I have long rooted for global warming....well, not so much global warming as Minnesota warming.....up to a point, of course. That point would occur when the Earth around where I live enters Horticultural zone five.....No warmer, and certainly no cooler. Why would I want to slip back into the dark ages of landscaping in Horticultural zone 3.5 or 4.0? I'll never see the day, but I have craved to be able to landscape in a...
Read More >>We should have shared this Onslaught of Winter article with readers a few weeks ago. However, the nature of this particular Twin City late autumn has been keeping our company busy until the real snow arrives. Each autumn in our area is unique in its appearance and character. No one seems to record each year's peculiarities and we usually remember only the extremes....especially the thirty inches one Halloween in the 1990s and a repeat the...
Read More >>We receive notices from city 'officials' in a monthly bulletin. City officials are politicians and want people to re-elect them. Here in Minnetonka where I live city officials are officials for life..... In our horticulture world they rail against wild mustard and buckthorn nearly every month during the growing season. A few years ago purple loosestrife was on the city officials hate list. Now that European insects which suck the life out of purple loosestrife...
Read More >>In general the Minnesota home owner knows little to nothing about the landscape garden world. They do not understand it as an art form. They do not know the names or the habits of the plants in the neighborhood as well as on their property. A shade tree gets big, conifers are called pines, shrubs are bushy. No one really pays much attention to names. "I don't like spiraeas", a recent new client uttered in...
Read More >>The landscape garden, 2013, has been the best ever this Spring......despite its short supply of dry and warm weather. But that's the point.... Remember that the Twin Cities is at the western edge of America's watering zones with the vast prairies beginning just to our out of town Twin City West. The prairies are the prairies because of their lack of moisture....end of story. The wetter East simply spread westward for Spring, 2013....along with some...
Read More >>I own almost 3/4 of an acre of landscape garden surrounding my rather boxy, not terribly attractive house. It was a white painted house when my family moved in, January 1, 1974. It was seventeen below zero Fahrenheit that evening. There is no uglier color for a house in Minnesota to be painted. Winter with its cold white, is the landscape season equal to all other seasons combined. Worse, the adjacent shutters were blue visually...
Read More >>In all of my years of gardening various political religious sects have deified things organic. Sixty years ago and beyond, much of the worship emanated from Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Now city folks and others who blaspheme America's oil industry have picked up the chant. There is no doubt in my mind the best of all fertilizer additions one can apply to outdoor growing things in general, is good old 1-1-1 well rotted cow manure. But, ow...
Read More >>About three weeks ago two 80 plus feet high cottonwoods began shedding their leaves cluttering up many of my garden paths and favorite plants. There is no apparent need for this shedding because these water hoggers have grown up over the past 50 years immediately beside an acre sized pond including a large part for which I pay property taxes. Too, I have noticed the shedding of white pine needles which started about two weeks...
Read More >>The following observations are made for the general not the specific regarding pruning conifers. It is far better for the growth and health of conebearing plants if pruning is accomplished in our Northland community before the first of June of each year. Some conifers are fussier than others about pruning. GENERALLY, then, you might find it easier to remember the pruning requirements of both groups by calling the candle producers the 'fussy' and those which do not produce candles, the not fussy....
Read More >>The temperature low last evening was televised locally as 29F. Plant deaths have been on my mind for the past 24 hours with the return of hard frost. Unaware, I discovered that my sprinkler system had turned on at 3AM this morning making most of the grounds appear frozen solid. I had potted about 100 Angelica gigas leftovers from last year's growth now anxious to get into bloom mood for August displays, but they all...
Read More >>