A tunnel of laburnum outside the Palace at Kew Gardens in London. |
There are all sorts of good reasons to consider adding an arbor, pergola, tuteur or another type of freestanding trellis to your garden this spring. Here are just a few:
1. Create instant impact. Trees and shrubs serve an important role in a garden or landscape. They create focal points, add vertical interest, enclose a view and define spaces. When establishing a new garden or new area, there’s often a period of waiting while trees and shrubs are maturing. A garden structure can provide instant visual impact while those plants are growing in.
2. Define a space. An arbor will clearly signify the entrance to your garden or into a separate garden room. Well-defined spaces make small gardens feel bigger and bring a sense of order to large gardens.
These baby blue tuteurs add architectural interest to the border, while also supporting climbing roses. |
3. Grow climbing plants. Walking beneath a bower of flowers is an unforgettable pleasure! Trellises make it possible to grow lots of wonderful climbing plants including clematis, roses, honeysuckle, passion vine and kiwi. Put a trellis in a large pot and you can grow annual vines such as sweet peas and thunbergia.
4. Make your own shade. If your garden is short on trees, an arbor or pergola can provide welcome protection from hot sun. You’ll need a super-sturdy structure if you want to grow vigorous perennial vines such as wisteria, aristolochia and grapes.
5. Create a focal point. A tuteur is a freestanding trellis, usually with 3 or 4 sides that come together at the top. Tuteurs can be used to draw the eye to the end of a pathway. You can also use a number of them in sequence to create visual rhythm in the landscape.
6. Add privacy. Need to hide an unsightly view or screen yourself from the neighbors? A trellis can do the job nicely and won’t be perceived as a “fence”. If the gridwork on the trellis is relatively dense, you’ll get lots of privacy even before plants have time to climb their way up.
To learn more about trellises, read Smart Supports for Climbing Plants.
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
At left: the Andover Screen is one of many screens, trellises and arbors available on our website. This model is available in 5 different colors! At right: Climbing roses and clematis make happy companions on a tall, sturdy trellis. |
Community plant sales and swaps are a highlight of the gardening season at this time of year. These events are ideal places for new gardeners to hook up with seasoned veterans and for surplus plants to find new homes.
Perennials that spread readily and those that need frequent dividing make up the core offerings at these events. Vigorous creepers, such as like beebalm (Monarda), yarrow (Achillea), lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria), obedient plant (Physostegia), and common yellow sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa) can easily take over the garden if allowed to grow unchecked. Digging up the colony and replanting part of the population every couple of years keeps each in its allotted space.
Some perennials grow in dense or ever-expanding clumps that eventually stop blooming or simply die in the middle. These include tall phlox (Phlox paniculata), Shasta daisy (Leucanthemum), blanket flower (Gaillardia grandiflora), tickseed (Coreopsis), Siberian iris (Iris siberica) and lamb's ear (Stachys byzantina). Dividing the clump into smaller pieces rejuvenates the original plant and gives you lots of new plants to share with others or to put in other parts of your own garden.
 This clump of monarda is ready to be divided. |
Dividing and replanting perennials also gives you a good opportunity to replenish the soil. Whenever I move or replace a plant that I've divided, I add a shovelful of compost and a handful of slow-release, granular, organic fertilizer to the backfill.
Early spring is the best time to divide summer-blooming perennials—ideally when they are still dormant or just as they emerge from soil. I try to complete the job before the stems get more than a couple of inches tall. As plants leaf out, it gets trickier to divide them because their soft new growth is susceptible to drying out, wilting, and breaking. That said, there's always a long list of chores for early spring and it's often mid-May before I've divided and moved all the perennials that need it. As long as you make the moves on an overcast day and keep the plants well watered for a couple weeks, most of them will be fine.
Using forks, it's easy to get the clump out. Take a healthy piece for replanting and use the remaining divisions elsewhere—or share them with other gardeners. |
I usually start by digging out the entire clump with a garden fork or spade and putting the plant on a tarp to contain the soil and debris. Some plants are easy to pull apart by hand (beebalm), but others take some serious muscle (tall phlox) and the prying action of a couple of garden forks placed back to back. A few are so tough (Siberian iris), that it's tempting to resort to a machete or hand saw to get them apart. Regardless of the plant’s tenacity, I make sure that each division has plenty of roots and several vigorous shoots. A few of the largest divisions go back—into the garden with a thorough watering and the rest get potted up and labeled for the garden club’s plant sale in May.
