Lawn & Garden 2016

Lawn Garden

2016

A S P E C I A L P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E B O Z E M A N D A I LY C H R O N I C L E

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

Lawn Garden 2016

See Us For All Your

GARDENING NEEDS

Demystifying Tree Care as Easy as 1, 2, 3 .................. 3 MT Gardens Offers Plenty for Any Garden, and for the Community Too .............................................. 4 How Gardens Speak and What They Say .................6-7 Ten Watering Tips from Professionals.......................... 8 Be Creative with Your Lawn, and Save Water Too .... 10 Spring Gardening Checklist ....................................... 11

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ALTITUDE GARDEN & LANDSCAPE

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

Demystifying Tree Care as Easy as 1, 2, 3

By Hannah Stiff

To some, tree planting and maintenance is a mystery. It doesn’t have to be. tree roots for water, soil and nutrients. Mulching helps ease the competition and ensures tree roots are properly nourished.

And remember: Rocks are not Step 1: Mulch properly. The key mulch. word in this first step is properly, “Mulch insulates the soil,” Pfeil Pfeil said. Here’s how to do it. said. “It reduces the temperature “You want the mulch to be differentiation. That’s why you three to four inches deep, no less, don’t use rock. Rock does not hold no more,” he said. “You want the in extra moisture, and rock does mulch to not be touching the trunk not make your microorganism of the tree.” count go up.”

Mulch should extend beyond After selecting the proper mulch the drip line of the tree. The drip and laying it correctly, move on line is below the outermost tips of to... tree branches, where water drips to the ground.

Step 2: Properly water the tree.

Mulching has many benefits. It The best way, Pfeil said, is to mimic doubles the microorganism count rain. Dropping a hose around the in the soil, making it healthier, base of the tree is a good watering helps control weeds, prevents soil system for the first three years of compaction and stabilizes soil a tree’s life, when the roots are moisture. “The other thing mulch concentrated in that area. does that is often undervalued is After that, maturing trees need a it prevents the grass roots from different approach. “Water the area competing with the tree roots,” around the tree. Ideally you always Pfeil said. want to be watering a few feet Tree feeder roots are located inside and outside the drip lines.” in the top four to 10 inches of It doesn’t take a fancy irrigation soil. Grass roots grow in nearly system to properly water a tree. the same space, competing with A regular sprinkler will work fine “I’ve got the prescription for a healthy and happy tree,” said Bozeman Tree Service owner Jeff Pfeil. “It’s a three-step process.”

as long as it is used properly. Pfeil advises watering a tree every other day for 40 minutes. That gives the soil a better chance to deeply absorb the water.

“The ideal cycle for watering is not based on the season, it’s based on the soil conditions,” he said.

“The ideal cycle is to water the plant or tree and then allow it to dry out before watering it again.”

Even on a 90-degree summer day, Jeff Pfeil, Bozeman Tree Service if the soil is wet, the tree is fine.

Check back in a day or two. If the owner soil is dry, the tree is ready for a a micronutrient fertilizer blend at drink.

240psi.

Pfeil urges anyone struggling The method, which can be used with watering to buy a standard on any tree species, provides slowsoil moisture meter at any garden release nitrogen to dramatically center and measure moisture levels increase the growth rate and at six to eight inches deep. Another improve color and general vigor. trick is to put a tuna can under “If you’re going to do it yourself, the sprinkler when it’s turned on it’s really critical to distribute the around the tree. A good watering fertilizer evenly around the tree should fill the tuna can each time. and follow the instructions,” he said.

Step 3 is fertilization. You may “Putting too much down can want to hire the professionals. For burn the tree.” the health of his clients’ trees, Pfeil For more on how to nurture uses deep-root injection under healthy trees, find Pfeil at pressure, inserting a soil probe six bozemantreeservice.com. to eight inches deep and injecting

The Emerald Ash Borer A native of Asia, the green jewel beetle has invaded the eastern United States, where it’s been highly destructive in the past decade. Now, it has been found as far west as Colorado.

Local governments are attempting to control it by monitoring its spread, diversifying tree species, insecticides, and biological control.

“It is a very real threat to Montana ash trees,” Jeff Pfeil said. “It is only a matter of time before it reaches Montana.”

The best thing Montanans can do is annual preventative tree treatments, which will also help protect ash trees against the twig girdler and ash plant bug, two common and destructive insects.

Photo: NPS

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

himself. He likes lots of variety and originality for his customers.

Gardeners who believe that perennials are too expensive compared to annuals can easily fall into a flowering rut.

Gardenier hopes to challenge their thinking.

“You can get a one-gallon, good perennial for under $10,” he said. “I probably offer 60 varieties of those.”

