Rose Pruning — Too Much or Not Enough

Last weekend, I pruned my roses. There is always a certain amount of anticipation and dread in pruning, plus last year, pruning my roses resulted in a medical event for me (more on that later). I worry that I won’t do it right, then I go for it and chop the heck out of them. I alway have a certain feeling that it is me against them as I prune –you wouldn’t believe the size of the thorns on some of the roses and there is always a chance that one of the climbers will snap back at my face and stab me or I’ll get scratched or have a thorn embed in my knuckle, like last year, which resulted in some kind of arthritis that I battled for six months (I promise I will write more about that next time. I know I said that twice now.) Anyway, don’t let the thorns get you!

Of course, now I think I pruned too much, especially the climbers. Why I did not read my gardening books before I pruned, I will never know, but I waited and read the books the day after to see if I did it right. Then I realized that I over-pruned my climbers, which is what I did the year before. No wonder they look shabby! I think I pruned them too much the first year, too. Oh well. I have taken a class on pruning roses–learning to prune them is a personal evolutionary process. One day after years of practice, I will finally get it right. Anyway, the rose is an amazing plant, complicated and simplistic at the same time. They will survive my efforts.

Here are some of the things to remember:

–The three Ds of pruning: remove canes that are ”diseased,” “dead” and some other “d” word that I can’t remember. No wonder I can’t do it right! The one thing that is cool about diseased canes are that in my roses I can see the hole where a beetle bored through it. You chop the cane down to where you get to good wood and no longer see the little black beetle hole.

–Try to cut crossing branches. Try to create an open “vase-like” effect–not my words. Those are from Pat Welsch. But if you leave crossing canes, you will soon see them attacking each other with their thorns and basically mauling each other, allowing disease to enter the wounds.

–You can actually see where the little buds will form and which direction they will grow. Clip 1/4 inch above those to determine where new growth will happen and influence its direction. Leave more than three little buds on a cane and clip above that. I love that I can determine the direction the canes will grow.

–There are lots of other important rules of thumb like 1/3 rules and whatnot that I can’t remember. I am a disastrous rose pruner. It makes me feel good though to go out and chop them.

–Next on the list: spray with dormant spray and add Ada Perry’s Magic Formula–but that’s next weekend’s job!

I took these pictures to help me see if I did it right once or wrong … in years to come, I will look back at this first. I promise. These aren’t all of my dozen roses just the main varieties.

Note to self: read this before picking up the pruning shears! Wear gauntlet gloves, too.

This all sounds horrible, but as I was pruning, a couple walked by and told me that they absolutely love my roses every year so I can’t be that bad at it!

Mary Rose pruned, Jan. 8, 2012

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Pumpkin time

Now I planted seedling pumpkins in July. I know this was late, but I am always hopeful. I hope I will have Thanksgiving pumpkins. But again I had problems. Some little baby pumpkins came but fell off. Some plants had only male flowers — how in the heck is that possible? Anyway, while I was discouraged, I was happy to find some real little gal flowers with baby pumpkins at the base along with some male flowers. Now that I read about fertilizing them myself, I decided to get on it.

That sounded wrong…what I meant was, I was going to have to cross-pollinate my pumpkins. First of all, I probably planted too few and too far apart.  I had to plant them in the front flower beds because we are going to re-do our backyard. Since I bought them late, I only bought one of each variety–a Cinderella, a baby bear and a Jack be Nimble (or something) plus a loofah gourd. Don’t ask me why I bought a loofah. I don’t really like them, but I was fighting some lady at Walter Andersens who was also there buying late pumpkins. We were helping each other, sort of. I got the loofah.

Well, I used a Q-tip. That seemed scientific. I stuck it in there and got as much pollen on it as I could and then I ran around to the Cinderella, the Baby Bear and the loofa and rubbed pollen in all the lady flowers. I thought maybe I should have on some Marvin Gaye. I felt a little embarrassed, like I was doing something naughty.

