It is hard to get in the mood of gardening or even of planning ahead for your garden when the temperatures are soaring towards the century mark. That’s when it is nice to take advantage of previous foresight and sit in the shade of a tree.
We have enjoyed the shade of the big sprawling Amur honeysuckle at the south end of our terrace ever since the third summer after we planted it. Using a comfortable chair, it is a nice place to think about what to do in the landscape and the garden during the summer.
This is also where I go to plan for the bulb orders to be sent in immediately for fall delivery. As I look over the garden into the shaded areas, covered with Japanese spurge, periwinkle and English ivy, it hardly seems possible that this past spring they were a mass of color with a multitude of daffodils, English squills, hyacinths and other spring bulbs.
I have jotted down in my garden notebook notes of those particular spots that didn’t have enough bloom last spring so I can order an extra supply of bulbs to put in them this fall. A range of varieties of narcissus – starting with the early trumpet types, going on to the short trumpets and finally ending up with the poet – will give us almost six weeks of bloom here in our climate in normal seasons.
Naturally, in competition with the oak tree roots, the shrub roots and the ground cover roots, you don’t plant expensive varieties, but you can have just as lovely effects from the older, less expensive ones. About late tulip time you will enjoy the blooming of the white, pink, blue and purple English squills.
Just back of the main lawn I ripped a big regal pivet out of a bed last spring and polled up quite a patch of English ivy and periwinkle ground cover to make a delightful home for a number of hardy primroses last summer. In almost pure peatmoss in the coldframe.
I have a lot more primroses that were grown from seed last spring. They will be ready to plant in this bed in early September. By keeping them dusted all summer long with a dust containing malathion. I have been able to keep down the spider mite or red spider, as most of us still call it, so that the foliage is a dark, rich green instead of the sickly grayish brown that it used to be.
Since I don’t like the effect of all the daffodil foliage in among the primroses, I am going to put the new daffodils in back of them instead of among them. I do hope to have a few open spots between the primroses where I can put in a few patches of common crocus, grape hyacinths. Tulips dasysteman, T. Clusiana and Fritillaria meleagris. None of these has coarse foliage to interfere with our enjoyment of the primroses.
Since tulips only last two or three years at the most in my garden, between the competition of tree roots and some fifty years accumulation of root diseases in the soil. I plan on getting new ones at least every three years. I particularly want to order some new double early tulips and some of the single early to put in that little 1-foot strip between my drive and the little boxwood hedge that I have started along the property line. And in between them will be tucked crocus, grape hyacinths and some waterlily tulips (Tulipa Kaufmanniana), the latter for early bloom.
The flower bed in the front corner of the lawn has been looking pretty much neglected. And it has been neglected for several years. The work schedule calls for digging out everything in it in September and giving it a large part of the compost that is in the back part of the yard.
Into this bed will go a collection of newer Darwin, lily-flowered, parrot and peony-flowered tulips, and the new varieties of daffodils that I blow myself to each fall. I got some quack grass into that bed some years ago with one of the perennials that I planted and it is going to take some very careful working over the soil to get every individual piece of that underground white stem out of the soil. The bed, roughly x 20 feet, will get some 25 or 30 wheel- barrow loads of compost, plus a complete commercial fertilizer.
It is rather hard to understand why so many people think that having a compost pile is such a terrific problem. There is absolutely nothing to it! All you have to do is pile up all of the dead leaves in the fall when they drop onto the lawn and more in the spring after you have raked them out of your flower beds and hedges. Then during the summer you throw on any weeds that you pull, provided they haven’t gone to seed, and any vegetable garbage, such as pea pods, lima bean pods, corn husks and what have you. If you don’t have enough, get a truckload of sawdust from the mill, and mix that in with the other things.
If the pile is shaded, it won’t dry out as much and will therefore decompose a little more. If the pile is entirely above ground, it will decompose faster than if it is in a hole, because the bacteria will get the oxygen supply that they need much better above ground.
