Author: cathyclary

Summer ends Sunday, September 23, with the autumn equinox as the sun crosses the equator and everywhere day and night are of equal length. Days continue to shorten until the winter solstice when Earth turns back from her farthest loop around our great star. Shadows become longer and evenings in the garden more precious.

Many plants respond to changes in day length and begin preparations for shedding leaves and storing food. It’s optimal time for root growth in trees, shrubs and perennials, thus timely soakings (with the gray water you’ve been saving from dishes and laundry, right?) and applications of compost and mulch are in order.

This is also prime time for renovating the lawn. If you’ve been having problems establishing a healthy stand of turf, it’s most likely a matter of poor soil—compaction, lack of organic material or a need for lime. If water restrictions remain in place, you might have to put off seeding a new lawn or over-seeding patchy places until the spring when we can hope rainfall will be more plentiful, but there are plenty of nonwater-dependent things you can do now to grow good grass.

Test the soil (call the Extension Service at 872-4580) to find out how much lime you need to apply. Most of our soil is clay and needs to have its acidity raised closer to neutral to sustain turf grasses. Pelletized lime is better than powdered because it doesn’t blow away.

Lime takes a while to work its way into the soil, so whatever recommendation you get from the soil test, divide it into two or three applications over the coming seasons. Freezing and thawing over winter will help.

Once you get the pH right, begin a regimen of adding compost every fall instead of chemical fertilizers. Nearly neutral in pH, compost will counteract the natural acidity of clay and add organic material with all its lively microorganisms which are the best food for every growing thing.

Aeration is also best suited to the fall. Rent an aerating machine that pulls plugs of soil up out of the ground, or hire a landscaper to do this for you. This will counteract compacted soils, allowing oxygen and subsequent applications of compost and lime to filter down.

With your soil suitably fluffed up and amended, you can look forward to autumn rains and sleep well during winter snows as they meld together a ripe medium for next year’s greensward.

It’s not too late to order bulbs and just the right time to begin looking for them at garden centers. Daffodils, tulips, crocus, alliums, hyacinths, snowdrops and myriad other minor bulbs will make a splendid spring show just a few months after planting this fall. Plant through December as long as the soil can be worked, but it’s best to get them in by November. Thanksgiving is a good goal and a nice time for a family project.

In the vegetable garden, sow spinach and winter greens like kale, collards and mustard. Acquire a bale or two of straw to have on hand for mulching once the weather turns cold.

As time winds down, these tawny days take on a special beauty. The new slant of the sun smolders summer’s green into a hazy gold. Switch grass and joe pye weed, coreopsis and ironweed come into their glory and offer sustenance to every passing butterfly. The chickadees and finches eat the thistles and sunflowers and the coneflowers’ cones and those of us who have something in the ground can look up and see some semblance of balance in this crazy world.

What planet do you live on? One where the rainfall deficit is 11"-plus and the Chesapeake Bay a sewer of nitrogen and phosphorus, or Bizzaro World where a chemical green lawn pocked with automatic irrigation heads (or at least a yellow rotating water spike) is the perfect picture of the good life?

Most lawns here are cool season grasses, of the type called fescues, that go dormant in the heat. It’s not dead, just resting. Brown grass greens up with cooler temperatures and more rain. Only a prolonged drought is likely to kill turf grasses, but by then water use would be restricted anyway (remember when the Orange River went dry?) and you’d be wishing you’d installed that graywater system or stored summer’s rainstorms in barrels. But even if you had, watering the lawn in August still wouldn’t be a good idea.

If iPods and books-on-tape don’t appeal, bury drip irrigation hoses under a couple inches of mulch, attached to a timer.

Untended sprinklers slop over onto driveways and streets, washing pesticides and fertilizers, oil and gas drippings into the watershed. Overhead watering can work with turf if you position sprinklers carefully, monitor the water and restrict it to morning hours so it doesn’t stay wet overnight, but it’s not the best choice for other plants because a lot of water gets lost in the air; crowns rot, fungal diseases spread.