For lists of perennials that need frequent dividing and more details on how to do it, visit these web sites:
-Ann Whitman, Horticulturist
This planter features rose-blotch pansies, pink hyacinths and blue muscari. |
There are a few weeks (or maybe a month) in spring when it's too cold for annuals, but nice enough for something. Usually, that means pansies —especially up here in Vermont, where we usually have to wait until Memorial Day to feel safe about putting out annuals. However, you can make a container planting that will thrive despite the changeable conditions of spring.
While looking for planters at the garden center, I noticed a beautiful display of forced bulbs—probably late risers that didn't put on a show in time for Easter. What's more, they were 50 percent off. I selected some pink hyacinths and a few tiny pots of muscari (grape hyacinths) to mix with a six-pack of rose-colored pansies. The result was instantly satisfying. Next year, I might even plan ahead and force my own bulbs.
Don't get me wrong, pansies are great. All by itself, a planter of pansies is lovely—especially with the array of colors and forms that are available these days. But, it's exciting to have more options that look great and perform well during cool spring weather.
I've been enjoying this instant container planting so much that I've decided to use this urn to display a changing selection of plants throughout the season. When the springtime show has passed its prime, I'm thinking about osteospermums (African daisy)... or maybe argyranthemum (cobbity daisy)?
-David Grist, Online Content Coordinator
Perennials in Piet Oudolph's nursery in Hummelo, Netherlands. |
Garden travel is one of my passions and, over the past 25 years of travel to gardens in Europe and North America, I’ve witnessed a shift in design and planting emphasis toward more naturalistic, low-maintenance landscapes. The new designs are based on sweeps of structure, texture, and color that change with the seasons and gardens' maturity. Plants are chosen for their durability and adaptation to the site as well as their contribution to the larger design.
Piet Oudolf, Dutch plantsman and landscape designer, has been one of the people at the forefront of these changes. His work, beginning in the 1980s, revolutionized European garden design with its emphasis on grasses and tough, hardy perennials and bulbs. In his early years, he felt constrained by meticulously kept perennial borders that required constant deadheading, staking, dividing, and pest control to remain presentable.
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Oudolf is first and foremost a plantsman; he grows and studies the plants that he uses in his designs so he intimately understands how they look in all life stages and seasons of the year. His knowledge led him to use more grasses and complementary perennials in his plantings and to hybridize his own new varieties. He and his wife operate a plant nursery at their home in Hummelo, Netherlands, where he experiments with new varieties. His plant introductions include Aconitum ‘Stainless Steel’, Sedum ‘Red Cauli’, Malva ‘Sweet Sixteen’, Geum ‘Flames of Passion’, Echinacea ‘Jade’ and E. ‘Fatal Attraction, and many more.
His award-winning designs carried him across the Atlantic to New York City and Chicago, where he worked on the master plan for the Gardens of Remembrance and the Battery Bosque in Manhattan and the Millennium garden in downtown Chicago. He’s currently part of the team that’s working on the High Line project in New York City. This unusual project is transforming a 1.5-mile-long elevated train platform into a public park.
When planning my garden-related trips, I usually don’t consider major cities as destinations, but I see visits to Manhattan and Chicago in my future. Short of a trip to England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, it’s the closest I can get to the work of this groundbreaking designer.
To read more about Piet Oudolf’s public and private gardens, visit the following blog sites and articles at these links:
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
A Dutch breeder holds some new, unnamed miniature daffodil cultivars. |
For the past 20 years, I’ve been adding a few new daffodils to my home landscape every fall. Now, more than 60 varieties bloom in my borders and under trees and shrubs from late March to early June. It’s a show that my neighbors and I look forward to as the snow melts and the days finally get longer and warmer.
Of all the varieties that I’ve collected over the years, I find myself increasingly fond of the miniature daffodils. Smaller versions of full-sized daffodils, these little gems grow only 6 to 8 inches tall and have equally diminutive flowers. Their petite size makes them perfect for tucking into the lawn and rock gardens, planting under shrubs, and mixing with crocus, Scilla, grape hyacinth and other small-stature spring flowers. Unlike their larger brethren, miniature daffodils fade more gracefully after blooming because their foliage is short and narrow and looks less messy and obtrusive as it ripens.
