My Half Acre of Paradise

Today, I got home from work early, so I did a little garden work. I divided my three-year old clump of dianthus and put some on the driveway end of the front walk and some out in the front flowerbed. I also divided some Shasta daisies and spread them around a bit.

I put my new bare-root roses in a bucket of water in the garage so they’ll soak the roots before I plant them in the next few days. These are the ‘Nearly Wild’ rose variety. One specimen is bigger and healthier than the other, and I hope the smaller one is OK.

Also, two days ago, I placed some Japanese maple seeds in a ziploc with moist paper towels. These are seeds that were hanging on to my red Japanese maple in front of the house. I assume they got all the freezing they’ll need outside this winter, so hopefully they’re ready to sprout.

Today, I pruned my clematis down to one or two leaf buds from the ground. The vines that I cut off had some green leaves coming out on them, so I cut them into smaller segments and put them in a jar of water to see if they’ll root. I read on GardenWeb.com that someone had luck leaving clematis cuttings in water for three or four months, and they rooted. If it works, it’ll be awesome, because these were expensive plants and they will be so beautiful when they grow large and produce those large red flowers.

I just came across an informative thread on bindweed at GardenWeb.com. It’s at: http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rmgard/msg0510060716313.html?66

I get some bindweed in my garden, and in some places it’s a serious nuisance. It would be nice to find a website that has photos of all the weeds that grow in our area and how to fight them.

Here are some postings on how to fertilize clematis from gardenweb.com. I bought fertilizer, bone meal, and composted steer manure last night, so I’ll do this very soon. 

RE: What to feed my clematis?
Posted by: suzymac z6, Mass. (My Page) on Wed, Jun 22, 05 at 8:59

Clematis like rose or tomato food. I feed mine ‘Espoma ‘Rose Tone’ which I pick up at my local nursery. It’s an organic granular food. Also, a big shovelful of manure around each clematis in springtime helps to promote lush growth. I use a sprinkling of bone-meal sometimes as well.
Suzy

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RE: What to feed my clematis?
Posted by: cantcatchup 6 (My Page) on Fri, Jun 24, 05 at 12:16

Thanks, I appreciate your reply suzymac. When should you feed clematis? While blooming, before, after?
I’m hoping some more see this thread and reply. Also, has anyone heard of this: someone told me that their Henryii (sp?) clematis likes eggshells to be mixed in the soil around it.

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RE: What to feed my clematis?
Posted by: Matt_in_MI (My Page) on Fri, Jun 24, 05 at 12:59

I too use Espoma Rose Tone on all my clematis and roses. I always use a cup or so of bonemeal whenever I plant something, along with a good amount of composted manure. This gives the plants all they need the first year, to establish a good root system. Bonemeal promotes root growth. I then use a fertilizer like Rose Tone the following spring, scratching a handfull or so into the top few inches of soil around my clematis or roses. I do this ever couple weeks while the plant is putting out green growth. I then stop with the fertilizer when I see buds forming. I’ve heard that fertilizing during bud formation and during blooming will lessen the amount of blooms and also shorten the bloom period.
You don’t want to give your clematis a fertilizer that has too much nitrogen, as it will push vegetative growth rather than blooms. You’ll get lots of green leaves, but no flowers.

If you stick to a rose or tomato food, and hold fertilizer during blooming period, you should be all set.

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RE: What to feed my clematis?
Posted by: suzymac z6, Mass. (My Page) on Fri, Jun 24, 05 at 15:57

My feeding schedule is as follows:
One word of caution. Do not fertilize ANY clematis that are blooming or in full bud. (tiny buds are ok) Wait until just after blooms if necessary.

March….1st application of Espoma Rose tone, manure, bone meal.

June….Espoma Rose Tone (and then manure, optional) If I have the time and the manure I give a shovelful per plant, but never let it touch the stems)

September….Espoma Rose tone, (manure optional)
Suzy 

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RE: What to feed my clematis?
Posted by: cantcatchup 6 (My Page) on Sat, Jun 25, 05 at 11:39

Thanks very much! You’ve convinced me that I need to look for Espoma Rose Tone for both my clematis and roses.

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RE: What to feed my clematis?
Posted by: MaMoo_z5 z5IN (My Page) on Mon, Jun 27, 05 at 14:12

You can use any Rose or Tomato fertilizer. I use both & have been for years. Fertilize once a month or after each flush of flowers. I second not fertilizing while in bloom.

