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"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:Good morning. Conversations with Alaska Gardeners back on the air after a prolonged winter hiatus.
Speaker 3:You think?
Speaker 2:You think? Golly gee.
Speaker 3:Think of all the gardeners that have are so glad it's spring. So glad.
Speaker 2:They look across at each other and grin. Yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. And also how tragic.
Speaker 2:You know, we hear story after story after story of people coming to the nursery and saying, you know, I've had this rhododendron since you sold it to me forty years ago. I killed it. My children grew up playing around it. Now it's damaged and broken. And they're they're they're really injured.
Speaker 2:You know, they look at each other and their hearts are broken for the damage done to their landscapes.
Speaker 3:But, you know, for being a rhododendron, a lot of them survived. I mean, we didn't lose one at our house. We lost other things. We lost alder trees. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We lost, you
Speaker 2:know Japanese maples.
Speaker 3:Well, we've lost a branch on the Japanese maple from the snow on the big trees dropping down on top of them. So much snow.
Speaker 2:So much.
Speaker 3:And we didn't lose the entire tree. We just lost a branchlet.
Speaker 2:We had another one that's growing in the backyard.
Speaker 3:Oh, that one. Yep. We lost that one.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. Broke into the ground. And you can drive around, you look at the damage done in, all kind of public spaces like the ones around the Mendenhall library. You know?
Speaker 3:That broke my heart. All those flowering cherries. Holy moly. I'd never and other cherries lived, but I don't know what it was about that site. It must have been the wind.
Speaker 3:It must have been something that made them vulnerable. They were all decapitated, and they'd been there for ten Yep.
Speaker 2:And I was so looking forward to the flower of the cherry in the springtime is such a signal.
Speaker 3:Well, planted those because the tile that's on that library is beautiful. And it's it's kind of purple, purply gray kind of color. And the pale pink against the purple was a real compliment. But I'm gonna go with red columnar
Speaker 2:Beach trees.
Speaker 3:Beech trees because they won't fall apart, and, they'll be pretty too in a different way.
Speaker 2:They will. So you're probably aware if you're listening to the radio but there's no phone connection here. If you'd like to send a question, you can use the studio email air@kinyradio.com, or you can text one to me at (907) 321-4149.
Speaker 3:But we're back.
Speaker 2:We're back.
Speaker 3:And we'll have phones hopefully soon.
Speaker 2:Hopefully, by next weekend, we should have phones on the air here. And don't hesitate to send us questions or, you know, or ask us questions. People stop us in the grocery store and in the hardware store and ask questions. There's so many people that are so interested and so concerned and so so, complimentary about how it's all coming back again and things are happening for them.
Speaker 3:I think they need the companionship. I mean, that's the thing about Gardeners. You know, we are a community and we all have that darn. It was a horrible winter.
Speaker 2:It was a horrible winter. That's right. Okay. Enough of that. We'll talk talk about some more of that in a few minutes.
Speaker 2:So the Primrose Society, Worldwide Primrose Society Convention is today, and they have a show, and they have judging, and they have a Primrose sale. And if you look on the web and still see from the Garden Club or from the Primrose Society, you'll see invitations and hours and schedules. And, it's always a real interesting group.
Speaker 3:I was looking from the the last time that we we bought a coffee cup that was from the year 2000. It was a primrose.
Speaker 2:Nationals convention here. That's right.
Speaker 3:Convention. Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep. But primroses are a real popular thing here.
Speaker 3:Well, boy, and they came through. You know, you look at people's yards. What's what's growing there now? Primroses.
Speaker 2:Primroses. Primroses come back. You know, you look at them, you think, oh, they're so delicate looking, but they're not.
Speaker 3:They're tough.
Speaker 2:They're real workhorses. Yeah. There's so many kinds of them. So, Laird and Francine sent me in a photo of their rhododendron that had been broken, branches broken on the rhododendron. And, I I can't tell you how many people stop and ask that particular question, what to do about the broken branches on it.
