Mulch and How to Use It

Mulch…We here in the piedmont of Virginia have been having a rough go of it this summer in the rainfall department. Mulch has saved our bacon this season. We put in a huge display garden around our new retail space, mulch like superman saved the day. We would never have been able to keep it watered and looking as great as it does without mulch. It is just the thing for keeping the moisture where it belongs around the roots. It also helps suppress weeds, which tend to grow faster than the stuff we actually planted.  The kind of mulch we choose and the amount used differs depending on what and where. Our personal view is about one inch of mulch put on once or twice a year. Applying mulch like this still helps retain moisture in the soil and lets rain or your watering through. Too much mulch can make an impenetrable barrier to water, not to mention an ugly mound. We are also careful to pull the mulch away from the base of each plant so if we get too much moisture it doesn't sit next to the stem of the plant and help to rot it. As to what to mulch with, that is up to your personal taste. The field is now so varied, and personal taste so distinct that I won't comment much on this. I will tell you we use double shredded hard wood that looks very dark on the ground. We think it shows off the plants better and looks more natural.

A garden tip for this time of year that I am dealing with now.

Daylily

Edit your garden. This is a good time to remove plants that didn't work out. Maybe they took up too much space where you put them (my yarrow), or didn't perform well, or it isn't the look you want for that part of your garden. Dig them up and give them away or move them to another part of your garden or return them to the garden in the form of compost (which means throw them on the compost pile, ashes to ashes dust to dust). Don't keep something in your garden you don't like just because it is alive and healthy. It is your garden and when you look at it I want you to smile. Aren't gardens wonderfully recyclable?

Garden Grow Time

New Gardens

Our new gardens are growing, and fast. I have no idea what is in that soil, but it seems like magic. The pergola over the main entrance is finished, and it's painted a lovely violet blue. It's satisfying to see a lot of hard work pay off in an inviting and beautiful garden retail space. Actually, looking at our display gardens to see what is blooming at that moment and how big it really gets in the garden is worth the trip over here. It's amazing how big plants in little 3 1/2" pots will get, isn't it?

Gardening Hats for Sale

It makes me want to run around visiting all the other nurseries within an hour or so just to see what their places look like and compare and get more inspiration. Going to a local nursery (like ours!) is such a great experience; it's so much better than getting plants through the mail or from a catalogue (or from Lowe's!). Also the fun of a plant road trip with like-minded friends could make your week. I find it very satisfying to come home with a carfull of plants from everywhere on the map.  It will also help the local economy...AND when you put your new purchases in the ground, you'll get a good workout in the most Zen way by getting in touch with nature at the same time. Maybe now that garden season is slowing down a little, it's time to jump in the gardenmobile.

Garden info:  It's the second week in June, so it's time to cut back mums and asters. I also cut back my tall summer phlox, boltonias, and some sedums. Cutting back these plants helps to stagger bloom time and keeps them shorter for a neater appearance. Stay tuned and we'll see you soon!

Planting the New Garden

One of the new greenhouses

We have a new planting project here at Morningside Farm: our new huge display bed. It stretches on forever around the new retail area. The back side of the garden is going to be a rain garden, which will help with erosion and runoff problems into our new pond and on down the pond chain to the river system and the Chesapeake Bay. I am savoring the idea of planting this garden. Our friends Jeff and Bill came and tilled the whole garden bed. It's beautiful just as it is, but of course an empty garden to a gardener is a battle cry. We will all work on it. I like to imagine it will be the wonder of the neighborhood, and it will certainly be the wonder of our nursery. As children at Christmas with sugarplums dancing in their heads, our heads are full of dancing perennials and annuals, maybe a few small trees and shrubs, a few pieces of iron work maybe, beautiful blooming containers over-spilling with summer lushness. I am going to do the containers now so they will be ready to add to the garden after mother's day.

Crab Apple

I was thinking of a seasonal Spring, Summer, and Fall garden starting with Spring at the big blue house and continuing around. The whole garden would be of interest all the time, with an emphasis on a particular season in a particular area. I haven't broached this with the men yet; I'm trying to get it straight in my own mind first. I plan on making a list of all sun blooming Spring perennials, a list of Summer perennials, and a list of late Summer/Fall perennials. I'll start with a list and veer off entirely by the end.

I would also like to have bays of annuals in the garden that stay the same every year, kind of like annual islands in the perennial bed, with their own area they can be planned as a garden within the garden every year. That's the end of my garden musings for now.

A small, funny string of tips about old-fashioned clothespins (the ones with a coil of wire between the pieces of wood):

• Use an indelible ball point pen to write on them, snap it onto the rim of a flower pot to identify the plant
• Put on opened packages of seeds to keep tightly closed or to separate different packages
• Flank a partly broken stem with pieces of wood and hold in place with the clothespin
• Hold the pages of a book open to free both hands
• Hold covers in place to shade a plant.
• The last part of the tip..."Keep in your basket of tools at all times"

That's it for me this week. I will let you know about our garden progress, or better yet, come visit.

New Plants, A Fresh Recipe, and The Phabulous Philly Flower Show

Our trip to the Philly Flower show was incredible. We left at nine in the morning and got back at one the next morning. There was so much to see and so many great ideas to absorb. Instead of the big displays that had lines snaking around them, I preferred the smaller, lovely little vignettes: house fronts that looked like a country cottage filled with tulips and flowers, a ruin of a stone church with vines creeping through the windows and an overgrown garden surrounding it, huge containers with the most perfect plant combinations. We made sure to go early in the week because some of the flowers fade as the week goes on. You can see some of the elaborate pictures from the flower show in this entry.

Gardening, I have to say, is a very personal journey. We now have three gardeners under one roof, and we all have something to say about every gardening issue, which, in this house, is every issue.

My garden preference is toward beautiful, vivid colors. All the new Heucheras (Frosted Violet, Lime Rickey, Marmalade, Mystic Angel, and Peach Flambe...some of these names are sounding very food-like) are my favorites at the moment. They are so dramatic at any time of the year, even without their flowers. Leaf and foliage texture, like on the Heucheras, means much more to me in my garden than just the colorful flowers by themselves. Plant texture also pulls a garden through the entire year as it changes from season to season. Grasses in the garden, for example, have great texture. My new favorite grass is Panicum "Northwind." It looked so expressive in my garden this winter and still does.  I hate to cut it back, but it's time for everything to fall as part of my spring garden clean up.
Travis loves to cook, so herbs are his plant of choice at the moment. He made a great bruschetta to go with dinner on Sunday. The recipe is very simple, but it tasted just like heaven:

It's just diced Roma tomatoes, minced garlic,  some of our Greek Columnar basil (that we should be using for cuttings at this time of year), and olive oil. Mix that in a bowl with some fresh ground pepper and kosher salt and let it sit at least a half an hour. Then toast thin slices from a baguette in an oven until they become crisp but not too brown. Finally, spoon on the tomato mixture.  A little Parmesan cheese and olive oil sprinkled on the bread before you toast it makes it even better. It's easy and fresh and almost everything comes from the garden.

That's all for this week. A few garden tips to remember: If you buy bare root shrubs this time of year, be sure to soak them in water several hours before you plant them. And now's the time to divide Hostas, liriope, daylilies, Shasta daises, astilbe, and coral-bells, before they begin to grow.