Rubber-Neckin’ to Come

You know what rubber-neckers are, don’t you? Streeeeeetching their necks to see all that can be seen as they drive by an interesting sight. They are typically referred to as the cause of slowing traffic as it passes by a wreck. Twist that connotation around a bit, please, and think of rubber necking at a garden as you drive by. Yes, you have! I know you’ve rubber-necked at a garden. (Maybe it was a wreck of a garden!) That’s what I’m aiming for in my new yard at the former Madison County Jail in Winterset. Unfortunately, I’m still mostly aiming. (In case you’re not familiar with our move, you can see more about our 1903 county jail in Winterset, Iowa, at Applehurst.com.)

Surrounded by gravel, baked by the sun, and less than a foot of top soil over gravel.

Slowly. Much too slowly. Starting a new garden from scratch is taking much longer than I would like, but I keep reminding myself of the lessons of patience that I have already learned. I’ve heard it said–and I do believe it’s true–that you should live with a new home landscape for a year before digging in.  We moved here in November, and the growing season has barely begun. I have already ‘dug in’ a bit, but I am thinking hard about what I’d like my new gardens and yard to look like.

The shady side with a little morning sun. Nice!

So, here’s the situation: I have two extremes of garden siting and conditions. One side of the ‘house’ is where the exercise yard of the jail was situated. There is little open garden space, and what is there has only a few inches of soil over several feet of pea gravel. The other side of the house has a traditional lawn under shady trees and deep, loamy soil. Sounds like the best of all possible options, but having many options seems to make it harder for me to decide what to plant with my limited time and dollars.

The gravelly soil will become my new herb garden, which works out well because I sell herb plants at Applehurst, and this will help people see what their little 4″ pots grow up to be. As for the lawn side of the house, I’ll be able to have the shade garden that I’ve always wanted. As for the shade area, there are so many possibilities! Goat’s beard (Aruncus), Astilbe – the tall ones, such as ‘Bressingham Beauty’, Heuchera- also the tall ones, such as H. americana ‘Dale’s Strain’, Ligularia, and snow-on-the-mountain (Aegopodium). Ferns of many kinds, hostas, even a mossy garden will work here. Yummy!

You should head to yoga class now to prepare. Don’t want you to miss a thing as you drive by next summer!

Favorite Container Combo

In summers past, while I worked full-time as a garden editor, I woke to watering chores every morning. As many as 40 containers required my attention, in the hopes that each one of them would be photographed for the pages of Better Homes and Gardens, or one of the other magazines I worked on at the Meredith Corporation. This year I had only five containers. That’s ’5′ without another digit in front of it, nor following. Only five, as in the number of fingers I have on only one hand. (Relative) freedom! Yea!

But that doesn’t mean that I find container gardening a particularly boring or exhausting. It’s fun to create eye-catching pretties in the garden. Here’s one of my favorites of this season, and a pairing I’ll put together again: ‘Breathless Blush’ Euphorbia and ‘Sweet Caroline Bronze’ Ipomoea.

Did you pot up an especially rewarding pairing? Share it!

Make This Stuff and Stuff Yourself: Good Grape’s Post

I don’t read many blogs, but there are a few on my GoogleReader that I am nearly always glad to catch up on. One of my favorites is GoodGrape.com.

Visit Good Grape for the most recent post, Nine Things Every Wine Lover Must Know How To Make. I have made several of the special treats on his list, and now I think  I’ll make a list of my own in a future post. (However, I’m not sure my homemade kimchi goes with wine.)

Mmmm. Stomach growling . . .

Post-Tour Turf Repair

Yes, it seems a little tedious but I just aim for a meditative rhythm and I'm done in no time. Now I get why chain gangs sing.

