Pioneer Valley Gardening

Hating the Knock-out Roses

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:12:00 +0000

Does anyone else feel duped by the extravagant campaign for the knock-out roses? I see them everywhere which means they have been oversold and over-bought. It must have been the most expensive ad campaign in the history of gardening. And for what? A rose that has no odor and blooms half the season, if that. This rose doesn't even respond to the old brewers yeast trick to get a blooming cycle started. It responds instead with more foliage which in the end simply adds more time in the garden for cutting back an un-gainly looking shrub, the knock out rose. After the blooms petals fall off, the spiny looking hip left behind simply doesn't develop into a respectable hip and then the unsuspecting gardener has to spend more time in the garden snipping off the trashy looking clusters of spent blooms so that the bloom cycle will come a little more quickly. Do you know that left to it own devices this knockout rose will grow to six feet or more? how much cutting back do you want to do in one season?

A better rose is the Nearly Wild pink old fashioned five petaled rose. It grows to a respectable 3 feet in height and no further. When brewers yeast is added to its base every month this rose blooms in spades with no extra foliage. The Nearly Wild is also three feet wide at best.

Perhaps you truly want a red rose. Mr. Lincoln is a good choice and it is truly red. Not that off-shade of very dark cerise that the red-knock-out claims is red. Place that red knockout near a real red rose and you will see a striking difference. Mr. Lincoln, being red, also thrives in the Northeast so it is an easy rose to grow in our humid summers and harsh winters.

This rose added to any garden has another problem. This rose is everywhere: used in high traffic local curbsides, used in town landscaping, parks, and of course it was carried at home depot and still is which means it is still in demand by landscaping companies and towns. How many of one kind does a person need to plant? What gardener wants a plant that has no uniqueness? There are plenty of plants recently introduced that are much better behaved and unique: Rock and roll Astilbe for one and the valentine Dicentra. Granted these plants don't bloom as the knock-out roses claim to bloom but they are more unique and every gardener has a special place in their dirt for a good old american unique plant. Thats what built america to begin with: unique people with unique beliefs. Perhaps that is why I have a penchant for the unique as well.

Make the most of your garden space.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:27:00 +0000

For many people nowadays, the needs of the family are paramount when deciding to finally pull out that spade and fork to start a garden. Many people grow a garden for the simple pleasure of homegrown taste and control of the ingredients of the soil in which their veggies are grown. When considering what to plant in your garden is a way to have both control and provide your family with less expensive nutrients you would buy at the grocers.

Step one: Take a trip to the store and price the produce where you spend the most money. Does your family prefer greens to potatoes? Tomatoes to lettuce? Or herbs that diminish your food allotment/budget with tiny bottles of aged flavorless herbs. The main question is, "Where is my food money going?" The second all important question is, "Can I grow food that will replace the food I buy so that I have money left to buy the items that I can't grow?" This is one way to offset the grocery bills throughout the year when prices get out of control and food is at a premium. This will become ever more important as the increase of living contiues to climb.

Step two: Within the limits of what my family eats and uses, what costs the most to buy per square foot of gardening space. Cilantro tops the list. If you are an avid cilantro user in cooking, then cilantro is one herb you could grow, freeze or can and save money to use on other things in the long run. If salsa is your thing, then cilantro and tomatoes are a sure bet to save you money. If you like fresh greens, zucchini or peppers, then grow those in abundance and freeze as much as possible for winter use when the food costs rise.

Step 3: Decide your available gardening space. What is your space and how much space does each plant require for optimum growing space? This is when knowing what vegetables you need is the most important. For example, growing cabbage is not a good use of your garden space if you can find it at the end of summer for a dollar per head at your local grocer. Cabbage takes up 2-3 square feet when it reaches maturity and most cabbages require a full summer to grow to full size. (there are some exceptions) Even if your cabbage does not take the full summer to grow, after harvesting the cabbage, finding something to fill that space and will grow quickly enough before winter sets in, will be difficult unless you are interested in fava beans which require cool temperatures.

Step 4: "What can I grow that can replace some of the snacks or foods we use regularly?" This is where family cooperation is a must. If you are non-vegetarian, it will be hard to get your family to eat vegetairan burgers...however there is a simple trick to this. Take one pound of hamburger, add two cans of processed mushed black beans and follow the recipe for vegetarian burgers. Make patties and freeze. Broil to perfection: serve with mayple syrups, sauces, rice, pasta or buns. With beans included you cut the cost of hamburger by two thirds and can make enough burgers for 4 meals for 4 people. You CAN grow your own beans to offset the cost of meat in a variety of ways. Black beans go with hamburger. White beans go with chicken or turkey. Pink or red beans to make chili or add a bit of beef for chili con carne. White beans can also be made into an alfredo sauce by adding the watered down mushed white beans to one jar of alfredo. You can eliminate meat with this meal and have enough to serve 6-10 people with one jar of alfredo sauce and the protein comes from the beans. Add torice and you have a complete protein. Add 2 cups greens grown from the garden and frozen ahead of winter and you have a complete meal. Hint: by adding 2 cups of greens to this meals you can reduce the serrving size of alfredo and rice to half and extend the number of servings to 12-20 people or servings. This enables you to make one meals for 6 people and freeze the rest for another meal in the future.

Step 5: Recognize that with the system above you have cut your grocery bill in half by making two meals for 6 people with only two store bought items: alfredo sauce and rice. One small bag of brown rice is 1.79 and the alfredo sauce is 4.00 at the most. So for less than six dollars, you have created two meals for a family of six by using produce you have grown in your garden.(beans and greens)

Planning a 4 x 6 garden

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 16:12:00 +0000

As with any garden the most important part of growing vegetables is making sure the soil is deep enough to accomodate the roots of the plants. Although, not true for all vegetables, determining the needed depth of the soil can be gauged by the height of the plant at maturity. What is above the soil is almost always mirrored beneath the soil.

The key to your question is the St. Augustine grass. This type of grass is difficult to remove at best and even if you can remove it, it takes the soil with it. Removing the soil from beneath the grass roots is not advised in most situations due to last years seeds of the grass being at the basse of the roots. Knocking the soil off the roots will also dislodge the seeds from the root base and they will infiltrate your carefully prepared soil and then start growing when you add water.

A raised bed comes to mind when thinking about removing grass. Raised beds can be really easy if you have the money but if your don't then it is a real challenge. Of course, the question is, even if you do have the money, how much money do you want to invest to make a raised bed to get a limited amount of vegetables from that space. Are two tomato plants and a bit of chard and kale worth a $200.00 investment via wood, soil, fetilizer, etc?

The less expensive way, but not necesarily organic, is to purchase 8-12 large bags of Miracle Grow moisture retentive prepared soil. (Keep in mind that plastic bags are the same as water bottles. Plastic releases BPA/BPH when heated and dioxin when frozen and thawed. These chemicals will enter the soil...your food. Some foods can reduce the toxicity of these chemicals before you eat them but knowing which vegetables can do this requires way too much research for the average gardener.) Stack the bags for long parallel to each other, open the top and stack the next level top. Open the second level by cutting the bottom and top lengthwise down the center. Repeat on the top third level of bags. (You do this so the roots can reach the bottom bag of soil.) Stab holes in the outer sides of the bags with a screw driver or sharp stick to help the water relase from the bags so your plants won't get water logged. Cover the entire pile with wood chips or hay for moisture retention, weed prevention and to provide shade to the bags during summer heat. Tomatoes love soil to be very warm but some other vegetables prefer cooler soil. A coating of 4 inches of hay can produce a happy balance of moisture and heat. The bottom bag will act as a water resevoir due to the lack of holes in the base of the bags. The side holes of the base bags will limit the depth of water in the resevoir.

A more organic option is to purchase year old manure from a local organic farmer. Half a bucket load will give you enough soil to work with for the 4 X 6 size garden. Place cardboard on the ground in the 4 x 6 area and stab holes in it at about 1 hole every 5 inch square. Layer year old manure on top of cardboard. It's okay if the manure goes over the edge of the cardboard a bit. Keep in mind that manure is not a balanced soil. Horse manure has a tremdous amount of seeds and hay mixed into it and cow manure can be too strong if used too soon. Some people and garden advisors recommend bat guano, bird guano and reptile guano as the best manure.

I recommend a combination of worm dirt, fish emulsion, epsom salts, copper watering pots, banana skins, live moss, rabbit and goat poo in a compost tea after making the garden bed with 1 part sand, 1 part peat or coco coir, and two parts year aged and protected-from-elements cow manure.

Cocopeat Coconut Coir 5 Bricks Coco Coir Organic Potting Soil Amendments
After removing the grass, double dig the soil at least two feet down. Remove half the soil and add coco coir or peat, sand, as well as fish emulsion (find someone who cleans a fish tank), 1 pint (for a 4X6 area) epsom salts and two tablespoons unflavored instant iced tea mix (if you want organic then dont add the tea mix, use tea bag compost tea instead.) Stir it all together and add the removed soil a little at a time until the height of your garden is 6 inches above the ground around it. If you would like to frame your 'raised bed' use untreated wood or logs from the woods (free). Once the soil is completely evened out on its surface, spread hay or straw on top of the soil to help with moisture retention, necessary carbon from the decomposition of the straw and weed prevention. You can plant in the soil beneath the hay by leaving a little room in the hay around each plant until your plants are taller.

