Extension News: June 2007 Archives

One of my favorite childhood activities was making dollies from inverted hollyhock blossoms in my grandmother’s garden. The blossom becomes the skirt of the doll; the body and head come from imagination or whatever’s available by scrounging the garden, lawn, orchard, or driveway. Unripe blackberries made great bodies as did small native strawberries and small dropped peaches and apples. Sometimes the head was a single Cosmos blossom; other times the head disappeared under a flower bonnet of sweet peas.

When I was seven, our house burned to the ground. We lost everything: our beds, books, clothes, shoes, and toys. We lived with my Quaker grandmother in her third-floor apartment while the house was rebuilt. She allowed me to eat parsley from her garden (after I learned not to squash her parsleyworms, the caterpillar of black swallowtail butterflies), and to pick single hollyhocks.

Hollyhocks still rank among my favorite flowers. I bought seeds of two kinds Alcea rosea and A. fificolia as “old fashioned single hollyhocks.” Both form low rosettes of ground-hugging leaves the first year from seed. Flower spikes emerge the second year.

The leaves of A. fificolia resemble hands or maple leaves on the flower spike while Alcea rosea retains the same rounded, scalloped leaves of the rosettes; foliage of both species are covered with fine hairs. A. fificolia is a grayer green and slightly hairier. Deer detest the foliage.

In my stony, bony, heavy clay ground, I double dug the soil, amending it profusely with composted cow manure and building caches of the stones, before the seeds were planted.

Double digging is an English invention to promote aerobic exercise and enrich the soil. You dig and remove the soil to a depth of one spade; loosen the sub soil to a depth of another spade and enrich with compost, then replace the first soil on top. Ten or fifteen years amending the soil by layering composted cow manure and mulch over all the beds has produced a soil friable enough to support hollyhock seeds sown by chipmunks and chickadees. Some years, they plant more than I do. In sandy soil, hollyhock seeds planted early in a spring garden sometimes will bloom late in the first year.

Alcea rosea tends to bloom in the dark reds, burgundies, mahoganies, true reds, deep pinks, and “black” (really very dark red). It also blooms first and is a true biennial in my garden, with a first- year rosette hugging the ground and a second year bloom stalk of flowers. The black one has blossoms twice the diameter of the others, and is the least robust to self-perpetuate, so I have to reseed it myself. Some have lighter colors of pale yellow or white in the center. These pale centers are called “eyes,” and they appear to watch over the garden and house.

Fificolia has a paler palette of sorbet colors: strawberry, raspberry, peach, apricot, cantaloupe, lavender, creamy lemon and white. Some flowers have an inner ruffle, a second layer of petals in a different hue. Some are so pale they can be distinguished from pure white only at high noon. Fificolia tends to return to bloom for two or three years if the stalks are cut to ground level before the seeds set in round rolls resembling donuts.

When frost hits, hollyhock seed rolls shatter and forests of seedlings spring up to be culled. These seedlings are mostly Alcea rosea, which will bear the red flowers. Many seeds retain the same color as the parent plant.

One year, I confess to being the Martha Stewart of hollyhocks. I punched holes in my old business cards, threaded strings, and labeled the plants with the most desirable colors. In the fall, I collected seeds of the labeled plants, destroyed the old bed, and reseeded with the darker colors nearer the house fading into the paler colors in the distance. It gave a false sense of depth to the bed.

That was the year I reread the work of Gertrude Jekyll, the famous 19th century British garden designer, several times to grasp her concept of color and order in a perennial bed. After a hundred years, Jeykll’s advice about drifts and sweeps of colors still rings true.

In wet years, in full sun, hollyhocks reach nine feet with multiple flower stalks, beginning to bloom before the Fourth of July and continuing to Labor Day. Following Jekyll’s admonition that the bed depth is two thirds the height, a six foot wide bed is a minimum for hollyhocks. My largest perennial garden is the leach field for our septic system, so hollyhocks add height on the edges.

