of tomatoes on my plants but none of them are close to ripe. As hard as it is on people, it’s that hard on our plants and our lawns. We need to replenish the nutrients without encouraging too much growth. I’ve seen evidence of Japanese beetles on my roses and hibiscus. And on top of it all we now have diseases to control.
This time of year you need to be careful when applying chemicals. Chemicals are expensive and you want to be sure you get the most out of them. Your plants and lawn should be well watered before you apply any chemical. Chemicals can be stressful even on the non-target plant and you want them to be in the best condition before applying the chemical. Some chemicals work through the vascular system of the plant, like systemic insecticides or most herbicides. If the vascular system is not functioning because the plant is thirsty the chemical won’t work as effectively. In addition, many chemicals require that you not water for a day or two in order for the chemical to be fully taken in by the plant. If the plant or lawn is already dry, another day or two will stress it even further making the chemical less effective. You may think if the weed is going to die any way what does it matter. However if the weed can’t move the herbicide from the leaf to the roots it won’t work. We had a situation at work recently here a customer returned some Roundup because it wasn’t working. He had applied in the heat of July when the weeds weren’t actively growing so the weed wasn’t dying.

Most chemicals should not be applied when the temperature is over 85 . Again, heat causes plants to slow down their growth so the chemical won’t move through the plant efficiently. Over spray onto turf grass when you are trying to kill weeds in the lawn will stress the lawn. Most herbicides are taken in through the foliage by stomas or openings in the leaves. When the temperature rises, plants close these openings to conserve moisture. If the openings are closed, the chemical can’t be taken in.

Apply chemicals in the morning so that the chemical has a chance to dry before the sun hits it. Most chemicals have a petroleum based carrier. Those drops of chemical on the leaf can act like a magnifying glass, burning the leaf. If the leaf is damaged it cannot undergo photosynthesis as effectively. Photosynthesis is what produces the energy for the plant that is stored in the roots and helps the plant survive over the winter. When spraying insecticides, spray early in the morning when bees are not active so you don’t inadvertently kill them as well. Bees in the US have been under attack from Colony Collapse Disorder. Bees are responsible for the pollination of many of our agricultural production and the value of crop pollination is estimated to be $5-14 billion dollars according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. So do be careful when spraying insecticides as they are not selective and can’t tell a Japanese beetle from a bee.

Organic chemicals have become more popular, especially since more people are growing their own vegetables and herbs. Some of the most popular insecticides are neem oil (from the neem tree), pyrethrins (an extract from chrysanthemums), nicotine, sabadilla and rotenone. Neem oil also has a fungicidal effect. A new product on the market is a bacteria called spinosad which was discovered in the Caribbean in an old rum factory. Diatomaceous earth works great on crawling insects. Essentially it is shells of microscopic ocean dwelling animals called diatoms. Even microscopically the shells have very sharp edges. As the insects crawl over them is cuts them to shreds and they dehydrate. Sounds gruesome. For herbicides, organic controls include food grade oils (garlic, rosemary, etc.) and citric acid, usually in a soy based carrier. Most of these controls only kill the tops of the weed not the roots. They are also non selective, meaning you can’t use them to treat weeds in the lawn, but they are effective in killing weeds in the driveway, walkway, patio, or even in a flower bed if you are careful about overspray. Organic fungicides usually contain sulphur or copper.

Watering the Garden

2011-07-20T18:44:00.000-05:00

I’ve been dragging hoses and hauling watering cans for the past several weeks so naturally this week’s blog is about watering. In my travels around town I’ve seen a few watering "no-no’s."

Neighbor Ed's garden--looking good

First, it takes up to two years for plant material to fully root in so if you have newly planted landscaping make sure they get 1" of water a week. A well established plant and grass can certainly handle a little drought but drought does stress the plants and make them more susceptible to disease even into the following year

Second, water in the morning so that any water that splashes on to the leaves has a chance to dry before evening. This will reduce the opportunity for disease.

Third, water the soil, not the plant. I noticed my neighbor Ed, whose garden is looking quite lush, water with a sprinkler the other evening. Watering from overhead is very inefficient because of evaporation. Water will also splash up onto lower leaves and can invite soil borne diseases such as tomato blight. Watering in the evening also can provide an opportunity for diseases, since they thrive in moist conditions.

Put the hose at the base of the plant
to ensure proper watering

When water trees and shrubs, especially newly planted ones, place the hose right up to the base of the plant and leave it on a slow trickle for awhile. This allows the water to penetrate the root ball from the center and then move out into the surrounding soil and encourages the roots to grow out in the same direction.

And one last thing on the watering front: Lots of people, including me, garden in containers and not just flowers but vegetables as well. I have two whisky barrels that I plant up every year with tomotoes, peppers, eggplant and some herbs every year. If you grow tomatoes in containers it is very important that you water them consistently. Tomatoes require calcium to prevent a problem known as blossom end rot. There is usually enough calcium in the soil from fertilizers to provide enough calcium but if they get too much water so that the calcium is diluted or not enough water so that they cannot pull enough up through their roots you will notice a "water spot" on the blossom end of the tomato. Eventually it turns black and starts to rot. If you notice this happening there are foliar calcium products on the market that you can spray on the plants to prevent it but also remember to water regularly.

Garden Walks

2011-07-04T09:52:00.000-05:00

Garden Train with creeping sedum
in foreground

The Garden Conservancy raises money for charity through their "Open Days" program, private garden owners open their gardens to the public. You can go to their website and request to be on their e-mail list to get notices of gardens open in your area.

Another view of trains with
sedum and veronica

Last weekend I went to two gardens in the Barrington area. The first garden has as it main feature garden trains. These "G" scale trains are built for outdoor use. The woman who owns the garden actually has a business designing and installing garden trains called Huff N Puff. In an area the size of my city lot, she had quite a layout with numerous tracks and trains all running at the same time. There was also an indoor display that basically depicted all of Illinois, from down state farms to the city of Chicago, complete with Wrigley Field, Millennium Park and Grant Park.

Non Stop Begonias, salvia
and argeratum

What I found fascinating was her use of annuals in her gardens. It’s rather inspiring to see plants most people can only afford to use in containers being used as bedding plants. She had a whole bed of tuberous (Non-Stop) begonias in full bloom that were gorgeous. It inspired me to stop at Countryside and get a few for my last container. It is mind boggling to think of the number of flats and 4" containers that are needed to fill a garden that size. It must be truckloads.

The second garden was equally as fabulous, though for different reasons. Again, lots of use of annuals for great color punch, but also, as my friend pointed out, several well-placed arbors to give some structure to an other wise flat landscape when you moved away from the house area. One in particular had clematis growing up the arbor and shrub roses along side.

Clematis arbor

Janice also pointed out that even in the shady areas, the turf grass was thick and green. It’s hard to grow grass in shade and in really dense shade we usually recommend putting in some type of ground cover. To do it successfully, you must start with the right type of grass seed mix. Most shady mixes will have very little bluegrass and lots of fine and tall fescues. It’s important not too push the grass by heavily fertilizing as that will just result in tall spindly blades of grass.

We over heard the owner of this property tell another visitor that she has gardeners in Monday through Friday. That’s a bit intimidating so I am perfectly happy with my little lot.

All of this brings me to the subject of our next garden walk, which is next Saturday, July 9^th. It is sponsored by the McHenry County Master Gardeners and is a major fund-raiser for them. This group of volunteers gets special training by the Cooperative Extension Service and must also complete additional training to keep their certificates current. They repay the extension service by volunteering in the extension office in Woodstock and answering homeowner horticultural questions. The garden walk starts at the demonstration garden at McHenry County College and then to 8 other gardens in southern McHenry County. The cost is $17.

Landscaping

2011-06-25T09:44:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the mere thought of re-doing something just makes me want to lie down until the urge passes. Having to make decisions and then do the actual work can be daunting. Fortunately for me I have several friends who enjoy telling me what to do, so at least the decision parts are done for me and all I have to do is the physical part, which can be enjoyable.

What used to be in the raised beds were
a purple sand cherry, euonymous
and some boxwood and holly.
It really didn't do much for me
although it was easy to care for.

So, a couple of weeks ago, at a friend’s urging, I did a little tweaking in the front garden and I do admit the results are quite pleasing. And it really wasn’t a lot of work.

Newly planted impatiens

My parkway tree had some creeping sedum planted around it and it didn’t really provide a lot of color "pop." So out it went– I gave some to neighbor Dave and some to another friend and moved some to the back– and the rest "gasp" I just threw out. It was really quite cathartic. In its place went a flat of colorful Impatiens. Yes, they will have to be replanted every year, but for a few minutes work I will be rewarded with blooms all summer long.

On either side of my front door are raised planter beds but the wall blocks were so high you couldn’t really see the bedding plants until the end of the summer when they had finally grown tall enough. So, we took off the top layer of block and res-set the cap stones and now you can see the pink begonias I planted last month.

The re-purposed arbor

On the right side of my house was a really nice arbor that at one time had clematis growing up the sides. It was too shady so the clematis eventually died, except for one which was struggling. So, we took the arbor apart and used the sides for trellises in the aforementioned raised beds. I replanted the struggling clematis and bought another one (The President) for the other side.

The finished project

So, for just a few hours time and a little cash at Countryside I now have a whole new look at the front of the house. I feel really good about re-purposing the arbor, tho I still don’t know what to do with the arched top.

At Ease Disease, There's a Fungus Among Us

2011-06-14T19:34:00.001-05:00

Powdery Mildew

We’ve had a wet spring and that
means two things—mosquitoes and diseases. It doesn’t matter if it is cold and wet or warm and wet, some disease thrives in it. Some plants are naturally more prone to fungal infections. My monarda get powdery mildew every year and garden phlox are also susceptible. Powdery mildew usually doesn’t do lasting harm, tho it can look a little unsightly. Roses are also prone to many types of disease, including powdery mildew and black spot. Other types of diseases can be devastating to some crops, including tomatoes, squash, and potatoes.

Mosaic disease

Plant diseases are spread in a variety of ways. Sucking insects, like aphids, can transfer the disease and some diseases are spread by spores in the soil. Rose Mosaic Virus is spread through vegetative propagation (cuttings). Some are preventable, most are not treatable.

Late blight on tomatoes

The best way to fight disease is to follow good horticultural practices. Water early in the morning and don’t water from overhead; that is water the soil not the plant. In the vegetable garden, rotate your crops from year to year. Mulch between the rows so soil borne spores aren’t splashed up onto the undersides of the lower leaves when it rains or when watering. If you know you have plants that are susceptible to certain diseases, such as the monarda, or if your vegetables become diseased year after year, start applying fungicides before you see the problem and follow the good horticultural practices outlined above. If you don’t catch it in time, the only thing to do is to remove the affected leaves or stems and begin a spaying program. Dispose of the diseased material by putting it in a bag and then in the trash. Do not throw the diseased prunings in the compost pile. There are organic fungicides that you can use on vegetables and other edible crops, but always, always read and follow the label.

You can also use seed or buy plants that are certified disease resistant. When buying tomato plants, for example, you may see the letters VFNT, or only some of those letters. The V stands for verticillium, the F for fusarium, the N for nematodes and the T for tobacco virus. The Champion tomato variety is certified VFNT, which means it is genetically bred to be resistant to those for pathogens.

Vegetable Gardening

2011-06-07T19:52:00.000-05:00

Ed's new veg garden

My neighbor roto-tilled up part of his back lawn and put in a vegetable garden. It was an ambitious project that took most of two weekends to finish and now I see rows of something green beginning to sprout.

The vegetable garden at Countryside has been in for several weeks now. This year Richard and Lori have planted potatoes, broccoli, chard, tomatoes, radishes and peppers.

The Countryside Garden

You might think that June is too late to put in a veg. garden but it really isn’t, especially since our spring was so cold and wet. Most of the traditional veg crops do best in warm weather anyway. So, really, now is the perfect time.

Even if you think my neighbor was a little ambitious, many vegetables are easily grown in containers. I grow my herbs and tomatoes in half whiskey barrels where I can position them to take best advantage of the sun in my otherwise shady garden.

Netting over the spinach to keep
our little friends out.

Some vegetables, in particular the leafy chards, beets and lettuce can be interspersed amongst your ornamentals. One year at Ball Seed field days we saw beets used in ornamental annual containers and I just love the look of Bright Lights Swiss Chard in containers. My friend, Jean, does the containers at the Brink Street Market and uses them. Chard is a great alternative to spinach, which has a tendency to “bolt,” or go to seed in the hot weather.

Planting vegetables, even in containers, is a great way to get your kids interested in gardening and interested in eating what they grow. When we lived in Denver I planted pole peas up the one side of our deck. We never had enough for a whole meal but we would use them raw in salads and my girls enjoyed harvesting and shelling them.

If you need some ideas about what to plant, the Cornell University vegetable variety project has vegetables rated by actual gardeners. It is not just specific to New York, but has garden profiles from all over. The University of Illinois extension web site also has information about growing, harvesting and storing vegetables. And, not to brag, but we here at Countryside are a vertible font of knowledge on vegetable growing.

We still have plenty of starter vegetables at Countryside and of course seeds. So come on in and let us help you get started. It’s not too late!

Hummingbirds in the Garden

2011-05-25T18:40:00.000-05:00

Ruby Throated Hummingbird

Last week while having my coffee and watching the rain I noticed a blur in the hedge next to my house. When it finally settled down on a branch I was surprised to see it was a hummingbird. As they migrate north they send out scouts to look for food sources. There is an overgrown honeysuckle growing in the hedge and that was what it had found. Last summer I had a couple hummingbirds come to the monarda I have planted.

Monarda- A hummingbird favorite

If you want to attract hummers to your garden you can start now by putting out a hummingbird feeder. If the scouts find it they will make it a regular stop on their route. They seem to be quite punctual as every day when I come home from work I see them at the feeder. I make my own sugar mix by heating a cup of water in the microwave and mixing in 1/4 cup sugar.

Trumpet Creeper Flower

You can also plant shrubs and perennials that attract these delightful birds. Plan your hummingbird garden with a variety of plants that begin to bloom early in May and continue to provide nectar through out the summer and into the fall. Yes, as a general rule, they seem to be attracted to red, tubular shaped flowers. Here is a list of plants to consider.

Shrubs Perennials Annuals

Trumpet Vine Agastache Cuphea

Honeysuckle Columbine Fuchsia

Rose of Sharon Crocosmia Lantana

Butterfly Bush Delphinium Morning Glory

Weigela Heuchera Nasturtium

Lobelia Salvia

Monarda Petunias

Penstemon

Japanese Beetle Control

2011-05-14T07:53:00.000-05:00

Japanese beetles love hibiscus!

You might think it is a little early to mention Japanese beetles but if you have plants in your garden that attract the little blighters you need to start planning your beetle strategy. I always say you need a multi pronged approach to beetle control and it helps to understand their life cycle to know which control to use when.

The Japanese beetle emerges from the ground in late June or early July and feeds voraciously on your roses, shrubs, trees and whatever else it can sink its little mandibles into and then they lay eggs in the soil. When the eggs hatch they are called grubs and they then feed voraciously on the roots of your grass. As summer turns to fall, they begin to migrate deeper into the soil to over winter. In the spring they move back to feed and then pupate. At this point they are not feeding, but turning into the beetle that emerges to start the cycle all over again. The upshot is you have two opportunities to kill them– in the grub stage and then as adults– and there are several types of controls available at each stage.

In the grub stage you can use a granular systemic insecticide that you apply and then water in. The grass roots take up the chemical (imidacloprid) and when the grub takes a bite– it dies. If you want an organic control you can use Milky Spore, which is a bacteria that kills the grub. It is available in a concentrated powder that you only have to apply once or a less concentrated granular form that needs to be applied six times over two years in order to build up an effective population of bacteria.

Japanese beetles feeding on leaves

Even if you can control the grubs in your own yard, Japanese beetles can fly several miles to find a mate and to feed, so you will still need to control the beetles at the adult stage. You can spray with Eight® or Sevin®, but they will need to be reapplied every 10-14 days. Or you can use a systemic drench. This is particularly effective if you have large trees that are hard to spray. It is a concentrate that you mix in water and then pour at the base of the tree or shrub. The roots take up the chemical (imidacloprid) and move it up to the leaves at about 4-6 feet a week, depending on growing conditions. The protection last 12 months. If you use it on roses, be aware that the chemical does not go into the flowers, so you will still have to use a contact spray on them.

Japanese Beetle Life Cycle

Black Knot Disease

2011-05-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

Branches afflicted with Black Knot

My friend Janice called last week to ask about a problem she was having with her ornamental plum in front of her house. It had black growths on some of the branches. I was pretty sure it was some type of fungus, but I didn’t know what or how to treat it. I told her to take a branch into Countryside and ask for KC or Kelly. They are both certified nursery professionals and have training in disease identification.

Kelly O'Leary
Nursery Staff

Well, the diagnosis was Black Knot. Kelly advised her to prune out the affected branches, cutting at least 4" back from the infected sites and to carefully bag the branches and dispose of them. You don’t want diseased plant material going into a compost pile or back in the woods where the fungal spores can continue to spread. After cutting out the infected branches Kelly recommended treating the tree with Bonide Fruit Tree Spray or any spray containing captan.

Black Knot affects plum and cherry trees. The fungus disrupts the twig growth and causes a tumor like growth. At first the swelling is light brown in color but by the second year the swellings have become hard and black. It takes a year or two before the disease even becomes noticeable and by the time you do see indications of the disease, it is usually too far gone for any remedy to work. As with all fungal diseases, it is easier to prevent than to cure.

Close up of Black Knot fungus

The best time to prune out the diseased wood is in the late fall or early winter when the tree and the fungus are dormant. This way you won’t be inadvertently spreading more spores. When you do prune make sure you dip your pruners in rubbing alcohol between cuts to again insure that you don’t spread the disease to healthy tissue.

We got about half way through the job of trimming when we realized that we wouldn’t be left with much of a tree when we were through. Janice decided to just replace the tree with a more disease resistant one. This time she is thinking of a crab apple. Though crab apples are also susceptible to fungal infections such as apple scab and fire blight, new varieties have been introduced that are very disease resistant.

