Category Archives: Gardening

The Scarlet Pimpernel … plant

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Eventually I’m going to do a big blog post on gardening. Or more likely: a series of posts.

back yard redo stone with dymondia
Teaser: we replaced the old hardscape (crushed rock, yeck) with stone pavers and planted dymondia between. The California natives are going in around the perimeter. This pic was taking 11 months ago.

But today I’m inspired because of this article, Feed the soul: In chaotic times, gardening becomes therapy.

It’s a lovely piece — a round-up of short interviews with people who are turning to gardening, right now, to help them cope with Covid.

The story I’ll be writing up more extensively, at some point, starts last year, when my sweetheart and I embarked on a complete re-do of our back yard.

The first step was to pull out all of the irrigation.

And now, a little at a time, we’re adding plants — drought-tolerant plants — and no, not succulents, but primarily California coastal natives. (We’re not being purists however! And one little section near the house is now herbs :))

We decided to do this a few plants at a time so that we’d get a sense of what will do well and what will not.

If this works, we’ll have a yard that will support regional insects and birds, without requiring much care. Not water, not fertilizer. We’ll be shearing the plants back from time to time and that’s it.

Gardening with weeds? Uh huh!

In the meantime, we still have a lot of bare spots, so I’m letting “volunteers” come in to fill it up a little bit.

Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis) has been sprouting throughout our yard this spring.

One of my favorites so far is a plant I finally identified yesterday: Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis). And how funny is that? Random weed comes up in the yard and turns out it has a novel named after it?

Fun fact: in some parts of the plant’s range, the flowers are blue, and in some they are red. Our version has a lovely peachy-pink flower.

Another fun fact: because the blooms close if it gets overcast, other common names are along the lines of “Poor Man’s Barometer.”

Also: no, it is not native to SoCal and yes, it is considered a weed and even “invasive.”

But I don’t care. I think it’s pretty.

How about you? Do you garden? If not, are you thinking about taking it up?

I have (ahem) composted . . . my lawn

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Well, part of my lawn. It turns out I didn’t order enough compost.

Here it is scattered in its little piles.

Lawn compost step one

Next step: I had to rake it all to spread it — or more precisely, knock it off the leaves of the grass so it won’t kill it, which would have rather defeated the purpose.

lawn compost after raking

About halfway through doing this I realized that I am, as an Englishman might put it, “barking mad.”

Composting a lawn?

There is a reason that uniform, green-all-year-round lawns and eco-awareness don’t mix. They aren’t supposed to.

And since my front lawn is that compost-awkward size — too small for two yards of compost, two big for one — and since I decided during a rare burst of fiscal prudence to err on the side of too little compost when I ordered it on Saturday — I have now a 1/2 composted lawn.

I’m toying with what would be wiser. Leave the other half uncomposted as a test to see if the effort is really worth it?

Or shell out for another load to spread next weekend . . .

We’ll see.

In the meantime, one of the things compost won’t really help of course is weed control (yeah I know, theoretically if your grass is happy it will compete better — but compost nourishes weeds too now, doesn’t it). As I’ve mentioned in another post, I’ve been applying corn gluten in the spring; it inhibits seed germination and so over time will cut down on weeds. Some weeds — if they’re annuals or short-lived perennials. Any perennial that lives on like grass, otoh, will be unaffected by corn gluten — and speaking of the English, one of the weeds I have the most problem with, Glechoma hederacea, is a non-native plant brought over here by someone on that side of the pond.

Gil over the ground

I suspect the English. Wikipedia mentions an English herbalist, John Gerard, who said a brew of it cures tinnitus, and that

Glechoma was also widely used by the Saxons in brewing beer as flavoring, clarification, and preservative, before the introduction of hops for these purposes; thus the brewing-related names, Alehoof, Tunhoof, and Gill-over-the-ground.

Some descriptions say it smells minty but that’s only one aspect of its odor. Excuse me, “odour.” Its smell is unlike anything else — strong, bitter, medicine-y.

It’s happy in sun and shade, doesn’t mind being cut low, is happy to grow right over top your grass if you cut it high. It loves to take over the edges of things — the edge of a garden, the edge of the driveway, the edge of a new patch of lawn you’ve reseeded for some reason.

The good news. Wikipedia and this article both say you can get rid of it by using Borax, which is relatively non-toxic.

I may give that a try . . .

On the other hand, I have tinnitus . . . hmmm . . .

In which Kirsten fires another salvo in the Iris wars

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Isn’t this gorgeous?

Earthborn iris

This one is called “Earthborn.” I planted a few of them to set off the yellow of “Harvest of Memories” and “Second Act.” It’s working pretty well although to really get the effect I want I’ll have to move things around a bit.