Post-Tour Turf Repair. Bet you can’t say that three times real fast. But fast is what I’m going for today. We’ve had over 10 inches of rain just since the first of June, so the grassy paths in my yard were already a little ‘flat’ before 700 pairs of feet strolled through on the garden tour last Saturday. Much more rain is forecast for the coming week–every day, in fact. So this morning I got out my trusty core-aerator and went to work to beat the next thunderstorm that’s on its way. I can rent a power aerator for the larger areas of  my yard, and in the past have shared the rental with a neighbor. But the narrower spaces between garden fences, under arbors, checkered by stepping stones, or those near irrigation heads are the ones that are  most trampled right now, and the manual version of core aeration will work just fine. I also like that I can whip it out on a whim and not worry about scheduling a rental. The tool I have is a Fiskars aerator, and I love that the handle is long enough for me (I’m 5’8″) and the step is broad so it doesn’t hurt my foot.

My Fiskars aerator was a free sample, but Yard Butler and Hound Dog make similar tools. When I first saw one of these, I didn’t think I would actually use it much, but for a small yard with narrow spaces, it is a much better option than trying to wrestle a power aerator under an arbor. As compacted as my clay soil is, the cores and holes will improve the health of my lawn better than just poking a bunch of skinny little spikes in the ground. Core aeration is one of the best things you can do to create a healthy lawn, and it is not the same thing as spike aeration (which some researchers think is actually detrimental to turf health in clay soil.)

There are a few places I will scratch in a little grass seed, and since we are expected to have moist conditions for most of the next two weeks, it will probably germinate. Between the gradual degradation of the cores on the turf, the aeration of the soil, and the extra seed, I think we’ll be back to normal pretty quickly.

The cores will degrade over a couple of weeks as it continues to rain, and I continue to mow. Just like the dog poop they resemble.

Whew! My yard is getting healthier by the minute. That was fast.

Put A Hold On My Lavender

English lavender line the steps to my front door.

Nearly every year, the lavender in my front yard (yes, you can grow lavender in Iowa!) blooms just after Father’s Day. Although it’s about ten days ahead of schedule this year, it absolutely rocks! Hope it holds out for the Polk County Master Gardener Tour on Saturday–some cooler, dryer weather would help with that. I hope it doesn’t burn itself out due to hot, humid weather. Just hold on a little longer, Fellas. Gals. Whatever.

My lavender has been very happy in this bed over the last eight years, and has produced many seedlings. When I was on the Gardening Today show on WHO radio last Sunday, Eileen and Mohamad encouraged me to talk about growing lavender. It seems they get a lot of calls about that on the show, because so many gardeners are disappointed in how it performs for them. So here are my tips for growing lavender in the Midwest.

Variety English lavender–not French or Spanish–is the plant you should shop for. L. angustifolia ‘Munstead’ or ‘Hidcote’ seem to be the most reliably hardy and tolerant of humidity. There are a very few others that will perform well, such as the pink variety ‘Jean Davis’, but these two are the best choices to start, I think.

Soil My soil is a little heavy, however it has a fairly high pH–usually around 7.1 to 7.4. The lavender is planted next to limestone, which probably also influences the pH upward. Good drainage is very important; mine is planted on a slope.

Site Full sun. There is no other option.

Care I do not fertilize every year, but I do top-dress with compost every other year or so. As with most perennials, lavender should not be cut back after frost. I save the clean-up for spring, waiting until there is about two inches of new growth, then cut back all of the previous year’s growth.

Can you recommend any other lavender cultivars for the Midwest? I have tried a few others, but they have not been long-lived. However, if you like lavender, that’s no reason not to plant them!

Insider’s Scoop on Garden Tour

Inside looking out--the view from my kitchen sink.

After putting our house on the market a few months ago, I really didn’t expect we’d still be here. So when the tour committee for the Polk County Master Gardeners asked me to be on this years’ “Extraordinary Gardens by Ordinary People” garden tour on June 19, I told them that I wouldn’t be able to commit, but would join the tour as a ‘bonus garden’ if we still lived in this house. And here we are.

For tickets and more information, check out the Facebook page for PCMG Garden Tour

I’ll also be joining Michelle Walke, who is blogging about this years tour, on Gardening Today, Sunday from 10-noon on WHO radio 1040.