Although mini daffodils are hard to find in stores, specialty catalogs offer plenty of choices. The American Daffodil Society maintains an approved list of 183 miniature cultivars that grow less than 6 inches tall. They recognize 13 different divisions of narcissus based on flower form and the number of flowers per stem. Categories include daffodils with small cups, large cups, trumpet-shaped cups, double flowers, Narcissus species, and others. Every division includes miniatures as well as full-size cultivars.
My garden already included several swaths of yellow Tête-à-Tête and yellow and orange Jetfire, which are the most commonly available cultivars. These early bloomers are the perfect complement to blue crocus and dwarf Iris reticulata. They make wonderful little bouquets, too, and are easy to force indoors for midwinter color.
Encouraged and excited by the success of my first mini daffodils, I added half a dozen new cultivars to my garden a couple of years ago. Segovia is a sweet little flower with pure white petals and a small flat yellow cup. Xit is an all-white, show-winner with a name I can’t pronounce. (Please add a Comment, below, if you know how to say it!) Chiva is a very fragrant jonquil with buttercup yellow blooms. Heirloom Pencrebar hails from the 1930s and has rich, yellow, double flowers. Sun Disc ends the daffodil season with round, fragrant, white-and-yellow blooms.
I’m looking forward to adding even more miniature daffodils in the coming seasons. My favorite source for bulbs is Dutch Gardens, (which is a sister company to Gardener's Supply). Dutch Gardens sells fall-planted bulbs (including miniature daffodils) through the end of October.
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
A miniature variety called Tête-à-tête is among the first bulbs to bloom here at Gardener's Supply. |
“Petals are a romantic shade of warm pink with a creamy reverse. The perfume is a heady blend of traditional rose fragrance and the aroma of fruit” That’s how the catalog describes the new rose variety called Falling in Love. The dormant shrub—newly arrived on my doorstep—reveals none of this potential. It’s difficult to imagine that the bare roots and leafless canes in the plastic bag will ever deliver on the catalog’s promises.
Planting a dormant, bareroot rose requires a leap of faith from novice gardeners. Experienced gardeners know that the thick roots will anchor themselves firmly and leafy buds will burst from the waxy green canes within weeks. With proper planting and care, this shrub will bloom for many years.
How bareroot roses look before planting. This one is Maria Stern, an especially hardy variety. |
Site selection, soil preparation, and planting technique are the initial secrets to success. The ideal garden site gets at least 6 hours of direct sun a day and is open to allow summer breezes to pass through. The rich, fertile soil drains quickly, but holds moisture.
It’s critical to keep the rose plant hydrated until its roots can take up water on their own. Prompt planting hastens the process. I’ll get my Falling in Love rose into the soil within a day or two or spritz it with water and keep it cool and wrapped in its plastic bag. Before planting, I’ll soak the roots in a bucket of tepid water for a couple of hours. If the rose is dehydrated, experts recommend soaking the entire plant—canes and all—for up to eight hours. It’s best to trim broken roots back to healthy tissue and prune the canes so that each one has three to five buds. This step encourages strong growth and branching.
I expect this rose to live in my garden for years, so now’s the time to prepare the soil. My planting hole is two times wider than the root spread and 15” to 18” deep. To increase the fertility, I add 1 part compost or composted manure to every 3 or 4 parts of the removed soil plus a handful of bone meal and 5 cups each of alfalfa and soybean meals.
The roots and canes join at the knobby graft union. The planting depth depends on your growing zone. |
After mixing, I make a cone of soil in the hole using the enriched backfill and set the roots over it. I adjust the height of the cone so that the graft union (see illustration) is 2-3" below the surface to protect it from freezing. In Zones 6 and warmer, the graft can be placed just above the soil surface. Hold the rose at the proper height while backfilling the hole. Press the soil lightly around the roots, and then water thoroughly to settle the soil. Adding more backfill to level the soil.
To prevent the rose from drying out during the first few weeks after planting, I make a raised ring of soil around the outside of the planting hole to retain water. In addition, I’ll pile 6-8" of soil around the base of the plant covering the graft union and lower canes to keep the canes moist and encourage bud break. After three to four weeks, I’ll gently wash the mound away and level the soil ring as the buds begin to grow.
