Bringing The Outdoors In

28 November, 2011 Reply

Now that the winter months are approaching fast, dreary days are more common. The flowers are gone from the garden and the leaves have dropped from the trees. Most plants have gone to sleep for the season. In these greyer days there are many ways you can bring a spot of garden cheer to your house.

Bring nature inside with a traditional or contemporary wool rug.

Of course potted flower plants and cut flowers are one way, but they are very temporary. One permanent way you can bring nature inside is through your décor. Bringing nature to your décor is very simple through fabrics, wallpaper, and rugs.

Wallpaper is hard to change out, so you only want to do that if you know you’re really wild about the design, same thing with upholstery fabrics. One way you could change with the seasons is rugs.

There are all kinds of nature themed rugs. You can opt for an inexpensive manmade rug, but if you want staying power and long lasting beauty, wool rugs

are the way to go. I have both in my house and the wool is outlasting the synthetic hands down. After 5 years there is not even one hint of packing down or shedding.

There are so many beautiful floral pattern rugs these days, too. You can go for the more traditional Palace or Diamond rugs. However, there are a large number of bold nature themed rugs available now, Florence and Chelsea styles are a couple possibilities. I have to say that Kodari style rugs, with their bold graphics and intense colors, really caught my eye. If I didn’t already have a rug for the family room I’d be tempted to pick up their paisley rug, as it matches the color scheme and style of the room.

So, if the drearies have you yearning for spring before winter officially starts. Try perking up your house by bringing nature indoors.

Caring For A Cut Christmas Tree

24 November, 2011 Reply

There's nothing like the smell of a fresh cut Christmas tree.

I haven’t been able to give up my cut tree, yet. Even though I know that growing Christmas trees is a highly toxic industry, I still want that fresh cut smell in the house, and I’ve not found an artificial tree that looks anything like a real one. So, until I’m able to give up this vice, I try to make sure the tree stays as green and safe as possible.

I went straight to the expert’s site, the National Christmas Tree Association to check and see if there was anything I should know that I didn’t already. Actually I was doing everything right, except I put warm water in the base when I bring it in because I was told it will make the cells in the tree swell more and take up more water, but they say that it doesn’t matter. Second, I didn’t know you shouldn’t burn any part of a Christmas tree. I’ve often burned the piece I cut from the bottom and sometimes a couple of the branches we’ve removed. They don’t say why, but I’ll heed that this year.

Really the most important thing you can do is keep them dry, cool, and watered. Avoid putting worn lights on them, unless you want the possibility of burning your house down, and try to keep pets and small children away from them. I recently read about a woman who was trying to keep her cat from climbing the tree and sleeping in it! Now that’s a unique, but hazardous decoration. The tree had toppled a number of times last Christmas and she’s trying to figure out what she can do this year to keep it up for the season.

So, if you’re like me, and still love to have a cut tree to decorate, just follow the tips in the above link for a safe holiday season. Live trees are another story. I’ll cover them next time.

Focus Plant: Amaryllis

21 November, 2011 Reply

My beautiful amaryllis, posing for a portrait.

This is the time of year when you see all the special packages of Christmas bulbs to force into bloom. The all-time favorite is the amaryllis. When I grew my first amaryllis the only color you could get was bright red. Now you can get red, white, pink, and bi-color. There are even specialty colors available from online sources.

Watching an amaryllis grow is something everyone loves. You open the box, start watering, and within a few days a tiny sprout shows up. However, the next morning when you get up that tiny sprout is now 6” tall, by the next day there are two leaves over a foot tall. You can almost stand there and watch it grow. We used to tape a ruler to the side of the pot to keep track of how fast it was growing. This is a great idea for anyone with children. Not only is it a lot of fun, but an opportunity to talk a about plants, flowers, and nature in general.

Once the blooms are gone though, most people just throw the plant out. What a shame as the bulb will continue to grow and produce flowers every year, with just a little care. I’ve read a bunch of sites about how to care for your plant; all of them involve multiple steps, and way more attention to the plant than I give mine.

What I’ve found works the best is this. Once the plant has stopped flowering, cut the stem about 2” above the bulb. Then set it in a sunny window and water is like you would any other houseplant. In the summer I set mine outside on our front porch, which gets some afternoon sun. I water it with all the other outdoor potted plants and just let it do what it wants. Then in the fall I bring it in before the first frost and put it back in the window and care for it like my other houseplants. Usually around April almost all the leaves will suddenly die back, but before I can do all the fancy stuff like put it in the dark for 6 weeks, etc., it starts to grow again and this time a blossom comes up. I’ve never done any of the recommendations, no darkness, no lying it on its side, no stop watering, nothing, and it has bloomed for me without fail every year.

