Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal




Top Ten Lists of Plants

It might be the top ten choices of anything, but I mainly record the ten best plants for a given situation. Easy and visually helpful way to review good things for the garden.

10 Useful Gardening Tips For Spring

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spring garden tips top ten
I gathered up some expert gardening tips from around the web, from beginners to a few unusual ones.

1 Soak your seedlings

…the roots of the seedlings become so entangled that separating them without damaging the roots is not easy to do. What can you do in such a case?

Fortunately, here’s a trick that works without fail: soak the roots before you divide. Here’s how it works:

20160325B
From the Laidback Gardener

2 Plant egg shells along with your vegetables:

Crushed eggshells planted along with your tomatoes help your plants avoid “blossom end rot” , which is often caused by a calcium deficiency.

eggshell in garden
Add eggshells for calcium, tip from Beekman 1802

From Beekman 1802

3 Cut the bottoms out of used plastic jugs to protect new seedlings.

Ian Lowe's photo

From IanLowe.blogspot.com

4 Sharpen the edges of tools. This is one of those reminders that takes only a little time to do, but saves lots of effort. Use a large file

garden tools need sharpening
Even old tools can work like new with a little maintenance care

From the gardeningcook

5 Stagger planting is a very useful method for quick growing crops like lettuces, mesclun mixes, radishes, and the like. It ensures that tender baby greens and veggies come along on the heels of more mature plantings. This is especially nice when a crop grown to long needs to be removed- always a fresh one!

ready for spring planting
Photo by Erin Feinblatt

Reminder from Eat Drink Garden

 

6 Keep your plants healthy

  • don’t let them dry out, but don’t overwater
  • leave enough room between plants so air circulates to prevents fungus from growing

 

7 Loosen roots in root bound plants before planting them. And for those who are planning on planting some trees and shrubs this spring comes many tips on just how to do that successfully.

From true Cold Climate experts.

 

8 Use seed packets for handy planting info: time to plant and depth of seeds. Remember that seeds will usually yield the most plants for the money.

seed packet photos from farmgirlgabs

Beginning gardener tip from Farm Girl Gabs

9 Weed Early, Weed Often… because Summer is coming. It is always important to get a head start on the weeds. They are much easier to pull when young and the soil is soft. weeding a tap rooted weed in the broiling summer sun is no fun. Weed now.

weed you garden beds
(c) Francesca Yorke

Reminder from English Gardeners at the Daily Telegraph.

10 Grow Chamomile. If you grow your own stand (very easy), then you can make lots of Chamomile tea during the season to to ward off bacterial and fungal infections. To prevent dreaded damping off in young seedlings, brew the tea and spray with the cooled tisane.

chamomile flowers
Chamomile photo by Ian Muttoo on Flickr

from Huffington Post

Don’t forget these Spring gardening tips, for early spring! And more…

Early Spring Garden

Do You Grow Herbs? 10 Reasons To Love Them

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thyme
Thyme in flower

There are so many ways to enjoy herb plants, that they are not for herb gardens only. Think about tucking them into the landscape, into containers or into your home.

I do I enjoy thee? Oh, Herb, Let me count the ways!

10 Ways I Enjoy Herbs (and you can, too!)

  1. In companion plantings, herbs often repel harmful organisms through their volatile oils.
  2. Delicious when culinary herb choices are grown in the garden.
  3. Herbs make delightful bouquets, either alone or mixed into your favorite flowers. Tussie Mussie, anyone?
  4. They are usually easy to grow.
  5. Their soft coloring, whether in foliage or flower, make garden color harmony.
  6. Herbs smell heavenly.
  7. You can make crafts out of them.
  8. You can grow them on your windowsill.
  9. Herbs may improve your health.
  10. People have grown herbs for ages. They are historically important plants.

What are some ways of growing herbs in the garden?

Of course, the garden dedicated to them, the herb garden, sometimes laid out in rows, or in a Colonial manner of blocks -either in raised bed or simply planted along a path or fence. Since some of them run at the root, people do like to keep them contained, either in the raised bed or container pots. The only one that gives everyone a bit of trouble with running through the garden is the Mints, but who doesn’t love a spot of mint tea? And added to meats or chopped into salads, mint makes everything so refreshing.

