Forsythia UnCut

As a general rule, I prefer to allow my shrubs to grow according to their own natural manner.  Stated in another way, ProfessorRoush is quite derelict in his efforts to force unruly shrubs to grow in unnatural and restrained fashions.  Or, even more simply put, I detest topiary in any form and I really hate to prune shrubs. 

The result from these efforts, of course, is an informal, devil-may-care feeling for much of my garden, but occasionally even the best-behaved child needs a haircut lest the grandmother (or in the case of shrubs, Mrs. ProfessorRoush), think we are bad parents. 



Take the 'New Hampshire Gold' forsythia pictured above both pre- and post-bloom.  It had a very nice, prolific bloom this spring, but, as forsythia are prone to, once the flowers are gone, I've got an airy, messy green blob squatting on my landscape.  This year, one of my planned spring garden chores was to prune the forsythia, and along the way remove the many suckers threatening to spread the bush on into Nebraska.

So, I'll ask you to make the call.  Pre-pruning is on the right,  post-pruning from the same angle on the left below.  Did I do a good thing this spring, or did I capitulate to group-think and ruin the natural lines of the plant?  Should I have gone further and made a box turtle or an elephant out of the unshaped mass?  Mrs. ProfessorRoush has already weighed in and is definitely on the "haircut" side, but then, she always wants my garden to be neater than I'm prone to keep it.

Most important to ProfessorRoush, of course, will be the effect my pruning has for the next bloom of this shrub.  I'm hoping that the experts are right and the shrub fills in and has more bloom and is more compact.  Time, as always in a garden, will tell.

Aphids Abounding

I don't often intend for the Garden Musings blog to be a basic garden instructional blog, but my finding of aphids among the roses in the K-State Rose garden, and my subsequent Iphone picture capture of said aphids, shown at left, was too good to leave untold.

For those who have never visited, the K-State Rose Garden is healthier this year than I've ever seen it, and I'm all a-quiver for the blooming days to come.  I stopped by a couple of days back to check on the results of the EMG's recent pruning efforts at the garden and to assess if any current work was needed.  In among the healthy bountiful budding roses, were a few buds or leaves with apparent growths of seething green hair, aphids (also known, appropriately, as "plant lice") which did not then, nor should they ever, send this gardener into a panic.

If you see them, and have not run across such creatures before, DO NOT reach for your bottles of synthetic or organic poisons.  Aphids seldom cause extensive damage on roses in an outdoor garden, and they can be easily controlled by squishing them off the buds (which I accomplished here by rolling the buds gently between my fingers), or by blasting them off with a brisk spray of water.  Both methods of control are satisfying and enjoyable, at least if you don't mind a little bit of green insect stain on your fingertips.  Cackle in an evil manner while squishing, if it suits your fancy.  I knew, even while brushing off a few aphids here and there, that in a few days these bushes will be swarming with aphid-eating lady beetles who will be most happy to rid the garden of the problem all summer long.

Imagine, for a moment, how a lady beetle must look to the poor soft-bellied aphids.  I'll bet that aphid mothers (who are parthenogenetic, thankfully unlike the vast majority of human females in history), have a hard time convincing aphid larvae to sleep at night, fearful as they must be of the red and black-spotted monsters in their closets.  Aphid mothers also probably make their children behave in supermarkets by telling them, "if you don't be good, the lady beetle will eat you."

Great picture, huh?  So good, in fact, that I added the source onto the picture, knowing that this one will probably spread out over the Internet and be used elsewhere.  I don't usually "watermark" my pictures, not really caring if anyone uses my pictures from this blog, as long as they're not making money off of them, and I'm not the world's greatest photographer anyway.  Please feel free to use this picture to educate others, just as you can any of my pictures.  I would appreciate it, however, if you acknowledge the source for pictures because in the long run, it'll bring people back to this blog.  I don't make any money from blogging, but I do get paid in readers, the only currency I care about.

eCollege Blogging Nominated!

I just found out this morning that Garden Musings is nominated for eCollege's Top Garden Blogs Award.  As an amateur gardener and blogger, jousting away at the Garden Gods out here in a "flyover" state, it is warming to know that somewhere, sometime, one of my readers considers this effort entertaining, if not actually worthwhile.

eCollege asked me to provide my number one tip for the aspiring gardener and here it is:
 
Photograph your garden often, and then write about it.

It's one thing to garden.  It's another entirely different thing to photograph your garden, because that helps you see your garden, or your garden composition, or that honeybee, through the eyes of another gardener.  And then it is a completely new level of gardening to write about your garden, in a personal diary, a webblog or a book, because writing about it (preferably for consumption by others), forces you to THINK about your garden.  I would encourage all of you to try a blog of your own because you are free to do anything you want with your own blog. Writing, I found again by blogging, is just a whole lot of fun if you start out without a specific endpoint in mind.

As I wrote in the first post, of July 28, 2010, I'm a veterinary surgeon and university professor who turned back to writing for some respite from my normal daily grind.  I wrote my first book of gardening essays, pictured below, just for me but it was enjoyed immensely by the other three people who found and read it.  I blog now so that another three or four people out there can enjoy the blog in the same way. The majority of my blogs are about garden philosophy, garden writing, or simply surviving the brutal gardening universe of the Kansas Flint Hills.  I spend a lot of time writing about roses because I'm an avid amateur rosarian, and I often feature my wife, Mrs. ProfessorRoush, in bone-dry humor pieces  because she's a convenient non-gardening muse.  I write for release, and I write to provoke my readers to think, and I write for love of gardening and writing itself.  If I happen to write about a garden topic from which you accidentally learn something useful, then that's just gravy on the mashed potatoes.

For the students who participate in eCollege, I'd appreciate your support for Garden Musings and I hope you find it both informative and fun.