Once you have completed the soil preparation, deciding what to grow in your area is the next step. A 4 X 6 area is a relatively small area if the soil preparation isnt done correctly as above. If it is then the next decision is what your household eats the most and costs the most at the grocery store. It also depends on likes and dislikes, of course. Many people like to grow tomatoes for that homegrown flavor. Planting one large tomato like the heirloom Pineapple tomato

and one small like the heirloom Matt's cherry tomato can supply your family with enough of each sized tomato for the summer. Plant each tomato at each end of area and surround them with basil and cilantro seeds. In this small area, carrots love tomatoes but tomatos do not like carrots. The needs of the carrots will stunt the growth of the tomatos. If you have trouble attracting bees to your area, plant lambs ears in between and let the bees pollinate at will. Some early blooming plants that help attract bees can also be included: plant some strawberry plants around the edges of the area...the early spring blooms will start the cycle of bees returning to feed on pollen. If desparate for attracting pollinators and no early flowering plants are available, make a sugar water mixture as you would for hummingbirds and place in a bowl near freshly planted plants. The rest of the garden between the tomato plants can be planted with seeds or store-ready plants like one zucchini and one sum-squash or a variety of herbs.

Although zucchini and squashes are wonderful to grow at home, they are relatively inexpensive at the store and don't provide as much nutrition as other alternatives. The most nutritious plants in any garden are kale and swiss chard. Both are able to provide greens all summer and are loaded with vitamins and nutrients important to everyones health. Keeping to the red varieties can increase the benefits of anthrocynins as well as all the other nutrients that are naturally in kale and chard. Picking them fresh for the table is the best way to get the most out of any leaved vegetables. The sooner they are on the table after picking the better the nutrition. You can plant these in rows or clumps to leave space for another bump of a pumpkin hill. Two pumpkin plants can be produced on one hill and will almost guarentee the participation of any child in the household.

I hope this explaination helps you a bit. Enjoy your endeavors and plan to plant for a lifetime once you taste the difference between your own nurturing of plants and the less favorable products from the grocers.

See future articles about profitable Gardening for your household.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:44:00 +0000

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Knowing vegetables that grow in shade doubles your gardening space.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:10:00 +0000

Many people do not consider putting a vegetable garden in the shade but there are plants that grow well in the depths of winter and require only 4-5 hours per day of light. It is those same plants that grow well in the unlighted greenhouse mid-winter that can tolerate a shady spot during the heat of summer.

There are a variety of vegetable plants that cannot only survive in the shade but actually produce better with only 4-5 hours of daily light.

Brassicas are a great warm and cold weather choice that will nutritionally benefit the household long term: Bokchoy, pak choy, the wide varieties of kale, swiss chard, cauliflower and brussell sprouts: Steam and eat or freeze. Brassicas have a unique character due to the many nutrients they offer to the dinner plate. Kale has protein as well as a boat-load of calcium and vitamin A. A cup of day will keep the doctor and Father-time away. Its a great anti-aging plant for the daily diet. Steam it with a bit of brown sugar, real butter and pepper. Create the brown sugar and butter sauce first and then pour over the kale to offset the bitterness. This is especially helpful for children and adults who can't palate the sometimes bitter taste. Just a small bit of this sauce changes the taste so don't over do it.

A quick note on sugar substitute grown in the garden. Buttercup (not Butternut) squash makes a terrific thickener substitute for soups, stews, and gravies as well as a prime sugar substitute for tomato sauces and other sweet sauces. The main root base must be grown in the sun while the tendrils that travel east towards the sun, can tolerate partial shade. Plant on the east side of the garden so they have room to roam further east and develop the many fruits along the vine.

Root vegetables are another pleasant tasting solution: radish, carrots, beets and the plethora of beet greens during warm weather, turnips and greens, parsnips (let them freeze hard for sweetness) and a variety of potatoes interplanted with horseradish which protects the potatoes and other root vegetables from pests.

Beans have very few varieties that can tolerate shade but fava bean is one that can tolerate dappled or partial shade. As with most beans they are nitrogen replacements for the soil when tilled into the soil at the end of the season. As with any vegetable grown in the shade, the leaves and pods may be bigger when grown in the shade but the beans may be fewer. The advantage of shade is the number of pods produced in shade number far more than what are produced in sun. Since this bean can tolerate shade and cold weather, when the leaves fall from the trees that are producing shade, the bean will still produce and fill those pods with beans as the colder weather sets into the garden.

If you want instant gratification, trellis some peas of all kinds: steam and eat or freeze for winter stir frys. You can also eat the tendrils from the tops of the plants: steamed and seasoned with an olive oil and lime sauce with cinnamon and a touch of clove or horseradish.

Other instant gratification plants are lettuce, spinach and radish. There are colorful varieties that bring nutrition to the table in a cheerful way. The Spinach Fiorana variety is a terrific choice for containers that can grow outside during reasonable temperatures and then be brought inside and put under a 4 hour per day light for fresh eating in winter. Malabar spinach is a vining spinach that can be started in containers, top-harvested before frost and brought inside for the winter as well. Spinach takes very little light (like lettuce 4 hours per day) to grow well.

Let us not forget celery, calendula and cress. All are able to withstand partial shade in your vegetable garden and can be used not only as interplantings with sun loving vegetables but can be put aside into the partial shade area of your gardens. These vegetables can also tolerate a bit of cold weather. Use your celery in soups and stews; cress in sandwiches, and calendula in salads or softening cremes for those gardening-hands of yours.

Keep in mind that most of these vegetables need to have sun when first breaking through the soil as seedlings, but after they get their third leaf they are ready for the partial shade area of your landscape or gardens.

Financial advice? What your family eats now is what you should plant in the garden. A small spaced garden is not where you should experiment with new foods. Taste them from the grocers first and then determine the space you need to provide for them in your garden. If no one likes them, then save the space for what everyone likes to make sure your vegetable garden is providing what is popular and necessary for your household. In this way your vegetable garden will provide financial benefit to the household as well.

Late season vegetable garden starts with planning for cold weather.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:04:00 +0000

Here in the Pioneer Valley, the gardening season is over but there are places in the country where gardeners are in the mid-season of gardening and this aritcle is for those who are starting their gardens late in the season.

If you are starting a late season vegetable garden, plan ahead for the impending cold weather.

Brassicas are a great warm and cold weather choice that will nutritionally benefit your household long term: Bokchoy, pakchoy, the wide varieties of kale, swiss chard, and brussel sprouts: Steam and eat or freeze. Brassicas have a unique character in that they have a wide variety of nutrients to offer the dinner plate. Kale even has protein as well as a whole load of calcium and vitamin A. Eat a cup a day to keep the doctor and father time away. Its a great anti-aging plant to add to the diet. Steam it with a bit of brown sugar, real butter and pepper. Create the butter and brn.sugar sauce first and then pour over the kale to offset the bitterness. This is especially helpful for children and adults who can’t palate the bitter taste. Just a small bit of this sauce changes the taste so don’t over do it. In our household we use buttercup (not butternut) squash instead of brown sugar to sweeten everything. If you have enough time to grow it, do it. It is a great sugar replacement in soups, stews, tomato sauces, and a terrific additive to sauces as well.

Root vegetables are another pleasant tasting solution: beets and the plethora of fresh beet greens during warm weather, turnips and turnip greens, and a variety of potatoes interplanted with horseradish which protects the potatoes from bugs.

If you want instant gratification, trellis some peas of all kinds: steam and eat or freeze for winter stir-frys. You can also eat the tendrils from the tops of the plants: steamed and seasoned with an olive oil and lime sauce with cinnamon and a touch of clove or horseradish. Another instant gratification plant is lettuce. There are a variety of lettuces that bring nutrition to the table in many colors.
Fiorana is great for containers
Spinach is another alternative and you can bring the vining malabar spinach inside for the winter if you plant it in a large pot originally: Harvest the long vine before bringing in and then grow under a light in a naturally lit room. Malabar spinach is difficult to find in plant form so seeds may be what you will be forced to plant. Don’t stress, plant regular bloomsdale spinach as well for a quick dinner salad and plant some in your inside garden as well. Spinach takes very little light (like lettuce 4 hrs. per day)to grow well.

I do hope that some of these suggestions help you in planning your vegetable garden. Keep in mind, that what you and your family eats now is what you should plant in the garden. A small spaced vegetable garden is not where you should experiment with new foods. Try them from the grocers first and then determine the space you will need to provide for them in your garden. If no one likes them, then save the space for what everyone likes to make sure that your vegetable garden is providing what is popular and necessary for your household.

The bottle of Mount Tom mirrored in the pond of Eathampton.

Blessings from the snow covered Pioneer_Valley in the lower Berkshires of Western Masschusetts

Finding the right Christmas tree

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:00:00 +0000

Trying to find the perfect christmas tree with the right smell, the right shape and the right size is like trying to find the perfect woman. She has to be willing to ride in the trunk....and you can get rid of her after the holidays...and get a new one every year....and your mother who never truly approves is terrific about this short term relationship.

Christmas trees are bit different than women though. The trees gather at temporary local joints for three weeks each year and you can just-go-there, pick-up your favorite and bring it home. You only have to feed it water, it trys-on only one skirt for christmas festivities, it has beautiful and shiny balls, and you don't worry about the dangle of the garland, its supposed be that way. You can plug it in at your will and even unplugged it will sit around looking beautiful. It doesn't take much to turn it on, you don't want it bare, its easy to slim down. and there is always a special place for it in your living room. You actually want to show it to your family, friends, neighbors and you might even have a party in its honor. You put the same arrangements on it everytime and even so, whenever you ring its bell, an angel gets it wings. It doesn't pretend or tolerate your idea of Christmas, it truly like trains. It dies slowly and the best part? It doesn't talk back and there are fifty more waiting outside your door.

