Teaching Kids about Mother Nature

The Elegant Iris



Have you any  iris growing in your garden?  The iris family is very large -- Japanese, Siberian, Pacific Coast -- but I’m thinking of the bearded iris that stand tall and stately in the May garden, providing a rainbow of colors as they bloom.  The three outer sepals of their flowers are called “falls” and have a fuzzy center known as a “beard.” 

July is the best time to plant or divide iris rhizomes, those knobby looking things from which the roots dangle. They’re easy to plant if you know how, but let’s  review the proper method as it’s a big unusual.     

The first step is to cut across the fan of leaves with a scissors so it’s only 3 or 4 inches high.  Then dig a hole and make a sort of hobby horse of soil for the each rhizome to sit on. Spread its roots down on either side and cover them firmly with soil   The rhizome itself is left barely covered.  It will extend itself each year, so if you’re planting a group it’s important to position them in a circle with the fans facing out.  That way they won’t get crowded for hopefully three or four years. 

Sad to say, if the rhizomes get really crowded they can cause a nasty bacterial disease called root rot, especially in a wet summer.  To avoid this problem, you should replant them when they get crowded by digging them up, breaking off the elongated rhizomes and planting them again, following the same directions. 

When I first started my perennial border my sister-in-law gave me about two dozen iris rhizomes.  I didn’t have a clue how to plant these strange knobby rhizomes, but I found easy directions in a good garden book. Molly had gushed over their brilliant colors, but had neglected to label them, so although they produced that rainbow of colors, it was spotty --  a blue one here, a deep umber there, a yellow one right next to a clump of lemon lilies. 

I think irises are far more effective when each clump contains a single color, so a few years later I decided to rearrange them. While they were in bloom  that spring I tied  colored yarn on each one to match its blossom.  Then in July I carefully dug them up, cut their fans back and set them into piles according to their colored yarns. 

By then it was almost noon, so I took a break, had some lunch and came back to replant the piles.  Much to my horror, Rosta, probably the naughtiest dog we ever owned, had been playing catch with the piles.  The lawn had rhizomes here, there and everywhere.  Not a single pile was left untouched.

I locked Rosta in the barn and faced making new piles.  Fortunately a lot of the yarn tags were still attached, and I was able to plant most of them correctly.  Rosta is long gone, but every time I look at one of my large clumps of iris, all sporting a single color, I smile as I picture what fun she had with those rhizomes. 

I wish I’d taken a photo so you could see this wooly brown Irish water spaniel tossing rhizomes into the sky, but getting the camera was far from my thoughts, so the picture above was taken one snowy winter day.  If you have a naughty dog, I suggest you lock her away when you replant iris rhizomes. 

Ah, June



I once wrote a column about June, voting it not only the perfect month for a wedding, but one that provides a much needed rest for the gardener.  June gives  us a little window of time to enjoy the results of all the hard work we’ve been doing -  cleaning up the debris of winter, planting seeds and seedling, staking various perennials, edging borders, spreading compost.  It’s a time to savor the tidy yard, the little green hands of lupine leaves each cupping a drop of dew at dawn, the colorful fleur-de-lis of blooming iris, the heady perfume of peonies, and the joy of the first fresh radishes and lettuce.

By mid-July our little window of rest  vanishes  as the yard loses its tidiness and hot weather inspires the weeds to shoot up by the dozen.  Fruits and vegetables will suddenly become so abundant we must begin the chores of harvest, get out the freezer bags and the canner kettle and face hot days in the kitchen.  My elderberry bushes are in full bloom, but before you know it they’ll be dripping clusters of purple berries ready to make a huge pot of elderberry jelly.

This year June was anything but the little window of rest I’ve enjoyed in past years.  Rearranging the  border to supposedly make it less work has been a monumental job as I dug up heavy  clumps of phlox, heliopsis and other badly behaved plants, mixing more than a dozen buckets of compost into the soil and then planting a half dozen flowering shrubs and a few hostas, all recommended as trouble free, to the empty spaces.  

I was so totally consumed by the border that I think the vegetable garden would win a prize as the biggest failure a gardener could face.  Too busy to even get to the local nursery, I used last year’s seeds (or possibly even older ones) and paid the consequences.  The bush bean row managed to sprout four seedlings and another six when I planted more of the ancient seeds.  The broccoli – I have no idea why, but it produced those pretty yellow flowers before I even thought about harvesting. 

The squash produced a single seedling in its hill. Brussels sprout and cucumber seeds never came up at all.  The tomato plants were keeling over by the time I got around to staking them.  I haven’t found time to thin the carrot row or separate the foot-long clump of lettuce seeds I planted. The only success so far has been the healthy looking row of onions. The garden is really too big for just me, so I left half of it unplanted, and as a result it has become a carpet of weeds. 

