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

Container gardening is not new as the practice has been around for centuries and was widely used in the Roman Empire, at the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon and is evidenced even in  Mayan ruins. The Roman urn planters are still popular to mark front entrances, by pools and on patios but today we have dramatically expanded our choices in containers and plant material for these container gardens. For many years we mainly planted urns, hanging baskets or planter boxes but today we can use on almost endless array of container choices to make design or fashion statements, to accent or add contrast and excitement to our homes, businesses and property. Retail sales of prepared container gardens rose 8% from 2004 to 2005 to exceed 1.3 billion dollars. That is the most recent year for which data is available but I can assure you the trend is growing each year and this does not include all the plants folks buy to plant in new containers or to replant existing containers and pots. Many folks replant their existing planter boxes, containers and hanging baskets each year and add one or more new containers to their collection. Everyone can participate in container gardening whether you live in an apartment or have a large estate. Select containers with drain holes, add your own drain holes or on really large containers you can add a significant layer of gravel, broken pots or other open drainage in the bottom of the container. Then fill the container with a good quality, well drained soil mix. You can either use a prepared soilless mix or mix your own soil with about 1/3 loamy soil, 1/3 sphagnum peat or composted pine bark and 1/3 of a combination of vermiculite, perlite or calcined clay. You may want to add some polymer crystals to the media to help hold water and reduce your watering by about half. Select the plants you want based on the exposure to sun, shade and wind. Container gardens are usually most interesting when you combine some taller upright plants with cascading plants. They are easy to care for as long as you water them regularly. Remember that the smaller containers and hanging containers will dry out more often while larger containers will hold more water and go longer between watering. Just as your regular flowerbeds will benefit from a 1 ½” to 3” thick layer of top mulch of natural bark or hulls so will your container gardens. Mulching reduces weed problems, reduces watering and keeps the soil temperature more consistent to keep your plants healthy and happy in our hot summer weather. Mulching is one of our very best sustainable gardening practices in Oklahoma.

Container gardening allows you to move your plants to areas where you are entertaining or want to make a special show. They allow you to create special focal points, to change your design more often than permanent plantings and to add excitement to your landscape. Some folks refer to container gardens as a plant “hole” lifted up out of the ground to make a statement and are easier to access to plant and care for.

I was just at a big greenhouse conference in Arizona and everyone was talking about the new trend in “Staycations” where folks are staying at home instead of taking long or distant vacations because of concerns about fuel prices and the economy. Many folks are spending more time in their own yards to grow their own vegetables, berries, pretty flower beds and container gardens or to develop an outdoor kitchen or living area. This is a great opportunity to discover the joy of gardening or to expand your gardening efforts.

Whether you are a trend setter taking a staycation or just want to enjoy and commune with nature, spend a little extra time in your yard and plant the trees and container gardens you enjoy to create own special garden environment.

Hopefully you had a great Memorial Day weekend and got to spend a little time working in your garden between the family activities and the visits to pay your respects at the cemetery. We owe so much to those who have preceded us and  served this grand country in our military as they worked to establish and protect our liberties, sometimes sacrificing their life and limb for our benefit. We also owe a great debt of gratitude to our family members, friends and fellow citizens that have preceded us and worked tirelessly to figure out new ways to work with nature, to harness energy, to create new products and services to enrich our lives. Each generation has worked hard to improve the life of the next generation and to give us a chance to live an easier, fuller and more satisfying life. That effort even applies to the yard and garden where there has been a continuous effort to discover new plants, breed new varieties, learn the best production techniques and to share that information to produce food, energy, shelter and beauty for others.

These days management gurus call it continuous improvement but that is what healthy civilizations or countries do naturally. There is a general commitment to explore, learn, do better and work for a better life for those that come after us. Thank goodness for our ancestors and their commitment to learn, share, plant trees and prepare for the future. Hopefully future generations will look back on our time and see that we contributed to this ongoing gift of learning and improving.

The weather has been fairly kind to us this spring and we have been enjoying beautiful flower displays from most all of our plants and most crops are growing very well. This is still a great time to plant most all kinds of container grown trees, shrubs and flowers. As we deal with hotter temperatures you will need to water a little deeper and more often after you plant to help the plants get well established than was required with earlier spring plantings. You can still be very successful and get lots of food, pleasure and beauty by planting now.          

This is a good time to feed your lawn and flowers before entering the heat of summer. It is a great time to mulch your flowerbeds with natural bark, hulls or compost materials to reduce watering, keep the soil temperature cooler and reduce weed problems. You can really add pizzazz to your porch, patio or add design flair to flowerbeds by potting up large pots, urns or your own unique containers with those special plants or combinations of plants you choose to make a design statement at your home. Container gardening really allows you to design and decorate with plants.

