"A Rich Spot of Earth" - March Traditions, Bare Root Plants and Spring Ephemerals

Introduction

Michael Tricomi
It's March here at Monticello. The weather has been all over the place. One day it’s snowing, the next it’s 70 degrees out. It can leave our plants a little bewildered.

Early daffodils and fragrant Roman hyacinths are bursting forth. The peach trees have started blooming. Mockingbirds, mourning doves, robins, crows, and red-tailed hawks can be seen and heard on the mountaintop.

This is “A Rich Spot of Earth” a podcast about gardening and the natural world. I’m Michael Tricomi, the Vegetable Gardener here at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Albemarle County, Virginia.

This month, we’re going to talk about bare root plants. Our Center for Historic Plants is shipping bare root plants out to customers every day. That's B - A - R - E root, meaning you'll get a plant without any soil around the roots. They don't look like much, but they can give you a head start in the garden.

Last month we talked about winter aconite, crocuses, and daffodils. But this month we've got a whole slew of new flowers popping up in the forest, along the riverbanks, and in our garden beds, so we’re going to continue our discussion of Spring flowers.

Bare Root Plants

Michael Tricomi
People have been planting bare root plants for centuries. Thomas Jefferson did it more than 200 years ago! But a lot of home gardeners still feel intimidated about 1) what they’ll receive when they order a bare root plant and 2) whether they’ll be successful growing it.

Here to allay your fears are my colleagues Peggy Cornett, Monticello’s Curator of Plants; Jessica Armstrong, our Manager of Nursery Operations; and Robert Dowell, horticulturist at the Center for Historic Plants.

First, Jessica and Peggy go over the basics.

Jessica Armstrong
Bare root plants are plant specimens that have been dug in the late fall or early winter when they're dormant and stored in a cool environment until they're ready to ship in the early spring. And we have a wide variety of bare root plants, including wildflowers, trees, and shrubs. We've got 91 varieties, actually, for sale this year.

Peggy Cornett
And fruit trees also.

Jessica Armstrong
 Oh, and fruit trees. That's right: apples, pears, persimmons.

Peggy Cornett
I think Jefferson was getting bare root plants from the Prince Nursery in the 1700s, when he received roses and things from the Prince Nursery. They would actually wrap them in ferns or moss.

Jessica Armstrong
It is a really great way to receive a plant. And if you're following the guidelines that we share with you, you're going to be successful.

Peggy Cornett
I think it's a good way to get things growing before the summer comes on because there's nothing worse than trying to keep something alive in the dead of summer. And a lot of times you can really get things well established before that happens.

Bare Root Wildflowers

Michael Tricomi
Now let's talk about bare root wildflowers.

Jessica Armstrong
When we ship our plants, for the wildflowers, we put them in a little plastic bag with some moistened peat moss because you don't want the roots to dry out. That's crucial.

Peggy Cornett
When people are receiving a bare root plant it can be a little intimidating. It's a lot of roots and you have to make sure that you have the growing tip going up in the right direction.

Jessica Armstrong
Some are actually quite small, but there's a bud hidden in there, and, like Peggy said, find that distal and proximal end. And if you're confused about what that might look like, the internet is an incredible resource to show you what these plants look like in their bare root state.

It's important to observe the type of root structure that your wildflower has. And some plants, are just like a little tiny ball with a few little tiny roots hanging off and a little triangular bud poking right out of the top, and it's a little corm. And those just need to be planted a couple of inches below the soil surface.

Peggy Cornett
You wanna spread the roots out so that they're not all in a wad, you want to spread them out like they would grow naturally.

Jessica Armstrong
But then you have some, like the Allegheny Pachysandra, that it comes to maybe a 6 to 10 inch, almost like a . . .

Robert Dowell
. . . spaghetti noodle

Jessica Armstrong
Yeah, spaghetti noodle or like a stick bug shape. People think you might need to plant that very deep, but it actually is something that needs to be planted laterally, just under the soil surface, horizontally.

