First Tomato and New Vegetable Containers

I think it was very early March when I noticed a tiny tomato plant that had self-sown in a flower bed. I had not planned to have a tomato plant in this flower bed, but I was in no hurry to plant the bed so I did not immediately take it out. This particular bed holds water and I've found that if I plant too early, the plants succumb to root rot. I have been trying for the past few years to add amendments to address this issue. This spring I added a mixture of good bagged garden soil, pine fines (aka soil conditioner), and our own homemade compost. 

It was a few weeks after I noticed this little tomato plant that we had that cold snap (the temperature was 26 degrees one night at our house), and I fully expected that this little plant would simply turn to mush. But apparently it must have had a strong will to live. Or maybe it lived because it was protected by growing so close to the house. In any case, it came through unscathed, and I plopped an old tomato cage over it while I decided what I wanted to do with it. 

Last week I decided it was time to plant summer annuals in this bed. I love annual vinca (also called Madagascar periwinkle), which prefers a sunny, fairly dry location. I debated about removing the tomato plant (which likes more moisture than the vinca), but, by this time, it had gotten quite large. It was too large to transplant to another location and too healthy-looking to yank it out and throw it on the compost pile. So I took the easy way out and postponed the decision once again. 

Today, while watering the vinca, I noticed a tiny tomato fruit, and this sealed the deal. Even though I know that trouble awaits me as the tomato plant grows (crowding, watering, etc.), it will remain in my flowerbed. 

Although I can't be sure, I believe that it is a cherry tomato. Last year I had two cherry tomatoes in pots on the patio and I suspect that this is a seed from one of those. It's possible, though, that it could be a Roma or even a full-size tomato, as these seeds were probably in the compost I put in this bed. Whatever it is, I'm hoping for a winning tomato for the Great Tomato Contest on July 1. I planted tomatoes in my patio pots, but they were planted too late, I think, to produce ripe fruit by then. This may be the only entry I can come up with.

Speaking of patio tomatoes, I came across these nifty, self-watering vegetable planters on sale. Never able to resist a bargain, I bought two of them for the tomatoes I grow on the patio every year.  The planter is on rollers, which makes it easy to re-position the plant when it starts growing toward the sun. The bottom of the container is a water reservoir, and water is added through the tube that can be seen in the left corner of the container in this picture. Maintaining consistent moisture is important to prevent blossom-end rot in tomatoes. Keeping a regular pot consistently moist can be a challenge, especially when the plant gets large and the weather gets hot. I am really excited to see how well these planters work for our tomatoes. I have high hopes they will produce some excellent tomatoes! And did I mention they were on sale?

The Joys and Trials of Water Features

Doesn't everyone love water in the garden? When Jack and I moved here from Virginia, one of the things that attracted us to the house we bought was that it had a water feature. I have always admired water features in the garden but had little experience with them. Our townhouse in Virginia had a very small garden area so my options to include water were extremely limited. When I saw that the property we were considering here already had a water feature, I was delighted. But then reality set in . . .

Here is a picture taken when we first moved in. There were several things that did not appeal to us. For one thing, there was too much stone for our tastes. Black mulch had been used between the stones, but it was not suppressing the weeds so we knew it would take a lot of work to keep the weeds out. Also, neither Jack nor I liked the overgrown look of the plantings. In particular, there was some kind of water plant in the pool (a small portion of the pool area is just barely visible in the lower left corner) that had escaped its pot and over-run the pond. We had to drain the pond and take all the stones out to remove the roots.

Our water feature in 2011

So for the first few years, we set about removing some of the stones around the water feature, cleaning out the invasive plant in the pool, and getting rid of all the black mulch. Then we began to replace the plants in the surrounding area. We put in a red Japanese maple to spill over the waterfall and an assortment of ferns and hostas to soften the edges of the stones. The bright, grassy plant at the lower left side of the picture below is Japanese forest grass (Hachenechloa macra), one of my favorite plants for brightness and texture in a shady area.

