May 31, 2008

Rhododendron ‘Swansdown’

Like ‘Boule de Neige,’ but a little bigger, ‘Swansdown’ is a perfect rhododendron for when you want a big, evergreen blob all year (and wouldn’t mind copious trusses of gold-splashed white flowers in spring as an extra). I’ve had my plant about 10 years and it is about 6 by 8 feet. ‘Swansdown’ was the 1982 Award of Excellence winner form the American Rhododendron Society, if you don’t want to take my word that it’s a good one.

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Who's Gardening Here?

from martha to just margaret
I was so blessed to visit and document many of the nation’s finest homemade gardens for 15 years for ‘Martha Stewart Living,’ first as its garden editor and then as editorial director for the company. The list of places we were proud to publish included my own upstate New York home a few years back. Take a tour of how it looked then. Want to know more about me? Or read what Anne Raver said in June in The New York Times, calling A Way to Garden “the best (garden blog) I’d ever seen.”
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Why Do You Garden?

One of the most popular questions at A Way to Garden: Why do you garden? A bunch of us answered in a stream of comments, and there's great other stuff on the Forums. Just in case you'd like to tell us why, too (or have a good read about what makes the rest of us tick).
October Garden Chores

All based on my Zone 5B Berkshire/Hudson Valley location; adjust accordingly.

FALL IS HEATING UP, at least visually, even as temperatures begin to trend downward. Cleanup is (hopefully) under way in earnest, with time out to cook up the last bits from the vegetable garden into a batch of ‘Tomato Junk’ or soup, or local apples into applesauce. With such delicious reminders of summer and fall in the freezer, and the right plants in the garden, there’s no “end” to fear. Some of us even feel happy about the coming riches: berries, bark, new birds. Peak planting time for bulbs and for many woody things is through month’s end or so; make that work include some focus on the addition of fall and winter plants to the landscape.

TREES & SHRUBS

CLEAR TURF OR WEEDS from the area right around the trunks of fruit trees and ornamentals to reduce winter damage by rodents. Hardware cloth collars should be in place year-round as well.

BE EXTRA-VIGILANT cleaning up under fruit trees, as fallen fruit and foliage allowed to overwinter invites added troubles next season.

BE SURE TO WATER trees now through hard frost if conditions are dry, so that they enter dormancy in a well-hydrated state. Evergreens (needled ones and broadleaf types like rhododendron, too) are particularly vulnerable to desiccation and winterburn otherwise.

DON’T PANIC IF EVERGREENS continue to show some browning or yellowing of needles this month and next. The oldest, innermost needles typically shed after a few years on the tree.

ALWAYS BE on the lookout for dead, damaged, diseased wood in trees and shrubs and prune them out as discovered. This is especially important before winter arrives with its harsher weather, where weaknesses left in place invite tearing and unnecessary extra damage. Remove suckers and water sprouts, too.

VEGETABLE, FRUIT & HERBS

PREPARE A SEEDBED NOW for peas and spinach for next spring, to get a headstart on such early crops. Spinach can even be sown now through Thanksgiving, for super-early spring harvest; not the peas, of course.

AS VEGETABLE PLANTS (and annual flowers) fade, pull them to get a start on garden cleanup. Before composting the remains, cut them up a bit with a pruning shears or shred, to speed decomposition.

PARSLEY AND CHIVES can be potted up and brought indoors for offseason use. A few garlic cloves in a pot will yield a supply of chive-like (but spicier) garlic greens all winter for garnish. Determined types with really sunny windowsills can sow seeds of bush basil in a pot, too. I rely on frozen pesto cubes instead.

IF NEXT YEAR’S GARDEN plans include a patch of strawberries or asparagus, do the tilling and soil preparation now so the bare-root plants ordered over the winter can be planted extra early come spring.

AS AREAS COME EMPTY from harvest, build vegetable-garden soil by sowing cover crops: winter rye can be sown through mid-fall. These “green manures” will be turned under later to improve soil tilth and fertility.

REPLANT YOUR BIGGEST CLOVES from heads of harvested garlic for best yield, or hurry and order a supply and plant now (about a month before frost is in the ground). Prepare a sunny spot, and plant each clove 1-2 inches deep and 6 inches apart in the row, with about 12 inches between rows. Green growth will happen this fall, which is great; don’t panic. It’s a hardy thing.

FLOWER GARDEN

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION to areas around peonies, roses, irises and other flowers that are prone to fungal diseases. Cut down iris foliage and rake well under roses.

CANNAS, DAHLIAS AND OTHER tender bulb-like things including elephant ears need to be dug carefully for indoor storage. There are many methods, but the basics: Once frost blackens the foliage, cut back the tops to 6 inches and dig carefully, then brush or wash off soil and let dry for two weeks or so to cure. Stash in a dry spot like unheated basement or crawl space around 40-50 degrees, in boxes or pots filled with bark chips or peat moss. Details, here.

DON'T DEADHEAD FADED perennials, biennials and annuals if you want to collect seed (non-hybrids only) or will let them self-sow. Nicotiana, poppies, larkspur, clary sage and many others fall into this leave-alone group. So do plants with showy or bird-friendly seedheads, like coneflowers.

