The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

How to care for Rhododendrons and Azaleas

My friend Paree the Prada Girl just bought a new house. Remember, she’s the girl who doesn’t garden. So she sold her relatively low maintenance house and purchased a house with a high maintenance yard. I will write more about this in another post.

I’m trying to give Paree and her hubby a little advice on plant care. Their yard is fairly shady and I noticed that they have a lot of rhododendrons and azaleas. These beautiful plants are starting to look a bit stressed, so I thought that I would write about caring for them.

Rhododendrons and azaleas are closely related plants that fall under the genus rhododendron. Rhododendrons are evergreen. They are larger with big leathery leaves. Some grow to well over ten feet. They produce large flowers at the end of their branches.

Azaleas are smaller and more compact with smaller leaves and blooms. Some are evergreen some are deciduous. Both rhododendrons and azaleas bloom in early spring. Their blooms tend to be vibrant, and mostly in shades of red, purple, pink and white. Azaleas are covered with blooms in the spring. Both rhododendrons and azaleas like light shade, although some species of azaleas can take a lot of sunlight.

They love acidic well-drained soil with lots of organic matter in it, soil that isn’t soggy or clay like. The soil should be moist, however they will die if they sit in water for too long. Rhododendron and azaleas will not survive in dry conditions. They need soil that is both fast draining and water retentive.

If there is not enough acid in the soil, the leaves will turn yellow and the edges with look burnt. You can treat this by applying fertilizer made for acid loving plants, and or iron chelate. Be careful though, you don’t want to overdo it. You might even experiment by using a dosage that is half what the label suggests. Better to fertilize half as much twice as often.

When you plant a rhododendron, dig a hole that is two or three times as big as the plant’s container. Lift the plant from the container and place it the hole. Fill in the area around the root ball with highly organic soil. Soil amended with sphagnum peat moss is good for acidity. Make sure you plant your rhododendron with the top of the root ball showing. Never allow the soil to bury the stems.

When rhododendrons are first planted, make sure they get enough water. Their roots are fine and they take a long time to grow into the surrounding area. At first they will rely on the moisture from their root ball. Make sure the root ball is getting wet and not just the surrounding area. Both Azaleas and rhododendron are surface rooters and will benefit from mulch. Mulch with pine needles, oak leaves, redwood or fir chips.

To keep your plants looking full and healthy, you will need to prune them.

Prune rhododendrons in spring before they bloom. You will have to give up some of the blooms, but it is the best time to prune.

You can pinch back azaleas frequently after they are done blooming, through August.

Paree, this is your first gardening lesson. Aren’t you excited? O.K., forget it, let’s just go shoe shopping.

I found this picture of me on a rhododendron farm and the tea I was drinking almost came out my nose. See, when I get around flowers I get so excited I forget to dress myself properly. What am I wearing? Scary.

Colander O’ Plenty

This is my first harvest. All I picked were tomatoes and tomatillos though, which is O.K., because that’s all I planted.

I haven’t done anything with the tomatoes yet. I heard it was best to pick them, turn them upside down and set them on your counter for about three days. Supposedly this brings them to optimum sweetness.

I did make salsa with the tomatillos. I roasted them until they were slightly blackened. I let them cool then I put them in a blender with a small white onion chopped, 5 or 6 sprigs of cilantro and a couple cloves of garlic. I blended them for a few seconds and then added salt to taste.

We laid it over fresh cod, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and threw it on the grill until the fish was just cooked through. Yum.

Oh, by the way, I didn’t take any pictures.

Hey, I’m still getting used to all this blogging stuff.

Sharp Tail Snake.

Last night I was snail hunting yet again. I don’t know why I enjoy it so much. It’s sort of therapeutic I guess. Everyone’s in bed, it’s quiet, there I am all alone with my flashlight and my boots. I can sort things out in my mind. I figure out the day’s problems in between flattening the slimy little beasts.

I was in my shade garden. I looked down and saw what I thought was a lizard but it’s body keep going and going. I realized it was a snake. I finally found the head. The head was quite slender and I knew it would have a hard time biting me so I picked it up and brought it into my son’s room—he, of course, was still awake.

I let it go on his bed. My husband and my other son soon joined us. We all held the snake and played with it. It was very beautiful, and docile. It was a light coppery pink color. I let it go where I’d found it a few minutes later, and went back in the house to look it up on the Internet.

Of course I didn’t think to take a picture of it. Oh well, I was enjoying the moment.

It turns out that my little snake was a sharp-tail snake and it was doing the same thing I was doing—hunting.

The only difference is the snake was hunting for slugs.

I love this snake.

Lawn Bubble

Has this ever happened to you?

A pipe broke in the sprinkler system in our lawn and a giant lump about four by four feet rose up and freaked me right out.

I had turned on the sprinklers and started to weed. I looked up, and my previously flat lawn had become a mound. I know this sounds stupid—but it actually scared me.

All I could think of was Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward in “Tremors”.

I ran into my house and screamed for my husband. “Honey! You have to come see this. Something weird is happening.”

It seems that the netting in the sod helped the whole sheet lift up from the soil, a lot like a giant worm under a green carpet.

Of course, as soon as I turned off the water, the lump went away. My landscape guy showed up a couple of hours later and fixed the pipe and all was well with the lawn once again. No giant worm with huge sharp teeth.

Greenthumb Sunday

Happy Rudbeckia

The Pothos That Ate My Living Room

Old habits die hard. I was calling this a philodendron because that's what my mom always called them. but Misty with Oceanic Wilderness was quick to catch the mistake. Sheesh, you can't get anything past all these great garden bloggers.

