Garden Mavens' Blogs

Mon, 22 Jun 2009

Summer deadheading and pruning
Now that it's getting hot in austin and most of the perennials are finishing their first spring bloom, it's time to cut them back! I love the summer pruning time. When you cut back perennials at this time you are taking off dead blooms and encouraging the plants to grow more busy. Try removing the top 1/3 of your mexican bush sage, salvia gaurantica 'black and blue', salvia gaurantica 'majestic', copper canyon daisy, indigo spires salvia, turk's cap, and anything else that blooms in the spring and fall that gets about 2 feet or taller. If you do this summer pruning you'll notice that the plants stay shorter and bushier which will keep them from falling over or splitting open in the fall. They will also have more vigo and will look more robust in the late summer. If it's too hot outside for you then don't bother. In July, it's a good idea to trim your skullcap, oregano and salvia gregii.

posted at: 15:58 | path: /colleen2009 | link for this entry

Fri, 19 Jun 2009

Summer Vacation!
Today I am returning to Austin after a trip to the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park and Las Vegas. Look for articles about the national parks later. Las Vegas landscaping/plants were not so great except the Bellagio, where it's clear the landscape designers went to great lengths to create an authentic looking Italian landscape complete with Italian stone pines and painstakingly pruned square hedges everywhere. It was impressive and the stone pines offered some much needed shade on the strip. I had planned on a visit to spring preserve, a nature center/botanical garden 3 mi west of downtown Vegas, but I decided to spend more time with my good friends who met me in Vegas instead. Maybe next time. I did not win anything gambling. It was downright depressing. But every American should see Vegas once, it's a bizzare, impressive and exciting place. I walked almost everywhere, and I am pooped.

posted at: 10:57 | path: /colleen2009 | link for this entry

Wed, 27 May 2009

Tree surgery
Yestuday I preformed surgery on a small lemon tree with my friend Rebekah who is also a pro gardener. She works with me every week for one of my customers who has a large yard. This customer of mine has many citrus trees, including one Meyer Lemon that has been dropping some leaves lately. we realized that the trunk of the tree was being choked by one of its own roots. the root and the trunk grew really fast in the last couple months, and before we knew it the root was bigger than the trunk and was encircling the trunk and strangling it. this is common with trees grown in containers, especially fruit trees that are grafted like meyer lemons. Basically we carefully chipped away at the root until we cleared it away from the trunk. We used pruners, lopers and a pruning saw to very carefully gouge out parts of the root. we took extra care to not hit the trunk with any tools to avoid injuring the trunk. We could tell the trunk had been squeezed- a problem that experts call 'girdleing'. In the process we had to trim off a few other large roots, and we were sqeemish about injuring the tree too much. but we figured the tree would certainly die if we didn't do anything. We shall see how the tree comes out of it. I think it will be ok.

posted at: 10:28 | path: /colleen2009 | link for this entry

Sun, 22 Mar 2009

Owl Action
So a couple weeks ago I was getting ready to leave my house for work in the late morning. I was in my truck and I needed to put my bag in the backseat, so I got out of the truck and opened the back door. Then I saw something fly down from accross the street and landed under the truck. I stooped down and I was stunned to see that it was a tiny screech owl. It walked towards me and my first instinct was to pick it up, which makes no sense whatsoever, so I did not give in to my first instinct. Eric was sitting in the passenger seat and I told him there was an owl under the truck. He opened his door and the owl flew away. It was exhilirating for me because I am a big owl fan. I have alot of owl jewlery and decor in my house, and many friends have given me owl-oriented gifts because I give out alot of good advice/wisdom about all kinds of things. I was worried about the owl, I thought it must have been scared out of it's nest since it was out during daylight and seemed startled, but I thought it would be ok because it had no trouble flying. Then, the other day I was watering my garden and noticed something underneath one of my small Lady Banksia roses near the lettuce seeds I had planted a week earlier. It was a tiny screech owl- dead. I was really shaken up by this, and I suspect it is the same owl that landed under the truck a couple weeks ago. Eric helped me put it in a paper bag and we called 311 to see if anyone at the city wanted to preform a necropsy on a dead owl. Sometimes they want mammals to make sure they didn't die of rabies, but there isn't much interest in owls. No one wanted the dead owl so we buried it in my back garden which is lying fallow this spring. I felt really sad about the owl, and I did a little online browsing and found out that screech owls have tons of natural predators and get infected with parasites and stuff like that, so maybe that is what happened to it. I think I might put in a call to a raptor expert whose phone number I found online.