One of the highlights on the garden calendar each year is the annual Oklahoma Horticulture Society Garden Tour for Connoisseurs that will be held this coming Saturday and is your chance to visit seven very special Oklahoma City private gardens. Every year the Horticulture Society selects a different neighborhood and provides a chance to see some very special gardens. This year the gardens are all within a couple of miles of Northwest 50^th and North May Avenue. Tickets are $12.00 in advance at local garden centers or $15.00 on the day of the tour purchased at any of the individual gardens. This is the main fundraiser for the Oklahoma Horticulture Society and is used to support horticulture scholarships for 4-H and FFA Members and for horticulture students at OSU Stillwater, OSU Oklahoma City and Tulsa Community College. The tour sites will be open from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM and are a wonderful opportunity to see common and unusual plants in real Oklahoma Gardens and to get lots of design ideas from real Oklahoma gardeners while supporting a good cause.

As a member of the Horticulture Society board I guarantee you will enjoy the tour and we will deeply appreciate your support and the chance to encourage more young people to explore horticulture. Come out and enjoy the Garden Tour this weekend and then go buy some of the new plants you enjoy on the tour to add to your yard or container gardens.

We are in the prime of spring when we can plant most any plants and when all of our plants are growing rapidly and the entire plant kingdom seems happy and productive. This is a great time to plant the rest of your flowerbeds, to plant all your container gardens and hanging baskets so you can enjoy the next 6 months of our Oklahoma growing season. As we make the annual march through spring many seasonal flowers are celebrating with colorful displays of flowers. We are still enjoying some Iris and Wisteria we talked about earlier but now the Peonies and Roses are stealing the show. This last week I have seen some of the prettiest Peonies in years flowering just in time for Mothers Day and they will flower for the next several weeks. They produce beautiful large flowers, many very double in tones of pink, white and red grown from roots handled like bulbs planted in the fall or you can buy them now, grown out in nursery containers. They will make a magnificent show year after year in mid to late May.

Roses are one of our most famous and historic flowers that we use to communicate our love and friendship. We use roses for Valentine’s Day, Mothers Day, all kinds of special dates, weddings, anniversaries and just because. Besides enjoying rose cut flowers for special occasions you can grow beautiful roses in your own yard. Archeologists have found rose fossils dating back over 35 million years and they are prominent in Greek Mythology involving Aphrodite, Zephr, Chloris, Dionyses and Apollo. Roses are mentioned in Hindu legends involving Brahma and Vishnu arguing whether roses or lotus are the most beautiful flowers. Frescoe paintings in Crete from 1700 years before Christ feature roses and wreaths with roses were found in many old Egyptian tombs. The Romans became so enchanted with roses that they filled baths and fountains with rose water, created rose petal confetti for celebrations, set on carpets of rose flowers for very special feasts and events. They also used roses for perfume and medicinal purposes. During the fifteenth century the civil war to control England was known as the War of the Roses as the York area was identified by the white rose and the Lancaster area was represented by the red rose. Later the rose was championed by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet at a time when roses were in such demand that roses and rose water were used as legal tender. Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, established great rose gardens with over 250 varieties west of Paris. Cultivated roses were introduced to England and the rest of Europe from China in the late 1700’s. These new varieties from China were repeat bloomers instead of only blooming once a year.  The early roses were tones of pink and white until red roses were introduced from China. Frenchman Joseph Permet – Ducher discovered yellow roses in the early 1800’s and soon breeding had yellow and orange tones to go with the red, white and pink roses.

Today there are over 30,000 known varieties of roses for you to choose from in many growth styles from climbers or vines that do well on trellises and fences to polyantha’s that stay small and compact and work good as borders. The most common types are floribundas with clusters of flowers, grandifloras and the elegant hybrid teas with the large single stem flowers. All growth types are available in numerous colors.

You can buy beautiful container grown roses at your local nursery or garden center to add to your landscape. They do best planted in well drained soil planted in the full sun with the bud union or graft 1” to 2” above the soil.

After each flower is finished cut that stem back to at least the first leaf with 5 leaflets to direct the plants energy to produce more flowers rather than seed. Roses will need supplemental watering in the dry summer months to get the most flowers and they will benefit from several light feedings through the growing season. Some varieties are more susceptible to blackspot or mildew funguses which may require spraying. Your nurseryman can help you select the right rose bush for your application. They will come back year after year with just a little attention. Prune your roses back in late February to mid March each year and they will perform for many years.

Our days are now longer and the weather is inviting so make some time to get out and commune with nature in your yard and gardens.

In spite of a couple of surprisingly cold nights this last weekend it appears the spring season is in full gear and all of nature seems to be leafed out, blooming and springing back to life. You can now plant almost all kinds of container grown trees, shrubs, vegetables and flowers. Now is the best time to plant to take advantage of the full 6 month growing season between now and the killing frosts late next October or early next November.

Two of the plants making the biggest color splash now as you drive around our wonderful state are Azaleas and Iris. Both are plants that come back year after year with just a little attention and are available at garden centers and nurseries now if you want to buy some to add to your landscape. Azaleas are in the rhodendron  family and many varieties of azaleas are widely available in our area for use in full or partial shade . There are well over 10,000 varieties of species and hybird azaleas available in many tones of white, purple, red, orange and pink flowers.  Flowers range from a ½” to 2 ½” across but it is the huge quantity of flowers that makes a showy mound from 12” to 60” tall and across and the intensity of these flowers that makes them so impressive. Most popular deciduous varieties are native to North America and many evergreen varieties are native to Japan. Azaleas usually bloom at this time of year and stay in flower for 2 to 4 weeks although some new varieties like the Encore series bloom off and on throughout the season with bigger flower displays in the spring and fall.

