The Frugal Gardener

Spooky Black Plants for Halloween and Beyond

 

(Aeonium arboreum) ‘Zwartkop’ and purple leaved oxalis

    Black hued plants are a horticultural phenomenon. No wonder, because their leaves and flowers offer boldness and drama in the garden. Black plants are extraordinary when placed next to contrasting orange pumpkins and autumn decorations. Because of their recent popularity, expect to find many entrancing varieties of black plants to haunt your garden.
Gardeners drawn to the novelty of this color should look for the stunning black elder (Sambucus nigra) ‘Black Beauty’ or ‘Black Lace’ at a plant sale or local nursery. Are you wondering if black is for you? Then look at the silky petals of ‘Nigra’ the black hollyhock and you will fall for black’s magic.
    Karen Platt in her book, Black Magic and Purple Passion, wrote, “Black plants are dressed to thrill and seduce. They possess a come-hither quality.” Besides for being spooky and mysterious, black is sexy. Indeed most lingerie is black. Black is a stable in closets because it sets off other colors and flatters figures. Although there is nothing to slim in the garden there are plenty of colors that black will compliment.
    There are a couple of tricks to using black in the garden. The secret is to place plants where they stand out, not buried in the back of the border where their hues disappears. Black is always dramatic but such a dark color is best offset by contrasting foliage plants. Try a backdrop of bright gold, grey or chartreuse foliage. Such hues, not only highlight dark colors, but in turn their brightness is balanced by black.
    For a more subdued combination team dark plants with pastel colors like lavender, pink or peach. White flowers and silver foliage contrast well with black. Even ordinary green looks it’s best when paired with black.
    To add some black color in the fall without a complete garden makeover, try two wee plants in the viola family. Look for ‘Bowles Black’ Johnny-jump-up (Viola tricolor) and ‘Black Magic’(Viola cornuta).

The latter is a pansy, meaning it has larger flowers that are about an inch across. These flowers are truly black with a tiny yellow eye in the center. Additionally ‘Black Magic’ is more heat tolerant than most pansies so it continues to flower late in the spring. ‘Bowles Black’ has petite flowers common to all Johnny-jump-ups, also called violas. The flowers are a shiny eggplant color and grow in generous mounds.
    To grow all types of violas and pansies, place them in morning sun, but out of the scorching afternoon light. Space them about six to ten inches apart in well draining soil because pansies don’t like soggy roots. Every time a pansy dries out and wilts, the plant is stressed and won’t flowers as well. Prevent this stress by regular watering, especially on hot or windy days.
    Andean Silver Leaf Sage (Salvia discolor) has black flowers that bewitch. This woody shrub gets large about three feet by three feet. This shrub forms a big mound without any pruning. The leaves are beautiful all year with velvety, grayish white on the underside and a muted green top. Moreover, this plant attracts hummingbirds, tolerates poor soil and gets by with little water.
    ‘William Guiness’ (Aquilegia vulgaris) is a beautiful, double columbine with flowers in deep purple and white. The purple is so dark that it looks black and contrasts enchantingly with it’s white corollas. The flowers rise two feet over beautiful, bluish green, delicate foliage. Combine with yellow flowers or golden leaves for a hauntingly lovely show. These perennials benefit from fall planting in warm climates, and like pansies need morning sun and afternoon shade.
    This is just a tiny sample, sort of like eating a mini Halloween candy bar, of the numerous black beauties you can grow. As Karen Platt summed up, “Black plants are sexy, fantastic, mysterious and utterly stunning with a velvety quality found in few other colors.” Turn on the black light in your garden this Halloween!

Seven Black Flowering Plants and Seven Black Leaved Plants:
(Aeonium arboreum) ‘Zwartkop’
(Euphorbia amygdaloides) ‘Purpurea’ Wood spurge
(Heuchera) ‘Chocolate Veil’ Coral bells
(Ipomoea batatas) ‘Blackie’ ornamental Sweet potato
(Ophiopogon planiscapus) ‘Nigrescens’ black Mondo grass
(Oxalis regnellii triangularis) Purple-leaved Shamrock
(Pennisetum setaceum) ‘Purpureum’ Purple fountain grass
Flowers
(Alcea rosea) ‘Nigra’ hollyhock
(Aquilegia vulgaris) ‘William Guiness’ Columbine
(Canna) ‘Black Knight’
(Salvia discolor) Andean silver leaf Sage
(Scabiosa atropurpurea) ‘Ace of Spades’ Pincushion flower
(Viola cornuta) ‘Black Magic’
(Viola tricolor) ‘Bowles Black’ Johnny-jump-up

 

Fun Apps to use on your photos

 On the surface, this topic doesn't seem to relate to gardens, or gardening. However, most gardeners love to take photos of their hard work and their masterpieces, even if it is just one bloom like the above photo of my first rudbeckia of the season!

I hope you explore some of these apps, they are cheap or free and no I am not sponsored by them. (Although, if they want to send me some dough for gardening projects feel free). The app I used on the above and two below photos is called PIP Camera. You can take an instant photo to use or one of your older photos. My only complaint is that sometimes they have the words "insta mag" somewhere on the edge of the project if you use a "classic" image. It is easy to clip off the advertising when doing your final edit. I love the bubbles.

