Time for Fall Haircuts

Bronze sedges, all trimmed up

The bronze sedges (Carex comans) have had a great year. The new babies all grew well and the established ones outdid themselves, growing their long, golden tresses out to amazing lengths. But when I'm out doing fall weeding and breaking up the small branches that have fallen over the summer, I can't do much without getting tangled in those strands, which are frequently as long as three feet. Last spring, just to make things easier for myself, I cut the long leaves off my three bushiest, hoping I didn't mar them for life. I didn't need to worry—those plants were fully as furry this month as they had ever been. So yesterday I broke out my heavy garden scissors and went around giving haircuts. The strands are tough enough that they could tangle and conceivably, in sufficient numbers, choke up equipment, so rather than throw them whole into the recycling bin, I just cut them into finger lengths and left them on the ground for mulch.

I usually don't have to give full haircuts to the orange sedges, because except for their seed stems (which I will cut off when they get in my way), their leaves rarely grow more than 12-14". However, over last winter I bought half a dozen seedlings at a couple of stores that were labeled "Orange Sedge" but turned out to have leaves twice as thick (1/8" compared to 1/16") and twice as long as my old standby orangies. The only thing I can guess is that the polite, refined ones I've had for years are a cultivated variety of C. testacea, and the ones I (and another friend) picked up this year are the original species, substantially larger and a bit rougher-looking. Their coloring is almost exactly the same, and the leaves on the young plants were narrow, so I was easily fooled. I've pulled my miscreants out of the small bed I'd placed them in and moved them to an area where they can compete with each other for space, and not overwhelm their heuchera neighbors, as they were doing.

Fortunately for me, my original orangies, a good seven years old now, had a bumper crop of their own babies this year, which I'm still moving to new locations in the former meadow.

Summer winding down

This has been a beautiful summer for the garden, and thanks to the mild temps I've been able to spend a lot of time out in it. Finally, I've been able to go out and really feel that I'm in a garden. There are still plenty of unfinished and unsightly areas for me to keep working on, but there are spots that are pure joy.

Now I'm trying to catch up on my blogging, which I'm sorry I neglected, because I've had so many great hours out there I can't count or remember them all. I have a backlog of photos to post, so this may be an out-of-sequence hodge podge for a while.

One of my go-to plant groups is Carex grasses. I have 6 or 7 species now, and orange sedges are one of my favorites. They grow in every kind of soil I have, and seem very tolerant of inconsistent watering. And nothing eats them. I was able divide a couple of my bigger ones this year, and every year I find at least a couple babies in the spring. Most of them turn out to be bronze rather than orange, but I have plenty of places to put them. The more sun they get, the more orange they show. The Bowles Golden sedges are happy where they get regular water and plenty of shade, and they don't seem to care about how soggy their site gets in the winter. I have quite a few bronze sedges; some of them were here when I moved in and they just keep going, and I usually get at least a couple new babies, just like the orangies.

Carex testacea, in morning light

Bowles Golden Sedge

Bronze Sedge

I found a new plant to love this year. Actually I had one, a Bergarten Sage, already growing in my Ruth Stout veggie garden, but this year I realized just how tough and versatile this plant is. It spreads slowly—mine is about 18" wide now—tastes great in cooking, and like the carexes, seems ready to grow anywhere, whether I take care of it or not. I bought four more of them and put them in various spots around the garden where I'd like to have a no-care ground cover. Where they get enough sun, they pop out with beautiful blue flowers in midsummer that continue to look decorative after the petals fall off.

Bergarten sage

I tried two other sages this year—they're so cheap—a purple sage I put into a mostly-shady spot where it won't get much water in the dry season, and the pineapple sage I put just outside my veggie garden, where I really didn't expect it to do much. It does get watered every other day there. Imagine my surprise when it got two feet tall and a foot across, and still has the wonderful light fragrance from which it got its name. I haven't tried it in cooking but I certainly will. I bet it would be wonderful in rice or curry. A friend confirmed that it grows beautifully in her garden as well, has for a couple years, and gets covered with red flowers in the fall. I look forward to that.

Pineapple sage embracing a small blue spruce

Just a couple weeks ago I went on an HPSO trip to Sebright Gardens in Salem, where I found this adorable little Pinus strobus "Vercurve". I'm positively silly about curly-needle pines and this little cutie will only get a few feet tall in 10 years.

Pinus strobus "Vercurve"