It's Raspberry Time! |
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 Filling with ripe, luscious raspberries, the fields at the
Salman Raspberry Ranch in La Cueva, NM are ready for picking. July 26 saw the first berries of the 2006 season. Our U-Pick-It Field should open Aug. 12.
 The Ranch Café opens August 5 with our traditional homemade chile, tamales, tacos, salsa, guacamole, salads and sandwiches served on homemade bread. A favorite is soft serve ice cream drizzled with raspberry topping and fresh raspberries.
 The Ranch Store
If you can’t make it to the store or field, call us for jars of raspberry jam, topping and vinegar. Or design a gift basket with any of our gourmet food items.
Call for field conditions, store and café hours: 1-866-281-1515 and visit our website:
www. salman
raspberryranch.com for more details. |
David Salman's Secrets to Waterwise Gardening
Now on DVD
 For only $14.95, you receive David Salman's proven techniques of how to create a beautiful, xeric garden that blooms from early spring through fall. This is one of the most valuable resources on waterwise gardening you can get your hands on!
Click Here to Order
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Gardening News
For more information about soil, plants, garden history, botanical news, watering and much more.
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Using Shrubs to the Best Advantage
By Mary Ann Walz
Shrubs are a very important in the natural environment -- providing shelter and food for a variety of animals and birds. But they are often underutilized in many otherwise creatively designed landscapes. As a design element shrubs provide the medium height in a garden and help blend the differences between trees, herbaceous plants and grass lawns.
But the woody branches of shrubs also provide more fullness. This fullness is what often gives a garden that established look and also provides visual interest during the winter.
Attributes of Shrubs
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 Create the understory -- In any landscape, it’s important to have variation in heights.
Shrubs provide the intermediate height between the taller trees and the shorter plants. Shrubs also come in a wide range of sizes, from short and wide to narrow and tall. Select shrubs with their mature size in mind and allow plenty of space for them.
- Provide food and shelter -- Many shrubs have berries that are attractive to birds. They also provide shelter for birds. Many have nectar-rich flowers that attract hummingbirds and butterflies. If you want to attract birds to your garden, shrubs are an important element.
 Flowers and berries provide seasonal interest -- What would spring be without the welcoming blooms of Forsythias and Lilacs? Just as these signal the arrival of warm weather, other shrubs provide fragrant and colorful blooms during spring and summer; some even have the added bonus of producing berries later in the season. Many berries remain on shrubs through the winter adding a bit of color to an otherwise brown landscape.- Woody structure creates interest -- The benefit of shrubs' woody structure shows after the leaves have fallen. Some shrubs such as dogwoods have colorful stems of red, yellow or purple.
New Mexico Privet has interesting branching structure and a pretty creamy color bark which brightens any landscape. The contorted branches found in the Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick might be thought of as a curiosity, but they definitely lend intrigue. Keep any pruned branches to use in floral arrangements.
A Few Favorites
My favorite shrubs are those that are fairly low maintenance and easy to grow. Also, I tend to favor things that have a dual purpose of providing design interest at the same time they attract birds.
- Fallugia paradoxa (Apache Plume) is one of the very best shrubs for a native landscape. It is extremely drought tolerant and has pretty white flowers throughout the summer. The seed heads, however, are its greatest glory with pink feather-like plumes covering the tips of branches.
Rhus trilobata (Three Leaf Sumac) has small yellow flowers followed by berries that attract birds but the gorgeous red and orange of its foliage in the fall is its greatest attribute. A shorter version,
Rhus aromatica ‘Gro Low’ only grows to about three feet in height. Another small version is
Rhus trilobata ’Autumn Amber’ and is only 18 inches tall and has a pretty yellow color in the fall. Use this shrub is areas where a groundcover is needed.-
 Forestiera neomexicana (New Mexico Privet) is a tall shrub or prune it into a multi-trunked small tree. Its branching structure has great character and it looks good against a wall. The female plants have berries that birds love.
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Cercocarpus ledifolius (Curl-Leaf or Evergreen Mahogany) can grow about twelve feet high but can also be pruned and used as a small multi-trunked tree. As its name implies, it keeps its leaves in the winter. This shrub requires some pruning if placed in a small area.
