Hi Gardener’s
I’m inside writing on a hot and steamy Tuesday. Plants may
like the humidity, but I don’t. And I think the plants would like it more if it
also included some good rain. I know rainfall has varied tremendously across
the country- and even across Michigan.
Some are getting lots of rain, some of us aren’t.
I have seen so many pictures of dried-up hanging baskets and
pots. In hot dry weather you may need to water hanging baskets and pots twice a
day. Check your baskets and pots even if there has been some rain. Sometimes foliage
in full baskets and pots sheds the lighter rains over the sides and the soil
inside isn’t getting any water.
If your plants look dried up all may not be lost. Submerge
the pot in a bucket of water. You may have to hold it down until it sinks and
bubbles stop coming up. Let it sit an hour in the water if you can, then take it
out. It can take a couple hours to overnight for the plants to recover. Then
don’t let the pots or baskets get that dry again.
If you planted new perennials, trees and shrubs this year
and it’s been dry you must water them if you want them to live. Even plants labeled drought tolerant should
be kept watered their first season.
Conversely if it’s been raining a lot in your area make sure
pots and baskets are draining well. They
must have drainage holes. It can help drainage if you lift the pots up off the
ground or deck surfaces a little. Use little wood blocks, pop bottle caps, tiny
stones and so on to lift the corners of the pot up an inch or so.
In my garden lack of rain is keeping things shorter and the
flowers look smaller on some plants. Color is starting to come back as the
yellow evening primrose, blue clustered bellflower and orange poppies are
beginning to bloom. The Siberian iris, columbine, various landscape roses, mock
orange, clematis, Love in a Mist, cornflowers and Maltese cross are also
blooming.
My ninebark is in bloom, but the flowers are really small
this year. I have been mowing around patches of yellow and orange hawkweed. I
remember once a researcher called me at Extension asking if I had seen both
colors in bloom in my area or just one. She believed only one color would grow
in an area. I wish I remembered who she was so I could show her both colors in
my yard, although they occur in separate patches of color.
The vegetable garden is doing great. There are tiny tomatoes on my plants. The pumpkin vines are getting huge. Cukes are
flowering. So far the grow bags are a success.
Bird activity has been different at my feeders this year
too. I noticed the purple or house finches (hard to tell apart) are also eating
the grape jelly in the oriole feeder. I’m
seeing fewer orioles and hummingbirds. Tons of baby red winged blackbirds,
grackles, and starlings are devouring suet from the feeders. I am seeing meadow
larks, which I haven’t seen in a few years around here. (They don’t come to the
feeders.) I’ve also seen yellow warblers up by the house. I have not seen any
bluebirds here.
Usually, I am seeing tons of tiny frogs and toads by now and
I’m not. I have seen some adult toads and 1 frog up by the house. I generally
have 3-4 frogs in my little water feature by the back door and I don’t have any
this year. Ponds around here are drying up.
Chipmunks, however, seem to be having a population
explosion. The little buggers are everywhere and eating at my bird feeders all
day. I have one on my back porch and there’s one living under the platform the dog’s
doggie door opens onto. I guess it’s too hot for cats and dogs to hunt them.
I hope you get rain if you need it and sun if you have too
much.
Columbine- Aquilegia spps.
People often ask what flowering plants they can grow in
shade. The columbine is a pretty, late spring, early summer bloomer that will
thrive in light or partial shade. A bonus is that many species of columbine or
aquilegia are native to North America. The plant is also native to many parts
of northern Europe and Asia. Columbines grow at the edges of woodlands and in
moist meadows.
There are dozens of species of columbine and many varieties, both natural and man cultivated. Aquilegia species hybridize easily. Two common North American native species found in gardens are Aquilegia canadensis, Red columbine and Aquilegia coerulea, Colorado Blue columbine. Garden columbines are often hybrids of many species.
Columbine 'Bluebird' |
The columbine has composite leaves that have 3 leaflets,
each leaflet has 3 lobes. There are usually several stems about 2 feet tall to
each plant, with cultivated varieties being taller and having more stems than
native type plants.
Flowers appear on the ends of stems in late spring. Each
flower has 5 sepals, 5 modified petals that have a long tube, each with a
nectar gland at the end called spurs and a flatter blade shaped portion on the
top. Depending on the species, spurs come in many sizes, positions and lengths.
In the center of the flower are a large number of stamens, grouped in 5’s and 5
pistils.
Columbine flowers come in a variety of colors, usually the
center petals are a different color from the sepals, but some are solid colors.
Blue, red, orange, white, yellow, purple and pink columbine colors can be
found. A few species are fragrant, but
most garden columbines are not. The flowers turn into long pods filled with
tiny seeds.
Columbines got the common name from the Latin word for dove.
It is said that when you turn a flower upside down it looks like 5 doves in a
ring. Columbine is pollinated by hummingbirds
and a few butterfly and bee species. The flowers are edible if you don’t
consume too many. Some people suck the nectar out of the long spurs, but this
seems a waste of a flower to me.
Columbine blooms for about a month, after which the plant may
go dormant in hot conditions. In milder moist areas foliage persists but may
turn purplish toward fall. The foliage is food for several larval species of
butterfly. Deer and rabbits tend to leave columbine alone, maybe because it is
toxic.
