Trees – Glorious Trees – Arbor Day

Rowe landscape

My friend (and noted author), Kathryn Galbraith, explained the importance of trees to community in her beautiful new picture book for children, Arbor Day Square.  I am fortunate to be surrounded by woodland here in Heath, but as a new member of the Bridge of Flowers committee I have been more and more aware of how healthy street trees, some of them quite new, add to the quality of life in a small town like Shelburne Falls, but they also support the economic life of the town. When visitors come to tour the Bridge of Flowers they see that the Bridge is not an isolated element in the town, it is just a symbol of the care the community takes of its resources, of its residents, and of the natural world. Visitors find pleasure in walking through the town, and stopping to shop and snack, and even dine. Not to be crass, but greening a town can lead to putting a little green in townspeople’s pockets.

Does your town have street trees? What do they mean to you?

Celebrate trees and Arbor Day. There is lots of information about Arbor Day in Massachusetts here.

Snow again?

Snow on new Front Garden 4-28

This was the view of the newly planted Front Garden yesterday morning at 6:30 am. It was still snowing and the temperature was 32 degree. Windy.  You can’t see, but my tiny lettuce and broccoli transplants appeared to be damaged.

Snow on herb garden 4-28

The herbs did not mind the snow and by 10 am the snow was gone and temperatures had risen to 40 degrees. All is well – as far as I can tell.

Today dawned with brilliant sun and 42 degrees at 7 am. A heat wave is promised.

Perfectly Pink

And now to see how Wordlessly beautiful the world is elsewhere click here.

Gloriosky Gloria!

Gloria Pacosa and me

Yesterday my husband,  Henry,  and I went out to The Curtis House in Ashfield to film a session with Gloria Pacosa of Gloriosa & Co. and Trillium Workshops fame for the Shelburne Falls Cable TV show Over The Falls. The subject was how to make beautiful container plantings. Mine is the red arrangement and Gloria’s is one of fifteen herbal containers that she is making for a wedding next weekend. The show will be aired first on May 14.

We talked about everything beginning with what kinds of containers are available. Clay pots, plain and fancy are classic, but they do dry out quickly and special attention needs to be paid to watering. Plastic, resin and new fangled materials sometimes mimic ornate stone containers at moderate prices. They also dry out at a slower rate but all container plantings must be watered every day.  Gloria, the Queen of Recycling, is always looking for throwaways to use from pretty china teacups for muscari, to rusty old egg baskets like this one that she lined with moss, harvested from her lawn and the woods, inserted a plastic bag to hold potting soil and then filled with a great selection of plants combining silvery and red foliage.

There are many recipes for potting mixes online. I usually buy a commercial mix, but I always add a helping of compost. In addition to being kept well watered, containers must be kept fertilized. Fish emulsion is good, and Gloria said I could put all the comfrey in my backyard to good use by chopping it up and letting it steep in a pail or barrel of water for a few days. I have LOTS of comfrey. Comfrey tea is very nutritious and good for plants.

My own container began with a bright red dahlia. Then Gloria helped me choose other plants to go with it. Basil and a variegated sage added light bright green foliage, red salvia was a good compliment to the dahlia and then came what I thought was a bold move, the coral dascia.  Wow! I would never have been able to do this myself, but Gloria has given me new confidence – just what every good teacher does.  I also took hydrated moss from Gloria’s collection and ‘mulched’ the top of the container. This gives the arrangement an elegant finished look.  To keep the container looking its best all summer I will have to keep the plants deadheaded. They will grow taller and will fade. Cut them back!  Gloria was quite insistent. Shear the dascia! To get more dahlias keep deadheading.

I can’t put this outside yet because it is too cold, but in a couple of weeks it should be safe. It will be really happy on my very sunny piazza.  In the meantime it is is our bright, unheated Great Room.

Tulip Time on the Bridge of Flowers

Tulips on the Bridge of Flowers

Tulips of many colors and hues are in full bloom on Shelburne Falls’ Bridge of Flowers. It’s enough to make one stop – or at least slow down – to enjoy the day and be grateful to live in such an area where  going about one’s duties and errand running brings one this kind of pleasure.   And don’t forget you can add a little bit of the Bridge to your own garden by buying a plant or two at the Annual Plant Sale on May 22.  Nine a.m.!

