So what is an ephemeral anyway? It’s tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and all the other spring blooming minor bulb plants. When they begin to die down, they look pretty messy. The leaves sprawl and they drive the Martha types up the wall. Martha recommends braiding daff leaves! Go ahead if you don’t want a healthy daffodil next spring. Those apparently dying leaves are making food for next year’s blossoms. Eventually they will disappear but in the meantime the best you can do is plant annuals in front of them. Or, for next spring, plant perennials in front of the ones that bug you the most. It is very tempting to cover the mess with mulch but that cuts down the amount of sun the leaves get too, so don’t do it.
Iris are just starting to bloom. Now is the time to mark the clumps that only have flowers on the outside of the clump. Those will need to be dug up in August and thinned. Chuck any rhysome that doesn’t have a fan of leaves on it. Occasionally, as you replant iris you get them mixed up. Bunkey made the mistake two years ago of digging up three different clumps of iris at the same time. He had a yellow, blue and a dark purple that needed transplanting. This spring he had one clump of yellow and blue mixed together, another of all three colors and a third of purple next to a brown and white iris. Petunia had a lot to say about that. It is best to mark the color of the clump you are renewing and only digging one color at a time. That way, you won’t have an eye-hurting color clash. Bunkey’s iris bed started out with all the blue and purple iris on one side and all the brown and yellow on the other. Then he bought a pink one and a peach and white one. They didn’t fit either side so they went in the middle. He’s seriously thinking about starting a new bed for the outliers.
Watering is especially important now as you are planting annuals and adding perennials to the flowerbed. The rule of thumb is an inch a week of water either from rain or the sprinkler. Keep the water close to the ground. Those fancy sprinklers that throw water up in the air, lose quite a bit of moisture before it gets to the soil. Your vegetable gardens need at least that much moisture to do well. Of course, if you have sandy soil, you will need even more as the soil doesn’t hold the moisture. Get a soil sample. It will tell you what the texture of your soil is, and how much, if any fertilizer you need. Usually the recommendation is for nitrogen. Don’t get carried away. Nitrogen is for the green parts of plants. It’s great for grass, corn and any leafy vegetables. Too much and your pumpkins will get worn out as the vines grow and drag them along. (Well, maybe not but you get the idea.) Tomatoes in particular don’t need a lot of nitrogen. It all goes to leaves and stem, not the fruit.
Now that you have everything mulched, most of the hard gardening is done. You will only need to pull weeds in the rows in the veggie garden. Most likely the flower garden will still grow quack grass. You can try grass killer but the only almost final solution is to dig it up. Almost final as you can never get all of the darn stuff. Oh well, you needed the exercise.
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Bev Johnson is a Master Gardener with the University of Minnesota Extension. Her column appears in the Weekend Edition.
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