ENTER FIELD NOTES

            Okay, I admit it. I’m frazzled today. Over the past week and a half, both our air-conditioning unit / heat pump and the refrigerator decided 13 years of non-stop service was enough, and expired. I hate shopping in the first place: shopping for appliances vies with shopping for cars in the race for last place on my shopping continuum. (Groceries rank first.) Nonetheless, it had to be done. And was. Fairly painlessly, too, on the whole (if you don’t count the expenditures).  

            But it wasn’t fun.

            Then the weekly paper reported our town government plans to cut water and sewer rates by 4.8% across the board. In the Bizarro-World that is Oak Island, this more than likely means monthly utility bills will hit the stratosphere. Our state-of-the-art sewer system, the previous administration’s edifice complex and an on-going trend for town employees to outnumber non-town employees are going to impoverish all 6200 of us for generations.

            That’s not fun to contemplate, either.

            Then my friend Sally, editor of American Nurseryman, a trade magazine, needed a pinch-hitter for July’s “Field Notes,” so she asked me to help out. “Field Notes” is a regular feature of the magazine, profiling garden-worthy plants. As I covered the living room floor with reference books and dove into my photo files for pictures, Idea-Man Tim says, “You could start a periodic ‘Field Notes’ blog post too. It would be useful, and you won’t have to write two separate pieces this weekend.”

            I can’t tell you how lucky, and how endlessly grateful I am that this man found me, said yes when I asked him to marry me, and hangs in there despite me not being the very easiest person in the whole world to live with. Not only that, he’s brilliant.

            And that is fun.

            So here it is, the inaugural GFTGU Field Notes post. (If you subscribe to American Nurseryman, you can give its “Field Notes” entry for July a pass.)

 

FIELD NOTES

       Lespedeza thunbergii

           
 As a professional gardener, I’m always on the lookout for under-utilized plants to break the ho-hum factor in landscapes. I especially covet ones that flower. Tell me about an under-utilized, flowering and low-maintenance specimen: even better. Toss in a high level of deer resistance, and I’ve hit the jackpot. I’ve found Lespedeza thunbergii.

            That Lespedeza thunbergii—a.k.a. Thunberg bush-clover—belongs to the family Fabaceae is immediately evident. Smooth, blue-green, trifoliate leaves clothe supple branches that arch gracefully earthward. Six-inch-long racemes of pendant pink, rosy purple or white pea-like blooms appear on the upper portions of shoots, combining to form panicles up to 30 inches in length. Here in southeastern North Carolina, flowering begins in late April or early May. After taking a break during the sultriest weeks of high summer—as does anything with any sense—bloom recommences, peaking in September and continuing well into November.

            It’s a mystery to me why such a lovely, easy-care plant isn’t more common in the trade hereabouts. Introduced to Western gardens from China and Japan in 1837, this herbaceous subshrub dies back to the ground after hard frost, even in Zone 8b. Prune the stems down to six inches in late winter, then stand back: bush-clover can reach a height of over six feet and an equal or greater spread in a single season.



Lespedeza thunbergii 'Pink Cascade'

 

In the four years since I started using L. thunbergii in client gardens, I have observed no disease problems despite summertime round-the-clock oppressive heat and humidity levels, nor any pest damage, not even a sample nibble from the deer herds that plague our area. Thriving in full-sun locations, its form is just as lovely in up to half-day shade, but flowering diminishes. Although it shines brightest in moist, rich soils, it performs nearly as well on hot, dry sites. Propagation couldn’t be simpler: whack a couple suckers off the main plant and pot them up. Transplanted seedlings take readily to life in containers as well.

Lespedeza appears to have no pH preference. It grows equally well for me in the basic sand of coastal North Carolina as in the heavy, acid soils of north Georgia. In the fifth edition of his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, Dr. Michael Dirr describes Thunberg bush-clover as “…really the beauty… of the genus.” (See Good Reads at right. While it's not as thrilling as the latest Caleb Carr, the Manual is a primo reference for tree and shrubs.)   

Two cultivars occasionally come available in the local trade: ‘Pink Cascade,’ with pink flowers and a slightly more compact habit than the species; and ‘Gibraltar,’ with deep rose-hued blooms that Dr. Dirr finds difficult to distinguish from the species. Allegedly, ‘Alba,’ a more upright, white-flowering version, and ‘Variegata,’ with white-streaked foliage and rose-purple blooms, exist out there somewhere.  

