Takoma Gardener

Nandina domestica*

Where it isn't an *invasive pest, Nandina is valued for its extreme tolerance of drought, its tolerance for sun or deep shade, its evergreen foliage, and the red berries that, when eaten by birds, are causing problems in the Southeast. (Photographed here with Aesculus parviflora or bottlebrush buckeye.)

Invasive?

Nandina domestica is on the invasive plant lists for Texas and the Southeast, as far north as Virginia, where it spreads by bird-carried seeds.   Yet I've read warnings from  naturalists that nandinas aren't, in fact, food for birds (so shouldn't be counted as wildlife-friendly).  So the unsolved mystery is:  Are there noninvasive varieties of nandina whose berries the birds won't eat? They also spread very occasionally by stolens in a clumping manner, but that's not been pinpointed as the problem - only the dropping of seeds by birds.

But just to complicate the issue even further, the former president of the Florida Native Plant Society has written publicly that Nandina was designated as invasive in Florida by the very groups who benefited from doing so (by receiving more funds for its removal).  He disagreed with that designation and quit the Society in protest.  Yikes.

In any event, some gardeners who grow Nandina prevent the production of berries and the possibility of spreading by removing its flowers.

It's indigeneous to China and Japan.

Details

• Lacy white panicle-shaped flowers in the spring; bright orange berries emerge and last for months.
• Fine in full sun or deep shade.
• The species grows to 8 x 4-6 feet', and dwarf varieties are available that are full grown at  3 or 4 feet, even just 2.
• Hardy to Zone 6.
• Deer-resistant.

Care

• Extremely drought-tolerant, meaning that gardeners report its survival through the longest droughts with no supplemental watering at all.
• No insect or disease problems are reported.
• If leggy, the stems can be cut back to the ground.
• May drop leaves if temperatures go below 10 F, or die back to the ground in below-zero temperatures.

Your Comments are Welcome and will be added to the plant profile on Sustainable-Gardening.

Tools for Digging - what are your favorites?

Here's a new page on my Sustainable Gardening site - about tools for digging.  It includes all my favorites but I'd much rather it include some of yours, too.  Any suggestions?

Digging is our most basic gardening task, and here are my favorite tools for getting the job done, and some others you might try.

LONG TOOLS USED WHILE STANDING   

Basic Shovels and Spades

Technically, the bodies and edges of shovels are rounded while those of spades are flat.  So both are good for digging but the rounded shovels are best for carrying the soil but when the digging job is a big one.  Whatever.  I use them interchangeably, according to which has a short handle and which a long one, the long one affording good leverage for those deep digging tasks.

The HGTV guru Paul James recommends that gardeners have both both.   

In the photo you see the spade I recently used to remove my entire lawn.  A shovel wouldn't have worked nearly as well for that task.

Perennial-planting shovels

By definition, these are narrower and what I use for tight spots, to make sure I don't damage nearby roots - or at least try not to.  Photo right.

Bulb-Planting Shovels

These are even narrower, and work well  where the soil is easily dug (not so great for cutting roots or getting past rocks).

Hoes

Hoes are perfect for removing large quantities of tiny weeds or deep tap-rooted weeds.  Elliot Coleman, popular guru of edible gardening, recommends using a hoe regularly to prevent weeds.  Photo left.

Scuffle hoes are great for large areas because of their push/pull action.   The weeds can just left on the ground to compost in place. But there are SO many types, try your neighbors hoes out to see which ones feel best for you.

Garden Forks   

Got rocks or clay? Then the old-fashioned garden fork will help you navigate through and around them.  They're also good for aerating the soil, breaking up clay, and digging up bulbs.  Photo right.   

The best have 4 tines, not 3, which should be quite rigid (steel is a good material), also a fiberglass shaft and a strong D-handle.

   

Pickax       

This tool, above all, makes me feel like the Wonder Woman of Digging.  I always use it in a sitting position, though, for maximum impact on the clay I'm breaking up and minimal impact on my back.  Photo left shows a well worn pickax.        

