Tulips-The Straight Dope

For the last 30 years I have tried to answer questions about tulips, particularly about why you have beautiful tulips the first spring after you plant them, then the next year they don't look too great.  I have experienced this frustration myself when I planted 200 tulips on either side of my front sidewalk.  They were fabulous that first spring, and then the second year about 100 of them bloomed.  I was so mad because it was  a lot of work planting 200 tulips!!  The third or fourth year I attempted to dig them all up.  Now I have a dozen or so sporadic red tulips that still pop up in the spring.  Grrrrr.
So, today, I ran across the most concise explanation of why the tulip thing just doesn't work out too well.  This explains why the big landscapers plant hundreds of tulips in the fall and then they dig them all back up after they are through blooming in the spring and they plant annuals in their places.  They throw away the tulip bulbs!!!  You just have to look at this whole thing like you look at planting annuals in the spring.  You get to do the work and spend the money in the fall and enjoy the fruits of your labors in the spring.  Then you have some more work in the spring, replacing the bulbs with annuals.
Why don't tulips come back?
The tulip bulbs that you buy have been raised in sandy Dutch soil and fertilized to perfection.
When they bloomed in the spring, the flowers were cut off as soon as they opened so they didn't steal much energy from the bulb.
The leaves were allowed to grow for six weeks in the cool Dutch weather.
After the bulbs went dormant in early summer, they were dug and stored in a climate controlled warehouse that mimics a long, hot, bone dry summer in the mountains of Central Asia, which is where most tulips are native.
All this TLC produces the perfect flowering size bulb to sell.
As you can guess, conditions are not that favorable in our soil and our weather!
The bulbs that we plant will split into smaller bulbs and it takes years for those to grow into big enough bulbs to bloom.  Many of our bulbs will rot in our heavy wet soils.  This why our tulip display dwindles down to nothing impressive.

Tulips that will bloom the best for us are Darwin Hybrids, Fosterianas, and wild, or, specie tulips, but none are guaranteed to be perennial.

My suggestion to gardeners is to create a bed in your landscaping that is reserved for tulip planting in the fall, blooms in the spring.  Don't plant your tulips in beds with perennials or shrubs that you have to dig around, possibly injuring them.  After you dig the bulbs in late spring, replace them with your favorite annual, such as petunias, marigolds, or vincas.  Then enjoy the color until frost, then dig up the annuals and plant new bulbs.
A few hours on a Saturday, twice a year, and you've got blooms your neighbors will be jealous of!!

So, with all this information, you have to ask yourself, "Why would I go to all the trouble to plant tulips bulbs, just to have to dig them up in the spring????  And, do it all over again next year???
You could spend $50 to $100 on one hundred or two hundred bulbs.  Do you spend that much on a Reds baseball game, or a concert, or UK football tickets?  That's money spent on something that lasts a few hours.  Spend that amount on tulip bulbs and you will get a week or two, depending on the weather at the time, of pure enjoyment.  A riot of colorful flowers is proven to lift your spirits and the spirits of everyone who sees your flowers.  I like the sound of that after a long, gloomy winter, and a wet, cool spring!  Nothing says Happy Spring! like a bed of tulips in full bloom!!



For a lot of fantastic information about tulips and other bulbs, go to www.colorblends.com.   This information I have shared comes from their current catalog.

Take a look around

January is an odd time for landscaping, even though the weather so far this winter has been unusually mild, and we have just finished the wettest year on record.  The last time I looked, the daffodils in the yard were about two inches tall- they are so confused by our mild temps.  January is the time for planning and daydreaming.  The seed catalogs start arriving in the mail, so if it ever snows this month and you are forced to stay in the house for a day or two, you can pour over the beautiful selections in flowers and plants available to you in 2012.
A very worthwhile project this time of year is to go outside, take a long, hard look at your landscaping and assess how it looks in the dead of winter.   When landscaping in warm weather, all the plants have their leaves and it can be difficult to visualize what those plants will look like in winter when the leaves are gone.  Basic design principles are balance, repetition, unity, and variety.  Good landscapes have a balance of evergreen plants and deciduous plants.  Varieties of evergreens, such as boxwoods, should be planted in multiples, as should deciduous shrubs, like spireas or barberries.  No large quantities of any one type of plant should be planted.  And all this advice adds up to variety!
Look at your plantings now and see if there are too many bare plants clustered together or too many green leaved or needled plants in a spot.  Would it look better if you traded in some winter bare plants for some that keep their leaves all winter?

