Category: The Gardening Guy

I’ve heard it said that June is the most common month for weddings. I’m not sure why, but my theory is that June, despite black flies and noxious ticks, is a great month to be outside for wedding receptions. Roses are in bloom, as are peonies, iris and so much more.

Roses have evolved considerably since I was a boy in the 1950s. Breeders have created modern hybrids that are disease-free and bloom almost non-stop all summer. In the old days rosarians sprayed roses regularly with various poisons to minimize damage from fungal diseases and insect pests.

Many old-fashioned roses bloom mostly in June and are deliciously fragrant. New hybrids will bloom more or less continuously all summer if in full sun, but most are not fragrant. And they are rarely attacked by insects as they have no scent that would attract them. Since I’m technically a geezer, I should grow the old-fashioned roses — but I like these new hybrids.

There are several lines of trademarked roses. I love the ‘Knock-Out’ roses. They are winter hardy (in Zone 4) and offer blooms until October for me. Everything the Proven Winner people grow — annuals, perennials, roses — does very well. Their ‘Oso Easy’ line of roses is well-regarded, but I haven’t personally grown any.

My wife loves heirloom roses and has had great luck buying some from Old Sheep Meadows Nursery in Alfred, Maine. And if they will grow in Alfred, Maine, they will grow where you are. According to his website, the owner, Raymond Graber, has been growing roses in Maine for over 60 years. He has a wealth of knowledge and he is happy to share it.

Three bits of knowledge I can share about roses: 1. They love — and need — plenty of water. Water daily in hot or dry times. 2. They like dark, rich soil and some added garden lime and slow-release organic fertilizer at planting time. 3. Although six hours of sunshine or more is recommended, most will do fine with four. You don’t have any roses? Go buy a few. We only live once.

Most plants have a finite lifespan. Many perennials will die out in 10 years. Some trees last a hundred or more. But I often say, “Properly planted, peonies will live forever.” My maternal grandmother, Anna Lenat, died in 1953 when I was just 7 years old. My mother dug up one of her peonies and brought it to our home in Connecticut. I dug it up again in 1984 and divided it, leaving half with my mom, and planting half at my home in Cornish, New Hampshire. The roots or tubers, presumably more than 100 years old by now, still produce plenty of blossoms.

I always recommend buying peonies in June when they’re in bloom — seeing is believing. Some are fragrant — even heavenly fragrant — while others are not. Some have stiff, strong stems, while others flop even on sunny days from the weight of their magnificent blossoms. “Single” peonies have just one row of petals so are less prone to flopping. But most common are the doubles: gorgeous, but with so many petals they flop when it rains.

Peony rings are wire cages sold to hold up flower stems even on rainy days. Most are too low to really do the job right. Plus, you have to remember early in May to install them. By now mature plants are too big to fit the cages over them. My solution is to poke three bamboo stakes firmly into the soil around each plant and then connect them at the appropriate height with green garden twine. If you were a Scout, you may remember learning to tie a clove hitch. That’s the knot you want.

If you bought a nice peony a few years ago and it no longer blooms, you may have planted it too deeply or covered the “nibs” (growing points) with too much mulch. Feel around the plant to see where next year’s growth will emerge from little pointy nibs. More than an inch of cover will often inhibit blooming. Yes, you will have a healthy plant — but no blossoms.

My great Great-Granny told me that peonies need ants crawling around on the buds for them to open. Not true. Peonies attract aphids, and ants come to harvest the sweet “nectar” that is their poop.

Other great June flowers in my garden include gas plant (Dictamnus albus), which has an intense citrus odor that is strongest at dusk to attract night-flying moths.

Delphiniums are wonderful plants with stalks often over 5 feet tall and loaded with blue, purple or white blossoms. But you do need to stake them to keep them upright in the rain. Scratch in some slow-release organic fertilizer each spring as they are heavy feeders. And if you cut them back to the ground after blooming, they probably will re-bloom in the fall.

Perennial bachelor buttons (Centaurea montana) are easy to grow and make good cut flowers. Blue to purple, they love sun and will make you feel like you have made it as a gardener.

All the flowering plants are wonderful. Think back to what your parents and grandparents grew. That’s a good place to start shopping. Or better yet, see if you can dig some plants from their gardens if they will let you.

Henry can be reached at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of four gardening books.

