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Archive for the drought tag

Janet’s Journal – A Drought Diary

August 30, 2016   •   1 Comment

Some gardening seasons are better than others. Don’t look and learn only during the best years, but also when disasters such as drought strike. There’s a lot to be learned, such as the fact that butterfly bushes, sedum and grasses not only survive drought and heat that wipe out astilbe and daylilies, but also look good under those conditions.
Some gardening seasons are better than others. Don’t look and learn only during the best years, but also when disasters such as drought strike. There’s a lot to be learned, such as the fact that butterfly bushes, sedum and grasses not only survive drought and heat that wipe out astilbe and daylilies, but also look good under those conditions.

Plants that armor themselves against future droughts

After one of the hottest, driest summers in recent memory, we realized that quite a few species were not crispy critters, but actually seemed to be reveling in the heat and drought.

So I began noting plants in my own garden and others that rely almost entirely on rain, and made the following list. It’s hardly exhaustive—it’s heavy on perennials since that’s my gardening specialty, but even that list could be longer—but it’ll be useful for designing dry, gravelly beds or hot places where the hose won’t reach.

Hawthorns provide pleasant bloom in June, fruit for the birds, and respectable fall color. What a delight to know they also perform well in hot, dry places.
Hawthorns provide pleasant bloom in June, fruit for the birds, and respectable fall color. What a delight to know they also perform well in hot, dry places.

Don’t call it a list of drought-tolerant plants. Tolerance isn’t what you should settle for, because it’s not always pretty.

Joe Pye weed is a good example. They showed me their burned-back foliage, their drought defense mechanism. They simply hang on until late June, ugly though they may be with leaves so wilted you can pass your arm between stems without touching foliage, because then they can set buds for next spring. Even if they die back without flowering, those buds survive, insulated below the soil. It’s an effective survival technique, but hardly handsome.

So, some plants perfectly capable of outlasting a drought aren’t listed here. I sought and found plants that fare well in a drought and remain attractive too.

What makes these winners, when other plants shrivel or duck out in a hot, dry season? I’ve noticed a number of common characteristics that probably helped them survive. I’ll describe them so you can be on the lookout for other plants like them. Even without witnessing a plant’s performance under fire, you can probably bet on it if it has one or more of these attributes.

Plants with skinny foliage

The fewer and smaller its leaves, the less water a plant loses through transpiration on hot days. This was important this year, since some plants that might have weathered simple drought couldn’t handle the heat—they couldn’t take up water fast enough on the hottest days to replace what the leaves transpired.

Missing from the list are some plants with tiny leaves but a preference for dry air. Cosmos and annual bachelor button, for instance, are drought tolerant. Both are also susceptible to mildew when they’re under stress, as in a drought. Our high relative humidity insures that spores and chances of infection abound, so we see their lower leaves begin to brown and curl, victims of mildew.

Leaves held vertically

A leaf that stands upright escapes the full impact of midday sun. Bearded iris is a perfect example. It’s a plant that may never be as happy as when it’s planted in that hot, dry strip between driveway or sidewalk and brick house foundation. Yuccas and many ornamental grasses employ the same tactic.

Even large leaves can get by in a drought if vertically arranged. Prairie dock and its relative, compass plant, have huge leaves that stand straight up like canoe paddles stuck butt first into a sandy beach. Both plants impress me most in dry years, standing taller and producing sturdier flowering stems in a dry summer than wet (although prairie dock, a native of seasonally wet meadows, loves being wet at least through spring).

By comparison, and in explanation of some sad losses this year, pity the poor understory species often planted in the sun—flowering dogwoods, Japanese maples, redbuds, hydrangeas, etc. These plants’ leaves are held parallel to the ground, better to catch every photon of light that filters through the forest canopy. The only way for those leaves to protect themselves from full sun is to hang down—to wilt. In a wilted state they can’t photosynthesize, so the plant can starve in the process.