Viburnam

The woods are also beginning to bloom. Even when my errands take me through the hills I look around and see woodland foliage attaining more definition and leaf buds unfurl in ruddy shades of maple, tender green and the bright yellow green of willows. Everywhere I go, magnolias, cherries and trees I can’t even identify are blooming in yards, along the Deerfield River, and at the edges of pastures. Crabapples are just beginning to bloom. Trees, tulips, daffodils – bloom is bustin’ out all over.

At home, bees are buzzing in the wild plum trees that grow around the hen house. I am reminded that I need to get busy as a bee. This week I spent a happy morning moving rotted horse manure from my neighborly supplier and into various garden beds. I pruned roses and planted roses: Hawkeye Belle (pink) on the Rose Bank, and Prairie Harvest (yellow) and Quietness (pale pink)  on the Rose Walk. All three are hardy Griffith Buck hybrids. I also ripped out Pamela, a pink rugosa that was too much like Scabrosa.  I put a couple of the shoots on the Rose Bank and gave the greater part to neighbors who have no roses. Yet.  My  husband revved up the tractor and pulled out a nearly dead spirea – too far gone to try and save. Now I have a beautiful open spot in a Lawn Bed that was looking too crowded.

Trillium Workshop - Planting Containers

The lasagna Front Garden is now completed and I planted my own lettuce and broccoli seedlings in the new bed. Then I celebrated by attending a Trillium Workshops program on planting containers. The three Trillium gardeners, Jeff Farrell, Lisa Newman and Gloria Pacosa, gave a group of excited gardeners information about options in containers, how to make potting mixes, how to keep container plantings alive – and then we all dug in. So to speak. We had brought planters and Trillium supplied a whole range of seedlings, annuals, herbs, dahlias – and ideas. One of the participants noticed that all of the completed and very different arrangements looked great. Which just goes to show that there are many aesthetic approaches and many ways to make something beautiful. Thank you Trillium!

Herbs for Cooking and Drinking

Common Thyme

The first plants to show green in my garden are the herbs growing right in front of my piazza.  Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme – as well as dill, tarragon, chives, basil, lemon balm and black stem mint – are handy for seasoning my cooking, and for steeping a cup of tea. Other herbs are planted throughout the garden: black cohosh or cimicifuga racemosa; comfrey; scented geraniums, and lovage.

Herbs fall into two main categories. It is the perennial herbs that produce the first green shoots in my herb bed.  By the time I notice that the chives are bare of snow, they are also ready to be snipped for use in the kitchen.  Chives have an onion-y flavor and can be used at the last minute in a cooked dish, or cut and sprinkled as a fresh garnish. Who among us has not enjoyed a baked potato with sour cream with a dash of bright green chives?

Chives

Later in the spring chives bloom, with edible lavender flowers, a smaller version of the ornamental allium, that can be added to a salad for color and flavor. Chives will be usable all season into late fall.

Lovage is the most unusual perennial herb I grow. It gets to be 6 feet tall and has a celery like flavor. Whenever I need celery for a soup or other dish, but find the crisper empty,  I cut a small branchlet and use the leaves to add that celery flavor.

Parsley is actually a biennial which means it will not set seed until its second season. However since there is not much usable the second year a new six pack of parsley starts will give you most of the parsley you will need all summer and fall. I have been growing my own parsley from seed so I have plenty to use as border edging and as lavish garnish on summer potato and pasta salads. I only grow flat leaf Italian parsley for its flavor, but many like to also grow the curly parsley, the garnish usually found in restaurant meals.

Lovage

The annual herb basil comes in dozens of flavors from large leafed Mammoth to tiny Spicy Globe to Thai basils. Don’t put your basil seedlings in the garden too early, they are very tender.

Cilantro is an annual much used in Mexican-South American dishes. It is important to know that it goes to seed very quickly. In order to have fresh cilantro all season it is important to plant a new plot every two or three weeks.

Herbs are among the easiest plants to grow if you give them well drained, ordinary garden soil in full sun.  Just a reminder, full sun means at least six hours of sun between 10 in the morning and six in the evening

Most of the herbs in my garden are used in my cooking, but other herbs can be used for herbal teas. Have you ever looked at the ingredients label of a Celestial Seasonings tea?  Many gardeners will find those ingredients in their gardens – chamomile, raspberry leaves, lemon balm, bee balm or mint.