Speaker 3:Well, people don't prune their rhododendrons often. I mean, they should not be afraid because they're very resilient and can come on more by being pruned off.
Speaker 2:And rhododendrons are pretty unusual in the fact that you can prune it anywhere.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:You can cut it anywhere on the branches and new leaves will show up below your cut.
Speaker 3:Remember, it's a forest shrub that comes from the Himalayas. Rhododendrons are very, very tough.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of kinds of them, and they they come from all kinds of environments. Most of the ones that are hardy enough for us come from the Himalayas or from Japan or even from North America too. There's a whole bunch of native ones in North America.
Speaker 3:Right. But, you know, during the eighteen hundreds, when the wealthy would go out on their expeditions and go to China and go to the mountains Burma. Somewhere. Yeah. They were collecting plants and they and the rhododendron was one that they definitely focused on because it was so incredibly resilient.
Speaker 2:And there are people who made their lives profession of being able to go out and explore and find plants and send them back. And, you know, they they built a a whole culture of exotic plants that being displayed.
Speaker 3:Well, we came to Alaska.
Speaker 2:Bringing our exotic plants in our wagon right
Speaker 3:behind us. That's right.
Speaker 2:No doubt about it. So when you have a broken branch on the rhododendron, you really some people tape them back or tie them back, you know, they might still be alive and maybe the bark will grow over the wound, but the wood never heals. And so it's always going to be a broken place. And the next time stress is put on it, it'll break again in the same place.
Speaker 3:So if you cut it off, it gives it a chance to grow something new.
Speaker 2:To grow new branches, right? And they do, they grow right back. Well, not right back, it takes them a couple years. But remember the lady over there by the river who cut her rhododendrons back just to single trunks? They were growing by her front door, and she cut all the side branches off and kept a couple of trunks going up and down.
Speaker 2:And a couple years later, they looked like of like indoor plants, like ficus plants because the new leaves had come everywhere along the stem.
Speaker 3:They made me think of lollipops.
Speaker 2:Yeah. They made me think of columnar forms of rhododendron. Thought, there should be a columnar form of rhododendron. Columnar form means that it it grows, the branches grow up and down rather than out to the sides, kinda like a foxtail.
Speaker 3:Well and there are people who have pruned their rhododendrons so that they're on a single trunk and they're up and and only the tops are being kept as a ball. They're just like a trunk on a tree. Yep. Because the rest have all been pruned off. And that's a a very formal application.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And it's it also, it illustrates.
Speaker 3:Wasn't the hennies the ones that had that out in their nursery?
Speaker 2:They did. And we bought them from them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And their son had done it as a science project for the science fair and worked at it for several years before they promoted it. That's right.
Speaker 2:And then the plants that we bought from him were twenty years later. They were his original science fair project.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And they made like little maple trees. They were very cute. Yeah. Very, very cute. This goes to show you how malleable some of these species are, how many forms they can take.
Speaker 2:They can take it by themselves or we can make them take it. So pruning and manipulation is a it's an art form all of its own. Absolutely. And you can look at a overgrown, many branched shrub, and if you can see the form in it and cut away the rest of them, it'll show itself off as a very, very beautiful shape.
Speaker 3:Now it's a little early yet to be able to tell if the shrubbery in people's yards is alive or dead. If you scrape it a little bit with your knife or your scissors or something to see if it's green underneath the bark, there's a good chance it's just not recovered yet from the from the wintertime. But you can fertilize and water. Depends on where it is. You know, the ground dries out pretty quickly.
Speaker 3:And pruning and feeding your plants some granular time release food is a good thing to get it kick started.
Speaker 2:Springtime fertilization is really critical. You're right. The plants are are living on their stored energy and not on what's readily available in the ground yet. So
Speaker 3:And they're tired.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. And it's taken a while and it takes a lot of energy to come alive.
Speaker 3:That's what I mean.
Speaker 2:To be to be get your leaves back out and open them.
Speaker 3:They were buried under eight feet of snow.
