GARDENING LUNACY
Lunar Influences
For no apparent reason, my seedlings sometimes take longer than usual to poke up through the soil. Or one day’s transplants get off to a rousing start right after planting, while another day’s transplants sulk for a while before they grow. Fickle plants, or is the problem perhaps with the moon?
Some gardeners believe that the phases of the moon dictate the best times for gardening. No one has told me that my garden will be a flop if I ignore the moon, but paying attention to it as I go about my gardening activities will “take advantage of the impetus provided by nature” (as one moon-gardener has stated). Old-time gardeners used to say, “Plant potatoes by the dark of the moon.”
The Details
For some moon-gardeners, instructions are more refined, taking into consideration the sign of the zodiac along with the phase of the moon. Planting is not the only activity covered. Read more
IS IT SUNNY, ENOUGH?
A Plant’s Perspective
No matter what you’re growing, and especially if you’re growing most fruits or vegetables, you need to know what “full sun” and “part shade” mean. People with shady yards often have their own definitions.
The tall trees that surrounded my father’s yard created lots of shade; he once planted a grapevine in what he called a sunny spot, which was where the leafy tree canopy spread open enough to let a ray of sunlight peek through for about an hour at 12:30. The grape vine did grow, but bore a paltry crop, and those grapes it did bear were sour.
Grapes need “full sun. “Full sun” to a plant means direct, unobstructed sunlight for at least five or six hours a day. Besides vegetable gardens and most fruit trees, many flowers also require this exposure.
Sometimes Shade is Tolerable
There are plants that are well adapted to, even need, shade in their youth, but require more sunlight as they age. Maples and beeches, for example, as well as other forest trees which start out as seedlings in the shade of existing forests, but eventually reach light and become the canopy itself.
Pawpaw, which is a forest tree native throughout the eastern part of this country, is also in this category. That applies to seedling trees, that is, trees Read more
PRUNING AN APPLE TREE, A NECESSARY EVIL
Too Many Blossoms, Too Many Fruits
I winced with almost every snip of the pruning shears yesterday. My apple trees needed pruning and they were loaded with buds showing pink and about to pop open. Pruning was late this year, not that it would matter to the trees, but I had hoped to get it done a month or more ago, before the vegetable garden started beckoning.
What was making me wince was all the blossoms I was removing, blossoms that, after pollination, could swell into luscious apples. I kept reassuring myself that removing blossoms and, hence, fruit was one of the reasons to prune an apple tree.
Left to its own devices, an apple tree tends to set too many fruits, too many for best quality, that is. With the number of fruits reduced, the tree can Read more