In the landscape, Lespedeza thunbergii works as a specimen, in perennial gardens or as part of a shrubbery. I’ve alternated it with pruned Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum ‘Ruby’ to screen a garage, and dotted it along the perimeter of a large corner lot to unify an otherwise eclectic mixed planting. It’s got a beautiful shape, clean blue-green foliage, a long bloom period; it’s low-maintenance, and Bambi doesn’t like it. Who could ask for anything more?



Close-up of Lespedeza thunbergii 'Pink Cascade' flowers and foliage



BOTANICAL NAME:  Lespedeza thunbergii cvv.

COMMON NAME:  Thunberg bush-clover

HARDINESS:  USDA Zones 5/6-11

MATURE HEIGHT:  5-6’

MATURE SPREAD:  to 10’

CLASSIFICATION:  Herbaceous subshrub

LANDSCAPE USE:  Specimen, perennial gardens, mixed shrubberies

ORNAMENTAL CHARACTERISTICS:  Smooth, trifoliate blue-green foliage; 6” racemes of pink, rose-purple or white flowers form panicles up to 30” long; graceful, arching habit; ease of maintenance; highly resistant to deer browse

*****

            There. Lespedeza’s one of my all-time favorite plants for all of the reasons listed above. If you simply must have one for your yard and live near Oak Island, Tim and I have nine healthy one-gallon starts available for seven bucks a pop. Contact me by email, or ask about them in the comments section. (As if.) Transplanted Garden on 16^th Street in Wilmington also carries Lespedeza, probably three-gallon ones, but I’m not positive they’re L. thunbergii.  

            Thanks for dropping by. I’m sure I’ll be feeling better by next time.

                                                                                                Kathy

THE HEARTBREAK OF CLEMATIS

            First of all, say CLEM-uh-tiss, not cluh-MATT-iss. Mispronunciation of Clematis ranks up there with POM-pus grass in irritating my ear. (It’s PAM-pus, y’all, after the Argentinean grasslands, not some blowhard of your acquaintance.) Now that’s sorted, I’ll tell my tale of woe.

   

When this star-crossed relationship began, the sum-total of my knowledge of the genus extended only to the large-flowered hybrids. In rapid succession, I planted and killed ‘Henryii,’ ‘Niobe,’ ‘Hagley Hybrid,’ ‘Ville de Lyon,’ ‘Nellie Moser,’ ‘Étoile de Violette’ and ‘Comtesse de Bouchard.’

            Dismayed and discouraged yet not defeated, I boldly ventured into the wonderful world of species clematis, where I’ve enjoyed a few spectacular triumphs (relatively speaking, of course), the usual failures, and one or two draws. In rough order of appearance in my garden, they are:

      ·    C. x jackmanii superba (Jackman’s clematis) This astoundingly hard-to-kill large-flowered survivor throws out a few four-petalled, blue-violet blossoms annually, just to keep me on the hook. As I regularly forget to prune it down to three or four leaf buds in early spring, it gets leggier by the year. This spring it bloomed up in the adjacent live oak, as you can see from the picture. At least it flowered. I take my victories where I find them.

     ·   C. paniculata. Or C. terniflora. Or C. maximowicziana. Unsurprisingly, taxonomists seem at odds over this. (Autumn clematis) An unqualified success. Masses of small, white, fragrant blossoms smother my ‘New Dawn’ rose—with which it is interplanted—in mid- to late August for two to three weeks. The foliage mostly dies back after the first hard frost, leaving a brown and crunchy mess for me to pull out from among the thorns of the rose, but I don’t care: as Dr. Frankenstein famously observed, “It’s [still] alive!”

·         C. armandii (Spring clematis) Large, pure-white, five-petalled flowers appear in April among the leathery, dark green, lanceolate and (allegedly) evergreen foliage. The first of three attempts teased me by blooming two consecutive springs before going crunchy in July of its sophomore year. The second fell victim to squirrels, who, in an unexplained fit of pique, gnawed the poor thing down to a stub in its pot before I ever managed to get it into the ground. The third never recovered from the crunchy blight it suffered during its first summer. This species is becoming more popular in the trade, so I haven’t given up on it entirely. Yet.

      ·  C. x durandii (Blue clematis) Wayside Gardens catalog promised this gorgeously dark-blue flowered scandent little lovely was perfect for my back yard, given a little shade. Wrong. I tried two years in a row: death in both cases was annoyingly swift.

