Tulip Pruning Tips

Pruning tulips and other spring-flowering bulbs, helps ensure the best flower production, season after season. Pruning spring-blooming bulbs involves two steps: clipping spent flowers and removing faded foliage. Timing is important in both steps of the pruning process. In step one, it’s important to cut back tulip, daffodil and hyacinth flowers once they begin to fade. Left on the stem after the flower wilts encourages the bulb to produce seed. As a rule, tulips don’t reproduce well from seed so allowing a seed pod to form takes away energy from the bulb unnecessarily. Snip the flower all the way to the base of the stem, but don’t remove any foliage at this time. Tulips, as well as daffodils and hyacinths, depend on this green foliage to replenish each bulb for next season’s flowering. Removing the foliage too early means fewer and smaller blooms next season, if any. It isn’t necessary to prune smaller bulbs such as muscari or crocus.

Once you’ve removed the spent flowers, apply a mild fertilizer to the bulb bed. This will help restore nutrients used up in the blooming process. 

Leave the foliage in place as long as it is green. It usually takes about six weeks after the flowers fade for the foliage to start to turn yellow. Once it does, cut the foliage back hard to the ground. Follow this process if you’re treating your bulbs as perennials; that is, you expect them to come back year after year and flower well. Some gardeners treat bulbs as annuals and dig them up each spring after the blooms have faded. This is done in order to utilize the space for planting summer-flowering annuals. Either practice is acceptable, but to get the best production season after season, it’s important to remove spent flowers first, followed by foliage pruning some six weeks later.  

Spring Gardening: Wall-O'-Water

  

Eager to get your tomato starts out of the house and into the garden, but concerned about the unpredictable spring weather.  A Wall-O’-Water acts like a mini-greenhouse to protect your young plants from the cold, wet weather we often experience in April and May.  

Start by amending your garden soil by digging in two to three inches of organic material. Next, open the package and select one of the three enclosed Walls-O'-Water.

 An easy way to hold the empty Wall-O’-Water in place is to set it over a 5-gallon bucket. Fill each of the Wall-O’-Water tubes about two thirds full and then remove the bucket. Once the bucket is out of the way, allow the tubes to fold into themselves. This will form a teepee and help protect your young plants. Plan to set up your Wall-O'-Water at least one week before you actually set out your plants. This allows the soil to warm up under the Wall-O’-Water and reduces transplant shock. 

While the soil is warming up under the Wall-O’-Water, start setting your young plants outside for a few hours at a time. This is called “hardening off” and it allows your starts to become accustomed to the outside temperatures and conditions.  When you're ready to plant, pick up the Wall-O'-Water and set it aside. Plant your tomato in the spot where the Wall-O'-Water has been sitting, then put the Wall-O'-Water back in place, covering the plant. As your plants grow and temperatures warm up, fill up each of the tubes to the top. You can use Walls-O'-Water for tomatoes, peppers, squash and other warm weather vegetables.  Walls-O’-Water are available in original green or red and are reusable, so store them in a safe place until next season. 

Rose Gardening -Selecting Roses

Wondering which rose types to grow? With hundreds of varieties including hybrid teas, climbers, David Austins, shrub roses, miniature roses, grandifloras and floribundas, how do you make a decision on which rose is right for your garden? 

Start with the basics. Roses need a minimum of six hours of full sun in order to grow and bloom properly. Roses need a bed of their own, away from trees, shrubs and perennials that compete for sunlight, space and nutrients. Roses need space. They don’t do well when crowded together.  Roses need well-amended soils in order to establish strong root systems and achieve vigorous growth and bloom potential. With these factors in mind, selecting a rose bush becomes a question of purpose. Are you looking to augment your current rose collection; start a rose garden; replace a lost or damaged rose bush; add color and fragrance to your garden; build support for local pollinators? There is a variety of rose bush that will fill some, if not all of these goals including hybrid teas, floribundas, grandifloras, climbers, shrubs and even tree roses.  When we think of roses, it’s the hybrid tea variety that most often comes to mind. 

Hybrid tea roses represent an amazing pallet of color and fragrance, such as the rose pictured here: Chris Evert.  Depend on hybrid tea roses to bloom consistently throughout the summer season. 

Grandiflora roses are very similar to hybrid teas. They tend to be taller and bloom in clusters rather than one rose per stem. Like all roses, grandifloras will attract pollinators. This is Strike it Rich. 

Floribunda roses such as Hot Cocoa, are valued for their ability to bloom continuously. 

If you want to cover an arbor or trellis, choose a climbing rose, such as Fourth of July. David Austin roses are fragrant English roses that grow on their own roots. Our annual Rush for the Roses event is an excellent opportunity to learn more about each rose type and how different varieties will add value to your landscape. This year’s Rush for the Roses is Saturday April 20, beginning at 8 am.  

How to Prepare Garden Soil for Planting

The key to better tomatoes and vegetables this season? It all starts with the soil. Adding organic materials to your garden soil in the spring is the single most important step to having a healthier, more productive tomato and vegetable crop. Organic soil amendments will turn even the densest clay soils into fertile ground that will support better crop production throughout the season. In addition to building soil structure and quality, organics will help lower pH, promote strong root growth, improve nutrient uptake and encourage beneficial microbial life. Organic soil amendments include compost, composted manure, sphagnum peat moss, coconut coir and worm castings.  Locally-produced products such as Earth Essentials Sheep, Peat and Compost offer solutions to reduce heavy clay content as well as improve existing garden bed’s tilth and texture. 

A one cubic foot bag of Sheep, Peat and Compost will cover twenty square feet of garden plot, one inch deep. If you have an existing garden, plan to add one to two inches of organics, worked in eight to ten inches deep. If you’re starting a new garden plot, the ratio needs to be one to one; two inches of organic material to two inches of clay, worked in as deep as you physically can. In addition to organic Sheep, Peat and Compost, sphagnum peat moss, coconut coir and worm castings are soil amendments that will improve soil structure and increase fertility. Sphagnum peat moss is a long-fibered product, adept at keeping our clay soils from clumping together. Low-sodium coconut coir increases soil aeration and improves nutrient retention. 

Worm castings are added to garden soils to enrich the soil and to introduce humic acid. Humic acid is a bio-stimulant, which helps build root mass and enhances nutrient uptake. Worm castings, peat moss and coconut coir tend to be very dense and as such, can be resistant to water absorption. 

A simple way to overcome this resistance is to dump your soil amendments on the surface of your garden bed, mix them together and then dig the combined soil amendments into the garden plot. This will optimize each amendment’s contribution to your garden. Time spent now to build fertile, healthy soil will result in a more productive garden this year.