Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Durham County

by Gary Crispell, EMGV

Summer must have started because Memorial Day has come and gone. As I write this it is cold and wet and generally unpleasant. Worst of all, it is totally not conducive to gardening. How rude.

Meanwhile the Accidental Cottage Garden (ACG) is trying its best to ignore the unpleasantness. Current cohabitating contributors to the conspicuously colorful collection of organisms with cellulose cell walls include lance-leaf coreopsis (C. lanceolata), orange daylilies (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus), black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta), English daisies (Bellis perennis), Stoke’s aster (Stoksia laevis), wand flower (Guara lindheimeri), gallardia (G. pulchella), Asiatic lily (Lilium x ‘Corsica’), thyme (Thymus vulgaris), and prairie cone flower/Mexican hat (Ratibida columnifera). The Siberian wall flower (Cheiranthus allioni) and sweet William (Dianthus barbatus ‘Sweet Black Cherry’) are carry-overs from last month. A decidedly delightful display, if I do say so myself.

The weather continues to be perplexing. At least we can garden without breaking a sweat. Thought for the month: If a beverage containing alcohol is a potent potable, is a non-alcoholic beverage impotent? LET’S GARDEN!!!

LAWN CARE: Because I realize there are some of you out there who are too busy/new to the piedmont of NC/not paying attention/just plain horticulturally uneducated, I am urging you to fertilize your warm season grasses (Bermuda, zoysia) now, as in right now. April or May would have been just fine, but now it is mandatory. You’ll know how much and what formulation because you got a FREE SOIL TEST earlier (No. Probably not as you haven’t fertilized yet. All excuses from above I suppose.) Soil tests are free from April through November. Contact the NC Cooperative Extension office (919 560-0525) to get a free test kit with instructions. If you insist on winging it, 1 pound of Nitrogen per 1000 square feet of turf is a safe application rate.

June is THE month to fertilize centipede grass. The 1 pound per 1000 sq.ft. rate is applicable to centipede, also.

Summer is a good time to core aerate any lawn. Aeration facilitates air, water and nutrient movement through the soil and to the roots zone.

Always wanted a zoysia grass lawn? June is a really good month to start one. You will need to use sod or plugs as zoysia seed is not available.

FERTILIZING: Dogwoods (Cornus sps.) can be fertilized now. Again, a FREE SOIL TEST and its resulting recommendations would be helpful here. I am unable to offer suggestions here. Too many variables. Throw a handful of 10-10-10 or equivalent at the plants in the veggie garden. It’ll assist the quantity and quality of your anticipated harvest.

PLANTING: All of y’all who have been waiting for warm weather to plant your vegetable garden better hustle up now. It’s apparently as warm as it’s going to get for a bit and if you want tomatoes before Labor Day… It is necessary at this point to install plants rather than seeds for most vegetables other than beans and maybe pumpkins.

For those of you who plan ahead, it’s time to start seeds for your fall/winter garden. Cruciferous veggies (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower. kale, collards) can be started now to be transplanted in mid-July.

PRUNING: Coniferous (produce seeds in cones) evergreens such as pine, juniper, chamaecyparis, cryptomeria can be lightly pruned now. Be aware, they generally do not produce new leaves beneath a pruning cut.

Hedges and any severely overgrown plants can be radically cut back. The book says never more than 1/3 of the top, but anecdotally I can tell you that many broadleaf evergreens and deciduous shrubs can be reduced to 18 inches or so and recover nicely. (The author nor the publication nor the Master Gardener program nor NCSU Cooperative Extension nor the university assume any liability for plants that do not recover.)

Continue to pinch back garden mums (Chrysanthemum maximum) until mid-July if it is fall blooms you desire. If you don’t care when they bloom, well good for you, you rebel.

Big leaf hydrangea (H. macrophylla) can be pruned as soon as the blooms fade.

Azaleas, including Encore cultivars, can be pruned anytime from bloom fade through the 4 th of July. Dieback can occur in ericaceous (acid loving) plants in early summer. Rhododendrons, including azaleas, pieris and others can be infected by a Phomopsis fungus. Prune the infected branches well below the infection and sterilize your pruning tools between cuts with a 10% bleach solution or 70% alcohol. (Good gracious, NO! Not 140 proof vodka.) Destroy all clippings.

SPRAYING: BOLO (be on the lookout) for the following dastardly destructive six and eight legged pests: lace bugs (azaleas, pyracantha), leaf miners (boxwoods), spider mites (needle leaf evergreens), bag worms (mostly, but not exclusively, on needle leaf evergreens) and aphids on anything they can get their pointy little mouth parts into.

There are numerous pest control products available for control. Try an organic product first. The planet is counting on you.

June is prime Japanese beetle time. (Contrary to popular myth, they do not sing “Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” in Japanese while devouring your roses and crape myrtles.) Treat them with appropriate pesticide or pick ‘em off and drown ’em. Smush ‘em if it gives you satisfaction. (Personally, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”.)

Be aware of tomato early blight. It shows up as brown spots on the lower leaves followed by a yellowing around the spots. Eventually the whole leaf will usually turn yellow and fall off. There are several products available to treat early blight. Some of them even have zero days until harvest rating.

Vegetable gardens are susceptible to a myriad of pests. Lots of insects (and other genera) like the fruits of your labor as much as you do (and they outnumber us). There are multiple species of worms seeking sustenance from your cruciferous veggies. Then there are the cucurbit lovers like cucumber beetles on (believe it or not) cucumbers and other cucurbits, squash borers on most squash varieties and melons. You might find flea beetles (They don’t sing either.) on any bean species plus tomatoes and eggplant. And let us not forget the ubiquitous aphids.

