It is a flagrantly fragrant and flowery time. I am often asked my opinion concerning good choices for flowering trees for the garden. With pink flowering dogwood, 'Kwanzan' or weeping cherries, and flowering crabapples so common around the Island, I usually recommend a visit to the Polly Hill Arboretum to observe in person the diversity and variety there. But three smaller trees that I am very taken with seem to be chronically overlooked, which I would like to rectify. Possibly it is due to lack of dramatic autumn color. The three are Japanese styrax, Styrax japonica, covered in bloom now with overpoweringly fragrant, pendant bell-like flowers; also in vanilla-scented bloom now is the native fringe tree, Chionanthus virginicus; and Crataegus laevigata 'Crimson Cloud,' a wonderful, May-blooming English hawthorn adorned with glossy scarlet fruits in autumn.
Roses, including these classic Nymphenburgs, host sawfly larvae and clusters of aphids near or at the flower-bud tips. Look for telltale skeletonized leaves and minute, flattened green slugs. Squish them, along with the aphids. Control also by spraying with insecticidal soap on overcast days. Photo by Susan Safford
Insect pests are emerging: snails, slugs, mosquitoes and biting gnats. One remedy for snails and slugs is the trapping trick, where one puts downs boards or bricks and turns them over to find the slithery ones seeking shelter on the underside. Small containers of beer or near-beer work, sort of. The recent waves of wet weather, challenging for line-drying laundry purists, accurately demonstrate my wry axiom: if your peonies are loaded with bloom, it is going to rain. Wet weather also confirms the wisdom of staking.
One person's way to stake
There are many proprietary systems of powder-coated staking such as peony rings, etc. They often promise more than they deliver, they are tricky to use, and they are expensive. Bamboo stakes, jute twine, the clove hitch, plus practice, are the elements needed for a good staking job. Often the hardest thing about staking is the contortions required.
I use the clove hitch (as useful in a garden as on a boat) often since one goal of staking is, naturally, unobtrusiveness. A knotty bundle of twine attracts attention to itself; the clove hitch is slim. Practice by making two loops running the same way close together in a piece of twine; then bend back the right one over top of the left one and slip over the stake. Or check a knot book.
Place stakes of the proper size and thickness for the job around the plant to be staked. Usually three or four are sufficient, but a large clump of something needing support may use many stakes. Angle them in gently near the base, keeping in mind that some plants may have below-ground structures - tubers, fleshy or woody roots - that may be damaged by piercing. Position the stakes in line with the stems, not catawampus, to deceive the eye.
Eyeball a length of twine that will encircle the plant in question, and then some. Make a clove hitch and slip it over the first stake. Bring the end around back toward yourself, putting a half hitch around each stake you come to. Make a small "slippery" clove hitch where the ends meet, preferably around a stake.
Adjust the twine and plant so the plant is positioned naturally and does not look cinched in or lopsided. Pick out leaves to hang over the twine to obscure its horizontal line, again to deceive the eye. When satisfied with the job, tighten the knot and trim it neatly.
To keep plants at bed-front, like nepeta or alchemilla, clear of grass, slugs, or mowers, make little supporting fences with twine and bamboo. Take two small bamboo stakes and connect them, using the necessary length of twine, with a clove hitch at either end. Place beneath the mass of leaves or stems and gently lift it, inserting the stakes around either side. It is easy to half hitch another small stake with a twist-and-turn into the center, if the span is too long. Make sure the device does not show.
One way to avoid staking
There is another sensible solution if staking sounds like too much work. All the tall perennials of the great June parade - peonies, irises, poppies - come in shorter growing cultivars and varieties. Choose bearded iris plants from the Intermediate category over ones from the Tall category. Check heights of oriental poppy cultivars: most colors come in shorter as well as taller choices. Peonies come shorter or taller and are also identified as blooming early-, mid-, or late-season. The later-blooming peonies may avoid the rainy season of late May/early June. The single or anemone-flowered sorts, sometimes identified as Japanese peonies, are much less likely to lean when wet than ones with fully doubled, or bombe, flowers.
Siberian iris
They seem to have had an unusually good year and are doing well and blooming heavily, which means lifting and dividing soon. Apart from the unknown ruffled lavender turquoise Siberian in my own garden, favorites for me this year have been 'Silver Edge,' 'Strawberry Fair,' and 'White Swirl.' Siberians self-seed freely, with tenacious root systems: deadhead ASAP.
To do in the garden
Make applying Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) part of the weekly standard operating procedure. Spray it on broccoli, cole, and other crops that are eaten by lepidopteran caterpillars. Pinch out the axillary buds on cordoned tomatoes. Keep after weeds; different kinds germinate as soils warm up. Protect ripening fruit from birds and thin apples, peaches, and nectarines.
Have new crops coming along to plug into rows as they become open, when the previous crop is harvested. Make smaller sowings repeatedly, rather than larger amounts all at once. Gardeners do have different styles though: e.g., with Swiss chard and basil. Some harvest leaf-by-leaf, keeping the same plants as long as possible or for the entire season, others harvest the mature plant completely. When early potatoes flower, the plants may be ready to harvest.
Homegrown meets at 4 pm on Sunday, June 21, at Agricultural Hall.
