Horsefeathers!!

Our spring apparently will be short lived, and to be truthful, it wasn't spring at all, I guess.  Following the front that's coming through now and the rain that it's bringing, the forecast is for lows of 29 degrees on Sunday morning and 25 degrees on Monday morning.  That qualifies as a hard freeze.  Crapola!!  I was so hoping this wouldn't happen, and I certainly hoped it would have waited a week or two for this new growth to harden off some.  Probably even a couple of weeks wouldn't be long enough.  Dang!  The rose bushes are looking so beautiful.  Tomorrow I'll take some photos of them in between rain showers... and say good-bye to spring for a while.  Of course, now would be a good time for the meteorological computers to be wrong, wouldn't it?

Hold the presses and praise God!!  I just looked at the forecast again (an hour has passed), and now it says the low on Monday morning will be 27 degrees.  That's an improvement!  Maybe, just maybe, there will be more upward revisions.  I certainly pray so!

"I won't be outside long."

I was absolutely serious when I hollered back to DH that I was just going out to put epsom salt on the roses and I would be right back.  I was so tired that I really wanted to sack out on the sofa, but I was way late with the epsom salt since it takes 30 days to start working.  So... no excuses.  I had to!  But what is it about the garden that wakes you up and energizes you??  Instant pick-me-up.  Sleepy no more.

Two hours later...

Well, I needed to remedy the pruning that 'Clotilde Soupert' received last evening at dusk.  And then I had to pick up the trimmings that I had left where they fell.  And then I decided I had to work on the driveway bed which I had gotten my first look at in months (weeks?) while I was administering the epsom salt.

Gosh!  'White Maman Cochet' is going gangbusters!!  She's covered with red new growth and even has several big flower buds, but she also had a bunch of freeze damage.  And underneath her was a whole crop of undesirable weeds. Now since I only came outside to toss some epsom salt... no, I'm not the always-prepared type of gardener who never goes anywhere without her gloves in one pocket and her pruners in the other. Who does that??? Personally, I prefer to repeatedly go back into the house for every implement and amendment to be used in the garden that day - one at a time.  Why carry them all and strain myself?  Sunday I went back in the house four times in the span of sixty seconds!  Just so we're all on the same page, I did not have my dirt-proof, latex-coated gloves on my person.

Eeewww!!  Damp, black compost under my fingernails. Yuck, is this what gardening is?  Not in my garden!

But I got over it and then persevered until all the little weeds were gone. Is it oxalis that sort of looks like clover? Those buggers have deep, thin roots/runners that really need to be grasped deeply in the soil.  My disgust was great, but it was tempered by victory and the presence of lots of little Purple Coneflower seedlings.

I moved around the bed, and after much trimming of the 'Victoria Blue' salvia from last year I finally just pulled out its ten-pound rootball, realizing it was going to be too large growing under WMC which, after all, isn't a baby anymore.  I pulled dozens of salvia seedlings before making this decision, and I was wishing I had just one to transplant near this spot, because I loved it last year.  Even better, though, I just sprinkled some coneflower seeds from the surviving deadheads there instead. 

Then came 'Madame Antoine Rebe' who has never had more leaves in her whole life.  It's amazing what some sun will do.  She even has some of her signature long, slender, red flower buds, but she also had freeze damage that needed to be removed.  She has put on lots of growth since being relocated here, and much of it was crossing and closely parallel canes. With leaves obstructing the view of her structure I really didn't make much of an attempt at thinning her except for one sizable side-shoot grouping.  It's hard to remove something like that that's flourishing with growth, but it had to be done - and even more that didn't get done, but that's another day.  It's a good thing that this rose has never indicated any sensitivity to chopping.

Then I had fun sprinkling more echinacea seeds among the daylilies I planted near 'Mme Abel Chatenay' and between the old SDLMs and other places. I've got lots of deadheads and seed packets.

Tomorrow it's on to 'Louis Philippe' who is completely leafed out and huge.  The rope that had been holding him vertical broke recently, so he's leaning over.  He's definitely a project.  And definitely, I won't shear him too short like I did last year.  I really don't think he liked it.  I'll only trim away enough to clear the path and give a little sun to the daylilies and 'Richard's Rose' who is all of eight inches tall and directly north of Louie, meaning Louie basically eclipses the sun.  Hopefully, all will be sunnier when that golden orb rises higher in the sky.
  
Sorry about the lack of photos. Dirty fingers and cameras don't mix well... plus I forgot.  Remember, I was only going out to throw epsom salt.  Oh, well, here's an ad lib.

