Category: Outdoors

Cut them fresh in the morning if you can

I’ve been keeping track this year of what blooms for me, and when. So far I’ve recorded over 100 species of flowers (plus many more named varieties of the same genus) and 40 species of flowering trees and shrubs. Blooming starts with snowdrops in March and will continue on until well after frost in November with witch hazel trees blooming even after leaf drop.

I grow so many flowers because they give me pleasure to look at them. And even though I spend a lot of time in the garden, I spend more time indoors than out, so I cut stems of annuals, perennials and flowering woodies and arrange them in vases. I want flowers on the kitchen counter, the dining room table, the desk I write at, in the bedroom, in the bathroom — in fact, on every flat surface in the house.

Let’s look at some basics of preparing and arranging flowers. When is the best time to pick flowers? Pick in the cool of the morning, especially if the day will be hot. The stems are full of water and carbohydrates and should feel full, not limp. Bring along a clean container so that as you wander around picking flowers their stems are well-submerged. Instead of picking flowers just before dinner with company, try to pick them before going to work in the morning.

Flowers with multiple blossoms on a stem (delphinium, foxglove, for example) should have some blossoms in full bloom, others showing color and some in tight bud. This will prolong the show. Flowers that grow on individual stems should be in full bloom, or just starting to open. Peonies, for example, will often have tight buds on the same stem as an open blossom, but it is rare for them to bloom in the vase. Daylilies only bloom for a day, but a single scape can have up to 10 buds that will bloom in sequence for a week or more.

It’s best to let your freshly cut flowers stay in the bucket of water for an hour before you arrange them. Cut the stems on a 45-degree angle using floral shears, or your bypass pruners if they are sharp. Scissors made for cutting paper are not good for flowers, so you may want to buy a dedicated pair of floral shears.

Because of capillary action, water in hollow stems will be sucked up the stem a little as soon as you cut them. So you need to recut about ¾ of an inch of each stem and place it in a vase right away. Otherwise an air bubble may inhibit water take-up.

Be sure to remove all leaves or flowers that would be submersed in the vase you are using. Why? The leaves will rot and ferment; the bacteria will inhibit water uptake.

Florists selling fancy roses or other expensive flowers generally provide a packet of “flower preservative.” But you can buy that stuff or make your own for your homegrown flowers. In a quart of water add a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of household bleach and 2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice. I learned long ago to drop a couple of copper pennies in a vase with a bunch of tulips to help keep the buds closed longer and have seen it work. Failing that, just change the water every two or three days, and trim off a little of each stem.

The height of the vase is important. I’ve read “expert” advice recommending different ratios for the height of the vase to the length of the flowers ranging from flowers being 1.5 times the vase height, up to three times the vase height.

To my eye, a 6-inch vase will look good with 9-to-12-inch flowers in it, but even 18-inch stems may look fine, especially if you place shorter flowers around the outside perimeter of the arrangement. I made an arrangement recently with six stems of beebalm in an 8-inch vase. I angled the stems to create support for a 24-inch stem of delphinium in the middle, standing straight up. That looked great to me.

There are devices called frogs that can be placed in a bowl or big vase to hold flowers in place. They consist of a piece of heavy metal with sharp, upward-pointing pins that allow you to stab the flower stems and hold them in place. Glass frogs also exist that have divots in a chunk of glass where a stem can be lodged.

What is blooming now that will look good in a vase? I love delphinium, astilbe, daylilies, roses, bee balm, phlox and Shasta daisies. All will last well in a vase, and provide plenty of height for a tall vase.

We just finished the peony season with the Itoh peonies lasting well past normal herbaceous peonies. They are the result of crossing tree peonies with regular peonies. Mine, called Garden Treasure, produced 30 or more 5-inch-diameter blossoms that last very well in a vase.

Arranging flowers is an art form we can all enjoy. You don’t need training or expertise. Just pick what you like, and arrange them in a vase, or even in a tall water glass. Give flowers to an aging uncle or a friend with a sprained knee. Everyone loves the gift of flowers. And be sure to put some on your dinner table tonight.