This app also has grids, freestyle and templates. It is interesting to see how summer roses look in a grid with a fabric style backdrop. You can use different photos for for the foreground and for the background. I used this app to create a photo showcasing my granddaughters first lost tooth and set my morning walk photos on a film strip.See below.


    The postcard template came from an app called PIC Collage. They have grids and templates.

I love tilt shift photography. You know the photos where beach goers look like toys, or city-scapes seem like model landscapes? Well, there is an app for that called tiltShiftGen.  This works best for larger landscape style photographs, like of the fair or New Orleans.

    Finally and perhaps vainly, there is an app called insta beauty. At the risk of sounding self obsessed, I like this app for when you have a photo you like of yourself ( rare occurrence for me) but you wish you could add a touch of lipstick or soften a blemish. It is fun to play with but save your original photos because it is easy to add too much makeup, or become too pale from softening!!
As Elliot Erwitt said, " Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."

Rose Myths debunked and a cheat sheet for summer rose care

Summer rose care for those in a hurry

~Constantly remove dead roses and inspect for insects.
~Water deeply twice a week and add a thick layer of mulch.Fertilize monthly with product high in phosphorous
~Prune lightly while removing dead flowers. Aim to remove crossing branches and any awkward branches.

Debunking Rose Myths
    Summer brings visions of roses to gardeners. They imagine vases filled to the brim with glorious, fragrant roses and a garden laden with these summer jewels.
Yet many good gardeners secretly feel overwhelmed by the thought of growing roses. Ironically, the abundance of talk, perfect roses on Instagram and pinterest add to fears that roses are tricky.
    Push your anxiety aside because roses are tough. In ghost towns, roses grow though neglected for decades. Tombstone, Arizona has the world’s largest rose, planted in 1885 and it currently covers 8,000 square feet. It is unlikely Wild West gunfighters gave this rose special, or time consuming treatment. Roses are amazingly easy to cultivate.
Myth Number One: You must prune roses properly, and perfectly.

Don’t be afraid to simply whack the rose back. Keep in mind the objective is to reshape the rose; not to be graded by fellow gardeners. Prune away crisscrossing canes, and remove any small, spindly canes.
Furthermore, if winter pruning was overlooked, your rose won’t die. Instead, your rose may flower earlier because it won’t have to recover from a hard pruning. The downside of missing winter pruning is that your rose may sprawl. However, if you prune lightly, and continuously during the growing season, your rose will recover a pleasing shape.

Myth number two: Roses need buckets of fertilizer, complicated tonics and specially formulated elixirs.

Admittedly to get roses worthy of a blue ribbon at the fair, you might need frequent application of fertilizer. Truly most gardeners want their roses to stay healthy and ornament the garden. To achieve this result, you can get by with a less rigorous feeding schedule. Surprisingly, roses thrive when fed monthly, or even bimonthly during the growing season.

When choosing a fertilizer, keep in mind that roses don’t require specially designated rose food. To thrive, roses need nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Their bloom are prompted by high levels of phosphorous. Consequently any fertilizer with a high phosphorous content brings flowers. Knowing this frees you to buy any super bloom or high phosphorous fertilizer on sale. The second number in the sequence on the fertilizer label indicates the phosphorous content, so pick accordingly. In summer sometimes roses stop blooming from heat stress but don’t fear, they will bud when the temperature lowers.
If you garden organically and have enriched your soil, you can fertilize even less than monthly. Many companies make organic rose food, such as Dr. Earth, and these can be applied every other month during the growing season.
Experts recommend rose fertilizers because they contain additional nutrients these flowers enjoy, such as magnesium and calcium. What a rose needs is soil rich in organic matter, six hours of sun per day and regular water in summer heat.

 

the heart of the rose

Myth three: Roses are susceptible to diseases and insects.

 

Again, this is fiction. Modern roses have been hybridized to be disease resistant. Moreover, San Diego County’s climate prevents the top three things that plague roses in other parts of the country: extreme cold, black spot, and Japanese beetles. If you live in parts of the country that get black spot and beetles, cross you fingers you won’t get them, but if you do look up organic methods to cure these aliments.
Roses may get aphids in spring or they may develop some rust or powdery mildew late in the summer. These pests and problems should be short-lived in healthy roses. If you have a rose that continually has such issues, then dig it up. Replace it with a robust rose, less prone to such problems, life is too short for a fussy plant.
Myth Four: Roses are water hogs.

Fortunately for water-restricted Californians, roses need less water than once believed. It is true that without supplemental water in the summer, roses lose leaves and refuse to bloom. To prevent this, water twice a week deeply in summer and add thick mulch to hold in the moisture.
In selecting a new rose, choose one known for it’s drought tolerance. Cecile brunner and Lady Banksia are old fashioned climbers that are low maintenance, pest free and can survive on winter rains alone. Oddly, even hybrid tea roses can get by with less water than is usually prescribed, although they may have less flowers.