More Improvements

Last week we got a new wall with 2 doors and 3 windows.  Then we got an addition to our roof that makes it so our roof sits over the top of the wall and extends out about 24".  It rained a lot last Thursday and we did not have one bucket inside the building to catch water!!!!!!  I think it has been over 20 years since the inside of the shop stayed dry in the rain!  I am so happy!  If you never really looked at the problems we had before, you probably can't understand why this is all a big deal to us.  It is so exciting to upgrade things- change is good!

Change is scary!

Two and a half weeks ago we started the project I've looked forward to since 2008.  After taking over the florist and greenhouse in Nov. 2006, I soon began to realize what a white elephant the greenhouse structure itself was.  Because the greenhouse was attached to the flower shop building, there was a "ditch" where the two structures were conjoined, which trapped water when it rained.  For years, buckets had been kept in place to catch all the water than leaked into the building with each shower. This really bothered me!! 
By 2008 , I had had enough time to figure out that the price we had to pay to keep the water pipes from freezing was outrageous!  This was all because the water came from the meter in the back yard and came to the greenhouse, entering in an unheated section of the greenhouse.  Then the water traveled through pipes in the air, eight feet overhead through the length of the greenhouse.  The water finally entered the building and then supplied the restrooms and the workroom.  Heat tape had to be used to keep the pipes from freezing where they came up from the ground into the unheated section of greenhouse.  The two heated sections of the greenhouse had to be kept above freezing all winter to keep the pipes from freezing.  The only logical explanation I can come up with for all this is that the greenhouse must have had running water before the flower shop had bathrooms!
I hope you can imagine how expensive it is to keep a greenhouse heated all winter!  This was a greenhouse that had rain coming down inside of it, as well as snow falling in it!  So, if those forms of precip can get in, that means a lot of warmth can escape.  $$$$$ down the drain!!!
I asked for advice from plumbers, builders, and electricians.  No one wanted to tackle all these problems.  The only answer I could imagine was tearing the whole thing down!!
Side Note:  I always wondered how the old greenhouse kept from falling down when the wind blew.  I was always scared it would  fall and hurt someone.  Today I learned why it never fell!  The frame of the greenhouse was galvanized steel. Dave dug up four feet deep concrete pilings that secured the steel posts in the ground, with his tractor today.   The wood in the place was very old and fragile, and there were some pieces of the steel structure that were no longer attached to each other, but those steel poles in four feet of concrete were not going anywhere very easily!
So, 2 1/2 weeks ago, we started swinging the sledge hammer!  Today the last major part of the whole structure came!  When you drive along Main St, you can now see the backs of houses on Elm St. past where the greenhouse used to be.  When I walked into the shop this morning, I couldn't believe how sunny it was inside the building because the greenhouse is no longer blocking the morning sun on the east side of the shop.
I just can't wait until winter and Columbia Gas sends me little bitty bills!!!

July in my garden

Looking out over my organized chaos in my backyard flower beds, I can write an article called "Toughest Perennials for Kentucky Gardens".  When flowers are happy and blooming out there right now that means they have survived the potential of mildew, fungus, and drowning roots from the heavy rains in April and May.  If they are still standing up tall, they have survived the storms in May and June.  And, by now, they have survived and thrived in spite of high temps, high heat indices, extreme humidity, and periods of no rain.  Let me also add that, to survive in my gardens, they have to be resistant to the bugs, too, because I don't use insecticides so I don't offend the bees, butterflies, & birds.  Those little creatures, plus the moths at night, are one of the main reasons I raise flowers.  So, here comes my list:

1. Snowball Hydrangea.  This is technically a woody shrub, not an herbaceaous perennial, but it is an important part of my floral scheme.  I have several scattered around because they are easy to divide.  They have been blooming for a month already with their large white puffs that start out snow white and turn to green and then eventually turn brown when they dry, providing fall and winter interest. Hydrangeas are great cut flowers, lasting over a week.  Insects don't bother them and they are just not fussy about anything!

2. Tall Garden Phlox.  I have allowed these to grow everywhere because of the fact that I never deadhead them so the seeds fly all over.  Phlox is also an excellent cut flower and they smell lovely.  Some do suffer from powdery mildew and I pull them up and toss them, because I have plenty to spare.  In fact, I have way too many, and plan to dig and give a lot away.

