Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
"Conversations with Alaska Gardeners" is your gateway to exploring the vibrant world of gardening in Juneau, Alaska, where the wilderness of towering mountains and the vast blue sea meet. This podcast series brings to life the unique challenges and unmatched rewards of gardening in the rugged yet beautiful terrain of The Last Frontier. Join us as we celebrate the passion and resilience of Juneau's gardening community, sharing insights, tips, and stories from those who thrive amidst the challenges of Alaskan gardening.
Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners is your gateway to exploring the vibrant world of gardening here in Juneau. Join us as we celebrate the passion and resilience of Juneau's gardening community, sharing insights, tips, and stories from the experts. Here's Margaret Tharp and David Lundrum of Landscape Alaska on KINY.
Speaker 2:Hello. Hello. Hello. Margaret Tharp, David Lindrum, Landscape Alaska back on the air. Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners.
Speaker 2:By the way, if you wanna hear any of our past episodes, they're at the KIMY website on their podcasts. I noticed that only this year's episodes are showing, but maybe there's a way to get the last couple of years episodes on there too. So it's Conversations. It it would be a call in show if the phones worked. So instead, it's gonna be a text in show.
Speaker 2:You can text into my phone, (907) 321-4149, or the radio station, (907) 586-1800. And if your question is one we use on the air, we'll give you a present at the nursery. And Laird Jones, you are chosen this week, and you asked me to talk about what to do with damaged material over the winter, how to prune it. And, we'll get to that in a few minutes, and I just want you to know that your question is the winner this week. So let's talk about Sitka roses.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about the beautiful fragrant Legosa roses that just rolled into town.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They are they're absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2:And you walk by them, the aroma just fills the air. It's such a sweet, sweet smell.
Speaker 3:Well, know, the Rugosa Rose is the one that really puts out
Speaker 2:for here.
Speaker 3:And this year, the weather is so what what's the polite way to say this? Challenging?
Speaker 2:Yes. I think challenging works just fine.
Speaker 3:That they just drive a big bus and you're not gonna bother me.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. I look at the ones that wintered over and they're all coming back into leaf and butted up nice and strong. The ones on the hillside at the university got so beaten down by the snow weight that a lot of them are laying flat on the ground, but they're bright green and coming up.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They will.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. We're gonna have to prune them back hard, but I think
Speaker 3:And feed them. Yep. Food foods are big.
Speaker 2:That's always a big deal with roses. You gotta make sure they get fed. Yeah. So when we talk about Sitka roses, we're talking about a specie from Northern Japan that was put into Alaska in Sitka in the experiment station in the thirties and forties. And then when they closed the the agricultural experiment station down, the man that ran the place told the people in Sitka, you're certainly welcome to these roses, you come and get them.
Speaker 2:And he had hundreds and hundreds, and so people came and dug them up and planted them all over Sitka, and that's why we call it a Sitka Rose. But it's really
Speaker 3:A Rugosa.
Speaker 2:The the specie name is Rugosa rose. And there are the the specie, the wild kind, are from the beaches in Northern Japan, and there they grow right along the edge of the water, And they have a running Real tough. Tough. Real tough. Can take the weather with no trouble, and they spread underground and make big thickets.
Speaker 2:And from that that bloodline, from that that genetic stock
Speaker 3:We should go to Japan.
Speaker 2:I'd love to go to Japan. Let's go right now.
Speaker 3:We're on the radio right now, but absolutely.
Speaker 2:Okay. So from those, they've hybridized a lot of kinds that don't spread, but stay polite, stay where you plant them, don't make a big thicket. So if you wanna have something that controls erosion and spreads out and makes a barrier and does the the wild plant's job, you get the wild kind, and they come in white and pink. And you can tell them when you look at the flower because the flower is only a single row of petals. Five petals, bright pink or bright white.
Speaker 2:And then then from those are hybridized a lot of different ones, magenta, dark purple, creamy white, dazzling dazzling shocking white.
Speaker 3:And the fragrance is beautiful.
