Hi Gardeners
As the fog burns off it’s turning into a pretty fall
day here. After some good rains last
week, the plants are perky and fresh looking.
Goldenrod is lighting up the fields. Heath asters are pushing out white
clouds of flowers. The maples are
starting to show some good reds and oranges.
Pesky Virginia creeper is turning purple-red.
In the garden the last plants to bloom, toad lilies
and colchicum are blooming. Mums are at
full bloom. Anemone, hardy hibiscus, rose of Sharon, sedum, snakeroot, black
eyed Susan, coneflowers, and buddleia are still blooming. We’ve had no frost, so the annuals are still
going strong, but starting to look a little tired. Roses have a new flush of bloom, although I’m
aggravated, they are being chewed up by Japanese beetles. Those buggers should be gone by now. They are worse than they were earlier in the
season. The drought earlier must have
delayed some of them emerging.
Grapes and apples are ripening. Deer are coming up to snatch apples. The veggie garden is done for the year, I dug
the rest of the potatoes and the tomatoes have pretty much succumbed to
blight. Now I just need to clean it all
up.
I’m seeing lots of monarchs right now. I don’t know if they are migrating through or
not. I saw hummingbirds two days ago, so
I refilled the feeders, getting stung by a hornet in the process. It’s odd but I’ve noticed far fewer ants at
the hummingbird feeders this year. Maybe
it’s a bad year for ants. I think the
red winged blackbirds and orioles have already left. Killdeer and buzzards are still around
though.
The tree frogs and crickets are really calling at
night now. The frogs sound close to the
house and I am worried they are crawling into the houseplants. I am starting to move some of my houseplants back
inside this week. I am going to have
cataract surgery on one eye this week and won’t be able to bend and lift for a
few days. Then I am having surgery on
the other eye in early October, so I have to get those plants moved inside
within a tight schedule. I’m hoping the
weather cooperates.
Speaking of my eye surgery, I don’t know if I will be
putting out a blog next week or not. I
guess it depends on how I see after the surgery with one eye fixed and the
other not. I’m worried it may be hard to use the computer, but we’ll see. If you don’t see a blog next week, you’ll
know why.
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| Japanese beetles on rose |
It’s National Houseplant week
September 16-22 is National Indoor Plant week. You do have houseplants, don’t you? If you don’t, shame on you. Every home needs houseplants, and I mean
needs. Every classroom needs them too.
Houseplants make people calmer and happier; research has proven
this. While the air cleaning aspect of
houseplants is somewhat exaggerated, they do provide us with improved air
quality.
In one study children were asked to choose between
two classrooms, exactly alike except one had lots of plants. Every child chose the room with plants. Teachers- you need plants in your classroom! There are plants that can survive colder
nights when the heat is turned down and even school year vacation breaks. And plants are cheap- often free. Heck, if
you are a teacher near me, I’ll give you a houseplant for your classroom.
If you don’t have houseplants, it’s a great time to
buy them. Since they are popular once
again many stores are carrying them. Do
some research and find plants that match your lighting conditions and your
likelihood of caring for them. But you
are gardeners after all – so no excuses that you can’t grow houseplants. You can, you should.
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| Kalanchoe synsepala Gremlin |
There are some houseplants I don’t recommend for most
homes. These are Boston ferns, and most
other ferns, crotons, gardenias, and azaleas.
Fiddleleaf figs, while popular, are also difficult. Carnivorous plants are fun for a while but
rarely last long. That still leaves hundreds of plants to chose from.
Do you give your houseplants a summer vacation
outside? I do. It’s too early to frost
here- probably- but it is time to start thinking about moving the house plants
inside. When nights fall below 50
degrees on a regular basis most tropicals should be brought inside. Even if you
don’t turn on the furnace the house will be 10-20 degrees warmer than outside
if the windows are closed.
