It’s baby making time in the garden, the shame of it all is that there is no sex involved whatsoever. Big bummer for the plants, but if you’d like you can drink a glass of wine or maybe have a nice dinner and hum some Barry White while you help along in assexual baby making.

Here is the quickie “how to” for a few plants that are in the mood right now for crankin’ out the offspring.

Lots of shrubs and  vines are primed  in June to get “layered”. Here in my garden  I am doing the very handsome Flamingo Willow (salix integra) and  some hydrangeas as well as as many clematis as I can get to. (Some others are rhodies, forsythia,summersweet , boxwoods, honeysuckles,dogwoods, mock orange,) 

 To layer, take a branch, or in the case of the clems one single vine, that has a lot of new growth on it, and cut a small nick in it with an exacto knife or similar tool. Bend the branch or stem to the ground and place the nicked area touching the soil. (You can put a little soil over the layer as well but I don’t always) Hold it down touching the ground using a rock or a landscape pin if you have one. Water, and  that’s it, no spooning or deep conversation necessary. Just leave and come back in the fall and carefully check around in the soil to see if there are roots. If you see some you can cut the stem or branch from the mamma and transplant the baby. I generally leave mine until the following  spring to give them a longer time to develop a good root system though.( Iam also better at remembering to water transplants in the spring )

Clematis ALWAYS needs to be left in the ground after root formation and separation from the mother plant for a YEAR before transplanting, or if you are the attentive type you could dig it out and nurse it in a pot for a year. That is too needy for me, I don’t care for the clingy type.

Old fashioned climbing roses ( the ones that grow on their own roots and are not grafted) are the ultimate in one night stands. I don’t even know mine’s name, yet I propagate it like mad. Right now  they are in bud about to bloom, so I just take a 3-4 inch cutting from a stem that has a bud(s) on it and trim off everything except one bud. I push the stem into the ground where I want it to grow and cover it with an inverted mason jar or a similar glass you sort of screw in the soil so it won’t fall over , water and leave until fall. This method is great under a large shrub  because you will not disturb any roots transplanting a full grown plant and  by next year you will have a rose rambling through your bush. I did this last year under  my pussy willow bushes ( um just reporting the facts here, get your mind back over with me in plant world) and I would have them blooming except for the f***n  rabbits. (excuse the language but my frustration grows exponentially every day).

you can see what blooming here this week under “What’s Blooming” …June 7th

Happy Baby-Making!

Cheryl

Or maybe ” The Azelea Picked the WRONG Day to Get Scale” or maybe even ” Cheryl has a Really Bad Temper” take your pick as a title

So…a few years back a friend of mine and I went to this garden club event where horticulture (and realted) speakers come to give a 5 minute synopsis of their presentations and lectures to those people who plan their garden clubs annual programs (that would have been us for ours that year) . You essentially bring a notepad and keep track of who might be interesting, who is entertaining (my only criteria really) and who to just plain avoid altogether. About halfway through this very stern looking woman all dressed in black who reminded me of the super hero costume designer in the cartoon movie The Incredibles (yes my world is wide..) came up and used her 5 minutes to tell of her program entitled “Gardening Without Plants”.  Who’s bookin this chick?  Seriously, this is your angle?  I thought we giggled too loud at the “bird call” lady but that was tame compared to our reaction to this travesty.

Fast forward to last week. Because I have a free day to work outside it is raining and 45 degrees. Because I have friggin rabbits I am spending my day outside trying to cage off certain plants and the cutting bed with hardware cloth (read :sharp wire you can’t use for clothing ) . Because said “cloth” comes in large rolls you must unroll, and as any of you know who have wallpapered or helped your kid with poster board, rolled things want to stay rolled  I must go find something heavy to put on it so I can cut it. Because it is thick wire the skimpy wire cutters I brought won’t cut it so I must head back in to search for others. Because we live in New England every place I want to mallet in a post has a boulder in the hole so I  must go get the shovel. On every one of these 500 trips back to the garage I am walking by an azelea bed that earlier in the week I had treated with Horticultural oil because it had scale (which it is prone to get every gd year). Each time I look a little closer and I realize that all 10 bushes now despite my efforts have scale on steroids.

Because I can be unbalanced at times, and have been known to throw the odd fit here and there, I immediately turn back into the garage and get the loppers and another shovel..

Here are the azeleas now

 and here is my new garden space (see below) . Because I can give credit where credit is due, thank you lady in black , gardening without plants is a joy.(today anyway, even though I did include just one climbing hydrangea you hardly notice)

             

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Welcome to my blog!  It is springtime here in lovely Jefferson,MA and by way of introduction to me, and my garden I am posting an ABC list (an idea shamelessly stolen from facebook) entitled “The Spring of My Discontent” , sorry Mr. Steinbeck.

A   is for ants, whose multi-hill and tunnel re-creation of an aztec city almost took my kids swingset and the front rock wall to China. .

 

B   is for Borers, the nasty creatures that have infested my favorite birch tree, the one I lovingly stare at out my picture window all winter as I wait for spring to arrive. Mother Nature, you really need to cut me a break on this one, please don’t make me cry… it is not a pretty sight.

c   is for corgis, my dogs Baby Dear and Tigger, who enjoy nothing more than a morning cavorting with the bunnies who are ravaging my gardens. The “dogs” as they like to think of themselves refuse to track, bark, chase or threaten the varmints in any way. Much like the questionable friends your kids bring home from high school , you just shake your head and wonder where it all went wrong.

