Catchweed Nemesis

ProfessorRoush has briefly referred before to my exasperating experiences with "cleavers", or Galium aparine,also known as "bedstraw", "catchweed", "goosegrass" (geese eat it) and, in a modern twist, "velcro plant".   Some years it grows much faster and thicker than others and this year I almost had two different beds completely consumed by it.  So, once again, the enemy is at my gates and I'm in a wartime footing against this smother-acious pest.

Some may ask about the "catchweed" name, or wonder why I write with such vehemence about it, but if you have ever touched it, you'd know.  This weed-from-Hell attaches itself to anything and everything with the small hooked hairs on its stems and whorled leaves.  It frankly feels "icky" to touch it with bare hands.

Even worse, it has small globular fruits with the same hooks that attach to socks and shirts and underwear and sometimes skin.   I put a closeup to the left, above, and here to the right a wider picture of my T-shirt after one skirmish with the plant.  I'm sure an ecologist would be enthusiastic about the catchweed's utilization of me and every other passing animal to spread seed, but I'm less complementary about that feature, myself.

 Catchweed is an annual with sprawling stems that grow up to 3 feet long and branch and spread along the ground and climb over other plants.  It tries its best to cover and smother neighboring perennials and shrubs while the sadly smothered plant props up the square stems.  And Galium is quite successful in that regard.  In my front bed, for one example, I've got a 6'X8' area where the only recognizable plant is the catchweed on top of everything else.

Since I don't have a pet goose on the premises (nor am I willing to abide the resultant goose droppings that come with one), I've previously recommended pulling catchweed out while wearing cotton gloves as an efficiency measure, but this weekend I found this long-handled cultivator marked down on sale from $7 to $2.50 and I correctly recognized it might be just the nuclear option I was looking for.   My motto is "never use a grenade when an atom bomb is available." 

Anyway, a "picture being worth a thousand words", I'll let the next two photos speak for the efficacy of my inexpensive and effective tool.   Here, at right, I give you a daylily smothered by catchweed.

And a few minutes later, the same daylily from the same angle.   A little hacking-away occurred in the interim, but the cultivator's handle is long enough that I didn't have to bend over, and the catchweed, at least the bulk of it, is gone!  You can see that raking away the "bedstraw" hasn't damaged the underlying daylily (the streaks on the daylily are from hail damage last week!).   Yes, I know I'm not getting the root, but when the Galium grows back, by golly, I'll just do it again.  No seeds for you this year, Catchweed!

Brief Bartzella Bonanza

Despite my momentary elation at the triple alliteration of the title, Professorroush finds it hard to believe that he has never raved in lyric fashion about the peony wunderkind that is 'Bartzella'.  A search of my blog, however, says I've never mentioned the gentleman at all.  See that search button at the right of this column?  If you haven't tried it, you can search this entire blog for whatever you desire to see or know about my garden or the plants in it.  I use it to find old posts to link from current posts and to make sure I'm not writing my 40th entry on 'Madame Hardy' lest it chase my readers away.  Anyway, shameless plugs aside and back to today's subject, I've had a 'Bartzella' in my garden since 2018, purchased on a whim at a Maier's in Indiana on a trip, and this year "Mr. Bart" has outdone himself trying to one-up the sun here in Kansas.

What can I tell you about this nearly disease-free and trouble-free peony?  'Bartzella' is an Itoh-type peony, and because of that, I wasn't entirely honest when I said I purchased him on a "whim".   Since I discovered them, I'm always on the lookout for a new reasonably-priced Itoh.   These hybrids are more pricey than "regular" herbaceous peonies, often over $50 and sometimes over $100 apiece at local garden centers.  I bought "Bartzella", purchased pre-recent-inflation at a time when most Itoh's were $60, for the bargain price of $26 as I recall, a deal that I couldn't turn down.

'Bartzella' is an Itoh-type peony, yes, a so-called "intersectional" cross between herbaceous and tree peonies, but not one introduced by Dr. Toichi Itoh who hybridized the first such intersectionals.  'Bartzella' is a more recent introduction, in 1972, created by noted peony-breeder Roger Anderson.   Anderson was a self-taught breeder who began hybridizing peonies in the 1970's and introduced 50 varieties of intersectional peonies from Callies Beaux Jardins,the nursery owned by Roger and his wife Sandra.  Roger is said to have created the most named and color varieties of any peony hybridizer in the world and is considered the world’s leading intersectional peony expert.   Roger was a native of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where there is a display garden at the Hoard Museum that contains 58 peonies developed by Roger and the "largest public collection of intersectional peonies in North America."  

But, enough history, look at the gorgeous display of this peony at its best!   The bloom featured in the top right photo is bigger than my hand and its otherworldly yellow glows above the medium green matte foliage.   Gorgeous, isn't it?  It is said by some to sometimes, in some places, display these fabulous blooms for up to 5 weeks!

I'd prefer to leave you in that floral ecstasy that I just induced without telling the rest of the story, but alas, Kansas weather has shown its ugly side and smashed my dreams and this peony beneath its unrelenting onslaught.   I took the fully-blooming picture above at 6:07 p.m. on Tuesday, May 14.  the following Wednesday night we had a rain- and hail-storm come through, accompanied by high winds and tornado warnings, and at 6:50 a.m. on May 16th I took the photo at right, documenting its "new" appearance, a ragged and nearly-naked bush, brilliant petals on the ground at its feet.  Blooms for 5 weeks?  Not in Kansas!  Such are the boundless highs and the dismal fate characteristic of a Kansas gardener and his garden.