Speaker 2:The fragrance is lovely, and they make a fruit. And the fruit from a rose is called a hip, rose hips, and they look like little plums. They've got Big. The the rugosa roses are big. Big.
Speaker 2:Many of the other ones are smaller, but the rugosa roses make big ones. People make tea out of them, but people also just eat them like little tiny apples. And I see them picking them at the uni when it we got a lot of them planted there. I see people picking them and just eating them like that. And, you know, they they taste well, they taste seedy for one thing.
Speaker 2:They got a lot of seeds in them, but the flavor is pretty good. Good. I was talking to our delivery man from AML who was asking me about Bulgarian roses.
Speaker 3:Are you gonna do some research on that?
Speaker 2:I did some already, and and it turns out that there's a huge industry in that part of the world from Persia and Syria all the way to Bulgaria, and they grow roses that are hybridized from a Gallica rose and another Syrian kind of rose. They turn out to be real hearty, but they grow incredibly fragrant roses.
Speaker 3:And is it warm there?
Speaker 2:It's both warm and cold.
Speaker 3:I don't know anything about Bulgaria.
Speaker 2:Both warm and cold, and and seasonal pretty pretty brutal. It may be able to grow here, I'm not sure. I'll try and find some, but he talked about the industry that his grandmother had which was common in their farming community.
Speaker 3:The perfume industry.
Speaker 2:A perfume industry. Had she had five acres of roses and she would pick them and get the oils out of them and make oils of roses and rose water, and that in their culinary life, rose water was a very important thing. They put it in everything. They put it in soups and stews. They sprinkle it on their bread and eat it like that.
Speaker 3:High in vitamin c,
Speaker 2:I imagine. I bet it is, and I bet it's really, really flavorful. Mhmm. Anyway, thanks a lot, Manu. I really appreciate that that inspiration, and, I'll see what I can do to find out.
Speaker 2:So the kind of roses we have now, we have the the dark dark magenta one called hansa.
Speaker 3:It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:It's yeah. I love it too. And it gets about chest high to me and about as far as I can reach. And and the old ancient looking plants you see in people's yards that spring forth with those big fragrant flowers in the summertime, those are most likely Hansa.
Speaker 3:And then we have the white rose.
Speaker 2:We have the blanc double des coubert.
Speaker 3:Yes. Old blanc.
Speaker 2:Old blanc is right. And boy, it's a a shockingly clear white. It's still the white that they judge other roses by.
Speaker 3:I don't think people are very crazy about white this year. We had so much snow. I
Speaker 2:well, there is that, but I've had four people at least this year say, everything I've got in my yard is white. I love to have white in my yard.
Speaker 3:That's great.
Speaker 2:Makes me think of Joe. You know, white's a a color of celebration. Okay, Laird. Here's the story. Pruning things that have been damaged.
Speaker 2:Let's talk first about the most obvious one. We'll talk about arborvitaes. Arborvitaes are those evergreen things that people have as kind of hedges that go between the properties, and they are a kind of a dill pickle shaped thing. And they look cedarish because they are part of the big cedar family, and they grow wild from the Great Lakes to Maine and, what are called perched wetlands. So it's, kinda swampy areas that are on the sides of hillsides.
Speaker 2:Is that for me?
Speaker 3:It's it's somebody's sick.
Speaker 2:Okay. So, in the wild world, they take that shape of they abandon the shape of the dill pickle, and they take the shape like the ones that we see that are snow so snow affected. They spread apart, those branches grow up, and it becomes a big open like a big hand reaching up into the sky. That's evergreens, and, it's not that tight little cone that's so polite. That tight little cone is a selected form chosen by mostly Norwegian people and the name of it as choice is Smargard.
Speaker 2:So they chose that one because it keeps its juvenile form the longest and stays that tight little shape. Well, this winter, a lot of them got blown apart.
Speaker 3:You think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sure do. Even ours. And even the ones that we had internal bracing on and tied all the branches together inside them, those still got affected. In this case, they didn't splay apart. They just bent over from the waste.
Speaker 2:Yep. And
Speaker 3:Now the cedars, the dwarf cedars that we have.
