Lavender’s Blue….

Posted on  June 21, 2006  in General Posts, How to: Plant Care, Month 06: June

Just as many early to mid summer plants start to look a bit tired, the lavender bushes send up their beautiful blue spires with their unmistakable old-fashioned fragrance to lift the whole garden out of the doldrums. What a treat this plant is, easy care and totally reliable, it is also extremely drought tolerant which seems to be what everyone is talking about these days.

Lavender is one of the mediterranean herbs that thrives in almost any soil except wet sticky clay. It needs good drainage and as much sun as it can get, but will be ok in a slightly shady spot. The leaves have a blue-green tint to them, some with a silvery sheen due to the tiny hairs on them which help reflect the sun. It is a sub-shrub, the leaves remain on the bush all year round so it makes an excellent informal hedge. It can be clipped right after flowering to tidy it up, and this will reward you with a second flush of flowers towards September or October.

The flowers are generally shades of lilac to deep purple, with some pinks and a lovely white. Especially decorative are the French or Spanish lavenders with their elongated top petals which look like tiny butterflies hovering over the plant. This works very well as a specimen plant – try it in one of those wonderful big terracotta pots for a choice garden feature.

 

 

Lavender grows readily from seed and will be in flower next summer if you sow them now. eSeeds.com is featuring several selected varieties of lavender at 50% off until the end of June.

Oriental Poppies (Papaver orientale)

Posted on  May 31, 2006  in General Posts, Plant Talk

poppy in border The poppies look absolutely fantastic this year, the best I remember them. I think the cold spring has actually been a big help to them as the flower stems are much shorter and stockier than they usually are, and they haven’t flopped over at all. Since I never get around to staking anything, this is a welcome sight. The orange-red flowers are as huge and striking as ever, and the whole plant looks so much tidier and more presentable than in previous years (it can get a bit scruffy when it grows all tall and lanky and lies about).

 

 

poppy flower closeup

This is one of the easiest plants to look after as well as being one of the most spectacular. They don’t need dividing, in fact, they resent being moved or fussed with at all. The only thing I do is completely cut back the faded leaves in mid autumn, saving the wonderful big pepperpot seed heads. Fresh new leaves grow to about 6-8 inches high by winter, and they stay evergreen though the harshest weather. In fact, I think the foliage is at its best in winter, very attractive rimmed with frost.

PizzicatoCoral PinkBrilliant

Oriental poppies grow very easily from seed, and come in a range of beautiful colours. Check out the selection on eSeeds.com: ‘Pizzicato’ is a popular mix of pinks and oranges; ‘Coral Pink’ is a pretty soft pink that is easy to blend into a pastel colour scheme, and ‘Brilliant’ is the brightest, darkest true red imaginable. A definite showstopper in the early summer border

Verbena bonariensis – a plant for all seasons

Posted on  August 9, 2005  in General Posts, Plant Talk

This lovely plant is at its best in late summer, with its tall airy stems topped with bright purple flowerheads wafting gently in summer breezes. But don’t let its delicate appearance fool you! It is very tough, a perennial that survives the harshest winter conditions and comes up smiling. A strong and cold autumn or winter wind doesn’t make any difference to this plant, it might as well be like the breezes we have now. And those flowerheads dry very nicely on their stems and last all through the winter – they look great frosted or covered with a bobble of snow. It probably has to do with the strong but flexible stems, almost wiry to the touch. The leaves also are tiny but quite sharp and tough. Verbena bonariensis isn’t like one of the soft grasses that you want to caress, but more like pampas grass that is very harsh but looks deceptively gentle.

Easy to grow from seed, it flowers in the first year but really develops after a couple of seasons into a beautiful tall clump. Perfect for a screening ‘wall’ or ‘hedge’ in a garden where its height (up to six feet) is welcome without any heaviness or darkness. Sow seed in midsummer or very early spring and be patient as they take a long time to germinate. Then plant the small clumps directly out into the garden bed. They are disease resistant and even the slugs and snails won’t touch them. What more could you ask for? In my opinion, it is an almost perfect plant.

