Spring Training for Vines

Plan now for summer displays



Spring arrives soon, officially, but if past is prologue, the first string of balmy days will be here before that to warm the blood. In early March, garden centers begin to stock up with the bright plants of the pre-season in anticipation of the fever.Rushing out to buy pansies or primroses is a fine way to celebrate winter’s end, but if you really want to do something for the garden now, think about choosing the annual and tender vines that will drape and decorate that far-off world of the late-summer garden. Why vines? They make up one of the few groups of plants that grow happily in a pot and rapidly enough in one season to provide near instant screening on a trellis or arbor, deck railing, wire fence, mailbox or lamppost. Common climbers, such as morning glories, or less-well-known ones, such as the weirdly flowered aristolochias, are particularly useful for screening in city gardens and apartment balconies too small to support trees and shrubs. A decorative trellis forms an ideal support for these vines. Some, including passionflowers and the hyacinth bean vine, maybe tender in name but can produce some serious biomass come October. If you need to build or install a stürdy trellis, do it now. These annual vines have a place in larger landscapes as well, grown as patio plants or on supports in garden beds toprovide late-season color, height and focus. March is the month to seek them out. One of the complaints about seed-sown morning glories — fleeting trumpet flowers in shades of blue, purple, red and white — is that they are slow to flower, blooming as late as September. This is an ingrained trait; they flower in response to summer’s shortening days. But other factors contribute to the tardiness. April is too soon to sow them, but June is too late. So pick May. Hasten germination by soaking the seeds in tepid water overnight before sowing. And plant them where they will get lots of afternoon sunlight. Don’t give them a high nitrogen feed or place them in too rich a soil. Those factors will promote vigorous growth but few flowers. Renee Shepherd, founder of the online seed nursery Renee’s Garden, says varieties of morning glories named purpurea and tri-color will flower earlier than others. These include HeavenlY Blue, Early Call, the heirloom Grandpa Ott’s and a variety put together by Shepherd called Mailbox Mix, with flowers in blue and white. The family also includes the gorgeous scented moonflower vine, whose big, fragrant trumpets open at night. The cardinal vine, another relative, has tiny scarlet trumpets that drawhummingbirds. No late summer is complete without either. An obscure tropical vine named momordica is seed-sown in May, will cover a tall trellis by late summer and eventually will produce edible fruit. The Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants in Charlottesville, Va., sells two varieties, the balsam pear and the balsam apple. Byron Martin of Logee’s Greenhouses in Danielson, Conn., favors a morning glory named Blue Dawn Flower. Its vigor has made it a weed in some tropical regions. Martin said the flowers stay open longer than typical morning glories, whose blooms shrivel in the heat of the day, to be replaced with new ones the following night Martin also recommends athunbergia hybrid named Sunlady. “You can put it in as a young cutting and it will take over a trellis by the end of the season," he said. Its single flowers are daisy-like, with pale yellow petals and a black center.

-Washington Post

See You at the Show

Two Important Shows Coming Up

PRO GREEN EXPO
Jan. 24-25-26
Colorado's Premier
Landscape Exposition
Colorado Convention Center
For information & Free Tickets
www.progreenexpo.com
__________________________________
COLORADO GARDEN &
HOME SHOW
Feb. 3 - 11
Colorado Convention Center
www.gardeningcolorado.com

Time to seed your lawn!

Fall's the perfect time.

Fall is the perfect time to seed or reseed a lawn. There are two key elements to help ensure a lush, green lawn: selecting the correct seed mixture for your climate and location on your property; and adding rich, crumbly soil for a nutritional foundation upon which the seeds can germinate and grass can thrive.
TO RESEED SOME AREAS:

> Dig up existing vegetation or kill it off with a herbicide.
> Briskly rake up any dead vegetation.
> Lay down ~ inch of crumbly top soil and level off with a rake.
> Hand-spread grass seed, then lightly rake it in.
> Water daily until seed has germinated and filled in.