This is the time to let established plantings take care of themselves. Concentrate instead on individual trees, shrubs and perennials that haven’t yet grown their roots into surrounding soil. Plants put in last spring need to be nursed through the summer with a deep soak every week or two until they get a good rain.

Envision the root ball. A 6-8′ balled and burlapped tree has a bigger root system than a quart-sized perennial or a 6" potted petunia. Put water to the roots as directly as possible, holding a moderately flowing hose to the base of the plant.

A mounded hill of soil around the edge of the planting hole holds water in. Hunker down on your haunches (this will make you an honorary Virginian regardless of birthplace) or sit in a lawn chair and watch the water puddle up and bubble down repeatedly (kink the hose or use a shut-off valve while you’re waiting; don’t blast away and let the water and soil run off) until the ground is saturated.

Some people can’t stand this because it takes too much time and they find it excruciatingly boring. Their plants die and they lose money. If iPods and books-on-tape don’t appeal, bury drip irrigation hoses under a couple of inches of mulch, attached to a timer. Portable plastic watering bags can be placed around newly planted trees. Five-gallon buckets with holes in the bottom are equivalent if not particularly aesthetic.

Sound water use allows us a bit left over to get a jump on the fall garden. As August wanes, temperatures abate and well-amended soil is ripe for direct sowings of kale, turnips and carrots along with transplants of chard, Brussels sprouts and cabbages. Look for them now in local garden centers.

It is possible to husband our landscapes through the sere times without sucking the water table dry or contributing to polluting run-off. Think twice before you water this summer. Minimize turf and use drought resistant plants.

The little white garden on the corner of the McGuffey Art Center at Market Street and Second Street NW showcases plants that tolerate dry conditions and minimal maintenance while shimmering in the dusk and dawn: oak leaf hydrangea, Shasta daisy, coneflower and catmint. Ornamental grasses and herbs are also indispensable for the Virginia xeriscape. That’s what the good life looks like: sustainable.

Garden questions? Send to them Cathy Clary at garden@c-ville.com.

Horticultural wisdom counsels the gardener to surrender to the torpor of summer and do as little as possible—a welcome respite for those who’ve been working steadily since spring, and in the heat and humidity of a Central Virginia summer, certainly the better part of prudence, especially for the slackers.

If you began weeding, edging and general sprucing up in March (or at least April), like any decent person, you could enjoy these sweltering afternoons in the hammock, or better yet, from an air-conditioned sun room, surveying in pampered comfort the personal Eden your discipline and superior character have created. But for those of us who have been remiss—distracted by false priorities, overcome by the inexorable march of the dreaded vetch or crabgrass, oppressed by inertia—yet resolve to save the garden still, is there not some passage through the encroaching jungle that does not lead to heat stroke or despair?

Tuck in a couple of nasturtiums to trail over the edge, and some dill for height and its pale chartreuse flowers that provide landing pads for beneficial insects.

As with all disasters, triage is the best approach. Turn your attention to areas closest to the house and give up on the back 40 ‘til temperatures abate and spirits are refreshed in the fall. Look first to the main entrance (not necessarily always the front door); then in descending order to the driveway, deck, and views from the kitchen and family room windows.

Fresh container plantings can distract the eye from distant disasters and get you up out of weedy patches. A half-barrel or like-sized ceramic pot filled with sages, rosemary, thymes and basils thrives on a hot patio. Tuck in a couple of nasturtiums to trail over the edge, and some dill for height and its pale chartreuse flowers that provide landing pads for beneficial insects.

You can go classic cute with a little wheelbarrow or wagon tipped on its side spilling out impatiens or caladiums in the shade (geraniums or lantana for sun) or use a funky old chair or elegant tripod to anchor an instant bed. Place a bale of potting soil where you need it and slit it open, beveling the sides down to the surrounding ground. Pop in a flat or two of colorful annuals, water well—make it muddy—and mulch to keep the moisture in.

