Archive for Gardening Green – Page 3

My Portland Spring Veggie Garden

An Edible Portland Garden

I’m trying some new things to improve my early spring garden this year.

Carol standing at the entrance to community garden at Rocky Pointe Marina 7 23 2014

Community garden at Rocky Pointe Marina. Photo Credit: Peggy Kreman

Early Spring Garden

Overall I’m happy with my edibles  garden experience but I miss out on the early spring garden because I don’t get my plants into the ground soon enough.  My landscape design work is seasonal and by February I’m so busy it’s too late for me to get organized for my personal garden. I’ve been vague about planting start dates.  Is it still too cold?  What is the last frost date?  This year instead of wondering about it, I’m using the Portland Nursery calendar to get out of vague and into organized.

Buying veggie starts

I called my favorite place to buy starts so I’ll know when I can purchase.  Turns out they use the same calendar and will have my starts for mustard greens, kale, collards and more by March.  My grandmother was very thrifty and every penny counted.  Her huge vegetable garden was one of the ways she contributed to her family income.  I’m playing.  The amount of greens I go through in my kitchen is significant but would not break the bank if I bought them.

Carol's winter kale

My garden supplies me with year round greens like kale.

I buy 80 percent of my plants as starts  in 4 and 6 packs.  I don’t have room in my house for setting up seeds and starts provide instant gratification and cover my soil quickly.  My neighbor Betty grows a lot of interesting plants from seed for fun.  I often benefit.  I grow spring greens from seed in my tabletop salad garden and I can start seeds for my favorite smoothie green, arugula in late February.  If it’s too cold I’m out the cost of seeds.  I sow spring greens seeds every two or three weeks until mid June.  I will purchase veggie starts for my summer garden and plant them in May and do starts again in late summer for my fall garden.

Soil Test

I’m doing a soil test this year which I’ve not done before.  My root vegetables don’t do well and I’m curious about lead.  I understand that adding certain nutrients can help lock up some of the lead in the soil.   I hope to dig out one of my beds, lay down a weed barrier and a metal grid.  Why?  One reason is to keep the ground soil which probably does have some lead in it (the garden is below Hwy 30), separate from my nice new clean soil, and the 2nd is to keep the gopher or mole from bringing that soil up into my garden and keep them from moving the soil around and messing up the roots of my plants!!  It’s a lot of physical work so I’m only going to do one bed, probably with help this year.

That’s my plan, we will see what happens!

Portland floating house veggie garden

Carol’s husband harvesting tomatoes.

My favorite place for vegetable starts is City Farm on N. Lombard.  They grow their veggie starts in a nearby greenhouse. New Seasons often has great veggie starts.  Cornell Farms is serious about their veggie starts so you can expect a good selection.  Portland Nursery, Garden Fever, Livingstone……..lots of choices for every part of town.

Lawn Do Over for Portland Landscapes

Drought Tolerant, Synthetic & No Lawns Landscaping

Landscape Design in a Day's newly installed drought tolerant RTF grass.

Landscape Design in a Day’s newly installed RTF grass with dry stream bed.

This is the year for rethinking the lawn. As a Portland landscape designer many of my new clients want to make big changes in their landscapes.  I am recommending clients replace their old lawns with new and improved grass varieties.

My Lake Oswego clients, George and Marcia, contacted me completely discouraged about their front yard. I met them in the fall after our particularly hot and horrid summer of 2015. They had spent their entire summer watering and watering their lawn.  It wasn’t dead on the October day that I came to their home but as you can see it was quite unattractive.

Uplands Neighborhood of Lake Oswego before drought tolerant lawn.

Damaged Lake Oswego lawn

They decided it was time to hire a designer and start over with their landscape. It is a typical Lake Oswego landscape with heavy clay soil, fir trees nearby with thirsty roots, and drainage problems.

