this is our first garden in our first home and i need some help. both my DH and i know very little about gardening. firstly, is this boxwood? it's leaves are yellowing (?dying) and i don't know why. i pruned it a few weeks ago to shape it. was i not supposed to? why does it look like this.....
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there is so much to learn!!!! i am actually getting quite excited. thanks for all your help, mary anne and everyone. this is going to be a long but hopefully rewarding process as i begin to cultivate my mind as well as my garden....
thanks for helping me get started :)
some stores offer soil testing kits like Loblaws.
and welcome to the wonderful hobby of gardening! an endlessly frustrating but also very pleasing one.
are available at most garden centres and they will give you an idea. You also should read about "tilth" in a good basic garden book -- you need to see whether there is too much clay or sand and the soil test kit won't tell you that. Usually the test kit comes with recommendations on what to add if your soil is deficient in one thing or another.
The main nutrients are nitrogen, phosporous, potassium - hence the numbers N-P-K on fertilizer boxes or bags - the numbers relate to percentages. Basically, high N number is for green, leafy plants that don't have real big flowers, high P number is good for flowers and root growth (you will see high P numbers on specialty rose food, for example) and K depends on your local conditions (for example, in Albetra you don't need a lot of K because the soil is already alkaline).
There are also specialty fertilizers for conditions that the plants especially like -- for example, azaleas and rhododendrons like acid conditions and there is special food for them and for evergreens that also like that. There are also other trace elements that may be useful - Marjorie Harris always adds "fritted trace elements" (basically a bunch of metalic elements) to her potting soil, because she says it works well for the plants. Ed Lawrence, the head gardener at Rideau Hall recommends adding iron to lawns because it helps to green them up.
Other additives can include peat moss, to help increase water retention properties; compost to add organic material; sand to improve drainage, etc.
A good basic garden book can give you the fundamentals of this.
thanks so much for your valuable and much appreciated input. i am off the the garden store now as you have inspired me to take action!
thanks again! :)
Actually if you search for bleeding heart on the perennial.com site, you will find the one you have -- "Dicentra spectabilis" and it has this to say about its habits in the summer time: "After flowering, the plants should be sheared back to 6 inches tall, to rejuvenate the foliage. Even still, these often go completely dormant by midsummer, to return again the following spring." So, there you go!
I'm not familiar with that one, Junebug, but I looked at its description and it seemed to be a good one. You are right, you need a good comprehensive one that covers cultivation methods, soil preparation, pests, pruning and all sorts. When I was starting out, I found the Reader's Digest one to be very good, although it covers more than just perennials. Lois Hole, the Lt-Governor of Alberta, has a good one too.
Basically, what you want to look for is one that has a lot of advice, as you describe, and also one that has more than a little Cancon, since our zones are quite different than in the US.
You may also wish to use reference books like the American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening and American Horticultural Society A to Z of Garden Plants. Trevor Cole, a Canadian gardener who actually lives here in Ottawa is a co-author on the first one and was heavily involved in the second. They are both too expensive for the casual gardener, but can be invaluable for reference, and your library should have them somewhere around. I own both of them, but then I am a tad more addicted to gardening that most folks ;-))
how do you determine the nutrient compostion of your soil? it is obviously important. also the acidity or alkalinity - is that variable with regions? sorry, probably really basic questions...
thanks for your help maryanne and dreamer...
can you or anyone else recommend a good (perennial) gardening book for a beginner gardener, and i mean a REAL beginner? there are so many out there that i don't know what is really good. i bought one, however it's just full of really nice pictures. need one with more details about the plants and their growing conditions. i found the "perrenial gardeing guide - 4th ed." by john m. valleau...heard of it? it was listed on the perennial.com site....
fertilizer is important all through the year. I have a well-established perennial garden (about 4 years on) and I fertilize throughout the year, about every 2 weeks. I also had to adjust the nutirents in the second year because I found out the soil I had was deficient in phosphorous, so I added some triphosphate granules and that helped a lot to move the blossoms on. I also apply mushroom compost every spring or fall. And becasue I use a good thick shredded bark mulch like you have, I also want to add nitrogen regularly -- hence the good old standby 20-20-20.
