This week in the garden: Oops! I messed up.

Posted on September 12, 2024 by John Kevin Hickey
The front yard looks good in this photo. But a couple of weeks ago things were looking dire.

I have been gardening for nearly 30 years. You would think I would know what I am doing by now. You would be mistaken. This summer I made two novice blunders, both occurring in the waterwise front yard. Big enough blunders that it could have destroyed all the hard work and time MrsVintage and I put into the yard. There is a reason why I haven’t been posting anything about said front yard. It’s because it looked like hell. And it’s all my fault.

The drought tolerant plants were really struggling this year, and I couldn’t figure out why. In fact, the situation was pissing me off. I thought these plants were supposed to be so tough! In fact, I was concerned that we were going to lose a lot of our plants.

As you can see in the photo below, this plant is practically a skeleton. It’s desiccated and has been devoured by grasshoppers. I did learn something this year: grasshoppers LOVE drought stressed plants. I have bitched before about the locusts devouring our gardens before, but this year was particularly bad. Not just at our place, either. All along Colorado’s Front Range gardens and farmers crops had been ravaged by the tiny monsters. According to grasshopper experts, since we had such a wet spring and early summer in 2023, the damned locusts produced an above average crop of eggs. Definitely won’t have that problem next year.

So, you might be asking, what was it that I did wrong? Let me give a little backstory first. Last week, as I went to the mailbox to check the mail, I stood and surveyed the front yard. I had just run automatic sprinkler system in the front yard a few days before, so I thought there should be moisture in the ground. I pulled back the mulch from one of the plants, and discovered the ground was bone dry. I checked a few more plants. Yep, bone dry. OK, that could be a problem.

I resolved that the following morning I would deep water the whole front yard. The next day rolls around, and I drag out the hose and run the water for 30 minutes in one spot. Soil should be nice and moist now! I have a soil moisture tester for just such occasions. Stuck the probe in the ground (or tried to. It was hard as a rock) a couple of inches deep. No moisture! None!

I tested a couple other locations where I had watered. Same deal. Confused, I start pulling the mulch back. And I continue to pull the mulch back. Then I pull the mulch back some more. See where I am going with this? The mulch was so thick that no water of any kind had reached the soil in several months! Even waterwise plants need some water every now and then.

Panic time!

This was an emergency situation. I grabbed a rake out of the shed and began raking mulch away from all the plants. Once that was accomplished, I began deep watering the whole yard.

I scheduled the automatic sprinkler system in the front the next morning, because I wanted to make sure the plants were watered really well. As luck would have it, the next evening we had an unexpected rainstorm come through that dumped nearly an inch of water. Checked the soil with my moisture tester again, and now the soil was wet several inches down.

Here was where I screwed up. Back in May we decided that the brown cedar mulch looked pretty shabby (see here: https://www.mrvintageman.com/this-week-in-the-garden-odds-and-ends/). So I covered it with a layer of colored mulch, as you can see in the photo below.

Too much of a good thing

The mistake I made was in not making sure that the mulch wasn’t too deep around the plants themselves. Water couldn’t percolate through the mulch to the soil, which was fine in the parts where I don’t want things to grow (weeds), but bad for the plants that I do want to grow. This problem has now been corrected. The areas around the plants are like little islands in the sea of mulch. They are still mulched, just more thinly.

Good news

I am happy to report that once the plants got the moisture they needed, they bounced back dramatically. For example, these Blue Mist Spirea’s were looking a ghastly before. Their leaves were a faded grey, and the flowers were practically invisible. Afterwards, the leaves took on their normal olive-grey tone and the blue flowers began to pop.

You can see the sad remains of this poor columbine. But if you look at the base of the plant, you can see rosettes of new leaves appearing. I feel much more confident that it will return next year.

We did lose a couple of plants, unfortunately. The “Northwind” switchgrass you see below bit the dust. A couple of “Standing Ovation” little bluestems are also toast.

But it is amazing how most of the plants survived several months without water just fine, especially considering they aren’t fully established yet. Which just goes to show me that these plants are indeed as tough as they are touted to be.

