Where's Winter????

My husband said it this morning: 'Where's winter?' he asked.

Good question. It's the middle of December and it's like early November out there. Practically no snow, no frost. Just drear, drear, dreary wet grey woods, soggy raspberry canes, dripping branches and ferns flat on the ground looking bedraggled. One thing, you can sure see the evergreen ones!

Kip and I went for a walk just now to see if we could see anything worth photographing. After half an hour we both agreed the answer was 'no' and we came back in. Here's Kip looking damp:

Notice his fine eyebrows! When he was a wee pup I chose him because I liked his brown eyebrows.

We did admire some mosses, though. I love those 'moss balls'. These are mosses that have the acrocarpous (upright, clustered) growth form. Here's one:

Here's a moss that has the other growth form, that is, creeping or sprawling, or pleurocarpous:

OK, end of lesson.

We did see a curious fungus. It was only about 3" high and at first glance looked like a patch of scales from a pine cone nibbled apart by a squirrel. Each one is flat, with an outline like a lozenge or tongue, and with the bottom sides of the lozenge curled in to create a sort of tube. I'm sorry the picture isn't clearer, but it really was dark out there!

Tomorrow is supposed to warm..... if this keeps up I'll have to do some garden work!

Trail Making

There's just something about paths! Is anything more satisfying than making a new path.... suddenly new areas are accessible, new plants become visible, new ideas develop in the gardener's mind.

I've been working on my trails the last couple of weeks. There was plenty of other work I should have been doing but I've been itching to work on my trails all summer, and now with the cooler weather I've gotten right into it.  I've been chopping, snipping and clearing like a path maniac. You can now walk all around my property without having to push through thick stands of young Balsam Firs or climb over (or through!) fallen trees. Not that it is a walk in park, mind. I'm a firm believer in following the path of least resistance when it comes to paths through the woods, so my trails are rather twisty and winding, and have the occasional large log to leap over or leaning tree to duck under. Not for the faint of heart perhaps, but good for the walker's fitness!

One small area I found as I was scouting a way through for a cross path is on top of the rock ridge, sloping gently towards the north, and bare except for wonderful mosses, lichens, and small, first-year rosettes of Rock Harlequin, Corydalis sempervirens. This is a biennial, forming the small rosette one year, and growing tall and blooming the next. It likes dry rocky places, and while the flowers are a bit 'meh', the blue-green leaves are gorgeous. Here's a closeup of a couple of plants in the moss:

You can see why I wanted my trail to go near that. It's going to be a very neat spot in the spring! Actually, it's pretty neat already.

I don't want to walk on the mosses and lichens, so I placed small rocks along the left and across the back of the area shown in the picture to remind myself where to walk. Just at the top of the picture you can see one of the huge Pines that went over in the 'not-tornado' of (I think) 1997. The weather people called it a 'micro-burst', but it had a lot in common with a mini-tornado. About 30 huge White Pines were blown over, making one heck of a swath of deadfall. I still can't easily get through there, but Kip just walks down one tree to the next to the next and leaps off when he gets where he wants to go. I think he's tickled that I can't follow him!





Making new trails allows me to see more of what is growing. I found a nice patch of Dewdrop, Dalibarda repens which I'll photograph in the Spring, a fruiting patch of Spinulum annotinum, Bristly Clubmoss, a small Christmas Fern, Polystichum acrostichoides, and a patch of Northern Ground Cedar, Diphasiastrum complanatum. I have acres of it's cousin, D. digitatum, but only (so far) this one patch of this one. I knew it had to be here, but couldn't find it anywhere. Ha, it was there all along, just hiding!

Compare it to D. digitatum:

Given that snow is in the air tonight, I've finished my trails just in time!

Small Cuttings

Chipmunk Tomatoes

I've had a great crop of chipmunk tomatoes this year. They didn't start to ripen until past the middle of August, but once they started, there was no stopping them. I know more ways of serving tomatoes than an Italian restaurant....  What are chipmunk tomatoes? Well, the chippie that lives near the veg patch is a tomato lover, and he takes a bite out of each just when it is ripe to claim it for himself. I've been keeping an eye on the tomatoes, trying to beat him to them, but with no success. Every ripe tomato has a bite taken out. At first I didn't want to eat them, but now I just cut off the chewed bit. Ya do what ya gotta do, sometimes.


