Melissa, I agree with you that organic matter on top can block water from penetrating below. We dumped grass clippings last fall, and my tomatoes got wet feet in the spring, but it's bone dry below. Other years we got better result rototilling the grass clisspings INTO the soil.

I have a few shady areas - which ones of the Hybrid Musk and Gallicas are your favorite? My kid doesn't like thorns, so I'm interested in the least thorny ones. Thanks in advance.

Melissa, it sounds like you are having exactly the same weather we are - cold frosty nights, but sunny sunny days - we are expected to get up to 70 degrees (F) this afternoon! My garden work sounds like yours too, but on a much smaller scale. My husband and i just got out into the garden for the first time, after 6 weeks of holidays, and six family birthday parties!
Yesterday I was crawling around underneath a 6 year old Le Vesuve (8 ft tall by 6 ft wide). There is evidently some confusion about whether it is a tea/china hybrid or just a china. It certainly grows like a china! Crazy typical china zigging & zagging of the canes - sprouting at all angles, everywhere. It builds up a lot of dead canes at the bottom, but I have realized over the years that that is what allows this rose to be a large free standing bush - it props itself up on the structure of these dead canes. So, I generally leave the ones it is actually resting on, and just take out the dead ones that are waving around in the air. Yesterday when we were digging up some Jupiter's Beard that had established itself directly under the Le Vesuve, I realized that there were tiny rose canes tangled up with the Jupiter's Beard. After examination, it turned out that one of the canes that was lying right on the ground had rooted itself, and had put out several new canes! I was so happy - have been meaning to root this rose, which is from a rooted cutting from the huge old one that lived in our garden for about 100 years. Hadn't gotten around to it, and it takes 6 months anyway, so I was delighted. We dug up the baby rose (which was still linked to the mother bush by a living cane). It did have its own roots, so I planted it in a big pot and pruned the canes to about 6 inches, and it looks like it should survive - Yay!

Never know what you are going to find when you start cleaning up around areas, that in this case, had not really been cleaned up for 2+ years....... I have found so many multiplied daffodil bulbs, volunteer iris, volunteer Jupiter's Beard, volunteer fox gloves, volunteer hollyhocks, etc., that I needed to move that I will not have to buy any flowers to plant this year!

D0 hope it rains - we have had NONE since Oct, when we should have had 20+ inches by now. My garden is small, so we turned our irrigation system back on, and I am watering all of the many many pots by hand, but this is ridiculous! Our weather forecast is sunny for the forseeable future - lovely weather to go out into the garden, but not good long term!

Jackie

I am a firm believer in thick, thick mulches, but they have to go on top of watered soil. It's a bad idea to mulch when the soil is already dry. I wait for rain or I pre-water. We are apparently having a drought year (we're due), so I will need to pre-water when the time comes, which will be in a month or thereabouts. We've had almost no rain so far this rain-year (measured July 1 through June 30).

One does not always have the choice, but I prefer to use straw mulch on the vegetable beds (annuals) and wood-product mulches on the perennial, shrub, and tree areas. This mimics what happens in nature. There is some evidence that the kind of microorganisms that thrive in such environments are the ones that are most beneficial to those classes of plants. Of course, free or low cost trumps these considerations. Almost any organic mulch is better than no organic mulch.

Rosefolly

Hi Jackie: I enjoy hearing from how Le Vesuve rooted itself by just lying there. That's how my Mom rooted her Rose of Sharons in Michigan: she made the canes lie down, then pour dirt on top. It worked really well even in hot and dry summer. I tried cutting branches of Rose of Sharons, and buried them in shady wet soil, but they didn't root even with non-stop rain.

Rosefolly recommended the book, "Complete Roses: featuring 100 easy-growing favorites" by Field Roebuck. It's excellent! The best out of 6 books on roses I read. It has illustration on Propagation by soil Layering (make the branches lie down, then pour soil on top) This is what happened to your Le Vesuve's cane lying there and rooted itself. This process takes only 2 months!