Featured photo: Bachelor buttons have unusual, spidery flowers. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Test your soil, make it better

Asking me to name my favorite flower is, perhaps, like asking you to name your favorite child or dog. But late May brings one of my top picks: the candelabra primrose (Primula japonica). It sends up a flower stalk with a circle of florets, then it grows a few inches and sends out more blossoms, getting taller and blooming sequentially for nearly a month. They grow best in deep, rich, moist soil in partial shade and ideally under old apple trees.

Late May will also produce early peonies I love, including two part-shade peonies, Paeonia obovata and P. tenuifolia. The latter is also known as the fernleaf peony for its finely cut foliage; the blossoms are a deep red. Neither is common in garden centers, but keep an eye out for them.

Spring is a good time to improve your soil. Most commercial farmers grow food by adding chemical fertilizer to the soil before planting. I am an organic gardener, meaning I do not use pesticides nor do I use any chemical fertilizer.

Chemical fertilizers are safe to use but only provide three of the 17 elements needed by plants to grow and thrive. Granted, most of those elements are needed in very small quantities and may already be in the soil, but I want to provide my plants with the equivalent of a full five-course meal.

Chemical fertilizers only contain nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and lots of filler. A 5-10-5 fertilizer is 5 percent N, 10 percent P, and 5 percent K; the rest — 80 percent — is filler. Nitrogen in the form of nitrate and ammonia ions is used by plants to make proteins, fueling green growth. Phosphorus promotes growth of roots, blooming, seeds and fruits. Potassium is important for growing thick cell walls to survive cold and excess heat.

Plants also need other elements in order to thrive: calcium (for cell metabolism), magnesium (for chlorophyll needed for photosynthesis), sulfur (for making proteins and fats). Also needed are micronutrients like iron, chlorine, manganese, zinc, copper, boron, molybdenum and nickel.

All those elements are found in organic fertilizers like Pro-Gro, Gro-Tone and others. And while most chemical fertilizers provide water-soluble elements for quick absorption, organic fertilizers are mostly slow-release, providing key elements over a period of months, or even years. Most contain things like cotton seed meal, kelp meal, ground peanut shells and ground oyster shells.

So what can you do to improve your soil? Add compost. Don’t buy just a bag or two of compost and think it will improve your whole vegetable garden with some left over for new perennials. Borrow a pick-up truck and get a “scoop” from a front-end loader at your garden center. Or get it delivered. Alternatively, you can buy aged manure from your local dairy farmer. Even aged manure will have some weed seeds, but it will add good organic material that will be used by your plants.

Why is compost so good? Well-made compost is full of microorganisms that will work with your plants. Many produce organic acids that help to dissolve minerals from fine stone particles in the soil and make those minerals available to your plants. Compost is, or should be, biologically active: full of living bacteria and fungi. And it will improve soil texture making root growth easier for your plants.

Our soils were created back during the last Ice Age when glaciers a mile thick ground up bedrock, making sand and even the finer bits of stone that are in clay and loam. Fully 50 percent of all soil is made of ground up rocks. The rest? Anywhere from 1 percent to 8 percent is organic matter, and the rest, nearly 50% of soil by volume, is air. Oxygen is absorbed by root hairs from the air in the soil.

Two other key ingredients do not come from the soil. Plants get carbon, a major part of all plants, from carbon dioxide that is in our air. Nitrogen is in our air, but most nitrogen used by plants comes from decayed plant or animal material — or is made in a chemical factory and sold as a fertilizer.

I highly recommend getting your soil tested every three to five years. Each state university offers a service for gardeners and farmers. It will tell you soil pH (a measure of acidity), soil type, levels of some soil minerals and the percentage of organic matter. It will offer suggestions on what to add to your soil, though different plants have different needs. You should strive to have 4 percent or more organic matter in your soil.

You can perform a simple test to see how well your soil holds water or drains. Dig a hole 24 inches wide and 8 inches deep with sloping sides. Fill it with your hose and time how long it takes to drain. Sandy soil will drain almost immediately. Clay soil will hold water for several hours, even overnight. Good loam might take an hour or two, depending on how much rain you’ve had recently.

Adding compost to heavy clay or sandy soils will help them considerably. Soil texture and the ability to hold some water but drain well is important to most plants. Compost does both.

Improving your soil takes years, even decades. Yes, I do use some slow-release organic fertilizer at planting time, but my real success has come from years of adding compost.

You may reach Henry at henryhomeyer@comcast.net.