Fall is a great time to plant most shrubs. The cooler air and less intense sun helps get their roots established while the soil is still warm. Check your landscape for a few places where shrubs might be used to best advantage for fullness and a haven for birds. |
David's Helpful Hints: How to Plant Shrubs
The following guidelines can also be used for planting trees.
Before planting:
Call utility company to mark lines before digging. Look up for overhead utility lines.
Preparing planting area
- Dig hole twice as wide as container and same depth.
Prepare backfill
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 Mix soil from hole with Soil Mender™ Blend; 1 part Blend and 2 parts soil.
- Add Super Phosphate; and if needed, soil acidifier like soil sulfur.
- Add a complete fertilizer such as
Yum Yum Mix or
Gro-Power and
Planters II trace minerals.
Preparations for rootballs
- Do not break rootball.
- If in a container, cut around the edges and bottom of the root mass to encourage new growth. Cut any coiled roots and pull away the ends.
- For B&B (ball and burlap) leave wire basket on until placed in hole.
Planting
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 Center shrub in hole to proper depth; keep top of rootball at ground level.
- For B&B and wire: Do not remove burlap or wire from sides. This may damage lateral roots. Cut away covering on sides as deep as possible without letting rootball fall apart. Untie burlap and fold back over the edges of hole or cut off.
- Add amended backfill to hole.
- Use shovel blade to slice new soil to remove air pockets. Never water backfill soil before refilling the hole!
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Watering
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 Create water basin around shrub.
- Add water slowly to saturate root ball.
- Add
Root Stimulator Combo (mix Superthrive and Seaweed Concentrates).
- Repeat application of root stimulator in 2 weeks, then monthly if needed.
Maintenance
- Water regularly for first two growing seasons; every 3 to 4 weeks in winter.
- Use 2 to 4" of Soil Mender™ Mulch year round on top of soil.
- Fertilize in the fall after hard frost. You can also fertilize during the growing season after plants have leafed out in spring through mid-July (about an 8 week period in Zone 5 climates).
Special Feature: Planting and Combining Bulbs
By Cindy Bellinger
 It's that time of year again. As gardens fade, we begin thinking about the next growing season. And this often means planting
bulbs. They are surely the harbingers of spring.
The writer May Sarton loved gardening, but was particularly fond of bulbs and once wrote: "At the moment of planting a bulb, all is hope, no dismay." There is also something magical about bulbs. After a dreary, bleak winter they seem to pop out of nowhere. It's possible to have a garden teeming with their delight.
Selecting
- Plant for continued bloom for the coming spring and summer seasons. Combining different
bulbs lets a variety of color and shapes and sizes enter the garden. If all is well, you may not even notice the transitions between one set and the next. (See individual bulb descriptions for time of bloom.)
Early bloomers
Mid-spring bloomers
Late spring bloomers
Summer bloomers
Designing
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 Group bulbs according to height.
- Group bulbs using complimentary or contrasting shades.
- Bulbs look best in clumps of 5 to 7 or in larger drifts of a single variety.
- Plant among perennials; when the bulbs finish, the perennials are leafing out.
- Plant fragrant varieties near walks, doors and entryways to enjoy the scent.
When to Plant
- Get bulbs in by the end of October to get their roots established before winter.
Planting
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 A good rule of thumb is to plant three times deeper than the widest part of the bulb.
- Dig a hole, either with a trowel or with a bulb planter. A
dibble works well for planting small bulbs. Add a palm-full of
Yum Yum Mix® Winterizer to each hole.
- Place bulbs root down; cover with soil and water in thoroughly.
- Mulch with 2″ of Soil Mender Mulch or other high quality organic compost
- Water occasionally during winter months if there is no snow.
Labeling
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 Either stick tags in the ground or draw a simple map of where and what bulbs you planted; when done blooming, it's hard to know (or remember) where they are.
Sarton also wrote: “There is…something hauntingly symbolic about burying a living thing toward a sure resurrection, at a moment in the season when everything else is dying or on the way out.”
It’s always that way with bulbs. They give something to look forward to.
Gardening Lingo -- terms for the horticulturist
Bulb: A tuberous underground bud with roots and a scaly stem; many require a period of freezing in order to bloom.
Root nodule: A small swelling on roots resulting from nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
Stolon: A horizontal stem growing above ground that forms roots at its tip.
View all the Gardening Lingo from our Monthly Ezines
More Gardening Articles
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It's that time of year again. As gardens fade, we begin thinking about the next growing season.