Leaves with a furry coat

The hair that makes a leaf look gray or silver also acts as insulation. Water released from “breathing holes”—the stomata—isn’t whisked away directly by the wind but remains trapped in the hairs as a high-humidity buffer zone.

Even a little bit of hair makes a difference—the downy foliage of a Tellima or the bristles on prairie dock and annual sunflower are examples. Excessive hair doesn’t seem to be the problem for plants that overdressing can be to people, however. Blue mist spirea and Russian sage, two of the best species for hot dry beds, have a coating not only on their leaves but the twigs too.

Leaves can fail to develop their rightful downiness if grown in cool, moist shade. Blue globe thistle and dusty miller are cases in point. They become almost green in the shade and apt to sag at the first taste of drought.

Waxy coatings on leaves

Here’s another means to slow water loss. Myrtle euphorbia’s (Euphorbia myrsinites) wax coating protects it even through winter’s freeze-drying, so I’m not surprised this plant looked blue, cool and comfortable all summer. And although giant crambes burned or were set back, their waxy blue cousin, sea crambe, never looked better than it did in this drought.

Tap roots

Plants that pull water from deep down can grow for weeks and even months after other plants have curled up and blown away. Tap roots are probes that can extend many feet into the subsoil.

Many plants have more than one defense mechanism. Waxy myrtle euphorbia has a tap root. Yucca and yucca-leaf sea holly (Eryngium yuccifolium) have vertically-arranged leaves as well as tap roots.

Butterfly bush may hang its leaves on the hottest dry days, but it comes through with flower even so. Now, if we could only help it stay ahead of the spider mites that also like hot, dry conditions!
Butterfly bush may hang its leaves on the hottest dry days, but it comes through with flower even so. Now, if we could only help it stay ahead of the spider mites that also like hot, dry conditions!

Wide-reaching roots

Far-flung, stringy roots carry junipers, butterfly bushes and hawthorns through a drought. These plants aren’t limited to drawing water from only that relatively small area right outside their own driplines.

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ has become the plant I love to hate, because it’s too perfect. Is it fair that a plant with good foliage all summer, great color all fall, plus winter interest should also handle drought and heat without faltering?!
Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ has become the plant I love to hate, because it’s too perfect. Is it fair that a plant with good foliage all summer, great color all fall, plus winter interest should also handle drought and heat without faltering?!

Succulent foliage

You probably know that cacti take up water during the brief desert rainy season and can retain and use it slowly, even over years. Michigan native prickly pear cactus and many sedums can also make use of water that was imbibed weeks before.

Bulbous plants and others with avoidance syndrome

Listen hard, and you can probably hear tulips, daffodils and foxtail lilies humming with delight right about now. These plants developed “grow fast, then hide” traits to deal with bone-dry summers. In fact, Michigan’s normally-moist summers may account for problems we have with these plants as perennials—namely, that they won’t come back. If the bulbs (tulip and daffodil) or roots (foxtail lily) remain cool and moist all summer, they don’t ripen. As a result, they may not set flowers or might not develop a proper protective tunic, which may mean they’ll rot during winter.

Catmint is happy here next to a stone patio in 95 degree heat, even without irrigation.
Catmint is happy here next to a stone patio in 95 degree heat, even without irrigation.

Beats me what gives them an edge

Then there are the plants who survive by some facility I can’t figure. Yet even though I can’t guess why ‘Gold Standard’ and ‘Sugar and Cream’ hostas keep going when other hostas are toasted or prostrated by the heat, I can’t deny my notes—they did stand tall. Tovara, Solomon’s seal and goatsbeard stump me as well, as does siebold viburnum—this last has hairy leaves and twigs, but so do other viburnums that scorched and drooped this summer!

Most of these enigmas are shade-loving plants, and as such are not likely to withstand drought and heat if moved out of their element. However, I’m convinced that shade alone did not save them. Many were survivors in shade gardens among dozens of other shade-loving species that wimped out.