But you know what, I got a pumpkin. See the one in the photo! I hope it makes it. I hope I don’t get some weird loofah pumpkin hybrid. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. I went to Olivewood Gardens last week in National City. It is a really neat place. More on that later.

Oh yes, plant your sweet peas and wildflowers now. I started. You can do it in ten minutes if you have a prepared bed, or if you don’t, sweet peas and wildflowers will grow just about anywhere there is sun and water. I don’t have much room for planting right now (plus the pumpkins are taking up a lot more space than I anticipated). I had to find little empty spots around the yard.

Compost Thrills

All the talk of composting made me want to try, too. I didn’t want to buy one of those $100 composting bins and growing worms isn’t for me. I came just imagine my eight year old walking in the house holding a hundred worms in her bare hands. (She loves any creepy crawly thing.) No, I can’t grow my own worm castings. I prefer to buy a bag of them when I can afford it.

So back to composting — I found this video on Sunset Magazine’s web site:http://www.sunset.com/garden/backyard-projects/chicken-wire-compost-bin-video-00400000037005/

This was cheap, fast and easy to make. The problem was that this method took me a year to make compost!

Also, if you do this method, you had better have a lot of space because you should start several of these bins at once or over a series of months. That way you would have continuous compost and when one bin filled up, you could start another. Also, it was very hard to stir and turn the compost the way you were supposed to because the sides were too high. Maybe my husband and I made it too high to begin with, but you might want to consider how tall you are (and how strong you are too.)

Now in the Vegetable Gardner’s Bible by Edward C. Smith, it shows this type of chicken wire hoop as the perfect tool for making “leaf mold” compost, which is supposed to be one of the best composts. But he tells you it takes a year. So start now!

The compost I eventually made ended up enriching my vegetable garden but was nowhere near what I need for my whole yard. I am still trying to figure it out. Send me your ideas!

Now if you have a very short attention span, need instant gratification and cheap thrills (and can’t wait for compost to decompose), try this soil amendment recipe from my favorite San Diego gardening author Pat Welsh.  In her Southern California Gardening book, she writes about harvesting seaweed from the beach. Stuff it in a black plastic bag, take it home and chop it up with a machete and mix it in the soil. All this sounds really funny to me. I don’t think I have a machete. I guess I could use a meat cleaver. I am not sure that would be safe for anyone.  But if you really want to try that go for it. I may do it one day just to amuse my husband or my niece –she says all I blog about is fertilizer, anyway.

Please send me your composting tips. I need help!

Too Much Squash: an Overabundance of Vegetables

Thanks to a few days at BlogHer, I have some new ideas. First of all, after being inside for three days, I really need to get out and garden!

At the beach on Sunday, I realized most of my friends — most of whom are gardeners too — have too much squash right now. We can’t give squash away to each other anymore!

My friend Rebecca brought zucchini muffins, which we all ate, expect my husband because he thinks vegetables disguised as desserts or breads is trickery. (I could write a lot about his food habits, but will spare you.)  I planted only yellow squash, and I don’t think that is good for fried squash blossoms or muffins but heck, I may try it soon if I get tired of eating it with my dinner (or lunch as I did today). Plus no one else in my family will eat it — back to the weird food habits story that I haven’t written about yet. I am the primary squash eater of our household. Yay for me!

Anyway, one recipe that my friend Julie  suggested was very delicious and simple. You can use the grill or roast the veggies in the oven. It feels very summery and even my husband tried it! Here goes:

• Squash (any kind, sliced thin, vertically)
• Eggplant (Japanese, slice vertically)
• Red peppers
• or any other sturdy vegetable
• Pesto (can purchase from the grocery)
• Olive Oil

Slice vegetables 1/4 inch thick and dilute the pesto with a little olive oil. Toss vegetables and add salt and pepper to taste. Grill or roast in oven.

There you have it. Thanks, Julie!  Something else to do with all that squash (and Japanese eggplants, too!)

Eat well tonight and garden until the sun goes down.