Iris grouping: Harvest of Memoris Iris, Earthborn Iris, Second Act iris

It’s funny how with perennials it can take several years to get things the way you want them — because you put something in, and then see how it looks throughout an entire growing season, then move it and see how that looks . . . it’s like painting in super slo-mo . . .

(Close-up of one of the yellow irises here.)

40 million acres

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That’s how much of America is lawn, according to Brian Black in CS Monitor. He’s reviewing “American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn,” by Ted Steinberg.

Black admits he doesn’t care for lawns, and Steinberg, apparently, thinks they’re “an instrument of planned homogeneity.”

As Americans sought to fit in with one another during the cold war, writes Steinberg, “…what better way to conform than to make your front yard look precisely like Mr. Smith’s next door?”

Sorry, but I think that’s just silly (although not quite as silly as “we descended from savanna dwellers,” lol). If it were true, then we’d all be painting our houses the same color. For that matter, we’d all want houses built exactly alike. We’d demand cookie-cutter landscaping. But we don’t. Even in relatively homogeneous tracts, builders know to vary the color, orientation, floor plan etc. of the houses — and the longer they’re lived in, the more we alter them to make them unique.

Lawns are simply a fashion — a landscaping fashion — and like all fashion, the reason they’re popular is esthetic. People like the way they set off our homes and gardens, forming a kind of matte within the frame of road, sidewalk, or property line which borders our homes.

That’s why uniformity (i.e., no weeds) is considered so desirable. We don’t want the matte to call attention to itself. It’s supposed to be even-textured and uniform in color.

Are lawns a good ideal from an environmental standpoint? Probably not. But it’s facile to dismiss them with singsong “they’re all made out of ticky tacky” platitudes, particularly when your platitudes are tinged with condescension. Tastes change, and there’s no reason our collective eye couldn’t begin to appreciate other ways to frame our homes. But the way to get people to change is by presenting alternatives they find beautiful, not sneer at them for being mindless conformists.

Iris for your smilin’ eyes

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yellow iris

I planted these last year, so this is their first time blooming. I thought they were “Harvest of Memories” — that’s what I’d written in my notes when I was figuring out what varieties to buy and where to put them — but now that they’ve bloomed, I’m confused — I think that the falls on Harvest of Memories are supposed to be the same shade of yellow as the upper petals. As you can see, the falls (lower petals) on these blooms are tan. Did my order get mixed up? Is there some variation in Harvest of Memories colors? Did I actually order something different and neglect to change my notes?

Doesn’t matter, in any case, I like them a lot, whatever they are.

Update: here’s another picture showing how I’ve grouped my yellow iris with “Earthborn.”

Viburnum

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Here’s one of my favorite spring-flowering shrubs: Viburnum carlesi, Korean Spice Viburnum. I planted three along the side of my deck a couple of years ago, and every spring since, I’ve been glad I did. Their flowers are wonderfully fragrant — as my daughter said this morning, “that must be what heaven smells like.” And the scent carries. I can smell them everywhere in my yard, and even throughout the house on a warm afternoon when the windows are open.

viburnum

Mine is the compact form so it will only grow to three feet or so. There are other cultivars that will grow to about five feet.

Long before I’d stumbled across my first cultivated Viburnum (in a municipal planting in downtown Rochester, in the evening after work — the lot is now a parking garage) I was familiar with a number of wild species. According to Wikipedia, there are about 175 different shrubs in the Viburnum genus. You may have seen the wild ones, too. They tend to grow in clumps along the margins of forests and fields and bloom with white clusters of flowers. In late summer the bushes are covered with berry-sized clusters of fruit, often blue-black, each with a single flat seed inside. The birds love the fruit, and many are edible for us, too, although they aren’t particularly fleshy or flavorful. Some of the bushes are quite tall, 15 feet or more, and their clumping habit means their canopies form wonderful grott0-like hiding places, perfect for playing when you’re a kid growing up in the country.

My dad once mentioned that his aunt (is that right, Dad?) used to make a jelly from highbush cranberry, one of the wild Viburnums, so I tried it too about 15 years ago. It was an interesting jelly, tart and with a musky, earthy flavor that reminded me of tomato. Kind of. (Here’s a photo of a highbush cranberry bush with fruit. It’s easy to spot since the fruits are a brilliant red.)

Here in New York State, several species of our native Viburnums are sold as ornamentals, but unfortunately some of them are vulnerable to damage (sometimes extensive) by the Viburnum leaf beetle, a pest introduced from Europe. Sigh. Highbush cranberry is one of the species that gets hit the hardest — defoliated, sometimes twice in a year, once the beetles settle in.

I’ve seen the beetle around my neighborhood, so this year I’m going to submit my observations to Cornell to help them track the beetles’ spread. Korean Spice Viburnum isn’t vulnerable, btw. But truthfully, much as I love mine, I’d rather it were vulnerable instead of our native Viburnums. After all, ornamentals, by definition, have humans assigned to their care. Wild plants don’t.

