The Chicago Gardener

Turning the page

Every Chicago gardener knows that some things survive the winter and some don't. This blog is one of the things that won't.

We've decided to put our energies into different ways of providing information about gardening. My most heartfelt gratitude goes to all of those who participated by posting comments, questions and answers. It's been an adventure learning to become a digital journalist and you've all taught me a lot.

I'm not going anywhere; I'll be writing about gardening every week in the Tribune's Sunday Home&Garden section, with all the experts who contribute, and you'll be able to find all my stuff and more at http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/home/.

Thanks a bunch, and happy gardening!

Beth Botts

Good source needed for grapevine ivy and other houseplants

Eddie from Chicago wanted to know here he could get grapevine ivy. "I had one years ago, but it has since died," he wrote. "Do you know of any place that might sell them or a site to swap clippings?"

I replied: I am not really sure what you mean by "grapevine ivy." Are you talking about grape ivy (Cissus rhombifolia)? There also are many kinds of English ivy (Hedera helix) that are grown as houseplants.

I would suggest that you call ahead to a garden center that carries a lot of houseplants and ask them if they have what you want. Here are some possible local sources: Grand Street Gardens on Grand Avenue; Geimer's Greenhouses in Long Grove; or City Escape Garden Center on Lake Street.

Does anyone else out there have a favorite local houseplant source? Or have a cutting for Eddie?

Photo: It's not a grape ivy, but Hedera helix 'Gold Child' is the American Ivy Society's 2008 Ivy of the Year.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about houseplants here. See more gardening coverage here.

Some links for Chicago and Indiana gardeners

Here's a list of links that might be useful. Got a further suggestion? Post it as a comment.

Tribune garden forums

Extension web search
(returns only results from land-grant university extension services, for more focused and reliable information)

Institutions

Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe
(see especially Illinois Best Plants section)

The Morton Arboretum, Lisle
(see especially Tree and Shrub Selection Guide)

Missouri Botanic Garden (northern Missouri is Zone 5)
(see especially Plant Finder, Plants of Merit)

Zone 5 university extension offices:
University of Illinois Extension
Purdue University Extension
University of Wisconsin

Online communities:
Gardenweb

Dave’s Garden

Plant company marketing sites:
Proven Winners
(see especially container combinations)
Simply Beautiful
Monrovia

Plant introduction and trials programs
Chicagoland Grows
Great Plants (Nebraska State Arboretum)
All-America Selections

Seed starting:
Park Seed's Success with Seed site

National Garden Bureau

How to make a newspaper pot

What are your favorite sources for information about gardening in Chicago? Post a comment.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about research here. See more gardening coverage here.

Seeing orchids up close and beautiful

I was charmed by the flourishes of this Victorian-style orchid magnifier from Smith & Hawken. A magnifying glass is balanced on an adjustable counterweighted arm so you can examine every detail of your carefully bred cattleya or dendrobium (or the $20 moth orchid from the supermarket).

The 34-inch-high gizmo, with a silver-coated steel wire frame that can stand or hang, is $159. Call 800-940-1170 or see smithandhawken.com to order or find local stores.

Photo from Smith & Hawken.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about indoor plants here. See more gardening coverage here.

Shasta daisies to love

Didn’t the Queen Mum have a hat like this once? Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Snowdrift,’ with mostly frilly double 3 1/2-inch blooms, got four stars out of five in a seven-year evaluation of Shasta daisy cultivars at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.

The five-star cultivars — with classic single blooms of various sizes and heights — included Leucanthemum x superbum ‘Amelia’ and ‘Becky’ and Leucanthemum vulgare ‘Filigran’ and ‘Maikonigin.’ They were all heavy flower producers over a long bloom period, according to plant evaluation manager Richard Hawke.

Hawke’s report on the Shasta daisy evaluation has this advice for growing them: They need full sun and fertile, superbly draining soil, because they are susceptible to crown rot. So don’t mulch heavily over the crowns in winter. Be prepared to deadhead and to stake taller cultivars.