Container Show

2011-04-29T19:20:00.001-05:00

Last night Micheal and I participated in the McHenry Garden Club’s Annual Container Show. We were up on stage with our friends from The Barn, The Gardens of Woodstock, Harm’s Farm and Locker’s Flowers. Shelley Isenhart from Whispering Hills was the moderator.

Micheal at the Container Show

Mike and I made 8 containers and all the containers made were raffled off to members of the audience. It was a fun evening that showcased the talent available to you at our McHenry County gardens centers.

Moderator Shelley

We all had the opportunity to make a few comments about our designs and Mike offered some design advice about the use of contrast in designing a pleasing combination. Contrasting foliage and flower texture and color helps make each individual plant stand out in the container.

Shelly talked about the three basic design elements in container gardening being the thriller, filler, spiller—choosing plants that are tall for the “thriller,” semi-trailing or mounding for the “filler,” and trailing plants to soften the edges of the container.

Some of the containers
we made last night

Many of the containers used a lot of annuals but also incorporated perennials including roses, a Japanese maple, a blueberry shrub, heucheras, lamium, and even plants we usually think of as indoor houseplants.

The Barn used miniature conifers in their fairy gardens and accented them with scale versions of garden accents. (Be sure to congratulate Heather next time you are there on the upcoming birth of daughter number 2, due this fall.) Locker’s Flowers used children’s pails as containers and sea shells as soil cover, to add come whimsy to their designs. Harm’s Farm did several containers with vegetables and herbs for containers that are fun and functional.

So, a big thank you to the McHenry Garden Club for sponsoring this fun evening. To learn more about garden clubs in our area contact the National Garden Clubs at www.gardenclub.org.

The Year of the Tomato

2011-04-26T19:03:00.001-05:00

Topsy Turvy tomato

A couple of weeks ago my youngest, who is in school in Boston, called to ask about growing tomatoes in one of the Up Side Down grow bags. She asked if they started tomatoes from seed would they bear fruit this year. Well, apparently, I have been neglectful of her horticultural education (tho I may say that she is getting a first rate education in information science and it has been worth every penny Mr. Ross spends to send her there). Of course tomatoes are an annual here and even if you could over winter them, the likely hood of survival and then good production the next year is doubtful.
The National Gardening Bureau has proclaimed this year the Year of the Tomato. They have also selected the Zinnia as the Annual of the Year and next year will also honor a perennial.

Tomatoes can be classified in several ways, including by size and shape of fruit, growth habit, color, days to maturity, etc. Everybody has an opinion on which is best, but it really depends on how you are going to use it, to determine what tomato is best for you. There are plenty of hybrids and heirlooms to pick from so you shouldn’t have a problem finding one that suits your needs.

Tomatoes in a mixed container

Tomatoes range in size from grape, cherry, plum, standard and beefsteak. They can be red, orange, yellow, green, almost black and even striped. One important factor in determining what variety to grow is its growth habit. I always grow mine in a big whiskey barrel so I usually pick a “determinate” variety. This type of tomato grows to a genetically predetermined height and bears most of its fruit at the same time. This is a good thing if you do any type of canning or preserving of tomatoes. Determinate tomatoes tend to be more compact, which makes them perfect for containers. Some of them are so compact they can even be planted in hanging baskets! Indeterminate types continue to grow and produce fruit over the entire season. They can get quite large and need staking or a tomato cage to hold them up.

There are a bazillion
tomato varieties

One question we always get at Countryside is about the days to maturity and what this actually means. Tomatoes are classified as early, mid-season and late. Days to maturity are the average days from the time the plant is transplanted into the garden until the first fruit ripens. Since it is an average, it really should be used as a guide not gospel. Generally speaking early tomatoes will ripen in fewer than 70 days, mid-season from 70-80 days and late tomatoes will require over 80 days from date of planting outdoors.

We always have a great selection of all types of tomatoes and I am sure we can find one that will suit your needs. Click here to see all the varieties we will have this year.

Ideas for Spring

2011-04-19T19:13:00.001-05:00

Pansy bowl with snow!

I am really getting eager to start planting, but what a surprise this morning’s snow was! Your pansies, violas, snapdragons, and other cool season annuals will have survived just fine but please do remember that the last frost date for our area is May 15th. Warm season veg crops and annuals will have to wait! My friend Janice sent me this picture of her pansy bowl on Monday morning!

Giant double zinnias

I do tend to be a creature of habit and try to stick with what I know works, but it is fun to change things up once in a while and I plan to do that this year in my annual beds. For the last several years I have planted wax begonias in the shady back beds and salvia in the sunny front beds. I haven’t been happy with the performance of the begonias, tho that could be a function of watering. This year I think I will use impatiens in the back (and remember to water more frequently) and put the begonias up front. They really do work well in sunny areas, though most people use them for shadier spots.

Zinnias in containers

If you are thinking of doing something different this year, the National Gardening Bureau has proclaimed 2011 “The Year of the Zinnia.” There are some plants that are so common we often forget about using them. I think zinnias fall into that category. They are truly an “old fashioned” annual that most people remember from Grandma’s garden. They are easy to grow from seed, come in a variety of heights and colors, and make an outstanding flower for the cut flower garden.

Sadly, the cut flower garden is becoming a thing of the past. We are using annuals as more of a ground cover plant or in containers rather than as a tall, stately garden flower and we don’t want to deadhead. Well, fear not. The plant breeders of the world know this about us and have bred some zinnias just for this purpose. The “Profusion” and “Zahara” series fill this bill perfectly. The Zahara series was an AAS (All America Selection) 2010 selection for its larger flowers and many color variations.

Zahara Zinnias

Zinnias have been given the AAS designation because they are easy to grow, disease resistant and grow well in a variety of conditions. They come in a variety of heights, colors, and flower forms. They need at least 6 hours of sun and, while they are not heavy feeders, they should be fertilized at least twice during the growing season. They perform well in hot weather but don’t forget to water them.

Grassy Weeds

2011-04-10T16:55:00.000-05:00

Crabgrass

I hope everyone enjoyed Garden Fest at the college yesterday. Kim gave two presentations and I gave on on watergardening. Next weekend we will have several seminars at the store so drop by to find out about the best new plants for 2011 and dealing with insects.

With the warmer weather I have been out looking at my lawn. I have a bird feeder in my yard and it seems I also have a lot of grassy weeds. I am sure there is a connection. Neighbor Dave next door has also noticed more "crabgrass" and I had to fess up that I thought it was because of my bird feeder. We both enjoy the birds so I guess that is a tradeoff we have to make.

Dandelions are broadleaf weeds

It's easy to kill grass in an ornamental bed or to kill broadleaf weeds in the lawn because they are completely different in their makeup and don't react to the herbicides in the same way. It is much harder to kill broadleaf weeds in an ornamental bed without affecting the ornamentals or to kill grassy weeds in the lawn. One way is to get to the weeds before they germinate. We call this preemergent weed control. The trick to being successful at pre-emergent control is to get the herbicide down before the weeds germinate. Most crabgrass seeds germinate when the soil temperature reaches 55F. You need to get the herbicide down a week or two before this happens. With our fluctuating temperatures in the spring this is hard to do. A visual clue to timing is the forsythia. When you see the forsythia in bloom it is time to put down the pre-emergent. By the time the lilacs bloom, it is too late.

Corn Gluten

For those of you looking for an organic control, try corn gluten. University studies have shown that corn gluten inhibits root development in germinating seeds. As an added benefit it also has 9% nitrogen and makes an excellent fertilizer. The product needs to be watered in after applying it and then needs a dry period. Try to pick a day when no rain is forcast for the next couple of days and then gently sprinkle with a hose to get the product wet. If it rains, the product will become too dilute and the seeds with be able to recover and continue to grow. Apply the corn gluten at a rate of 20-40 pounds per 1000 square feet. For best results apply twice in the spring and again in the fall.

Pre-emergent herbicides do not discriminate between "good" seeds and "bad." If you are planning to overseed your lawn wait at least six weeks after applying the pre-emergent.

Spring Is Finally Here

2011-04-03T13:20:00.000-05:00

Crocus in lawn

Spring Is Finally Here!

The crocus in my front lawn are up and blooming and the daffodils are not far behind. Last fall I planted more crocus in the back but it is shadier there and hence cooler so no sign of them yet. I hope the squirrels didn't dig them up. I do occasionally find blooming bulbs not where I planted them. But that is okay because I naturalize my bulbs in the grass as well as designated flower beds so what could be more natural than bulbs planted by squirrels.

Naturalized scilla

A few years ago I planted scilla in the middle of the front lawn. I just love those houses on Woodstock Street near Oak where the scilla has truly naturalized in the front lawns. What a sight. You should drive by and see it. Mine hasn't done so well and I will have to remember next fall to add more. I meant to do it this year, but by the time I got around to it the stores were sold out.

Well, what better way to begin another gardening season here in Norther Illinois than by attending Garden Fest next Saturday at McHenry County College. GardenFest is sponsored by the Master Gardeners of McHenry County, part of the University of Illinois Extension Service. With all the funding cut backs going on this is one way to help support a group that gives so much to the community. If you ever have a gardening question and call the Extension Office in Woodstock, it will most likely be a Master Gardener that answers it. They get extensive training from the Extension Service and in return volunteer time at the office to answer garden related questions.

Kim Hartman and I will be there as speakers-- I am giving a talk on water gardening and Kim's topics are shade gardening and roses. Kim's are at 9:30am and 1:15 and mine is at 2:45.

Also going on this month, in fact as we speak, is the Macy's Flower Show at the Macy's on State Street. I can't get there this year but I have gone in the past and the floral displays are outstanding. Again, they also have classes and the Cook County Master Gardeners are there to answer any questions.

And, finally, on April 16 Countryside is having another full day of seminars on gardening. Kim will be filling you in on the best new plants for 2011, Karen Campney, Nursery Manager, will be talking about growing fruit and a tree specialist will be teaching you about insect management in trees, including how to deal with the emerald ash borer.

Get Ready for Winter

2010-10-12T19:43:00.000-05:00

Now is the time of year to prepare the garden for winter. As much rain as we got this spring and summer, that is how dry it has been this fall. Plants prepare for winter by transporting the energy produced in the leaves down to the roots and they need water to do this. If you did any new planting this summer be sure to give those plants a good drink of water. Don't assume the rain we are supposed to get tomorrow will be sufficient. I have been dragging the hose around the garden for the last week making sure all my plants have adequate moisture. I even watered the lawn, which I never do, because it is just so parched.

Besides getting ready for winter we can also prepare for some spring blooming by planting bulbs. Bulbs seem to go in and out of fashion and you can tell they are currently out of fashion by the limited availability in the garden centers. I don't know why that is because they really are a good value, especially when compared to buying them already in bloom next spring. I like to "naturalize" my bulbs by planting them to look like they would in nature. I don't plant them in rows in a border. I plant mine in the lawn and in clumps in and among my perennials.

Bulbs are not hard to plant. They should be planted at a depth 3x the height of the bulb. Small bulbs, like crocus and scilla, are planted just an inch or two below the surface of the soil, while larger bulbs, like tulips and daffodils should be planted much deeper. This ability to plant at different depths allow you to layer the bulbs and you can actually plant enough different types of bulbs in a small area to have blooms from April through June.

If you planted bulbs last summer, you might have planted gladiolas, cannas or dahlias. These bulbs are not hardy in our area and need to be dug up, dried, cleaned and stored in a cool, dry place until they can be planted next spring.

More on Organic Lawn Maintenance

2010-08-23T19:03:00.000-05:00

Organic fertilizers and good horticultural practices are only two aspects of organic lawn maintenance. You may still have weed and insect issues to contend with.

Weeds

Organic week control in a lawn is a problem because there are no selective organic controls, such as a broadleaf weed killer that only kills broadleaf weeds. Organic herbicides are made from horticultural strength vinegar (usually a 20% concentration compared to a 3 % concentration for what we use in the kitchen) or horticultural oil extracts such as oil of thyme, mint or rosemary. They are non-selective (think Roundup) and will kill any vegetation they come in contact with. They work best in a flower or perennial bed where the ornamentals can be protected from any over spray. In a lawn, the most organic method is to pull them by hand.

Pre Emergent Weed Control

Preventing weeds from germinating in the first place by using a pre emergent herbicide, is one way to limit weed growth and here there is an organic alternative. The ability of corn gluten to inhibit root growth was discovered at Iowa State University in the early 1990s. It has been growing in popularity ever since. It is a bit tricky to use and get good results. Timing is critical. Several companies package corn gluten, including Bradfield Organics. Make sure you are using 100% corn gluten. Apply it at the rate of 20 pounds per 1000 square feet about 4-6 weeks before the weeds are expected to germinate. This is the tricky part. Most seeds germinate when the soil temperature is between 68̊–86̊ degrees fahrenheit but trying to estimate exactly when that will happen when the weather is so variable here in Northern Illinois is hard. Also, if it is too rainy during the germination period the corn gluten gets diluted and is not effective. On top of that, corn gluten contains about 10% nitrogen and makes an excellent fertilizer so you may actually end up with a bumper crop of weeds!

Insects

By far, grubs are the biggest insect issue for turf. Grubs are just one stage in the life cycle of many types of insects, including some moths and certain beetles such as Japanese beetles.

We did not experience a huge Japanese beetle outbreak this year here in my part of Crystal Lake. They do seem to be somewhat cyclical, so I am guessing that over the next few years we will see populations build back up. The best time to kill grubs is in the juvenile stage, which is to say mid-to late July. There is also an organic alternative for grub control.

Milky spore is a bacteria that the grubs ingest as they are chewing on the roots of your lawn. The bacteria then kills the grubs. Milky spore comes in two forms– a concentrated powder that you apply with a tube that looks like a giant Parmesan cheese shaker , and a granular form that is not as concentrated but is more easily applied with a drop spreader. It is not an immediate cure as it takes several years for the spore count to reach a critical mass.

Fungi

The most common lawn fungi are powdery mildew, red thread, pink patch and rusts. The University of Illinois does not recommend fungicides on home lawns. Instead use the good horticultural practices that we have talked about. Most fungal diseases occur in shady areas where the grass is not as healthy. Plant appropriate shade tolerant grasses in shady areas, or better yet, replace the lawn with shade tolerant ground covers or a shade perennial bed. Water early in the morning and water deeply and infrequently. Make sure the lawn is healthy through a good fertilizer program. Healthy turf is better able to withstand turf diseases.

Using Garden Chemicals

2010-07-26T21:06:00.002-05:00

Organic lawncare is less expensive in the long run but sometimes you have diseases or insects that require a chemical control or the weeds are running rampant and you just need to deal with them. Garden chemicals are expensive but if you use them correctly they will be alot more effective and won't cost as much to use.

Before you spray make sure the plants, even the target weeds, are thoroughly watered in. For the weeds, you want them actively growing so that they will take up all and use the herbicide more effectively. Onamentals and vegetables should be actively growing so that they can withstand the stress of having chemicals applied to them. Many chemicals require some period of no rain or water for the chemical to work its way into the plant. If the plant hasn't been watered before chemical application it may become stressed from lack of water.

Always spray when it is cool and expected to stay cool for a few days after application. For herbicides this is especially important because plants take in the chemical through pores in their leaves. In the heat these pores close up and the herbicide cannot be taken in by the plant. Also, plants tend to slow down their rate of growth in the heat so if they are not actively growing they are not actively dying. Leaves have a waxy coating or even a coating of dust that also impedes chemical takeup. You can add a "spreader/sticker" to the chemical mixture that cuts through this wax and dirt and again increases the chemical's effectiveness.

Spray early in the morning so the chemical has time to dry before the sun hits it. The beads of liquid can act like a magnifying glass and burn the leaves. Spray when the wind is calm so that you don't have spray drift and accidently take out some of your perennials when you were spraying for other broad leaf weeds.

As always read the label and make sure it will treat the problem you have. If you have questions about any chemical stop by Countryside and ask one the ICN professionals to help you determine what the problem is and how best to treat it. And follow the label directions--more is not always better.

Blossom End Rot

2010-07-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

I was really bummed this week to discover that some of my tomatoes have blossom end rot. I have probably pitched 7-8 tomatoes. I grow my veggies and herbs in containers because I don’t have a lot of room where there is full sun. I was really happy this spring to discover that the thyme had survived the winter and I replanted the rosemary I had taken inside last fall and it has done really well. This year I planted a bush Early Girl and it has grown and produced quite a few blossoms that will eventually turn into tomatoes.

Blossom end rot pretty much tells you what the disease does in tomatoes. The blossom end turns black and eventually the whole tomato rots. It is caused by a lack of calcium and is due to irregular watering. Too little water and the plant cannot take up enough calcium, too much and the nutrients are diluted. I think it is exacerbated in container gardening because there is only so much soil to hold water and nutrients and the roots can only go so far before they reach the side of the container. When the tomatoes are in the ground at least they can send the roots farther out to search for nutrients and water.

The most immediate remedy (besides correcting the water issue) is water soluble calcium that you can spray on the leaves of the tomato. It is available at Countryside and is called Blossom End Rot Stop.

Planting tip: If for some reason you are having to plant or transplant in this heat, use an anti-transpirant such as Wilt Stop or Wilt Pruf. This will keeps the plant from losing moisture and will make your planting more successful. Plants need about an inch of water a week and prefer to be watered deeply and infrequently rather than frequent shallow waterings.

Organic Lawn Care

2010-06-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

With more and more people getting back to vegetable gardening, there has been an increased interest in all types of organic gardening products. One aspect of our gardens that uses a lot of chemicals is lawn care. We really like lush green weed free lawns but weeds are actually a symptom of other problems not the cause. If we just changed a few things about how we care for our lawns, we could reduce our reliance on chemical controls.

The cheapest herbicide is simply raising the height of the mowing deck on our lawn mowers. This does two things: 1) Increases photosynthesis due to greater leaf surface area resulting in healthier plants with deeper and denser root systems and 2) Increases rhizome development which is how most grasses reproduce. Both of these things lead to reduced weed pressure in the lawn because there is now a lot less space for the weeds to get established.

The recommended mower height for blue grass, which is what most northern lawns are, is 2½ to 3 inches. It is also recommended that not more than ¼ to ⅓ of the blade length be cut at any one mowing. So if you happen to miss a week or the grass is growing faster than you can keep up with it, raise the mower deck and gradually bring it down so that you get to the desired height over time.