The postcard from the
 Shanagarry Cookery School

·    C. montana (Anemone or mountain clematis) Tim and I swooned at the sight of great pink and white swags of flowers festooning the buildings of the Shanagarry Cookery School in Ballymaloe, Ireland, in May of 2000. Naturally, I had to have one, despite our distinctly non-Irish climate. I admit to having reservations about how something with montana (“mountain”) in its name would do on the coast: but, hey—you never know until you try. I finally found a source (in central Tennessee, which should have told me something) and ordered two pink-blooming C. montana ‘Elizabeth.’ Neither flowered nor survived their second coastal summer. This marks the only time I haven’t felt completely flummoxed by SCD (Sudden Clematis Death, a disease I just made up).

     ·  C. ‘Alionushka’ (Alionushka clematis) According to Hillier’s Manual (see Good Reads at right), she produces rosy pink flared, bell-shaped flowers from mid-spring to fall. I got this one from Tony Avent’s Plant Delights Nursery at one of the fall open houses, and had the highest of hopes. Which were, of course, completely dashed within nine months.



·    C. montevidensis and C. versicolor   Mail-ordered from Woodlanders on the basis of extremely sketchy catalog descriptions, these two species apparently exist nowhere else; at least I’ve not found any corroborating reference to either in my library. From the specific epithets, I have deduced that “versicolor” may refer to variably hued…something; leaves? flowers? stems? The cryptic catalog entry remarked only that it produces lavender to purple flowers, has grey-green foliage and is native to the south-central U.S. It survives as a puny little thing, declining to flower yet clinging to life. “Montevidensis” is harder to figure. Lantana montevidensis has a trailing habit; could this clematis be scandent? Insofar as my garden is concerned, it’s moot: I’ve forgotten where I planted it, and am pretty sure it’s dead now. There’s also the possibility that both are hybrids of C. integrifolia and some other C. that go by other names in other places, just to muddy the taxonomic waters even further. So if anybody knows anything about either of these two, get in touch at your earliest convenience, okay?



C. montevidensis
a.k.a. Old Man's Beard,
according to the Internet



C. versicolor











  



 

'Bonanza'

     ·  C. ‘Evipo031’ and ‘Evipo033’ (Festoon hybrids) ‘Evipo031’ goes by the name “Bonanza.” You can call ‘Evipo033’ “Avant Garde.”  Both have tiny, finely dissected leaves. The tags say both are “…free-flowering mid-summer to fall,” Bonanza’s offerings allegedly mauve-blue, Avant Garde’s reddish with pink stamens. After three years, I spied a couple of blue blooms in June, but that was it. I figured Avant Garde gave up the avant-ghost early on—I planted them together and can’t really tell who’s who from the foliage. Then in May of 2008, a single reddish bloom appeared on all that entwined foliage, an event never to be repeated. So much for “Avant Garde.” “Bonanza” still throws a few flowers in May most seasons. Non-stop bloom, phooey. Non-start bloom is more like it. 

·  C. texensis x reticulata (Leather flower or Texas clematis) Another Woodlanders specimen, my research leads me to believe it may actually be C. pitcheri. (See the second listing down from here.) Straight species texensis is supposed to have smooth, blue-green leaves and reddish-orange (maybe this color made some imaginative soul think of leather?) to scarlet bell-shaped flowers mid-summer to fall. I can’t say from personal experience. Mine half-heartedly climbs two or three feet up its support each spring, but has yet to bloom.

      ·  C. cirrhosa (Winter clematis) A Plant Delights acquisition from 2006’s fall Open House, this three-inch-potted baby remained evergreen and even reached out a tentative tendril toward the welcoming chicken wire, raising my hopes, well into June of the following year. When it went all brown and crunchy, I crossed all my fingers and toes that it might recover from this serious-looking sulk. No dice. From the specific epithet, you’d expect the flowers to be bile yellow, but Hillier says they’re cup-shaped and cream-colored with silky seedheads following the bloom. I’ll just have to take his word for it.

      ·  C. pitcheri (Pitcher’s leather flower) Named for its discoverer, Zina Pitcher. Purple, bell-shaped, pendant blooms are alleged from mid-spring to September. I’ll believe it when I see it. I planted this baby as soon as I got her home from Plant Delights in the fall of 2007, and immediately became a bit worried: the plant growing in her spot mostly resembled a thriving cudweed. I chewed my fingernails all winter. In early March 2008, the distinctive trifoliate leaf of Clematis poked up through what was, in fact, a giant cudweed. Apparently the two were friends, so I prudently left both alone. The latter inexplicably died that summer, but Miss Zina’s clematis clings to life. Maybe it’ll even flower in a decade or two.

