Read an Excerpt

Ask Ciscoe

Oh, la, la! Your Gardening Questions Answered

---

By Ciscoe Morris

Sasquatch Books

Copyright © 2011 Ciscoe Morris
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57061-757-7

---

Canna no looka so good.

The winter cold turned the leaves and stems of my Canna lily to mush. Do these beautiful plants survive the cold or do I need to dig it up and store it in some way? If I do store it, do I just replant it in spring?

Canna foliage burns to a crisp in freezing weather. Fortunately, the temperatures usually must dip at least into the low 20s before root damage occurs. Some cannas are hardy and can be left in the ground, but many of the best varieties won't survive temperatures below 20 degrees. If you leave it in the garden, cut off the burned foliage and cover the rhizomes with a thick cover of insulating mulch. The easiest way to make sure they survive is to dig up the root ball and store it in a box full of soil or compost in an unheated garage. Water as needed to keep the soil slightly moist. Heat loving Cannas are notorious for being slow to grow in our cold Northwest springs. Get a head start by potting up divisions in early spring and placing them in the hottest spot you can find, such as against a south wall. Water and fertilize regularly, and you'll have big, tropical looking Cannas to transplant into your garden while your neighbors wait to see if ones they left in the garden survived the winter.


Don’t tempt ‘eek-squish bugs’ to go off the wagon.

While working in the garden, I often see those big black iridescent beetles coming running out. I often find dead ones in my beer traps. Are those good or bad bugs?

Local entomologist Sharon Collman nicknamed those inch long, shiny black ground beetles 'eek-squish' bugs because that's what folks do to them when they see them run out from under cover. Eek squish bugs have bad breath, but it's not because they don't brush their teeth. They eat slugs! Most eat slug eggs and cutworms, but you haven’t lived until you go out at night to see the type of ground beetle known as the slug destroyer eat 4 or 5-inch slugs. It’s more exciting than anything on ‘Discovery Channel’! Avoid burying beer traps (used to catch slugs) at ground level. The beetles will be tempted to stop in for a drink and will suffer the same fate as the slugs you are trying to get rid of. Instead, cut 4, 1-inch holes just below the lid of a cottage cheese container and place the traps on top of the ground. The beer loving slugs will still crawl in for happy hour, but the beetles can't get in to join the party.



Sow the seeds of carrots in summer for harvest in fall and winter.

It’s only mid-summer and it seems as if I just planted my spring garden, but am I right that it is already getting to be the time to plant carrots for harvest in fall? Any tricks when it comes to sowing carrots in summer?

I know, mid-July is too early to be thinking about fall and winter, but that is the perfect time to plant carrots for fall harvest. Carrots resent transplanting, so seed them directly into the garden as space becomes available. Plant about 1/4 inch deep and cover the seeds with a thin layer of peat moss. Carrot seeds must stay moist to germinate. Carrots tend to look like a grandpa nose when they get too much nitrogen, so go easy with the fertilizer, and use something higher in phosphorus.


Don’t get carried away pruning Ceanothus

I love my Ceanothus plant. It has blue flowers and the evergreen leaves look great in my dry border, but it's getting too big. How far can I cut it back without hurting it?

Ceanothus is often called California lilac. The blue spring flowers are attractive to butterflies and bees. It's the ideal shrub for a sunny, well-drained location. The problem is that they almost always get bigger than desired. Don't over do the pruning. Cutting back hard will drastically shorten the life of Ceanothus, and shearing them gives them an artificial lollipop look. Branches can be pruned back, but never cut wood that is wider in diameter than a pencil and always cut to another branch, never leaving a stub. It's much better to control height by starting when the plant is young. What to do if your Ceanothus is huge? Enjoy it: They generally only live for 5 to 10 years. Begin pruning its replacement when it is still small.


Cherries don't have to be monsters.

Cherries are my favorite fruit, but they cost a mint at the grocery store. I want to plant my own cherry tree, but I don't want it to take over the whole yard. Are there any varieties that don't get so big? Also is it true that I have to plant two different varieties in order to get cherries?

Sweet cherries do cost a mint at the grocery store, but in the past if you grew your own, you needed a lot of room and an appreciation for shade. Most sweet Cherry trees topped out at around 40 ft tall, and you had to plant a second, different variety, to provide cross-pollinatiion.
Now self-pollinating sweet cherries are available on dwarfing Gisela rootstock and can easily be maaintained at 10 ft tall. There are a number to choose from. Here are a few of my favorites: 'Lapins', is a heavy producer of delicious, black, crack resistant cherries. 'Glacier', a recent WSU introduction has huge, incredibly flavorful, dark red fruit. 'Sweetheart', a new introduction from British Columbia is covered with big, bright red, irresistible cherries. Now you can have your cherry pie, and enjoy sunshine too. (That is, if you can beat the birds to the fruit!) These and other self-fertile, dwarf sweet cherries are available bare root at local nurseries, or order on line at www.RaintreeNursery.com.


Read this before you prune your cherry tree.

My cherry tree is supposed to be a semi-dwarf, but it's so tall the birds are getting more cherries than I am. When is the best time to prune it, and how far can I lower the tree by cutting it back so that I get the cherries instead of those darned birds?

You can prune your sweet cherry tree anytime it is dormant during winter, but do it only on a dry day to reduce disease problems. Sorry to tell you that you're better off sharing the bounty with the birds. Cherry trees need only light thinning of crowded and crossing branches and the removal of dead, diseased and damaged branches. . Don't lower the height drastically or you will get serious decay and battle sprouts for the rest of your life. Semi-dwarf cherry trees should be pruned using the central leader method. The goal is to make your cherry look like a Christmas tree with equally spaced layers of branches growing out at 45degree angles. The lowest branches are left the widest with each successive layer of branches pruned shorter than the one below. The central leader can be headed back each year, about a foot above the last branch, to maintain a height that can be reached using a ladder.


Marry a Canadian for a floriferous Christmas.

What is the trick to making Christmas cactus bloom at Christmas? Mine seems to bloom at all times of the year except on the holiday.

Many garden books advise you to put your Christmas cactus in total darkness for 14 hours every night, starting in September, to get them to bloom by Christmas. Not true! All you need to do is marry a Canadian. Keep it on the dry side, and give it cold nights starting in October, and your Christmas cactus almost always will set blooms for the holidays. Evidently it's a Canadian trait, not only to sleep with the windows wide open in the middle of winter, but to have a fan blowing on you as well! My Christmas cactus has bloomed right on schedule every year since we got married. The amazing thing is that I have survived my wife's Popsicle toes to see it bloom.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Ask Ciscoe by Ciscoe Morris. Copyright © 2011 Ciscoe Morris. Excerpted by permission of Sasquatch Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---