Another factor in weed control is soil fertility. Most weeds actually prefer less fertile soils while our lawns need lots of nitrogen to grow well. A good example of a “weed” that grows well in less fertile soils is clover. Clover is a legume or nitrogen fixing plant. It doesn’t need extra nitrogen because it makes its own. Creeping Charlie, another noxious weed tho not a legume, is also a plant that grows well in less fertile soil. The presence of these two plants are a symptom of low soil fertility. The University of Illinois recommends 3-4 pounds of nitrogen per 1000 square feet per year. You can actually add about 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft annually by not bagging your lawn clippings.

Will changing your lawn care practices get rid of weeds immediately? No, but you will notice the difference over time and will able to feel good about your lawn’s impact on the environment.

Frost Alert!

2010-04-06T19:48:00.000-05:00

This spate of good weather so early in spring has us aching to get into our gardens. I have primrose blooming and azaleas and daffodils, as well.

In anticipation of the rain that was forecast, I fertilized my lawn on Friday. Now is a good time to put down fertilizer with a pre-emergent weed control, to prevent crabgrass and other annual weeds. If you are an organic gardener, corn gluten makes an excellent weed preventor and fertilizer. When the corn gluten becomes wet it forms a gelatinous mass that smothers the newly germinated weed (and other) seeds.

It’s still too early to plant, tho a quick look through the garden centers last weekend showed forsythia and azaleas for sale. If you just can’t wait, and remember Countryside’s annual flat sale is coming up in a couple of weeks, there is a new product out protects tender plants from frost damage. It is called Freeze Pruf and it is from the Liquid Fence people. Freeze Pruf acts like anti-freeze for your plants. It is a spray on systemic that lowers the freezing point of the plant by 2-9 degrees or the equivalent of half a hardiness zone. It doesn’t make all plants hardy to 32̊ but if the plant is hardy to 40̊ it will lower that to around 38̊ to 31̊. Or if the plant is hardy to Zone 5, it will make the plant hardy to zone 4B. Once applied it will last 6-8 weeks. Freeze Pruf will not protect an impatien from a hard frost but it will keep pansies flowers from frost damage. So use it with caution, but here is another tool to help extend our growing season.

Other things you can do to prevent frost damage, keeping in mind that our last average frost date is around the middle of May, is to cover your plants with a sheet or towel or even a cardboard box. Don’t use plastic as this will transfer the cold to any leaves or flowers that are touching the plastic. You could even use a tomato cage as a frame and hang the fabric over it to protect your plants.

Don’t forget that Kim Hartmann and Ann Larson will be giving presentations at Garden Fest this coming weekend at McHenry County College. Countryside will also have a booth and will be able to answer any questions for you.

More Pruning

2010-03-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

What a difference a week makes! Last week I was out pruning and doing some cleanup and this weekend my poor little crocuses are shivering. It was not so cold out to really hurt anything and I think the crocus will be just fine. The daffodils didn’t seem too bothered either. Freezing temperatures can damage the flowers, but if the bulbs haven’t bloomed the cold will just slow down their growth until warmer weather returns.

So, back to the pruning: If you know what you have, the next thing is to determine what you are trying to achieve with the pruning. Some plants just need to be shaped, or have broken or damaged limbs removed. Some shrubs need a “rejuvenation” pruning.

My sand cherries have been rather weak and spindly, with not a lot of leaves on them. I have pruned some off the top last year just to get it below the window, but all that did was force more growth on the top and the lower branches were practically leafless. So last weekend I took it down to about a foot above the ground. I was ruthless. This should result in some vigorous growth from the ground up. Spireas can generally stand a pretty thorough thwacking as well. Some plants you just can’t kill.

I needed to be a bit more judicious with the crabapple. My goal here is to keep it shaped nicely and not let it get too big so that a major pruning is ever necessary. I cut back the sucker growth (crabs really want to be shrub and will send up little stems from their roots) and the water sprouts. These are the little branches coming at a right angle from the main branches. Then I looked for branches crossing each other and removed them. I also cut back branches that were brushing up against the siding of the house and cut back the branches that were getting too tall.

Neighbor Dave has a few issues also. He has a shrub hedge of some type of spirea, Bridalveil I think, that has been beaten down by the snow. I tell him all the time that after it snows he needs to take a broom or rake and gently, from underneath the branches, shake the snow off. The snow is so heavy it has bent the branches down to the ground. This can be self correcting but sometimes not. Also, heavy snow can break branches, especially on evergreens, when the heavy snow sticks to the needles and adds additional weight.

A New Year

2010-03-13T15:57:00.000-06:00

Last weekend I was finally able to get out in my garden and take stock of the situation. There was still snow on the ground but I could definitely see signs of spring. Some daffodils are beginning to poke through the soil and some of the creeping sedum ground cover is beginning to green up, or in this case “red” up since it is the Dragon’s Blood variety. I am looking forward to having the scilla I planted two years ago come up and I hope it has spread a bit more in the lawn this year. I just love the way those houses on Woodstock street look in the spring when the scilla is blooming. I’ve also noticed something coming up along the fence, I have forgotten what is there so I hope it’s not a weed.

Now is a good time to look around the garden and begin planning for the coming season. You can really see the framework of the garden and evaluate it with a more critical eye. I already know I want to plant more bulbs out in the back garden, in front of my shrub bed. And I want to find a place for a couple of Fothergilla, a shrub with great autumn interest. I read about them in the trade magazines this winter and I need to do a little more research on how shade tolerant they are.

Today I spent some time out in front looking at how my little casa looks from the street. My street is used as a “rat run,” as they would say in England, so a lot of people see my house. You really need to be mindful of this area of your garden and what is planted there. The plants closest to the house are called “foundation plants,” mostly because they are used to hide the cement foundation and any utility boxes that may be in the front of the house and to help soften the edges of the house and make a smoother transition to the rest of the garden. I like to think of these types of plants as forming the “foundation” or basis of the entire landscape plan. The down side to plants grown so close to the house is they tend to eventually outgrow their space. You need to really keep up on the pruning and shaping and be ready to admit when the plant has outlived its usefulness.

At my house there are two sand cherries on front of the two windows and a crabapple off to the side. The sand cherries have gotten five feet tall or so and cover the window a bit. The crabapple is almost to the roof line, so a little pruning work is in order and now a great time to do it. Before you go overboard on the pruning there are a few things to keep in mind: what types of shrubs do you have and what are you trying to achieve. There are basically two types of shrubs: those that bloom on old wood and those that bloom on new. Lilacs are an example of a shrub that blooms on old wood. Spirea would be shrub that blooms on new wood. Shrubs that bloom on new wood tend to bloom later in the season. If you were to prune a lilac now you would be not get any blooms this year. So if you don’t know what you have don’t prune it now. Wait until it has bloomed and take in some leaves to KC, Kelly, Ed or Elaine and get them to identify it for you and they can give you care and pruning instructions.

In fact, next week (March 20) KC will be giving a seminar on how to prune. Several other Countryside staffers will also be giving seminars or demonstrations that day so be sure to stop on by. And don’t forget Garden Fest this year at MCC. Kim from the greenhouse staff will be giving a talk on shrubs in the garden and Ann Larson from the flowershop will be giving a talk on house plants.

Next week I will show you how my pruning chores went.

Top Performing Annuals

2009-12-13T12:39:00.000-06:00

Last week I watched a “web” inar by Dr. Alan Armitage of the University of Georgia, Athens. For us plant geeks, Dr. Armitage is like a hero as a plant breeder and promoter of annuals and perennials alike. His webinar topic was “Best Performing Annuals,” and it covered both flowering and foliage annuals. At the trial gardens the plants are evaluated every two weeks for number of flowers, leaf color, disease and insect resistance and over all performance. The data are then combined to come up with a single performance score.

It is important to us as retailers to only sell plants that we know perform well. It is also important to everyone up the marketing and production chain. So seed companies, growers and retailers all have an interest in making sure the plants we grow and sell will perform for the end user, you our valued customer. There are all kinds of trials that are done to make sure we all get it right. The most famous is probably the California Pack Trials, but other organizations also host these types of trials, including our land grant universities. When I was a grad student at Michigan State University, the entire campus was an All American garden and it was a big deal during the summer when the seed company execs would come to see how their plants had performed well and which would be going on to full production.

Well Dr. Armitage offered up some really cool plants and here are just a few that caught my eye. As you look through your gardening magazines and start to plant for your containers for next summer keep these in mind. Also here is the link to Dr. Armitage’s web site. You can see pictures from their trial gardens and learn about how you can visit if you are ever down that way.

Breathless Blush– This is a euphorbia similar to Diamond Frost but with a pink blush to the flower. It makes a great “filler” plant in a container and would go well with silver toned foliage plants and darker purple petunias.

Sun Patiens– These impatiens are bred to be more sun tolerant than regular impatiens, tho even those will do well in sun if given enough water. The cool thing about some of the sun patiens (I think) is the foliage. Several varieties have variegated foliage, which is quite stunning.

Zinnia– Zinnias are some of my favorite annuals. Their flowers are very colorful and last a long time on the stem. They are a traditional flower for the cutting garden. That said they are somewhat spindly and need to be planted at the back of the garden. The Zahara series was profiled on the webinar and were very nice. Another more compact zinnia is the Profusion which comes in a variety of flower colors.

Celosia– Michael is not a fan of celosia because it is prone to mildew with the type of flower that is has. The “plumed” varieties retain a lot of water and fall over due to the weight in the flower head. I think the “cocks comb” variety is very unique and would look good toward the front of the container.

Ornamental Peppers– We most often think of these as accent plants for our fall containers, but when I was at MSU all the summer annual beds were edged with ornamental peppers. It was truly beautiful.

Pennisetum Jade Princess– This is a relative of the purple fountain grass that is so popular in containers but has that brilliant jade coloring. Like the purple fountain grass it is not hardy in our climate so don’t expect it to come back the next spring. Like its purple cousin the seed head will attract birds in the fall.

I hope this has given you some ideas for next spring when planning your containers and gardens. I know after this last week and our frigid temps it probably seems like light years away but it will be here sooner than you think. Remember we are always available at Countryside to help with any of your gardening questions. If you are interested in seeing what a trial garden looks like, the closest one to us is the Ball Seed Garden in West Chicago. They have a big "Open Day" in August when visitors are welcome to visit and Master Gardeners are on hand to answer questions.

More Fall Chores

2009-11-23T21:34:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving is a good marker for many garden chores. It is still too early for any pruning, especially for roses, which have not yet gone dormant. You may also want to clean up your perennial beds. I personally like to wait until spring. The stems and dried seed heads can be quite attractive covered in snow. There is a benefit to leaving the stems on as it does protect the root crown. If you feel you must cut them down now, leave at least 6" of stem above the ground.

But here is something to do if you have broadleaf evergreens, such as boxwood, azaleas and rhododendrons. The rain we had last week didn't amount to much at my house and it has been so dry up to this point, it is a good idea to give these plants and your evergreens a long drink of water, especially the azaleas and rhodies, as they are very shallow rooted. Another good practice is to spray them with an anti-transpirant. This is a waxy coating that keeps them from drying out. Wilt-Pruf is one brand, Wilt-Stop from Bonide is another. These pictures from Wilt Pruf show the difference when

one is treated and one is not. The waxy coating prevents the plant from drying out when the ground is frozen and the plant cannot take up water.

Wilt Pruf and Wilt Stop can also be used on holiday greens used in decorating. If you decorate your patio containers for the holidays give them a spray of the Wilt Pruf or Wilt Stop. This will usually keep them looking good through late winter.

Preparing Roses for Winter

2009-11-08T19:48:00.000-06:00

Roses can be tricky to grow here in Northern Illinois. Selecting the proper type of rose is one way to ensure success in growing roses. Proper care is essential.

I have grown hybrid tea roses in the past but not very successfully. I’d always lose one or two over the winter. I did notice that the shrub roses I had required little care and always came back the next spring. Shrub roses are much hardier than hybrid teas and though you do sacrifice bloom size you make up for it in sheer quantity of blooms. Most climbing roses perform similarly. I have a chain link fence on one side of my garden and a couple years ago decided to plant a climbing rose to help hide the fence. I chose a zephirine drouhin, which is from a very old class of roses and very fragrant. It only blooms once a season but it also tolerates some shade.

Proper pruning in preparation for winter is key to rose growing success. Pruning any plant encourages new growth. This new growth will be very weak and will not survive over the winter. It will add stress to the plant and could end up killing the entire plant. It is important to wait until the rose is fully dormant before doing any pruning, such as you might do to fit a rose cone over it.
Yesterday I was planting some bulbs around my climber and I was stunned to see how much new growth has occurred this fall. There are new lateral branches emerging from the main canes as well as 6-8 inches of new growth at the end of the main canes. This rose is now where near dormant.

Winter Pruning Tip: Wait until all the leaves have fallen from the rose before pruning. If you use rose cones don’t put them on until the plant is fully dormant and can be safely pruned to fit under the cone. Some years this may not occur until late December! Alternatively, you can use rose collars. These are tall strips of plastic that wrap around the base of the plant and allow you to backfill with top soil or garden soil to protect the rose. Also, remember, the purpose of winter protection is not to keep the rose from freezing but rather to keep the rose in a chilled state and avoid the temperature fluctuations from mid-winter warm ups.

If you have shrub roses, you really don’t have to do much to prepare them for winter. You’ll never get them to fit under a cone or get a rose collar around them. They really don’t need the protection anyway. Next spring just prune out any dead canes or branches and give it a good shaping.

Most climbing roses bloom on old wood from last year’s growth so you don’t want to prune in the fall. You can selectively prune out dead canes in the spring or if you have to cut them back do it right after they have bloomed

If you have questions about what kind of rose you have, check with the Countryside greenhouse staff.

Fall Lawn Care

2009-11-01T18:57:00.004-06:00

I spent most of the day raking leaves. What a chore-- and a waste. Leaf compost is such a great addition to the garden soil. Really, adding any type of organic matter can improve just about any soil. Soil too sandy? Add organic matter. Soil to heavy? Add organic matter. Soils to alkaline? Again, add organic matter. Alot of people like to use mushroom compost, which contrary to its name, is not made from mushrooms but rather the compost (the straw from horse manure, poultry litter, ground corn cobs, rice hulls, etc) in which it is grown. It can be high is salts and is not the best compost to use in our heavy clay soils. Since we have so many leaves this time of year, why not compost them instead of burning them or adding them to land fills?

My neighbor down the street piles all of his leaves directly on his veg. garden and then tills them in right before he plants in the spring. If you don't have too many leaves to deal with you can just run them over with the mower and shred them. Don't leave too thick a layer (you may want to mow several times or rake them out) since they will smother the grass which leads to many more problems next spring. Also make sure you rake the leaves out of the flower beds because a thick layer of leaves will also smother your perennials. You could rake back in shredded leaves because they break down much more easily than non-shredded leaves.

I have a rotating composter so I am going to shred the leaves with the mower and then add them to the composter. I am hoping to get a good ratio of brown (leaves) and green (grass clippings that are high in nitrogen and gets the whole process started). I am also going to make a more concerted effort to add appropriate items from the kitchen to the composter. I did this last year and got a nice batch of compost but then sort of lost interest. My brother just digs a shallow hole off to the side of his yard and fills it in with the leaves and a few shovels full of dirt to start the composting process.

As we go into the winter season, you might want to consider giving the lawn one last feeding with a low nitrogen fertilizer (10-1-10 is a good analysis) but one that is high in insoluble nitrogen so that whatever the grass doesn't absorb this fall will still be in soil for the grass next spring.

Also begin to lower the deck on your mower. Usually we recommend a mowing height of 2-3 inches but as you get close to your last mowings gradually lower it to 1-1.5 inches. This will help prevent winter diseases like snow mold.

The Big Freeze

2009-10-10T20:30:00.004-05:00

We are supposed to get a hard frost tonight so for all intents and purposes our growing season is over. Last weekend I brought in my tropical patio plants after a touch of cold got my taro. It is recovering but several of the leaves are toast. At the last minute today I decided to try to over winte my rosemary plant. I like cooking with fresh herbs and it was great having an herb container right outside my kitchen door. The basil had gone to flower months ago, but the thyme and rosemary were doing well. Thyme is a perennial, even here, but not the rosemary. Since it was going to die anyway I figure I don't have anything to lose by bringing it indoors.

There are a few things to remember about bringing plants indoors. More than likely I will have brought in a few unwanted guests (insects) with my plants. I can use systemics on my tropicals but not on edible plants. I can get sticky traps and wipe down the plants to try and physically remove any insect eggs from the leaves.

Usually the plant will undergo a kind of "culture" shock when brought indoors. Even the sunniest spot in your house is not the same as being outside in the sun. You may notice the leaves drooping or even dropping. Resist the urge to water unless you have checked the soil and found it dry. Dropping leaves is a natural part of the plant's effort to acclimate itself to its new environment. Eventually (hopefully) the leaves will grow back and these new leaves will be acclimated to the new conditions. Also, resist the urge to fertilize. Feeding a plant when it is not growing much causes the new growth to be weak and leggy.

I have a spot behind my kitchen sink that is pretty sunny and also conveniently located for cooking so that is where my rosemary will go. I hope it likes it there.

Another factor in surviving winter months for all house plants is humidity. When the furnace is running it really dries out the air and this is bad for most plants. Most plants like about a 50% humidity level. You can increase the humidity around the plant by misting it periodically or by placing trays of water near the plant. Lori always recommends filling a saucer with pebbles and then adding water. Put the plant on top of the pebbles so that it is not actually sitting in the water. This will create a constant humidity dome around the plant.

Over Wintering Tropical Plants

2009-10-04T15:05:00.006-05:00

Saturday morning I stepped out on my back deck to discover the temperature had dropped so low overnight that my taro plant (colocasia) leaves were all curled. I drug it in the house and no permanent damage seems to have been done. So we all probably need to think about bringing in our tropical plants and digging up the non-hardy bulbs in the garden. Some plants do seem better able to handle the stress of being indoors than others. My hibiscus and jasmine do just fine, but the Princess Flower I tried to overwinter last year made it to about February then just died. I haven't had much luck with gardenias either. So I guess what I am saying is that as beautiful as some plants are it's just not worth the effort. Pitch them onto the compost pile with no regrets.