Geranium cuttings

I like to keep my geraniums. By now I have a nice little collection of different colours and leaf forms. I mean pelargoniums really, but you know what I mean. Those red things you get at the nursery in the Spring and plant in pots. Ah, but there are also many shades of peach, white, different pinks, dark plum red, bright crimson..... and leaves of all kinds. I have a gorgeous oak-leaved one which gets to about 3' tall in a good summer, and a little one with bright red flowers like perfect miniature roses. Also some scented ones, and one called Mrs. Taylor which has the most beguiling deep scarlet flowers with darker spots.

Late in the Fall, just before frost in fact, I take cuttings and stick them in some pots I made. I just tidy up the cutting, jam it into the soil, water it, and put the pot on the windowsill. All but the pine-scented one always root. To see them, you wouldn't think they were cuttings at all. Most of them even bloom, and by Spring they are nice, if small, rooted geraniums. Then I move them into large pots outside. By July they fill the pots and bloom like maniacs. If I manage to keep them dead-headed they go on until frost.

I took the cuttings yesterday and brought them inside to pot up. I was too tired to do it right away (I'm in the middle of a nasty cold) so I put them in water in a blue pottery bowl. How beautiful they looked!

Burning Bush

Bah, humbug. Until now, I liked that bush. It was planted behind a Mugho Pine and the Christmas colour combination appealed to my sense of humour. Today I looked at them - bright red Burning Bush, bright green Pine. All around them, brown seedheads, bare Sumachs, grey rocks.... that Bush has got to go. It was hideous! Totally out of key.

One Squash

You may recall I planted a single squash plant this Spring and I wondered if I would get squash. Short answer: yes. The vine got huge, leaves 18" across, stems trailing 10', and there were 8 large acorn squash. Unfortunately, they seem to be watery and tasteless. Is this because it was a single plant, or because I watered the plant (it was a very dry summer) or was it a weird seed? Rogue squash?


Potato Fact

I always knew you had to hill your potatoes. When I was a kid my parents made us hoe and hill the potato patch. Naturally, we resisted mightily but I can't say it actually did us any harm and it probably did the family diet some good. Anyway, when I started growing my own potatoes I knew how to plant them, how to hoe them, how to hill them.... and my potatoes were always pretty good.

This summer I ran out of time soon after the first hoeing and never got them properly hilled up. When I harvested them, each plant had one or two large potatoes and that was all. Reading an old gardening book one night, I came upon a scientific reason for hilling potatoes. Seems the tubers grow at the ends of stolons, and stolons only form if the root of the plant is deep enough in the ground. So if you don't hill them (or plant them in a trench and fill in the trench as the plants grow, same thing really), no stolons, and few potatoes.


Why is it that....

Why is it that when you dig a 1-gal. hole to plant a 1-gal. plant, there is never enough soil to fill in around the rootball? I dug a nice hole the size and shape of the rootball of a White Spruce which had gotten much too big for its pot, and put it in, and had to go get a wheelbarrow load of topsoil to fill in around it. This seems to keep happening to me....

Wm Cody Memorial Fern Glade - Part 2

OK, fast forward to last Sunday. I finally got out there again, planning to work on my new path. I was delighted to see that all the ferns are alive and well, and that the other wildflowers all looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as well. No sign of the Clintonia, but then, it goes dormant in September. The Fletcher people had put some dead birch logs along the edge, which looked a lot better than the yellow tape we had there before!  A lot of people walk (and walk their dogs) along the various trails, and the fern area looked empty so without the tape or now logs, people would walk on the plants.

You can see the logs here. The existing path is on the left, the start of the fern area is on the right of the logs. The spot so far is about 40' by 10-15'. You can see the wonderful dappled shade cast by the huge trees which are just, as the film people like to say, 'out of shot'. What you can't see is the ferns - told you they were small!










Here are some pictures of the new path:

I started by clearing where I wanted the path, pulling out Vine, leveling the ground a bit with my drag hoe, moving a couple of small rocks and so on. Then I put down a double layer of permeable (cloth) landscape fabric, the kind the lasts about 3-4 years and then deteriorates to nothing, pinning it down with wire staples every couple of feet. Then I covered the fabric with a few inches of wood chips. Getting the wood chips was almost the hardest part of the job!

The hardest part of the job was talking to all the people who came by and stopped to find out what I was doing. It was fun talking to them all, but I soon found I had to stay alert as some of the questions were hard to answer. Why was I doing this?( Um, well.....)  How long before the Glade would be finished? (Um.... never?) Did squirrels, of which there were two hanging around hoping I had squirrel lunch in my backpack, eat ferns? Why had the Fletcher people mowed down the meadow? (Did you read the sign???) And so on. Quite a few people were out with kids, and they were all very interested. Anytime I felt I had answered enough questions I would ask them, with a smile, if they would like to help. It really worked with adults, who all promptly decided to continue their nature walk, but the kids were all keen to work! They were great at stomping down the wood chips.  One kid patiently picked up about a hundred acorns. Not sure what he was planning with those, but by the time he left his pants were hangin' a bit low.

