Earlier this season, Todd Forrest posted a blog entitled “Waiting for Hydrangeas”. He spoke of the cold spring we had where temperatures plummeted below freezing, destroying many hydrangea flower buds that were waiting to bloom this season.
While panicle hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata) and smooth hydrangeas (Hydrangea arborescens) flower on new wood, the bigleaf, mophead, and lacecap hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla) that we all adore, flower primarily on old wood with the flower buds forming the previous season.
The re-blooming or remontant type that flower on both old and new wood have, as predicted, fared very well. We have a large planting of Endless Summer® at the train station entrance of the Garden at the Moshulu Gate. It has been flowering beautifully for the past month with new flowers starting to form as older ones fade. The first year these hydrangeas were planted the flowering was sparse, but now that they have established a solid root system and settled in they are floriferous.
The roses in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden demanded a lot of patience this year, but it was well worth the reward. The harsh winter resulted in severe die back for many of the hybrid teas and floribundas, so we cut them back hard in the spring and gave them a jolt of nitrogen-rich fertilizer to get them going.
The cool spring had the roses growing at a slow and steady pace and they sat in bud throughout the month of May, waiting for warmth. Generally, our roses start to open around the third week in May and peak bloom spans from the end of May into the first few weeks of June. This year the old-fashion garden roses were pretty much on schedule but our repeat-bloomers were a good two to three weeks behind.
The warm weather finally arrived, and it was certainly worth the wait. To call the roses resplendent would be an understatement. I drove by late last week and my view from the top of the hill was a mosaic of colors as vibrant as an Andean textile.
Last week we discussed different onion varieties and explored several ways to prevent the tears from flowing once these spicy bulbs go under the knife. This week, we’re switching gears to discuss planting techniques and focus on successfully growing our onions this season.
This is the time of year that I start heading down to the farmer’s market in search of onion transplants, which are generally sold in a small, 2-inch pot—all crammed in together. They need to be thinned as well as planted. Once I get into the garden, I take the mass out of the pot and drop it to the ground, letting the root ball shatter and the minuscule transplants separate from each other. With a trowel held like a dagger in one hand and the transplants in the other, I stab the ground and place them 1 – 2 inches deep and an inch apart. In less than a month you will be pulling them up and tossing them into your salad.
I can be very sentimental when it comes to gardening, and the subject of today’s topic always brings a tear to my eyes: onions. My favorite onions are bunching onions (spring or green onions), though they are not the culprits that make me cry. Spring onions are an incredibly versatile delight that can be tossed into a salad or sauce at the last minute. Instead, it’s their pungent cousins that get me, so let’s talk about them.
You will notice that onions are listed as three separate growing types: short-day, intermediate, and long-day varieties. Onions are sensitive not only to temperatures but to the amount of daylight, as well. Short-day onions will start to form their bulbs with 11-12 hours of daylight; intermediate types need between 12 and 18, and long-day onions only form their bulbs after receiving 14 hours or more of sunlight.
Northerners grow long-day onions that are planted in the spring, southerners plant short-day onions grown in the winter, and intermediate types are generally planted in early spring and harvested in summer.
Bananas are a glorious tropical plant that can be grown indoors in a container or outdoors in summer as part of a tropical display. And since we’re just in time for Tropical Paradise, taking place here at the Garden between January 18 and February 23, I’m going to talk about growing these familiar plants at home. Their enormous, paddle-shaped leaves act as a focal centerpiece for any seasonal display, and planting one just might have you hearing steelpans in the distance.
While most bananas are tropical plants that need to be brought indoors during the winter months, other bananas are actually hardy in the New York area. They can be left in the ground to over-winter—dying back with the cold–only to come back in the spring, forming a progressively larger, more awe-inspiring clump each year. However, unless grown indoors, these plants will not bear fruit in our region. They need at least 12 months of warm weather to flower and produce those familiar edible (sometimes) bundles.
Evaluation is an important process in the garden. It teaches us to understand what grows well in specific sites and what struggles or fails; what combines well and what doesn’t; and it affirms our likes and dislikes between different species and varieties. That said, I always like to take a few minutes to reflect on the season’s best performers so I can add them to the expanding repertoire of stellar annuals for every gardening occasion.
One of my favorite annuals in the garden this year was the flowering tobacco Nicotiana mutabilis. This tender perennial (hardy in zone 8) flowers from June until first frost without slowing down or missing a beat, creating a colorful haze in the garden with dainty trumpet-shaped flowers that smother its wiry, 5-foot-long stems.
