Geraniums dug for over wintering

Fall, 2011

Today, before the Seattle area has a frost, I pulled out all of my geraniums and packed them away for the winter.  It’s easy.  I use a weeding tool with prongs to pull each plant out of the ground, keeping the root systems as intact as possible.  I shake off as much soil as possible.

Then I put 2 to 3 plants, or as many as will fit, roots first into a paper grocery bag.  The tops will be sticking out of the sack.  I label the bags with blossom and leaf color because, in the spring, I may not be able to tell which is which.  The bags are stored in a cool, dry, dark place, which happens to be our basement.

Geraniums bagged and labeled

Here is the critical part.  Each month, all winter, I take the plants out of their bags, one group at a time, and soak the roots in a bucket of water for about 5 minutes, then stuff them back into their bags.  In early April, I cut the tops back to about 4″ tall, clean them up and plant them into 1-gallon containers, using store bought potting soil.  I set them near a window that gets afternoon sun and water as I would a house plant.  By the time I’m ready to plant them outdoors in May or early June, they are all leafed out and close to blooming.  (They probably could be planted outside here in Seattle in early April, but I have pansies in full bloom where the geraniums will go.)  I have been using the same 20 geraniums for 4 years, and feel pretty smug about the dollars I’ve saved not having to buy new plants every year.  I do have to put a sticky note reminder on my calendar to soak the roots monthly, or it just wouldn’t happen.

Pruned Japanese laceleaf maple

We have two Japanese laceleaf maples that were planted by a previous owner. One is about 4 1/2′ tall and has become a lovely, large specimen at the entrance to our driveway, at least it would be if we prune it  soon.  The other is about 2 1/2′ high and, much to my consternation, is trying to become a groundcover.  Last spring I worked on the smaller one, removing branches that were starting to crawl along the ground and opening up the branching pattern.  I left the small branches that were pointing skyward, in hopes that they would eventually become the next tier of foliage.

Unfortunately, I never got around to pruning the larger laceleaf last spring, so now I’m faced with a twiggy mass that will take some patience to sort out.  Where to start?  I always start by removing any twigs that died over the winter.  They are light grey in color and usually snap off at the base.  It’s not unusual to have whole branches of a laceleaf maple die back, and those should also be pruned off where they meet live wood.  I take off the twigs that have grown on the existing branching pattern I’ve developed over previous years.

Japanese laceleaf maple before pruning

Then comes the fun, artistic part.  I like to see a curving pattern that moves upward and outward, avoiding having branches cross or grow back towards the center.  I am very tentative at first, taking off small branches to see if I like the effect, then getting bolder with my pruners and standing back frequently to see the overall effect.  I’ve heard of people lying down under their laceleafs and looking up through the branches to make decisions, but that would not be me.  I always cut the branch off back to a joint where it meets another branch.  It seems brutal, but otherwise you end up with these odd stubs that will host multiple twigs.  I don’t like the look of a “haircut” around the bottom of a laceleaf.  It reminds me of when our children were small, we were poor, and I gave my husband and kids their haircuts.  My mother always said they looked like I used the same bowl on all of them.  She wasn’t far off.

The sun is shining.  The birds are singing.  It’s a perfect day to go out and commune with my Japanese laceleaf maple.

Jan Rodda

February 13, 2011

By Jan Rodda

I call them my Van Gogh bouquets.  Brown clay pots, one an antique salt jar, the other an old baked bean pot, are filled with sunflowers, orange dahlias, multi-colored zinnias, and purple asters, with the bright yellow blossoms of Rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’ dancing above.   I’m in heaven in August when the sunflowers and orange dahlias are in their full glory.  I even painted our kitchen/family room a soft yellow to compliment these arrangements.  I love large bouquets of fresh flowers on our dining room table and the corner of our kitchen island.  Consequently, the landscaped beds around our house and our large vegetable garden are filled with my favorite fall blooming perennials and annuals.

I have carried Rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’ through three house moves.  In 1973, a small clump was shared by an elderly neighbor who could tell that I loved flowers.  She didn’t know what it was, just that it was “very special.”  I didn’t know what it was either, but it grew 6 feet tall and needed to be tied up.  As the clumps have grown and been divided, Rudbeckia ’Herbstonne’ has provided a cloud of cheery yellow on grey days throughout the fall in each house we’ve lived in.  It’s the perfect cut flower, long-lasting in a vase as filler between larger, showier blossoms, or as a light, airy bouquet on its own.  And the birds, especially the chickadees, love the seed heads.

