By Carol Cichorski, on July 5th, 2013 This is so perfect – a twofer. Yep, two for the price of one. Today’s Favorites on the Fifth covers creativity and About.com. We’ll use About.com as our reference tool for left brain vs. right brain, and for creative garden recycling tips.
 Personally, I’m creative. It may take me a while to come up with an idea, but eventually one falls out of my head. According to About.com, that idea would be falling out of the right side of my brain; the side that is intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. So though it took me 3 years to come up with the design and complete the mosaic that graces the banner of this website, it did get finished. We even had to get creative to get the colored tiles I wanted for the border, as in we made them ourselves.
Yet by profession, I’m a Computer Trainer at Law Firms. That requires me to use the left side of my brain; which is logical, analytical and objective.
Which side is dominant? I took the About.com Painter’s Brain Quiz. No, I don’t paint. My garden is my palette. A great compliment was given to be recently when a neighbor visited my garden for the first time and said “I always figured an artist lived here.” I took the quiz and got a 65, which means my right brain is slightly dominant. I think that’s a fair estimation.
Perfect world is when both sides of the brain work together to accomplish a task, like a New Hire Training class that just happens to be creative. Here I am at Aon New Hire Training on Beach Bash Day. Sherry Perkowitz brought in the decorations, while I, of course, provided the flowers.
Perhaps using both sides of my brain helped when it came to putting together my presentation for the Chicago Flower and Garden Show this year. The right side loved the topic of creativity, while the left side had been organized enough to collect creativity pictures all these years.
 Garden creativity comes in many shapes and forms. One of my favorites is reusing items in a new capacity, like this bicycle that Patrice Goosetree used for flowers.
Let’s take a look at how some About.com readers are doing creative recycling in their gardens. There are 284 so far, so we’ll just take a sampling.
Dripping Water for Birdbaths
To draw birds to my birdbath, I freeze water in a pint plastic milk carton with the handle and hang it on a feeder pole above my bird bath. Put a small hole in the bottom of container and the water will drip slowly as it melts. This drip will attract many birds for a cool drink or bath.
—Guest ccbloom_rn2
Another Great Use for Coffee Cans
I love watermelon and plant the big Carolina Cross variety. If you place them on coffee cans that are upside down when they are young you can turn them and make sure they fully ripen. Mine always weigh in over 20 pounds. You gotta drink a lot of coffee. LOL
—Guest DruidJo
Deter Deer
Instead of putting up a very tall fence (which is a must because deer jump very high) just put up a fence post at each corner of your garden perimeter and string either thick fishing line or in my case I had a bunch of twine on the top rung of the post and walah the deer will get spooked when the run into in and will stay out, they won’t attempt to jump something they can’t see.
—Guest Tracy
Mulch for Acid Lovers
Pinecones make good mulch for under acid loving plants.
—Guest connie mchugh
Paint Stick Markers
Most paint companies will give you extra paint sticks. They make great row markers and you can label them as well.
—welderwoman
Creative Flower Border
I collect old chipped saucers from odd coffee/tea cups as colorful boders around my flower beds.
—Guest cynthia daniel
Old Carpet Mulch
Iam doing up my neighbours large garden and to stop weeds and grass re growing I used old carpets over the ground that can later be covered in gravel. Great way to recycle old carpets.
—Guest teresa
Recycled Plant Markers
Old plastic mini blinds found at yard sales make great plant markers. Cut to size with scissors and use a permanent black marker. I leave them in the ground for the winter so I can remember what is planted in each location and I won’t dig up perennials in the spring.
—allalalan
Do you want to see the other 276 ideas? Head on over to About.com, and you’ll see why they qualify for Favorites on the Fifth.
By Carol Cichorski, on June 26th, 2013 A sneak preview of Nashville Indiana, an oh so cute town filled with oh so many flowers and oh so cute stores filled with oh so cute things. I’ll let their seating areas tell the story for now. More to follow, in particular since the Brown County Garden Club has a Secret Garden Walk on July 6th and 7th.
By Carol Cichorski, on June 15th, 2013  Photo by Kevin Penczak Zephirine Drouhin has never looked better. She is blooming with wild abandon on my Chicagoland garden gate. Zeffy, as she is affectionately known at Antique Rose Emporium, is officially a zone 6 rose. I’m zone 5 and I needed a thornless rose on my garden gate. Call me silly, but I don’t think anyone should get hurt walking through my gate. I couldn’t find a thornless zone 5 rose, so I ordered Zeffy.
