Sunday, June 1, 2025

Cats in the Rose Garden

Cats in the Garden: Why They Matter

Buddy stands guard in front of Honorine de Brabant, a Bourbon rose

Independent spirit aside, a domestic cat can be a great asset in the garden. It isn't every day we consider America's most popular household pet as a tool, but they are as useful as a rake, shovel, or hose.

One can't judge their effectiveness, however, based on their ability to get human tasks done. That's unfair. They don't have thumbs. The claws and jaws can hold onto a wide range of items that attract and hold their attention, but don't expect much in the fetch department. It's not their thing, even though they love a good chase after a tossed rose hip.

Freddy shows me where to pull more weeds.

They are natural-born hunters, even the laziest and clumsiest in the species. They will often prove their prowess by depositing a dead critter at your doorstep just to reassure you they can get their prey.

Andy suggests I remove this tree root before I plant a rose bush.

Here's what they are best at and why all gardeners should have one or more by their side.

1. They are always ready to entertain you, turning routine chores into much more bearable tasks. Yes, it was only yesterday when you weeded the entire garden, but a lot can happen over just a week, and it's soon time to do it again. With a cat next to you chasing the end of a particularly long blade of grass, you will forget about the drudgery. When your mind has wandered off as you trudge onward into the second or third hour of digging, pulling, and discarding weeds and grass, and a white paw emerges from the undergrowth to smack your glove, it is a gesture to bring you to reality. It's proven to lower your blood pressure, too, and has produced barrel laughs from me as I sat alone in the garden.

A dusty Andy Boy telling me this rose with one straggly cane isn't worth saving.

2. Cats have an extraordinary ability to investigate most things they deem as new or unusual. That will make you think, is the hole too big? Is it too shallow? Did you prune enough of the bush so they can complete a cheek rub and, thereby, leave a strong scent-marking telling other cats to get lost?

Andy Boy reassures me that leaves will make a comfortable ground cover.

3. By their very presence, cats can deter a wide variety of animals such as moles, voles, and gophers. They will persist in routing them out and causing them to go elsewhere, as long as the invasion doesn't outnumber one poor feline. Admittedly, my yard is in the center of a vast neighborhood of single-family homes, far from any park, natural area, stream bed, or open space, and I've been rodent-free for years. Yep, no rats or mice ever make it from the yard to the house. Unless, of course, they are gifts from a proud hunter.

Andy Boy is tangled up in Crépascule, a hybrid musk.

4. If they cry for you to help them out of a climbing rose they get stuck in, perhaps it's time to thin it out a bit. Cats love to climb and get to places you can't reach without a ladder, but again, don't expect much help from up there.

5. Having a patch of dry, loose soil in a corner of your garden is an attractive location for your cat to relieve itself, thus reducing the drudgery of cleaning out the litter box every day.

Bruce is watching over the garden in winter.

My life continues to be enriched in many ways by growing roses and by tending to a series of feline companions since 2002. I mourn their loss when it's time for them to pass under Eternity's rose arbor and have given their remains safe resting places well below the roots of a new rose bush.

My Blue Girl Story

Roses Are Tougher Than You Think

Blue Girl, aka Kölner Karneval, A Perfect Candidate for Rose Queen

My Blue Girl Story

Joe Truskot, Master Rosarian, Salinas, California, June 1, 2025

My first encounter with Blue Girl was during a photo shoot for a local news magazine. She stood out among a crowd all vying for the prized cover shot. She was tall. She was different. She seemed to dance in the gentle afternoon wind, and that captured my attention. Every click that camera made of her in the warm sun produced an eye-popping image. As I approached her, I was smitten. Her form was voluptuous, her color soft yet intense. She was fragile but had great substance. Her fragrance was intoxicating. I had to have her. Blue Girl needed to be mine.

Serendipitously, Blue Girl showed up on the Rose Society raffle table, and I won her. She lived in that same pot for the rest of that year as I prepared a weed-infested corner of my yard for her. The ridding of weeds from that plot took much longer than I thought … nearly three years. Blue Girl prospered in the first two seasons in the pot, but when I tried to move her, I realized she was doing well because her roots had come through the drainage hole and found some delicious soil. I moved the pot, cut off the exposed root, and her health took a plunge.