This is the tenth year of the tour, but the last time I participated was in 2004. And this will be the last time that this garden will be on the tour, because we are still expecting that our house will sell! In fact, our realtor is holding an open house the next day. Perhaps all the lavender blooming in the front yard will charm someone into buying–I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Move Over, Euell Gibbons

Actually, if you know anything about Euell Gibbons, the title of this post might seem a bit uppity. Anyone my age probably remembers him from his appearances on the Grape Nuts commercials of the 1970′s. Gibbons actually was a respected and knowledgeable outdoorsman and teacher of wild-food foraging, who authored Stalking the Wild Asparagus. But, since I foraged a fruit that I’ll bet few of you have eaten, I’m feeling a little extra proud of my crunchygranolalike skills today.

You might call them serviceberries, or saskatoons, or juneberries, but their botanical name is Amelanchier.

Well, perhaps picking fruit off trees in your backyard might not actually qualify as foraging, but when it is something that few people eat, it feels that way.  I usually lose the berries to the birds and squirrels, but I am home during the day now, and the tree actually seems to be rewarding me for that–it’s an especially heavy crop this year.

Whatever you want to call them–I choose ‘serviceberries’–they are far from the tart, chewy berries that you might expect to find on a native tree. I have a single-stem specimen of what is usually a multi-trunked small tree or large shrub. I can not tell you what cultivar of Amelanchier arborea I have; it was a bargain tree I bought from one of the local government sponsored tree planting programs. The berries are like a small blueberry in both texture and sweetness.

I haven’t decided what to do with my serviceberries yet. It’s always fun to serve things like this to friends who have never tasted them before. Maybe I’ll surprise someone with a serviceberry dessert. Mr. Gibbons might suggest I serve them with wild hickory nuts. Grape Nuts would be less work, I think.

Chicken Pot Pie For Company

I’m all for quick and easy when it’s time to make dinner. But once in a while it’s worth the time it takes to prepare an old-fashioned casserole. Not one that uses canned soup and boxes of stuffing mix–but one that uses lots of fresh ingredients. This chicken pot pie recipe definitely takes a little while to prepare, but according to more than one guest it was worth every messy minute. I typically replace the frozen mixed vegetables with fresh peas, corn, beans, and carrots when they’re available, but the veggies I have harvested from my garden and frozen for later use are just as good to me.

I made this for a church dinner recently, and had several requests for the recipe. Since there are a fair number of vegetarians at my church, I also made a meatless version that replaced the chicken with hard-cooked eggs and diced potatoes. Mmmm!

Sunday Dinner Chicken Pot Pie

Want a meatless version? See the note below. This makes 6 generous servings

Grocery list:
3 ribs celery
2 onions
2-3 lb chicken, cut up
1 bay leaf
1/4 c. chopped parsley
S & P
14 or 16 oz bag frozen mixed vegetables (green beans, carrots, corn, peas)
8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp., plus 1/3 c. butter
1/3 c., plus 1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. cream
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. poultry seasoning
3/4 c. milk

Prepare chicken and broth:
Cut 1 rib of celery into 2″ pieces. Peel 1 onion and cut it into quarters. Combine 6 cups of water, celery, onion, chicken, bay leaf, 2 tbsp. of the parsley, 1 tsp. salt, and 1/2 tsp. pepper in a soup pot. Cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until chicken is nearly falling off the bone, about 45-60 minutes.
Remove chicken and cool on a platter. Leave the pot uncovered and continue to simmer the broth to reduce it to about 3 cups. When chicken is cool enough to handle, discard skin and bones and chop meat into bite-sized pieces. Heat oven to 450.
Prepare vegetables:
Cook vegetables in boiling salted water per package directions. Drain and set aside, but reserve cooking water and add it to chicken broth.
Dice the remaining onion. Melt the 2 tbsp. butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add chopped onion and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in mushrooms, 1 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp. pepper and continue to cook, uncovered, until juices are evaporated. Stir in 1/3 cup flour and continue to cook and stir for 2 minutes.
Prepare sauce:
Measure out 2 1/2 cups of warm broth, and whisk half of it into the onion-flour mixture. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and cook until thickened. Add remaining broth, cooked mixed vegetables, and cooked chicken meat to pan, blending well. Stir in cream and remove from heat. Pour into a greased 9×13″ casserole.
Top with biscuits:
Stir 1 1/2 c. flour, poultry seasoning, baking powder, and a pinch of salt together in a bowl. Cut remaining 1/3 c. butter into flour mixture. Stir in milk just until dry ingredients are completely moistened. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto hot chicken mixture, distributing evenly. You won’t cover the sauce completely, but that’s all right.  Bake for about 25-35 minutes, until filling is bubbling and biscuits are browned. Serve immediately.