·    C. stans x heracleifolia, a bush variety, joined my collection of potential victims in 2008. Planted near the C. pitcheri, it did just fine. Unfortunately, it is the ugliest clematis in foliage and flower I’ve ever slapped eyes on. Even the Internet wouldn't publish a picture of it. After spending two seasons in denial of and disbelief at its weed-like habit and undistinguished blooms, I yanked it out and composted it.

Now I’m eying a $60.00 C. x cartwrightii at my favorite Wilmington garden center (photos of which have also eluded the World Wide Web). Will she or won’t she?  

Well, that’s my tale of woe. To date. Plant Delight’s spring catalog lists a couple more species for me to lose my heart to. I’ve got my hi-liter out. I know there’s a lovely clematis species or cultivar out there somewhere—besides C. paniculata/terniflora/maximowicziana and the Jackman hybrid—that will enjoy living and perhaps even flowering in my garden. If there’s a lesson to take away from this sad story, it’s to never give up. The plant world is vast, frontiers stretching far in all directions, new discoveries made every day. Don’t let a few (dozen) failures get you down. Be of good heart.

            Thanks for dropping by.

    

                                                                                    Kathy

MASTERS OF VERTICALITY II

           Just a quick note about what makes a vine a vine. A vine is a plant that pulls itself up or through a support of some kind by one of three mechanisms.

It is scandent, having flexible stems that maneuver themselves over and around whatever it’s near; or…

It climbs using aerial roots, like ivy and Virginia creeper; or…

It twines, employing various anatomical parts for the purpose of gaining altitude. Some plants use their stems; some use their petioles (the technical name for “leaf stem”); some grow tendrils,  the corkscrew-like filaments you associate with grapevines, from their stems ; and some, like clematis, produce tendrils out of the tips of their leaves.

             Isn’t nature amazing?

Never one to hesitate when plants with exotic names whisper my name as I peruse catalogs, availability lists, nurseries and garden centers, I’ve trialed 15 perennial vine species and cultivars (not including climbing roses), mostly in my own yard, some for doting clients. Below is my alphabetized list:


Akebia quinata 'Shiro Bana'

 Akebia quinata (Chocolate vine) This one boasts bluish-green foliage composed of five rounded leaflets (hence quinata) and spicy-smelling brownish-purple flowers (hence chocolate) in April and May. Edible purple fruits may appear in late summer. Two cultivars are sometimes found in the trade: ‘Variegata,’ with cream-splashed foliage; and ‘Shiro Bana,’ Japan’s monastery vine, which produces fragrant white flowers. I’d call it “white-chocolate vine,” but then I have waggish tendencies.



Ampelopsis brevipendunculata
'Variegata'

Ampelopsis brevipedunculata (Porcelainberry) The foliage resembles that of hops, with which some of you may be familiar. (Tim, who grew up in the Mohawk Valley of New York, tells how his mom and her family would take hops-picking vacations for a couple of weeks in late summer. She said it was like getting paid for attending a camp-meeting, and remembered the occasions fondly.) The little white flowers are inconspicuous, but the plentiful berries mature from green to the most beautiful metallic blue. If you plant ‘Tricolor’ (a.k.a. ‘Variegata’ and ‘Elegans’), the green foliage is prettily splashed with pink (really!) and white. A Chinese native considered invasive in some places: mine died after three seasons in a pot.

Aster carolinianus

Aster carolinianus (Carolina aster) (F.Y.I.: Always offended by simplicity, taxonomists changed the genus name to Symphyotrichum. I urge you to resist.) This scandent late-season flower powerhouse produces multitudinous little lavender daisies with yellow centers from late September into November. Its drawbacks—a twiggy habit and semi-evergreen unremarkable foliage—fade into the background most of the time.  



Bignonia capreolata



  Bignonia capreolata (Crossvine) Pronounced “Big Nona,” local plantsman Bobbie Brock used to say it sounds like a lady truck-driver’s name. This vigorous evergreen puts out vaguely fragrant orange-red trumpet-shaped flowers in late May and June. A native of the southeast, it is extremely vigorous where it’s happy.



