Gardening Tips: Keeping the Bloom Alive

August is the height of summer on the island, and the MV Agricultural Society’s Agricultural Fair (August 15, 16, 17, 18) is the highlight of August. Deadlines for making serious selections of flowers and vegetables for entry into the Fair are approaching. Decent rainfall between now and entry time should produce a nice flush of fresh new growth.

If you have family and people visiting and helping, it’s not unreasonable to mark your entries with “Do Not Pick” signs and Day-Glo caution tape! Read the entry description and presentation carefully to keep things simple and uniform for the judges. I once submitted an entire bunch of ‘Lemon Boy’ tomatoes because they looked so perfect. Stern note on the entry label: “Only three.” Which brings me to tomatoes…

Tomato department

I have previously grown tomatoes from the North Carolina State University (NCSU) “Mountain” series tomato breeding program with good results. The author of this exemplary breeding program is Randy Gardner, PhD. His output has transformed tomato growing for both home and commercial growers, as this link describes: cfgrower.com/thoughts-on-heirloom-tomato-breeding/

This year I chose Mountain Merit and Mountain Magic. The seed is hybrid and expensive, but each variety has been selected to produce heirloom-style fruit and flavor with disease resistance, and without the prophylactic spraying and fumigation schedules that heirlooms so often require.

Every expensive seed germinated and I was able to share a few plants. These two were joined by three other heirloom tomato cultivars, Black Krim, Black Heirloom and Oxheart Pink. They are all doing well so far, fingers crossed, with the Mountain series plants looking particularly good.

Much of Dr. Gardner’s work involves producing cultivars that are resistant to late blight. For many gardeners here, that test, where the jury is still out, is what happens to plants in the wake of conditions created by passing tropical depressions: wet, warm, humid air masses.

Repotting the orchid

Phalaenopsis orchids have become much more accessible and affordable in recent decades, good news for those fascinated by these beautiful flowering plants. One visitor, who is a bit of a plant nerd, laughed when I asked about repotting: “They’ve become so cheap, just throw them away if they look neglected.”

When you’re born frugal, that’s impossible, and no matter the price, you build relationships with the floral friends in your life. So I recently set about repotting an older phalaenopsis friend that had begun to look a bit mousey. Orchard manager David Geiger, the propagator at Heather Gardens for many years, “held my hand” over the phone (as did a Horticulture (February 2001) from my archives). He reminded me that the bark medium breaks down over time and doesn’t keep the roots healthy and aerated, and needs to be replaced.

The clear plastic pot allowed the plant to slide out easily and exposed the mess of old roots that had become dark and mushy. These clear plastic pots are a great improvement in orchid keeping: look for them when purchasing an orchid. The root color of healthy, well-watered plants is a vibrant bright green. Healthy roots that need some water are silvery-green, but still plump. Any roots that are shriveled, brown, or black are failures. Once I had the orchid on the bench, I removed as much of that mass as I could and poked and repacked fresh medium in and around the base of the plant and healthy roots.

So far the results are positive. New leaves that are smooth and shiny are growing; I think I see two tiny nodules emerging between the leaves on the stem that may become new inflorescences.

In the garden: Routine maintenance

Much can be done to bring about a visual, if not an actual, transformation of tired, high-summer gardens. Care and deadheading are careful and painstaking, but once the dead leaves, flowers and seed heads are removed, there is an immediate improvement. Many perennials flush out new growth and flowers as a result. This excludes weeding; in good soil, weeding is easy and done as you go.

Astilbe and alchemilla mollis will fade – remove dead flowers and cut them back. Alchemilla will produce new foliage and flowers; astilbe is done for the season, although the fern-like masses of foliage form attractive mounded shapes. Some newer astilbe cultivars have reddish-tinted foliage, which remains effective after flowering has finished.

Geraniums seem to flower forever, but the plants themselves spread and continue to grow; prune them back. ‘Rozanne’ is a much-praised introduction, voted Perennial of the Year in 2008; there are others like it, equally good garden plants and they flower for a long time. Limit the spread by cutting them back by a third to a half.

Nepeta is another reliable, hardy plant that starts to look tired and untidy at this point. Prune it back. Platycodon is a great bloomer that I can’t say enough good things about. However, once it’s decorated with old flower debris, it doesn’t look so great. Remove spent platycodon capsules and harvest reblooms.

Gardens with butterfly bushes also need to consider the “browns.” Most butterfly bushes are heavy flowering shrubs, making them attractive to butterflies and pollinators. Each faded flower spike will turn brown. As noted above, this is a delicate job, but once done, it makes a huge improvement. (Give it another day or two; then rinse and repeat.)

Tawny daylilies are done blooming for the year. Their flower stems age gray-brown and pull easily when fully ripe. If it is in a front-and-center position, cut the tired foliage all the way back to four to six inches: new, fresh leaves will follow and improve the appearance of the planting. Otherwise, just leave them and save yourself the trouble.

Newer Hemerocallis cultivars, the tetraploids and repeat bloomers, continue to produce new leaves while the older ones shrivel and collapse into the crown. They are easy to pull once they are fully mature. It is a chore, but worth doing for better air circulation and appearance.