Nurturing new rose bushes for the first month or two is well worth the effort. By mid- to late-summer, I expect these leafless canes to be filled with ruffled petals, intoxicating fragrance, and dark green foliage that fulfill the catalog’s promise.
For more on growing roses, read Success With Roses. And, if you'd like to plant some bareroot roses of your own, check out the full lineup of roses from Dutch Gardens.
-Ann Whitman, Horticulturist
Most people—me included—find that the toughest part about growing peas is figuring out how to support them properly. In my garden I grow only one type of peas: edible pod peas (rather than shelling peas or snow peas). I eat most of my peas raw rather than cooked, and that’s not something you can do with the other types.
I’ve tried several different varieties of edible pod peas and always come back to Sugar Snaps. In the fall I grow the bush variety Sugar Ann, but for my main midsummer crop I find Sugar Snap produces the most peas and has the longest harvest season. The downside is that these plants get very tall, usually topping out at well over 7 feet.
And that gets me back to pea fences. It’s critical that you decide how you’re going to support your peas BEFORE you plant them. Ideally, you’re ready to put up the trellis the same day you plant your peas. If the weather is right, the seeds will germinate in a matter of days, and baby peas will start searching immediately for something to grab onto. Two things happen if there’s nothing there to grab: their growth will be arrested and they’ll flop over.
Because pea stems are extremely brittle, they often break if you try to bend them up to reach a trellis. The best thing is to have your trellis in place, with the bottom “rung” no more than 2" above the soil surface.
Remember that peas climb, they don’t twine. At each node along their stems, they generate two or three 1" long tendrils. These tendrils need to grab and then wind themselves around something that’s less than about a quarter inch in diameter. I have used three different techniques for supporting peas: twine, netting and galvanized fencing.
Twine
Pea tendrils love to grab onto the rough texture of natural jute twine. It's the most versatile option because you can make your trellis as long and as tall as you wish. Start with three or four rows of twine and add more as the plants grow taller. Be sure to put in twice as many stakes or poles as you think will be necessary. I also find that natural jute twine stretches over time, so string it very tight and be prepared to reinforce as the season progresses.
 Fresh peas are usually one of the first harvests of spring. |
Netting
I’ve used this polypropylene netting many times and am a huge fan. It’s the perfect height right out of the package (6.5 feet) and is 30 feet long, so I get two years of trellis from one package. The mesh has big, 6" openings, which is ideal. Just like with twine, you should put in more vertical supports than you think. I have tried bamboo poles and hardwood stakes, but they’re never tall enough. My latest and greatest solution is 8’ tall green metal “T” posts.
Fencing
This year we’re introducing a new galvanized wire pea fence that’s 5'4" tall. It has eight, 12" wide, hinged panels that can be zig-zagged down your row of peas. This zig-zag design provides extra stability, but we still recommend staking the fence at each end and once in the middle. (A 7-foot wall of peas makes a very effective sail.) We’ve been selling a shorter version of this fence for many years and it works great for bush peas.
How do YOU support your peas? Leave a comment below!
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
Stopping weed seeds from growing makes lawn and garden care easier and less time-consuming. |
The snow has finally receded enough to reveal the flattened remnants of last year’s gardens. Brown daylily and hosta foliage lies pressed to the ground and phlox stems look like a tangle of pick-up-sticks. The lawn is still tawny brown, too, except for the green patch over the septic tank.
Signs of spring are emerging slowly from the still-frozen ground: blooming crocus, daffodils poking through the leaf litter, and dandelions unfurling their tender green rosettes. Even in this earliest stage of spring it seems that weeds have gotten a head start. I know from experience that chickweed and crabgrass seedlings won’t be far behind. Annual weeds have to make the most of their short lives by growing and reproducing quickly and prodigiously. They get a root-hold in the bare soil around the still-sleepy perennials in the garden and take over the bald spots in the lawn.
