Maggie's Farm

Like all thistles, Sea Holly likes sun and poor or sandy soil.

Like campanula, it's a blue late-summer bloomer for a perennial border.

I found this one here. I like it.

One of my many planned gardening projects this spring is to put in a row of three tree hydrangeas behind a low fence on which my climbing roses grow (they are New Dawn. Note to rose fans: those New Dawn roses need monthly fertilizer during the summer. In fact, all roses want regular feeding or they will not do well).

I like the old-fashioned look of the tree form, and they can be pruned to keep them small for a garden. The one in the photo is too droopy for my taste, I think, but it makes for a living bouquet.

A reader sent us two good arborist sites. I would never go up a tree with a chain saw, but I realize that I might not be all that safe with one even with my feet on the ground.

ArboristSite

ArborMaster

I am told by those who know such things that Platycodon grandiflorus, a member of the Campanula family, belongs in every perennial flower border.

It is a tough plant, has interesting buds, good delicate blue flowers, and it blooms in late summer.

What else can you ask for from a plant?

You can read all about this plant here.

I have been hearing much praise for this year's Philadelphia Flower Show. It is known as the best and the biggest plant and flower show in the country.

Should have sent somebody with a camera. Some exhibitors have constructed entire small scale landscapes and gardens - with trees - in the Convention Center. Here's a photo from the show's photo gallery: 

An annual re-post

Miller Nurseries. Our source for hardy fruit trees, grapes, and more.

Musser Forests. Our favorite source for seedlings for your farm, game preserve, conservation land, or country place, including Christmas tree plantings. Lots of native plants.

Seedland. Great source for large-volume lawn, pasture, game preserve, farm, etc. seeds. I buy meadow clovers from them.

For garden seeds, including heirloom vegetables (h/t, readers):

Renee's

Johnny's

The Cook's Garden

Gary Ibsen's Tomato Fest (These sound wonderful, but tomatoes from seeds is too much hassle for me)

The Tie Dye Clematis, at Wayside.

I'm not sure that it's lovely, but it's interesting.

Daisys are the friendliest of garden flowers.

Our Montauk daisies (aka nipponicum) have come into bloom this week, which seems very late, but their blooms are welcome.

They have woody stems, succulent leaves which bugs leave alone, and perfect flowers.

I bought these at Home Depot on a whim, a few years ago. As a beachy plant, this type needs full sun, and seems to enjoy poor soil.

Peaches ripen in early to mid-September in Yankeeland.

Here's our first batch of peach chutney from our good tree: vinegar, sugar, raisins, hot pepper, whole black peppercorns, spices, lemon juice, raisins, etc. Do not overcook or you will lose that fresh peachy flavor.

After we finish the jars of chutney, we'll do some peach pies to spread around the neighborhood. Maybe a couple of peach cobblers too. We have good neighbors,and home-grown and home-made still means a lot in Yankeeland.

Important rule: When peeling and slicing, eat every tenth piece. No more, no less. You do it for health. Ripe peaches one hour off the tree have tons of zip to them.

We have acres of Wild Thyme in the fields on the Farm, and some parts of the front lawn have more thyme than grass, making mowing a pleasant  olfactory experience. We have too much really, because it prospers in areas where the soil is poor, dry, and gravelly, and where there is full sun. When you walk across it on a hot day it fills the air with fragrance and annoys the bees on its purple flowers. No need at all to grow thyme in the garden. You can drive over it occasionally and it doesn't seem to mind. Here's one of our smaller patches, carpeting the entrance to an old rickety shed:

Our wild Black Cherries are beginning to ripen, and the trees are filled with robins with purple cherry-stained beaks. I counted 17 happy Robins in one tree this morning. Many of them still have their immature plumage.

Black Cherry is a common "pioneer tree" in New England. Some people call them "Chokecherry," but Chokecherry is a different species. Ours tend to be tall, gawky, with a brittle rust-red wood which is great for fires, smoking meat, and for furniture. Here's a low branch of one of mine. The robins have already eaten most of the ripe ones. Not edible for humans: you will choke on them.

Ours are in bloom now, and will continue through September. These small trees will survive up through Zone 6, but in Zone 6 they prefer some shelter from the winter winds, and they are slow to emerge from dormancy (they look dead).

They are common in the South, but up here people are stunned by such a brilliantly summer-blooming tree and don't know what it is.

They like to be pruned properly, and heavily mulched, and need full sun to produce those blooms. A little fertilizer, too.

This is a young plant, with three main stems. I much prefer them with multiple stems rather than with a single trunk.

The exfoliating bark is interesting too.

51 varieties here, with photos. Most of our cultivars are of Asian descent, but there are native species. More photos, and how to grow them, here.

Growing plants on or above their zonal limits is always an interesting challenge for us gardeners. A fully-rational person would not bother.

We like all of the DR products (a great Vermont company) but the one we use the most on the farm is our sturdy and indestructible 17 hp Field and Brush Mower.

The machine really does take down 2" saplings and chews them up, and it can run faster than a weary, sweaty, dirty man can walk.

The only downside is that using the thing is hard work: you have to muscle it around to turn and maneuver it, and it is heavy. Using it for a few hours ends up being a good work out, unless you are just mowing tall grass on a flat surface. I hate saying it, but it isn't a machine for most females. 