Henry is the author of four gardening books and is a gardening consultant. Reach him at [email protected].

Featured photo: Flower arrangements are easy to make and pleasing to the eye. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Have you thinned your root crops yet?

For me, July has started off wet: rains, heavy at times, three days a week and going on for weeks. Although I like not having to water my new plantings in the vegetable garden and flower beds, some plants are having a tough time — they need sunshine!

It’s fortunate that I make raised beds in my vegetable garden, which is near our stream. Hoeing up the earth from the pathways and adding compost has helped me considerably. Even though the beds are only 6 inches above the walkways, it helps to drain soggy soil. Of course it’s too late to do that if you have already planted on the flat of the garden — but remember for next year, as we may see these conditions again.

If you haven’t thinned your carrots, beets and other root crops yet, now is the time to do so. I try to get that done by July 4, but later is OK. You can thin to 1 inch if you want to thin them again to 2 inches in a few weeks, or you can just thin to 2-inch spacing now. The advantage to thinning twice is that your carrots will be big enough to eat when you thin them the second time.

Carrots are heavy feeders, so you may want to side-dress the rows with a little slow-release organic fertilizer like Pro-Gro or Espoma Garden Tone. Just sprinkle a thin line of fertilizer alongside the carrots, and then use a hand tool to work it in a little.

I recently finished mulching my pathways and around bigger plants like tomatoes. I put down a layer of newspaper, four sheets or more, and cover it with straw. This does a good job of keeping down the weeds. Hay is cheaper, of course, but has seeds, which can grow.

For onions, carrots and other things planted close together in straight rows I tear strips of newspapers and cover them with grass clippings or, better still, chopped leaves from last fall. FYI: Newspapers rip well from top to bottom, but not across the page.

I did lots of staking of peonies in June, as many of them have such heavy blossoms that they bend over and land on the ground, particularly after a rain. Tall fall asters and goldenrod and even phlox will fall over later on as they get too tall to stand up to rains and wind.

I have lots of 4-foot and 5-foot quarter-inch-diameter iron rods I had custom-made for me for holding up these fall beauties. The iron rods go deep into the soil more easily than thin bamboo stakes, and are stronger. To avoid getting poked in the eye when bending over, I put a wine cork on the top of each one. I drill a quarter-inch hole into the cork and slide it on. They are a good excuse to buy a nice bottle or French red from time to time with a real cork!

It’s getting late in the season to cut back tall flowers to keep them shorter, but you might try cutting back some phlox or asters now if they haven’t started making flower buds yet. Traditionally this is called the “Chelsea Chop” and is named after the Chelsea Flower Show in London, which occurs in late May each year. After the Chelsea show English gardeners prune back big tall plants. They bloom later, are shorter, and often have many more blossoms. Good candidates for hard pruning include asters, Boltonia, purple coneflower, Joe Pye weed, sneezeweed (Helenium), bee balm, Russian sage, phlox, obedient plant, rudbeckias of all sorts and Culver’s root.

Not all flowers respond well to the Chelsea Chop. Do not do this with lady’s mantle, columbine, goat’s beard, astilbe, delphinium, gas plant (dictamus), foxglove, geraniums, daylilies, hostas, iris, lupines or oriental poppies, among others. You can find lists of which to cut and which to leave alone in Tracy DiSabato-Aust’s fine book The Well-Tended Perennial Garden. Everyone should have a copy of it.

Weeding flower beds is loved by a few gardeners but avoided by many. I am so lucky that both my wife Cindy and I like to weed. Cindy is a formidable weeder, even better than me, and she has much more endurance than I do. If you don’t enjoy weeding, set a goal: Work for half an hour. Work until this small bed is weed-free. Weed every morning or evening for 15 minutes. Small efforts done every day really make a huge difference.

My advice? Get a good weeding tool that you like, one that will get under the roots so that you can lift from below and pull from above. For us, that is the CobraHead weeder (www.CobraHead.com). It’s made like a curved finger with just a single tine. I can tease out roots that, if broken, would re-sprout. It’s important to get the entire root system out so you don’t have to pull the same weed over and over.