We cleared out the taller plants along the stream (they blocked the view of the waterfall) and replaced them with low-growing, groundcover plants that would minimize weeding. Because this area receives partial sun, we were able to use plants like phlox subulata, candytuft, gardenia radicans, and spreading juniper. The very low-growing groundcover in the picture below is a mixture of ajuga and creeping charlie. Since both were already there, I decided to leave them both and see which one crowds the other out. So far, the creeping charlie is winning near the edges of the stream and the ajuga is winning in the drier areas.

Now that we have the plants surrounding the water feature pretty much done, I've been thinking more about plants to go into the water. The ecosystem of a pond is a very delicate and complicated thing. For whatever reason, the ecosystem of our pond has always been healthy. We have goldfish that seem to be healthy with no supplemental feeding and a lot of tadpoles in the water. Even so, I'd like to have some vegetation to provide a hiding place for the fish. (That fake heron in the picture above is sometimes joined by a real one, and a hawk frequently hangs out in our backyard). Also, the pond end of the water feature gets afternoon sun, so without some plants to provide shade, algae can become an issue when the weather gets hot. 

In the past, I've used water hyacinths to provide coverage in the pond end. We usually buy two plants in the spring and in a few weeks, they've covered half the pond. They multiply like rabbits! For the rest of the summer, we are throwing away about half of them every week to keep them from suffocating the fish. In places where they can survive the winter, they are considered invasive water plants that are dangerous to the environment. Supposedly, water hyacinths are annuals here, but with--dare I say it--global warming, that may change at any time. Looking for an alternative to water hyacinth, I was delighted when a master gardener friend shared some of the floating plants from his pond.

Another thing I'm experimenting with this year is growing in the stream a variety of plants not traditionally thought of as water plants. Impatiens, which I've grown in the stream bed in previous years, does great.

This year, I'm experiment with lobelia, as well. So far, it seems to be doing quite well. 

Notice that both the impatiens and the lobelia are simply wedged, barerooted, between rocks at the stream's edge. Not only does it look more natural without a pot, there is no risk of the soil escaping to muddy the water.

I'm also trying a few cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis) directly in the stream. These are plants that typically grow near streams so I'm pretty sure this will work. Because these plants can get fairly tall, I placed several in a mesh planting bag hoping it will provide enough support to keep them from falling over. As the plants get taller and fuller, I don't think the bag (which is placed behind a large stone that serves as a bridge) will be noticeable.

Having a water feature this large is not without work, but I'm hoping that as Jack and I learn more about how to manage it efficiently, we'll find more joy and fewer trials. Already it is more than worth the effort we put into it to be able to watch the birds that bathe in the stream and to listen to the frogs whose babies swim in the pond and laugh at the cat who sits on the edge watching the fish swim just out of her reach. There is something very soothing about water . . . .

R&R Me and Yew and Me and a Dilemma

Yew (Taxus)

I am half way through weeding and mulching my 14 flowerbeds. While working on a bed I call "The Island of Unwanted Plants" (a bed mostly populated with shrubs I've pulled out of customers landscapes) I pulled out seedlings from my three Yews (Taxus). The seedlings were about the same size as the three I transplanted some 16 years ago when my wife brought them back from her parents house in Bush, Louisiana. Now the Yews are 8-15 feet tall, the shortest one having survived my accidentally mowing over it a couple times. It's always good to see a plant thrive in your landscape and it's especially nice when there is a connection to your past. As our ancestors immigrated to this strange new world I'm sure they brought plants from their homeland mainly to remind them of their former life. Coming from the Coastal South to the Mid South meant a lot of familiar plants just wouldn't work as well here as there so the Yews doing well has been nice. That's the good news.

