Roses-May Care and Maintenance

During the month of May, you are about the middle of the first bloom cycle.  If you show roses, you have been most likely babying and protecting your prize blooms for show, if not you have been like me and just enjoying the view.  There is nothing like taking a stroll through your garden and clipping a few roses and a few other pieces of greenery to make a hand held bouquet, then sneaking into the house to give it to the one you love.  I love to watch Ms. Janet’s eyes light up when I manage to get this done before she sees me.

Keep up your spray program this month because black spot and powdery mildew never rest.  The best fungicides that I have found for my area are Immunox and Mancozeb.  Funginex and Bannermax are two more that work well too.  I still spray once a week just because my garden seems to be a place where black spot loves to live.  I really don’t have a problem with powdery mildew or maybe I just have the upper hand on it.

This is a good time to check periodically for spider mites.  I usually just wash them off with a sharp blast from the water hose.  If you happen to have a bad case and need to  use a chemical spray, I recommend permethrin, a product named Avid, and I have heard of a product named Cinnamite.  I have not tried the latter.

During the month of May, I like to give each bush a cup of 13-13-13 and about 3 tablespoons of Epsom Salts, smaller bushes about half that amount.  I sprinkle it around the drip line and scratch it in the soil.  I also still use Monty’s Joy Juice in my mix when I spray the fungicides.

If you have never attended a rose show I urge you to do so.  The Northeast Mississippi Rose Society will have their Annual Rose Show at the Renasant Bank Lobby on Troy Street, Downtown Tupelo, MS on May 5^th, 2011 from 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM.  If you think you would like to be an exhibitor, please arrive with your roses by 8:30 AM.

If you have any questions or comments, send me a message at colorsbytim@hotmil.com

Add a Tropical Feel to Your Garden

While every garden has its staples; roses, hydrangeas, azaleas, assorted annuals, and other perrinials; I thought why not add a tropical touch to the garden.  Last year Ms. Janet and I added a few plants to give our garden a tropical feel. 

The first thing we added was a Rice Paper Plant that a fellow master gardener from Booneville gave us.  We got it late in the season, so it only grew to a height of about three feet.  This is a plant that can take the extreme Mississippi heat with no problem.  It likes most any soil, but will grow and multiply best in a rich, well-drained soil.  It likes the full sun, but will also grow in partial shade.  It can grow up to ten feet in height and has brownish-frosted green leaves that can grow up to 24-36 inches in width.  The flowers come on in late fall and are creamy white, fluffy balls.  I started with the one plant last year and this year I have half a dozen or so that came back.  It will die back to the ground in this area and come back in multiples next year.

The next addition we made last year was the Castor Bean Plant.  We planted three seeds and they came up and just sat there, then about June they started growing about a foot a week or it seems.  They grow to be about ten feet tall and have large reddish-purple leaves that have five to eleven lobes and can get up to three feet in length.  They look great as a specimen plant and even better planted in groups of three or more.  The flowers are formed in clusters and develop seed pods that contain three smooth seeds about one half inch long and are usually a mosaic of colors.  Plant three seeds this year and next year you will have fifty or more plants come back.  This plant is an annual, but comes back year after year from its own seed.  The down side to this plant is that the seeds are poisonous and are deadly.  If you grow this plant, you will want to teach your children about it.  We grow this plant and have taught our grandbabies that it is a pretty plant, but it is not to be eaten.  If you remove the flower clusters as they appear, no seeds will form making them a safer plant for children. 

Another great plant that has been around for years is the canna lily.  It comes in a variety of colors as well as several colors of foliage.  They can have green or purple or variegated foliage with flowers of red, yellow, or orange.   Canna lilies like moist soil and plenty of sunlight.  Plant the rhizomes at least six inches deep and mulch them to help retain moisture.  They will grow in partial shade, but not as tall as in full sun.  They need to be protected from the wind as they will break easily.  Depending on the amount of sunlight it gets, I have grown them to six to eight feet in height.  These plants look much better in groupings as opposed to being a specimen plant.

These are just a few of the plants that you can add to your landscape to give it that tropical  feeling.  Others are ferns, elephant ears, hostas, and calla lilies.  We have some of all of these in our garden.  Some grow in the sun and some need all shade, but all give that feeling of being on that little island far away.

Happy Gardening and Keep Digging in the Dirt

Lady Banks Rose

The Lady Banks Rose has been in bloom in my yard for a couple of weeks now and has been the topic of much discussion in the form of emails, phone calls, and numerous postings on facebook.  We have three of them in our yard and they have exploded with thousands of yellow blooms.  We have a forty foot pergola on one side of our home, with a Lady Banks Rose on each end of it and they have nearly met in the middle.  The third is a smaller one on an arbor that leads into a smaller garden area.