If you’re resolved, it’s never too late to clean up a bit of overtaken ground and reclaim a modicum of respectability. Wade into the worst of it and spend at least 20 minutes at a stretch early in the morning or evening with proper tools that allow effective search-and-destroy missions against enemy roots. Long-forked asparagus knives and sturdy-bladed soil knives let you dig down deep for tenacious tap roots; sharp-nosed trowels, hoes or multipronged claws scrape the surface to dislodge shallow rooted invaders without bringing more weed seeds to the top.

Mulch immediately afterwards or all is lost. Use 2-3" of good quality shredded hardwood for shrubs and trees or 1-2" of organic mulch (compost, pine tags, shredded leaves or grass clippings) for perennials. Keep it away from the crowns of perennials and the trunks of woody plants to prevent rotting, disease and insects.

I’ve had success with vegetables using thick layers of overlapping newspapers covered with straw. Wet them down before mulching. Black plastic can be good for warming up the soil early in the season for strawberries and tomatoes, but for perennials, shrubs and trees, organic is best as it allows air and water circulation.

Marc McVicker, nursery manager for Monticello’s Center for Historic Plants, gives a specialty hands-on pruning workshop on Saturday, July 21, at Tufton Farm. Visit www.monticello.org or call 984-9816 for more info.

The arc of the sun reaches its zenith on June 21st, bringing the first day of summer. From then ’til December 22nd the golden orb tracks steadily back towards winter. If you haven’t yet been invited to a summer solstice party, plan one now to celebrate the longest day of the year.

Cocktails at twilight are an excellent opportunity to revel in the sweet scent of Nicotiana alata or N. sylvestris, which wait for sunset to come into their own. Start these old-fashioned annual flowering tobaccos from seed (Thompson & Morgan catalogue has a good selection) or acquire them as transplants from select growers like the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or Eltzroth & Thompson. Don’t fall for the candy-colored “Nikki” hybrids, which have had their scent bred out of them.

Consider also the moon vine, another fragrant summer treat. They’re a bit tricky to start at home (you need to soak the seeds overnight), but worth the effort as they can be difficult to find in the garden centers. Delectable whipped cream buds open languidly in the gloaming into pure white blossoms that do a respectable imitation of large porcelain sand dollars. Give this special morning glory full sun and entice it along twine strung about the deck posts and railings. It will all collapse with the first hard frost.

Our path around the sun determines the beginning of summer and winter, but many people look to the moon for the best timed garden tasks. A moon waxing towards full reduces the pull of gravity which results in more moisture in the soil, conducive to sowing seeds and putting out transplants.

As the moon wanes, the increased pull of gravity reduces water content and favors a harvest of root crops like carrots and onions that profit from drier conditions. This is also the time to get the best results from mowing the lawn and pulling weeds.

From planets spinning in space to plants rooted in the ground, the garden contains a multitude of cycles. Fine old gardens in France suspend all other activities in order to dead-head lilacs in late spring, so important is this activity to good bud set for next year. Immediately after flowering is the best time to shape and thin any flowering shrub. Along with the lilacs, give some attention now to overgrown forsythia and azaleas before it gets any later, or you risk harming developing flower buds.

Our prolonged cool spring might cause some difficulties with hot weather crops like tomatoes, corn, zinnias, marigolds and okra. There’s not much these plants will do until the ground warms up. Old-timers listen for the first whippoorwill or look for oak leaves the size of a squirrel’s ear before planting their corn. The oak leaves are long enough, but here in the hollow, we have not yet heard the plaintive cry of that increasingly rara avis.

Set the mower on high and cultivate the shag-rug look over an astro-turf buzz to shade out weeds and give your lawn lots of leaf surface to feed its roots. Don’t bag clippings. They’re one of nature’s fastest sources of nitrogen. If they clump up, rake them out and dispose of any excess in the trusty compost bin. Get with your composting, people! Steve Murray, master composter at Earlysville farm Panorama Paydirt, says the largest component of landfills is kitchen garbage.