Robert Dowell
Maidenhair Fern would be another example of that.

Jessica Armstrong
Exactly, where it is just like this long rhizomal root structure that needs to be planted laterally in the ground -- horizontally -- instead of perpendicular. And in the packaging that we send people, we have a description of the root structures and how they should be planted.

Michael Tricomi
 We asked Jessica to pick a favorite plant.

Jessica Armstrong
I really love the Celandine Wood Poppy, the Stylophorum diphyllum. It is beautiful. It's got a bright pop of yellow. I love the shape of the leaves. It's pretty simple when you receive them in, the roots are obviously pointing down. And then, you plant it and just a few weeks later, you've already seen the leaves emerging from the soil. The wood poppy is always just going to come up, even out of that strange chunk of a root.

Bare Root Trees

Michael Tricomi
Now let's move on to trees. Robert shares his favorite.

Robert Dowell
I have a special love for Birches and River Birch is one species we sell. Birches are generally thought of as a northern tree. But the River Birch is a great birch for the South, where a paper birch or other white bark species would fail. I think its native range extends all the way to the Gulf.

Peggy Cornett
It's a beautiful tree.

Robert Dowell
It's a beautiful tree, exfoliating bark. And you just give it a wet spot in full sun and it will grow like a rocket.

We mentioned the wildflowers, the trees are a similar story. It's going to be a little more obvious what's the foliar part and what's the root part.

Jessica Armstrong
Although some people do say that it looks like just a stick in a bag.

Robert Dowell
Yeah.

Jessica Armstrong
Because they're dormant.

Robert Dowell
They are dormant, yeah. Some will leaf out faster than others. But let's assume that you receive your bare root tree or shrub in the mail and you can't plant it maybe for a week. The best thing to do is when it arrives, it'll be wrapped up in wet newspaper. So you want to take it out of that bag take out that newspaper, and you want to re-hydrate the roots in case it did dry out. The way you do that is just put in a bucket of water for a period of time and then let it re-hydrate.

Jessica Armstrong
A couple of hours?

Robert Dowell
A couple of hours, I think, would be adequate. And say you can't plant the tree still for another week, you can do a process that's called "healing in," which is basically you're taking that dormant plant and you're keeping those roots moist with some easy to use material to fill in around the roots. Mulch or just any material to keep them damp and moist and you want to put them in a shady area, a cool area.

And then once you're ready to plant the tree, the most critical aspect is when you're digging a hole for a tree, you want to think more wide than deep, because roots spread out much further beyond the tree than they actually go below the tree.

Peggy Cornett
People don't realize that 90% of the tree roots are just in the first couple of feet of soil. It's not like this big deep tap root that goes down forever. Most of the important roots are really in the top and that's why it's so important to make a nice wide hole.

Robert Dowell
And one thing that's particular to Virginia and other places with heavy, hard pan, clay soil is, as you're digging that hole, you might notice your shovel will make like a smooth kind of glazing effect on the edges of that hole. If you plant a tree in a hole that looks like that, you're basically putting your plant in a bucket and it could die. So you want to take your digging implement, whether it's a soil knife or a trowel and just flake away at that glazing and just give those roots little nooks and crannies that they can penetrate through. And that's the best way to get that tree established.

Peggy Cornett
I think also when you get a bare root plant, you can see exactly where the grade of the plant should be. And sometimes when plants are in pots, they might have been planted too deeply. And then you get the plant and you put it in maybe a little bit deeper. And for woody plants, especially, it's really not good to have plants too deep. And so with a bare root plant, you can actually see that root flare and then the roots begin so that you know exactly the level where you're supposed to plant it. The root flare comes to the soil level.

Jessica Armstrong
And it is a flare, where the trunk begins turning into the root.

Robert Dowell
Yeah. If you imagine just walking in the forest and looking at the Oaks and Beeches, you'll see that natural flaring, that's how they grow in nature, so that's how you want to recreate it in your garden.

