POTS & PLANTS

IT’S FALL PLANTING AND DISCOUNT DAYS TIME

View fullsize

by Peter W. Gribble
It’s fall planting time. The spring-blooming bulbs are in: snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths and tulips. Winter kales, large pots of chrysanthemum accompany flats of winter pansies and violas and bring a refreshing seasonal reset with the colours of fall.

Yet in any largish garden centre, my first to-go place from now until the end of October or so is the discount section. Various departments (perennials, trees and shrubs) need to reduce their inventory so there is less to over-winter. Not only this but in the course of a growing season, plants lose their labels, get damaged and if they are perennials without tags and in the process of dying back are progressively difficult to identify. So a 30, 50 or 75 percent sales sticker is slapped on it and it is exiled to the discount area – the palliative ward of retail.

Tree and shrub overstock is usually not more than 30 percent off as there nothing wrong with it except there are too many left over. The discount can increase as fall edges closer to winter, but as the product sells down selection is less. Everything from fruit trees and rhododendrons to Japanese maples can go on sale although garden centres like to switch things up. Sales may be for the entire month or an in-store special lasting a week. This product is not usually found in the discount area but in their accustomed places in the nursery. Evergreens, unless they are damaged or pot-bound, tend not to be discounted as they sell well during winter months. Cedar, yew or laurel hedging seldom goes on sale as these are the bread and butter of a nursery.

The best time to plant trees is the fall. As the leaves begin to drop and our rainy season approaches, the fall, winter and spring months give a newly planted tree a sustained period for roots to establish themselves. If you plant a tree in June, July or August, cancel your vacation plans. The tree’s roots can’t reach the water table to counteract the blasts of heat and drought, so you may have to water every day depending on the severity of the summer weather and the tree’s exposure to it. If the tree or shrub is left in its black plastic pot in full sun, it can dry and parch in a day. So best plant your trees in the fall.

In the discount area you’ll find tagged and identified trees and shrubs, but with a squashed side, broken branches, root-bound in weedy pots, requiring a good prune and un-saleable at regular prices. After a certain point, if they remain unsold, the plants are thrown in the compost bin, a sad waste of labour, time and cost and, more importantly, life.

I rescued a Styrax japonica (Japanese Snowbell tree) that was all of the above and had suffered the additional indignity of several discounts amounting to 90 percent off the original price. Yet it sat ignored in the corner of the nursery by its lonesome, dangerously close to the compost bin.

Buying a plant is not unlike buying a puppy: is it wagging its tail? Will it come when it’s called? Will it go on the paper? If it’s a rescue puppy, none of that matters. A nursery discount area is full of rescue plants in need of good homes and caring gardeners.

Years later, my straggly, pot-bound, weedy, lopsided, broken-branched, rescue Styrax has become a lovely little tree blooming its heart out every May with small, white bell-like flowers the bees love. Without supervision it would’ve grown into a twenty-foot, misshapen sprawl of a tree too big for the backyard so I prune it every year after flowering in May, cultivating it into a happy, gorgeous tree growing in the ground as a compact standard form eight feet tall.

Shrubs are looking less attractive: hydrangea have spotty leaves and their flower heads are going papery, camellias are losing colour, pot-bound plants are accelerating their leaf drop, tall plants are but tall stems with a tuft of leaves at the top. Perennials are in a different category: hostas are getting translucent; lupins curl under powdery mildew, and deciduous ferns are dying back. In another month or so, perennials are dead-looking and the discounts are steeper, providing great savings. What was once a four-inch pot of a $4.99 identifiable perennial is now a tagless mystery costing $3.49 (30 percent off), $2.49 (50 percent off) or 1.25 (75 percent off.)

I once bought five Patriot Hostas in this fall state of decline at 75 percent off. The following spring they emerged lush and full in an attractive receiving line beside a set of backyard stairs. Every year the hostas look better and better.

Discounted pots with nothing but dirt and a bunch of dead, curled leaves will strain the powers of deduction. But previous customers may have picked through them and disarranged the product. I found half a flat of nameless dead plants but one, looking suspiciously similar, was on a different shelf had a plant tag: a cyclamen! At 75 percent off, what’s not to like? On the chance the rest were cyclamens, I bought the half flat. Now, season after season the cyclamen patch is a beautiful focal point in the semi-shade part of the garden and bought for next to nothing.

This is not to say all are success stories. I once bought a nearly full flat of cute pink shooting stars or Dodecatheon meadia – according to the tags. They were four-inch pots of dirt, without a dead leaf in sight but 75 percent off. Winter had to turn into spring and spring to summer to make it clear the pots of dirt would remain pots of dirt. I had made too eager a purchase and didn’t upend each pot to check for root growth in the soil. It would have separated what would grow from what had already died. In this case, all of it.

My introduction to plant ID was when my aunt told me to feel the stem of a plant. “It’s firm, ah ... woody?” “It’s square,” she said. Sure enough, it was and it was startling to realize it. “Anything with a square stem,” she explained, “belongs to the Lamiaceae Family. Most are invasive. Now pinch the leaf and smell your fingers.” “Mint!” “Yes. Many members of this Family have a fragrance. Sage (Salvia) and beebalm (Monarda) are others, but they’re runners.”

Let nature show you. Engage your senses. Observe the shape of the leaves and how they grow on the stem, how the flowers open, their elegant structure, their scent, how the seeds set and disperse.

Yes, exploring the discount area introduces you to new plants; cuts down the amount the garden centre composts; saves you money - but it also reduces our carbon footprint.

It is our responsibility to learn ever more about the world we are having such a devastating effect upon. And to do this we need to get closer to it, be intrigued by it, allow its intricate and wondrous dynamic to enchant us and make us more courteous and kind to it.