Garden remodel continues

Tis the season, you know, for reinventing the wheel, garden-wise.  It has happened every year so far in my garden.  I guess I’ve given up vowing that it won’t.  What the heck.  We move furniture around. Why not roses and other plants?  Today after work I spent the most productive two and a half hours moving plants.  Don’t you feel thrilled with yourself when things go well and smoothly??  That was me when I came in at dark.

Working in the front garden – as everywhere – certain things must happen before certain other things can happen.  How many times have I walked past certain roses and certain empty spaces in total frustration with the status quo?  Don’t answer that.  Well, today things were moving! 

‘Mary Guthrie’ has been jammed between two ‘Red Ruffles’ azaleas and the Tea rose, ‘Duquesa’, literally buried under these other plants.  The damp ground made the move easy.  She was up and out in seconds and in her new home next to ‘Louis Philippe’ in minutes.  I was amazed by her large size since I’d never been able to see her where she was.  Now those big, bright pink single flowers will be much more visible.

‘Capitaine Dyel de Graville’ and ‘Mystic Beauty’ were in an even more awful situation.  I had planted them very close to each other (two feet apart) as babies, knowing it was probably unwise, er, definitely unwise.  The double whammy was a lack of sun, so they were looking pretty scrawny – if you could see what you were looking at.  When ‘Pink Perpetue’ moved away to Rose Petals Nursery, she left a prime space on the front circle.  The move of ‘Mary Guthrie’ left an opposing space across the path, so these were the destinations of CDdG and MB, both being kin to ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’.  After some bed preparation of MG’s former spot (lots of sand astonishingly close to the surface) I slipped the Capitaine out of the ground. Wow! He was bigger than he looked. Now he’s settled in next to ‘Duquesa’ with room in front for daylilies.

‘Mystic Beauty’ was a bit more reluctant but did submit, and on the way to the new spot, it dawned on me (palm to the forehead!) that I had planned to put MB next to ‘Duquesa’ and CDdG next to SDLM since MB is basically SDLM’s twin – just the opposite of what I had actually done.  Oh, well, move on, right?  So as I dug MB’s hole, it occurred to me that what I will have is a bank of ‘Souv de la Malmaison’ – three bushes next to each other! This could be quite a sight in full bloom!!  And MB will be surrounded by echinacea plants, because seeds have sprouted all over that area, and so many seedlings are growing there that I transplanted several over to CDdG.  This is a prime example of how a garden evolves and grows.

The azaleas got planted elsewhere, and a displaced Ilex crenata ‘Compacta Holly’ was placed in CDdG’s old spot.  And a good time was had by all!


My January hardscaping efforts finished off the edging on this corner and made a place for seven daylilies, using the last of my topsoil pile.  The bare shrub behind the daylilies is ‘Pinky Winky’ hydrangea, and behind that is ‘Mrs B. R. Cant’.  On the right is my new camellia that was potted on to a large pot since my ground is inhospitable to camellias.


The old plastic edging was allowing soil to spill out of this bed, and with more composted horse manure to be added soon I had to make a change in the edging, so I chose the same scalloped concrete blocks that I used in the new bed under the ‘Francois Juranville’ arbor.  It really wasn’t as difficult as you’d think. It took about half an hour. Those invisible bushes behind the newly planted daylilies are ‘Red Ruffles’ azaleas, looking much the worse for having been through the freeze.


As a way to hide new basal shoots from marauding squirrels, I planted snapdragons at the base of ‘Leonie Lamesch’ (above) and ‘Arcadia Louisiana Tea’ (below).  When they get bigger and bushy, I think they will offer some protection to the new cane breaks.  Speaking of squirrels, my plan to rid the garden of them was peanut butter and plaster of paris bonbons.  I read a report that hypercalcemia would result in a heart attack for the squirrel.  Alas, after I made 20 of them and put them out last Saturday I was doing more research and found an actual experiment where someone tested the lethality of these bonbons.  A squirrel was fed nothing but the bonbons for four days and didn’t die. Drat!!  Anyone need a big bucket of plaster of paris?




Lovely new growth on ‘Maman Cochet’ (above).


This is my ‘Quietness’.  Admittedly, at only one year old she has been in a less than total-sun position, so I moved her to a possibly less beneficial position on the west side of the house.  That means no sun until one o’clock in the afternoon.  Have I doomed her?  Well, possibly, but I made room for daylilies, so what’s done is done. Go for it, ‘Quietness’!!  I think it will take me all of one minute to prune her.


A Mophead (Hydrangea Macrophylla) making a break from winter.  Yay!!


‘Foxy’ Foxglove, having survived our summer, is blooming beautifully.


