gardening: observing, planning, designing, and editing
There are three natives in this yard that develop good-sized seed collections, which start getting distributed in July: twinleaf, trillium, and false Solomon’s seal. These plants did very well setting fruit this spring, but the nonnative Solomon’s seals, which seem to like similar habitats, did not.
Twinleaf seedpods are very silly—eventually they split open at that manic smile of a seam, ready to dribble seeds nearby.
It may seem brutal, but one of the goals for this garden is minimal or no supplementary watering. I posted what I thought was an alarming picture of a beleaguered section of dwarf Japanese Solomon’s seal, wondering if the problem was too much sun or too little rain, in another post.
It got worse. We started the year with precipitation well below normal—we had relatively little snow last winter—and then we had periods of entrained rainstorms followed by several sunny, breezy days this spring. It was relentlessly breezy, and sometimes hot as well. Continue reading “Is the Dwarf Japanese Solomon’s Seal Dead?”
I never thought of Solomon’s seal as a garden plant—it was a plant from botany field trips into the woods in college, so I was struck by a neighbor’s planting of dwarf Japanese Solomon’s seal, Polygonatum humile, several years ago. They had planted it in a shady little patch of earth on a street corner with road on one curved side, and sidewalk on the other two sides. At about 6 inches tall, it is a very nice orderly little plant for such a small space. They stand sturdily upright, about a leaf-and-a-half’s distance from stem to stem—with a great texture, and serve as a very nice ground cover.
The best time of year to move some plants is summer. Plants that bloom in the spring and have fat, sturdy roots are candidates for summer transplanting. Irises are the most commonly mentioned group, but I have found that various Solomon’s seals also respond well to summer moves—actually any time after the flowers have dropped.
I looked at my dwarf Japanese Solomon’s seal the other day, and realized that it was really muscling in on my liverworts. There are only four liverworts, and about a gazillion dwarf Japanese Solomon’s seal, so the solution was to recreate the gap between them by digging up and moving some of the Solomon’s seal. This divide-and-transplant project will show you how to plan and implement a transplanting project with smallish plants—a very good place to start. Continue reading “Dividing and Transplanting: An Example Project and Beginner’s Guide”
Just a very quick note: the tagline of this website mentions editing. What’s that about? Here is a good example. The wood sorrel, Oxalis, is sprouting everywhere, including among my dwarf Japanese Solomon’s seal.
The Solomon’s seal begins to look a little scruffy with the weeds, and there are forget-me-nots in there, which spread like wildfire, so they have to be pulled. It’s very easy when the weeds are this small; I pull out everything I spot that isn’t a dwarf Japanese Solomon’s seal.
Is it perfect? Perhaps not, but it is good enough for now.