Hawke writes that Leucanthemum x superbum was introduced in 1901 by Luther Burbank and is probably a hybrid between Leucanthemum lacustre and Leucanthemum maximum (although Burbank apparently didn’t keep very precise records). It was named after Mount Shasta in California. The parent species are European. Leucanthemum vulgare is the classic European ox-eye daisy, very similar in appearance, but widely naturalized in this country.

The daisy cultivars in the evaluation ranged in height from 15 to 40 inches and in flower size from 2 to 5 inches. Most bloom from June to August.

Hawke recommends playing the white simplicity of the daisies (well, simple unless you plant an amusing fluffy cultivar such as 'Snowdrift') against the colors of bee balm, catmint or sage or with ornamental grasses.

And I have to say, it's so lovely to have all the botanic garden's plant evaluation reports available free on the Web site. They go back to a 1991 report on rhododendrons, but time was, to find out about annuals, perennials and shrubs, meticulously tested for years on end right up there in Glencoe by experts, you had to mail in $3 to get a hard copy. You can still get the reports that way that way, or you can just click on over.

Photos: Top, Leucanthemum x superba 'Snowdrift.' Chicago Botanic Garden photo by Carol Freeman. Bottom: Leucanthemum x superba 'Amelia.' Chicago Botanic Garden photo by Richard Hawke.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about perennials here. See more gardening coverage here.

This week you could . . .

. . . Register for the Jan. 31 "Down to Earth Gardening" symposium, featuring Irish author Helen Dillon; David Howard, head gardener to Prince Charles at his organic estate; William Cullina, author and director of research for the New England Wild Flower Society; and other speakers. It will be held at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.

. . . See a slide lecture on "Searching for Lilies Along the Silk Road to the Court of Kubla Kahn" by Galen Gates, director of plant collections at the Chicago Botanic Garden, at 2 p.m. today [Jan. 20] at the Chicago Botanic Garden. The talk is part of a series presented by the Wisconsin-Illinois Lily Society; next up will be author Pam Duthie speaking Feb. 17 on "Companion Plants for Lilies."

. . . Try some crafts at a "Make and Take" meeting of the Garden Club of Downers Grove Monday afternoon [Jan. 21].

. . . Hear about " 'Green' Gardens" from Anna Viertel of the Chicago Botanic Garden Tuesday [Jan. 22] at a lecture sponsored by the Hyde Park Garden Fair Committee at Augustana Lutheran Church in Hyde Park. On Jan. 29: "Woody Plants for the City Garden."

. . . Learn "Container Design -- the Basic Recipe" from Robin DiIorio at a meeting of the Lombard Garden Club Friday [Jan. 25].

. . . Hear Ted Biernacke of Ted's Greenhouse in Tinley Park speak on “Succulents and Cacti” Saturday morning [Jan. 26] at the Oak Park Conservatory. It doesn't say this on the Web site, but tickets are $10.

. . . Register in advance for a Saturday [Jan. 26] workshop on "propagating plants from seeds and cuttings" by Richard Tilley and Larry Clary at the Wicker Park Garden Club.

. . . Hear Jennifer Brennan and Morrie Millman speak on "House Plant Maintenance" Friday [Jan. 25] and Saturday [Jan. 26] at the Chalet in Wilmette.

. . . Learn about "Seed Starting 101" Saturday [Jan. 26] at City Escape Garden Center and Design Studio in Chicago.

Photo: Unconventional planters, from Helen Dillon's talk in the "Down to Earth Gardening" symposium at the Chicago Botanic Garden Jan. 31.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about events here. See more gardening coverage here.

Deadline is Jan. 31 for garden show photo competition

The deadline is Jan. 31 for the amateur photographic competition at the Chicagoland Flower & Garden Show in Rosemont March 8-16. See the rules here.

