Hormones Get Pumping
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More Brussels Sprouts, Cabbages, & Pears with Hormones
It’s time to get the hormones pumping. No, not by me embarking on some testosterone-fueled, garden-related feat of strength or endurance. Not even my own hormones, but the ones in my plants, more specifically my brussels sprouts plants. And actually, quashing the action of one hormone so that other hormones can come to the fore.
Let me explain: Brussels sprouts are not only a member of the cabbage family but are the same genus and species as cabbage, as are broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and kale. Differences in these plants lie in…
End of Summer? Enter the Fall Garden.
Fading Summer Brings in Fall Greens, and Hollyhocks for Cheer
There’s a flurry of seed sowing and setting out of transplants going on here. Am I deluded that it’s springtime? No. Autumn is around the corner and there are vegetables to be planted.
For many gardeners, summer’s end and the garden’s end are one and the same. But planning for and planting an autumn vegetable garden bypasses the funereal look of waning tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and other vegetables that thrive only with summer heat and long days of sunshine, and puts plenty of fresh vegetables on the table. Having…
WESTWARD HO, FOR FRUIT MEETINGS AND EATINGS
Fruit Nuts, Including Me, Nurseries, & Wild Blueberries
Are there organizations for people who make and eat cheese; build and ride motorcycles; write and read books; grow and savor fruits? All I know is that the answer to the existence of the last-named organization is a rowsing “yes!” I know because I recently returned from Oregon, where I converged with other fruit nuts for the annual meeting of North American Fruit Explorers (www.nafex.org, and nuts, incidentally, are also covered under the organization’s umbrella).
No need to don a pith helmet and traipse off to Borneo to be a…
GOOD FUNGI AND BAD INSECTS
Fungi I Like and Bean & Japanese Beetles (Don't Like)
Where once scorned or appreciated only after being sautéed in butter, fungi have finally come into their own. If you’re among those who isn’t awed by fungi except when they’re sautéed, swallow this: each gram of soil (the weight of a paper clip) might house over a million fungi, or anywhere from 10 to 100 pounds of them in the top 6 inches of a 1000 square feet of soil. And most of what they do -- for plants and soil, forget about your taste buds for now -- is beneficial.
I recently heard of a project using fungi as a building…
WEEDS, BIRDS, & PEST-FREE CURRANTS
I Battle Weeds and Birds, but Currants are Care-free
Part of my weedless gardening technique (which I thoroughly fleshed out in my book Weedless Gardening) involves -- sad to say, for some people -- weeding. After all, no garden can ever be truly weedless. Even people who spray Roundup eventually get weeds as they inadvertently “breed” for Roundup-resistant weeds, which now exist. My techniques are weed-less rather than weedless.
Which brings me to hoeing. Most years my hoe rests on its designated hook in the garage. This year, it’s hardly made it back to garage, mostly just leaning…
Eerie White to Golden Flowers, with Some Fungi Helping Out
White Indian pipes, mycorrhizae, and a golden flower
I do occasionally tear myself away from the farmden. So into the woods I went last Friday and as I was hiking along and glancing down at the trail, I came upon one of my favorite flowers. It’s a favorite not for its beauty but for what it hints at of goings-on beneath the soil surface.
The flower was indian pipes, Monotropa uniflora, an eerily white plant that looks like a upright tobacco pipe whose stem has been poked into the ground. Yes, it’s white. All white. You might rightly wonder how the plant synthesizes carbohydrates for energy…
Plagues Come & Go, With Some Help, and Seattle-time
Meet me in St. L . . . Seattle
Come hear me lecture on August 10, 2014 on "Luscious Landscaping, with Fruiting Trees, Shrubs, and Vines" at 1 pm in the Garden Room at Magnuson Park. For more information, go to http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/755459.
Plague again; keep calm
Every year it seems some new plague is ready to attack plants. A few years ago, late blight of tomato moved to the fore. Emerald ash borer, threatening ash trees, was first found on our shores in 2002. (Figuratively; literally, the insect, native to Asia, was first noted in Michigan.) What’s next?
Perhaps a calmer…
Farmden Health Club & Basil
Rei-King, an Ancient Exercise?
Among the many benefits of gardening is the opportunity it offers for enjoyable, productive exercise in the great outdoors. And now we can add an exercise called rei-king to boot camp, pilates, zumba, kick boxing, cardiofunk, and other ways modern humans build and maintain sleek, fit bodies. Or so I told my wife, Deb.
As with some of those other exercise routines, equipment is needed, simple equipment in the case of rei-king. Basically, the equipment is a pole, perpendicular to and at the end of which is a length of wood or metal, attached in its middle to the…
