Webinar planned: GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES
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Yes, you can be picking fresh fruit from your own fig tree even if you live in a cold climate! I’ve grown figs for decades, beginning in Wisconsin and now in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Figs can be grown successfully in cold climates because, among other things, they are adaptable plants and have unique bearing habits.
Learn various ways to get plants through cold winters, how to prune the plants, how to harvest the fruit, how to speed ripening, and more. If you already grow figs, this webinar will help you grow more or better figs, and be able to manage them more easily. If you haven't…
SOMETIMES CALLED SPARROW GRASS, SOMETIMES ASPARAGOS
Many Reasons to Grow Asparagus
In my book Weedless Gardening, I begin the section about asparagus with the statement “Forget about the usual directives to excavate deep trenches when planting one- or two-year-old crowns of asparagus.” More about planting in a bit; let me first lay out my case about why YOU should grow asparagus.
With most vegetables, by the time you taste them fresh-picked somewhere, it’s too late in the season to plant them in your garden. Not so with asparagus. Borrow a taste from a neighbor's asparagus bed, or from a wild clump along a fencerow, and you’re likely to…
PLANT STRAWBERRY PLANT(S)
Humble Appearing Beginnings
The UPS man's face is a familiar one this time of year, as he brings me boxes and bags of plants from all around the country. I can’t count how many times I’ve met his brisk walk up the driveway to retrieve a box of strawberry plants. A strawberry bed languishes after a few years, typically five years, and when that happens, I just choose a new site and order new plants.
I begin again with new plants, because although strawberries are perennial plants, old plantings eventually pick up diseases from wild strawberries and related plants. By planting a new bed…
TEASING APART HYDRANGEAS
Good Answer
When someone asks me how they should prune their hydrangea, I give them the answer that most people don’t like to any question “It depends.” What else can I say? It DOES depend. One or more of a few species of hydrangeas commonly make their home in our yards, and you have to approach each, pruning shears or loppers in hand, differently.
Let me tease apart the answer by, first, taking a look a what hydrangea or hydrangeas we may be growing, and then how they grow and flower, which, in turn, speaks to when and where to start snipping away.
Mopheads and Lacecaps, and Oakleafs
If…
GOURMET FERTILIZER
Vegetarian Plants
The other day in the hardware store I overheard someone ask the clerk for some rose food. My eyebrows went up as I thought to m’self, “Are they kidding, thinking that roses need their own special food? Next, I'll hear about plants that prefer vegetarian or kosher food, perhaps fish emulsion on Fridays?"
All this food science when it comes to plants may boost fertilizer sales, but it hardly bothers plants either way. Plants take up the bulk of their nutrients as ions (charged atoms or groups of atoms) that are dissolved in water in the soil. Rock particles, as well as humus…
EVOLUTION AT WORK
Green Thumb Not Needed
Anybody out there now sprinkling seeds into mini-furrows in seed flats, flowerpots, or repurposed yogurt cups? How many of us are then disappointed when, a few days later, there’s no sign of green sprouts poking up through the brown soil? Or not enough of them.
A green thumb isn’t a prerequisite for growing seedlings indoors to give plants a head start for earlier ripening of tomatoes and peppers or earlier blooms of zinnias or marigolds. Backing up every seed is 350 million years of trial and error; seeds have evolved to sprout. So why, sometimes, don’t they, and…
SHRUBS, I’M SHARPENING MY SHEARS AND LOPPERS
Shrubs are Shrubby
A shrub is a shrubby, woody plant. (Now, that’s profound.) Numerous stems originating at or near ground level are what make a plant shrubby. Usually, no one stem ever gets the upper hand over other stems. For most shrubs, you need to get out there with your pruners to snip and lop every year.
How to prune a shrub depends on when it flowers and on what age stems provide the most ornamental effect. Does the shrub flower early in the spring, or later in the summer? Does it flower on old stems, on those that grew last year, or on new shoots?
And one more thing before we…
BREWING UP BATCH OF POTTING SOIL
Prime Ingredients for Any Potting Mix
Many years, my gardening season begins on my garage floor. That’s where I mix the potting soil that will nourish seedlings for the upcoming season's garden and replace worn out soil around the roots of houseplants. Why do I make potting soil? Why does one bake bread?
There is no magic to making potting soil. When I first began gardening, I combed through book after book for direction, and ended up with a mind-boggling number of recipes. The air cleared when I realized what was needed in a potting soil, and what ingredients could fulfill these needs. A good…
TO PRUNE OR NOT TO PRUNE, THAT IS THE QUESTION
A Sharp Knife is not Enough
“Prune when the knife is sharp” goes the old saying. Wrong! (But don’t ever prune if the knife—or shears—is not sharp.) There are best times for pruning, and they depend more on the type of plant and the mode of training than on the sharpness of the knife.
As each growing season draws to a close in temperate climates, trees, shrubs, and vines lay away a certain amount of food in their above- and below-ground parts. This food keeps the plants alive through winter, when they can’t use sunlight to make food because of lack of leaves (on deciduous plants)…