One last thing. If you choose to grow a perennial or hardy woody plant from this list, don’t simply set it out in a dry bed and expect it to thrive. If it was produced in a nursery or an irrigated bed, even if it belongs to the most drought-tolerant species in the world, it will need time to reconfigure its root system from a dense, watered-every-day ball to something wide, deep or both. If it’s a species shielded by furry foliage or a thick, waxy coating, it may come to you less hairy or thinner-skinned than it should be. Once established, things are different, since the plant’s leaves will form in hotter, drier conditions. So provide water during dry spells for at least the first year if you want to see your drought-tolerant plants shine the next time rains fail.

Half the world may feel that yuccas are appropriately named, but even those detractors must admit they shine during a drought.
Half the world may feel that yuccas are appropriately named, but even those detractors must admit they shine during a drought.

Drought-thriving plants

Annuals

  • Dusty miller (Senecio cineraria)
  • Gazania
  • Licorice plant (Helichrysum species
    and varieties)
  • Red fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’)
  • Sunflowers (Helianthus varieties)
  • Verbena bonariensis

Perennials

  • Allium (Allium species)
  • Amsonia (Amsonia tabernaemontana and A. hubrichtii)*
  • Baby’s breath (Gypsophila paniculata)
  • Barrenwort (Epimedium species)*
  • Bearded iris (Iris germanica hybrids)
  • Blue globe thistle (Echinops ritro)
  • Blue lyme grass (Elymus arenarius, Lymus arenarius). Beware: it’s not a clump-former but a runner extraordinaire.
  • Butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii and its hybrids)
  • Catmint (Nepeta mussinii and hybrids)
  • Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum)
  • Daffodil (Narcissus species and hybrids)
  • Dianthus ‘Bath’s Pink’ and other perennial carnations having D. gratianopolitanus in their genes.
  • Fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides)
  • Foxtail lily (Eremurus himalaicus)
  • Goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus)*
  • Goldenrod (Solidago species and hybrids). Note: it’s not an allergen and there are excellent clump-forming hybrids such as ‘Goldenmosa’ available.
  • Hosta ‘Gold Standard’*
  • Hosta ‘Sugar and Cream’*
  • Lavender mist meadow rue (Thalictrum rochebruneanum)*
  • Leatherwood fern (Dryopteris marginalis)*
  • Michigan lily (Lilium michiganense)*
  • Myrtle euphorbia (Euphorbia myrsinites)
  • Perennial ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum)*
  • Prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum)
  • Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa)
  • Rose mallow (Lavatera cachemiriana and Malva alcea)
  • Sea crambe, sea kale (Crambe maritima)
  • Showy stonecrop (Sedum spectabile and hybrids such as ‘Autumn Joy’)
  • Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum species)*
  • Starry false Solomon’s seal (Smilacina stellata)*
  • Tellima (Tellima grandiflora)*
  • Tovara (Tovara virginiana, Persicaria virginiana)*
  • Tulip (Tulipa species and hybrids)
  • Yucca (Yucca filamentosa)
  • Yucca-leaf sea holly (Eryngium yuccifolium)

Shrubs

  • Barberry (Berberis thunbergii)
  • Blue mist spirea (Caryopteris x clandonensis, gray-leaf forms)
  • Juniper (Juniperus species)
  • Siebold viburnum (V. sieboldii). Caution: fragrant in bloom, but not in a nice way.*

Trees

  • Hawthorn (Crataegus species)
  • Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos)

* Should be grown in shade or half shade.

 

Article by Janet Macunovich and photos by Steven Nikkila, www.gardenatoz.com.

Filed Under: Janet’s Journal Tagged With: Butterfly bush, catmint, drought, hawthorne, Janet Macunovich, sedum, yucca

Janet’s Journal: Proper Watering

June 1, 2014   •   Leave a Comment

Water is the crux of gardening. For a beautiful garden, spend some time sorting out your plants’ individual water needs and how water flows in your soil.
Water is the crux of gardening. For a beautiful garden, spend some time sorting out your plants’ individual water needs and how water flows in your soil.

