Garden Notes: Showing up

Vitex, the delicious lavender-blue summer lilac, and trumpet vine, in shades of yellow to fiery, say August is right around the corner. They decorate shrubberies, walls, and fences. and are classic feasts for hummingbirds. 

The recent rains gave slowed-down plants and gardens the boost needed to refresh and surge into new growth. There is nothing like rain for gardens! Hoses and irrigation are lifesavers, but for plants they are but a substitute for the real thing. 

The Ag Fair and Island life

Plan a fair entry, volunteer, show up. The M.V. Agricultural Society’s 164th annual fair, an integral part of Island summers, takes place early this year, August 13 through 16. Planning entries starts way before actual fair days. 

Linking the Ag Fair to Island identity and Island life requires participation, whether it is a fair entry, or showing up at M.V. Commission hearings. 

Support the M.V. Commission. It exists to protect the Island’s identity. We are a real place with real, gritty people, real, gritty lives, and real, gritty values, not some disembodied chunk of overperfected suburbia seven miles out at sea. 

Curating the garden

Many gardens suffer from hodgepodge plantings: everything we ever desired, all in one garden. Visiting other gardens is usually productive. Harder to achieve, discipline and simplicity are effective. 

Who has not bought a plant or plants on impulse? Sometimes these are inspired acquisitions, sometimes they fail to live up to the original expectation. As the garden takes shape over time and seasons, some will be shown the door. (Dig, pot, and share it with someone who will appreciate it.) Others will be so successful that “more, more, more” is wanted! This is where propagating is fun — your secret power. 

I planted four dwarf hydrangeas in a bed, and then became bothered by the unbalanced look: Really, five was the ideal number. I pinned down a longer cane of one of the four until it rooted. Now, No. 5 is transplanted and growing where it should have been to start with. 

Lifting and dividing is one way to make more plants. The digging can be laborious, and is another reason to work to improve garden soil. Good soil is easy to dig, and helps divisions to overcome transplant shock and to settle in well. 

Observing and recognizing seedlings is another way to improve your garden. The cryptomeria seedling pictured has been transplanted. The wineberry seedling has been weeded.  

Taking softwood and semiripe cuttings is slightly more involved, but not all that complicated. These links are to RHS information pages: bit.ly/RHS_SoftwoodCuttings are taken in spring; bit.ly/RHS_SemiripeCuttings are done in late summer to early fall.

Learning the characteristics of the plants you choose helps to multiply them, or, alternatively, to keep them under control. Deciding what you want, and sometimes being able to produce it, is one of the creative “eureka!” aspects of gardens that captivate us. Everyone who tends a garden has these moments. 

Wineberries

Wineberry season is here. Although wineberries, also known as thimbleberry, are juicy, superficially resembling raspberries, they somehow lack the more intense, distinctive flavor. Thickets of wineberry quickly form, and are loved by children and birds. But they then become home to rabbits and other wildlife, and crowd out native vegetation. 

Wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) was introduced originally as an ornamental, and as gene stock for raspberry breeding. It grows fast and has spread, and is considered a noxious weed in many areas: It is on the Massachusetts Invasive Species list. 

The seedlings are in gardens everywhere, evidence of how birds love them. While these are small, they are easy to pull: The juvenile thorns are soft. Look for them now, before roots become entrenched.

Lavender

Lavender is among the very favorite plants of gardeners. Sunny gardens, dry gardens, deer- and rabbit-pressured gardens, in flower, and as a foliage plant: Lavender is attractive and wonderful. Top lavender choices are ‘Hidcote’ and Munstead strain.

I grew a plug crop of the recently introduced Lavandula x. intermedia ‘Phenomenal,’ and am impressed with this one as well. It is a hybrid plant that grows strongly, and whose wandlike flowering stems are intensely fragrant. In my own garden, it lines a sunny walkway. In heat and sunshine, its scent is intense and powerful, and plants are alive with insect life. 

These and all lavenders benefit from being trimmed after the flush of flowers is over. In early August, trim away the flower stems and reduce the plants (shrubs, really) by six to eight inches. The aim is to renew them. Avoid overly old, woody growth on plants, which is weak and splits easily. Doing this in early August, there is still time for hardening off before cold weather.

In the garden

Expect sulphur polypores and other interesting fungi in the wake of recent rains. Lilac borer activity is past, so lilacs may be safely pruned. Stake tall Oriental bulb lilies, and remember that their pollen makes stubborn stains. Tidy daylilies by dead-leafing. 

Sparse populations of Oriental and Asiatic beetles are appearing. Along with Japanese beetles, confusingly named, all three are adult forms of white grubs disliked in garden and lawn soil. During midday heat, the small beetles are active, but morning and evening they are easy to knock into containers of soapy water.

Likewise, cabbage white butterflies are flying. They seek out members of the Brassica family as caterpillar larval food. These and all lepidopteran caterpillars, such as tomato hornworms, may be controlled with regular spraying with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). 

Also, check out neem oil as a plant protector and insect control. Mix up one to two tablespoons of neem oil with a small amount of mild liquid soap and one gallon of water. Spray early or late, but avoid spraying in strong sunlight and the heat of the day.

Side-dress tomato, eggplant, and pepper plants with low-number organic fertilizer. 

Tick check, frequently!