The May Garden Ramble

What a difference a year makes, and this year I’m reminded how very different each year is in the garden. The battles are different, the challenges different and the pleasures never ending.

Things started just over a month ago while I was walking through my still dormant long border. Twenty feet before the end of this garden there’s a group of lilacs that look to be 30 years old or older. Just plain lilacs, nothing special. Last year they were getting pretty tall so I decided to do a major pruning, and that meant taking down some of the older 5-inch diameter trunks that had split and rejuvenating others. There were splits due to heavy snow loads, and the tops were getting precariously close to the main power line that runs from the road to the house.

Using a pruning saw and small electric chain saw I went to work and reduced the mass by about a third. In the process I found that a few of the larger-diameter trunks were rotted, but since these were still sending out side shoots I only pruned several of the trunks down to about 4 feet.

Now I love to watch my gardens and what’s going on in them. OK, I admit I’m a horticultural voyeur. But as I sat about 75 feet from the lilacs gazing at the long border, I noticed a pair of chickadees repeatedly returning to one rotted end of a 4-inch trunk. Over and over this pair returned to the hollowed trunk. It didn’t take long to realize that the birds were busy catching insects, which they were feeding to their chicks who were well hidden in their nest 8 inches down the inside of the trunk.

Now chickadees are pretty accommodating birds and one of the few that you can easily and quickly train to eat out of your hand. Late in the day I was able to get close to the trunk and peer down where I saw the nest and three tiny chicks. I took a quick look, then mom and dad resumed their feeding ritual.

This lasted less than a month from my first sighting of the pair to their disappearance so in all it wasn’t more than five weeks from the female laying her eggs until the chicks fledged and the family moved on.

The whole incident reminded me of a similar occurrence about a dozen years ago when I passed an old but healthy star magnolia at work. It grew close to a little used but still-maintained swimming pool, and nearby were beds and borders surrounding the manor house. I noted a broken and rotted trunk about 4 inches in diameter and peered down the trunk. Inside, a female chickadee peered up at me as she sat on her eggs.

Now some gardeners and landscapers would have done everything in their power to remove these rotted trunks from the magnolia and the lilac. I’m not that fastidious, and I’ve also learned that rotted spots like this and cavities are opportunities for wildlife nesting be they birds in small cavities or raccoons raising their kits in larger voids higher up.

Last year I had an awful time with rodents early in the season. The rabbits were everywhere, and cute as they are they were feeding on just about every bud, leaf and emerging spring of green in the gardens. This year is quite the opposite, and the results are seen everywhere.

I have one garden at the top of a slope that drains really well and gets full sun. It’s the one place on the property where echinaceas (purple coneflowers) thrive but the rabbits seem to love the tender, early foliage, and it’s been a challenge to grow the plants here without fencing the garden until the plants are larger. This year, no fencing and no rabbits, and this year the garden is chock full of foliated, young, purple coneflower plants.

But there was one rabbit that seemed to have a particular interest in a spot in the long border at the opposite end of where the chickadees nested. This rabbit would always hang around one spot, and several times a day I had to chase it away. However, it became less and less willing to be chased and would hop away a few feet until I chased it more — always returning to the same spot.

A few days ago my helper was doing some weeding in the same bed and called me over to the same general area. This is a spot where I have several types of Aruncus growing and on the west side of a 15-inch Aruncus crown with 8-inch-tall foliage she showed me where she’d just found the rabbit. It had dug a shallow depression in the garden next to the plant and hidden by the foliage. Under the foliage the depression had been filled with leaves, grass clippings and other garden debris that was made into a nest.

Seems the rabbit, quite pregnant, was about to install her family in the nest. We persuaded her otherwise and moved her to a different location.

As to my ongoing battles with the groundhogs, I’ve been able to have something of a truce with them. As soon as I saw them begin to lurk in early April I used a new tactic and began applying mothballs to every spot I thought they were or might be nesting. So far so good, and not a one has set foot in garden land. I then read from a garden blog that dried blood (available in bags at garden centers) was the best groundhog repellent as they hate the scent.

You need to be very, very careful with mothballs though as you don’t want children or pets to get access to them. If you find a groundhog hole you can drop the mothballs down the holes or if they’re living under a shed or foundations you can place mothballs there as well. Just make sure that pets and children can’t get access to the mothballs AT ALL.

The last saga of the week has been the return of the scarlet lily beetle. This battle has been going on for three years now with a steep learning curve. I found the easiest way to control them was with well-aimed shots of pyrethrin, but you need to get every single one. The beetles show up first on their alternate host, the fritillaries, and later they move on to the lilies. You can get pyrethrin sprays in ready-to-use spray bottles or make your own from concentrate.

Pyrethrin is a natural and organic insecticide but kills any insect it hits and has no residual effects. This is why it should be used as a “stream” as opposed to a “spray,” and one squirt, well aimed, will kill an SLB in seconds. It’s also very effective on Japanese beetles and aphids, but again, it’s a nonspecific insecticide and will kill good bugs as well as bad ones so aim well and use as little as possible.

The Monterey brand of pyrethrin spray is OMRI organic listed. However, the Bonide brand of pyrethrin contains PPB (a synergist) so while some will consider this as still being organic the purists won’t.

Another garden delight was the arrival of the first hummingbird of the season on April 29. It was a male, and the males always show up a week or more before the females arrive. It looks like he was about a week earlier than in other years. Clearly in need of food, he hovered where the red string hangs on the front porch. The string is the mount for the feeder, which I immediately filled and installed.

You can read all kinds of special methods and menus for feeding hummers, but I keep it simple and easy. A quarter cup of pure, granular cane sugar mixed in a half cup of hot water until it fully dissolves. Then I add another half cup of cold water to cool the brew down, add it to the feeder and wait for the show. Be patient. The hummers don’t all arrive at the same time, but in a couple of weeks they’ll all be back and waiting for your donations.

After years of telling you when and how to use a preemergent herbicide on your lawn to control crabgrass I’ve decided to do a little experiment: Not using it this year.

I’ve always felt that after successive years of applying Pre-M there should be few to no crabgrass seeds in my lawn. Well, now that theory will be tested.

The only place I’ll put a preemergent is along the road in the front of the house and along the sides of the driveway. These are the two spots that can accumulate crabgrass seeds that wash in from other properties in the runoff from rains. At least that’s the theory. If any does show up a spot treatment can be used to kill the plants as they emerge, but not once they’ve gone to seed. Stay tuned. And of course, keep growing.

GARDEN NOTES

New plants are arriving every day by USPS, UPS and FedEx. One UPS driver says there’s a big increase in the number and size of the trees he’s seeing on the trucks. Most of these are potted plants and can remain in the pots for weeks before planting. But they need to be unboxed immediately and put in a bright, sheltered spot outdoors and watered. If you can plant the bare-rooted plants, the smaller ones can be potted in 1- or 2-quart nursery pots with Pro-Mix and planted later. Larger bare-rooted trees and shrubs can be “heeled” into the ground for a few days but should be planted within a week. No fertilizer on any of these, but you can use a biostimulant and then fertilizer about a month after planting.