Another thing to be mindful of when bringing plants indoors, is what else you may be bringing in. Insects often lay their eggs on the undersides of leaves or in the soil and when you bring plants into a warm room the eggs will hatch and now you have an insect problem. There are many products on the market suitable for houseplants. Ann Larson from the Countryside greenhouse recommends cleaning the plant leaves with an all-purpose cleaning product we sell. You can also use systemic insecticides or sticky traps.

For my hibiscus and jasmine, I just drag them into my dining room, where they apparently get the right amount of sun because they do just fine. The hibiscus has even bloomed in there in January-- what a treat that is!

The canna are also easy to overwinter. I just let them die back in their containers and put them, container and all, into the the basement where it is cool and dry. Last year I did the same with the taro.

Other plants to overwinter:

Gladiolas-- When the foliage has died back, use a garden fork to lift them from the ground. Let them dry and clean the dirt off. Place them in a box with some peat moss or shavings and put them in a cool dark place. When the soil has warmed up in the spring you can plant them again. When you are digging you will find tiny bulblets--baby glads, if you will. Store them as well and replant in the spring. It will take a few years before they are big enough to bloom, but they will eventually.

Dahlias-- This is another garden favorite known for its large colorful blooms. These are actually tubers, and they can be over wintered as well. After the first frost, use a garden fork to lift the tubers. They can be quite large so be prepared. Let them dry for a day, and then cut off the stems, clean off the dirt and store in a box with peat moss or shavings in a cool dark place.

One of the benefits of overwinter bulbs and tubers is that you are saving older more productive tubers and the result the following year should be bigger blooms.

Travel in Guatemala

2009-08-16T13:49:00.007-05:00

Mike in the greenhouse has a saying, “Everything is a perennial somewhere.” (The corollary is “Perennial does not mean eternal,” but that is a topic for another day.) This was really brought home to me last month when I spent a week in Guatemala with my dad and the Bend, OR area Habitat for Humanity group building houses.

Guatemala shares its northern border with Mexico and its southern border with El Salvador. In the 90s many US companies had textile plants in several Central American countries sewing garments. These business have now moved elsewhere in the search for cheaper labor and their economies have really suffered. Our build site was in the western highlands town of Quetzaltenango, which means “place of the quetzal,” their national bird and name of their currency. Their were about 15 people in our group. My dad, Fred, was the oldest participant at 78 and the youngest was 16. It was a great group of people and we were able to shave about a week off the normal time it would take to finish these very basic concrete block houses.

But, back to the plants...
One of my favorite tropical plants is Tibouchina urvilleana or Princess Flower. It has masses of purple flowers and velvety leaves. It is zoned 10-11 so it does not winter over here in Crystal Lake, IL. Mike and I have both tried to over winter it indoors. It makes it to January or February and then croaks. Naturally they thrive in Guatemala where I saw it planted in many town parks and plazas and about 5' tall.

Impatiens (shade) and pentas (sunny and attracts butterflies and hummingbirds) are used as annual bedding plants here. There they can winter over from one season to the next and get the size of small shrubs. I saw a New Guinea Impatiens with stems the size of your thumb. I will say there is a tradeoff. None of these were blooming in years 2 and more the way they do in year 1. I don’t know if this was because they weren’t getting fertilized or if they were just “fatigued” and needed a good pruning.

Another plant I saw reach its full potential was croton. Ann Larson sells these in the interior plantscape department. They have large yellow/bronze foliage and make a great house or office plant. I have seen them used in the borders at the Boston Public Garden to great effect. In Guatemala they were as big as small trees. Unbelievable.

Finally, because I know Lori will be thrilled to know that someone loves irisine, I saw it everywhere– in the median strip of large boulevards, at highway interchanges, everywhere where no one wanted to spend a lot of time on maintenance proving another favorite saying “Every plant has its place.”

2009-06-20T06:55:00.009-05:00

Garden Patrol-- Jackie's Garden

I’ve been helping neighbor Dave with his fight against the creeping charlie that has invaded his lawn. We really knocked it hard a few weeks ago with the Weed Beater Ultra but it looks like we will have to hit it again before we reseed but with the weather we’ve had to take a break. So while we wait how bout another installment of Garden Patrol?

My daughter Alexa showed me this garden one day when we were out on our bikes. It belongs to the grandmother of one of her friends. What intrigued me about this garden is its complete lack of lawn area. I don’t know how well this concept would translate on a large country lot but it is fabulous on a smaller city lot. I absolutely loved the creeping jenny (lysimachia nummularia) “walkway.” You may have seen this plant used as the “spiller” or vining plant in a container, but it actually is winter hardy in our area. It takes sun or shade (in shade it turns darker green as the plant tries to capture as much chlorophyll as possible) and it likes water. It works well around a pond. As you can see in this picture Jackie has it planted with lamium, pulmonaria, geranium and various hostas.

One of the things I think is important in garden design is adding permanent structures. Jackie has done this in a couple of different ways. In the front, amidst the greenery of the perennials, is a whiskey half barrel (split longways) that is filled with red impatiens. This does a couple things for the garden: It brings the flower up closer to the viewer and it adds additional dimension to the plantings. Jackie has done a great job with texture, with the lamium, coral bells, hostas and pulmonaria. Adding the impatiens ensures that there will be constant bloom at least in this part of the garden – what a treat to have that pop of red!

The back garden is just as inviting and this dry creek bed adds some structure and visual interest to the design. If you’ve ever wanted a water element but didn’t want to make such a big commitment, a dry creek bed gives the impression of water without actually having to add the water. Jackie has integrated a small fountain at the head of the creek bed to give her that soothing sound of water in a smaller form.

Jackie’s garden is quite shady but she still likes to grow vegetables. The sunniest spot in her garden is the side yard next to the driveway. The dilemma is that she also enjoys the monarda and other sunny perennials that grow there and attract hummingbirds in the summer and didn’t want to give up. The compromise is to grow vegetables in containers. She has a few peppers in one and some tomatoes in the other.

Jackie’s Garden Tip: Jackie uses Soil Moist crystals in her potting mixes to help with the watering. In the pepper container, she has buried several liter sized plastic bottles cap end up in the soil. She poked holes in the bottom of the bottles and when she waters, she uncaps the bottles and fills them with water. As the soil dries it wicks the water out of the bottles, providing constant moisture for the plants. (This might also work with house plants when you go on vacation.)

Here's another picture of the side yard. Jackie is using arborvitae as a screen from the neighbor's driveway. Arbs are pretty fast growing. Jackie bought these a few years ago when they were only a foot tall and now they are almost 5 feet tall! I wasn’t surprised to learn that Jackie is a long-time volunteer McHenry County Master Gardener. The Master Gardener group in McHenry County is very active. As payback for the training they receive they are expected to contribute volunteer hours at the McHenry County Extension Office in Woodstock. There they man phones answering gardening questions from the public. If you have any questions they can be reached at 815-338-4747. Their annual garden walk will take place July 11 which is also the same day as the Countryside Flower Shop and Nursery Pond Tour. A great day for visisting gardens and ponds in McHenry County.

Lawn Renovation 2

2009-05-31T12:59:00.009-05:00

As I mentioned I have been helping neighbor Dave with his lawn. He has a terrible problem with creeping charlie, also known as ground ivy, but whose botanic name is glechoma nederacea. As with most plants, glechoma family has variaties that are considered ornamental, and some that are, well, not so much. We sell a variety at Countryside that Micheal uses in mixed containers for the "spiller," that is the viney plant that spills over the side of the container. (Lori always calls it glaucoma, but it has nothing to do with the eye disease.)

Any way, a few weeks ago we sprayed his lawn with a product called Bonide Weed Beater Ultra. It is a broad leaf herbicide and does not contain 2,4-D. Instead the active ingredient is carfentrazone. 2,4-D acts by causing the plant to grow so fast it outgrows its food supply and dies. Carfentrazone acts by disrupting photosynthesis and causing the cell walls rupture. ALWAYS, always, always follow the directions on the label for application rates, re-entry into the area, and re-application intervals. Also, most herbicides work best when air temperatures are moderate, say below 85 F. And don't spray if it is windy.

You can see by the pictures that the first application really knocked it for a loop but there is still some life in it so we will have to make a second application. The label for the Weed Beater Ultra says you can re-apply in 2-6 weeks but that you should make no more than two applications per season.

I have a problem with garlic mustard. This is a problem in many areas of McHenry County. Garlic mustard is a very invasive weed and poses a severe threat to native plants and animals by aggressively competing for light, moisture, nutrients, soil and space. Where herbicides cannot be used you can hand pull the plants when the soil is wet so that you get the entire root or you can cut the second year stems to the ground to prevent the flowers from going to seed.

Lawn Renovation Part 1

2009-05-19T20:46:00.002-05:00

Neighbor Dave has a terrible problem with Creeping Charlie so I have been giving him advice on how to get rid of it. For most of us here in suburbia, a lush green lawn is the sign of a well kept home and garden.

The best way to keep weeds, diseases and insects to a minimum is to use good horticultural practices. This will save you time and money in the long run, because the best defense is a good offense.

1. Always mow at the correct height. I told neighbor Dave over the weekend that he was mowing his lawn too short. "We don't live on a golf course, so your lawn doesn't have to look like a putting green!" The University of Illinois recommends most bluegrass lawns to be cut at about 2-3" high. This does several things. It keeps the soil shady and reduces weed seed germination and helps to retain moisture in the soil.

2. Keep your mower blades sharp. This makes a clean cut when you do mow and keeps the grass from looking raggedy.

3. If you do water, water early in the morning and water deeply but infrequently. Watering early allows the grass to dry off before the sun hits it. The drops of water can act like a magnifying glass and burn the grass. Also, watering at night encourages fungus growth. Watering deeply encourages the roots to grow deeper and makes for a stronger turf that can better withstand drought.

4. Proper fertilization: The University of Illinois recommends 2-4 pounds of nitrogen per 1000 sq feet per year. Fertilizers come labeled with 3 numbers. These represent the percentage of nitrogen (first number), phosphorus (sec0nd number) and potassium (third number). The nitrogen is for growth, the phosphorus is for flowering and the potassium is for overall plant health, in a nutshell. You should fertilize 3-4 times a year. If you are going to apply 1 pound of nitrogen each time of a 20-1-3 fertilizer and you have 7,000 sq. ft. yard you would need to apply 35 pounds of total fertilizer for each application. (1/.2)*7000/1000)

Are all types of nitrogen the same? No. Look for fertilizers that have water insoluble or slowly available types of nitrogens. These nitrogens do not leach out of the soil or evaporate into the air so they are better for the environment. Also, our soils are already high in phosphorus, so look for fertilizers that have a low second number. Neighbor Dave and I are using a completely organic fertilizer made from composted poultry manure. Organic fertilizers are high in insoluble and slowly available nitrogens, so the nitrogen is always available to the grass when it needs it.

Next posting we will look at how Dave's fight with the creeping charlie is coming.

Macy's Flower Show

2009-05-06T20:26:00.003-05:00

I missed the Chicago Flower Show at Navy Pier in March, so last month I met Alexa down at the State Street Macy's for their annual flower show. Obviously, not the same scope and scale as the one at Navy Pier but a treat none-the-less on a dreary rainy Sunday. The City of Chicago Master Gardeners manned the information booth to answer any questions and there were lots of flower arranging demonstrations from some of the more avant garde downtown flower shops.

Here are a few of the things we saw: I just love topiaries, where the plants are wired, trimmed and pruned to grow into a specific shape not found in nature. This kalanchoe flamingo was really bright and cheery. Kalanchoe is a common plant available in most flower shops. It makes a great gift because of its bright flowers and long bloom time. The blossoms range from white to yellow to orange, red and hot pink. They are a succulent and require well drained soil, a sunny location and little water. They can be made to rebloom. First, cut back the faded flowers, then place the plant in a dark room for about a month. When new buds have formed bring the plant back to a sunny location and begin watering again.

The shrub at the center top of this picture is a variety of azalea called "Northern Lights." What is unique about this shrub, and what makes it a great azalea for our climate, is the fact that it is deciduous, unlike other azaleas and their cousins rhododendrons, that are evergreen. Why does this matter? Because these plants go dormant and are not subject to drying out in our winters. They are not as floriferous as the evergreen ones but I suppose, like lots of things in life, it's a trade off.

The Macy's designers must have had fun putting together these displays. It reminds us that we should have fun in our gardens. Add things that are whimsical or create an unusual juxtaposition, whether it's a fun plant or piece of statuary or even an old bike with the baskets planted up with annuals. Especially this year we could all use a little chuckle and what better place than in our garden.

Snow in March

2009-03-29T13:29:00.007-05:00

What a shock to the system to wake up this morning to a snow frosted landscape. No working in the garden today. For deciduous trees that have not yet leafed out, this bit of heavy, wet snow is usually not a disaster. Down the street from me several trees have branches hanging over the street. If they had already leafed out the extra weight of the snow would have been enough to break them. This happened to us a lot in Colorado, where we once had snow the first week of June and sometimes as early as September. We would be out at midnight shaking the snow out of the trees.

Here it is the evergreens that take the brunt of these late snows. My neighbors have arborvitaes as a screen and over the years many branches have broken. Some are hanging over onto my side of the fence. You can take a broom or rake and gently push up on the branches to remove the snow. Where branches have broken you will need to prune them. This will aid the tree in healing over and reduce the opportunity for disease or insect damage later on. You can go to the Cornell University extension web site for a down loadable brochure on pruning to see how to do it properly.

It is also time to cut back your ornamental grasses. They can be cut back to about 6 inches. You might also give some thought about dividing them. They should be divided about every 2-3 years otherwise they die out in the middle and begin to look like a donut. Many perennials have this tendency if not divided frequently. It is actually a survival mechanism. As the middle dies and begins to decompose it provides needed nutrients to the remaining part of the plant. However, since I know you are very diligent gardeners and fertilize with a well balanced fertilizer every year and otherwise take good care of your gardens, it is an un-necessary task for the plant to do this and plants with holes in the middle are unsightly in the garden. So transplant regularly, (spring is great time to do this), and if you run out of room, find a friend who would like them or donate them to Habitat for Humanity.

And speaking of grasses, this year’s Plant of the Year, as selected by the Perennial Plant Association, is the Hakonechloa “Aureola,” otherwise known as Japanese Forest grass. I guess we don’t often think of grasses as being a perennial, but really they are and the PPA is to be commended for selecting a grass as this year’s Plant of the Year as they have become so popular in recent years. I would have thought that the Plant of the Year might have been a miscanthus, one of my favorite grasses, but the Hakonechloa does have a lot going for it. This grass is hardy in zones 5-8 (we are zone 5) and in our climate does well in partial sun and moist, rich soil. Its leaves are gold with green stripes and will lighten up the darker corners of any garden. It would also look good in a container, with some colorful coleus. It is also deer resistant, which is a definite benefit where we live. You can also go to the Perennial Plant Association web site to learn more about this plant and the PPA.

2009-03-18T19:59:00.007-05:00

Clematis

Clematis are a great group of flowering vines that are adaptable to many situations. They are usually sold as “sun” perennials, but in fact there are many varieties that tolerate some amounts of shade. There are low growing “shrub” type clematis, clematis that bloom early spring, in the summer and several varieties that bloom in the fall. Most clematis have large, even huge, blooms and some with smaller, more dainty, bell-shaped blooms. Clearly, there is a clematis out there with your name on it.

What throws people off is how to prune it. Most plants are pretty forgiving with how we prune them, the worst that will happen is that you will accidently prune off this year’s buds and you won’t get any flowers for a year. So don’t be nervous… just follow these simple instructions:
Clematis can be divided into three types of plants: those that bloom in the spring, those that bloom in the summer/early fall and those that bloom twice, once in early summer and again in late summer (truth be told I have never had one of my twice blooming plants actually bloom the second time).

Group 1 plants bloom on old wood and should be pruned only after they have flowered for the year. These plants bloom early in the spring. Remove all the dead and weak stems immediately after flowering.
Group2 plants bloom on new and old wood so they bloom both in the early summer and then later on in the summer (maybe). Watch for swelling buds and carefully remove all dead stems above the swelling buds.
Group 3 clematis flowers only on new growth. These are the plants that flower in the early summer. These types of clematis can be pruned hard in February or March.

Here are a few other facts about clematis care:
Clematis prefer cool roots. Dig the hole about 2 feet deep and amend with organic matter. Set the clematis with the crown of the plant about 1 inch below the top of the hole. Back fill with the amended soil and water in thoroughly.
Clematis stems are very brittle. Tie the clematis to the trellis or what ever you want it to grow up and be sure to protect the base of the plant with screening material to prevent animals from damaging the stems.
Apply a layer of mulch over the winter months.

Here's another interesting thought when selecting clematis: you can plant several varieties together as shown in the picture on the right. You can select plants that bloom at the same time but in different colors or you can plant ones that bloom at different times so you always have something blooming. If you want to learn more about clematis, visit the greenhouse staff at Countryside.

Here are some varieties to try for shadier areas:

Alabast: Creamy white 5-6” flowers. Blooms May, June and August
Clair de Lune: 6-7” white blooms that turn to pale lavender. Blooms June, July and late August.
Elsa Spath- Rich lavender blooms, free flowering
Nelly Moser- pale pink with a red bar down the middle, blooms June and September
Lemon Chiffon- pale yellow cream
Viticella varieties: smaller 4-5” flowers, blooms profusely in July and August

2009-03-13T19:21:00.002-05:00

Well, this past weekend would not have been a good one to spend out in the garden, but better weather will be here soon! Before things really get going, there are a few chores to be done prior to plants coming out of dormancy and that is pruning. Early spring is a great time to prune because the trees and shrubs have not leafed out and you can still see the branches and most plants heal more quickly in the spring than they do at other times of the year.

We prune for a variety of reasons. Pruning helps maintain the health of the plant. You can begin to control and train the growth of young trees and shrubs so that more drastic pruning doesn’t have to be done later. We also prune to rejuvenate shrubs, but sometimes replacement is the best option in these cases. Trees are a huge investment and add value to our homes, so it is worth spending the time to take care of them properly.