Speaker 2:I'm not there yet.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay. We'll go to that. So so if you have those kind of of trees and you want to have them be more managed looking, if it's if it's a fairly young one and you can do it, you can tie them back together inside. Tie the trunks. Don't try and go around the outside of the bush.
Speaker 2:Go inside it and tie the trunks together and cinch them right up. And if you can't get them all the way cinched in one try, leave them there for a month and then come back and do it again later. And if you can get them back up and upright in an acceptable condition, then that's that's plenty. But if you can't do that or you don't feel like doing that, you wanna cut them back, you go ahead and you cut the main trunk. Then usually, you'll have four or five trunks.
Speaker 2:You cut it back so it's so it's in the the direction you want it to grow. You cut it back so it's flat, and then you take the youngest, the the top branches of what's left on the tree, and you tip them up and tie them together as if they were a crown roast or something like that. So that instead of laying flat, they're pointed up.
Speaker 3:And so to tie things, there's a certain type of material that you should use, a woven, not a plastic.
Speaker 2:Right? What I like to use are those nylon woven straps that are black like they use on backpacks. Right. And and that ties pretty nicely. It comes with buckles too if you wanted to slide it and buckle it.
Speaker 2:And that way you can tighten it over time. But they they don't rot, you can't really see them, and they don't dig into the tree trunk. Right. That's It's flat. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's flat. So that's really the desired pattern. But you can use anything to tie them. You know? It doesn't have to be perfect.
Speaker 2:If you wanna make it work
Speaker 3:Doesn't have to be perfect?
Speaker 2:It doesn't have to be perfect. Well, not perfect at first. You can come back and re perfect it. Make improve it. But the important thing is to make it happen fairly soon in the season.
Speaker 2:And then those branches, were horizontal and are now vertical, will become the new tops to the tree, and they are going to then grow upright. And in a couple of years, your wound visibility will be gone. You'll be able to prune them back and keep them flat topped or pointy topped, however you wanna have them. And what Margaret was talking about, the cedars.
Speaker 3:We have some beautiful dwarf cedars.
Speaker 2:We found a kind of, dwarf western red cedar. Now western red is kind of the king tree in the forest. It's just a forest giant, 250 feet tall, spongy soft bark, incredibly aromatic, and always clean underneath it because the litter from the cedar discourages other seedlings under it. So walking into a grove of mature cedar trees is just an unearthly experience. But we're at the very northern end of tolerance for cold temperatures, so we have a couple big cedars, we have a a really large western red cedar and it may be the furthest north cedar we know of.
Speaker 2:But the, new variety called northern spire is a dwarf variety, a top out at about 20 feet.
Speaker 3:And it grows columnar.
Speaker 2:And it's only got a single trunk. Mhmm. So it it won't splay apart under the snow weight. And the deer don't eat it.
Speaker 3:And the deer don't eat it.
Speaker 2:That's a good point. It smells like a cedar tree rather than like an arborvitae Mhmm. Which is a particularly pungent aroma described by many people as disgusting. But I'm not gonna talk about what it parallels. Okay.
Speaker 2:So that's that's the arborvitaes. And the other thing that got damaged pretty badly were the deciduous trees that have branches on them, that the branch got weighed down and torn down. And in many cases, it got torn all the way off, but in lots of them, it's still hanging attached to the body of the tree. And what's happened is the wood has broken, the edge of the wood is still attached and tearing down, and the bark is still attached and tearing down. And the tear down is the hardest and most dangerous part.
Speaker 2:So don't just grab the trunk and yank it down and tear more. You want to make sure you cut it off. First, you cut it to take the weight off it, just right above where it's torn, and cut it so it doesn't tear anymore. And then the part that's torn on the bark, you cut that off too, and then as the tree heals, it's going to enclose that wound area. And it does so by growing new bark that grows over the wound, and you want it to be as fairly smooth as possible.
Speaker 2:So where it's jagged and torn around the edges, take a sharp knife and cut it, and cut it so it's a smooth curve and maybe football shaped, So it's pointed at the top and pointed at the bottom so that the liquids that are passing up and down the xylem and the phloem have a way to to pass.
