Gardening Basics - Monthly Tips

Monthly Tips

June - Plant of the Month

Syringa pubescens ssp. patula 'Miss Kim' - Miss Kim Lilac

Certain plants compel your attention, calling you into the garden like sirens - but without the bad end. Plants can beckon with bright flowers or showy leaves but to my mind, an enchanting scent is the ultimate enticement into the garden.

One of these benign sirens came into full bloom, and more importantly, full scent toward the end of May this year. I was on the deck when I first caught a whiff of something luscious. If I were a dog, my nose would have twitched and my ears would have pricked as I looked around to locate the source of the fragrance, and there, 10' away was Syringa pubescens ssp patula 'Miss Kim'. Quite the mouthful for such a sweet little plant.

'Miss Kim' is a dwarf lilac. She doesn't look like the standard lilacs you see all over Seattle. She is dainty and diminutive, generally reaching 5-6' x 5'-6'. Unlike her larger cousins, dwarf Korean lilacs don't send up suckers and try to form a thicket. Generally speaking, 'Miss Kim' lilacs seem to bloom like mad but for a relatively short period of time. The bloom time also seems to runs a little later than the larger lilacs.

Dwarf Korean lilacs are easy-going about soils, are moderately drought tolerant and like sun. For that delicious lilac scent in a smaller, better looking shrub, look no further than that temptress 'Miss Kim'.

June - Tip of the Month

Weeds

Weeds. I've got them all. You name it and it is somewhere in my yard. Blackberry? Check. Morning glory? Check. Horsetail? Check. Ivy? Check. Dandelions? Check. Other sundry weeds? Check. So what does one do to manage weeds?

First, give up hope of eradicating all weeds. You could napalm your yard and soon weeds would be dropping in from birds, creeping in from the neighbors and drifting in on the breeze. The idea is to hopefully eradicate some and reduce and manage others

There are two basic categories of weeds, annual and evil perennial. The annuals grow from seed, flower, set seed and die in one year. They are usually prolific in their seed production but relatively easy to remove. The keys to handling annual weeds are -

Don't let them set seed. Ideally pull them before they flower and you can toss them on the compost pile. I've left annual weeds lying on the ground and they have re-rooted themselves and/or set seed after they were pulled up if they were in flower.
Cover the ground with plants or mulch. Many, many seeds are just lying in wait, hoping for the light necessary to germinate. You can foil them by mulching with compost or wood chips, thus reducing the light that reaches the soil. The shade of your own plants will also prevent germination of many seeds.
Disturb the soil as little as possible. Stir up the soil and new weed seeds come to the surface where they can get light and water. This is another reason to plant an area with a permanent planting, ideally with evergreens. The soil is always covered and you seldom disturb it.

Perennial weeds - blackberry, morning glory, horsetail, ivy - are all much more pernicious and I'll cover them next month.

So get out there and weed, mulch and plant to lessen your chores and keep weeds at bay.