Speaker 2:And and what it really is, it's not so much how cold the air temperature is around them as how cold the ground temperature is. Until the ground temperature is warm enough, the roots can't be active enough to give it any kind of push. It can't send any any moisture up to leaf buds to let them unfurl. I was looking at spireas that had been in the cold frames over the winter and last week they looked just dead. Dead.
Speaker 2:All of them looked dead.
Speaker 3:Are they not dead?
Speaker 2:They're not dead. They got little leaves coming out all over them. Even the ones that are piled up in a pile getting ready to be disposed of, miraculously, they got little leaves on them.
Speaker 3:Well, let's water and fertilize them.
Speaker 2:That's the goal. That's right. And if you have that kind of stuff and it's it's looking kinda rangy, most of those shrubs can be pruned fairly vigorously.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And they'll respond immediately, and and the new growth coming on them will in most of these species is what's gonna bloom this year. So spireas and roses and lilacs.
Speaker 3:Spireas especially always look dead in
Speaker 2:the springtime. And potentilla. Boy, doesn't that look that looks dead until July.
Speaker 3:I don't know why I'm laughing. But, anyway but this year, they really got hammered.
Speaker 2:They really did. At the University Rec Center, there's this big hedge of viburnums, long curly vibe hedge of viburnums, and they were oh, they've probably been on the ground twenty years. Yes. So they are substantial and, pruned vigorously every year. So there's really, really a lot of branches on them.
Speaker 2:And the snow weight this winter pushed them to the ground and broke a lot of the branches
Speaker 3:Flattened them.
Speaker 2:Absolutely flattened them. And now that spring has come, it's warmed up, and they're starting to grow again. Even the broken branches that are laying on the ground look like an elephant slipped on them.
Speaker 3:Well, an elephant did sleep on them.
Speaker 2:They're coming back up. So we're just gonna have to cut it to the ground and let it come back.
Speaker 3:Fertilize it.
Speaker 2:That's right. And now now that we see that it didn't kill them, it'll them stronger. Right? What does not kill you makes you stronger?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's what I it's a rumor
Speaker 2:I heard. I heard that rumor too. I think I might even have said it a couple of times. So
Speaker 3:the So our radio show's starting, but we don't have any phones yet. But hopefully, sometime soon, we'll be able to have phone calls or you can send David emails.
Speaker 2:You can send me an email or a text. You text my phone, 321-4149, or email to the studioair@kimyradio.com. And, of course, always, you can send questions to us via our website all the time. We get 25 questions a day coming in from people that are interested in what to do about this, how to manage that. The nursery is gonna be open this week.
Speaker 2:We received beautiful shipments, really, really beautiful shipments of new material, and the pansy crop is delightful. Absolutely delightful.
Speaker 3:What about those Gerber daisies?
Speaker 2:Is a kind of a kind of daisy that originally comes from South Africa, and it's called a Gerber, Gerbera, and it is fluorescent. It's pink and orange and gold and red. Red, yeah. Boy, they are standout colors and they're optic and they bloom all summer long. The same thing with the African daisies, the osteospermums.
Speaker 2:People introduce things, and one of the things that people introduced us to a long time ago, older gardens, older established gardens in Juneau, like Mrs. Overstreet would come every year and say, I wanna have this color of African Daisy. And you look at the plant and you think, well you're obviously too tender to live in Southeast Alaska, but in fact it does just marvelously. And talk about spectacular colors. That yellow with the blue eye and the little blue around the edge of the yellow petals, man, that just knocks my socks off.
Speaker 3:Isn't it called blue eyes? Something like that.
Speaker 2:Something like that. Sparkly blue eyes or something. But it's really a spectacular it stops you in your tracks when you look at it.
Speaker 3:Well, Dave, you're a plant nerd. You know? Come on. Yeah. That's why you do what you do.
Speaker 2:But you know, so is everybody. Everybody's essentially a plant nerd. They just have various degrees of it.
