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soil-full musings

What’s There to Like about Weeding? Top 10 Reasons.

May 22, 2022

Pulling weeds may be one of the most universally disliked garden chores.  But a recent survey of Buncombe County Extension Master Gardeners uncovered some good reasons to appreciate (if not actually like) the job.

But before we reveal these Top 10 reasons, why is weeding important?  Weeds not only make a garden look messy, they compete for water, nutrients, and light that your plants need.  Weeds can harbor insect and disease pests that may spread to cultivated flowers, shrubs, and vegetables.  And ignored, weeds multiply rapidly to overwhelm your garden and make any extraction session more and more difficult.

Buncombe County Extension Agent, Alison Arnold, shares tips to help you win the battle against weeds in this April 21, 2022, article published in Better Homes & Gardens, “7 of the Worst Weeding Mistakes That Make Gardening Much Harder,” by Rita Pelczar.  https://www.bhg.com/gardening/yard/garden-care/weeding-mistakes-to-avoid/?did=779004-20220512&cmp=bhggetgrowing_051222&utm_campaign=bhg-get-growing_newsletter&utm_source=bhg.com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=051222&cid=779004&mid=87090528438&lctg=39823821

And now, a countdown of 10 Reasons to like pulling weeds.

  1. EXERCISE. Believe it or not, I find pulling weeds to be good exercise!  Lunges and squats give my glutes a workout; hinging at the hips to bend over stretches my calves and hamstrings; and, navigating a steep slope while carefully stepping between plants improves my balance.
  1. AVOIDANCE. Weeding gets me out of the house while [fill in the blank] someone else cooks dinner!
  1. PERSONAL TIME. Weeding is my time to think and plan with no phone and no distractions.  It’s my personal, quiet time—just me and the singing birds.
  1. DISCOVERY. With my nose close to the ground, I discover emerging plants that are not weeds and become garden treasures.  Some of these volunteers that now thrive in my garden are native flame azaleas, downy rattlesnake plantain, blue-eyed grass, Solomon’s seal, and a ten-foot-tall American holly that I discovered when it was only a one-inch seedling.
  1. NEXT STEPS. The slow pace of weeding lets me identify other garden needs for my “to do” list–diseased plants, bad insects, future pruning or transplanting jobs.
  1. INTERACTIVE. Weeding lets me get up close and personal with my plants.  I find that I appreciate them more and am ready to tackle more weeds the next day.
  1. CARETAKING. I like knowing that all the water and nutrients that my garden needs will now be going to help the plants I love, and not the weeds.
  1. NATURE. I like to weed because it gives me quiet time in the sunshine when I can really listen to what is going on in the garden—bees humming, birds chirping, the wind blowing through the leaves. It’s a win-win to enjoy nature while tidying up the garden.
  1. ACCOMPLISHMENT. I have a feeling of accomplishment when the weeding’s done.  I’m a bit compulsive and this fills a need to tackle and complete a job.
  1. APPEARANCE. I especially like how nice everything looks after the weeding is done.  Weeding is like washing and putting away dishes and wiping down the counters.  It helps things look tidy and the things that really matter can shine and be seen.

Now that you’re feeling slightly more enthusiastic about weeding, do approach it wisely.  Tolerate some weedy growth as beneficial to the survival of pollinators, honeybees, and ultimately our food crops.  Flowering weeds, like clover, dandelion, henbit, and hairy fleabane, provide food sources for pollinators in early spring.  Protect bees and other pollinators by avoiding insecticides.  Reduce lawn size and opt for pollinator-friendly, native plants instead.  Designate a small area of your landscape where weeds like goldenrod, bee balm, Joe pye, and milkweed can flourish.  Be weed-wise for the bees.

Want to learn more about how to identify and effectively manage weeds in your garden?  Check out these resources:

From NC State Extension:

  • Plant Toolbox:  Weed Profiles
  • Extension Gardener Handbook:  Weeds Chapter
  • Gardening Portal:  Weed Resources

From other Extension services:

  • Learn to Read Your Weeds: lsuagcenter.com/profiles/rbogren/articles/page1563547396748
  • Reading the Weeds: gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu/care/weeds-and-invasive-plants/reading-the-weeds.html
  • What Can Weeds Tell Me About My Garden Soil? extension.unh.edu/blog/2019/06/what-can-weeds-tell-me-about-my-garden-soil

Thanks to the following Master Gardener volunteers for their weedy musings:  Carol Brown, Nancy Good, Catherine Pawlik, and Carol Anne Reynolds.  And also to our Extension Agent, Alison Arnold.