Fall Lawn Fertilization During Drought

Fall fertilization of cool-season lawns such as Kentucky bluegrass is a common and recommended practice for Colorado. When watering is not restricted, fall fertilization increases turf quality during the fall and following spring and promotes healthy fall and spring rooting. Watering restrictions and cutoffs create situations where this practice should be modified or not practiced at all.
Green (no watering restrictions), actively growing lawns should be fertilized according to the normal fall lawn fertilization schedule. Watering (1/2 inch) just after fertilization will provide the greatest benefit to the lawn. Additional watering will increase fall benefits while early water cutoffs will postpone the appearance of some benefits until spring.
What about lawns where water applications have been restricted to the point that lawn quality is poor (spotty brown and green) and early water cutoffs are expected? Fall fertilization can benefit these lawns if the fertilizer is applied and watered-in before the watering cutoff. In these cases, most of the fertilization benefits will be seen in spring.
Fall fertilization of dormant (brown) lawns, especially those that have been dormant (brown) a month or more, will provide little or no benefit this fall (although spring green-up of dormant, still-living bluegrass lawns will be enhanced.). Some tall fescue and other lawns that have been brown for 2-3 months may be partially or totally dead or will die during the winter. If there is a reasonable certainty that the lawn is dormant but still alive, an application of slowly available fertilizer may provide spring benefits.

For more expert advice, visit www.renewablefiber.com

Dog Spots

Is your dog named Spot?

Dog spots Straw-colored grass or dead spots with dark green borders are common in lawns of dog owners. The concentrated salts in the urine of dogs, particularly female dogs, cause these spots.





There are only a couple of solutions to this problem. Some dog owners follow the dog with a hose and wash the spots, a labor-intensive solution to the problem. A better solution is to retrain the dog to go to a specific, out-of-the-way area, perhaps a graveled, remote corner of the property.

Water is the only thing that can reverse the effects of dog urine on grass. Do not apply baking soda, dish washing detergent, or products claiming to dissolve or leach the salts. They will be ineffective and may compound the problem.
Sometimes the damaged grass can't be revived, making reseeding necessary. The damaged spots should be heavily watered with a hose for a few days before reseeding or resodding.

How to Water Your Trees

Your young trees will need TLC and water this summer

As spring turns to summer, your trees could need some special TLC. Young, newly-planted trees require attention like newborn infants, but don’t overlook the needs of your mature trees either.

In many parts of the country, a summer drought is something gardeners and landscapers have come to expect, and even a mild drought can have a detrimental effect on young trees.

How much water does a young tree need? A good rule of thumb is the equivalent of about one inch of rainfall a week. If you don’t own a rain gage, local news sources often provide information about current rainfall conditions, and you can compensate for shortfalls simply by watering.

You might be surprised to know how much water you will need to provide. A brief sprinkle isn’t going to cut it!

Landscapers use the term “caliper” when describing the size of trees, particularly young ones. The caliper of your tree is the diameter of the trunk close to the base. If you have a tree with a one inch or two inch caliper, it will need approximately ten gallons of water per week. That amount of water comes as a surprise to many homeowners!

Dumping ten gallons of water around your tree all at once is definitely NOT the way to go. The water needs to be applied slowly, the way Nature would do it. I found an excellent tip online, provided by Jay Banks, the town arborist in Leesburg, VA. You can read the entire article on tree care at this Web site: http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/greenline/98v3/gl9807.03.html or go to my Web site www.landsteward.org and you can easily click on a live link when you find this column under The Plant Man heading.

Jay has this suggestion: Find a five-gallon bucket and punch a very small hole (1/8" or less) in the bottom. Put the bucket next to the tree. Fill the bucket with water and simply leave it for gravity to do its work. For the sake of safety, remember to cover the bucket if there is a risk that small children or animals might fall in. When the bucket is empty, you move it to the other side of the tree and repeat as necessary.

