Plants that grow in soggy soil

Q: I’m looking for ground covers that tolerate soggy soil.

Julie James, e-mail,

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Walter Reeves / AJC Special

Creeping jenny grows well in wet soil, so much so that it can even be placed in a floating pot as a water feature.

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A: Several spreading plants grow reasonably well in wet soil. Creeping jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’), variegated Japanese sedge (Carex morrowii ‘Variegata’), sweet flag (Acorus gramineus), and bugleweed (Ajuga reptans) fit the bill. More plants for damp soil at xrl.us/FLOWERDAMP.

Q: An older gardening friend says we should all be using mineralized fertilizer. No one seems to know what that means. Can you help?

Buddy Greenoe, e-mail

A: It’s sort of like my mother’s muscadine hull pie. Thick muscadine skins are sour and inedible. But boil them, add a bit of sugar and put them in a pie crust and they become savory and delectable. Organic fertilizers like animal manure or compost contain large amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but plants can’t absorb it in the chemical form the organic material presents. If, however, these chemicals are converted to water-soluble molecules, plants use them readily.

Mineralized fertilizer is organic fertilizer that has been cooked or otherwise converted to a plant-friendly form. A plant doesn’t care whether its food comes from the back of a cow or from the front of a fertilizer factory. Mineralized and organic fertilizers, though, contain important micro-nutrients and soil-conditioning compounds that synthetic fertilizers lack.

Q: I have found strange bugs eating my blackberry leaves. They are tan, about the size of a BB, and are hard shelled. When I touch one, it falls off the plant and acts dead. Damaged leaves have notches along the edges.

John Shaffer, e-mail

A: The behavior and the leaf notches tell the story. You have strawberry weevils chewing on your blackberry foliage. As the name implies, this insect primarily feeds on strawberries in late spring, but it often has a second generation in summer. The weevils are hard to control organically. Use carbaryl (Sevin, etc) when they are seen and reapply it if they come back.

Q: What are some of the best thorny plants to grow under windows as a crime deterrent? The house gets full to part sun on all sides.

Robin Kemp, Jonesboro

A: Chinese holly, barberry, shrub rose (Knockout, Nearly Wild or rugosa), pyracantha, mahonia, or yucca are guaranteed to give a burglar pause. But before using them, consider the pruning job you’ll need to do each year. None of these are small shrubs. Their size can be controlled with regular pruning, but plan on wearing protective gear when you do it.

Q: I need help identifying a bird I have at my feeder. It looks like a cardinal except for the head, which appears to be devoid of feathers! It has normal red body feathers and a head with no crest.

Mike Hall, Acworth

A: You have a male cardinal whose feathers have dropped off. This is the subject of lengthy discussion among birders, but the consensus is that it can be caused by mites, heat or nutritional difficulties. The folks at Hilton Pond Center in South Carolina have observed several birds with this condition (which they call “lizard-head”), including one who was bald one year but fully recovered the next. Details at xrl.us/LIZARDHEAD.