Ground Breaking Banter - Rick
When people think of growing your own food, the image that comes to mind is typically a dedicated vegetable garden, with peas and carrots all in neat rows. But that’s not the only way you can grow food – you can just as easily incorporate edible plants into your garden or landscape. Many small fruits, like blueberries, blackberries, currants, and elderberries come in landscape-worthy varieties with plants as beautiful as the fruit is delicious, but there are other ways to creatively incorporate edible plants into your landscape. Rick grows garlic in his beds, and Stacey uses super-hot hot peppers as ornamentals in containers, just to name a few.
Join us on your favorite podcast platform or at the YouTube link above to hear our whole conversation on incorporating edible plants into your garden or landscape. And in the meantime, here’s this week’s Lim-A-Rick:
I’m out for a late night snack
It’s growing right out back
I’m wearing my bathrobe and slippers
Holding my favorite clippers
My munching by moonlight knack.
I did it. I ripped up my lawn
And now have something to feed on,
For all of my labors
I’m the talk of the neighbors
A suburbia phenomenon.
My buffet on the boulevard
For all to see no-holds-barred
I’m developing better habits
And eat better than the rabbits
Right in my very own yard.
Edible landscape has a lot of obvious choices: blueberries, grape vines, fruit trees, to name a few. But there are some maybe not so obvious choices worth considering as well – maybe even shrubs that you already have in your landscape and just don’t know are edible. Take, for example, summertime favorite rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus). If you live in USDA zone 5 or warmer, they’re virtually ubiquitous and have become such a standard part of landscapes that most people don’t realize they are edible. And, I think, pretty tasty, too.
We have a lot of different roses of Sharon I could feature, but I’m choosing Paraplu Pink Ink hibiscus for this episode. The Paraplu series is selected for extra large flowers, and Paraplu Pink Ink boasts huge white blooms with a center of deep pink streaks and a big, robust column of stamens in the center. It’s a beautiful and interesting take on your standard rose of Sharon that will turn heads.
As far as ediblity goes, all roses of Sharon are, in theory, equally edible. You want to pick them when the flowers are in the tube stage – they’ve emerged from the calyx and are showing color but are still a day or two from opening. You then just pluck that flower out of the calyx and eat it – you can slice it in salads, or eat it plain or fry it up lightly in some batter. What’s it taste like? Well, it’s very similar to its close relative okra – a little slimy (in a good way, I think!), very vegetal. Of course, you don’t have to eat the flowers, and if they are allowed to open, like other roses of Sharon they will sustain pollinators and attract hummingbirds.
Hardy USDA zones 5-9, reaches 5-8’ tall and 4’ wide so a good space saver. Full sun, deer resistant, drought tolerant once established. A great choice for an edible flowering hedge.
If you’d like to add Paraplu Pink Ink rose of Sharon – or any of the 320+ Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs – to your garden or landscape, you’ll find a list of local retailers here.
Gardening Mail Bag - Stacey
There are two main reasons why this plant is ailing:
1) Japanese maples in general do not thrive in open, exposed areas such as near a lake, and lace leaf varieties like this one will especially suffer. That lacy foliage exposes a huge amount of surface area on the leaf edges to wind and sun, substantially increasing the desiccation of the foliage, leaving it tattered, stressed, and dry.
2) Planting in potting mix like this causes major drainage issues, leading to overwatering/root rot. It’s called the bathtub effect: that potting mix is light and fluffy, with big air spaces between its particles. As such, when you water or it rains, that potting mix can hold a LOT of water. By comparison, your native soil is dense and has very small spaces between its particles. So what happens is that as the water starts to drain downward, the large volume held by the potting mix comes to a screeching halt and sits around the roots while it waits its chance to drain through. This leads to a similar effect as overwatering.
So, even though this plant has been through a lot and has been transplanted many times, it’s only hope at this point is to move it to a more protected, hospitable spot. I would recommend doing this in September, when the temperatures cool off a bit. When you transplant, do not add any potting mix to the hole, plant directly into the ground. After you transplant, mulch it with a good 2-3″ layer of shredded bark mulch and water it well. Continue to water until the ground freezes if rainfall is scarce. It’s still going to struggle for a couple of years, but with some luck and TLC, it should make it.
In your case, we’d recommend removing the additional stems. In the wild, these can be multi-stemmed small trees, and it looks like your plant is trying to do just that. So they’re really more new trunks than suckers, but can be treated the same as suckers and pruned off as close to the ground as possible. I’d try doing this in August – it is said that in summer, the hormones in some plants, like crabapples, are such that if you cut the suckers back then, they will not return.
IPM to the rescue here – yes, even in weed management! Get to know what are your worst weeds and that will help you deal with them better. For example, if you have perennial weeds, Preen will do nothing – it is a pre-emergent, which simply prevents seeds from germinating. It has no effect whatsoever on already growing weeds. Second, once you’ve dealt with the existing weeds, either by pulling or spraying, mulch the area with a good 4″ layer of shredded bark mulch which will do a lot to prevent them from coming back. You may find this link helpful as well.
Do you have a question for us? We’re happy to help! E-mail us or use the contact tab above. Due to high volume, we may not get to your question, so if you need an answer quickly, please reach out via the Proven Winners website.
Branching News - Rick
In this episode, we’re joined by Diane Devereaux, The Canning Diva, to talk about her new book, Meals in a Jar. As she tells us, she did not want this to be another chili and soup book, so it features tons of interesting recipes from around the world. What a great way to take advantage of summer’s bounty and leisure time to stock up for winter when things are busier! As she tells us, it took over three years for her to develop and test all the recipes before the book could become a reality.
Join us on your favorite podcast platform or at the You Tube link above to hear our whole conversation with Diane.
