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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. Good morning. Conversations with Alaskan Gardeners. We're back on this beautiful sunny day. Yesterday
Speaker 3:yesterday was a beautiful
Speaker 2:sunny day. Wasn't it lovely? I was just thrilled. Sitting in the sun and having it bake on my back. Oh.
Speaker 3:Well, we haven't had very many days like that.
Speaker 2:We sure had a nice one yesterday though. Yep. Absolutely. And we were sitting on the porch eating ripe berries off the bushes. God.
Speaker 2:What a pleasure. If you haven't had fresh picked black currants or gooseberries, you gotta come by and try some. They are so delicious. And they're so productive here in Southeast Alaska. This is really berry country, you know, it's berries everywhere, but having more kinds of berries to pick from in your yard is really a thrill.
Speaker 3:Looking Easier to have berries than it is to have fruit trees.
Speaker 2:Oh, yes.
Speaker 3:I mean, even though the fruit trees we all love, don't misunderstand me, the bears and other animals attack them so much, you
Speaker 2:get disappointed often. And the attack it's not so much they attack the trees as they just break them in order to get the fruit. No big deal. Right. But with the berry bushes, you don't have to worry about that.
Speaker 2:As long as you can stay ahead of the other animals in the world and eat them before they get to them.
Speaker 3:Well, we live there at the edge of the forest and we do get some animals trespassing in our berry bushes
Speaker 2:It's quite astounding to come out and see everything askew.
Speaker 3:What kills me is we have all those native blueberries. And why aren't they eating those?
Speaker 2:You know they are. But maybe they're not eating them right next to our house and they don't maybe they're just gourmets. Okay. It's a call in show folks. 1805861800.
Speaker 2:You can either call or text to that number. Invite us to look at something beautiful blooming in your yard, talk about some questions you have, point out somebody else's yard you think is really pretty right now. All those things are delightful. And call us up, give us some contact. My birthday is coming up and every year I have a sale for my birthday.
Speaker 2:And this year, I'm starting now and I'm adding an additional item every day until the September 10. We started off with rhododendrons and snowmound spireas, and today I added blue dweeks spathe lilacs.
Speaker 3:That's the dark purple one.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:A dark purple one that gets big. The double flowered dark purple one. It's the darkest purple of any that I know. It's a
Speaker 3:And was Ludwig's face some kind of
Speaker 2:was a German botanist.
Speaker 3:Botanist, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yep. German botanist and nurseryman in the mid eighteen hundreds. So it's an old variety. And we have a call. Good morning Conversations.
Speaker 4:Hi, good morning. I have a question about Regulera if I'm saying it right.
Speaker 2:Regularia. Yep. Last
Speaker 4:couple of years, I noticed not flowered and the leaf plant itself is getting
Speaker 2:I'm losing you. I'm losing you, ma'am. What?
Speaker 4:Yeah. The plant has not years. And the plant itself is I've been fertilized.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm losing you, ma'am. I can't I can't hear you.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay.
Speaker 2:Sorry. Try it again. Try it again in another couple of minutes.
Speaker 5:Yeah. I gotta make sure radios are turned down when people call in. That was what was happening was Oh, shit. Her radio was interfering with it? Yep.
Speaker 2:I gotcha. Okay. So if you call here, turn your radio off or way, way down so it doesn't interfere with it. Ligularia, the plant she's talking about is a
Speaker 3:It's it's unusual for it not to be a performer because
Speaker 2:It's so tough.
Speaker 3:It's so tough and it always blooms and is greatly neglected. But she was saying that she fertilized. Of course, I don't know what she fertilized with. It always does make a difference. And
Speaker 2:a it's a plant that makes a towering flower. It gets it gets chest high to me. Great big tower of bright yellow blossoms. And it likes it shady and moist.
Speaker 3:What I love about it is you don't have to put it on a trellis or it's it sustains itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a toughie.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Unlike delphiniums and things like that. Can't take the wind and the rain.
Speaker 2:Have to be staked. Yeah. So that brings up the the the sequence of blooms, things that are in flower now and are coming into flower now, late summer flowering things, and some really nice examples of the late summing late summer flowering things are those beautiful asters that are just coming into blossom right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They look great. Dark, dark blue. Purple. They're purple, Dave.