Speaker 3:So the other thing is people love hostas. And I like hostas too, don't misunderstand me, but I like to use hostas in a way that they show each other off. And by having a variety of different colors and using the textures, for me, I love the bright yellow and then that smoky blue. That's a beautiful combo to have in your garden edge. I mean, not as a continuous line, but here's some and then you don't have any.
Speaker 3:And then there's some more here. There's like turning on light bulbs and it shows off the rest of the plants. It's not so much about their flowers, but their leaf color. I think it's a very exciting thing.
Speaker 2:Me too. And it it allows you to have color combinations in times when the weather is inclement.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:You know, whether it be the
Speaker 3:Like it rained two days ago, pouring down rain.
Speaker 2:Like the rain the is the day before yesterday. Yes. The hostas were very happy then. Didn't have any trouble at all. The water beads up on their leaves and makes it look so shiny and clean.
Speaker 2:You know what else looks really cool right now? Are the Luissias.
Speaker 3:Luissias are always cool.
Speaker 2:Luissia is a kind of plant
Speaker 3:It's a succulent.
Speaker 2:That you look at it and you think you're you're a combination of various different kinds of plants. The leaves are fleshy and and kinda gray blue and creamy They're not gray blue.
Speaker 3:They're green.
Speaker 2:Okay. And the flowers look like springtime wildflowers.
Speaker 3:Yeah. The flowers are darling, and they just bloom and bloom and bloom and bloom.
Speaker 2:And Luicia is named after Meriwether Lewis, the Lewis and Clark guy. He named it himself, as a matter of fact. The other common name for it is bitter root, but it's it's got a a long tap root that grows back in the cracks of the rocks, and it really wants perfect drainage. People in Juneau grow them in gravel and or in a pot filled with gravel or in a gravel bed out in their yards because it's really, really hardy.
Speaker 3:Well, and something we've got is gravel.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We got plenty of gravel. No no question about it. And if you don't have enough, you can always come and get some from us. We got lots of gravel.
Speaker 2:We had to regravel our entire world this year. So, vegetables. Had a pot planting party at the university a couple days ago yesterday, and we planted strawberries of various kinds and chard and lettuces and all kinds of flowers for individual flower pots that are gonna go around the campus, and one of the things that really stood out to me was that everybody wanted to plant strawberries. They all wanted to have strawberries in their flower pots.
Speaker 3:You know what's funny is that the dogs like the strawberries.
Speaker 2:And so do the ravens.
Speaker 3:And they like to eat the strawberries.
Speaker 2:They so
Speaker 3:very the delicately go over and pick the strawberries and swallow them right up.
Speaker 2:And you think dogs are color blind.
Speaker 3:Why do you think that?
Speaker 2:I I always thought dogs were color blind. I know. I'd always thought so, but they can pick out the red strawberries out
Speaker 3:of the can smell them, my bad.
Speaker 2:Oh, I bet that's it. They're not nose blind by any means, are they? No. No. Okay.
Speaker 2:So there's two kinds of strawberries basically, and one is called an everbearing and the other one is called a Junebearing. It has to do with the relationship with light, with the day length. And one of them, once it gets the kick start, it's gonna continue to bloom and make berries and bloom and make berries. That's the everbearing kind. What we are using this year is called Fort Laramie, an everbearing that's really, really hardy in terms of cold.
Speaker 2:Really, really hardy, and it produces a lot of runners and makes a big strawberry bed very quickly. And the other one is called a June bearing, and more of the varieties that are out there are considered June bearing, and that makes one huge crop, and then just little bits after that.
Speaker 3:Strawberries in a hanging basket are great.
Speaker 2:It's a greedy good idea. Yep. No slugs.
Speaker 3:No slugs.
Speaker 2:That's right. No slugs. And it gets them out of the reach of the dogs.
Speaker 3:And out of the right. No dogs.
Speaker 2:Unless your dog's like like a pogo stick and he can jump up and grab one. And I know that strawberries are grown in hanging baskets and they're grown in troughs and bags and gutters. Bobby at Peterson Hill is growing them in plastic rain gutters, for you to stick up on the side of your garage. What a great idea.
