GUT PLANTING
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Not My Usual Approach
I couldn’t help myself, so yesterday I broke protocol. After quite a few days of bright sunshine with daytime temperatures in the 70s, even the 80s a couple of days, I went ahead and planted all the tomato and pepper plants that I’ve been nurturing since their birth a few weeks ago — six weeks for the tomatoes, ten weeks for the peppers. Looking ahead, warm sunny days should follow, with night temperatures are predicted to dip down only into the 50s.
My usual protocol has been to plant not with my gut, but with the calendar date. Over the years I’m come up with a…
A WEBINAR AND A PLANT SALE
Webinar: GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES
Harvesting your own fresh figs, which offer a very different gustatory experience from dried figs, is possible and easy even if you live where winters are cold. Even where summers remain cool. Once you know why fig allows this, various methods can lead you to fig-dom. I'll cover the why, some of the methods, and detail the all-important methods of pruning.
Date and Time: Monday, June 6, 2022, 7-9 pm Eastern Time
Cost: $35
Space is limited and registration is necessary. Register and pay (credit card or Paypal) here, or at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4hqKduDNSyiuRGPBlmBObg
Contact…
SPRING SEEDING: WHEN?
Truth From a Thermometer
Stop by my vegetable garden this time of year and you might see one or more thermometers poking out of the ground. No, I’m not experimenting with a new way to monitor the soil's health. Soil temperature can serve as a guide for timely sowing of seeds outdoors. Seed sown in soil that is too cold won’t germinate; just sitting there waiting for warmer weather, ungerminated seeds are liable to rot or be eaten by animals.
Lettuce, onion, parsnip, and spinach seeds can be planted earliest. They’ll germinate just about as soon as ice in the soil thaws. At the other end…
Webinar planned: GROWING FIGS IN COLD CLIMATES
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…