As part of a kitchen garden, herbs are traditional companions to tomatoes, whether you want parsley or basil, and that is the natural place for your kitchen herbs. I have dill that comes up every year in my vegetable garden. I just pull it up where it isn’t wanted; not deeply rooted and easy to remove, the seedling s are also distinctive and easy to weed out.

Tucked into nooks and crannies inside a Cottage garden is the perfect way to include them in a garden “plan” for a very sweet smelling and lovely medley of plantings. Thyme running along cracks in the pathway, a purple blooming stand of sage as a full stop, there are so many beautiful ways to incorporate herbs in such a place.

If you want lots of herbs for crafts they are easily grown out in rows in a cutting garden. I loved marjoram wreaths for my kitchen. Try making potpourris and include Sweet Annie (Artemisia annua), which can also be used for informal wreaths or a wreath base for other flowers.

Are you tempted to find a place for an herb or two ( or more!)in your life? It is one romance to share with friends and one that might grow into a life-long relationship. Herbs are like that- a perennial favorite to enjoy in many ways.

 

Eparé Herb Mill and Grinder - Great for Shredding and Chopping Parsley and Greens

Binding Kitchen
Brand eparé
Color Green
Department Kitchen
EAN 0854767005309
Label eparé
Manufacturer eparé
Model EPHT03
MPN EPHT03
Package Quantity 1
Part Number EPHT03
Product Group Kitchen
Product Type Name KITCHEN
Publisher eparé
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Title Eparé Herb Mill and Grinder - Great for Shredding and Chopping Parsley and Greens
UPC 854767005309
Price Disclaimer

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Visit Ilona’s Garden Journal on facebook: Click here
© 2013 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.

10 Cool Season Annual Flowers To Plant

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Shirley poppies and Bachelor Buttons

Not every garden writer alerts you to the fact that annuals can have seasons that are shorter than other choices. For places like Ohio which have hot summers, there are common annuals that only do well when our weather is cooler, such as in early summer. Those flowers sort of burn out in our hot summer temperatures of midseason, in July and August.

Does this mean we shouldn’t plant them? Not at all. I love the cool season annuals because of their beauty, but also because they pop up early. Such plants can be ideal in a child’s garden, where quick results are wanted. To fill in where perennials are slow to cover space might be another good use for them.

English Meadow Denizens

Many of these types of annuals grow native in the English meadows.

Filled with colorful blooms of Bachelor button, Allysum, and Calendula
Filled with colorful blooms of Bachelor button, Alyssum, and Calendula

Here is the list of ten cool season annuals to try in your garden this year:

  1. Candytuft, Iberis umbellata, quick and easy- but oh so pretty. Large flat shaped seeds burst into purple, mauve, pink, and white Candytuft blossoms.
  2. Shirley poppies, Papaver rhoeas, are delicate, full blown poppies and come in a rainbow of colors. They sway in the breezes and will make your garden veritably shine with a mass of blooms.
  3. Love In A Mist, Nigella damascena, creates the sky blue gardeners love when they are selected for that color, such as in the ‘Miss Jekyll Blue’ variety.
  4. Sweet Peas, Lathyrus odoratus, are fragrant and come in not just a candy store display of colors, but special bloom forms, too. The old fashioned selections are the most fragrant, and try to plant the seeds around St. Patrick’s Day.
  5. Pot marigolds, Calendula officinalis, are not just gorgeous in spring, but one of the last to be still standing and blooming in the fall. They can put chrysanthemums to shame in both color and long-lasting bloom. You can eat them if you wish, too.
  6. Toadflax, Linaria marrocana, is one of my favorite little flowers and great for a Fairy Garden. They come in both mixed colors and selected varieties. Like small versions of snapdragons.
  7. Nemesia, is a small scale flowering annual that comes in all sorts of colors and looks pretty with linaria and is one of my favorites for a container planting. Like many of the cool season plants it needs to be kept moist.
  8. Chinese Forget-Me-Nots, Cynoglossum amabile, are easy to grow and bring cheerful forget-me-not type flowers and that sought after blue into the garden. It was very persistent for me for years, coming back reliably from seed. Also called “Hound’s tongue”.
  9. Annual Baby’s Breath, Gypsophilia elegans, will give the pure white, delicate flowers that grace a cut flower arrangements and lace the borders with pretty sprays of baby’s breath flowers. They are much shorter than the perennial plants of that name. ‘Covent Garden’ is the variety I always planted.
  10. Satin Flower, Godetia, doesn’t seem to be very well known nowadays. Its showy pink flowers deserve to be more widely known. Just barely cover the seeds that are directly sown into the garden. Another good cut flower choice.
kehäkukka
I just wrote a new plant profile page on Calendulas

The main drawback for those of us who garden in the continental Midwestern states is that fact that these lovely blooms “burnout”, and do not thrive in our hot summers. But if a garden is located in the South, the cool season annuals can be great choices for sowing in November for early blooms the following year.