For the first few years, my Zeffy was bloomless as well as thornless. That was when I was overprotective trying to keep her alive in zone 5. I’d cut her almost down to the ground in the fall and mulch heavily for the winter. Wrong. Now I’m being less cautious. We’re still protecting her with winter mulch, but not cutting her down, and were finally rewarded with blooms aplenty. She’s made my garden her home for 10 years, so she has made it through some bad winters and well as the recent easy ones. I’m hopeful she will continue to flourish.
 Photo by Kevin Penczak  Photo by Kevin Penczak Now that we aren’t’ killing her with kindness, the only pruning we’ve done the last few years has been to keep her under control. I help the canes wrap around the gate, cut dead wood, and cut back any canes that don’t add to her beauty. I trim her whenever I want and whenever I want. No real rules.
Zeffy is in full sun. She does get some black spot, so far nothing horrible. With so many canes, I sometimes just take out a whole cane instead of individual leaves to control it. I also feed her about 4 times a year.
Now that we’ve finally got this figured out, I’m hoping for a repeat performance this fall. In the interim, I’ve got a clematis growing up the other side of the gate, hoping it blooms during the summer months while Zeffy rests.
Speaking of repeat performances, join me at Bertholds Garden Center on June 22nd for ‘Creativity in the Garden’ at 1:00. This presentation debuted at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show this year. I’ll be happy to present it again in Elk Grove Village.
Do you want to know what else is blooming in the June garden? To see what other bloggers have blooming on the 15th of every month, visit May Dreams Gardens – Bloom Day for our Garden Bloggers’ Bloom day entries.
By Carol Cichorski, on June 5th, 2013 Bill Kurtis drove me around his garden on a golf cart. Boy was I surprised. I figured the kind person offering to chauffeur us around Bill Kurtis’s garden was one of the workers. Actually, it was one of the workers – the one who just happened to be Bill Kurtis himself.
That moment was just one of the joys from garden tours I’ve taken through the Open Days Program of the Garden Conservancy. That’s why I chose to tell their story and make their website the one we will visit for this month’s installment of Zone 5 – Favorites on the Fifth.
The Garden Conservancy makes it possible for you and me to visit gardens all over the country that are not normally open to the public. Gardens like Bill Kurtis’ garden in Mettawa on July 28th. It does cost $5 to get in. No, Bill doesn’t need the money. Proceeds from the Open Days Program support the national preservation work of the Garden Conservancy such as the rehabilitation of the gardens on Alcatraz Island (really), as well as local nonprofit organizations. Spend another $5 that day and go to Camp Rosemary for an exhibition of elegance. You won’t be disappointed.
The June 23rd garden in Barrington is well worth going to. The Olsen’s have 15 acres and 2 gardeners. We were suitably impressed last year and highly recommend it. Granted, your garden will pale in comparison, which can cause considerable feelings of inadequacy. Go anyway.
You can see the schedule for Illinois on the Conservancy website.
As Forrest Gump said, ‘Open Days is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get’. This much I do know – It’s gonna be good.
By Carol Cichorski, on May 30th, 2013  From the Garden of Faith, Hope & Love FB page There is a picture deep in our minds of what a gardener looks like, and the enchanting time they spend enjoying their garden. The image is serene and peaceful. Perhaps something like this one, complete with a graceful young lady gathering roses, clad in a beguiling white dress.
 Then there is reality. My gardening look is really much closer to Lucy’s. Lucy is our dog, the oh-so-dirty dog you see below. She and I run around the yard getting dirtier by the minute. Fortunately, Lucy seems to have a wonderful built in cleaning system. Our little white American Eskimo doesn’t often need a bath. I on the other hand, often need to be hosed off before I’m let back in the house to take a shower.
Somehow the two concepts mesh together when I’m in the garden — I (often) feel serene and peaceful like the lovely lady, while I’m looking dirty and disheveled like the dog. The rest of the world disappears for me and I am consumed with the task at hand. Often even with total joy.
