Heart of the Garden

I love hollyhocks, cheerleader pom poms, scaffolding of the garden. But I admit they do make me think of that Absolutely Fabulous episode when Eddie says to Saffy…

“I hate those flowers. Those. Those flowers there. They’re too English. It’s about simplicity and sort of Japanese efficiency. The land where they haven’t even got time to let the trees grow tall, dahling. No theater and no time for petals in my life. I want stems.”

Hollyhocks are biennials—they grow one year, bloom the next, then go to seed and die. They may seem like perennials, but the flowers you see in the spot where they bloomed the previous year are actually its sprouted seeds. They do have long tap roots which make them drought resistant, but make transplanting difficult.

The yellow spots on the leaves above are a fungus called Puccinia malvacearum or RUST. Unfortunately, fungal disease can only be prevented, not cured. Last summer, as soon as I saw leaves with rust, I picked them off and put them in the garbage and made sure they didn’t fly out again. This went against all my instincts, throwing away green, and sending fungus off to a landfill, but I didn’t feel right running across the street and adding them to my neighbor’s brush fire. By the end of July, I had pretty much cut all the stems down to the dirt because the rust was out of control.

There are only so many things you can do to prevent rust:

• Good air circulation
• Don’t let water get on the leaves (except rain of course)
• ALWAYS water your garden in the morning so leaves have a chance to dry so fungal creepers don’t have a medium in which to spread around and fester.
• Use mulch to suppress weeds and retain moisture
• Use good loamy soil with a dose of composted fall leaves
• Spray the new growth with neem oil in the early spring every 10 – 14 days
• Rust is not so terrible until it gets out of control and actually inhibits the ability for the leaves to photosynthesize, so you can live with a couple yellow dots, right?