Anyway, that may be it for work on the Glade this year. The weather is changing and I think snow is not far away. Not really enough warm weather left for ferns to establish before winter, so I think I 'll wait before moving more of them in. Dan (remember Dan) plans to plant a few Spinulose Wood Ferns, Dryopteris carthusiana, and some Marginal Woods, D. marginalis if he has time. Next spring, Christmas Fern, New York Fern, Silvery Glade..... lots more to come! And some more native ground covers (I snuck in some White Trillium plants already) and a concerted effort to get ahead of the Dog-strangler. I plan to approach it like a science experiment. I intend to mark about 20 plants, then each week cut down whatever growth it made that week. If I keep records, I should be able to find out how often it needs to be cut down to eventually exhaust the roots. Even grass will die if you cut it low enough often enough. At the same time I hope to cut the rest of the Vine in the Glade every couple of weeks so at least it won't seed, and to dig it out in small areas as ferns get planted. It's not a huge space, so it would be possible.

What Dan and I really need is some help! Anybody up for a challenging project? We could be the Fern Team.... I'm serious here, guys. If you are in the Ottawa area, willing to work hard for a few hours each week, and would like to join us, get in touch.

Wm Cody Memorial Fern Glade - Part 1

Curious how some projects seem so simple, and then turn out to have all kinds of inherent difficulties. The practical difficulties are nothing compared to the philosophical ones, although in the case of the project I want to talk about, the practical ones are also daunting.

The William Cody Memorial Fern Trail at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden is a case in point. Several months ago  Sandy Garland (chair of the Fletcher committee) asked me if I'd be interested in working on such a thing. I don't really know anything about Mr. W. Cody, except that he worked for Agriculture Canada, wrote a booklet on local Ottawa Valley ferns, and is now deceased. Since the little book is an absolute classic, a 'must-have' for local fern-ers, I loved the idea of a memorial garden. Sandy said she had a spot in mind, and, later, took me down to see it.

Right away I could see a practical problem that will loom large in this project's history. Dog-strangling Vine, or Pale Swallow Wort, Vincetoxicum nigrum; syn. Cynanchum louiseae, is rampant in the area she showed me. It is also a very dry spot, with a number of fine large Maples, a few conifers such as White Pine, and, a little further back from the trail, a large stand of mature Eastern Red Ash. Now the Ash is under threat from the Emerald Ash Borer, so any plans for the Trail should take into account that conditions may change dramatically in a few years. But for now, the Maples and Ashes give good high dappled shade. The area is a bit of a hill-top, so well-drained, but dry. This year in particular it is dry.

Sometime in June, I think it was, Sandy lucked into a couple of volunteers who wanted to work for a day or two, and she put them on to clearing the fern area of DSV. They did a great job, but when I went there a few weeks later to do some work, I saw that instead of clearing a square bounded by the two intersecting trails, they had cleared a rectangle along one of the trails. OK, but it threw my sketched plan out of the water. As well, someone had planted a bunch of Whorled Aster, Oclemena acuminata, right where I had mentally placed ferns.... so, right, Plan B coming right up.

I started by doing a bit of exploring. I found a patch behind the trail with some Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis. The plants were stunted, but alive. Not really a damp spot, but a somewhat damp-er spot. Possibly an area could be made there, suitable for ferns that need more moisture. Another person, Dan, had expressed interest in moving some of his ferns to the Trail, and he had mentioned moisture-lovers like Interrupted Fern, Osmunda claytoniana, and Marsh Fern, Thelypteris palustris. Neither of these would do well in a bone-dry situation under Maples. But perhaps (you see my Dutch problem-solving mind working here), perhaps, one could dig out a depression, line it with old pond liner with a few holes poked, fill it with good humus-y soil, and have a place for ferns that need more moisture to thrive. Further exploring took me back to the existing path which crossed the path the Trail is on. Clearly, a new path, curving around and enclosing the fern area, and joining the two intersecting existing paths, would be the way to go. (pun not intended!)

Then it could be called the Wm. Cody Memorial Fern Glade, no longer being a Trail. I had trouble with the concept of a 'trail' anyway, particularly with the difficulty of maintaining an area which would have no border..... I mean, how would I ever keep the DSV out if there was nothing to stop it from spreading into the fern area? Apparently lawn edging is not allowed, I guess because it isn't exactly natural, but somehow the Vine's stolons have to be stopped. Otherwise it would be a never-ending job to dig it out of the ferns' domain. It's seeds will be bad enough, but at least small seedlings are easily yanked.