Hi Melissa;
I truly enjoy reading your posts. Your descriptions are so well written and detailed that I almost feel as though I'm right there.
Truly enjoy your descriptions as I've never been to Northern Italy.
Very surprised that the hay is preventing rain from passing through and being absorbed by the underlying soil. Go figure. Here I use barn yuck...you know horse poops, wood chips and leftover alfalfa stems and some hay that hit the deck and got mushed with horse poops. This stuff does not compact down. I'm passing this along...not sure but maybe mine does not compact as it is made up of more than one product. The alfalfa stems are messy looking but they hold up the mulch. Not sure if you can picture what I'm trying to explain. Perhaps you can add something to your mulch that would help to prevent compacting...
Weather...whether or not we likes it we gets it...

When you lived in this area did you experience ElNino? Well we have gone through almost 2 years. ElNino...rain, rain, and more rain and cold yuckie summer. It looks to me that it ended last fall. Yippie skippie. We are experiencing low rainfall and above average temperatures. Frankly its been glorious. I've been working in the garden many days. I love it. The spring bulbs: tulips, iris and the like are about 5-6" tall.... About 75% of the rose bushes still have leaves. And more that 60% have new growth pipets. Pipets..new word I just made up. Small nubs is more like it. Its been glorious. After 2 miserable winters...hope this doeswnt sound like bragging...not meant to be.
If the rain continues at this rate there will also be drought conditions in this area as there wont be much snow melt. However they are predicting snow this weekend. How much??? We'll see.
Well gotta get a move on time to put the weanlings to bed. My adorable poop machines...
Jeannie

Melissa,

Your mentioning letting the annual grasses grow made me wonder if sowing alfalfa would work even better. It has an extensive root system and puts nitrogen in the soil as well as adding organic matter. The drawback is that it is a 3' perennial. Maybe you cold grow it in the pathways and mow it after a year or two. Just thinking... I have no experience with this.

Cath

Well Cath, we call these green manures in the UK and use them extensively to cover the ground, help maintain soil structure, add humus and discourage weeds. Alfalfa (lucerne), as well as buckwheat. annual mustard, tares (vetches) various rye grasses (Italian, grazing) phacelia and clover are all popular. Because manure has been compromised through the use of herbicides such as amypyrolid and chlopyralid, many gardeners have been looking at using green manures in the last 2/3 years, especially vegetable growers on thin soil (me) who rely on regular additions of humus and nutrients. I use clover as a kind of living mulch arouynd my currants although it was not that easy to get it established. Melissa, it sounds as though we are on the same page regarding mulching. Rosefolly points out the folly of thick mulch on dry soil but, even after winter rains (ha!) I am not inclined anymore to have thick blankets of anything which is not green or growing. I simply hate the look of patches of 'stuff' under my plants (although I hate bare earth more). If I have no choice annuals or perennials to fill gaps, then I leave the weeds (unless they are dock or mallow) Chickweed, galium and ground ivy may stay until they get turned into the soil when I want to plant something new into the weedy space. True, Melissa, this would probably look a bit rough and nasty in a formally designed garden or a small urban plot....but on a public allotment, weeds are a undefeatable fact of life.
As for pruning, I am itching to attack the long canes on the bourbons and hybrid musks. I confess to being a pruning ignoramus, pruning however I like, whenever I like. I suspect this confidence is misplaced as we have a forgiving climate in the UK but, I prune when I have secateurs to hand and the canes are annoying. Sometimes I don't even get around to it. Sometimes, it is summer before I get a grip on rampageous stems. I am sure my shrubs would respond better to a more considered regime but life is chaotic and I am disorganised and blessed with short-sightedness - a fuzzy blur of lushness is quite OK for me.

There is a sweet comfort to me in the routines of pruning, weeding, mulching, shoveling, hoeing, digging, raking, and doing the best I can to take care of my small place of earth. Temperatures have been in the 30's to high 20's at night, reaching to almost 50 on some days. I have pots of cuttings and my potted roses outside, with three thermometers I use to check on them. So far they've all managed to stay outside and because it's been so mild, as Jeannie said, they're all growing. Even the cuttings that dear Kim sent me are outside and starting to put on leaves. The wrapping method he describes in his blog was very effective here in humid, cool Washington.