If you need grow lights now is the time to order or
shop for them. The new energy efficient
grow lights make it easy to grow plants even when window light is poor. They
are safe, and inexpensive to operate. There’s a plant for every room if you use
grow lights and almost every room if you don’t.
I don’t like the work involved in moving them in and
out, but the house does seem cozier filled with plants in the fall and winter. Usually I bring mine into the porch first as
I check them for bugs and look for mice and frogs hiding in the pots and then
decide where to put them.
I learned a lesson one year when several tree frogs
hitched a ride inside on my plants. In
the middle of the night they called and sang to each other. I couldn’t find some of them though, which
bothered me. I’d see one and then it would vanish. The poor things voices
gradually faded away through the winter.
I was providing little dishes of water among the plants but there was no
way to feed them.
Getting a Poinsettia to rebloom
My mom has had her poinsettia plant outside all summer.
It grew large and lush. She told me she
had brought it inside and stuck it in the closet behind her steps because she
heard it needed darkness to get colorful again.
(The leaf bracts turn red, it’s not a flower, although the plants are
flowering at the time.) I asked mom if
she was bringing the plant to the window in the day and she said no.
I explained to her that although poinsettias need
complete darkness at night- for at least 12 hours each night- they do need
sunlight in the daytime. If you want a
poinsettia to turn red again near Christmas it needs to be in the natural light
cycle for fall, days getting shorter until darkness is about 10-12 hours
long. Any artificial light during what
should be night will delay or prevent that red color you want.
Most poinsettias will never be as pretty as when they
came from the greenhouse but if they were given good care through spring and
summer, preferably a summer outside in the sun, and the right light conditions
are met in the fall, they can look pretty nice near Christmas the second or following
years.
Poinsettias should also get a gradual cooling down in
fall, although they should never be exposed to frost. The chilling makes the coloring of the bracts
more brilliant. If you leave them outside until just before the first frost
this usually does the trick. Of course,
once inside they still need those long dark nights.
If you are keeping the poinsettia plant inside all
year round you should put it in the window of a room that doesn’t get used at
night and remains dark, starting in late August. If you can’t do that try slipping a box over
the plant as nightfall comes outside and removing it when the sun is up. It’s
best to mimic the gradual shortening of the day in the fall, so use the light
conditions outside to guide you. Lower
the room temperature at night to 55 degrees if possible.
Once the poinsettia leaves have turned red again the
plant can be moved to a location where it can be seen better if needed. You don’t have to worry that light at night
will change the color of the leaves anymore.
They will often stay red for months once they color up.
The poinsettia makes a pretty good houseplant if it
has a sunny window and regular watering and with a little care can “bloom” for
many years. It will get larger; they are
shrubs in Mexico. My mom has agreed to
move hers back to a windowsill, I don’t know if she’ll remember to keep up the
light schedule but since she goes to bed fairly early it may work out.
Blending spring blooming bulbs into
perennial beds
Many people don’t plant bulbs like tulips and
daffodils in their perennial beds because they have read that the bulbs must be
dry in the summer or because they think the dying bulb foliage will be too
ugly. But many gardeners successfully
blend bulbs into their perennial beds and those are the gardens which look so
pretty in early spring.
While it is true that most spring blooming bulbs like
a period of dryness after the foliage disappears, almost all types of bulbs
will successfully adapt to the normal perennial bed. You don’t have to skip watering your
perennials to keep bulbs happy. Unless
you have poor drainage and are growing wetland perennials many types of bulbs
will thrive.
Some gardeners think they must dig up the bulbs after
they bloom and store them somewhere until next fall. You can do this if you like, but it’s a lot
of work and really isn’t necessary. Each
type of bulb needs a certain length of time to go dormant. And then after digging they need a period of
time to cure spread out somewhere in a dark spot. After curing they need the proper storage conditions
until fall. All of this can be hard for
the average gardener to do.
Some bulbs, particularly tulips, do tend to fade out
after a year or two in the garden.
