Fall Clean-ups: Detailing

(Originally posted: November 29, 2019)

With the majority of the leaves down, fall clean-up is becoming less about ‘just getting leaves to the curb’ (or the compost pile or the leaf mulcher) and more about making the garden look tidy heading into the winter. Whether you prefer to strip your beds of leaves (with the plan to add lots of compost next year) or keep the leaves in place over the winter so that they can break down and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil, there are a few key tips that can ‘up the tidy factor’ in your fall garden (and protect your plants in the process).

Free your Plants!

When leaves from large trees fall, they cover the garden. (Thanks ‘Captain Obvious’!) During fall clean-up, these leaves are usually raked or blown out of the beds. What often gets neglected are all the leaves that have been captured by the branches of smaller trees and shrubs in the garden. Sure these plants look dead at this time of year, but they don’t have to look like debris traps! While it may seem tedious, picking out the leaves that have been trapped within the branches of your specimen trees/shrubs or even perennials, will greatly improve the overall tidiness of your garden.

A Spiraea betulifolia (birch leaf spirea) that has been effective at trapping leaves (left) and the same shrub with the oak leaves removed (right).

Leaves are left on this garden bed but they have been brushed off the clumps of [cut down] grass- this provides a little definition to the plantings and ‘ups the tidy factor’ despite the leaves remaining on the rest of the garden.

Picking out leaves becomes even more important when dealing with evergreen trees, shrubs, as well as groundcovers and other perennials. While leaves resting on the top of hedges or within the canopy of evergreens is really noticeable and unsightly, a build-up of fallen leaves can form thick mats on the evergreen needles/leaves which can smother/kill them. In the spring you can be left with a patchy-looking shrub or even a dead patch of groundcover. So, in the case of evergreens, it is not only aesthetically important to remove leaf litter (from on top of and within the plants), it is also important in maintaining plant health.

Leaves settled on top of a Taxus (yew) hedge (left) not only looks untidy but the leaves are not good for the yew foliage. Removing the leaves (right) is an easy fix.

A fair amount of leaf litter resting on top of Vinca minor (periwinkle) on the left and Pachysandra terminalis (Japanese spurge) on the right; leaves should not be allowed to pile up on evergreen groundcovers such as these.

Now that we have dealt with the top portion of our trees and shrubs, we will now shift our gaze and look beneath them. Leaf blowers are notorious for blowing leaves into the base of shrubs and firmly lodging them in place. Yes, the garden bed may look tidy and uniform (with the mulch and top soil completely stripped away… ‘leaf blower rant’ to follow in a future post!) but the shrubs look like they are being swallowed by leaves! Enter another tedious task with big a payback… picking out leaves from the base of your plants. This task is guaranteed to restore some definition to your plantings but it also serves another purpose. A pile-up of leaves at the base of plants can act like a really cozy and inviting home for rodents over the winter months; rodents that can nibble on and therefore damage your plants. In an effort to not lay out the red carpet for rodents, I try to keep the base of my trees, shrubs, and even perennial clumps free of leaf build-up.

Leaves caught up in branches and around the base of some shrubs (left) and the same shrubs with leaves removed.

A Taxus x media (yew) hedge showing one section with leaves caught in branches and beneath the plants, and another section where the leaves have been ‘picked out’.

Edge

With less plant material in the garden now, the edges of our garden beds become much more prominent- which means bad edges tend to stand out like a sore thumb! A quick pass with the garden edger can ‘crisp-up’ the lines again, and give the garden a tidier look. I will also rake the turf following along the edge of a garden bed to remove any mulch that has decided to take heed of the notion that ‘the grass is greener on the other side’. To further enhance the edge of beds (ones with a surface of bare soil or fine mulch), I will take a rake and do a light pass along the front of the garden bed to give it a nice uniform look. In general, regardless of the amount of debris you leave on the garden bed, if you can keep the edge of the bed tidy, you will improve the overall appearance of the garden.

Fluff the Mulch

If you like cleaning leaves out your beds and you happen to have a layer of mulch on your gardens, now is the perfect time to turn or ‘fluff up’ the mulch- one final refresher before the snow flies!

And there you have it! These tips may seem minor and of low priority given the fact that the gardening season is coming to a close, but if you live in an area that does not receive reliable snowfall, then chances are you could be looking at your garden ‘as is’ for a fairly long time! These are all tasks that are often overlooked during fall clean-ups (by homeowners and professionals alike!) and I find that to complete a fall clean-up that really stands out… the tidiness is in the details.