Finally, the ground was ready for a new resident. The hole was dug wide and deep with a couple of dried rack-of-lamb bones tossed into the bottom. As I lifted Blue Girl out of the pot, my hand slipped, and the entire rose fell four feet to the ground, breaking off half the bush. I did a nice clean prune and planted the remainder in the prepared soil. She made it through the rest of that season no worse for the trauma.

Spring came, and the weeds were back. When I went to prune her a little bit, I realized that my mow-blow-and-go team had gotten there first and had weed-whacked the side of her strongest cane. Roses don’t heal from those wounds. So I cut the cane back to below the shreds of the scraped side – three inches protruding from the soil, now matching the stub I cut last fall when I dropped the plant.

I cleared more grass and weeds so the weed wacker would never get close again, watered, gave them some alfalfa, and let the sun shine on them. A week later, two canes had popped out, and a future for Blue Girl was assured.

My house is seventy years old, and although I’ve made many improvements over the years, the time was past due to fix the rotten and leaking window frames. The actual windows were replaced with Milgard ones twenty years ago, but what they were set into was now rotten and had to be replaced. After several interested contractors never returned with quotes, fortune finally shone in my favor. I engaged the best crew of repairers I’ve ever experienced. These guys knew what to do and how to do it quickly and within just two days. I was so pleased to have this dangerous maintenance chore completed so beautifully.

Blue Girl, hybrid tea, 1964

When I went to admire one of the three fixed windows, I looked down and realized that was where Blue Girl was. Those two new canes coming from the stubs of what was once a beautiful rose bush were broken off, and the remains looked dried out and forlorn. Like all rose enthusiasts, I knew it was a downside of growing roses. Sometimes the bushes you love just don’t make it. I began to think of other roses I might now put in that ideal spot. Many new varieties exist and are often better than those from the past. I was set on investigating something new.

After a couple of weeks and no sign of life up top from Blue Girl, I gave her one last chance and explored underground. It looked like something was happening beneath the soil line. Could that be a basal break? Sure enough, after being discarded, abandoned, broken, slashed, stepped on, and mourned over, Blue Girl was returning to life.

You can't keep a good rose down.

Here’s more information. Blue Girl was introduced in 1964 by the famous German hybridizing family, Kordes. Blue Girl is a deep lavender, hybrid tea rose released in the United States under that semi-prurient name in 1964, but introduced in Germany as Kölner Karnival (Cologne Carnival). Curiously, Carnival is a season celebrated in the City of Cologne and much of the Rhineland from November 11 up to Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, with a break for Advent, Christmas, New Year's Day, and the Epiphany. The largest celebration takes place on Rosenmontag or Rose Monday, the day before Mardi Gras. Giving Blue Girl the name Cologne Carnival in Germany by the top rose hybridizers in Germany indicates the Kordes family thought it a superior creation.

In the American Rose Society’s 2021 Handbook for Selecting Roses, Blue Girl is given the non-distinguished rating of 6.8 out of a possible 10. It appears to have been out of favor for a period and has regained some popularity. It isn’t listed in the 2014 Handbook at all.

The lesson of this story is that as long as you have a healthy root system and a quality graft sitting in a well-watered, well-drained soil, a rose bush has remarkable resilience.

As it turned out in that photo shoot, which occurred years ago now, my enthusiasm for Blue Girl’s photogenic qualities didn’t win over the editor, and some other tart ended up the cover girl.

Ellen Baker and Freddy Menge talk about Avocados

Avocado Growing on the Monterey Bay

Ellen Baker and Freddy Menge discussed growing avocados during their interview on "In The Garden," the weekly garden show on KSQD Santa Cruz hosted by Steven E. Popp and Joe Truskot, on Saturday, March 29, 2025, from 9 to 10 a.m. Epicenter Avocado

Saturday, November 5, 2022

Freddy Menge talks about heritage apples

Learn about growing heritage apples organically, delving into the rich past of specific varieties, and laughing as you experience the joy of apple tasting. It's all in the video from KSQD Santa Cruz.