A quick tidy up of the courtyard

Posted on  July 11, 2005  in General Posts

All I meant to do today was to go out with my son and replant his pumpkin, and that was only because I felt so guilty about him having to drop out of his afterschool gardening club because of my new job. He came home last week with his tiny pumpkin plant that he had grown from seed and instructions to repot it immediately. Out we went into the warm sunshine, and only about three hours later did we come back in for lunch! This always seems to happen when you work in the garden, you lose track of time so easily. I thought I might just tidy up the courtyard area a little bit while I was outside since it was such an unwelcoming mess. I took the broom and swept up all the clutter that the kids inevitably make, and the bits of leaves and twigs that blow around and get stuck in the corners. It looked so much better so quickly that I thought I might also weed along the edges as well. Being an old house the bottom edge of the stones are quite pitted with lots of dirt stuck into the cracks and crevices between the house wall and the stones of the patio – just perfect for all manner of weeds to take root. Using my favourite gardening tool, a big old screwdriver, I dug up all the weeds and swept the area again. Now things were looking really smart! It is amazing how a bit of attention can change the look and feel of an entire area so quickly. Now the courtyard felt like somewhere we might sit occasionally and have a quiet drink or maybe even dinner!

It felt great to be back out in the garden again! There is so much more work to be done even in this small courtyard area, but I’m looking forward to making this into a really nice area for the whole family to spend time this summer.

The Garden Tapestry Journal will now be in a slightly different format, updates weekly or possibly even more often, but I will still send out the email messages letting you all know the latest, so be sure to sign up for your free subscription.

Coming Soon

Posted on  June 12, 2005  in News Bug

Once we have migrated all our old material to the new site we are excited to announce that we will also have available for download a little application you can run that will tell you when new articles appear on Hedgerows. Stay tuned!

Hello world!

Posted on  April 23, 2005  in General Posts

Welcome to Hedgerows Garden Tapestry Journal. We are moving to new technology and will be restoring what information we can from the old website. Please bear with us. Thank you!

“Shrubs in the garden, perennials from seed and garden surprises”

Posted on  June 20, 2000  in General Posts, How to: Garden Maintenance, How to: Plant Care, Thoughts

Final Thoughts:
“Shrubs in the garden, perennials from seed and garden surprises” by Mala Gunadasa-Rohling

A nice surprise greeted me one morning a couple of weeks ago – I looked out the window at the weeping willow that hangs over one corner of our garden from the neighbours (a very nice ‘borrowed’ plant) and saw that the lower branches were covered in beautiful pink blooms! During last summer, without anyone noticing, the clematis that grows along our fence had reached up and grown into the weeping willow, and was now in full bloom.

I have a beautiful forsythia bush in the garden, in direct view of the office window. It has lovely fresh green leaves and extremely graceful, tall arching branches. This bush wasn’t pruned last year, (unlike the chopped back one right next to it) and was left to grow into its natural shape and height – about 10 feet tall! This would be great if the weather cooperated: I expect annuals and some perennials to be affected by a heavy rainstorm and flop over, especially the topheavy ones like paeonies, delphiniums, and the delicate, wispy wildflowers I am so fond off. That is why there are always instructions to stake them…But shrubs? Shouldn’t woody shrubs stand up by themselves? I always thought so, but not in the case of this forsythia! On a rainy day, or even the damp, misty days of a Vancouver spring and summer, the days that seem like 200% humidity, the moisture collects on all the leaves and branches and folds them over. My lovely bush looks like a sad, overgrown mop turned upside down in the garden. Pathetic. Almost horizontal, it leans precariously over the other plants around it, threatening to knock over the lilies coming up beside it.

What happened to this bush? Why would it grow so tall? It was probably overfertilised, resulting in far too much fresh, lush growth last year that hasn’t developed any woody structure and so flops around badly. It would have better to grow half that height and have the strength to support itself properly. It is also growing in a rather shady spot – it probably needs more and stronger sunshine to prevent the lax habit, just like seedlings get leggy if they don’t get enough light.

The best thing to do for this plant is to give it a severe pruning right after flowering (oh, did I mention that these nice long stems barely had any flowers on them at all this spring? And I was so looking forward to a lovely show of bright yellow…it never materialised). Remember that forsythia roots from cuttings very easily, you could quickly have a whole hedge of it. It actually makes a very attractive informal flowering hedge – just keep it fairly low, no more than 4 feet tall.

