Gardeningwithcats's Weblog

I’ll answer gardening questions

gardeningwithcats — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:46:44 +0000

As I said in my last post, I’ll try to answer any gardening questions you may have. Just leave your questions in the comments section and I’ll try my best to find the answer if I don’t already know it. It may take a couple of days since I’ll be out-of-state taking care of my dad after surgery, but I’ll get back to you. I’ll try to answer cat questions, too. Or gardening with cats questions. Questions about life and the universe, I’ll leave to others.

hardy hibiscus

Thanks.

CC Lady

My Dad’s Having Surgery.

gardeningwithcats — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:38:30 +0000

My dad is having surgery on July 15 and I’ll be taking about a week off to take care of him. No internet access at his house, so I may not post for a little while. But I’ll be making cuttings and digging up some plants from his and my late Mom’s yard. I’ll let you my success rate. Meanwhile, if you have gardening questions, put them in the comment section and I’ll try to answer them. If I don’t know the answer, I have a pretty good selection of gardening books. I’ll try to find the answer.

Easy Plants to Root

gardeningwithcats — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:01:14 +0000

All the books tell you all kinds of rules about rooting cuttings. The instruments have to be sterilized, you have to use rooting hormones, and so on. But sometimes is just isn’t gonna happen. Suppose you’re out in the boonies, unprepared, and the closest things you have to clippers are your fingernails? Are you going to leave this heirloom rose or weird colored geranium behind because you didn’t bring your sterilized scalpul with you? Of course not. I went to an auction once where there were shrubs with the most charming flowers in autumn. I didn’t know what it was but I thought I needed some. There was a pile of old, rusted garden tools that were to be auctioned. I found a dull, rusty hedge trimmer, made four cuttings of the sweet plant, and stuck them in some bottled water I had in the car. Two of the cuttings are still alive and about to bloom in my yard. They are also butterfly and hummingbird magnets and I’m so glad I have them. I’v'e hauled them on three moves. It turns out they are called Turk’s cap or Turk’s turbin. They are covered in small red blooms that look like unopened hibiscus. I broke all the rules you see in books, yet they are growing and thriving. Just keep your cuttings reasonably warm, moist but not soggy, and in good soil or growing medium like perlite. Half the time I don’t bother with covering them, but if you do, just use a plastic bag from a big box store and put a stick in it to keep it from collapsing onto the plants. Pull off the bottom leaves and stick the cutting in whatever you’re growing it in.

Besides Turk’s cap, easy plants to roots are: Roses, azaleas, camellias, rosemary, sages and salvias, geraniums, mums, forsythia, coleus, impatiens, hydrangeas, and oleanders. If you start with coleus or chrysanthemums you’ll feel like a success and gain confidence to try more. Chrysanthemums are so easy, when you pinch them off to make them bushier, stick the parts you pinch off into the ground. They’ll root! I’ve also had great success with succulents, especially jade and ghost plants. Good luck!

turk's cap

How to Propagate Heirloom Roses

gardeningwithcats — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:18:17 +0000

Fairy Rose

A beautiful flower that’s fairy easy to propagate is the rose. One of the most fun things about roses is that you can find heirloom roses in old cemeteries, at old farms, and around abandoned houses or places where houses used to be. ( For heavens sake, ask before you cut if you’re at a place that’s obviously lived in.) The other nice thing is that you can take cuttings as keepsakes of people you love, or as a memory of a place you visited. And heirloom roses are easy to grow. As the garden writer, Felder Rushing, says, “They’re so easy, dead people grow them.” That’s because so many are found in old cemeteries. If you ever visit the big cemetary in Jackson, Mississippi, where Eudora Welty is buried, you’ll find dozens of heirloom rose bushes.

If you’re not taking cuttings out of your own yard, where you can immediately stick them in soil, wrap your cuttings up in wet paper towels or wet newspapers. Take a cutting about as big around as a pencil, and about 6 or 8 inches long. Remove the bottom leaves but leave a few at the top. You don’t have to dip them in rooting powder, people were taking cuttings long before that was invented. If you have some and like it, go ahead and use it, but you don’t need it. (Willow has a natural rooting hormone in it. You can soak willow sticks in water and use the water to moisten your cutting, if you have a willow handy and feel you need extra hormones.) If you’re home and it’s not terrible cold out, you can just stick the cuttings in the soil, in the shade, and put a clear jar, like a mason jar, over it. Plastic liter bottles that have been cut off work, too. Just leave your cuttings there in the shade to grow. If you tug a little and they hang onto the dirt, they’ve rooted.