As with your shrubs and flowers, watering trees in the early morning or late evening will help reduce loss through evaporation.

Is it possible to over-water a young tree? The answer is certainly YES. You might see the leaves of your new tree begin to droop in the midday heat, but resist the urge to turn on the faucet. As the day cools down, the leaves should begin to perk up. If the tree has sufficient water resources the leaves should return to normal in the cool of the night.

Check the leaves in the evening, then again in the early morning. Only then, if the leaves still seem droopy and listless, should you re-water.

A good way to reduce evaporation and to protect the root system of young trees is to add a layer of mulch. You’ll find that cypress or hardwood mulch tends to last longer than pine mulch. Spread a layer about 3" deep around your new tree. Extend the mulch wide enough to cover the entire root system, but pull it back slightly from the base of the trunk to prevent the possibility of rot.

Which trees are best suited to your landscaping needs and your growing zone? If you e-mail some basic information to me about your specific situation, I’ll respond with some suggestions. You can reach me at steve@landsteward.org
The first summer is the most challenging for your new young tree. Apply some TLC in the next few months and you’ll enjoy it for years to come.

Winning the Battle of the Weeds

Not as hard as you think

Basically weeds grow either from seed, or they reproduce from their roots. As the roots grow outward from the parent plant new plants sprout up from the lateral roots, creating more parent plants and the process continues and the weeds thrive. Weeds that tend to reproduce from the root are usually more difficult to control.
Weed controls facts? Weeds are plants, and they function just like the desirable plants in your yard. They need water, sunlight, and nutrition to survive. Of these three key survival needs, the easiest one for a gardener to eliminate is sunlight. Through proper mulching you can eliminate the sunlight.
But first, let’s look at the steps you should go through before you mulch, then we’ll discuss the best mulching techniques to use. In order for your weed control efforts to be truly effective, you should do everything in your power to make your gardens as weed free as possible before you plant or mulch. There are a couple of ways you can go about this, either organically or with chemicals. I don’t like using chemicals, but I do use them for weed control, and I use them for pest control when necessary.
I’ll discuss organic control first. The first thing you should do is remove all unwanted vegetation from your planting area. Using a hoe, spade or other digging device, undercut the roots and remove the undesirable plants, roots and all. Then you should work the soil by rototilling or turning the soil by hand.
Once worked, let the soil sit for four days or so, and work it again. Keep doing this over and over as long as time permits. This process serves two purposes. It brings the roots that were left in the soil close to the surface so they can be dried by the sun, which will make them non viable, and it disturbs the weed seeds that have started to germinate, which makes them non viable as well. The longer you continue this process the more weeds you are eliminating from your garden.
Weed control facts? Depending on the time of the year, there are a few billion weed seeds drifting through the air at any given time, so to think that you can eventually rid a garden of weed seed is false thinking, but at least this process is effective for the remaining roots, which are the most difficult to control.
With that process complete, go ahead and plant your garden. When you’re done planting you can either mulch the bed, or keep turning the soil on a weekly basis to keep it free of weeds. Most people opt to mulch. Not only does mulch help to control the weeds, but if you select a natural mulch it also adds organic matter to the soil which makes for better gardening results down the road.
Before mulching you can spread newspaper (7-9 layers thick) over the soil and place the mulch over top of that. The newspaper will block the sunlight from reaching the surface of the soil and help to keep weed growth to a minimum. The newspaper will eventually decompose, and not permanently alter the make up of your garden.
Paper grocery bags also work well, so the next time you hear, “Paper or Plastic?”, you’ll know how to answer.
What about black plastic, or the weed barrier fabric sold at garden centers? I don’t like either and I’ll tell you why. For one, neither one of them ever go away, and the make up of your garden is forever altered until you physically remove them, which is a real pain in the butt.