Perhaps our young lady continues her fashion statement by wearing shoes like those designed by Madelyn Gaul. Madelyn took her inspiration from the Chinese Zodiac calendar’s year of the dragon. Madelyn says the Dragon is strong and magical. The dragon better be strong and magical in my garden. Strong to move rocks, magical to get all of the work done.
No dragon shoes for me. I would be more likely to wear raggedy washed-out shoes like these. Exactly like these, as a matter of fact.
My imagined musing of a gardener at the end of her day would include sipping iced tea on a garden swing surrounded by beautiful blooms. Oh wait – this is a picture of my garden swing surrounded by beautiful blooms. And it’s no surprise that the peaceful serene gardening lady in a white dress is absent. Someday she will be there. Someday.
By Carol Cichorski, on May 22nd, 2013 I knew I was doing something wrong with my tomatoes. Big bushy plants, very few tomatoes. I even know the main problem – me! I put the plants in the ground and pretty much ignore them. I did make progress last year. At least my tomatoes got some serious support from these old fence pieces. A rather ingenious system with rebar running from end to end; rebar that could easily be adjusted as the plants got taller.
 I don’t mean to ignore my tomato plants. You would think that someone who keeps up a major garden on a half-acre lot could take care of two tomato plants. Trouble is, I prefer tending my flowers, so this Tomato Soup Echinacea plant is much more likely to see TLC than a real tomato plant. Please don’t tell my tomatoes.
Maybe this year will be different since I learned a few things from Wally Schmidke at Bertholds Nursery. Wally spoke to the Elk Grove Garden Club last night and I took notes.
My first concern for my tomatoes is location, location, location. I’ve been planting them in the same spot for years, which is a no-no. I’ll probably switch out the soil with some from Mike’s 2nd dahlia garden. That garden was intended to be a vegetable garden, but we’d have to want the vegetables more than the dahlias for that to happen. Not likely. That garden soil is rich with compost that Mike has been creating for me. Ok, he thinks he was creating it for his dahlias, but I’m sure he will share.
My second concern is whether or not I bought the right tomatoes for us. I now know I want indeterminate, as the tomatoes will ripen at a variety of times. Determinate tomatoes are all ready at one time. Roma and patio tomatoes are often all ready at one time. I also should have given some thought to heirloom v. hybrid. Heirloom sounds good as they tend to have great flavor. Problem is they tend to crack and are more disease prone. I’ll save that decision for next year as I already have mine. Wally suggested Whopper, a hybrid that has good production and good disease resistance.
My third concern is the size of the plants. Mine are rather puny. I could have bought bigger ones. I could also have bought mine early, kept them inside, and repotted them while waiting for the weather to warm up. Wally wants lots of roots. If I had big plants I could have taken off some of the bottom leaves and planted part of the stem to have it generate more roots. Here’s Wally with a couple of his tomato plants.
 I also need to prune the suckers when the plants get big, something I have failed to do in the past. This picture from Wally will help remind me.
Some of Wally’s other tips:
• Our Chicagoland compacted clay soil is rather alkaline. Tomatoes like neutral or slightly acidic. One option would be cotton burr compost, which would break up the clay and help the PH go acidic.
• Don’t overtill, it kills the good bacteria. A better choice would be to plant a cover crop in the fall, then just aerate a bit with a pitchfork.
• Dr. Earth is a good fertilizer to mix in at planting. Use it again later in the season, and be careful to not disturb the roots. Dr. Earth has mycorrhizae, which helps roots grow by pulling in nutrients and water. Bone meal and potash are good too.
• If you foliar feed, be sure to do the underside of the leaves. Fish emulsion and seaweed concentrate are options.
• Cut leaves/branches off that are near the ground.
• Use dechlorinated water. If your water is chlorinated, put some in a 5 gallon bucket and wait a few days.
• Water the soil, not the leaves. 1″ per week is enough. Don’t overwater.
• Don’t overcrowd your plants.
Want more of Wally’s tomato tips? Come to Bertholds in Elk Grove Village on Saturday, May 25th, from 2:00 – 3:00 to hear Wally’s tomato tips for yourself.
By Carol Cichorski, on May 15th, 2013 
You may find this hard to believe, but only 37% of the folks in Chicagoland have a flower garden. Of that 37%, only 13% have lilacs. Of those 13%, only 7% cut the flowers to make bouquets.