Maybe your climate is harsh and you’d rather root roses indoors. Place your cuttings into a pot with potting soil or perlite in it, and put a plastic tent or a sawed off plastic 2-liter bottle over it. I use those plastic bags you put produce in at the grocery store. I’ve even used plastic shopping bags. Puff it up where the plastic doesn’t touch the leaves. If it caves in, prop it up with a fork or Popsicle sticks or something. Some books have you create a wire contraption to hold the plastic up. I just use a stick or plastic fork.

In about a month you should have roots. Take a few cuttings because there is usually not 100% success. This is the way people have made more rose bushes ever since roses were discovered. Except they didn’t use plastic.

Passalong Plants or How to Get or Plants Free.

gardeningwithcats — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:16:24 +0000

dalylilies

: Canna from Mama’s yard

One of the nicest things about plants is that they tend to reproduce themselves. Unlike other living things that are demanding, like puppies and kittens (please spay and neuter your pets) plants are easy to give away, or to take as keepsakes. My mom died last March and I dug some of her cannas up. While digging, I found a baby redbud tree amongst the cannas, so I dug it up, too. Now everytime I see the cannas or the little tree, I think of my mom. Now that I think about it, most of my passalong plants are from people who died. But, for heavens sake, don’t wait that long if your granny or friends or the lady down the street has something you like. If it spreads and otherwise reproduces itself, please ask. Most gardeners are friendly and will appreciate the fact that you’ve noticed their work. But please ask, if someone is living there, because many of us, including me, have gone into our garden and noticed little holes where something used to be. Nothing major like a tree gone, but maybe some bulbs, in my case, anenomes.

That said, I have to admit that I carry a shovel in my truck. I had more luck in the deep south than I have in Oklahoma, but I still carry the shovel with hopes up. In the south there are lots of places where old plantation houses and other buildings have been abandoned and fallen down. But years after anyone set foot there, daffodils or naked ladies, or heirloom roses are coming up. Roses are easy to make cuttings from, and the bulbs I just dig up. I don’t like to dig things in the wild because sometimes you’re depleting a plant from nature, but I did dig up a tiny baby saw palmetto beside a road in Louisiana. It’s still growing in a pot in Oklahoma.

Some of the best heirloom roses come from old cemetaries. There is a group in Texas called the Rose Rustlers who make cuttings from heirloom roses growing in old cemetaries and on old farms. (They ask permission from places that are occupied by the living.) They have rediscovered roses that were long thought to be vanished.

I like passalong plants because they are often an old variety, an heirloom plant. They’re so expensive in catalogs but if you know somebody who has them, they are usually happy to share. My favorite heirloom passalong plants, ones that cost mega bucks in the catalogs, are spider lilies (also called hurricane lilies and lycoris) and naked ladies (also called surprise lilies.) Until I moved to the south and saw them blooming in late summer and early autumn, I’d never seen them. They were always around very old houses. When they bloom later this summer, I’ll post photos.

Besides naked ladies and spider lilies, some of the best passalong plants are daylilies, cannas, daffodils, seedling trees and aloes, which make babies right and left. Roses are easy to root. In fact, I think I’ll post on how to root roses next.

Is it okay to plant seeds in the middle of the summer?

gardeningwithcats — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:43:08 +0000

Pretty Kong

: nicotinaPretty Kong

You can’t always believe everything you read. I was just browsing in a Martha Stewart special publication and it said that midsummer is too hot in the Deep South to start seeds. Well, I lived in the Deep South for six years and I always started a second garden in July. When the flowers you planted in the spring start petering out, the ones you started in July look pretty good. I got the idea to plant seeds in midsummer from Felder Rushing, the garden writer from Jackson, Mississippi. When I moved to Oklahoma, where the summers are a lot hotter and also shorter than southern summers, I wondered if I could do the same, especially since I didn’t have a place to garden until mid-July. I planted zinnia, purple hyacinth vine, cosmos, nicotina and sunflower in the 95+ heat of July and they not only came up, they looked great right up until freezing weather in late October. Garden centers put their stuff on sale when it’s so hot nobody wants to work outside. There were only two trees and no shrubs in my new yard. So I bought one and two dollar sale shrubs, including some really sad looking flowering quince, spirea, weigela and even a few neglected knock-out roses and planted them in Oklahoma’s brutal heat. With plenty of water, they did just fine and looked super this year. So no matter what Martha Stewart says, go ahead and try. This year I got over ambitious and bought too many seeds. I didn’t even get around to sowing zinnias until late June. They’re just now starting to bloom. Seeds like zinnias come up just about anytime it’s not freezing, even in 90+ temperatures. Anywhere from zone 7 and higher has a long enough summer to make replanting in midsummer worthwhile.