Today I went for a load of manure from a horse barn nearby and dh helped shovel and layer it with leaves for the raised beds that he just built for us. I went through and checked on my 18 milk jugs and assorted odd containers that have my wintersown flower seeds. The alba maxima we moved is pushing buds, what a relief, I didn't kill it. the daffodil and tulip bulbs are not yet showing green.

We cleaned out more undergrowth a couple of weeks ago and there's room for a large ramber but I'm going to add an eglantine I found on the Vintage site instead. I am growing it for the red hips years from now. Gardening is about the future, but the present, plodding, work of today with its small triumphs gives me such happiness .

What think is so true about what you say, Melissa, is that it takes time to figure out what works best to grow our plants. We all have to work within the limits of what we can give, and the process of figuring it out and seeing what grows, what works, what doesn't, coping with weather that disagrees with our agenda and hopes and dreams, all this teaches so much. I love gardening. Maybe one day the dreams I have of my garden will be fleshed out into some kind of reality, but the day to day work of getting there is a blessing in itself.

it is all about the process, yes? If I didn't hate the J word in its current usage so much (Journey) I would say that this is what we are all on.
And whilst I am on lexical abuse, lets please have a moratorium on another much abused word - passion. Gah!

I wouldn't say I enjoy pruning or weeding and I don't mulch anything at all except for winter protection. I do enjoy being outside in the garden though. No matter what I'm doing in the garden I'd rather be out there working than almost anything else I can think of. It's my "me" time. And I spend it listening and talking with the roses and plants. Rainy days make me blue because there's nothing to do but sit by the window and look outside at the garden I want to be in. No matter how much I do, how much I get finished or how many hours I spend outside there's always something else to do or that I'd like to try or that can be imporved on. It's always changing and that keeps me enthusiastic and interested.

As for that no mulch bit, I garden for the most part barefoot. I haven't found a mulch yet that I can walk on barefoot comfortably. The one area where I tried the darn stuff (and spent big bucks and may back breaking hours doing) up and floated away the first time it rained. I stood helplessly by as it ran down the street gutter into the drain. I use leaf mulch to winterize and the bottom layer of that is usually full of worms by spring and gets turned back into the soil and that's it.

I am looking forward to pruning, and taking my time doing it after 50 years of working and always having to hurry, hurry, hurry! And weeding to me is very therapeutical, I had to talk myself into this but it worked!

Strawberryhill: Grass clippings are tender and, as you say, pack down easily into an impermeable layer. They need to be mixed with coarser drier mulch, or scattered thinly. I'm following the ideas presented in the book Teaming with Microbes and trying to disturb my soil as little as possible--initial amendment is necessary, of course--so wouldn't rototill, even if it were feasible.
I checked through the hardiness listings of some of my favorite Hybrid Musks (I'm talking about the Pemberton HMs and those of his successors the Bentalls), and some may not be hardy in your zone: you'd have to check the variety, and possibly consult gardeners in your area. A lot of the Pemberton musks have Tea rose in their ancestry, and most of them trace back to a remote Noisette as well, so many are slightly tender.
My favorites among the Pemberton musks are mostly varieties with long lax canes, dark canes and foliage, and pale, scented flowers; among them are 'Cornelia', 'Francesca', 'Pax', 'Kathleen', 'Buff Beauty', and, possibly a more compact grower, 'Penelope'. In mild zones these can be trained to climb as smallish repeating ramblers. Then there's the open, angular, leggy, charming 'Vanity', a cheerful shocking pink, one of the brightest HMs, and 'Felicia', of shrubbier growth than the others, at least in my experience, and with one of the best fragrances around: old rose that floats on the air. Delightful, delightful roses: I wish I had more places to put them. I don't have enough of the half shaded, cool, protected spots that they like in our blazing summers. But I'm talking about the farm, where temperatures seldom fall below 20F.
With the Gallicas, it's hard to know where to start. There are many of them, as they were much bred during the early 19th century. A few I like--but did I ever meet a Gallica I didn't like?--include 'Tuscany Superb', spectacularly deeply colored, with hips, low suckering growth, healthy and easy; 'Jenny Duval', pink-lilac-purple, double, superb blooms, easy likewise; 'Alain Blanchard' (I see HMF lists this as a Centifolia, how odd), with freckles!!, and a great rose; 'Ypsilante', ('Ipsilante'), taller than the others, though perhaps just because it's growing in a better spot, possibly with some thorns, blooms pink-purple-lavender-gray, large, double, velvety, perfumed. And so on. Anyone who loves Gallicas could name as many wonderful varieties as I have without repeating a rose on my list. These are hardy in your zone, no trouble.
I'll post this, then continue.
Melissa