A calming tea can include a few leaves of chamomile, catnip and lavender. Some herbalists recommend a combination of three herbs which you can choose to your own taste.

An energizing tea can be made of spearmint, peppermint, rose hips, lemon balm and a little citrus zest.

Tea herbs, or any herb that you want to dry for later use, should be harvested in their youth, and early in the day, after they are dry. You will not get the best flavor if you wait till the end of the season to harvest just before the weather turns cool.

There are other less common herbs for less common uses. I have a big patch of perennial comfrey behind the house. The bruised leaves which contain allantoin can be rubbed on a scrape or swelling to help healing. One of its common names is boneset.  You will find comfrey in many healing salves. It is also very nutritious and I use it chopped for chicken feed.

Tansy

Everyone knows that mint can be quite invasive and are usually prepared to keep it in check, sometimes planting it in a container.  Not everyone knows that tansy, which is sold in nurseries, is also very invasive. I speak from experience on both counts. In the field next to my vegetable garden and raspberry patch spearmint and tansy are battling to see who can spread faster and more thickly.

I planted tansy as an insect deterrent. Maybe the tansy and spearmint field around the vegetable garden is the reason I have so little trouble with bugs. The Rose Walk backs up to this field; perhaps that is one of the reasons I have so little trouble with Japanese beetles. I have been giving all the credit to milky spore disease.

Tansy and mints spread by rhizomes, but tansy also spreads by seed.  Tansy now grows in the field, but also up and down our road. I assume the seed has been spread by birds. You may see tansy with its pretty bright yellow button flowers in a plant nursery and I have just one word for potential buyers. Beware!

We’ve had a lot of rain already this spring. Ed Himlan of the Massachusetts Watershed Coalition will give a free workshop on building a Rain Garden at the  Greenfield Public Library Tuesday, April 6 at 6:30 pm. We’ll be able to see the Library’s new Rain Garden and learn the benefits to the gardener and the community.###

Between the Rows   April 3, 2010

Indomitable Siberian Iris

Siberian iris are among the hardiest perennials I can think of. There were clumps of white iris, and deep purple iris around the house when we moved here 30 years ago. I’ve moved clumps of these around the garden, I’ve given them away to friends, donated them to plant sales, and I’ve even tossed divisions into the field and over to the edge of the road – see above. I don’t want you to think I planted them by the side of the road, I mean I threw them on top of the weeds. I don’t think any of them have ever died. This is obviously a plant that doesn’t need coddling.

If you want to buy Siberian iris I can think of no better nursery to recommend than Joe Pye Weed’s Garden. They have a fantastic selection of Siberians in many colors. They have not paid me to say that!

Rain Gardens for Earth Day

The term rain gardens sounds kind of romantic. I imagine something vaguely tropical with exotic blossoms amid rain drenched foliage viewed from a wicker chair on a veranda.  In reality a rain garden can have colorful blossoms, not necessarily exotic, but when the foliage is rain drenched the rain garden is doing its work of infiltration. Infiltration is not a romantic term.

I have heard the term rain garden and seen Master Gardener work sheets on building a rain garden, but until I heard Ed Himlan, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Watershed Coalition (www.commonwaters.org), speak at the Greenfield Public Library last week, I  had no idea of how important rain gardens could be to a community’s department of public works,  the health of our waterways, and our own health.

Statistics can be boring, but the numbers that Himlan brought to the meeting were riveting. He said that 90% of the pollution of our waterways, streams, ponds, lakes and rivers, comes from stormwater runoff. How? By carrying sediment, oxygen depleting materials like leaves,  toxic chemicals from pesticides, herbicides and insecticides, heavy metals like zinc, lead and mercury, and bacteria from pet waste.

Pollution of our waterways is evident to those who use them for recreation. Fishermen will tell you that brook trout are gone. And many of us have been disappointed from time to time that we cannot swim or go boating because the water is too polluted.

In our urban and suburban neighborhoods where there is so much paving, of roads, sidewalks, parking lots, malls and other buildings, there is no place for storm water runoff to go except into the streets and inadequate drainage systems which discharge all these pollutants into local streams and rivers.

Himlan also gave a corresponding positive statistic. He said that rain gardens can keep 96 % or more of stormwater runoff on site, keeping it from polluting waterways, and letting it infiltrate and recharge groundwater supplies. The rain garden will filter and clean the water that will ultimately make its way to local streams.