Freddy Menge in in Aptos Hills Orchard

The fruit of his labor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILVsTl2bpdE

Thursday, August 5, 2021

Bindweed in a Rose Garden

Convolvulus arvensis, Wild Morning Glory a.k.a. Bindweed

Now that I’ve taken measures to block weed seeds from sprouting in my rose garden, I must contend with those weeds that are particularly troublesome and aren’t stopped by my layer of cardboard, layer of heavy landscape cloth, and four inches of tree-bark mulch. These nasty plants have established themselves throughout the garden, mostly under and around the base of my roses.

A big topic at our last Rose Society meeting was bindweed. This noxious weed is at its height at the moment.

Often referred to as “field bindweed,” I’ve seen this prevalent pest in every garden I’ve ever visited in California. Its other common names are Creeping Jenny and Devil’s Guts. Its Latin name Convolvulus arvensis shows that it is part of the morning glory family of vines. Wild morning glory is another name for it but unlike the popular annual which can be a garden showstopper in the right place, bindweed never seems to be in the right place. Its roots are persistent and are usually in the top two feet of soil. But I have found them coming from much further down.

Bindweed grows well in both rich fertile soil and nutrient poor dirt. It is drought tolerant and will rest in arid ground until an errant hose waters it. Then it springs to life.

Describing bindweed as aggressive doesn’t emphasize enough the rapid twirling behavior of this weed. Within hours – with the correct nutrients and sunlight – bindweed’s tentacles will reach out and grab plants such as roses and tangle them up as it tries to reach the very top of the bush. This strangulation particularly of roses will prevent air from circulating in the center of the bush leading to fungal diseases. It will also distort into bent and useless shapes the much softer new rose canes and flowering stalks which want to grow straight up. Who wants a rose bush with flowers growing sideways or toward the ground?

By the way, bindweed twirls around its host’s stem in a counter-clockwise direction when reaching for the sun. This is true. Look for yourself. When left without a host, bindweed will create a thick mat on the surface of the soil.

Bindweed is a European and Asian native plant which has established itself throughout the globe. Its growth rate slows down after mid-September as the days shorten. It’s above ground growth will be killed by frost. It doesn’t grow in waterlogged, boggy areas – but then, what garden plant does?

The leaves are arrowhead-shaped and appear all along the vine. Its flowers are trumpet shaped, white or pink. Its seeds are contained in a capsule which is 5-10 mm long, bearing 1 to 4 seeds, each about 3-4 mm long. Seeds can persist in the soil for up to 50 years according the State of Utah’s Ag Department. The number of seed per plant varies between 25 and 300. Birds do eat the seeds and spread them around. When an individual seed sprouts, it sends down a tap root which then sends out horizontal roots and from them, smaller feeder roots.

If you dig out bindweed, make certain you get as much of the root as possible. A two-inch length of root remaining in the dirt will re-sprout and establish itself as a new plant.

I have known rosarians who allowed the bindweed in their rose beds to develop healthy green leaves and then paint on (not spray) RoundUp. A bindweed leaf has a particularly rough surface which many agriculturalists have said resists a spray of herbicide. In addition, well established bind weed has such a vast system of underground roots, the total effectiveness of herbicides is questionable.

The best control is digging as much of it up as possible whenever and where ever you see it. It’s a particular challenge with roses as its roots are often intermingled with those of the rose.

Don’t ever allow it to flower. Simply pulling the top of the vine off is easy to do and somewhat helpful, but the remaining root often bifurcates and you end up with multiple vines coming out of the tap root within a week or two.

By persistence, you will eventually deplete its roots of the nutrients it has stored.

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Candelabras in the Garden

Summer is definitely here. With several hot days, the spring rose flush has definitely ended. The good news is that you should be seeing lots of new growth.

Secret, hybrid tea, sending up a candlebara

We were fortunate to have such an incredible weather pattern this season which developed some of the largest, most colorful roses I’ve seen in years. The hot temperatures, of course, shorten the length of time the flowers will stay on the roses. It also means that your gardening time increases as the sooner you remove the spent flowers, the quicker new growth will appear.