Hot weather has brought a thousand biting bugs, so weeding, which I usually find a restful job, is no fun at all.  And the ticks are equally bad.  This year’s ticks are microscopic. I’ve already had three, and finding them is a challenge when you live alone. 

I hope your June was not as exhausting as mine, but I can at least end on a cheerful note.  The 40 acres of hay fields that has hemmed me in all month, were finally cut, tedded, raked, baled and taken away last week.  My view of the valley is back and I intend to enjoy it from the front terrace for the last little bit of June.

Animal Tales



When Hank and I were first married we lived in a little cottage on his family’s farm in Fairfield. The woodland on the property was rich in wildflowers, and thanks to Hank’s mom,  I became a wildflower enthusiast and eventually gave garden club programs on the subject.  Since in those days no one disapproved of digging up wildflowers, and I had the perfect spot to put in a wild garden, I began to transplant many of these treasures.

Hank also enjoyed wildflowers, but after a few years he got a little fed up with being a beast of burden, lugging home clumps of columbine and hepaticas and sometimes even mossy logs or large rocks covered in lichen. On our third wedding anniversary he arrived home leading a burro, and announced that as we had one jackass in the family already, we might as well have two.

I naturally assumed he was referring to himself, only to discover he’d brought home a Jenny, a female burro, not a Jack.  Pippy, or Pipsissewa, as she was appropriately named, became a permanent member of the family and carried home wildflowers, ferns, rocks, and sometimes all three children. When she died, however, we had no luck finding a replacement until I wrote a column about the problem and promptly heard from a reader happy to sell me her burro.

I don’t need a new burro, but I’m hoping that this solution will prove to work for sheep. I’ve just had to put down two of my very elderly ewes, both too old and crippled and toothless to survive.  My two remaining old ladies just can’t keep up with Locust Hill’s large sheep pastures, which I can picture quickly going to brush.  With no desire to get a new ram or a young ewe and start raising lambs again, I’m hoping one of my readers knows of someone who’d like to board a sheep or two in my pastures for free, or sell me a nice old ewe for cheap.

Lambs are adorable, but rams are ornery.  Over the years we had a total of six.  Although their primary function was to make sure all their wives got pregnant, they were also expected to keep the grass on the pond’s dam trimmed, and all were referred to as the dam ram.  If you think lawn mowers are temperamental, you should try a dam ram.  Our first ram was loaned to us by a neighboring sheep farmer.  We named him Rammit, as he would charge anything that moved, from dogs and children to chickens and bumblebees.

It took Rammit only a few days to mow a section of the dam, but moving his stake to a new spot was a challenge.  Putting a bucket of grain at the outmost reach of both the old and new tether areas, I could, if I was quick,  pound his stake in its new spot before he finished his treat and knocked over his bucket and me!

After several years of coping with Rammit, we decided to buy our own ram,  and were delighted when we found a really docile one named Beaver.  We planned to change his moniker, but the first day this new dam ram fell into the pond and nearly drowned.  The kids spotted him floundering in the shallow water, his wet wool weighing him down, and when we pulled him out we all agreed to keep his original name.

Beaver was a well-endowed ram, so spectacularly equipped that if he wasn’t careful he’d step on his own equipment.  Consequently he stood around looking sheepish and never charged or butted anyone.  His progeny were a sickly lot, however.

That summer when the mother of a male lamb sired by Rammit the previous year up and died,  our eight-year-old, Bridget, volunteered to be the orphan’s mother.  She named him Zinnia, bottled and babied him and begged us to never turn him into lamb chops, so we only docked his tail, and let him replace Beaver when he was old enough. 

The only trouble was that Zinnia thought he was a people, not a sheep. Instead of charging lustily after his new wives when it came time for his marital duties to begin,  he stood at the pasture gate all day blatting for Bridget.

We never did spot any sexual activity, but unless you believe in Immaculate Conception, Zinnia must have done his job, as there was the proper complement of lambs each spring.  I have lots more sheep stories, but I think I’ll save them for another column.  In the meantime, hopefully I’ll hear from someone who’d take up my offer of free pasture. 

The Strawberry Patch



I like strawberry jam the way rabbits like lettuce, but I never thought of growing my own berries any more than a bunny contemplates putting in a vegetable garden.  For many years I got my strawberries from the local produce auction. Once the auctioneer had sold all the fat fancy berries with fat fancy prices and would get down to the ones he called “small and mean” I would start bidding.  To me they were “sweet and cheap” and made by far the best jam.