CMBS

Now for my dilemma: my Crepe Myrtles (Lagerstroemia) have Crepe Myrtle Bark Scale (CMBS). Fortunately, the infestation is not widespread, yet. In order to stop/control the spread of CMBS I took a sponge and a bucket of water and washed off as much as I could reach with my 8 foot ladder. I did this to three Crepe Myrtles and I was surprised at how quickly the water turned dirty. The need to frequently change the water made this a laborious process. So for a different three Crepe Myrtles I put on my neoprene gloves and " massaged" the bark, rubbing off the scale. This went a lot quicker though I must have looked like a nut to anyone passing by-talk about your tree hugger. My goal is to see how well each method controls CMBS. I'll be checking every few days to see if CMBS returns and if so how quickly; as that great Zen philosopher, Yogi Berra, once noted "you can observe a lot by watching".
My dilemma is what happens if this "hands on" approach doesn't work and I am left with the option to use a neonictinoid chemical to systemically removed the CMBS. Neonictinoids, chemicals such as imidiacloprid, have been linked to Colony Collapse Disorder in bees. These chemicals are indiscriminate pesticides and degrade very slowly. So the dilemma is how do you choose between  crepe myrtles and bees; to save one could harm the other. I try to be a good steward of the environment but I am not a 100% organic gardener. The potential loss of pollinators is a cause of real concern and I try to practice Integrated Pest Management, impacting the environment as little as possible, but where to draw the line.
Another example of this is the overuse of nitrogen fertilizer. With the Mississippi River draining over half the land mass of the continental United States the runoff of excess nitrogen has caused a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is basically 80 miles by 80 miles just south of the mouth of the river. In addition, excess nitrogen causes algae blooms that periodically have killed off aquatic life off coastal Florida. Anyone with the answer, please let me know.

Since it's still Spring I'll finish with two short Emily Dickinson

A little Madness in the Spring

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the king
But God be with the Crown-
Who ponders this tremendous scene-
This whole Experiment of Green-
As if it were his own!





I cannot meet Spring unmoved

I cannot meet Spring unmoved-
I feel the old desire-
A Hurry with a lingering, mixed,
A Warrant to be fair

A Competition in my sense
With something hid in Her-
An as she vanishes, Remorse
I saw no more of Her.

Loropetalum

The New Southern Living Garden Book calls this plant “as common as barbecue and beer.”  No, the reference is not to azaleas or crab grass, but instead to the perennial loropetalum (Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum), also know as Chinese  fringe-flower.  It is indeed everywhere in and about our county and available at most plant sales and garden centers.  In early spring the pink flowers of loropetalum signal the change of seasons, along with the yellow blooms of daffodils and forsythia, and although by mid-April those pink blooms are gone, the attractive burgundy-colored foliage will endure throughout the year. 

Its popularity is due not only to its beauty but to its resistance to disease and pests and its varied uses as an understory plant.  Native to the Far East, it is happy in our climate, thrives in partial to full sun (and will tolerate shade), needs only moderate amounts of water, and is deer resistant.   The rubrum variety grows 8-15 feet tall, but shorter, more compact cultivars are available.

Loropetalum at Sally Hillard Mini-Park at Evergreen and Belvedere

Loropetalum prefers acid or neutral soil and can exhibit signs of chlorosis (yellow leaves with green veins) if the soil is too alkaline.

The genus name Loreopetalum describes the flower shape and combines two Greek words, loron meaning strap and petalon meaning petal. The strap-shaped petals form in clusters similar to witch hazel blossoms; both plants are in the Hamamelidaceae family.

I learned about this perennial when I moved into my house and found two five-foot-tall shrubs in the backyard.  I didn't recognize it; certainly, my flower-loving grandmother never grew it, since it wasn't introduced into the country until the late 1980s or early 1990s. It took me awhile to roll the name off my tongue (thanks to Mary Wade), and I have progressed to giving friends and even strangers lectures on the plant in grocery stores, in bank parking lots, and on street corners.  A year or so ago, in a gardening article in the Commercial Appeal, Chris Gang recommended loropetalum and ocala anise as good choices for screens or borders.  Since I have experience with both in my

Larger shrub in Evergreen Historic District

landscape, of course I recommended these shrubs to a friend who was searching for a privacy screen between her front porch and the neighboring porch only a few feet away.  

Lorepetalum is more than just a shrub, however, although most specimens are shrub-like, growing in a natural mounding shape.  Mine were, until they outgrew themselves into gangly, seven-foot tall masses, so that in February I cut them back.  They are pitiful now, but I had seen this dire step in process in a nearby landscape and knew that the plants would become the shrubs I want in a year or two.

