My new friends here at Sunnyside have been getting on my case to get online and write you some choice words introducing myself.I admit I’m not one for the cell phones and these internets, but like Jimi Hendrix and chicken cordon bleu, I can dig it
I rolled off the line in 1973 – the same year George Foreman beat Joe Frazier for the heavyweight title, Marlon Brando won the Oscar for the Godfather and a computer was the size of a living room.Now Brando is gone, Foreman’s selling grills, and I’m writing this on a laptop – but guess what – I’m still trucking.I admit I’ve “had some work done” but nothing beyond a little engine retooling and a new orange paint job.And hey, if you had as many miles on you as I do you’d need a little work too.My odometer maxed out at 99,999 miles a long time ago but considering what I’ve experienced, let’s just say I’ve been there and back, baby and I can still go from 0 to 60 in only six minutes.
I’ve spent the last two years parked up on the North Shore outside Duluth – serene but boring, I enjoyed the scenery but seldom had my engine revved.When I saw Mike and Sarah in their Sunnyside orange I knew it was destiny – and from the moment Sarah turned my key I knew I had found a new home.The wind was blowing something fierce that day, my friends, and poor Sarah was so nervous that I would tip over she nearly fainted, her legs quivering as she switched my gears for the first time in years.
Pulling onto the Sunnyside lot for the first time was a cosmic experience.The colors, man, the colors- from the shinning pottery to the bountiful and bodacious flowers it was as if I had been transported back to the innocent age of my youth.I had finally arrived home at a place where flower power is still in full effect.
Come on by and meet me in person here at Sunnyside or at one of the “Meet-ups”Mike and I are putting on.Last month we drove to Lake Harriet and gave away free mums.At first I thought, Mike, man, giving away mums for free!But seeing all the smiles and the fun people were having only reinforced my notion of the Flower Power emanating here at Sunnyside.
This weekend Sunnyside Gardens is (g)hosting a Spook-tacular Pumpkin Party to kick off the month of October.Sunnyside will have kid games, refreshments, pumpkin decorating, and much more on Saturday October 3rd and 4th.
Along with the Party in the Pumpkin Patch, it is also the final weekend of the Last Leaf Sale.All pottery,perennials, shrubs, and evergreens will be 40% off.Sunnyside is also currently stocked with fall blooming mums, Halloween pumpkins, hay and straw bales, cornstalks, and gourds.So this weekend, make sure to stop on down for some ghoulish good times at the Sunnyside Pumpkin Patch.
What:Sunnyside Gardens Party in the Pumpkin Patch
When:Saturday October 3rd and Sunday October 4th
Time:10 am- 4pm
Kid Activities:
-Pumpkin Bowling
-Jack Puck (shoot mini pumpkins with hockey sticks!).
-Bean Bag Toss
-Pumpkin Painting
-Tattoo Parlor
-Guess the Weight of the Pumpkin (It’s huge!You gotta see it!)
Refreshment:Honey Crisp Apples, popcorn, root beer, bottled water
Sale:Last Leaf Sale (all pottery, perennials, shrubs, and evergreens)
In an on-going effort to go Green, Sunnyside Gardens has enrolled in the Green Industry Plastic Recycling Program.Working in a partnership with the MNLA and Choice Plastics, Sunnyside accepts garden industry plastic containers, pots, trays, and small packs that will be recycled and processed for future use.During the summer of 2009, Choice plastics accepted 350,000 pounds of plastic and ground up 200,000 pounds.The program is wildly successful and Sunnyside is committed to doing the right thing for its loyal customers, the community, and the environment.
What:Sunnyside Green Industry Plastic Recycling Program
Where:Sunnyside Gardens
3723 West 44th Street
Mpls, MN 55410
(612) 926-2654
When:June through October 1st, 2010.
Time:During store hours only.(Please do not leave loads of used garden center plastic after hours.)
How:Bring used garden center plastic to Sunnyside and check in with any available Sunnyside employee
Fall in Minnesota- got to love it– the kids are off to school, the cool breeze coming from our many lakes washes away the summertime blues and our green city becomes alive with color as the leaves begin to turn.It’s a perfect time to enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee outside, enjoy the cool weather and … Garden!