Speaker 3:She's a very creative person.
Speaker 2:She said she though, that's a whole industry she makes. So the plants that we hear the most questions about are the arborvitaes because they got this this winter damage that makes them arborvitaes are those cedar look like cedar look alikes that are tall and bright green, and they kinda look like the shape of a dill pickle. And, you can tell the winter damage makes them splay apart so they look like spread hands instead. And, you can either tie them back into place as the weather warms up and the wood gets a bit springier, tie them back and tie them together inside so you don't see the tie. You tie around the main branches and pull them back up together.
Speaker 2:But if they're split and the wood is actually split and broken, you gotta cut it down. Cut it down below the split. And then the new branches that are at the top of the like as if you'd cut the top off a pineapple. And so, like, the next set of branches will gradually sprout up out of those flat branches. You'll get new vertical branches growing up.
Speaker 2:And it might take it five or six years to grow back to its acceptable look.
Speaker 3:Arvovita are something that are really very affordable in comparison to other exotic evergreen columnar styled shrubbery.
Speaker 2:They are. They're affordable. They grow fairly rapidly. They're easy enough to grow as a commercial crop. People grow them by the hundreds of thousands of them.
Speaker 2:Right. They grow them out like corn.
Speaker 3:And and then there's the dwarf columnar cedar.
Speaker 2:That's where I was going.
Speaker 3:It's much more expensive, but more durable.
Speaker 2:And only has a single trunk. Yeah. So they've developed a dwarf western red cedar called northern spire. And we're kind of at the northern edge of where red cedar grows naturally, but these new varieties are hardier than the wild form and they don't grow to be 200 feet, they only grow to be about 30 feet, which is still pretty big, there's no doubt about it. Boy, are they beautiful?
Speaker 2:And do they smell wonderful? And do the deer not eat them? All of those are real pluses.
Speaker 3:Because the deer eat the arborvitae.
Speaker 2:The deer eat the arborvitae. Think all those people who lived over there on Douglas Island, every winter the deer come down and eat their arborvitae as much as they can reach up. Arborvita means living tree, and one of the reasons that they name it that is that people can eat the green part of that and get enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy. So it's an ever very So
Speaker 3:horrible.
Speaker 2:Well, so is getting scurvy. You know? But if you if you're there in the woods and it's been a long time since you had any fresh veg and there's a nice arborvita tree, Yum. Yum. Yum.
Speaker 2:We'd be glad to get it.
Speaker 3:I don't know. I can't imagine it myself.
Speaker 2:Anyway, please come and look. I've got some beautiful cedar trees that are, this this northern spire, and it's a very, very effective tree. And they didn't in anybody's yard that we planted them last year, they didn't get affected by the snow. They didn't get bent over. They didn't get split.
Speaker 2:They didn't get broken. They didn't the tops didn't separate. They are all great. It's a real, real good choice. And there's also, as you look at tree forms, and one of the reasons why the arborvitae is chosen is because it stays pretty narrow, and you can make a hedge out of it that will just take care of itself.
Speaker 2:It won't you don't have to keep shearing the front of it to keep it narrow. It stays like that. That's a plant form called columnar, and it turns out that you can find columnar forms of lots and lots of plants. You can find columnar forms of beech trees and maple trees and spruce trees and pine trees. So there are varieties, and one of the things that nursery guys do is to find a shape that they like and propagate that particular shape so it fits into a design category.
Speaker 2:And the design category of hedging kind of plants requires that. We've got a columbedr European beech tree that we've had for thirty years. We've moved it around as we've moved ourselves to dig it up and carry it with us. It's now probably 25 feet tall. I don't think we'll move it again.
Speaker 2:Don't think
Speaker 3:so either.
Speaker 2:Alright. But it you know, it's once again, winter damage, not a bit. Not even a fleck of it. It looks grand. So we're a few minutes away from the end of the show.