Lessons learned

Ok, so just what did I learn from this? A couple of things. One, you gotta be careful with mulch. Some mulch is a good thing. In spring it helps to suppress weeds. In summer, it keeps the soil cooler and helps it retain moisture (if it gets moisture that is). In winter, it protects the crown and roots of the plants from bitter cold, and helps to prevent frost heave. So, mulch is good. However, more mulch does not mean better.

Two, I need be better about attention to detail. I should have been checking the soil moisture levels all summer. I know better than this. I just assumed that the plants were getting the water they needed. Assumptions, as I nearly found out, can be catastrophic. Adding too much mulch was a mistake, not inspecting the garden was boneheaded.

Something cool

There was something cool that occurred in the front yard this year.

In all the years that we have lived at the Vintage Ranch, I am not sure I have ever seen a hummingbird visit our yard. However, in late August I was lucky enough to see several catching a meal from several of the native plants. I took this picture from the car as I was backing out of the garage, so it’s a pretty bad photo. But if you look between the purple and blue flowers, you can see a blur that is a hummingbird.

Can’t see it? Here’s a closer view. The hummingbird is that tiny brown blur in the middle of the circle. It makes me very happy knowing that MrsVintage and I have created a oasis in our suburban neighborhood we get to share with our native fauna. Grasshoppers excepted.

For those curious about what the two plants in the picture are: the blue flowered one is “New Mexico” prairie sage, and the pinkish/purplish one is “Sonoran Sunset” hyssop. Both are western natives.

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This week in the garden: odds and ends

Posted on June 25, 2024 by John Kevin Hickey

The summer solstice has arrived, and a “heat dome” over Colorado arrived with it. It’s amazing me at all the terms meteorologists have come up with over the years to describe weather phenomenon that we just used to call summer.

Anyway, before the heat rolled there was lots of activity here in the Vintage Garden. Certainly not as frenzied as last year’s front yard renovation, but activity nonetheless. Let me show you some of the things we have been up to since the garden came out of its winter slumber.

Cutting down a mutant tree

Plant version of “The Thing”.

Many years ago we planted a dwarf Alberta spruce in the long border in the backyard. This occurred during my dwarf conifer infatuation. It is normal for gardeners to go through several obsessions during their lifetime. For a brief period, I wanted to create a mini-Rocky Mountain forest in our yard. The fad passed, but the plants remained.

For years this dwarf Alberta spruce just did its thing, slowly growing and just being innocuous. Then, about 6 or 7 years ago, something strange happened to it. A growth appeared that looked completely different from the rest of the tree:

Note the different types of needles growing on this dwarf Alberta spruce. This is a mutation

On part of the spruce a branch with different needles appeared. These needles were more like a normal spruce tree, not like the tightly bunched mini needles one would find on a dwarf Alberta spruce. This was mutation of some kind. This type of mutation is known as a “witch’s broom”. Plant breeders love finding witches brooms. They use various means to propagate them, and every once in a while, they produce a plant that is on some way a superior specimen to the original plant. Lots of money to be made if it’s successful.

My witch’s broom on the other hand, was a reversion to the mean. It looked like a full-size spruce was growing out of my dwarf spruce. This is my theory: part of the tree genetically reverted to its natural form, away from the highly cultivated form that is a dwarf Alberta spruce. Mind you, this is just a guess, since I am no arborist or botanist. Either way, the damn thing looked like something out the 1982 horror movie “The Thing”!

So I tried to cut the offending mutation out. It did not go well:

Yuck

So out it came:

Changes to the corner grass border

I have never been happy with the so-called “ornamental grass corner” in the backyard. It has never lived up to my expectations:

The corner grass border in the past. Not bad, but not what I originally envisioned.

Most of the grasses I planted have vanished, and the area is being overrun by Russian sage and blue globe thistle. The one grass that has remained, a hardy pampas grass, has seriously underwhelmed. It’s supposed to get about six feet tall, with plumes that can reach up to 10 feet. As you can see in the photo above, it’s not really all that impressive.

So I dug out the pampas grass, as well as scads of the blue globe thistle and Russian sage. Last fall I plunked three of the ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grasses that I had salvaged from the front yard into the area.

This spring, in the place where the pampas grass was, I planted a Miscanthus ‘Dragon Fire’. It too is supposed to get around six feet tall, but in autumn it’s supposed to turn a blazing red color. I know it’s not much to look at right now, but hopefully next year it will really put on a dazzling show.