Anyway, I then settled down and weeded the area the volunteers had cleared, digging out some more DSV that had come up again, removing a quantity of what I call burr-bush because I don't know its name, but I know it is a pesky weed, trimming the shrubs of overhanging branches and dead wood, and digging spots for the ferns I had brought. The volunteers had planted Clinton's Fern, Dryopteris Clintoniana, in front of Crested Fern, D. cristata, which put the taller one in front of the shorter one, but I figure in a few years we can move the Cresteds. The Whorled Wood Asters got in the way, but I put the Northern Lady Ferns, Athyrium angustum, behind them. It didn't look too bad, although of course all the plants are still very small. There were also a few Blue-bead Lily, Clintonia borealis, a small clump of Bunchberry, Cornus canadensis, and a sad-looking straggle of Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia. The dry summer hasn't helped them, but at least they were still alive.

I went home feeling encouraged and vowing to be back the next weekend.

The Low-maintenance Myth

"A Manager is a person who finds a competent person to do a job, gets their commitment to doing it, and then gets out of their way. A supervisor is someone who assigns some part of a job to somebody, monitors them closely, and ends up doing most of the job herself."

One of the things I was musing on the other day, as I forked bushels of  Pale Swallow Wort roots out of the ground, was the idea, widely circulated in the 1980's, that native plants are low-maintenance. I was at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, working on a Fern Trail project (more about this in a later post), and I was remembering that one of the goals of their Model Backyard Garden was to show suburban gardeners how to use native plants to reduce the garden maintenance they would have to do. There were other goals as well, but that is the one I was thinking of between swatting late mosquitoes and wiping sweat out of my eyes.

One of the players was Landscape Ontario. They were pushing a sod they said was low-maintenance. I forget just what they called it, but the implication was that because the sod used native plants, it would require less work than regular grass. Of course they charged a premium for it. The thing that blew it out of the water, at least for me, was that the natives they were talking about were things like white clover. Probably a lot cheaper to produce than pristine sods of various grasses..... but they were charging a premium. They knew a money-making opportunity when they saw one. Unfortunately for them, most homeowners knew a marketing boondoggle when they saw one, so I don't think it caught on all that well. Anybody can have lawn with clover in it, all you have to do is wait.

If you do little or no maintenance, you will have a low-maintenance lawn. You might not like it, and your neighbours may point and whisper, but you're not spending hours and dollars fertilizing, rolling, raking, cutting and weed-killing your lawn.

The other thing  the 'experts' got onto at about the same time is the idea that native plants require less maintenance.  Reluctant gardeners thought, 'Oh, I'll just plant some wildflowers and I won't have to do any work'. Seed companies, knowing a marketing opportunity when they saw one, got into the act right away. They advertised various 'mixes', supposedly designed for various conditions, like, for example,'Sunny Meadow Mix' which was supposed to work in sunny conditions, or 'Shady Corner Mix' for, right, shady corners.  Every 'mix' was illustrated with large pictures of glorious flowers of all colours waving in the sun. Probably you remember this. Of course this didn't work. What came up and eventually flowered were annuals such as Cornflower or Cosmos. Nice enough plants, but whether in the sunny corner of the yard or the shady one, they were scrawny and soon overpowered by weeds. Gardeners  began to see another marketing boondoggle.

Since I've been talking up native plants every chance I get for years, I caught heck from quite a few disgruntled gardeners who, now not having to do so much garden maintenance, had time to come and yell at me about how native plants were no good. One older fellow, wearing the white belt and shoes of the officially retired, came to the Home Show once where I was fronting a large display of photos of beautiful native plants, and gave me a good blasting, and then demanded his money back! He had purchased a tin of 'mixed wildflowers seeds for the sunny border' from a seed company who shall remain nameless so I don't get sued, and he felt that he deserved his $12.95 back. Had he carefully prepared a weed-free, well-dug spot for his seeds? Of course not. Had he painstakingly removed all the grass and Creeping Charlie that came up? Naturally not. Had he watered in late May after it hadn't rained for three weeks? Nope. Why should he? Wasn't this was supposed to be low-maintenance?

I tried to reason with him, politely explaining the facts about weeds, water and wildflowers, but once he saw that he wasn't getting any $12.95 from me he lost interest and wandered over to listen to a slightly brain-scrambled Person lecturing about how to achieve Serenity and Happiness by growing roses.

The problem is, that when it comes to native plants and low-maintenance, almost everybody misunderstands.

Any plant is low-maintenance if it is happy and you allow it to do it's thing.