Speaker 3:So one of the things that happened this year, I believe, for damaging trees is the big snow load on the big forest trees falling off those spruces and hemlocks dropping down on the ornamental trees. You know, I'd never even thought about that until I saw it this
Speaker 2:year. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And that's what happened to my Japanese maple. The tree itself isn't at fault. So the huge snow load hit that branch and snapped it right off.
Speaker 2:Did and tore off a great big chunk and made a hole in it. Made a hole in the trunk. So as it's healing, the cavity where where it made a hole in the trunk, you know, that's gonna be a zone of infestation, a place where rot can set in.
Speaker 3:I know we need to fix it.
Speaker 2:And so what we do for those kind of things, we cut around the edge so it's smooth, and then you fill the hole up with, urethane foam, urethane expanding foam, and that's something that'll fill all the crevices and get really tight in there. And so the idea is not to let water gather inside the holes. So on a sunny day after it's been sunny for a couple of days and not really torrentially raining, get the urethane foam, not the polyurethane foam because that breaks down too fast, but the urethane foam, which will stay for twenty years. Spray it in there, let it expand out, and then kinda sand it off, and you can even paint it to match the color of the trunk so it won't be as obvious. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And then, and then the the bark will grow over that, and then it doesn't have to grow down inside the hole Right. And fill all that area up. I get it. So it speeds it up tremendously. I looked at Sue Mason's weeping cherry tree last week
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And her big, big branch on that tree had torn off. It was still attached to the tree just like I was describing. So we'll have to go back and cut it cut it first to take the weight off it, and then cut it cleanly, carve around the edges, and fill the hole with urethane foam, and then we'll lightly prune the rest of the tree. And I think that'll probably be the best we can possibly do for it.
Speaker 3:And feed it.
Speaker 2:And feed it as we feed everything. And feeding it, feeding the trees, we have some really nice time release fertilizer that's meant for big trees. It comes in a like a giant tea bag, a tea bag that's four to six inches long and two inches thick, and you just dig a hole and drop that thing in the ground and and do it around the perimeter of the tree, and it releases over a period of two years. And not only does it have fertilizer elements in it, it also has mycorrhizobia inoculum to to have increase the mycelium, the fungal growth that is under the ground where all trees reach out further than their roots can. It's a way to mobilize soil nutrients and get them into the tree.
Speaker 3:Well, you're full of all kinds of knowledge today, Dave.
Speaker 2:I I think about it, you know, as we come to to, toward the radio station, I think, you know, there's some pretty critical things that are happening in the gardens right now, and this wound repair is a big one. Yeah. But the other one is how to make it look nice. And we are lucky enough this year that we have some really, really beautiful items come in. Hydrangeas.
Speaker 2:Beautiful, beautiful hydrangeas. Hydrangeas that are shrub forms and ones that have been trained in to be little trees. And these hydrangeas, like quick fire and little quick fire, quick fire fab, and vanilla strawberry, these all come out the flowers come out one color and they turn over the season to a deeper and darker and and more vibrant shade. They start pale green, and then they go cream color like parchment, and then they go light pink, and then they go darker pink, and then they go dark red. So they start blooming about the beginning of July, and when the snow comes, they're still in flower and they've still got that vibrant color to them, and by that time, the leaves on them have turned to burgundy color.
Speaker 2:So they're a really good second season kind of flowering bush. You have early season roses and lilacs, second season hydrangeas, and the colors are spectacular, and everybody has fallen in love with them.
Speaker 3:Yes. Well, because when everything else is almost done, the hydrangea comes on and goes for the rest of the way to the very end of fall.
Speaker 2:And they make a great cut flower.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And they make a great dried flower. And they're a zone two shrubs, so you can plant them with confidence. They're not gonna freeze out. You have to watch out they don't get broken in the wintertime. So in the fall, you cut the spent flowers off and put some kind of a belt or strap around them so they don't absolutely apart.