In our part of the country Azaleas do best on the north or east side of the house or other buildings or in the shade created under trees. They like acidic (5.5 to 6 PH) and well drained soil. Adding lots of organic matter to your soil will help lower the PH and improve the drainage. You may want to dig a hole about the size of a bushel basket and mix Canadian sphagnum peat about 50/50 to your backfill as you plant azaleas into your yard. Azaleas are light feeders but will benefit from an annual application of a low PH fertilizer for acid loving plants. Any pruning should be done right after flowering in the next few weeks so you don’t cut off the flowers for next spring.

Iris is another plant available in thousands of varieties and we often think of them as a “grandma” plant as we probably saw them in grandma’s garden with their unique and royal looking bearded flowers. In reality, their history dates back much further than grandma as they were named after the goddess of the rainbow because of their many colors and their flower appears on the ancient sphinx statues and in many early Egyptian stone relief works. There are two major groups of iris, all with interesting green sword like or fan shaped foliage. Rhizome iris include the popular bearded, crested or beardless iris with thickened stems that grow horizontally and the smaller bulbous iris like Dutch iris that produce smaller flowers and need a period of dormancy between flowerings. The iris are available in a rainbow of colors including blue, purple, red, pink, yellow, white, black and many combinations of these colors. Some are especially interesting where the 3 upright or standard petals are one color and the 3 sepals or falls that drop down are another color. Iris roots have been used medicinally for dropsy, as a powerful cathartic and to remove freckles. Today the flowers are widely used to make a violet like perfume.

Select the Iris colors and varieties you like and plant them in the full sun in a well drained soil for best results. Space the plants one to two feet apart. They do best if you will work the soil 12 to 15 inches deep and mix in 2” to 4” of sphagnum peat or other good compost. You can plant container grown iris at the same depth as the soil in the container or if planting the rhizome or fleshy root dig a hole about 10” to 12” in diameter and 4” deep and make a ridge at the center of the hole where you can set the rhizome and spread the roots to each side of the shallow ridge and cover the rhizome with a thin layer of soil. Water thoroughly and regularly and get ready for your own iris flower show next spring like those enjoyed by the Egyptian Pharaohs and your grandma. Plant away and have fun in your yard and garden.

Hopefully your early planted vegetable gardens and flowers, fruit trees, grapes and other plants survived the frosts or hard freezes this last weekend. For the second year in a row we got popped with a cold front at mid April after two or three mild weeks above freezing. The mild weather causes many of our plants to think spring has arrived, bud out and to be particularly vulnerable when exposed to these late freezes following such nice mild weather. Thankfully this years mid April cold front does not appear to have dropped as low and did not linger for as many hours as last years freezes that caused so much crop damage. From looking at the seven day forecasts and our historical weather it appears that was probably our last flirtation with the 32º freezing mark this spring and we should be able to safely move into full planting mode on all but the hottest blooded container grown plants. It is probably best to wait until May 1^st or after when nighttime temperatures and soil temperatures rise a little more to plant periwinkle, caladiums, sweet potatoes and a few other real heat loving plants.

This is a great time to plant new trees and shrubs and to plant replacements for those trees lost or damaged in our bad ice storms of the last two winters. This is the time to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and most all of your other favorite warm season vegetables. With food prices up so dramatically, what better year to plant some vegetables in your own vegetable garden or even plant some amongst your regular flower beds. Few things are as enjoyable as planting your own vegetables, nurturing and caring for them and then the joy of picking your own fresh vegetables to wash and eat fresh in the garden, at the dinner table or in your cooking.

Our grandparents mainly raised vegetables to feed their families with a few flowers to add color and beauty to the landscapes. Our parents mainly planted and raised flowers to feed their souls and beautify their houses and neighborhoods with just a few vegetables for their favorite recipes or dishes. These days we mainly plant and grow ornamental flowers to decorate and landscape our houses but you may be missing out on the special joy and satisfaction of growing some of your own food. It is a real treat to raise your own fresh tomatoes, slicing cucumbers, sweet or hot peppers, strawberries for homemade shortcake and cream or any of the other countless home grown treats you can raise.

It is just plain fun to get your hands into freshly worked dirt and to plant your own plants. It may be a new wisteria vine motivated by the beautiful purple wisteria now blooming on arbors and fences across our state.  You could plant azaleas, rhodendrons or camellias like those creating gorgeous masses of color under trees or on the north or east side of homes across our state.

Flowering bedding plants create an amazing splash of color in your container gardens, hanging baskets and flowerbeds. Consider the traditional geraniums, petunias, marigolds, zinnias, begonias, penta, impatiens or numerous other colorful annuals to jazz up your yard and plant now to create your very own photo opportunity. This is one of the greatest seasons of the year, full of energy, growth and vitality. Spend as much time as possible in your yard and enjoy your own personal experience with nature.