Have you ever seen a bare-root rose? When you pull one out of the cool, moist mulch it’s stored in, all you see are a couple of thorny sticks on top, a couple of black roots on the bottom … if this is the bottom …. And you think, I’m spending twenty-some bucks for this? However, a good bare-root rose is worth every cent.
One of the most important things a gardener can do is to build up the soil in her garden. But keep in mind that soil-building is not a one-time operation – it’s a process.
In the fall, after you stop deadheading the rose, you will be rewarded with large, orange hips. (On the rose, not on your body.)
The tomato seeds will germinate more effectively if you have a heat mat under the cups or trays. This will warm the soil with dependable heat, allowing the seedlings to germinate more quickly and grow out more quickly. Just be sure to get a thermostat with the mats so you can adjust the temperature so you don’t end up cooking your seeds.
Ladybug larvae are voracious eaters and are shaped like tiny lizards, or Komodo dragons. They are black with two little orange spots toward their head and have a long tail.
The backbone of the garden is the one-foot square. You take four of these one-foot squares and put them together in a grid. Separating these squares are paths, about a foot or two wide, so you don’t walk on the soil inside the four-foot areas. (Soil compaction is bad news in the garden. I lay board walkways in the garden so I can keep from mashing the soil. A light, airy soil is very good for plants.)
I got my seeds a month ago. They aren’t doing much in the bag, and it’s a little early to plant, but I just like to take them out and look at them. My daughter takes the bean seeds and goes around the house shaking them like maracas. I like …
Plant tags make all kinds of crazy claims. But do you know what the truth is? The problem with plant tags is that the people who write them up are not allowed to tell the unvarnished truth about the plant, even if the plant is a real dog. If they do speak, highly suspicious things happen to them.
I was able to wrest a few secrets out of one such writer before she met her doom in a freak rose accident. Here’s a primer on what the plant tag says … and what it actually means.
When I was reading my usual pile of articles and books while researching this topic, I read about some pretentious garden writer who said, of gardens, that a real work of art is not something that could be copied or analyzed. Let me tell you all the ways this is pure bull.
January would be a really lousy month if we didn’t have seed catalogs. There’s so much ice on my garden that I can walk over the snow without breaking through the slick crust on top. So every day I skate to the mailbox, hoping for some good reading material to …