Campsis radicans 



Campsis radicans (Trumpet creeper) Grows wild around these parts. Its dark green, wisteria-like foliage is nice enough on its own, but the orange trumpet-shaped flowers it produces from mid-July into September give the plant its claim to fame. Trumpet vine has thuggish tendencies: I’ve seen specimens climb utility poles, cross the street on the wires and start down the other pole.

  

  

Gelsemium sempervirens

Gelsemium sempervirens (Carolina jessamine, not “jasmine”) A southeastern U.S. native. Evergreen leaves take on a red tint in cooler weather, showcasing small golden-yellow funnel-shaped flowers in late winter. G. rankinii foliage and flowers look the same as G. sempervirens, but bloom-time is September to November. Cultivar ‘Plena’ boasts lovely double flowers.


Gloriosa superba 'Rothschildiana'

Gloriosa superba ‘Rothschildiana’ (Glory lily) A scandent specimen, this tuberous beauty produces eye-catching yellow-and-red flowers with recurved petals in late summer to fall. In my yard, they continue to multiply in their mostly shady spot and are one plant I don’t mind staking. The straight species has orange flowers: at our house, they twine themselves into the eleagnus hedge for a special late-summer show.



Holboellia coriacea



Holboellia coriacea (hole-BELL-ee-uh) With no common name I know of, Holboellia has been a slow starter in my garden; nonetheless, I’m encouraged that it continues to live. Oblong evergreen glossy leaves on tough, wiry stems climb a little higher up its support each year. Eight years after mine went in the ground, it finally bloomed—tiny, inconspicuous muddy-lavender bells proving the axiom that anticipation often exceeds the actual event.



Hydrangea anomala spp. petiolaris

Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris (Climbing hydrangea) Greenish-white, lace-cap-like flowers appear in late May to June. The dark green, heart-shaped foliage climbs by aerial roots. You can maintain this one as a shrub if you’d rather, but it would prefer to climb. Tim’s and my specimen, an orphan from a job that didn’t pan out, lives on the latticed screen surrounding our HVAC unit. We go out once or twice a year to rip errant stems from places—like the coils—they’re not supposed to be. It only sees the sun for an hour or so in the early morning and only rarely gets fed and watered, so it’s a hardy bugger.



Lonicera sempervirens



 Lonicera sempervirens (Trumpet or evergreen honeysuckle) Native to the southeastern U.S., this woody-stemmed twiner produces sparse but constant clusters of scarlet-orange tubular flowers from late spring through summer. The semi-evergreen L. x heckrottii ‘Gold Flame’ (a cross between L. sempervirens and L. americana) is common in the trade and boasts slightly fragrant, pinky-orange flowers. The honeysuckle you remember from your childhood is more than likely the intensely fragrant and delicious but thuggish Japanese honeysuckle, L. japonica. If you live in the south, you should probably avoid the latter, given its predilection for expansion.



Manettia luteorubra
'John Elsley'







Manettia luteorubra (Brazilian firecracker vine) Tubular, one-to-two-inch bright red flowers with yellow tips explode from the light to dark green foliage in mid- to late summer. The hybrid ‘John Elsley’ has slightly larger blooms. Underused and hard to find, this is another one I wouldn’t be without.

 Passiflora spp. (Passionflower) Many species hail from Brazil and are not reliably hardy for us, but three are: P. caerulea, P. incarnata and P. ‘Amethyst Lady.’ The first and third are cultivated; the second, native to scrub areas of the southeastern U.S., grows wild hereabouts; locals call it “Maypop.” I love my ‘Amethyst Lady.’ Her exotic purple and white flowers cover our outdoor shower every summer and play host to the caterpillars of the Gulf fritillary butterfly. The downside is that I spend about an hour every week from June to October pulling up volunteer seedlings from all over my yard and the neighbors’, but it’s a small price to pay for all that wow factor. ‘Lady Margaret’ is a red-blooming cultivar we tried one summer. Blooms are smaller but definitely red, her growth rate more restrained. She did not survive the winter. What else would you expect from somebody named Lady Margaret?



Solanum jasminiodes
'Album'



              Solanum jasminoides (Potato vine) Another of my beloved Solanum species. Delicate-looking stems with dainty leafleted light-green foliage produce characteristic pale blue potato-like flowers with yellow stamens. My specimen is the cultivar ‘Album,’ with white blooms. While never robust, it nonetheless comes back no matter what the winter throws at it or how heedlessly I whack it down.  