The show's Web site announces some sponsors of gardens, among them English & Sons landscaping in Montogomery, the Barn nursery in Cary and Synthetic Turf of Illinois (synthetic turf?), as well as show stalwarts Rich's Foxwillow Pines, Triton College, Leisure Woods, Aquascape and Rick Rock. The Chicago Botanic Garden will offer its "Gardening Live" demonstrations and Bill Aldrich is hard at work lining up speakers for the always informative gardening seminars.

Show sponsor Special Events Management has added a home show and art show to the price of the ticket this year. See details at http://chicagolandflowerandgarden.com/.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about flower shows here. See more gardening coverage here.

Cover sprouts against cold snap

Pat wrote in worrying about some of her bulbs that have already sprouted and wondering how she can protect them against the bitter cold expected this weekend. Here's my reply:

As long as it's only foliage that is exposed and not flower buds, you still should get at least some flowers. Leaves may be damaged and end up looking frazzled, but the flowers should be OK.

Bulbs are pretty tough and can withstand freezing weather in early spring, but this freeze that is coming this weekend is going to be really, really cold. They are saying it could get down to 15 degrees below zero tonight in places. So if you have some leaves or mulch that you could spread over the bulb foliage, or you can cover the beds with something like landscape fabric or even old sheets or plastic, it might be a good idea. Weigh the sheets down with something heavy so they don't blow around.

However: Be ready to remove the covering as soon as it warms up. Any kind of fabric over the plants can trap heat on sunny days. That could actually make your sprouting problem worse by warming the soil and confusing the plants even more. Plastic is especially bad because it doesn’t breathe at all. So get it off those plants as soon as the crisis is past.

And although mulch is generally a good idea over the root zones -- precisely because it does insulate and protect against swings in soil temperature -- you don't want to leave it over the crown of the plant until spring; it can trap moisture and cause rot or disease when things warm up. It would be strictly an emergency measure against the weekend's bitter cold, and should be pulled back from any green growth when the weather gets back up into the 20s or so. This being Chicago, we should presume that there will be plenty more warm spells and cold spells before winter is done.

You definitely want to get those sheets off before it snows. A few inches of snow alone would be a good thing -- it is excellent insulation for plants against cold winter air and, falling softly and tucking itself around the sprouts, it rarely harms bulb foliage. But snow weighing down a sheet of fabric or plastic could crush the plants.

Next fall, when you plant bulbs, cover the area over the bulbs with about 1 to 2 inches of mulch. That will help keep soil cool and deter bulbs from sprouting.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about bulbs here and weather here. See more gardening coverage here.

Ain't no sunshine when he's gone: We have to wait for new rose

There was supposed to be a new member this spring in the Wisconsin-bred line of hardy Knock Out shrub roses bred by William Radler: a pale yellow called Sunny Knock Out. But not for us. I'm told that Star Roses has run into production problems and can't get enough plants grown for national distribution this year, so Sunny Knock Out (Rosa 'Radsunny') only will be available on a limited basis on the East Coast.

Here in flyover country we'll have to wait to find the rose in garden centers until 2009 -- which hardly seems fair, since we are a lot closer to the Milwaukee-area ancestral home of all the Knock Outs than the East Coast is. But Star Roses is based in Pennsylvania.

Knock Out began as a trademark name for one particular rose. Here's an interesting page on its history.
Now Knock Out has been expanded into a brand name for a whole series of hardy, resilient, disease-resistant shrub roses.

Pink Knock Out and the pale-pink Blushing Knock Out, for instance, are sports -- chance mutations -- of the original cherry-red one. Rainbow Knock Out is a hybrid of Knock Out and some other cultivars.

Actually, Radler has a yellow rose out already, 'Carefree Sunshine,' with deeper yellow double blooms. It's often thought to be related to Knock Out, but Radler hasn't revealed its parents. What we do know is that Radler is personally highly intolerant of black spot, and so, I'm told, is this rose.

