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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:Good morning. Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners back on the air. Mark and Dave from Landscape Alaska, and we welcome you to a beautiful foggy morning. Looks like the perfect day for planting things. Nice and moist.
Speaker 2:Soils are all wet. It's not raining torrentially. Perfect. Come on out to Landscape Alaska today and enjoy yourself. Look at all the beautiful stuff and take home a few things anytime you want.
Speaker 2:So the new shipment of nematodes arrived this week, and this is to combat the black vine weevil, which is a a pest of the rhododendron family. But it turns out that they eat lots of other things besides rhododendrons. I was doing some research about it and I found that that the same pest attacks hydrangeas and spireas And ewes? Japanese ewes, and the fir tree family. So if any of those are in your collection and you begin to see some kind of damage done to them, the the vine weevil adult feeds at night, so you're not likely to see her.
Speaker 2:She's about an inch and a quarter long, black, and with a really weird looking proboscis front nose and mouth part. But the real damage is done by the juveniles, the larvae, and they're down underground eating the root system.
Speaker 3:So And this the evidence that you have something wrong is like with the Japanese yews is that they have tips that turn brown. And it's here and it's there. Not entire branches, but edges of their evergreen needles turn brown. And so in the rhododendron, you can see it because they take big bites out of the leaves and you see that that effect. You don't really see the beetle itself.
Speaker 3:You only see the damage it
Speaker 2:does. Right.
Speaker 3:You know?
Speaker 2:I I've only seen them a couple of times in my whole life. I've ever seen the the real ones, but I sure can tell the damage. On rhododendron, it looks like the edges of the leaves have been pucked punched with a ticket punch. You know, semi circular to oblong circular, notches taken out of the edge of the leaf. And that's kind of your clue that they're in your your area, in your environment.
Speaker 2:And if they show up, then you wanna make sure that you are applying these kind of nematodes, which is a microscopic little worm that goes down into the ground and finds those infants, finds those grub forms and kills them, eats them. And it's a naturally occurring nematode everywhere in the world, just not in the concentration it needs in order to protect our ornamental plants. If you're interested in that, come talk to me. I'll tell you more about it. And the aphid eating lacewing larvae are also available.
Speaker 2:And if aphids are in your greenhouse or in your house or in some place that's objectionable, This is a a way to manage that without using any kind of spray, without using any kind of chemical treatment. It's a naturally occurring little insect, and you get a card with eggs on it, and you put it hang it on the plant itself, and the eggs hatch out, and the little babies walk around on the on the host plant eating aphids, and a little baby lacewing larvae can eat about 30 aphids a day. Pretty effective. And it makes you feel so wholesome. So I've had a lot of questions lately about pruning arborvitaes.
Speaker 2:So many people's arborvitaes got damaged during the winter that the they're either pulling them all out and replacing them with cedars or buying new arborvitaes or in in many cases, trying to treat what they have. And they do that by tying the branches back together inside, or by trimming off the damaged parts. And if you trim arborvitaes off, back to where it's still a kind of coherent looking shrub, You might have to take a third of the shrub off, and it'll be a flat top, and you can see the the, ends of the big main branches. But in a couple years, it starts to grow again.
Speaker 3:You're giving a class tomorrow, aren't you, on pruning?
Speaker 2:I am giving a class tomorrow at 12:30 in the afternoon at Landscape Alaska on You'll summer
Speaker 3:talk about this.
Speaker 2:I'll not only talk about it, I'll show how to do it. Uh-huh. And I'm also gonna show how to do lots of other kinds of summer pruning. Summer pruning is really different than winter or spring kind of pruning, and mostly it's because the plant's response to it is so different. If you prune something in the wintertime, the plant tries to make up for that in the next year.
Speaker 2:It tries to get its shoot to root ratio back to what it was used to. If you prune them in the summertime, it doesn't have that same effect. And so if you wanna keep something under control for size, you really do your pruning about now. And now if you look at at most of the shrubs or trees in your yard, or not not even just in your yard, just in general, you see in the springtime, they made a big burst of growth, and it was really soft and and mostly water. And now it's stopped growing, it's got its shape is there and it's turning from soft tissue into harder tissue.
Speaker 2:So this is a really good time to prune. Really, really good time. It's also a really good time to transplant things if you need to do that in your yard.
