Summer To-Do List

Summer is the time to enjoy the beach, pool, the family's yard, vacation and gardening.

Planted containers compliment the pool's shape and surrounding architecture

 Harvesting vegetables from the garden, cutting flowers to be displayed on the patio table, and flavoring a grilled dinner with herbs plucked from just outside the kitchen are terrific rewards for all the time spent planting and tending the garden. Here are a few tips to keep plants growing through the rest of summer.

Now is the time to mow lawns high and let the grass clippings lie.

Lawns are an important part of our landscape

 The heat will decompose the clippings fast, adding nutrients to the lawn. Longer grass shades the roots, keeping the sun from drying them out too fast. And, best of all, the longer blades inhibit weed growth. We recommend a 3" mowing height for most lawns in our area.
If weeds, especially crabgrass, are a problem, apply Crab-E-Rad now. Read label directions carefully for best results.
Wait until fall to feed the lawn. Most of our lawns contain cool-season grasses which may be dormant now, but will green up with autumn's cooler temperatures.

Flower beds benefit from a light application of slow release fertilizer. Organic gardeners can use Flower-Tone or Dr. Earth's Rose and Flower food. I might use Osmocote in my flower beds. It is a timed release fertilizer that lasts for up to 4 months. Osmocote is great for plants in containers too, though we recommend using a water-soluble food also to keep plants healthy and blooming.

Formal planting beds containing beautiful summer begonias

Now is a good time to cut back some annual and perennials that may have spent blooms. Pinching and deadheading old blooms encourages new growth and gives plants a fresh, new look.

Weeds aren't just ugly, they take valuable resources away from other plants. Remove them to keep the garden looking good. Use a bark mulch or compost over the soil to keep weeds out and moisture in. Maximum depth should be about 2 inches. Be careful not to pull mulch all the way up to a plant's stem for best results. Trees and shrubs benefit from an application of mulch over their roots as well. In addition to the aforementioned reasons, mulch can protect tree bark from the dreaded weedeater disease. String trimmers do a lot of damage to trees and shrubs this time of year; adding a protective border of mulch can be very useful.

Replant favorite vegetables from seed to keep the garden growing. Beans, and herbs like cilantro and dill, can be planted 2 weeks apart for a progressive harvest.

Billy's beans are harvest ready!

Basil and other herbs create a beautiful border.

 For tomatoes and peppers that continue to produce, provide a feeding of you favorite fertilizer to keep the vegetables coming. Plant cole crops, like broccoli, kale and cabbage around August 1 for fall harvest.

The water garden has tasks that should be completed to keep the pond healthy. Plants like water lilies and marginals should be fed one last time before fall.

Gorgeous water lily flowers

 Keep the plants cleaned up and follow-up with a bacteria to keep sludge from building up on the bottom of the pond. Fish should be getting fed daily and transitioned to cool weather food by mid-September. And, for those using barley straw for algae control, now is the time for a second batch.

Monitor the garden for pests and diseases and treat as necessary. A healthy garden, properly spaced, fed and maintained, will have a natural ecosystem of beneficial insects that will keep the bad guys away.

More than anything this summer, enjoy the fruits of your labor. Gardening is a wonderful way to enjoy each season.

These are a Few of Our Favorite Plants

What's your favorite plant? We've asked this question of each other several times this year. Some of the answers have stayed the same each time they've been asked. Others change from season to season. Here are a few of our staff's favorites.

Owner Andy Foard spends the spring procuring plants for our annual greenhouse and shadehouse and assisting customers with their plant choices. He is a big fan of Dragon Wing begonias and the large-leaved Whopper and Big begonias.

We first saw these Whopper begonias at a field trials site

All do a tremendous job in sun and shade, are deer resistant, somewhat drought tolerant and are easy to maintain.

At his home in North Baltimore County, Andy has planted many varieties of hydrangea. His favorite is Hydrangea paniculata Limelight.

One of a few spectacular Proven Winners varieties

 Limelight grows six to eight feet tall and wide. It blooms on new wood, so is best pruned in late winter. This hydrangea is very hardy, drought and sun tolerant and a true star performer in the garden.

Colleen Harlan and Ruth Engel enjoy the bright, colorful blooms of  Gerber Daisies. Gerbers are nice container plant that loves full sun and plenty of space to allow for good air circulation.

Gerber Daisies add tons of color to our greenhouse each spring 

The color range of these gorgeous daisies is just part of the reason for their popularity. Ruth likes to take them home and grow them indoors where the daisy flowers freely for a month or more. Ruth suggests watering Gerbers early in the day and fertilizing them with a plant starter when planted out in the garden, following up with Osmocoate fertilizer throughout the growing season.