Hot to start an organic garden

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0000

How to start an organic garden
Organic gardens vs. standard gardens is the difference in what chemicals you put on the garden in order to prevent bugs or disease or maintain an already healthy garden environment. According to the U.S. government, an organic garden is a garden in which chemicals are avoided and only used as a last resort to control unwanted pests and diseases.

If you are in a hurry, who isn't(?), then find a supplier who carries organic compost and loam and sand. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that chemicals are not in the compost, loam, or sand. When purchasing items for your garden, the term organic simply means there were no chemicals used in creating the loam, sand or compost. It does not mean that there were no chemicals at the site where the distributor retrieved the sand etc.

Without knowing where you live...urban, suburb or exurb, I have to assume you have space to build a garden. If you don't, then try a conatiner that can hold three bags of soil medium. Buy one bag each of compost, loam and sand. If you do have an outdoor site to start a garden, also include a wheelbarrow full of soil from your planned garden site.

I find raised beds the easiest to begin and maintain. The amount of soil mediums listed above is enough to fill a 4 X 4 raised bed area. Other amendments to the soil will be determined by what you are platning in your garden.

Use green sand and bone meal in the area that you are planting tomatoes. If this is too expensive for you, use epsom salts. Epsom salts is something that is absorbed by your body when you take a bath and will not hurt the plants. Epsom simply replaces the magnesium in your soil medium to make your soil magnesium more readily available nutrition and it prevents blossum-end-rot on your precious tomatoes.
If your area is not being used for tomato's, then follow other instructions for the plants that you are planting. Plant lettuce in between your tomato plants. As the tomato plants grow they will provide shade for the lettuce as well as a moist environment in which lettuce likes to grow.

If you dont want to use the standard fertilizers, then simply make sure you have a trench compost set up between your plantings. Keep in mind that kitchen waste used in your trench needs to be pre-washed before cooking to eat due to the chemicals on the food you buy at the grocers and don't add, tomatoes, potatoes, meats or oils to the compost.

Another compost method is to dig a hole in an empty area of the garden periodically, when you have kitchen waste available...fill the hole with the waste and then cover with the soil you originally removed from the hole. The plants on either side of the trench or hole will gain nutrients while the waste decomposes. This type of composting is actually the best way to compost since most compost piles lose their nutrients into the ground when it rains. Granted, composted soils that have been exposed to rain are more nutritious than other soils (unless you live in a river bed area) but the whole point to composting is to reserve the nutrients from decomposing waste for the fruit and vegetables that you are growing. If most of the nutrients go into the ground below, then some of the nutrients are wasted for your project.

When talking about organic gardening there are some topics that people simply ignore. One of them is that many independent studies have determined that the organic weed preventative corn gluten causes cancer. Corn gluten also stays in the soil for years beyond what is natural. This is simply because the the gluten is removed from the corn and then used are a weed prevention in organic gardens. As far as I am concerned, this removes corn gluten from the saftey list.

An easier way to prevent weeds is to spread a weed filter on top of the soil in between the plantings. The question is, what type of coverings? In recent years, newspaper ink has under gone changes to protect the public. The ink no longer carries the carcinogens that it used to have and is now safe to hold in your hands as well as put in your garden. Many people use cardboard without thinking about the glues that cardboard inherently has within its walls.

If you truely want to go in the direction of organic, the best covering for weed prevention is 8 inches of hay. Replace as needed (if a weed pops up through it.) You will only need one full sized bale for your 4 X 4 garden. The hay decomposes slowly over time and adds nutrients to the soil that the soil would otherwise be without.

What to plant: packing nutrition into your four foot garden;

If you are interested in the most nutrition per square foot in your 4 x 4 garden, keep in mind that kale is a leafy green that people could live on if they had to. Kale has so many nutrients including protein in it, that you might live forever if you eat it everyday. The nutrative standouts are the high content of calcium, vitamin C which helps the calcium be absorbed and more readily available, vitamin B6 which is terrific vitamin for migraine sufferers, folic acid, vitamin A (in the form of beta-carotene), vitamin K which helps deter the aging process, potassium, manganese, copper, and even the plant form of omega-3 fatty acids (alpha-linolenic acid). In addition to the carotenoid beta-carotene, kale contains other important carotenoids: lutein and zeaxanthin (necessary for eye health, i.e macular degeneration), and zinc which combined with vitamin A encourages the body to produce white blood cells in the event of a virus or bacteria entering the body. Kale also has chemicals in it that assist in the prevention of colon and ovarian cancers.

With all these nutrients combined, Kale is the number one plant that can help anyone detox their system without going on a liquid diet with a side of colon cleanse. Keep in mind that Kale also has a large amount of tryptophan in 1 cup so when you eat it, you will feel sluggish for a short while, like you ate some turkey if not fall asleep altogether.

One deterrent of kale is the amount of oxalic acid it contains. if you have kidney or gall bladder problems already you might want to avoid kale or limit the amounts you eat to a comfortable-for-you level.

Other high nutrient vegetables for a 4 X 4 garden include, swiss chard, turnip and beet greens, broccoli, cauliflower,...and the rest of the brassicas. For a treat you can grow a tomato or two in between the more nutritious plants. Tomatos have longer roots and get their nutrition from deeper within the soil. Be sure to dig individual holes around the tomatos so that you can fill them in with compost when it is available.

To keep you garden cooler in the hottest weather, add some cheesecloth to the top of the plants in order to provide some shade. This will help the tomatos keep their cool and keep producing.

More on organic beginner gardening later.

Blessings!!!!!

Crafting supplies

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 13:17:00 +0000

If your a crafter of soaps, perrfumes or body products , I found a terrific site for you to peruse. Try http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com/ and you will be surprised at the selection and the prices!!!!!!!!!!

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noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:58:00 +0000

Finding shade tolerant plants is easy; you probably already have somein your sun garden

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:44:00 +0000

You can buy all the books you want and still have to spend more dimes, dollars and pounds of cash to grow a terrific shade garden? Perhaps you have shade tolerant or shade loving plants already.

While many plants enjoy time in sun -a minimum of a few (3-5) hours per day- there are many sun-loving plants that can not only tolerate shade but also perform better in a shady location. The easiest way to determine if you have plants to start a shade-garden is to test each of your sun-garden plants by doing a job you do in the garden already - annual division of plants that have grown too large for their location. When a plant is ready to divide, simply take one division including roots and plant it in your prepared shade garden. Another way is to test the plant beforehand by planting it in dappled shade near a tree line or similar light of your planned shade garden location.

If you are eager, ready your site, plan your design and divide your perennials to share in your shade garden. The worst that can happen is that the plant simply will not grow if you choose to create your shade garden quickly.

Perennials that might be growing your garden already:

White and pink bleeding hearts have hollow stems and bloom early in the spring. Dicentra can generally tolerate sun but perform much better in the shade and give the gardener a tall plant in the backdrop. When you lower their soil ph by using pine needles in the mulch, the Dicentra will grow much more vigorously in height. Protect from wind and early frost.

Sun-loving hostas are able to tolerate shade regardless of their genetic penchant for sun. Shade loving hostas perform their best in shade. They offer small and large, front and back-border plant specimens. Hosta comes in a variety of greens from limelight to the darkest green of grass-colors and all sizes from the very tiny specimen plant to curly, twisted or smooth vase-like displays. Plant a few varieties rather than lining your border with one variety. Grow your hosta in rich soil with low ph and they will multiply prolifically. Divide your hosta after a few years and you will have multiple display plants or you can start another shade garden elsewhere.

The Ferns tend to grow prolifically in the shade and dry out in the sun, so it is a natural choice for the shade due to their very nature. Ferns are similar to hosta in the number of varieties and heights available for using in your shade garden. Tall dark green fronds make a beautiful backdrop to any colored flower and the small statured ferns add interest to the mixture of other perennials.

As you are dreaming about the future looks to your garden, don't forget to add a few edible plants as well.

Goats beard loves the early morning sun and can tolerate the sun if given a half day of afternoon shade during mid-summer. Due to their natural tendencies in the wild, Goat’s beard is a terrific backdrop or large specimen plant for the shade garden. Give it room to grow by root and cut off the blooms, as they turn brown if you need a pristine look in the shade.

Astilbe or false goats beard are versatile and can tolerate the sun all day in many northern locations of New England. In the south, this plant desires the shade to prevent the soil from drying out and keeping nutrients accessible via moisture. The boon to this plant is that it performs better in shade by retaining its bloom under a tall canopy.

Coral-bells, heuchera, or alumroot is also tolerant of the sun but perform better in moist shade by making their foliage glow in the dark. Even the darkest and heaviest veined leaves are noticeable on a heuchera in the shade. Electric lime, Midnight Bayou, and Georgia peach are the best to start with and since they are so prolific in producing themselves, you'll have a bunch in a couple years with the correct low ph soil: Water deeply when planting and water during hot summers with little rain. Other maintenance is not necessary with the exception of dividing every few years.

Primrose (not evening primrose) and Pulmonaria are both one of the first blooms in the New England spring garden. Both bloom earlier than the bleeding hearts, are deer-proof, and give a burst of bright color in the shade or sun. They also multiply yearly especially when planted in low ph soils with added wood chips or bark mulch.