Continue spray programs for roses, fruit trees and bunch grapes.

Use pesticides only when necessary. ALWAYS read the label and follow the instructions. Try organic first.

MISCELLANEOUS STUFF TO DO OUTSIDE IN JUNE:
A word about watering. Sometime this summer you will find it necessary to supplement Mother Nature’s somewhat capricious watering schedule. Plants, including lawn grasses, need about one inch of water per week to sustain growth. It is best applied in the early morning to minimize evaporative loss. Evening watering is acceptable if the leaf surfaces will be dry before nightfall. Damp leaves promote disease.

Alas, strawberry season is over. Therefore, it is appropriate to renovate the beds in preparation for September planting.

Once you have exhausted the days’ to do list (and most likely yourself) one should take time to kick back and enjoy the garden. Outdoor living spaces were made for June evenings. Food, family, friends (and a cool beverage). That’s what it’s all about. As T.S. Eliot wrote, “There is no life that is not in community.”

Find your community and welcome to summer.

All photos: Gary Crispell

Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)

By Wendy Diaz EMGV

Foreground: Spotted Wintergreen in bloom near base of Beech Tree. All photos taken on June 4, 2021 by Wendy Diaz unless otherwise stated.

In North Carolina, one of the advantages of my removal of invasive ground cover mechanically rather than chemically and changing my gardening habits – such as no longer mulching with three inches of pine straw – is that remarkable tiny native plants start to appear beneath my beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) like the Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) without any more intervention from me. (I wrote about another diminutive native plant beneath my beech tree, the Cranefly Orchid (Tipularia discolor), in the blog post of July 30, 2020^{^[1]}).

Distribution

I feel fortunate that I have a few plants of this smallest of evergreen shrubs peeking above the dead leaves and pine needles in my woodland garden; although it is fairly common in North Carolina, it is rare, if not endangered, in its northern range near my home town in Ontario and also in Maine^[2]. It has become so rare in its most northern range of Canada that there is a recovery program in Ontario^[3]^{,^[4]}.

Spotted Wintergreen in full bloom just a few inches high above the leaf litter.

Growing Conditions

Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) is a native, evergreen rhizomatous wildflower or dwarf shrub found on the shaded forest floor. It only reaches a height of 3 to 5 inches tall which makes it a good ground cover if you can get it to spread^[5]; it is slow growing. The habit form of the Spotted Wintergreen is classified as a sub-shrub and is considered in some literature as a small broadleaf evergreen shrub^[6]. The woody plant is easily found in the forests of the Piedmont due to the conspicuous white mid-rib of the dark blueish-green leaves which contrast with the light brown of the surrounding leaf litter. The genus name is a combination of the Greek word for winter (cheima) and to love (philein). Other common names include Striped Wintergreen, Striped Prince’s Pine, Rheumatism Root^[7] and Spotted pipsissewa^[8]. Pipsissewa comes from the Cree Indian word pipsisikweu which means ‘break into small pieces’ because mistakenly, they believed that a substance in its leaves would ‘break-up’ kidney stones. Native Americans also used to make tea from the leaves to treat rheumatism and stomach maladies. The foliage is avoided by deer. It has a wide range in Eastern North America from Quebec to Florida and as far south as Central America. It prefers medium to dry forest floors with medium shade and acidic soils. More precisely, it requires dappled sunlight (shade through the canopy all day) or deep shade (less than 2 hours to no direct sunlight) and sandy soils on the dry side with good drainage^[9]. It has a stoloniferous root system and spreads by underground stems or rhizomes. The plant does not do well if its roots are disturbed. It reproduces both vegetatively and by seed reproduction following light wildfires.

Conspicuous white mid-rib of the dark blueish-green leaves of the Spotted Wintergreen plant.

Leaf

The evergreen leaves are a deep blue-green color with a white stripe along the central vein of the leaf with a waxy or leathery appearance. As the larger leaves widen, the white stripe spreads laterally to give a mottled appearance giving it its most distinguishing characteristic. Dentate leaf margins have shallow widely-spaced teeth. The narrow ovate-shaped leaves have an opposite and whorled arrangement and are about 1 to 3 inches in length and less than an inch in width. The leaves are attached to a semi-woody stout reddish-brown stem.

Pronounced white midrib of whorl of bluish-green leathery leaves of the Spotted Wintergreen along with stem with dual buds.

Flower

In late May to early June in the Piedmont of North Carolina, small fragrant, pretty white flowers appear from spherical white buds. The flowers are bell shape and open downward or hang (nodding) from the top of long reddish-brown stalk that grows up from the leaf whorl. Each stalk is topped by 2 to 5 curving stems from which clusters of 2 to 5 flowers emerge; looking much like an old fashioned lamp post.

Top Photo: Spotted Wintergreen buds and stalk look like tiny lamposts. Middle Photo: Partially opened blossom, fully opened blossom and missing blossom on one reddish stalk emerging from the whorl of waxy bluish-green leaves. Bottom Photo: Closeup of blossoms and green pistil (early seed pod). Photo taken by Wendy Diaz at Raven Rock State Park on June 7 2015.

Each flower of ½ to ¾ inch diameter has 5 waxy white petals that have small scattered brown spots, 5 light green sepals and ten yellowish or tan colored stamens and a green pistil. After pollination the flower turns upward so that the resultant small (less than an inch in length and 1/3 inch wide) seed capsule that forms is erect and eventually matures to a dark brown color. The dried capsule splits and releases tiny seeds

I was out of town this year when a few buds blossomed on the plants beneath the beech tree. I suspect there wasn’t a bigger show this year than there was in 2021 because we had a very wet winter and spring and they prefer drier soils or I am disturbing their sensitive roots when I often walk over to their colony to admire them.