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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 Tharpe and David Lundrum of Landscape Alaska on KINY.
Speaker 2:Well, what do you know? Summertime still. Sunny days, 65 high, and yet we can see the coming of the fall.
Speaker 3:Not only that, it was cold all summer long. I mean, so we're getting a few days at the end. Scripture is
Speaker 2:Scripture. You're not crabby, are you, this morning? No, I'm not. You're okay.
Speaker 3:But the weather has not been at all
Speaker 2:such been horrible. As Tom Ruticke pointed out to me, statistically, it's been below average rainfall all year.
Speaker 3:But the temperature.
Speaker 2:The temperature has been cold. Cold.
Speaker 4:And before we get any further, I'd have dinner. Did we shut the back door? Yes. Did. Given the bear poop that's out there?
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 2:Thanks. I shut it. Alright. Yeah. There's a big pile of bear poop outside your back door, by the way.
Speaker 2:Okay. So what I was saying, you can see the signs of fall, leaves are beginning to turn color. We're beginning to see the the reds and golds and pinks of the autumn, and the first ones to show it are gonna be the the spireas, the glow girl spireas. They're beginning to show it right now. And your big Japanese maples, just the very hint of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it is a challenging time for gardeners, is what I see. Some things have been very successful, but there's a lot of things that just didn't thrive because the temperature was so cold.
Speaker 2:A lot of people didn't even get flowers on the hydrangeas this year. Although I got to say the ones that you planted around the Capitol Building, they're in absolute full flower right now. And so with these colder, autumn nights, they're gonna start coloring up pretty soon.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:They're in the ivory color now. They started off pale green, and now they're in the ivory tone. But next it's going to start getting pinker and pinker and pinker.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, it's really great to be able to have hydrangeas for the late season bloom time.
Speaker 2:Okay, you got be closer to your mic. Oh, hello. So, yeah, and the hydrangeas really do that because they can bloom at a time when hardly anything else is flowering. And they last for a really long time. I see them all over town now.
Speaker 2:As I was we've been working in Douglas there are those two trees on Main Street in Douglas that are in the front yard, one big one and one small one.
Speaker 3:I love to cut the flowers and dry them and have them for dried flowers for the summer the wintertime because you can have something in your house being pretty all the time.
Speaker 2:And there is that need to cut the flowers off at the end of the summer anyway, so they don't go into the winter and get, you know, So iced
Speaker 3:anyway, they're a nice dried flower.
Speaker 2:And you can choose whether you're going to pick them now at green or you're to let them get red and pick them.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'd let them get
Speaker 2:red, personally. Or both. So, I have been having a Dave's birthday sale for about two weeks. My birthday just was, but I'm gonna continue the sale on through the rest of the month, and I'll add another specie every day. And yesterday I added the deciduous azaleas.
Speaker 2:And deciduous azaleas are a real winner for us here. One of the reasons is that they bloom so early before they've even got leaves on them, and they bloom so spectacularly. They bloom orange and pink, red and
Speaker 3:Yellow.
Speaker 1:Bright, bright, bright
Speaker 2:yellow. Yeah. Yeah. Very pretty. And then they have this season, and they're already starting to turn because they're among the the most dramatic of the fall color plants.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. The leaves turn color.
Speaker 2:Turn them really, really red. Yep. So we've been doing as as lots of people are, I'm sure, cutting the fall, cutting the gardens back, cutting the perennials down, getting it all ready for the next seasonal change.
Speaker 3:Before the really bad weather comes. It's always a rate a race.
Speaker 2:It is. And we have luckily, we have tools from Tyler. We've got a sickle bar cutter that goes on a weed eater motor.
Speaker 3:Well, everybody that we work for, you show them the tools we've got and say, you ought to buy some of these.
Speaker 2:That's right. And and universally, they go, oh, look at that. And they grab them. And that little handheld pruner with this little sickle bar pruner, that's a really useful tool, particularly if you're doing things like spireas, where there's lots and lots of little branches. Zip, zip, zip boy.
Speaker 2:It's a handy tool. And lucky for us, Tyler's right there. They've got the batteries and the replacement parts, and they've got somebody on hand that knows how to fix them. It's a wonderful community resource. Thanks a lot, Tyler Renal.