Did you know that fall is also the perfect time to plant all shrubs trees and perennials?While the air may be cooling down, the soil temperature is warmer in fall than it is in spring – creating the perfect environment for fast, strong root growth. The shorter days and colder nights reduce the severity of transplant shock, and since many insects are going dormant for the season the risk of insect attack and disease are significantly reduced.Serious gardeners also enjoy fall plantings because any gardening done in fall reduces the multitude of springtime chores – fill those blank spots now with shrubs, trees or perennials and sit back and watch your garden grow anew in spring.In addition, Sunnyside is offering a deal for all those interested in fall gardening – from now until the end of the year all of our perennials, shrubs and evergreens will be progressing from 20% to 30% to 40% off.
Sure there are some hurdles in front of you when you commit to turning asphalt into a lovely landscaped retreat for 12 days. Level the sloped surface? Sure! Keep the hundreds of living plants watered in August heat? No problem! Place dozens of giant boulders? No sweat!
We are thrilled for the opportunity to meet folks from around the state and beyond and to let them
know what a neat business we are. We want introduce you to OUR STORE!!! Sunnyside is a real urban gem. We have brilliant staff, hard working everybody, and quality plants and products. Need something unique? We can get it for you!
Our landscape crew is always up to the challenge, whether creating a retreat for millions, or sculpting your personal space into an oasis for all seasons.
Perennial of the Week:Japanese Forest Grass (Hakonechloa)
Although Japanese Forest grass, or Hakonechloa, received the Perennial of the Year award this year I still insist that it is the most underrated perennial in the Minnesota landscape.Simply put – anyone with a shade garden needs some Hakonechloa – essentially the only perennial grass that can tolerant shade, and fortunately one with the most striking foliage color.
Native to the mountain regions of Honshu Island, Japan, Hakonechloa comes to Minnesota ready to add texture to our shade gardens.My favorite feature of the Japanese Forest Grass is that can add movement to a normally stolid shade garden on a windy day.The bold yellow of the foliage also provides a perfect contrast with many shade garden mainstays – especially blue leafed hostas and Cimicifuga (bugbane).Hakonechloa is also excellent for edging retaining walls as it cascades over the wall and looks especially stunning contrasting grey stone.
I will admit that I stole this idea from a arboretum in Wisconsin but the idea stuck with me so I will share it – use Hakonechloa in pots!Simply plant a medium to large sized blue hosta in the pot with several Hakonechloa around the base of the plant.This creates the uniquely stunning effect of the Hakonechloa growing out from under the hosta and the color contrast is simply spectacular.Since the resulting plant is a foliage pot it will maintain its beauty all season and be a constant conversation piece.
2009 Perennial of the Year – Hakonechloa!A must have!
Getting kids interested in gardening isn’t easy, so try sparking their interest by attracting butterflies.
Making a butterfly garden is as easy as planting, watering and watching. As an added bonus, the brightly colored perennial flowers that attract butterflies make excellent cut bouquets for in and around your home.
For a successful butterfly garden you will need a warm sunny site for the nectar rich plants to grow. Note: The butterflies also need heat to become more active and generally only feed in the sun.
When shopping for plants, remember it is best to plant in clusters to obtain the bright splash of colors and intense fragrances that really attract these beautiful pollinators. Select from some of my list below.
Choose Echinacea planted with Asclepias (butterfly flower), and Coreopsis and Yarrow planted together to lure butterflies early in July.
Some midseason blooming buddies are Agastache, Phlox and Monarda. Odds are that you are going to love visiting your blooming perennials as much as your winged friends do.
Sedum, Rudbeckia (Black-eyed-susan), Liatris and Physostegia for Fall will give you an extended opportunity to attract butterflies and offer them a continuous supply of nectar throughout their short adult life.
Most importantly, you will need to plant a few “host” plants for the caterpillars to enjoy as a snack and to use during metamorphosis into butterflies. So, please tolerate the chewed up leaves on a couple of plants like Asters, Turtlehead, or Asclepias . (They also really love Parsley!)
