{"id":163,"date":"2009-08-17T03:13:19","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T11:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=163"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"digging-up-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/digging-up-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Digging Up Trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

DIGGING UP TROUBLES
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not long ago, I had a day that came laden with at least a month’s quota of vexatious people and situations.\u00a0 After eight hours of querulous callers, enervating e-mailers and bureaucratic snafus, I felt like Hamlet when he said, “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!”\u009d\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The only thing to do was take advantage of the remaining daylight hours and go out into the garden to compost all that vexation by doing something positive with plants.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I decided to fix an unsatisfactory situation involving three roses with a high sentimental value and the two rectangular beds that form my upper back garden.\u00a0 All the roses are the same variety–‘Dorothy Perkins’, a pink-flowered rambler.\u00a0 For the past eight years the three have dominated the expanse of trellising by the back porch, sending out vigorous long canes.\u00a0 And those canes don’t just ramble; they root whenever they come into contact with the ground, making it easy for one ‘Dorothy Perkins’ rose to beget more of the same.\u00a0 In the spring, the shrubs also flowers vigorously, bearing fluffy pink flowers that make up for their small size by appearing in great numbers.\u00a0 A mature plant can have hundreds of clustered blooms.\u00a0 Unfortunately, ‘Dorothy’ is also very susceptible to powdery mildew, a trait exacerbated by the high humidity of the average New Jersey summer. \u00a0My ‘Dorothy’s’ have been afflicted with the disease every single year since they were installed, including one year when the humidity was relatively low and drought conditions prevailed. \u00a0Of course even powdery mildew can’t stop the plants from rambling, it just makes all those long canes extremely unattractive.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So why don’t I just give my three ‘Dorothy’s’ the heave ho and invest in something that helps keep me sane instead of driving me crazy?\u00a0 There are two reasons.\u00a0 The first is that the parent of my original ‘Dorothy Perkins’ is a plant that has flourished since at least the 1940’s in the little semi-shaded garden of our summer cottage in Central New York.\u00a0 I think it was installed by my aunt, who was born with a green thumb.\u00a0 After she died, I took three cuttings from the mother plant and gave one to my sister, one to my aunt’s son and brought one home.\u00a0 All have succeeded well, and mine produced two offspring.\u00a0 My sister tells me that if she didn’t prune hers religiously, it would knock down her house the same way it brought down the trellis on which she originally trained it.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The second reason is rooted in tradition.\u00a0 The ‘Dorothy Perkins’ rose played a pivotal rose in the history of rose growing in America.\u00a0 Originally bred by E. Alvin Miller, an employee of Jackson & Perkins, ‘Dorothy’ was named for the younger daughter of company founder Charles Perkins and introduced by that company in 1901.\u00a0 The variety’s enormous success led Perkins to transform J&P from a general-purpose nursery into one that specialized in roses.\u00a0 Subsequent J&P roses were more disease-resistant, but few had the enduring popularity of ‘Dorothy’.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So, for reasons both historic and sentimental, I decided to keep my ‘Dorothy’s’, but grow them differently.\u00a0 I dug out two of the shrubs and replanted them in large containers, where they can climb up specially installed supports.\u00a0 I am hoping that container growing will provide better air circulation and possibly forestall powdery mildew.\u00a0 The remaining plant is still in the ground, but instead of climbing the trellis affixed to the house, it will scramble up a pillar that I have ordered online. \u00a0Pruning to control the roses’ rapid growth will be much easier now that all three have been brought under control.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Once the ‘Dorothy’s’ were out of the way, I weeded the newly cleared area and filled it with daylily divisions from elsewhere in the garden.\u00a0 Daylilies now border the upper garden beds, framing the potted roses and standardized rose of Sharon shrubs.\u00a0 In the fall I’ll install clumps of daffodils in between the lily plants to create an impressive spring show.\u00a0 The emerging lilies will start pulling their weight next April by covering the dying daffodil foliage.\u00a0 I filled the beds’ bare spots with divisions of catmint, also taken from elsewhere.\u00a0 Catmint has many virtues, from attracting butterflies to keeping weeds at bay.\u00a0 It also blooms regularly over a long season.\u00a0 Best of all, it requires almost no care.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At the end of all the digging, dividing and replanting I was covered with scratches from my dealings with the ‘Dorothy’s’ but filled with satisfaction.\u00a0 The vexatious day had been put in its proper perspective and the upper back garden looked much better.\u00a0 Anger has a way of corroding your soul if you sit and stockpile it.\u00a0 It’s much better to take it outside and let it fertilize the garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DIGGING UP TROUBLES \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not long ago, I had a day that came laden with at least a month’s quota of vexatious people and situations.\u00a0 After eight hours of querulous callers, enervating e-mailers and bureaucratic snafus, I felt like Hamlet when he said, “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}