Jackie,
Doesn't it make YOU want to rave when people rave about the wonderful mild sunny winter weather? We need rain. There was an article about it in the provincial newspaper the other day: the province's two main reservoirs are extremely low, and there's still no significant rain in the forecast. I was talking with a gardening friend over in Vicenza (Veneto) the other day, and it's dry there too. The interesting thing was, she couldn't even imagine that it wouldn't rain significantly before spring arrives. Me, I can imagine it quite well. The problem here is, if there's no water in the Apennines, the closest place it can come from is the Alps with their snowpack and their glaciers, and that would have to be trucked all the way from the other side of the Po up to where we live, and supply a large population. It could get quite painful.
My garden is more prodigal of self-sown weeds than it is of volunteer good plants, though we get some of those too. By the time it's almost a century old, like yours, no doubt it will have settled down. It is pleasant to hear about your garden and know that it has been in existence for so long and been loved and tended by generations of gardeners.

Paula, I agree with everything you say. We work within our limits, like everybody does: limits of money, water, available mulch. As the shrubs in the garden mature they add dead twigs and leaves and pruning clippings to the mulch and the microlife of those areas of the garden will change, slowly. As to water, with supplies so low we can't do it, but I'm tearing apart those compressed swaths of old hay so that whatever precipitation does come can get through. Actually, our soil that has a permeable organic covering is still moist: hurray for mulch!

Jeannie: your mulch doesn't compact because it is mixed. We use old hay, no longer good for feed, that arrives in huge, tightly rolled bales. It's usually been sitting around for a couple of years getting rained on and has had time for fungus to grow in it, gluing it together even more compactly. Much of it has to be pulled apart by hand. Your mulch sounds great, by the way.
Thanks for the kind words about my posts! You sound like you're enjoying yourself with your animals and your gardening, and your fine weather. I well remember being sick to death of rain.
I remember, it may have been the winter of 1996-97, as a particularly bad winter, incessant rain, very dark, with a series of spectacular ice storms mixed with heavy snow at one point. I got hit by seasonal depression that winter, though I didn't recognize it as such at the time. I quarreled with my brother, a rift that took years to heal completely, and I quit the job I'd had for seven years (that was an excellent decision, actually).
About the rainy PNW's dry summers: Olympia, Washington was where I first began learning about drought tolerant plants.

Cath and Suzy: I've thought about green mulches, but start back in fear at the thought of preparing an acre or two of steep, heavy-soiled, unwaterable ground for seeding. I let the weeds be my green mulch. We have wild clover and, I think, vetch, as well as areas of annual grass and even a bit of alfalfa. A well-chosen cover crop might speed up soil improvement, but not enough to justify the hassle, or so I think. I find that an initial mulching with hay encourages annual grass growth later on. Suzy, I don't share your aversion to the look of mulch: it beats Bermuda grass by a mile.
Suzy, coincidentally, Bourbons and Hybrid Musks are in my sights as well. There was a recent post about rejuvenating Hybrid Musks. This post prompted me to cut a wretched sunbaked plant of 'Cornelia' back to the ground; it may or may not come back, but wasn't worth keeping as it stood. Same treatment for an unhappy nearby 'Reynolds Hole' (or is it a Hybrid Perpetual?). Both plants were loaded with old and dying canes.

Gean, it sounds like you're making another wonderful garden. Yes, we spend our lives figuring out what to grow and how to grow it. Our piece of ground is unique, so no one can tell us exactly what to do with it: we become the world's leading experts on our own gardens. I do think this is one of the great hidden charms of gardening.

Hear, hear, Suzy!!

Seil, well said. I'm surprised, though, that you don't like pruning. Perhaps it's too cold and dark when you have to do it? Barefoot in the garden, wow. I can't imagine it (rocks, nettles, thorny prunings, dried blackthorn in the mulch,...).

