OF BULBS, BULBILS, BULBLETS, AND CORMS
Admission
I’ve admitted to this addiction before and I’ll do it again. I’ll even hope you become addicted. You are forewarned.
My addiction is to propagating plants. No harm done, you say? How about all the plants that you become inundated with. Perhaps you plant them; that can be overdone. Give them away, please. Or sell them.
Anyway, here goes another wrinkle on plant propagation. You are forewarned!
What’s in Your Hand?
You’ve perhaps bought some spring flowering bulbs for planting. Wait! Before you drop all those tulip, daffodil, crocus, and hyacinth bulbs into holes in the ground Read more
A WONDERFULLY FIERY FALL
The Glory of the Hudson Valley Unfolds
Here on the farmden and beyond, this growing season is exiting with perhaps the most gloriously colored fall I’ve seen in decades. Standouts right around here this year are Korean mountainash, red oak, stewartia, huckleberry, and blueberry. Even Norway maple, usually with unsightly splotches of yellow, this year have been turning a fairly attractive pure yellow before dropping.
Korean mountainash
Knowing what puts color in leaves opens up the possibility for ratcheting it up. It might even increase appreciation for the various hues. To best do that, I’m going to plagiarize . . . from my own book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.
Yellow and Orange
Green is from chlorophyll, most welcome in spring and through summer, but not what interests me in fall. Chlorophyll must be continually synthesized Read more
CURING CHESTNUTS, AND MORE
Gathering
“There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” Likewise for chestnuts, in this case twixt the ripening of the nuts (in September and October and the lip. That is, if you want the highest quality nuts.
We can start right when the nuts begin to drop. They’ll do so still enclosed in their spiny burs or the burs will open to release the nuts. Don’t be disappointed with burs pretty much empty, perhaps containing a couple or more small, slivers of nuts; these are the result of inadequate pollination.
Those disappointing burs are among the first to drop. The real show yields burs bursting with two, even three fat, mahogany brown chestnuts. For the best quality nuts, I gather them daily, at the most every other day, before Read more