Speaker 3:And a good time to fertilize things.
Speaker 2:Have to fertilize. That's right. Is kind of the last of the big fertilizer rush So right if you have hydrangeas or rhododendrons or azaleas or roses, this is the good time to fertilize them. When you look for something that's going to give them both the nitrogen and also the phosphorus so they have enough oomph to make flowers for the springtime. I was in Tyler Rental this week.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. God, I love to go to that store. There's always something fascinating to see. They had they had a zero turn mower. They sit on made by steel.
Speaker 2:It's a gas powered mower. It looked like like a lunar landing device. It didn't look at all like a regular lawn mower. It's sleek and that orange and white color that Stihl tools all use. Very, very cool.
Speaker 2:Made you wanna just, you know, go go mowing. Absolutely go mowing. And they're such nice guys. I went in there with a tool last week and said, you know, this is the the chain has jumped off this little tiny pruner, and the, the screw that holds the pruner together has backed out. What am I gonna do, Justin?
Speaker 2:Justin says, well, I'll just fix it for you. And he went and found a a missing part out of my device and took it apart, put it back together, said, you're on your way. There we go. Thanks, Justin. It was just a pleasure doing business with you.
Speaker 2:At Tyler Reynolds, that's where we all go to get our stuff done. And I walked out of the house today, and we have a bunch of of currant bushes that are loaded with fruit sitting by the back door. They were. They were loaded with fruit. Right.
Speaker 2:Somebody came in the middle of the night, knocked them all over, ate most of the fruit off them, and scattered the rest of the fruit around. I don't think it was a bear.
Speaker 3:It looks like a riot. All those shrubs laying down on the deck.
Speaker 2:It does. You know, they're and they're like like they did them one at a time because this was laid on top of that one, laid on top of that one, laid on top of that one. Yeah. Like, he just went down the line eating and knocking him over. He, she, it, them, they, can't tell what it was.
Speaker 3:Well, we have so many blueberries around our house. I'm surprised they're not attacking those.
Speaker 2:I bet they are. I'm sure that there is out there eating blueberries like mad. But sometimes, you know, the blueberries are high up on a bush and they can't quite get up there.
Speaker 3:Well, we don't have any idea what kind of animal this was.
Speaker 2:Nope. We sure don't. But it was disappointing to see, I gotta say, because the fruit on the bushes was so prolific, and the black currant taste is so delightful.
Speaker 3:That's the way it goes.
Speaker 2:Yep. That's the way it goes.
Speaker 3:You take them Life in Alaska.
Speaker 2:Take them and lump them. Okay. So this is also conifer time. You know, the conifers made their big growth in the springtime, like I was saying earlier, and now they're settled down and you can see how they're really shaping out. There's some really, really beautiful conifers.
Speaker 2:Conifer is anything that makes a cone. You know, it's not necessarily a needle tree, but most of them are because a cedar doesn't really have needles. It has flat branches, but they are they're not really needles, but the cedars are so cool. There's a kind of cedar, the western red cedar, that in its wild form gets about two forty feet. There's a dwarf form that tops out at about 20 feet called northern spire.
Speaker 2:We have one of the big ones growing in our yard that we've had for thirty years or so. It's gotta be 25 or 30 feet tall now.
Speaker 3:It's beautiful.
Speaker 2:It is. It's just beautiful. And then this this is kind of the northern edge.
Speaker 3:Of how they can survive.
Speaker 2:The hardiness zone for western red cedar. Uh-huh. Yellow cedar is hardier and they can go further north, but western red, this is about it. I feel pleased to have that one growing as well as it does. But the new dwarf forms called northern spire, they're even hardier.
Speaker 2:So you don't have any trouble having them around in your yard. And for the wild one, it's kind of light and airy, a lot of space between the branches. The dwarf form, like many other kinds of dwarves, the space between the branches gets shortened. So it's really a dense, dense, thick, you can't see through it, you can't see past it, kind of a plant. If you want to have a a hedge, if you wanna have a view that you don't like, if you wanna have some kind of solid definite statement in your yard, this is a really good choice.
