Charlie’s Mid April Newsletter
As the days lengthen and warm in our zone 5 garden, the perennial plants and bulbs are exploding with growth and flowers. One tried and true perennial flower that’s up and starting it’s march towards May flowering is our peonies. These are the showiest of the spring flowers with their big, gaudy, often fragrant blooms. Read here about some cool varieties you might want to plant this spring in your garden.
The rhubarb is up as well as some wild greens such as winter cress and dandelions. We’ll be planting more soon as the soil dries out. One way to get a jump on the veggie growing season and grow vegetables in a small yard is to grow them in containers. I talk about some great vegetable varieties for containers and unique container options in this newsletter.
Calendula flowers are bright and cheery and they make a great addition to your garden. These annuals self sow readily so once you have them, they’ll be back forever. There are some new varieties that stretch the flower color range and I talk about growing and using calendulas in this newsletter.
Although it’s not time to plant spring flowering bulbs, I have to talk about the bulbs that are blooming in our yard. One of our favorites is the species or Dutch iris. This small beauty comes back faithfully every year with bright blue flowers with shades of white and yellow. I talk about this sweet bulb here.
I’m continuing to highlight some of my most popular webinars. Below is a link to my No-Dig Gardening Webinar. If you want to garden smarter and more in tune with Nature without sacrificing adding extra work, try this technique. Check out this webinar.
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For many years, I, like many gardeners would have a spring ritual of tilling the annual flower and vegetable beds. But after some research and listening to other expert gardeners, we sold the tiller and transitioned to No-Dig Gardening. We haven’t looked back since. No Dig Gardening is better for the soil, plants and people tending the garden. It preserves the ecological life in the soil by not destroying the microbial network with tilling or turning the earth. The result is healthier plants, less weeds, less inputs and less work for the gardeners.
In my No-Dig Gardening Webinar, I talk about all the benefits of No-Dig and how it’s s smarter way to garden and make new beds. Then I launch into the different ways to do no-dig and talk about the benefits of raised beds. Included in the webinar is a discussion on planting methods, succession planting, watering, fertilizing, fall and winter bed care and transitioning from regular beds to no dig beds. I also talk about special topics such as keyhole gardening, straw bale gardening and hugelkultur.
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Until next time, I’ll be seeing you in the garden.
Charlie
How to Grow: Peonies
No other perennial flower creates an amazing spring show like the peony. These herbaceous perennials are just starting to grow in our zone 5 garden and by May the plant will stand 3 feet tall and wide topped with an abundance of colorful, fragrant blooms. Depending on the weather, the blooms can last a week or so. And if you plant a number of different varieties you can extend the flower show even longer.
There are many classic peony varieties to grow. ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ is a double pink flowered heirloom variety with a delightful fragrance. ‘Karl Rosenfield’ is considered one of the best double, red peony varieties and has mid spring booms with sturdy stem making it great as a cut flower indoors. And ‘Festiva Maxima’ has knock your socks off fragrance on heirloom, double white flowers splashed with red. We love to broaden the color scheme of our peonies with ‘Pink Hawaiian Coral’ . This apricot-pink colored bloomer has semi-double flowers, blooms in early summer and is very fragrant. ‘Garden Treasure’ is an Itoh hybrid. This is a cross between an herbaceous peony and tree peony. It features bright yellow, semi-double flowers with a melon scent and sturdy plants that bloom anddon’t need support.
Peonies are long lived perennial flowers so be careful where you plant them. Sometimes gardeners forget about trees and tall shrubs growing nearby. These plants eventually grow tall, shading their peony patch. This reduces flowering. Once established, they need little care. Just some compost in spring and some weeding to reduce competition from other plants.
Plant nursery grown or bare root peonies now. Plant so the crown of the peony isn’t more than 1 inch below the soil line. Any deeper and it will reduce flowering. Also, don’t place too much wood chip mulch around the plant or the same thing can happen. As the plant starts to grow place metal grow rings around the stems. This is a support system where the stems grow through the rings and stay supported when flowering. The rings disappear in the foliage and flowers stand tall even during rainy, windy weather. Another option is to wrap the plant in chicken wire, although it’s less attractive.
Enjoy the flower show and remember to cut and bring indoors some stems to have in our home. Cut the flowers as they begin to open in the soft bud stage for the longest flowering. The fragrance on many peony varieties can be overwhelming, so start with a few stems and then add more as desired. Another way to display peony flowers indoors is to float the flowers in the shallow bowl of water. Cut the stems to just below the flower and float away.
Go here for more on Peonies
Go here for my Video on Peonies
Container Grown Vegetables
Growing your own vegetables is a joy for the taste, freshness and as a way to save some grocery money. But some gardeners don’t have the space for a full garden or even a raised bed. The solution is container gardening. There are many veggies you can grow in containers that will mature and give you food all summer as long as the area is in full sun and pots well cared for. Even if you have space for an in-ground garden, containers are a great way to grow specialty veggies or just accent the garden beds.
It all starts with the container. The bigger the pot, the more plants you can grow and you can grow larger plants such as zucchini and tomatoes. Clay pots are great for plants that like a drier soil such as thyme, oregano and other Mediterranean herbs. The newer rubberized polyurethane pots are great for most vegetables and self watering pots reduce the amount of work. Also, consider railing planters, standing small beds with trellises for growing vining veggies and hanging baskets to grow cascading plants and dwarf varieties.
