Rodd's Seeds of Wisdom Horticultural tips and tricks from Rodd Moesel

Hope you had a very special Valentines Day. Remember to keep your cut flowers in clean water and add some cut flower preservative or cut flower food to further extend the beauty of your roses or other cut flowers. Make sure to strip off all foliage that will be below the water line to help keep the water clean of decaying material and to extend the shelf life. Some roses will get a droop neck where the flower stems bend way over just below the flower or bud. This is usually caused by an air bubble or other blockage in the stem that is preventing water from getting up the stem to the flower. As soon as you start to see this problem, remove the flower from the vase, make a fresh cut, best if the new cut is made under water in the sink and then placed back in the vase. Sometimes the blockage will be solved and it will perk back up. Other times the droop neck gets worse and you just have to send that flower to the compost pile or dry it and save it for a prank “over the hill” bouquet.

Once we passed Valentines day we officially launched the 2007 outdoor gardening season and there are many projects we can now tackle in the yard. This is a great time to fertilize trees and shrubs including fruit trees, pecans and other nut trees. This is a good time to prune shade trees and some late summer flowering shrubs and hedges. Be careful not to prune spring flowering shrubs like quince and forsythia now but wait until just after they bloom or you will cut off your spring flowers. You can plant container grown trees and shrubs pretty much year round if the soil is not frozen but bareroot trees and shrubs need to be planted now in February or March for best results. Now is the time to spray peaches with a fungicide to prevent peach leaf curl and now is a great time to apply a well refined dormant oil to trees and shrubs to help control insects that may have over wintered like mites or aphids and to control galls.

We are a few weeks away from the best time to apply pre-emergent crabgrass and weed control for our lawns. It is best to apply that when the bright yellow forsythia come into flower. March is also the time to sow tall fescue in shady areas. If you want to do something to your lawn now you could spray glyphosate (Roundup) over your dormant Bermuda grass lawn to kill all the green winter weeds and grasses on days when the temperature is above fifty degrees. Be careful anytime you spray glyphosate because it will kill any living tissue that is green with chlorophyll including desirable shrubs or plants if you get the spray on them.

The most significant outdoor gardening activity that is ready to go is starting your spring vegetable garden. Valentines Day to Saint Patrick’s Day in mid March is the best time to plant your cool season vegetables. That means now is the time to cut your seed potatoes into two or three ounce pieces with at least one “eye” for a new shoot on each piece to grow your own baked potatoes or french fries. Most folks need about fifty feet of row of Irish potatoes per person to supply the average household.  This is the time to plant twenty-five feet of row of onion sets or onion plants to grow your own onions. This is the optimum time to sow seed in the garden for carrots, swiss chard, kohlrabi, head or leaf lettuce, peas, spinach or turnips. Most greenhouses or garden centers will have small transplants ready of cauliflower, cabbage, head or leaf lettuce that you can plant to grow your own nutritious crops. Most of these cool season crops will provide you a good harvest starting in about two months if planted now. In March we can start planting broccoli, beets and radishes and then in April and May we can plant lots of warm season vegetables. Many veteran gardeners will stage these crops with successive plantings every couple of weeks over the planting season to insure a steady supply of fresh produce for your dining pleasure. If you enjoy fresh strawberries, rhubarb, or asparagus this is a good time to purchase those plants, usually available bareroot at this time to add to your garden where they will produce for many years once established. These will be available later in the spring in pots or cans for transplanting into your yard. If you want to add fruiting vines to your garden this is a good time to buy and plant grapes, blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries or most other berries.

If you are tired of being cooped up inside through these cold winter months, want to get some good exercise and enjoy growing some of your own fresh vegetables take advantage of the nice days to get outside and start growing.

Hope you and your yard survived the recent ice storms without too much damage. Our outdoor plant material has really been tested this year with some very cold weather keeping us below freezing for an extended period of several days. The very heavy ice caused a lot of natural pruning on our trees and shrubs, some of which will require some clean up pruning in March before the new growth sprouts for a new year.

Speaking of a new year we will celebrate Valentines Day for 2007 before our next visit and one of the best, time tested ways to show love and affection is to share the beauty of cut flowers or living plants. From the days of Greek mythology we have picked pretty flowers from the hills and valleys to present to our sweethearts. As the years have progressed we started building conservatories and greenhouses to grow more impressive flowers to gift to our sweethearts and now we are able to purchase beautiful and unique flowers from all over the world to express our love. Valentines Day is the largest cut flower holiday in our country and more cut roses, carnations and spring bouquets are sold on this day than any other to express the deep love we share for our spouses and sweethearts. Roses are clearly the most popular Valentine flower and worldwide production usually sells out on this day that celebrates love. The best American and Dutch grown roses draw the highest prices for their limited supplies of long stemmed roses. Worldwide production of cut roses has grown dramatically with huge rose crops produced at favorable altitudes in countries like Ecuador and Columbia that have much lower production costs and still produce beautiful crops and now dominate the United States retail markets and have actually lowered the cost of a dozen roses in recent years on Valentines Day or any other day. Roses still cost more on Valentines than other dates because of supply and demand and since it takes at least two years of production to get a rose crop in flower production from the time a cutting is rooted and the plant is grafted. Growers cannot produce extra roses just for this holiday each year on such a long-term crop. There are hundreds of varieties and colors of roses. Although long stemmed, big budded red roses are the most popular in our country many sweethearts may prefer yellow, pink, white, orange or other colors of roses. In Italy blue roses are the most popular and since there are no true blue roses yet – they take white roses and dye them bright blue with coloring soaked up through the cut stems. There are always some rose novelties or specialty crops to add extra excitement.  This year a new rose is being introduced with stems as long as 6’ topped off with large rose flowers. A Utah company has patented and is marketing a system of personalized roses where they are able to print a custom message on the rose petals, like Rodd loves Dona!,  Be my sweetheart!, Will you marry me? or your message of choice. They are licensing the technology around the world. In my opinion it is hard to top the beauty of roses or any of the other many beautiful flowers and their own natural beauty.

