Sanhedrin Nursery – Garden Blog

• Dig gently to harvest potatoes, a few plants at a time, after foliage yellows and dries up.

• Roses need water and fertilizer to keep blooming through the summer. Watch for pests and diseases and treat as soon as you see trouble.

• Birdbaths will attract our feathered friends to your backyard so you can enjoy them close-up. Place them a few feet from a bushy shrub to give the birds protection.

• Zinnias love the heat and will add a rainbow of color to your garden and the deer don’t like them.

• Garlic should be harvested when the leafy tops turn yellow and fall over; air-dry bulbs, remove tops and store bulbs in a cool place.

Solve Landscaping Problems with Vines

All vines scramble or climb, but that’s where their similarity ends. You can grow vines for shade, for food, or for beauty of foliage, bloom or fruit. Vines range from tough, woody grapes, wisterias and trumpet vines to annuals like morning-glories and sweet peas. Add in clematis, ivies and Virginia creeper and you have lots to work with.

Are you bothered by an unsightly view? Vines can be used to cover up unsightly views or structures. Does your deck or patio broil in the noonday sun? A vine planted to grow over an overhead structure can provide welcome, cooling shade much quicker than a tree can.

Vines are used to soften and connect the hard edges between structures and plants in a garden. Wisteria or grapes can be used to cover a sturdy trellis linking the house with the garden. Or they can climb over an arch or pergola to form a green entrance or walkway. The drooping clusters of wisteria’s fragrant flowers are beautiful in the spring.

Plant vines to screen unsightly walls or views. A well placed vine can provide the same amount of privacy as a tall shrub, while taking up less horizontal space. For this purpose, be sure to choose evergreen vines, and train them to cover a trellis thickly. You can also extend the height of a typical 4-6′ privacy fence by adding trellising materials and an evergreen vine.

Virginia creeper, which attaches itself to walls with little suction cups, is excellent for covering plain walls or fences. In the fall, it turns a brilliant scarlet before dropping its leaves. Climbing hydrangea is a large vine that also climbs with suction cups. Its white flowers are very showy in summer in partial shade, though the vines will tolerate full shade, but bloom less.

Star jasmine or Carolina jessamine are very attractive planted by lampposts and pillars. They are both evergreen and will eventually cover the post completely.

The deciduous clematis have wonderful displays of flowers in spring or summer. They can be used to climb fences and trellises.

A chain-link fence can be turned into a beautiful green wall with vines. Orange trumpet vine or Virginia creeper will give a lush green look all summer but be bare in winter. Ivy or evergreen clematis will hide the fence permanently. Honeysuckle is partly deciduous but covers well and spreads its lovely fragrance over a large area.

Annual vines are generally overlooked for their landscaping qualities. Planting annual vines on fences, gates and other structures quickly brings an established look to a young garden. Create summer shade on a porch with a string trellis covered with vines. Try morning-glories, scarlet runner beans, and moonflower for eye-catching summer color. Hops vines make a beautiful green covering but die to the ground each winter.

Look to versatile vines to help solve many of your landscaping problems.

• Dress up for the Fourth! Red, white and blue petunias, verbena or combinations of these with lobelia, geraniums, impatiens and salvia will make a nice display for the Fourth of July.

• Plant fresh herbs from young plants. Basil, rosemary, thymes, mints and sages are just a few ideas.

• It’s time to set out Brussels sprouts for fall harvest. Plant lettuce every two weeks for fresh heads all summer.

• Check young trees and fruit trees for suckers and water sprouts. Rub suckers off as they appear and cut water sprouts off apple and pear trees.

• Roses are in their glory now. Choose a new rose bush or climber to add to your flower garden or brighten up a wire fence.

Plant a star in your garden

One of the most popular landscape plants in California is known as star jasmine. Actually there are two star jasmines. The commonly planted one is Trachelospermum jasminoides, and the other is the Asian star jasmine, T. asiaticum.

Star jasmine has long been prized for its wonderful fragrance. It normally blooms through June and July with scattered flowers on through the summer. The flowers are about an inch across and are borne in clusters at the ends of the branches. The glossy, dark green leaves make an attractive contrast.