Trachelospermum
jasminiodes



Trachelospermum jasminoides (Star or Confederate jasmine) A Southern standard, powerfully fragrant white star-shaped flowers perfume our whole block in May and June. Two plants completely engulf my back arbor; Tim periodically goes out with a machete to restore the passageway. This evergreen vine suffers cold damage some winters, but usually manages to recover by bloom time. A cultivar with white variegation on the foliage has recently entered the marketplace. It looks leprous to me.



Wisteria sinensis



Wisteria spp. (Wisteria) Wisteria is practically synonymous with The South. Not for people craving ultra-low-maintenance plants, the rest of us can consider three main species: W. floribunda, or Japanese wisteria, has the longest and most intensely fragrant flower clusters. It bears 13 to 19 leaflets per leaf and twines clockwise. I mention these attributes because W. sinensis, Chinese wisteria, has 9 to 13 (usually 11) leaflets per leaf and twines counter-clockwise. Its flowers are only slightly less long and minutely less fragrant than the Japanese, so only by leaflet count and twining direction can anyone tell them apart. Even then, you have to remember which is which. (If anyone devises a workable mnemonic, please let me know. It’s like “Feed a cold, starve a fever. Or do you “Starve a cold…”?) Suffice it to say that both bloom in early spring and are equally thuggish. The better-behaved native American wisteria, W. frutescens, is far less showy: smaller flowers, late spring to summer bloom, hardly any scent to speak of. But it certainly has a less exuberant growth habit, if that’s what you want in a wisteria.



Aristolochia macrophylla

Oddly missing from the viney plant pantheon here on the coast is Aristolochia macrophylla (Dutchman’s pipe), the ubiquitous Southern porch-screening plant. Grow this one for the big, heart-shaped leaves that quickly cover any support you give it. Although I lived around it for all of my childhood in southeastern Virginia, I never knew it had flowers, which, in fact, it does: greenish tubular things with patterns of yellow, purple and brown hidden by the foliage. Somebody thought they resembled pipes the Dutch smoke, and the name stuck. I haven’t turned up a single local source of plants; if you want one here, you’ll have to start it from seed.



Actinidia deliciosa

 One vine I haven’t tried is kiwi. The cultivar listed most often in the trade is Actinidia kolomitka ‘Arctic Beauty.’ That icy cultivar name—plus the fact that one of its big selling points is its pink variegation: fat chance of that happening on the sultry coast—gives me pause. However, the January 2008 issue of The Avant Gardener mentions a species of kiwi grown in California, A. deliciosa ‘Elmwood,’ as a good plant for the South. As soon as I find one, I’m putting her in.

                   

           I know what you’re thinking. How did I ever manage to grow dozens of different vines—not including 20-odd clematis and several cultivars of climbing roses—on only four chicken-wire-covered posts in my back garden? Simple: I’m just a little ol’ master of verticality.

            Stay tuned for the sad story of my struggles with the genus Clematis, subtitled “The Importance of Failure.” Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                    Kathy

MAY PROP-UP

            May was a madhouse, not that that’s unusual. As of today, only three clients left to change out containers for. After a delightful extended spring (for southeastern NC), summer arrived all at once on the 23^rd. She’s unmistakable, with her unrelenting humidity and nighttime temperatures creeping through the 70s into the 80s. The three-day Memorial Day weekend came just in time to forestall the onset of leaden-limbed zombietonia for the staff of Fitzgeralds Gardening. Tim and I start four-day work-weeks as of June 1. We may be old and stubborn, but we’re not stupid.



Houseplant Class of '11 Reunion





            So that’s it for the wrap-up, except for this photo of the happy survivors of overwintering in the Fitzgerald House of Plant Peril. You’ll notice the poinsettia is not only still alive, it has new leaves. Miracles surround those of us with eyes to see.

Check out the poinsettia!



Inherently stable triangular supports
for tomatoes and peppers



           Keeping with the verticality theme introduced last time, today we’re about helping plants grow up. Literally.

            In May 3^rd’s “Moving Right Along” post, I described contriving a triangular tomato support out of concrete reinforcing wire panels. Since then, Tim knocked off three more of them to prop up three bell peppers and six more tomatoes in my newest raised beds (see “Raising Cain [and Beds],” April 9). Here’s a picture of the completed trio: remember you can click on the photo to make it bigger.

 A construction detail featuring bendy wire;

and another utilizing the pointy ends of the reinforcing wire itself.