Ugly Ducklings Shine

In the midst of an otherwise disappointing Spring flowering season, there is a gem or two popping up in my gloomy garden.   'Harison's Yellow' has won the "first blooming rose" race in my garden this year with a spectacular show that I almost missed.  I saw the first bloom over a week ago, on April 24th to be exact, and then I went out of town for 6 days:  Six long gardenless days where we had several storms and several inches of rain on my gardener-less garden.  

 I fretted away the away time, wondering repeatedly if I'd missed my yellow rose beginnings, but came back to a fully blooming bush as pictured here.  Something finally is going well in the garden.

But wait, there's more.   For the first time ever, after several attempts, I have overwintered an 'Austrian Copper' to see a bloom.  Situated in a special spot where I can watch it, with better drainage than I've given it before, and I, at last, have a healthy bush with the promise of future bounty.  There are not many blooms this year, but I'll take a healthy young bush any day. 

The surprise "belle of the ball," however, is this 2019 addition to my garden, Lonicera Trumpet Honeysuckle 'Major Wheeler'.   I planted it here to replace an 'Arnolds Red' honeysuckle that had languished and expired under the multi-year assault of an annual vine.   Coming back from my "vacation", I found this beautiful display just to the left of my front door, a bright beacon from the driveway and front approach to the house.   

I have not yet sampled the nectar from this honeysuckle, but I will when I next pass it.   One never forgets the sweetness that can be squeezed from a good honeysuckle, no matter how old and gray and wrinkled the gardener grows. 

Any...way....the garden seems to be moving in fits and starts, but at least something is blooming.  And getting green.   And we've had several inches of rain now so perhaps, just perhaps the worst is past.   The main peonies are to start soon and, warm weather permitting, I'll get the dead wood pruned out of the roses and get the repeat bloomers in a better mood to fight it out with the Japanese Beetles that will come in mid-June!

Anticipation Abandoned

Where, pray tell me, does one start to explain one's absence from this minor blog of over 3 months?  Many, if not most, of my readers may not have noticed my lack of attention to their daily entertainment, although dare I hope that at least a few fleetingly wondered if I'd departed for parts unknown, upward to fulfillment or slipped into the cold embrace of spring ground?   And how do I apologize to my garden, my poor garden, neglected and abandoned to the whims of weather and fate?   Where does responsibility for the care and feeding of a garden or garden blog begin and end?

'Yellow Bird'

In the case of my garden, but not yet you blog followers, I've made the novice gardener's mistake of hoping for a return of affection, or mere notice, for my efforts.  But as winter rolled to spring and spring has settled into a teasing dance of welcome warmth interspersed with crushing cold, I've found my affection for and from the garden has been less than satisfying.   Simply put, is it too much to ask for a normal transition of spring bloom in return for my cultivating and caring efforts?

The evidence of an answer to that question this spring, has been a resounding "no!" from the Kansas climate.  The first bloom in my garden was the "Pink Forsythia", Abeliophyllum distichum 'Roseum', which I noticed had just opened blooms on February 29th.  One day and a cold night later its promise of love returned was reduced to a fountain of brown, never to shine again.  Then, in sequence, my beloved Star Magnolia (Magnolia stellata) teased me one day and crushed me the next, several forsythia teased a few cranky yellow blooms and then the rest froze and browned, and then the French lilacs, too embarrassed to carry the torch, refused to bloom at all.  So, at this stage, magnolias, forsythia, and lilacs are, in sports parlance, 0-3, while the Witch of Winter is 3-0.  The redbuds on my hills made it 0-4 in short order, also adding to the general woe and despair, and the red peach tree made me 0-5 for the early season.  

'Jane' Magnolia

Oh, yes, the first Scilla, Puschkinia, and daffodils bloomed, all surviving and promptly laid low by frost as if their diminutive status needed to be removed yet farther from center stage.  Even these minor spots of color were a jumbled mess, overgrown by Henbit and abandoned to my inability to work with frozen hands and ears to clear the garden.   I simply couldn't find a single day until April where it was warm enough, or windless enough, or I wasn't away to a meeting or work, to tidy the garden.  I just fail miserably to confront 70 mph gales as I work outside.  My front garden finally got trimmed and mulched last weekend, almost two months later than in previous years, and the back garden is yet to be touched, piles of bagged mulch waiting in vain as I struggle through a respiratory virus passed to me last week by the treacherous Mrs. ProfessorRoush. Yes, friends, even my spouse has taken sides with weather and fickle seasons against my garden.  

Paeonia tenuifolia

There are a few minor bright spots that I cling to.   Both my 'Jane' and 'Yellow Bird' magnolias have snuck in decent bloom this spring, and I share them with you here.   Mind you, I take no credit as my 'Ann' magnolia didn't show near the bountiful bloom of her sister, so any hue of success is a matter of chance and the random timing of nightly lows sparing individual bloom cycles.  For future hope, the late lilacs, like 'Boomerang' are opening up with some appearance of a decent showing, and so far the peonies are budding up well.   I got one day of  a fine display by the Paeonia tenuifolia, illustrated at left, after my return from a DC trip before it was ruined by rain. 

But did I yet mention that we've been bone dry, all through winter and spring, so dry as to make the ground as solid as cement and dry as far as I can dig?  We need rain to even have grass yet!   Should I will just roll over, cut my losses, sacrifice the troops, and wait until 2025?  I need color; beautiful sunrises and hope can sustain me, but not forever. What say ye?  (that last question asked in my mind with the voice of Gregory Peck as "Ahab" in 1956's Moby Dick, as he asked his first mate to follow him to their mutual death).  

12/12/2023