Cindi Fielder loves all orange flowers. Luckily, plenty of flowers are available in her favorite color, including pansies, violas, petunias, begonias, fuchsia, vinca, coleus and so much more. Her singular favorite this year was the Santa Cruz Sunset begonia.

Begonia Santa Cruz Sunset is great for full sun or part shade

If it was up to Cindi, our entire plant selection  would be featured in color-blocked displays, with orange taking center stage.

Nurseryman Scott Carbone had a hard time picking just one. He likes the perennial Asclepias tuberosa, also known as butterfly weed. Butterfly weed is both a larval host plant and a nectar producing plant for Monarch butterflies. Sometimes called orange milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa does not produce milk.

Even young plants on our perennial benches attract Monarch butterflies

Our water gardens and store manager Tim McQuaid choose one of his favorite plants to be---surprise--- a water lily.

So many tropical water lilies are blooming right now in our water gardens 

It has unique variegated foliage and knock-your-socks-off lavender flowers.The tropicals do have to be protected over the winter. Tim does a seminar each year on winterizing the water garden and always provides wonderful tips to overwinter plants.

So, what's your favorite? We know that the hardest part of choosing your favorite plant is narrowing down the choices as we have gotten to know so many of them. We will revisit this subject again soon.

Native Grace

In early to mid April in Maryland, growing along the edge of forests, you may notice a leafless tree 

with tiny spots of magenta color along its branches and trunk. These are the flowers of eastern redbud
or Cercis canadensis, which bloom before its heart-shape leaves emerge.

Eastern redbud, which has an oriental cousin, Chinese redbud, is a graceful, smallish, native tree of the
forest understory, where it can grow 15 to 20 ft as it competes with larger trees. In the garden setting,
however, with adequate moisture and nutrients, it will tend to remain shorter, perhaps 10-12 ft in 15
years. Its bark is smooth and pale grey and the branches ascend slightly, giving the canopy a rounded
outline.

Redbud is adaptable to many soil types from acid or alkaline, but will decline in permanently wet soils,
and being a tree of the forest understory, it will tolerate, and grow well in, light shade.

There are several cultivars of redbud available – 'Forest Pansy' has reddish purple leaves which glow
the color of tawny port if the tree is placed where the morning or evening sun can back light them.
Another, 'Ruby Falls', has branches with a weeping habit giving it a sculptural look, and when grown as
a single specimen it would make a wonderful highlight to the front entrance of a home. One of the
newest cultivars is The Rising Sun™ with newly opened leaves in a range of colors from apricot to
golden yellow, becoming bright lime green through the summer months, and then turning the color of
Galliano liqueur in the fall. The best color for this cultivar is obtained if the tree is situated in full sun.

Redbud is a fine choice as a tree for the shrub border, where it could be paired with smaller viburnums
such Viburnum obovatum 'Mrs. Schiller's Delight', Virginia sweetspire, Itea virginia, 'Little Henry' or
“Henry's Garnet', or Clethra alnifolia, 'Ruby Spice' or 'Hummingbird'.

Thanks to our own Teresa Dutton for the article

Ready, Set, Grow!

After a particularly long winter, a spring rain today promises warmer temperatures just in time for our spring gardens. Winter has allowed our gardens to rest. Straw spread out over planting rows are ready for tilling. The use of organic matter is important to the garden. It supplies natural food to support microbial life, creates air spaces for healthy roots, and provides space for water.

Straw in Billy Foard's Garden

Get a soil test done now; our garden shop can process one in a few minutes for pH for no cost to the home gardener. If lime should be added, do so right away. Add fertilizer as needed, till, then get ready to plant.

John James tests soil for pH levels

 Valley View Farms has grown vegetable transplants for gardeners for over 30 years.

Seedlings growing in our farm greenhouses

 This year's cole crops and other cool weather plants are already at the store. Asparagus, horseradish and rhubarb roots are available as well.

Tomatoes and peppers, and other warm weather vegetable transplants will soon follow. By mid-April, we'll have most of  our vegetable transplants available for area gardens.

Hanging baskets and container gardens grown at our farm greenhouses

Of course, our farm greenhouses grow beautiful flowers, including the area's best selection of hanging baskets. Our head grower, John Miller, starts growing in late January to have healthy flower and vegetable plants available from March to the end of the year.

John Miller, our head grower

We're ready! Are you? Ready, set, grow!

Stinkbugs

The Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs are still here! After a super cold winter, many snowfalls and other weather events, the BMSBs have survived!

 I know because they are in my ceiling light fixtures and various other venues in and around my home and office. That telling cilantro odor clings to the air. Luckily, they're slow moving so I can pick them up and dispose of them in any number of ways. But how did they make it through this winter?

