August Surprises

In the Kansas Flint Hills, late July and August is a dreadful period for gardeners.  There is often a seasonal lack of rain during those weeks and oppressive waves of heat build and sear plants (and gardeners) on a daily basis, turning leaves brown and suppressing plant growth and melting away any resolve to keep the garden in prime condition.   The roses, in misery, pause their blooms and the daylily season has ended and the landscape is left almost colorless, a bland dull green turning brown and not yet displaying any autumn coloration.

I said "almost colorless", though, because there are some intrepid garden denizens who provide some relief from the blandness.   First, I want to recommend loud and clear that every gardener, particularly if you garden in Kansas, needs to obtain some "Surprise Lilies" because this period of summer doldrum is their preferred bloom time.    One minute there's nothing in a spot, and the next, PINK goodness erupts.  I plodded out to my every-other-morning pity-watering of the tomato pots on the last day of July and saw the miracle pictured above.  A few days later, the buds were all in bloom and it was yet even more captivating.  All this from seemingly bare ground!

I've seldom been able to catch them in actual growth, but here are a few early sprouts in process.  In spring, this is a clump of green grass that appears from nowhere, stays green into early summer, and then quickly dries up and disappears.  You can see their remnants at the base of the stems.  The flower stems appear in the same spot a couple of months later, usually unnoticed until they bloom in just a few days.   Sometimes, I think if I watched them closely enough, I could see them grow before my eyes!

My other life-saving perennial at this time is a native, Salvia azurea, the Blue Sage, which is a moderately uncommon but not rare plant in my region.   The clump pictured here is a volunteer in my front landscape that I allowed to remain as a welcome invader a dozen years past and it gets more bushy and floriferous each year.

I'm simply in awe of the gentle sky-blue color and the drought resistance of the plant.   Flowering in the most in-hospitable season here, there must be some survival advantage in being the sole source, or one of the few sources, of pollen during the heat of summer that led its distant ancestors to flower now.   I'm just thankful for all the bees it draws and feeds here, and for the color it brings during an otherwise drab end-of-summer.  And right now, I'll welcome color in any form, however it wants to appear.

Blackberry Beginnings

ProfessorRoush received an unusual offer a couple of weeks back;  an offer via email from Tom Doyle himself to grow and promote Doyle's Thornless Blackberry™ plants.   Specifically, Mr. Doyle offered some free plants and a host of other inducements in exchange for a few blogs on the blackberries' performance, including a 10% commission on sales directed to his nursery.  As you know, what I share on this blog is written for my own enjoyment and I've declined Google Ads on the blog and don't look to make money off of its viewers, so I turned down his offer of income from sales.  I was, however, intrigued by his description of the vigor and high yield of the patented blackberry plants, and flattered by his awareness of Garden Musings, so after a little negotiation Tom did send the plants and other gifts, and I'll be writing a few blogs over a couple of years to tell you my experiences with them.

The Doyle Blackberries are from a small, family-owned blackberry nursery in Washington, Indiana, and, small nursery or not, I've got to give the Doyle's credit for reaching out into the social media world for marketing. The original Thomas Doyle passed in 2001 at over 100 years old, so I presume the individual contacting me is his son, Thomas E. Doyle, Junior, carrying on the family business.  In the fifteen or so years I've been blogging, only one other firm has offered any item for evaluation and, while I recognize Garden Musings isn't taking the non-gardening world by storm, it DOES average around 3000 visits each day.  So, my mouth watering for future blackberries, my ego deftly stroked, and to help out a fellow Hoosier, I'll happily lend a few words here.  Besides, you know how I love blackberries and trying another variety is a treat all by itself.