Wherever you garden, consider direct sowing some of these lovelies in your garden.

More about gardening with annuals Ilona’s Garden Annuals Page | California Annuals list
photo credits: poppy and bachelor buttons, calendulas
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Visit Ilona’s Garden Journal on facebook: Click here
© 2013 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal by Ilona E. An excellent blog.

August Gardening: Ten Suggestions

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my shady seat
Yes, it is hot, and no one feels like doing much gardening in the dog days of summer, but here are ten suggestions for your gardening efforts.

 

  1. Remember that August is a good time to weed, and get things ready for fall season planting. September is an important time to plant perennials so they can get established during the late September and October times of moderate temperatures and rainfall. Fall-planted trees and shrubs have time to develop roots and perennials can get settled before the deep frosts of late November.
  2. August is a good time to get in your catalog orders for fall, both for your plants and especially bulbs. If you wait, you may not have the selection you hoped for.

    3.  

  3. Keep your plantings watered, it is only a little longer ’til the fall rains and cooler temperatures. Watch out for mulch, it is great for keeping moisture in the soil, yet if it is very wet along with August heat there could be disease problems. Stir it up with your cultivating hoe, and pull it back from plants that might be susceptible to rot. Root rot can be caused by water-logged warm soil.

    4.  

  4. Collect seeds from your favorites that are setting seed. Dry them carefully and package for next year. Don’t forget to label and store in a place that stays cool, dry, and frost-free

    5.  

  5. Like January, you might want to use the hottest days to plan your fall gardening schedule, keep your journal, and just sit in the shade and enjoy your garden
  6. Dead-head, compost ( which you could turn if the heat abates), and shape up some of the plants that get all sprawling at this time of the season. Prune the summer-blooming shrubs when they finish. (The general rule for pruning blooming shrub is right after their flowers are finished)

    7.  

  7. Do you have perennial flowers that have gone into dormancy? This is a good time to move those, such as Oriental Poppy or Bearded Iris. Bearded, the type with rhizomes, can be cleaned up, cutting out signs of borers. Replant with compost since they are heavy feeders. It’s too late to add fertilizer, but you could add in bone meal, a slow acting fertilizer good for roots and bulbs. Time to make more hostas with divisions now. It is vital to water newly divided plants. and it doesn’t hurt to protect the roots, even give protective cover for a day or so in really hot weather. As we move into late August, it is a good time for moving peonies and planting new ones. They take a couple years to really get settled in well, so don’t move them unnecessarily.
  8. If you heat with wood in the winter, August is time to replenish the woodpile; order it if that is how you get your supply. Don’t leave too many chores until the nice autumn weather, it will be overwhelming enough with jobs that must wait until then.
  9. Veggie gardener? I don’t need to tell you that this is your major harvest time, or that you will be planting the fall cool weather crops, but if you are new to the kitchen garden, those are your August garden chorelist.
  10. Stop feeding, if you haven’t already. Plants need to get ready to sleep for the winter and a big meal before bedtime has bad effects. Once they are dormant you can add the type of fertilizer they need for the winter root feeding. So much secrecy goes on under the frozen earth! Just think those thoughts when the mercury is rising in August …Think cool be cool 😉

Those are the top ten things to remember in August: weed, prepare for fall, order plants and firewood, keep things watered and keep tabs on the health of your garden, harvest, collect seed, dead-head/divide/prune as needed, divide dormant plants, plant cool season veggie seed, and Don’t Fertilize your trees, shrubs or perennials. That is it in a nutshell, I think.