Clumps of purple and blue Michaelmas daisies, Aster novi-belgii, have also moved with us from house to house.  They provide a foil in our autumn landscape for the reds and oranges of our Japanese maples and dogwood.  Their small, upturned flowers attract butterflies, and finches enjoy these seed heads.  Their deep purple color provides a strong, contrasting filler in my flower arrangements.

And then there are the dahlias!  We inherited large orange dahlias from the previous owner 10 years ago when we moved to our present house.  And I was not particularly fond of orange.  But they’ve stolen my heart.  The most wonderful ones have masses of very contorted petals, twisting every which way. How very Van Gogh!  And they look great with sunflowers.

Multi-colored sunflowers and zinnias are planted from seed every year in our vegetable garden, purely for cutting.  I think zinnias are a most satisfactory flower both for the garden and the house.  The blossoms on stiff, upright stems last forever in a vase and in the garden.  And the bright pinks, reds, and yellows remind me of the vibrancy of Mexican color combinations and saris in India.  Sunflowers in every hue, from light yellow through the golds to deep burnt orange provide the foundation for my fall arrangements and make for happy chickadees hanging upside down from drying seed heads.

Our crew recently replaced an old, narrow, cracked concrete front entrance walk, probably poured in the 1950’s.   The homeowner loved the lushness and shape of a mountain hemlock growing over the sidewalk, forcing guests to walk single file to the front door.  We poured the new sidewalk wider and in a much larger arc to give the mountain hemlock room to spread.  We added brick expansion joints to dress up the appearance.  Two days is all it took.  “Why did we wait so long?”

In June we had a customer,  a single woman, who wasn’t sure she was going to stay in her house, so didn’t want to spend a lot of money.  Her back yard, in an earlier life, had been a collector’s garden with lots of small sitting areas, meandering paths of many different materials, a waterfall and pond, irregular lawn areas, and lots of specimen plants. When our customer purchased the house, the small back yard was a jungle, completely hiding the house from the neighbors.  She had had a friend do some of the major pruning and clean-up.  But she wanted to simplify it visually and have larger, more useful spaces that were easier to maintain.  We gathered all the pavers from the small patios and paths to nowhere to create a patio that would accommodate furniture and 6-8 people.  We took out the defunct water feature and redid the lawn in a large, curvilinear shape.  We transplanted some of her specimen plants into the newly shaped beds and mulched the beds with groco to give the whole landscape a finished look.  Four days and voila, a lovely back yard.

In May we were approached by a family whose garden designer suggested raised vegetable beds in place of a lawn area where their young son loved to play.  They had actually tried to grow a few tomatoes against the garage foundation at the top of an ugly rockery.  Could we make that west-facing area into a terraced vegetable garden and keep the lawn at the bottom?  The basalt rocks were huge, but we repositioned them with our Kubota backhoe to create two 3’ high x 25’ long terraces and filled them with garden topsoil.  On the top terrace, we added an 18” high x 2’ wide raised bed against the unsightly foundation.  We built the wall using flat-faced Cottagestone blocks with a cap on top.  The last time I saw it, there were tomatoes and peppers planted in the raised bed, and zucchini, carrots, onions, bush beans, beets, and basil planted on the terraces.  I suggested planting strawberries in the pockets between the large rocks.  Next year.

Bird highway along the fence line

Over the ten years that we’ve lived here, we’ve gradually developed a “bird highway” the length of our narrow garden west of our house.  To preserve our view of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, we keep the foliage height at a maximum of 15 feet.

So what’s a “bird highway?”  It’s a foliage thoroughfare that allows birds to travel from one place to another under the protection of overhanging branches, with rest stops for food and water.  Ours is a combination of small deciduous trees, some Japanese and vine maples, a golden rain tree, and a pink dogwood; and a few small-growing evergreens, a mountain hemlock, a blue foliaged cypress, and a bay laurel.  We’ve added perennials and woody shrubs between and below the trees to create feeding and resting spots.  A clump of six-foot tall yellow Rudbeckia ‘Herbstone” towers over blue and white hydrangeas, pink roses, and white garden phlox.  We’ve tucked shade perennials, hardy geraniums, hostas, bronze heucheras, hellebores, astilbes, and dwarf hardy fuchsias beneath.  A shallow, blue birdbath sits, almost hidden, next to a blue hydrangea.  And our granite Japanese water feature trickling water from a bamboo spout into its basin is the final rest stop at the north end of the highway.  Small birds love to travel from limb to limb and hiding place to hiding place, along this highway that connects the greenbelt below us to our neighbor’s giant maple and birdfeeders across the street.

