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Archive for the ‘Ruth Rogers Clausen Tells All’ Category
Friday, July 30th, 2010
 By August, does it feel like the best is over in your garden? Spring and summer bloom is usually abundant, but by late summer the garden may look tired. With just a little extra care you can make your display last until early Fall by growing perennials that keep blooming throughout the season, or produce a second flush later in the season.
 Salvia 'May Night' “Off with their heads” should be your mantra. The act of deadheading stimulates lower buds to develop and produce more flowers. Perennials such as Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’, purple toadflax (Linaria purpurea) and coreopsis bloom more or less continuously throughout the season. Threadleaf coreopsis (C. verticillata ‘Moonbeam’ and others) are trickier to deadhead because they have lots of skinny stems that take a little more time to snip. I recommend a lightweight compact scissor from Womanswork, which is small enough to be precise.
 - Yarrow (Achillea)
With strong-stemmed spiky bloomers you can whack off the stems more readily and be rewarded by blooms on the lateral branches later. These include meadow and summer phlox, obedient plant, salvias, campanulas, monkshood, and yarrow. If you work around globe thistle (Echinops) or other spiny plants, protect your hands with Womanswork garden gloves. I like the original work glove or rose leather gauntlet glove for this job.
 - Coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’
Some perennials can be cut to the ground after blooming, and new foliage and possibly some flowers will return in a few weeks. These include Lady’s Mantle, catmints and some hardy geraniums (G. endressei ‘Wargrave Pink’ for instance). Shasta daisies can be cut to the ground after their second flush, with the possibility of more blooms later.
To deadhead, cut the stem above a leaf bud further down the stem, where you may see new growth. After a severe cutting, give the plants a deep watering and feeding with liquid seaweed or other fertilizer. Also fluff up the surrounding soil so that late rains penetrate the soil easily.
Tags: garden gloves, Garden Supplies
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Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Children and gardening go together naturally, but too few kids experience the fun of getting down into the dirt. Try these projects to get them interested and don’t forget kids garden gloves to protect their hands.
What sounds like more fun to a child than growing garbage on a windowsill? For a “Garbage Garden” start with carrots and pineapples, potatoes, and other vegetable waste bound for the garbage pail. It’s educational and cheap too. There’s no need for pots either. You just recycle cottage cheese or yogurt containers (poke drainage holes in the bottom).
To start your garden cut ¾” or so off the top of the round end of a carrot. Press the cut end into a container of damp potting soil, and put it on a sunny windowsill. Keep the soil moist, and a green forest will soon start to sprout. Cut leafy pineapple tops (wear gardening gloves to protect from prickles) with only ¼” of the pineapple left on. Clean away any flesh and let it dry overnight. Firm the top into a few inches of damp potting soil. Keep it moist and in several weeks— voila! Roots.
 Garbage Gardening with a Potato White potatoes grow quickly. Look for old ones with nubbins of developing shoots (called eyes). Cut a potato in half, each with 1 or 2 eyes, let it dry overnight, then plant it cut side down. Keep moist and you’ll have an indoor garden in no time.
A good way to introduce older children to vegetables is with the Vegetable Garden Wheel. It helps them identify different popular vegetables and gives them the information they need to plan out a complete garden. The information is presented in a fun to use spinning format with lots of color.
 Vegetable Garden Wheel  Potato after just 3 weeks
Tags: gardening with kids, kids garden gloves, vegetable gardening
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Thursday, April 1st, 2010
So spring is here and the summer and fall-blooming shrubs need to be pruned—right? Well, yes and no. Don’t be in a rush. Beware of pruning too early, especially those silver-leaved beauties that have only just started into growth.
 Perovskia atriplicifoia Through bitter experience, I have found that it is better to wait a couple of weeks until at least 1″ of new young growth is showing. You can always cut back later, but too early pruning may indeed toll the bell for butterfly bush (Buddleia, shown here), common sage (Salvia officinalis), Russian sage (Perovskia), bluebeard (Caryopteris), lavender, etc. A friend of mine living in the Delaware Valley had a crescent-shaped bed with a row of tall butterfly bushes running down the spine. One spring, they were pruned hard just as the sap was rising and the buds were beginning to break. The following week there was an extended cold snap and every last butterfly bush was killed! It was a disaster and very hard lesson for her.
When I decide to prune these shrubs, I always wear sturdy and comfortable garden gloves to protect my hands, and am sure to use sharp hand pruners and loppers (www.felcostore.com). To encourage vigorous new growth, prune hard towards the base where new shoots are emerging. Cut above a bud on a slant so rain runs off the top of the cut. The harder you cut, the more vigorous the plants will grow. Every few years take the whole plant down to about a foot from ground level to increase vigor and control size.