Summer moisture is only part of the problem though, some hybrid,
cultivated tulips are just naturally short lived. Many species type tulips have longer lifespans. I always plant more tulips every fall to
ensure a good show in spring. Renewing most bulbs every few years is wise, with
maybe the exception of daffodils, which often multiply tremendously and aren’t
bothered by bulb eating animals.
Other things that cause bulbs to disappear after a
year or two are disturbing the bulbs when planting other things, cutting off
dying foliage too soon, and animals digging out the bulbs either for a snack or
just tunneling or digging in the garden.
Moles don’t eat bulbs, but if they tunnel beneath them the bulbs can
either fall down into the tunnel and be buried too deeply or the bulbs are
damaged in the tunneling process.
Cats, dogs and skunks sometimes throw bulbs out of
the ground when digging. Frost can heave
bulbs out of the ground as the ground freezes and thaws. Heavy rain can wash
them out. If the bulbs are exposed on
top of the ground for long, they will probably die. When there are thaws and the ground is
visible in winter check your flower beds for bulbs that have been pushed out of
the ground and replant them.
The foliage of bulbs should be left to mature and die
naturally so that the plant makes food to produce a new flower. Flower buds are being made for next year soon
after this year’s flower fades. Bulbs also need energy to produce new
bulbs. If your concern is that the bulb
foliage will look ugly after the flowers fade in the spring, there are ways to
minimize the mess.
The best way to hide bulb foliage until it dies, and
the bulb goes dormant, is to plant your bulbs among perennial plants that are
slow to emerge in spring but then rapidly disguise the bulb foliage beneath and
among their foliage. In the fall plant
your bulbs carefully under these plants, making sure not to cut into the
perennial’s roots.
I like to plant bulbs under hosta and among daylilies
and ferns. Early blooming bulbs can be planted under roses, especially
landscape type roses. In the spring the bulbs grow and bloom before the
perennials get very large. By the time
the bulb foliage is yellowing the perennials should be large enough to hide
them.
Other perennials that can hide bulb foliage are
ornamental grasses, true lilies, cannas if hardy in your zone, poppies,
bleeding hearts, brunnera and astilbe. Small, early flowering bulbs like winter
aconite, crocus and snowdrops can be planted under groundcovers like thyme,
sweet woodruff, and various sedums. By
the time the groundcovers are actively growing the bulbs should have bloomed.
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| Bulbs with hosta and Jacobs ladder |
If you plant your bulbs in the fall before you have
cleaned up the foliage of perennials- if you are a fall clean up gardener-
you’ll know what area of ground around the perennial will be hidden by its
foliage next year. (Pictures taken when the perennials were mature for the year
can also help you decide where to plant bulbs.) Just carefully tuck the bulbs
in that area. This may take more work
than digging up a large area just for bulbs and plopping them in, but it will
be worth it next spring.
Another way to use bulbs in perennial beds is to
reserve a strip for them behind perennial plants. If your flower bed is in front of a wall or fence,
the spot for the bulbs should be back against the wall or fence. The bulbs should bloom before the plants in
front of them leaf out and hide them. If
your flower bed can be observed from all sides plant bulbs in the middle.
You can also reserve space in the front of a
perennial bed for smaller bulbs like crocus, miniature daffodils, grape
hyacinth and so on. Then as soon as
possible in spring plant annuals like pansies, petunias and marigolds among the
bulbs. As they grow the annuals hide the
bulb foliage while providing color to the flower bed. If you plant annuals and tropicals in large
containers every year, bulbs can also be planted in them for early color.
You could plan a bed that’s all bulbs. Carefully planned you could have something in
bloom all season. Start the season with
small early bloomers, snowdrops, crocus, iris reticulata, add early season
tulips and daffodils, then mid spring and late spring bloomers like
fritillaria, alliums and late tulips.