Understand your soil and plants roots to help your plants thrive

 

By Janet Macunovich / Photos by Steven Nikkila

The hazy, hot eye of summer is upon the garden. Reach for the hose, but use your head for proper watering.

Herbaceous plants—annuals, perennials, vegetables, etc., that have no wood to hold them up—are simply columns of fluids. Roughly 95 percent water, they stand because liquid pressure holds their cell walls taught. Remove much and they fold. Wilted plants might recover with watering, but damage is done during the wilt: from localized scarring of tissues and greater susceptibility to diseases that can enter through weakened tissue to the more general stunting that occurs because the plant was not able to photosynthesize while dehydrated.

Photosynthesizing is the harnessing of solar energy to make food. Plants use sunlight to split water and carbon dioxide molecules in their leaf cells, then recombine those ions with pinches of mineral matter to make sugars, starches, cell thickeners, new cells and everything else they need. Sunlight is the fuel, but water is the main ingredient, lubricant, coolant and transportation device in these leafy factories. Water’s atoms become part of the product, but water also keeps all parts supple and cool enough to work and is the conveyer belt which brings ingredients together and moves finished products from leaf to stem and root. In brighter light and warmer air, the plant factory works faster and more water is needed to keep it running.

No wonder plants ask for water every time we turn around in summer. The best thing we can do in July is to water wisely, not by rote but using a variety of methods geared to specific plants, soil and weather.

One inch of water per week is the average rule, but all plants are not average. Be aware of your plants’ specific water requirements.
One inch of water per week is the average rule, but all plants are not average. Be aware of your plants’
specific water requirements.

 

Take the standard rule, to give plants one inch of water per week. Some of us set out rain gauges to measure rainfall, then turn on sprinklers as needed to top up to that one inch mark. Others read cumulative precipitation in newspaper weather charts and drag out hoses when rain doesn’t add up. Both are smart practices, better than setting an automatic system to run every day or two, rain or shine. Yet you can water even smarter.

One inch per week is an average, but all plants aren’t average. Some need more because their leaves lose more water to evaporation, or when they’re ripening fruits, or if they were cut back and must fluff out all new foliage. Big, thin leaves may lose so much water through evaporation on a hot, sunny day that the roots can’t keep up even if a hose drips there constantly. As an example, look at a ligularia wilted into a green puddle. Many ligularia plants suffer from root rot in summer too, overwatered by a gardener who reaches for the hose every time the plant wilts. The soil becomes super saturated and airless, so they die of starvation and rot.

Big, thin leaves in the wind and sun may lose so much water so quickly that the roots can’t keep up. Just look at a ligularia spread out on the ground like a green puddle.
Big, thin leaves in the wind and sun may lose so much water so quickly that the roots can’t keep up. Just look at a ligularia spread out on the ground like a green puddle.

 

Some plants need less water than others on a hot or blustery day. Gray, furry or needle-like leaves are designed for minimal water loss. Hairs that make a leaf gray or furry form a layer around the leaf that prevents immediate evaporation or blow-drying of water vapor emerging from pores. The vapor is trapped and sheltered inside the fuzz where it can linger and do its job as a coolant. To grow a gray leaf plant like lamb’s ear (Stachys lanata) next to a wilter like ligularia, water very carefully, feeling for moisture in the soil at the base of each plant before turning the hose on just one plant or the other.

A gray leaf plant such as lamb’s ear (Stachys lanata) does well where it’s hotter and drier. It has a layer of hair on each leaf where water vapor coming out through the pores is trapped and protected.
A gray leaf plant such as lamb’s ear (Stachys lanata) does well where it’s hotter and drier. It has a layer of hair on each leaf where water vapor coming out through the pores is trapped and protected.

The amount of water available to roots isn’t based solely on amount of water poured onto the soil—that inch we measure in a rain gauge or in a wide-mouth container set on the ground under a sprinkler. Whether an inch will mean there’s enough, too little or too much water for the roots varies with type of soil, drainage, air temperature and wind.