Our daily visitors include chickadees, towhees, rosy and yellow finches, bushtits, wrens, sparrows, flickers, robins, and hummingbirds.  This summer, because I thought visiting grandchildren would enjoy watching the birds, I hung a feeder with black sunflower seeds in a Japanese maple.  Guess who loves to sit and watch the most.

New Front Walk/Ramp

According to the Seattle Times, the average age of homeowners selling their homes and moving into a senior living situation is eighty five years old. Wow! We certainly hope to stay in the home we love as long as possible. So it makes sense to start planning how to make it physically possible as our knees and hips start complaining when they encounter stairs.

Our Rodda and Sons Landscapes crew has just completed the landscape renovation of an aging, overgrown garden. The concrete in the front walk and steps was cracked and heaving. The concrete landing at the front door was tipping and pulling away from the house. Both were hazardous and needed to be replaced. The landscaping was not the only thing that was aging. The owners, who want to remain in their home several more years, realized that steps were becoming painful to climb, and they were starting to have trouble with balance. So they opted to eliminate the three steps along the sidewalk and three steps at the front porch in favor of a poured concrete ramp up to a new concrete front porch. We poured a longer concrete front walk to accommodate the gradual rise from the driveway to the front door, and added concrete steps next to the house for a shortcut. Now they have an easy walk, and in the event that they need a walker or wheelchair an easy glide, from the car to the front door and on into the living room.

Jan Rodda, Rodda and Sons Landscapes, Inc.

My own garden journal says that last year we planted early vegetable seeds on March 9th. Indoors!!! I call it “kitchen sink gardening.” We start many of our vegetable seeds inside, because we’ve had poor luck planting seeds directly into the ground and having all of them germinate. If it’s too cold and wet, I think the seeds just sit there and rot, but the biggest culprit may be the crows who hop down the rows searching for tasty tidbits. In any case, we put 2 to 2 1/2 inches of potting soil (garden soil is too heavy) in clear plastic containers and work at our kitchen counter spreading seed and covering it with a light dusting of potting soil. I like to use clear plastic cookie containers from the bakery. The snap-on lids create mini greenhouses. We label the containers with the vegetable variety and the planting date. Then we water to dampen all the soil, snap on the lids, and set the containers on a card table next to a west facing window. We check every few days to make sure the soil stays damp. As the tiny plants germinate and begin to grow, we remove the lids and check daily on the watering.

Starting vegetable seed indoors is, admittedly, more work than sowing seed directly into the ground. But we get much better germination. And when we plant the seedlings outdoors in April or May, they are way ahead of planting seed in the ground. It also saves money…I feel rather smug watching people at garden centers buying paks of 6 lettuce plants for $1.49, when a pinch of lettuce seed has given me a whole row. And lettuce seed keeps at least a couple of years.

So, what will I plant in my cookie containers? Seeds of vegetables that are normally planted early in the spring, lettuce and spinach, sugar snap peas and sweet peas (the flowering kind for picking), cauliflower and broccoli, parsley and Walla Walla sweet onions. I’ll also start tomato seeds that will need to be transplanted into individual containers (yogurt cups with holes punched in the bottoms) to get some growth on them before they are planted in the garden in May. Last year we planted way too much lettuce seed. How many bunches of lettuce do you buy in 2 or 3 months? Lettuce is a great plant for succession planting throughout the summer, so this year we’ll start some seed now, and plant again in mid summer. We’ll plant root crops, carrots, radishes and green onions, beets, and potatoes, directly into the ground beginning now, and into May. Carrots are sweeter if grown in cool weather. We also plant old potatoes, that didn’t get eaten and are wrinkled and sprouting, into the garden. Last year we had fun with very contorted fingerling potatoes in stews and soups. I’ll wait to start corn, beans, most flower seeds, and especially basil until later in the spring.