           

SHORT TOOLS USED WHILE KNEELING

Trowels   

This is the digging tool I use the most - for planting, weeding, moving small amounts of dirt, and more - so I'm pretty picky about which one I use. This one is my favorite because it's strong enough not to bend under pressure, it's big enough to hold some soil, has a pointy end that's great for cutting, and even measures how deeply you've dug!  No wonder it's such a bummer when I misplace it and have to use one of my many others.  Photo right.   

Steak knives for dividing and slicing

Every year or I stock up on steak knifes at the local dollar store because it's my favorite best tool for slicing through small perennials like liriope. It's also the tool of choice for cutting through the roots of pot-bound plants.

 

   

 

   

Cobrahead for weeding

   

I once won a Cobrahead and I was hoping to later write that I love-love-love it, but I don't.  I do know gardeners who can't get enough of it, so do give it a try.  Photo left.   

Hori hori knife or Japanese gardening knife, the knife that never needs sharpening.  It works well, and here are some photos of them.

    

Mattocks

I call this tool the "Slayer of Invasives" and indeed it is, at least the ones I tackle while kneeling.  Photo right.   

FOR MAJOR OVERHAULS
Rototilling is a controversial practice, with many experts warning that it destroys soil structure.  In creating new gardens it's still practiced by many, who find it the best way to get amendments (additives) mixed several inches into the soil, so will disturb the soil structure once, but not again.

MORE GREAT INFORMATION ON LINE       

• Great article about shovels by HGTV's Paul James
• Tool care tips by Felco.
• Caring for tool handles, and how to sharpen a shovel, from  Lowes.
• Good advice on cleaning and sharpening from Fine Gardening Magazine.   

AND IN PRINT   

• The Tool Book by Logan is the latest favorite.
• Garden Tools and Equipment by the editors of Fine Gardening.
• Year-Round Guide to Garden Maintenance by Gordon and Mary Hayward.
• Garden Tools by a bunch of authors.
• Tools, Techniques and Tips for a Successful Garden by Dobbs and Knowles. 

Garden Withdrawal

Fellow temperate-zone sufferers of garden withdrawal, how do you cope?  What activities replace all those hours you'd like to be in the garden but can't because of, you know, winter?  I'm looking for help here because this is the part about being a gardening addict that's sad, really - when we can't.  And of course it's on top of the normal challenges to happiness that affect everyone, like short days and hostile weather. Here are my pathetic attempts to replace digging:

• Thorough immersion in podcast availability, with the help of my new Nano and the growing supply of gardening podcasts available on the web.
• Plowing through my stack of gardening magazines and books, even my nongardening books and a few New Yorkers.
• The occasional daytime movie, and lots of little red envelopes from Netflix.

See, I'm in trouble coz that's not nearly enough.  And this year is a particularly challenging one for me because I'm heading into winter without my daily dose of laughing at power from the dynamic duo on Comedy Central - the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.  Where else can I turn for that comic/tragic perspective?

When Master Gardeners become Whistleblowers

Remember all the cheerful articles I've written about becoming a D.C. Master Gardener?  I wrote excitedly about the classes, then missing everybody when the classes are over, about starting to create an organization of Master Gardeners, and then changing our name to DC Urban Gardeners, independent of the city's Cooperative Extension Service at the Univ. of D.C.  But finally, we started working on Projects, including the news blog those stories are on, and our website.

Well, the time to be coy about what's really going on is over.  (Only readers of our blog saw the clues.) Several of us, after trying to correct a really awful situation from within, have gone to the top.  We've written to the City Council, the Deputy Mayor for Education, and the acting president of the university.  The encouraging elements here are the new mayor and an evolving City Council who are focusing on the university, holding hearings, asking for input and apparently willing to see heads roll.  So at the urging of a staffer at the Council, we've submitted testimony for their oversight hearings.  I've copied my testimony below the "Continue reading" at the end of this article.

I've gotta say it's weird, and not in a good way, for hands-in-dirt volunteer gardeners to find themselves in a role we basically hate - the whistleblower.  But because we're just volunteers we have nothing to lose - at least we don't THINK they can hurt us for speaking up.  Funds for good urban projects are limited, dammit, and we're just trying to correct this total waste of taxpayer money.  Actually, it's worse than that because in this case city employees are working against the mission they're tasked to complete.