Hybrid Tea Candelabras

I’m happy to say that this year I’m seeing lots of candelabras in my garden. Candelabras are those magnificent new canes with a large flush of new blooms on the top. I like to think of them as a “bouquet on a stick.” This usually doesn’t happen on the first flush of blooms but comes along in the next flush. Yes, this year was a great season for good quality blooms early on but it was also, in my garden, the first time in five years that I’ve fed the roses Epsom salts and both a dry organic fertilizer and a MiracleGro type product. (There are several rip-off varieties out there and they are more or less the same thing as the original.)

Blue Girl, hybrid tea, sending up a large candelabra

These candelabras may need some tending, however. We’ve had some windy days which have knocked many of my flower-laden canes over. Get yourself some of those tiny bamboo supports and prop up these great sprays as the main cane might not be sturdy enough to support all the flowers – especially if they get wet in an odd summer shower.

Regularly, remove the spent flowers on candelabras little by little. If there’s one large flower on a short stem right in the middle of the spray, remove that bud early on and you’ll get a better looking flower spray.

Radiant Perfume: it's a grandiflora and they regularly send up large candelabras

Once the candelabra’s last flower is gone, prune it back to where it is a single stem and pick a spot where there’s a bud eye facing the outside of the plant. On some of the larger ones and where space allows, you may wish to keep two of the original four of five canes. I'd recommend pruning down to the bud eye facing outward two leaves up from where the cane branched out. This will ensure that the joint hardens sufficiently to support new, heavier growth above it.

Sacred Heart, hybrid tea, sent up an enormous spray. Only the last two flowers remain.

The Re-bloom Cycle

The cycle usually takes about six weeks. It’s also important to water and feed regularly throughout the long summer. Water is the most important factor in new growth, even more so than food. Look at the ground beneath your rose bush. If it looks dry on the surface, it probably wants more water. If the temperatures are above 80 degrees or if there have been long sustainable periods of dry air and wind, you need to water at least twice a week.

Water in the early morning, if there’s a chance of the leaves getting wet. Water in the evening, if you can hold the hose under the bush. If you are on a drip system, start watering around 4 a.m. and make sure during the day that all the emitters are in the right spot and working. Leaves which stay wet for more than four or five hours are an invitation for airborne fungus spores to attach themselves and hatch.

I like to feed the roses something about every two or three weeks during the growing season. “Something” is not a particularly helpful word, I know, but it happens to be, for me, whatever is on sale. Giving your roses just a little bit of food almost every time you water is more important than a whole lot of fertilizer a couple of times during the year. Food helps you get the maximum result out of your roses. Remember to water well the day before and then feed the next day with just a little water to soak it in.

Organic food (blood, bone and hoof, kelp meal, fish fertilizer) needs time to be in the soil and breakdown into nutrients the rose can readily absorb. If you provide a little organic every time you feed, you’ll always have something in the soil in various stages of breakdown.

For established roses, you could just stop everything right now and your roses most likely won’t die. But, you as a gardener are the tender of their ability to perform well. Keep them watered and give them food and make the effort to get good results -- it's worthwhile to your own self-satisfaction.

Thursday, June 4, 2020

2020 - A Great Rose Year

Westerland, shrub

Hands down this has been one of the most spectacular spring rose blooms in history.

Santa Cruz rosarian Joe Ghio says it’s the best year of his entire 70-plus years of growing roses.

Along California's Central Coast, we had a chilly, dry February which came, of course, right on the heels of our pruning regime. This truly put the roses to rest. March brought us rain right when the roses started growing. Additions of alfalfa pellets and Epsom salt super kick-started the growth in my garden. I hadn’t done the Epsom salt cure in years.

A month later, my application of a good rose fertilizer and some watering pushed the blossoms up and out. The sunny but cool days of April allowed the buds to develop and bloom gloriously.

The recent hot and sunny days hurried up the bloom cycle and now we all ended up with lots of home dead heading to do.

But before this spring is in the distant past, here are some photos of my best roses.