Barry and I have been vegetable gardening most of our married life. It feels like a healthy hobby that we enjoy together. It’s a great form of exercise, but it’s also a lot of work. Our friends in the retail nursery industry say that, with the price of fresh produce and our sagging economy, vegetable seeds and gardening tools are flying off the racks. If you are vegetable gardening for the first time, I’d suggest starting small. Find the sunniest spot in your yard that has access to a hose for water and clear a small spot. Improve the soil by digging in 2-3″ of compost or steer or chicken manure. Vegetables like rich soil, water in our dry summers, and lots of sun. Building a raised vegetable bed and filling it with garden topsoil makes gardening easier.

Well, I’ve checked through my stash of last year’s seeds and made my list of “must buy” seeds. I’ll see what else looks interesting at my garden center. On this cold, rainy Saturday morning it’s time to do a little “kitchen sink gardening.” Gotta go.

Jan Rodda, Rodda and Sons Landscapes, Inc.

It’s time to begin work in the garden, work that is easier to do now, before new shoots of perennials and ferns begin poking out of the ground and before shrubs and trees start to leaf out. This is the best time to clean up dead foliage from last year’s perennials, ferns, and grasses, to prune overgrown trees, shrubs, and roses, and to transplant shrubs and small trees that would be much happier in a different location with new companions. Early spring is also a good time to get a jump on those landscape construction projects you’ve been thinking about, but didn’t get going on last year. Our landscape company, Rodda and Sons Landscapes, works all winter long building retaining walls, sidewalks, patios, decks and fences, and preparing planting beds. I just talked to a client who said, “I wish we had done this years ago.” What are you waiting for?

Early Blooming Hellebores

Pruning trees and shrubs is traditionally winter and early spring work. The old adage to prune your roses on George Washington’s Birthday holds true in the Puget Sound area. I like to prune our deciduous trees and shrubs before they leaf out so I can see the branching patterns and determine more easily which branches should be removed. There’s a kind of zen to spending time with your Japanese laceleaf maple, deciding on the shape you want it to develop and how to achieve that gnarled-branch, ageless look. I don’t particularly like shearing shrubs, so tend in my own garden to cut one branch at a time. However, my husband got an electric hedge trimmer and loves trimming our Ilex hedge in a rope shape. He gets lots of compliments on it.

Transplanting small trees and shrubs is also best done in the winter and early spring, when their root systems are still dormant and they suffer less transplant shock. Rhododendrons, Pieris japonicas, and camellias are just a few of the shrubs that transplant easily this time of year. Rodda and Sons Landscapes has successfully transplanted several large Japanese laceleaf maples before they have leafed out. In my own garden, I just moved a tree peony to give it space to become a large shrub. Into its old spot, I will move a small shrub hypericum. The hypericum’s roots are full of invasive grasses, so I will bareroot it to remove all of the grass roots. After I have lifted the hypericum out of the ground, I’ll wash off all of the soil with a hose and tear out the grass roots, then replant the shrub in it’s new location. I have been successful treating treasured perennials that have been invaded by grasses in this same way, saving and replanting small clumps.

It’s not too early here in the Puget Sound area to gather up your pruners and shovel, slide into your boots and work jacket, pull on your garden gloves, and enjoy that first breath of spring.

Jan Rodda, Rodda and Sons Landscapes, Inc.

If you’ve been considering upgrading or adding to your landscaping, winter is a good time to the have work done. Most hardscaping (paving, retaining walls, decks, sprinkler systems, and drainage) can be installed, unless it is pouring rain. Actually with drainage work, the extra water makes it more obvious where there are problems. The root systems on plants are dormant, so trees and shrubs can be planted or moved with less transplant shock. We’ve had great luck moving large Japanese laceleaf maples this time of year before they start to leaf out.

Did this winter’s ice and snow smash your New Zealand flax and your ornamental grasses? If you haven’t already cut back the dead foliage on your grasses, flaxes, and perennials, bundle up on one of these sunny afternoons and go at it. Cut most everything back to the crown of the plant. Cutting off the old fronds of your sword ferns and last year’s Hellebore foliage will give you lush, gorgeous ferns and Hellebors in a few weeks. Winter is also pruning time for fruit trees and ornamental trees in your garden. We recommend waiting to prune roses and hydrangeas until late February, when we’re less likely to get hard freezes.