The plants were shipped soon after we reached agreement, and then I was left to fret while their original 3-day UPS trip turned into 8 days, and during the hottest time of the summer!  However, my concerns were misplaced because the nursery plans for a 15 day delay in shipping and planting and packaged them accordingly.  Four small but healthy rooted plants arrived in good condition, peanut-cushioned to protect everything from mayhem, along with a copy of Rose Doyle's Blackberry Recipies, a very nice T-shirt, liquid fertilizer, mycorrhizal root booster, a proprietary trellis, trellis clips, fertilizer, and other items, many of which you can see pictured here.  Rose Doyle's Blackberry Recipes alone is worth obtaining, with 186 pages of recipes that use blackberries for everything from Blackberry Chicken to Blackberry Brandy and on to Blackberry & Cantaloup Salsa!  NOTE:  If  you order from Doyle's, use this link  for 10% off.  I get no commission, you get a larger discount!

In fact, one could accept the shipping delay as God's Will, since the plants arrived at the end of the hottest stretch of weather we've had.  I unpacked them, watered them, and waited through one more 90ºF+ day of  highs and then planted them Thursday, July 31st, just as we begin an unusually cool period of 70's and 80's predicted for the next week.  

They're protected as best I can for now behind fencing from rabbits and rodents, and mulched with prairie hay squares on either side.   I've warned Mr. Doyle that, as tough as he claims his blackberries are, they're now in Kansas and they'll be field-tested and tried to their limits.  Drought, rodents, coyotes, searing sun, frozen winters, they'll experience it all here.  As the Doyle nursery 19 month plant warranty covers everything except a soil pH outside of 5-6.5, I will, however, apologize in advance for my pH 7.2-8.5 prairie soil, but there's little I can do about that.  And I haven't unpacked the Trellis yet; the plants won't be big enough to need it for awhile.

I would be remiss if I didn't repeat, here at the outset, the advertised qualities of Doyle's Thornless Blackberry®, and share the contact information for the nursery.  Doyle's Blackberry is a trailing plant grown on grape-type trellises, produce 10-20 GALLONS of large and exceptionally sweet blackberries/plant, are hardy to Zone 3, and are featured in the Agricultural Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Kansas.  Production is reportedly slow in the first year but reaches normal in the 3rd year after planting, and the plant is a biennial, canes fruiting in the second year, and so it should be pruned accordingly.  Doyle Blackberry, Inc. is located at 1600 Bedford Road, Washington, IN  47501 and can be reached at (812) 254-2654 or via the website at www.fruitsandberries.com

For now, the plants are out there in the midst of my Kansas prairie, protected as best I can from critters and drought.   They'll have to do the rest!

Dayflower Difficulties

 While the rest of the world is occupied with either embracing or avoiding the inevitable summer heat of July and August in the Northern Hemisphere, ProfessorRoush is additionally fully engaged in my annual war with the Common Dayflower, Commelina communis.  Not as strikingly blue as its cousin, the Erect Daylily (Commelina erectus), C. communis is described in KSWildflower.org in unglowing and uninspiring terminology as "A common weed. The flowers bloom for one day, wilting into a moist, blue mass after a few hours."   I would add that if a "weed" is benignly considered to be any plant that is growing in an unwanted place, then the Dayflower is an overachiever; pernicious to its neighbors, invasive, impervious to glycosophate, and seemingly impossible to eradicate.

As an aside, the Wikipedia entry regarding Dayflowers is a model of "more than you ever want to know," and was obviously edited by some wild-eyed and socially questionable Dayflower fanatics.

Dayflower is supposed to be an annual (I'm not as convinced about that as Internet sources seem to be), so my primary angle of attack is to rip it out before it goes to seed.  Unfortunately, it has an uncanny ability to hide among irises and daylilies as it creeps along on the ground, popping up only as it gains the unsanctioned support of an neighbor plant, so I have to watch closely for the light blue flowers and rip them out at first appearance.  Equally unfortunately, the plant blooms during the hottest days of the year, so I battle both the plant and heat stroke simultaneously during my periodic forays into my garden beds.