The Lady Banks Rose is a species rose and not a hybrid that was originally found in China.  There are two varieties, 1)Rosa banksiae normalis which is the natural wild form of the species and has a single style flower with five white petals and dates back to 1796.  This rose was introduced to Europe by William Kerr, who had been sent on a plant hunting expedition by Sir Joseph Banks who was the head of the Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain; thus the rose was named Lady Banks in honor of his wife.  2)Rosa banksiae lutea is the probably the most popular of the two species and has double yellow flowers with many petals.  It was introduced to Europe by J. D. Parks in 1824.  All Lady Banks Roses have a faint fragrance that is said to resemble that of a violet. 

The Lady Banks Rose is a thornless, vigorous grower and can easily take over an arbor, shed, fence, or even the side of your home in just a few short years.  This rose is not meant for a small spaces.  They are the first rose to bloom in early spring and will have hundreds or even thousands of blooms which provides one of the most breathtaking displays in the garden.  The bark of the Lady Banks has an exfoliating cinnamon brown color on the older canes.  This rose is an excellent backdrop for azaleas, dogwoods, and Japanese maples.  It is very drought tolerant once it is established and is most likely the most disease resistant rose grown.  This makes it a favorite for all rose growers, because it is basically maintenance free. 

Lady Banks Rose likes full sun and well drained soil.  When planting mix lots of organic matter with the exsisting soil.  Dig the planting hole a little deeper and at least twice the diameter of the planting pot.  Pour water in the bottom of the soil, backfill with some organic matter and plant the rose so that the soil line of the plant is about one inch above the soil line of the ground.  This will allow room for mulch without smothering the rose. Water regularly until it has become established, after that watering is not necessary except in extreme drought conditions.  Pruning the Lady Banks is not necessary, but if you must prune for whatever reason, do so within a two week window following the bloom cycle.  The Lady Banks Rose blooms on old wood or last year’s growth.

The Guinness Book of World Records has listed the largest of this species to be in Tombstone, Arizona.  It is said to cover 8000 square feet of area and the trunk of this rose has been measured to be 12 feet in circumference.

If you don’t have one, you might want to consider getting one, because they are beautiful and are a centerpiece of any garden.

If you have any questions or comments, send me an email at colorsbytim@hotmail.com or leave me a message at the Union County  Extension Office 662-534-1916.

Happy Gardening and keep digging in the dirt.

Sunday Lunch: Country Style

My father-in-law is a market farmer in a big way.  He grows taters, maters, corn, peas, watermelons, cantaloupes, sorghum, and a few other vegetables. 

A couple of months have passed since tater planting time this year and taters have been dug. They have been safely stored in the barn where we go and get them as we need them.  Ms. Janet and my grandson, J.T., picked a double mess of green beans that were growing in a 4’ x 8’ raised bed that we have in our back yard.  Ms. Janet snapped them and grabbed us some new taters out of the bucket, scraped them, and put them on to cook.  Later in the day the feast began, with a grand meal consisting of fresh green beans and new taters, fresh cucumbers from the back yard, also boiled fresh cabbage donated by my next door neighbor from his garden, hominy, fried bacon, and a pone of skillet cornbread bathed in real butter.  This cornbread was made from fresh cornmeal that my father-in-law makes every year.  Ms. Janet cut a fresh ambrosia cantaloupe (from somewhere in south Mississippi).  Are you hungry yet?  Well, if you’re not, you’re not from around here.  We also have plenty of home brewed Mississippi wine to drink (better known as sweet tea).  After a few minutes of laughter while Papaw Joe gave a rendition of some of his boyhood adventures, Ms. Dorothy made us some homemade skillet fried apple and peach pies.  These magnificent made from scratch delicacies were washed down with a pot of fresh ground and brewed coffee (from Dan Skinner’s High Point Coffee Roaster).

This meal was exceptional and made for a great lesson for my grandson.  He now has an idea where the food on the table comes from and how much better it tastes when you watch a seed grow into something that you can eat.  I recommend that you take your children and grandchildren and plant a little patch somewhere in your yard this year. You don’t need a big garden to teach them a big lesson.  Don’t forget to take them with you to the Farmer’s Market also and let them meet the farmers.  Why, I bet those farmers would love for you to bring them out to the farm for a tour.  It’ll be fun for them, not to mention they will get a bird’s eye view of what food looks like before the food companies get ahold of it.  The quality time and memories will last forever and I’ll bet they teach their kids some day and make their own memories too.

Folks, I believe I hear my recliner calling me, because after a meal like this, my eyes just can’t seem to stay open.

This article is written by Tim Burress, Union County Master Gardener and Farmer’s Market manager.  I live on top of Center Hill, just outside of New Albany with my adorable wife Ms. Janet along with all the flowers and some vegetables too.