Speaker 2:We're so thrilled you're open and so thrilled you're so easy to deal with. We'll see you again very shortly, I'm sure, probably even today. I know they're not open tomorrow, but they are open today until noon.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, actually. I can't remember how late the on the day they are open on Saturday, but I think it's noon. Anyway, if it is, go over go over there this morning or wait until Monday. But they have a real armada. And so the I've been talking about the little tools, but the one I was talking about this morning, there's a whole style of weed eater kind of tools.
Speaker 2:They have a motor with a shaft and then you can put different kinds of attachments on it. And one of the attachments is a sickle bar pruner. And for doing the big beds of Astilbees and things like that, it's a wonderful tool. Absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 3:Gets you up off your knees.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And and with the the strap over your shoulder, it takes the weight of the machine off your hands too.
Speaker 4:And you're right. Noon today. Oh, good. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2:So that's what we're doing. We're going into people's yards that have had us take care of their gardens for years and years, we're getting a jump on the fall while we still have labor. Speaking of which, Landscape Alaska is hiring. The young college people are going away and we need some more some more hands on the ground, boots in the garden.
Speaker 4:And this doesn't have to be permanent, just temporary for the fall or something
Speaker 2:like Yep. The fall. Cool. In a couple months. Be great.
Speaker 4:Before you start hibernating, get some exercise in. Perfect.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And maybe somebody's in town and just got here and looking around for a place to to get started at, well, Landscape Alaska is a great place like that. Not only do you have entertaining work and a and a a nice scene to work in, you get to work in some of the most beautiful gardens in the whole town. Really, the the work we're doing right now, the Astilbe is in full bloom. It's work
Speaker 3:we did forty years ago.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 3:And we've been taking care of for forty years. What's that say?
Speaker 2:Good job. It means they didn't fire you yet. Perfect.
Speaker 3:Not yet.
Speaker 2:Not yet. Still on the job. Oh, yeah. Well, you do a great job, Mark. All the time.
Speaker 2:I just got another shipment of nematodes in. In the research doing around the Capitol Building, I realized that the vine weevils attack more than just the rhododendrons. Yeah. They do yews. They do Japanese yew.
Speaker 2:They do the spireas.
Speaker 3:They do hydrangeas.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And they also do the mat forming primroses and they really do the climbing hydrangeas. And for years I've looked at them and thinking that were slugs that were eating the climbing hydrangeas, but now I realize that's not it. It is the black vine weevil. And you can come to Landscape Alaska, I'll show you some pictures where you can look online and see vine weevil and see the the kind of marks they make on the leaf.
Speaker 2:And you'll know exactly, you go, oh, I've seen that. And if that's the case, it's the adult eats holes in the leaves, but the larvae eat the root system. And that's what you're really worried about is the larvae. So the nematode is a microscopic little worm. You just put them in water, shake them up, pour them in the root system, and they get washed down in among the roots, and then they go hunting.
Speaker 2:They go hunting for the larval stage of the black vine weevil. And it's a really, really effective way to manage it because it's a it's an insidious kind of pest. And once they get established, they can kill great big things in not very long.
Speaker 4:What else do the nematodes go after? Anything else? The nematodes probably go after the larval stages of almost anything. So, like, even fungus gnats that are in house
Speaker 2:Oh, yes. They're really good for fungus gnats. Perfect.
Speaker 4:I'm You need some? Following you back to the store.
Speaker 2:Okay. Yeah. And it doesn't take very much. You know, a quarter of a teaspoon is 5,000,000 of the little creatures.
Speaker 3:So we mix them up in our old mayonnaise jars that have been washed, and that's about a quart, and put water to it and shake it up and then pour it on the ground. And it's very, very effective. The thing about the black vine weevil is for different plants, the results of recognizing the damage is different. It's one thing about the rhododendrons that actually take a bite out of the adult leaves and stuff. But when we've figured it out for the yews, the Japanese yews, It's like this tip of this one is brown and this one over here is brown and this one over here is brown, but it was not the whole plant.
Speaker 3:But that doesn't mean they don't have it underground, heavy damage done. So when you see anything that looks unusual, it's an indication that it could be nematodes.
Speaker 2:You could need nematodes. Well, think having the introduction to Alison's business with all of her curative bugs
Speaker 3:That's great.