A three-and-a-half-inch annual pot goes for $3.50, which seems less expensive.

But not in the long run.

Annuals brighten the garden one year. Perennials will shine for many years.

“The big thing about perennials is you plant them basically once,” he said. “Most perennials will give you lots of longevity. There are tons that work in Montana, from irises to peonies.”

While you’re at MT Gardens, Todd Gardenier and his daughter, Caelah, keep things green at MT Gardens. also check out the garden art, created by many local artists.

“We try to bring in a variety of Montana artisans,” Gardenier said. “If they want to show their stuff out here, I have a hard time saying no.”

Before he started tending

By Hannah Stiff he greenhouses boast everything from flowering trees to greenhouses five years ago, hanging basket arrangements and one-of-a-kind planters Gardenier was a carpenter. He made by MT Gardens owner Todd Gardenier.

If you’ve hopped off the still makes wooden furniture This spring, Gardenier is rolling out a stock of vibrant Bear Canyon Exit on the he sells at MT Gardens. Other annuals and perennials to delight seasoned and east side of Bozeman artisans offer handmade beginning gardeners alike. recently, you’ve likely “We have peonies and poppies, and several types of perennial grasses gardening tools, metalwork, pottery, antiques and artwork like blue oak grass,” he said. “We have some patchy rose and patchy spotted the colorful featuring Ecuadorean saints. windflower, Shasta daisies and foxgloves and irises, delphiniums, plants, trees and art The offerings are eclectic, Echinacea, dianthuses, yarrows, salvias, lavender, Tuscan sun daisies, at MT Gardens.

Gardenier agreed. And there’s forest grasses, catmint and a large variety of herbs.” more. He also makes hypertufa The herbs come from a seed store in Maine. The annuals and planters. They look much like old perennials are shipped from Wisconsin. When the flowers arrive, Gardenier creates bright hanging baskets by mixing flower arrangements Mexican water troughs.

MT Gardens Offers Plenty for Any Garden, and for the Community Too

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

“They are a mixture of cement, peat moss and vermiculite, and look kind of like stone. They’ll last a really long time, and no two are alike.”

On Wednesdays, Gardenier donates 5 percent of proceeds to KGLT Radio. On Thursdays, 5 percent goes to the Gallatin Valley Food Bank. This Saturday, he’s donating 5 percent of profits to THRIVE. He plans to give to other area nonprofits as the growing season continues.

“I want people to know that we’re local and we’re supporting their community. It’s time to be giving back a little. I’ve had a good life here in Bozeman.”

Flowers sprout from recycled boots in this playful hanging garden

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“Gardens are a form of autobiography,” Sydney Eddison once wrote in the “Horticulture” magazine.

S How Gardens

Speak

& What They

Say

Story by Lisa Reuter Photos by Duncan Bullock

he’s right. Each garden is as unique as the soul that plants it, and each garden’s structures and art elements are the gardener’s punctuation points, revealing a sense of lightheartedness or solemnity, a fondness for decorum or boisterous living, even a glimmer of spirituality.

Consider what a garden’s boundary devices say, merely by their presence. A wooden fence is a tip off to a preference for order but also a settling for impermanence. A rock wall is the statement of one who wants things that endure or, at the minimum, has the means to hire someone else to do the heavy lifting.

Structures speak of romance. An English garden’s linear pathways, sculpted floral rooms and ionic temples suggest an orderly, courtly notion of love. The twig configurations and chaotic plantings of a cottage garden intimate something more earthy and passionate.

The variety of available art elements is endless. If the gardener makes her own, they’re unique. Yet each one and each kind carry a specific message, from the naturalness of a stump to the rusty solidity of an old watering can, the blithe flirtiness of fairies vs. the comic quirkiness of gnomes, and the everlasting calm of an Asian stone lantern.

See any one of them and you know what the gardener thinks about and wants you to reflect on.

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

Ten Watering Tips from Professionals

By Jan Cashman and Lisa Reuter

1. Water deeply and less often.

This is the most important change to make if you haven’t already. Whether it’s grass, trees, shrubs or flowers, deep watering encourages deep rooting. Just wetting the soil’s surface for 15 minutes each evening won’t do that; the roots will stay shallow. Large trees especially benefit from running a trickling hose under them until the root system is saturated. Watering less often also better mimics nature’s rain cycle.

• Experts advise setting sprinkler systems to water deeply for about an hour one day a week, then not watering again for a week. Before making this your regular sprinkler setting though, be sure to watch where the water goes the first few times, advised Dana Durham of Lawn Rain Sprinklers. If you are watering on a slope, or your soil is shallow, has high clay content or is particularly rocky, water may begin puddling or running off before the hour is up.