Ogrose, you are going to have fun, I can tell.

Melissa

um yes, green manures. Well, I started to use these with enthusiasm but let me be clear, I do not have 2 acres of steep hillside, I have 20 rods (poles, perch - an ancient measurement of land) of public allotments, open and flat....and when I got it in 2001, empty. Easy-peasy to get half of it laid out in raised beds with various areas scattered around for this and that. However, on the plus side, I have had great success using clovers as a permanent living mulch around my currant bushes, so much so that I have been convinced that bare soil is anathema while every other organic mulch, from woodchippings, compost, manure to landscape fabric either failed to manage weed growth, interfered with irrigation (not that I do much of that apart from rainfall) and harboured a vast range of not always beneficial insect life. Also, I had to keep on doing it. Could never make enough compost even though a ridiculous amount of space is given over to compost bays, manure is compromised, my sandy soil is rubbish....what to do. Now though, the not so good things about green manures. The sowing periods are short, most need tilling back into the ground quickly (so it is more of an amendement than a mulch) so I still have bare soil over winter. I guess I just have not really got to grips with them yet but, like many garden panaceas, most work some of the time, some work some of the time but none work all of the time.
Do you have Bermuda grass in Italy or is it the horrid couch grass (elymus repens). True, this is awful - it is only when you start to dig it and see the vicious white hooked rhizome and root system that you realise what a horror this is. However, the plant which has colonised nearly every inch of my allotment is a harmless annual - love in the mist (nigella damascena). It is everywhere, in thick carpets. This, I am happy to leave as, if not exactly a mulch, a great weed deflecting canopy of thick feathery leafage. A bonus really, as it has been seeding away before I got the plot. Ox-eye daisies do much the same but are just a bit too thuggish to leave them to run amok. Still we learn....or not. Right now, I am pondering the unwise decision to grow baptisia, a plant which is not that familiar to UK gardeners, without considering the massive rootstock I have been assured is there now, eating through all neighbouring plants, sucking every bit of life from the soil. How can I have been so dim? And no wonder the Japanese maple is looking so poorly. Oh dear. I only just got rid of the echinops and acanthus and a socking great tamarix (and then planted Scarlachglut, am I simple?), not sure I can face more heaving around humongous roots.

Thank you, Melissa, for info. regarding your favorite roses. I saved your info. as clipping in my gardenweb's site for public reference, and also in my notebook. I learn so much from all of you - much appreciated.

yep, Strawbs, we all look forward to Melissa's entertaining and useful updates. Sometimes, I can almost see and smell her garden.

Melissa, it is always a pleasure to hear from you. I was thinking of you just today as I was pruning some salvias. You are the only gardener besides myself that I am aware of who is growing lots of salvias and roses together!

Rosefolly

me too, rosefolly, although my salvias tend to be the shrubby greggii or microphylla types (apart from a lovely blue S.patens). Cannot over-emphasise the great value these shrubs are - flowering for months on end (a couple of microphyllas are at it still) with luscious fragrance. Have tried the herbaceous types such as S.nemorosa, S.farinacea and S,pratensis, but they tend to be fairly short-lived flowerers for me. Then, there is the marvellous (but massive) new world types such as S.guaranitica - which i no longer grow as it is not reliably hardy....but what a fantastic plant - the size, the colour, next to the golds and russets of autumn daisies - not even the bluest aster can compare.

I grow salvia leucantha (Mexican sage) with some yellow, medium pink, dark pink, and peach colored roses out by the street. The combination is fabulous! it is all over my neighborhood and town - both the one with purple flowers, and the one with purple and white flowers, and also the dwarf variety. It loves our climate and in some places is used as an informal hedge out by the street, where it needs/gets very little care. Just needs a hard haircut in Jan/Feb. It starts blooming in July, and is still going now! It is large, and a warm weather variety - there seem to be types of salvias for any place or climate.

Jackie

I grow a number of sages. I have them zoned by how frequently they need to be watered, since we have no rainfall during the growing season. Some of them could get by with no watering at all, and might even prefer it.

