HOME & GAR DEN
A8
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
TIPS
FOR A
STURDIER
GARDEN
“
Deer, clay soil common obstacles
What you take out of soil
you need to put back into it.”
Julia Justice
Better Blooms & Gardens
By Rylan Boggs
Blue Mountain Eagle
Building a resilient garden
takes time and requires ad-
dressing a number of factors.
One of the biggest things
people ask Julia Justice of
Better Blooms & Gardens
about is a deer-resistant gar-
den.
“That’s the main thing peo-
ple want to know, what deer
don’t mess with,” she said.
As browsers, deer will eat
just about anything, but Jus-
tice said there are some things
they’ll skim over if they have
a choice.
Plants like the potentilla
and barberry shrub are fairly
safe bets, according to Justice.
Deer will sometimes eat the
new growth on them, but the
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Julia Justice holds a handful
of topsoil at Better Blooms
outside of Prairie City. She
advocates for constantly
replenishing nutrients in the
soil with compost.
barberry’s thorns will often
shield it from the worst of the
munching.
Strong-smelling
plants
such as lavender, salvia and
catmint are usually a turn off
for the ungulates as well. Or-
namental bunch grasses, to
Justice’s bewilderment, also
seem to be a fairly safe bet.
However, she said there are
only deer-resistant plants,
not deer-proof plants.
Another big issue is
choosing plants that will
handle the elements. Every-
thing Justice carries at Better
Blooms is capable of surviv-
ing the local weather.
“I’m not going to get
anything in that doesn’t
over-winter,” she said.
She has customers com-
ing in from Spray to Seneca
and carries a wide variety
of plants suited to different
conditions.
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“I have stuff that can
work in Seneca, and every-
thing is happy to go to Spray
where you’ve got a long
growing season,” she said.
However, even the hardi-
est plants will have a tough
time growing in poor soil.
One of the biggest issues
in the area, Justice said, is
clay soil.
If roots sit in water
trapped by clay, they can rot
and kill the plant, she said.
One way to test for clay is
to fill a hole for a plant with
water and watch how quick-
ly the water drains. If water
drains slowly, you may have
clay issues.
“Not too many plants are
going to do well in clay,” she
said.
If you have a soil heavy in
clay, she recommends adding
bark or sand to break up the
clay and build up a mound of
soil where you want to plant
so roots aren’t sitting in water.
She also sells a sandy loam
soil mix she recommends as a
starting topsoil. However, she
advocates for constantly re-
plenishing nutrients in the soil
with compost.
“What you take out of soil
you need to put back into it,”
she said.