Sandy soil has large pores—spaces too big to hold water up against the pull of gravity. Water runs through sand more quickly than through the tiny pores in clay or loam. An inch of water applied all at once to sand may be gone in a day, though in clay it would have lingered at root tips for a week or more. So sand often needs more than an inch of water per week, meted out by the quarter- or half-inch every few days. Sand’s ability to hold water can be improved by topping it with evaporation-suppressing mulch and mixing into it a generous layer of organic matter or pre-moistened water-absorbent polymers (sold as “Water Sorb,” “Soil Moist,” etc.). These materials can absorb and only gradually lose up to 100 times their own weight in water. Yet even fortified this way, a sandy soil will dry more quickly than clay.

Drainage is the movement of water and air through soil pores. Some soils drain quickly, others slowly. Often the drainage depends on the type of soil well below the surface, so even a sand may drain slowly enough that moss grows on its surface. The only sure way to know how long water lingers in a soil, and how soon life-giving air is also back in the soil after a drenching rain, is to dig a hole 3 to 4 inches deep and touch the soil. What feels cool is damp, but aerated. What feels warm or hot is dry. Soil that actually wets the fingertip is still draining.

Doing touch tests can be revelatory.

Even within a city lot with homogenous soil, some spots will dry more quickly than others. South-facing slopes and elevated areas may be dry while soil a few feet away is still moist, since ground tipped to the sun is often warmer and elevated sites catch more breeze and lose more water to evaporation. Dry spots in lawn or garden often show in early spring as dead patches or where one group of plants is slow to emerge.

Bee balm (Monarda didyma) likes a constantly moist soil. If grown on the dry side or where it is very wet and very dry, its chances of developing powdery mildew are greater.
Bee balm (Monarda didyma) likes a constantly moist soil. If grown on the dry side or where it is very wet and very dry, its chances of developing powdery mildew are greater.

 

Lungwort (Pulmonaria species) grown with drought-tolerant bigleaf forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla) in the dry shade is more likely to develop mildew than if grown and watered equally with hostas that thrive in constantly moist, well-drained soil.
Lungwort (Pulmonaria species) grown with drought-tolerant bigleaf forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla) in the dry shade is more likely to develop mildew than if grown and watered equally with hostas that thrive in constantly moist, well-drained soil.

 

We’re also taught to water gardens less often but more deeply so soil is thoroughly wetted, and probably have been told that watering lightly is bad practice since it “brings roots to the surface.” It’s wrong to think of roots “coming to” anything, but even some of the most scholarly horticultural texts use this phrase that misleads gardeners. As Dr. Joe Vargas of Michigan State University once said in a lecture on watering turfgrass, “I’ve looked at a lot of roots very closely, even dissected them, and one thing I’ve never found is a brain. They don’t know where water is. They can’t sniff it out, either.”

Roots grow if the soil around them is moist enough to supply water and nutrients needed to fuel cell division. They don’t grow if soil around them is too dry. Roots in a dry pocket or dry layer will not move toward moisture.

One thing we learn once we know that roots can’t seek out moisture is that root balls of new plants need special attention. A peat-based root ball of a container-grown plant may dry out far more quickly than the garden loam or clay around it. Roots within the peat will simply stop growing. Until a new transplant’s roots have grown beyond the peat and into the garden soil, its root ball has to be checked separately for dryness even if the soil around it is wet.

Another corollary of “roots can’t go to water” is that although it may be best when sprinkling many flowers, trees and shrubs to water deeply so that the whole depth of the root mass is wetted, plants with shallower roots need frequent, light watering. Lawn roots shorten in summer heat so a daily application of 1/8 inch of water is better than a weekly watering that means days-long drought in the surface layers. Annual impatiens evolved in rich leaf litter in damp jungles, and have shallow roots too. Water them often, but don’t waste water by applying enough to wet the deeper soil layers every time.