Speaker 2:Predatory insects, non chemical treatments, all that stuff, know, that's it's really made a big difference to us. And it's let us continue our stance that we don't need the pesticides. We don't need the herbicides. We can design ourselves a way out of that and utilize natural life processes and utilize design as much as possible. And that is one of the things that we really focus on, is how to design it so you don't have to weed it.
Speaker 2:You know, you can make your landscape weeding is a design problem. You know, it occupies so much of your gardening time that could be put to other purposes. It's true. It's kind of meditative. And and you can you can lose yourself being a weeder.
Speaker 2:There's no doubt. But it doesn't have to be. And if you can design it so that the plant material you want is bigger than the competition and that it grows together to present a common surface that's above the weed level
Speaker 3:And shades it out.
Speaker 2:And shade it right out. That's what it is. I realize it's if you can see the ground, that means the plant the weeds can get enough light to grow. If you can't see the ground, then there may even be some weeds down there, but you'll never know. You can't see them.
Speaker 3:And And they don't get to
Speaker 2:be big. And they don't get to be big. So the competition here is horsetail and
Speaker 3:the ridunculus. Dandelions.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And Aegopodium, even though it had been planted, that's the bishop's weed, the green and white bishop's weed stuff that creeps around on the ground. It's so hard to eradicate. But really that what Margaret was saying was shade them out, plant bigger things among them. And the same thing is true on the much larger scale.
Speaker 2:Reed canary grass that's growing so wildly around our town, the only way we can really treat it is to have a larger scale landscape that shades it out. They can't live underneath the big trees. And there's no way that someone's going to manage the whole the whole regional landscape. It has to be kind of a consciousness. That's my hobby horse.
Speaker 2:Never mind. I'll talk about something else.
Speaker 4:Oh, I appreciate your advice on the fertilizing too, because I remember, you know, as a young kid mowing lawns, I don't like doing this. How do I get it to stay green but not grow? So don't use the miracle weed eater all the time, and what you're saying about the sixteen sixteen sixteen to help the root growth and things like that. What about the seasons for fertilizing now that we're in the fall?
Speaker 2:Well, this is the time maybe this week and maybe next week is the last fertilizing for almost everything. And you're gonna give it something that's not real high in nitrogen. You know? So the eight thirty two sixteen is a good choice. If you have twelve twelve twelve or sixteen sixteen sixteen, don't be hesitate.
Speaker 2:Go ahead and use it because the nitrogen is going to be used up right away. But the phosphorus and potash will linger around all winter long and the plants will continue to absorb them even when the ground is frozen. So go ahead and get it to it. But remember, whenever you fertilize, you have to water. Whenever you put fertilizer out in your yard or even in your house plants, and you put the fertilizer out, you got to water it right away.
Speaker 2:Because fertilizer is a salt, and its first reaction is going to be to suck moisture out of the root system. So add add moisture right then, you know, neutralize that need. Also, this is the time for tying up things like arborvita and cedars, things that have a tendency
Speaker 3:Internal tying.
Speaker 2:Internal tying.
Speaker 3:So they don't get splayed apart when the snow comes.
Speaker 2:Right. Exactly. And you reach down inside and find where the main up and down branches are and tie those, but don't tie them tightly. Tie them loosely. Your idea here is not to tie them together.
Speaker 2:They're not in bondage. They're not in bondage. That's right. The idea here really is to stop them from getting torn apart. So you can give them a little bit of play.
Speaker 2:Let them move, you know, like 10%, 15%, but don't tie them rigidly. And if you if you don't tie them at all, you look around and see what you're gonna get. You know? Because if you look
Speaker 3:Last year, they annihilated everywhere.
Speaker 2:They look like baseball gloves. Yep. Splayed apart, big thumbs on one side, big fingers on the other side. The plant's still alive. The plant's still healthy.
Speaker 2:It's reshaped, though. And if you want it to be back to its original shape, this is kind of the way to do it. But prevention is better than curing, and prevention means taking some kind of a flat strap. Like, I like to use a nylon strapping because it doesn't cut into the trunks of the branches at all. And so you tie it around and you don't want to see it.
Speaker 2:So get a dark color, get a dark brown or black and arrange it so that the leaves of whatever you're tying up cover up the strabbing.
Speaker 3:Or the needles.