We use ground fall leaves in the flower beds, or, lacking enough, we buy double-ground bark mulch. But be careful: If you use too much, you can starve your plants of water from light rains. An inch and a half is what I strive for. Anything less than an inch looks good but won’t do much to deter weeds. And if there are roots from things like goutweed or Japanese knotweed, no amount of mulch will deter those culprits.

Henry is a lifelong organic gardener and a 20-year veteran of the UNH Master Gardener program. He is the author of four gardening books and a gardening consultant. Reach him at [email protected].

Featured photo: Wine corks placed ontips of iron rods protect me against a poke in the eye when bending over to sniff the peonies Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Tomato hornworms are the worst

All gardeners have to contend with a variety of insects and other small pests in the garden, those that attack our plants and those that bite us.

I’ve tried every kind of spray to repel ticks and prevent bites. I haven’t found any that are 100 percent effective. There are lots of “all natural” ones out there, but it is hard to tell how effective they are. I don’t like sprays with DEET in them, but believe they probably are better at repelling ticks than the herbal applications. But I don’t rely just on repellents.

When I am working in brushy areas I wear long pants: lightweight quick-dry nylon. Then I either tuck the pants into my socks or wear some special tick gaiters. The ones I use are called Lymeez. According to their advertising, they are a mesh treated with EPA-registered micro-encapsulated permethrin tick repellent and closed with Velcro. LL Bean and other suppliers also sell clothing treated with permethrin to kill or repel ticks, mosquitoes and other insects.

Slugs and shell-covered small snails are always a problem in my garden. I usually keep a jar of soapy water in the garden near my lettuce, which is the preferred treat for these nasty critters. Pick and drown works.

Another garden pest is the Colorado potato beetle. This striped beetle can decimate the leaves of potatoes if you don’t control them early, even killing the plant or reducing your crop. The beetles are yellowish with black stripes, the larvae are beige to red with rows of black dots. The eggs are orange and generally found on the underneath side of the leaves. It is important to pick these pests early as they mature quickly and each female lays many eggs, multiplying their impact quickly if not controlled.

If you have too many potato plants to hand pick them all, there is a biological control called Bt. It is a bacterium that is diluted in water and sprayed on the plants. It is not a contact poison, it needs to be consumed by the larvae when they are young. They sicken, stop eating and die. But you may need to use it for a few years to really solve the problem. There are several different Bt formulas, so be sure you get one labeled for potatoes.

Striped cucumber beetles look a bit like potato beetles, but they are smaller and fast-moving. They can strip all the leaves off your vine crops in a single night if they are present in the soil when your cukes or squash-family plants first germinate. You can cover the crops with row covers to keep them away, but they may already be present in the soil. Me? I start my vine crops indoors and only plant them when they have at least a 6-inch-long vine and can’t be killed by the beetles.

My least favorite pest is the tomato hornworm. Big, up to 4 inches long, they are aggressive when you pick them up. There is a natural predator, a parasitic wasp that lays eggs in them. So if you see what looks like grains of rice on them, just remove them to a faraway part of the garden. Those “grains of rice” are larvae that will suck them dry and keep them from reproducing. You can make or buy houses for these wasps and other good wasps and hang it on your shed. These are simply a collection of hollow bamboo pieces they can use for shelter.

A good reason not to use insecticides is that they will inadvertently kill good bugs like lady beetles, spiders, praying mantises and more. You’ve probably never seen an assassin bug, but they are relentless killers of bad bugs, sucking them dry.

Mother Nature tries to create a balance that keeps pests from taking over. Unless you know an insect is a pest — think Japanese beetle, rose chafer, striped cucumber beetle — leave it be. It might be the critter that controls others from decimating your garden.

Henry is a lifelong organic gardener and a 20-year veteran of the UNH Master Gardener program. He is the author of four gardening books and a gardening consultant. Reach him at [email protected].

Featured photo: Wasp house. Photo by Henry Homeyer.