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Planting around the frost
Everyone wants to know when it is safe to plant in the spring. When it warmed up in March, friends asked me if I was going to plant early. By “plant early,” they meant would I plant tomatoes, peppers and other frost-tender vegetables and annuals in March or April instead of mid-May. I told them I was absolutely waiting. Once frosted out makes a gardener twice wary in the spring.
As expected, we did have frost in April and some plants in my garden were knocked back a bit by it, including hydrangeas and hostas, as well as one ginkgo tree I planted three years ago. I’m confident they’ll all grow out of it and by July no one will even know those plants were frost damaged in April.
Out in the vegetable garden, I sowed seeds for cool season, frost-tolerant vegetables like peas, lettuce, and radishes on a warm Saturday in March. As expected, they took the frost in stride, and I’m now harvesting lettuce and radishes. But I have refrained from planting anything frost tender.
When will I plant the frost tender plants? If I could garden backwards, then I would know when the frost-free date is each spring and plant accordingly. I could confidently tell everyone when it will be safe to plant and not worry about scrambling to pull all the sheets off the beds to cover the garden on a frosty morning. But I garden in a forward direction like everyone else.
Our average frost-free date is around May 10, meaning it is usually safe to plant frost-tender plants after that date. I will admit, though, that after the warm weather we had in March and the frosts we had in April, I’m a little distrustful of the weather in general. Still, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that based on the 10-day forecast as of May 1, planting frost tender plants after May 10 looks to be pretty safe. But check the forecast yourself before you plant, because I’m not committing to my prediction until the end of the month. Then I’ll look back to see if I was right.
New AAA App Makes Auto Buying Easy
Buying a new car is certainly stressful, but being armed with AAA’s new Auto Buying Tools app can make the process a lot easier. Available on the Apple iPhone, AAA’s new Auto Buying Tools app gives consumers the ability to modify car details in real-time and refresh pricing data on the show room floor.
“This tool will give consumers the confidence and information they need to make an educated decision when buying a car,” said Marshall L. Doney, AAA National Vice President, Automotive, Financial Services and e-Business. “AAA wants to ensure its members are prepared and knowledgable about available member benefits when making such an important decision.”
With AAA’s Auto Buying Tools app, prospective buyers can build the car they want, including options and available incentives, while viewing market pricing, crash safety ratings, AAA reviews, images and much more.
Key features of the AAA Auto Buying Tools App:
• Search new cars by make/model, style and list price (MSRP)
• Build your ideal car, down to color and trim
• Features, specs, and crash safety ratings
• AAA vehicle reviews and car buying services*
• VIN number entry for quick, exact specifications
• Save searches and cars to favorites
• Share car details on Facebook, Twitter or email
• Compare two customized vehicles
• AAA Member Pricing and Reviews not available for some models or in certain areas.
• AAA’s Auto Buying Tools app is the fifth from AAA and is available for free from the iTunes App Store. Please visit AAA.com/mobile for further details.
The other AAA apps include:
• AAA Insurance app provides AAA’s recommended steps on what to do immediately after a traffic collision and helps you gather important information about the crash needed to submit an insurance claim.
• AAA TripTik Mobile is a GPS-based app with maps showing gas station locations and pricing along with points of interest, such as AAA-rated hotels, restaurants and attractions, near a user’s location or any user-specified location.
• AAA Discounts app, with more than a million downloads, also uses GPS technology to display nearby AAA Show Your Card & Save locations.
Devices such as smartphones with mobile applications are valuable tools before a vehicle is in motion; however, they greatly increase motorist distractions when used while driving. Distracted driving can have deadly consequences. AAA urges motorists to minimize distractions behind the wheel by not using wireless devices, such as cell phones with mobile applications, while driving.
* AAA Roadside enables AAA members who require emergency road service to send their vehicle description, location and breakdown details directly to AAA.
Finding undiscovered gardens
Have you ever gone on a trip and after you had checked into the hotel, the first thing you did was pull out the phone book and look under “gardens” to see if there were any gardens nearby that you should visit? You haven’t? Well, I’ve always done that, but today most hotels no longer have phone books. So instead of using a phone book, I rely on Internet searches, which may not find gardens to visit without just the right search terms.
But I don’t have to worry about missing any gardens anymore. Now there’s a new book that will help me find gardens in any city I visit: The Visitor’s Guide to American Gardens by Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp (2011, Cool Springs Press, $19.99). This recently published book includes information on more than 400 gardens in the United States and Canada, including public gardens, historic properties and more.