One of the snapdragons that I planted last winter along the front sidewalk next to the garage lasted through the summer and has become quite large this winter, and now it’s blooming beautifully, too.  I’ll have to be more lavish with my care of the new ones I have to plant, so they’ll live long and bloom again.


Remember last summer when I was dropping coneheads around the garden?  Here is one of the results.  I’m still dropping seeds around.  I really think echinacea is my favorite plant and flower.


Volunteers.  A weed at the top of the photo and ‘Victoria Blue’ Salvia seedlings.


Another Echinacea ‘Purple Coneflower’ seedling.


And a sweet viola volunteer.  Teensy, teensy blue flowers.  Love them!


David Austin’s ‘Lilian Austin’, a gift from Carol, is now in a big pot.  Hopefully, the clay pot won’t dry out too much in the heat of summer.


Newly planted daylilies. These are ‘Chinese Scholar’.  My planting plan was to keep plants of the same cultivar grouped together rather than scattering them around willy-nilly, figuring they would have a bigger impact that way.  There’s another cluster like this one nearby.


I also tried to plant the daylilies with roses of a similar color. These Dianthus chinensis (my other most favorite flower) will go under ‘Polonaise’ and some other red roses.

I’m really loving the cut in my job hours though I felt differently when it happened.  One extra hour a day is wonderful for getting a lot done in the garden before dark sets in.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the rain gauge registered .90 inches.  Happiness is almost an inch of rain!!  

It's raining!!

I had to share this blissful news with everyone. The misting turned to actual rain at 5:45 this evening and fell steadily at a medium rate for more than half an hour on my garden and the surrounding Ocala area, a part of the earth that is decidedly unfamiliar with the concept of rain for, lo, these many months. A sustained rain is a wonderful thing, but the icing on this cake is the off-and-on rain for hours afterward. I can't wait to check out the rain gauge in the morning.

The daylilies and dahlias that I hurriedly planted after work are thinking they're in garden heaven right now. Maybe this portends good things for the dahlias which were the bagged kind from Walmart. What can I say? I'm a sucker for those beautiful flower photos on the package even though just about nothing on those racks - except the caladiums and elephant ears - will ever survive in this part of Florida. Oh, but the hollyhock I bought as a bagged root is, indeed, sprouting!! The photo on the bag was pink - oh, joy - hopefully, it's the beautiful baby pink that I grew once and that graces my computer desktop. Yes, folks, it's not a rose. It's a gorgeous fluffy 'Summer Carnival' hollyhock.

I also want to clarify my pruning practices. Since I mostly grow OGR's, my garden's pruning needs are not typical.

• The Teas and Chinas get cleaned up, i.e., dead stuff is removed, growth that has extended into walkways or neighbors is cut off where it sprouted from the older cane, and just a bit of trimming - a scant few inches is removed from some tips for shaping. The freeze killed the brand new growth that was there, so all of that has to be removed back to healthy cane. I also remove any low growth that is growing downward or laying on the ground, and I try to thin clumps of growth, usually leaving a "Y" at the end of the cane. I've found that usually that third or fourth shoot will die back anyway later on.
• Some Polyanthas - notably 'Clotilde Soupert' - appreciate and need a refreshing pruning. My two bushes are about 4 feet tall, and I probably don't take off a foot of that height. However, the cutting triggers the auxin, and lovely new growth follows. There is nothing more gorgeous than Clotilde covered with her tender, spring-green leaves.
• My only Hybrid Tea is an antique and does not have the typical modern HT form. You saw her in yesterday's post, and she sort of resembles a tumbleweed (before it tumbles) with at least a couple of dozen canes coming up from the base that mostly bloom singly or in small clusters of two or three flowers at the tips . This type of rose needs to be shortened some (I don't think she was damaged at all by the freeze), but I don't think I took off even a quarter of her size. Afterwards I thought perhaps I could have cut more, but I wasn't up for a second round. She'll just be bigger this year. Oh, I forgot 'Mme Joseph Bonnaire', but she's a one-cane wonder so... not a problem.
• I have two shrub roses, 'Quietness' and 'Polonaise' that are similar to HT's. They're young and spindly, and I'll probably just shorten them a bit, not even 25 percent.
• The small Bourbons, 'Souv de la Malmaison' and her kin, do not like to be pruned according to those more knowledgeable than I am, so I just removed the dead stuff. Their size is not an issue, so the roses and I were happy with that.
• I don't have a clue yet about the Austins I have. I'm trying to find out if my two candidates for pruning are among the ones that resent pruning. I'll let you know.
• Climbers are a whole post unto themselves, except 'Reve d'Or'. She responds well to a simple haircut - nothing technical about it.
• Damask Perpetuals will be pruned by ear. I only know to "prune them hard". Winging it is such a pain!