The specific epithet mutabilis means “changeable,” and it’s more than appropriate. The flowers on this flowering tobacco open white, morph into a pale pink, and finish dark pink, giving the impression that there are three different flower colors on the plant. The foliage has a tropical feel to it, adding to this gardening belle’s natural mystique. But can it possibly get any better? Of course! Nicotiana mutabilis is deer resistant, attracts hummingbirds, and is easy to seed around the garden.
Back in October of 2011, I answered a question a follower asked us on Twitter: “How do I overwinter a mandevilla vine?” It was simple enough to come up with an explanation at the time, but little did I know I would be receiving so many additional questions after the fact. Over the last two years, a number of Plant Talk visitors have stopped in to leave their comments and requests, which I’ll answer here.
For those who are not familiar with it, the mandevilla (Mandevilla splendens) is a Brazilian native with glossy leaves and bright, trumpet-shaped flowers. It is normally grown as a vine but occasionally pruned into an upright shrub shape. A hybrid, Mandevilla x amabilis, forms a tall vine perfect for growing on a trellis. But because these plants are not hardy in our zone, they require some special care in the cooler months. You can read all about it in my original post. In the meantime, I’ll answer the more specific questions our visitors have posed in hopes of helping your mandevilla survive the coming winter.
If you have a question that I haven’t answered here, feel free to leave it in the comments below!
We all have good intentions. Recently I was perusing well-known quotes on ‘good intentions’ when I came across one that I liked from Jeffery Kluger, a senior writer at Time Magazine. It reads as follows: “There’s a deep-freeze of sorts for all good intentions—a place that you store your plans to make changes in your life when you know you’re not going to make them at all.”
This blog entry is about making good on ‘good intentions’ which may incidentally involve a deep freeze. Every year I plant at least four different types of basil. I do this partially for experimental purposes, though mostly because I love having fresh basil around in the summer. But how often do I actually use it?
That is where good intentions come in. Often basil from my garden or from the store lies around the kitchen before it is all used up. I am ridiculously frivolous and wasteful when it comes to basil. Try as I might, there is something about summer that just does it to me. I swear I will be more vigilant and still it blackens and wilts before my eyes.
What, then, can be done to excess basil to ensure that it is put it to good use throughout the year? When I buy or pick a large bundle of basil, the first thing I generally do is stick the long stems in a glass of water to keep it hydrated. I use it like a vase arrangement and place it on the corner of my kitchen counter at arm’s length from my cutting board.
Last week we discussed how to plant your water lilies. This week we will focus on the bloom. Water lilies flower for 3 – 5 days, with the bloom emerging from the murky depths on the first day, opening, and standing erect. On the second day, the flower starts to bend slightly, slouching more on the third day and falling back into the water by the fifth.
Once the bloom disappears back into the water, it is a good idea to take your hand and run it down the stem until you get close to the base, then either snap or cut it off. The water lily stem will start to get mushy as it ages, and sometimes a good tug is all you need.
In a pond situation, the flower head forms seeds that eventually find their home on the muddy floor of the pond. As a homeowner, however, you are probably interested in maximizing your bloom. Seed production takes energy away from flowering, so try to remove old flowers and foliage once a week to keep your water lily tidy and focused on producing flowers.
As the rain fell heavily on Friday, I found myself worried that it would do a number on the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. It’s in its prime right now, and if I told you it was “ablaze with color” that would easily be an understatement; looking down from the top of the hill, all before you is a sea of color. Thankfully, my fears were at least somewhat unfounded—things looked a little wet, soggy, and disheveled come Saturday morning, but gardens are resilient and the roses perked up quickly without too much loss.
Every year I select a few of my favorite roses to discuss, and I thought this would be a good time to do just that considering the Rose Garden is in peak bloom. With it looking so spectacular, it wasn’t easy making my choices, but I managed to come up with a few that caught my eye.
For those with a romantic inclination, I would like to guide you to rose ‘Traviata™’—a hybrid tea from the well-known and respected French hybridizer Meilland. The rose is cherry red, the flowers are enormous and fully double, and the stem is sturdy and fit for a cut flower arrangement. Another classic in the Rose Garden is a German Kordes rose called ‘Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tale®’. It’s one of those roses that display a mélange of colors, with orange, yellow, pink, and salmon all swirled into one breathtaking concoction. This four-foot rose is a floribunda, meaning that instead of just one large flower on a sturdy stem, each stem is covered with a bouquet of blooms. ‘Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale®’ really does get smothered with blooms. The Fairy Tale series from Kordes are hybridized to look like old-fashioned roses with their fully double blooms.