Star jasmine is a plant that can be trained to do almost anything you want. It will climb a trellis, spill over walls, climb fences and drape from hanging baskets. It is also a very graceful ground cover forming a thick cover about 18 to 24 inches tall.

Since it is slower growing than most vines, it is far more suitable for the small private garden or backyard. It can be grown in a large container for many years. Let it grow up a trellis to make a screen for the patio.

To cover a fence or wall, set the plants about 3 feet apart and start them in the direction you want them to grow. They climb by twining, but you may have to tie them to a trellis to start them growing up. As the plants mature, they grow faster, and can be trimmed lightly to keep them from becoming woody.

Asian star jasmine sends out long trailers on young plants and can be trained right away. It is more hardy to cold, but the flowers are a little smaller and more cream-colored than its cousin.

If you want to plant star jasmine as a ground cover, set the plants two feet apart. Use a diamond-shaped planting plan to assure good coverage as soon as possible. Any shoots that seem to grow straight up should be removed so that growth can go into the trailing shoots.

It is best to plant star jasmine where it receives afternoon shade. Hot sun can burn the leaves. Keep them well watered and weeded. A program of feeding every spring and late summer will help them grow and cover as soon as possible. It is slow to take off growing so if you want to cover an area quickly, you might want to start with a larger plant.

Both star jasmines are good-looking all year, and make a nice backdrop for other flowering plants. Use star jasmine near an entry or along a walk so you can enjoy the wonderful fragrance of their star-like flowers.

• Finish planting the summer vegetable garden. Seeds of early corn, and beans can go directly in the soil and plants of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, squash, cucumbers and basil can be set out.

• Fertilize container plants every 10 to 14 days with a liquid fertilizer. Pinch off faded blossoms and they will keep blooming all summer for you.

• Red, white and blue petunias, verbena or combinations of these with lobelia, geraniums, impatiens and salvia will make a nice display for the Fourth of July.

• Attract birds to your garden with a concrete bird bath. They come in many attractive styles and make good gifts.

• Feed rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias with an acid plant food to encourage lush growth. Pinch or prune to promote full, dense growth.

Create Your Own Cottage Garden

Whether the image comes from a childhood storybook or a memory of Grandma’s flower beds, the informal, joyful look of a cottage garden is appealing to many of us. Even the names are magical, like “lamb’s ears”, “pincushion flower”, and “love in a mist”. You will enjoy giving tours of your garden as much to share their colorful names as their glorious flowers.

Don’t worry about “rules” when making a cottage garden. Just have fun creating pleasing combinations of color, texture and proportion. You’ll need to take into consideration the amount of sun or shade the garden area receives and choose appropriate plants accordingly.

Traditionally, an English cottage garden is a front yard garden enclosed by a wall, fence or hedge. It has a welcoming front gate and a path to the front door. More paths define the beds which are filled with a rich mixture of plantings.

You may want to begin with a structure such as an arbor or trellis. Nothing says “cottage garden” more beautifully that a rose-and-clematis covered arbor surrounded by a rainbow of cheerful flowers. Or perhaps a fountain or birdbath, a statue or a gazing ball will give your garden a special touch that makes it uniquely yours.

The real show in a cottage garden is a relaxed jumble of free-flowing flowers, vines, trees, shrubs, bulbs and ground covers. The well-defined planting beds give structure to the garden: an “organized disarray.”

Try for a long season of color by using perennials that flower at different times through the spring and summer. Roses, peonies, carnations and hollyhocks were among the perennials commonly planted in days gone by. Hydrangeas, lilacs, lavenders and daisies of all types add a profusion of color. Tall sunflowers will follow the sun through the day. Ornamental grasses can be mixed in with the flowers, and bulbs can be tucked in between.

Even herbs and vegetables are welcome in the cottage garden. A ‘Patio’ tomato plant will stay neat and compact, eggplants can be enjoyed for their flowers as well as their fruits, and lettuces come in many colors and leaf shapes to add texture to the border.

Your cottage garden can feature similarly colored plants in groupings that paint the garden with swaths of color, or a mixture of contrasting colors that shout joyfully to passersby.

No matter how you interpret the cottage garden style, remember that a barely controlled jumble of plants suggests the workings of nature over time and gives the garden its much admired, storybook charm.