Come and join us for the annual

Spring Re-Opening of Egan Gardens!

Friday March 1st through Sunday March 3rd
9 am - 6 pm Fri. and Sat., 10 am - 5 pm Sun.

We're now open 7 days a week to serve you, our favorite gardener.

Celebrate the new season with:

• Free pansy packs (bring your coupon)
• Daily drawings for the planter or basket of your choice
  
• Plant -your- own flowers for the kids
  
• Cookies, coffee and cider
  
• A sneak peek at spring on a greenhouse tour
  
• Spring-cleaning sale table
  
• Lots of Spring flowers!

Remember, no matter what it's like outside,
it's always warm and dry in the greenhouse.

Dear fellow gardeners, customers and friends,
As another gardening season is about to begin I can't help but look back on the one past and think "What a great summer". A really cold, wet spring, but a great summer. It was the best Tomato Summer we've had in many years. Coming after two Green Tomato Years in a row it was especially welcome. For those of you who don't do vegetable gardening, my talk of the different years may be mysterious. You'd better plant a tomato this year so you, too, can sound like an old farmer. "Yup, I recall the summer of 1965, the gosh-darn rain didn't quit 'til near 'bout mid August..."

I guess I'm on a roll here and might as well continue talking about the weather. Among gardeners such talk is not a polite triviality designed to avoid discussing real topics, it is a real topic. Last year most of the nation was in extreme drought conditions, and the only reason we were not was that the spring rains were heavy, so our very dry summer didn't affect us until it was nearly at its end. But we really should be prepared to deal with drought if it hits us, too. Here are a few water-saving gardening techniques:

• Plant trees. Trees use quite a bit of water themselves, but the shade and humidity they provide for plants underneath reduces their water use and creates a more comfortable environment overall.
• Limit use of automatic sprinkler system. Think of it as mostly something to use if you're gone on vacation. Use it only on occasion, when the whole yard truly needs water. Most of the time you can spot-water using a sprinkler on a hose at a low pressure to get the places that dry out fastest or have the most vulnerable plants.
  Water extra by hand on newly planted plants, or individuals that need more for a period of time, like Camellias and Rhododendrons as they set the next spring's flower buds in the dry heat of August.
  
• Soaker hoses are great. Very little water is lost to evaporation or run-off. Initial set-up can be a bit demanding as you convince them to leave the curled configuration in which they have spent their lives until that point and lie flat ! Down, boy, down! Once past that point, they are easy to use.
  
• Harvest your downspouts. Rain barrels can collect water from your downspouts for you to use on your plants later. This helps in late spring and early summer as the rainy days start to spread farther apart, so you need to begin watering. By late summer they are nearly useless because there has been almost nothing for them to collect. In spring you could pump it out into a reservoir if you had one. So they help when they can.
  
• Plant low-water-use plants. This seems obvious. But you'll need to pick through the plant choices carefully to keep your garden looking the way you want it to if you're not a fan of the arid look. We at Egan Gardens will be glad to help you, of course. You can start with areas that dry out fast, that are hard to reach with sprinklers, or that are at the tops of berms or walls where water drains away fastest.

All the things we can do, even if they don't seem like much by themselves, add up to considerable water savings. Most importantly they can do it without making us stop gardening and turn our yards into brown deserts.

What's Happening at Egan Gardens in 2013

What’s New or Otherwise Interesting for 2013
New Disease Problem
First, the bad new stuff:  Impatiens Downy Mildew.  Some of you may have gotten my email explaining it last fall.  It is a new, deadly disease of impatiens that reached Oregon last summer.  It only affects “regular” impatiens, and leaves New Guinea and Sunpatiens unharmed.  I recommend that if you are in the habit of planting quite a lot of impatiens to switch to something else, at least for a couple of years until we see how widespread this disease is going to be.  If you only use a few, so your risk isn’t too great, then go ahead and plant your impatiens.  The mildew is bound to strike just here and there, but there’s no way to know where that will be. 

I will give a class on Saturday, March 30th so that I can give more detailed information to those of you who are interested. In response to this situation, I am of course growing more other kinds of shade plants,  such as more wax begonias, polka-dot plants, coleus, and some new things like…

New Begonias
Summerwings Begonias are semi-trailing begonias, with smallish flowers, similar to the Bonfire type we’ve grown for several years.  But they come in red, rose and white as well as orange and have more branches.
Sparkle Begonias  are more of the same type, but from a different breeder, and come in rose, salmon and white shades.  On both of these, what they call “rose” I would call coral.
Bon Bon Begonias are yet another, from yet another breeder.  They see a good thing, they all jump on the bandwagon.   Bon Bons come in Cherry and Sherbet (yellow w/ coral-shaded back)
Arcada Begonias are  larger, double-flowered trailing begonias.  I have been looking for good trailing tuberous begonias for years and I hope these will finally satisfy me (and you, too) They come in orange, pink, rose, red, white and yellow. I hope that “rose” isn’t coral in these, too.  I’d really like some nice pink shades!
Begonias will be ready to plant late April through mid June.