Featured photo: Candelabra primroses delight me each year, starting in late May. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Clean your tools and seize the weeds

Spring arrives in New England in fits and starts: hot and sunny one day, chilly and drizzly the next. Maybe even a few flurries to outrage the impatient gardener. But there is much that can be done now, even on a rainy day.

I much prefer tools with wooden handles: If treated properly they will last your entire lifetime. Every year or two I clean up and oil the handles of my garden tools, which keeps the wood supple. I‘ve got tools with wood handles I’ve used regularly for over 40 years, and some from my grandfather that are more than 75 years old.

First I clean up the handles by rubbing with fine steel wool or, if very rough, with 100 grit sandpaper. Then I wipe them down with a scrap of a towel. Finally I use a brush to paint them with boiled linseed oil. I then let them dry in the sun or in the barn it’s a rainy day, and wipe them down the next day.

Shovels should be sharpened from time to time. Get a wide, medium-rough flat file and push it firmly across the shovel’s edge on the backside of the blade. Take long, slow strikes but do not saw back and forth with your file. Look carefully at the angle it came with, and try to mimic that angle with your file. A sharp shovel is much more efficient than a dull one. But it’s not a good idea to sharpen the blade until it’s knife-sharp. It will dull quickly if you do. Sharpening a dull shovel is not quick work,

Impatient to get things growing in the vegetable garden? Peas, spinach, arugula and lettuce are very cold-hardy and can be planted early by seed, even if frost will still occur. Soil temperatures of 40 degrees are adequate for germination of them, but I think 50 degrees is better. For most seeds, I prefer to wait until the soil hits 50 degrees or more. I worry seeds will rot if the soil is too cold and wet. That goes for potatoes and onions, too. Cukes, squash, pepper and tomato seedlings I don’t plant until June.

Soil thermometers look like little probes with a dial on top, something like the one you poke in a turkey to see when it’s done. Garden centers sell them. If you get one, poke it down 4 inches to get your reading.

If your soil was covered with leaves or straw for the winter, rake that off your planting beds now so that the sun will hit your soil directly and warm it up. Mulch keeps the soil cool. If there are weeds coming up, pull them as soon as you can — no sense letting them get a head start on your plants.

This is also a good time to look for invasive plants on your property. For me, the cast of characters includes bush honeysuckle, barberry, buckthorn and multiflora rose. If you have a Norway maple, you probably have lots of new seedlings from it that are easy to pull.

You can get a list of invasives from your state online, but I found the Vermont Invasive Plants list is best. It includes just the 12 most common, along with pictures, so it’s easier to use.

Many invasives leaf out early and drop their leaves late in the fall. That gives them an advantage over many natives. Honeysuckle puts out greenery in mid-April for me. Burning bush holds its red leaves late in the fall, so it’s easier to find small ones then.

Although not easy, digging out invasives is generally the best way to control them. Cutting them down usually does not kill them. Buckthorn is the worst: Cut one to the ground, and a dozen will grow from the roots. If you can double-girdle all the stems down low, it will die after two winters. Basically, you’re starving the roots from the nutrition produced by the leaves.

Potting mix is readily available at all garden centers, big box stores, and even some mini-marts. But if you are going to fill up lots of flower pots, you can save money by making your own.

If you never emptied your pots and window boxes last fall, you can reuse it this year. First pull the dead plants and dump the used potting soil into a pile. Then make up some new potting soil and mix it 50-50 with your old potting soil.

To make potting soil, mix add equal parts coir or peat moss, compost and perlite (which looks like crumbled Styrofoam but is actually super-heated volcanic minerals) to it in roughly equal quantities in a wheelbarrow until mostly full. Stir well. Add half a cup of a slow-release organic fertilizer like Pro-Gro or Plant-Tone and mix well. It is best to water the peat moss or coir before using as it can be very dry.

When I make potting soil, I don’t measure things exactly. I probably use more compost than perlite or coir. If you have a good source of mature compost, you can save money and add good microorganisms to the soil. The finished product should be fluffy and not quick to clump up when you grab a handful of it. But if you are only going to use a few pots, just buy a bag of potting soil.

So don’t get discouraged by a few cold days now. Summer is on the way, so get ready.

You may reach Henry at henryhomeyer@comcast.net.

Featured photo: Honeysuckles have opposite branching. They leaf out early. Photo by Henry Homeyer.