Hydrangea has many varieties, height, and different colored flowers. With the new types of hydrangea the colors range from the standard white, blue, pink, red, and of course the newest off-pinks, mauves and purples. The off-pinks and whites especially glow in the shade but the blue offer a burst of color at a different time of the summer season as well. Choose at least one for your shade color-palate.

Liriope has been named Lily turf, border-grass or monkey grass. It offers a nice vase-like shape, purple-blue colored blooms in mid-summer and is another deer resistant plant where shade might attract those long tailed beauties. In wet or bone-dry, loamy to clay soils this lovely little plant of the lily family is disguised as grass with long tendrils of grass-like leaves with a penchant for clinging to soil to prevent soil erosion in the most difficult areas. One of the best attributes to this plant is that it can tolerate salt so it is a natural choice for the edge of your shade garden where you may have a footpath that needs to be salted. Mow off the tops in early spring to encourage a new flush of growth and bloom. The pest that loves this plant is slugs and snails due to the taste of the leaves being very attractive to the soft-skinned destroyer of all in your garden. Iron pellets help destroy the slug population but copper wire or tubing can also help. Weave the copper tubing throughout your shade garden to prevent the destroyers from having bon-appétit!

Some daylily’s can survive in the shade as long as they have 3-5 hours of afternoon sun. Of course, the common roadside orange daylilies named ‘Fulva’ can survive quite a bit of shade and some newer varieties can as well. The key is making sure that the strong sun of summer bears down on them during the afternoon. Many websites give the specific names of shade tolerant daylilies. A spider daylily with bright yellow flower petals named ‘Orangeman’ is just one of them. Keep in mind that morning sun and afternoon shade will decrease or eliminate flower production and weaken the plant regardless of soil nutrients so be sure the plant location includes afternoon sun and dry in mid-summer.

Solomon’s seal and false Solomon’s seal loves the shade, spreads by creeping root, and offers a graceful hanging arch over other shorter flowers. It is a polygonatum meaning many-angled with respect to the roots. If the roots are in shade and heavily composted soils, the roots will spread eagerly which in the end, will provide more arching tall sprays of strong stems and dangling flowers.

Columbine, wild or domesticated, blooms forever in the shade and has a graceful and delicate lacy bloom with multiple colors available. This little plant with self propagate through seed dispersal and you will find it coming up where the roots will have shade and the leaves have sun. Although this plant is said to have needs of moist soils with rich and fertile nutrients, in New England, the seeds burst forth from sand.

Lamb’s ears have a soft fuzzy feel and a look that softens the rough-edges of any garden in sun or shade. Seeds propagate prolifically in well-drained sand and the plant prefers that condition as well. Mulching under the soft leaves will prevent fungus, mold, and rot that heavy rains or moist ground can bring. Lamb’s ear is a low maintenance plant in zones 4, 5, 6 but in higher zones, the plant can become too prolific and difficult to remove. Easy to grow and care for, the lamb’s ears can also spread by root: This helps the low or no-flowering varieties create new plants. De-heading is important for pristine look in the shade garden but allowing the flowers to remain on the plant will attract bees to your garden in thousands. Plant in your shade garden but share some in your vegetable garden to attract those necessary pollinators. This plant is often used as an edging plant if kept neat and trim with maintenance but can also handle being in the midst of ferns and Solomon’s Seal to offer more texture in the mid-level area of the garden.

Paeonia (peony) needs some sun to produce its best but truly enjoys morning sun and the coolness of the late afternoon shade. Plant in an opposite sun location to the daylilies to make sure the blooms last a long as possible. Similar to Lamb’s ears, Peonies prefer well-drained sandy fertile soil. The many varieties of this plant include many colors via heirloom (paeonia lactiflora) and more recently developed deep pink varieties offset the true whites of old fashioned and heirloom varieties. ‘Bowl of Beauty’ is a favorite because of its large pink outer-petals and creamy inner-bowl with tufts of yellow on the stamens. The paeonia suffruiticosa (tree peony) is also an option for height with its tree form.

Annuals are easier to use than perennials in the shade. Choosing annuals to provide the backbone of your garden: texture, foliage, and backdrop are the challenge. After that, it is simply choosing your favorite color to add in the minimal light of shade. If you like glowing colors for an eye attracting view or subdued colors that add a bit of relaxation: most blooms are easy to choose as long as your garden center offers a good selection. Another benefit of annuals is that the ambitious gardener can decrease their annual plant cost by planting annuals from seed early in the spring and avoid the garden center altogether.

Lobelia has lovely miniature blue, pink, or white flowers en masse that offer a bright color in the shade. Although the lobelia can tolerate full sun in cooler climates, the lobelia struggles in dry ground. Gardeners here in New England have found the trick to make lobelia perform better by planting it in part to full shade in neutral ph moist soil. The ‘Rosamond’ variety is particularly known for glowing in shade gardens.

Impatience flowers come in a wide variety of colors of peach, reds, pinks, whites, and Fuchsia. If your garden center offers that kind of variety, take advantage of the offerings by choosing one or all. Keep in mind that some of the best will lose their color if provided too much light.

Coleus, with its nature of ruffle-edged leaves and multiple colors in foliage, this plant just doesn’t stop displaying its best in shade. This plant can get quite tall if left to its own. To keep it short, trim throughout the summer or plant it in the back where height won’t be a problem. Some of the light colored varieties tend to droop in dry hot soils. The darker the leaves, the better this plant can tolerate more sun. Keep watering down to weekly once established.

Caladium is another beautifully foliaged plant that just keeps going in shade. Plant the bulbs in early spring or plant them in your greenhouse for a head start on the season. (Bulbs need to be pulled out in fall here in zone 4,5,6) Pots of caladium can be planted with the pot in your garden to provide an easy lift in the fall when the bulbs need to be protected for winter.

Speaking of bulbs, flowering bulbs that are planted in the fall directly before the ground freezes are another alternative to add color to your shade garden in the spring. Bulbs will bloom later in the shade because the ground takes longer to warm up in the shade. As a result, the same bulbs planted in your sun garden will bloom later and longer in the shade garden. Narcissus is a favorite for a spot of white in the early spring and is the harbinger of clearing the spring garden leaves to make room for the leaves and beauty of burgeoning perennials.

For those who have little or no money, shade gardening can be inexpensive due to the plants that are already in your sun garden. Try transferring a few and watch the different behavior that shade and a cooler environment bring to your beloved perennials.

Need to choose and plan a site for your shade garden? Check back for the next article.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:41:00 +0000

What a cutie and so talented. Find this in you store and get it for your loved one to listen to Christmas eve.

O Holy Night (CD/DVD)

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:39:00 +0000

The Gift

A new blog added

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 15:36:00 +0000

The Vashti Collection (a new blog for art) is a simple place to display the art that comes from my soul. Due to a recent disability future works will be in miniature for ease to produce and transport to galleries and for sale at the vendors fair in Southampton, Ma.: Southampton Congregational church in the Spring. The painting currently on the Blog site are huge in many respects and thereby expensive for the atmosphere of this economy.

I sit here listening to services on the TV church and wish I could get out to church more often to give my soul a place to rest weekly. As it is, this week, I struggle just to remain out of bed this week and try not to let anyone know. It is my hope to find the strength to paint yet againt his winter regardless of weather and physical condition.

Check out http://thevashticollection.blogspot.com/ to see what art is new or old.

November's Gardening to-do list.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:38:00 +0000

Every month has a list of to-do gardening jobs and this month, regardless of the cold, is no different. Give your garden one last tending while this warmer weather is upon us...it won’t last forever.

Do you have an area by the street that could use a bit of touching up? Now is the time to do it. Get ready for decorating and snow by cleaning out the leaves and brush from your curbside appeal. The less debris, the less messy it looks when the first snow falls.

If you haven’t done it already, prepare your rose bushes for the extreme temperature fluctuations during winter. Roses are just one of those plants that don’t go into dormancy for winter. Roses struggle to survive the cold temperatures but they also die from the wind. Wind causes dehydration and if the bud union of your rose bush is peaking above ground, that can cause the entire rose bush to die. Cut your tea roses to one foot high and cover with burlap stuffed with leaves. This covering prevents your rose canes from dehydrating in the wind. One the burlap and leaves are in place, protect the bud union (if visible) with a mound of dirt. One of the ways to prevent this work is to plant your roses with the bud union at least two inches down in the soil. This can increase the amount of work when planting due to a deeper hole but in the long-run, you won’t be finding and placing dirt on the bud union every year.

Climbing roses? Just secure them so the wind won’t bruise the canes. Make sure your loppers are sharp for spring pruning.

Now is the time to add bone-meal to all your roses if you have it.

Get rid of the bugs before they have a chance to settle in by clearing debris and cutting back perennials in the garden. Many gardeners this year will find the tiny grey eggs lining their sedum stems in November...cut the sedums to the ground and put the stems in a burning pile or the trash to be taken away from your yard. These tiny grey eggs signal an infestation for the following year. Protect your roses and other aphid attracting perennials by planting large onions near the roses now. Simply buy a bag from the grocery store and place them root-down in the soil near the plants. The onions will survive during the winter and begin pushing forth greens early in the year. The mere smell of onion will deter the aphids from your treasured plants.

Plant your bulbs before the ground freezes. If you have moles or voles wrap your blubs in hardware cloth or chicken wire when you plant. This will make it more difficult for those little creatures to get at your bulbs during the winter and you will have better success in the bulb flowers appearing in the spring. Don’t forget to mark them so you won’t disturb them during the spring digging and planting of new perennials.