3. Coneflowers.  I have been successful with "Kim's Knee High".  Other cultivars don't survive so well.  I do have some insect damage, but I just let that happen.  I don't deadhead, so the seeds scatter, and I get new plants, and the finches come to see me to eat the seeds.

4. Perennial Hibiscus.  Not to be confused with tropical hibiscus, which is readily available in the spring.  Perennials die back in the fall, leaving dry brown stems that you can cut down after a hard frost or the next spring.  Perennial hibiscus have huge dinner plate size blooms that start blooming around the 4th of July and continue until frost.  The blooms only last a day, but are prolific.  Hummingbirds can't miss them!!  We will have several perennial hibiscus for sale next fall at the greenhouse!

5. Day Lilies.  These are the easiest plants in the world to grow!  I have many reblooming day lilies, such as the over used Stella D'Oro, red "Pardon Me", "Ruby Stella", and others I can't remember the names of.  I've gone through phases, such as the red phase, when I only planted red day lilies, the purple phase, the pink phase.  Most of my yellow ones were given to me.  The blooms last a day, hence the name, but they produce lots of blooms and keep the color coming for a month or more.  Dig and divide and pass them along!

6.Iris.  Spring begins with Bearded Iris, then along come the blooms of Siberian Iris, and , in conclusion, we have the Japanese Iris.  I love iris, so I get to enjoy them for a month to six weeks with this succession of blooms!

7. Bee Balm.  This plant with the very interesting bloom is a hummingbird, butterfly, & moth magnet.  Careful, they can be invasive, though.  Mine are red, but there are also shades of pink and lavender out there.  Also interesting is the square stem on these aromatic plants, which are also classified as herbs.

8. Anemones.  These don't bloom until late summer, but they are lovely when they do, and the foliage of these plants is attractive all summer, prior to bloom.

9. 'Autumn Joy' Sedum.  Many sedums are on the market today, but most don't measure up to the performance of 'Autumn Joy'.  They love full sun, tolerate drought, and tolerate moisture better than other sedums.  They bloom mid summer and the blooms eventually dry and remain attractive into winter.

10.  Hosta.   There is so much to say about Hosta!!  I have collected many over the years.  I have very large leaved 'Sum & Substance' and I have planted my namesake (LOL) 'Francee" and 'Guacamole' because they can tolerate more sun.  I have hostas because they have green and white leaves, or because they have chartreuse green leaves, or because they are very small leaved.  I have hostas with white flowers and some with lavender flowers and some are more fragrant than others.  So, you see, there are a lot of reasons to love a hosta!  Heads up for 2012:  We have purchased 'Empress Wu' Hosta to sell-they are as big as a grown person!!

I hope this list is useful to you.  You may see posts on Facebook from time to time where I'll offer up the surplus when I dig and divide perennials.  One of the things I love about perennial gardening is that so many of my favorite plants are "pass a long" plants.  I can walk through and remember that the hydrangeas and phlox came from Mae, the obedient plant came from Michelle, the iris and peonies came from Richard's
grandmother's garden via Hazel, and it just makes me feel at home in my flower garden!  Happy gardening!!

Thrillers, Chillers, & Spillers

By mid April, our greenhouse will be jam packed with hanging baskets and hundreds of trays of blooming annuals and tomato plants.  Our parking lot will be converted into a little garden center, with tables filled with blooming plants and the ground covered with blooming shrubs, perennials, tropicals, and roses.  We will answer a million questions about flower and vegetable gardening and landscaping by the time May has ended.   In this column I'll answer one of those questions, with the subject being container growing.

How do I choose plants to go in a mixed pot?  The plants that you put together in a container should be chosen for the reasons I'll list below.  And remember, that a container does not have to be a conventional pot, it can be a wagon or a box or an enamel ware bowl or a concrete trough or anything you can think of.
 1. Sun requirements.  All the plants should need full sun, or part sun or shade. i.e. Don't plant an impatien in the same pot with a lantana and a geranium.
 2. Water needs.  All the plants should require similar amounts of water.  i.e. Don't plant moss roses with lobelia. 
3.  Color.  Pick a color scheme you like.  Monochromatic is shades of one color.  Complimentary colors are purples and yellows, or reds and greens, or oranges and blues.  Aggressive colors are oranges, reds, and yellows.  Receding colors are blues, greens, and violets.  What colors do you like best?
4. Thrillers, chillers, and spillers.  This refers to the levels of plant growth that make an attractive container garden.  A "thriller" is the tallest plant in the pot.  The dracaena spike is commonly used, but don't be afraid to try something new.  For real drama in a large pot in full sun, plant a hibiscus or lantana tree in the center for height.  The "spiller" is the plant that will grow and drape over the side of the pot.  Wave petunias, Million Bells, and verbena are great choices for spillers in the sun.  The "chiller" is the plant that is of medium stature and upright and branched and fills in the space in the middle of the pot.  Good examples are geraniums, aryranthemum, vincas, or Bandana lantanas.