**Do skip the chemicals. Insecticides will kill the caterpillars and no caterpillars = no butterflies.
Perennial of the Week: Russian Sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia)
Oh, and did I mention its sweet, sweet fragrance?
I tend to get excited about Russian Sage – after all, where can one find a perennial that gets up to four feet tall, features huge clusters of airy blue flowers, is super hardy to Minnesota,attracts butterflies, is drought tolerantand blooms from late June into fall?
Perovskia is neither Russian nor a sage…
Native to Afghanistan and Tibet, Russian Sage was named for Russian general V.A. Perovsky.
The plant is as graceful as its botanical name is unpronounceable. With an upright growth habit Russian Sage produces a slightly woody, almost shrub-like look, with attractive grey leaves.
This spectacularly performing perennial does great in hot dry locations and, once established, can go without water for some time.
Russian Sage is remarkably unbothered by pests or diseases and is markedly deer resistant.
Good companion plants include Black-eyed Susans, sedums, ornamental grasses, coneflowers and Joe Pye weed. In my garden I have several three year old Russian Sage plants providing the backdrop for Rudbeckia ‘Goldstrum’ and groundcover sedum, creating a killer look that blooms mid-summer.
Sunnyside is featuring store-grown Russian Sage in large 2 gallon pots for an instant and established addition your garden. Russian Sage is THE ideal late-season perennial garden filler!
Low maintenance, winter hardy and deer resistant plants for cabin.
Why not incorporate some easy maintenance beds to your favorite family get away?If you enjoy plants from a distance when on full retreat at the shoreline, take note of a few of my favorites.
Cabin gardening can be even more rewarding than urban gardening at home. The key is to select low maintenance, winter hardy plants that are deer resistant.
I selected a few perennials with different bloomtimes to provide lasting color all season! For starters, Salvia ‘May Night’ and Dianthus ‘Neon Star’ work well together offering a striking combination of blue spikes and neon pink flowers. As the spring blooms of ‘May Night’ begin to fade, cut them back and allow Nepeta ‘Walkers Low’ to take over the show.‘Walkers Low’ looks beautiful paired with red, white or pink Astilbe, lending color to your Fourth of July garden.
Don’t forget the Daylily ‘Stella d’ Oro’ to give a hot summer show of color.
These are a few of my must haves:
Hardy Asiatic and Oriental lilies will bloom beautifully during July. Starting in Mid- July Hardy garden Phlox should be just opening and the Liatris and the Echinacea will be spiking up and ready to show their color lasting well into August.Fall will bring the late season color of Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ and the pink spikes of Chelone (Turtlehead).Saving the best for last, ornamental grasses! Miscanthus ‘purperescens’(Flame Grass), Calamagrosotis ‘Karl Forester’ and Blue fescue are all hardygrasses that will add height and texture to any perennial garden.
1. Plant your tomatoes 12-24” apart, in rows if you are planning a large planting.
2. Plant in a sunny location as the tomato plants need as much light as possible to grow and fruit in our short season.
3. Water your tomato garden slowly and make sure to give the soil a good soaking, as there is little or no value in giving it a light watering that only wets the soil surface.
*Using tomato cages is a good idea, as this gives your plant support, especially later in the growing period when your large, juicy tomatoes can begin to weight the plant down.
*Only YOU can prevent blossom end rot! (That nasty black spot on the bottom of the tomato.) Use a fertilizer high in calcium and be sure to never let the tomato plant stress from lack of H20.
*And as someone who would willingly do battle against a rabbit for just one fresh tomato, keeping the critters away from your tomatoes is important. There are plenty of organic solutions to the critter problem – just come and ask us in the garden center if the critters are bothering you and we’ll give you tips on keeping your precious tomatoes safe!