Shrubs: If you are rejuvenating a shrub do not prune more than of the plant during any one growing season. In most instances you will just be removing dead canes or giving a light shaping. In the early spring you can prune the summer blooming spireas, Rose of Sharon, dogwoods (those with colorful bark), privets, potentilla, St. John’s wort and snowberry. You could also prune the buddleia’s, caryopteris, and Russian sage, but here in our part of the country these tend to die back to the ground. Later in the early summer you can prune or shape the spring blooming shrubs such as lilac, rhodendrons, azaleas, and spring blooming spireas.

Trees: If you have mature trees it is probably best to call in a professional. They should send out a certified arborist to do the initial examination of the trees in question. They have the right equipment and experience to do the job right. There is a great pamphlet on the Cornell University web site called "An Illustrated Guide to Pruning Ornamental Trees and Shrubs". They also have information on pruning fruit trees for maximum performance. Pruning fruit trees is definitely a science.

Roses: I always wait until my roses start to bud out before I prune. This way I know exactly what winter damage has occurred. I prune down to the first outward facing bud break. This encourages the growth away from the middle of the plant. You really want to keep the middles as free from branches and leaves as possible. This way light can get all the way down to the lower branches and give the plant the greatest opportunity for photosynthesis as possible. This will lead to greater flower production and is better for overall plant health.

One thing that is really important when pruning is using the proper tools and having them well maintained. At Countryside, the greenhouse staff all use Felco pruners. The great thing about Felco pruners is the blades are replaceable. They are made from high quality steel so they maintain their edge longer and it is worth getting them sharpened. We totally abuse our pruners, cutting wire and plastic and all sorts of things we shouldn’t. Last year K.C.’s husband Duane sharpened all our pruners and that edge lasted all summer. If your budget can’t stand the Felco’s, Corona tools has several pruners that come close to the Felco’s and are not as expensive. Also the Corona tool website has two downloadable guides to pruning so check those out at http://www.coronaclipper.com/. (Lucky thing I always check these links. The first time I typed this in from memory I thought it was just "corona," which naturally took me to the Corona beer site.)

I was going to also cover pruning clematis but that is whole blog in itself so I will cover that next time.

Just a Bunch of Stuff

2009-02-28T15:39:00.010-06:00

The other week, obviously when we were still in the deep freeze, I met the younger daughter down in Chicago for the day. She is on an internship, living in our condo, and thinking this must be what it’s like to be a grown up, minus the rent bill. It has given me plenty of reasons to go downtown for the weekend or just even a day. I never take advantage of the opportunities we have with Chicago being so close. We have promised ourselves to take some of the neighborhood tours the city offers in the summer to become more familiar with the place we call home. But, I digress.

Here’s what I really meant to write about today. We meandered through Millennium Park and through the Lurie Gardens. I was there late last spring when the salvia was in bloom and it looked just like an ocean, with wide swaths of blue. It’s all well and good to have a garden that looks great in spring and summer, but what about winter? What do you look at then? Perennial grasses are one thing you can plant to give you winter interest. The grasses we saw were some type of miscanthus, judging by the seed head. There are several other grass varieties that also look good in the perennial garden, or even as specimen plantings (meaning they look good just on their own.) These would include the calamagrostis (feather reed grass), pennisetums ( fountain grasses), and panicums (switch grass). I think the miscanthus is one of the best, with lots of cultivars from which to choose.

These pictures I think really illustrate another topic we talk about when designing a garden and that is structure. Just what does the designer mean when he/she talks about structure in the garden? One of my favorite garden writers, Joe Eck, says that structure is what is visible at a distance and can be seen in winter. So, we leave perennial grasses unpruned for the winter as a way to add structure to the garden.

Structural elements in the garden aren’t necessarily always botanic, i.e. plants. They can be pieces of garden art, statuary, or even a strategically placed bench or gate. This gazing globe was in one of the planters in front of some hotel. I love glass and the swirls in this globe are really beautiful. At times during the year when nothing is blooming, like mid-summer or the dead of winter, here is a little color to cheer you up.

One more thing-- we often talk about how to provide winter protection for plants and shrubs that need some extra TLC in our part of the country. This is boxwood down at Millennium Park. It is a broad leaf evergreen, in other words, it has a leaf like the deciduous trees or shrubs, but because it is evergreen it doesn't drop its leaves in the fall. Therefore they are subject to drying out over the winter. In Chicago, being close to the lake, they may not have the dry winds that we do out here. The Park District has made a low fence with burlap to protect the plants. We would recommend using a product called Wilt Pruf or any other anti transpirant to provide additional protection and it probably wouldn't hurt to give your broad leaf evergreens (box, azalea, rhododendrons, etc.) another application now, since we can still get some cold dry weather.

Say, rumor has it that Heather at The Barn and her husband are expecting a baby in August. Be sure to stop by and wish Heather all the best and then come on by Countryside to see all of us.

Don’t forget the Flower and Garden Show this year down at Navy Pier. It runs March 7-15 and offers lots of seminars on gardening and cooking (two of my favorite things). So head on down to Navy Pier and get inspired.

Welcome Back!

2009-02-15T18:59:00.003-06:00

I love this time of year. The days are noticeable longer, when I get home from work it is still light out, and the snow that falls doesn’t usually stick, in short, there is hope that spring will be here eventually. Last weekend I even rode my bike into town for breakfast.
To the untrained eye, this plant may look dead. Even to the trained eye it might look dead, as Michael gave it the last rites when he saw it in December. I don’t even know what it is called, but it has lovely velvety purple flowers in the summer. Anyway I brought it inside last October and almost immediately it dropped all its leaves. I resisted the temptation to keep watering it, only watering when the soil was dry, about once every two weeks or so. This did give me some hope that it was still alive, since if it were actually dead the soil would have stayed wet. It has started to grow, sending out new green shoots. They are rather long and lanky, since it doesn’t get a lot of light in the room that it is in but at least I didn’t kill it.
My hibiscus, which is now going on year three, is also looking pretty robust and I have been having to water more frequently, another sign that it is coming out of its dormancy. I even had a few blooms this winter.

A project I wrote about last October is coming along great. I decided to force some bulbs for an early indoor spring. I planted them in a shallow container and put them in a paper bag in the refrigerator. When the stair well to my basement got cold enough I put the bag there to continue the chilling process. Spring blooming bulbs need to be chilled in order to bloom. The amount of chill time depends on the type of bulb. You can read about it on the previous blog or go to Van Bloem web site to learn more about forcing bulbs. Anyway I had sort of forgotten about them until a few weeks ago. I retrieved them and put them in my dining room, which is usually pretty cool. It has been about a month and they are now starting to bloom. It is important to turn the container as they do have a tendency to grow toward a light source and turning the container will help to keep them growing straight. After they have finished blooming I will transplant them outside. I could also let them go dormant and dry the bulbs, then plant them in the fall.

All This Snow

2008-12-27T09:20:00.004-06:00

I was out shoveling the drive this evening. It was very still, except for the sound of my shovel scraping across the drive and the snow was still coming down and it was very peaceful. I could see the Christmas lights twinkling from down the street. I bought some ice melter the other day, thinking that it would help relieve me of the burden of shoveling the drive. Then I read the label. This is kind of like the time I bought the leaf shredder from my neighbor. I somehow thought that it would reduce the amount of leaves to about what would fit in a 5 gallon bucket. Wrong. And it was a lot of work, raking up all those leaves and running them through the shredder then spreading them around the flower beds and digging it in to the soil to decompose. I guess I thought the ice melter would somehow turn a driveway covered in snow into... something other than a driveway covered in snow and it would somehow all just go away. Wrong again.
So what does ice melter do and how does it do it? Well, when you read the fine print you find out that what it does is keep the snow from adhering to whatever it has fallen onto, like your driveway or sidewalk and it should be put down before it snows, not after. Who is going to remember to do that?! Ice melters are made from several different substances. The cheapest ice melter is rock salt. More expensive ice melters are made of different types of chlorides, including magnesium chloride and potassium chloride. Ice melters can melt down to different temperatures as well. Some go as low as -20 . Anything with chlorides in it will be corrosive to some degree or another and also damaging to plants. The lower the sodium chloride the safer the ice melter for your plants, deck and sidewalk.
There are organic ice melters now on the market that are completely safe for plants, decks and sidewalks. They melt down to -50 . They are even less corrosive than water and you won’t track the residue into your house. They are liquid and you can apply them with a pressurized sprayer. I have used it around my house this year and it seemed to work as advertised. I sprayed it before the snow fell and it did seem easier to shovel the snow from the front walk.

Birding

2008-12-07T19:07:00.003-06:00

Crystal Lake today had two opportunities to enjoy holiday programs featuring Countryside staff members. This afternoon I had the pleasure of seeing Laura Fergus, from the greenhouse department, and her husband Rick sing at the First Congregational Church Christmas program. The concert features several choirs and a bell choir. What a fabulous performance and we all had a great time at the end singing a medley of Christmas songs. Tonight, Jim the driver, will be playing the tuba in the Crystal Lake Concert Band’s winter concert. If you didn’t get a chance to hear the band tonight, they are frequent performers during the Tuesday night concerts at the band shell in the summer.

With the first real snowfall this week, I got to thinking about the birds. The snow has covered up any seeds or other food sources so it is incumbent upon us to help provide food sources, especially as development takes away from the natural resources. A lot of birds, of course, do migrate to warmer climes with more available food sources, but the cardinals, juncos, and the finches, to name a few, stick around (I don’t know why, even my neighbor has finally left for Florida for the winter) and so we should put out not only food, but water also.
I have several friends, mostly from my garden club, who also feed the birds during the winter and they have two different philosophies about what type of food to put out. My one friend, (you know who you are) buys the cheapest bird food she can find feeling that whatever she puts out is better than nothing. I personally like to attract a wide variety of birds, so I put out several different kinds of bird food in different types of feeders. And I feel that if the birds won’t eat what you put out, why bother.

Selecting Bird Seed --It is pretty easy to tell a high quality bird seed, just look at the label. Just like at the grocery store, the ingredients are listed in descending order by percentage. Also listed on the label will be the guaranteed analysis, by percentage, of protein, fat, fiber and moisture. In order to compare one mix from another, compare the ingredients and the analysis. It also helps to know what type of birds you want to attract. If you want to attract finches, which like nyjer thistle and your mix doesn’t list it, then you won’t attract many finches.

Most birds that stay around through the winter prefer foods that have sunflower seeds, safflower, cracked corn, millet, thistle and fruit. Suet is another popular food this time of year. Just as important is to also have a source for water. Just like all animals, birds need water, too. Using a heated bird bath is one way to provide a water source this time of year.
Birding is the second most popular hobby in America. It can be a very rewarding experience to put out feeders, plant bird friendly plants, and make a backyard habitat for birds. If you want more information about birding as a hobby here are several links to websites for more information.

The Prince Corporation
Cornell Ornithological Lab

One More Chore for Fall

2008-11-24T20:33:00.007-06:00

I am sure you are all getting ready for Thanksgiving and then Christmas and you probably aren't thinking about the garden. So if you need an excuse to avoid the mall this weekend, here it is. Broadleaf evergreens and evergreens don't go dormant during the winter like deciduous trees and shrubs do. To keep them from drying out over the winter you should water them whenever the temperatures go above freezing. You can also apply an anti-transpirant which will keep them from losing moisture through their leaves. This is especially important with broad leaf evergreens, such as boxwood, holly, azaleas and rhododendrons. Do your azaleas and rhododendrons not bloom in the spring? This could be the reason. These shrubs set their blooms in the fall (I've actually had a PJM rhody bloom in November when we've had a warm up) and if they get stressed over the winter from drying out they will jettison the blooms in an effort to save themselves. You can see the difference it makes in looking at the pictures on the right. These are from the Wilt Pruf web site and are quite dramatic.

So what is an anti-transpirant? It is a polymer layer that is sprayed on the plant leaves, or needles in the case of spruce or arbor vitae, that keeps the plant from drying out. There are several brands available, including Wilt Pruf and Wilt Stop from Bonide. The Wilt Pruf lays down multiple layers of polymer and seems to last longer. You should apply it in late fall, Thanksgiving is a good reminder, whenever the temperature is above 40 degrees.

This is a great product to use in the spring and summer when you are transplanting shrubs, as it helps the plants retain moisture. You can also use it with your fresh Christmas trees, wreaths and roping and on your winter containers.

More Fall Chores

2008-11-16T12:41:00.005-06:00

Most of the leaves are off my trees and neighbor Dave and I were out raking yesterday in our respective gardens. I put the patio furniture away and the hose and really started battening down for the winter. When we first moved here a friend of mine said of this time of year, "Say good bye to your neighbors because you won’t see them until spring! They hibernate, too!" And she was right. Unlike other parts of the country where people really enjoy winter sports, we don’t here. I suppose it has to do with the dreary, gray days. (Mr. Ross tells me that in most parts of the country backing up to high tension power lines results in lower appraisal values for houses, except in Minnesota where it is considered a bonus because it makes for great snow mobile trails.)

Well, I guess what keeps us going is knowing that in six months spring will be here and our gardens, like us, will be springing back to life. I am already starting to plan for next year and my leaves are helping out. I want to put in a mixed herbaceous border, as they say in England, so I need to get rid of some grass in the back. Mike in the greenhouse department gave me this tip so I am trying it out this year. When he puts in a new planting area, he spreads newspaper over the area and then piles leaves on top. By spring the leaves and paper have smothered the grass and then you can till in the decomposing leaves to help amend the soil. So this week I have 3 bags of leaves for the city to pick up, whereas neighbor Dave has seven.

It is pretty shady back there and I want plants with brighter foliage to lighten the area up. I will be planting lots of the gold tone and chartreuse hostas and hakonechloa grass in addition to the limelight hydrangea and itea shrubs that I planted last spring. One thing to keep in mind when planning a new bed or landscape is to think about what the area will look like when not in its prime. What is there to capture the eye at that time. This is a piece of statuary from my old house. It looks great mixed in with the plants, but it also gives me something to look at during the winter. I can see this area from my kitchen window so I do see it through all seasons.

I also planted the last of my bulbs. I had a few daffodils and crocus bulbs left over from my bulb forcing project last month so I got them planted as well. (Last month I planted some bulbs in a container to force them to bloom earlier than they normally would. I had them in the refrigerator until last week when I moved them to the cellar steps, where they would stay cold but not freeze.) I used a bulb auger attached to my electric drill to dig the holes for the left over bulbs. I have a few planted up the beds on either side of my front door, but to change it up a bit, I planted these last few in the lawn right in front of the raised planters. I accidently dug up one that I had planted earlier and was pleased to note that the roots had really started to develop. So that is one other thing I have to look forward to this spring.

Winter Rose Care

2008-11-08T11:21:00.003-06:00

If this doesn’t convince you winter’s on the way, you are either in a major state of denial or already in Florida. I’m staying close to home except for spending the afternoon at the MCC French movie festival. Seems like a good place to spend a cold, icky Saturday afternoon.

This is the time of year we get a lot of calls and questions about cleaning up the flower beds. Believe it or not, the garden has not yet gone fully dormant, so the short answer is don’t do anything! What a relief! I was out this morning looking at the roses I planted this summer. The climbing rose I bought to cover the chain link fence between me and neighbor Dave has grown at least 4 feet! The yellow rose has also grown and still has buds, one that is even starting to open.

Roses are a tough sell in our climate. The winter is pretty hard on them and just when they start to look great in the summer, the Japanese beetles get them. There are many varieties of roses that do well here in northern Illinois. The best roses for our region are the shrub roses. Though their flowers are not as large or fragrant, they are very floriforous, meaning they have many blossoms, and many are everblooming, meaning they will have flowers all the time. They are also very hardy in our area and don’t need a lot of maintenance.

That said, what should you do with your roses this time of year? You do need to provide some type of protection for the roses. This is not to keep the roses from freezing but rather to keep them from coming out of dormancy prematurely during those times when we get an early warm up and then a deep freeze. If you have grafted roses, which would be most of your hybrid tea, floribunda or grandiflora roses, you can use rose collars to protect the root graft. This is a plastic collar that fits around the base of the rose and is then backfilled with compost, blackdirt or garden soil. The benefits to using the rose collars as opposed to rose cones, is that you can do it earlier in the fall and you don’t have to prune the roses to make them fit under the cone.
If you opt for rose cones, wait until late December when the roses are fully dormant, then prune them back to about 16"-18" or enough to fit under the rose cone. Some cones come with a removable top. On days when the sun is out, the temperature under the cone can rise to the point where the rose starts to come out of dormancy and begins to transpire and produce moisture in the cone. This can lead to disease problems later on. On warm sunny days remove the top or the entire cone to allow the moisture to escape. Be sure to remove the cone for good in early spring.

Bring in your Tropical Plants

2008-10-19T11:30:00.003-05:00

Last Thursday we had a frost warning, though I don’t think it actually did drop below 32 . Just to be on the safe side I dragged my patio plants inside and now that I’ve done that I’m beginning to wonder what else I’ve brought inside. I had a customer once who left her plants outside until well into fall and when she did bring them inside discovered she also brought in a hibernating frog!
Well, the whole point here is that you never know what else you bring in with your plants and, really, I am thinking of bugs. Before you bring your plants inside you may want to give them a good hosing with water to knock off any insects that may be lurking in the foliage. Check the undersides of the leaves for insect eggs. Ann Larson, who is currently recuperating from ankle surgery, recommends using a mild solution of True Value cleaner (we sell it at Countryside) to remove insect eggs and kill smaller insects. You can also use a systemic insecticide or yellow sticky traps, that work like fly paper. The yellow color of the trap attracts whiteflys, aphids, thrips, leafhoppers and aphids. The systemic takes a few weeks to work its way up the plant and into the leaves so a combination of all of the above is probably best.
It is usually a bit of a shock to the plant to go from a sunny, cool outdoor spot to a now warmer, drier, less sunny inside location. Some plants to not make this transition very well. Keep the plants in as sunny and cool a location as possible and keep them away from the heating vents. You may want to provide additional humidity by putting a pan of water next to the plant. Often, plants react to a drastic change in environment by going into shock and dropping their leaves. Do not just assume that the plant needs water and water it. Check the soil first. If the soil moisture is adequate, just let the plant be. It will begin to set new leaves that will be acclimatized to the new location and should be fine. Remember, in lower light conditions plants do not grow as much so they don’t take up as much water. Over watering will do as much to kill a plant as under watering.