Speaker 2:Or needles. Right. Or or scales or bracts or whatever you call them. It's still the same. Those those Those chlorophyll containing things.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:If you can use something like a flat strap, that works really well.
Speaker 3:And from what so far we can tell, it sounds like we're going to have another horrible winter like we did last winter. So being proactive will be more positive for the garden.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Especially on a day like today. There's no reason not to go out there and tie things up today. It's gonna be great. The sun's shining.
Speaker 2:Everything's Turn the opera on. Well, listen to KIMY maybe.
Speaker 4:Margaret, I must be watching the wrong channel because I had my hopes up because I saw news about El Nino and that the northern was gonna get a break and the south was gonna get buried. So I'm I thought we were gonna get a little drier when now you
Speaker 3:Well, I hope so.
Speaker 2:I mean I had thought we were gonna get warmer and wetter.
Speaker 4:Well, that's I I just saw a news map, and they were showing the shift or whatever and saying that the northern might we might get a break.
Speaker 3:You know, my thing is I like to prepare for the worst. And last year was one of those years.
Speaker 2:Right. And we didn't we were not able to prepare for it. It was just it came upon us.
Speaker 3:Well, we came home. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. So then another thing is as you're looking out at your landscape and your landscape, your neighbor's landscape, and as you drive around town and look at both public and private landscapes, pick out the things that you think are showing that fall color. We went to dinner last night at the Boca De Lupo, and the planter boxes they had as you walked in had those ornamental cabbages in them. Ornamental cabbages and hostas. Did you notice those?
Speaker 2:I didn't, David. They were so pretty. That's And it's not the dark purple ornamental cabbage. This is the one that looks more like a like a a real cabbage, but the edges of the leaves are all pink and the the body of the the thing is is white with a little bit of green in it. They were crisp and pretty, and I thought, you know, if you can have something with colorful foliage and form that's that doesn't really depend on flower in order to have the color.
Speaker 2:That's really a smart move for someplace like this.
Speaker 3:Yeah. No, remember those tourists stopped and talked to me, so it interrupted my getting to the restaurant. I wanted to know what I knew about the restaurant and how come I was going there and was I a tourist Yep. And
Speaker 2:And you're glad to be able to say, No, I know this place. Good place. Good food. And great landscape design. Okay.
Speaker 2:So that was really, really nice. So you're driving around, you're looking at people's landscapes, look for fall color. Look and see what's showing the colors that you think are attractive.
Speaker 3:Well, it's just starting.
Speaker 4:I haven't been out the road, have you? There's some beautiful fall colors when I've been dripping I out
Speaker 2:of the know that I'm going out there, though. I've got a couple of clients out there that we have to go to that are about as far out as we reach.
Speaker 4:And on the On the El Nino thing, both right. So warmer than average, but also drier for the northern latitudes. Sounds great to me. I wouldn't mind that.
Speaker 2:Let's hope so.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I can't count
Speaker 4:Don't on don't borrow trouble. But
Speaker 2:I can't count on it. Well, I'm still gonna tie up everything that I have. Yep. And also, we're have gonna to put another sheet of plastic on the greenhouses. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The last couple of years have been pretty rough on them.
Speaker 3:Yep. Taking the snow off.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Surprisingly enough, Polly oh, I never gave the phone number. This is a call in radio show. It's not just Dave talking. Oh, it's a call in radio show.
Speaker 2:Okay. 1805861800. And, that'll you can either text to that number or call that number.
Speaker 4:Do you have any advice for people who lost their greenhouses because of the winter last year and
Speaker 2:the snow loads and everything else about what Okay. Rather than go down to a retail outlet and buy a kind of a backyard greenhouse. Look online, go to greenhouse supply places, buy the metal ribs, and and use those, assemble those. It's much less expensive and it's much sturdier. And you can get ones that are designed to shed the snow.
Speaker 3:But you still put internal bracing on those too for the amount of weather we get.
Speaker 2:That's right. You wanna you wanna truss something that ties the two sides together and has a bow shape to the top that's pointed on the top. You know, the Gothic arch shape cleans itself. The low curve, that's a kind of a Quonset hut style, doesn't. You have to clean it yourself.