Tomatoes the Italian Way
When you see the tomatoes redden on the vine you’ll know its time to mangia! (eat!) While biting into a tomato like an apple is never a bad thing using your tomatoes to cook a multitude of foods is the great strength of our red Mediterranean super food. In honor of the mustached waiter that shared with me the great Italian secret of Fresco I will share this simple recipe of fresh, Italian pomodoro sauce:
• Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat in large frying pan
• Add two cloves minced/chopped fresh garlic and fry lightly
• Add four-six fresh tomatoes, chopped/crushed/blended – experiment with the consistency to taste and peel tomatos if you want a smoother sauce
• Add LOTS of sugar –I suggest adding what you think an appropriate amount would be and then doubling it. Eventually you will be able to add sugar to taste but in my experience more is better.
This comprises the base of tomato sauce in Italy. I know it seems too simple, but I’ve watched two amazing Italian cooks just use this for their sauce. Freshness is indeed the key ingredient. The beauty of this base it that you can add anything – meat, fresh herbs, fresh vegetables, a splash of red wine… whatever you fancy. And after you’ve learned to cook the Italian Fresco way, you’ll never be able to walk down the grocery store isle again without wincing at the sight of packaged Prego or Ragu or any other horrible bottled sauce.
Caring for your favorite flowers, vegetables and trees is good for
you too.
It’s good for kids to get closer to nature—to know where their food comes from, and even participate in growing it. But gardening is good for us grown-ups too. A little fresh air, Vitamin D, and our hands in the dirt.
It’s relaxing. And it’s rewarding to see the fruits of your labor
literally grow over the summer. Think about it. When you’re concentrating on pulling a couple weeds, or spreading mulch, or watering just the right amount, there’s a lot you’re
not thinking about. And we could all use a little more time thinking
about less. Your garden can make that happen.
And, like the very best kind or exercise, you don’t really think of it as
exercise. You’re just out there, checking on your plants.
Your garden is also the perfect way to make sure you get out and enjoy
our glorious, but brief, Minnesota summers as much as you possibly can.
Like having a date with a trainer at the gym, your garden will make sure
you get outside on a regular basis.
And once you’re out there, why not pull up a lawn chair, have a glass of
lemonade and enjoy the view that you’ve cultivated?
Ahh, gardening.
Little did I know I would discover the key to Italian cooking my first night in Italy….
…we found a small hole ristorante on one of the side streets in the San Spirito neighborhood of Florence. The place was everything we dreamt of Italy – red and white checkered tablecloths, cheap table wine and a dark, heavily mustached waiter whose ridiculously extreme moods ranged from unbridled anger to playful nonchalance within seconds. I ordered the spaghetti pomodoro (spaghetti marinara), clinging to my cowardly eating ways, and knowing that a good tomato sauce is the poor man’s ambrosia. Yet what my charmingly flustered waiter set it front of me was no mere collection of noodles and sauce – it was gastrointestinal bliss, salivating, stomach-enlarging… the culmination of all that is good with food.
I had finished my plate long before my companions and my mind raced to figure it out – what was the magic ingredient? Was is just Italy? What made this seemingly simple tomato sauce SO good? I bravely chanced asking our waiter, in my broken Italian. He broke into a great moustache smile and began an impassioned speech in blistering Italian. With “my needs-improving” Italian I was only able to discern some of the meaning, but the speech was tied together with one word: Fresco! The American plate was ruined by processed foods and large/slow grocery stores.
Fresco! Italians took their food seriously enough to use only the freshest ingredients.
Fresco! The tomatoes for my sauce had come from his grandfather’s farm, only five miles up to hill in Fiesole.
Fresco! Freshness is the key to the Italian way of food. The waiter walked away mumbling curses towards all the other local establishments that used less that the freshest food.
I left the restaurant not only full, but with the most important lesson I would learn on my trip – Fresh food = Great food.
Grass seed germinates and grows the best when air temperatures are in the upper sixties-low seventies.
New Lawns:
Start with a quality topsoil spread to a depth of 2-3 inches and raked smooth.
Seed your lawn area with a blend that is appropriate to the amount of sunlight the area receives
Cover the seed with a thin layer (1/8”) of peat moss to prevent the seed from blowing or the birds eating it.
Topdress with a new lawn starter fertilizer and water in. It will take 7-14 days for the seed to germinate with good water and some sun; soon you will have a lush green carpet of grass!