Use A Journal

You could use your garden journal to record good varieties that have done well for you this year, and notate your list of to-do in the garden, or make your fall plant wish-list. Fall is one of those seasons that have more work than you have time for, and if you have 100 bulbs or so, you will wish you had a plan. If you are planting beds of them or areas of a group- it saves so much to have already prepared the area. That is just my experience, and granted I am a very disorganized serendipitous type of person, but even you diligent types will be glad to follow encouragement to take advantage of whatever breaks August gives you for actual work, and map out the work plan for those days that zapped your best intentions.

Relax

And what if you go on vacation, or give into reading that great novel you lost yourself in? That is perfectly ok, the garden will wait for you. That is why these were all suggestions…Gentle encouragement.

Do I follow my own good advice? Sometimes. I have been tackling weeding when there are no heat advisories, and I always am game for planning- that is just a step away from day dreaming. Always a pleasant way to while away a summer day, iced tea in one hand, pencil in the other. And there is always the computer (insert a mischievous grin) for doing research, et al. How virtually virtuous of us.

Sage Advice

I have many years of gardening behind me, and I know the disappointment of having waited until September for getting my garden ready for plants or dividing some of my plants. As it is, life is too short for the full panoply of gardening, so anything to create the constant balance between the work and the pleasure is a benefit.

Some of my to-do list will be subject to your own tweaking.

It is a time to take cuttings of plants you want to winter, and most people don’t even think of the old fashioned woodpile.

Some people are showing their flowers and vegetables at county fairs and exhibits, some dry their flowers for arrangements and some wouldn’t think that seed collecting was worth their while… It is just the great variety that is the occupation of gardening.

It expands and contracts with life and demands, but August is a useful time for all who love plants and who are thinking of their own lists of things to do.

Some other August chores

Tags: August, gardening tips, top 10

What are your ten top choices for perennial plantings?

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Only 10 Plants?

If I was reduced to ten plants around which to plan the gardening season, which would I choose?
That is a difficult choice given that there are lots of them I haven’t even tried. For instance, I always wanted a dictamnus, gas plant, but never managed to purchase it.

To answer the question…
Those I would choose now, for this garden on the plain, are these old stalwarts.  I have greatly appreciated them.

Top Ten Perennials For A Home Garden

Smaller flowers are sometimes overlooked, but I have included some of these in my must-have plant list.

  1. Roses are always in the list of top ten perennials.
  2. Peonies have been a stalwart choice for centuries. They make the May/June garden.
  3. Lilies are something I would plant more of, they fill June/July with bright color and fragrance.
  4. Rudbeckias, like ‘Guldsturm’ tend to be overdone, but their easy growth and golden daisies provide color in even the hottest summer heat ( for the north, anyway), so I would always like some of them in the garden.
  5. Hostas, everyone needs some hostas, and they have beautiful flowers on graceful stems. Rise to #1 in the top ten perennials list for many modern gardeners; especially if you have lots of shady spots.
  6. Campanula carpatica is a useful, sturdy, blue flowering cushion.
  7. I have come to really appreciate Scabiosas. Another blue, graceful and free-flowering.
  8. Daylilies are in a class by themselves for usefulness. Many are fragrant, and free-flowering, they come in lots of colors, but the yellows are always wonderful.
  9. Siberian Iris replaces all the German types in my opinion. Not as showy, but far more graceful and lots less work.
  10. Chrysanthemums have to end the season. Nothing else gives as much hardy color in the fall garden. But I would be tempted to say Flowering Kale…. it simply is not as versatile or colorful as the mums…. but it lasts through frosts and freeze. But, no, Chrysanthemums stand. They are easy to grow and propagate. They have all sorts of interesting forms, but the cushion types are most useful.

So. There is my list. Of course, it is only imaginary, since I don’t think I could have only those in a garden… I would fill in with whatever little plants I could tuck into corners and niches. Things like Campanula cochlearfolia, Adenophora, Alchemilla, Violas, …….. I better grow to be a really nice old lady, so that grandkids will gladly work in the garden for. me….

…or perhaps I will take the advice on taking up growing orchids? One of my grandmothers who became invalid, after having grown prize iris and peonies in her younger days, took up African violets. She grew the most beautiful violets.

Flowers are a lifetime of joy, I think.

What if the list were not just personal choice, but some of the strongest and best performers in most any garden?

The group would be quite different, and I put together the top ten best for most gardens:

Top Ten Perennials that are both tough AND beautiful.Good Plant Performers