D   is for digging, when someone asks me “Hey, what have you been up to?  this should be my only answer

E   is for edging, the most dreaded chore of the season. I have a friend who walks her borders with round-up in the fall “edging”. Now that is either very brave or very stupid depending on your attention span and the wind. I resort to manual labor , spade and wheel barrow. It is my gardening purgatory

F   is for frost. Thank you  Mother Nature for the beautiful warm weather you gave us in April. Did it maybe occur to you that the heat  would cause everything to bud and leaf out early so when late frosts hit three nights in a row this week we would be left with blackened leaf tips, transluscent hostas and crispy clematis? Dear lady, think about the repercussions to your actions a little harder next time.

G   is for green. Not the trees,the lawn, or perrenials where it would be welcome, but the pool water. The warm weather we had early on caused an algae bloom leaving us with a lake of startling green ectoplasm. Our chore list is so long in the spring we needed this like a sharp kick to the head.

H   is for Happy Birthday! (anniversary ,Mother’s Day or other important event I missed). In the spring, garden trumps all. Sorry, I will make it up to you.

I   is for the ice that hung heavily on my trees again this year providing me with many meditatitive hours pruning and chipping  to wonder why I bother at all

J   is for junkie..that would be me (at least it is plants, Ma). Apparantly I was suffering some sort of depression or an advanced state  of my OCD over the winter and was plant shopping online. Much of this I do not recall, but as the boxes have started arriving daily all screeching in bold lettering “LIVE PLANTS  OPEN IMMEDIATLY!”  I am now suffering from a kind of panic disorder trying to remember what they are, why I bought them, and where in heavens name they are going to possibly fit in my overstuffed gardens.

K   is for kill trap, see L  …..and don’t judge me

L is for lagomorph, aka rabbits, the latest bane of my gardening existence. They are destroying everything! If you have a pet bunny whose picture your lovingly carry around in your wallet, do yourself a favor and do not show it to me. I will not be gracious.

M  is for money. DO NOT tell Bill, my hubby who finances this operation, but this has been a record year. See J, W, then add in what L is costing me in traps, repellents and lost plants, and I need to go my happy place and try not to think about which of the 4 children’s college fund I am depleteing

N   is for nesting. well at least someone in my yard is havin a good time 😉 The birds are staking claim to every tree, shrub, hanging wreath, basket etc they can to nest in. I leaned a trellis against the house briefly to move a plant and turned around to find a not-so -bright robin had already built  his nest on it. Mister Robin, even though you were quite mad at me for moving your nest, try to focus on the fact that I saved you a lot of heartache. A leaning trellis does not a good home make and your potential mate would have been quick to realize this and leave your dumb a** for a smarter bird. You owe me

O   is for “open goddammit”..the cute little phrase of encouragement I offer to the peony buds daily. How long must this dumb plant stay in bud before blooming?  I don’t like to be teased….keep that in mind

P    is for psychotic, which is the state I am dangerously approaching every time a see a 50lb rabbit gleefully munching my plants, full belly and ready to make more bunnies in the” den of sin” under my deck (I know what is going on under there!)

Q   is for my quest to find a suitable mulch to replace last year’s fiasco of a choice. I think the salesperson at the last nursery was ready to call 911 and have me escorted off the property when my badgering and mulch pile inspecting carried on for 45 minutes.

R is for rain,coming consistently every day I have a chance to work in the garden. I am tired of being wet and cold, and spreading wet mulch is no joy either.

S   is for the first snake of the season to catch me off guard, RIP my friend. Warning to others, do NOT do this..it will result in you being pummeled, spaded, clipeed or otherwise maimed and killed with whatever tool I happen to have in my hand.I know you are good for the garden, I am working on my phobia, honestly. But now for your own safety, please  keep to yourself

T    is for tornado. Okay, they weren’t tornados, but the windstorms that have accompanied every front moving in and out of our area have made me wonder, “when did we move to Kansas?’ as I scrape the sand off my teeth and try to catch my breath (and the empty plant pots that just went  flying down the road) . Combined with the heavy rains, these evil winds have forced me to stake every small tree on the south side of the house. It is a lovely look  for the garden

U    is for unholy, accurately describing my feelings for all things nature that I did not invite here. Excuse me, but get out of my sandbox

V    is for voles, icky disgusting little creatures who spent all winter tunneling through my lawn making it look like a labyrinth in miniature and eating all the roots to several evergreens whose survival is now questionable

W     is for wet heavy snow , of which we had 20+ inches dumped on us in late winter causing me to have to call an arborist in to cable some tree$$$$

X  is for xeriascaping which I now have to practice in earnest….not so much to conserve water (although that is a very admirable reason for doing so) but so I won’t continually wash off all the concoctions I am spraying on my plants to repel rabbits and deer

Y   is for yarrow, the newest in the great cascade of weeds taking over the back 40. Pulling it and it’s runners out disturbs all the mulch and soil and promotes guess what?….more weeds!

Z   is for  ZERO TOLERANCE…my new bunny policy…you will be destroyed or driven off my land!  Yes, I have seen caddyshack, no I am not in fear of my sanity……yet

Here’s to a happier summer!

Cheryl