Don’t forget to water!
Established lawns:
Give your lawn a good raking to get rid of any thatch build up and break up matting from the snow.
Fertilize with a crab grass preventer.
If your lawn is really thin you can lightly over seed and use a new lawn starter fertilizer to get that lush green carpet.
If you have some patches from the dog, voles, or snow plow,Scott’s Patch Master is a great all in one remedy to fill those in.
It’s cold in Minnesota about seven months of the year, and rainy for about two more. That’s not a complaint, it’s just an observation. I actually love all the seasons. Each has it’s own effect on my garden. Thankfully, the soil here is rich and the rapid changes in the weather make my flower beds nice and airy.
I love sharing stories about my flower beds, but my most recent gardening adventure didn’t happen there. It actually took place in an area of my yard that’s not counted in my lot dimensions. It’s the area along the boulevard in front of my house. It collects a ton of standing water during the Spring thaw and then all through the rainy months.
It used to hold a deep water puddle for weeks after a hard rain. The neighbor kids loved to splash and play in it until it dried up. I just ignored it. I would mow up to the edge and then not think about it until the next time I started the lawnmower. That is, until the day I received a nice note directly from a City Inspector. It stated very clearly that I was 100% responsible for fixing the boulevard hole and any continued maintenance of the area for reasons of public safety.
Here I thought I had been mowing the area every week out of the kindness of my heart. Go figure?
Heeding the warning, I was all but ready to fill the area with dirt and rocks and maybe slap a piece of sod over it. Instead my husband decided we should try planting a rain garden there. So, we started researching online and found some great resources, like this one.
We settled on using bog plants, different grasses, some seasonal flowering plants that would be happy with very wet or dry roots. The majority of the plants we use are available in most planting zones. We also created a couple shallow valleys by digging a bit so the overall appearance would match the hole that was collecting all that water and attention from the inspector. We chose to top the entire area with pea gravel. There are many options to finishing a rain garden with stone, but the pea gravel looks pretty when its wet.
The City Inspector hasn’t stopped by to comment on the home we apparently built for the local Monarch butterflies, or the new bathing place for all the birds after a heavy rainfall, but they sure seem to appreciate it. We’ve also noticed that the water doesn’t run into the storm drain like it used to, and we haven’t had to do any maintenance on the garden at all.
Gardening in containers is a great way to experiment with color, personal style, and plant combinations.
It’s also a great solution for those with restricted gardening space as the size of the pot matters less than what’s planted inside it.
I prefer to garden in containers because I’m what my husband refers to as a decoration commitment-phobe. I love to change the look of my front porch along with change of the seasons. What quicker way is there to make a new statement than to change what’s in my flower urns and moveable gardens?
I love daffodils and tulips placed in pots of all sizes and finishes around the porch and around the still sleeping flower beds of Spring. Summer brings my bright and blazing vine roses, and my Fall containers boast mum-filled pots in 10 different colors…but, I digress.
No matter what plant design you choose, you can change them as frequently or infrequently as you want to. What’s more is that if you don’t like something you designed, you can simply take it out and start over with little planning or hard work.
I find that the container has as much to do with the success of a design as the plants you choose. There are a great variety of containers on the market. Most Garden Stores have a variety of ceramic and terracotta pots in different sizes, as well as glazed and ornamental pots and urns made from a variety of materials. Many container gardens are 100% portable for those who live in an apartment, share a common gardening area, or move frequently.
Container Designing Tips:
There aren’t any style rules for designing a container garden, but you will need to design your planter in a way that allows the plants you choose to thrive. Your favorite garden center can give you tips on what the best plants are for your planting zone.
I prefer to think of designing my container gardens as I would if I were designing a sculpture. Like with any good work of art, the artist must consider a few basic guidelines to make it a success:
Focal Point
Background or filler
Color Choices
If you find that you aren’t happy with what you’ve created, you can easily start over again with a new color or plant combination. Or maybe keep what you created and add on to make it more appealing to your personal style. The sky is really the limit with container gardening.