Speaker 2:I wanna invite you all to come and see us. We'll be closed on Mondays. Rest of the time, ten to five. But you know what I'm really, really anxious to communicate here? I'd like to hire a couple people to work in the nursery.
Speaker 2:I'd like to hire people that are interested in nursery life. I'd to hire people that want to talk about it, that want to be friends with other gardeners. I'd like to hire people that like to come and take care of plants because they don't take care of themselves. They always need some individual attention and someone who has that kind of character, who has that degree of attention and likes to talk to other adult people about gardening. I'm really, really interested in meeting you.
Speaker 2:If you wanna call me up or come visit me, we would It be
Speaker 3:doesn't have to be a full time job.
Speaker 2:Can be a
Speaker 3:part time job.
Speaker 2:Could do it a day a
Speaker 3:week. Something.
Speaker 2:Yes. And it's nice work, and the people you talk to are all really, really nice. Nobody comes to the nursery wanting to have a bad time. They all come, they bring their kids and their dogs, laugh about things, they're just fine and they pet the plants. I love it when they bring the little kids.
Speaker 2:So anytime you come to Landscape Alaska, bring your kids. Let them see what it's like to go to a nursery. Let them see what plant varieties are like.
Speaker 3:There was a little boy yesterday, his name was Roman. Man, he was fast. He was running and jumping and going everywhere and helped his mom with his the cart to get the plants to the car and brought it back. Here, miss Margaret.
Speaker 2:Oh, isn't that fun?
Speaker 3:Really sweet.
Speaker 2:Really, really fun. So Landscape Alaska, email contact, landscape Alaska at Gmail. Website, landscape Alaska dot com. Address, on the back loop road between Goat Hill and Spring Way. Now we're not allowed to have a sign on the road due to municipal ordinances, but we do have a beautiful mailman.
Speaker 3:Heights.
Speaker 2:Well, there's always that. We have a mailbox that's painted up to look like rhododendron flowers. As you drive along on that area
Speaker 3:a sawhorse.
Speaker 2:Mounted on a sawhorse. That's our indication. There's a sign there that says landscape Alaska, but if you see that brightly colored mailbox that looks like rhododendron flowers and a driveway, a steep driveway going up to the top of the hill, that's us. And we would love for you to come and visit us. We would love for you to come and stroll around, enjoy the plant material.
Speaker 2:I'd like you to buy some too, but you know you don't have to. You can just come and enjoy it. The rhododendrons are in bloom now. Rhododendrons are in bloom now. The rhododendrons in your yards aren't in bloom yet, but these rhododendrons came in from Oregon last week, and they're in bloom now.
Speaker 2:Some of them are just cracking open, and some of them are in full flower. And the ones that are in full flower are these dwarf forms from Northern Japan that are just stunning. Yeah. Yeah. Kusumina hybrids, and they're bright, bright pink buds, they open to a pale pink flower on kind of dwarfish plant.
Speaker 2:They're just covered with flowers. You can barely see any leaves. There's so many flowers on them. And I'm sending stuff around Southeast. I'm sending big purple rhododendrons to Sitka this week.
Speaker 2:We're sending Japanese maples to Sitka. We're sending Japanese maples to Haines too this week. And if you live out of town and you want to get some kind of spectacular plant for your garden, you know, call me up and see what we've got. Visit us online, visit us on the web, or just come by when you're in town.
Speaker 3:And we have some really nice peonies.
Speaker 2:Oh, beautiful peonies. And and one of our friends grows peonies like a like a a crop in the ground. Most of the peonies are grown. Yeah. They grow like corn.
Speaker 2:They got big grow in the field of peonies. And they you know, he doesn't care what color they are. He just grows them as plants. So they're a mixture of colors, no name, variety, but they're substantial big plants, they're all gonna bloom. They all look really healthy and happy.
Speaker 2:We have one minute left, so let's hope that next week we have phone calls. And other than that, come see us at Landscape Alaska. We'll be excited to see you too. And until then, this is Margo and Dave from Landscape Alaska 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.