Peggy Cornett
If you see a tree that looks like a telephone pole coming out of the ground, it's too deep. And you see this everywhere. And then people put mulch around it and make it even worse. So it's not as easy as you think to get a correct siting for, especially, a woody tree or shrub.

Jessica Armstrong
Also, I think that a lot of times people may have failure in planting their bare root plant because they dig a hole and followed the rules and planted it and then they never came back to water it. And so it's really important that you're continually watering these trees and wildflowers as they become established.

Peggy Cornett
The first year is important.

Robert Dowell
Absolutely.

Peggy Cornett
And some people think, " Oh, it's going to rain." You need to water it in. Even if you get rain.

Jessica Armstrong
At the very least once a week.

Peggy Cornett
Watering will get the soil in a good connection to the roots themselves.

Bare Root Apples

Michael Tricomi
We ship a lot of bare root apple trees from the nursery here at Monticello. And if you’re fuzzy on plant reproduction, we're going to get into that in this section. It’s important to understand if you want to harvest fruit from your trees.

Jessica Armstrong
We offer between 9 and 12 varieties of apples. We typically offer the varieties that are Jefferson-documented. But we also offer newer varieties that have some disease resistance as a lot of these historic apple varieties don't usually offer a lot of disease resistance.

Peggy Cornett
We'd like to let people know, too, a lot of apple trees need to have a pollinator. We'd like to encourage them to get another apple or a crab apple that can bloom at the same time. A Hewes Crab is one of the popular ones that Jefferson grew. And it's actually a cider apple, but it's a beautiful tree and it's a really good pollinator.

Jessica Armstrong
It just has a really long bloom time. No matter what the other varieties are, their bloom time will overlap with that one.

Robert Dowell
They need a partner to exchange pollen with, so if you just plant one variety of apple trees, you've planted two trees that are genetic clones of each other. And so they're not compatible. So you need to introduce a Hewes Crab or other compatible varieties so that there can be pollen exchange and the fruit gets fertilized. Because your ultimate goal is to have fruit production.

Jessica Armstrong
That's not only apples. There are actually a lot of trees that are not self-fertile. And so if you're looking for fruit of those trees, it's important to know which plants are either self-fertile or dioecious. Dioecious literally means two houses. Plants that are dioecious have both a male and a female sex within its species. The male plant will create the pollen and the female plant has the flowers. And so the two together will make sure that the female plant produces fruit. We do have it listed on our website, which plants are dioecious.

Bare Root Service Berry

Michael Tricomi
And now, last but not least, Peggy's shares her favorite plant that we're shipping bare root.

Peggy Cornett
I really love the Amelanchier, which is a native shrub or tree. It blooms very early in the spring. It's in the Rose family, and that's one of my favorites because it has a beautiful flower. It interesting history to it because another common name for it is service berry, and it's just because, in the mountains it flowers at the time when the soil is soft enough so that you can bury the dead that you've stored over the winter. So you can have services, you're going to have funeral services.

Jessica Armstrong
People also call it Sarvisberry.

Peggy Cornett
Sarvisberry – but that's because you're from Kentucky and you're calling it Sarvis!

Anyway, the other name is Shadblow, which it blooms at the time that the shad run in the rivers. And it has a beautiful bark to it. I think it's a kind of a smooth gray bark.

Jessica Armstrong
And it has fruit that's delicious.

Peggy Cornett
And it's fruit for wildlife -- and people, I guess. But I grow everything for wildlife.

Robert Dowell
Beautiful fall color, too. I've seen Serviceberries with beautiful yellows and oranges, almost as good as a Sugar Maple sometimes.

Peggy Cornett
A lot of the tree stewards are really pushing that as a tree for homeowners in the city because it doesn't get too tall, it doesn't grow into your power lines. It's an alternative to dogwood and that kind of a similar size tree.

Visitor Spotlight

Michael Tricomi
Here are a few words from a recent Monticello visitor. Then we'll be right back to talk about work we're doing in the garden right now.

Joan
Hi, I'm Joan from New Jersey. 