For Indiana, Sharp lists 18 different gardens. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve been to just six of them, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art, though I may have to move it to the “not seen” list because I haven’t visited the new 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park there. I’ve also visited Garfield Park Sunken Garden & Conservatory and the White River Gardens located by the Indianapolis Zoo. I’ve been to the Purdue University Horticulture Gardens, New Harmony State Historic Site, and the Minnetrista Center in Muncie and can recommend them as worthy of a drive to go and see. That leaves a dozen other gardens located around the state that I’ve never visited.
The Visitor’s Guide to American Gardens makes me want to pack my bags and venture out to see these gardens in Indiana and across the United States and Canada. It will be a great for armchair traveling this winter and for planning visits next summer to some gardens I definitely want to visit. I’ll be keeping this book close at hand so when I find myself in another city with time to see a garden or two and no phone book, I’ll know if there is a good one to visit.
Pansies rise in the fall
The end of summer, the beginning of fall
Sowing the seeds of broom corn
The strange looking corn in the corner of my vegetable garden, the tallest plant by several feet, is broom corn, which I’m growing for the first time. There is nothing edible about this particular corn, however, because it isn’t really corn. It is actually a type of sorghum. The seed heads are born on long seed branches, which is what brooms are made out of.
I first got the idea to grow broom corn when I saw it growing in a pioneer garden near the Smoky Mountains. I thought it was an impressive looking plant. Later, I found seeds for it and read that Benjamin Franklin is credited with bringing this crop to the United States. I do love a plant with history!
It was easy to grow. I sowed the seeds after all danger of frost, and then let the plants grow, and grow, and grow which they will do until they are eight to ten feet tall. I’ve found that broom corn needs no staking because it sends out side roots from the stalks, which seem to help anchor it in the ground. I’ve also discovered that the birds love the seeds and will spend quite a bit of time hanging precariously from the thin seed branches to get to the seeds, swaying in the wind the entire time. That is, they’ll do so until someone, like me, tries to sneak up on them to take a picture. Then the birds fly off and wait for me to leave so they can return and eat more of those seeds.
Friends have asked me what I’m going to do with the broom corn other than admire it. I’m going to make a broom, of course! In a few more days, the seed stalks will be ready to be cut and allowed to air dry. Then I’ll remove the remainder of the seeds, saving some of them to grow more broom corn next year and leaving the rest for the birds. I think I’ll have just enough seed stalks to make a small broom.
Next, I need to figure out how to make a broom. We never learned such a skill in school, but I’m sure I can find instructions online.
Garden failures grow wisdom for next season
I like to browse through and read old gardening books, the older the better. Sometimes author advice is quite outdated. For example, I might read recommendations about pesticides that have been off the market for decades, or plants with long-forgotten names are mentioned. So it takes a little detective work to figure out what names plants goes by today.
Sometimes authors provide gardening advice that is timeless. In The Flower Garden by Ida D. Bennett, published in 1910, Bennett, who lived and gardened in Coldwater, Michigan, included a very important section called “A Chapter of Don’ts”. Some of the “don’ts” still apply to gardeners today.
“Don’t try to follow all the advice that is offered you; make up your mind what you want to do and go steadily ahead. If you fail you will know how, and why, which is in itself a distinct gain… Don’t be too greatly cast down by failures; they have their uses. One failure, if it sets you to studying out the cause and remedy, is worth a dozen haphazard successes.”
Mid summer is the time when many gardeners look at their gardens and think about some of the early failures of the season. Why did a crop fail? How did the weeds get so tall? Why isn’t this plant flowering? Where are all the squash? Why did a plant die? On and on we go, seeing failures, asking questions about what went wrong.
In my own garden, my pea crop failed this spring. I am fairly certain it is because I sowed the seeds too late and then the hot days of early June came at just the wrong time for this cool season crop. I recognize this failure. It has happened before and I learned that the earlier I plant peas, the greater chance I have of actually having peas to pick.
As I pulled up dried vines and tossed them on the compost pile, I thought of Bennett’s timeless advice that failures in the garden have value, even if the failures teach us how to be successful next time. I made a mental a note that next spring, I’ll plant peas much earlier.
Don’t let your gardens get too thirsty
It’s too early to say for sure that this summer will be like last summer, when rain was plentiful all the way up to the beginning of July and then it turned hot and dry. It was a tough season for both gardeners and plants. Weeks passed with little hope of rain and finally, even the most frugal, water-conscious gardener eventually had to give in and do some watering, or risk losing some plants completely, especially any trees or shrubs planted that spring.