LAST CALL FOR BULB ORDERS (see Sources), and plant as they arrive (lilies most urgently). Remember our “early, middle, late” mantra when ordering. And think drifts, not onesies and threesies.

PREPARE NEW beds for future planting by smothering grass or weeds with layers of recycled corrugated cardboard or thick layers of newspaper, then put mulch on top.

HOUSEPLANTS

START A POT OF PAPERWHITES in potting soil or pebbles and water, and stagger forcing more every couple of weeks for a winterlong display.

REST AMARYLLIS BULBS by putting them in a dry, dark place where they will have no water at all for a couple of months. I put mine in a little-used closet.

IF HOUSEPLANTS NEED repotting, do it as they come inside (less messy than in the house!). Don’t step up more than an inch (on small pots) or a couple (on large ones). Most plants don’t like to swim in their containers.

LAWNS

KEEP MOWING TILL THE GRASS stops growing, and make the last cut a short one. Let clippings lie on the lawn to return Nitrogen to the soil.

COMPOST HEAP & MULCH

START A LEAVES-ONLY PILE alongside your other heap as a future source of soil-improving leaf mold, or when partly rotted for use as mulch.

ORDER A SUPPLY of bulk mulch, which is cheaper than the packaged kind and also eliminates the waste of all those heavyweight plastic bags. Many local nurseries deliver. Top up mulch in all garden beds as they get cleaned up gradually in fall.
Brief but Juicy

new-fashioned recipe swap
OUR SUMMER-LONG SERIES of Thursday Food Fests, a cross-blog joint venture with our friends at the Dinner Tonight blog, has been a big hit. For those of you currently awash in a sea of cuke or zukes, take heart: still time for a batch of refrigerator pickles or squash parmigiana. Up to your whatever in basil? Maybe you missed our pesto fest. We’ve talked tomatoes (red or green) and green beans (from dilly to dally), ways to savor or stash fresh corn, and ideas for the fruit harvest, too. You can find them all under the Category “Edibles” in the right sidebar on every page, or by scrolling down through the posts at will.

ultimate garden no-no’s
WHEN SOMEONE ASKED in a comment about my point of view on using landscape fabric, the fuse was quickly lit: NO! I said. NO! I’ve rounded up some no-no’s we’ve posted collectively so far, but I bet by now there are a few more things to bitch about. Grab a lawn chair and a cold drink, and we can fester together. Sure beats weeding (which ought to be a garden no-no).

lose anything lately?
THE SAYING GOES THAT a thing of beauty is a joy forever. I guess “forever” in this case is in the mind’s eye. My darling, oldest bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora) went down for the count in July, or at least half of it did, and I had already seen the death knell for a couple of my 10 crabapples. Jeez.

true love, really
LOOK, I HAVE A THING for frogs. Call it my little fetish. An issue. Whatever. My general obsession notwithstanding, I’ve finally met THE ONE FOR ME.

hail the stewartia
I LIKE PLANTS THAT EARN THEIR KEEP. By that I mean they do more than a week or two of showing off; they look good in more than a single moment, or season. The small-ish to medium trees in the genus Stewartia are a good bet if that’s the kind of multi-season interest you are looking for. Sound good?

more, more, more clematis
WHEN I SEE ‘POLISH SPIRIT’ CLAMBERING up and through the golden Chamaecyparis in late spring-into-summer, I realize I have a serious Clematis shortage around here. Not in the Chamaecyparis, specifically, but in lots of other places where things look a little dull. I’ve got a penchant for growing vines up and over otherwise-dull shrubbery, you see.

can-do pruning
REPEAT AFTER ME: I can prune. I can prune. If you follow this simple method for starters, your woody plants will thank you.

the ‘other’ peonies
JUNE WAS PEONY TIME, the big raucous kind of peony time, but just before that another kind of peony you might want to consider adopting did its subtler, wonderful thing.

which lilac to plant?
SO MANY LILACS, so little space. Browse a glossary of some of my favorites before you shop—maybe you’ll like them, too.

non-blooming peonies?
Did your peonies not cooperate—was there not a good crop of flower buds, and you don’t know why? This came up on the Forums, and here’s the dish.

twist-off ticks
I AM COMING IN everyday with at least a tick or two on me; not embedded, thankfully, so far, but it's only a matter of time. But I am prepared. Are you?

anything but forsythia
I guess I have a thing against forsythia…even though I have several specimens of it along the fringes of my property. But there are better choices for spring color among shrubs.

surprise (avian) visitors
If you make a garden for birds, or even plant a crabapple or two (or ten), you never know who’ll show up.

magnolias to love
THEY’RE MEMORIES NOW but I couldn't garden without magnolias. Want to know more about the queen of the spring-blooming trees?

order in the garden
I AM LABELING my plants, I am. As memory fades, out comes the label machine, just in the nick. Saved by the Dymo. You can be, too.
Buried Treasure

I NOTICE THAT BLOGGING results in some rich but buried treasure: great stuff in a comment thread you may not see; interesting topics on the forums that perhaps you haven't visited.

Subjects ranging from feeding and pruning Hydrangeas and pruning clematis, to entertaining (read: ranting) lists and lists of garden no-no’s (not just mine!).

Pick a click, and enjoy. Better yet, CHIME IN yourself. Up in the nav bar…that's right, GO FOR IT: our Q&A FORUMS.