I counted all my seedlings this evening, and here is what I have:

• 34 Coreopsis grandiflora ‘Mayfield Giant’
• 10 Salvia nemorosa ‘East Friesland’
• 62 Echinacea purpurea, a white variety, possibly ‘White Swan’ but not sure. That is, if they come out true from seed. It’s possible some will be purple or maybe even a very light purple cross between the white and the purple! Wow! 62 of them! Those were some good seeds.
• 48 Eschscholzia californica ‘Summer Sorbet’ — the pink California poppies
• 28 Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Double Click’

They seem to be doing well. The coneflowers that have been on the heating pad are growing faster, so I moved the pad so it’s under half of two trays and covers most of the area where the coneflowers are.

Wow! That’s 182 plants! Looks like I’ll have some fun at planting time in a few months!

Yesterday was a good gardening day. It was warm enough to work in a short sleeve t-shirt while pruning roses (ouch!). Here are things I accomplished in the garden:

• Pruned the Ruby Meidiland roses in front to about 18″ high.
• Planted the English daisies and pansies I bought last week along the front walkway.
• Cut out the dead remains of last year’s chrysanthemums and asters along the front walk.
• Pruned the Arctic blue willow bush by the driveway.
• Pruned the linden tree.
• Pruned one of the cherry trees, and the other one looks like it doesn’t need any. I put two spacers in the branches of the one to spread them out, too.
• Finished pruning the butterfly bushes down to about 12″ high.
• Pruned the caryopteris bushes to 12-18″ high. I did that at 10 PM with my new floodlights!
• Removed the remains of last year’s morning glory vines on the front arbor. Quite a few seeds fell off of them, so I expect I’ll have some again this year.
• Looked at the golden rain trees and only lopped off a few branches. I don’t think they need any more pruning.

I noticed my crocuses blooming — they have actually been blooming for a week or two now. I also noticed for the first time this year a clump of Grecian windflowers (anemone blanda) blooming in the front flowerbed.

I haven’t taken the bare root roses (Nearly Wild) out of their packages yet. I’ll soak their roots for a day or so before planting them next weekend.

Yesterday at Home Depot, I bought some flowers (my daughter Hannah was with me and she complained that I must be addicted to gardening or something). I got some yellow and some purple pansies and some white and some pink-to-purple English daisies. I also bought two bare-root roses at Wal-Mart. The roses are a floribunda called ‘Nearly Wild.’ They grow only 2-3 feet tall and spread out about 3 feet. I’m going to put them as specimen plantings up among the aspen trees when I cover that area with weed blocking fabric and compost or bark. They’ll add some interest to the ground level among those tall trees, and they’re supposed to flower all summer till frost.

Here’s what this rose looks like, from a photo found on the web.

I don’t think I’ll go to another Thanksgiving Point garden mini-expo. It was much too basic. If you’re a guy like me who reads garden books and magazines and has tried a lot of things in the garden, there just wasn’t much to learn. They had people teaching who were trying to earn their master gardener certification, which requires some volunteer hours. It was clear that some of them did not feel comfortable teaching and were only doing it to earn their hours.

I wish they had an advanced level of classes. It would have been good to learn more about how to save a distressed Japanese maple tree that may have been chlorotic or may have had some other disease, or how to ensure roses bloom all summer, or how pruning a clumping birch tree would be different than a linden or a fruit tree.

Maybe someday I’ll teach at one of these expos. Perhaps I’ll get my master gardener certification, too.

Earlier this week, I took the jiffy pellets with the white coneflower seeds and put them in a different tray that’s on the heating pad and is still covered. That did the trick, and within seven days, many of them are sending out roots now.

The salvias are finally starting to grow more, so they are developing larger true leaves (not just the seed leaves, or whatever you call those first two that emerge from the seed and later drop off).

I moved the poppies off the heating pad, because they seem to like cooler temperatures.

The coreopsis plants are growing pretty well and looking healthy.

The cosmos plants haven’t grown as fast as they did the first week or two. They look OK, although a few look a little yellow. They might have gotten too much water.

Here’s a response to that GardenWeb.com posting from someone who lives in zone 6 in New Jersey:

RE: Camellias in Zone 6 (Utah)?

Posted by: ermazi z6, NJ. (My Page) on Tue, Mar 21, 06 at 17:23

April series could be what you need. However, they do not flower from Jan. to March in zone 6, instead they may just start flowering at the end of April.You need to set some protection on them for the first few years. And you may also need to find some acid compost under old, big pines to change your soil.

Here’s something from the Camellia Forest website about an April series camellia that is particularly hardy:

CF`April Rose’ (`Bernice Boddy’ × `Kumasaka’; CF-31) - This very compact and relatively slow-growing plant has rose-red formal double flowers. It has a heavy bud-set and a medium to late season of bloom. After the severe cold of January 1985, this was the only Camellia, among thousands in our collections, to open flowers to any degree, and cold-induced dieback was not recorded in any of the three individuals in our test plots. $22.00 and $48.00