Speaker 2:Northern spire western red cedar. And since it's I'd mentioned it earlier, it is a good time for transplanting things. They've made their growth, they're hardened off, they're able to be moved now without having to lose all that that moisture that they've got. So when you're gonna transplant something, the technique of doing it is is something you don't think of right away. Instead of facing the shrub and putting your shovel in the ground there, you turn sideways so that you're fat you're standing with your shoulder pointing toward the plant, and you make a a ditch.
Speaker 2:You dig a ditch around the plant. You cut on both sides with your shovel and dig it out, and you're gonna leave a a pillar of earth with the shrub or tree standing in it. You don't disturb that. So you dig around it, dig a ditch, and then you go outside your current ditch and you dig it again wider and make the outside slope more, more gradual rather than vertical. And so by then you have like a a shallow dish shaped depression with the cone of dirt standing in the middle of it and the shrub or tree standing in that.
Speaker 2:Then you'll go at the outside edge and turn your shovel over and kind of chip away at the bottom of the column underneath the root system, so you can get it so it's starting to to get freed from the soil, You get a tarp and put it down into the hole because you don't want to grab the plant by its stem or its trunk and lift it because the tender little roots can get torn or damaged like that. You always try to pick it up with something.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But before you do that, you dig the other hole.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Before you you gotta have the hole ready before it. Yeah. You're really right. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:We should have started with that one.
Speaker 3:First, you know where you're gonna move it to, and you dig that hole.
Speaker 2:There is an aphorism in our world, which is never pick it up until you know where you're gonna put it down.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:The last thing you wanna do is be standing there with it in your hands wondering what in the heck am I gonna do with this. That's right. No. So you do that. You got your your site prepared for it, then you pick it up with your tarp, you and your friend, you carry it over there, set it where you want it.
Speaker 2:If you're gonna put stakes in the ground, put them in before you put the plant there. So you'd you'd have your hole dug, you pound your stakes in, you set the tree back the way you want it, and you twist it and turn it so you get just just exactly the aspect you want. You want it to be seen at its best view from your most common viewpoint. So if you're trying to show off an area of your yard, you wanna make sure that that your normal viewing place, that's where you have the nicest looking aspect of the plant. If you're trying to make something vanish, then that's a different effect.
Speaker 2:Try and have it be so that that it's broadest no matter what the look is to make something go away. Anyway, that's a little quick lesson in how to move stuff around in your yard. So summer pruning, things don't respond by regrowing. Summer transplanting, this is the time to do it because the plant will have enough time to grow new roots in its new site and be ready for winter. And it won't have any transplant shock if you do it this time of year.
Speaker 2:And the the pruning also brings up another thing. Do you notice how often we see things in the landscape that are grafted and they're sprouting from the base? Yes. You know, and so so this time of year is also a time you wanna look around in your yard and say you have a a particular kind of an apple tree or you have a known named variety of some other kind of shrub and right down there at the bottom, at the bottom by the ground is a whole new set of leaves that are growing that don't look anything like the top part. And the reason for that is that this is coming from below the graft and whatever the the root system is, is trying to grow itself back.
Speaker 2:You don't want that. You wanna make sure that all those below the graft sprouts get cut off, unless unless the top is dyed. If the top is dyed and the roots are sprouting, then you have the opportunity to choose any one of those sprouts and have it replace the main ones.
Speaker 3:Sounds complicated.
Speaker 2:Well, it sounds complicated. It's really not so complicated. You look at them, you can see that's different than this.
Speaker 3:I I understand.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Of course you do. Okay. Dwarf conifers. This is the time that they're really shining.
Speaker 2:And we have some dwarf conifers that'll knock your socks off. We have one called a dwarf eastern white pine. It's got long, very, very soft, almost almost caressingly soft needles with little white lines on the side of each needle. So it's got this kind of of iridescent look to it. You look at the plant and it's kind of is it green?
Speaker 2:Is it white? Is it green and white? Is it white and green? And it's so soft to the touch the winds move the little needles around. Where most kinds of pines, the needles are stiff and they stay where they are.
Speaker 2:This one, it's sways like a grass skirt. It's always moving and shaking. It's really, really pretty. And it'll top out at about five feet, by which time it'll be five or six feet across.
Speaker 3:Are those incredibly beautiful pines that we have? They're they're kinda like the Mugo pine, but they have long needles.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm talking about. That's exactly the one. The they're really, really it's a eastern white pine.
Speaker 3:That's an eastern white pine.