The wild Sweet-scented Waterlily, Nymphaea odorata, is low maintenance. Provided, that is, that you have a large enough body of clean water of the right depth, beavers to eat some of the tubers to stop it from crowding itself out of the water, and you are prepared to let it grow where it wants.

Peonies are low-maintenance, if you put them in a good spot and don't hack them down with the lawn mower too often.

Delphiniums are low-maintenance if you don't mind them falling over in June.

On the other hand, Sweet-scented Waterlily will be very high maintenance if you are determined to grow it in that dry sunny spot beside your garage.

Native plants are exactly the same. Put them in the right situation, give them whatever care is critical to their survival, accept them for what they are, and they will be low-maintenance. Put them in the wrong situation, ignore their survival needs, expect them to act like British society matrons, and they will be high maintenance.

Now, go back to the top of this post and re-read my definitions. If you manage your plants, they will be low-maintenance, if you supervise them, they will be high-maintenance.

Same as people.

Garden Renovations

Leaves are starting to show red here and there, especially some of the show-off Sumachs, there is a nip of frost in the air, and the season of garden renovations is in full swing.

There's something about August that exposes all your gardening weaknesses. You see them, but it is too hot to do anything about them. You maybe make an entry in some notebook: must move that daylily...... or you brush by some overgrown thing and give it the 'just wait until I get my secateurs' glare, but you don't actually do anything. It's too hot, the garden is too dry, and that glass of chilled white wine is calling.

But September, ah September. It is cooler. The border revives. Asters bloom. A tomato finally ripens. Birds check out the feeders, notebooks in hand, with an eye to winter patronage. Out come the secateurs, the garden fork, the spade, and, in my garden, the crowbar. To work!

So far, I've done bits in a number of different areas. It would make more sense to do everything in one area and then move on, I know, but I can explain. I started in the Crabapple garden, where I removed a 100-sq-ft patch of Adenophora 'Elizabeth'. Nice flowers, nice leaves, too bad about the garden manners. It was taking over the whole area, and I was not, simply not, moving three large Peonies. I intend to reduce the Japanese anemones too, but will wait until they finish blooming. For some reason they all fell over this year, but then the ends turned up and now the flowers are all facing forward nicely at about the 2' level. Odd, but looks fine.

Then I putzed around in the Rock Garden several afternoons, planting the stuff I never got around to planting in the spring. Doesn't every gardener have pots that sit around for months waiting to be planted? Of course I couldn't just stick them in the ground, I had to dig new places for them, move some rocks, carry buckets of pea gravel over for mulch, you know the drill. It's fun to make new garden! A new plant is the best excuse to indulge! My tiny bog is doing fine and I had to sit on the rock above it and admire it. So far no weeds, and the moss is green. The steps down to the lower part of the rock garden were overgrown with Viola labradorica, the Dog Violet (what a name for a flower!) and I dug those out. Then I got sidetracked a bit and spent a couple of afternoons clearing more trail in the woods. I basically hacked a path through the patch of young maples and hornbeams behind the Rock Garden. Used my trusty secateurs to do it, too. Who needs an axe or a saw if she has secateurs? But I ran into a fallen spruce, spiky branches sticking straight up ready to scratch or poke anyone who tries to climb over it, so I had to back off on that project. October is for things that need axes and saws.

Then I cleared around my Goldenrod and Aster test beds, put down landscape fabric around them, and covered the fabric with pea gravel. Looks like a million bucks and took all of an hour to do. Where the fabric is now will be paths later; these little beds are the pioneers in the rough patch at the far end of the rock garden. I hadn't planned to extend the garden that far, but a certain bulldozer pushed a certain pile of crushed rock too far and .... never mind, it's a great spot for some of the 'wilder' plants.

In between, I've been attacking the Hillside Garden, which needs major work. It's become a difficult area. The soil is clay, and I haven't been able to mulch it the last couple of years. When it is dry, and this summer has been very dry, I can hardly get the fork in, let alone up-end any perennials. It rained a bit last night, and I got some Goldenrods dug out (too many of them) and got a start on removing the Geranium Sanguineum. (Some call it Bloody Cranebill, and that's not an adjective.) Now there's a thug for you. Spreads like the dickens, and roots to China. And always only has a few flowers. One plant, surrounded by rocks and gravel, is a fine thing, but a patch of it is a boring mess.

Of course, that's only one side of renovating. The other is new planting, and that will wait for Spring. I have some ideas......

Oh, and I promised some more pictures of Fringed Gentian, so here they are:

The flowers only open in the sun, but aren't they worth waiting for?