Dr. Malcolm Manners of Florida Southern College recommends removing every leaf from all rose bushes as a way of eliminating any remnants of fungal disease and of triggering new growth. I did that last year, but I don't think I will this year due to a lack of old leaves and new growth being well under way. 'Mrs B. R. Cant' may be the exception. I haven't really looked at her yet, but she is fully clothed with last year's leaves. My situation is probably different from others, because I have so few roses that are susceptible to black spot. (Winnowing works!)  Although, I'm wondering if my new baby 'Chrysler Imperial' might be a candidate for leaf stripping, but maybe I should let her get established before I strip away all her energy sources, ya think?

DH's pruning suggestion was something to the effect that I should get out the chainsaw, or maybe he was suggesting I go buy some hedge clippers. He was quite adamant about it, too. However, my deep love and respect for him notwithstanding, his non-orthodox opinions will be ignored. All pruning "doctrine" should be tested to be sure it pertains to your roses, because all roses are not the same.

By the way, I do  intend to stay out of holes for a while!

Ready or not, here I prune!

Winter? Absolutely no sign of it here.  Daytime temps are way up in the 70’s and sunny, and nights are fine for shirt-sleeves.  I did a search for a 30-day forecast, hoping to find our ‘last freeze date’, and came up with precious little. One site showed the lowest temperature would be 36 degrees in mid-February.  Not a problem, so yesterday when I heard the roses crying, “Pru-u-une me.”, I said, “I hear ya. Here I come.”  Everything is showing new growth (‘Hermosa’ is even blooming!), and I had had enough of looking at the ugly dead stuff from the freeze. Did you catch that? Freeze singular? What a winter!



Since ‘Madame Abel Chatenay’ was the instigator, I better start with her last weekend. You may remember that MAC was suffering terribly and that I had determined to lift her, amend the bed and move her a few feet. So I was back to excavating again - this time to a depth of three and a half feet. I dug out an area of 3’x6’ (thankfully, the clay was moist and diggable) right beside her toward the house and moved the five or six wheelbarrowfuls of crappy stuff to the backyard, raising the level of the swing area. I’m almost not heavy enough to push that wheelbarrow when it’s full.

Then I had an enlightened moment and decided to stick the pH tester in one of the big clumps of solid white clay. I was stunned to read 6.8. Huh? I can live with that pH, so what’s the problem?  I tested the fertility. Uh-huh, very low.  Then I tested the grainy sand/clay strata that was above the clay level - 6.0 pH (apparently my sulfur applications have worked) and very low fertility. Interesting.  Breaking up the bottom, I mixed in Milorganite, cow manure and small pine bark mulch with the clay, then filled up the hole with more compost, topsoil (by the way, I found Walmart’s topsoil to be plain old sand), a little sphagnum peat moss, pine bark mulch, Scott’s LawnSoil, and the original top 15 inches of amended soil that I had set aside. End of day one.

On Sunday I lifted ‘Mme Abel’ and set her aside on the new bed.  Time was of the essence since she was sitting in the sun, so I opted to pile the removed soil on the driveway.  By way of visuals much of my digging time was spent sitting on the ground with one leg dangling in the hole while the other pounded the shovel into the clay, then muscling the shovelful over my shoulder beside and behind me.  I found out that getting out of a three and a half foot deep hole isn’t easy when you’re an arthritic old lady, so again I returned to my butt and rolled to my knees to regain sea-level.  Don’t you wish you had a ringside seat?  Dumping on the driveway made the job much quicker, and I got her settled in with scratches on arms and legs.  She’s a very prickly lady, definitely well armed. Here she is, albeit hard to see.





She’s to the right of the label marker which used to be in front of her, so she didn’t go far. A big Variegated Liriope was moved out, too, so the vacant area will be home to about four daylilies. The rose in the white pot is a ‘Peach Drift’.  I got two the other day.  I thought their color would go great with ‘Mme Abel’, so they’re planted on both sides of her now.  FYI, I shoveled the dirt from the driveway into the truck for easy transport to the back. It filled half the bed as high as the sides. I was astonished because this hole was only 3'x3'x3' - half the size of the previous day. Highly compacted stuff.

