Whether your perennial garden consists of flowers or herbs, there are a number of considerations to get the most out of it!

Most perennials propagate through other means than just seeding, many send out side shoots, or grow rhizomes, or tubers, to sustain the parent plant year after year, and then when the parent plant puts out seeds, their purpose is to spread out to other areas. In many cases this is not needed in your garden, so when the flower buds are past bloom you should dead head (remove past blooms) as much as possible to encourage new flower buds, and keep it blooming as long as possible. The reason for this is when a plant puts out flowers, and those flowers are fertilized, the process for creating seeds starts, when those seeds reach maturity, the plant releases hormones to indicate that it has completed it’s mission, reproduction, so by dead heading your past blooms before seeds are made, you incite the plant to try harder to make seeds, increasing overall yield.

Another suggestion on perennials is to tip off the main stalk, doing this encourages side branches, which will make your plants much fuller looking when in bloom. When it comes to herbs though, you will want to pick off any flowers that develop, flowering on herbs slows down the foliar growth, and picking them helps side growth, in most cases it is the foliar growth you desire in herbs, except for the medicinal herbs and flowers, where the most desirable part of the plant are the flowers, like Echinacea.

Now for the biggest mistake people make when perennial gardening.

It’s late October, and most of your perennials are done, there has been a hard frost or freeze, and not much is going on, the stalks are getting all ragged looking, the leaves have either dropped, or turned brown and shriveled, and the whole area looks like a mess, at this point many people will cut everything back to the ground to give the area a cleaner look, and this is the first mistake, after the plants have all died back LEAVE it as it is till spring, all the debris laying on the ground is going to start breaking down over the winter, this provides both insulation for the roots, and some small amounts of heat, as the micro organisms break down the organic matter produced by the plants, this is the natural cycle, and in many cases, if not followed, these plants will not come back the next season, then in spring when you do clean up what’s left, you should cut everything back only up to about 2-3 inches from the ground, because many plants have root crowns at the soil level, and if it is cut too short, the crown is removed and the plant will die.

A word about feeding your plants!

Most people are familiar with the NPK values on fertilizer packages, but what do they mean? There is a simple way to remember how these values relate to your plants, The first value is the Nitrogen content, the second is the Phosphorous content, and last but definitely not least, Potash, now you need not remember this to make these values useful, just remember over, under, all around, meaning the first value supports the growth of the foliage(over), the second supports the root system(under), the last one, general health and resistance to disease(all around). When you see something like 10-10-10, this is a general food for veggie gardens and tomatoes, when you see 15-30-15 this is also for general feeding, but for flowers, tropicals, and shrubs, when you see 10-6-4 this is for evergreens and acid loving plants, how does this help you? When a plant is establishing itself it needs lots of N for foliar growth, then as the nitrogen depletes the P become more prominent in producing flower buds, at this point the plant is working very hard, which is where the K comes in to sustain the plants resistance to stress(high temps, droughts, insect infestations) and disease. If you were to look at the many different plant foods in stores, you will see the ones for grasses, are primarily N, and the “bloom booster” foods for flowers, are highest in P, and the remedies for plant problems are highest in K.

DO NOT USE FERTILIZERS FOR AT LEAST TWO WEEKS BEFORE HARVESTING ANYTHING YOU PLAN TO INGEST, and you can help to flush them by heavy watering a day or so before harvesting.
When picking herbs, or medicinal flowers, early morning harvesting will provide the highest quality, as their oils are at their greatest concentration, as the day progresses, photosynthesis starts converting sunlight in to sugars, then as the plant respires over the night, the sugars are converted to starches and stored.

Well it’s almost spring and there are many tasks to perform to clean up your landscapes, and prepare for planting beds, and vegetable gardens.

Until the weather is warm enough, and the ground dries out enough to work, the first tasks in the spring would be cleanup and pest prevention.

Now is the time to trim back and remove all the dead debris from your perennials, if you have tall ornamental grasses, you can cut them back to an inch above ground level, cut your hardy hibiscus stems down to about an inch as well. I suggest leaving an inch exposed so you can identify where things are when you start adding new plants.
If you are like me you would have distributed some of your fall leaves to add a layer of insulation over perennial and bulb beds, as well as your vegetable garden if you grow perennial herbs, at this point I would rake them up and compost them, it is also best to remove or rake to the borders, any wood chip, or shredded decorative mulch used last season, exposing the dark earth to the spring sun will warm the ground, and help dry it out, much quicker than if this insulting layer were left in place. Do not replace mulch until ground temperatures reach the 60’s, or the nights stay above 50 for over a week. The ground will warm to a higher temperature faster than the air will.