I remember at one point late last summer thinking that it was time to stop watering container plantings, which are usually dumped after the first frost anyway, and focus my water and watering efforts on trees and shrubs. It turned out to be a good move. I lost no plants due to the lack of rain, though my lawn looked pretty rough toward the end of the season because I am generally not the first one to set up lawn sprinklers when it gets “a little dry”. I expect my lawn to go dormant when it gets hot, and then start growing again as the weather cools down. But last year, my lawn went beyond dormant to drought-stressed.
This summer, as we face more hot, dry days, I’m starting to water sooner than last year, while keeping in mind the one tip that everyone should follow when watering. That tip is that it is better to water once a week deeply than to water shallowly every day. When we water just enough to wet the ground around a plant, the plant’s roots tend to stay near the surface of the soil, and thus are more susceptible to drying out. By watering deeply, we help ensure the roots grow deeper and then the plant is able to withstand some dry periods without a lot of extra watering.
Hopefully this summer won’t be exactly like last summer and we’ll get some rain well before fall. But if we don’t, remember to water deeply, and focus on newly planted trees and shrubs first. If it stays dry, don’t forget to water evergreens, perennial gardens, shrubs and trees, and not just the lawn. Doing so will help protect the investment you’ve made in your garden so you can enjoy those plants for many more years.
Think past the shovel for digging
When someone mentions that they plan to dig a hole to plant a tree or shrub, most people immediately assume they will use a spade or shovel. That’s a reasonable assumption, but sometimes a shovel is not the best tool for digging. Sometimes a digging fork is the best tool for the job.
For example, when you dig up potatoes or other root crops like carrots or parsnips, using a digging fork makes it less likely that you will slice the vegetables in half as you dig them. Plus, using a fork takes less effort than using a shovel because a forkful of dirt weighs less than a shovelful of dirt.
A digging fork often loosens hard-packed soil when compared to a shovel because the fork tines can often break through the crust of ground in situations where a shovel just bounces off hard-packed soil.
It can also be hard work to turn a compost pile with a shovel, which involves digging the plant debris out of one compost bin to put it into another bin. Turning helps mix the contents and hasten the composting process. This is much easier to do when you use a digging fork. I compare it to the difference between eating spaghetti with a fork and eating it with a spoon. The same is true if you have a big load of mulch in your driveway and you scoop it up to throw into a wheelbarrow. It is often easier to do this with a digging fork.
So why the comparison of shovels and digging forks? Gardening is no different from other hobbies or vocations. Many tools that can be used for a particular job, but some tools are just better for the job than others and can make the task easier. That’s definitely the case when it comes to digging. A shovel works well, but a digging fork is sometimes the better choice.
Halt those garden obsessions
Are you constantly checking to see which plants need more water, less water, more sun, less sun, more shade, less shade? Do you inspect your plants daily to figure out if they should be pruned, deadheaded, staked or shaped? Do you take a magnifying glass with you out into the garden so you can check deep into the crevices of the bark of the trees, looking for signs of disease or insect holes? Have you had your soil tested so often that they are giving you quantity discounts at the local soil testing lab?
If this constant hovering over the garden describes your method of gardening, then I have good news for you. The tower has cleared you and your gardening helicopter for landing. Yes, if you are constantly checking and inspecting your garden, hovering over it looking for signs of trouble, then land that helicopter, turn off the propellers and turn in your pilot’s license. It’s time to stop hovering! Stop worrying about your garden. Stop fussing over the plants. You are likely driving yourself and everyone around you nuts.
You need to learn that plants and gardens require far less attention than you are giving them. You need to step back, leave the garden alone for a bit and let it grow.
Of course, there are times when some extra attention in the garden is called for and can keep a disaster from occurring. Newly planted seedlings, trees, and shrubs should be checked occasionally to make sure they are getting enough water. Weeds should be pulled before they get too big. And it is a good idea to walk through your garden occasionally to look for signs of trouble like bad bugs, plant diseases and flopped over plants.
But by and large, now is the time to just let the garden grow and begin enjoying all the work you’ve put into it so far. You’ll be surprised how the plants will grow, flower, and set seed while your back is turned, how the garden will start to fill in and how the tomatoes and zucchini will suddenly be ripe enough to pick. All while you aren’t hovering over them.
“Tower, we’ve got another helicopter gardener ready to land.”