Tidewater Gardening - Yellow Petunias: K. Marc Teff eau

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Dorchester County is known as the Heart of the Chesapeake. It is rich in Chesapeake Bay history, folklore and tradition. With 1,700 miles of shoreline (more than any other Maryland county), marshlands, working boats, quaint waterfront towns and villages among fertile farm fi elds – much still exists of what is the authentic Eastern Shore landscape and traditional way of life along the Chesapeake.

For more information about Dorchester County visit https://tidewatertimes.com/travel-tourism/dorchester/.

by K. Marc Teffeau, Ph.D.

Gardeners think of white, pink, red, purple and various bicolor varieties of petunias. How about a yellow petunia? One of two 2022 All-American Selections (AAS) ~ allamericaselections.org ~ is the yellow petunia “Bee’s Knees.” This new variety of petunia is one of the twelve 2022 AAS winners and a Gold Medal Winner.

According to the AAS judges, the prestigious “Gold Medal Winner” honor is “reserved for a plant breeding breakthrough. Historically given very rarely, these two new AAS winners have been deemed Gold Medal Winners because of their unique characteristics and super-outstanding garden performance. These two entries

earned scores from the AAS Judges that were high enough to earn this prestigious distinction!”

AAS, in its press release, comments ~ “Each Bee’s Knees petunia is filled with lush blooms that put on a colorful show of deep yellow, non-fading flowers all season long. The intense yellow petunia color contrasts beautifully against the deep green leaves. Bee’s Knees offers great garden performance in a variety of conditions and requires very little maintenance. Gardeners will love its deep, rich yellow color and its versatile mounding habit. Works great as an element in mixed containers or as a hanging basket but also thrives as a longblooming groundcover.”

If you want to grow Bee’s Knees Petunia this upcoming gardening season, transplants will be available through Burpee and Ferry-

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Morse seed companies. I do not know if annual transplants will be available for spring 2022, but you might check with a local independent garden center to see if they will be getting them in.

Tomatoes are the number-one vegetable that gardeners like to grow. One of the AAS’s 2022 winners is a new tomato named Tomato Purple Zebra F1. It has a unique purple-red coloration. This variety reminds me of the Cherokee Purple Heirloom Tomato. Since I now grow in raised beds and containers, I am always looking for vegetable varieties that I can grow in small spaces. Purple Zebra F1 will do well as a container plant.

According to the AAS, the Purple Zebra F1 “tomato” is a fun new addition to striped tomatoes, producing tomatoes that are rich with complex flavors and a moderately firm texture. Dark red fruits with green stripes and a deep mahogany red interior do not produce muddy coloration like other tomatoes of this type. The taste is sweet and acidic leaning to sweet.

“Overall, this tomato has a better taste and thinner skin than comparisons with excellent disease resistance. Judges in the know say this is a very marketable fruit for farmers’ market growers. High disease resistance to ToMV, Verticillium Wilt Va/Vd, Fusarium Wilt Race 1, Leaf Mold A-E, Late Blight PH2/PH3, and intermediate resistance to TYLCV and TSWV.” Purple Zebra F1 is an indeterminate tomato, so be prepared to stake it and provide support. Seed and plants will be available from A.P. Whaley and Territorial Seed companies.

February gardening activities can consist of both outdoor and in-

door gardening efforts. During the milder days of February, we can get outside and work. Outside, when the weather is okay, prune hybrid tea roses and Knock Out Roses©, removing old canes and lowering the plant to a height of 12-15 inches. Apply a fertilizer heavy in potassium (K) to care for rose bushes now. Apply a drop of white glue or a thumbtack to the end of fresh-cut canes to prevent borers from moving into the cut stem.

Apply a dormant spray of limesulfur and dormant oil before active growth appears. Clean up rose beds, discard old foliage and pieces of canes, and remove old mulch with weeds. Reapply a fresh layer of mulch to the rose beds.

Don’t forget that the branches of forsythia, pussy willow, quince, spirea and dogwood can be forced for indoor bloom. Make long, slanted cuts when collecting the branches and place the stems in a vase of water. Change the water every four days. They should bloom in about three weeks. You can also force the

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cuttings of apple, peach and cherries into bloom this month.