Ok, so I made up the statistics, but the principal is true – not everyone has lilacs. With your help, we can wipe out the sad state of lilac-less-ness for one and all in our fair city. I’m doing my share by bringing in cut stems to work. Won’t you help by sharing yours too?
I’d show you pictures of our lilac bushes themselves, but that would be embarrassing. Did you know you are supposed to cut them back after they bloom? I did. But we haven’t done it.
Some of our lilacs are as big as a tree, needing Mike to do most of the bloom cutting for me. Even our Sensation lilac is a gangly sad looking thing. Both situations are our fault and need to be remedied after this year’s blooms are done. We should have been cutting out the stems that are bigger than 2″ in diameter. That would have given us a balance of new and old stems. The bush would have topped out at about 8’ and provided an abundance of flowers that I could reach. Oops.
This is the year we’ll do better. The pruning needs to be done right after they bloom. I’m putting in on my calendar. We won’t wait long as that would result in destruction of next year’s buds. We can rejuvenate the Sensation lilac by cutting out up to 1/3 of the stems. Some are overgrown, some are butting up against another bush, some are rubbing against each other, and some are just plain old unattractive.
The other lilacs are hiding out back where we forget about them. They are horrendously overgrown. Perhaps that is why they are hiding. Getting those back in shape will take more effort. Lots more effort. We should cut them almost to the ground and hope they recover to bloom in a few years. I’m not sure I have the courage for that.
For now, I’m going to fill some more vases and enjoy the moment.
Do you want to know what else is blooming in the May garden? To see what other bloggers have blooming on the 15th of every month, visit May Dreams Gardens – Bloom Day for our Garden Bloggers’ Bloom day entries.
By Carol Cichorski, on May 5th, 2013 How can it be time for Favorites on the Fifth again? Can today really be the 5th? Can it really be May? Doesn’t the world know I’m busy tagging, sorting, inventorying, and selling dahlias and can’t spend time at my computer? Is Erik Johansson really flattened onto the ironing board you see below? Ok, now I have your attention.
I’m gonna make it easy on myself, and I’m just going to send you off to see some really fun photos. I’m not even going to be concerned that the photos are not gardening related. Erik Johansson is a photographer and retouch artist from Sweden, and as you can see from his pictures below, he gets up close and personal with creativity.
By Carol Cichorski, on April 24th, 2013 Believe it or not, spring is coming. And so are plant sales! Our dahlias are hardening off outside, with some 400 of them going to various sales. Another 100 will be planted in our garden.
You might ask why — why the obsession with dahlias? That question is easy to answer with pictures. Feast your eyes on Cinnabar.
And Drummer Boy.
 Yes, these are all pictures from our yard, actually Mike’s part of our yard.
As President of the Central States Dahlia Society, he is intimately involved with all aspects of dahlia growing. That includes making sure that you can grow them too. He recently spoke about dahlias for the Arlington Heights Garden Club, and will soon do the same for Rolling Meadows.
Please come to the sales and share the joy of passionate growers like Mike. His passion gets plants to you that are ready to go into the ground. They’ll flower starting in August, way earlier than if you plant tubers in the ground yourself in mid-May.
Upcoming sales include:
Here is a screen shot of general plant sales I received recently from the Garden Clubs of Illinois:
Happy planting!
By Carol Cichorski, on April 22nd, 2013  Mike and I knew that we’d eventually have to get some of the wild mulberry trees cut down. They were among the trees that line the back of our yard; at least they were till about a week ago. Now three of them are gone. There were others that could have gone too, but my heart and my wallet said no.
Not everyone cuts down a tree just because it has a split in it. This tree in Yosemite has a bit of a split, and they didn’t cut it down. Mike wasn’t convinced that was good logic for us. Yosemite didn’t have power lines, a fence, and a neighbor’s shed right behind the tree. Ours did, and the mulberries would have come down themselves if we didn’t help them along.
I really liked having the whole row of trees that you see below. The mulberries were on the far left.
 They were pretty tall, and did a good job of creating a forested look in the summer. As you can see, Mike helped.
Now it’s back to the drawing board. We may put something really big in again, or maybe we’ll just go for something smaller. Decisions, decisions, decisions.
In the interim, someone has to go outside in this lovely weather to start moving shade plants to new homes. That would be me! Out I go.
|
|
|