Speaker 2:Dark, dark purple, I stand corrected. Well, it's it's a it's a matter of perception now. You you can call it whatever it was. It's a really pretty color. Really, really pretty color.
Speaker 2:And the ones that we have now are dwarfasters, so they're only gonna be about fifteen, eighteen inches tall.
Speaker 3:Well, we have both. We have the dwarf ones, but we also have the ones that are gonna be about a foot and a half tall and they're just getting started.
Speaker 2:Okay, they're cool. Asters are grand and we also have anemones and the anemones are so pretty. They look so delicate and they are pink. Very pretty. Very pink.
Speaker 2:And again, dwarf forms. And the one I was looking at yesterday had an open blossom. It had about 30 big fat buds just waiting to open. I know it's gonna be just covered with flowers.
Speaker 3:The problem with this year is that everything's so cold. You know, in the past forty years, we've had flowers and gardens and everything. You get a little bit more heat than what we've had this year. The air temperature has been low in comparison to other summers. Even when it rains, it's still been warmer.
Speaker 2:And the hydrangeas?
Speaker 3:Well, they're going to town.
Speaker 2:They're just starting to flower for most people now. It's, you know, September and they're like a month and a half later than they than they usually would be.
Speaker 3:Because there's not been any heat.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And I wonder if they're gonna even be able to get the full flower form and go through their color changes because the ones that I see blooming now are beginning to turn pink. But they've got a long way to go before they get that dark red color. 586-1800. Call us up.
Speaker 2:Tell me about your hydrangeas. Tell us about the changes in your own garden.
Speaker 5:We did get a text message from that previous caller. They're saying the radio was off, so I don't know what their that feedback was going on. But their question was their legaria, right, is getting small and not blooming. They're wondering if it's worth replanting in another pot.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's in a pot and not in the ground. Yeah. Probably so. And probably what you could do, if it's getting smaller and you've had it quite a while, it may need to be divided because that's what happens with those perennials over time. They don't have enough space to grow out and get bigger.
Speaker 2:You know, sure. That would be a really smart move. Take it out, get some fresh soil, put it in another pot, maybe even a bigger pot.
Speaker 5:Oh, they corrected me. It was spot. It was a typo.
Speaker 2:Oh, I
Speaker 5:was reading it wrong.
Speaker 3:So in what kind of fertilizer are you using? That's the other key. A granular fertilizer hangs out longer than the liquid feed.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Feed
Speaker 3:is immediate and the plants like sustain it for long periods of time without constantly being liquid fed.
Speaker 2:And this is the time to give all your perennials another shot of fertilizer now before the end of the season and use something that has all three major ingredients, like sixteen sixteen sixteen or eight thirty two sixteen or twelve twelve twelve something like that, that's got all the kinds of elements that the plant needs to fortify itself and be able to enter the winter and come out again in the spring ready to grow again.
Speaker 3:I mean, everybody's kind of dancing around in the garden world hoping we're not gonna have a winter like we had last year.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I was in Tyler Rental yesterday, and there were the conversation was around that, the coming of the seasons and the change in the weather, the change in the weather patterns. It's always interesting to go in there and look around and see what they have available now. Oh, I have some some battery powered tools that I bought from Tyler, and every now and then I need another part, or I need another something to be fixed. And it's so convenient to go in and they're friendly and helpful and just take care of it right away and Justin behind the counter says, here, just give it to me.
Speaker 2:I'll fix it for you right now and bam. Just walk out of there happily. It's really a joy working with Tyler. Really a joy being able to walk in there. And they are always open and ready for business.
Speaker 2:Okay. So other things that are happening in the garden right now. Miss Kim lilac is turning color already. The the foliage is turning purple. Flowers are long gone.
Speaker 2:Don't know, dear. But the foliage is just is turning purple. It's really a spectacular color change in that thing. So, it's also time if you have those early spring blooming flowers like primroses and oh, the big, bright, yellow spring bloomers that are everybody wants em. You know, and they if that's part of what you have in your garden, this is the time to divide those.