If you have a strawberry patch, cover your plants with a bit of mulch. The best mulch for strawberries is pine needles but bark mulch or wood chips will do in a pinch.

You have grapevines? Time to prune.

If you have new trees or perennials, water everything with an inch or two of water (a gallon or two each) before the ground freezes for winter.

If you have a compost, turn it over before the snow comes.

If you have a greenhouse, plant some peas, kale, swiss chard and start some long-growing herbs.

Happy Gardening!!!!!!!!!

Try new foods this Thanksgiving!!

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:06:00 +0000

We often wait years, here in New England, for the second warm-up of weather. The known Indian Summer in October is famous but what is this second warm up called? After much searching in books (yes, I still use paper books) and the internet...apparently, no one knows. We are having cool nights and quick warm-ups during the day... And the warmth is glorious. This warmth is giving us slackers (I am one of them) some extra time to spend in the garden, getting ready for winter, cleaning our yards and simply enjoying the brightness of the sun before the intimidating gloom of deep fall and the onset of winter. Wishful thinking allows New Englanders (including myself) to hope that winter will be mild but the gardeners within us hope for a normal winter with normal precipitation so that the growing season will be as fruitful next year as it was this year.

Our family ventured into a new area this year by growing a new-to-us type of squash, Buttercup. Butternut is the old standby for the Thanksgiving table. It's a brightly colored orange and a sunny addition of color to any table that holds all the browns of gravy, turkey and stuffing. As wonderful as it is, it's a bit plain without added seasoning.

Buttercup on the other hand? It's so brightly colored it literally glows and it truly doesn't need seasoning before putting on the table. 40 years of eating Thanksgiving dinner could have been improved by simply changing the type of squash...To top it all off, we could have easily grown it ourselves...it grows anywhere. With nine seeds we grew enough to supply us with a winter of feeling good three times each week.

79 pounds a week out of the veggie garden will keep us healthy way beyond winter. Most of the vegetables were potatoes and squash but those root veggies have a plethora of much needed vitamins, specifically designed for the winter gloom onset in our bodies. Vitamin A, being at the top of the list, works in conjunction with Vitamin D and helps us feel better all'round.

To get your Vitamin A more easily, bake your squash before separating it from the skin...it scoops away from the skin with a simple spoon. Cutting the squash in half is the hard part but if you have a cleaver and a clean area on your back deck, one good swing with the cleaver can make it truly easy to split. The simplest way to process the tons of squash we had this summer is to chop all in half right out of the garden and freeze just as they are. When you're ready to 'up' your intake of Vitamin A, thaw the halved sections, turn flesh-side down in a 9 X 13 pan in an inch of water and bake for 20 minutes to an hour...The bigger, the longer...the longer, the easier it is to scoop out.

Thanksgiving usually falls into the tried and true's of traditions and old standbys. If we were truly trying to replicate the first harvest we would be eating venison and lobster and celebrating our harvest in August and early September when the produce of the garden is plentiful. Trying new foods by growing them is only one way to tempt your palate. Buy small varieties and make Thanksgiving a ritual of helping others expand their tastes and traditions by including at least one new dish each year. Give that old green-bean-salad some competition.

Mahoney's announces new online blog with local gardening tips - Wayland, MA - Wicked Local Wayland

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:05:00 +0000

Mahoney's announces new online blog with local gardening tips - Wayland, MA - Wicked Local Wayland

Hybridization: simply put.

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:05:00 +0000

When putting the garden away from the plethora of harvesting during summer, pay attention to the fallen tomatoes. In spring, those fallen beauties create volunteer plants by the hundreds and frankly, its heartbreaking to rip them out.

Those volunteers cant be trusted especially if you have grown hybrids in your soil. Hybrids volunteers will grow the following season and every gardener should know that hybrids are a little tricky the second year. Hybrids are a combination of two parent plants pollinated with each other to create the baby fruit. The seeds from that baby tomato are the source of plants for the greenery in the greenhouses all winter and into spring when you purchase them and bring them home for your garden. Once grown however, the seeds from that hybridized tomato will create seeds that are not as reliable for the second generation.

Hybrids are created and designed by the perrson who wants to get a better tomato or better resistance to bugs in a tomato plant or both for one generation only. The parents (first generation, FG) determine the results and the seeds of the baby (second generation, SG)will develop a grandbaby-plant (third generation, TG) that includes many characteristics of the parents and not all of those characteristics are good.

When growing hybrid plants, the seeds from the grandchild-tomato (third gen.) might and usually does have the grandparent-tomato's (first gen.) dominant characteristics. Those dominant characteristics may or may not provide you with a terrific tomato or a terrific plant.

For example, tomato A and tomato B (first gen.) are pollinated together to create tomatoes on each plant. When the seeds of both are tested by growing them, the hybridizer finds that tomato A produced better tasting tomatoes that are also semi-resistant to blight while tomato B had tomatoes with little taste and a strong resistance to blight. With taste in mind the hybridizer sells tomato A's seeds as a great tasting tomato with a little resitance to blight. This hybridizer also takes tomato B's seeds (second-gen. labeled B2), grows them into plants and interpollinates the plants(A+B2 and B2 +A) again. The resulting tomato A and seeds (also second-gen. +B2) on tomato A the second time is a significant resistance to blight and a fairly good tasting tomatoes. The resulting tomato on B2 is a fabulous sweet tasting tomato with moderate resistance to blight. He (the hybridizer) sells seeds from tomato A but this time it is with the advertisement of a terrific resistance to blight as well as good flavor. He also sells the resulting seeds from B2 as a fabulously sweet tomato with good resistance to blight.

We grow those tomatoes at home and the resulting harvest is substantial and wonderful in taste. Our thoughts are to grow another (third) generation of the same and we save the seeds. The following year, we plant the saved seeds on the window sill inside, we nurture, water, fertilize and carefully transplant to the garden and nurture, water, and fertilize even more. When it is time to harvest the first tomato, the taste of the tomato is horrible (similar to tomato B's taste) and we have no idea why.

The reason? The dominant gene for taste in tomato B is still in the DNA of the third generation tomato seed (B2) and being the dominant DNA, the taste is what comes though into the third generation of seeds.

Why did it do that? Tomato A was missing during pollination. Without tomato A's pollen, the dominant DNA for taste was missing and the strongest gene for taste came from the original grandparent tomato B.

This is why so many gardeners are returning to heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes naturally have terrific taste, and resistance to blight. Heirlooms also are open polinated meaning that any tomato plant can pollinate them during their offspring cycle. The resulting seed is hybridized but it is a hybridization of two open pollinatted plants and many of those plants have terrific characterisitics. There is one problem though. When you harvest from an open pollinated tomato plant, the resulting seed next spring may not produce the same characteristics as the parents. This is due to natures open pollination system and you will have a hybridized plant.

Avoid this is by planting the different tomato species 200 feet apart and not down wind from each other. You could also plant them on either end of the house. This will stop the bees (and other pollinators) from visiting plants consecutively and pollinating all the open pollinated plants at the same time. Of course you could also go to extremes and plant them in a closed environment to make sure that the tomatoes are not hybridized with and to each other.

Disadvantages for the home gardener:
This is one of the factors that gardeners face when exchanging seeds online. many garden websites have exchange groups that exchange not only plants but seeds as well. Those seeds, if they are heirloom, may not be true to form and they might produce non-true tomatoes (or whatever else you are trading) the following year. If you exchange seeds or plants, be watchful of this problem and don't exchange what you have unless you know it is true to form.

Advantages for the home gardener:
If you are into hybridization yourself or would simply like to try it for the first time. Plant two different species of heirloom tomatoes on one side of your home. Choose a wall that is out of the wind and is exposed to at least twelve hours of light per day mid-summer. When summer comes the wind changes a bit here in the valley, so be sure your tomatos are not being pressed against the wall by the wind. This will also ensure that the wind is coming from the opposite direction so the tomatoes are protected from the wind. You are not protecting the tomatoes from the wind, but from the pollen carried on the wind. If you want to hybridize tomatoes, this is very important. You do not want any other pollen to have the chance of reaching the blossoms of your tomatoes.

Waiting a year to see what your results are is the hard part but you may find that you are truely good at this hybridization "thing" and want to do it again. Enjoy!!!!

August 8th, 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:40:00 +0000

Garden Journal

August 9th, 2010 8:30 a.m.

We picked 5 lbs of vegetables out of the north garden yesterday while Cathy was here. The kids were really well behaved and had a great time pulling out the potatoes from the garden. They had planted them in the spring and wanted to pull them out to see what they grew into. We had planted russets that were rotten from the pantry closet. They were half rotted when we put them into the ground but when they came out they had repaired themselves and grown baby potatoes too: As a result, we ended up with five potatoes to every one we planted. Most of the potatoes were small sized but that is because they didn’t have the whole summer to grow. When we pull them up in October, most of the potatoes will be of good size and we will be able to store them or can them with some acid sauce. Perhaps that is why German potato salad tastes the way it does...they can their potatoes with vinegar and a hot water bath. Now it all makes sense. Duh. For years, I have wondered why Germans made their potato salad that way (ever since I went to a German restaurant at 12 years old and had some real German salad; so, now I know; and it was so simple to figure out. That is almost forty years of “duh”; Geesh; and my mother would agree: LOL.