Sheared loropetalum at Regions Bank on Cleveland Street

Loropetalum can be sheared into a formal hedge like boxwood, as was the case in front of the Regions Bank on Cleveland Street.   There is a wilder version of the loropetalum hedge near My Big Backyard at the Memphis Botanic Garden.  A row of six-foot-tall (at least) Loropetalum lanceum, the white flowering species, lines the entry walk.

Loropetalum can be limbed up to make a single-trunked small tree.  I have seen several examples of this in my neighborhood, with the tree usually located at the corner of a house.  It can also be espaliered to a fence or wall.  I have read that it can be used for bonsai.

I have just removed a dead gardenia beside my front porch and am wondering what to put in its place. Should it be another gardenia (not likely), an azalea (possibility), a Little Lime hydrangea (strong possibility), or something else?  Maybe I should choose one of the compact versions of loropetalum that I keep recommending to everyone else! 

Dealing with Freeze Damage

I'm sure that all of us are dealing with damage from the freeze we had mid-March. After a very warm February, most plants had already begun to show signs of spring: deciduous magnolias and azaleas were blooming; and ferns, hosta, and other herbaceous perennials had sprouted. Then, on March 15, the nighttime temperature in my neighborhood was 26. Although I have a few frost blankets, I did not cover any of my plants. So many were at risk that the task seemed impossible.

Although it was sad to see so many plants suffer from the cold, it was interesting to see how the same species were affected differently, depending on the specific cultivar and location of the plant. Take azaleas, for instance.  Some of my azaleas had been blooming since early March, and the fully-opened blooms on these were completely ruined by the cold. This was not a terrible loss since their blooms would have been declining very soon anyway. On others (see picture below), the blooms froze on the parts of the plants that were more exposed (and thus the blooms were farther along),  and the parts of the plant where the buds had not yet opened were spared and have since flowered.

What to do about cold damage on azaleas? I don't intend to do anything until the azaleas have finished blooming. Then I'll prune as I usually do. Admittedly, the freeze-damaged blooms are unattractive and seem to be taking longer to fall off the plant than an undamaged bloom would, but I'll wait and see what happens.

Quite a few of our hosta were also damaged by the cold. Some had not yet broken through the ground, and others were barely peeking through. These were not damaged at all. Others had broken dormancy to various extents, and these were damaged to varying degrees. 


Here is a cultivar called 'Fragrant Bouquet' that had a few stalks emerged and was somewhat affected by the cold weather. The older leaves on the left side of the picture are a bit crinkled and deformed, but I will probably leave them on the plant and hope that the new foliage will be enough to disguise them.

Here is another 'Fragrant Bouquet,' planted in the same bed, that was completely turned to mush by the cold. Go figure. I will completely remove these stalks once the new ones begin to appear.

And finally, here is a different cultivar (not sure which) that was fully emerged when the cold came, yet seems to be unaffected.

For me, the list of plants affected by the late cold is a fairly long one. My hardy orchids (Bletilla striata) were fully up with buds about to open, and they were all killed back. They are cold hardy to zone 5 so I'm not too worried about their ultimate survival, but I don't expect to get flowers this year. 

The plants I worry about are the ones that are borderline hardy in our area, like the paperbush (Edgeworthia chrysantha). It had already pushed out new leaves, and they seemed to have been stopped in their tracks by the cold. They did not turn brown and crispy but neither have they continue to grow. 


The paperbush pushes up new shoots from the root each spring, seen as the green center in this otherwise still-brown plant. I typically cut these shoots back each year because I like the branching structure that is visible in the winter. This spring, I will wait to see how well the old part of the plant recovers. If it doesn't, these new shoots will become the plant, and I will cut away the old part. I don't think that will happen but I will be patient before pruning away the new shoots.

Speaking of patience, in one of my earlier posts, I talked about using a warm February day to cut away the old foliage on our autumn ferns. I wish I had shown more patience in that case. By cutting back the old foliage and revealing the crown to the warm sun, I encouraged early new growth that was too tender to withstand the cold temperatures. By cutting back too early, I left the tender emerging fronds to face the cold without the protection that the old foliage would have provided.

