Green Garden Girls

Favorite July plant – daylilies

When you and your plants are wilting in the summer heat, it’s a pleasure to have no-fuss bloomers brightening your garden with little effort. Versatile daylilies serve as a bridge between seasons in the perennial bed, blossoming in a multitude of colors, forms, and heights. Best known for a trumpet shape, the more than 13,000 cultivars of daylilies can be now found rounded or ruffled, pinched and curled, with spidery trails or with fluffy cascades of petals, with each flower blooming for a single day. Some varieties boast dozens of blooms per stem. Everblooming and reblooming varieties extend the show throughout the summer, with brief rests between new waves of blooms. Daylily petals and pods with their spicy taste, can dress up a salad.

Daylilies can range from foot-high front-of-the-border features to towering six-foot back-bed fencerows of color, depending on the cultivar. So be sure to plant accordingly. Space them at least a foot apart to allow for them to multiply. As they multiply over the years, you’ll want to dig up the clumps and separate them to ensure good blooms. Either plant the divisions in your expanding garden beds, or share with friends and family.

To help whittle down your choices, look for them in full bloom in the Lititz front yard of Jim and Sue Stauffer. These avid daylily growers open their trial beds to the public each year. Bursting with nearly 130 different varieties, the blooms will be on display until the 18th.  The couple will be hosting open houses this weekend and next, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Private garden tours can also be arranged for garden clubs and civic groups.

Favorite June plant – strawberries

The first bite of real, locally grown strawberries has to be one of the best sensations of spring. Now, when they’re coming in like gangbusters, the abundant harvest is a luxury. If you don’t have a couple dozen plants tucked into your landscape as an edible groundcover or potted up in containers, plan on changing that next year. A bundle of 25 plants will yield a daily handful for cereal or smoothies through the season. A local favorite, Earliglo, is usually producing by the beginning of the month. Be sure to pick regularly as rotting berries will attract slugs and diseases. At the end of the month, when your June-bearing strawberries are finished producing, it will be time to rejuvenate the bed for next year by thinning the beds and fertilizing. After a few years, remove the mother plants and select strong runners to create the next harvest.

Favorite May plant – Weigela

The fickle cycles of spring weather often leave me mourning the abbreviated bloom time of some of my favorite plants. This year my lilacs bloomed and were browning in the space of three days, done too quickly to enjoy for Mother’s Day bouquets. Thankfully, the late blooming weigela compensates, stretching the spring display into June. Weigela florida, a deciduous shrub often dismissed as old fashioned, is returning to favor as new cultivars like the dwarf “Variegata Nana”, variegated “My Monet”, and dark burgundy foilaged “Wine and Roses” find fans. Easy to grow with a graceful arching habit, weigla does best in full sun but will tolerate some shade. The fragrent tubular flowers in shades of pink, red and white, are great hummingbird attractants. Although the plant is appealing for three seasons, it’s best to mix in with some evergreens to help with the barrenness of its winter appearance.

Favorite April plant – Eastern Redbud

The month is filled with spectacular flowering trees as magnolias and dogwoods all welcome the season in clouds of pink frothiness. A drive down President Avenue, or a visit to the Amos Herr House, offers delightful examples. Less showy, but just as loved, are the ornate purplish-pink flowers of the Eastern Redbud, cercis Canadensis, decorating our woodlands. Whether encountered on a hike or driving through a neighborhood, this harbinger of spring is a reliable understory tree that thrives in challenging conditions. Maturing at only 20 to 25 feet with bark that grows more attractive as it ages, it’s perfect for small lots and under powerlines. Its hardiness and compact size earned it the 2010 Urban Tree of the Year award from the Society of Municpal Arborists.

Fruit in the Garden

I have been trying to add more fruit to my property. This year I’ve purchased and plan  to plant 7 different blueberry bushes and 2 raspberries. I already have a strawberry patch. Each year at the end of March, I graft fruit trees with the Backyard Fruitgrowers. In past years I have grafted asian pears, regular pears and apples. This year I did a few more as well as a peach. I’m also trying to sprout Hardy Kiwi and seedless grapes. I’ll let you know how that goes. These all all now in pots waiting for a place to go or to root.

March or Early April Shrub Pruning

Butterfly Bush

Lavender

I’ve  been out pruning the  sprouting  butterfly bushes, lavender, beauty berry and other shrubs as they start  to sprout.  Make your cuts just above the sprouting growth anywhere you want along the stem. I like to keep my butterfly bushes  and beauty berries small so I cut to the base. I’m also cutting the lavender back to the base this year to try to rejuvenate  some very old plants.

End of March

I’ve been very busy in my garden, but not too busy to enjoy my over wintered lettuce yum!

Transition plants

The spring-like temperatures of the past week have us positively giddy. As the melting snow recedes, the emergence of dainty snowdrops, cheery crocuses, and the sweeping yellow waves of winter aconite turn a “snowmageddon” winter to memory. We’re already seeing last year’s Johnny jump-ups in bloom and garden centers are filled with all varieties of pansies to complement your emerging daffodils. But we’ve weathered enough March surprises to know that another snowstorm or cold snap is a very real possibility. Which is why we like to satisfy our spring fever with some greenhouse-grown primroses that give us indoor color while we wait for the last frost date to pass. The common English Primrose has a sweet nostalgic quality and a broad color palate. Many varieties have a contrasting eye to add interest. Indoors, keep the soil moist and the plants out of direct sunlight. Once it’s safe to plant outdoors, find a shaded location where it can thrive and provide you with blooms next spring.

March 7, 2010

Weather this weekend was awesome! I was able to go out and start planting in my two covered squares. I transplanted my chinese cabbage and pac choi seedlings. I have beautiful small lettuces and parsley and 1 small swiss chard that overwintered in these mini greenhouses. I also planted seeds of spinach, radishes,cilantro,swiss chard, beets and because it is protected and not soggy from the snow, I went ahead and planted my vining peas.The usual day is St. Patricks Day but the open beds will probably still be too wet, so I’m experimenting. I created the covered beds by putting rebar in the 4 corners, then bending PVC  in an arch over 2 and again over the other 2. The arches are connected by another piece of PVC. The whole square and arches are covered in plastic.

Starting a square foot garden

I would suggest you start really small, I guarantee you will enlarge it but starting with just one square doesn’t take too much time or cost much.This will ensure your success. Begin with a 4’x4’ square or if you can’t fit that make it any shape that you can comfortably reach into from the edge. This is where you will learn the principles and realize a good harvest with very little time invested .

My original squares I made from 1×4 pine. I used this size because it was so inexpensive. There were 4 pieces  4’ long joined by exterior screws.You don’t even need a box(if your dirt is good  just mark off the area, and don’t walk on it.   You can assemble this now, place it where you want it and start to plan. If you have a garden already, just put it at one end. If you are starting from lawn or undug ground you may have to miss the spring planting because the ground is too wet to work yet, but, plan for summer.When the ground is dry enough to dig double dig the area for your box them start in whatever season you are in. You can also  start with a large pot filled with bagged, organic, garden soil for the spring while you get your squares ready, or just stick with pots if you only have a balcony. If your dirt is not good you may want to fill your box with either your own soil mix or bagged commercial soil.

Now,  my squares are made from 2×6’s  for two reasons. One; they don’t rot as fast  and two; I needed more height because my ground is clay and the drainage is not great. I needed to add lots of compost to the soil and raise the surface of my beds for drainage.