Zanthan Gardens
Category: Garden Essays

Returned from San Francisco to find a jungle. Flying between Houston and Austin, I saw swollen rivers brown with runoff and sheets of standing water in the fields. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this green in July. It had rained through last Thursday and the temperatures continue in the low 90s; that is quite temperate for us this time of year. Compared with the dry, cool air of San Francisco, though, arriving in Austin was like stepping into a sauna.
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As a combination Mother Day’s/birthday present, I got a reel mower, which arrived yesterday. After a bit of research, including going to look at some at Breed and Home Depot, I decided on American Lawnmower’s 1815-18. It is supposed to work best on our coarse St. Augustine grass and it has the highest blade level. (As summer progresses I mow higher and higher, so that the leaves of grass shade its roots.) We purchased the mower on sale at amazon.com. When the UPS man delivered it, he was so excited. “Look what I brought you. Man! I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. I can see what you’re going to be doing this holiday weekend.”
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Last November, when I was pruning roses, I noticed that some of the canes seemed very, well, lively. I hated cutting them or throwing them out. So I decided to see if I could get them to strike.

Following the instruction in Rayford Clayton Reddell’s The Rose Bible, I made cuttings about a foot long and stripped off all but the topmost set of leaves. Then I planted them, putting two of the bud eyes underground and two above.
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For the last two years, after I acquired a dozen or so heirloom roses, I’ve spent the thirteenth week of the year battling a little green inchworm–spring cankerworm. As the cedar elm and oak trees leaf out, it floats down on a silken thread until it finds the tenderest new leaves, mostly those on the roses or the flower buds of the lilies. It exudes a sticky web and curls the leaves around it, munching away happily. In stage 2, it acts rather like a hornworm, munching leaves along a branch, denuding it.
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Displaced Yankees often complain about the lack of fall color in central Texas. While it’s true that we lack the brilliant hues of a New England autumn, I’m thankful that while they’re trying to shovel themselves out of a massive snowfall, we’re enjoying weather like this today.

August may be miserable here, but damn!, December’s gorgeous.

The cedar elms have produced spectacular color this year. Just as they lose their leaves, the red oaks will start turning color. Autumn drags out gradually here in Austin, rather than exploding in one big bang of color.

I’m always trying to teach the boys that procrastination doesn’t pay, but today proved me wrong. Our back yard is surrounded on two sides by a 4-foot chain link fence and on the third side by a 6-foot wooden privacy fence. The privacy fence, I’m loathe to admit, is in disrepair. It’s never really recovered from that storm in 1995 when a tree fell on it. I prop it up and it falls over. The wood is dry and splitting. It barely supports the assault of the neighbor’s ivy, which is the only thing it has going for it.
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The yard was already 40 years old when I move here and filled with an established lawn, a dozen large cedar elms and many overgrown shrubs. Since there was no immediate need to do anything with it, I simply watched it over a couple of years, learning the names of the plants and thinking about what could be added and where.

In the spring, the ‘Ice Follies’ daffodils and summer snowflakes bloomed. In the early summer, a pale yellow iris. In the worst of summer, white rainlilies bloomed five days after any thunderstorm. And then in the fall, oxblood lilies and red spider lilies appeared overnight. So my first interest was in bulbs. Scott Ogden’. Garden Bulbs for the South was my bible.

After ten years I’m finding that I can’t put my spade to earth without uncovering, and sometimes slicing into, some bulbs. Grape hyacinths, Spanish bluebells, and various alliums produce offsets by the hundreds. They compensate for the tulips, certain daffodils, and true lilies that can’t stand the heat and mucky soils of central Texas.

So I’ve been dividing bulbs the last few weeks, work that is a satisfying as digging up a pot of gold. Like coins in a magic purse, the more I divide the more I have.

The advice I’ve read elsewhere says to divide Lycoris radiata in the spring, after their leaves die down and cautions that they probably won’t bloom the following fall. I find, however, that the best time to divide them is right after they bloom. Their roots are small and the ground is soft, so it’s easy to dig them up without damaging the bulbs, especially since you can see where they are. I soak them in a pail of water and with a little seaweed mix for a few hours. Dividing them in the fall allows them to do all of their growth in a new spot, amended with compost and bulb food and bloom better the following year than those left growing crowded all season.

Ditto Rhodophiala bifida. Whereas Lycoris radiata stops blooming when it gets overcrowded, Rhodophiala bifida doesn’t seem to mind. I divide mine because I can’t get enough of them. Although oxblood lilies bloom tolerably well when left to on their own, they perform outstandingly with a little loving care.

The pink rainlilies are the same. I had been afraid to disturb them. But after digging up one bunch, I discovered that although they continued to bloom like champs, they were really overcrowded. So I’ve dug them all up and now have three times as many as I did at the beginning of summer.

After a few days of scattered thunderstorms and a 20 degree drop in temperature (from 110 to 90), the St. Augustine greened up again. So I decided it was time to cut it. I forego cutting during the hottest days of summer. I believe that cutting the lawn, stresses it. And when it’s 100 degrees and hasn’t rained in a month, the lawn is stressed out enough. The longer grass shades its own roots, so it doesn’t need as much water as shorter grass.

Also, (while I’m rationalizing), I feel that not cutting the grass in the heat of summer is my civic duty. A lot of summer days are “ozone action days” and you’re not supposed to use gas-powered lawnmowers on “ozone action days” because it just makes the pollution problem worse.

You’ve probably read that waiting too long between cuttings also stresses out grass (because you end up cutting off more than 1/3 of the leaf) and causes thatch to build up. But I don’t have that problem and here’s why. I don’t use chemical lawn fertilizer on my lawn. So it grows at a natural rate rather than like a high school jock pumped up on steroids. And that natural rate slows down a lot when it gets too hot and dry…like the six weeks from the beginning of July to the middle of August.

I do fertilize the grass with Dillo Dirt in the spring (March/April) and early fall September. I also make a mulch of Dillo Dirt wherever the grass has thinned. But most of the fertilizer comes from the grass itself. I have a mulching mower. In the fall I mow all the leaves into the lawn. And in the winter, one of the best tricks I’ve discovered for improving the lawn is to rake and mow. If there is any thatch buildup, this gets rid of it and mulches the soil at the same time. Grass loves mulch. Haven’t you noticed how it makes straight for those lovely mulched flower beds?

Sometimes it just takes a visit to someone else’s garden to recharge one’s gardening batteries. Of course, a bit rain and cooler temperatures help, too.
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Reader Janette Boley asks for help combatting iris rot.

When the weather’s hot and humid, bearded iris rhizomes have a tendency to turn to mush. When the temperatures hit the 90s, you should not feed your irises. If you water at all, you should water carefully–deeply, but infrequently. Never allow water to stand on iris rhizomes. Water in the morning so that the rhizomes can dry out in the sun. And do not bury the rhizomes under the dirt or mulch them. Irises can survive the summer with very little water, although their will yellow and turn brown. They’ll come back again in the fall.
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