Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2019 i Garden Gate

Container gardening can bring the garden right to your doorstep. A potful of plants, after all, is the quickest way to extend your garden onto a deck, porch, or patio. Small trees and shrubs in planters can accentuate an entryway or steps—or even conceal the recycling bins. And containers are an easy way to add color and greenery where there’s simply no place to plant. “There really are no secrets,” says Laura Justice, specialty garden manager for Chalet, a renowned Chicago-area nursery and garden center. “But textural contrasts are the unsung heroes of most good designs. The play of bold leaves against delicate fronds, upright versus draping, spiky versus lobed. This is what tends to bind the design together.” Laura insists there is no special formula to designing a successful…

Black spruce Picea mariana Dwarf Korean lilac Syringa meyeri Lavender  Lavandula angustifolia Miss Willmott’s ghost Eryngium giganteum Pine Pinus spp. Astilbe Astilbe spp. and hybrids Clematis Clematis spp. and hybrids Coreopsis Coreopsis spp. and hybrids Daylily Hemerocallis spp. and hybrids Foxglove Digitalis purpurea Hollyhock Alcea rosea Ligularia Ligularia dentata Nasturtium Tropaeolum majus Yellow loosestrife Lysimachia vulgaris Cinnamon fern Osmunda cinnamomea Hay-scented fern Dennstaedtia punctilobula Japanese maple Acer palmatum Rhododendron Rhododendron spp. and hybrids…

Dianthus basics Well-drained soil and full sun will ensure your dianthus returns every year and produces lots of blooms. A few hours of afternoon shade in hot summer areas is OK and can prevent flower color from fading. Avoid irrigation If you have an irrigation line, don’t plant dianthus there — watering this way promotes rot or foliage disease. Instead, let dianthus dry out a bit first then water on the soil near the plant without getting the leaves wet.…

You may just need to be patient. Blueberries mature at about 4 years, yielding the best fruit on 1 to 1 ½-inch stems. Some other ideas: • A late frost can damage flowers enough to prevent fruit from forming.• Cold or rainy weather during flowering can slow bee activity and pollination.• Snipping off the fat buds near the ends of the branches in early spring removes the flower buds that form fruit. Prune in late winter or very early spring when the plants are dormant. But only remove spindly or low-growing branches, dead or diseased stems, and old thick stems with peeling gray bark.• Blueberries produce best in acid soil. Try elemental sulfur to lower the pH if a soil test shows that it’s above 4.5 to 5.5.…

Your plants are in the ground — now what? Feed once Karl Batschke of Darwin Perennials® has been growing and developing dianthus cultivars for years. He recommends using a slow-release plant food once in late spring to keep plants healthy and blooming prolifically. Sprinkle it around the perimeter of the plant to avoid causing fertilizer burn on the foliage and crown. Don’t wait to deadhead Two to three times during the growing season give dianthus a haircut like the one below. Cut off all the flowering stems (but not all the foliage) when most of them have faded — even if you still see a few flowers or buds. This freshens up plants and encourages them to take off again. You should have blooms again in just a couple of…

Nothing compares to the sight of a mass of poppies bursting into bloom in early summer; their crepe paperlike petals glowing in the sunlight are stunning. From the classic single red-orange ‘Legion of Honor’ corn poppy at left to lush doubles, such as ‘Flemish Antique’ breadseed poppy on the next page, there’s an amazing range of colors and shapes to choose from. Though the flowers can be fleeting when temperatures are warm, these tough plants are rarely bothered by insects or disease, and deer leave them alone, too. Turn the page to meet some annual or short-lived perennial members of the poppy family that will reseed happily in your borders year after year. Choose Your Favorite Poppy Corn poppy Papaver rhoeas Also called “field poppy” or “Flanders poppy”, this petite…

Mouseear chickweed Cerastium vulgatum What it looks like Mouseear chickweed grows 20 inches long, with hairy, rounded, stalkless leaves along hairy stems that will root down at the nodes to form a low mat on the ground. Tiny white flowers appear from early spring to late summer or fall. The flowers have five petals, though they might look like 10 with their deep lobes. It spreads by seed and by rooting nodes. It is usually perennial, but can also grow as an annual in colder zones. Mouseear chickweed foliage often has a sticky feel to the touch. Where to find it It grows in lawns, gardens, roadsides, and cultivated sites, preferring shady, moist spots. How to get rid of it The best control is to prevent flowers and seeds from…

The first time I spotted a doublefile viburnum in full bloom, I had to do a double take. Even though it was springtime in Missouri, here was a good-sized shrub smothered with flat sprays of pure white flowers that looked like its branches were covered in snow. This plant’s habit is so distinctive you can’t help but look twice: The 2- to 4-inch flowers resemble lacecap blossoms and grow in two horizontal rows above and on both sides of the stems (doublefile). Its branches are tiered and held straight outward, just like multiple outstretched arms blanketed in blooms. YEAR-ROUND APPEAL This is a tough deciduous shrub with more than just a single season of interest, even in a cold climate like mine. The brilliant flowers are followed by bright red…