Mature blossoming hollyhocks attract bumblebees, lady bugs, hoverflies, butterflies, chickadees, humming birds, nuthatches, and chipmunks. They offer height and a wide a palette of colors. They bring a touch of nostalgia. They contain no known noxious toxins, so they make great dolls or imaginary ice cream for tea parties. Plant hollyhocks and enjoy!

By Cheryl Grabe, Master Gardener

A strange occurrence took place in my yard one day. While loading the dishwasher, I looked out the window and noticed two gray squirrels chasing each other around a tree. There was nothing unusual about their activity, but I was struck by what seemed to be patches of blood on their backs and wondered if they’d been in some kind of fight, perhaps inflicting mutual wounds.

Still, it seemed odd that they would have identical injuries and, to add to the mystery, neither looked as though it was suffering at all. I continued to watch as they raced through the yard, up one tree and down another.

A few days later I saw the pair again - bloodied, but moving as if nothing were wrong. My next-door neighbor called to ask if I had seen them.

“I’m looking at them right now,” I said. “I am too,” she replied.

“You mean you can see through the woods into my yard?” I gasped, thinking of all the times I’d darted half-naked into my driveway to get the morning paper. “No, they’re sitting on the stone wall, right outside my living room window.”

The feeling of relief that came when I realized she couldn’t see my property from her house was immediately replaced by the realization that, if she were looking at two bloody squirrels and I was looking at two bloody squirrels, there were four bloody squirrels running around McCoy Road. We decided to call the local vet to see if perhaps it was a disease, not an injury, which caused the discoloration. The vet was as baffled as we.

The answer to our puzzle came a few weeks later at our annual Fourth of July neighborhood tea when one of the elderly ladies described her new method of dealing with the squirrels that constantly raided her bird feeder.

“I capture them in a Havahart trap and then Fran takes them down the road and releases them at the pond.” she told us, adding proudly, “But first, I spray a spot of red paint on their backs so I’ll know if they return.”

A unanimous smile spread across our faces as an epiphany took hold. So that’s where the red splotches had come from nothing so complicated as squirrel gang-wars or bizarre diseases, just a sweet old lady with a can of red spray paint, trying to protect her bird feeders.

The pond where Fran set the squirrels free was a mere 150 yards from their house - nowhere near far enough to prevent the squirrels from returning. That would require taking them at least five miles away. But there are many reasons why you shouldn’t try to relocate any animals you have on your property:

• Relocating squirrels and other animals is usually unsuccessful and, more often than not, fatal to the animal. Once moved to a new environment, an animal is without family, regular food sources, and their familiar shelter, leaving them vulnerable to predators as well as starvation.
• When you move a squirrel you may be spreading disease or taking a mother away from her babies, who will certainly die without her.
• The introduction of a new squirrel to an area causes a disruption to the existing squirrels that perceive their new neighbor as a threat to their survival.
• The trip alone may be traumatic enough to cause death. (My four-year-old daughter wasn’t far from the truth when she referred to them as “Have-a-heart-attack” traps.)

In many states, it’s illegal to relocate wild animals. Plus, it’s simply not effective: eventually, the void left on your property by removing one squirrel will almost certainly be filled by another.

So what can you do to cope with these pesky rodents? To prevent them from getting into your house, perform annual inspections to find and block any holes or crevices they might enter. Attic vents, soffits and chimneys are popular entry points—especially for female squirrels, who have two litters a year and are always looking for a warm place to have their babies.

As for keeping squirrels out of bird feeders, wildlife biologist Marsha Barden of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services unit in Concord recommends removing bird feeders entirely in the spring and summer, “for the sake of many species, including the birds themselves that feed in crowded conditions, may pass diseases, and lose some wariness and foraging skills. We strongly suggest using dust baths, water attractants and natural plantings, rather than feeders, to attract birds in spring and summer.”

Barden adds another note of concern: “Marking animals, as with paint, should never be done frivolously. Even when wildlife biologists capture and release animals for a legitimate purpose, there is concern that any kind of marking, whether it be by putting in an ear tag or even clipping a toenail, could adversely affect the survival of the animal.”

Bottom line: think of your job as working for ADT home security systems, not Mayflower van lines.  Both you and the squirrels will be happier with the results.

By Susan Ferber, Master Gardener