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Spring Gardening Tips for a Flourishing Garden
As the vibrant colors of spring burst forth and the air fills with the sweet scent of blossoms, it's the perfect time to roll up your sleeves and tend to your garden. Whether you're a seasoned gar...
Chest of Hope
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Usually, June is full of roses in my Sacramento garden. It’s the second wave of bloom after the big burst of first roses in April. But not this year. Where there should be buds, there are only stubs. Those are “blind shoots,” growth that never produces a flower. In early May, I dutifully deadheaded spent blooms to prepare the bushes to generate new buds. But May’s confusing weather – triple-digit one week, 30 degrees cooler the next – created equally confused plants. Is it August? Is it March? The stems look healthy with lots of foliage and fast growth. But no matter how long those stems grow, they won’t sprout a bloom. Blind shoots are the result of extreme fluctuations in temperature and growing conditions. Our yo-yo weather confused many bushes, especially when temperatures plunged back below normal. Another oddity: Blind shoots can appear on the same bush with normal blooming stems. Some rose varieties are more sensitive to temperature fluctuations than others. But this week, I’ve seen blind shoots on more than 100 bushes in my own garden. They’re appeared on almost every hybrid tea in my garden as well as most of the floribundas and many miniatures. Even the David Austin shrub roses have blind shoots. This is a condition on modern reblooming roses, which covers most varieties commonly grown in home gardens. Old garden varieties introduced more than a century ago include many once-blooming roses such as Lady Banks banksia roses or Dorothy Perkins ramblers. Their growth after initial spring bloom is all foliage, no buds. But modern roses are valued for their reblooming qualities. And an abundance of blind shoots will prevent the bush from producing new buds this summer. Fortunately, the cure for blind shoots is easy: Prune them off. Restart the growth by cutting the cane or shoot back about 5 or 6 inches, snipping about 1/2-inch above a leaf with five leaflets. So, I’m back deadheading my roses again, but all I’m snipping off this round are a bunch of stubs. Hopefully, if weather cooperates, I’ll have a new round of blooms – in August.
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Garden Checklist for week of May 19
Temperatures will be a bit higher than normal in the afternoons this week. Take care of chores early in the day – then enjoy the afternoon. It’s time to smell the roses.
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. If you haven’t already, it’s time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters.
* Plant dahlia tubers. Other perennials to set out include verbena, coreopsis, coneflower and astilbe.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Don’t forget to water. Seedlings need moisture. Deep watering will help build strong roots and healthy plants.
* Add mulch to the garden to help keep that precious water from evaporating. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch to 1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.
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