Another thing we hear often is that we should water early in the day, not in the evening, so leaves can dry off before night and be less susceptible to disease. This makes sense, reducing the amount of time that fungus-prone leaves are covered in fungus-promoting films of water, but then how does Mother Nature get away with evening and nighttime watering? Thunderstorms and rain showers come when they will, yet the normal state of being for plants in the wild is one of good health—maybe a bit of fungus here and there, but life-threatening epidemics as seen in rose gardens are rare.

If water is applied deeply and occasionally to supplement rain—perhaps weekly or bi-weekly—time of day is not so critical as in an every-day automatic system. Occasional watering means occasional openings for fungus infection. Daily late-day watering increases the chances of fungus infection by a factor of seven or more.

For some plants, an increased chance of fungus infection may be offset by water’s cooling effect. As temperatures rise into the 90s, many plants stop photosynthesizing because their root systems can’t supply enough water to keep that process running at the high speed engendered by high heat. Pores in the leaf close, shutting off the upward flow of water like a drain plug in reverse. Without water flow, photosynthesis can’t take place, and the plant can’t produce fresh sugars to fuel its life processes. It lives off its reserve starches until the air cools. Dr. Vargas’ ground-breaking studies of turf irrigation clearly show that watering during the hottest part of the day is best for lawns because it cools the air around the grass, allowing it to continue to photosynthesize.

Other plants are more susceptible to fungus when exposed to drought or alternating wet and dry. If bee balm (Monarda didyma) that thrives in constantly moist soil is kept dry, its chances of developing powdery mildew are greater. Likewise, lungwort (Pulmonaria species) grown with drought-tolerant bigleaf forget-me-not (Brunnera macrophylla) in the dry shade is more likely to develop mildew than if grown in a constantly moist, well-drained hosta bed.

How about all the hype for weeper hoses and trickle irrigation, to conserve water and keep the leaves from ever getting wet? Does it sound like the only good way to deliver water? With weeper hoses, we often see increased spider mite damage. Regular rinsing keeps mites in check. Roadside plants struggling with pore blockage and light reduction under a layer of grime become more susceptible to pests unless rinsed regularly.

If all this seems too much to keep straight, maybe you haven’t been watered well! Why not go sit in the shade, have a cool drink and think about it? You may see that only one or two of the situations I’ve described here apply to your garden. While the heat’s on and your plants need it the most, fine tune that watering system!

Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.

Filed Under: Janet’s Journal Tagged With: annuals, drought, perennials, photosynthesis, Watering

Fighting the drought with organic lawn dye

August 3, 2012   •   Leave a Comment

It’s amazing what some will do just to keep a lawn green…

Associated Press via NPR:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — When this summer’s drought turned her prized lawn brown, Terri LoPrimo fought back, but not with sprinklers: She had it painted green, making her suddenly lush-appearing yard the envy of her neighborhood.

The Staten Island, N.Y., resident and her husband, Ronnie, hired a local entrepreneur to spruce up their yard by spraying it with a deep-green organic lawn dye. By Monday, the couple’s property was aglow with newly green blades of grass and no watering needed to sustain it.

“It looks just like a spring lawn, the way it looks after a rain. It’s really gorgeous,” said LoPrimo, a 62-year-old retiree.

Read the rest of the story…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: drought, lawns, organic dye

Save your garden from drought with charcoal, yes charcoal

March 31, 2012   •   Leave a Comment

The Salt, NPR’s food blog:

You’ve probably heard of compost – that thick chocolate-colored stuff that’s an organic gardener’s best friend and supplies plants with all kinds of succulent nutrients.

But what about biochar? It’s another ancient farming material made from slow-burned wood (also known as charcoal) that holds nutrients and water into soil without them draining away. And lately it has enjoyed a certain revival because it can also pull and store the carbon in greenhouse gases from the air. Everyone from California grape growers to home gardeners on YouTube is trying it out.

Read the full story here…

Filed Under: Clippings Tagged With: biochar, charcoal, drought

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