April Flowers

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I have several perennial beds on my property, one of which is in the front yard. A big challenge, with this garden, is the timing of the plants’ blooming. I have a lot of flowers (chrysanthemum, perennial sunflower, and aster family plants) that bloom in late summer. But the rest of the year there have been occasional “gaps” when nothing is blooming.

One of these gaps falls in late April/early May. So last year I bought some primula veris — a non-hybrid primrose — and I’m very pleased with the effect.

primroses

The plants are 12-14 inches high, and the blooms have lasted for weeks — they first started to put out their bloom stalks the first week of April.

The size of the bloom clusters, their height, and the intensity of the color makes them visible from the street, which is part of the spec. They also work with the palette I’ve got going in this garden, which is primarily whites and yellows, deepening into some oranges/corals as accents.

I bought the primroses last spring from Evermay nursery in Maine, which specializes in primroses. I had a great experience with Evermay and highly recommend them.

In fact, one of the nicest things about the Internet is that small, specialty growers can reach a bigger mail order market. They get more customers. We get access to a wider variety of interesting plants.

I’ll post more when some of my other experiments bloom :-)

Look, ma, no dandylions

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Lawn

Actually there are a handful — you may be able to make them out toward the top of the photo.

But. There are far fewer than there were last year, which is a reason to celebrate, because this marks the one-year anniversary of my starting a program of organic broadleaf control.

My secret weapon is corn gluten, a byproduct of cornstarch production that acts as a natural pre-emergent herbicide — it inhibits root growth of newly sprouted seeds. (It’s also a 10-0-0 slow release fertilizer.) (I buy it at Bristol’s farm market in Victor.)

In addition to the corn gluten, I set my mower blades pretty high (three inches). The idea is that taller grass is healthier grass — the root system becomes stronger — and healthier grass is able to crowd out other plants. Taller grass also helps the earth retain moisture and prevents light from reaching any weed seeds, which prevents them from germinating. It looks okay, too — when it’s freshly cut it’s nice and neat; you can’t really tell it’s being cut longer unless you walk across it. (Don’t use the photo as the guide on that point — I haven’t mowed yet, this spring.) And it doesn’t mean I have to cut more often, either — leaving it longer doesn’t make it grow faster.

My lawn is a perfect lab for this experiment, since my property’s previous owner never did anything but mow, and until last year, I didn’t either. So that was 15, maybe 20 years of laissez-faire lawn care, plenty of time to establish a nice colony of broadleaf plants: ground ivy, white clover, violets, broad leaf plaintain, speedwell, dandelion, purslane, wild lettuce, dock.

In the photo, you can see clover in the foreground. The lighter-color patches are speedwell, probably slender speedwell, Veronica filiformis. It’s a low-growing plant that tends to spread out in mats. It is more noticeable now than it will be later, because it’s in its first flush of spring growth. Plus the patches are smaller this year than before.

Which means next year they’ll be smaller yet. Or who knows? Gone completely. We”ll see.

What I’m doing, at this point, is waiting out the perennials. Dandelions, for instance, can live five years or so. I have to wait until the established plants have passed on before my lawn will be pretty much dandelion-free.

Speedwell is a nice little plant, actually, with pretty, delicate little flowers. I also like dandelions. But I’m proving a point to anyone in my neighborhood (or elsewhere, for that matter) who thinks they need to hire chemical companies to spray horrible-smelling, toxic, expensive chemicals on their grass.

Corn gluten isn’t outrageously expensive, either. A $30 bag is plenty to treat my front yard. (I don’t bother with the back yard.) I’ve only treated it in the spring although I’ve read somewhere that a second, late summer application is helpful since some weeds germinate in the fall.

You’ll pay more to have an organic lawn care company care for your lawn than a conventional lawn care company, of course.

But if you’re willing to spread the stuff yourself, it’s not a budget-breaker.

Here’s an Organic Gardening magazine article on organic lawn care.

Here’s another, although this one kind of plays up the expense and difficulty. It’s not that complicated, really. I suppose some lawns might be more trouble, if the soil was deficient in specific nutrients or something. But in my case, if I decided to do more, like spread compost, it would be just for the sake of puttering, not because the lawn really seems to need it.

I’ll post another pic after I mow.

Update: and then came the compost …

On Tulips

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If you’ve ever planted tulip bulbs, you’ve probably noticed that unlike daffodils, tulips tend not to come back stronger year after year.

Constance Casey, writing in Slate, explains why.

She’s talking about hybrid tulips, of course. I have some species tulips planted in my front garden and they’re amazing. I’ll post a photo when they bloom. But of course they are shorter and less showy than the hybrids.