The damsel and dragonflies are out in force this morning: Big black monster-bugs flying around the garden eating up god-knows-what. There also seems to be a host of them flying around in this humid early morning sunshine. I will research what they eat: probably there are tons of good little bugs here... due to our organic way of doing things around here.

I know that there are a few zucchini out there in the north garden. I should probably look to see if any are ready to pick today. I will do it after sundown tonight. The humidity is oppressive today and probably not going to quit until the sun goes down. The air is so still, with the exception of the crickets: not a breeze to-be-had until a few minutes ago. Now that the breeze is about ½ mph occasionally, there will be some coolness in the shade if we dare.

We will be venturing forth to get a truckload (or two) of manure for the north back garden. We are preparing it for spring and a corn patch. We will have to weed-whack the next section, cover it with black plastic and rocks and let it heat up in the sun for a few days to kill the grass. We are hoping for a decent amount of gardening space next year. The condition of our current garden is overfilled. The squash vines are taking-over. The tomatoes are indeterminate so they are growing beyond their trellis. The bush beans are in the shade of the squash. The peppers are not producing at all. The potatoes are struggling to survive the bugs that want to eat their leaves. Molasses seems to keep them at bay though. The cleome is growing exponentially behind the tomatoes and next year I may use them for supports of the tomatoes. The sage, rosemary, and artemisia are un-noticeable under the canopy but they are doing their job very well by deterring the various bugs that do not like their odor.

The tomatoes are not ripening now but when they do, we will be up to our ears in sauce. We plan to can everything from the garden this year. We will be eating zucchini until spring: LOL. We have zucchini-vines (that grow little baseball fruit); zucchini bush plants and both kinds of summer squash plants too. The summer squash grow a little differently. The squash look like a crookneck with all the bumps on them but without the crooked neck. When small, the squash are lime green and rarely turn yellow before they are ready to pick. We are mixing them with the zucchini and blanching them before putting them in the freezer. We are also adding them to our recipe of spaghetti sauce stew: a very chunky sauce that is loaded with vegetables added to rice or spaghetti.

As we were cutting them all yesterday (about 5 lbs. of them) we ran into what we thought was a zucchini but tasted like a pumpkin. We added it to the mix anyway. Daniel wanted to know how I knew it was a pumpkin because it was so young that the inside of it didn’t have any color. The clue was the curled line outside the seed center. This little line is very visible when cutting the fruit in half lengthwise. The difficulty determining if it is a pumpkin when un-cut remains however. The fruits seem to look all the same and the only clue to some of them is the harder than normal skin. We have a variety of pumpkins that start green and shaped like a zucchini football. As they age, they turn a darker green and it is late in the season before the start to turn orange. We have one out there in the north right now that is large than a football and very green. I think it will be a zucchini after all but when it first started, it was similar to other pumpkins in the patch so I left it there. Since it is so large and it has been on the vine for so long I will leave it there and let it winter over in the winds of winter. It will give us seeds for next year. I hope that Daniel won’t rototill the dries fruit into the garden before I can get to it next spring. That is the reason the garden this year is as it is; he rototilled the desiccated shells of zucchini and pumpkin into the patch and before we knew it, we had vines everywhere. The benefit of it is that there are very few weeds and so much thickness to the three-foot canopy that the soil is able to retain its moisture for a week. Watering is less frequent than it would have to be without the canopy. Even so, we water every other day.

I think that I want to build some self-watering containers this year for everyone as Christmas gifts. I found some information online that will help do the whole job for less than $6 for each container. I think that I can build one for each person and that would give each couple two large containers to grow tomatoes or peppers or corn and they will be self watering so they would only require watering once a week or so. So, the adults are covered this year and all I have to worry about are the kids. Even Jessa (daughter) might like to have a self-waterier.

The requirements for the self waterier:

18-30 gallon tote with lid:

pvc tube 20 inches long:

a styrofoam ball that will fit into the pvc tube;

a dowel that is 20 inches long;

a piece of linoleum flooring

and some left over yogurt cups and perhaps a large yogurt cup as well for the well in the bottom:

A drill with a drill bit for 5/16th holes.

I will show you pictures as I make it. I have all the equipment to do it except the tote so it shouldn’t be too hard to make. I can pick up some green totes at home depot and the styrofoam balls and dowels at the wally-mart craft department. Perhaps they carry the at home depot too but we shall see. I should be able to use the prize money from the fair to get the stuff. Oh, the fair.

I won prizes at the fair for what I entered. I entered:

Oil landscape: Red sky at night: ocean theme: blue ribbon: first place

Oil Still Life: Sunflowers: garden theme: blue ribbon: first place

Tea cup bouquet from flowers in the garden: blue ribbon: first place

Bouquet in clock: red ribbon: second

Bouquet of only green foliage: red: second

Bread: white ribbon: third place.

The person who runs the fair, Jody, said that the judge was truly impressed with the paintings. I am so glad that I finally received a ribbon on my work. I have never won anything so this was quite a surprise. I guess a little money for winning doesn’t hurt either. I forgot all about the pot rosemary that I entered. I don’t even know if the rosemary is still in the building. What a goof I am. I will have to call the person who runs the whole thing and see if I can get it. It was my largest rosemary and I wanted it to have a place of honor in the kitchen window during the winter this year, but if it is dead from the hot building then I guess I will have to take the one from the garden to use.

Being hot today, perhaps it is a great day to mow the lawn. Daniel woke up at 12 noon so we can mow and then get manure. Perhaps we might even get to the weed whacking today as well. I would love to fill the herb beds with this manure. The herbs would love it. If I could get them filled, they would have a couple of months to get on their feet to survive the winter. That would be awesome but perhaps that is too much to ask for this time of year. We should get the manure before we mow I think. We disturb people to get the manure because they have to run the tractor. I wish I could send some to Barb. She always complains that she doesn’t have good soil down there in the trailer park. I suppose she is right: Years of being near pavement and have water pipes near the surface there provides the soil with temperatures that are too high for good growth. Barb would love to have a self waterier. What a hoot. I could give everyone, one of those. Imagine giving individually wrapped gifts. : individually wrapped styrofoam balls, sticks, used yogurt cups, zip-ties from garbage bags, pre-drilled linoleum, and pre-drilled pipe etc: What a funny AND a great idea!

Happy Christmas thinking during this oppressive heat!!!!!!!!!!!

August notes

noreply@blogger.com (Pioneer Valley Gardening) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:30:00 +0000

August 8th, 2010

The house is still this morning, except for the increasing drone and fade away of a car passing; The dogs nails are tic-tick-ticking on the kitchen floor and I hear them crumbling food on the back porch. The coffee maker is grumbling like a sleepy child and dripping the dark elixir of early morning life. As I sit here and think about it, it is not the quiet that is so peaceful, but the noise: Even the crickets are humming a waking tune that will turn into a drone by days end. Its funny how a person’s attitude can change during the day. The same noise we hear in the morning that can be so peaceful, can also be so annoying by the end of the day...is it fatigue or simply mental issues? Most of us are not paying enough attention to ever know but it is perhaps because most of us dont take the time to give-a-damn.

Daniel and I have discussed the green-bean production at length: Trying to figure out why the beans are produced on the east side of the trellis and not the west. We have watched the sun during the day at length as well and perhaps the light has something to do with it but we think it is a combination of several factors. The trellis is lying lengthwise from south to north. In hindsight, we should have laid it east to west and braced it vertically rather than horizontally. I had to add some tripods (camera) to the growing beans because they kept stretching towards the sun ever taller and seemed to be happiest with height. Perhaps next year we will change the climbing structure. Anyway, as they are this year, they are producing beans with abandon on the east side but rarely one bean on the west where the sun is located for most of the day. The only thing we can figure out is that insects prefer to pollinate in the shade. The bees hum around the plants in the shade for hours and leave the rest alone if they are in the sun. In addition to this fact, the beans seem to enjoy growing in the shade of other things. Note: We harvested some truly large beans yesterday on the bush beans in the north garden and those plants are in the shade of the squash plants.

Note: I would like to change the climbing structure to a trellis cross-patch with 1x3 boards so that the side that holds the beans faces east. Something like this:

E

N S In this way we should be able to get a more substantial harvest. Although we are a little behind. The 1X3 boards are great cause they are cheap and hard compared to the 2x4’s that you would get for construction. Perhaps we will build a few of them for all the gardens. It would be nice to have several around the herb gardens.

The Little Gem squash plants seem to be the flying saucer type. They will be orange and round on top and perhaps a lighter shade of orange on the bottom with a circle at the base of the bowl. I have to look these up online to determine the best way to store them since that is all we have. We did not get any butternut squash this year and that is a mistake from the seed company. All we have is this saucer type. This is very discouraging. We planted a ton of seeds for that.

Daniel was noticing that due to the crowded conditions of the garden that there are not very many weeds and the soil tends to retain any moisture it gets by hose or rain: Very good observation on his part. He said that he would like everything to be uniform in the garden but that he can see why the mish-mash of plants we have out there in the north, works for the plants. I reminded him that in nature, all plants grow where they are most comfortable for the further development of the species. This is true in nature but if you can replicate it in the home garden, then you will have and abundance of any one crop or possibly two. Due to the nature of the heirloom, seeds that we planted some of them have cross-pollinated and formed a new type of plant and fruit. We have some summer squash that is simply not forming like squash. The color is off; a lime green instead of a yellow. Moreover, the shape is not what it should be: a teardrop instead of a long neck. I think this is because other plants that have those characteristics are blooming very close and the bees are pollinating the sum. Squash with pollinators from the vine zucchini and the pumpkin. We have several zucchini in the area (north) that simply have not developed fruit until now. Now that they have started, they will take over for the ones that have been developing fruit all spring and summer.