All cut flowers will last longer if you keep them in clean water with a little cut flower food or flower preservative added to extend their vase life. If you get the flowers dry (not in water) make a fresh cut at the bottom of the stem and place them in clean water with preservative as soon as possible. Strip off any foliage or leaves that will be below the water line in order to help keep the water clean longer before you need to change the water. Cut flowers will hold up better if not placed immediately in front of a heater or heat vent and actually will last longer when displayed in a cool room. If your sweetheart prefers daises, amaryllis, bird of paradise, anthuriums or any of the hundreds of other cut flower choices surprise her with a beautiful bouquet of her favorite flowers on this special day when cupid matches lovers. Beautiful flowers help us remind our significant other that they are not taken for granted and are truly special and important to us. Some sweethearts prefer a living plant such as a blooming orchid, miniature rose, blooming tulips, hyacinths, paperwhites, daffodils, kalanchoe, cyclamen or a beautiful houseplant to be cherished for years like a spathiphyllum, dracaena, ficus or other special plant that brings back or creates memories.

 I know some couples who share their love by planting a tree together or selecting a rose bush to add to their yard this spring. There is certainly nothing wrong with giving a beautiful bouquet with chocolates or presenting flowers before you head to a memorable dinner together to make the holiday truly special. We wish you a very happy and special Valentines Day if you are already with the love of your life or we hope that you find true love this year and it adds an extra dimension to your life as your love grows for one another.

Houseplants add warmth and life to any home and can change the look and feel of a room but they seem even more special in the winter when so much of our outdoor vegetation is dried up and brown and we are inside more of each day. Besides adding color and interest to your home, plants can literally help freshen the air as they naturally take in and process carbon dioxide and other gases that are not good for us and produce lots of fresh oxygen our bodies do need. For many years now NASA has been experimenting with air filters for the space station and although they certainly use a variety of mechanical, ionic and mineral filters they have found that growing, respirating and transpiring plants are one of the best filters for contaminants and an excellent generator of oxygen. Certain plants like Chlorophytum or airplane plants excel at cleaning the air and have earned space on the space station even though they don’t produce anything the astronauts can eat but somebody decided what they breathe is pretty important and that is where many foliage or houseplants excel.

Besides their role as clean air machines there is a trend towards recognizing and using houseplants as living art. This trend probably started in Europe but is being widely adopted here in the United States to select and place houseplants in groupings to create a visual effect, in mixed pots or dish gardens, grown in bonsai, braided, poodle, espaliered or numerous other unique shapes to create interest or drama. Most of the larger size foliage houseplants are grown in Florida or California where they get bountiful sunlight and don’t have to use as much heat or energy to grow these slow growing warm blooded crops. They are then shipped here for your selection and enjoyment. The cheaper houseplants are usually sun grown but may drop more leaves and have a harder time adjusting to your low light in the house while the better foliage plants are acclimated under increasing shade for weeks or months before shipping. This acclimating costs more but almost always increases your chances of house plant success.

Your collection of house plants will often vary in physical size, pot size, type of soil mix and growth rate or vigor so watering will vary depending on the plant and you should generally not just water everything because it is Tuesday or some other set day. Observe your plants, feel the soil and wait to water until lightly dry and then water good. Wait to water again until dry again. Big plants in small pots will need water more often while small plants in big pots will need water less often.  Most houseplants don’t really need much fertilizer because they are growing at such a slow pace in low light. You can feed with a liquid fertilizer every fourth or fifth watering or use a slow release fertilizer every 4 to 6 months. There are a few pest problems you can face like white fuzzy mealy bugs or very small red spiders that leave little yellow dots on the leaves where they have sucked and if they get real bad they will actually create fine webbing. These and other pest problems are pretty easy to solve with a systemic insecticide, aerosol indoor plant bomb or by mixing a little general purpose insecticide in your sprayer and thoroughly spraying your plants. The bigger problems are the tendency to overwater houseplants which causes the roots to drown or have a shortage of oxygen and weakens the plant to be attacked by rots or funguses. When watering it is better to err to the dry side rather than the wet side if you are unsure whether to water. The other major problem which causes a slow degeneration of most foliage plants is low light. Compared to 5000 to 15000 footcandles out in the yard on a bright day. Most places in your home have only 50 to 200 footcandles of light so many plants will slowly go downhill. Place the plants near windows or under lights to get as much light as possible and adjust to the idea of using a plant for several months or years depending on the light and then replace it with a fresh new energetic plant. You can also renew or re-energize many of your houseplants in the spring, summer or fall by moving them out on your patio or under trees. Remember they will need more water in the higher light but will usually produce a flush of new growth when given a chance to “vacation” outside. You can pinch and prune your plants to control their growth, to shape them and to get cuttings which you can try to propagate.