Before we even started the landscape design process, I was able to share information about a new lawn grass that uses less water and is more durable than the grass (perennial rye grass blends) we have been using for the last 30 years.  Working closely with Kevin Schindler of Autumn Leaf Landscaping Inc. we replaced their old lawn with Rhizomatous Tall Fescue (RTF) grass and designed a naturalistic dry stream bed that also solves the drainage problems.  Solving the drainage problems also enhances the health of the grass.  Even RTF grass doesn’t do well in a boggy winter soil.  George and Marcia are very pleased with the appearance and performance of the new grass.  They love their new dry stream bed and how it has pulled together the entire front yard, giving it a dramatic focal point.

They are no longer slaves to watering with drought tolerant lawn.

Installation day at George and Marcia’s Lake Oswego home.

This year several of my clients have taken out their old grass and installed RTF.   From a distance it looks like any lawn, in fact it looks more uniform because it grows so thickly that it tends to crowd out weed grasses much better than our perennial rye grass does.  My Lake Oswego clients especially appreciate the fact that RTF tolerates more sun and heat and if they did decide to let it go dormant, it will come back beautifully.  RTF can even handle a south facing lawn with reflected heat from a sidewalk.  This is the most difficult place to successfully grow grass so Portland landscape professionals are embracing this new product.

It is available as a roll out turf product (sod) and as seed.  Kuenzi Turf & Nursery

After front lawn of drought tolerant landscaping in Rose City Park.

Rose City Park Neighborhood

No grass lawn for drought tolerant landscaping.

West Portland Park  Neighborhood

Other clients want no lawn designs, thinking it will be lower maintenance.  No lawn will mean lower water usage but replacing a lawn with paths and plants does not promise low maintenance. Even the fairly new minimalist style using 90% round river rock and 10% plants isn’t as low maintenance as you think. Someone has to blow dust and debris out of the river rock frequently to prevent weeds from building up.  Many clients simply don’t want to mow any lawn and are fine with the first two years of extensive weeding that is needed to get a no lawn front yard established.  For a lot of people, however, weeding is the least favorite gardening chore.

Synthetic Lawn Installed in front yard for drought tolerant landscaping.

Newly installed synthetic lawn in Parkrose Heights neighborhood

Other clients are installing synthetic lawn.  Before you sneer at the idea of fake grass (which I did when I first heard about it), check out these photos of my Southeast Portland clients Bob and Norma Bleid.  They gave themselves a retirement gift, front and back synthetic lawn.  No water, no chemicals, no fertilizer; it is the ultimate low maintenance landscape lawn.

Early fall is a particularly good time to install a new lawn or landscape.  With a good irrigation system landscapes can be installed any time of the year.  As a Portland landscape designer I am not fond of July or August installations, I know my clients will be “nervous nellys”  seeing their plants’ leaves droop, scorch and burn in the summer sun.  The fall rains typically do a beautiful job of providing the moisture needed to get plants (including grass) well established.  This eliminates the stress and worry of summer planting.

If you are interested in having your landscaping updated, redesigned or help with a plan – contact us for more information.

 

 

Portland Landscape Designer’s Advice on Watering

Portland Landscape Designer’s Advice on Watering

carol lindsay portland landscape designer with lupe

Portland Landscape Designer Carol Lindsay (with client’s puppy Lupe)

You know how Facebook gives you that reminder about something you were doing a year ago today…………Well! Let me tell you, a year ago today I was sick with worry about my clients’ gardens because of the horrible, everlasting,  record breaking,  summer of hell.  Do you remember?  It was unseasonably and unreasonably  hot early in our spring and it stayed that way all summer.   I grew up here and I was in shock and a kind of grief actually.  I missed our normal summer.

As a Portland landscape designer I’m always trying to teach  my clients about how to water.  Did you know you can train your plants roots to grow more deeply? This has many health benefits and one of them is that the plants will be less stressed in high heat periods, another is they won’t need as much water which is nice for your water bill and for the environment in general.