• Because most area soil has a high clay content, Lain Leoniak, Bozeman’s water conservation manager, recommends a “cycle and soak” strategy. You run the sprinkler in an area for 21 minutes three times a week, but there’s a special cycle to that 21-minute soaking time. Run the sprinkler for seven minutes in one area. Then stop, move the sprinkler to a second area, and run it there for seven minutes. Then stop, move the sprinkler to a third area and run it in there for seven minutes. Do that one more time. Then go back to the first area and repeat the cycle.

Repeat the cycle again, until every area of the lawn has been watered for 21 minutes total in three seven-minute cycles with a 30-minute break between each soaking.

• This is the starting point, Leoniak said. Length of watering time will vary depending on how much shade your lawn has, how much sun hits various sections and how windy it is.

• If soil several inches down remains squishy or the grass is looking very healthy, consider shaving a minute or two off each soak cycle. “Over the course of a watering season, you could save hundreds of gallons of water,” she said.

With each passing year, water becomes a more precious resource in the Gallatin Valley.

To help conserve, check your watering routine to make sure you’re following more recent water-saving guidelines, which are healthier for lawn and plants, too.

2. Water in the cool of the morning—as early as 4–8 a.m.

– to reduce water waste.

Water evaporates more quickly the longer the sun is up. Don’t water later than 8 a.m. If your watering area is big, start earlier than 4 a.m., but don’t go past 8, Leoniak said.

3. Water the soil, not your plants’ leaves.

Water that hits plants’ leaves, whether lettuce in the vegetable garden, or roses or quaking aspen, encourages fungus (leaf spot) diseases.

4. New plants, whether sod, flowers, vegetables, shrubs or trees, require more frequent and diligent watering than

established plants do.

The new plants are not yet rooted in well, so their root systems dry out quickly. Plan to apply extra water to new plantings.

5. Group plants with like water requirements together for efficient watering.

And consider using native plants that require less water.

Many beautiful landscape plants are drought tolerant once established.

6. A thick mulch layer (up to 3 inches), such as soil pep (ground-up bark), holds moisture in the soil and decreases weeds.

Mulches work especially well in perennial flower beds.

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

7. Water according to what your plants and soil require, and changing weather dictates.

Regularly check soil moisture a few inches below the surface. And watch for wilting plants. Personal observation of your plants is the best gauge.

8. Just because you have a drip or sprinkler system, doesn’t mean you can forget about it.

Drip systems can plug up.

Dana Durham recommends using one or more 5-gallonper-hour emitters for trees and 2-gallon-per-hour emitters for shrubs, running twice a week on established plants. Smaller emitters may work best for small grasses and other ornamentals that require less water.

• Bubblers, rather than traditional drip tubes, are recommended for trees and shrubs in a native landscape.

They are less likely to plug.

Drip tubes placed in a grid pattern are ideal for planting beds. Durham likes Netafim type drip irrigation systems (the emitters are spaced about 12 inches apart inside the drip tube). The tubes can be hidden with mulch or decorative rock. Set Netafim stations for flowers differently than tree and shrub stations.

Flower stations may need to run twice daily in the hottest part of the summer.

• You can check the amount of water your system puts out by placing straight-sided cans around under the sprinklers.

The old idea that plants need one inch of moisture per week does not hold true during dry, hot weather in midsummer. As much as two inches a week or more may be needed depending on your soil type. Belgrade’s rocky soils, for example, drain quickly. Plants there need more water than those in heavy clay soil.

9. As summer progresses, decrease watering of trees and shrubs to encourage them to harden off or go dormant.

In a typical Bozeman spring, summer and fall, you’ll water far less in May and June than you will in July and August. Your lawn needs the 21-minute cycles in July and August. In May and June, depending on rainfall, it may require no more than one 10-minute cycle three times a week. By Labor Day, stop watering, or water no more than once every five to seven days, unless your grass is new.

10. Remember, overwatering can be as detrimental as underwatering.

In low spots, or where heavy clay soils are present, an unwatched sprinkler system can drown your plants. Symptoms of overwatering mimic those of underwatering—yellow leaves, brown edges on leaves, wilting. If the area is wet when you walk on it, or you have landscape fabric with mulch around your plants, check for overly wet ground and make corrections.

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SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

Be Creative with Your Lawn, and Save Water Too

A

human transplant from the East, after surveying area lawns, would think Kentucky bluegrass is a native plant. It definitely is not.

It needs at least 1.75 inches of water every week in summer, or 21 inches total over the course of a typical June, July and August.