There are many wonderful choices in houseplants these days far beyond the normal rubber plants, weeping figs and scheffeleras.  Visit your local nursery, garden center or florist and select some houseplants and start purifying your air and creating a style or personality for your home.

Happy New Year! We hope you had a very happy and rewarding 2007 and are full of excitement and anticipation as we enter this fresh year of 2008 which affords us a new clean start. Every year results in special memories and experiences that accumulate to tell the stories of our lives. Although we get a fresh start each year we hopefully are wise enough to learn from our experiences in the earlier preceding years to do a better job each new year in picking out how to spend our time, what skills to develop, whom we want to spend our time with and the myriad of other choices and decisions we get to make each day. A new year gives us a great opportunity to re-evaluate whether we are happy and growing in our jobs, our families, church, community, friendships, education and hobbies. The older I get the more I have come to realize that if something is not working in family, church, work or personal relationships it may involve my attitude or carrying too much baggage or memory instead of exercising forgiveness and giving things a fresh start. The New Year seems a good time to re-evaluate, to forgive and to start fresh but blessed with the knowledge and experiences of past successes and short-comings.

Our yards and gardens can use a fresh start or a review every now and then as well and a new year provides a good opportunity to do just that.  If your trees and shrubs got slammed by the ice storm that may have created issues that force you to do some planning and of course the first thing you have to do is prune out the damaged branches or cut down trees or shrubs damaged beyond recovery. After dealing with the emergency issues, take some time to decide if you want to spend more or less time outdoors in the year ahead. Do you want to grow any of your own food? Do you want to add new trees or shrubs to your permanent landscape? Do you like the amount of flowerbeds you have now or do you want to add new beds around the trees in the front yard or new flowerbeds along the front sidewalk? Do you want to remake your backyard into an outdoor living area? Do you want to add a garden pond, a cold frame or a greenhouse? Do you want to add stone walks or create a butterfly or wildlife garden?

There are an endless array of possibilities to change or upgrade your personal outdoor living and landscape environment. If you want to spend more time outside getting a physical workout, taking in some sunshine, and communing with nature you can easily tackle most all these projects yourself and may only want to hire a landscaper or gardener for heavier projects like laying stone pathways or digging garden ponds. If you don’t want to tackle the actual physical work but still want to enjoy the beauty and serenity of an upgraded landscape you can hire the landscape design and installation services from a local nursery or garden center to make these dreams and visions a reality. Many people enjoy the experience of planting their own color annuals or vegetables, mowing their lawn and basic yard maintenance but if you prefer to spend all your outdoor time with a glass of iced tea in a swinging chair or on a patio recliner you can hire really good yard services to mow and trim your yard and even plant your seasonal color plants.                

Take time to decide how you want your yard to look and how much of the work you want to do and how much you want do with your children, the help of neighborhood youth or you can hire commercial landscapers, garden centers or lawn services to help you plan, create and maintain the yard and gardens you have dreamed about. Whether you are going to do the work yourself or have someone to do the work for you this is good time of year to do a soil test. Dig down to about 6” deep at several places in your flowerbeds or lawn and then use samples from 3 or 4 similar areas to fill a pint bottle with soil. Take the bottle to your nearest OSU county extension office and they will run a good soil test for $10.00 and get the results completed in about 2 to 3 weeks. Since the cost of fertilizer has shot way up the last couple of years and with all of us working to be more responsible with the environment soil tests make more sense now than ever. In this region we usually do not need any additional phosphorous and may not even need any potassium. You may only need to feed nitrogen to your lawn and possibly even your gardens. There is no sense to pay for more fertilizer than you need and the extra phosphorous can negatively affect our water quality and encourage more algae bloom in streams and lakes. I would encourage you to do a soil test in your front yard and another from your backyard and maybe a third from your main flowerbed. When you get your results take them to your local nursery or garden center to help you select the best fertilizer program for your yard without wasting valuable minerals and resources. You will probably save enough on your fertilizer to pay for the soil tests plus you will be more environmentally responsible to only feed what is needed this spring and summer. 

All the mail order seed and garden catalogs are now mailing out so this winter season is a great time to review these catalogs and pick out new plants you want to try. I like to encourage you to buy locally and our local nurseries offer many new plants but occasionally there will be specialty or unusual plants that are only available by mail order or over the internet.  Do try something new as it can be fun and lets you feel like a plant explorer and gives you something to show friends and talk about. Have fun planning your garden and make time to enjoy your yard and gardens as part of a very special 2008.