Midsummer flowers and cats slideshow

gardeningwithcats — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:17:56 +0000

Here are some of the flowers and cats blooming in my garden in July in Oklahoma. Place the pointer on the picture to read the caption. Enjoy!

How plants, cats and various things come to be in my yard.

gardeningwithcats — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:40:27 +0000

Punky vs. Monstrous SunflowerPunky prevails!

Once you start putting things out into your yard, you will find that your friends and loved ones will be thinking of you when they go to garage sales. Hopefully they will have good taste, or at least share your weird tastes. Neither Punky or I were too sure about this plastic encased sunflower which I just found one day by my back porch. It is too awful to get rid of. It has grown on me and the cats like to sleep on it. If you garden, and garden in such a way that people can’t help but notice, you will find yourself receiving gifts of plants, yard “art”, and things that are hard to catagorize. But love them anyway. It means someone loves you and thinks of you. Or sometimes it just means they’re getting rid of junk and you were the first one that popped into their minds. Either way, sometimes you get some pretty cool stuff. The hibiscus in the background is real, thank goodness.

Tub Gardening

gardeningwithcats — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:01:26 +0000

tub garden

This is a picture my 81-year-old father-in-law took of his garden. He used to plow up an acre or so, but with the heat and humidity here, plus his age, tub gardening has been a boon for him. There’s many reasons to garden in containers. I planted stuff in buckets, washtubs, laundry baskets, for years because I moved every couple of years. Just took the garden with me. It’s also great if you don’t have space or you don’t like to pull weeds. You have to water more, containers dry out quicker, but holding a hose or watering can is sure easier than bending over pulling things that might fight back.

For vegetables, a five gallon container is the smallest you want to use. If you don’t have any and don’t want to spend money, go to a fast food place, the golden arches is one of the best places to get these, and ask for the used pickle buckets. There you go–a free 5 gallon bucket. They also have really secure lids that come with them, so they’re great for holding pet food, potting soil, bird seed. I even take them canoeing to hold stuff I don’t want wet, like food. Ever have river-soaked cupcakes? After holidays, I’ve found big tubs, the kind that are used for filling with ice and canned beverages, on sale for $1. If you don’t mind your petunias or tomatoes growing in an orange tub with pumpkins and black cats on it, then you’ve got another inexpensive container. Pictured are feed tubs for calves. No more cattle on the farm but the tubs have found another use.

In the photo are luffa (The fruit is edible when small), catnip, tomatoes, cypress vine, and more.

Midsummer, Time to Pinch and Be Pinched

gardeningwithcats — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:41:04 +0000

moss rose

: Kongmoss rose

Summertime, and the livin’ is hot and humid. Ticks pinch me and I pinch them off. A safer and less annoying pinching job is pinching back your annuals. If plants, like petunias or the moss rose in the photo, start to look pale, ragged, leggy and have no or anemic looking blooms, get up the nerve to do a little surgery. I used to be not confident, thinking I’d pinch back too much or the remove wrong thing. I figured out that plants are not little kittens and instead of hating you for life, plants will reward you with new green foliage and a new flush of blossoms. What you’re about to do is no worse than what a wind storm or hungry bug would do. Go ahead and use your fingernails. Your plants won’t hold it against you.

Here’s why pinching helps instead of hurts. Kong would tell you, but as you can see, she’s busy doing other things. Plants live to reproduce. When a plant is damaged it produces a hormone that makes it flower again. If the plant can think, it’s thinking, “I’m dying. I have to reproduce myself before it’s too late.” In the deep South, where I used to live, people beat their okra with sticks. They’ll tell you it makes the okra produce again, but most don’t know why. They’ve seen their parents and grandparents do this and it works, so they do it, too. It works because of the hormone released by the damage. Both hurricanes Katrina and Rita were like giant sticks beating up the plants. Everywhere was devastation and all the spring flowering trees bloomed. Peaches, crab apples, redbuds, everything, even though it was near autumn. They thought they were dying so they had to reproduce.

Now, if you think you should go out and punch your peachtree in August to make it bloom, think again. They haven’t stored enough energy to do this over and over. Once the Rita and Katrina trees bloomed in the fall, most of them didn’t have the energy to try again until spring a year later. But your annuals, pinch them all you want.