How To Enter: INSTAGRAM: Submit photos of your garden using the hashtag: #ggmagReaderGarden MAIL: Reader Garden Award Garden Gate Magazine 2143 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50312 EMAIL: Email your information and a link to your images in cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc.) to ReaderGarden@aimmedia.com GUIDELINES: Only amateur gardeners are eligible for awards; participants cannot earn their living from gardening, landscaping or interior design. Gardens that have received other national gardening honors or awards or have been featured in a national magazine are ineligible. Please retain an original copy of your complete entry for your records; materials will not be returned. Images from entries may be shared online. DEADLINE: Submissions must be received by October 15th, 2019. Award winners will be selected by Garden Gate editors…

Pipevine swallowtail Battus philenor What it looks like Both male and female pipevine swallowtails are deep blue with bright metallic blue hindwings and a shiny blue body. The males are brighter and more iridescent. White spots line the inside edge of the wings and orange dots, the outside. The eggs are red and round. Brown-black caterpillars have lines of red spots along their backs. Where to find it This species is found in the southern half of the United States in meadows, woodlands and gardens with pipevine plants (Aristolochia macrophylla). They prefer warm climates, though they’re occasionally spotted in the Midwest. The plant it loves Females lay their eggs on pipevine plant, whose leaves contain a toxic acid that makes the caterpillars inedible to birds and predators. But the tropical…

There are so many reasons to love dianthus—gorgeous single or double blooms in pink, red, lavender or white, a scrumptious spicy scent and good-looking green or silver-blue foliage. But this family of plants hasn’t been without its problems. Often short-lived, some are sporadic rebloomers, don’t have much fragrance or die out in the center by summer. Fortunately, more recent varieties have been developed that solve these problems. You’ll find a few of those recent introductions here along with growing tips below and on the following page. While you can buy many of these dianthus at your local garden centers, I’ve included a few mail-order sources on the next page, too. Ready to check out some new and improved dianthus? Let’s go! 1 ‘COCONUT PUNCH’ Part of the Fruit Punch® series, ‘Coconut…

As if there weren’t enough grudges to hold against weeds, let me introduce you to four of the nastiest weeds of North America. They don’t just disrupt your garden—they can cause you bodily harm or even death through ingestion or through contact. If you live near fields, meadows, waterways or woodlands, these plants might be growing unnoticed on your property. Even if you don’t, they inhabit other flower-filled spaces you visit: public parks, hiking areas, ponds, lakes, rivers and meadows of wildflowers. TREACHEROUS AND TRICKY And they aren’t easy to eliminate. Removing them manually is most effective, but it requires thorough protection to keep yourself safe. Cover all skin with non-cotton clothing and wear a hat and thick gloves. In some instances you may want to wear eye protection. Always…

GETTING STARTED Imagine the taste of a juicy, ripe strawberry—so much better when you’ve grown it yourself. And you can—here’s how: First, pick which type of strawberry best suits your needs; the table at left explains the differences. Find a spot with at least 8 hours of sun each day and make sure it has well-draining soil. The kind you choose will dictate how you lay out your beds (more on that to come), but no matter which one you grow, if you purchase bare-root strawberries, plant them right away so they won’t have a chance to dry out. Trim back roots longer than 4 to 6 inches, then fan them out in the planting hole and set the crown at soil level. Don’t plant too deep or the crown…

Since the vegetables in these beds are planted closely together, you will have fewer weeds to deal with. That’s because the higher density of plantings shade out most of the weeds. Once the plants are well-established, your watering chores should be minimal. Keep in mind, the depth of a raised bed determines how often you will have to water: More soil holds more moisture, so a deeper raised bed will require less frequent watering. Expect to water your raised beds at least once a week, perhaps every few days. In hot wether and periods of drought, you may need to water the beds daily. Feed your plants at planting time and midseason with a granular all-purpose organic fertilizer. And be sure to visit your raised beds daily and take the…

Q What is the best way to move blooming daffodils and still have flowers for next year? N. Gray, WI A Daffodils (Narcissus spp. and hybrids) need about 6 weeks after blooming to store up enough energy to form leaves and flower buds within the bulb for the following year. That’s why gardeners wait until the foliage dies down to divide or transplant. If you must move them, try digging the plants up as a clump. Get as much soil around the roots as possible and keep it all intact, slipping it into a large nursery pot, tub or bucket to transport. Plant the clump as soon as you can and water in well. If the daffodils were minimally disrupted, you might see blooms again the following year. But often…

Knowing a little bit about your favorite butterflies will help ensure you’re doing all you can to bring them in. Ever see one you didn’t recognize? Identification can be a bit of a challenge because some butterfly species mimic others to fool predators; then there are seasonal variations and the differences between male and female. This guide will get you started. In addition, visit www.butterfliesandmoths.org for more identification tips.›› Eastern tiger swallowtail Papilio glaucus These big butterflies are hard to miss as they flit through the garden. Their signature tails extend from the lower wings, and tigerlike black stripes taper down from the top. Males and females look very similar but the females have the iridescent blue you see in the photo below. Females can also be dimorphic, which means…

When you plant a butterfly garden, you’re helping to provide a bit of habitat for them. One of the key aspects to doing this is to grow native plants, such as New England aster and butterfly weed, which can be found in almost all of North America. These plants are important because the insects evolved over time alongside the plants and rely on them for food, shelter and a spot to lay their eggs. Check local greenhouses and specialty online nurseries for native options for your area. It may be easier for you to find cultivars of native plants, often bred more for their landscape value, for sale in garden centers. ‘Gateway’ Joe-Pye weed, ‘Moonbeam’ coreopsis and ‘Fireworks’ goldenrod are a few in this plan. When possible, choose cultivars that…