Park Seed Garden Journal

I've gotten a few emails from readers in the past week asking what exactly "Wave Petunias®" are.  Television commercials for these flowers have been running lately on the gardening and lifestyle networks, and that has piqued a lot of interest in people, so I thought I would quickly address the question here.

Wave Petunias are a hybrid cultivar of petunias that was introduced several years ago.  This series was among the first of the true trailing petunias that spread effectively as a ground cover.  Waves spread quickly and with little care in full sun, making them excellent as border plants or even in large beds.  They are also special in that they produce flowers all along the long, low stems, which makes for an impressive display of blooms (generally from mid- or late-spring until first frost).  The low, trailing habit of most of these Petunias is also excellent for containers, especially hanging baskets.  New Wave Petunia varieties come out almost every year, too, which means that an impressive variety of habits and colors are available.

Earth Day is tomorrow, so today seemed like a good day to talk about how a little gardening can change the World.  In his piece in the New York Times Sunday, Michael Pollan makes a very convincing case for gardening to save the world.  Research indicates that growing some of your own food is one of the best things you can do for the environment, especially if you grow organically.  Modern agriculture methods use mammoth amounts of energy to produce our food.  Pollan's argument is that growing your own food is great for a variety of reasons.  First, it uses far less energy to produce the same amount of food.  Second, it doesn't need to be transported great distances (unless you have a very, very big yard).  Third, and, according to Michael Pollan, most important, is that growing your own food makes you realize just how capable of self-reliance you really are.  Once you grow your own vegetables or fruit, it's amazing how much easier other things that can make a difference start to seem.  You might start eyeing your rain gutters and envisioning easily-made rain barrels.  You might start thinking of building a compost pile or getting a composter every time you take out the trash.  You'll be amazed at how much difference you can make with just a little effort once you realize just how powerful you are.

As you gardeners know, spring cleaning isn’t just for in the house.  When the world starts to warm up, most gardeners like to spend almost one whole weekend getting their spring chores done.  While this is extraordinarily satisfying, most of us tend to be pretty disorganized about it and waste a lot of time and energy.  I for one find that my first weekend spent gardening is usually unexpected: the weather is great, and I am inspired to go out there and get something done.  And, while I do get a lot done that first warm weekend, it usually isn’t nearly as constructive as it could be if I had planned my time a little better.  What I like to do is make a list of the things that need doing and break them down into small, easily manageable tasks.  This way I can slowly get my garden and yard cleaned up and prepared for the real planting to start.  I usually try to get one task finished every day after work.  This way you can make twenty minutes of great time spent in the sunshine every day turn into a beautiful, ready-for-planting garden over the course of just a couple of weeks (if it even takes that long).  Then, when that perfect Saturday rolls around and you feel the spirits move you to garden, you’ll be able to do the most satisfying parts of gardening: planting!

For more on planning your gardening tasks, check out our selection of Month-By-Month Gardening books.

I suspect that we all love growing our own fruit.  The satisfaction of biting into a sweet, fantastic apple or pear that you've grown yourself can't be beat (nothing's better than fresh).  Blueberry plants are especially popular.  The fruit is not only delicious and extremely healthy, it's also versatile.  Blueberries are not only great raw, alone or in cream, but also baked in almost any way you can imagine.  The problem that many people have with growing blueberries is that many blueberry plants aren't the prettiest fruit plants available out there.  Park Seed has found one, however, that is one of the best-looking plants you'll ever see.  The foliage on the Blueberry Sunshine Blue is a glossy silvery-green color, and it's semi-evergreen to boot!  It's a dwarf blueberry bush with a dense habit that makes it a perfect container plant.  Sunshine Blue is easily attractive enough to stand alone as an ornamental potted plant, but come spring it is covered in bright pink flowers followed by masses of sweet, juicy dark blueberries.

Blueberry Sunshine Blue is also an exceptionally easy blueberry bush to grow.  It's self-pollinating, hardy all the way from Zone 5 to Zone 9, and it's more tolerant of high pH than most other blueberries.  Add to that the ease of container gardening (it's certainly easier to adjust the pH of a couple of gallons of soil than a patch of uncontained ground), and you've got one of the easiest blueberry bushes I've ever seen.

Every year at this time Azaleas take center stage on the minds of many people around the world for four days.  This is not because of any Azalea festival, but rather because they are featured so prominently at the Masters Golf Tournament, which is played just about sixty miles from us here at Park Seed.  Even if the announcers covering the tournament didn’t draw attention to the famous Azaleas of Augusta National, it would still be impossible to miss the showers of showy, brightly-colored blooms around the borders of so many famous golf holes. 

Of course, as most fans of the tournament (or just of the associated shrubbery) already know,  all sorts of fancy gardening tricks, including brining in plants from other parts of the country, are used to get those particular Azaleas to be in their fullest bloom for the exact weekend of the tournament.  None of that, though, is at all necessary to have fantastic Azaleas blooming big in your garden.  One of the main reasons that Azaleas are so popular is that they’re remarkably low-maintenance flowering shrubs, especially the Encore Azaleas.  If you choose your planting location well, your Azaleas should be some of the easiest plants in your garden to care for.

Azaleas do best in loose, well-drained soil.  If you’re planting them in hard-packed dirt, just mix in some compost or sand to the soil around the root area to give them drainage.  They prefer slightly acidic soil, so watch the pH around them, especially if there’s a lot of cement nearby that could break down and lower it.  Plant Azaleas shallow and keep other plants that might compete away from the root structure.  They’ll do best with some mulch down; this will regulate moisture and temperature, as well as providing most of the fertilizer that the bushes will need.  If you prune your Azaleas, be sure to prune after they shrub is done flowering, but no later than mid-summer (around the end of July).  If you keep these tips in mind, your Azaleas can easily provide you many years of trouble-free spring blooms.

Contrary to popular belief, Tulips are not native to Holland.  These beautiful bulbs actually come from the Middle East, from flowers that look somewhat different from the tulips that you are probably used to.  These Middle Eastern flowers are called Species Tulips or Wild Tulips.  Species Tulips are the stock from which those legendary Dutch breeders have been creating Hybrid Tulips, the plants you’re most likely used to, for centuries.  Because of the huge variety of Hybrid Tulips that have been created over the years, there are far, far fewer types of Species Tulip available, especially commercially.

For many years it was extremely rare to see Species Tulips in Western gardens, but over the last few years they’ve started to become popular.  This is partly because of a general movement toward more "natural" plants, but mostly it is because Species Tulips are much closer to true perennials than Hybrid Tulips are.  Most Hybrids become less vigorous from year to year and usually need to be replaced after the second or third blooming season.  Species tulips, when planted in the right conditions, will thrive for several years.  Some will actually spread quite well in more Northern climates with just the right conditions.  Species Tulips prefer very well-drained, almost rocky soil and full sun.  They tend to bloom significantly earlier than their hybrid counterparts, and some varieties of Species Tulips produce multiple blooms on each stem. 

Hybrid Tulips, on the other hand, are typically much larger plants, producing larger and more well-formed blooms.  The bloom color of Hybrids is often more intense, and many gardeners prefer the broader selection that Hybrid Tulips offer.  Because there are so many more varieties of Hybrids available, gardeners are much more likely to find just the right specialized tulip for their garden.  While most Species Tulips bloom very early, planting a few different varieties of Hybrid Tulips can mean blooms spanning most of Spring.  Many of us also prefer the more ordered, clean look of the single blooms that Hybrid Tulips are known for.  Either way, both Hybrid and Species Tulips are beautiful, easy flowers to grow.  Just consider the particular needs of your garden when choosing your tulip bulbs this autumn.