Perhaps next year we will cover the garden with clear plastic to warm up the soil prior to planting so that the plants can feel at home right-off: if we have the plastic and if there is some time to do it without snow on the ground (like this spring, we had five feet the last spring snowstorm)

There are some pumpkins out there (north) that have developed and are now growing as an orange ball. They first grew as yellow fruit and I thought they were a vine zucchini. Then they gradually turned to yellow orange and developed ridges vertically from stem to floor. As the ridges became more prominent, the orange color increased and now they are bright orange.

August 7 th, 2010

Went tagging with Samantha today allllllllllll day-What fun. Then we, Dan and I, pulled out 9 lbs. of veggies from the garden tonight at 6:30 p.m. after Sam left. Zucchini and summer squash mostly but we also got a suitable amount of green beans from the bush bean plants in the north garden, enough for two servings, maybe three. We pulled three small carrots out of the ground just for a taste and they were the sweetest things we have tasted since blueberries.

August 6, 2010

Oh, we went to visit the goat farm a 6 johnnycake hill rd today (sandy’s place) and there is this cute little goat all covered with patches of black and white: So-o-o-o cute. I always wanted a goat or two for milk and cheese and soap but Daniel doesn’t like the way they taste so sheep is what he wants. I think he didn’t cook the goat in the freezer right so it didn’t taste that good. I suppose when things are real tough, you wouldn’t mind tough meat but I wouldn’t want the goats to eat anyway. I would want them for milk, soap and cheese. That would be the best thing to have them for and two would do it. Daniel always thinks of meat. I think of other protein sources. That way you can have both. One flake of hay per day per goat is two into one bale is 5 days which is five-6 bales per month of the cheap hay = 15.00-20.00. One bag of grain for three months for two goats unless pregnant or breast-feeding. So that is about 25.00 per month it would cost to feed them through the winter and during the summer it would be less due to the fresh grass they would get in the field. Goats need copper to have health so feed them out of a copper bowl for water and of course keep grain on hand for vitamins etc. Grain is especially for nutrients that the hay cannot provide. Of course we would have to find a source of cheap hay. We do not have that now but it would be easy to find since goats like the chafe of hay rather than the alfalfa stuff. The hooves have to be trimmed though. Not a tough job but it has to be done every six weeks or so. In addition, of course, the shots that have to be done in spring and fall. Too much work.

All the information I have written in the last three days has disappeared in the Netherlands of this computer. Perhaps it just didn’t get saved but if you find it anywhere here, just add it to the mix. I will rewrite it all again here. ..I hope.

The chickens are fighting over laying space this morning. I swear that at times there seems to be a bee in their tail feathers because they seem to run around unexpectedly and rush to the south end of the yard. It is funny to watch. In November they will be moved to the inside and then there wont be so much to laugh at.

In the last three days I have noted that the cucumbers have been growing exponentially. It has been a real treasure to look up all the different methods of growing cukes but the method that provided the most response was burying a hard boiled egg under the plants at the center of the triangle. I will have to remember that for next year.

Remember for next year:

Hardboiled egg with cukes

Tea = nitrogen for corn and peas.

Beans:pole

In the south garden we have been watching the beans: pole beans. The beans seem to be profilically producing beans on the east side of the trellises but not on the west side. We have a couple of theories as to why this is happening. It is possible that the insect are pollinating on the shaded side of the plant more often than the non-shaded part. The beans are planted south to north and the east side is in the shade most of the day. This offered more time for the plants to get pollinated on the east side than the west. The west side of the plant is in the sun most of the day and we get one bean a week from that side. We have watched the insect situations around the gardens and have noticed that the bees especially prefer to eat in the shade. On the sunflower plants, they always pick a shaded flower to do their business so this theory may not be too far out of the realm of the cause.

Another theory is that the bean plants themselves seem to like growing towards the east, much like a sunflower. There are a few flower buds on the west side but most of the flowers are on the east side. This in combination with the insect preference may be the combination theory that is the most likely.

The bush beans in the south garden are not producing much at all. Perhaps the shade is the cause but based on the above information, that seems unlikely. The flower buds are healthy enough as are the plants but perhaps they were delayed by the lack of water just enough to develop later than others.

Soaker Hoses:

The soakers are placed in the north garden in amongst the plants and curled around the base of the tomatoes in the north edge.

August 2, 2010 picking today

Get Daniel to bring out two sets of glasses to pic beans: Wouldn't do it, But did find the peas.

Tended compost tea: put in two bottles of left over tea bags and left over pot of coffee and grounds. PUT COFFEE GROUNDS AND LEFT OVER COFFEE IN BLUEBERRIES.

North-garden:

Pick:

Three zucchini: 5

peas: north garden snap and south garden whole

pole beans: four servings

summer squash near arbor seat: two

Check:

tomatoes: RE: # of tom's and status: trimmed and tied up more

Check potatoes: poured somemolasses on the leaves to deter pests.

Chores:

thin tomatos by cutting excess leaves: trim tops: Y

Use poles to divert tom's away from squash: nope

use poles to divert squash away from pole beans: nope

Find all basil, sage, rosemary and mark with pole: nope 1/2

tie up grapes: garbage bag ties? Y

status of corn: Y:nothing coming up yet

Spray fungicide on potatoes: put molasses on it

Rhubarb Pull: # of stalks: pulled forty stems; some broke but many came out easily.: Rhubarb needs to be divided

South-Garden:

Pick:

pole beans: some: 3-5

cherry tomatoes: tied and trimmed

peas: 3 good sixed at north end of south garden

tomato's: plenty of plums and large

Check:

soy beans: some are producing pods now.

cukes: many cukes being developed from the hard boiled egg that was planted with them two weeks ago: molasses added to the soil today.

yellow beans: five today on two plants

Chores:

tie up cukes: tied and found a large cuke in the bottom of the plant on the north side of tire.

molasses to cukes in #1 bed and #5 tire. NEED TO PLANT A HARDBOILED EGG WITH THE CUE AND THE SUM. SQUASH.

Fertilize with homemade fertilizer: research and create: do today. Aug 3.

August 2, 2010

We tried to use the Journal program for this journal but it didn’t workout so the journal is here in MS office. We hope that it will be better managed over time.

We didn’t write a journal for most of the summer or planting days. We have been so busy keeping up with all the planting, transplanting, growing, watering and general garden chores that there is rarely a time to write about it. We have learned so much this summer though, so we are going to write about it here. We hope that thiswill remain a record of our triumphs and failures as a reminder of what to do next year and the year after that.

The north garden this year is stupendous. Daniel decided to rototill the hay under and turn it all over so that the fresh dirt would be on top. This provided us with weeds for a while but we went out, weeded the entire area and layered more hay to prevent the seed seeds from germinating. Now that the plants are growing leaps and bounds, there is no sun touching the ground and the weeds are not growing much at all, except here and there.

The south garden is equally terrific with all the harvest we are getting out of there. Summer squash, tomatoes (are coming) and of course the peas and poles beans are continually putting out most days. We are looking forward to the brussell sprouts after the hard freezes of winter setting in and the cabbage will make wonderful sauerkraut for the winter (oo-oo-h, and galumpki’s:) Here’s South Garden setup as it stands now. We have learned a bit from this setup and there are things we will do differently next year.

Pb = pole beans:

p = Peas= p

sp = Snow peas:

bp = Bell peppers:

cp = Chili Peppers:

Po = potatoes:

Ck = cukes:

T= toms:

SQ= squash:

Z = zucchini:

Cb= cabbage:

BS = brussel sprouts:

Bc= Bok Choy:

sb =Soy Beans:

Bl = broccoli:

L = lettuce:

R = radish:

S = spinach:

Cl = celery:

V= volunteers

Herbs:

B= basil:

Cm = comfrey:

PT = peppermint:

ST = stinging nettles:

What we grew this summer:

The south-garden was formed in raised beds made out of old 2 x 6’s and tires. The best source of growing conditions are the tires of course because they are deeper. There are only a few vegetables out there but they are terrific so far.

We set it up like this. The rectangles are the raised beds made out of boards and the circles are the tires. The sun is a designation for time of day that the sun hits the raised bed. This is necessary information if you need to determine what plant or seed to place for the right amount of sun. Some plants require more sun than others. We were fairly successful this year. Now that we have a more acurate record we will be able to plan more efficiently for next year.

A summer squash that I didn’t plant has been producing a great amount of squash. We pick a beautiful one about every four-five days.

The cukes growing in tires have been doing really well. We get about two per week from the three long plants. We have trellised them well but they still lie to grow to the ground so the plant is hanging in some places and the cukes continue to grow on it.

August 2, 2010 picking today

Tended compost tea: put in two bottles of left over tea bags and left over pot of coffee and grounds. PUT COFFEE GROUNDS AND LEFT OVER COFFEE IN BLUEBERRIES.

North-garden:

Pick:

Three zucchini: 5

peas: north garden snap and south garden whole

pole beans: four servings

summer squash near arbor seat: two

Check:

tomatoes: RE: # of tom's and status: trimmed and tied up more

Check potatoes: poured some molasses on the leaves to deter pests.