Next add summer blooming bulbs like Asiatic and
oriental lilies, and things like dahlias, canna, rain lilies, glads,
crocosemia, tuberose and others to bloom all the way to fall. (Some of these may not be winter hardy in
your zone.) There are fall blooming
crocus and colchicums.
If you can’t hide it, the foliage of spring blooming
plants can be cut back when the leaves have yellowed completely. The “ugly” period is usually short if you can
tolerate it. In some bulbs like crocus and corydalis (sold with bulbs but not a
real bulb) the foliage isn’t that bad looking.
The beautiful blooms of bulbs in early spring before
all else blooms are well worth tolerating some yellow foliage. Go with bold and beautiful and plant some
bulbs. There’s room in every garden.
Gather
your herbs while ye may
If you haven’t harvested herbs such as lavender,
sage, rosemary, oregano and thyme now is the time to do so. Cut young stems after the dew has dried in
the morning or they have dried after a rain.
Bundle 6-10 stems with a rubber band or string and hang the bundles in a
warm dark area. Rubber bands contract as
the stems dry and keep the bundles together.
You can also place stems or bundles of herbs in brown
paper bags and put them in your car to dry.
A car sitting in the sun dries herbs quickly but beware, your car will
smell like what you dry in it.
I now place dried herb bundles in plastic bags and
put them in the freezer. This keeps the
flavor strong. You can also crumble the dried herbs into clean dry jars with
tight fitting lids. Place a teaspoon of
dried milk in a piece of tissue paper and twist it closed. Place that in each jar to absorb any
moisture. You can also put some dry
white rice in each jar to keep the herbs dry.
You can also buy or save those little deoxidizer -drying packets to put
in jars. Use ones labeled food safe or that came in food.
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| Dill seeds just about ready for harvest |
Collect the seeds of dill, fennel and caraway now or
they will be lost on the ground. Put something like a bowl or bucket under the
seed head as you snap it off to collect loose seeds. Then shake or scrape out the remaining seeds
from the dried flower. Spread the seeds out in a dry warm place for a few days
to continue drying before storing in clean dry jars with tight lids. If you have a food dehydrator or your oven
can be set on low heat of about 150 degrees, you can use that to speed up the
drying process. Be careful not to scorch
or over dry the seeds.
Don’t try to dry herbs with powdery mildew or other
fungal diseases. Discard any herbs that
mold during the drying process. Dried
herbs can last a year or longer if properly stored. Label your packages or jars so you know when
the herbs were collected and what they are.
Blinding the queen bee
Think of spending your life studying the seminal
fluid of honeybees. That’s the job of UC Riverside's Boris Baer, an
entomologist who has been studying bee sperm for 10 years. Your tax dollars at
work.
It turns out bee seminal fluid is full of chemicals –
bee manufactured ones not environmental toxins.
One of the things bee seminal fluid can do is kill the sperm of rival
bees. But a recent finding pointed out
another thing the fluid can do- make the queen blind.
When male bees mate with a queen early in her life
the sperm they pump into her blinds her.
Within a short time after mating the queens start becoming blind and
have difficulty finding their way back to the hive. Since blind bees can’t fly,
the queen stays home to produce babies. This also ensures the queen isn’t
flying around mating with other males.
Maybe the queen isn’t the ruler of the hive after all.
The blindness does fade after a while because later
in life queens often leave the hive in a “swarm” and create a new hive. (Or maybe they are fleeing from captivity.) They
do see then, researchers found. But most
queens mate only once in their lifetime, with the sperm they received at that
first blinding event becoming the father of their babies for a lifetime.
But life isn’t all kingly fun and games for the male
honeybees since they die shortly after mating. Did they die happy? No one has studied that yet.
More reading;
“But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my
possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head ... The
harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer
relationship that brought it on. “
-
Robert Finch
Kim Willis
And So On….
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I write this because I
love to share with other gardeners some of the things I come across in my
research each week. It keeps me engaged with people and horticulture. It’s a
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