Ground Rules
Year of the greens
New Year’s resolution: Grow your own. Tired of worrying about E. coli in bagged spinach and turning over bedraggled heads of romaine that look like they’ve been through hell to get here from who knows where? With a bit of planning, it should be possible to walk outside and pick some kind of green every month of the year.
If I’d been on my toes in August and September, I’d be munching on little lettuces from a mesclun mix with colder crops like collards and kale coming on, but I lean more towards ornamental gardening and my vegetables have been limited to tomatoes, basil and jalapenos. Beginning where we find ourselves, however, the plan for this month is to use Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest (1999, Chelsea Green Publishing) as a primer and make a list of greens with a schedule for sowing that begins in February. Stay tuned for further developments.
Winter makes us yearn for greens inside and out. The leafless landscape looks bare without them. Broadleaved hollies and laurels with fine-textured conifers like pines and spruces make dense backdrops to display flowering trees, shrubs and perennials and are essential to the living walls of garden rooms.
Native red cedars give pleasing weight to soft meadows of copper broom sedge and American hollies sparkle in the sun in low spots along I-64 towards Richmond, but the Mediterranean-born boxwood claims the mantle for the classic evergreen of Virginia. Some treasure it for its soft texture and the aroma of an easy, elegant past; others despise it for associations with the worst of the Old South and the scent of cats. Love it or leave it, boxwood has three requirements, without which, like a doomed relationship, it will never thrive.
The soil must be kept “sweet” so the roots can take up nutrients. Boxwoods prefer a pH of 6.5-7.2, higher than our native clay, so soil tests every few years and regular applications of wood ash, compost or perhaps a bit of lime may be necessary. Protect them from drying winter winds and baking hot sun (do not plant them on a southwest-facing ridge).
Finally, boxwoods are fastidious and greatly enjoy being “plucked”—clipping or breaking off live twigs to open them up to air circulation (no electric trimmers!), a task that can coincide with collecting holiday greenery. Each spring, shoot the interior with a strong spray of water (or leaf blower) to dislodge old leaves.
Don’t smother them with 3-4" of heavy mulch. Boxwoods have a shallow root system and are particularly sensitive to over-mulching; better not to mulch at all than use too much. Limit it to 1-2" of well-rotted leaf mold or compost, taking care not to bury the crown. If you’re using the ubiquitous shredded hardwood, keep it to 1" (the length of the first joint of your thumb) and fluff it up every once in awhile to let rain penetrate.
In addition to fussing around with the boxwoods, winter is a good time to do necessary pruning on deciduous trees, cleaning out the interior of a crape myrtle, for instance, to better show off the beautiful bark, or removing a limb that’s too close to the house or overhangs a walkway. Trees don’t need a lot of pruning, though. Shearing is for privet hedges. Have a reason for every cut, don’t leave stubs and if you need a ladder, hire an arborist.
Here’s to starting the year off right with a good plan, a careful hand with the mulch and pruning implements, and the very best of intentions.—Cathy Clary
Garden questions? Ask Cathy Clary at garden@c-ville.com.
On Your Windowsill
Winter lift
The cyclamen is a charming beast, with its blooms shaped like butterflies that appear in the dead of winter, when we all need bright color most. If you buy a cyclamen, it’ll probably be in the full beauty of its blooming cycle. So how to keep it looking chipper?
First of all, prolong the blooms by putting your cyclamen in a sunny place. These plants like cool temperatures—no warmer than 68 degrees during the day, 40-50 degrees at night. They also like to dry out between waterings, since they grow from tubers that are prone to rot if doused too often. Feed the cyclamen every three to four weeks, and pull out dead stems with a sharp tug.
The real challenge comes in the summer, when the blooms have all gone to that great compost pile in the sky. Can you force yourself to stop watering and exile the cyclamen to a cool, shady place to let all the leaves die back? If so, you might be rewarded with a new crop of pink or white butterflies to cheer up your midwinter days.—Erika Howsare
January in the Garden
-Grow greens
-Soil-test boxwoods
-Go easy with those shears