Back to the Garden!
Season 5, Episode 28, May 24, 2023
On this week’s episode, Carol and I talked, talked, and talked about many gardening topics. We are working feverishly in the garden these days. How about you?
I have been doing a few Instagram posts, including this one about deadheading roses. I’ll get back to the blog soon. I just returned from our river cruise along the Danube last week, and I’m still tired.
It’s that time of the year when there is so much to do and so little time to do it. For example, don’t forget to cut back your more aggressive and floppy perennials like asters and goldenrod, a la the Chelsea Chop or the Indy 500 Chop, as Carol calls it.
Our flower this week is the bearded iris. I mentioned that Michael Kowalchyk, President of the Oklahoma Iris Society, was on Oklahoma Gardening to talk about irises at the Will Rogers display gardens. Also, the American Iris Society has tons of cultural information about bearded irises too.
Plus, Carol wrote a blog post about Ella Porter McKinney, author of Iris in the Little Garden. My only problem with irises is that our Oklahoma storms almost always destroy them.
Our vegetable topic was how our vegetable gardens have changed over time. Carol and I now love raised beds and containers for many reasons. Here’s a hint: they’re a lot less work. Here’s a metal raised bed vegetable garden container from Botanical Interests (affiliate link) that is pretty cool.
If you don’t want to buy so much raised bed soil, you can try Hügelkultur to take up some of the space in a deep raised bed.
Carol found our book for the bookshelf this week, American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, edited by Susan Barba, with illustrations by Leann Shapton (Amazon link)Â
Our dirt is a new game coming soon called Botany: Flower Hunting in the Victorian Era.  Plus, there’s a Youtube video with people playing a prototype of it.
My rabbit hole was about Julie Newmar’s garden. She has always gardened, and she’s 89, so she gives me hope for my future. Here’s another article about her roses and her Youtube channel. Carol found several rabbit holes to run down, including Martha Stewart's new rose garden and Flower Pounding, which Carol is now doing.
We also gave a shoutout to one of our listeners who shared a link to a Youtube video with someone reading a chapter of one of Jean Hersey’s books, who is one of Carol’s lost ladies of garden writing.
And the other stuff we want you to know….
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For more info on Carol, visit her website, or visit her blog, May Dreams Gardens.
For more info on Dee, visit her website, or visit her blog, Red Dirt Ramblings.
On Instagram: Carol: Indygardener, Dee: RedDirtRamblings, Our podcast: TheGardenangelists.
On Facebook: The Gardenangelists' Garden Club.
On YouTube. We should post a new video sometime, but it’s hard to keep up with everything.
Hi ladies. I so enjoy your show! I watched the Oklahoma gardening just yesterday about irises. I have Siberian irises and I’ve had them for about 20 years and they have multiplied like crazy and are just all bunched up. I’ve already dug a bunch of them up over the last two years, but I still have a couple of sizable stands of them, After listening to your podcast this afternoon, I went outside and dug a section of them up to separate, and re-plant them, further apart. When I re-plant them, do I expose the top of the bulb above the soil? Did I understand Dee correctly? Thank you so much for any advice you can give me! I always laugh and laugh when I listen to y’all. It just makes my day.
Deri David
Valley View, TX