An infant Miscanthus ‘Dragon Fire’

I ordered 3 ‘Red October’ big bluestem grasses. It too is supposed to put on an amazing autumn display as well. Unlike the Miscanthus, big bluestem is a native to the western U.S.

‘Red October’ big bluestem

Unfortunately, only one of the bluestems is doing well. I ordered these grasses from an online nursery called Plant Addicts: (https://plantaddicts.com/), and one of the plants was damaged by UPS during shipment and never arrived. The 2nd plant did arrive, but went into transplant shock soon after I put it in the ground:

Just a tuft of brown foliage is all there is to show of this ‘Red October’ big bluestem.

I am 98.5 percent sure that this grass is dead, but I’ll keep watering it over the summer in hopes that it might bounce back.

Unfortunately, I am now unable to find a nursery with this grass still in stock. Not that I would want to plant in the middle of summer anyway. The odds of a summer transplant surviving are not good. My hope is that at least one nursery somewhere will have ‘Red October’ in stock for fall planting. Otherwise, I will have to try again next spring.

Plant Addicts gave me a full refund on not just the damaged/missing plant, but the one that went into root-shock as well. They are a small, family-owned nursery, and I highly recommend them should you want to order a more unusual plant for your garden.

Anyway, here is what the corner grass border looks like in late June;

It’s going to take some time, but I am expecting big things in the future in this corner border.

Make your own organic weed killer

I found this home brew organic weedkiller on a blog written by a woman who gardens in Arizona: Blog – Desert Gardening 101 (azplantlady.com) It only requires two ingredients and a spray bottle. And it is extremely effective for most weeds.

Fill a spray bottle about 2/3 full with vinegar, and 2 or 3 tablespoons of dishwashing soap, then shake it up. Any vinegar will do, but I use a general-purpose vinegar because it’s a little bit stronger than white vinegar. You don’t need to be precise on the soap. I just eyeball it.

Death to weeds!

The dish soap strips the protective coating off the leaves and helps make the vinegar stick to the surface of the plant. The vinegar sucks the moisture out of the plant’s cells.

Spray offending weeds on the morning of a warm/hot and sunny day, and by nightfall the transgressor should be toast. Check out these before and after photos:

Before
After
Before
After

I feel a near psychopathic glee in watching weeds shrivel.

I will throw a couple of caveats about this concoction. Caveat number one: unlike weedkillers such as Roundup or Weed-be-gone, this formula will not kill the plant’s roots. You may see the weed sprout up again. Blast it with the vinegar mix again as needed, and eventually the plant will give up the ghost.

Caveat number two: some plants are hardier than others. I’ve sprayed bindweed and sometimes I’ve had success. But if the bindweed is fairly well established, the spray only mars the leaves a little and the rapacious bugger soldiers on. Plants such as bindweed can have roots that run for feet, which means they can laugh at my puny vinegar weedkiller. Roundup or Agent Orange is your friend for invaders such as these.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I suppose I better: DO NOT USE THIS ON WEEDS IN YOUR LAWN! It will damage the grass surrounding the weed. Also, when using in flower beds or veggie patches, spray carefully as to avoid damaging the plants you want to keep.

Some modifications to the front yard scheme

I spoke earlier about the front yard renovation. Let’s see what’s going on there.

MrsVintage finally convinced me to put down dyed wood mulch down. I was resistant at first, mostly because I didn’t want to do the work. But she was right about the old mulch. It looked fine last year, but this spring it looked faded and unsightly. Truthfully, it made our front yard look like a vacant lot. So, amidst much grumbling and two trips to the landscape company with the truck, the new mulch was put down. It definitely is an improvement.

The red mulch gives the front yard a more finished look.

I also replaced a couple of plants than ran along the front sidewalk. The bunnies really did a number on the Turkish veronicas, so I replaced them with two varieties of prostrate sedums. I know they don’t look so good in the photos, but trust me, they look better in person. I took these pics around noon, and the harsh light makes them look sickly:

Sedum Angelina ‘Teacup’ has leaves of bronzy yellow. They are supposed to turn an orange color in the fall. I’ll keep you posted.
‘Sedum ‘Blue Spruce’ provides a cooling contrast to the bright Angelina sedum. The leaves of Blue Spruce really do remind me of blue spruce needles.