Speaker 1:Dwarf
Speaker 2:eastern white pine.
Speaker 3:Oh, man. They're beautiful.
Speaker 2:They truly are. We have a big eastern white pine, and you can kinda see how the needles look very similar. But it like like other ones, you know, the big trees have a lot of space between the branches, and the dwarf trees don't have much space between the branches. So it makes a really dense ball of a plant. You can't see through it at all.
Speaker 2:It's a it's an object we looked at, not past.
Speaker 3:Well, if we don't sell those, we should put them in the ground.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think so too.
Speaker 3:Know, things had a hard
Speaker 2:time Like a little family cluster.
Speaker 3:The winter last year was so hard that even things in the greenhouse died.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know? So having it in the ground, it has more insulation.
Speaker 2:Most of the stuff that we had stored in the greenhouse died last winter. Yeah. It was heartbreaking. Things we've had for many years, you know, and then things that we're familiar and accustomed to keeping around. Sayonara, too bad.
Speaker 2:Okay. Among the things that are new to us this season are the Jack Frost hybrid Asian maples. And this is a cross between a Japanese maple and a Korean maple. The Korean maple is hardier than the Japanese maple, and so it's able to have, you know, maybe another 150 or 200 miles hardiness. I I can't guess on that.
Speaker 2:But anyway, it's got a full zone hardiness above the the Japanese maples, and the different forms of them are just lovely. If you come to my pruning class tomorrow, I'll show them to you. They're they're really they're staggering. They have such grace and beauty to them and such an unusual kind of color. And they're changing colors now as we speak.
Speaker 2:See the red beginning to flush into the green? We've got a really pretty one that has split leaves, is about eight feet tall, has a strong trunk that stands up and make an umbrella top to it, And the leaves kind of look like carrot leaves. They're so finely divided. And they were bright green and now they're beginning to get ready. It's kind of exciting, you know.
Speaker 3:It sounds a romantic date. I like
Speaker 2:this I like this seasonal change of stuff.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:You know, it's it's it's inspirational. And also, it makes me feel like I'm part of something much bigger, you know, like like the without sounding model and the gigantic sphere of life. It's it's it's always changing, always moving, and me with it. Okay. So you don't just prune your your domestic and introduce things.
Speaker 2:You know, you can prune the wild world. You can prune the native plants. You can shape your native plants, your native environment. You can make them more open. You can make pathways through them.
Speaker 2:You can show off parts of them. There are everything is wild someplace. You know? And just the fact that it's wild here doesn't make it any less desirable or or ornamental or attractive. You you can tend take native shrubs like an alder and make a really attractive hedge out of alder.
Speaker 2:You can make look at the one that's at the fish hatchery. That's probably been forty years. Probably. I think forty years ago, we planted that. Yep.
Speaker 2:And, you know, it has it's got virtually no care. They cut it once a year. That's all they do. And I did the same thing at the university. We cut it just once a year.
Speaker 2:So I was thinking that that Alder would make an ideal topiary. You could take it and shape it and let it flesh out, you know, make it into some kind of a a cylinder rather than let it be its own irregular shape. If you wanted to, you know. There is that about putting your imprint on the wild world. It's so attractive the way it is.
Speaker 2:So and maybe what you want to do is just to show that off. Prune away part of the branches so you can see and see the formation of the trunks.
Speaker 3:So this is a call in show.
Speaker 2:Oh, I forgot to say that. This is a call in show. I just started talking. 805861800. The radio station call.
Speaker 2:We have a call? Oh, good. Good morning.
Speaker 4:Good morning. I observed something last week before the rains came, but I was walking on the back, that loop side of the Brotherhood Bridge Trail. And on the leaves there, there was a whole bunch of brown powdery substance, almost like pollen. It was the color of close to rust or whatever. And then I realized it was coming off of the dead spruce needles at the tips of the spruce trees.
Speaker 4:And it, the spruce tree needles that were dead, you know, in the end when they're attacked by whatever they're attacked in the spring, and they sometimes die. Do you have any idea of what that is? I've never seen that before.
Speaker 2:I don't. But, you know, here in in, Juneau, we have the forest service laboratory, and they have forest pathologists there. And and, if one of them is listening, they could call in and let us know. But that's something I always go to that. If I can't figure it out easily, there's these guys that get paid to know that stuff.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, whatever it is, it's probably gone now because it rained pretty heavy, and I imagine it was washed off because it was just it wasn't a mildew or anything. It was just a a powdery residue like the pollen.
