Riot of color, courtesy of spring

“Spring is coming, spring is coming, spring is in the air! Crocus, lily, daffodilly, spring is everywhere!” This catchy little line from a song my son sings at his school has been playing over and over in my head and not just because he sings it — a lot! The energy of springtime is taking root, and with it comes new growth, beautiful blooms and a bright future for our region. As your springtime-self ramps up, please send any gardening questions to me at gardening@mountainx.com.

Easy-peasy please

What are the easiest kinds of flowers to grow?

Oh, the beauty of blooming! I actually worked on a commercial organic flower farm for two years, so I’ve known many kinds of flowers, from the exuberant self-seeders (like calendula) to the very finicky (like lisianthus). At this point, I love interspersing flowers throughout the veggie garden to boost biodiversity and bring delight to everyone. 

My go-tos for ease and abundant color are marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers, cosmos, calendula, tithonia (Mexican sunflower) and monarda (bee balm). These are all annuals that are easy to grow from seed, except monarda, which can be perennial. Well, to be totally accurate, some Mexican marigolds can also be perennial, but not in our climate. Marigolds, cosmos, calendula and monarda will readily self-seed, meaning that once you grow them in a spot in your garden, it’s likely they’ll pop up near there, all on their own in future years, as long as you keep the area somewhat weeded. 

Marigolds, calendula and monarda are useful medicinal herbs, along with being beautiful. Marigolds are also an amazing and easy dye plant for turning natural-fiber fabric a gloriously bright yellow color. Sunflowers, depending on the variety, can produce food for humans in the form of their seeds, along with impressively tall and gigantic flowers. Even those that don’t make seeds we think worthy of shelling feed birds with their oily goodness. All of these flowers can help increase the overall biodiversity of your garden by providing habitat and food for beneficial insects like pollinators and for predatory insects who eat pests. Planting flowers along with crops can increase your yields of vegetables. The same insects that come to pollinate the showy zinnias will end up visiting the more demure cucumber blossoms. Each of these types of easy flowers I’ve mentioned come in many different varieties, giving you choices around color, size, drought tolerance and other characteristics.  

Reining in bamboo

I’m interested in planting bamboo as a privacy screen, but I’ve heard it can really spread. Are there kinds of bamboo or ways to plant it that keeps it contained?

Bamboo is an incredible plant. And we’re lucky that it thrives in our climate and ecosystem. When I visited the mountains of Thailand, I stayed in a village of Lahu tribal people who constructed almost their entire homes out of bamboo. The incredible giant grass (bamboo is in the Poaceae family, along with other grasses, corn, sorghum, wheat and rice) is also edible to humans and animals. We enjoy bamboo when it’s very young, as bamboo shoots, while herbivorous animals like cows, goats and horses munch and enjoy the evergreen leaves at any stage. You’ve probably heard of bamboo flooring, bamboo fabric and I bet you’ve encountered bamboo-fiber disposable dishware, floss picks and many other products made with the biodegradable and quick-growing plant in the place of plastic. 

Once it’s established, bamboo can make an excellent privacy screen or hedge. This plant is also helpful in preventing erosion and produces a large amount of biomass each year that can be turned into mulch or biochar to feed the soil (or just let your animals eat it and use their poop as fertilizer). 

There are over 1,400 species of bamboo around the world, with the majority of them calling the tropics and subtropics their home; none is native to North America. These numerous kinds can be grouped into two main categories based on growth habit: clumping (sympodial) and running (monopodial). The difference is how they spread. Clumping bamboos grow new shoots from around the bases of existing plants, producing a clump that only gets wider by a few inches a year. In contrast, running bamboos send underground rootlike reproductive structures called rhizomes out as “runners” that can travel as far as 15 feet  from existing plants before shooting up as a stalk (the average is more like 3-5 feet from the existing plant). 

If you’re planting bamboo for privacy, running bamboo will spread and grow to create a screen more quickly than clumping bamboo but will need to be managed so that it doesn’t take over. On the other hand, clumping bamboo grows more slowly but won’t get out of hand even if you ignore it. 

To manage running bamboo, regular root pruning is the most effective technique. You also can install physical barriers around the area you’d like the bamboo to fill out. Cutting off new shoots after they emerge simply makes the spreading invisible but doesn’t actually stop rhizomes from running. Barriers are usually thick plastic or metal sheets that you place about 2 feet deep. Rhizome pruning involves digging with a sharp spade around the bamboo patch once in early summer and again in the fall, when growth is most vigorous. Using the spade, you will cut through any rhizomes that are attempting to leave their sanctioned area. 

Whether you plant a clumping or running variety, its growth will be impacted by water, soil and sun, just like any other plant in or around your garden. If your goal is a thick privacy barrier, consider preparing the soil ahead of time with compost and/or nutrients and make sure to water when it’s dry. Bamboo thrives in full sun, so removing trees and shrubs that shade the area can improve growth. Be careful of planting bamboo under power lines, especially the supertall timber bamboo that is popular around Asheville, as it can become a fire hazard if it comes in contact with the wires. 

A couple of bamboo nurseries are Haiku Bamboo Nursery in Hendersonville and Brightside Bamboo Nursery near Chapel Hill. There you can find different kinds of bamboo that are suited to our climate, along with tools and advice for managing bamboo. 

Another option is to simply dig up a clump of bamboo from an existing patch — with permission, of course. In the case of running bamboo, it’s likely that anyone with a large planting will be happy for you to dig some up, as this is part of regular maintenance anyway. The best times to transplant bamboo are in the early spring, before new growth, and fall, after growth has stopped. Be sure to prepare a space for transplanting ahead of time, and keep the roots and rhizomes moist during transport. 

One clump of bamboo that you dig can be separated into several for replanting, making establishing a new privacy screen fairly easy. Dig down about 24 inches near the existing patch to get under the rhizomes, then use your tool to remove a clump from the existing area. You can cut any existing shoots to make the process more manageable. To transplant, make sure to dig a hole about twice the size of the clump you’ll be planting there, place it in the ground with the shoots facing up and roots and rhizomes facing down, and water it right away after you cover it with dirt.