John
I'm John. I'm originally from England, but now from New Jersey.

Joan
As you pull up to the house, I love the Little Leaf Linden trees. Some of the branches reach down to the ground. Absolutely beautiful.

John
Enjoying coming out here, seeing this beautiful setting.

Now at Monticello

Michael Tricomi
This time of year we are busy preparing the soil for planting. We've been tilling in compost and leaf litter to allow for a good, healthy growing season. We've been directly sewing peas, lettuce and salsify or oyster plant in the garden as well.

Due to the warmer weather we've been having, we've been doing a lot more weeding and even watering.

In our orchards, we've been steadily pruning our fruit trees before they've opened up in bloom. We make precision cuts to prevent any disease from spreading throughout a tree. We prune out any dead wood and we also thin out the branches to provide good air circulation and, lessen the weight on the branches of the tree.

Spring Wildflowers

Michael Tricomi
Curator Peggy Cornett and Flower Gardener Debbie Donley are back to talk about three spring wildflowers coming into bloom. Here's Peggy with flower #1:

Virginia Bluebell

Peggy Cornett

The Virginia bluebell is actually beginning to bloom in the woodlands now. Mertensia virginica is the Latin name and there are many common names for it. We know it as Virginia bluebell or Roanoke Bells. People in Pennsylvania, I understand, call it Brandywine bells. And it is a native plant to the eastern parts of North America. And Jefferson observed them in April of 1766. He was only 23 years old. He didn't know the name of it, so he said it was "a bluish colored, funnel-formed flower in the low grounds."

It starts to send up this beautiful kind of succulent growth in the spring. And the flowers unfurl like a fern almost. And they're blue, of course.

Debbie Donley
And sometimes they're pink, and on a rare occasion they're white.

Peggy Cornett
That's right. We have a few down in the woodlands at Monticello that are pure white and they're quite striking.

It is a woodland plant, and it can grow in just deep woods because it blooms before the foliage comes out on the trees. So it's sunny. That warms up the forest floor and that's when these ephemerals come up. But it can also grow in a sunny garden because it goes dormant in the summer. So you have some beds that have bluebells that are out in full sun basically.

Debbie Donley
Right. Right now in the garden, they're just very deep purple nubbins coming out of the ground, whereas, for some reason, down at the river, in bluebell Valley, as we call it, they're quite lush.

It's one of those plants that You have to suffer through the dying foliage. You can't cut the dying leaves off. They need to feed that rhizome. And it's a good one to be planted amongst your perennials so that the perennials will help hide that ugly foliage that has to stay on the plant until it's quite brown.

Peggy Cornett
Debbie mentioned the Bluebell Valley, which is part of our spring wallflower walks, and it takes us down to the Rivanna River and the bluebells love this moist, rich, woodland soil. And so it's growing through an area that's like a spring that runs from the side of the mountain down to the Rivanna River. And so when you walk down there, it's just so lush.

Debbie Donley
I believe Brent of Brent and Becky's Bulbs, I had seen him giving a talk one time and he showed a picture of Bluebell Valley and he said that it was one of the best stands on the East Coast.

Peggy Cornett
Oh, wow.

Debbie Donley
We're famous for that.

Peggy Cornett
That's right.

Michael Tricomi
Debbie mentioned feeding the Bluebell rhizome. A rhizome is a stem that grows horizontally underground, and the plants shoot up from it. It's where the plant stores food. Waiting to cut the Bluebell leaves allows the plant to store more food for the upcoming year.

Also, fun fact, you've probably eaten a rhizome! When you eat turmeric or ginger, the part of the plant that you're eating is the rhizome.

Now for spring wildflower #2.

Bloodroot

Peggy Cornett
Another plant that Jefferson first noted in the forest was the plant that he called "Puccoon." And that's a Native American name for the bloodroot. As the name implies, the root does have a kind of a red cast to it. It's in the Poppy family. So if you think of how delicate the flowers are and they're just pure white and they come up early. They'll start to flower as the leaves are just starting to come out of the ground.  