Once a week water:

Salvia nemerosa 'Sensation Deep Blue'
Salvia nemerosa 'Lubeca"
Salvia guaratica - Black and Blue Sage (big plant)
Salvia patens 'Blue Angel' (especially nice color)

Water every three weeks:

Saliva leucantha 'Santa Barbara' (about two-thirds the size of the species)
Salvia spathacea - Hummingbird Sage - big and an aggressive spreader, but so gorgeous I think it's worth it. Maybe.
Salvia mellifera x sonamensis 'Dara's Choice' - wide spreading low groundcover
Salvia munzii - San Diego Sage
Salvia clevelandii - 'Pozo Blue' - gorgeous plant
Salvia nemerosa 'Carradonna' - best color IMO
various Salvia greggi cultivars whose names I have lost

I find the greggiis to be twiggy and brittle and suspect they may be short lived. I probably won't replace them if that is the case. They are fine for now. On the other hand, I was suprised that 'Carradonna' could get by with water every 21 days. I thought nemerosas needed more water than that. It is a particularly fine cultivar.

And yes, there are healthy roses growing in the two every-third-week-water beds.

Sorry, I missed one - Salvia microphylla 'Pink'. Growing in the every-third-week bed.

Rosefolly

I have three plants of 'Caradonna' planted - they are so spindly after last year's summer of no sun. They survived, though, so maybe this next year I'll admire them too.

So far I haven't been impressed with Caradonna either. The color reminds me of S. verticillata 'Purple Rain', but it's been a much wimpier plant so far. It also doesn't bloom nearly as much.

I need to figure out a more reliable way to overwinter the tender sages. S. patens 'Blue Angel' was quite nice, until they all died. As a seed strain, I could grow them fairly often, but since it takes a couple of years for them to reach blooming size, they still have to spend time indoors.

Seil, I loved your post, and feel the same way (but don't garden barefoot, lol!) I hate to say how my house looks in the spring before it gets too hot and I'm in the yard, but feel my soul is in the garden, and the work is never done...

In the winter, I must have the ugliest garden in our neighborhood; just had a huge cedar elm cut down due to its age and high winds (my Maggie took a beating), a new flowerbed put in with not much of anything in it, it looks pretty grim to say the least, but spring will EVENTUALLY be here, and looking up from there(there's always hope, right?)!!

Campanula,

Did you say that you are actively growing both the green manure (cover crop) and main crop (flowers) at the same time? Because then you have experience with it! Something very valuable. That is what I was suggesting but hesitated because I thought that it would be something that had not not yet been done. My understanding of green manure (here called a cover crop) is that the cover crop is sown, tilled under and then the main crop is planted.

Melissa,

My idea was to test a small area to see how well it worked as fertilizer and to not till it in right away, if ever. Maybe sow it in the pathways and mow it after awhile.

Cath

Here in Crete we have been having a good amount of rain thank goodness. But it has meant I have hardly been able to get out into the garden.
Even on the dry days, like to-day, there is a chilly north wind blowing
Years ago, I wouldn't have thought twice about getting some warm clothes on and getting out there to get on with things. But now.... I don't know whether I am turning into a wimp in my old age, or just the fact that I have become used to the fact that most days here are warm and sunny and I don't want to be out there when it is miserable?
The paving and steps were finally finished during last autumn and I was so pleased with the result that I foolishly proclaimed to all and sundry that we could have a garden open day in the spring!
Pretentious or what!!!
Well, it won't be happening.
I still have roses heeled in waiting to be planted.
My pansies and violas which I sowed last year are still sitting in their seed trays looking half starved.
The little border of agaranthemums, Salvia greggii, Salvia patens Guanajuanto, Aristolochia elegans, sedums and valerian which I had to dig up last August! because my neighbour wanted to rebuild the boundary wall, are still sitting in their pots, waiting to be replanted.
Plus I have to paint the wall first!!
The pond which should be finished, is still waiting for some ornament or pot which will make a small waterfall. ( I just cannot find anything I like yet.)
As for the weeding!!!
I am still so new to this Mediterranean gardening lark, that I forget that this is the growing season.
All of the beds and borders are growing weeds in profusion.
Luckily, most of them are easy to pull out.
The exceptions are couch grass and the oxalis pes-caprae.
The oxalis, originally from South Africa, is the most pernicious weed! It has taken over all the roadsides,olive groves and gardens.
Last year, I carefully applied glysophate to every single plant in my garden. I stood back and thought, that's the end of that! Ha Ha.! This year there are seedlings of it everywhere.
Luckily, there are some good things.
The snowdrops, still in their pots, have been blooming since early November and are still going strong.
The various narcissi, have bloomed, or are still coming up.