My hibiscus plant has really grown and I am always worried when I either put it outside or bring it in that the change is going to shock it. Hibiscus are pretty tough plants, but they do have a tendency to loose their leaves when brought indoors. It won't kill the plant and if you strip the leaves off the plant before you bring it in, you will leave all those insects outside.

Forcing Bulbs

2008-10-12T16:46:00.007-05:00

Forcing bulbs is a fun project for the fall, though you won't see the fruits of your labor until spring. Forcing bulbs means to trick them into blooming sooner than they would when planted outside. Some bulbs do not need to be forced, like paper whites or amaryllis. Others, such as daffodils, tulips, crocus or hyacinths need to be cooled before they will bloom. It is a little too late to force bulbs for blooming by Christmas but you can still get a jump on spring by doing it now. The Van Bloem web site has a page that explains how to do it and gives the weeks of cooling needed for each bulb type.

Most bulbs need 12-15 weeks of cool temperatures before they will bloom. After this period it generally takes another month for the blooms to actually set and open. I prefer to time my bulbs to bloom sometime in late January or February. There is usually plenty of color in the house in December, what with Christmas decorating and poinsettias. After that the house looks a little drab so it is nice to perk it up with some forced bulbs.

In this example I am using daffodils and crocus. You can use any type of container. If it is going in the house you would want to use a more decorative container. I am planning to put this out on the front porch so the container doesn’t have to look too nice. I think using a galvanized container would look nice, also.

Fill the container with potting mix, not garden soil, and place the bulbs pointy side up. In a 6" container Van Bloem recommends 6 tulip bulbs, 3-6 daffodil bulbs, 3 hyacinth and 12 crocus or muscari bulbs. In my container, which is more like a 10" container, I am using 4 daffodil bulbs and 5 crocus bulbs. Once the bulbs are in place, partially cover the bulbs with soil, water in and place in a paper bag.

Find a cool place to store the bulbs. Right now the coolest place is going to be in your refrigerator. I am having to evict the wine from the bottom shelf of the frig at least for a few weeks. Once the outside temperature has dropped sufficiently find a place that stays cool but does not freeze. My garden club friend Kathy, puts hers in the covered window wells in her basement. In 12-15 weeks bring the container into a warm sunny room. There should be green shoots about 1-2" tall emerging from the soil. They will continue to grow and form buds and finally open. This process will take about a month. Be sure to turn the container so that the stems don’t grow to one side, toward the light.

Bulbs do not have to be fertilized since they stored the energy for next year’s blooms last spring. I have had some people tell me that bulbs that are forced do not ever bloom again and they should be thrown out after the blooms are spent. This is not true. Once the bulbs have blossomed, you can fertilize them with a well balanced, all purpose fertilizer. If you want you can plant them outside in the ground at this point or allow them to grow in the container until later in the spring and then allow them to go dormant, remove them from the soil, dry them and replant them in the fall in the ground. The key is allowing them to continue the process of photo-synthesis and sending energy to the bulb to enable the plant to store up enough energy to bloom again the following spring.

Time for Bulbs

2008-10-05T16:07:00.007-05:00

I apologize for the lack of blogs recently. In early September I took the youngest daughter back to school in Boston, then got busy at work– but now I seem to have my muse back so here we go.

I have been in my house a full year and have seen the full range of seasons. I am beginning to see what is lacking in the landscape. One thing that I missed last spring was spring bulbs. At my old house I had planted hundreds of bulbs and this spring at this house there were like three. Now that the weather has cooled (I cracked up reading my last blog about the lack of rain!) we can think about planting bulbs. If you plant them too early in the season, we can get a cool down and then a warm up and the bulbs are fooled into thinking they have been through the cool down period. You really can fool Mother Nature sometimes.

I love driving down Woodstock Street in Crystal Lake in the early spring to see the scilla in bloom in the lawns of the houses near the intersection of Oak and Woodstock. Yesterday I planted a bag of scilla bulbs in the middle of the front lawn. I also planted daffodils in the planters on either side of the front door and in the lawn in front of the planters. I think this will create an interesting transition between the lawn and the planters as well as soften the hard edges of the brick paver planters.

I think, too, the blue of the scilla and the yellow daffodils will be a nice combination in case they end up blooming at the same time. Both bloom early, but the scilla is the earlier bloomer. So much of when plants bloom depends on the weather but again, as a general rule, crocus and snow drops bloom early, usually in March, followed by daffodils, and then tulips. For summer blooms you can plant alliums for dramatic impact and fall crocuses and colchicums for blooms in September and October. In fact, you can have more than 100 days of blooms with bulbs alone and in a small space if you plant them at different heights. Bulbs are really very versatile and, because the blooms usually last a long time, a great investment.

One bulb variety that may be of interest to those plagued with deer and rabbits is fritillary, sometimes called snakes head. This bulb blooms later in the spring and has lovely bobbing heads and the best thing is it is deer and rabbit resistant. Also deer and rabbit resistent are daffodils.

We get asked a lot of questions about planting bulbs and two of the most common are "What side goes up?" and "How deep do you plant them?" Bulbs usually have a pointy end and a flatter end. The pointy end is the top and the flat side is where the roots grow but don’t worry if you plant them upside down. Bulbs are "geo-tropic," which means they know which way to grow and can "right" themselves to the correct orientation. How deep you plant the bulb depends on how big the bulb is. A general rule is to plant the bulb 3x the depth of the bulb, so a 1" bulb will be planted 3 inches deep. Don’t get too worried about measuring from the top or the bottom of the bulb, close enough is good enough. You can bury bulbs too deep and if you do you will notice little or no flowering, but an inch one way or the other will not make a difference.

For more information on fall bulbs, stop by Countryside and talk to any of the green house staff. There are several web sites that also have good information as well. The International Flower Bulb Centre, run by the Netherlands bulb growers at www.bulb.com is full of excellent information as is the site run by Van Bloem Gardens (where all my pictures came from)

To Water or Not to Water

2008-09-01T16:29:00.005-05:00

You know, it seems like it’s either feast or famine. This spring was one of the wettest, especially in Iowa with all the flooding that occurred there, and now hurricane season is hitting Florida and Texas. And we haven’t had rain in weeks! Not that I am complaining but if your lawn is like mine it looks like shredded wheat. So, what to do? Unless we have an extended drought your lawn will do just fine. It is now going dormant, but it is not dead. You can water but you must water on a consistent basis and follow whatever water restrictions your municipality has implemented. If you do feel the need to water, follow these guidelines: The lawn will need 1" of water per week, water deeply and infrequently rather than a little bit every day and finally, water in the morning rather than in the evening to prevent disease. Water is a scarce commodity and it does seem silly to use it on the lawn, when as soon as the rains return, it will green up again. I say enjoy the break from mowing.

Your trees, shrubs and perennials are a different matter, especially since these represent a large investment. I found these watering recommendations on the Tree Gator web site:

1. Water slowly and deeply. Tree roots are in the top 2-4' of the soil.
2. Apply water directly over the root ball.
3. Newly planted trees need approximately 10 gallons of water per week per 1" of tree caliper. A 2" caliper tree would need 20 gallons of water per week.
4. It takes a tree about one year per caliper inch to become established. So, our 2" tree will take two years to become properly established.
Tree Gators are bags that fit around the trunk of the tree and are filled with up to 20 gallons of water. The water is released slowly through the root ball and out to the surrounding soil. This encourages the roots to grow out of the planting hole and results in a better established tree.
Soaker hoses are another option if you have a larger area that needs to be watered, such as a perennial bed. They can be snaked around the plants and can even be buried underground to more effectively deliver water closer to the plants’ roots. Using soaker or weeper hoses keeps the water in the soil and not on the foliage.

Sprinklers are definitely not the way to water. A lot of the water evaporates before it hits the ground and water on foliage promotes disease. If you only have one tree or a small area, just lay a hose on the ground next to the tree trunk or plant stem and leave it on a slow trickle until the ground is saturated.

You may have noticed your older, more established trees starting to turn color a little early. This is a stress response due to the drought, similar to the lawn looking like toast. Even if the tree is in a lawn that is being watered, the tree is still not getting enough water deep enough. It, too, will benefit from a good, deep soaking from the hose. Believe it or not, but a lot of these trees probably have not fully recovered from the drought of 2005.

Well, I've just noticed I've got a little hose draggin' to do myself!

On Patrol

2008-08-31T16:45:00.010-05:00

Hardy hibiscus are a really unique plant for our area. They have a great tropical look to them, with vibrantly colored large, dinner-plate sized flowers. They are very slow to come out of dormancy in the spring– we baby them in a warm green house before moving them out to the growing houses to give them an "edge." Unfortunately, they are also loved by the dreaded Japanese beetle. The other day I was peddling down a Crystal Lake street and saw some really nice hibiscus that obviously had not be ravaged by the beetles. I was intrigued by this and wanted to know more...so, I knocked on the door to get this gardener’s secret, which she was more than happy to share with me and my intrepid readers.

The "secret" is one we’ve blogged about before but it goes to show that it does work: Sevin® and lots of it. The active ingredient in Sevin® is carbaryl, which is a very common chemical. You’ll find it in flea powders and sprays, so it is safe to use. Like Eight®, it is a topical spray, which means it has to actually touch the bug to be effective so you do need to re-apply it on a regular basis. But here is living proof that what we tell you at the store really does work when applied as per the directions.

Marcy invited me in to see her backyard, which included a beautiful water feature. Unbeknownst to me, her pond had been featured on the Countryside pond walk last month. I went to several pond and garden walks that day and hadn’t made it to hers and, boy, was I sorry but I was glad to see it at last. What a paradise. For the last several years the gardening trend has been the "outdoor room" and Marcy and George clearly consider the back yard as their summer living room. It features a beautiful brick paver patio, a raised water feature and lots of urban wildlife. They also recently put up a bat box in hopes of attracting bats to eat mosquitos. While most people would consider squirrels a pest, Marcy and her family put out peanuts for the squirrels and one in particular has become quite friendly, even touching noses with their cat!

While I was there Marcy had some questions about her water plants which I was happy to answer. Most of what she has in and around the pond are tropical plants, which in our area have to be considered as annuals or over wintered inside. One of her aquatic plants is actually one of my favorites– equisetum. As you can tell from its Latin name, it has something to do with horses and the common name is in fact "horse tail." This is an amazing plant because it is one of the oldest plants on earth dating back to the mid-Devonian period (350+ million years ago!) It is hardy in our area, but should be kept containerized since it can spread.

She also had several calla lily plants around the pond. The mother of my best friend from high school called them "death lilies," since they are often used in funeral arrangements. I like them because of their dappled foliage and unique flower, which can be purple, pink, yellow, green, deep purple and white. They are grown from bulbs in the spring and therefore not hardy in our area. They can be dug up at the end of the season and over wintered inside.

Fall Containers

2008-08-24T16:21:00.004-05:00

Now that we seem to have a little touch of fall in the air, it’s time to think about changing out our containers. The summer annuals have had their day with their vibrant colors and now we can think about the muted colors of fall. I was out at our growing facility last week checking on the mums. They hadn’t broken bud yet but many were getting close.

If you plan ahead when planting your containers you can still use some of the plants and only replace those that look a little tired. The purple fountain grass has probably reached its full height and is starting to bloom. The vinca vine probably also still looks good and it will last well into the fall, but you will probably want to replace the blooming annuals. Of course, mums and asters are the typical plants for fall containers. Other annuals that look good in the cooler weather include osteospermum, diamond frost euphorbia, and ageratums. In fact many of the plants that we recommend for spring containers also do well in the fall. Plants for foliage include ornamental kale and swiss chard and ornamental peppers. Also consider adding a small pumpkin for a different look and texture.

One thing to consider when planting any container is color. I usually carry a color wheel with me when I am on the sales lot and it really helps when selecting a color scheme for my containers. The three primary colors are yellow, red and blue. Purple is the complementary color of yellow, orange is the complementary color of blue and green is complementary of red. If you use colors that are complementary you will get a very bold design, whereas if you use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel it will be more soothing. There isn’t any right or wrong way to design, but understanding the color wheel can help when selecting plants.

Vegetable Gardening Tips

2008-08-16T16:45:00.007-05:00

Well, I don’t want to be the one to say this, but does it feel like fall to you? I didn’t mind the mild summer, in fact, I rather enjoyed it, even if my tomatoes (that do so much better with warm nights) are now just ripening. I just hope we don’t pay for it this winter. I have a very long driveway and no kids to shovel. But I digress...

Last week on my jaunts through town on the old bike, I ran across this garden. Actually, Neil lives down the block from me and I’ve seen his garden many times with these odd bottles and finally got around to stopping by and asking about them. He was somewhat embarrassed to admit he didn’t get these at Countryside, but since I don’t think we carry them, it’s okay to say he got them by mail order, but I won’t say where. You can see from the picture how it works. You cut the end off a 2 liter bottle, screw a hollow plastic spike onto the other end and finally push the spike into the ground next to the plant. Using this system gets the water right to the root and doesn’t water the weeds. I think something like this would work to water indoor plants while you where on vacation as well.

Neil has been gardening for many years. His garden is actually in his neighbor’s yard but they let him use it. Every fall they rake up the leaves from both yards and pile them on the garden. Then they roto till them in and let them decompose over the winter. In this way they have solved two problems: what to do with the prodigious amount of leaves that accumulate and improve soil tilth.

Also last week I rode back over to the community gardens off of Barlina Road to see what progress had been made since my first visit in June. Wow, things had really changed in those two months. Only one gardener was out working when we were there, so we asked Don O’ Conner what he was growing. This year he was growing cucumbers, pumpkins, potatoes and sweet potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. He had started out growing heirloom tomatoes but is moving away from them because of disease problems.

He does not garden organically. I noticed quite a few Japanese beetles flying about. He had a trap out and had trapped and killed a lot. He was using Sevin® (carbaryl) as an insecticide for the beetles not captured by the trap.

The Gardens at Ball

2008-08-10T17:39:00.005-05:00

The Ball Seed Gardens in West Chicago were open to the public last Sunday as part of a Garden Conservancy Open Day. I took our good customer and personal friend, Jean Mc Daniel of Dream Gardens, with me. Jean does fabulous work with container gardens (her creations can be seen at the Brink Street Market) and I thought she’d enjoy seeing some of the newest introductions. The weather was fantastic and we had an enjoyable morning at the gardens.
The Gardens at Ball are a combination display and test garden. They are an All-American test garden, which means they trial seed varieties that have not been yet introduced onto the market to determine how well they will do in our climate. To that end there are several beds just planted with a couple rows of each variety.
They are also a demonstration garden in that they design the gardens in a way that shows how to use the plants in an everyday situation, like at your house. Ball Seed also develops premium annuals for use in container gardening and they have oodles of containers planted up and placed about the gardens.
They had lots of new introductions this year including a really pretty purslane series called Toucan and a new basil called Boxwood Basil. As its name suggests this is a compact basil with very small leaves.
A few things really struck me as we enjoyed the gardens. First, the impact of massed planting, second, the "wow" factor of most annuals, and third, the use of planted containers in an existing garden bed. We always encourage our customers to plant in groups and I am sure many people think we are just trying to get you to buy more plants. But when you see a large block of color, whether they are annuals or perennials, it can just be breathtaking. A single plant can get lost in the clutter, but many, blooming all at once, is very striking.
Most of us think of putting containers only on the front step or on the deck or patio, but putting a tall container filled with annuals in a perennial bed or in a shady spot, does several things. First, it gets the color closer to the viewers eye, without having to bend over to see the flowers. Second, the container itself can be that bit of structure we are always talking about in garden design. Garden art doesn’t have to be a statue or a trellis, it can be a colorful container in a foliage garden with some annuals.

Japanese Beetles

2008-08-02T21:29:00.006-05:00

I went down to the Kaleidoscoops (I am a shameless promotor of our local stores and besides my daughter Alexa works there) for ice cream after dinner and as I was eating I was struck by the damage done to the trees by the Japanese beetles. You have probably seen this on trees around town. The tops of the tree canopy are brown from the beetles eating the leaves. The liquid amber tree in my neighbor’s yard is similarly affected. Obviously, this defoliation is not good for the tree, but it will not kill it. In fact, if you look closely you can probably see new growth already starting.

A friend of mine with whom I worked a few years ago told me that he had noticed that the Japanese beetle population had increased as our winters here became milder. I asked him if he thought a few severe winters would decrease the population and he didn’t think so. So what can we do?

It helps to understand the life cycle of the beetle to know what type of control to use and when to use it. Right now the beetles are eating and mating and laying eggs in the soil. These eggs will hatch into grubs. As young grubs they will be in the top couple inches of soil, but as we move closer to winter and they mature they will move deeper in the soil. They move back up to the soil surface in the spring when the soil warms and feed some more. The next stage of their life is as a pupea. Similar to how caterpillars spin a cocoon to turn from caterpillar to butterfly, the grub pupates and then emerges as the adult beetle in late June to early July.

For this year, there isn’t much we can do. Use Eight® (permethrin) or Sevin® (carbaryl) as a spray to kill on contact. Please be careful to spray when there are no bees around. Lori always recommends using the beetle traps, but they can attract beetles from as much as 5 miles away and they only trap about 75% of the beetles, but at least you know the ones you did trap will be dead.

Starting now you can put down a grub control on the lawn and in the garden beds. Use a grub control that contains imidicloprid. Another product is Milky Spore®. This is a biological control that colonizes in the soil and also kills the grubs. As young grubs they are more susceptible to the grubicides and biological controls.

To protect your trees and shrubs next year, use a systemic insecticide. These are applied either as a drench (poured at the base of the tree or shrub) or a spray. There are several on the market that are effective for an entire year. So either now or next spring apply the insecticide (imidicloprid). It takes about 4-6 weeks for the insecticide to move up the tree to be effective so do it before the end of April.

Another thing to do is to choose plants that they don’t like. These include: ageratum, arborvitae, ash, baby's breath, garden balsam, begonia, bleeding heart, boxwood, buttercups, caladium, carnations, Chinese lantern plant, cockscomb, columbine, coralbells, coralberry, coreopsis, cornflower, daisies, dogwood (flowering), dusty-miller, euonymus, false cypresses, firs, forget-me-not, forsythia, foxglove, hemlock, hollies, hydrangeas, junipers, kale (ornamental), lilacs, lilies, magnolias, maple (red or silver only), mulberry, nasturtium, oaks (red and white only), pines, poppies, snapdragon, snowberry, speedwell, sweet pea, sweet-William, tuliptree, violets and pansy, or yews (taxus).

