It’s Memorial Day weekend so game on for shopping — and planting. Pace yourself and have fun as you welcome summer to the garden.
Perennials/Annual Flowers/Vegetables/Herbs
• Don’t hold back, get everything in the ground — Plant perennials, annuals, trees and shrubs — now, so they can be enjoyed this season.
• Add summer flowering bulbs in locations wherever you need a pop of color or to fill in bare spots – coleus, cannas, dahlias, gladiolas and elephant ear (needs shade).
• Direct seed — or reseed if recent rain and hail ruined the lot — annual flower seeds including zinnias, ageratum, amaranthus, cosmos, drum stick flower, four o’clocks, and sunflowers.
• Direct seed basil, dill, chervil, calendula and nasturtiums. In addition to their culinary or other herbal qualities, herbs
• Plant hardened off warm-season vegetable transplants including tomatoes, eggplants, tomatillos and peppers. Direct seed cucumber, melon and squash. Continue seeding leafy greens and carrots until the weather turns hot and stays that way.
• Many vegetables appreciate being fertilized at planting time, then again during the growing season. Crops vary on how much and when to fertilize. Avoid over fertilizing. A helpful resource for vegetable care, including fertilizer tips, can be found here:
• Wind can be tough on new plants, protect them for several days as they establish with a simple wind break. Inserting thin, 1- to 2-foot tall pieces of wood into the ground next to or around the plant, like a tepee, helps. Plastic or cloth wrapped around a tomato cage also works well, too. Water-filled milk plastic milk jugs placed near plants can protect from wind and provide extra warmth at night.
• Children like to help in the garden. Build a living tepee using twigs, bamboo sticks or poles. Simply tie the sticks together at the top, then plant scarlet runner bean seeds or other ornamental annual vines at the base of each stick.
• Engage young children by letting them direct seed large, quick-growing seeds like nasturtiums, pumpkins and radishes.
• Use weed-free mowed grass clippings or newspapers with clippings on top to mulch around new vegetable transplants and near direct seeded plants when they are up several inches. Mulch keeps soil moist and cool during hot weather. Mulch also helps keep weeds down and prevents water from splashing onto plant leaves which may lead to disease.
Roses
• Has the yellow rose (or any other color) you planted in the past suddenly turned into a very dark, almost maroon colored rose? And does it grow in flail fashion — upward on long, wild canes? If so, your rose is alive, but not the one you planted.
• What you have growing is the rootstock that was used to graft and grow your yellow rose. The rootstock survived, but the upper rose (yellow) has died — probably from incorrect planting or lack of winter protection. Just like many fruit trees, roses can be grafted or grown on their own rootstock.
• This reversion often happens on hybrid teas, floribundas or any grafted rose. Roses are grafted in the first place to achieve certain growth habits, bloom, fragrance or color characteristics. Roses grown on their own rootstock cannot revert.
• Confirm the rose reversal by checking for the grafted union on the rosebush.
• Grafted roses are easy to spot — near the base of the canes you’ll see a fist-like looking knob — thatap the graft where it was attached at a young age to a stronger rootstock.
• The name of red rose or rootstock below ground that was most likely used is known as the “Dr. Huey” rose–a very tough and hardy climbing rose. Dr. Robert Huey, a dentist and Civil War veteran, loved growing roses and was a well-respected rose hybridizer. He didn’t hybridize this rose; a friend did and named it after him. Huey had no idea how popular his named rose would become for below ground rootstock — truly postmortem rose fame.
• Seeing “Dr. Huey” is not the end of the world, but it is the end of your yellow rose as you knew it. It will never come back, so your options are to remove the rootstock (if you can, plan a few extra hours). If you choose to keep this once-blooming, wild growing rose — chances are high for him to come down with a case of fungal black-spot late in the summer.
• If you replace it with another grafted rose, be sure to plant the graft 2-3 inches below ground level or expect another visit by the dear doctor in the future.
Hail
• Scientists say that hail is a solid form of precipitation. We know it as a 5-minute (or less) nightmare of garden destruction. Colorado storm history points to hail events all through the summer and sometimes early fall.
• After the hail and after the tears, get down to business. Clean up leaf litter and debris. Remove severely damaged plants and toss them in the compost pile. Call in the tree professionals for large tree limb damage removal and pruning.
• Gently cut back less damaged perennials, follow-up with a light fertilizer application, and then water it in.
• There is time to replant perennials, annuals and vegetables. Ask a kind garden friend who wasn’t hailed out for plant divisions, they’ll gladly help you out.