Often, I find the Dayflower imitating and then trying to replace a desired plant (like an alien pod of 1950's science fiction) while mowing the lawn, as I did the weedy clump pictured above.   Beneath all those Dayflower stems and leaves is a desired 'Vintage Wine' daylily, which was blooming without care only the week before.  So, in this instance as in many others, I stopped mowing and attacked, wiping sweat away from my eyes periodically so I could discern daylily foliage from dayflower, and just generally resembling a bulldog attacking a bowl of soup.  Anyway, the final result looks much better (photo at right), a relieved daylily with a chance at survival.

 I'll finish by taking this moment to show you my latest lawn tractor modification.  I took this old 5-gallon bucket and have attached it to the tractor "hitch" point in order to always have immediate access to pruning tools and spray bottles of "Grass-B-Gon", yellow nutsedge herbicide, and brush-killer.   In other words, all the things I can't live without as a gardener in Kansas.   As I mow, I often spot a random clump of wild dogwood in a rose bush, or some yellow nutsedge in a bed, and it is much more effective to hit the brake and take care of it in the moment, rather than try to remember later what it was that offended me, where it was, and then make another trek to get the tool or spray I need to fix it.  I love my new bucket-basket!

Published Serendipity

Serendipity is defined by the Oxford dictionary as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way."   As we travel down that serendipitous rabbit hole, we learn further that the term was coined in 1754 by Horace Wadpole when, writing his friend Horace Mann, he related a surprising discovery in a painting he received from his friend that he related to a Persian folk tale, the "Three Princes of Serendip".  And while I could have continued my meager existence without knowing the etymology of serendipity, I was intrigued by a list of serendipitous inventions in Wikipedia which include Corn Flakes, safety glass, Popsicles, Teflon, superglue, LSD, the microwave oven, and penicillin.  I knew of the latter due to my veterinary training, but I would rather not know that Corn Flakes were created after John Kellogg inadvertently left out some wheat dough overnight and didn't want to throw it out.  I used to like Corn Flakes.

'Austrian Copper' watercolor by Nanae Ito

It was certainly serendipitous, however, that I chose to make a quick stop by a Half-Price Books on a recent weekend trip because I happened across a couple of texts that I've never seen before and was unlikely to look for.   The first was a worn hardback copy of Roses of Yesterday, by Dorothy Stemler, the latter a well-known name to any Old Garden Rose afficionado.    Roses of Yesterday is a scant 54 pages, but it contains passages about 18 Old Garden roses written by Mrs. Stemler and illustrated with water color prints of Nanae Ito.  The 18 roses chosen include my beloved 'Madame Hardy', 'Celsiana', 'Koenigin von Daenemarck', 'Austrian Copper', and 'Charles de Mills'.

'Madame Hardy' watercolor by Nanae Ito

About 'Madame Hardy', named for his wife by the breeder, Monsieur Hardy, Mrs. Stemler wrote "This rose is considered by many people the most exquisite white rose in exisence.  It has the elegance of emeralds and old lace....If he had never produced another rose in his lifetime, his name would still be famous." 

My second acquisition was a paperback copy of a similarly short (103 pages) self-published 2016 monograph, The Complete Guide to Gardeners, by Joseph Tychonievich.  Subtitled "The Plant Obsessed and How to Deal with Them, Tychonievich brings a highly tongue-in-cheek attitude into a semi-organized list of the trials imposed on a nongardener  who is living with a gardener.   There is dry, sarcastic humor throughout, as the author approaches the topics of the Notable Behaviors, Seasons, Care and Feeding, and Subspecies of Gardeners, as well as some advice on Troubleshooting Your Gardener.  I found Tychonievich's description of "gardener's myopia", a term referring to gardeners who can only see the weeds on their home turf rather than the beauty of his/her/their garden, to be very accurate.  I was also driven to thought by his advice regarding "gardener's paralysis," the tendency of a gardener to become complacent over the years and the garden to stagnate as a result.   I'm certainly self-afflicted by "gardener's myopia", but am I also guilty of "gardener's paralysis?  Hhhmmmph!