Gardening With Tony

UNITED STATES—Foliar color is not limited to autumn. Some deciduous plants display colorful foliage from spring to autumn. Then, some of these change color for autumn. Some evergreen plants display colorful foliage through the year. Variegation of foliage can be more colorful than associated bloom. So can unvariegated bronze, purple, red, yellow, blue or gray foliage. All sorts of plants...

UNITED STATES—There is no way around it. Just about every garden has some degree of shade. Even low profile single story houses without eaves or fences are shaded on the north side. Eastern exposures get the cooler morning sun. Western exposures get only the warmer afternoon sun. There are vacant and treeless parcels out in the desert that lack...

UNITED STATES—It was easy to bury spring bulbs so discourteously in shallow graves last autumn, prior to concern about summer bulbs. None of them got proper funerals. Perhaps cool season annuals obscured their interment sites. No one needed to know they were there. It seemed like a perfect crime, until now. They are back like the undead. After all,...

UNITED STATES—Most of us Californians are probably wondering what that means. Sugaring season is more familiar to horticultural enthusiasts in New England, Canada, and more recently, in Alaska. It is the time of year that sugary sap get harvested from maples, and in Alaska, from birches. Maple sap gets refined into maple syrup and sugar. Birch sap makes birch...

UNITED STATES—Dilemmas are common in gardening. Should summer vegetables that are still producing be removed so that winter vegetables can get started on time? What about replacing summer annuals that are still blooming with winter annuals, and then replacing winter annuals with summer annuals half a year later? Should tender perennials be regarded as annuals, or get a second...

UNITED STATES—Weather is not quite as warm as it had been. Warm days do not last quite as long as they did earlier in summer. Afterward, the longer nights get a bit cooler. Technically, autumn is only a few days from now. Although seasonal changes are mild, and a bit later here than in other regions, they eventually catch...

UNITED STATES—With conservation of water being so important right now, annuals are not a priority. Many of us are trying to use as little water as possible, and only to keep the more significant trees, shrubbery and perennials alive until winter. Lawn and annuals are usually the first to succumb, mainly because they use more water than anything else. They...

UNITED STATES—It is easy to see why there are optimum times to prune, and just as easy to see when pruning should not be done. Generally, deciduous plants prefer to get pruned while dormant and bare. They should not be pruned when actively blooming or making new foliage. Roots are of course not so easy to see. Do we...

UNITED STATES—Weeding otherwise bare and unused ground is no fun. Nor is weed whacking. Mulching inhibits future weed growth, but requires occasional replenishment. For many situations, ground cover plants are more practical. Once established, many sorts effectively exclude most weeds. Even more contain dust, and inhibit erosion of the surface of the soil below. As the terminology implies, ground cover...

UNITED STATES—Pretty soon, as autumn weather starts to get cooler, some deciduous plants will develop brilliant color before defoliating for their winter dormancy. Throughout the rest of the year, evergreen plants with gold, silver, bronze, bluish, purplish, reddish or variegated foliage are more colorful than common green foliage is. A few deciduous plants with colored foliage turn different colors...