Mar. 13, 2008 -- Carol Stocker
Carol_Stocker: Greetings Gardeners! I am Boston Globe garden writer Carol Stocker and I will be on line for the next hour to answer some of you gardening questions. I will also be speaking at the New England Spring Flower Show this Saturday, March 15, at 5:30 p.m. on invasive plants at the Dorchester Expo Center. The show is very good this year, so don't miss it!
Carol_Stocker: WHAT TO DO IN THE GARDEN THIS WEEK - Since there are so many requests for this feature, I thought I might also write a bit about what you should be doing in the garden this week. It is still too early to plant. You should even wait until April to start seeds indoors or they will get too big before you can plant them outtside in late May. However, this is an excellent time to prune most trees and shrubs, especially for winter damage. If you cut some branches of forsythia, quince or February daphne and put them in a vase indoors in a sunny window, the branches should bloom in about a week. Be sure to recut the branches indoors under a running tap because cut ends dry out in about 30 second and will not absorb water from a vase unless they are freshly cut.
Carol_Stocker: I give week-by-week advice about what to do in the Boston area garden through the year in my book, "The Boston Globe Illustrated New England Gardening Almanac." I will have copies to sign and sell after my Boston Flower Show talks this Saturday March 15 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. It can also be purchased on line through the globestore.com. You can contact me directly for speaking or signing books at stockergarden@gmail.com
LJD__Guest_: I live in Newton and my yard is clay soil, a sketchy lawn, a couple of mature oaks and various shrubs. I want to add vegetable beds, and read that clay soils can be improved by leaving fallen leaves on the surface and adding blood meals to encourage earthworms. I'm wondering whether it's a good idea to actually buy earthworms to aid the initial effort. My soil hasn't been much cultivated and is very tough to dig. I've read that earthworms aren't native, though, and can actually damage wooded areas -- I don't know whether this is a concern for the shadier patches of my yard (or the neighborhood in general). If adding them is useful, what variety -- night crawlers, red wrigglers, which?
Carol_Stocker: If your soil is that bad, any earthworms you buy will just crawl away to your neighbor's yard. The best thing you can do is improve your soil. If you do that, the earthworms should find you. But be aware, if you want to grow vegetables you need full sun. Vegetables need even more sun than flowers. What I would do is find the sunniest part of my yard, and then go to a big box store and buy some plastic "railroad ties" and some bags of compost and cow manure. Create a square or rectangular raised garden bed above the surface of your soil with the edging, should should be at least 6 inches high. Don't make the bed too large. You can always expand it later. Loosen up a couple of inches of your topsoil at the bottom of this bed with a shovel, garden fork, pick ax, whatever works. Open and dump in half the bags of compost and cow manure you bought with the raised bed edging, and mix it in with the soil you loosened in the bottom of the bed so it is about half and half. If you are way below the half way mark of what you need to fill in the outline, dig up some more of your own top soil from the bottom and mix it in. Your topsoil will expand in size as you loosen it up. Then mix in the rest of the bags of good soil you bought. You don't want it to come all the way to the top of the raised bed or the water will run off when you irrigate. Thing of your vegetable garden as a giant flower pot. The advantages of such a raised bed are: less bending over to weed and cultivate, good soil with less work, good drainage which allows you to start planting earlier in the spring. Once you set this up, you won't need earthworms, but they will find you anyway.
cold_in_brookline__Guest_: Is it too late to start seeds for impatiens, tomatoes, pansies, delphinium, lavender?
Carol_Stocker: These seeds like an early start, but it'
Carol_Stocker: s still early.
bamboo___Guest_: What is your opinion of growing bamboo in the New England landscape?
Carol_Stocker: There is "running bamboo" which is difficult to control because it spreads by underground runners. I would not plant this. Then there is "clumping bamboo" which can be a good garden plant, depending upon where you live and what your garden looks like. It can be very useful to screen unwanted views such as a neighbor because it grows so tall and fast and some kinds keep their leaves in the winter.
cold_in_brookline__Guest_: Is it too early to prune roses? Normally I cut them way back in November after it freezes, but Iforgot this year.
Carol_Stocker: Wait to prune roses now until the tiny red leaf buds start to appear in April because then you can see where to prune just below a leaf node to control the direction of the new branch that your pruning will stimulate into growth. You want rose branches to grow outward, not inward, so you want to cut the stem just above an outward facing red leaf node. Also, by waiting until the rose bushes show signs of life and growth, you can tell which branches have died over the winter and prune off the winter kill.
green_thumb__Guest_: which perenials can I plant for a border in the front of my house? I'm loaded with hosta's.
Carol_Stocker: Do you have hostas in front of your house because it is shady? If so, you might want to plant other shade tolerant perennials. There are many of these, including helleborus, astilbe, columnbine, sedum, rudbeckia, fall or Japanese anemone, tiarella and bloodroot. However, hosta leaves cover the ground to create a ground cover that other plants can't compete with, so you probably should not plant these other perennials amid the hosta plants. One shade tolerant bulb you can plant between hostas is wood hyacinths, also called Spanish squill which is about a foot tall and comes in shade of pink, blue or white flowers. It tolerates heavy shade and blooms before the hosta leaves come up.
novice_gardener__Guest_: Which types of rhodedendrons will do OK in partial shade?
Carol_Stocker: A lot of rhododendrons are shade tolerant, but the ones with large evergreen leaves often do better in shade than those that have smaller leaves.
cold_in_brookline__Guest_: My roses have red tiny leaf buds and the branches are green. Is it still better to wait until April? I would not want to stimulate growth and then have them killed off by a cold snap. Thanks for answering my questions .
Carol_Stocker: You can probably prune now then, but I would still wait a couple of weeks to play it safe.
Andimarble__Guest_: On the topic of roses, I have shrub roses (Carefree Wonder). This will be their second year and I have not pruned them at all. How much pruning do shrub roses need?
Carol_Stocker: As the name implies, the new low maintenance landscape roses such as Carefree Wonder to not need pruning, except to cut off broken, dead or crossing stems that rub against other stems and might created wounds that are entry points for disease.
cold_in_brookline__Guest_: I have an area that is part sun/part shade when the tree is fulll of leaves, but is full sun when the leaves have dropped. What do you recommend for flowering plants there?
Carol_Stocker: Maybe evergreen shrubs such as blue merserve holly, pieris (which is deerproof) mountain laurel, rhododendrons, lecotheue, or yews could take best advantage of the situation. They can tolerate shade during the growing season, but retain their leaves and the ability to photosynthesize when deciduous trees drop their leaves and the sun shines in.
flowergirl__Guest_: I have a small, urban, semi- shady yard. do I have any hope of having a colorful garden with something besides impatiens?
Carol_Stocker: A lot of tropical plants such as impatiens are native to shady jungle floors. Look for tropical plants with colorful leaves such as elephant ears and coleus, which comes in many colors. Shade tolerant annual flowers to try include begonias, nicotiana, browallia, torenia, which is like a purple snapdragon and also goes by the name wishbone flower.
Carol_Stocker: That's all we have time for today. I will be back on line a week from today, Thursday, March 20, at 1 p.m. I think you can also post your questions ahead of time for me to look at when I come into the Globe. If you come to my March 15 lecture on invasive plants at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Flower Show at the Bayside Expo, come up and introduce yourself after the lecture and tell me your handle!