Speaker 2:And when you're gonna divide them, you cut them back, cut the tops back, dig the plant out of the ground, turn it over, use your hose and wash the dirt away from the root system, and then you can see really where they're gonna come apart easily. And you don't want to divide them down into just one little bud per division, you know. That's that's if you were a nursery guy and you wanted to sell four inch pots, that's what you would do. But if you wanna have them in your landscape and garden, you divide them down to a reasonable size, you know, something that that's gonna make an effective garden plant.
Speaker 3:Because you have to be willing to lose some of it if the weather's really bad. I mean, if you make it too small, you can't afford to lose some of it, it just dies.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:It's really an environmental kind of let's survive thing. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And you have blooming shrubs in your garden, you've got lilacs, you've got azaleas, you've got rhododendrons, spireas, any of those things. It's that it's give them a good shot of fertilizer now too. Remember when you fertilize
Speaker 3:Out at the drip line.
Speaker 2:That's it. Not right up by the trunk. The part of the root system that does the work is the really little tiny root hairs and that's where you're gonna fertilize them, out around the edge of the branches.
Speaker 3:They call it the drip line.
Speaker 2:And when you do so, we don't have to worry about that today, you know, because the the soil has to be moist when you fertilize, and then you water afterwards, and wash the the nutrient down into the ground and let it do that. Now the nitrogen washes down into the ground pretty rapidly, but the phosphorus and potash will take a while. So when you fertilize and you come back two weeks later, you look on the ground and there's still granules of fertilizer there, that doesn't mean that nothing happened. That means that those particular parts are slow to dissolve. Something else has already dissolved and gone into the ground more rapidly.
Speaker 2:If you have big evergreens or big or small, but if you want to move evergreens around, this is a good time to do that. You wait until they've made their growth and the growth has gotten hard. By that, I mean, it's no longer really, really soft and tender, so that if you pinch it, it'll just come apart in your fingers. Now it's already got kind of a woody feel to it. So that means that the plant's water needs are gonna be much less.
Speaker 2:So when you transplant something, you essentially are cutting off its water supply until it can grow new root hairs. So it's gonna have to live on what it's got inside it. That's the reason that you wait until they harden off before you move them. And when you move a plant, there's a technique for it. If you're interested, come and talk to me and I'll show you what I mean, but you essentially, you dig a ditch around the plant without disturbing the main center of the root.
Speaker 2:You use your shovel and turn it sideways and and dig a
Speaker 3:Use it like a spatula to peel it up off the ground and keep the roots intact.
Speaker 2:After you've dug the ditch around, then you use your shovel like a spatula, right, and cut underneath it. But that's the first time you actually face the plant. The rest of the time you got your shoulder pointed to it.
Speaker 3:And even though you don't know exactly how big the root's going to be until you expose it, you can already have started a hole where you're going to transplant it to, so all you have to do is adjust it somewhat so when you go to move it, you move it directly into the ground and replant it right away.
Speaker 2:Don't want to
Speaker 3:just sit around.
Speaker 2:The watch phrase is don't pick it up until you know where you're gonna set it down.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of watch phrases and that's one.
Speaker 2:That's one. We have to repeat it, you know, every week or so, so that everybody stays on the same path.
Speaker 3:Primroses. This is the time to divide your spring primroses.
Speaker 2:I said that already. Oh, you know, we are remodeling the capital landscape. It hadn't been maintained for a few years and we were getting it back into shape and we were partly using the nematodes to defend the rhododendrons against the black vine weevil and if you're not familiar with that story, come talk to me or call me up or look in our posts online but it turns out that many more plants are subject to the attack of the weevil than we've previously thought.
Speaker 3:Hydrangeas.
Speaker 2:Hydrangeas, Japanese yews, spireas, even those creeping primroses you were talking about, they they all get them. The climbing hydrangea really gets it. And and the nematode is the only defense I can see for doing something like that, and they are very, very effective for it. If you have any of those things and you think that that something might be happening, the watchword for I mean, the indicator of the presence of the beetle is the adult comes up at night and eats holes in the edges of the leaves. They look like kind of semi round notches on the edges of the leaves, and if you see that, that means that there is weevil activity and the weevil doing the leaf cutting is not the real damage.
Speaker 2:The real damage is being done underground where the larvae are eating away at the roots. And your first indication that that's true, you know, it might be a big chunk of the plant just dies for no reason that you can see. Just it's dead and it's been the the root system has been compromised so much that it couldn't support the top anymore. And it's not just little things. The weevils can kill established trees.