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The Morea polystacha, started flowering on the 4th October last year and are still flowering.

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The birds are still eating me out of house and home.

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and the roses have been blooming all winter so far.

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Daisy

Beautiful, beautiful post. I just love your photos. Don't worry about promising about a garden party and not delivering. If we were not optimists, we would not be gardeners.

Cath

Melissa, I always enjoy your comprehensive reports. You really know how to draw a picture of your situation. And I second harborrose in appreciating your summing up: "it takes time to figure out what works best to grow our plants. We all have to work within the limits of what we can give, and the process of figuring it out and seeing what grows, what works, what doesn't, coping with weather that disagrees with our agenda and hopes and dreams, all this teaches so much." That says it right there. That's what is intriguing about this ongoing interest (I won't say passion) in gardening. There is always more to learn and always more challenges, mental and physical. And there's always next year when things will be better.

Rrosefolly said: "I find the greggiis to be twiggy and brittle and suspect they may be short lived." Some gardeners in Texas replace their salvias greggii each year because of this, but I've had the Red Velvet variety for more than 10 years, and I get plenty of new supple growth every year when I cut it way back in February - usually cut it back midsummer too to contain it. Can't remember the names of the pink or white varieties I grow even though they are a few years younger (the pink color is saturated - very intense like the red is), but I think they're going to be long-term plants too. I love my roses interplanted with them and the various grasses. THAT makes me happy.

I appreciate the mention of a shorter Saliva leucantha: 'Santa Barbara'. I think I'll try that one as well as the salvia macrophyla pink. I grow the macrophyla 'Hot Lips' which produces a finer and more attractive foliage than salvia greggii, but doesn't have the intense red color I like. Still it's a variety that's hugely happy in our area which means a lot. I'm hoping that the pink will be the same.

I appreciate the details you all are sharing and, Daisy, love your pics.

Yesterday I ordered two Munstead Wood (own root) from David Austin in Tyler. Sticker shockeroo! They haven't released it to Chamblees or ARE so I bit the bullet and will economize elsewhere. I'm about to get started rearranging some of my roses a bit. I'm hoping that all my bulbs have multiplied well. My February challenge is to divide and replant my grasses, and my new resolutions are to make sure, when it warms up, that my beautiful hyacinth bean vines don't catch hold of my Sally Holmes and Mme Isaac Periere - poor things were covered up last year before I got to them - and to mulch better which will help me do a better job in conserving water. Lou

Cath, I grow clovers as a permanent mulch - I have to resow odd patches which get walked on a lot but in general, it stays in place around the fruit bushes. Other green manures (we also call them cover crops) I use are much shorter lived - tares and grazing rye are sown quite late in September and dug in the ground in early spring. Mustard is a really quick cover crop and I turn it in after 6 weeks. The main reason for using these cover crops is the silty sandy soil I garden on tends to leach out nutrients and also, as I grow many vegetables, the soil needs more frequent replenishment than when growing perennials or shrubs. For years, I relied on a good autumn topping of horse but the amylopyrolid/chlopyralid used in many broad leaved herbicides, persists, even after passing through the animal's digestive system. Horses which eat hay from fields where these herbicides are used have been unable to break down the hormones in these herbicides (unlike the old 2,4D for broad leaf weed killing). Consequently, crops sown in soil which has traces of chlopyralid grow with massive distortions, rendering them unusable. The effects persist over several years - only curcubits are relatively unaffected. Until recently, these herbicides were not available for the home gardening market but last year, they started creeping into domestic use - Verdone, for examnple, is now using chlopyralid as the active ingredient. What this means for us gardeners is that not only is horse manure compromised because of the hay they have been fed, the municipal green waste which many of us used as a soil conditioner, is also useless. Knowing the provenance of manure is essential (and unreliable since farmers are not always totally honest). I cannot make enough good compost to replenish the humus and keep the soil structure open and friable so using green manures, as well as leaving annual weeds either on top of the soil or turned under, is my main source of soil amendements (and also leaf mould but that takes ages).
Is this an issue in the US? Are broad leaved herbicides using amylopyralid or chlopyralid or are they still based on hormones such as 2,4D - which basically makes plants such as dock, plantain, daisies and other lawn weeds, grow themselves to death.

