PLANT SMALL, THINK BIG
Chillax
If delayed gratification sometimes seems to be too much a part of gardening, it does teach us to appreciate the means to an end as much as the end itself. Especially with planting trees. Your vision might call for a towering maple or spreading beech in a corner of your front yard, but you can do no more than plant one, care for it, and wait.
Not that full-sized trees cannot be — and sometimes are — moved for instant effect. Read more
THE POWER OF TOUCH
Too Tall and Too Thin
I hope that I’ve caught you in time, before your seedlings have stretched out too long and too thin. That’s a problem this time of year. Tomato, zinnia, and broccoli plants — they’re all growing up on sunny windowsills. It’s the combination of a bit too much warmth and a bit too little light that causes that stretching.
The easiest way around this problem would be to just wait until the weather warmed up enough to sow seeds directly outside. There, abundant sunlight, cooler temperatures, and buffeting by wind would make sturdy, stocky seedlings. Of course, do this and you won’t eat your first broccoli bud until the end of June, and you’ll have to wait until early September to admire your first zinnia flower or bite into your first tomato.
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ESPALIER, A TASTY FUSION OF ART AND SCIENCE
Let’s Revive an Ancient Technique
Let’s go back in time, say, four hundred years. You’re puttering around your garden, your walled garden — walled to keep out animals and unfriendly neighbors. Hmmmm, you think, why not plant a fruit tree in that strip of earth against that wall, perhaps a fruit that will also benefit from the extra warmth over there? May as well make the plant look nice and orderly, too.
And so originated espalier (ES-pal-yay): a plant, usually a fruit plant, usually trained to an orderly and two-dimensional form. The word is derived from the Old French aspau, meaning a prop, and most espaliers must, in fact, be propped up with stakes or wires.
Although today we rarely build walls to fend off unfriendly animals or neighbors, an espalier still might warrant a place in the garden. Read more