Now there's nothing left to be done, except wait to see if anybody gives a damn - anybody who can do something about it.

Possibly the world's most useful garden plant - The decidedly unsexy cherry laurel

Cherry laurels are extremely popular with landscape designers as evergreen foundation shrubs and hedges, but they're less well known to the public because they're not showy.  They don't exactly scream "buy me" at the nursery.

The 'Otto Luyken' and 'Schip' laurels are the favorites, both of which I use in my garden - they're used to hide both the foundation of the house and the under-deck view. And the taller species functions well as an evergreen screening hedge along my side property line.  But don't miss the pruning ideas below.

In the U.S. they're often referred to as "English laurels;" in England, not surprisingly, just "cherry laurels."  They're indigenous to Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.

DETAILS

• All varieties do well in full sun or partial shade, and 'Otto Luyken' even tolerates deep shade.
• White blooms appear mid-spring
• Size? Take your pick.
  • The species (photo right) grows fast (up to 2' per year) to 20 feet tall, if left unpruned.
  • 'Otto Luyken' grows to 3-4 feet tall and 6-8 feet wide.  It's shown in the top photo.
  • 'Schipkaensis' or 'Schip' (photo below) grows to 4-5 feet tall and 5-8 feet wide.
• Sources say they need good drainage,  but doesn't almost every plant?
• Hardy to Zone 6.

CARE

• One less-than-helpful source tells us to "water regularly". In my experiencethey're quite drought-tolerant, once established in the garden (after at least the first season).
• To prune for smaller size, cut the tallest stems back to varying heights, but always just above another branch (don't leave stumps). OR remove the tallest one-third of the stems all the way to the ground or close to it every year.

• Left unpruned, cherry laurels can become so thick and densely branched that light and air are restricted and disease and pest infestations are encouraged.  So keep them more open and healthy by removing some of the interior branches, especially ones growing toward the center.
• Don't prune by sheering around the edges to a perfect but unnatural shape - this will lead to the same dead interior problems described above (disease, pests).

Readers, if you've grown these, do what's been your experience with them?

The double-edged sword that is liriope

There's no groundcover known to humankind that's as successful as liriope at preventing erosion on even the steepest hillsides, at surviving wet or bone dry conditions, and doing all that in full sun or deep shade.  You can yank it roughly out of the ground and cram it back into the ground and it won't complain.

Best of all for budget gardeners who need to cover ground, it'll spread and fill out quite quickly. Just divide the clumps you bought and they'll soon be ready to be divided again and before you know it - no bare ground will be showing, and weeds don't stand a chance in the thick mass of sheer liriope.

THE LIRIOPE THAT SPREADS - ONLY FOR CERTAIN SPOTS!

That said, the spreading type of liriope that I've just described will, given some direct sunlight, continue to spread and smother everything in its path that's not substantially larger than it - like a tree.  Yes, Liriope spicata spreads SO aggressively by runners, it'll go below cement and come back up on the other side. In the photo on the right is an example of where spreading liriope should never be planted - in a mixed border with other small plants - and it'll be quite a chore to remove it without hurting the plants around it.  Small gardening error there.

However, there ARE places for spreading liriope and an example is shown in the top photo - all by itself in a contained area, like the right-of-way between the street and the sidewalk.  Another might be a steep, shady embankment where there's room to remove each year's unwanted spread without damaging any nearby plants.  Or anywhere in full shade.

THE WELL-BEHAVED LIRIOPE

Liriope muscari is the "clumping" kind that does not spread by runners and basically stays where you put it.  It blooms purple, not white like spicata, but it shares all the good qualities of the spreading kind - incredible toughness and adaptability - without the invasive behavior.  And there's an especially attractive green-and-white variegated variety of this plant, which brightens up any shadey spot.

But budget gardeners, the bad news about clumping liriope is that you'll have to buy many more of them to accomplish the same coverage you'd get quickly and cheaply with the spreaders.   And clumpers usually aren't available free from your neighbors, as spreaders are.  So it's easy to understand why so many homeowners use clumpers where they shouldn't, even after being warned.