Campanula,

I cannot answer your question as to whether chlopyralid is used in the United States. My latest herbacide purchase, All-In-One, is made by Bayer and contains 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, 3,7-dichloro-8-quinolinecarboxylic acid and 3,6-dichloro-o-anisic acid. The first listed is, I believe, 2,4D. Perhaps Dr. Manners knows if chlopyralid is in use here.

Your account of using living cover crops; tares, rye, mustard and clover growing with the main crop is very interesting. I keep pulling the clover out of the beds. Maybe I should just leave it. The idea of using the clover in the pathways is an especially good one. It would be soft underfoot and not too tall. If the paths were used regularly it would probably be low enough to look like grass if you didn't look too closely.

Cath

mmm, in the UK it has been a practice of sowing clover in with lawn seeds as during dry summers, it still stays green, unlike the sere and brown patches we often end up with. Terrible grammar here, apols all round - I am a bit of a pedant and get annoyed by my rubbish spelling and punctuation.
Agreed, this is an interesting thread. Cheers, Melissa.

An old four-square house I lived in as a child in Pennsylvania had a lawn sown with clover. I think it was something people used to do because watering lawns in the summer was not a common practice back in 1900 when that house was built. It's not a bad idea today. As Campanula says, it keeps the lawns green. And doesn't clover fix nitrogen as well? Instant fertilizer. There are many clovers, so be sure you don't get one of the big weedy-looking ones by mistake.

I will warn everyone from my own childhood experience that clover in the grass means that you can't wander around outside barefoot unless you place your feet every carefully. Bees just love it. If someone in your house has a dangerous bee allergy, I would not plant it. Otherswise, I just love it. I still remember my mother's summertime habit of going through clover patches seeing how many four-leaf clovers she could find, then pressing them in old paperback books.

Rosefolly, caught in a moment of nostalgia

Lol, well then I must be practicing "green" because most of my lawn is clover and creeping charlie! I've never been one to insist on a perfect green carpet of grass. If it's green and mowed to an even height that's good enough. And I've never bothered to water the grass. It dies to brown every August in the heat but any little drizzle of rain brings it almost instantly back to green so why bother watering it! The water is saved for the ROSES!

The water is saved for the ROSES!

Hear, hear!

yes its that time of the year again...

{{gwi:220209}}

hoovb, I've always thought that you're a girl who knows how to have a good time!

We had a fescue lawn in Alabama with patches that were dead because of grub worms. We didn't spread grub killer, so had problems. I sprinkled clover seed in the bare spots and found that 1) it's green and can be mistaken for grass 2) grubs didn't eat it 3) you don't have to fertilize or water it 4) it spreads well 5) spare moments can be spent sitting in the middle of it looking for ones with four leaves. I went barefooted a lot there and never stepped on a bee, but that may have been good fortune.

I'm really, really impressed with how hard you all work. Since I'm only able to do a fraction of that I'm fortunate that my garden is fairly low-maintenance. For one thing, the garden part is all on one level and near the house, and for another I've kept the plantings simple with the companion plants needing little care. My main chores are watering (which I prefer to do by hand) and mulching with leaves to nourish the soil and keep the weeds down around the plants. I've learned that spacing out chores and not overtiring myself still gets the job done. I pruned just one or two roses a day and was able to do it in a short time, mainly because I've been careful to choose roses that don't need much pruning and have only three climbers now that I've taken out Cl. Pinkie, which never did well for me. A tea rose took its place. I've found that partially through serendipity (reasonably good soil, mild winters and flat terrain) and partially through keeping only the plants that like it here, I have a garden that gives me much pleasure and no more work than I can handle. But, I still marvel at those of you who undertake huge, arduous projects and battle inclement weather and often achieve spectacular results. Carry on!

Ingrid