I'll start this post again:

I gave my pothos a trimming today. Well actually I cut it back severely.

It’s all part of this new purging thing that I’m doing. I noticed something was nibbling on my pothos. I don’t know whom, maybe my dogs. All I know is pothos are poisonous and the vines on mine had gotten so long they wrapped around our fireplace twice and I had draped all over to try to keep them off the ground. But I wasn’t paying attention and they grew to the ground again and something nibbled on them.

I am not a really big fan of houseplants. Most of the ones I have were given to me five years ago for my mom’s funeral and they have multiplied and multiplied. Now I’m weeding through them.

So I decided to hack the pothos back.

In seven cuts, I removed four vines, a total length of 77 feet. I even weighed them. They weighed 3 pounds.

I uncovered a picture of my grandparents, a picture of my dad from WWII, a picture of me, my son and my husband, another plant, a flashlight, and a dragon I made out of clay in 1978.

The Jungle Run

These are my friends/neighbors Lisa and Jodi, with whom I ran the Jungle Half Marathon yesterday.

Yes, they are younger. Yes, they are more beautiful. And yes, they sweat less than I do. I figure if I’m going to embarrass myself trying to run 13 miles, I might as well run next to them and look really old and sweaty in the process.

Our other neighbor, the famous Mike Willie, author of the Dona Tomas cookbook also ran. Here is the humiliating part. He ran this course, which is part off-road, with a few little hills scattered about, in 1 hour 41 minutes.

Now some of you are thinking that’s not great time—I know lots of runners who can do better than that—and the truth is Mike himself could have done much better than that if he wasn’t pushing his two children in a double-baby-stroller the entire way.

As it was, Mike came in almost a whole hour ahead of us.

Mike’s wife was out of town, so super dad that he is he decided to pack his two boys up, get them dressed and fed, bring snacks and juice and all that kid stuff. He hauled himself and his kids down to the start line around 6:30 in the morning and ran 13 miles, yawn, oh just another lazy day for Mike.

His kids fell asleep and stayed that way for almost the entire race. My kids would have bailed out somewhere around mile .07 looking for some electronic device to keep them pacified.

At the start of the race Lisa, Jodi and I had big plans. We were going to run a marathon, marathon in Italy. Yah, that’s it, we were going to fly somewhere exotic every year and run a marathon there.

At the end of the race, as we passed mile 12 and headed for the finish, I turned to Jodi and Lisa and said, “Just think, if we were running a marathon now we’d almost be half way.”

Our marathon plans have been put on hold.

We are still thinking about going to someplace exotic to run a race—but right now it ain’t going to be a marathon.

Gardener Blogger's Bloom Day

Oops, I forgot that today is the fifteenth.
I ran a half marathon this morning.
I’m now sitting in my new “office” on an ice pack trying to blog and not fall asleep in the process.
I am really not prepared for bloom day so I’ll just post what I have. I really don’t feel like getting up and taking photos right now, (Goodness what a whiner.)

Abutilon
Ajuga
Bacopa
Calendula
Calla lily ‘Green Goddess’
Campanula
Cannas
Columbine
Coreopsis
Cuphea
Dahlias
Fuchsia
Gerbera Daisies
Gladiolus
Hydrangeas
Impatients
Johnny Jump ups
Lamb’s ear
Lavender
Morning Glory
Nasturtiums
Orchid
Passionflower
Pelargoniums
Peraniums
Roses
Rudbeckia
Salvias-many
Shasta Daisies
Snapdragon
Sweet Peas
Verbena
Veronica
Zinnias

Greenthumb Sunday

Shasta Daisy

Happy Greenthumb Sunday from Gardeners Anonymous.

The White Flies Are Gone

The coneflower in the foreground with the flower is one I just planted. The one in the background is one that I planted directly in the garden when it was shipped.

I used the Dr. Brommer’s Soap on my coneflowers for a couple of weeks to get rid of the white flies.

You remember, I ordered some plants by mail. I planted them, and they were mowed down by snails. So, I decided to plant the remaining plantlets in larger pots so they could grow to a respectable size before they had to brave the snails. Then they developed a thriving white-fly population.

I used my own method of white fly abatement. Well the soap seemed to cut back the population a bit. But in the end the white flies were still there. At this point every logical voice in my head (Good God I sound like Sybil) was screaming just throw the stupid plants away. And then the flies started to spread to some seedlings I had in pots next to them. Did I throw the plants away? Noooo. I decided to move them to my plant hospital that is located on the side of my garage. I watered them and kept them alive. Two days ago I realized there were no more flies. They were gone.

Plant hospital

Did the soap kill them? My theory is the soap cut way back on the population. I think that when I moved them to the “hospital” the natural predators took care of the rest.

The lesson I learned is careful what catalogue company you order from. I probably should have boxed up the whole lot, sent them back and gotten my money back. At the time, returning them seemed like a huge hassle.


I just planted this one also. You can see some leave damage from the white flies.

But I bet if you calculated the amount of time and energy I spent saving the few remaining plants, sending them back would have been the way to go.
This is why I take in people’s sick plants, there unwanted plants and stray dogs. I would have stray cats also if my husband wasn’t allergic.

Another plant that had white flies. This one has a lot of damage.

I planted my plants yesterday. They had some snail damage this morning but it’s time for the coneflowers to fend for themselves. It’s time for me to let go.

I fear that if I keep interfering they won’t be able to exist in the wild and they’ll have to live in a zoo for the rest of their lives, never knowing what it’s like to be free.