THE DILEMMA POSED BY SPREADING GROUNDCOVERS

This one plant epitomizes the dilemma of anyone in need of groundcover for a large area: if a plant fills in quickly, it usually will also spread where you don't want it to go.  And certainly the word "invasive" is a flag for anyone.  So here are some good follow-up questions to ask:

• In what situation does it spread so aggressively?  In the case of spreading liriope, it's only a problem when it gets direct sunlight.  I've seen it growing in the shade for years, not spreading at all. 

• And how hard is it to remove the unwanted growth? If it's a matter of a few shallow-rooted seedlings, removing them might be a easy enough.  But plants like Liriope spicata that spread by long, tough runners are actually much harder to remove than turfgrass, which everyone agrees is hard work. So you're warned.

DETAILS

• Can take sun or shade, soggy or dry conditions. 
• L. spicata blooms white in summer; L. muscari blooms purple.
• Hardy to Zones 6-9.

CARE

• Sheer back in late winter (although in full shade and there's usually no need because the foliage looks fine even after the winter).
• Easily divided using a cheap steak knife.
• It's not just extremely drought-tolerant but also moisture-tolerant - an amazing feat by a plant.

Photos from top.  A good place for spreading liriope is in the right-of-way.  Next, a crowded perennial bed is NOT the right place.  But bottom, in the shade beneath a deck it's well behaved and one of very few things that will grow there.

November issue of Sustainable Gardening News is Up

Now it's right here in the Archives and I'd love some help with:

• Additions, corrections to my article about Composting. I've noticed on local listservs that people can't stop asking questions about compost, no matter how often they're answered.  So we're trying to get it right and park it on some websites for reference.
• In the On The Blogs section I've included some newsy or on-topic posts from the Rant and my own blog but please - if you have one, send it along so it can be added it to the discussion.  And you'd better believe I added Michele's wonderful post about rules for beginners - with its 38 excellent comments - to my Getting Started page. 

And I welcome any other suggestions you might have.  I've decided to publish the newsletter at the leisurely pace of once a month, with no particular date of publication.  Staying loose, ya know.

[Yes, I've also posted this on GardenRant.  Guilty as charged.]

November "Bloom" Day, in which "blooming" is a metaphor

Okay, now's the time for gardeners in temperate climates to get creative with the term "bloom".  Doesn't it really mean looking its best?  Showing off its color?  Yeah, I thought so.  So no problem; there's plenty to show off in mid-November.

First, here's why it's best to grow big-leaf Hydrangeas where they can be their natural size and require no pruning.  Why remove these gorgeous blooms right after blooming, as required, when they look this good for SO long?

On the right you see the foliage and berries of Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur," a terrific plant for small gardens.

More fun with foliage from the lovely Japanese maple 'Green Cascade' on the left, or how about the serviceberry on the right?

Now we do have to look harder to find perennials blooming, but in the photo below left these Euphorbia amygdaloides blooms haven't changed since they first appeared in June.  And what's more, the foliage is evergreen.

And finally, below right, Amsonia hubrichtii is still eye-popping, lush and gorgeous against a backdrop of Nandina.

I waited all season for this? Reassessing asters

Now you KNOW I love New England asters.  I feature them  prominently in photos showing off my garden.  I tout them as native plants that require no fussing at all, even in periods of drought.  But this year's superdrought taught me to ask one more questions about a plant's (supposed) tolerance for drought.  To wit:  Will it not only survive but actually look good?

See, after devoting a huge chunk of prime garden real estate to asters all season long and waiting, waiting, waiting for the big pay-off, this is what I got - a scattering of blossoms in a sea of diseased-looking foliage.  My hort friends tell me the drought is the cause, so I have a decision to make:  either water them more regularly get rid of them altogether.  Or, at the very least, devote less space to asters and finding some mid-summer bloomers to include in this prime spot instead.  You know how gardeners love an excuse to acquire more plants?  I'm looking through catalogs already.

Bottom photo: what I expected them to look like.

Obies take First Prize this time - Greenest College

Oberlin did it again - this time being awarded the top spot by Sierra Magazine.  Again just ahead of Harvard, exactly where they've always wanted to be.  Congrats again, guys.