Vegetable Garden

Squash, peppers and egg plant

Sunflowers, beans, lettuce and cucumbers

Progress

 Okay, so I noticed this old picture above in my “No Holes” blog. Now look at the area. That makes me feel pretty good!

Back to the scale, here is a better picture of the white armored scale. It lives with ants and eats their honeydew or something. It also makes black soot on the branches.

armored scale

 

 

 

 

Poor Lucy

  In Memorium: Lucy 1997 – July 2011….since I have included her in this blog before, I will commemorate her here too. She was a good dog. She dug up my garden but she tried to kill the gophers too. I will miss her.

Summer 2011

Now, the gophers are gone, the roses are blooming again, a few Dahlias have sprouted.  Now is the season of dead Alyogenes (blue hibiscus) and my time of painting rubbing alchohol on the branches of my one tree to kill the white  scale. Here is a picture–the scale looks prehistoric. You can take a toothbrush and dip it in alcohol to rub off the bugs, but it takes time and patience.

Some happy things: lots of yellow squash from the vegetable garden, green beans, eggplants and sunflowers, too.

Diseased branch

 

The dreaded late summer scale

Spring 2011

Well, this is a little late, but spring was beautiful in my garden. Easter was the best time with Austin roses blooming so much that I got sick of making bouquets. The lavender was thick and the bower vines blossomed. Everything was beautiful. For the first time, did not plant Sweet Peas. That made me a little sad, but I ran out of steam, I guess. I’ve planted them for eleven years. My sweet pea patch grew shaded so it wouldn’t work for planting and I had no will to find another. It’s a pattern of these years, to be so passionate about something and then drop it. Anyway I got sad at the end and bought a six pack. They were measley little things.

But I still love roses. They lasted until May-ish. Then died in a huge way with caterpillars, rust and wilt. Not sure if the copper spray did much (but maybe I didn’t put it on right.) This was the first year for that. I revived them and have blooms now in July. First with Ada Perry’s Magic Formula, then pruning, then a fertilizer and Grow Power. Two died, though, when I went on vacation. I think the Ada Perry’s was too much for the type of watering my housesitter did (spraying not soaking.) They may have also died from the gophers. We had an infestation and my husband tried to gas them out. Gasing them is not a good idea for your plants–they can die instantaneously like the poor little gophers!

Sad Season

Well, my garden went from over the top, blooming wonder to ridiculously dead. That is a garden for you. All the wildflowers died, and I had them pulled out right away because my brother was coming and I wanted it to look neat. Then I was a little overzealous watering over Memorial Day weekend and tested all my drip systems (maybe for too long) and pruned all the roses.

This week was cool with thick fog, and without even noticing the rust moved in and wrecked all my roses–maybe I transferred it when I pruned them too. On top of that, little miniature green caterpillars ate holes in every single rose leaf. My favorite rose “Mary Rose” is completely barren of leaves and only has a few flowers left. The only ones that haven’t caught the rust are the climbers, but they still have caterpillars. I went through the shed  looking for all my organic sprays and soaps. I plucked off all the yellow leaves and cleaned and put worm castings all around them. Someone told me that would be absorbed by the roses and make them taste bad. Then the guy at Walter Anderson told me that wasn’t true. He told me my pumpkins didn’t make fruit last year because it never reached 90 degrees and all that made me mad. I went crazy trying to remove every rust leaf in my yard and had giant thorns stab me. My arms are all scratched to pieces, bruised too from one very bad rose cane that snapped back at me as if trying to get revenge.

So anyway, I am very sad about the end of spring. I’m trying to grow some Black Eyed Susans to fill the holes. I think one sprouted in the gravel around the fountain. I tried to grow the rest in a seed grower thinging but nothing came up so I bought a six pack of that other yellow flower that looks like Black Eyed Susan…can’t think of the name right now. Anyway, my garden is very sad and so am I. Sad start to summer gardening.

At least I got a handful of green beans from my vegetable patch.