While you are working on your ornamental trees and shrubs, take time to clean them up. Remove any bagworm “Christmas ornaments” on your cedars and other narrowleafed evergreens. This will reduce the population of this pest for this year. Each of the bags contains 500 to 1,000 eggs that will hatch out later this spring. Prune out any dead or diseased branches and stems and remove diseased leaves and insect eggs.

If you have bramble plantings, February is a suitable time to do some pruning. Red, black and purple raspberries and both thorny and thornless blackberries are referred to as brambles. To understand the pruning practices for your brambles, it is first necessary to understand their growth habits.

Brambles have perennial crowns and roots with only biennial canes (lives for two growing seasons). The vegetative shoots that come from the crowns are called primocanes during their first growing season. In the late summer, flower buds are formed on the primocanes and remain dormant through the winter. During the second growing season, these buds flower, fruit and then die.

This two-year pattern is typical of all brambles, with the exception of the fall-fruiting raspberries such as Heritage. The cane growth and fruiting are similar in these, but compressed so that fruiting begins during the first growing season. The flower buds are initiated on the top third of the primocane,

flower in late July and begin fruiting in August. These canes finish fruiting with the first frost.

After fall-fruiting raspberries have finished fruiting, you can cut out all the canes because they will produce new fruiting primocanes in spring. For regular brambles, carefully prune out the dead canes in the plants now and leave the fruiting canes for this year’s production.

When the crocus poke their leaves through the mulch, bring a little color into the house in late February by potting up a few clumps of crocuses from the garden. In a sunny spot indoors, they will develop blooms before the ones outside.

Don’t remove mulch from pe-

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rennials too early. A warm day may make you think spring is almost here, but there may be colder weather yet to come. Also remember to avoid walking on frozen grass and groundcovers during the winter. Ajuga is especially sensitive to being walked on in winter, and substantial portions can die back, leaving bare spots in spring. In addition, the frozen leaves are brittle and easily damaged.

Even though there might be rain or snow, the soil dries out against a house under the eaves, where precipitation rarely reaches. Therefore, be sure to water well during a thaw to prevent loss of plants. Remember that plants require water during winter to replace water lost due to wind desiccation and lack of rain or snow. This is especially important for broad- and narrowleafed evergreen plants.

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preparing for the vegetable garden by making labels for your spring garden. Plastic milk jugs or bleach bottles cut in strips 1 inch by 6 or 7 inches work well. Use permanent markers to write on them. Don’t forget to start building up your supply of gardening aids, such as plastic milk jugs for hot caps and orange juice cans to make guards to stop cutworms.

Now is the time to check last year’s inventory of leftover vegetable seeds.

It is important to remember that vegetable seeds have a short life and usually will not be good after a year or two. This includes sweet corn, onion, okra, beans, parsnip and peppers. The year of sale will be stamped on the seed packet.

Handle seed packets with care. Rubbing the outside of the packet to determine how many seeds are inside can break the protective seed coats, thereby reducing germination. If you will be growing your own vegetable transplants from seed this spring, don’t start them indoors too early. Six weeks ahead of the expected planting date is early enough for fast-growing species such as cabbage. Eight weeks allows enough time for slow-growing types such as tomatoes and peppers to get started. Check out the average last frost date in your area and count the weeks backward to determine a starting time to seed your seed flats and pots. Remember to take into consideration the germination after seeding.

If you have trouble planting small vegetable seeds, some mail-

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order seed companies offer pelleted seed of lettuce, carrot and a few other small-seeded crops. Pelleted seed has a special coating to make them larger. This is especially valuable for children and gardeners with arthritic hands, weak eyesight or poor coordination. In addition, wide spacing of seed helps eliminate thinning.

When using pelleted seed, plant in moist soil and keep it moist because the coating has to dissolve before the seed can germinate. If you use artificial light in your seed starting process, it is essential to change the fluorescent light bulbs every few years as older bulbs do not give off as much light. Happy Gardening!

Marc Teffeau retired as Director of Research and Regulatory Affairs at the American Nursery and Landscape Association in Washington, D.C. He now lives in Georgia with his wife, Linda.