Garden books claim strawberry plants are short-lived, lasting only three or four years, and that the first year you should pick all the blossoms before they produce fruit, and cut off all the runners so that the second year there will be a good crop.  That sounds like a lot of work for very little return, doesn’t it?

The year of our oldest daughter’s garden wedding, however,  I decided to plant strawberries at the top of the retaining wall in the newly landscaped backyard as a decoration. They were in full bloom on the wedding day, and because I hadn’t picked off the blossoms a few weeks later I was rewarded with a nice crop of berries.

 I still believed all those tales about the difficulties of producing a good crop, but the job of cutting off runners was done by the lawnmower as most of them crept out to the grass just beyond the bed.  I also discovered that picking the ripe berries was a joy for someone with a bad back as the bed atop the retaining wall was just four feet high. 

That bed was still producing berries ten years later as I replaced tired plants with those produced by runners I steered into the bed.  Each fall I covered the bed with pine needles, a mulch that supposedly enhances the flavor of the berries. I always got enough to enhance my morning cereal, and 5 or 6 jars of jam, but  by then I had a flourishing raspberries bed which makes jam almost as good. 

But the real reason I gave up raising strawberries was that after a few years the chipmunks were enjoying more berries than I was. These adorable critters are not very cute when they take a large bite out of any berry that blushes.  I had such a chomping of chipmunks that almost every morning during the strawberry season my Hav-a-Heart trap held a chattering chipmunk.  I always released them up at the Norfolk cemetery, far from Locust Hill.  But eventually I lost heart and gave up the strawberry bed.

I was inspired to try again after I acquired Gottoo, a Basenji, very fleet of foot, who chases my cat at any opportunity. I thought she might keep the chipmunks at bay, but it didn’t work.  Eventually I put netting over the bed, a very tedious job and not pretty looking either.  This year I’m planning to let the chipmunks enjoy those blushing berries, and just make jam from raspberries and jelly from the elderberries blooming in the sheep pasture.

Don’t let this tale discourage you from trying to raise these delicious fruits. Despite all the warnings in the garden books, they are easy to grow, provided you don’t have a family of chipmunks in your back yard.

The Garden Merry-Go-Round



I’ve just spent another day on what I call the Garden Merry-Go-Round.  It happens every spring when there’s so much to get done that I find myself jumping from one horse to another, so to speak. I leave one project to fetch a trowel and get waylaid by another needier project. 

I started by tackling the perennial border which I’d been mulling over all winter,  having decided it was time to make this 100 foot long bed easier to take care of in my old age.  I have already discovered that I’ve made myself a ton of work to accomplish this plan.  Just getting rid of three quince bushes that not only required the prickly job of pruning twice a summer, but were constantly sending up new shoots, sometimes as far away from their mother as a couple of yards, turned into a major job.

The other part of the plan to ease my old age involved removing certain plants that continually self-seeds in the wrong places. Phlox, Lady’s Mantle and  sprawls of black-eyed Susans were all growing in undesirable places. I’d already placed a bucket of compost every ten feet or so, waiting to be turned into the soil as I removed these unwanted plants.

Making the bed less work had turned into a lot of hard work, but since I always enjoy killing two mosquitoes with one slap (much nicer than killing two birds with one stone) my garden cart was ready with a pile of empty pots which I plan to fill with  the plants I dig up to donate to the Douglas Library in Canaan for their  plant sale.  It’s this Saturday, the 19^th from 10 to 3, the reason this column is early.  Besides plants they will have books and baked goods for sale. 

I’d filled almost a dozen pots with my  plants when I realized I should get the camera and a much-needed pair of garden gloves.  Since it was on the way, I took a buckets of weeds with me to the compost pile and got waylaid by the sight of the rugs I’d spread last fall to smother a carpet of weeds.  It was time to find out if this idea worked, but before I rolled up the rugs I took some pictures. 

It really did work, didn’t it?  But all that clear space… I couldn’t think about how fast it would turn back into weeds, so I returned to my border job.

By the time I’d  filled a few more pots with the  plants I’d dug up,  my back told me I should quit, but then I remembered another job that would be relatively easy, cutting the dripping vines of ivy that cover the Abitta’ garden's  stone wall, a nice stand-up job.  It looks so much prettier when you can see the wall,  doesn’t it?

As I took a bucket of ivy cuttings to the compost bin, I saw another job that needed doing.  This is always what happens on the Merry-Go-Round. But taking photos of everything is making this an easy column. Have you noticed the incredible amount of fungi that has sprouted on all outdoor wooden surfaces? My fences are covered with little red-capped moss and other scaly fungi.  

After I took a photo of the gate, I got the paint scraper and tackled the fungi problem.  Boring.  I put the scraper away and suddenly realized I hadn’t even planted my peas, something I usually do in April.  Ah, that allowed me to kill two more mosquitoes. Where my pea vines climb the fence there were a dozen forget-me-nots that could go to the Douglas Library.