I guess I was so eager to peer at the photo!! if it is in small hedges around the garden plot then I would suggest it is probably boxwood. And I think you have probably not killed it and don't worry, jsut wait until you see how it goes thorughout the year. Then onces you ahve seen how it behaves all season, you will get a better idea of how it might fit into your plans for your new scheme.
Re: the bleeding heart -- no, they typically only bloom in spring, and how long they will keep the bloom depends on where you are and local weather. And just what is "spring" depends on the variety and where you are located. My fern-leaf b.h. is still very much in bloom here in Ottawa, for example, but it is in a north-facing bed that is often a couple weeks behind ones that are in another orientation and we have also had a rather cool bunch of nights, with lots of rain in April. Same idea as before -- you are new to the yard, so take the first year to observe - where does the sun shine? for how long? is it afternoon or morning sun? how does the plant behave throughout the season? etc. Make lots of notes, and then as you plan your garden, you can ahve those reference points to help you decide on new plants and if and where to move the existing ones.
i was wondering about fertilizer and whether i should be using it... the landscaping was done maybe 2-3 years ago so it's still a fairly "new" perennial garden. i imagine it'll grow more "lush" with each passing year.
thanks for the tidbits about mulch near the stems - who knew? i'll try all your suggestions :)
I can't tell (need my bifocals!)
here is a better shot of the ?boxwood. does it help? it is placed on each corner of the yard in an L-shape as small hedges, about 2 ft high.
you are both right about the bleeding heart (they are near the front of the yard - the tall ones) i do recall pink and white hanging flowers. do they not last all season? they are in partial shade as the garden is north facing and has our neighbour's large tree to the east of it. the ground is covered with mulch which i understand helps keep the soil moist.
this is a real learning experience for me. i think i'd like to change somethings about the garden but will wait until next year. i'd like to see what else happens this year...
I see you have plenty of shredded bark mulch (am I right?). You might want to just pull some of it away so it is not in direct contact with the base of the stems. When you have mulch it can also take a lot of the nnitorgen from the soil and leave not much for the plant to keep its leaves nice and green, so you may want to fertilize as I suggested bafore - in this case, with the 20-20-20, which will do for root growth as well.
There is very little you can do completely and irretrievably *wrong* in a garden, unless you actaully cut something completely down or have winter kill, and about the latter, there is nothing you can do anyhow! You are lucky to be starting with a new garden with *mysteries*! but there will always be mysteries regardless...
I'm not sure either whether your shrub is boxwood -- need a frame of reference - maybe another pic? How tall is it? how wide? where does it live? how big are the leaves? The dead-looking stuff, I would say is definitely dead - it may be a branch that you pruned that then fell down into the bush and has died since. Is it attached? if it is attached still, then it may have been bent and/or therefore broken and that is why it is dead-looking. If it is not bent or broken, but still dead-looking, that is a problem, and I don't know what the solution is. You will need patience, I think, to wait and see what happens form now on. The livign leaves on that plant look good to me - very green and vigorous, so I would not worry for the moment.
The other plant, as Dreamer says, is a bleeeding heart - I think the most common variety. I used to have some that got looking this way after they had bloomed. Just make sure it is in the right kind of spot (shady or partially shady) and that it seems to be neither too wet (and therefore possibly rotting) nor too dry. Rot is a big problem because it can kill it, dead, now. Drying out is not too much of a problem, especially if it has finished blooming, because, being a perennial, it will come back next year. You might want to fertilize with a good fertilizer with the middle number higher than the other 2, or with a good all-round fertilizer (like 20-20-20) because that will help grow and strengthen the roots for next year, although this looks like a pretty mature specimen.
I can't tell if the first picture is a boxwood. They have very small leaves, so I would need a size reference. One of the gurus that come on this board may be able to tell you.
The second picture is of a Bleeding Heart. It is a shade loving plant, and very hardy. I don't know why it is yellowing...I have several and they are all healthy, with little care. Does it get too much sun and not enough water, perhaps? Maybe you should move it to a spot where it will get just dappled sunlight - give it lots of water when you move it. Bleeding hearts are great, long living perennials.
I understand your difficulty...I had the same problem when I moved into my current home - lots of flower beds full of things I was clueless about. I made a ton of mistakes before I figured things out!
there is this plant....what is it and why is it yellowing?