Snow loads

(Originally posted: November 11, 2019)

As I write this, we are receiving the first beautiful blanket of snow for the fall/winter season- certainly putting a pause on my fall clean-ups! While there is much to say about autumn tasks and leaf clean-up, I am also going to pause these topics, and take this opportunity instead to talk about… you guessed it… snow!

(Don’t think I can’t hear your grumbles.)

The first snowfall is always beautiful- all our ‘winter interest plants’ are fresh and looking their best…ready to shine or more accurately sparkle, with the added snow- take it in and snap some photos! It’s a magical time of year!

With that said, not all plants receive the snow with open arms- some just crumble under it’s weight. It is one thing for a perennial to flatten to the ground as a result of the weight of heavy snow (it’s OK- it will grow back from the ground in the spring), it is another thing entirely for a woody plant such a tree or shrub to be overloaded with the white stuff and snap. This is damage that the plant will need to rebound from. Aside from a potentially gaping hole in the structure of the plant, the wound is a really nice entry point for disease organisms. All this boils down to one point: we want to protect vulnerable woody plants from the damaging effects of snow loads.

Some shrubs, like the Buddleia (butterfly bush) unphased by a blanket of snow (for now), others like the Taxus (yew) hedge on the right are not so sturdy!

Thankfully this is not a problem that affects every tree and shrub in the garden. I find that the most ‘at risk’ plants are our evergreens. Since these plants hold on to their ‘leaves’ they are also able to hold on to more snow when it falls, and their branches can’t always take that extra weight. The main evergreens that I flag as a concern are:

• Boxwood (Buxus spp.)- when they are not routinely clipped they will lack a nice tight structure; in contrast unclipped boxwoods can actually be quite sprawly with weak branches

• Upright-growing yews (Taxus spp.) are multi-stemmed (multiple main branches emerging from the base of the plant) and when snow piles up on them the weight can splay the stems in different directions; sometimes the stems bounce back and sometimes they don’t

• Upright-growing cedars and junipers (Thuja spp. and Juniperus spp.) can also have multiple stems; if they do, these plants will have similar problems to the yews mentioned above.

The main goal of protecting against snow is to provide some supplemental support to the plant to prevent the branches from snapping or the multiple stems from splaying. This can be accomplished in three ways:

1) Tying up the branches/stems of the plant together so that the branches are able to support one another and there is a reduced area on which the snow can land. To accomplish this, I tie twine to a branch close to the top of the plant, spiral it around the tree/shrub to the bottom and then work my way back up. I pull the branches in toward each other slightly to ensure they are getting some support however I still want the branches to have air flow to prevent disease problems so I don’t pull the branches in too tightly. This twine gets removed in the spring.

2) Erecting a structure that can act as a support when the plant needs it. This approach can be as simple as a small makeshift fence that prevents branches from bending over too far. This tactic works for smaller shrubs.

3) Commit to being on ‘snow patrol’. If you think you have plants that may suffer under the weight of a good dumping of snow (but you live in an area where this is an exception and not the norm), you can always periodically trek outside during a storm and gently brush the snow off the plant to free it from the load. (Who says you can’t garden in the winter?). This is also a great tactic to use when you get caught off-guard with an early season snowstorm!

And there you have it- your first ‘taste’ of winter! We will resume the regularly scheduled ‘fall programming’ with the next post. Hot chocolate, here I come!

YUM. (Photo created by freepik - https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/christmas)

And then there were 2... or 3... or 4...

(Originally posted: November 7, 2019)

A while ago I promised a blog about dividing perennials. While it’s taken me some time to put virtual-pen to cyber-paper, it is still a relevant topic this late in the season.

Let’s not waste any more time and get straight into it!

Throughout this growing season, did you notice any perennials completely outgrowing their allotted garden space? Did you notice a perennial that grew as a ring with a big empty space in the middle of it (see photo)? Did you have a perennial that under-performed in it’s floral display? These are all signs that your perennial in question needs to be divided (and probably should have been divided years ago)!

Perennials are NOT meant to look like donuts! This grass is in need of some dividing.