Debbie Donley
Yes. the flowers really appear before you have too much of the leaves showing. There's some species tulips blooming amongst them that have just kind of mingled together-- the Turkestanica.

Peggy Cornett
Yeah it's a nice combination because they're both about the same height in the garden.

Debbie Donley
And the flower structure is pretty different, so it really looks nice together.

Peggy Cornett
And once the flowers drop, the leaves are also quite interesting. It looks like a mittens almost. The foliage will last a long while. In fact, in the north it's a bit of a ground cover for a longer period than it is here. I think it, it will go dormant quicker down in the south.

Debbie Donley
It does. Hot summer days, it tends to die out faster than if we have a cooler summer. But the leaves are so pretty that I like to leave them, as long as I can. They're just very nice. They're different looking than a lot of other things.

Michael Tricomi
Debbie mentioned the Turkestan Tulip, which she called a "species tulip." Most tulips are hybrids, but species tulips are un-hybridized. The Turkestan’s stems are shorter and hold clusters of blooms.

Peggy mentioned that Jefferson documented finding bluebells and bloodroot in the forest as a young man. You kind of wonder if he would have been happier being a horticulturalist rather than a politician. He definitely had a lifelong fascination with plants. And that brings us to our last wildflower: the Twinleaf.

Twinleaf

Peggy Cornett
It's important to us because it's named after Thomas Jefferson. It's Latin name is Jeffersonia diphylla and diphylla means two-parted leaf. And it was named in 1792 by a botanist named Benjamin Smith Barton, who made this big speech in front of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. And he said that he was giving it the genus name Jeffersonia, it's actually in its own distinct genus, and he was naming it after Thomas Jefferson, not for his political contributions but for his knowledge of botany and natural history, which was equaled by few others in America. So it was quite an honor. It's called a botanical namesake. Jefferson had an entire oval flowerbed planted with Jeffersonia right near the north terrace of Monticello. I think he was quite proud of having a plant named after him.

It's a white flower that looks a lot like Mayapple. And the foliage looks like a butterfly wing.

Debbie Donley
It has one of the prettiest seed capsules.

Peggy Cornett
Yeah, they're very unusual, these cute little seed pods that look like urns. We can't really sell seed of this plant because they have to stay moist. Once they get dry, they lose their viability. And in fact, a lot of times ants will spread them in your garden because they like to take those seeds and eat the stickiness off of them and carry them around so they spread that way quite readily.

Debbie Donley
Right, and it's available through mail order.  

Peggy Cornett
And it, again, it's another ephemeral, so it's going to go dormant in the summer but we grow it in the garden under big Mallow plants.

Debbie Donley
It's in there with the Trillium and right now there's Fritillaria milliagris in there with it. It's a group bed of a number of different plants, but they do enjoy the shade from that Rose Mallow.

Peggy Cornett
The mallow gets probably five or six feet tall and just makes a little mini forest over it. And the Jeffersonia is perfectly happy just growing among its roots.

Debbie Donley
It's the same with the bloodroot is underneath the mallow on the other side of the garden. It's very happy there. Gets bigger every year.

Wildflower Walk and Center for Historic Plants Open House and Sale

Michael Tricomi
And we have one last important note for you! 

Peggy Cornett
We're offering Wildflower Walks in April there are four of them on the calendar. And we try to keep the groups small because the walk is down narrow paths.

Debbie Donley
And it's also a little bit challenging.

Peggy Cornett
Yeah. It's a long walk. And it goes, it's down and downhill and uphill and depending on the weather, it could be muddy and a little slippery.

Michael Tricomi
It's a fairly rigorous, three-hour hike through the forest around Monticello but it's stunning. This year the walks are scheduled for April 15th, 20th, 27th, and 29th. You can order tickets on our website. And please join us for the Center for Historic Plant’s Open House and Spring Plant Sale on April 22nd.

Thanks for listening!  Join us again in April when we talk about tulips and spring bulbs. In the meantime, happy gardening!