Grapes in Minnesota

We decided to go with the St Croix grape, I told the nursery I wanted a table grape, so I took his suggestion of the St. Croix. After I got home and we planted it I got around to reading thre label. It said the this was the one red wine variety that Elmer Swenson has released. It is Vinifera like wine quality with low tannins and good hardiness -32F to -40 depending on who you read. Ripens midseason and has a semi-trailing growth pattern. Good resistance to black rot and powdery mildew. Also makes a suitable seeded table grape. I got the impression seeds are going to be in any table grapes I plant here. It's in the ground, planted next to the garden arch. We'll see how it goes.
Tags: Minnesota Gardens Home Garden Planting Grapes

Rain Garden for Investment

From Naterraland Reality
It makes common sense that part of the reason for protecting the earth is just protecting your investment.
Not surprising, lakefront real estate with cleaner water commanded significantly higher prices.
Rain gardens are landscape areas planted with wildflowers and other native vegetation designed to replace portions of lawn.
Rain gardens are beneficial to lakefront property for several reasons.
• To help protect streams and lakes from pollutants carried by storm water – lawn fertilizers and pesticides, oil and other fluids that leak from cars and other harmful substances that wash off roofs and paved areas.
• To enhance the beauty of your lakefront property and the surrounding area.
• To provide a valuable habitat for birds, butterflies and many beneficial insects.
Spring and early summer is the best time to build and plant a rain garden. It’s easier to dig and the plants are more likely to thrive.
Determining the right size and plants.
The appropriate size of your rain garden depends on how deep the garden will be (typically between four to eight inches), what type of soil the garden will be planted in and how much roof and/or lawn will drain to the garden. The length and width is important to ensure it properly catches water. A good rule of thumb is to make the rain garden about twice as long (perpendicular to the slope) as it is wide, usually about 10 feet wide.
For plant selection, choose native plants with a diverse mixture of sedges, rushes and grasses. They not only add to the garden’s beauty, they also create a thick underground root matrix that keeps the entire plant community in balance. In fact, 80% of the plant mass in native prairie communities is underground. Once the garden has matured with a deep, thick root system, weeds will naturally decline.
Another nice benefit of a rain garden is the low maintenance required once the plants are established.
As you make plans for your rain garden, consider the following tips and proven guidelines.
More tips and proven guidelines to remember.
• Place the garden at least 10 feet from the house or cabin.
• Do not place it directly over a septic system.
• Although tempting, don’t put the rain garden on a part of the land where water already ponds. The goal is to encourage infiltration and your land’s wet patches show where infiltration is slow.
• Keep the garden level to prevent rain runoff.
• Make a berm across the bottom and up the sides to keep water in the garden.
• Select plants with a well-established root system, usually one or two years old.
By reducing storm water run off, a rain garden can help you improve and maintain the water quality of your lakefront real estate or riverfront property while increasing its value. And that’s beautiful any way you look at it.
Source: University of Wisconsin Extension; “Rain Gardens: A How-to Manual for Homeowners.” And “Protecting Your Waterfront Investment.”
Tags: Minnesota Gardens rain garden Home Garden

1990 Pond Photo

I came across this photo of our pond from about 1990. We had a lot of cattails growing in the lower pond at the time. It was a lush summer. One did not have to work so hard to keep plants green or the ponds full.

Tags: Minnesota Gardens Home Garden ponds

Siberian Irises

It's time to enjoy the Siberian Irises that are blooming right now. With all the pond work I haven't been paying attention to the flowers. That is wrong ! One should always have time for the flowers. They are a very adaptable plant the blue one is in a pond the white one is in a regular flower bed. They do like wet feet. The blue flags grow wild in the swamps.
Tags: Minnesota Gardens Home Garden Siberian Irises

Buffalo Berries in Bloom

The Buffalo Berries are blooming. These are tastey little berries a little bigger than currents. They make a good tasting jelly. I understand there are several varieties of these. We believe what we have are the Canadian Buffalo Berry (Shepherdia canadensis )
Tags: Minnesota Gardens rock sculpture Home Garden Buffaloberry

The Middle Pond

This is from last summer. Just before we started work on cleaning out what we call the middle pond. For a number of years we had let it become a 'bog'. Rain water would keep it damp. It naturalized itself, with cat tails and all kinds of other interesting plants. We planted some siberian irises in it , they did very well. for a couple of years we tried cardinal flowers, they did beautifully the first year but would never come back. I built up the soil so they had wet feet but were not super wet. I have given up on them for now. Any ideas ? Anyway we decided to bring it back to a pond and modify the waterfall. Oh, notice the glass blown hummingbird feeder. It's beautiful. We picked it up at the U of Mn Arboretum the hummingbirds come up to it, try and figure out how to feed out of it and go away. I've tried different angles moving it around, I guess the hummingbirds around here aren't hungry enough.
Tags: Minnesota Gardens Home Garden rocks ponds water falls

Deicing vs Plants

pWinter is technically here. The snow will be coming. Along with that comes deicing salt for the roads that will work it's way up onto the boulevards. This is not a good thing for plants. Salt spray from a busy highway can coat trees as far as 60 feet away. Trees that are susceptible to salt damage, such as red or sugar maples. Around here we don't have busy highways to worry about it , so the distance wouldn't be quite so extreme. It is said the “the best” salt-tolerant tree species for Minnesota are Japanese tree lilac and Ohio buckeye. We have two Japanese lilac trees in our front yard about 10 feet from the road. They have been doing fine for about 12 years. For a list of salt-tolerant trees and shrubs and tips on preventing damage from deicing salt, look for deicing at the U. of Mn. Extension Web site
Tags: Minnesota Gardens Deicing vs Plants home & garden