Dividing is a way to rejuvenate our perennials. Clumps can get overcrowded and experience a reduction in vigour over time. Additionally, some perennials simply begin to take up too much space in our gardens- becoming bullies to our other plants; in this case, dividing is a way to keep the size of a perennial patch in check.

Dividing is insanely easy. Plus it is a great [free] way to increase the number of plants that are available to you*. While, you may not want the same Hosta covering every square inch of your garden, having divisions at your curbside in a box labelled ‘free plants’ makes you a popular person in your neighbourhood, not to mention you gain some serious ‘garden-related street cred’ when people see that you have the nerve to rip plants from the ground only to slice ‘em up and give them away. (“Wow” people whisper in awe, “That person must really know what they are doing in the garden…”)

TIMING

Dividing is typically done in the spring and the fall when temperatures are cooler and moisture is more abundant. Blazing heat, intense sun, and drought are all plant stressors that are minimized in the spring and fall months. The process of dividing is stressful enough as it is- why unnecessarily add environmental stressors into the mix?

As for spring versus fall, common advice states that fall flowering plants are to be divided in the spring and spring-flowering plants are to be divided in the fall.

Why all the rules?

First of all, it should be known that if you divide a plant too close to it’s flowering time, it may not bloom- it is too busy getting it’s ‘smaller self’ reestablished! If divided and cared for properly, you won’t kill the plant, but sacrificing blooms is a real possibility (but not a guarantee). If you divide while a plant is in flower, not all the plant’s energy will be put towards growing new roots, so reestablishment in the garden can take longer.

Another consideration with respect to timing is the length of time available for the plant to reestablish itself. Plants divided in the spring have a whole growing season to set new roots and bounce back from the ‘operation’ whereas plants divided in the autumn months have a much smaller window of time to settle into their new size and surroundings before the snow flies. This can be a problem for more tender perennials, but for the ‘tough-as-nails’ ones such as Hemerocallis spp. (daylilies) or Hosta spp… they laugh in the face of autumn division.

‘Tough-as-nails’ Hemerocallis spp. in bloom.

Since 90% of the plants that I divide are these super-strength perennials, I typically divide them in the fall (and sometimes quite late in the fall)… they always bounce back beautifully; besides, the spring is busy enough as it is!

One final note with respect to timing: I typically time my dividing for when the soil has some moisture in it but is not saturated. Trampling on a wet garden bed is a great way to compact the soil which is bad for root growth and therefore the health of the plants in the garden, so I avoid this at all costs.

HOW TO DIVIDE

Dividing a perennial can be completed in a series of simple steps. I will use a Hosta to illustrate the process; it is a great perennial to start with if you are tentative about this whole procedure!

Step 1: Select your candidate for division

Step 2: Dig all around the clump with a spade, starting close to the drip line of the plant (the point away from the plant to which the leaves extend) and moving inward when you get a sense of where the roots are. You will sever some of the roots in the process and that is fine, but your goal is to leave as much of the root system in tact as possible. Once you have sliced around the plant, it is time to get your spade under the clump to ‘pop’ it from the ground.

Step 3: Use a spade to slice the clump into multiple pieces. In this case I have sliced the original clump twice to magically turn 1 Hosta into 3 but I could easily have turned it into 5 or 6! Perennials can also be divided by hand or with a non-serrated sharp knife (suitable for perennials with finer, more delicate root systems), a handsaw (suitable for perennials with woody crowns), pitchforks or even an ax! Regardless of your tool, when you are ‘slicing and dicing’ be sure to cut out and discard the dead zones from the centre of your ‘donut plants’ as well as anything that looks diseased.

Step 4: Mix in a shovelful or two of compost or composted manure into the planting hole to amend the soil

Step 5: Plant a newly divided clump into the ground making sure the plant is put in the soil at the same depth that it was originally growing at and that the roots are spread out and away from the centre of the plant; cut down the leaves by at least half if dividing in the autumn

Step 6: Water around the clump to help settle the soil around the plant’s root system

Step 7: Exclaim “That was insanely easy! Now what am I going to do with the other two clumps…”

While there is MUCH more to say about division, this should help illustrate the basic technique. I will do more posts dedicated to dividing other types of perennials in the future, but in the meantime, have fun increasing the Hosta and Hemerocallis populations in your neighbourhood!

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*It is important to keep in mind that dividing a plant is considered propagation. Some plants are patented and for these plants unlicensed propagation is prohibited (even for personal use).