Speaker 2:Beaten apart. And then about now, when the buds are swelling on them, they're just if you look at the hydrangeas that are in people's yards now, you can see the buds are just beginning to swell on them. And you're gonna cut those stems back to just two or three buds per stem. So it looks really, really severely pruned, but then as those stems as buds start to grow, you realize that this plant really, really puts on a lot of foliage, and each one of those buds is going to become a branch and every branch is gonna have a flower on it. So you have to go back about a month or a month and a half later and even take some of those out, any weak ones or crossing ones, anything that doesn't look like it's gonna be strong enough to support a big flower, just snip that baby right out.
Speaker 2:I love them. Can you tell? I really, really love them.
Speaker 3:I love them too. I really love the fact that they fill that niche of everything's over. Yeah. And it's still
Speaker 2:going on. And it's still going on. And it's it's so reliable. And they look great in a pot.
Speaker 3:Yep. And they're tough.
Speaker 2:And they're tough. So you know what else came in that's absolutely stunning? Peonies. How lucky we were to be able to get peonies from all those different growers this year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're nice.
Speaker 2:So many different sizes and colors, including we got a great deal on peonies that are grown in the field and they're four years old about, and we don't have any idea what color or variety they are. They're all mixed.
Speaker 3:White, pink, or red.
Speaker 2:Well, that's right. And they're the old fashioned kind of peonies, really, really tough. So if you're interested in peonies for your yard, remember when peonies bloom in Alaska, they're not in bloom anyplace else in the world. So you can look at your peony flower and have confidence that nobody's better than me.
Speaker 3:July. They usually are about July, you know? And it's really great to be able to have your peonies. You don't have to, but if you can plant them under your eve, then we'll have our torrential rainfall in July. They don't blow apart.
Speaker 2:That is true. They do get blown apart in the rains.
Speaker 3:Well, they're big flowers.
Speaker 2:The other thing is that when a peony is in the bud form and you squeeze it a little bit and it's kinda yielding, not really, really hard but kinda yielding, you can cut them then.
Speaker 3:And have them as cut flowers.
Speaker 2:And you can put them in the refrigerator for two months, and they're still able to come out. So peony is a is a storable, shippable flower that you can have bloom another two months later. Exciting.
Speaker 3:Didn't know that.
Speaker 2:I learned it last year with my peony friends. New vines, clematis vines, and honeysuckle vines, and climbing hydrangea vines.
Speaker 3:And the clematis vines are mostly the dark purple, aren't they?
Speaker 2:We have half dark purple and half of them are pink and white.
Speaker 3:Oh, Nellie Mosher.
Speaker 2:Nellie Mosher. Uh-huh. Great. Half of them are Jack Minai and half of them are Nellie Mosher. Great.
Speaker 2:Now we don't have a great number of them, so if you're interested in that, call me up, make sure I have your name. I can put your name on one of them till you can get there. And loaded with pansies, a beautiful, beautiful crop of pansies. And all the little pansy houses are filled with those smiling little pansy faces. And you don't think about it, but pansies are really, really fragrant flower.
Speaker 3:We need to organize our roses. We need to organize the nursery.
Speaker 2:You know, it's that time of year, stuff comes pouring in. Right. All we can do is to find space to put it down and maybe get a name and a price on it.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:I'm still desperately looking for another nursery salesperson. So if this is the kind of job that would appeal to you, I can teach you. I can't I can't change your personality, but I can teach you about the plant material. So that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 3:He'll try.
Speaker 2:No. Not a chance. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, come see me. Make an appointment, call me up, send me an email.
Speaker 3:I love those dwarf eastern pines.
Speaker 2:Aren't they cool? Mhmm. So there's a kind of a pine tree called eastern white pine. That's a gigantic tree. That's what they made the masts out of the English sailing ships for.
Speaker 2:But there are in the genetics of all things are all shapes and forms. And one thing that's come out of that gigantic pine tree is one called nana, which is a short one and it grows only about five or six feet tall, but it's really soft to the touch, really moves in the wind, has really long, very soft silvery green needles. And so we saw a chance to get a few of them this year and we brought them in. They're just lovely little dwarf trees, just absolutely lovely. It does make you want to pet them.