We who live amid large lawns may think we have done our duty in capturing rainwater, but turf grasses are only about 30% permeable. They form a hard surface that rain penetrates with difficulty.

Those who want to see a rain garden in action can visit the rain garden that was created and planted behind Greenfield Library last year. The process is not complicated.

Remove the sod and dig a hole up to about 18 inches deep – of whatever size you wish. Any flower bed should be of substantial enough size to allow for the planting of shrubs, or even trees as well as perennials.

The depression can first be filled about halfway with coarse sand or small gravel.  Then add a layer of leaf compost, and finally a smaller layer of soil. It is important to leave a sufficient depression, five or six inches, where rain can collect, puddle and slowly sink into the ground. Mosquitoes are not a problem because they thrive in standing water, but a rain garden drains within just a few hours.

Native plants are a good choice for rain gardens because they will also attract indigenous birds and butterflies. It is not hard to find lists of plants suitable for rain gardens on the Internet. Some of my favorites are daylilies, cardinal flower, Joe Pye weed, turtlehead, Queen of the Prairie, sensitive fern and baptisia whose roots grow 25 feet into the ground, leading water deep into the soil.

Some of the trees or shrubs that can be added to a rain garden include river birch, elderberry, winterberry, and summersweet. When you choose plants they should not only tolerate the wet, but be chosen for the amount of sun or shade your site gets.

It is amazing how much water can sheet off a roof during a storm. A good place for a rain garden is where the rain comes off the roof or from a downspout. To protect the house it should be located at least ten feet away from the foundation. If you have drainspouts, additional pipe can be added to direct water into the rain garden.

Clean potable water is taking its proper place as a priority concern. We all need water to maintain life, and to maintain the lives of the plants, animals and fish that make up our diet, as well as the beauties that feed our souls. We need to use a multitude of ways to encourage rain infiltration on site. We can increase the permeable surfaces in our own landscapes by including groundcovers, trees and shrubs as well as flowers and lawn. We can use rainbarrels, although it must be noted that a 55 gallon barrel fills quickly. We can use permeable materials for our driveways and patios.

Himlan is working with his town of Leominster to install rain gardens at municipal sites as well as encouraging their creation on residential properties.

Michigan, Vermont and other states are encouraging the creation of rain gardens. There are now rules for Low Impact Development (LID) where there is new building that will emphasize permeable surfaces – and rain gardens.

Ed Himlan was invited by Ed Gorecki, a Greenfield Public Library Trustee, and the talk was co-sponsored by Greening Greenfield. The large audience was filled with gardeners. I think the town can look forward to some new rain gardens. I’d like to hear about them. If you are planning a rain garden, please email me at commonweeder@gmail.com.

Between the Rows  April 17, 2010

The Mysterious Larch

I just came back from checking the Larch seedling I was given ten days ago. I  watered it the first couple of days, but the recent weather has been perfect for transplanting  -  overcast, cool (but not freezing)  and showery. The tree seems to have settled in well. So far.

Larch trees, tamarack, hackmatack, or more properly Larix laricinia, are that mysterious thing, a deciduous pine tree. This is a native tree that can reach 75 feet tall.  It does not mind cold climates,  wet sites or heavy acidic soil, but does like the sun. Birds like the larch, espcially spruce, blue, and sharp-tailed grouse who eat the needles and buds; pine siskin, crossbills, and other birds eat the seeds released from the small cones.

Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin State Herbarium

As majestic as they are,  in spring they are known for their tiny bundles of inch long  needles that emerge in a tender bright green, such an unusual shade in conifers, and then the gold of autumn. Finally all the needles fall off, leaving only the small pine cones.

If you like a little mystery in your garden, and you have the space, this is the tree for you. The hazy springtime green of  spring is enough to catch the eye of visitors, but they will be amazed or confused by the autumnal gold. Aren’t we lucky that our gardens give us so many opportunities to delight and amaze our visitors?

The Uninvited and Everpresent

For years I complained about witch grass – until I bought Weeds of the Northeast by Richard Uva, Joseph Neal and Joseph DiTomaso – and found out I should have been complaining about quackgrass. Witch grass (Panicum capillare L.) is a summer annual that reproduces by seed that germinates in late spring and midsummer. It is found everywhere, in gardens, farm fields, in poor dry soil and wet fertile soil.