Weed Control facts? Plastic is no good for the soil because soil needs to breath. Plastic blocks the transfer of water and oxygen, and eventually your soil will suffer as will your garden. It’s all right to use plastic in a vegetable garden as long as you remove it at the end of the season and give the soil a chance to breath.
Weed barrier fabrics allow the soil to breath, but what happens is that when you mulch over top of the fabric, which you should because the fabric is ugly, the mulch decomposes and becomes topsoil. Weeds love topsoil, and they will grow like crazy in it. Only problem is, they are growing on top of the fabric, and you are stuck with a ton of problems, like a weedy garden, and a major job of trying to remove the fabric that is now firmly anchored in place because the weeds have rooted through it.
Weed fabric is also porous enough that if an area becomes exposed to the sunlight, enough light will peek through and weeds below the fabric will grow, pushing their way through the fabric. I don’t like the stuff, I’ve removed miles of it from landscapes for other people because it did not work as they had expected.
Weed control facts? Controlling weeds with chemicals is fairly easy, and very effective if done properly. I know that many people don’t approve of chemical weed controls, but millions of people use them, so I might as well tell you how to get the most effect using them.
There are two types of chemical weed controls, post-emergent, and pre-emergent. In a nutshell, a post-emergent herbicide kills weeds that are actively growing. A pre- emergent prevents weed seeds from germinating. Of the post- emergent herbicides there are both selective and non-selective herbicides. A selective herbicide is like the herbicides that are in weed and feed type lawn fertilizers. The herbicide will kill broad leaf weeds in your lawn, but it doesn’t harm the grass.
One of the most popular non-selective herbicides is Round-up®, it pretty much kills any plant it touches. Rule number one. Read the labels and follow the safety precautions!!! Round-up® is very effective if used properly, but first you must understand how it works. Round-up® must be sprayed on the foliage of the plant, where it is absorbed, then translocated to the root system where it then kills the plant. It takes about 72 hours for the translocation process to completely take place, so you don’t want to disturb the plant at all for at least 72 hours after it has been sprayed.
After 72 hours you can dig, chop, rototill, and pretty much do as you please because the herbicide has been translocated through out the plant. The manufacture claims that Round-up® does not have any residual effect, which means that you can safely plant in an area where Round-up® has been used. However, I would not use it in vegetable garden without researching further.
No residual effect also means that Round-up® has no effect whatsoever on weed seeds, so there is absolutely no benefit to spraying the soil. Only spray the foliage of the weeds you want to kill. Be careful of over spray drifting to your desirable plants. To prevent spray drift I adjust the nozzle of my sprayer so that the spray droplets are larger and heavier, and less likely to be carried by the wind. I also keep the pressure in the tank lower, by only pumping the tank a minimum number of strokes. Just enough to deliver the spray.
Buy a sprayer that you can use as a dedicated sprayer for Round-up® only. Never use a sprayer that you have used for herbicides for any other purpose. Once you have sprayed the weeds, waited 72 hours and then removed them, you can go ahead and plant. Mulching is recommended as described above. To keep weed seeds from germinating you can apply a pre-emergent herbicide.
Depending on the brand, some of them are applied over top of the mulch, and some are applied to the soil before the mulch is applied. A pre-emergent herbicide creates a vapor barrier at the soil level that stops weed seed germination, and can be very effective at keeping your gardens weed free. They usually only last about 5 or 6 months and need to be re-applied.
Visit a full service garden center and seek the advice of a qualified professional to select the pre-emergent herbicide that will best meet your needs. Never use a pre-emergent herbicide in your vegetable garden, and be careful around areas where you intend to sow grass seed. If you spill a little in an area where you intend to plant grass, the grass will not grow, they really do work.
That’s what I know about weed control. Read this article several times, your success depends on getting the sequence of events correct.
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his most interesting website, www.freeplants.com
and sign up for his excellent gardening newsletter, and grab a FREE copy of his E-book, "Easy Plant Propagation"