Speaker 2:And the ones that are made out of wood that you put old windows on, you gotta have some way to clear that stuff off. You can't let it build up on them because they will collapse. That's the things and we have been in both ends. We have a Gothic arch greenhouse that clears itself, and we have the one we have to go out every day and shovel. Luckily, we have young associates and and our son to be able to take care of that because it's more than I can manage.
Speaker 2:And to see what the last topic I wanted to touch about was as you're building landscapes, pay attention to the edges. Pay attention to where your landscape meets either the wild world, the fenced area, your neighbor's property, whatever that is. That's really where the strengths of your design are going to show. You're going to see how well you can make the transition from your central activity area to the surrounding much larger landscape. And part of it is by selecting views.
Speaker 2:Part of it is by denying views. It's true. You can hedge things off and not have to look at things. And you can put a significant plant in front of somebody some neighbor's window so that they're not looking right at you and you're not looking right at them every time you walk out your front door. You know, that's that's a a real that's kind of a given in landscape design because your adrenal glands secretes adrenaline automatically when you have that eye to eye contact.
Speaker 2:Has nothing to do with not liking them or not wanting to talk to them. It's your body's own reaction. And and, you know, you can design your way out of that. Design is a tremendous tool. I'm I'm blessed that I'm married to a designer.
Speaker 3:Well, thank And you everything
Speaker 2:you do, I like it.
Speaker 3:And And sometimes you want to build a screen rather than plant something. It's not always about planting something.
Speaker 2:That's true. And some and sometimes you can build a screen and you can buy those premade fence panels from the Home Depot and put them on legs and set them someplace and then plant something in front of it. Right. And so you've got something growing to look at, but the fence panel does the heavy lifting of cutting off the View unpleasant view.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And you don't have to go have it go all the way down to the ground, you know, you can put it up three feet. And and that that's okay. You can look down. The three feet of the ground is just fine. It's that eye to eye contact you want to avoid.
Speaker 2:So we have some of that going on with a couple of our clients, and it's turned out to be very, very effective. Tying up the arborvitaes. I know I started to talk about it and talked about it with the flat straps, but the tendency is to tie it right about at chest level because that's the easiest place for you to tie things. But really, in order to be more effective with it, you wanna go something up above your head height.
Speaker 3:Start up at the top and work your way down is really the way to go.
Speaker 2:And if you have mostly conifers, the tops have been damaged on them, you can repair those. You can cut back to below the dead part and choose another branch and tip it up and tie it in place, and it will become a new leader. It will absolutely become the new leader and it can it can still have a single trunk topped to your plant. Just like they do when they make Christmas trees. You know, they've they shear them every year or twice a year, actually, but they have always got a new leader tied up.
Speaker 2:So there's something suppressing the down the growth down below and keeping it all restrained, but still give you the shape that the Conifer has.
Speaker 4:When do you usually start tying things
Speaker 2:up at your place? I'm starting right now. So if
Speaker 4:somebody's not quite sure, not catching on what to do, that maybe stop by, see you next week, and you can see some examples right at your place.
Speaker 2:Right? Absolutely. And I had my young men tying up the Cedars and Arborvitaes this week because, you know, I have a couple hours. You have to find out when can you fit the task into the allotted time. Okay?
Speaker 2:And there's there's willing hands ready to do work, you know, and if you if they're your own hands, it's the same thing true. You have to find a niche in the day to take on that particular task.
Speaker 4:Will I be out here till 11:00 tonight? Well, maybe maybe
Speaker 2:till 08:00 tonight, tomorrow, and the next You know, all those things are true. My sister and her son are in town. They're gonna go whale watching and fishing today. Have a wonderful time, Diane and Jason. I hope you catch fish or at least see whales.
Speaker 2:Have a great time. Thanks for coming and visiting us. It's a minute to the end of our show, so I'm open today. Landscape Alaska is open from ten till four, and we have 11 things on sale. Rhododendrons, snow mound spireas, Japanese maples, all the perennials, dwarf conifers of exceeding, exceeding beauty, fruiting currants that have fruit on them, the azaleas that are beginning to show fall color, and all the varieties of rhododendron.
Speaker 2:All these 20% off and then come and help us distribute this beauty, this bounty to the rest of the community. And I'll see you there. Landscape Alaska.
Speaker 1:Is Margaret and Dan with Landscape Alaska. And we're wishing you all happy gardening. Alaskan Gardeners is your gateway to exploring 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.