Speaker 2:They can kill big old shrubs, And maybe they won't kill it, maybe they'll just weaken it, so it looks disfigured. It's In
Speaker 3:the ewes, I found it really interesting that the tips of some of the branches go brown. It's not the whole plant goes brown, but there's an indication there because they don't have leaves, they have needles. So when they get riddled with brown tips, that's an indication that you have weevils. And you have to go through and cut those off and treat the ground so that you can fight it.
Speaker 2:And treating them is not hard. You take the nematodes which come in kind of a a a frass, a powdered wood kind of thing and you put them into like a mayonnaise jar, fill it with water, shake them up, and pour it on the ground around the plant. And you do that a couple times a season and try and build the population of the nematodes up. And they'll go down and do the hard work. 586-1800, get you on the air and we'll be glad to share information and talk about it.
Speaker 2:The greenhouse at Landscape Alaska smells like roses.
Speaker 3:Because we have one gigantic rose that's absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2:We have every year I buy a couple things that just take my fancy. And this year I bought tree roses. Beautiful, bright yellow, full flower tree roses, so fragrant.
Speaker 3:Has 20 roses on it all the time. It's been blooming for three months.
Speaker 2:His name is Julia Child and it's you know, there are people who come every few days just to walk into the back of the greenhouse and it's kind of like forest bathing. In this case, it's rose bathing. Get close to it and just let that aroma waft over yourself. Yeah. Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Simply beautiful. And you know, we used to have a cut flower business and and I still love that sensation of the incredible variety of the cut flower market and all the different shades and the different shapes and how one can combine with another and then one thing follows the other. But those roses are just wonderful all by themselves. And if you look at spectacular things, there's some pretty spectacular things in landscape Alaska right now. And one of the most beautiful and beckoning things is a columbre red leafed, red obelisk beech tree.
Speaker 2:And these are what we just planted around the Mendenhall library to replace the damaged cherries. If you drive by there and you see those red trees, imagine them getting to be 15 feet tall and only about five feet wide. So like a big foxtail in the landscape. They're just lovely, lovely things. We've only got two left.
Speaker 2:If you're interested in them, come see them. I'll make a deal with you. Part of my absolute birthday special. You'd have no idea. I'm it's kind of fun figuring out how I'm gonna have what's gonna go on sale next and what do I think is really pretty and what's gonna be included on my list.
Speaker 3:I'm glad my children are raised. Might put them
Speaker 2:in hospital. Well, you could rent them for an hour. The columnar beech tree, if you come to landscape Alaska, I'll show you my columnar beech tree. It's not red leaf form, it's green leaf form, but it's almost 30 feet tall. It's just a tremendous looking tree.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 3:And it's old.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. And we've moved it five times now. As we've moved around, we carry it with us. The dwarf conifers are in great shape right now. They've made their summer growth and they're really looking robust.
Speaker 2:And one of the most attractive of the dwarf conifers is a dwarf eastern white pine. And it looks like some kind of alien creature with long creamy fur.
Speaker 3:It's really pretty.
Speaker 2:Instead of needles. The needles are long and slender and move with the wind. It is, it's a really, really pretty shrub. And you know, it's never gonna
Speaker 3:It's get not like any other shrub. It is unique into itself. You don't see other conifers looking like that.
Speaker 2:No, don't know anything else that looks like that. It really is. And it gets to be about five or six feet tall in ten years. So you can figure that it's gonna be a significant part of your landscape by that time.
Speaker 3:You want to pet it.
Speaker 2:And I have one dwarf arctic birch. You know, I I recognize that I buy things because they interest me, not necessarily because somebody says they want to buy them from me, but I want it. I I like having it, but I'd like to have I somebody else have am a collector. If I had more space, I'd have all these things planted in my yard and I just keep them. Me and John Isley.
Speaker 2:But this dwarf arctic birch is now almost six feet tall. And my friend who did her master's work on this shrub in the Range, said that she never saw one bigger than eight inches. She was absolutely astounded when she saw the size of this thing. It has leaves the size of a dime, and they're tiny little miniature corrugated birch leaves, and they turn beautiful yellow in the autumn. It looks it looks unlike anything else.