Eliminating these annual weeds with a pre-emergent herbicide early in the spring saves hours of tedious weeding in June and July. About 20 years ago, a researcher at Iowa State University discovered that corn gluten meal (CGM) prevented turf grass seed from germinating. Further research added crabgrass, barnyard grass, foxtails, dandelion, lambsquarter, pigweed, purslane, and smartweed to the list of seeds it could control. CGM is an all-natural product that prevents the weed seeds from growing after they sprout.
Unlike the chemicals used in most “weed and feed” lawn products, CGM is completely safe for people, pets, wildlife, and the soil. In fact, corn gluten meal is 9% nitrogen by weight, so it acts as a slow-release fertilizer while it’s snuffing out seedlings. Bradfield Organics makes a type of lawn fertilizer that features corn gluten. The granular CGM has been developed specifically for weed prevention and can be applied with a spreader or broadcast by hand. It sure beats weekly hoeing and hand-pulling!
For the best control, it's important to apply CGM before the seeds begin to sprout because it won't kill the weeds once they've started to grow. Crabgrass seeds begin germinating when soil temperatures reach 55 to 60 degrees for at least 7 to 10 days. The exact timing varies for every region, but generally the deadline is prior to lilac bloom.
I'm still going to have to pull up the mature dandelions and other perennial weeds that overwintered in my lawn and garden, but using corn gluten meal will reduce their numbers in future seasons. For this year, though, I'm looking forward to fewer hours spent behind the hoe and more time to sit on the garden bench admiring the view.
For more information, check out the following articles:
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
2008 will be my 30th year in the garden. But it's only my third year wearing garden gloves. Until a couple years ago, I never wore gloves in the garden unless I was pruning roses or raspberries.
There are a couple of reasons I was so resistant to wearing gloves. First is that living in northern Vermont, I already have to wear gloves five months a year just to keep my hands from freezing. When winter is finally gone I want nothing to do with coats, hats or gloves.
The main reason is that until recently, you had to choose between stiff, heavy leather work gloves and prissy cotton gloves that were suitable for a garden party but useless in the garden.
Fortunately, garden gloves have finally caught up with the 21st century—just in time to rescue my 50-year-old hands! I've gone from never wearing gloves to always wearing gloves almost overnight. This conversion was made possible by three innovative glove designs.
- Mud Gloves
- These are the only gloves I wear in early spring and late fall. It's a comfortable knitted cotton hand that's been dipped in flexible, waterproof vinyl. All but the wrist and very top of the hand are completely protected from cold wet soil, bristly brush and rough stones. I now keep at least 3 pairs of Mud Gloves in my glove basket on the front porch, and will usually use all of them at some point over the course of a weekend. Depending on the work and the weather, they'll get wet or encased in mud. Or I'll remove them to answer the phone or pull back my hair and manage to lose them for a few hours. Several different companies are now making this type of glove. The fit and thickness of the vinyl varies, so try a few different styles until you find the one that's right for you.
This style from West Country, called the Garden Glove, has a fit like a driving glove. |
- Knitted Nylon and Faux Leather Work Gloves
- I have large hands, but they're long and slender. In days past, men's leather work gloves were the only option for working with stone and other rough materials. I found those gloves loose and sloppy. Enter West Country Gloves. Their knitted nylon gloves have a close, comfortable fit and palms that are covered with textured faux leather. I'm not usually a fan of faux, but in this case, you get the same protection as leather, in a material that stays drier and never stiffens.
I wear these gloves hard and have gone through several pair over the past couple years. Everyone in my household has at least a couple pair, and I've also given them as presents to most of my gardening friends. They now come in fun colors like purple and green, and there's even an insulated version that's perfect for stacking and hauling wood.
- Nitrile Gloves
- These are the gloves I couldn't live without. I feel a little sheepish admitting that I put them on almost every time I head out into the yard and garden. My collection now includes about a dozen different brands and colors and sizes. All are made of lightweight knitted nylon, with a very thin layer of flexible rubberized material on the palm. They're cool in even the hottest weather. They dry quickly and can be washed in the washer (though I find the rubbery coating lasts longer if you hand wash them). I recommend always having at least a couple pair of them around so you can put on dry ones when you go back outdoors after lunch or tea.
The best thing about these gloves is that the water-resistant coating is so thin, I can (and do) wear them to do everything, including planting seeds and thinning seedlings. They let me feel what I'm doing. This is a practical advantage, but for me it's also metaphysical. One of the reasons I garden is because I get to experience a dissolving of the space between me and plants and earth. In the past, gloves got in the way of this connection. (My guess is that this will either make complete sense to you or it will sound a bit crazy, but I can't think of any other way to put it.)