Through the Garden Gate opens private gardens maintained by their owners to the public for a $5 fee. Saturday, June 9, from 9am to noon, find your way to 1647 and 1641 Oxford Rd. to inspect two city landscapes that take full advantage of their circumstances and sport a variety of specimen trees and shrubs (call 872-4580 for more info).

“…The flowers come forth like the belles of the day, have their short reign of beauty and splendour, and retire, like them, to the more interesting office of reproducing their like….The Hyacinths and Tulips are off the stage, the Irises are giving place to the Belladonnas, as these will to the Tuberoses, etc….”

Say what you will about him, Thomas Jefferson had a way with words. He had fun in this letter to his granddaughter, skirting the blatant sexual display of flowers (the pistils and the stamens, to be exact, glistening dewily at the center of those luscious petals) with the romantic rhetoric of his day. But, ever relevant, he shares every gardener’s concern with succession of bloom.

Most everyone nowadays at least pays lip service to “four-season interest”—bark, foliage and bright winter berries—but what most people want from a garden is lots of flowers lots of the time. Anyone can “do spring”—just stand back and let Nature have her way—but early summer can present a challenge. How to follow the eruption of dogwoods, azaleas, bleeding hearts and bluebells?

In older days, large gardens could devote great swaths of borders to different times of year, but smaller modern landscapes work well with mixed plantings that show off the different seasons in the same space: a small tree or large shrub anchoring different layers of shrubs, perennials, annuals and bulbs.

Kousa dogwoods extend the season nicely, decorating themselves with dramatic star-like flowers a good month after our native dogwoods have finished. They have a different look, often multi-trunked and shrubby, great for screening the ubiquitous unsightly view. Add one of the smaller crape myrtles or a smoke bush at the other end of the bed if you have sun (perhaps a Stewartia or Japanese snowbell if you don’t) and you can see yourself through summer with sultry blooms.

The true lover of floral display must not fear getting involved with annual bedding plants. Do not hesitate to embrace geraniums, petunias, begonias, impatiens, salvias, marigolds and zinnias. They pay their dues by producing vivid color up ‘til frost. Pop them in the border or use them in containers at entrances and on the terrace.

Don’t forget to harden off greenhouse-grown plants. Hardy perennials and herbs that have been started indoors, as well as tender annuals, need gradual acclimation to cooler temperatures and wind before being set out after the last date of frost, around the middle of this month.

Heat lovers like tomatoes and zinnias won’t do anything but sit in the ground until the soil warms up, even if it doesn’t freeze, so wait ‘til the end of May before setting them out. Move them up to larger sized pots if necessary in the meantime, and bring them in on cold nights.

This cool spring is perfect for over-seeding bare spots in the lawn. Rough up the ground with a steel rake and scatter an inch or so of compost. Generously sprinkle a mix of good quality hybrid fescue seed if you have sun (creeping red fescue for light shade), tamp down with the back of the rake and scatter a thin layer of straw. Keep the lawn moist and avoid foot traffic until the seed germinates.

The tulips and daffodils of April will give way to peonies, iris and roses, as the merry belles of May beguile us into late spring, reminding us that the promise of one flower after another is the enduring allure of the garden.

Something sinister lurks behind the Easter basket prettiness of April. The first blooms of spring also herald the start of the lawn care industry’s campaign to sell high nitrogen fertilizers laced with pesticides that promise to-die-for turf. Do not succumb to this false lure.

If you have decent soil and at least a good half day of sun, you can grow luscious grass organically without poisoning the waterways. Spring rains wash off granular fertilizers from close-shorn turf into gutters, local streams and, inevitably, the Chesapeake Bay, where they help grow the algae blooms that form the great dead zones.

Snazzy license plates and T-shirts with “Save the Bay” printed across a scenic wetland notwithstanding, our great watershed continues its decades-long decline as native water grasses disappear and the oysters die. Much of this is due to agricultural pollution from excess manure (think gigantic chicken factories and mountains of resulting poop) that pollutes the water. But a significant part of the problem comes from tons of fertilizer applied each spring by happy homeowners and diligent golf course managers.

