GROOMS GARDENING: Choose running vines carefully

Published 1:00 pm Saturday, April 4, 2020

April has arrived and we are still on self-imposed quarantine. 

I hope each and everyone of you are healthy and not taking any chances on getting coronavirus. I have friends who say they are getting cabin fever and about to go crazy. Maybe I am crazy, but I actually enjoy having a good excuse to stay home and not have to be going somewhere almost everyday. 

I am about due for a grocery store trip and had a doctor’s appointment this past week, as of right now I don’t know if I will be keeping it or not. My knee doctor canceled the follow-up appointment which was on the 13th.

I want to unload my greenhouse but I think I’m going to wait until Easter and see if we get a cool spell. Some plants are fading away as others are growing on top of them and capturing all the sun, others are doing well and they are the ones smothering out smaller things. 

I guess one more week will not be too long to wait, I sure would hate to get them outside and then have a light frost and damage new growth and flowers. 

All of my flower beds are just huge weed beds, the amaryllis have sent up scapes and are blooming above most of the weeds. Painful knees do not make a good gardener, nor nice weedless flower beds. I keep planning to spray herbicides but every time I have the enthusiasm and energy the wind is blowing.

I have got to spray my pine cone ginger bed as these gingers are usually late to come up and that hateful, horrible plague called Alstroemeria has tried to overtake the ginger bed. If I spray within the next week or so the gingers are protected under the ground and hopefully I will be able to kill back part of the Alstroemeria, as I do not know anything that will totally kill that stuff.

It is in a long bed next to the back of the house also and is trying to smother out Iris, amaryllis and even hydrangea bushes. I sure would love to have a laser weeder and could just point the laser light at a plant and it would go poof and evaporate. I saw a propane flame shooting weeder but that is still in the future for commercial sales.

I have always enjoyed container planting but that was a very small percentage of what I grew, if I can’t catch up and overcome all of these weeds, I may have to switch to container growing in the future.

Skinks, the lizard-like reptiles with bright blue on their tails, have moved into the greenhouse. I don’t mind them being in there, but I sure do not want them to eat the little green tree frogs or the many lizards living in there. Skinks grow larger than lizards and when Googled it said they eat worms, plant pests as well as small rodents, lizards and moths and butterflies. 

There’s a lot scuddling around the plants under the carport, and not nearly as many lizards as there used to be, so skinks may be eating the lizards.

Every few days, a new group of plants come into bloom. Big lilac clusters of wisteria blooms are hanging from vines as the vines twine, climb and wend over shrubs and up into trees. 

I would never advise anyone to get wisteria and plant it in their yard unless they buy the much slower growing and easier to control native species. The wisteria species that grows wild in the woods and grows very rapidly each summer is an oriental type that is difficult to maintain and almost impossible to control. 

It is lovely when it blooms in spring, but you will have to fight it the other three seasons of the year to keep it from taking over and strangling everything it encounters. This oriental type was imported for its beauty, but like many other imports it has no natural enemies and grows unchecked.

If you want wisteria in your garden, buy from a reputable company and purchase Wisteria frutescens, “Amethyst Falls” or W. macrostachya, “Blue Moon,” for plants that are manageable and beautiful as well as fragrant.

My dear friend, Betty Becton, has “Amethyst Falls” in her garden and it is beautiful and very manageable. The blooms are tightly packed with flowers and grow about six to seven inches long. “Blue Moon” produces very fragrant foot-long clusters of lilac-blue blossoms that cascade from the stems.

Honeysuckle is another blooming vine that can easily take over a portion of your garden if you get the wild variety that grows in the woods. If you purchase honeysuckle and the description says it is a vigorous grower do not buy that species. 

The plants send long, long runners underground and can come up anywhere within about 12 feet of the original plant. This is also a very difficult to control vine, but there is a domestic type that is easier to keep managed. One beautiful red flowering variety is “Major Wheeler.”

It will bloom for several months and has beautiful groups of brightly colored red blooms that attract hummingbirds and butterflies. This species, will not produce long underground runners nor try to take over. The botanical name is Lonicera sempervirens, it is good for a fence or trellis. A yellow flowering variety with a wonderful fragrance, reblooming habit and greatly restrained growth is “John Clayton,” the botanical name is Lonicera sempervirens sulphuera. It is also irresistible to butterflies and hummingbirds.

We are supposed to stay inside; riding in your car is inside also, don’t let the coronavirus keep you from enjoying the beauty of this spring.

I am out of space, see you next week.