'Stinky' hanging around my computer at work

According to Dr. Stanton Gill, an University of Maryland entomologist, stink bugs have a knack for finding nice, warm spots in which to hide. Deep in loose tree bark, in the attic or hiding in a warm pile of leaves, they have managed to stay alive. As it has gotten colder in some of those spaces, they have moved into mine. Yuk!
Mike Raupp, also an entomologist with the University of Maryland, offers some advice in the following video.

The trap that Mike shows is a Rescue Stink Bug Trap. I used one last year in my vegetable garden to keep tomatoes stink bug free. The amount of the critters that crawled up the green fins to the trap was astonishing. The pheromones attract the little critters into the trap. Good for me that it is reusable; once I've emptied the trap, it is ready to go for more.

Rescue Stink Bug Trap

Once just a problem in the Mid-Atlantic region, stinkbugs have slowly spread out to much of the United States. There are insecticides available that will kill the little devils.With some vigilance in closing gaps in the home, pesticides can be used very sparingly.

Good luck putting up with these nuisance pests. Unfortunately, they may be here to stay.

February Gardening Tips

As I am writing this, it's snowing...again. The groundhog indicated that we would have 6 more weeks of winter.  Phil, I hope you're wrong.

Here are some things we can be doing inside and out to prepare for spring's arrival.


Inside

As days start to lengthen, continue to provide humidity for houseplants by using a humidifier or place plants on a large saucer atop moist pebbles. Continue to water plants when the soil surface is dry. Empty saucers of standing water. Monitor and treat for insects by removing affected laves or by spraying with insecticidal soap and horticultural oil.

Luckily, our greenhouse provides all of the humidity that help our plants thrive.

Buy seeds now to get the best selection available. Cole crops and other early spring crops like broccoli, cabbage, kale, and perennial herbs can be started now for planting outside in early April. Wait until next month to start tomatoes, peppers and other warm crops that will not be transplanted until mid-May.

Some like 'em hot!

As Amaryllis finish blooming, cut off the large flower stalk and allow the leaves to grow out. Place the plant outside after all danger of frost has passed.

Take a class on gardening. Look at the seminars offered at Valley View Farms. Check back for more classes in April and June.

Terry Freed from Peninsula Nurseries teaches us about growing fruit trees.

Outside

Be careful not to get ice melt on lawns or planting beds.

Do not walk or drive on frozen lawns as grass blades and crowns may be destroyed.

Watch for voles, especially around trees and shrubs planted last year. Stomp snow around plants to keep voles from easily tunneling through to feed on plant material.

Deer are feeding now too. Use deer repellents or fencing to avoid damage to trees and shrubs.

This has worked very well around my garden

Feed the birds. Suet and black oil sunflower seeds are favored by many winter birds.

Prune trees and shrubs that have been damaged by winter storms. Do not use pruning paint as trees properly pruned heal fine.

Apply dormant oil to fruit trees as daytime temperatures rise above 40 degrees F. Summit Horticultural Oil will suppress overwintering insects and disease on trees.

As the extremely cold temperatures of this winter fade away, many other gardening tasks should be performed. We can address other gardening tasks as we get mild weather.

In the meantime, keep warm and dry and enjoy the season.

Winter Bird Feeding

Feeding the birds is a rewarding hobby that many people started as children.Such was not the case in my own life, but, being a gardener, providing a habitat for birds and other wildlife soon became one of the goals set in my own gardening world.

Nuthatches enjoy suet cakes

Fruit bearing plants like holly, winter berry, and beauty berry, have been added to the landscape to provide late summer and fall food for the birds. Evergreen trees and shrubs have offered shelter. The yard is kept a little bit wild to leave sheltered areas for the birds and other animals. Perennials like black-eyed Susans, daisies, and ornamental grasses are not cut back until early March to allow birds to enjoy the seed heads from the plants.

Cardinals perch around the feeder during a winter snowstorm

 But, come winter as the plants are covered in snow, and the berries already foraged by the birds, supplemental feeding becomes a necessity.
Birds have a fast metabolism and look for high calorie and high fat seed and suet to help keep them fed and warm. Black oil sunflower seeds, peanuts, safflower, and thistle are wonderful seeds often incorporated into mixes for cardinals, finches, juncos, nuthatches, tufted titmice, woodpeckers, and many other winter backyard birds. For people who have a squirrel problem, baffles, Squirrel Busters feeders and possibly the addition of  liquid hot pepper to the seed will thwart the little guys.

Squirrels can be as captivating as winter birds to watch as they eat food provided for them

Keep feeders clean to avoid spreading disease to the birds. Feeder Fresh is an additive that prevents mold and caking, keeping the food and the feeder clean, dry and fresh. Other house, feeder and birdbath cleaners are also available in our Wild Bird House at Valley View.

Enjoy the backyard feeders. And, take some fun photos, as Marian has done, in your own backyard.