Once I’d filled more pots with the forget-me-nots, I planted the peas, raked half the vegetable garden and got out string and stakes so I could put in a row of carrots and one of onions and another of bush beans.  By then, thank heaven, it was lunch time.  A restful hour reading the Wall Street Journal while I ate.  

  

I’m afraid you haven’t learned a thing from me today other than how hard I’ve been working.  This happens often, and now I know why.  Today’s  WSJ had an article which claims that talking about yourself activates the same pleasure zone in the brain as eating good food and receiving money!  Living alone, I rarely get to talk to people, so obviously I am often tempted to talk about myself through my columns.

I hope you’ve been on your own Garden Merry-Go-Round and reveling in the end of Winter.  But do take time out to visit the Douglas Library’s sale.

Advice for a Beginner



I’ve never been very enthusiastic about “how to” books, preferring to blunder my own way through my projects, no matter how ignorant I am about the job I’m tackling.  The big hazard with this approach is the volume of mistakes I can make – slipcovers that don’t fit, jams that don’t jell and blossoms that don’t bloom.  Even so, I believe that famous proverb “Experience is the best teacher,” as well as my own saying “Mistakes are the glue that makes new facts stick in the brain.”

Last week I received a request from a “Blooming Gardener” for advice on how to start a flower bed, so I put the sensible sayings above aside and have been reading several of the garden books on my shelves to get some “how to” advice besides my own.  I’d probably have saved myself a lot of mistakes if I’d read some of them fifty years ago.

My first flower bed grew like “Topsy” with nothing but “hand-me-downs” from friends and neighbors.  At that point my garden knowledge was limited to vegetables. I didn’t even know how to plant the iris corms my friend Bunny gave me, or what color and when to plant the box of unknowns (they were feverfew) my neighbor Jeanette brought me one April, or how tall a clump of something called phlox would grow.  Instead of reading a good garden book, I just stuck all these “hand-me-down” gifts in front of the sheep fence.

Reading about plants is definitely helpful, but don’t depend on the descriptions in the garden catalogs.  They always exaggerate a plant’s good points and rarely tell you about its bad ones.  Get some books from your library with good colored photographs and hard facts. Ortho Books - All about Annuals, All about Perennials -  are good basic books. No book can substitute for the real thing, but you can get enough of an idea to make some choices.  Read about their height, color, lateral spread and the time and length of their flowering.

If you’re as much of a beginner as I was, you may think that the word “perennial” means “lives forever” or “blooms all summer” but neither is correct.  Some perennials are so fussy they may only live a year or two, or so invasive you wish they would, and as for blooms, most will have only a few weeks of flowering, so to maintain a garden of continuous bloom requires careful study.  Annuals, on the other hand, are comparatively inexpensive and bloom all summer.

When I went looking for a good photo for this column  all the handsome flower beds I found were overpowering,  what you might only find on a garden tour of fancy estates.  They were all full of perennials with a mere smattering of annuals.  Even so, I would reverse that order and use primarily annuals with a limited number of perennials to begin.

A few well-behaved perennials include hostas, astilbes, tree peonies, day lilies and Asian lilies.  Once you’re made your choices of plants, visit a local nursery to look at them in the flesh, and then draw up a plan. Try to be as artistic and natural as Mother Nature, breaking up your planting lines.

Obviously the bed should be designed so that no large-sized plant hides a smaller one, but don’t just make rows, short, medium and tall. If your bed is a border, it needs a background, be it a hedge, a house, a wall or shrubbery. Whatever its color, be careful about your colors.  Don’t plant a red beebalm against  a red background, or a white phlox in front of a white  white board fence.

The border’s width should be determined by the height of the tallest plants.  A wide border that contains only bedding plants is as dull as a chorus line of flat-chested go-go dancers; a narrow bed lined with only tall plants is as gawky as a row of plucked ostriches walking a tightrope.

As for color, a flower garden is a place where you can run riot with bright splashes of primary colors or experiment with limited color - pink and gray, blue and white. When you’re planting annuals, use at least three of one kind in a cluster as single specimens get lost.  If the bed is to be multi-colored, no one hue should dominate and the strongest colors should be separated by planting creams and whites in between.

Despite the fact that the “blooming gardener” addressed me as Hasty instead of Hatsy, (actually I get called Hasty a lot, probably because I am)  I’ve tried to give her the basics. I’m sure she hoped I’d give her specific flower recommendations, but that would deprive her of half the fun of making a garden. 

Good luck, Blooming Gardener, and don’t forget my little saying “Mistakes are the glue…”