As a matter of fact, when I got the bulb it only put on three flowers, instead of the usual four. Once I started caring for it like I am now it blooms with the four blossoms and they are bigger and brighter red than before. So, no need for any special care. Just treat it like a houseplant that likes to be outside in the summer and you’ll more than likely be treated to huge blossoms every year, just not at Christmas, as they are forced to grow then. That’s not their usual bloom time. I don’t mind having an amazing beautiful flower in the spring!

Planting With The Holidays In Mind

17 November, 2011 Reply

A mix of evergreens creates a beautiful wreath.

If you enjoy decorating for the holidays, especially if you like to have lots of natural greenery, you need to do some planning when you do your landscape design. If you have the space you can grow evergreen trees that you especially like, although this will be a long term project as it will take years for the trees to get large enough to produce enough greenery to be of much use.

However, there are other plants that you can use for beauty on the holidays. Everyone immediately thinks of holly. It is a fast growing plant that thrives on being pruned, so it will be readily available just a few years after planting. Just make sure, if you want berries, that you get both male & female plants, as you need both within fairly close proximity to get berries. Another berry option is nandina domestica. The old fashioned variety will get quite large, but will also produce an abundance of berries for the holidays. Just keep in mind that it is considered an invasive plant in several states and the berries can be toxic to small animals, like cats.

Boxwoods, one plant that is not on my favorites list, makes a beautiful wreath. If cared for properly it will dry to off-white and can be used after the holiday season.

Any evergreen shrub can be trimmed a little to help have an interesting variety of greens for swags, wreaths, and arrangements. However, some will retain their green better and longer than others. Southern magnolia is a favorite here in the mid-Atlantic states. Here’s how to make your own wreath.

Also, don’t forget all the different sizes and style of cones that are produced by various evergreens. They make great additions to your holiday décor.

Winter Color

14 November, 2011 Reply

Lenten roses now come in many beautiful colors.

Almost everyone thinks of color in the garden as only lasting three seasons: spring, summer, and fall. However, there are some plants that like it cool. Most people in the southern part of the states know that pansies are a sure bet for color through the winter months, but there are other possibilities, even into the more northerly areas.

Right off the top of my head I can think of a few hellebores seem to defy the cold. Commonly found in a pale greenish white, they’ve now been bred in a multitude of colors. They can have dramatic impact on your winter garden. Witch hazel, a small deciduous under-story tree, is another that can brighten a corner in the garden with its yellow or orange color.

In more southerly states you can have camellias blooming throughout the winter months. These stately evergreen plants have become a favorite of mine since moving to the mid-Atlantic. I have two blooming out in my yard right now.

Camelias bloom throughout the winter in warmer climates.

You can even plant hardy cyclamen in your yard. The tropical cousin is often sold in florist departments as a houseplant. The hardy variety has identical, although smaller blooms. It is adorable, looking like a miniature of its bigger cousin.

I was introduced to winter jasmine when I moved to our current location. The house we first live in had a huge bush out in front. I had never seen it before, so was astonished and delighted when it started blooming while it was still below freezing at night. The mockingbirds liked it as a nesting place, as well.

Hardy cyclamen poke up through winter's leftovers.

You can have flowers and fragrance, too, with winter Daphne. It is a shrub that grows to around 4 feet tall with dark glossy evergreen leaves. The flowers are purplish or sometimes white and have a delicious fragrance.

Now there’s no excuse for you to have a bleak garden through the winter months, unless your ground is under a foot of snow!

Grand Entry

10 November, 2011 Reply

Stone entries add beauty, are eco-friendly, and add value to your home.

So many of us who love plants have a keen eye for placement in the landscape, but often we forget the overall picture. When we step back and look all we see are foliage and flowers, but we neglect to see the hardscaping that could really set the plants off.

Stop for a minute and look at the entry to your house. Is the driveway or walk cracked? What about discoloring? Has the wooden porch rotted, or is in need of repair? You can have the most beautiful gardens and it can all go unnoticed if your visitors have to pick their way across uneven ground or hazards.