posted at: 13:48 | path: /colleen2009 | link for this entry

Mon, 26 Jan 2009

Lantana
Lantana is a lovely perennial that is a staple of Central Texas gardens. It comes in many shapes, including trailing and shrubby. It also comes in many colors, from white to purple to red and yellow. Make sure you are familiar with the shape and size of your Lantana variety before you prune it. I recommend wearing long sleeves when you prune shrubby Lantana because the stems and leaves can be thorny and scratchy and some people get rashes from this scratchiness. Care of Lantana is fairly simple depending on weather. In November through March you can cut the plant's woody stems back to 3" from the ground when the plant first shows signs of cold damage. Most trailing Lantanas' leaves will turn purple when they go through a light frost, and you can prune them anytime after that. The larger shrubby types will typically loose their leaves after a hard freeze and they can be pruned back anytime after that. The motivation for winter pruning is to remove the ugly bare stems and dead leaves. Winter pruning is also good for reducing the plant's size if I is getting too large for the space it's in. No matter what variety, Lantanas are notorious climbers and can surprisingly climb up through the center of the plants near them, so winter pruning can solve problems like that. Often the bottom branches of Lantana plants will get shaded out and die off, and winter time is a good time to remove those dead branches. Sometimes branches will die during very very cold weather, especially on the white and purple trailing types and the dead branches need to be removed in the winter. New growth will begin growing back soon after pruning from the ground and from the short stems left after pruning. Fertilize your Lantanas with an organic slow release fertilizer with a higher nitrogen number in March. Many gardeners opt to leave their Lantanas untouched in he winter, and this has some advantages. The leaves will grow back sooner and the plant will bloom earlier than ones that were pruned back in winter. The plant will also grow much larger in size if you are interested in having a larger plant. However, it is still important in March or April to remove any dead branches from the plant when it starts to grow back leaves. This can be kind of tricky and time consuming, but sometimes works out great. You should also try to rake out any leaves that fell on the ground over the winter after you finish pruning out the dead branches to prevent diseases from festering in those leaves. If you have a Lantana plant that is too lanky, leggy or otherwise unruly, you can trim it at any time to shape it. If the plant is particularly bad, I recommend trimming it back by 1/2 after its first bloom of the year in May or June to really keep the plant bushy, robust and under control. This pruning isn't necessary if your Lantanas have a nice shape and aren't getting too big. Feed it with a basic organic fertilize after you prune it in the summer. On relatively rare occasions, these plants can be susceptible to powdery mildew disease, especially if they were planted too low in the ground of have mulch, soil or other debris piled up around their base. If you have a plant that has mildew, you should cut it back to the ground, remove all leaves, mulch and debris that are touching the stems, and give the plant a dose of soil activator and a slow release granular fertilizer. You should treat the new growth with potassium bicarbonate or a sulfur fungicide. They sometimes also get insect problems, especially scale in June through September. This typically happens when the plants are growing very close together and have pop-up irrigation spraying directly on the leaves. Scale love growing in high humidity situations with low air flow. It's a good idea to keep a little bit of space between the plants if scale insects become a problem for you. Cut the plants back by 1/2 and transplant them to other places in your garden where they can have more space. Use horticultural, neem or another organic insecticidal oil early in the morning or late in the evening to kill the scale. Neem will also kill fungal diseases like powdery mildew.

posted at: 14:26 | path: /colleen2009 | link for this entry

Sun, 18 Jan 2009

Beach Vitex
Some of my customers have bach vitex, an unusual small shrub with round, gray leaves and blueish purple flowers and gray berries, in their yards, and it took me awhile to figure out what to do with it. The answer: do nothing with it. This plant loses its leaves in the winter and it is tempting to cut it back to the ground, but you shouldn't. It is a rambling plant that sprawls all over close to the ground, kind of like some other shrubs often grown in Texas like coralberry. I only prune bach vitex in the late spring if it has dead branches or if it grows into a walkway or onto another plant. When pruning out of a walkway you should prune the bottom branches of the plant off completely first, allowing the top branches to fall down into the bottom branches' places. This should keep the plant in a natural shape and prevent it from looking like it was just chopped off. You can prune to shape it anytime. Beach vitex need nothing except hot sun and protection from crushing, so don't plant it near a driveway where it might get run over. I recommend compost and a light mulch once each year, no fertilizer is needed, but it responds well to a soil activator and compost tea treatments. As with most woody plants it is crucial to avoid piling up leaves, debris, compost and mulch around the stems of this plant or else it will rot. It tolerates underwatering and overwatering!

posted at: 21:20 | path: /colleen2009 | link for this entry