Hopefully, we are safe from freezes and frosts for this spring, but only Mother Nature knows. While the rule of thumb for the frost free date is April 15 for our area, it is good to be reminded that there is always the risk of the occasional exception. According to the National Weather service, the latest recorded spring frost date (36 degrees and below) for Memphis is May 4 and the latest freeze date (32 degrees and below) is April 25. 

Rhyme and Reason It's Spring!

Today is the first full day of Spring! The vernal equinox occurred yesterday, March 20th, at 5:29AM. After six months of more nighttime than daytime the scale tips in favor of daylight and, with more daylight, comes warmer weather. In gardening time it has been "spring" for a while. The mild temperatures in January and February caused many perennials to emerge and bloom earlier than usual.

Chiondoxa forbesii Glory of the Snow

 In March my garden has seen blooms for: Ipheion uniflorum (Spring Star Flower), Scilla siberica (Siberian Squill),  Anemone blanda, (Greek Windflower), Chionodoxa forbesii (Glory of the Snow), Polemonium reptans (Jacob's Ladder), Lecojum aestivum, (Summer snowflake), Vinca minor (Common Periwinkle), and on one of my deciduous azaleas. In addition to the blooms on the above, the foliage for Lycoris squamigera (Naked Ladies), Columbine chrysantha (Golden Columbine), Rudbeckia hirta (Black-eyed Susans), Sedum (Autumn Rose) and both the Bearded and the Louisiana Irises have appeared. The Narcissus (Daffodils) have come and  gone along with Galanthus nivalis (Snowdrops), and Eranthis hyemalis (Winter aconite) but the Helleborus orientalis (Lenten Roses) are still blooming. It seems that everyday offers some "renewal" in the garden. My gardening goal is to have something blooming every month and Spring gets everything started in that direction. I hope all your garden renewals are bringing as much joy to you as mine bring to me!

Lecojum aestivum Summer Snowflake

There are so many great garden poems for Spring it's hard to pick just one, but I'm going with e.e. cummings this month. Last month we used a romantic poem by a poet, Robert Frost, who didn't write a lot of romantic poems. This month's poem is by a guy who wrote a lot of romantic (some might say erotic) poems and very few nature poems. Here is his Spring tribute:

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything

Changing Weather Patterns: What’s a Gardener To Do?

Good Friday, along with its friend Easter, always has been one of those strange holidays that bounced around all over the calendar. Rather than being based on a human calendar, it was determine by nature’s schedule. The actual occurrence could range from March to April, making the selection of that frock for Easter Sunday dicey at best in the most unpredictable of seasons in the South. But one thing was a certainty. My grandmother would be planting her garden on Good Friday no matter what day and month.

 

But Mother Nature’s schedule has been shifting and changing. According to a report recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, spring, defined as the day when leaves first appear and flowers begin blooming, will arrive an average of 22 days earlier by 2100. The good news is that the Southern states, where “leaf out” already is relatively early, will be the least affected.

However, predictions are that nationwide planting zones will shift more rapidly than in the past. Currently, Memphis is a tiny island of Zone 8 with most of Tennessee in Zone 7. The map below shows Zone 8 moving north over the next 30 years. For some of us, this will mean opportunities to plant gardens that are more traditionally Southern. For others, this could create challenges in maintaining some of our favorites. 

And the immediate future looks warm and warmer. While many Memphians are hoping for a hard freeze soon to help control the insects and other critters that plague us during our long hot summers, neither the Farmer’s Almanac nor the various weather services are offering much hope. Temperatures are predicted to continue to be fair through the spring, although, as we well know, there are no guarantees!

So what’s a gardener to do? First is to realize that we are not in control as much as  we’d like to be. Whatever the reason for the increasingly warmer weather, most of us are not in a position to do much about it.

Realize that the warming trends eventually become more apparent and adjust accordingly. Respect your Zone and smaller ecosystem where you garden. Keep in mind that the numbers thrown out are averages and not one of us, nor our gardens, should be considered average.

Sources:  Environmental Research Letters, Farmers Almanac, GlobalChange.gov