We now offer a wide-ranging selection of gloves for the 21st century. Do you have a favorite glove to recommend? If so, please leave a comment below!
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
Nelumbo nucifera 'Alba Striata' bloomed the first season. |
The lotus is definitely one of the most dramatic blooms in my garden. The distinctive bloom—held high on its stem—is one of those things you really can call "startlingly beautiful." Its form is striking, yes. But look inside, and you'll be amazed by the bright-yellow seed capsule, surrounded by golden filaments that support the anthers. Another one of its startlingly qualities is the fragrance. To my nose, neither good nor bad, but like no other.
The bud, about a week before blooming. |
The lotus is easily grown in a tub or barrel. You don't need to have a pond. (What's more, overwintering lotuses is simple, too.) I order my lotuses by mail at this time of year. There's a short window of time (only in the spring) when the rhizomes can be dug and shipped as bareroot plants. This year, I'm going to try two new varieties: Baby Doll, a miniature from Perry's Water Gardens and Daintiest, another small variety from Lilypons Water Gardens.
When the rhizomes arrive, you plant them in a plastic bucket of heavy garden soil that can be amended with well-aged manure. I use a 8"-deep (12" dia.), plastic buckets that I get at a home goods store. Once the rhizome is seated in the mud, I lower the bucket into my water garden, which is a glazed ceramic pot. The key is to get the soil surface 4-6" below the water surface. If the planting pot is too low, raise it with some flat stones or bricks.
Alba Striata at the end of the summer, showing its distinctive foliage. |
Give the plant as much sun as possible. The first leaves to emerge are the floaters, which sit on the surface of the water—just like waterlilies. After that, you'll get some of the dramatic parasol leaves, which rise above the surface of the water. If you're lucky, you'll get a bloom or two. But even if it doesn't bloom, the leaves are gorgeous and tropical. Water beads on the surface of the leaves in a magical way.
Lotuses don't come cheap. You can expect to pay about $30-40 for a mail-order plant. To me, it's worth it because the plants are simple and spectacular. If it doesn't bloom the first year, hold the tuber over the winter, bring it out in spring. And get ready. You won't be disappointed.
-David Grist, Online Content Coordinator
Potatoes give me more garden satisfaction per square foot and time invested than any other vegetable I grow. A few years ago I planted six different potato varieties and kept records on how many pounds I harvested from each. The project made a good County Fair exhibit and won a blue ribbon, which paid for my much of my investment in seed potatoes. The crop also kept my family in potatoes for most of the winter. Every pound of seed potatoes I planted yielded about 12 pounds of harvest. In other words, we dug up nearly four bushels or 200 pounds of spuds from just 18 pounds of “seed”.
The term “seed potato” is a bit of a misnomer. Although you can grow potatoes from actual seeds, that’s best left to the plant breeders. All commercial and home garden potato crops are grown from eyes or sprouts on the edible tubers. I plant either whole, small tubers or cut up larger potatoes into two-eye pieces.
Compared to the limited selection in the grocery store, the variety of gourmet, heirloom, and specialty potatoes available to home gardeners is huge. Some are best for boiled new potatoes in summer; others are good keepers for winter storage. Skins and flesh colors include red, yellow, white, pink and blue. Those with moist or waxy flesh hold together in soups and salads. Dry-fleshed russet potatoes are suited to baking, mashing and frying.
Our all-around favorite varieties were Carola and Rose Gold. Carola has yellow skin and flesh with a smooth, creamy texture for potato salads and stews. Rose Gold is a beautiful pink-skinned variety with drier gold flesh for home fries, creamy soups and fluffy mashed and baked spuds. Both stored well into winter.
My kids were intrigued with the size and shapes of the fingerling potatoes. Instead of big round or oblong potatoes, Russian Banana, Rose Finn, and Ruby Crescent fingerlings grow long, narrow and even curved. Digging these heirloom “small potatoes” was the highlight of our gardening season.