 Salvia officinalis
Tags: garden gloves, pruning silvery leaved shrubs, spring pruning
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Monday, March 22nd, 2010
 Ruth's Greenhouse Welcome to my 10′ x 9′ greenhouse. It faces south with a sliding door from the living room. When spring comes I can walk through it onto the deck where I pot up lots of fun combinations in planters. Many of the plants I use have been overwintered and propagated in my greenhouse. My nitrile garden gloves live there too where they are close to hand. At the moment several varieties of velvety-leaved aromatic Cuban oregano (Plectranthus), a current favorite of mine, are being propagated through cuttings. Coleus and Streptocarpella do well, the latter in full bloom along with mini-fuchsia (Fuchsia cana). I keep geraniums, especially scented ones, growing and blooming through the winter. Chives, parsley and mint are residents too, of course. I’ll be starting seeds any day now—sweet peas in cardboard egg cartons, sweet alyssum (8 weeks to bloom), and spinach.
 Plants are Propagated with Cuttings Propagating plants with cuttings is an easy task. Clip a 1 ½” to 3″ long piece of a young shoot from the mother plant, recut where leaves emerge, remove the lower leaves, and insert the cutting into damp rooting mix: perlite or vermiculite. Water gently. I enclose the whole thing in a plastic vegetable bag, blow it up, and secure tightly with a twistie. This balloon-like cocoon prevents the cuttings from drying out. Keep them away from direct sun or they will cook.
Tags: garden gloves, greenhouse, Ruth Rogers Clausen
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Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
 White Pine boughs make a good winter mulch for garden beds Now that the holidays are over, in northern climates the ground is frozen. Now is the time to apply a winter mulch to keep the soil cold and insulate it from alternate freezing and thawing. The action of freezing and thawing, which occurs throughout the winter season, causes shallow-rooted and fall-planted perennials to be heaved out of the ground and roots to become desiccated. I find that members of the coral bells clan—heucheras, heucherellas, and tiarellas– are particularly prone to heaving.
At this time of year there are plenty of evergreen boughs and discarded Christmas trees around, free for the taking (save those pennies for new plants). These are perfect to cut up and lay gently on frozen beds and borders. If there is still snow on the ground lay the boughs on top. I never got round to cleaning up all the fall leaves, but the evergreen boughs will prevent them from blowing all over the place. As the weather warms in spring gradually remove the boughs to allow new growth to occur.
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Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
 This Norway spruce is in danger of losing a few branches Having taken a walk around our neighborhood today after the first snowfall of the season, it is pitiful to see how some evergreens take such a beating with wet heavy snow. One’s instinct is to bash the snow off as soon as you can, but beating on an already stressed branch from above is trouble. Always brush snow off gently from below with a broom so that it falls away from the bush. This Norway spruce is in danger of losing a few branches.
Dwarf mounding evergreens, such as some Chamaecyparis and arborvitae tend to open up in the center under snow. Wearing garden gloves, protect them by winding soft twine round them from bottom to top, keeping the twine just tight enough for them to hold their shape. Snow then will fall off more easily. It is too late for this Tsuga occidentalis ‘Rheingold’.
 It is too late for this Tsuga occidentalis ‘Rheingold’
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Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
This year it was Thanksgiving weekend before I had a chance to start tidying up in my garden. I’m not exactly a “neatnik” but I do like it to look nice and garden hygiene is important too. Be careful to clean up any dropped leaves beneath roses for fear of spreading black spot spores when the spring rains come next year. The spores overwinter in organic mulch (I like to remove the mulch) and will be splashed up onto new growth and re-infect the bushes. Spent annuals go on the compost pile, but there are a couple of schools of thought about cutting back perennials. Some like to cut everything down, cover the beds with a good layer of compost or shredded leaves, and head out of town for the winter. Those of us who stay put through the winter need a pleasing view all year.
 Conservatory Garden, New York City I took a walk in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park, New York City, to see how they handled the problem. Some cut and some left there as well. Ornamental grasses of course are dramatic against autumn leaves (purple smoke bush here with Miscanthus grass), and even more so in front of evergreens as the winter progresses.
Others that I leave include rusty colored tall sedums such as ‘Autumn Joy’, ‘Garnet Brocade’ and ‘Frosty Morn’, purple coneflowers, black- and brown-eyed Susans, perennial sunflowers, Russian sage and all silvery-leaved shrubs (Caryopteris, butterfly bush, common sage etc.). Not only do these provide winter interest, they become popular feeding stations for resident birds that add so much to the winter garden.
Spore cases of ferns are also decorative, although some remove them for neatness. Here sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) adds height and texture to a bed of Helleborus hybrids that will bloom next spring.
 Sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis) adds height and texture to a bed of Helleborus In my garden, I leave the dried spore cases of ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) too under a canopy of Euonymus branches.
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