New Perennials
‘Valentine’ Bleeding Hearts are a great shade perennial.  They’re the tall Old-Fashioned type with striking red and white flowers rather than the usual soft pink.  They should be up and growing nicely on Opening Weekend, though may not be blooming yet.
Columbine ‘Leprechaun Gold’ has gorgeous dark purple double flowers over gold and green variegated foliage. It’s very hardy and easy to grow in a wide range of conditions.  It should have nice foliage on Opening Weekend and be blooming in May.
Fairy Wand – Dierama pulcherrimum, also known as Fairy’s Fishing Rod and Angel’s Fishing Rod is another perennial that’s not new, but for several years I couldn’t find a source of starts from which to grow them.  As you might guess from all those references to fairies and angels they are lovely, with delicate-looking flower stems dangling pink-to-lilac lily-like flowers.  They grow into big, tall sturdy plants that handle full, hot sun.  Low water demands and good deer resistance make them a prime choice.  They should be ready to plant in April, though not blooming until summer.

New? No, Recycled Scottie Dog -  If you haven’t been out to see us since last spring you will not have met Rochester. He spent the past 11 years with my mother next door and didn’t get to come over and play at the greenhouses.  When my mother moved to a care facility last June, Rochester came to live with me and is thoroughly enjoying being a greenhouse dog.  He’s friendly and outgoing and would love to say “woof” to you.  He even likes children, a rare trait in Scotties.

Perennial Plant of the Year
Every year we of the Perennial Plant Association choose from among the multitude of worthy plants the one which we will honor with Plant of the Year status. Sometimes it’s a single variety, sometimes it’s the whole genus.  We just want to make sure you know about the best perennials.  “Best” means easy to grow in a wide range of conditions, and attractive much of the year.  If it has extra features like fragrance, hummingbird attraction, tolerance of having Rottweilers romp through it, etc, so much the better.  This year’s winner, Variegated Solomon’s Seal, (Polygonatum odoratum ‘Variegatum’ – take your Tums!)  has all that.  Just don’t let the Rottweilers stay too long.  Variegated Solomon’s Seal grows in arching stems 18-24” tall, and gradually spreads and fills an area 2-3’ in diameter.  The stems start to push out of the ground in March – get the slug bait out then and you’ll take care of about the only pest problem it could have – and fill out with slender cream-edged leaves.  The dangling creamy-white, fragrant flowers open later in the spring.  When the flowers are done, the plant still looks lovely all summer and turns golden as it dies down in fall.  My neighbor, Jean, has had them in big planters all by themselves for several years and they’ve been beautiful.  They also mix well with other shade perennials like Hostas and ferns, Astilbes and Brunneras (Jack Frost Brunnera was last year’s Plant of the Year) Try it, you’ll like it. They won’t be ready to plant by Opening Weekend, but don’t forget to come back for them in April or May.

Reminders

• If you’d like to get this newsletter by e mail, and also receive Vance’s monthly briefs on what’s happening, what’s on sale, etc, please fill out the sign-up card next time you visit us, or email us at egan.email.news@gmail.com. We’ll slip in deals for e-letter members only to make it worth your while.   If you are already getting this by email and are still receiving the paper copy, please let us know who you are – we’d like to save ourselves some postage, and I have the feeling we have missed some of you in the transition of delivery methods.
  
  
• We’re on Facebook as Egan Gardens – We Do Flowers.  Since I don’t do a personal page, skip that and go to the business page. We try to keep it lively with new pictures and commentary.
  
  
• Your Frequent Flower Card from last year is still good, so bring it with you if you can remember where you put it.
  
  
• Your used plastic pots can be put in the bin in our driveway, behind the little well house.  We reuse what we can, i.e. what came from us originally, and take the rest to Agri-Plas, a plastic recycling company just 2 miles from us on Waconda Road. 

In Conclusion

You and I know gardening is an enjoyable and satisfying thing to do.  An amazing number of people have no experience with it, though.  And the rest of us get stuck looking at their yards.  So for our own sakes as well as theirs, let’s encourage them to garden.  There’s a new public awareness campaign called Plant Something.  You can check it out at Plant-Something.org and you can find Oregon’s version at PlantSomethingOregon.com. Please help me spread the word that planting something isn’t that hard and brings a lot of rewards. 

Happy gardening,
Ellen Egan

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9805 River Road NE, Salem, OR 97303
Contact us: Phone: (503) 393-2131 -- E-mail: info@egangardens.com