Okay.. maybe not all the flowers.  I’m thinking daffodils. And they are almost done blooming.  And some of them haven’t bloomed at all.

I am always amazed at how many varieties of daffodils/narcissus’ there are.  I always want the ones that I don’t have.  I just have to remember it come fall when I pour bulbs into the giant hole in the ground that I’m going to dig.

This is also the time when some daffodils have decided they don’t want to bloom.  There are different reasons, but some are that they didn’t get enough energy saved into the bulb to produce the flower, or they need to be divided, or they are getting too much nitrogen in their fertilizer, or…

I found a bunch of information from the American Daffodil Society. 

Bulbs need to be fertilized every so often, say every couple of years.  They like a 5-10-10 feet at planting, when leaves start showing and again when they bloom.  (5-10-10 means it should have 5% by weight nitrogen, 10% phosphorus and 10% potassium, in that order).  If it is getting too much nitrogen it will promote leaf growth, but not flower production. 

If the plants are getting too little sun, they won’t perform very well.  They need at least half a day of sun to produce flowers, longer if only in partial sunlight.

If they are in competition for food with other plants, they will be less likely to produce flowers. 

Make sure they are in an area with good drainage.  They love water, but they don’t do well where the water puddles.  The roots can rot and then the plants die out.  If they get basal rot fungus, they will have color loss on the leaves, malformed leaves, stems and flowers or all of the above.  If you have basal rot, you can not cure it, so you need to dig up and discard the bulbs.

Make sure that you leave the leaves on until they die back completely.  If the leaves are cut too soon the plant cannot store enough food for the bulb to produce flowers the following year. 

Daffodil bulbs need to be divided every year or two.  I haven’t divided mine in much longer than that!

Wait until the foliage is yellowed and then dig up the bulbs.  Separate the individual bulbs, getting rid of any that are soft.  You can replant them right away (about 6 inches apart and 6 inches deep), or dry the bulbs in the shade, store them in a mesh bag of some sort and replant them in the fall.  If you do replant them immediately, DO NOT water them until the fall.  If you water them, they will just rot.   

When the flowers are done, you want to remove them.  If you leave the seed heads, the plant uses its energy to produce the seeds and not restore the bulbs energy reserves.

And there are a couple more possibilities including inhospitable weather during the previous Spring or the bulbs may be diseased or stressed from shipping the Summer before and a couple of others.  Just check out the American Daffodil Society‘s site.

Dig it!

Posted under Spring

Spring is my favorite season.  I can see the beauty in all of the four seasons in Iowa, but I especially love this time of year.  I love the smells of the earth being turned by the tractors and tillers and of the new-mown grass.  I love the colors.  Everything looks so vivid after the gloom of winter and the browns and greys of late winter/early spring.  And when the flowers bloom, it’s gorgeous.  You can get some great pictures!  Of course, you can do that at any time, but it sure looks great after the long winter we had.  Here are some that were sent in to either me or Mark (who then forwarded them on to me). 

Keep them coming!

Dig it!

Posted under Uncategorized

Last week’s post was apparently pretty popular.  I got a couple more emails on hydrangeas.  One from LeeAnn was asking about pruning her PeeGee hydrangea.  Actually, she mentioned that she has a couple of different varieties.  While I can’t tell you which name the plant will have, I can give some pointers to identify what TYPE of hydrangea you may have. 

I have come across several different types in my research, but some are not hardy to our state.  There is the Bigleaf/Mophead/Florist type called Hydrangea macrophylla.  This has large leaves and tend to have large rounded flower heads.  One site said they are not hardy in Iowa, but another said that Smooth hydrangeas are.  My mophead hydrangea has a bigleaf and keeps coming back every year, so this may be a case of the same name for different plants.

Hills of Snow or Sevenbark  are called Hydrangea arborescens.  These include Annabelle hydrangeas which are hardy in Iowa.

Pee Gee’s are Hydrangea paniculata.  These are a variety that can be trimmed into tree shape and bloom on new growth.  Or, at least, many do.

Oakleaf Hydrangeas are Hydrangea quercifolia.  These are also hardy in Iowa.

Tea of Heaven is Hydrangea serrata and is NOT hardy in Iowa. 

And then there is Climbing hydrangea, Hydrangea anomala petiolaris.  Most of what I see as hardy to Iowa doesn’t list this, but I found one site that mentioned it was hardy to zone 4. 

As for pruning the pee gee to look like a tree, it is amazingly hard to find detailed information on that.  What I did find says that you should cut back half of the plant each year.  The stems will be stronger and the blooms, though fewer, will be larger.  There is some information here.

There is more information about all things hydrangea here.

Many of the hydrangeas in Iowa, especially the smooth variety grow only on new growth and the old growth is killed off in our winters.  That old growth needs cut off.  I usually wait until I know that there is no growth on some of the lower parts of the stems.

I cut them off and then enjoy the new growth!

When buying a hydrangea make sure you get one that is hardy to your zone and make sure you have the right light requirements.  And if you have the large leaf variety, make sure you give them a LOT of water!

I hope you enjoy your hydrangeas!

Dig it!