People who don’t know the tricks of proper watering really struggled with their plants and lawns and had many plant losses.  Most were busy watering every day and either rotting their plants or doing such a light watering that the only thing that grew well was their water bill.  A big shock for me was the number of clients whose lawns did not come back at all due to the extreme heat.  They let their lawns go dormant, something that thrifty Portlanders have been doing for decades.  The lawns did not come back with the fall rains.  This had never happened to anyone I knew before.  The spring of 2016 was very busy for Portland landscape design professionals.  People were replacing their dead lawns and remodeling their landscapes.  So now it is July of 2016 and it’s just starting to get hot.  Whether your landscape is mature or has recently been installed it’s not too late to learn how to water properly and protect your investment.

So it’s time to share my watering tips with you again.  SUMMER WATERING TIPS

New Shrubs Expand Designer’s Palette

Add to Your Drought Tolerant Landscape Design

Drought tolerant Ceanothus G. 'Hearts Desire' Picture from Xera

California Lilac Ceanothus Griseus ‘Hearts Desire’   Picture from Xera Plants

I’m excited about these new plants for Portland gardens.

Many of us are familiar with California Lilac and its blue flowers.  Beloved by bees, including our endangered native bumble bees, it’s  also a host plant for Swallow Tail butterflies.  However, it has its problems in a home landscape.  Many varieties are short lived because they receive summer irrigation along with your other plantings.  They need infrequent or no summer water to be a long term plant.  Most of all keeping them a manageable size is difficult for many gardeners. Ceanothus Griseus ‘Hearts Desire’ is different.  It can handle some summer irrigation and unlike all the other varieties of ground cover type California Lilac, it grows to only 4 inches tall and grows slowly to 24 inches wide.  It is easy to tip prune so can be confined.  These new habits make it a very useful plant for smaller landscapes.  It can take a lot of dry so we can plant it in the xeriscape dry tolerant gardens that have no irrigation or it can receive some summer irrigation.   I see this  plant as a major improvement over old varieties like ‘Anchor Bay’ or ‘Points Rey’.  Xera Plants is growing ‘Hearts Desire’ but expect other growers to jump on the plant wagon soon.  I’d use ‘Hearts Desire’ under limbed up fir trees, on SW facing banks or in “hellstrips”.  I will be trialing this new variety of California Lilac in my xeriscape garden.

Manzanita is a shrub or large tree known for its colorful bark and picturesque windswept shapes on the northern California coast. Here in Portland it’s too wet or too cold for most Manzanitas.  News flash!  Some of the California Manzanita species have been hybridized (designed by humans) into cold hardy evergreen ground covers and shrubs.  I love the leaves and the bark color and will be using these two specific varieties of Manzanita in my designs more frequently.   My favorite is ‘St. Helena’ which grows to 24 inches, and can take irrigation if it must.

Hummingbird sitting on manzanita plant

Hummingbird sitting on Manzanita plant

For success with Manzanita don’t feed the soil with compost or fertilizer at all, not even when doing initial soil preparation.  Work with the existing soil.  It needs to be watered through its first summer and then little to no irrigation is best.  This year (2015) my clients will be instructed to water it through its first winter as well since we are expecting a very dry winter but most years this would not be necessary.  Note: hummingbirds love Manzanita flowers.  Pacific Horticulture Society has an in depth article about Manzanita/Arctostaphlylos for the NW; by our revered plants man Paul Bonine.

Callistemon viridiflorus 'Xera Compact' Picture from Xera

Callistemon viridiflorus ‘Xera Compact’ Picture from Xera Plants

Callestemon or Bottle Brush is well known to Californians.  They have many varieties with hot red flowers and they  attract hummingbirds like crazy.  Their loose needles have a tropical feel to them and they can look wild or messy depending on your point of view!  While talking with Greg Shepard at Xera Plants, I got good news about the varieties of this plant that we can grow here in Portland.  A few of these make very attractive  tidy evergreen shrubs.  I’m always looking for soft textured evergreen shrubs with winter good looks that don’t get too big.  Hummingbirds are attracted to all of the Bottle Brush plants but deer are not.  Pretty great huh?