If you didn’t prune last fall, now is the time to cultivate how your trees and shrubs will grow this season. When pruning back trees and shrubs, remove the branches that extend past the general width of the tree or shrub, this is where the feeder roots tend to end, keeping a balance of foliar growth and root mass, will reduce stress and increase drought tolerance. Follow a branch that is to be removed, observing the nodes on bark, and cut just past the node facing the direction you want the new branch to grow. Do this every year and you will have a beautiful shape to your trees and shrubs. If you have young trees, or fruit trees remove all branches from the bottom 1/3 of the trunk, these will be considered sucker stems and will rob the fruit bearing branches from energy to develop more, larger fruits. When pruning like this, brush the exposed cuts with pruning tar, or tree paste, to prevent pest and disease infiltration. At this point it is a good idea to spray your fruit trees with dormant fruit tree spray, this will keep your apple, cherry, peach, apricot, and many others fruits from becoming infested with parasitic bugs and blossom fungus.

If you do not have fruit or foliar trees and plan to put some in, it is best to get them into the ground before they start to break their buds. Many people wait to buy these so they can see it is actually alive before planting it, thinking they will save some time and effort should a dormant they pick not be viable, but nothing is further from the truth. Most nurseries have 1 year guarantees on trees, if you choose a dormant that has no dessication on the branch tips, and have hard packed, tightly closed buds, the chances of survival is much greater than planting after the bud have broken, and the tree begins to leaf out. The reason for this is simple, a tree that is transplanted a month or two before it is to leaf out, will have the chance for the root system to recover from, either being balled and wrapped, or root bound in a pot and then transplanted, and even when transplanting dormant trees and shrubs, it is best to water initially with a water soluble fertilizer like miracle gro, to prevent root shock.

In order to insure a successful transplant there are certain rules of thumb to follow. Always dig your planting holes two times as wide and two times as deep, as the root ball or pot, the plant came in. Take half the dirt you removed and add it to your compost layers. Replace the dirt you removed with your own compost, or a 2-1 ratio of soil to bagged compost or manure, then add 25% peat moss, mix and use to back fill the hole after orienting your new tree or shrub, how you want it to stand, if this is an evergreen you can mix coffee grinds, or pine needles into it to acidify the planting medium, if these are not available then increase the peat moss to 40%, this will also help acidify the soil.

Feel free to ask questions!

Composting can develop a most rewarding garden, whether it is an ornamental garden or vegetable garden.

You can either start a compost pile, or get one of the many commercial composters available in garden catalogs, which ever you choose, you will increase the overall health, and yield of your garden.

There are two types of composting, cold composting and hot composting, most of us use cold composting, which is much smaller and easier to manage than hot composting. To attain hot composting you need to build a compost pile that is at least 4-5 feet high, and just as wide. The advantage of hot composting over cold is, hot composting takes less time, and will kill weed seeds, and insect pest eggs, but it would probably require a bobcat or tractor plow to turn over properly. If you choose your materials intelligently you will not have an issue cold composting, just do not add materials that are going to seed, or are infested with insect pests, for instance, aphids on your rose cutting are easily removed with a sharp spray from your hose before putting them in to compost, another example, use straw instead of hay, as hay has seeds. Branches fallen from trees, or pruned from shrubs, will take a long time to break down (2-3 years) unless shredded or chipped, and even then at least a whole season, I usually have a smaller separate pile for these slow to break down materials.

Whether you go with a pile, tumbler, or bin, you must place it away from direct sun (tends to dry it out too much,) and add moisture when needed, but most importantly you must aerate it. You see there are different kinds of bacteria that break down organic matter, aerobic bacteria will result in compost that smells sweet and earthy, which is ideal, but if you starve your compost of oxygen (or over water) you will develop anaerobic bacteria, which will cause the rotting organic matter to smell because these bacteria produce methane, and can cause it to smell sour, and almost like a sewer, (sewerage treatment and septic tanks use anaerobic bacteria, hence the smell). To prevent your composting from souring you must aerate it by turning the organic matter over every week or so, unless you get a tumbler, then just one crank a day will do it. Compost piles, and bins, will take a few months to produce usable compost, but the tumbler can do it in about 4-6 weeks. Using compost pills, which are condensed aerobic bacteria that will accelerate the process, can shorten both methods. I would recommend, for either a pile or bin, because of the time needed to completely compost your materials, to start two, when the first is filled and beginning to break down, and you can still generate compost materials, start the second one about half way through the process of the first one. By doing this it will ensure a steady supply of compost year round by cycling between the two, and instead of waiting 4-6 months for a pile or bin to completely compost, you will have a supply every 2-3 months, after the first one is completed of course.

First a few notes - Green matter like grass clippings will add nitrogen, brown matter like leaves and twigs, will add carbon, try to regulate the amounts of each to maintain a balance, for instance, only add brown matter when you have green matter, because the bacteria need the nitrogen to process the brown matter. A way to increase the breakdown, and reduce the need for nitrogen, is add worms, (not recommended in a tumbler). This is why you NEED to compost this stuff rather than just add it to your garden in it’s raw form. The composting process will actually starve your plants. A compost pile will actually COOK, as evidenced with a long thermal probe, in a compost pile, in the middle of winter, showing a temperature of 160f degrees!