Always ask questions regarding plant choices when you visit our greenhouse.  We can give you information you can't always get at the big box stores.  Our staff includes 2 horticulturalists with a combined 35 years of experience with plants.

We get a lot of questions about rose plants.  The biggest selling rose is the Knockout Rose.  The great thing about Knockouts is that anyone can grow one!  They are disease resistant, insect resistant, and they bloom a lot!  They are a shrub rose, and they are grown on their own rootstock, instead of being grafted, which makes them hardier.
Also available this spring are David Austin roses, hybrid tea roses, climbing roses, and floribunda roses.
We are now currently adding the flowering shrubs, perennials, tropicals, and annuals that we will have to sell this spring on our website www.ravennagreenhouse.com.  You will be able to see pictures of flowers and plants and read about how to care for these plants.
 Our inventory this spring will include several varieties of Hydrangeas, including Pinky Winky, Limelight, Paris Cityline, Vienna Cityline, Incrediball, and Invinceable Spirit,  any of which would make a great Mother's Day gift!
Call us with your inquiries concerning availability of plants at 606-723-2175 or 1-866-408-2559.
Happy Gardening!!!!!!

Topping a tree is unacceptable behavior!!!

In the March issue of All Things Country Eric Baker wrote about topping trees.  He explained all the reasons why you shouldn't top a tree.  Thank you so much, Eric!  I will now expound upon that subject!

Do you ever look at the bare trees in winter?  Were you ever taught in school or Boy Scouts how to identify a bare tree by the shape, size, and growth pattern of the branches?  I learned to observe trees in winter after reading a book that showed the branch structure of many trees.  Now, when I walk the dog in the woods, or hike, or ride in a car, I notice the trees and try to identify what kind they are.  Most commonly, people identify trees by their leaves or fruit or flowers or bark.  And, of course, you can identify a tree by the cross section of it's wood.  My point to all this identification talk is this:  Can you identify, for example, a maple tree, in winter by its branch structure after that tree has been topped??
Have you ever noticed what a topped tree looks like in winter?  The sight of a  topped tree in winter is one of the ugliest sights I've ever seen.  It ranks right up there with trash along the roadsides and potholes!  A big fat trunk with some knots on the top of it and maybe some wimpy looking sucker branches on top of that is a horrible sight to a person who has spent a career working with plants.

I need to point out some basic things that can prevent that terrible urge to butcher a tree.
1.  Don't plant a 40,50, or 100 foot tall tree under power lines.
2.  Remember a 6 foot tall tree will grow into a large tree.
3.  Read the description of your tree before you plant it so you understand how tall it will grow.
4.  Look up before you plant.
5.  Take in to consideration what kind of tree you have.  If you have a 100' Pin Oak tree, you have a    very strong tree.  It probably will never be uprooted in a storm, or split and drop big limbs, so there is no excuse for topping it..
6.  Every tree, as well as every other kind of plant, will leave behind some debris, such as leaves, small limbs, and flower petals, as the seasons change and the wind blows.   This does not justify torturing the tree by topping it.
7.  If you hate your tree so badly that you want to top it, please just cut the tree down instead of maiming it until it finally dies.
8.  If you don't like trees at all, don't plant them.

While we are on the subject of trees, let me mention roots.  The largest percentage of a tree's roots are near the soil surface.  Those huge tap roots that people fear below the ground in their yards don't exist.
Evil roots are not below the surface trying to find a way to wreak havoc.  The root zone of a tree is roughly as large in diameter as the canopy of the tree.  If a tree's branches are about forty feet in diameter, its roots are about forty feet in diameter surrounding the tree.  Tree roots naturally grow toward water if it is available, and they will invade a crack in a pipe to seek water.  This is why it is not advised to plant a tree in the septic system drainage field.  There is a product available to pour in your septic system that contains copper, which acts to prune roots that have invaded a pipe.

As you may have guessed, topping trees and talking trash about innocent trees is one of my pet peeves.
I apologize if I have offended anyone!