Fertilizers are aggressively marketed in spring because we’re ready to drop some bucks at the garden centers and we’ve been brainwashed into believing we can’t have a lush lawn without chemicals. The inconvenient truth is that healthy grass growing on a lively soil will green up on its own in the spring with the onset of rainfall (or irrigation) and warming temperatures.

Plants are dormant just coming out of winter and not ready to use a sudden spurt of nutrients. Fertilize lawns, preferably with compost, in the fall when roots are actively growing and ready to receive food. Spend your money now on soil tests, compost, lime, grass seed for oversowing, and sharp mower blades.

Top-dress in spring and fall with soil test-recommended rates of lime and good quality compost. Buy it bagged or create your own. Forestall fungal disease by mowing with sharp blades and not watering at night.

Cultivate the shaggy look and set mower blades at 2-3". Taller grass shades out sun-loving weeds like dandelions. Turn up your nose at ad-driven macho displays of lawn prowess and compete with your neighbors instead over how small you can make your chemical footprint.

Not just moral, but design dilemmas, arise against the backdrop of vivid Easter basket grass. Strong spring colors scream for a little relief with red azaleas and pink cherries blazing against orange brick. Green and yellow tend to predominate (picture the perfect daffodil), but they’re too close on the color wheel to make a soothing combination. Some of us just give ourselves up to the riot of candy colors, but those with a more sensitive eye yearn for a certain restraint in the vernal display.

The bright whites of the early bridal wreath spirea (S. prunifolia) and candytuft, with creamy varieties of violas and pansies, can go a long way towards toning things down. White bleeding heart and Virginia bluebells are dependable aristocrats in the April garden, though they’ll leave gaps when they go dormant in early summer. Interplant with hostas, daylilies, black-eyed susans, sedums and ornamental grasses that bloom later in the season.

Don’t miss the chance to visit the fine old estate of Morven on Saturday, April 21. It dates to the late 18th century with a bona fide Jefferson connection and has been open every year for Historic Garden Week since 1933. The grounds sport a formal perennial garden designed by Annette Hoyt Flanders early in the last century, fanciful topiary along the drive and our state champion Chinese chestnut tree on the lower front lawn.

Many a gardener has an inner Edward Scissorhands, but not all shrubs flourish under the shears and in real life as well as show biz, timing is everything. Cut broadleaf evergreens down to size from Valentine’s Day through the end of March, but save the electric hedge trimmers for summer.

Now is the time for the surgical approach, lopping off individual branches with hand pruners or a saw. Don’t leave stubs. If you do this branch by branch, you can bring a holly, abelia or euonymous down to size in no time.

A formal hedge provides a healthy outlet for those who enjoy sculpting with shrubs. It requires a couple of clippings in July and August to look its best. For inspiration, inspect the beautifully maintained privet hedge at Congregation Beth Israel on E. Jefferson Street.

This is not the season to prune needle evergreens like pine, juniper and hemlock. Only a few of these needle types, chiefly yew, can re-sprout from cuts into dormant wood. Wait until after they begin growth later in the season to shape them.

Flowering shrubs are not at their best sheared into formal shapes. There are few sights sadder than the naturally graceful forsythia reduced to a diminutive green and yellow meatball. Although radical pruning at the wrong time will not kill these shrubs, you can reduce or lose altogether their blossoms for a season. The heart of the mystery is whether the blooms reside in old wood or new.

Forsythia, mophead hydrangeas (the old-fashioned blues and pinks) and lilacs flower early because they carry their buds on “old” wood produced last summer. A trim in late summer or early fall will decapitate them. Butterfly bushes and white snowball-type hydrangeas bloom in July, on “new” wood that will begin growing this spring. They will flower whether pruned or not but they profit from a late winter haircut to encourage more flower-bearing wood.