The other shrubs in the garden are doing very well, except perhaps for the rhododendrons. These look a little sickly and sparse…seem to be losing a lot of the lower leaves, and the rest are a bit yellow. This is probably because of bad drainage, most of the garden is a bit of a bog, so much so that I can watch the corner of the patio sinking into the ground after a rainfall.

The ceonothus bushes are doing fine, as are the witch hazel, hebes, hydrangeas and skimmias. The Pacific dogwoods are not almost the size of small trees, very attractive in shape and form. They are a bit late in flowering this year, only now are the first pale, creamy blooms appearing.

Growing perennials from seed is particularly rewarding, as the results will last for many years. My Shasta daisies, lavender and lychnis will be blooming very shortly and I’m really looking forward to them! The daisy buds are numerous enough to risk cutting some and bringing them indoors, as they are supposed to last quite long in a vase. The lychnis, with its soft, hairy silver-green leaves should make a great contrast to the brilliant, magenta flowers. I love the bright colour of this flower, and there is a lovely white version also which I must get.

As for the lavender, who doesn’t like this plant? Easy care, will grow in poor soil, doesn’t need much water, and just a trim at the end of the season to tidy it up if you wish. The fragrance is unforgettable, as is the colour. Delicate yet hardy at the same time. As useful as you want to make it (you can make soap and cosmetics from it, use it for scent sachets or potpourri, even cook with it), it also looks lovely just sitting there in the border or in a pot on the patio. I have just finished reading a book where the author tells a story that takes place in the lavender fields that used to cover the hills of southwest London in the 1800’s. A particularly touching story of a young girl and her sick baby brother takes place in these fields…I will never be able to look at a lavender bush again without remembering Lucy and Horatio. It is truly amazing how your perception of plants changes with experiences like this – where a flower has a part in a good book or movie, or even more strongly, if it is part of a friend or relatives treasured garden…if you can possibly get a cutting or seeds from these plants, or resort to buying a similar plant from a nursery, even if it is the ordinary, everyday variety, it is guaranteed to produce more pleasure and memories for you than anything that doesn’t have this ‘background’ or ‘association’. Make sure your garden is filled with your own personal favourites to really get the most enjoyment from it.

Wierd and Wonderful Uses for Vegetables.

Posted on  June 20, 2000  in Garden Gossip, General Posts

Horticulture News from Around the World:

Here are three stories from all around the world that focus on vegetables!

1. Mega-Artichokes to Power Homes?

(LONDON) – Reuters: Spanish farmers are growing three-meter high artichokes for burning in special power stations to produce electricity, the Independent newspaper reported on Thursday.

The genetically-modified monster vegetables, which boast seven meter roots, will be generating power for 60,000 people when operations in the northern towns of Villabilla de Burgos and Alcala de Gurrea begin in two years.

The newspaper said twin power stations will burn 105,000 tonnes of the dried and pulped Cynara Cardunculs each year. Farmers were persuaded to sow the prickly plant by EU subsidies and price guarantees from the electricity generator.

Burning plants for energy is not a new idea, but the biomass sector has seen a revival in recent years as environmental concerns rise. While there are already a number of biomass schemes in Europe they often struggle to compete commercially with other green energy schemes.

An Irish scheme to burn cannabis as a fuel foundered last year because of it was considered too expensive compared with wind power projects.

2. Scientists Champion Drought-Tolerant Crops in India
By John Chalmers

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – An agricultural research group said on Tuesday it has pioneered two drought-tolerant chickpea crop varieties that have reversed the fortunes of poor farmers in one of five Indian states suffering from an acute water shortage.

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), based in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, said alternative crops and the application of community-managed watersheds are solutions for the 800 million people living in low rainfall areas around the globe.

“In the semi-arid tropics, drought occurs two out of every five years. And even when there is rainfall, it is erratic, varying from year to year, and within seasons,” the group said in a statement released at a news conference in New Delhi.

“Further, only 30-60 percent of this rainfall is used effectively for crop production; the remaining 40-70 percent of rainwater is lost as runoff, evaporation and deep drainage.”

ICRISAT said that in Andhra Pradesh, one of several Indian states currently reeling under severe drought conditions, it had introduced short-duration chickpea varieties which mature in 85-100 days and therefore escape end-of-season drought. For farmers near Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, 1999 was particularly harsh: there were no rains at all after October 21. But those who grew the Swetha and Kranthi chickpea varieties harvested as much as 1.7 tonnes per hectare.