Posted under General

Deb sent me an email the other day telling me that she has three hydrangeas that will not bloom for her.  The year of the flood (2008) one of them bloomed, so that flood water must have had some good stuff in it.   Otherwise, nada.. no blooms.

Well, hydrangeas love water.  We found that out the first year we had our ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea.  It kept drooping a couple of days after we would water it.  We ended up watering it with five-gallon buckets of water every other day.  That seemed to keep it happy.  So maybe that is what happened with the one hydrangea that DID bloom for Deb… it finally got the water it thought it needed!

Other problems are too much shade, having the wrong type of hydrangea, winter kill and pruning too much (although I think that is more of a problem on the southern zone plants).

There are several varieties of hydrangea and many of them are not hardy in our state.  These put out blooms on the old wood.  The problem is that in Iowa, our winters tend to kill off that old wood.  You need to make sure the variety you have can either be saved by keeping it well covered (which probably won’t work) or blooms off of new growth.  ‘Endless Summer’ and ‘Annabelle’ are two varieties that are hardy in Iowa.  If you manage to get one of the not-necessarily-hardy varieties, make sure you know if it blooms on new growth or old growth before you prune anything.  The oakleaf hydrangea is a beautiful one to get.  Its leaves are shaped like oak leaves and the foliage turns burgundy in the fall. 

If the hydrangea is buried too deeply, it won’t bloom.  It may be in too much shade, although ours in on the east side of our house and is in shade for half of the day.   They prefer rich, well-drained and consistently moist soil and if there is too much nitrogen in the soil with will keep the energy focused in root and stem growth and not the flowers. 

One of the most fun things about the ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangea is that you can pick which color of flower you want.  Do you want pink?

Or blue?

In order to get blue blooms, you need aluminum in the soil.  This is only available to the plants when the soil pH is low.  So, if you want blue flowers,

 you need acidic soil.  You can buy aluminum sulfate at your local nursery.  To get the pink blooms

you need to increase the pH.  Adding high levels of phosphorus fertilizer to acidic soil should prevent or limit the plant’s uptake of aluminum.  Adding lime to the soil will increase that pH.  If the soil pH is somewhere in between the acidic and alkaline, the plants may produce a dull green or purple colored bloom. 

And in some plants, you can have both!

We didn’t add anything to the soil around the hydrangea last summer and the plant has blue blooms near the house and pink blooms away.  I bet you can tell which side of the plant is more acidic!

I have both aluminum and the lime.  I wonder which one I should go for this year…. Let me know what you think.

Dig it!

Posted under General

I don’t think I’ve planted potatoes in years.  Mainly because we don’t have the room or I forget and don’t get any in time.  Not so this year!  I am bound and determined to get those spuds in the ground on Good Friday!  As long as I’ve been around a garden, that is the day to get those potatoes in the ground.  For years I thought that if you didn’t get them in the ground on Good Friday, you wouldn’t get any potatoes at all.  Or they would be filled with bugs and other slimy things.  Every year I am asked “Did you get your potatoes in on Good Friday?”  Every year I shake my head and say “I didn’t plant any potatoes”.  They look at me with sympathy in their eyes, pat my hand and say “That’s alright, dear, there’s always next year”.  Okay, they don’t actually day that.  Sometimes I feel like I’m a failure, though, because I didn’t plant any potatoes. 

This year I got some Kennebec, Yukon Gold and Red Lasoda. 

 

I love mashed potatoes from Yukon Gold, but don’t ask me why I bought the others.  I have heard of Kennebec but not the Red Lasoda.  Doesn’t matter.  I’ll enjoy them later in the year.

Since it has been so long since I have planted potatoes I figured that I had better do some reading up on them.  I know to dig a hole, cut the potatoes – including several eyes- plop them in the hole and then mound it up.  That seems to pretty much be the rules to plant potatoes.  However, in my “research” I found one article that tells me to cut “the tubers into sections, place the freshly cut seed pieces in a humid, 60 to 70° F location for one or two days.” This comes from the Iowa State Extension Service (check it out here).  It says that the time after the cutting allows a callus to cover the cut surface.  I may do half with the cutting and plopping, and then half with the healing time before plopping it in the hole.   The article also mentions that potatoes sold at the grocery store have usually been treated to prevent sprouting.  That comes as a surprise to me since most of the potatoes that I forget about in our basement usually have sprouts.  And I’m pretty sure that is what we planted when we were kids.  I certainly remember helping Dad dig them up… trying to get them all out before he shoved the fork back in the mound… so I know they grew.  Hmmm.

When you plant your potatoes, dig your hole about 3 to 4 inches deep (and about a foot apart), plop in the pieces- cut side down- and then mound up the dirt around them.  If the potatoes grow with too much light hitting them, they produce a lot of chlorophyll and high levels of something called “glycoalkaloids” that develop in that green tissue.  Green potatoes have a bitter taste when you eat them and may cause an upset stomach or even more serious health problems.  So make sure there is plenty of dirt that is mounded around the base of the plant.

This could be a grand experiment.  And maybe I’ll hold a few pieces back and plant them after Good Friday.  Might as well go all out on the Great Potato Experiment!  I’ll keep you updated.

Dig it!

Posted under General, Spring