Although I grew my prize-winning potatoes in rows in a traditional garden, I’ve since learned how to grow them in less space and with less work. Raised beds and Potato Bags are now the way to grow! Potato plants are actually attractive in the landscape, especially when they’re blooming, so I put the planted bags where we can appreciate them.
For more information, read this PDF on growing and planting potatoes. For a list of links to seed potato catalogs and other information sources, visit visit this page at Washington State University.
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
Proven Winners has introduced so many fabulous container plants over the past few years. Some favorites that I now consider “must haves” include Diamond Frost euphorbia, Sedona coleus, Vanilla Butterfly argyranthemum, Toffee Twist carex, Rubrum pennisetum and Angelina sedum.
They’ve done it again for 2008, and here are a few of the new varieties I’ll be looking for when I hit my local nursery this spring:
Angelonia ‘Angel Face Dark Violet’: in the photographs I’ve seen, the color of these flowers looks more burgundy than violet. If that’s a fact, I’ll be sure to give it a try.
Calibrachoa ‘Dreamsicle’ and ‘Scarlet’: The first is a terrific bright orange and the second a bright red. These clear, hot colors are difficult to find and so valuable for creating flashy color combinations.
Lantana ‘Luscious Lemonade’: Hot colors are fun, but I’m not a fan of bright yellow. This new lantana is a pale shade of buttery yellow.
Coleus: There are two new varieties that caught my eye. Lemon Sunsation has narrow, chartreuse leaves with lacy edges that have a whisper of burgundy along the edge. Lancelot Velvet Mocha also has finely-cut leaves but is a sultry bronze-burgundy. Both are on the tall side (2 to 3 feet), which will make them good for anchoring the back of a container. There are not that many good “thriller” plants for containers, and these two sound like good candidates.
Pennisetum ‘Prince’: I’m already a huge fan of Rubrum, so I’ll be taking a close look at this new variety, which is supposed to be even deeper in color, with foliage that looks more black/purple than burgundy.
Acalypha ‘Sizzle Scissors': With such an unfriendly Latin name, this plant’s common name will probably be the one that sticks: copperleaf plant. It looks like it could be a good filler with raggedy, jaggedy foliage in mottled tones of cream and bronze. 24” H.
Proven Winners is also introducing a bunch of interesting echeverias and agaves, but unfortunately, these heat-lovers rarely appear in our northern New England garden centers. If you live in a warmer part of the country, keep your eyes open for some of these terrific new succulents.
Happy shopping!
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
Send a Photo
See how other gardeners are supporting their tomatoes and share a photo of your own. Visit our Photo Center. |
What's your favorite tomato support? Take our poll and let us know. (You can find the poll at the top of the right-hand column.) Do you prefer Tomato Cages, Tomato Ladders, Rainbow Spiral Supports, wooden stakes or something of your own invention? If you have more to say about your choice, please make a comment (click on Comments at the bottom of this post).
Cindy and Kathy at the photo shoot. |
Like many good ideas, it all began with a casual hallway conversation. Back in the office after a sunny May weekend, Cindy and I were talking about which gardening chores we'd managed to cross off our lists. We had both planted our tomatoes that weekend, but she had put up tomato ladders and I had put up cages. We started laughing about how she would never even consider using cages for supports and how I would never consider using ladders.
Others within earshot chimed in with their own opinions about the merits of each support system. It seemed clear: Either you were a cage-person or a ladder-person.
Our art director, Susan, overheard us talking and a light bulb went on. “Let’s set up a face off and photograph it for the catalog,” she said. “We could do it in one of the beds in our display garden!”
We enlisted our extraordinary staff gardener, Sarah, to set up and maintain the bed throughout the summer months. She made sure the tomato plants were well fertilized and had plenty of water. By early September, the plants were heavy with fruit and the photo shoot was scheduled for one day after work. Susan, the photographer, our photo stylist Martha, and Cindy and I met in the display gardens just outside our offices.
Cindy and I figured we’d been asked to be there as “expert advisors” about the merits of the two different systems. What we didn’t realize was that Susan's plan was to feature the two of us just as prominently as the tomato supports.
There was no time for special outfits and no one around to style our hair. The two of us got planted right in the bed with the tomatoes and it was all over but the crying in about 10 minutes. (Strange to see how you can look your age on the outside and still feel like 35 on the inside…).
Read Ladders or Cages to learn more.
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
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