Speaker 2:You look at them. You just wanna reach your hand out there and kinda ruffle them a little fur.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:Come see me. I'll show you. You'll you can't keep your hands off them. That's how they are. We were talking about pruning things for winter damage.
Speaker 2:There are things you can just cut back to the ground that have gotten broken and let them grow back again.
Speaker 3:Perennials.
Speaker 2:And also some kinds of woody shrubs, like dogwoods and currants and gooseberries and spirias. All these things have kind of really vigorous root systems that will send up new sprouts, And if it's the kind of a shrub that keeps sending up new sprouts around it anyway, you can figure it's one of those kind that you can prune it back to the ground. So if it got broken or smashed or grew back erratically and you don't like how it looks, send me a picture and I'll tell you if it's one of those kinds you can cut back to the ground. Cutting them back to the ground means that you rejuvenate the plant. It then has all young new growth on it, which in most cases flowers more prolifically, has greater ability to withstand winter damage and looks young and vigorous and healthy.
Speaker 2:Renewal pruning is what it's called.
Speaker 3:You ought to give a class in pruning, another one.
Speaker 2:I do a couple times a year. Uh-huh. It depends on what time it is. I should give one on hydrangea pruning before long. It's that time of year.
Speaker 2:And we have a few that are just at that bud stage.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Lilacs. Everybody loves a lilac and one of the things about a lilac is it triggers a memory. The aroma of a lilac makes you think of home and grandmothers and your favorite aunts, most beautiful places you've ever been, and there's some kind of association there that the aroma stimulates a part of your brain that right away recognizes it. But once you have that kind of memory in it, even the very thought of a lilac stimulates those thoughts.
Speaker 3:Well, know, in the forties and fifties, let's just say, and before that, there wasn't a home landscaped that didn't have a lilac.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 3:Everybody had lilacs. It was just a common a common thing. And of course, horticulture wasn't as highly developed then in terms of and here's five different varieties as there is now. Had white ones and you had dark purple ones. You had the lavender ones.
Speaker 3:That was it. But
Speaker 2:Boy, they're sure a lot more than that now.
Speaker 3:Every house you know, I think about being a kid and you're playing hide and seek in the summertime and all that. Everybody had a lilac. People like to hide in them. Little kids hide in them so they couldn't get found.
Speaker 2:So And when you look at old lilacs, like say you're downtown in the flats, you see those houses that have the big old lilacs that are covered in moss, one or two branches are looking like they're gonna fall over, and there's all those young sprouts coming up out of the ground around them. That's what I'm talking about when I say, you can cut those big trunks down to the ground and let the young trunks grow up around them. Or you could, as we did for the pews, internally brace them knowing that they're gonna be rotting away over time, but you want to keep them as long as you possibly can, and so you use some kind of flat strapping and tie them together so that they mutually support each other. Now you're not going to tie them up like a bunch of gladiolas, but you're going to put it around so that they can't quite fall apart. We're coming to the end of our time.
Speaker 2:It sure been pleasant chatting with you all.
Speaker 3:Hopefully, next week, we'll have phones.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, next week, we'll have phones. I know. And the radio station's hoping the same thing too. And, Laird, come by and see me. I've got a present for you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the texted question. I appreciate it. And anybody else during the week who wants to add to this question list, please do so. (907) 321-4149 or to the radio station direct, (907) 586-1800. And just put it on there.
Speaker 2:It's a gardening question and they'll take care of that and store them up till the weekend. We're open till 05:00 tonight unless the big storm comes in. We have to get run for shelter. But come out to us on the Back Loop Road, 11029. Look for our mailbox that's painted up like rhododendron flowers.
Speaker 2:And we're on the lakeside of the highway between Goat Hill Road and Springway. So this is Mark and Dave from Landscape Alaska. We'll see you next week. We're wishing you all happy gardening.
Speaker 1:Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners is your gateway to exploring the vibrant world of gardening here in Juneau. Join us as we celebrate the passion and resilience of Juneau's gardening community, sharing insights, tips, and stories from the experts.