Article written by Beth Leonard, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

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Categories Weeds Tags soil-full musings, weeds

A Garden Is Living Art in Nature

May 1, 2022

Occasionally I ask myself, “Why do I garden?”  It takes work, can be expensive, things die.  But to answer my question: “I feel alive in the beauty of my garden.”  The garden, for me, is like living within an artist’s painting.  As a career, my mediocre talent would have rendered me a fair but struggling artist.  But in the garden, I get to create my artistic voice—a composition filled with shape, color, texture, and mood.

Gardening inspiration varies by gardener
Gardening holds a variety of interests for different people.  Some are fascinated by unusual plant varieties; others are horticultural enthusiasts who seek scientific knowledge of plants; some approach gardening as a contribution to environmental health; others maintain a garden to improve the appearance of their home and play space.  Mine happens to be simply an artistic experiment in visual appeal.

For the most part, I’m happy with the landscape I’ve created over the years—except this one, small, oblong, garden space near the driveway.  I’ve tried so many different things:  ornamental grasses, roses, daisies, ajuga, and marigolds.  Who can’t grow marigolds?  I’ve had the soil tested and know the dirt is really good.  Moisture levels and drainage are fine.  I’ve even tracked an entire year of sun and shade patterns.  So, what’s wrong?  The area is just dull, uninteresting, and unappealing.  It needs to be replanted.  And I’ve decided to tackle it like an artist preparing to paint a masterpiece.

Creating a plan
Many techniques for creating a good painting and a pleasing landscape are actually quite similar.  Each requires thinking about composition, focal point, color choice, and movement or directional lines.

Small garden plot of mixed perennials and shrubs
Newly planted mixed perennial bed

Artists will often begin by creating a rendering of the envisioned painting.  Likewise, I started this replanting project by creating a plan.  I measured the area (8 feet by 16 feet) and sketched a rough outline.  I showed both the straight and curved edges of the oblong, and I highlighted the portion that receives full afternoon sun in summer.  I noted the most important existing feature—a ‘Bloodgood’ Japanese maple tree—and the least attractive feature—a telephone utility box.  Then I noted conifers in my neighbor’s yard that would become the background for my “painting”—Hinoki false cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) and a large cedar tree.  These elements defined the starting point of my composition.

Composition for a painting and for the landscape involves shapes, sizes, groups, and patterns.  It involves how these masses are arranged relative to each other and how they direct the eye along curves, lines, or see-through spaces.  Every composition needs a focal point and mine will be the Japanese maple.  The tree is perfectly situated off-center in the oblong, its branching structure frames a distant azalea bed, and its burgundy-red leaves define my color palate.  Everything else in the area will become supporting elements to this primary focal point.

The utility box needs camouflage.  The area in front of the conifers needs to be softened and brightened.  The sun-baked, curved edge at one end of the planting bed requires a different treatment than the shady area beneath the maple tree.  And the viewer’s eye must travel the length of the planting bed, pausing at secondary points of interest, before arriving at the primary focal point.  An artist can create these effects using objects of different shapes and sizes, color and light, and the angle or direction of brush strokes.  My design challenge is similar.  But instead of using paint and brush strokes, I must choose plants that create the visual effect I want and that tolerate the growing conditions of my space.

Selecting the elements of my living art
I decided on a grouping of Otto Luyken laurels and hydrangeas to transition from the conifer background to the planting bed, to introduce a different leaf texture, and to brighten the area with white and pink blossoms.  The hydrangeas will grow to partially obscure the utility box, as will a grouping of penstemons, or beardtongue.  The burgundy foliage of the penstemons replicates the color of the Japanese maple and helps the eye skip from the front of the bed to the focal point.

I heightened the interest under the maple tree by grouping hostas, heuchera, and Japanese forest grass.  The white and lime-green leaves of the hostas and forest grass will brighten the shady area and contrast nicely with the burgundy heuchera foliage.  A row of yellow-blooming coreopsis follows the curve of the lower edge of the bed and directs the eye toward the maple tree.  The coreopsis is underplanted with Cerastium tomentosum ‘Snow in Summer’ for its white flowers and silvery, fine-textured foliage.  A final nod to contrasting textures and repeating colors comes from a grouping of red and yellow day lilies.  Their spiky leaves and tall flower stalks will shoot up between the hydrangeas and the coreopsis to offer another element of interest in the garden.

Cerastium tomentosum 'Snow in Summer'_Jim Janke_CC BY 4.0
Cerastium tomentosum ‘Snow in Summer’
Coreopsis 'Jethro Tull'. Commonly called tickseed.
Coreopsis ‘Jethro Tull’
Penstemon digitalis 'Blackbeard'. Commonly called beardtongue.
Penstemon digitalis ‘Blackbeard’
Hydrangea macrophylla 'Mini Penny'
Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Mini Penny’
Japanese forest grass. Hakonechloa macra_Lucy Bradley_CCO
Japanese forest grass
Heuchera 'Palace Purple'_Kathleen Moore_CC BY 2.0. Commonly called coral bells.
Heuchera ‘Palace Purple’
Hosta 'Mediovariegata'
Hosta ‘Mediovariegata’

As I muse about my garden, I recognize that my enthusiasm comes from the artistic endeavor of design and that my joy comes from seeing the final composition.  I garden to create spaces that convey a visual message—some quiet and tranquil, some exuberant and colorful, some invitations to explore, and some reflecting memories of people and places.  My garden is my canvas—my contribution to art through nature.

