Author: Dean Fosdick
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For novice gardeners, seek out plants that will survive blackest of thumbs
Gardening is a forgiving pursuit. Get it wrong one year and you can start fresh again the next, wiser, with lessons learned. Study up between planting seasons. Scan the seed catalogs for bulletproof plants that anyone with the blackest of thumbs can grow. “Start small,” said Claire Watson, Wave brand manager for Ball Horticultural Co.…
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Nature is full of garden helpers
Looking for some help in the garden? Many of nature’s most useful critters lie literally at our feet, underappreciated and ignored despite their ability to eliminate insects, condition soils and pollinate plants. Turtles, moths, moles, dragonflies, snakes, toads and spiders are among the many wild things that can help maintain a landscape. The payback is…
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Dandelion roots and more: finding food at our feet
Ellen Zachos is a modern-day forager, gathering wild foods to enrich her cuisine. New York’s Central Park provides the fixings for much of her larder, which includes wines, pickles, jams and jellies made from flavorful weeds. “Many of the most delicious wild edibles are invasive weeds,” said Zachos, an ethnobotanist, instructor at the New York…
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Window boxes are small raised-bed gardens
Sometimes the best view isn’t what you see through a window but what catches your eye underneath it. Window boxes deliver color, edibles and fragrance. They’re practical, too, as raised-bed gardens that elevate contents to within easy reach. “Window boxes are convenient containers,” said David Trinklein, a horticulturist with University of Missouri Extension. “Plant them…
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New blooms, veggies and more debuting for 2013
Whoever believes there’s nothing new under the sun hasn’t seen the plants being introduced for the 2013 gardening season. Think multicolored blooms, high-yield vegetables bred for containers and ornamental edibles packing still more nutrition as breeders try to anticipate consumer demand. Grafted tomatoes appear to be the hottest new trend in home gardening, while cocktail…
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New blooms, veggies and more debuting for 2013
Whoever believes there’s nothing new under the sun hasn’t seen the plants being introduced for the 2013 gardening season. Think multi-colored blooms, high-yield vegetables bred for containers and ornamental edibles packing still more nutrition as breeders try to anticipate consumer demand. Grafted tomatoes appear to be the hottest new trend in home gardening, while cocktail…
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New gardeners have a basketful of questions
People new to gardening ask the darndest questions: about how seeds work, about growing the perfect tomato, about waging war with insects (many of them beneficial). No question is a bad question, though, since good gardening requires an endless supply of information. Beginners can find it by talking with neighborhood gardeners, nurseries, extension agents or…
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Tips for a quicker vegetable harvest
Vegetable gardening is an exercise in patience. Sweet potatoes can take more than 100 days to ripen; some tomato and watermelon varieties require five months. But there are ways to shorten the wait. The easiest is choosing plants that taste best when harvested young. “The one thing you will miss out on with speedy growing…
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Look for grafted veggies to be next season’s celebrity ‘seeds’
In many of the seed catalogs arriving soon in mailboxes, the headliners will be grafted vegetables, in which one or more varieties grow from a single rootstock. Tomatoes seem to be the grafted transplants most frequently offered, providing greater disease tolerance, bigger harvests, increased vigor and better taste. Side-by-side tests done by Ball Horticultural Co.…
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Fun, incentives can encourage kids to be gardeners
If you think it’s hard getting kids to eat their vegetables, wait until you try recruiting them for garden work. But the challenge is worth it: Children just might add more healthy foods to their diet if they’ve grown them themselves. “If a child grows herbs or vegetables, they will try them at least once,”…