Chores:

thin tomatos by cutting excess leaves: trim tops: Y

Use poles to divert tom's away from squash: nope

use poles to divert squash away from pole beans: nope

Find all basil, sage, rosemary and mark with pole: nope 1/2

tie up grapes: garbage bag ties? Y

status of corn: Y:nothing coming up yet

Spray fungicide on potatoes: put molasses on it

Rhubarb Pull: # of stalks: pulled forty stems; some broke but many came out easily.: Rhubarb needs to be divided

South-Garden:

Pick:

pole beans: some: 3-5

cherry tomatoes: tied and trimmed

peas: 3 good sixed at north end of south garden

tomato's: plenty of plums and large

Check:

soy beans: some are producing pods now.

cukes: many cukes being developed from the hard boiled egg that was planted with them two weeks ago: molasses added to the soil today.

yellow beans: five today on two plants

Chores:

tie up cukes: tied and found a large cuke in the bottom of the plant on the north side of tire.

molasses to cukes in #1 bed and #5 tire. NEED TO PLANT A HARDBOILED EGG WITH THE CUKEs AND THE SUM. SQUASH. For the best and most prolific production: Incredible. In addition, molasses helps with the cukes.

Fertilize with homemade fertilizer: research and create: do today. Aug 3.

August 1, 2010

August Garden Jobs

Compost needs watering during dry periods so that it remains active. Even microbes need water in this heat: Water with left over tea water and watery vegetables leavings from canning projects. Keep a bucket for left over nutrient filled water on the back porch and haul it to the compost daily.

Don’t let your compost get too hot during this time of year. The microbes can’t survive this type of heat and if you cover your compost there are many organisms that can’t survive it. Keep your compost open and only cover it with leaves and water weekly to maintain the wetness it needs to decompose the refuse you put into the pile.

Rhodes:

If you prune your shrubs, keep in mind that rhododendrons and azaleas bloom on last year’s growth. Those little buds you see on the plant will not bloom this year, but they will develop over winter, ripen during the warming temperatures of spring, and then burst into bloom. Keep your Rhodes and azaleas protected during winter and only prune them the week after they have all their blooms go by. This will ensure a flowering plant next year and keep your spring garden beautiful. If you must prune at all, prune to retain their shape. If you prune right back to the ground (or close to it) so that the front of the house can be seen, wait a while for any new leaves to come back onto the plant. It might take a year, but new leaves will come back and the bushes will be beautiful again in a couple of years. Give them the time, fertilize spring/mid-summer, and patience they require to overcome such a severe pruning. These resilient plants will reward you for your patience.

Mid-August through September is a good time to transplant any shrubs that you've purchased with root balls wrapped in burlap. Make sure you get them in the ground two to three days after purchase. Do not fertilize until the second year, after the feeder roots have become established.

Lawns:

If you have bare spots in your lawn, give it a does of coca cola and sugar and water it in. You can also reseed with this mixture, then cover with hay or sawdust and water daily until you see new sprouts.: Water at night for a half hour, instead of during the daylight sun hours. This will save you water and you will get the most out of the watering you do. The water won’t evaporate as soon as it hits the ground if you water at night. This type of watering can also be done in the garden if you use the soaker hose method. It is important to keep the leaves of plants dry during the night to prevent mildew and disease but watering at night can help the garden keep the moisture for a long period rather than letting it evaporate immediately during sunlight hours.

Lawns or bare spots reseeded with grass now will have a chance to get established before winter sets in: Water for short periods while waiting for the seeds to sprout and mulch with hay to help retain the water on the soil surface. Then when the grass is growing, you can water ore deeply less often as the grass grows.

Plant for indoor enjoyment:

You can still enjoy garden flowers indoors. Sow these annuals inside: sweet alyssum, dwarf marigold, ageratum, and nasturtium. Grow them in a moderately cool (60 degrees F), sunny window. In colder regions, houseplants that have been outside for the summer should be brought in at the end of this month. A sudden cold spell will be too much of a shock for them to survive. This is also a good time to take cuttings.

Bulbs:

Plant fall-flowering bulbs now through september. Add a wire cage and some chili powder if you have moles in your yard. The squirrels and moles do not appreciatte the smell or the taste of chili powder. This works for newly transplanted shrubs as well..

Gladiolas:

Cut gladiolas in the garden for indoor appreciation but leave two or three leaves on the bulb so the bulb can mature and get nutrition for winter storage. This is called ripening and is what is done for daffocils and tulips in spring as well.

Oriental Poppies:

Transplant any Oriental poppies you have to another spot now. This month is when the Poppies are ready for a move and will have time to develop sufficient root systems to survive the winter months and cold.

Growing rocks?:

If you have a Rock-garden now is the time to check the plants to determine if any need to be moved around. Thinning the plants in a rock garden is paramount to having a healthy looking garden next spring. This will also help the plants be active come spring and flourish during the summer.

Sow, Sow, Sow:

Certain perennials and annuals can be sown now for spring growth and summer bloom. Some seeds require a winters worth of cold in order to germinate. Sow: aquilegia, Phlox paniculata, digitalis, centaurea, echinacea, nasturtium, heirloom tomatoes, cosmos, beebalm, rudbeckia, sedums, liatris, loostestrife, sunflowers, kale, and primrose.

Delphiniums have the talent of providing a second bloom, albeit smaller, if you cut the decaying flower stalk off at the ground. The flowers of the delphinium can survive cooler nights than most flowers and will give the garden an autumn boost of color when everything else is turning brown from the cold.

Irises:

Siberian and Japanese iries love to have their feet wet but them dont like standing water up to their knees. Transplant you irises after they bloom straight-away. This will give them time to produce roots to survive the winter cold. Being delicate as they are is difficult but worthy of transplanting them during this oppressive heat.

Garden:

Check your vegetable garden daily. There will always be something to harvest. The zucchini seem to grow over night and those small un-pickable green gems that were not ready yesterday may be ready today. The green beans seem to be more prolific after a cooler night so even if the rest of the garden is taking a break, check your peas and beans after some cooler nights and you may find a second harvest coming in when you least expect it. Harvesting daily will provide growth of new vegetables due to the nutrition replacement after picking. The small beans that are waiting to get their share will suddenly burst in growth after the larger beans are picked. This is true for the zucchini and the summer squash too.

The flowers on your herb plants should be active. If you want to harvest from that flowering herb, cut off the flowers and wait two weeks to harvest. The plant will return its valuable nutrients and oils to the leaves and try to produce more blooms. If you see any blooms cut them off at the pass and the herb will be ready to harvest when the leaves are deep green and moist. Wash, Dry and tie them before hanging in a breezy shaded spot. When dry, crunch the herbs into a zip lock container or a canister for winter use. This can be done every couple of weeks if you feel the need to supply yourself with peppermint tea for the winter. Remember that the maximum flavor of the herbs is just before flowering so keeping them fro flowering or on the verge of flowering offers you the best taste.

Potatoes often climb to the surface of the soil. If you find any of those delectable dirt lovers above the soil, mulch or cover with soil without disturbing the soil around the tuber. The roots of the tuber will thank you and develop more potatoes as the summer pass by.

Asparagus:

Asparagus is grown in a trench for the best flavor, just like green peppers. This is the month that Asparagus gets its last filling in the trench...compost and leavings from grass cuttings are the best source of nutrition for the new growth in the spring. Nitrogen is the best for the green sprouts that come in spring. Let them sit in decaying matter over the winter and they will produce well in the spring.

Peas are a terrific cool weather vegetable but the peas you planted in the spring are now, or should be, dry and decaying and turning brownish-white due to age and powdery mildew. This is normal and it is tie to remove the dead vines and re-nutrient the soil. At this point, they have taken nitrogen out of the air and set it into the soil but new peas will need more as well. You can add tea water from left over tea bags, compost tea and compost for a new bed of peas or plant pole beans in their place for more cool season harvest of that luscious green starch. If the peas show signs of powdery mildew, don’t put them in the compost pile, burn them instead and use the ashes in the compost pile.

Melons in the garden should be fairly-large at this time of year. Squash as well. Wireworms can infiltrate the healthiest of melons and destroy a perfectly wonderful looking melon in days. Separate the melons and heavy squash from the soil by placing boards or aluminum foil (too expensive) on the ground under the melons. This will prevent most of those insidious worms from gaining access to your prize worthy melons and round squash.

Raspberries are spent by August. The old canes need to be trimmed off the plant so that the new canes can continue their growth in preparation for fruit production next year. Tip the tall growth of your new canes now and let them branch out. The more branches the more flowers and fruit. Cutting off the old canes will allow all the nutrition that your compost and grass leavings are providing to focus on the new growth. By spring, you will have an abundance of flowers, which will fruit in July.

If you enjoy container gardening, keep in mind that perennials in containers need repotting. Most experts report that repotting needs to be done every two to three years but in this humble gardener’s experience, repotting should be done prior to every fall for the best performance the following summer. This is especially true if you are growing blueberries in a container. The fresh soil, which houses important microbes and nutrients, can only help the perennials be as healthy as possible.

If flowers in your gardens are lacking this time of year, visiting a nursery and checking out what blooms is not always the best answer. Many nursery and garden centers have plants that have been forced to blooming early spring when sales for gardening are at the peak of the season. These plants may be bloomers all year in the ground but in a container, they may use up all the fertility of the soil and not show their beauty until next year, after they have settled into the ground. Check online for autumn to September flowering plants. Caryopteris, perennial helianthus, coleus, bee balm, phlox paniculata, liatris, rudbeckia, cleome (annual) loosestrife, Echinacea and portulaca (annual) are all terrific fillers in the garden when the heat is oppressive.