Two More Gardens

2008-07-27T09:18:00.008-05:00

The Wayman Garden

Susan and Glenn were my neighbors for many years until I moved into town last year. Her garden has undergone many changes in those years. Like the Hartmann’s, she and Glenn seem to do one major project a year. Over the years they have redone the front entryway, added brick paver walkways and expanded the perennial beds to border the entire back yard.

Susan likes plants that flower and the color scheme is a soothing blend of pinks and purples. One combination of plantings that she really enjoys is red astilbe and chartreuse hostas that she says "just glows" in the spring. She enjoys attracting some wildlife to the garden, especially humming birds, which frequent the monarda and the nepeta. She also likes the grass-like sedge, "Silver Scepter."

They have several fruit trees and a grape arbor and every year they put in a large vegetable garden. Last year she put up 34 jars of Concord grape jelly! They use no pesticides on the garden. Her favorite tomatoes are Rutgers, Celebrity and Big Mama. They will do a fall planting of more lettuces and radishes. Susan recommends using old CDs strung on fishing line to repel deer. She says if you hang it closer to the ground it will also scare off rabbits.

The Donahue Garden
Arlene is a long time member of the Countryside Garden Club (no relation), who enjoys all types of gardening and flower arranging. She has a large butterfly garden planted with lots of Asclepias, a milkweed favored by Monarch butterfly caterpillars. One year my daughters and I spent a fascinating afternoon there watching a monarch caterpillar spin a cocoon.

Arlene has several raised vegetable beds and I was particularly impressed with the trellis she had built for the cucumbers. The plants were already starting to scramble up the trellis without much help from Arlene, though she did tell me later she does tie them up.

Her favorite garden area is "The Secret Garden." This secluded garden is hidden by a shrub hedge with a willow branch entry way. I enjoyed the iron sculptures she had in various beds. Usually at some point in the season, the perennials are between bloom periods and it is nice to have something else to focus on.

One of my favorite plants is the giant allium and Arlene has several growing in her gardens. When they are in bloom they look just like a firework exploding on the Fourth of July, but even after the bloom is spent it still looks good.
It was a great day of gardens, but I have to say I was exhausted by the end and went home and took a nap! I hope you have enjoyed our little tour. Click here to see more pictures from my tour. Next Sunday I hope to get down to Ball Seed for their "Open Day."

More Garden Walks

2008-07-27T08:38:00.012-05:00

The Neville Garden

The Neville’s moved to a smaller home on this Kane County property in 1976 and then to a bigger house on the property in 1989. The garden has been a work in progress ever since.
Whereas the Hartmann garden is an oasis of peace and tranquility, this garden is ablaze with color. I particularly loved the annual bed of cosmos and annual poppies that greets guests as they arrive and the well placed statuary and other permanent structures found throughout the gardens. The butterfly and hummingbird perennial garden was also well done.

The main interest on this property is the 2-acre native garden. Carved out of farm acreage, this native area is truly a labor of love. Once established, native gardens such as this are fairly easy to maintain, but getting to that point involves a lot of weeding and removal of unwanted plants.

As if the ornamental beds aren’t enough, the Neville’s also have a large vegetable garden. I was pleased to see them using the "Better Reds" plastic mulch around the tomatoes. University research has shown that using the red mulch reduces nematode growth and reflects light rays back up to the plant resulting in greater growth above ground. The upshot is that production is increased and Mrs. Neville reports similar findings.

Gail Johnson
Anyone who drives down Pomeroy Street in Crystal Lake has seen Gail’s front garden and the back is just as pretty and well maintained. It has been featured on Master Gardener Garden Walks before and this year was on the Countryside Pond Tour. For a small city lot, Gail has packed in a lot of plants and features.
The pond in her garden is not the main attraction, but it does add an element of calm and one can imagine unwinding after a stressful day at work with a glass of wine.

We get a lot of inquiries at Countryside about wisteria and there are several varieties of wisteria that will grow here. Gail purchased this one at Countryside several years ago and it is thriving. The variety is "Aunt Dee." Like all wisterias, this variety prefers deep, moist well drained soil however it blooms while still very young. Most wisterias are very slow to establish and don’t bloom until they are 5-7 years old! Gail is quite the plant collector and she loves roses, especially rugosas.

To see more pictures of the gardens I visited, click here. Also, don't forget the Open Day at Ball Seed in West Chicago on August 3.

On Patrol: Garden Walks

2008-07-21T19:39:00.018-05:00

Many of you know Kim Hartmann from the greenhouse department. She joined Countryside in 2006 after a stint at Craig Bergmann’s retail garden center and 18 years as a management consultant at Hewitt and Associates. She has given many talks about gardening and perennials at Countryside and she often mentions that her mother was her gardening inspiration. Last Saturday I had the opportunity to visit Kim’s mom’s garden as it was on a garden walk sponsored by the Fox Valley chapter of the American Association of University Women.

There has been a house and barn on the Hartmann farm since the 1890s. The garden of present occupants, Ron and Pat Hartmann, has been a work in progress for the past 46 years. Kim’s dad, Ron, grew up on the farm and her mom, Pat, was raised on the neighboring farm. Ron currently farms about 800 acres of corn, soybeans, and hay. Originally, it had been a dairy and then a hog farm.

Pat told me that she "likes plants that look good all season." She usually selects plants based on their foliage. She finds flowers "too noisy." Her goal is to create peace. She also wanted to have something nice to look at out of each window of the house. She has lots of hostas and woody shrubs, such as hydrangeas. When she wants some color she will plant impatiens or coleus. She has several specimen conifers from Rich’s Fox Willow Pines that add vertical elements and interesting textures to the garden. Her other favorite places to shop are Countryside (of course) and Wasco Nursery, which is closer to her home.

Pat is pretty sanguine about her garden’s evolution. "Gardens are always changing," she stated, noting that trees grow, mature and fall down and you have to react to the changing environment. In some cases Pat and Ron are on the second landscaping of an area. Now they are contemplating changes to the porch and garden beds around the side door.

Pat offers these words of advice to new (and old) gardeners:
1. Make sure the soil is right. Amend it if necessary.
2. Keep the mature size of the plant in mind when you plant.
3. Where nothing will grow, put in annuals or a rock or a piece of "tchotcke."

Here is a link to more pictures from the Hartmann farm as well as several other gardens I visited that weekend. Don't forget the Ball Seed Open House on August 3 in West Chicago.

Summertime

2008-07-13T18:16:00.008-05:00

We’ve come to that time of the year when things start to slow down here at the ‘Side. You’ve put in the garden, planted your annuals, and maybe added to the perennial garden. Now you are off on holiday or just taking it easy.

There is always something to do in the garden, mostly under the heading of "Maintenance." Maybe your spring containers are looking a little droopy. Some plants need to be cut back or thinned before they take over the container. Sadly, one or two of plants may have "gone dormant," which is a nice way of saying "dead." Don’t be afraid to get out the scissors and give things a trim, or if need be, add some summer annuals to the container. There are many heat and sun tolerant annuals you can add to the summer container. Angelonia is a great upright element in a container. It comes in purples and white. Pentas come in reds, pinks, and whites and attract butterflys and hummingbirds. Coleus work well in sun as well as shade containers and come in wonderful variety of foliage colors.

Keep a sharp eye out for bugs in the veg garden. Keeping them in check now, with the judicious use of insecticidal soap or even something stronger, like Eight®, will pay dividends in the long run. I have noticed that the Japanese beetles are now out in force. I would have thought that with the cold spring we had this year their development would have slowed as well and they would have emerged somewhat later. But, sadly, no. They arrived right on schedule. You can use Eight® on them as well. It is a contact spray with some residual, but you will have to reapply on a regular basis. For future reference, you can use a grub control on the lawn starting next month to kill the grubs that hatch when they lay their eggs. Milky Spore® is a biological control that will take several applications to build up an optimal level of grub killing bacteria in the soil but our customers report good results with it.

I’ve been riding my bike a lot around Crystal Lake in order to save on gas and for the exercise. Here are a few pictures of a few things I’ve seen in my travels. Here is a prime no-no with the mulch. The transition zone between the roots of the tree and its trunk is an entry point for diseases that can be harbored in the mulch. Small burrowing animals can winter over in the mulch and gnaw on the bark, damaging the tree. Mulch keeps the tree roots cooler and helps conserve water, but it should be kept away from the trunk of the tree.

I saw this cute idea for a planter on my way to the grocery store the other day. If you have a cute planter, please email it to me at leslie_ross@att.net. and I will upload it to the blog.

I hope you are all enjoying our summer. I have enjoyed spending Tuesday evenings out at the lake listening to the summer concert series. If you haven't been you are missing a fun evening. Countryside deliveryman, Jim, plays the tuba in the Crystal Lake Concert Band and they are always great to hear.

Garden Walks

2008-06-27T20:53:00.005-05:00

One of my most memorable overseas experiences was on a trip to England with my good friend, Mrs. Grindrod. Mr. Ross had given me two round trip tickets to England for Christmas and said I could take anyone I wanted as long as it wasn’t him. We planned our trip around the locales of two series of books we were reading at the time written by Miss Read, otherwise known as Dora Saint. We even got to go to lunch with her one day. Afterward, Debbie and I toured several private gardens that were open to the public in aid of a local charity. We ended the tour at the rectory garden where the ladies were serving a cream tea. It was absolutely delightful. If you are interested in touring private gardens in England you can plan your trip using the National Garden Scheme’s Yellow Book, where you can search to find gardens open in the area. Here in the states, The Garden Conservancy has a similar program. The gardens listed by this organization tend to be large, private gardens. The schedule lists open garden days in many states and we are fortunate to have a few here in Illinois. The nearest open garden for us in Crystal Lake will be June 28 in North Barrington. This garden features a unique garden railway. On July 27, four gardens will be open in Glencoe, Lake Forest and Mettawa and on August 3, the Gardens at Ball, in West Chicago will be open to the public. The greenhouse department at Countryside usually goes to see the gardens during their "trade only" field day, so this is a great opportunity for the general public to see new varieties of perennials and annuals being trialed as well as great container designs, and woodland and wetland restoration projects. There will be guides available to answer questions. You can check out the details and get directions by going to the The Garden Conservancy website.

Closer to home is the upcoming McHenry County Garden Walk sponsored by the McHenry County Master Gardeners. This walk takes place on July 12 and features five local gardens, including that of my neighbor and another of a woman from my garden club. These are both great gardens, cared for by two people who truly love gardening and plants. I am sure the others are fabulous as well. These are great places to get new ideas and also to reassure yourself that your own garden looks pretty darn good.

Garden Patrol: Crystal Lake Community Gardens

2008-06-19T10:10:00.006-05:00

Behind Barlina House on Barlina Road is a gardener’s paradise. The Crystal Lake Park District rents garden allotments to anyone interested in gardening. Currently 63 plots have been rented. The day I was there I met Russ and Millie, who were checking on their plot after the heavy rains we’ve had. Their plot was on high ground but several others weren’t.

Russ and Millie have lived in Crystal Lake twice, with a seven year stint in North Carolina, and have always been avid gardeners. They have lived here this time since 1978. This is the second year they have rented a plot from the park district and this year they rented two. They are thinking of getting a third next year. Millie enjoys meeting the other gardeners, saying, "They are such friendly people." Several times last year the gardeners got together for a pot luck dinner at the picnic tables nearby the gardens.

This year they have planted tomatoes, peppers, corn, peas and beans, as well as flowers. They love to eat the vegetables that the garden produces. They have tried different tomatoes but their favorite is the Big Boy. It is big and reliable, and nematode resistant, Millie told me. They try not to use too many chemicals on their crops but when bugs start to eat the garden you have no choice but to, they say. They do mulch between rows to keep down the weeds and retain moisture. This is important since water must be hauled from a spigot a couple hundred feet away. A friend gave them some plastic tubs, which they fill with water and keep by their garden.

They, along with some of the other gardeners, donate the extra vegetables they grow to the Crystal Lake Food Pantry. One of the allotment holders has one whole plot devoted to growing food for the food pantry. If you have an interest in gardening but don’t have enough space at home, the rental fee for a plot is $24/resident, $18/senior citizens and $30/non-resident. It’s a great community of gardeners who are friendly and love to share their love of gardening. Contact the Crystal Lake Park District for more information.

The Great Sunflower Project

2008-06-12T11:31:00.007-05:00

Here at Countryside we are very concerned about the bees. There was an article last year in the Tribune detailing the decline in the bee population and what is thought to be a virus that kills entire colonies of bees. Any one in agriculture, and that includes all of us who eat, should be aware of how important bees are to food production. According to the USDA, roughly one-third of the food we eat is a result of pollination by bees and animal pollinators are responsible for the reproduction of 90% of flowering plants. Domestic honey bees pollinate approximately $10 billion worth of crops in the US (North American Pollinator Protection Campaign.)

So, what can the average homeowner do to help this situation? One thing we can do is reduce our use of pesticides, since according to the NAPPC pesticides kill $14.3 million worth of bees a year. When using pesticides follow the directions carefully, don’t spray on windy days, and try not to spray near flowering plants when bees might be present. NAPPC also recommends planting "bee" friendly perennials, such as foxglove, monarda (Bee Balm), and eupatorium (Joe Pye Weed) in our gardens. You can encourage orchard bees, which are solitary, as opposed to hive type bees and are non-aggressive, to live in your garden by setting out bee tubes.

The other thing you can do is participate in the Great Sunflower Project. Researchers at San Francisco State University want to learn more about urban and suburban pollinators and their impact on urban home and community gardens. It is very simple to participate. Go to their website to learn more about the project. Registering is very easy and once registered you will be sent a packet of sunflower seeds. Plant them and when they flower do a bee inventory. An inventory sheet and instructions are on the web site. One of our customers, who is also a friend of mine, is participating and she is going to keep me appraised of her results. This sounds like a great project to do with your kids this summer. Let us know how you do.

Lawn Care

2008-06-09T14:05:00.005-05:00

Phosphorus as a lawn fertilizer element has made the news lately as being a major cause of water quality issues in our lakes and streams. Excess phosphorus, from phosphates in lawn fertilizers causes algae growth and reduces water quality, especially in standing bodies of water such as lakes. If any of you are as old as I am, you may remember when phosphorus was removed from laundry detergents for this very same reason. It helped whiten fabrics, and my mom was very worried about getting Fred’s shirts their whitest after it was banned. But somehow we survived that crisis. Some cities and states have already banned phosphates in lawn fertilizer. Minnesota banned phosphates in 2005 and Maine in 2008. Here in Chicagoland, Antioch and Third Lake, in northern Illinois recently banned it.

So, what is phosphorus and why is it in fertilizer? When you buy fertilizer there are usually three numbers on the box or bag that describe the available amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Nitrogen is responsible for green growth in plants. It is what makes the grass green up in the spring. Potassium helps with general plant health, including tolerating stresses such as heat, cold and disease resistance. Phosphorus, in the form of phosphates, stimulates root growth, increases stem and stalk strength and improves flower formation. This is why we always recommend high phosphate starter or transplant fertilizers when planting new annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees. It is generally not necessary in lawn fertilizers, unless soil testing shows your soil to be phosphorus deficient and then only when seeding or laying sod.

Americans love their lawns and strive for the greenest lawn on the block. Proper lawn care will help your lawn look its best and reduce your use of fertilizers and herbicides (weed killers). The following steps will help your lawn look its best:

1. Aerate: The soil beneath most lawns becomes compacted over time reducing the amount of oxygen available to the roots. Aerating even once a year will help this. After aerating you can top dress with compost to add organic matter to the soil. This will help reduce the compaction further, increase drainage and increase the water holding ability of the soil.

2. Watering: Most lawns (and plants) need an inch of water a week. It is best to water infrequently but deeply to encourage roots to grow deep. This will help during periods of drought.

3. Fertilizing: Fertilize in the early spring and fall, when the grass is actively growing. Don’t fertilize during the hot summer months. Sweep up any fertilizer that gets on the drive or sidewalk.

4. Mowing: Cut the grass to a height of between 2-3 inches and only remove one-third of the growth at a time. This may mean cutting the lawn twice a week instead of weekly. Leave the grass clippings on the lawn. They will decompose over time and add organic matter back into the soil. Keeping the grass cut high should also reduce weeds as the grass will shade the seeds and keep them from germinating. A thick healthy lawn is better able to crowd out any weeds that are growing.

Hosta

2008-06-02T21:06:00.008-05:00

Hostas are a great plant with many cultivars, or sports, used in landscaping a shady area. While they do get a fragrant usually white or lavender flower, they are mostly grown for their foliage. The leaves can be ovate or elongate, small or large, and can range in color from blue to chartreuse as well as variegated.

While hostas are generally disease-free I recently became aware of a hosta disease called Hosta Virus X or HVX, for short. This disease manifests itself as blotching, called ink bleed, on the leaves and unusual leaf corrugations. It was discovered in 1996 and is spreading. It is transmitted mechanically, by using secateurs, scissors or even spades when cutting or dividing infected plants and then using those same tools on uninfected plants. Infected plants may not immediately show the symptoms of the disease until stressed by some environmental factor, such as drought or cold.

There is no cure for the disease. It is not necessarily fatal but plants that are highly susceptible can die. Unusual blotching or leaf corregations does not mean your plants are infected since several things may cause that to happen including cold weather but if you see any unusual blotching on your hostas it may be best to remove the plant and throw it away. Do not put it on the compost pile. Clean your tools with a solution of 10% bleach water after using them on each plant. Do not buy hostas if you don’t know where they came from. The virus is not thought to spread via the soil so you can replant in the same area although researchers do recommend waiting a few weeks so that any remaining plant material from the infected plants dies completely.
Hostas that appear to be more susceptible to HVX seem to be the gold or chartreuse colored varieties, in particular Sum and Substance and Gold Standard. Some varieties, or sports, that have been recently named are not actually new varieties but plants with HVX. The University of Arkansas web site has a chart listing highly susceptible, somewhat susceptible and sports known to be infected with the virus.
For more information here are some Web sites to go to: www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-7548.pdf
http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/library/plant2/EP132.pdf

Deer Resistant Plants

2008-05-31T08:21:00.011-05:00

The bane of the gardener’s existence has to be the deer and their equally annoying friends, the rabbits. It is so frustrating to plant up the garden or put in a new perennial bed only to find it mowed to the ground the next morning by deer or rabbits.
Although nothing is deer or rabbit proof, there are plants that are their least favorites. In general, they do not like plants whose leaves are stiff and fuzzy or that are aromatic. Of course, nothing is deer or rabbit proof, and if deer are hungry they will eat just about anything. Below are two lists of annuals and perennials that are more deer or rabbit resistant.