To reduce the need to water, you could plant a fescue lawn. But fescue doesn’t hold up to traffic like Kentucky bluegrass, especially if you, your kids and your pets like to do things on the lawn.

So put Kentucky bluegrass in your high traffic areas, and rethink the rest, advises Bozeman Water Conservation Manager Lain Leoniak.

For starters, wall to wall grass is not necessary.

It is expensive to water, requires fertilizer and weed treatments, and has to be mowed. It is high maintenance.

Change things up, starting with the backyard. It’s probably your high traffic area, so the Kentucky bluegrass stays. But can you reduce its footprint? Maybe put safer rubber mulch under play sets, and edge the edges of the yard with flower beds full of drought tolerant

By Jan Cashman and Lisa Reuter

Bozeman is a semi-arid ecosystem that receives an average 16 inches of precipitation each year.

It’s an area where it pays to think about conserving water. One of the best ways to save water is to reimagine what your lawn could be. shrubs and plants.

If those new edgy beds will be in full sun, consider shrubs such as green or silver rabbit brush, trilobe sumac, potentilla, silver buffaloberry and low spreading juniper. And perennials such as coneflower, penstemon, buckwheat sulfur, pearly everlasting and dotted gayfeather. All are native to Montana. Nonnative but drought tolerant sedum, Russian sage, bearded iris and hollyhocks will do well too.

For part sun and shade, native golden currant, kinnickinnick, chokecherry and common juniper are good choices. So are non-native lilacs. The last three even like full shade. Native perennials that prefer part sun and shade include Canadian violets, Colorado blue columbines, pussytoes, little flowered penstemon and roundleaf alumroot.

Showy, drought tolerant grasses include bluebunch wheatgrass, lttle bluestem, prairie dropseed and Idaho fescue, all native. Double your options by bunching together a wide range of water smart shrubs and flowers, which need water only during prolonged hot and dry conditions.

For side yards, try something different. How about a new patio area with a built-in barbecue?

You never have to water it. Or decorate with colorful stones and giant moss-covered boulders mixed up with grass clusters and fancy-shaped beds or containers of flowers.

Live with all of that awhile, then tackle the front yard. You’ll be braver, even daring by then.

When you’re all done, you’ll truly have the greenest lawn on the block.

For lots more information on waterconserving plants, lawns and sprinklers, go online to see the City of Bozeman Water Conservation’s “Planting & Outdoor Watering Guide for the Bozeman Area.”

Find it at www.dailychronicle.com under magazines; or at www.bozemanwater.com under water resources and conservation.

Also check out the MSU Extension publications at www.msuextension.org.

Hover over the Yard and Garden listing in Program Areas (top left) and click on Yard and Garden Publications. There’s a wide assortment of free downloads on lawns, perennial and annual flowers and vegetable gardening, plus booklets on growing fruit trees and choosing trees and shrubs that cost about $10 each.

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Photo: Duncan Bullock

SATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016 • BIG SKY PUBLISHING

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Transplant evergreens Plant bare root stock Prepare and plant perennial flower beds Plant berries Fertilize flowering shrubs Apply fruit tree sprays after blossoms fall Spray for fire blight at apple blossom time Sow wildflower seed

Choose plants that attract bees and butterflies, like Borage (Borago officinalis). Other options include aster, butterfly weed, fennel, lantana, bee balm, oregano, sunflower, sweet alyssum, alstroemeria, lion’s tail, penstemon, red hot poker, salvia, lavender, gloriosa daisy, pincushion flower, blanket flower, coneflower and yarrow.

Fertilize and prune evergreens Sow cool-season vegetables in early May Sow warm-season vegetables in late May Sow annuals

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DRIP YOUR WAY TO MORE GREEN.

· Water trees, shrubs and plants with drip irrigation and you can save up to 15 gallons of water a day. · Green up your landscaping and keep a little more green in your wallet too.

WAKE, WATER AND ROLL. · Roll up the savings that is.

· Water your lawn early in the morning and you can save big.

· How? Water evaporates midday and at night causes fungus and other issues. You’ll water most efficiently between 4am and 8am. · Water early for healthy lawns and savings.

MULCH MORE. WATER LESS.

· Most water evaporates before it ever reaches plant roots, so help your trees, plants and shrubs hang onto sprinkler water with a 2” deep mulch barrier.

· Save up to 10 gallons of water every day, all thanks to mulch.

For more tips on saving water and money, visit www.bozemanwater.com.

REBATES LOWER YOUR FLOW FOR MORE DOUGH. Keep your lawn green, save money, and get cash back, too. When you install qualified sprinkler system products, we’ll reward you with a rebate. But that’s not the only perk— these steps can help lower your water bills without sacrificing your lawn.

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