Speaker 2:Probably some kind of a spore because, you know, the thing that would attack those those needles was probably some kind of a fungus disease, and then that's the natural cycle.
Speaker 4:That's what I was thinking that one, either the dry weather and everything dying like that killed whatever it was, and it was just kind of, debris, or it was actually their, pollinate their
Speaker 2:Reproductive stage. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Reproductive. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for the call. I'm I'm interested. Yeah. And, actually, I think I'll probably call up and, find from the forest pathologist what it was too, just so I know.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Like I said, I I've walked in the woods often, and I have never seen anything like that before. So and, of course, we had a very different summer. Was cold and damp. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Very dry.
Speaker 2:Perfect fungus weather, wasn't it? Boy, have you seen the powdery mildew? You seen the powdery mildew around town?
Speaker 4:Oh, I've seen powdery mildew, and and this is definitely I mean, it's a whole different color, and and that's on kinda almost growing on the leaves where this was just something like you sprinkled talcum powder on it.
Speaker 2:I gotcha. Boy, those, crimson king maples that are silvery white instead of dark red are certainly a a standout example, man, oh, man. Well, thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Bye bye.
Speaker 4:Okay. Thank you very much. Bye.
Speaker 2:Always interesting to have somebody who's an observer in the world and point things out that you didn't notice. Thanks a lot, man. That was really a good one. So to recapitulate, pruning class tomorrow, 12:30, Landscape Alaska on the Back Loop Road. We're open today, ten to four.
Speaker 2:Come see us. There are plenty of lovely things to be seen and things that are coming into color right now, like the asters that are just beginning to bloom.
Speaker 3:That rose tree, the Julia Child rose tree has just been growing all summer long.
Speaker 2:And it's so sweet smelling. Mhmm. It's incredible. Buy a couple of of things every year that we know we're not gonna be able just to plant out in the yard because they're so exciting to have. And this bright yellow tree form rose called Julia Child is wonderful.
Speaker 3:It's got 20 roses on it right now.
Speaker 2:It's it's the whole greenhouse smells like those roses as soon as you walk into it. Yes. It's a very cool thing. If you've got a greenhouse and you can have it over the winter, come and see it. Maybe I'll make you a deal on it.
Speaker 2:It's such a lovely thing. And, man, there is something about the aroma of a rose. It just gets right to me. You know, I'm, I'm and I'm transplanted, transported back in my life. I know it's easy to be transplanted.
Speaker 2:I'm transported back to when I'm a small child and standing in my mother's garden in front of her rose bushes. And that alone
Speaker 3:Your mother had lovely roses. She did, didn't she?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. That that Joseph's coat mini color rose.
Speaker 3:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Man, that was just a spectacular thing. And it had yellow and red and orange roses all on the same plant at the same time. Just spectacular. But the aroma of those things is what I really remember.
Speaker 3:That's one Why would you grow a rose if you didn't have the fragrance? You know, I mean, not all roses have fragrance.
Speaker 2:That's right. Many of them don't. And you know, some of them, people don't like the fragrance on them, so they they choose roses that don't have it. But boy, Mary Lou's red rose downtown on her house on Calhoun Avenue.
Speaker 3:It's a winner.
Speaker 2:It's an absolute winner. It probably has a 100 open roses on it. Mary Lou, if you're listening to me, thank you so much for having that rose bush. It's a real treasure. I don't know what kind it is, but whatever it is, it's a gem.
Speaker 2:So we're coming to the end of our show. I'm glad we got a phone call. All I had to do is give the number out. 586-1800. There's time for one more call if you want to get it.
Speaker 2:But other than that, come see us. And if you are interested in summer pruning, come see my class tomorrow at 12:30. So until next week, it's been David Lindrum or Margaret Tharpe of Landscape Alaska.
Speaker 3:Already 09:00?
Speaker 2:It's a couple minutes early. My throat's getting dry.
Speaker 3:Oh, good.
Speaker 2:I've done nothing but talk for the last half hour.
Speaker 3:It's been very interesting, Dave.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll talk to you next week, and this is Landscape Alaska signing out. 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.