Some folks try turning their home grounds over to a “garden-sitter” while away. A friendly neighbor may feel sure he can provide the necessary care for the few weeks of your absence.
Perhaps that nice young fellow who does odd jobs for summer employment will take on the responsibility of groundskeeper. It’s a quick, easy solution.
Such an arrangement should give you peace of mind and add enjoyment to your relaxation because your treasured garden will not be neglected while you play and rest. But vacation over; when you drive back into the yard, what will you find has happened to your orphan-like plantings?
The odds are against your viewing with pride the clean, orderly, flourishing garden scene you remember leaving. Out of your sight, weeds have had a merry lark.
The opening buds have left dead flower heads. Unstacked plants have stretched themselves and bent over badly. A lean, hungry, and thirsty look has replaced the thrifty opulence you nurtured and walked out on.
This homecoming shock takes the edge off vacation memories. How about a leaf spot on the roses and insect depredations? Azaleas and other shallow-rooted plants give wilted evidence of rain scarcity while you were away.
It will take strenuous exertion to rehabilitate the back-sliding that went on during your absence. So there goes that hammock time you had been accumulating. Better forget the old rocking chair until garden affairs are brought back under control!
Prepare A Self-Sustaining Garden
Here is another case where preparation could have saved the waste of energy. Without hiring a professional landscape gardener to tend the place, it is possible to put your garden on a self-sustaining basis for the few weeks of your neglect and find it fairly well groomed, even showing some progress and improvement, when you get back.
Your vacation is planned weeks, maybe months ahead. Reservations are made, transportation arranged, apparel and equipment selected and packed, paper boy and milkman notified, fur nitric covered, and electricity turned off. But what have you done about the garden? Please don’t leave it for a last-minute, frantic effort.
Look the situation over as much as a couple of weeks ahead of your departure. Then, make your plans for packing your garden away, bit by bit, in an orderly fashion.
Provisions should vary depending on plant materials, the time, and the length of your absence. But here are some suggestions for leaving the garden on its own while you are away.
Pruning
Pruning is a good starting point. A light clean-up pruning of roses will do for them. If any spring-flowering shrubs have yet to be pruned at the end of their blooming season, complete the job through the first half of June.
Pinch terminal buds from garden chrysanthemums to induce branching into bushy compact plants.
Remove dead stalks from early flowers when their season is finished, and keep all flowers cut until the time for leaving. Cut back everything that has the habit of throwing out new growth and bloom that might be ready for your return.
Staking
Stake and tic tall growing, top-heavy plants, such as dahlias, lilies, exhibition chrysanthemums, cosmos, and tithonia, to avoid their flopping over and developing twisted stalks that can’t be straightened after you get back.
Stake single-stem plants, like lilies, as high as practical and tie them loosely so that stems will not be damaged.
Multi-stalked things, such as dahlias, call for basket-staking. Place three or four stakes around the plant, draw the stems together in a loose bundle, and run a tie-cord around the stakes for support.
Vines and climbing roses that you train to trellises, fences or arbors, and espaliers should receive discipline during your packing. See that they are growing the way you want them and secured in place.
Work on Weeds
Then get to work on weeds. First, clean the beds and borders and treat your lawn with selective chemical controls for broadleaf weeds and crabgrass.
Weed-killer and lawn-food combinations are available, but since you are not anxious for excessive stimulation of grass growth while gone, let the feeding await your return. Mow the lawn fairly close shortly before leaving.
Feed shrubs, roses, and plants coming along for late summer and fall bloom if your Vacation comes in early summer. However, if you vacation late, wait to do anything to prolong tender growth that might be damaged by frost before sufficiently hardening for winter.
Instant water-soluble plant foods used for supplemental liquid feeding of foliage and roots can be taken in by plants immediately and become exhausted in two or three weeks so that they may serve your purpose best for late feeding.
Well-nourished plants are less susceptible to injury by drouth and more resistant to diseases and insect pests.
Irrigate the Soil
Irrigate the soil thoroughly, deep enough to last reasonably well for your stay. This is no sprinkling job.
With one of the soil soaker devices attached to the hose, a flexible plastic waterer turned face down lets the water seep below the root depth of your annuals and perennials.
When one area is properly soaked to the saturation point, move to the next adjoining and continue until the whole place is deep watered, including the lawn.
Use Insecticide
Now use a multi-purpose combination of insecticide and fungicide spray or dust to leave a protective coating over the garden plants so that bugs and blights will not gain the upper hand while you’re gone.
If slugs and snails are a menace, scatter a metaldehyde bait on the ground to keep them under control.
Weeding, feeding, watering, and spraying completed, a heavy mulch of pine straw, peanut hulls, or other coarse, cheaply available material is the final step for holding moisture, stifling the growth of grass and weeds, protecting from soil crusting and sun baking, and keeping plant foods working.
Pot House Plants
You don’t have to farm out prized house plants, along with the cat and canary, on reluctant friends. Instead, you can plunge them (pot and all) into a suitable place in the garden where they will stay moist and shaded.
Or, you can leave them right where they prosper in the house. Give the pots a soaking from the bottom, and make a tent over the plant with a sheet of polyethylene plastic, large enough to fold tinder the container to seal in the moisture.
Air will pass through this plastic, but water will not. Moisture collects on the inner surface and falls back like dew. Even though they get no attention for four or five weeks, the plants will not suffer.
With garden responsibilities under control, you can shove off and leave things to Mother Nature while you frolic. But, of course, there is a remote chance that you may wish to change your plans after getting everything ship-shaped for the take-off.
You can cancel reservations, stretch out in the shade of a tree and enjoy the attractions of your surroundings without care.
44659 by Buxton White