Quackgrass (Elytrigia repens) also known as couch grass, is a rhizomatous perennial. It spreads by seed as well as by those awful fleshy white rhizomes. If I leave even the tiniest bit of rhizome in the soil when I am weeding, it will continue to grow and send up new shoots. It grows throughout the northern U.S. and Canada and as far west to southern Arizona. I love to find an isolated bit of quackgrass with stems coming up in a straight line from each underground node because I feel I have a better chance than usual of getting up the whole rhizome.

Unfortunately this is not the only weed grass that comes up in my vegetable and flower beds. I can safely say I also have wirestem muhly (Muhlenbergia fondosa), also known as knot root grass, another rhizomatous perennial that also reproduces by seed as well as by the distinctive knotty roots and rhizome.

I am pretty sure I have barnyard grass (Echinochloa crus-galli) a clump forming summer annual; orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata) a clump forming perennial; downy brome (Bromus tectorum L.) a summer or winter annual; wild oats (Avena fatua L.) an annual grass; and yellow foxtail (Setaria glauca) a clump forming summer annual that produces the familiar fox tail or bottle brush seed head. Downy brome, wild oats and yellow foxtail have very pretty seedheads in the summer, just the kind of thing you would want for a dried arrangement, but they will each spread hundred of seeds to come up next year.

Broadleaf dock (Rumex obtusifolias L.) is perennial and a bane of my existence. It grows thickly and fleshily with a deep taproot that is hard to cut out and almost impossible to dig out. It also produces seed that will germinate from spring through early fall.  The ripe reddish brown flowering shoot might also add interest to a fall dried arrangement – but is never interesting in the garden.

One of my favorite weeds is bedstraw (Galium), a summer or winter annual. There are two galiums, and I am not absolutely sure if I have G. aparine or G. mollugo; I will have to look more closely at the stems. This is a weed with fine whorled foliage and tiny white flowers. They are fairly easy to pull, but they are so pretty that I often leave them alone – depending on where they are. I don’t mind too much when they grow up through the middle of a rose bush because it is almost like having a rose and baby’s breath bouquet.

I think I have the annual carpetweed (Mollugo verticillata L.) too, which is very similar to Galium but it is prostrate, creeping across the ground, thus the name carpetweed. Carpetweed is very similar to the perennial common chickweed, and mouseear chickweed (Cerasteum). I know I have this weed because it forms dense mats; the stems root at each node. It produces tiny white flowers from spring into October.

Galium or Bedstraw

Weeds of the Northeast gives very specific ways of discriminating one plant from another when they are similar by describing the shape of the stem, round or square, the arrangement of leaves, color and hairiness. On many plants you have to look closely, but you will see that some have little hairs on the stems or foliage.

I find sorrel (Rumex acetosella L.) throughout the gardens. I used to think it was culinary sorrel, and while it does have a sour flavor and is edible there are other sorrel varieties that are more often used in cooking. If I want French sorrel soup I will have to look for R. scutatus.

Sour Grass or Red Sorrel

I’m happy to name one weed, hairy galinsoga (Galinsoga ciliata) because people often ask about it and I like saying the word ‘galinsoga.’ Sometimes this 8 to 20 inch plant is called shaggy soldier, I guess because it is kind of floppy. It has tiny white flowers around a yellow center. It is an annual and easy to pull out, but because the seeds have no dormancy they can germinate soon after being shed which means there will be several generations in one season. The leaves are egg-shaped and toothed. Both leaves and stems are hairy. My book says it is difficult to control and is usually found on fertile soil. Nice to know I have fertile soil.

I call my lawn a flowery mead because it is full of wildflowers, what some would call weeds. First and most noticeably there are dandelions, the common weed for which I named my blog. In the spring there are also field pansies that look like tiny Johnny jump ups, and blue violets. I cannot get too upset about these weeds.

Later in the summer the hawkweeds (Hieracium) bloom. These are perennials and reproduce by seed, rhizome and stolons. I have H. pratense that has yellow flowers and H. aurntiacum which has red-orange flowers. I call them devil’s paintbrush, some use the term Indian paintbrush.

I haven’t given a full catalog of all my weeds, but now you know why one visitor whispered to her friend, “She doesn’t weed!”  I do weed, but not well enough.

Between the Rows  April 10, 2010