ICRISAT said Andhra Pradesh’s ‘silent chickpea revolution’ — production of the pulse has grown sevenfold in the state over the past 10 years — has been a boon to farmers previously struggling to make a living from cotton crops.

The chickpea requires less investment, labor and fertilizer than cotton crops, which have long been dogged by pests. In recent years dozens of indebted cotton farmers in central and southern India have committed suicide.

ICRISAT said that in conjunction with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research it had also released five varieties of groundnut in India, three of which are tolerant to end-of-season drought and two are tolerant to mid-season drought.

The institute also promotes the conservation of rainfall through community-managed watersheds, which it says increase crop productivity and reduce soil loss.

“It’s a good approach to properly harvest the little rainfall we have,” said ICRISAT Director General William Dar, who said that of the 800 million people living in semi-arid tropics, 300 million are the ‘poorest of the poor’ and food-insecure.

Barry Shapiro, director of the group’s natural resource management program, said that expansion of deserts is affecting 40 percent of Asia’s land surface.

Advocating a long-term approach, he said scientists need to use remote sensing to identify areas of degradation, geographical information systems to locate ideal watershed areas and terrain modeling to capture rainwater efficiently.

3. ‘Super-broccoli’ to help fight cancer

BRITISH scientists have developed a “super-broccoli” that could help to combat colon cancer, it was disclosed yesterday. 

It looks and tastes the same as ordinary broccoli but holds 100 times more of the chemical sulphoraphane, which helps to kill cancer-causing substances in food. The chemical is in Brussels sprouts and cauliflower but strongest in broccoli. 

Scientists at the government-funded John Innes Centre in Norwich bred the broccoli, which could be in the shops in 2002, by crossing an ordinary variety with a wild Sicilian relative. Tests on people could start next year, New Scientist magazine said. Dr Richard Mithen, a plant biologist at the John Innes Centre, said it was acknowledged that a third of cancers were probably caused by bad diet. Colon cancer kills about 25,000 people a year in Britain.

Increase your vegetable production with Succession Planting

Posted on  June 20, 2000  in General Posts, How to: Garden Maintenance, How to: Plant Care, Month 06: June

June In-Depth How-To:
Increase your vegetable production with Succession Planting

Many beginner gardeners plant their crops in the spring, harvest the vegetables, then clean up the garden and wait till next year to start all over again. It is very easy to get more enjoyment, not to mention more production out of your garden. Try succession planting for a constant supply of fresh produce all summer (and into autumn) long. No matter where you live, you can harvest at least two crops from the same area of the garden during the growing season.

Divide the crops you will be growing into two different categories : cool weather and warm weather crops. Crops that do well in cool weather include: beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, kohlrabi, lettuce, parsnips, peas, radish, spinach, mustard greens, kale, turnips and swiss chard. Plant these varieties as early in the growing season as possible for your area of the country. After you have harvested these varieties from the garden, follow up by planting your warm weather vegetables. 

 

 

Warm weather vegetables include: beans, corn, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, okra, peppers, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes and watermelons. In a few areas of the country, a third planting of the cool weather crops can be planted again in the fall. Below are some examples of succession planting.

 

 

In many areas of the southern US, the growing season can be over 230 days.

Start by planting lettuce, spinach or other cool weather crops that can be harvested in 60 to 75 days. Follow that with a planting of beans or cucumbers (these also mature in about 60 to 75 days). This will still leave you with about 70 days for a late planting of root crops, cole crops or greens. Or as a second crop, you can plant corn, tomatoes, melons etc. and still have these mature by the end of the season.

In the northern areas of the country, you also can get two crops out of the same section of the garden. With as little as 150 days in the season, you can plant an early maturing lettuce or radish and follow with a crop of beans. In northern states with a longer growing season, tomatoes, melons, corn, etc. can all be planted after you have harvested the earlier crops of lettuce, spinach and cole crops.

Just remember, in order to plan succession planting, you have to know how many days each variety takes to mature and how long your growing season is. Also, do not plant members of the same family in succession, as this could put a strain on your soil’s resources. More on this aspect of vegetable gardening, known as ‘Crop Rotation’ in a future issue of the Journal.