If untangling the old wood from the new gives you a headache, put down the saw and turn to the vegetable garden where the tasks of the season are as simple as waiting for the soil to dry out and getting something in the ground. Transplants of lettuces, cabbages and leeks will be available at garden centers around mid-month.

If you’re going to be gardening in the same spot for a while and don’t feel it’s spring unless you’re doing some serious digging, consider asparagus. Dormant crowns can be planted this month. A good bed can produce for 15 years and needs to be well-amended at the outset with lots of compost and rotted leaves.  Plants need to grow for two to three years before you begin harvesting the tasty spears, so it’s a long-term project, but isn’t that what gardening is all about?

One pleasure of early spring that requires no sweat is to welcome the early daffodils. There is a world to explore beyond the great yellow honkers of April. “Butter and Eggs,” an old species narcissus, and the little wind-swept cyclamineus types like “Peeping Tom” and “February Gold” are among the first to flower. Consult Brent and Becky Heath’s Daffodils for American Gardens (Elliot & Clark, 1995) and the Van Engelen bulb catalog (www.vanengelen.com) to investigate the possibilities.

From the demands of the shrubbery to the promise of the vegetable plot to the lure of the first flowers, the spring garden calls us up from our winter sleep. Be careful what you cut, plant something to eat and put your nose deep in a daffodil as we spin on towards the equinox on March 21.

Weather Alert: stretches of balmy temperatures followed by frigid cold. A typical Virginia winter, really. But there’s a whiff of fear in the air these days. Few doubt the climate is warming and weather is becoming more extreme, but is this winter just another blip on the ancient screen of global history or does it foretell catastrophe? 

Most gardeners I’ve talked to aren’t changing their schedules for February. “As soon as the ground can be worked” is always the right time to plant early crops. When the soil crumbles in your hand like moist cake instead of rolling up into gummy little balls, it is time to turn from geopolitical concerns and get some seeds in the ground. 

Spinach, mustard, kale and mache take colder temperatures than the lettuces and are good for the earliest harvests. Some gardeners with warm microclimates (think of a stone wall behind a south-facing bed) even sow lettuce toward the end of the month if the soil feels right. Check out the colorful seed catalogs littering the mail and cruise the aisles of the local hardware stores and garden centers to get an idea of the different possibilities.

You can make it as complicated (cold frames, frost cloth, hotbeds lined with manure) or as simple as you want. Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest (Chelsea Green, 1999) has the best season-extending techniques. I prefer the stripped down approach: a little patch of well-drained earth with full or half day sun, a couple of inches of well-rotted compost, straw or pine tags for mulch. Turn over the soil, break up the clumps. Remove any stones and roots and rake smooth.

Sow tightly in blocks rather than rows to keep weeds down and take advantage of small spaces. As individual plants grow, harvest the thinnings. As they grow larger, harvest lower leaves on some and let others develop into full-sized plants. Growing your own avoids the pitfalls of industrial agriculture (internal combustion engines transporting E. coli-laced spinach) while achieving the gourmand’s Holy Grail, the season’s freshest.

There’s another green many believe indispensable to the good life. For some, the best lawn is none at all. But there are ways to enjoy a bit of turf about the place without adding run-off nutrients to the dead zones in the Bay. Here’s a ground rule: All the fertilizer in the world (and for some, alas, that does seem to be the preferred dosage) will do the greensward no good if the soil’s relative acidity (the pH) is not right. 

Quality turf is a harsh mistress and demands a pH between 6.2 and 6.5. With acidic clay, only regular doses of lime will do. Test every few years to find out how much to apply. Call the local Virginia Cooperative Extension Office (872-4580) for info on having samples tested, or use a garden center. You can test pH with a handy home kit, but the key is how much lime to apply and a professional test will tell you that.

As we ponder the difference between weather and climate, between the delights of early greens and polar bears treading water, let us take heart and turn to the tasks at hand: Begin to learn your soil; dig and tread carefully upon the Earth; plant some seeds if you can.