For a hearty meatless version:
Make a vegetable broth with 3 cups of water, the celery, onion, bay leaf, salt and pepper as above. Add a vegetable bullion cube to the both. Cook 2 medium red potatoes in the broth until just tender. Cool the potatoes, and dice them. Add the mixed-vegetables cooking liquid to the broth, as above. Quarter 6 peeled, hard-cooked eggs, and add them and the diced, cooked potatoes to the sauce and vegetables before topping with the biscuits.

The Rabbit Lists

With shorter rabbit-resistant plants around them, the wire that protects the zinnias doesn't show.

I’ve been getting lots of questions from people lately about what they might plant that rabbits won’t eat. It seems they will mow down just about anything–even thorny roses and barberry. I’ve lived in my particular neighborhood in West Des Moines for 10 years, and rabbits have always been a problem. Deer don’t venture into my near-the-freeway neck of the woods (fingers crossed to avoid jinxing), but rabbits are a big problem. So, I’ve put together lists of what has proven safe in my yard.

My vegetable garden is fenced with two layers of wire – one is the so-called rabbit wire (worthless against rabbits, but works for dogs) and a second layer is 24″-tall chicken wire. Metal fencing works–nylon just sharpens their teeth. There are a few things here and there in the yard that live behind protective circles of chicken wire (zinnias, roses, clematis,  all tree trunks, poppies, and lilies), but everything on the lists below are avoided or bothered very little by rabbits during the spring-summer-fall growing season.

A closer look reveals the wire. Shhh. Don't tell the wabbit!

Annuals
Ageratum
Antirrhinum (Snapdragon)
Aquilegia (Columbine)
Begonia
Catharanthus roseus (annual vinca)
Cleome hassleriana (Spider flower)
Coleus
Euphorbia
Iberis (candytuft)
Impatiens (I. walleriana and I. hawkeri)
Lobularia maritima (Alyssum)
Mirabilis jalapa (four o’clocks)
Ricinus (castor bean)
Tagetes – some are safe, some are not
Verbascum
Perennials
Agastache
Allium
Astilbe
Centranthus ruber (Jupiter’s beard)
Convallaria (lily of the valley)
Euphorbia
Gaillardia
Geranium (hardy)
Hellebore
Hemerocallis (Daylilies)
Heuchera
Hypericum patulum
Iris
Lamium
Lavandula
Narcissus
Nepeta
Monarda
Paeonia (peony)
Penstemon (flowers may be eaten)
Perovskia (Russian sage)
Salvias, particularly perennial/hardy species
Saponaria (soapwort)
Sedum (some short types are nibbled)
Stachys (lamb’s ear)
Veronica
Vinca (perennial ground cover)
Yucca
Most aromatic herbs (rosemary, sage, lemon balm, oregano, thyme, etc.)
Most ornamental grasses (Calamagrostis, Miscanthus, Pennisetum)
Trees & shrubs
(These have least winter damage)
Buddleia (these die back to the ground every year anyway, and then recover nicely)
Juniperus (my favorite is the columnar ‘Taylor’)
Physocarpus (Ninebark)
Sambucus (Elderberry)
Syringa (Lilac)
Vines
Ampelopsis (porcelain berry)
Lathyrus latifolius (perennial sweet pea)

An Herb Garden Shopping List

You should plant a few herbs and see where they take you. I’ve put together a shopping list for herb gardener wanna-be’s that will put them on the road to tasty garden goodness. Take a look at A Beginner’s Herb Garden and get your trowel out of winter storage.

If you happen to be at the Atlantic Spring Garden Seminar this coming Saturday, I’ll be giving a talk on growing and using herbs. I’m also going have a table in the vendor’s area, picking gardener brains about a new project I’m working on. Please stop by and say hi.