We love having vegetable combinations in containers. We grow dwarf indeterminate tomato varieties, such as ‘Goodhearted’, to produce cherry tomatoes on 1- 2-foot tall plants. If grown in a large pot, around the base we plant lettuces, spinach and arugula. These are harvested before the plant grows too big.
In railing planters that have a shallower soil depth, we grow lettuces, arugula, spinach, beets, radishes and baby carrots. All grow well, even in part sun and there’s enough soil for all of them. On elevated beds with a trellis on top, we grow dwarf peas, such as ‘Sugar Ann’, and dwarf, climbing cucumbers such as ‘Bush Crop’.
You can even grow large vegetables, such as zucchini, winter squash and sweet corn, in larger containers such as 20 inch diameter plastic ones. ‘Astria’ is a great bush zucchini, ‘Bush Delicata’ is a smaller Delicata squash plant and ‘On Deck’. is a dwarf sweet corn.
When growing vegetables in containers, remember any fruiting vegetable needs at last 6 hours of sun a day to produce well. Greens and root crops can get by with less sun. If growing on a deck or patio you can move the pots around during the growing season to get the best light. Use a mix of potting soil and compost for the best growth. Keep the plants well watered, unless you’re using self watering containers. But still check the water reservoir every few days. Fertilize regularly using an organic water soluble product. Once one crop, such as lettuce or beans, is finished, refresh the soil and plant a fall crop such as carrots or kale.
You should have fewer pests when growing veggies in containers, but still watch out for insect laying butterflies and moths and squirrels. Covering the container with a mesh cloth or row cover can help protect your plants.
Go here for more on Container Vegetables
Calendula flowers are a great way to add instant color to your garden. These annuals flower freely all summer, especially if you take the time to deadhead them. While the traditional calendula flower is that bright orange color we all know and love, there are other varieties with different colors. Calendula (Calendula officinalis) have undergone a bit of a transformation with yellow and even pink colored blooms.
‘Pink Surprise’ features double blooms with a pink/peach coloring. This heirloom has shorter stems so fits well in a small container. ‘Sunset Buff’ looks like a sunset with a combination of pink, apricot and red petals. ‘Orange Flash’ and ‘Triangle Flashback’ have rose, copper toned blooms with hints of peach and cream. ‘Ivory Princess’ has pale yellow, almost to white, colored, semi-double blooms.
Whichever variety of calendula you decide to grow you can start seeds now indoors in cool climates or direct sow into the garden in warmer locations after the last frost has passed. Calendula plants can take a light frost and survive. Calendula are very rewarding. They germinate and grow quickly into flowering plants.
Sow seeds in trays or cell packs indoors thinning to one seeding per cell once the true leaves form. Depending on the size of your cell, either grow until you’re ready to plant outdoors from the cell pack or transplant into a pot one size larger. Plant in the garden in full sun on well-drained soil. We grow our calendulas on raised beds and they grow fabulously.
After the first flush of flowers, deadhead to stimulate a second round. Continue deadheading all summer for many rounds of blooms. Even if you don’t deadhead, the plants will probably still keep flowering but it will be less and the dead flower heads are not very attractive. If you leave the spent blooms to form seeds, calendula will self sow rampantly and you’ll have probably too many seedlings in spring. If you’re willing to thin seedlings each spring, you’ll never have to plant calendula again.
You can use calendula flowers medically to make salves or you can eat the petals in salads and soups.
Iris flowers are a delight in any garden. Our bearded, Japanese and Siberia irises are growing and should be blooming in the coming weeks. But there is also another group of irises that are grown from bulbs, not roots. The Dutch iris (Iris Hollandica) including Iris reticulata grow from bulbs planted in the fall with other spring bloomers such as daffodils and tulips. These irises are a treat in the spring garden and ours are blooming right now. Unlike the herbaceous iris plants, these bulb iris grow short and flower about 12- to 24-inches above the ground. Some, such as Iris reticulata, flower at 6 inches tall. So this type of iris is best grown in the front of a flower border with other spring bloomers such as narcissus, scilla and crocus.
Although planted in fall, it’s good to notice this spring beauty now and make notes to buy bulbs for an autumn planting. There are many different colored varieties to grow. ‘Blue Diamond’ has the classic blue petals with yellow undertones. ‘Cantab’ has light blue colored petals. ‘Golden Harvest’ is yellow, ‘Lion King’ has red flowers and ‘Eye Catcher’ had white flowers with purple undertones and specks.
Plant Dutch iris in fall when you plant other spring flowering bulbs in full sun on well-drained soil. Plant in groups for the biggest show. Dutch iris are hardy in USDA zones 5 to 9, but often may not come back strongly the second year. If you want them to perennialize, plant where you have hot, dry conditions in summer. Also, remove the spent flowers, but not the foliage in spring. In wet summer areas, consider digging up the bulbs after the foliage dies back and storing them in a dark, cool place all summer to replant in fall. They will be easiest to save if grown in containers.
Dutch iris are great as cut flowers indoors. They last a long time in the vase and the stem and flower size fits perfectly with other spring bloomers. They are favorites of florists for these reasons.