There are a lot of roses with 'Carefree' in the name, including 'Carefree Beauty,'
perhaps the most famous of the rugged Griffith Buck roses bred out in Iowa. Meilland also has introduced several of them, including 'Carefree Wonder.' In these days when we are all looking for roses that don't need to be fussed over, the adjective is an obvious selling point. But it doesn't mean they are all closely related.

But reviews been good, so if you really need yellow this year, you might ask around for 'Carefree Sunshine' (Rosa 'Radsun,' not to be confused with Rosa 'Radsunny,' or Climbing Carefree Sunshine, a.k.a. Rosa 'Radsunsar.' There ought to be a law about making the names so aggravatingly similar).

Photos: Top, Sunny Knock Out. Bottom, Rainbow Knock Out. Photos from Star Roses.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about roses here. See more gardening coverage here.

Emerald ash borers found in Geneva, Hazel Crest

News is never good news on the invasive species front. Now we learn that infestations of the emerald ash borer have been confirmed in Geneva, near Randall Road and Illinois Highway 38, and in Hazel Crest, in a patch of woods near 170th Street and California Avenue.

Other Chicago-area places where the bugs, or evidence of them, have been found include Glendale Heights, Wilmette, Winnetka, Skokie, Hampshire, Plato Township west of Elgin, Lily Lake in Kane County, Elburn, Peru in LaSalle County and the Fermilab grounds in Batavia, according to Gina Tedesco, spokeswoman for The Morton Arboretum in Lisle. You can find a map of the sightings and the quarantine area, where ash trees can't be planted and firewood must not be moved, at www.illinoiseab.com.

These are only small pockets of insects now, but that's a pretty wide distribution -- so I'm betting that the borers have laid their eggs under the bark of ash trees in a lot of other places too, and we just haven’t found them yet.

"It's definitely a serious issue that's only going to get worse," said Rex Bastian, an entomologist who is vice president of field education and development for The Care of Trees, based in Wheeling. It was a pruning crew from the company that noticed the infestation in Geneva.

He pointed out, though, that at least we have more knowledge about the insects than when they swept through Michigan, leading to the loss of more than 10 million ash trees that either died or were cut down in a failed attempt to stop the insects' spread. There, he said, "nobody knew what was happening."

The Hazel Crest bugs were discovered in traps set by The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, which has a research program attempting to pin down the extent of the insects' spread in Illinois. Since the borers were first detected near Lily Lake in 2006, the arboretum has taken a leading role in trying to address the problem.

So far, there is no known means of stopping the borers, which arrived from Asia in wood used for packing. Scientists in Michigan are studying whether small wasps, which may be parasites of the borers in their native China, might help.

Bastian says some healthy trees may be protected from infestation by insecticides that can be injected in the root zone or the tree tissue. But the treatments -- about which some experts remain dubious -- can cost upwards of several hundred dollars a year per tree, depending on its size, and have to be continued indefinitely.

Since our knowledge of the borers only goes back to 2002, we don't know whether pesticides will protect trees over the long term. And it would be prohibitively expensive to treat all the blue, green, black and white ash trees in parks, on streets and in forests; in some places 20 percent of the street trees are ashes. Even if they wanted to mow down their ash trees, as some towns did in Michigan to try and keep the borers out, Illinois municipalities don't have the money.

So at this point, all we can really do is collect data and wait to find out about the next infestations to come to light. (Although the tree folk at the arboretum are trying to look on the bright side.) Signs of the bugs are subtle and tend to appear toward the tops of trees, so if you have an ash that seems sickly, it might be a good idea to call an arborist.

And, of course, don't move firewood -- which might spread the insects' eggs or deadly, burrowing larvae, and don't plant ash trees. The arboretum has lists of better trees to plant, or trees that can replace a fallen ash.

Photo: Emerald ash borer. In real life, they are only about half an inch long.

This post is part of The Chicago Gardener, a blog of the Chicago Tribune. See more posts about trees here and invasive species here. See more gardening coverage here.