The only gardener who doesn’t complain about the weather is a dead gardener.
My idea of a perfect gardening day is a Saturday when the temperature is about seventy-two degrees, the humidity is low, and a gentle, soaking rain is anticipated sometime between ten at night and two in the morning. Needless to say, this doesn’t happen very often. My average gardening day is a busy Wednesday when the grass and shrubs need a good haircut, the weeds are popping up everywhere and I have a maximum of thirty minutes available for all the garden chores. The temperature on that average day might be in the seventies, but the humidity probably hovers at around eighty percent. It has either rained incessantly for a week, or not rained at all for seven days. Worst of all, for a gardener who is prone to complaining, there is not even enough available time to complain.
I reviewed my list of weather-related grievances recently while pulling weeds. It was a highly satisfactory exercise in multi-tasking, as the anger I generated while reviewing the grievance list provided the energy I needed to get the weeds out by the roots. We have had high summer temperatures and humidity and a fair amount of rain lately, so many plants were suffering from various fungal diseases. The best way to cope with such problems is to remove and destroy the affected plant parts and trim or prune to promote good air circulation. As I was doing that, it occurred to me that air circulation is a fundamental of good gardening that is often overlooked.
If you read garden catalogs or how-to books, you know that seventy-five percent of the ornamental plants in the universe like at least good, if not excellent drainage. You will also be told that individual species and cultivars prefer either acid or alkaline soil and sun or shade. You will not be told that almost all plants profit from good air circulation.
How do you get good air circulation? First of all, let your plants have some elbow room. This is true even if you have a cottage-type garden with many different species growing side by side, or an impressionistic garden with large swathes of a single species like coneflowers or rudbeckia. Crowding impedes circulation. Remember to look at the plant tags or literature before you buy. You may have plenty of room for a plant that is six inches tall and four inches wide, but will you still have room when that plant is three feet tall and wide?
If mature plants are too close together for good circulation, consider removing some plants and giving them away or relocating them to another part of the garden. Remember that plants compete with each other for water and nutrients. Keeping the population under control assures that the competition doesn’t culminate in the death of the newest, oldest or least hardy plants.
If you have mixed borders of annuals, perennials and shrubs, practice good garden maintenance and cut plants back after they finish blooming. This allows more room for the plants that bloom later. The same goes for annuals, except that with annuals, cutting back after the first flush of bloom generally assures several subsequent flushes.
Rosebushes in humid climates are often afflicted with black spot, a fungal disease. One of the best ways to lessen the impact of black spot is to prune roses so that canes don’t cross each other. Going a step further and pruning out weaker canes gives the plant a better appearance and better circulation. With most roses, it’s also a good idea to trim flowering canes back by about one third after the blossoms have faded. Refrain from doing this only if you want rose hips to form in the early summer on once-bloomers and on reblooming roses in the late fall.
Mulch is a glorious thing, but too much of it can impede air circulation, especially around the bases of shrubs and trees. Make sure that when you mulch, the mulching material does not touch the tree trunks or the base of shrubs, otherwise rot can set in.
Alternate plants like hostas that have dense growth, with plants whose growth pattern is more delicate, like astilbe or ferns. Textural contrast creates wonderful landscape pictures and encourages good circulation.
In healthy societies ideas, people and traffic circulate freely. Since gardens are nothing more than societies populated by plants, the same holds true. Good air circulation means a healthy, productive and beautiful garden.