Many people will immediately think of having a concrete slab poured and be done with it. However, a much more ecological and beautiful approach is paving stone. Stone driveways and walkways allow rain to seep into the ground below causing much less runoff that can carry toxins into our local waterways.

Likewise, in some areas of the country a patio means a porch, and nothing else will do. However, high humidity means wooden porches and decks need constant repair and replacement. One way to get away from spending your summers in painter’s overalls is to install patio pavers. Once installed they’ll need little maintenance, other than a good hosing down once in awhile. This is also an eco-friendly choice, since you won’t be cutting down valuable forests, using toxic paints, and filling the landfills with rotted wood and concrete. They also percolate much of the rain beneath them, helping to keep you yard watered, rather than having all the rain run off.

Another eyesore is bare dirt. Maybe your yard has some areas that are in deep shade, or where the soil compacts to be like concrete and you’ve never been able to get grass to grow. Most gardeners feel installing artificial grass is a fate worse than death, but today’s artificial turf looks very real and could be the answer you’re looking for, to make that unsightly area look inviting. Also, if you have children or pets that are allergic to grass you no longer need to cover your yard in gravel or mulch, as the new eco-friendly artificial turf can look as natural as a well-tended lawn, without any of the hassles.

Last take a look at your yard after dark. Will visitors be able to see the house numbers? Is the walkway safe to navigate? Do you have any specimen plants you want to highlight with up-lighting. With proper landscape lighting installation you can not only have a safe entry to your home, but draw people’s eyes to nighttime attractions.

Look beyond the plants and paint the total picture of beauty in your yard.

Fall Cleanup

7 November, 2011 Reply

Beautiful fall foliage needs to be cleaned up to protect your lawn.

The first frosts have hit all around the country, with some people even experiencing record snowfall. The trees are bare, the annuals dead, the perennials sleeping, and surprisingly enough the camellias still blooming.

Now’s the time to do some cleanup in your garden, to be ready for next years display. First and foremost, if you have a lot of leaves covering either your garden or your lawn, you need to deal with them. You need to rake the leaves off the lawn, as they could pack down and kill the grass underneath. In the garden you need to rake the leaves so that they are off any evergreen plants. You may need to move some of them to more tender perennials to give them a “winter coat” against the cold. The best thing you can do with your overstock of leaves is to compost them. If you don’t have the space for that, try to ensure that they give picked up by a composting company. Many cities have composting services on certain dates. All you have to do is have the trees curbside so they can vacuum them up.

You should pull up dead annuals and compost them. With perennials you may want to leave some of the stalks intact to help hold leaves or other materials to help them stay warmer. Also, if they still have seeds on them you can leave them for the birds. It just depends on how messy you want your yard to look. Sometimes removing the dead stalks is needed.

Now is also a great time to put in, or amend, gardens. Tilling up the soil, when it is not too wet or frozen, can give you a head start in the spring. If you need to add amendments to sweeten or acidify the soil, doing it in the fall helps the soil to be ready for planting come spring. Your plants will thank you for it. Also, any compost, manures, etc, can be put in the gardens now and allowed to mellow through the winter. This will give your seedlings a tasty treat when you plant them.

Check to see when to trim back your shrubs and trees. Some of them should be done in the fall, others not until spring. So check, because you could cause less bloom and growth if you do it at the wrong time.

Planting Mistakes

3 November, 2011 Reply

Hot or not?

Even the best laid plans run amok sometimes and in several of my plantings this year I ran into some problems. You see, I planted all my peppers which included sweet, paprika, and hot, all in the same area. I thought that I’d have no problem identifying them because they would look different.

I was wrong. There are just two plants that look different from the others, but they look the same as each other. But they aren’t planted in the same area, so they aren’t the same variety!

Now I have a bowl of peppers drying on my table and I don’t have a clue whether they are hot, paprika, or sweet. The only way I’ll be able to tell is take a taste of each one after they’re dry!

Unfortunately I did the same thing with my tomatoes. It was a little easier here, because some of them were obvious. A yellow plum tomato is easy to distinguish from the red ones. However, I had a number of red tomatoes and to this day I don’t know which we’re eating. This is because I do intensive gardening and the tomato plants were so intermingled that you couldn’t tell one plant from another.

So, even after all these years of planting I’m learning what works and what doesn’t. Next year I’ll have to have several locations for both the tomatoes and peppers, so that I can keep the varieties that could look similar separate.