L OCAL LIVING
District LILIES ARE EASY TO GROW; HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW
Planting: Lilies need moisture in the growing season, but they rot in heavy, wet ground in winter, so they should be planted in rich, well-amended soil that retains moisture but drains. Plant lily bulbs about eight to 10 inches deep to aid root development. Sunlight: The flower stalks should be in sunlight, but the bulbs benefit from a little shade, and a light mulch will help cool the soil. Season: Lily hobbyists prefer to order and plant bulbs in the fall, though spring-shipped bulbs are fine as long as they are planted right away. Care: Remove flowers once they fade to prevent the plant from putting energy into making seeds, but keep as much of the stalk and leaves as possible. The top growth should be removed in the fall when it yellows.
lilies from 4
tint on petals that arch back. One of my favorites this year is
Catherine the Great, which forms tall clumps of lemon yellow flowers, profuse and exquisite. I saw it last week in the Oakton garden of Kathy Welsh. She is president of the American Daffodil Society but has a hankering too for lovely lilies. She is eager to show me Silk
Road, which is similar in color to Triumphator, but the rose hue is punchier and the stalks are nine feet tall. She has staked it, not because the stems can’t support themselves but because a violent storm would break them. Orania is a bit shorter but delicious, a creamy yellow with rose pink blushes on the outer petals. Quintessence is a buff yellow with a golden throat overlaid with a rose wash. Caravan is another beauty, butterscotch yellow with red markings. Ortega is tall and its dark stems a little brooding. The flowers are a dramatic mix of ivory, rose and yellow. In another garden recently, I encountered Conca d’Or, a gorgeous soft yellow Orienpet that grows to five feet. It would make a lovely cut flower. Welsh also has Scheherazade,
a tall, late-season lily still firmly in bud. When it opens in two or three weeks, its flowers will be a deep red lightening to gold at the margins of deeply arched petals. These lily introductions make July in Washington something to look forward to. Quite a feat.
higginsa@washpost.com
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Mondays at www.washingtonpost. com/allwecaneat.
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Find more about gardening online Read monthly tips (for July, remove tomatoes with rot and harvest basil leaves) and watch how-to gardening videos at
www.washingtonpost.com/home.
6
Kathy Welsh’s garden in Oakton includes a spreading clump of Catherine the Great lilies accompanied by acanthus.
Read more about growing your own food at
www.washingtonpost.com/vegetablegardens.
Adrian Higgins blogs about vegetable gardening
Yelloween, fragrant and relatively short at under five feet tall.
Where to buy Lily bulbs are never dormant and can dry out if poorly kept, a reason to avoid lilies that have been sitting in stores for too long and have begun to sprout. Lilies are shipped in the fall or early spring. A few sources:
Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, Gloucester, Va., 877-661-2852,
www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com.
The Lily Garden, Vancouver, Wash., 360-253-6273,
www.thelilygarden.com.
Potomac Lily Society. Join the group ($4) and order lilies through its annual bulb order. Visit www.
potomaclilysociety.org and click on “About Us.”
— A.H. by Barbara Damrosch
A lot of the work in gardening is getting stuff from one place to another, and the larger or more distant the garden, the more moving around. Tools, plants, weeds, compost, bark mulch, bags of soil amendments, rocks, bricks, gravel, firewood, buckets of water, UPS packages, jugs of cider and giant zucchinis are all things I have trundled about with my trusty metal contractor’s wheelbarrow. I also use a boxy, wooden two-wheeled cart, especially useful when a flat bottom is called for, as with pots, and seed trays, or for bulky objects such as hay bales. But nothing beats a wheelbarrow for maneuverability. It can turn on a dime, negotiate the narrowest of paths, hold its load without spilling, and dump tidily when it reaches its destination. With a few extra trips, a wheelbarrow can do a cart’s job. But not always vice versa.
Here are a few tricks for getting the most out of this ancient garden workhorse:
When loading it, place the heaviest part of the load over the wheels for efficiency and stability. Keep the tire inflated with a bike pump or small compressor, or get a “no-flat” tire. Sand the handles occasionally to keep them free of splinters, then protect them with linseed oil. When wheeling out seedlings for transplanting, pour a few inches of water in the bottom of the wheelbarrow to moisten the plants from below. You can also use a kids’ toy wagon for this job. Nurseries have those for wheeling plants; why not gardeners? Don’t overload it, especially on hilly ground. Going up, it will exhaust you. Going down, it can run away from you and tip over. When shopping for a wheelbarrow, go for a sturdy one with a large
capacity, even if the yard is small. If your strength is limited, just fill it partly full. Sooner or later there will be something large, light and fluffy for which a dinky, little wheelbarrow is useless. If cheaply made, a dinky little wheelbarrow has a dinky little lifespan. Buy one with one wheel. Those with two are very stable, but have little
maneuverability. BIGSTOCK
When not in use, stand the wheel- barrow up on its tip, leaning against a wall, preferably under the overhang of a roof. Rainwater that collects in the wheelbarrow can rust it out. This is not true of a barrow with a plastic dish, but even so it will take pressure off the tire and prevent a place for mosquitoes to breed.
No doubt, the wheelbarrow will be improved on in the future, though we might just as well look to the past. European travelers in the Renaissance found the Chinese using ones with masts and sails. How’s that for power assist?
localliving@washpost.com Damrosch is a freelance writer and the author of “The Garden Primer.” a cook’s garden
Your wheelbarrow: A trusty sidekick
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THE WASHINGTON POST • THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2010
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