We tend to use it in places that the tractors can't get to with the brushwacker, and on slopes that are too steep for the tractors.

A garden at Villa le Balze, Fiesole, a year and a half ago. The morning mist obscures the view of Florence spread out across the Arno valley below.

A re-post from last year:

The big problem around here
with raspberries, as with cherries and strawberries, is that the birds get them just before they are fully ripe. Or worse, they just peck the red parts off the ripening berry, and leave the rest. 

It really isn't hardly worth the effort, but one perseveres. Life cannot be entirely economics-driven.

Especially Catbirds, but Robins too. Nature sure can be annoying sometimes. We grow three varieties. The birds seem to prefer the big fat French dessert variety. They might be stupid, but they aren't stupid.

I have heard that it's a good idea to plant some mulberry trees around, to keep the birds busy. I had a couple, but I had to cut them down because they were shading the garden. Ya sometimes can't win.

Even the dog doesn't deter them. I'll try the plastic owl, but they'll get used to it in a day or two, and perch on its head.

The only thing finer than a handful of sun-hot raspberries is a sun-heated Beefsteak tomato, but we won't have them for another month. That's one thing the birds will leave alone, but in a dry August, the squirrels and chipmunks will bite hunks out of them for liquids. The simple solution is to grow lots of tomatoes, but the simplest solution is to give up. But that is no fun at all. Man vs. Nature.

This remarkable site lists 450 gardens (alphabetically and by region) which are open for visiting, with photos of each along with history and design information. Gardens Guide.

Below is a garden at Bradenham Hall in Norfolk.

Here's part of the front shade garden we've been working on completing all Spring. The general idea here is low, mostly horizontal, serene and subtle, which is why this piece of the garden has no Astilbe patch.

It has a some morning sun, otherwise Maple shade, except on one end. We re-did this garden about three years ago with deep soil enrichment, so most of the plantings are youthful or new. In a couple of years it should be just right - but every garden is a work in progress. 

Front to back: Bleeding Heart, Pee Wee hydrangea (which is a dwarf Oak Leaf), assorted rare interesting Hostas, a deciduous Azalea, a couple of low-growing azaleas with hostas in front of them, hybrid rhodies in the corner with a few special low hydrangeas in front of them, a patch of Coral Bells in front a row of Bridal Wreath hydrangeas, and where the photo is washed out, a large patch of Ladie's Mantle. Cinnamon Ferns scattered in the back along the garden.

I need my good camera back from Olympus repair.

From another angle, here's the newest section. I haven't fully set in the metal edging, and probably never should have bothered with it. The area with the grasses gets the most sun. An orange trumpet vine is trying to climb over the wall and into the garden. I believe a decorator would term that a color clash:

There is a new magazine out there, Garden and Gun. It sounds like an ideal sort of Maggie's Farm magazine (h/t, Dr. Helen).

With a photo of Pat Conroy on the cover, how bad could it be? I'll give it a try, if only to find out whether it's more interesting than our Maggie's Farm blog. I am certain that it is better-written.

Re gun mags, I used to subscribe to Shooting Sportsman, but it has become too snooty for my taste. Informative, though, if you own $60,000 shotguns instead of Mossbergs and Brownings like regular folks.

A bloom of some sort at the New York Botanical Garden orchid show last week:

We did a post on Goldfinches in the past. We have discovered, this year, that the Goldfinches like echinacea seeds as much as they like thistles. Sitting on them every morning. There is nothing like birds and butterflies to add color and vitality to a garden. They provide the movement, like dancers on a stage set.

A sterile garden, with no animal life, is dull. Need the birds and bees to make it complete.

Echinacea, aka Purple Coneflower, aka Snakeroot, is a Great Plains plant or herb. The usual forms are tall, for the back of the border, (and tend to tip over about now) but there is a shorter version now.

One of our old hayfields has been over-run with Goldenrod. It makes for a pretty sight in August, but there is no hay there anymore, and the upper part is all Milkweed, to the delight of the Monarch butterflies.

Rather than trying to rehabilitate it as a hayfield by deep-plowing, re-seeding for a couple of years with red clover, and plowing again and re-seeding with good hayseed, the current low-cost plan is just to mow it every two years, and to let the animals and birds enjoy it - which they do. Don't need more hay. Sparrows, snakes, and Wild turkey like it as is. And deer, of course, by the bushel. And I have noticed that the beaver come out of the marsh to eat stuff in the meadow at night.

I have planted junipers next to the rocks, because with high growth you cannot see the rocks when you mow. Also, putting Bluebird houses on each rock, which the Tree Swallows seem to take over. Last summer I stupidly drove a tractor right up on one rock, about a 3' item I forgot about, and not only did it scare the bejesus out of me, but it also took another tractor to pull it off. Picture the front wheels of a Farmall four feet in the air, and a boulder jammed under the crankcase. Three Stooges.

Mark the rocks before you mow. A good adage in rocky Yankeeland, where glacial boulders are one of our main crops. Like measure twice, cut once.

You can see how the dang White Pines had been invading that field about 15 years ago. That process has been halted by aggressive border patrol, but it's a big job to roll it back. Cannot get a logging truck over the bridge, so it's sweat and chain saw. One step at a time. It's an excellent work out.