The three ‘Goblin’ blanket flowers I planted in the raised bed by the house all died. I replaced them with ‘Arizona Sun’ blanket flowers. Hopefully this cultivar will prove to be more robust.

Elsewhere in the front yard

Speaking of the front yard, let’s see how things are faring from last year’s renovation. Should be a dramatic difference from last year, yes?

No.

I’ve mentioned the old adage about perennials before: first year sleep, second year, third year leap. The plants are still getting settled into their new homes. Hopefully, next year I will have a more impressive display to show you.

All the plants are still settling in. Next year should see some dramatic changes!

There is one exception though. These ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grasses are growing like gangbusters:

The biggest grasses you see here are the ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grasses.

I have a theory as to why these grasses are doing so well. (I have lots of theories). I salvaged these grasses from the front yard before we started the renovation, storing them in pots for a few weeks, and then put them in their current homes which are very close to where they were growing before. So, these particular plants are already used to growing in hard clay soil of the Vintage Garden.

The store-bought plants, on the other hand, grew up in a loose and friable potting medium. Being forced to adapt to a new environment has made them a bit sulky. They’ll catch up eventually though.

Quick check-in on the desert garden

A couple of years ago, MrsVintage and I overhauled the yard on the south side of the house. It was overgrown with bindweed and spotty grass and was truly ugly (Big things happening in the Vintage garden). We now call this area our “desert” garden. Let’s take a peek and see how it’s doing:

The “desert” garden is looking good! The Texas red yucca a finally putting on a nice bloom this year.

It’s doing quite well, as you can see. We even added a little ornamentation to enhance the desert aesthetic.

And finally, attempting tomatoes in a pot again

I have been attempting to grow tomatoes in containers for several years now. My efforts have been underwhelming to say the least. But when it comes to growing homegrown tomatoes, I am not one to quit so easily.

This year I picked up a determinate tomato called ‘Mountain Merit’. A determinate tomato puts on a flush of tomatoes all at once, and then calls it quits. Indeterminate tomatoes keep growing and producing until they tucker out or get zapped by frost. Indeterminates get quite large and gangly as the season goes on. Determinates usually don’t get so big.

I am hoping that by growing a determinate tomato I’ll finally get a decent harvest, and hopefully the plant won’t grow out of control in its confined growing space. Stay tuned.

I am going to harvest some homegrown tomatoes on of these days, come hell or high water!

So, how does your garden grow so far this year?

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Gardening mistakes I have made, and what I’ve learned from them.

Posted on June 9, 2024 by John Kevin Hickey

Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That’s the fun of them. You’re always learning.

Helen Mirren

Gardening is like any skill; it takes practice, patience and education to be any good at it. And while you can certainly learn a great deal about gardening from a book or in a classroom environment, the best teacher is learning from one’s own mistakes.

I have been gardening for almost 30 years now, and I have made a lot of mistakes in that time. Enough to make me a fairly well-rounded gardener. While some of my mistakes have been a little costly moneywise, I have no regrets in making any of them. What is important is that I learn something from my errors.

Today I thought I would share some of my more egregious mistakes, and the lessons I’ve learned from them, in the hopes that others will avoid making similar blunders.

Gardening for the wrong region

Blue penstemons, blue iris, and in the background, a serviceberry, are all plants suitable for the region I garden in.

My first, and probably biggest mistake, was not gardening for the region I live in. This error set me back in both time and money. There is a saying: “right plant for the right place”. This saying has many meanings. But for me, the biggest takeaway from this saying is making sure to plant plants that will actually thrive in the conditions here in my Colorado homestead.

Now, in my defense, there wasn’t a lot of literature or information regarding Western gardening when I got started. Most gardening lore is based on the conditions in the Northeast or Middle-Atlantic states. Magazines, such as Fine Gardening or Horticulture, are almost all based in New England. Even my favorite gardening writers, Allen Lacy and Henry Mitchell, gardened in the East.

And the foundation of American gardening comes from that island of gardeners, Great Britain. Let me tell you, about the only region that is more removed from where I garden than the British Isles would be the tropics.