Lady Banksia

‘Iceberg’ roses require even less water than hybrid teas, as do small sizes of David Austin’s, English roses like ‘Perdita,’ ‘Ann Boleyn,’ or ‘Fair Bianca.’ ‘Perdita’ is especially drought tolerant.
Beneath the rose’s false reputation for being high maintenance, there lies a carefree plant. Oh by the way, if someone wants to give you high praise for all the hours invested in your beautifully abundant roses, let them. The fact that it was hardly any work at all, will just be our little secret.

 

 

Pick A Perfect Pepper for Herb of 2016

    Peter Piper may have picked a peck of pickled peppers, but could he grow them? Yes, it’s easy! Peppers have spiced up gardens for centuries. Peppers are a pretty plant with plentiful fruit in a plethora of shapes, colors, and flavors. Shapes range from tiny to large; tall to squat. Peppers radiate flaming hues like red, yellow, orange, green, and purple. Their flavor reaches from the very mild to the burning hot.
    People are addicted to the unique, fruity heat of the pepper. Gardeners enjoy growing peppers because they produce, with little effort. No wonder peppers (Capsicum ssp) are the hot herb of the year for 2016.
Peppers are members of the nightshade (solanaceae) family which includes potatoes, tomatoes and eggplants. Countries vie to produce the hottest pepper. Indeed, there are companies that only offer items made with peppers, like sauces, powders, and marinades. Our appetite for peppers continues to burn.
    To avoid scorched tongues, a pharmacist, Wilbur Scoville, devised a method to measure the heat of peppers: the Scoville rating. The bell pepper is rated zero while the scorching Habanero’s are rated 60,000.
An additional benefit to growing peppers is that eating them may give you a ‘runner’s high.’ Scientists think this reaction is from the pepper’s heat (and the slight pain it creates) which stimulates the release of endorphins in the brain. The fire comes from the capsaicin, an alkaloid unique to peppers. They impart an intriguing mix of pleasure and pain that adds a special something to dishes with hot pepper.

Pepper’s Power

    Some may be perplexed why peppers are the “herb” of the year. The definition of an herb is any plant that is used either for culinary purposes, or to make crafts, or as a medicine. Obviously peppers have been used in cooking for centuries, but many are surprised to know the pepper’s medicinal and nutritional benefits. Peppers are a good source of vitamins A and C and they also may help burn fat. Capsicum, especially in high amounts, seems to increase metabolism for at least twenty minutes after being eaten. Hot peppers contain anti-inflammatory properties that ease migraines, arthritis and help clear up a stuffy head and nose. Adding hot peppers to soups and sauces helps fight colds, sinusitis, and bronchitis.

Grow Hot

    Peppers grow easily from seed, seemingly as fast as a wildfire in hot weather. However, you need to make sure the soil has warmed into the 50’s before you plant. Farmers used to preform a bare bottom test to make sure the soil was warm, but you can just wait until May or early June, unless mooning your neighbors is in order. Growing peppers from seed allows you to explore the unusual varieties, but with the rising popularity of backyard edibles, you can often buy some intriguing transplants. Peppers take between sixty to ninety days to mature. Starting out with transplants speeds up the process. If you go for the slower route, make sure you follow planting directions on the seed packet.
    If you are in a hurry, seek the ‘short season’ pepper varieties at your nursery, like ‘Ace,’ or ‘Yankee Bell.’ To pick pepper plants properly look for a sturdy stem and healthy leaves. Avoid transplants with blossoms or fruit, since you want the plant’s energy to go into establishing healthy roots before fruiting.
    Prepare the soil by adding compost or amendments and a general, organic vegetable fertilizer. Peppers need at least six hours of sun. The more time in full sun, the better quantity ND quality fruit you will get. Space the plants between 18-24 inches apart, in rows that are at least 24 inches apart. Give each pepper plenty of space because they grow rapidly. If they are too close they can stunt each other’s growth.
    After planting, add mulch around the peppers so the soil will retain moisture. As the peppers develop, switch over to a fertilizer higher in phosphorous (the second number listed on the fertilizer). If your fertilizer is too high in nitrogen (the first number listed), you may get flourishing leaves but little fruit.
    Peppers don’t like soggy conditions, but they do need about an inch of water a week. In addition, avoid watering overhead because water sitting on pepper’s leaves fosters disease. Watch out for spider mites and aphids on your pepper plants. If this crops up, try an organic insecticide.
    When most pepper are green they are immature, excepting jalapeños and a few other lesser known varieties that are ripe when still green. As most peppers ripen they turn a unique color, like yellow, red, orange or even brown. To determine the pepper’s ripeness, you must learn the goal color. If you are aiming for a heat, remember the riper the hotter. When you harvest plenty of peppers, try freezing them. To freeze them, simply dice or slice your peppers and spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet. When they are frozen, place them into freezer bags or an airtight container.
Pick a perfect pepper for your garden this year. They will fire up your yard and light up your dishes in 2016.

Peppers are perfect to make flavored vinegar!