Detail of concrete reinforcing wire arbor



           Further plumbing of the depths of the many and varied purposes to which wire panels can be adapted followed. How about an arbor to shade the flagstone path through the New Bed? Because the panels took on a distinct sway-backed appearance when left on their own, Tim attached lengths of rebar to them to rigidify them.

 My clever husband also devised a top-panel stiffener, pictured here:

Another garden use for
concrete reinforcing wire

And here is the finished result, airy, rustic, shabby chic—exactly what I had in mind.   



A concrete reinforcing wire
wall trellis





How about something for morning glories and moonflowers to climb? Using our handy wire cutters, I removed the bottom two horizontal rows from a full four-by-seven-foot sheet and pushed the remaining verticals into the ground on the back wall of our outdoor shower; then I tied the top to the wall with gardeners twine. Voilà! A sturdy frame to attract viney tendrils, with the extra advantage of being better-looking than the deer netting I tacked up last season.



I can just picture ripe, juicy melons,
undefiled by pickleworms,
hanging down from this slanted support



 For my melons, I “borrowed” a design for a slanted support from Gardeners Supply catalog, using my by-now well-loved concrete reinforcing wire and rebar. This should prevent whatever cantaloupes the pickleworms leave from ground-contact, and provide some shade for the supposedly heat-tolerant lettuces I plan to plant underneath. Here it is:

 Trellises for the bush beans came from Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening (see Good Reads over on the right). These involve one-inch electrical conduit, elbow fittings for same, and trellis netting.



One-inch-wide electrical conduit
and elbow fitting



Trellis netting (duh)





  



Bean trellis frame
made of electrical conduit



Cut three lengths of conduit to whatever dimensions you require: I needed two 36” legs and a 24” crosspiece. Use the elbows to attach the crosspiece to the legs. Tim pounded two-foot sections of rebar 12” into the ground, and slid the conduit legs over the 12” left sticking out. (Plan on lengths of rebar that leave about a third of the height of your trellis above-ground. For example: when we build a six-foot-high frame for pole beans, we’ll have 48” pieces of rebar as anchors, 24” in the earth and 24” out to secure the conduit-legs. Capisce?)



Tie netting to frame
and you're good to go



Once the frame is set, all that’s left is to tie the netting onto the crosspiece and secure it to the legs at a few points. I recommend you read Mel Bartholomew’s description of the intricacies of this activity. He’s much more succinct—and probably clearer—than I would be.

Finally, here are instructions for building your very own free-standing vine post(s), taken verbatim from the sidebar to an article I wrote years ago that never found any paying takers.

                   Materials:  1 4x4”x8’ post

                                    6’ of 24” chicken wire

                                    4x4” Post cap or finial

                                    Chicken wire staples

                                    1 40-lb. bag Quik-Crete

                                    Pea gravel

                         Tools:  Posthole digger

                                    Measuring tape

                                    Spirit level

                                    Shovel

                                    Wheelbarrow or tub

                                    A source of water for mixing concrete

                                    Paint or stain (optional)

                                    A helper would be a bonus, especially in the leveling and wire attachment phases

1.      Select a spot in your garden that could use some vertical enhancement and that gets at least five or six hours of sunlight a day. Dig a hole 27” deep with the posthole digger. Fill the bottom three inches of the hole with pea gravel to give the base of the post some drainage. Set the 4x4” post on the gravel and check for level on all sides.

2.      Mix the Quik-Crete with just enough water so that all the material is wetted and the mixture attains a heavy consistency (not thin or watery). Pour the mixed Quik-Crete into the hole, continually checking that the post remains level. Float (or smooth) the concrete at ground level with your hand to form a shallow cone. This helps water drain away from the post. (See drawing.) If the concrete doesn’t come to the top of your hole, backfill with some of the excavated soil and tamp down securely.



A picture's worth a thousand words,
right?



3.      Let the leveled post sit for several hours or overnight to allow the concrete to set thoroughly.

4.       Attach the post cap or finial to the top of the post.

5.      Paint or stain your post if you plan to, and let it dry completely.

6.      Wrap the chicken wire lengthwise around the post. Slightly overlap and staple the long sides to the back side of the post. Shape the wire into a tube shape, folding in or cutting close any poky fragments of wire at the top and bottom. (See drawings.)

7.      Plant your vines either inside the tube or just outside it and watch them grow up!

      So there we have it, the May Prop-Up. Thanks for "propping" by.

                                                                                    Kathy