Speaker 2:And when you come and we'll go on tour, walk around and look at that, We'll look at the columnar beech tree. We'll look at these new western red cedar varieties called Northern Spire. And it's a the wild western red cedar gets a 120 to 200 feet tall. It's hard to have a tree like that in your yard. But this one, it's a dwarf form again, and it only gets about 20 feet, but it's still got all those cedar qualities, that aroma and that shape, and the the deer don't like to eat them.
Speaker 2:That's a very big part of
Speaker 3:it. That's a big deal.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We have a client who has replaced her plants about four times now because the deer come down in the wintertime and eat them. And it's disappointing to say the least. Five eight six one eight hundred. We're gonna be out of off the air in a few minutes, but I'm inviting you to come and and make sure you get on my email list so as I expand the offerings for Dave's birthday sale, I'm posting them on Facebook every day and adding new ones every day until the September 10.
Speaker 2:If you want to be on that list, make sure that you either send us an email to landscape alaska at gmail, or come by, talk to us, make sure that I have it in my book, and then I can add it to our program. Boy.
Speaker 3:Think about how much the nursery business has changed in the forty years we've been involved in it.
Speaker 2:Well, there didn't used to be one.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm not talking about in Juneau, I'm talking about in the world.
Speaker 1:The world. We used
Speaker 3:to be able to buy crates of lilies, in crates of a stilby, in crates of other perennials, you know, where you'd get 25 in a crate. And they don't do that anymore. No. And I so wish they did because when you go to install a big landscape, buying it in a crate makes it much more affordable instead of having to buy it in a can. And
Speaker 2:And they're little. The things you buy in the cans are little compared to what you can buy when you when it comes out of the field. Mhmm. The field grown perennials we used to buy were astounding. But you're right, those lilies that we got, they are the size of grapefruits.
Speaker 3:Well, and the lilies what was left of the lilies that got planted in that big pot that's on the deck, you know, it's been cold for lilies, but they're growing and there's so many of them, and they just look like they're the king of the world. Oh, I'm taking over now.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And the buds are getting bigger and bigger every week. Uh-huh. But and this this kind of lily makes bulbules, little baby bulbs on the where the leaf and the stem come together. They're at the leaf axle.
Speaker 2:So it has hundreds of little black bulbs growing up in the air that then are gonna fall down on the ground and roll around a little bit, and then they're gonna find a place and they're gonna put a root down, and that root is going to suck the bulb down into the ground.
Speaker 3:They plant themselves.
Speaker 2:They plant themselves. They plant themselves. They're so eager to grow, they plant themselves. It's a wonder. It makes you stand back and look at them and boy, how in the world did this ever come around?
Speaker 2:It's and they make seed too. There's no doubt about that. The lilies make lots of seed, and it's also they divide by root, but the idea that they can make little bulbs on the stem and they drop and roll around to grow is just phenomenal. There is a plant that's eager to grow.
Speaker 3:Well, and there are several plants like that and the summer blooming primroses are certainly not that they're dropping bulbs and planting themselves, but I look at the primroses we have growing in our weedy surround and they just come up every summer and bloom and beat all the dandelions down and are taken over.
Speaker 2:And they're fragrant. And very fragrant. And when you know people have been growing that primrose for a long time and you see people's yards and they have they got two or three of them. You drive by a few years later, they got 50 of
Speaker 3:them. Exactly.
Speaker 2:You know, and they got make this this whole clump effect. They move in the wind and you see the insects coming to them. It's really a magnificent thing. And you feel so successful when you have something grow like that.
Speaker 3:Well, know, and I don't have time to cultivate my yard. I'm way too busy working and the fact that once planted they just take over is the perfect thing for me.
Speaker 2:I like it too. Know, I think that's absolutely marvelous. Well, this is the end of our show for this week. We'll be open from ten to four today, from noon to four tomorrow, closed on Monday, but then ten to four for the rest of the week. And I'll be putting a new item every day on for our sale.
Speaker 2:Come by and see some of these lovely things that are ready. This has been Margaret Tharpe and David Lindrum of Landscape Alaska. We'll talk to you next week. And until then, remember,
Speaker 1:happy 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.