OK, sure, there was Sunset’s “Western Garden” book, which was recommended to me by a couple who had been gardening in Colorado for decades. While I have found this book very helpful, it is very California-centric.

“Plant Select” (Plant Select – Smart plants inspired by the Rocky Mountain region), a collaboration between Denver Water and Colorado State University, had only been in operation for a couple of years when I started my gardening adventure.

Unfortunately, the internet wouldn’t become useful for gardeners several years yet.

So, this really wasn’t a mistake, so much as just ignorance on my part.

With all this being said, what does this all mean? Well, it means I followed the advice that I had available and tried to grow plants that are not adapted to my region. I have dry, clayey and alkaline soil, and most of the plants that were recommended thrive dirt that is moist, acidic and loamy.

Needless to say, I watched a lot of my hard-earned cash wither away and die in those first couple of years. I would love to show you some photos of the plants that I put in the wrong conditions, but I can’t. Because they’re dead.

Lesson learned: always, ALWAYS, try to garden for the conditions you have. Nowadays, with a profusion of available resources available to the Western gardener (see here for my review of Xeriscape books: The best Xeriscape books for Western gardeners (mrvintageman.com), I make sure to do my homework well before I ever put a plant into the ground.

Does this mean I never plant more “traditional” plants in my garden? Of course not. I do, in fact, grow hostas, peonies, clematis and spiraeas. But now I try to make their homes more hospitable for them. This means putting in lots of organic matter before planting, and making sure that they are given the moisture they need. I put them where the sprinkler system will hit them, or near to a water spigot for easy watering.

Planting in the wrong place

Again, this goes back to the saying “right plant, right place”. Growing native plants has been a big trend over the past couple of decades. In fact, some native plant enthusiasts are downright fascist about the whole thing.

One of the biggest selling points for native plants is that they are lower maintenance than foreign species. Is this true? Well, yes and no.

If you give them the conditions that they grow in the wild, then yes. If you take a sun-loving native plant, such as a yucca, and put it in a spot where it will get sunbaked for 8 hours a day, with little to no moisture, then it will indeed be lower maintenance. However! Should you plant it in the shade of an ash tree, where it gets hit by the sprinkler system on a regular basis, then no, it is in fact not going to thrive.

Right plant, right place.

Also, the wrong spot can mean that the plant sticks out like a sore thumb. Meaning it is not aesthetically pleasing. And do I have a few of those.

I apparently subconsciously avoid taking pictures with this dwarf Alberta spruce in them. I had to go back several years in my media library to find a picture of it.

See that conifer in the upper right part of the picture? That’s a dwarf Alberta spruce. And it is definitely in the wrong spot, aesthetically wise. It’s too big for the border, so it throws the feng shui off. I planted it too close to the fence, and as it grows it will eventually start pushing against the fence. Not healthy for the plant, or the fence. It just looks uncomfortable and out of place. But I am loathe to cut it down. Guess I will just have to live with it, or hope it gets a disease of some sort.

Again: right plant, right place.

Lesson learned: always take into account how large a plant is going to get. What is a cute little shrub today, can quickly grow into a monster in a surprisingly short time. Also, pay close attention to the conditions the plant requires. The tags on most plants will say how much sun and moisture the plant requires. If the tag says the plant requires full sun, that usually means at least six hours of direct sunlight. “Medium moisture”, depending on where you live, could mean watering weekly. So, don’t put a shade loving Hosta in a sunbaked hell-strip, unless you are into torturing plants.

Plants I wish I’d never planted

As you can see, the lambs ears (the fuzzy gray foliage) have surrounded the besieged crocuses. Left to its own devices, this plant will quickly dominate this whole section of the border.

There are descriptors for plants that have their eye on world domination. Terms such as “Aggressive”, “self-seeds readily”, or my favorite, “a thug”. What all these terms mean is that if you let this plant into your garden, they can quickly swamp and choke out the other plants. What’s worse, is that once these pants have gotten a foothold, it is damn near impossible to ever get rid of them. And a plant that grows where it isn’t wanted is called a weed.

Most of these plants tend to come from other regions of the world, thus have no natural predators. Plants such as bindweed, puncture vine, and even the beautiful purple loosestrife, are now classified as invasive species.