Article written by Beth Leonard, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

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Categories General Gardening, Landscape Design Tags landscape design, soil-full musings

Nostalgia Blooms Brightly in My Imperfect Garden

April 10, 2022

“These store-bought flowers are okay. But they are never as beautiful as the ones you give me from your garden,” my next-door neighbor said a few weeks ago, as she arranged a mixed bouquet from the grocery store. It was her get-well gift to me following foot surgery.

I had never thought of my flowers as noteworthy. They are what they are because I am a nonchalant gardener. Between competing interests, age, and arthritis, I don’t have time to pamper them. So, I stick with hardy, reliable, old-fashioned perennials. Among them are two – gladiolus and dahlias — that conjure up fond memories of summers spent at Old Lodge Farm, my Canadian grandparents’ home outside Aylmer East, Quebec. My grandparents grew neither, but George and Alma Fuller did.

Gladiolus_Carl Lewis_CC BY 2.0_Flickr
Gladiolus

My family would often stop by the Fullers’ farm for a visit and a cold drink of water from their pump before continuing our trek down to the Ottawa River’s rocky shore. Behind the cat-populated barn, Mr. Fuller grew vegetables and rows of gladiolus. Every week he loaded his produce and flower stalks onto his Model A truck and drove to Ottawa’s Baywater market. For her part, Mrs. Fuller tended a bed of dahlias in front of the house. The dark brown, weathered wood provided the right backdrop to showcase their brilliance. Because of the Fullers, I fell in love with glads, as George called them, and dahlias.

Despite being a flower that is slightly out of favor, glads have had a place in my garden for years. They’re easy to grow and never disappoint. Loosely arranged in a tall vase, they make a statement. Dahlias, on the other hand, were forgotten until my father planted them in the late 1990s. He and my mother had moved here from Ithaca, New York, following his retirement from Cornell. In the years that followed, he delighted in Asheville’s longer growing season, planted rhododendrons that never would have survived Ithaca’s winters, had a love affair with hostas, and in his late eighties, discovered dahlias. At the time, I was a wife and mother with a career. While I appreciated his octogenarian enthusiasm, I didn’t have the time or the energy to participate in it. Now, I do.

Dalhias
Dahlias

Here’s the thing about dahlias. When the black-eyed Susans look tired, and the crocosmia have gone to seed, and the Shasta daisy petals are tattered, and the gladiolus have bloomed themselves out, dahlias are coming into their own raucous glory. They thrive in cooler temperatures, one reason why Mrs. Fuller’s were so magnificent. But these fat tubers should come with a warning. Beware: they will take over your life.

The temptation to buy starts with spring catalogs showcasing the latest sumptuous color palates. Against my better judgment, I wonder whether I can fit in just a few more. The answer is no. I have more than I can say grace over. This became painfully clear in 2021 when illness and injury prevented me from properly staking them. I lamented my inability to care. A neighbor’s plot was a constant reminder of my neglect. While its well-supported dahlias stood tall and straight, mine sprawled against the fence. Others, out of desperation maybe, supported one another. I came to the sad conclusion that this was the year I would have no fall dahlias to share. How wrong I was. My dahlias produced an abundance of lush, colorful blossoms until the first frost.

So why does my neighbor extol the virtues of my ordinary, old-fashioned flowers? Could it be that perfection is over-rated? To be clear, I have never aspired to produce award-winning flowers. Could it be that after living with the fear and isolation imposed on us by the Covid-19 pandemic, an unexpected homegrown bouquet is a reminder that not everything has changed?

I won’t be gardening until May this year. By that time, I will be walking again. The dahlias will be sprouting, and it will be clear how many survived the winter. Some rearranging will be needed to make room for a raised bed. This will provide an opportunity to divide and share the tubers. Unlike other years, I won’t bemoan my late start. This year, I will take my time, thankful that a gifted surgeon made it possible for me to return to what I love doing. This year, I will fertilize and snip and stake, knowing that perfection isn’t what’s important. This year, I will garden knowing that my dahlias are resilient, and so am I.

Article written by Janet Moore, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer.

To learn more about gladiolus and dahlias, see:
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/gladiolus/ 
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/dahlia/common-name/dahlia/ 

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Categories General Gardening Tags dahlias, gladiolus, soil-full musings

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