Our neighbor woke her four daughters for an early morning yard sale. Sassy and I visited and offered some floral highlights. We delivered roses in bud vases to sell and a big vase of roses for color. All these were Easy Does It, because the three veteran EDI plants and the new EDI plants are blooming early - far beyond expectations.
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| Sassy took Mrs. Ichabod to another yard sale last year, after her surgery. |
The veteran plants have the most blooms, perhaps 40 flowers per plant. I bent down to prune a new, dormant Easy Does It, and it was popping its first green leaves, after weeks of waiting. Getting roses out of dormancy does not always work. Some will sit there and fade away. Others wait longer than seems possible. In this case, the canes were green, but they kept getting brown on the end. I cut those off to encourage growth, getting ready to phone for a replacement or two. They are free when they do not leave dormancy, a built-in warrantee, one more reason to order bare root roses online.
Roses, Crepe Myrtles, and many other plants love to be pruned, which energizes the blooming, fruiting, and rooting at the same time. That is just one part of divine engineering.
When Icha-grandson was pruning roses for me, he almost cut off a bud when we were cutting off fading blooms. He said, "I didn't know!" But I explained that removing buds only puts energy into the remaining ones. There are no bad prunes in the rose business.
Rains Plus Sun = Stupendous Weed Growth
All of the roses are doing well, including some I forgot I planted last year. Give me some credit here. I got some leftovers that were barely blooming when fall started. We were lavish with leafy mulch and pine needles - and buried a couple.
Roses should not grow crowded with each other, spreading diseases. So I am putting daisies, Joe Pye, and hostas in-between them. All three can be divided later for even distribution. My other ground cover is provided by birds - many square feet of Wild Strawberry, forming a tight green mat garnished with little ruby strawberries for birds and squirrels.
Meanwhile I have areas which are dominated by grass, grassy weeds, and potential trees (maple and nut trees).
- The old-fashioned gardener will get down and start pulling weeds, cursing Adam for being an orchard thief.
- The modern gardener will get out his tiller and tear up the weeds and soil, feeling good but doing evil to the soil.
- The Creation Gardener will begin gathering newspaper, cardboard, and mulch for a mass conversion - unwanted plants turned into perfect composted soil.
Every weed needs sunshine to grow. A layer of newspaper or cardboard, held down by wood mulch, will hold in moisture while cutting off sunshine for the unwanted plants. Grass and weeds quickly begin to die while fungus, bacteria, soil creatures, and earthworms turn those wood products into the best soil.
Mulch has to be renewed, but that means the tonnage of organic matter used to create the layer is mostly soil.
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| Calladiums provide color with their leaves. |