Here are 2 varieties I am most interested in for my clients:

1.  Callistemon Pityoides ‘Corvallis’.  Yes found in Corvallis, Oregon the original plant withstood 20 years of cold and everything an Oregon winter can throw at a plant.  It grows 5’ tall and 3’ wide in ten years.  It can take regular water or can be trained into drought tolerance easily.  It flowers twice in a season with soft yellow bottle brush flowers that remind people of baby ducks.  Deer usually leave it alone unless they are desperate.

2.  Callistemon viridiflorus ‘Xera Compact’ grows to 4 ½’ feet tall.  It is  VERY heavy blooming for 6 weeks.  The flowers are chartreuse and yellow brushes 3 inches long, the leaves are deep green in summer and take on hints of red in winter.

For more information on other drought tolerant landscape plants, go to my contact page.

 

 

Lace Bug Update

Azalea Lace Bug damageLast year I wrote a blog about a serious new insect problem for landscapes in the Pacific Northwest. It was serious because rhododendrons and azaleas make up a large percentage of the plants in most gardeners landscape. The easy way to control the insect was with a systemic pesticide that harms bees.  Many people were talking about removing all their susceptible plants rather than harm bees.

Here’s my latest report and what you can do to save your plants without killing bees:

Save bees and your azaleas and rhododendrons. How big a problem?
I have visited over thirty client landscapes in the Portland area since February – all the gardens but two had moderate to severe lace bug damage on rhodies and azaleas.  I was already expecting the 2015 lace bug plant damage to be a huge problem for my clients. Robin Rosetta, Associate Professor, Extension Entomologist, OSU says the lace bug hatch is a full month early.  This is very bad news unless you are prepared to start treating your plants now in mid-to-late April and early May.

Lace bug eggs waiting to hatch.  Photo by Robin Rosetta.

Lace bug eggs waiting to hatch. Photo by Robin Rosetta.

Strong blasts of water should be applied to the back of the leaves to damage the wings of the lace bug while it is in its soft nymph stage.  It can be a little difficult to hold your leaves steady to spray the back side, especially if it is a large rhododendron.  Portland Nursery has something called a Bug Blaster Head for your hose.  It’s easier to use and has a safer pressure for your plants’ leaves.  It also has a wand attachment that would make it possible to treat a large rhododendron.

Insecticidal soaps applied to the back of the leaves will also damage the lace bug nymph. These two methods are effective only while the nymph is soft.  Once it turns into an adult, soaps won’t work and water spray will not remove embedded eggs.

Green-Lacewing March Biological

Green-Lacewing March Biological

This may get confusing because the bad bugs that damage your plants are called lace bugs.  I’m about to introduce you to a good bug that eats the bad bug. The good bugs are called green lace wings.  If you don’t want to spray your plants because they are too big, there are too many plants or you want to work toward a long term solution; you need to purchase green lace wing larvae from March Biological  or go to Portland Nursery to order through them.  The green lace wing will eat the newly hatched lace bug and prevent the lace bug population from exploding.  Getting green lace wings in a high population in your garden will help with the next one or two lace bug hatchings that we expect this year.  My friend, Phil Thornburg, from Winterbloom has successfully diminished his damaging lace bug population. It took him a couple of years but he did it by applying green lace wings instead of pesticides.

Plants in full sun seem to be the most damaged from lace bug.
Basically they are stealing the green right out of the plants’ leaves and laying eggs that will hatch in another month adding insult to your already damaged plant.  Remember to water your rhododendron and azaleas regularly this summer –  they will need the extra support.

Question: What does lace bug on my rhododendrons have to do with bee colony collapse disorder?

Rhody Lutea March 2015 treated with bee killing spray

Rhododendron ‘Lutea’ in my client’s garden without any damage.  A rare occurrence.

Answer:  Systemic drenches often contain imidacloprid. It’s popular because it’s easy, the chemical is suppose to be safer for mammals (so humans, rats, bats are pretty safe) but the spray will harm or kill bees or any insects who feed on the plant.  For months afterwards bees take it back to the hive with the pollen so it’s not just harming one bee – it’s harming the colony.

The time to treat your plants without harming the bees is now!