Growing columbine
Columbine does well in a variety of soils but dislikes heavy
clay soil. In moist but well drained loam soils it can handle full sun, but
partial or light shade is a better position for it, especially in zones 6 and
higher. In deep shade it may not bloom well. It is hardy to zone 3.
Gardeners will probably want to start with plants, but columbine
does grow well from seeds if they are treated correctly. Seeds should be sown
in fall where they are to grow or sown in pots and left outside for winter.
Alternately seeds can be cold treated and started inside in early spring.
Columbine is a short-lived perennial, but it usually seeds
itself in the garden. Watch for little plants coming up in spring and protect
them. Thin plants so they aren’t too crowded.
Keep columbine watered in the spring through it’s flowering,
if the weather is dry. After flowering plants don’t mind dry conditions. But if
not watered and it’s dry and hot the foliage may go dormant and die down. A
light fertilization in spring as plants emerge will give you more and larger
flowers, but over fertilization leads to floppy stems.
Columbine doesn’t like being too crowded by other plants. Keep
weeds away and don’t let other plants crowd it out.
The biggest problem columbine seems to have is leaf miners,
which leave squiggly white trails across the leaves. While this makes the
leaves look bad it generally does not harm the plant and no treatment is necessary.
ALL parts of the plant are poisonous. Eating plant parts
could cause death. The flowers are the least toxic parts, and you would have to
eat quite a few to get sick, but why would you want to eat them knowing they
are mildly poisonous? Just small amounts
of roots or foliage could kill. Native Americans had some herbal uses for the
plant, but I advise against them.
Columbine or aquilegia is an excellent plant for blooms in
shadier areas and for those who like native plants. Make sure to add some to
your garden.
Why your peonies don’t bloom
One of the common garden questions this time of the year is
why aren’t my peonies blooming? Peonies
can survive and bloom with little care on old farmsteads for fifty years or
more, yet many gardeners have difficulty getting them to bloom. So just why are these gardeners having
problems with their peonies?
One of the most common reasons peonies don’t bloom is their
age. It takes 3-5 years from seed to the
first flower. But most peonies are sold
as root divisions and while these root divisions technically come from an
older, blooming plant it can also take a year or more after you plant a peony
before you get blooms and a few more years before you get a full, mature plant
full of blooms.
Did you move the plant? Peonies don’t like transplanting or
dividing. Every time a peony is moved or divided it can take a year or more
before it blooms again and several years before it becomes a large plant with
numerous blooms.
Which brings me to another reason your peonies might not
bloom, planting them too deep. Peonies
have small red bumps or “eyes” on the top of root clumps, and these should only
be about 2 inches below the soil surface.
There is some debate among experts as to whether a peony you suspect was too deeply planted should be dug up and replanted. Over time many plants have the ability to correct the depth of their roots, the plant pushes upward or downward as needed. This may take years and the peony may not bloom during that time. But if you dig it up and re-plant it, the peony could also take years to bloom again. You might try carefully removing a few inches of soil from around the peony.
Not getting enough sun is another reason peonies fail to
bloom. Yes, there are some peonies that
continue to bloom in partial shade, but these are exceptions, and no particular
cultivar is better in shade. Peonies
need full sun, at least 6 hours of sun midday, to bloom well. Often if peonies bloom less as they age it’s
because a tree has grown larger and is now shading them.
What did you do last year? Peonies need their foliage the
whole season to make enough energy to set next year’s blooms. Don’t cut down
peony foliage before the first frost even if it looks unattractive. The only exception is if the foliage is
infected with botrytis, see below.
Sometimes failure to bloom may be caused by a common peony
disease, gray mold or botrytis blight (Botrytis paeoniae). This disease is prevalent when spring is wet
and cool, and some types of peonies are more susceptible than others. If the disease comes on early and affects
shoots and buds, you are unlikely to get blooms. New shoots may get covered in
gray mold, rot and fall off, young buds blacken and shrivel up, older buds and
flowers get a gray mold, rot and fall off.
Peonies are a plant that thrives without much fertilization.
In fact, if they get too much nitrogen, they can stop blooming. This can be a
problem if they are planted in a lawn that is heavily fertilized, as lawn
fertilizer is high in nitrogen.
One last thing to mention, ants and peonies. Peonies do not need ants to bloom, and
ants do not harm peonies. Peonies and ants can have a symbiotic relationship,
the ants eat a sweet secretion from peonies and in turn defend the flowers from
some pollen stealing or petal munching insects.
But peonies don’t really need ants and since ants don’t harm the peonies
there is no reason to use pesticides to kill them. To get ants off peonies you have cut for
inside gently submerge the flowers in cold water for a few minutes.
There is no gardening without humility. Nature is constantly
sending even its oldest scholars to the bottom of the class for some egregious
blunder.
Alfred Austin:
Kim Willis
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And So On….
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I have two tree peonies and they have always bloomed. I can't seem to grow regular peonies, because most of my garden is shaded about 50% of the day. My grandma had a whole row of peonies in her backyard. They were beautiful! I enjoyed this article. Thanks!
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