But oftentimes, we deliberately plant plants that can get out of hand, even if they are not considered invasive. Gardening catalogs can be pretty vague sometimes when it comes to describing a plant’s attributes. They often oversell the positives and become uncomfortably evasive when it comes to negatives. Even magazine articles can gloss over certain flaws.

For instance: I once read that lambs ears (Stachys byzantina) is a drought tolerant plant that is not a thug. Note that “not a thug” part. While it may not be bent on taking over the garden, it is an aggressive self-sower that finds its way into many nooks and crannies in the Vintage Garden. Years ago, based on that magazine’s recommendation, I planted me some lamb’s ears. I like this plant in small doses (MrsVintage despises it), but if I am not careful, it can quickly get out of control.

Here, a lamb’s ear is that I have constrained. It adds a nice contrast to all the green foliage around it. (You can see its gray and purple flower stalk in front of the blue daisy-like flowers of the fleabane (Erigeron).

Another magazine article convinced me to plant a morning glory vine. This vine is actually an annual, so it dies back completely in the winter. The article stated that the flowers of morning glory vines are great for attracting pollinating insects, perfect for the veggie garden. A photo attached to the story showed the vine growing on a bamboo teepee.

Thus inspired, I went out and bought a collapsible bamboo teepee and some morning glory seeds. And I must say, the vine worked as advertised. We had a bumper crop of pumpkins that year.

Morning glory vine growing up a bamboo teepee. A beautiful pain in the ass.

What the article didn’t mention, and I didn’t find out until later, is that the morning glory vine is a relative of the hated bindweed. While morning glory vine is not as aggressive as its bindweed cousin, it self-sows prodigiously. The following year the veggie garden was awash with morning glory seedlings. It took me years of conscientious weeding to eliminate it from that border. And even today, a lone survivor will occasionally make its presence known.

Lesson learned: don’t be suckered by a pretty picture or rosy description. Do your research. Make sure that the plant you are going to plant isn’t going to over your garden on its way to world domination. If a plant is known for self-sowing readily, be prepared to weed its offspring out in the coming years.

Not planting correctly

Oftentimes, when you pick up a plant at a nursery, or big-box hardware store, the plants you are buying have been in their pots for far longer than is healthy. A plant that has been stuck in a pot can become “pot-bound” or “root-bound”. The plant has used up all the nutrients in the pot, and desperately sends out roots in a vain attempt to find more. Eventually, the roots just circle round and round the pot, forming a circular mass.

So, what does this mean for the gardener? If the plant goes in the ground without having the roots scored or “teased”, the roots will continue to grow in a circular motion, never striking out into the surrounding soil. Eventually, the roots will girdle the base of the plant and the plant will literally strangle itself to death.

I’m usually pretty good at scoring the roots of plants should they be pot bound before I put them in the ground. But I have lost more than one plant because I wasn’t as diligent as I should have been. When the plant is a perennial, it sucks, but it’s not a huge waste of time or money.

When this problem occurs with a tree, however, that is a huge loss of time and money. What’s worse, on such a large plant, the symptoms of root girdling usually don’t appear until many years after the tree was planted. If not properly planted, the tree is doomed the moment it goes into the ground.

This situation has occurred twice on trees I’ve planted. I have lost a thornless Russian hawthorn (oxymoron, I know), and a serviceberry. As you can see in the picture below, the roots of this serviceberry continued growing around the base of the tree. And in one case, a large root literally wrapped itself around another large root, strangling it, leading to the death of the tree.

Tree loss due to strangulation

Lesson learned: Before planting any plant, carefully inspect the roots. Make sure that the roots of plants will be able to grow into the surrounding soil. If the plant is NOT root bound, it should be safe to just plop it in the ground. But if there is even a hint of being root bound, make sure to tease the roots so they will expand out properly. See here for an explanation: Teasing the Rootball of Plants: Why and How to Do It (thespruce.com)

In conclusion

These are just a few of the many mistakes I have made in the Vintage Garden over the years. There are plenty more I will share with you in the future, but I think this is enough humiliation for one day.

I must say, however, that every single one of these errors have taught me something. I am a far better gardener now that I was even just a few years ago.

What horrors have you unleashed in your garden?

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