Gardening Judith Adam Deeply scented moss rose ‘Salet’, with soft scent-bearing prickles, blooms for six weeks in late spring to early summer. Have you caught the fresh scent of spring? Early blossoms and warming sun welcome travellers home to a new garden season. Spring is the best time to plant a garden that will offer extended periods of bloom through the coming months. Now that you’re back on home ground, here’s how to get the most from your perennial plants, plus bonus flowering weeks. And if roses are your passion, try a smart idea to solve a ‘pesty’ problem with an antique solution. Perennial overachievers Nearly 70 per cent of perennial plants bloom during the weeks of late spring and early summer. Most bloom for a period of three weeks, then cease flower production. From the plants’ point of view, they’ve put out enough flowers to produce seed and don’t need to invest any further energy in petal production. They’ll continue in green leaf until shut down by frost in late autumn. There’s no need to resign yourself to shades of green without colourful flowers. Prompt deadheading (removing the spent flowers) from perennials will prevent them fromgoing to seed, and will force plants to put out new buds. This easy practice will add as much as two weeks to the blooming period for your perennial plants. And there’s more good news – some perennial plants, such as daylilies and garden phlox, are natural overachievers with extra-long blooming cycles. Many daylilies bloom for approximately 21 days; but overachievers such as yellow ruffled ‘Siloam Amazing Grace’ will produce flowers for up to 45 days. Some daylilies are multiple repeaters, producing flowers from late spring through mid-autumn in part shade to full sun. For a full season of repeat daylilies, look for gold ‘Stella D’Oro’, burgundy ‘Pygmy Plum’, yellow ‘Happy Returns’ and deep pink ‘Rosy Returns’. With weekly watering and deadheading, these hard-working plants will be in bloomevery time you step into the garden this summer. Garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) is another long-blooming overachiever and will continue opening flower clusters for up to eight weeks, starting in mid-summer and running through early autumn. Modern phlox cultivars are resistant to the late-season mildew that chronically infected their older ancestors. Some disease-resistant phlox that you can look for are white ‘David’, pink-and-white ‘Katherine’, cherry-red ‘Tequila Sunrise’, purple-and-white ‘Purple Kiss’ and salmon-orange ‘Orange Perfection’. Remembering to deadhead and water weekly will ensure that you get the longest and best from both daylilies and garden phlox, and that could amount to a full summer of colour. RosesandJapanese beetles Nothing puts rage in a gardener’s eye more certainly than a swarm of Japanese beetles voraciously chomping rose petals. Japanese beetles have huge appetites for more than 300 garden plants and will consume flowers, foliage and fruits which they favour. Unfortunately, rose blossoms are themost relished food item in their diet and that can lead to heartbreak, whether you’re trying to grow just a single rose shrub or a whole bed of carefully selected cultivars. The beetles will quickly locate the scent of roses and make a meal of them. What to do? Some gardeners give up and stop growing roses, and that’s a sad resolution. Daily hand-picking and drowning them in a bucket of soapy water works well, but is time-consuming. There is a safe soil bacterium (Milky Spore) that can inoculate a lawn and eventually kill the grub stage beetles sleeping below. And there are effective pheromone traps drawing mature Japanese beetles into a bag with no escape. (But be aware that the trap can possibly lure the neighbourhood’s beetle population.) However, a clever timing trick will foil the eating pattern of Japanese beetles and allow roses to flourish unmolested. It all depends on what kind of roses you grow, and the length of their blooming cycles. Most modern shrub and hybrid tea roses are bred to be ever-blooming, providing flushes of bloom from early summer through early autumn, overlapping with the approximately 40-day mid-summer feeding period of Japanese beetles. Classic antique roses have one large burst of bloom in late spring to early summer, putting out scented flowers in the weeks before Japanese beetles leave the ground and are looking for their first meal. Classic antique roses include many categories, such as moss and damask roses, and are deeply perfumed and often very full with double petals. Local plant nurseries may have a selection available and an online search will quickly locate suppliers of antique roses. Just be sure that your selections are described as once-blooming. These are the roses that will avoid a Japanese beetle feeding cycle and make you a happy rosarian. 44 | www.snowbirds.org
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