How to start!

Begin by adding the first materials you have at hand to a depth of about 6-8 inches, and then layer about a half an inch of soil, the added soil will seed the new materials with all the needed micro organisms, by layering in this manner you will expedite the composting process. After the first month or two of adding layers to your pile or bin, you will need to begin turning or aerating your them to ensure an even breakdown of the materials and a healthy environment for the microorganisms. I have found a pitchfork will work best for turning and aerating your compost, but you can do what works best, or is easiest for you.

What to compost and their effects:

Kitchen scraps - eggshells – adds minerals (allow to dry in the sun then pulverize or grind into a powder).

Any vegetable scraps such as banana peels, leaves from greens, carrot tops and peels, orange, lemon, or grapefruit peels, and pretty much any fruit or vegetable matter, all neutral.

Coffee grinds – ph down.

I keep a small plastic pail, lined with a vegetable bag, on my counter for this purpose, but it should be added to the compost at least every other day to prevent it from smelling, because if this is left to spoil on its own, the bacteria that develop are not the same as the ones in the soil.

Ashes from a fireplace - ph-up (only if you burn hardwoods, not the formed logs which contain paraffin).

Grass clippings - neutral

Shredded leaves -neutral

Any weeds pulled BEFORE going to seed – neutral.

Horse manure - neutral (warning: horse manure from a farm is recommended, stables that board horses for riding tend to be high in antibiotics, and vitamins, which is not recommended).

Pine needles - ph down (composting pine needles and coffee grinds, makes compost for acid loving plants like, rhododendrons, blueberries, strawberries, and most evergreens).

Cow manure –neutral (recommended mostly for hot composting, contains large amounts of black fly eggs, and weed seeds).

Chicken droppings – ph down (can be quite stinky)

What not to compost:

Charcoal ashes from a barbecue (kills all soil microbes)

Meat trimmings

Anything containing fat, oil, or grease of any kind (suffocates everything in contact)

What to do with your finished compost!

When planting new plants you should dig a hole twice as wide and deep as the pot it comes in, then replace, back in the bottom of your hole, half the removed dirt with your new compost, and mix compost in the remaining dirt used to back fill the hole at about 50 percent.

For existing plants and shrubs you can either top dress your plants with new compost from the root crown out to the drip line, in which case nutrients will get washed down in to the roots every time it rains, or is watered, or you can make a “tea”, by placing enough compost to cover the bottom of a large bucket or pail, and adding water. After just a few days, use this water for your plants, add another scoop or two of compost and refill with water for your next watering, if a sprinkler system is in use, you must increase the frequency for top dressing, as frequent watering can wash out the nutrients from the soil, in a very short time.

Some additional amendments and their *N-P-K values, and practical uses, which can be used with compost:

Blood meal N-13 P-0 K-0 fast acting, water soluble, best for vegetative growth

Worm castings (those little dirt balls around worm colonies) N-0.5 P-0.5 K-0.3 great for starting seedlings or cuttings. Does not need composting.

Horse manure N-0.7 P-0.3 K-0.9 medium break down time, supplies a steady source of nutrients.

Bone meal (steamed) N-1 P-11 K-0 Dust bulbs before planting; mix in soil to promote blooming after the initial vegetative growth period for annuals and perennials.

Coffee grinds N-2 P-0.3 K-0.2 use as a soil acidifier by top dressing blueberries, evergreens, and other acid loving plants

Eggshells N-1.2 P-0.4 K-0.1 Contains calcium and other trace minerals, mix in soil when planting or cultivate into soil for existing plants, breaks down slowly so it is not needed more than once a growing season.

Limestone No NPK but raises ph in soil and adds trace elements like magnesium

Wood ashes N-0 P-1.5 K- 7 Beneficial to plant health and resistance to stress and disease

Oak leaves N-0.8 P-0.35 K-0.15 Breaks down slowly unless shredded, acts as a soil conditioner

Feathers N-14 P-0 K-0 Grind finely, adds nitrogen for foliar growth (getting rid of old pillows?)

Hair N-14 P-0 K-0 Chop or shred, along with being high in nitrogen, the human scent will deter deer, rabbits, and ground hogs, raccoons seem unaffected.

*These NPK values referenced from Rodale encyclopedia of organic gardening!

I do not recommend using compost in any indoor plant scenarios, even when you put them outside for the summer, because the environment in a house in winter, will initiate a hatch, and you will go nuts trying to get these tiny little flying bugs out of your house, however you can water them with the tea.

Written by Daniel Chiapperino © 12/2006

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