Back to this weekend’s pruning. I did not not cut back MAC when I dug her up, and rather unbelievably her growth buds are bulging everywhere and her one flower bud only went limp overnight.  So I figured I might as well prune her…along with ‘Clotilde Soupert’, ‘Souv de Francois Gaulain’, the three ‘Hermosas’ and half of ‘Le Vesuve’.  Then darkness set in. Today I finished ‘Le Vesuve’. My goodness, what a tangled mess he is. He grows all wacky in all directions and back again. He had a lot of dead stuff on him, so as I‘ve been saying I would for months, I finally replaced the drip tubing with two 180-degree micro-sprinkler heads for his circle bed.  I’m hoping this will make him happier this year.  Then I moved on to ‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’.  What a bedraggled rose bush, so full of dead and dying stuff.  Her soil situation is like MAC’s was, but I’ve decided to handle hers differently.  I’m going to drive a 3/4” pole into the ground as close to three feet down as I can get, then pour a bunch of Milorganite down the zillion holes I make along with some liquid humus.  Since the soil problem looks more like a fertility issue rather than pH, I’m hoping this strategy will save me from digging and more digging again.

I vipped on to ‘Softee’ in a pot and the two ‘Souvenir de la Malmaisons’ (dead stuff only on SDLM), and then quit pruning.  I find pruning to be very exhausting, physically and mentally.  That bent over position is a pain, and examining each and every cut makes for a mentally demanding exercise in decision-making that wears me out.  When I was done with these, my brain was mush, and I barely managed to move an under-a-rose daylily and plant a lovely potted purple pansy next to MAC and a $7 ‘Chrysler Imperial’ from Lowe's next to the front sidewalk.  It’s grafted on Dr. Huey rootstock, so I figure if it lasts a couple of years, I’ll be happy to have had those gorgeous red blooms and the phenomenal fragrance again.

So once again I have found pruning to be a wonderfully satisfying experience.  The roses took a giant step closer to spring.  I on the other hand have many more to go.

Days of future past

As a gardener, I’m in limbo, because my garden is in limbo.

'Souvenir de la Malmaison' on January 3, 2012

  

I haven’t posted (huge apologies for seeming to abandon my blogging efforts) because the past has been strongly present in my garden. No blooms, roses needing rejuvenation badly, the time for pruning being agonizingly far away, crispy being far more prevalent than green, this in-between time seemed to slip this gardener out of Drive and into Neutral. Breadmaking and dear husband took my attention, and the garden couldn’t have been farther away.

However, the last two weekends I was gardening. Thirty-eight daylilies are now in the ground. Hardscaping in the form of cement block edging in the back garden is in place. A plan to revitalize ‘Mme Abel Chatenay’ and ‘Bermuda’s Anna Olivier’ in the front garden is solidified. Christmas bonus cash has been spent on manure compost, pine bark mulch, dahlia and astilbe tubers, hollyhock roots, potting soil and patio pots for veggie seeds and Yukon Gold potato starts. Seeds have arrived in the mail.

The past is beginning to fade, and the future is definitely within reach now. The days are longer now, enabling me to accomplish stuff after work. Temperatures again are Floridian in nature. The roses’ lack of foliage allows me to see how they’ll need to be trimmed and pruned. Endless googling has delivered a viable weapon against my enemy, the squirrel. (There will be a post on that.) The discovery of non-pH-adjusted sphagnum peat moss at Walmart has offered new hope for my crappy calcareous garden soil. We even had .35 inch of rain this week. Everything is moving in a positive direction, out of the winter doldrums and into the hustle and bustle of spring. The daunting task of rebuilding the garden has morphed into normal spring garden labor, transforming my outlook in the process.

Since my gardening apparently will always be a learning experience, there will be googling and posting “Help!” questions on the Antique Rose Forum about how to shape up ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’ and ‘Blush Noisette’. Progress in that area and others will be halted until I know what to do, but since pruning is a month away, that’s not a problem, merely something else to occupy evening computer time. The balancing act of life continues with laundry, housekeeping, breadmaking, work, and husband who is recovering nicely from his back surgery on December 29th. Two weeks off from work (last year’s final week of vacation saved for the surgery had to be taken even though the surgery hadn’t happened yet and the first week of this year’s vacation taken to do absolutely everything that DH could not do for himself) was not spent in the garden, but that’s okay. The garden will get done. Spring will return. The future is on its way.

Breakfast is gonna be good

I just took breakfast out of the bread machine. Wow! The house smells so good. Cranberry-Oatmeal Bread. The recipe called for currants, but I didn’t have any of those. It has a teaspoon of cinnamon in it, too. What a nice smell. I’ve been getting a lot of use out of our new West Bend. It was the Christmas present that DH and I gave to each other, and it’s been a lot of good-tasting fun. Even when we have screwed up the recipes. A bit of advise: don’t have two pages of the cookbook open; cover the one you’re not making. However, the breads have come out perfectly. I can’t wait to get up early, and that’s definitely not something I like to do! Yum, yum! I’m going to bed!

Here's the recipe I used, substituting cranberries for currants.