Unfortunately, most of the vegetables for your garden are pretty much a deer and rabbit smorgasbord. A short fence will keep the rabbits out, but deer are another matter. There are commercially available repellents, as well as home remedies such as hanging Irish Spring soap around the area. The commercial products use several different bases: putrescent eggs, blood products and hot pepper oil. You can also use predator urines and garlic oil. These products do work but they must be used on a regular basis. It also helps to change them periodically since the animals do get used to them.

More Weather

2008-05-31T08:05:00.005-05:00

Yesterday’s storm may not go down in the books as a really great storm, but it was pretty severe. We were just glad that it was not accompanied by the dreaded H word (hail). In May 2005, Crystal Lake was hit with a hail storm that broke 200 panes of glass in our greenhouses, as well as shredded a lot of the plant material that was outside. I remember the hostas that we had displayed were severely damaged and we had to cut them back and let them grow out before they were saleable.

Weather

2008-05-24T08:52:00.005-05:00

Well, as they say, when you don’t have anything else to talk about, you can always talk about the weather. The weather has been foremost in our minds as we try to keep the cold and windy weather of late from damaging the plants. It has also been topic of conversation among our customers as you wonder whether to plant now or wait til it warms up, whenever that will be. April was the coldest April in 11 years and I imagine May will break some sort of record as well. The average last frost date for our area is May 15, but frosts have been recorded as late as the first week of June! So, you have been warned.

Last week we had a frost at Countryside that nipped several varieties of annuals that had been outside, as well as some of the veggies Richard had planted in the garden out back.
Vegetables– Lettuces, the brassicas (broccoli, cabbages, brussels sprouts, etc.) do well in cooler weather, tho the broccoli that Richard planted got nipped in last week’s frost and the young primary heads had to be removed. Heads will form on the sideshoots, so the crop won’t be a total loss. The beets also got hit and the leaf edges turned brown. Sometimes the veins of tomato leaves will turn purple due to colder temperatures. The plants will eventually grow out of it once the weather warms.
It is still too early to plant the warm season crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and the squashes and melons. Until the soil warms up you should really hold off on planting these crops in the ground. Even if you don’t get the plants in the ground until mid-June, you should not notice a decline in production. Once the nights warm up the plants will catch up.

If you want to get some ideas for planting your garden, check out the demo gardens located around the sales lot. The Vegetable demo garden is in Greenhouse 7. There are demo gardens for perennials, annuals and the "Stepables" (ground cover plants that can take foot traffic.)

Annual Bedding Plants– Pansies and snapdragons thrive in the cooler weather but hold off on planting impatiens and flowering vinca. Planting them when the soil is still cold will really set them back. You can actually see their little leaves curl up to protect them from the cold. The wind really does a number on hanging baskets. Set them on the ground or put them in the garage to protect them.

Perennials– Although perennials can be planted now (ours have been out on the display tables for several weeks with no ill effects from the cold) you may have noticed your perennial plants have been slow to come out of dormancy due to the cold soil temperatures. I imagine butterfly bush, caryopteris and hardy hibiscus will be really delayed this year, so resist the temptation assume they have died and pull them out. I never see much action out of my butterfly bush until June.

Container Gardening

2008-05-08T20:50:00.007-05:00

I am enjoying a day off sitting outside and trying to soak up a little inspiration for this week’s posting. Things are really picking up at Countryside. We are glad to see so many old friends and make lots of new ones. I actually have lots of thoughts but no time to really put them together.

A few weeks ago Michael and I participated in a container garden forum put on by the McHenry Garden Club. It was modeled after the floral design show that is sponsored by the Richmond Garden Club, in that several garden centers were asked to design containers on stage and the finished containers were then raffled off to audience members. There were over 300 people in attendance so obviously there is a lot of interest in container gardening.

Here are a few tips on container garden design. These are based on questions we get asked here at Countryside. A lot of this is pretty subjective. The most important thing is that you like it.

Placement: In order to get to the design considerations first determine where the container will go. This will determine the size, style and color of the container. If it is going up against a structure (house or garage) you might consider a square container so that it will sit flush against the wall. If it will be free standing, consider using a pedestal or urn-type container to get the color closer to eye level.

Color: Again, this is a matter of taste. You might want to use a container color that blends with the house color so that the flowers make a greater visual impact. If it is free-standing, in the garden for instance, you might try using a more boldly colored container so that both the container and flowers provide color interest.

Selecting Plants: Thriller, Filler, Spiller. This design mantra has become quite popular recently, being mentioned in the popular media as well as the trade media. Indeed, we are now labeling our annual plants with these designations to make it easier for customers to select plants for their containers.
“Thriller” plants are the main focus of the container. They should be one and a half to 2 times taller than the height of the container to give the proper balance and symmetry. They would be placed in the center of a symmetrical container or to the back of a one-sided design. “Filler” plants are usually mounding or semi-trailing plants that fill in the center of the container. Several different plants can be used to extend or enhance bloom time. The “Spillers” are the vines or trailing plants such as vinca or bacopa that trail down the sides of the container and soften the edges.

Maintenance: Containers require maintenance just as other garden beds do. Be sure to water regularly, fertilize, dead head and trim back the more vigorously growing plants as needed.

Michael gives a container gardening program every Saturday morning at 11am through May. Meet at his potting bench in greenhouse 4. He is also available to meet with customers whenever he is at work as is the rest of the greenhouse staff.

If you need additional inspiration go to The Proven Winners web site . It has many pictures of container gardens, as well as the "recipe" to make them. You can search their site by container type and size, color, season and exposure to find just the right combination for you. We grow a lot of their plants so if you see something you like we probably have it.

AAS Selections

2008-04-24T14:47:00.005-05:00

Wow, we had a great turnout over the weekend for our seminars. Kim and Pam did a presentation on annuals and perennials, I did one on vegetables and herbs, and Kerry and Mike showed how to attract birds, butterflies and bees to your gardens. It was also our Art in the Garden art show, with lots of new artists and some of our favorites from previous shows.

In the news today was an article about the price of food, especially rice. One way to keep the food bill down and eat healthier at the same time is to plant a vegetable garden. Even if you don’t have a lot of room, many vegetables do well in containers or can be easily integrated into your existing annual and perennial beds. I have two half whiskey barrels on either side of my garage devoted to vegetables. I just planted a 4-pack of butterhead lettuce. In a couple of weeks I will add a tomato, an eggplant and a pepper, as well as a few herbs. It’s only me here so I really don’t need much. (Which brings up another subject: As some of you may know I am in the process of getting a divorce. The garden center is not the ideal place to meet single people so if you have an older brother or a younger uncle let me know. I was married to Mr. Ross for 25 years so obviously I’m not that picky.)

I have a few tips for when you are select plants or seeds for the vegetable garden. The first is look for the letters AAS. This stands for All-America Selection and means that it has been grown in trial gardens all over the US and has been judged to be superior in garden performance. Each year since 1933 the AAS organization has announced the winning varieties in several catagories: annual plant, annual bedding plant and vegetable.

There are three trial gardens in Illinois and 12 display gardens. The nearest display garden to Crystal Lake is L & M Gardens on Randall Road in St. Charles. Catigny Gardens in Wheaton is also a display garden. Per AAS rules, each display garden must hold an "open day," in which the public is invited to view the gardens and it must be publicized in the local media.

This year’s selection for vegetables is an eggplant, "Hansel." This eggplant produces finger sized clusters of fruit on a short, compact plant. The fruit mature about 10 days earlier than the comparison eggplant. If left on the plant the fruit continue to grow in size but remain tender and do not turn bitter. At less than three feet tall, this eggplant is great for containers.
Previous year’s winners include: pepper "Holy Mole," carrot "Purple Haze," eggplant "Fairy Tale," and a melon "Amy." To find out about these vegetable varieties and the winners of the annual plant and bedding plant winners go to http://www.all-americaselections.org./

Here are two more websites with information on gardening: The Cornell University website has growing tips for all types of vegetables. They have also implemented a project so that everyday gardeners can rate individual varieties. You have to register and give your location if you want to post a comment, but you can browse the database without registering. If you want to try a new variety but aren't sure how it will perform, check out http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/index.php. The University of Illinois also has a good web site with vegetable growing tips: http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/veggies/.

The Birds and the Bees

2008-04-14T08:28:00.006-05:00

I have always enjoyed watching the wildlife in my garden. I don’t mind sharing (too much) with the rabbits and deer and seeing what else wanders through. When I lived north of Crystal Lake we had deer, racoons, possums, the occasional coyote and, of course, birds. One year for a brief week we had a scarlet tanager at the feeder. As the weather breaks and we get busy with gardening and other activities, let’s not forget the birds. Even if you fed the birds during the winter, with the decline in habitat, they still need supplemental feeding.

Some birds to stick around all winter, such as the goldfinches and the juncoes. Some of the migratory birds have already returned. I’ve seen robins since February. The oriole will be returning shortly. The male arrives first, usually around mid-April, to scout out food sources and nesting sites. If you hope to attract these lovely birds to your garden, put out food now. They will eat from a nectar feeder similar to a hummingbird feeder with orange flavored nectar or you can use an oriole feeder designed to hold an orange half.

Other guests to our garden that we should encourage are bees. Bees are the workhorse of the garden because without them we would have no fruiting crops or seed production of other ornamental plants. Bees are responsible for pollinating over 100,000 species of plants and 130 commercial crops. The best bee pollinator is not the honey bee or the bumble bee but is the orchard mason bee. This is a non-aggressive bee that does not produce honey, live in a hive or take care of its young, therefore they have nothing to be aggressive about. They lay eggs in holes in wood. You can provide bee nesting holes and even buy the bees to introduce into your garden. They do their pollinating in the spring so it is not too late to get them. If you have fruit trees in your garden, this would help in increasing the yield.

Portugal and England

2008-04-10T12:20:00.013-05:00

Two weeks ago I visited my daughter, who is on her semester abroad in Denmark. I didn’t want to go somewhere cold and dark when it’s been cold and dark here all winter, so we compromised and went to Portugal. We spent a week in Faro, which is in the very southern part of Portugal, about three hours south of Lisbon.

Portugal has a much more temperate climate than ours so they are way ahead of us in bloom time. Orange and lemon trees were in bloom and everywhere we went you could smell fragrance. Things that we can only grow as annuals are perennials there. For example, Michael likes to use lantana in some of his containers because they attract butterflies and they are pretty heat tolerant. In our climate they never get very big and are only an annual. In Portugal (and other temperate climates), they are used as hedges!

Another plant we saw used extensively in public flowerbeds was cineraria. This is a cool season plant that we only sell in our retail greenhouse as a house plant, but with its colorful, large daisy-like flowers it makes a stunning bedding plant.
This is the solana plant in tree form. It is in the nightshade family and thus toxic (but so are tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant!) In the states it can be found in California and Arizona and most varieties I found in my on-line research were only 1-2 feet tall. This tree had to be a good 6' tall!

One day we took the train to Tavira, a small town east of Faro. It is home to a Moorish castle complete with gardens. This bed is edged with santolina, a fragrant herb used for medicinal purposes only. It is hardy to zone 6 and makes a great clipped hedge. Inside the border yellow gazania are blooming. Down in the town center was a small park. It was odd to see both pine trees and palm trees growing together. Here they used the traditional pansy as the bedding plantas well as snapdragons, but there are also hibiscus already in bloom. We also saw poinsettias the size of small trees!

On my way home I had to overnight in London and I spent Sunday afternoon wandering through Hyde Park. To the south, Hyde Park is bordered by the toney Kensington and Knightsbridge neighborhoods of London and on the northeast corner is Speakers Corner, where anyone with a soapbox and an opinion can get up a speak. It was the first day of Europe’s daylight savings and lots of people were out enjoying a long and relatively sunny Sunday afternoon. I wandered through the rose garden to see what was in bloom. Unfortunately, I accidently shot most of my London pictures into the "black hole" when transferring them from my camera but I do remember a lot of what was there.

Of course, London, too, is weeks ahead of us in their bloom time and a lot of the early bulbs had already finished. There were a few daffodils left and some tulips were still blooming. I saw fritillary, which is a great bulb to use here since deer and rabbits don’t like it much. Also blooming were the hellebores, another early spring blooming plant, often called the Lenton rose. It is also deer resistant! Another perennial plant I saw used as ground cover was Pulmonaria, or lungwort. This plant has a long, slender fuzzy green leaf with white speckles. It has a blue or sometimes pink flower in early spring and the unique foliage gives it a year round interest. The annual beds I saw were edged with primrose with many cold tolerant annuals intermixed with bulbs in the center.

It is fun to visit other countries and see their gardening traditions. Of course, England is famous as being a country of gardeners, but other countries have their traditions also. Even how we refer to our gardens is very telling about how we feel about gardening. We in America refer to our entire outside area as the "yard" and an individual bed as a "garden," in England a "yard" is a utility area where the garden shed and the compost pile are located and the garden is the lawn and all of the beds combined. My great aunt, also a big traveler, once visited a friend in England and asked to see her garden and the friend replied, "My dear, it is all the garden." Sometimes seeing how other people do things gets us to think outside the box and use plants in ways we hadn’t thought before, like using the pulmonaria as a ground cover instead of a specimen plant, or adding shrubs to our perennial beds, as they do in England with their mixed borders or even adding edibles to our perennial and annual beds, a big favorite of mine.

More on Seed Starting

2008-04-06T09:32:00.008-05:00

Seed Starting

A few weeks ago I blogged about our colleague, Michael, who starts seeds in his basement. I thought you might be interested in how we do it on a large scale here at the ‘Side.

We grow all our own vegetables from seed and start around 1 March, with the peppers and tomatoes, then the lettuce, cabbage and other cucubits, and finally the squash, melons and eggplant (the French call them "aubergines," which I think sounds much more elegant but Lori won’t let me call them that on the signs). We also stagger our seedings so that we, and you, can have successive plantings. We make sure that we have the more popular vegetables in several container sizes. The tomatoes here are being grown in a four-pack, but we also grow them as single plants in 4" square pots (we call them 4D pots) as well as 6" square containers. Earlier in the year, we seeded tomatoes in plug trays and Friday the guys transplanted those into one and 2 gallon containers.

Some of the seeds are so small the girls accidently put two seeds in a pot. After they germinate, the second seedling is pricked out and transplanted to its own container. Here Anastasia is transplanting some pepper seedlings.

Here are the cool season lettuces and the onions in the very back of the house. The onions have been given a "hair cut," so they don’t get floppy.

We keep the temperature in the houses at about 65 degrees. Sometimes it feels like a sauna in those houses and if it is cold outside, my glasses always fog up when I leave the house! We don't want it too warm though and have the plants mature before it is time to plant outside so it is a real juggling act to keep the houses at the right temperature when we have sunny days. We check the temperatures during the day and often have to open and close the doors several times to regulate the temperature.

A New Link

2008-03-21T19:45:00.003-05:00

I just added a new link at the bottom of the blog to view the slideshow "Best New Plants for 2008." Kim Hartmann from the greenhouse department put this together for a presentation given at the Garden Clubs of Illinois District 9 annual meeting by Jennifer Hunt, flower shop manager. We are getting pretty tech savy at Countryside and I hope to post more of these links as we develop presentations on various topics. Also, if you are looking for speakers for your garden club or other organization, we have put together a list of Countryside personnel who can speak on a variety of topics. Call Lori at 815.459.8130 to get more information.

Seed Starting

2008-03-20T21:39:00.005-05:00

If you haven't already started your garden seeds, now is the time. Last week I went over to Mike's house to take a look at his seed starting operation. He started his cool weather crops, both vegetable and ornamental, back in February. This past weekend he was going to transplant those seedlings into larger containers and start some of the warm season vegetables.

He puts his seed trays on heat mats and uses an adjustable fluorescent light system. the lights hang down from the ceiling on chains that can be adjusted upward as the seedlings grow. Because he plants so many, he doesn't use segregated packs but instead plants the seeds altogether in larger containers. When the second set of true leaves emerge, he pricks out the seedlings and replants them in individual containers.

Mike doesn't have a fan going but I know several gardeners that start plants from seed and use a fan. This helps reduce disease and actually makes the plants stronger. Mike does use yellow sticky traps for the fungus gnats that sometimes infect plants, including house plants. White flies are also attracted to the color yellow, so if you have problems with insects in your house plants, put a few yellow sticky traps out.

A new plant Mike is growing this year is our favorite Red Bore Kale. This is an ornamental kale that is a great container plant. We first saw it down at the Ball Seed Trial Gardens last year. It looks great planted in the ground, also.

Spring Chores

2008-03-16T20:48:00.007-05:00

The weather seems to have broken, and none too soon as far as I am concerned! We can now get into the garden and here are some spring chores that need doing:

Now is a good time to do some pruning on your trees before they start to leaf out and the structure becomes obscured. Gerard took me out the nursery last week and showed me some pruning techniques. He also gave a great presentation last Saturday at the store. If you missed it, stop by and ask for the handouts.

Examine your trees and remove any branches that are crossing or rubbing together. Also remove any branches that are brushing up against your house or other structure. Remove any sucker growth or water sprouts. When making your cuts remember to make them with a 45-degree angle.

Sometimes the branch is too big to cut with a pruners and must be sawn. If this is the case use the 3-part method to cut the branch. Make the first cut from the bottom a foot or so away from where the final cut will be made. Make the second cut from the top just over where you made the first cut. Make the final cut at the correct place as shown in the example on the left.

KC reports that now is also a good time to begin spraying Dormant Oil, Oil and Lime Sulfer Spray and/or Fruit Tree Spray. These products kill hibernating insects by suffocating them and inhibit fungal growths. The key is applying them at the right time. If you have any questions about how and when to apply these products, call or stop by and talk to one of the nursery pros.