There is no need of adding a lot of fancy bacteria because unless you put all the compost in the oven and sterilize it, it has plenty of bacteria naturally. There is no need of adding lime and fertilizer unless you want to brag at your garden club meeting that you are making artificial manure. I find that things I put on the pile up through mid-June are usually sufficiently decomposed for use by late September. It is not powder, of course, but you get more for your money if it isn’t.
I sharpen my short-handled round-pointed shovel and simply chop down to the base of the pile in 1 or 2-inch widths. I find that this crumbles up beautifully. Our agronomists tell us that we get far more value out of this material using it when it is only partially rotted than if we wait until it is rotted down to powder.
Lawns are always a problem in summer unless you live far enough north so that you have cool days and nights. Even though you apply the equivalent of 1 inch of rainfall per week, using some sort of a sprinkler, it won’t help if your soil temperature is up into the low 80’s so that your bluegrass roots go dormant.
Under this condition fertilizer will be of no value. But it is a good idea to have it on hand so that as soon as your soil temperatures drop down into the low 70’s, you can give your lawn an application of a complete fertilizer such as a 6-10-4, 4-12-4. 5-10-5, 5-10.10 or something similar. It is amazing how much a poor lawn can be pepped up during the cool fall weather, especially if you give it water when it doesn’t rain. The spots where you take out weeds will grow over in a hurry.
Most of us probably have a good crop of crabgrass or wildgrass or water grass (whatever you want to call it) that is nice and green now but will turn ‘brown and die with frost. Right now, it has started to go to seed. And it will do so no matter how much you rake it with a crabgrass rake or kid yourself into believing that your new power lawnmower is cutting off all the seed heads before they get started.
While you are sitting in the shade with that cool drink, why not plan your fall planting of rhododendrons and azaleas (if they will grow in your locality) or of ordinary evergreens, shrubs, trees and vines? The broad-leaved evergreens – the rhododendrons. boxwood, firethorn. Oregon holly grape, pieris. [lollies and many others – can be, planted (luring September. Of course, you should water them if the soil is not sufficiently moist.
I like to plant the acid soil forms, such as rhododendrons and azaleas, in almost pure peatmoss, especially if the soil is not naturally acid and requires some iron sulfate to acidify it. The needled evergreen’s, as the -pines, spruces, hemlocks, yews and others, do not have to have an acid soil. but. like the broad-leaved evergreens, they must have good drainage. I always like to go directly to the nursery and wait for my order to be dug, then take it home and plant it.
Except for the very windy sections out in the plains, fall is a better time to plant deciduous trees and shrubs than- spring in many ways. You will find the soil is in much better condition to work. You will have more time and you can be sure that trees and shrubs have been freshly dug at the nursery and have not been stored over winter in their big storage cellars or sheds.
Why not be a little venturesome and try some flowering shrubs that others in your neighborhood do not have? Try some of the different viburnums, some of the species of lilacs, some of the many varieties of cotoneasters. From the catalogs select shrubs such as the Chinese witchhazel that blooms in February, others that bloom during March, April or May and so forth until you finally end up with the native witchhazel in November. I like to select those that have interesting fruits and berries and attractive autumn color. With this kind of shrub you get more for your money.
And in trees, don’t stick to those that everyone else has! Try some of the other varieties of flowering crabs, some of the different Japanese flowering cherries, the goldenrain-tree. the golden-chain, the Chinese scholar tree. the redbud. With our ranch-type houses we often do not need the big shade trees like the elm and the sugar maple ‘but can use the smaller ones to better advantage.
And during these warm ‘August days, sitting in the shade of the big bush honeysuckle or back under the big red oaks, I Like -to look around my yard and ask myself just what strangers coming into the yard think of it. What criticisms do they have? What would they suggest that I do that I haven’t already done? Then, as I look around, I always see some spots that have not been worked on for maybe fifteen or twenty years that I figure could well be decorated. After all, that is half the fun of gardening. You can change it from year to year. You don’t have to do it all one year, but a bit this fall or next spring. Pull out this old shrub that you are getting tired of. Put in a new one. Pull out this bit of periwinkle ground cover that has been there for years and try something else in its place. After all, variety is the spice of life. And planning is the key to achieving variety.
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