GIFTS FOR GARDENERS
Duh…A Plant, But What Plant?
December is a low point in the gardening year, but a high point in the year for giving gifts. A felicitous way to raise that gardening low point is with a gardening gift. What might be a good gift for a gardener?
Most obvious would be a plant. After four decades of growing and buying plants, I, for one, still get a thrill when opening a box with a new — for me — plant in it.
Staghorn fern
Still, there are ho-hum plants, plants that have their qualities but just aren’t going to elicit any surges of excitement from me. Read more
MOUSEY THREATS AND SOLUTIONS
Food and Lodging
Mice have been seeking bed and board, all to the detriment of us gardeners. Already their devilish deeds are evident in the gnawed bark at the base of a poor little apple tree that I planted in spring.
There are a few kinds of mice, and the meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus) — also known as the meadow mouse or field mouse — is most at home in tall grass. There, this rodent finds food and a place to nest and scamper about shielded from the hungry eyes of hawks, owls, weasels, skunks, and other predators.
Unfortunately, from fall to spring, meadow voles like to supplement their usual diet of grasses and herbs with the bark of trees. My trees! Your trees!
Meadow-vole, Cephas, Attribution-Share-Alike-4.0-International.jpg
Inhospitality
The first line of defense against meadow voles, then, is to create an environment inhospitable to them. Read more
BUSH RESCUE
Let the Plant Express Itself
“I brake for butchered plants.” Perhaps that’s what the bumper sticker on my car should read, because I did almost slam on my brakes last week to try and save a forsythia bush — a whole row of them, in fact — from being butchered. An obviously well-intentioned guy was attacking the bushes on his front lawn with loppers.
A few things were wrong with this scene. Read more
