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Gardening Tips: Fall is a great time for planting

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Posted: Friday, March 28, 2014 1:25 pm

Gardening Tips: Fall is a great time for planting


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With spring officially here, many of us will soon turn our attention to our landscapes. Often, we spend a lot of time and money adding trees, shrubs and bedding plants to our landscapes at this time. Planting during springtime is tricky. Most plants put most of their energy into top growth and flowering during the spring and summer. This means the plants are often using more energy than their root system can support. It’s important then to ensure planting is done properly and with as little stress on the plant as possible.

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Friday, March 28, 2014 1:25 pm.

Filed Under: gardening tips

This week’s gardening tips: fertilizing roses, battling buck moth caterpillars … – The Times

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Fertilize roses now if you have not already done so, as well as spraying for disease and insect problems. For convenience, use a material that combines an insecticide and a fungicide in the same product such as Ortho Orthenex or Ferti-lome Triple Action.

  • Check your oak trees for masses of young, black buck moth caterpillars, and consider having your tree sprayed of you see large numbers. Don’t wait until the caterpillars start crawling down the tree trunk or falling from the branches to spray.
  • Keep your Louisiana irises well watered now while they flower and through mid-summer. Remove any developing seed pods after flowering is finished.
  • Prune spring flowering trees and shrubs any time after they finish flowering. Have a specific purpose in mind before you begin pruning, and prune carefully to accomplish it. Unless you are creating special shapes, such as clipped hedges or topiary, try to work with and preserve the natural form of the shrub when you are pruning.
  • Mark your calendar for the Spring Garden Show at the New Orleans
    Botanical Garden, April 5 and 6. The show will be from 10:00 a.m. to
    5:00 p.m. both days and includes plant and garden products exhibits and
    sales, educational programs, music, Kids Discovery Area and more.
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Spring Gardening Tips

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The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Eliza Fournier joins us to talk about spring gardening. She brings tips and reminders on how to clear out the damage from a long Chicago winter and prepare for bountiful seasons ahead.

View a slideshow and read tips on how to start your own garden below.

Kathie Hayden, Manager of Plant Information Services at the Chicago Botanic Garden, gave us 5 foolproof tips on how to start a garden (for those of us who don’t have a green thumb!)

5 Tips on How to Start your Own Garden 

1 – Decide what type of garden you want to grow

Hayden: “What type of garden are you looking to grow? What plants interest you? What appeals to you the most? Vegetables? Perennials? Something with lots of colors? Annual? Trees and shrubs? Native plants?”

2 – Determining Light Requirements

“You need to really study how much sun you have, how much shade you have, locations for planting, etc. It is critical that you plant the right plant in the right place. If you put something requiring full sun in a shady garden, you are doomed for failure no matter what you plant.”

Sun vs. Shade

3 – Compost, compost, compost

“No matter what your soil is like, it can always use compost. I can’t say enough about that. If the soil has not been worked in a while, it’s desperately needing compost. If it has been worked, if you move to a new home and there were gardeners in the house previously, it can’t hurt to add compost.”

4 – Purchase healthy plants

“If you are viewing plants that are off-color or have spots, or are smaller or have an unhealthy look, don’t buy them. It’s important to purchase healthy plants, preferably from a local source.”

5 – Don’t Kill Your Plants with Kindness

“Once your plants are established, which can take 2-3 years, don’t over-water them. With the exception of annuals, plants are resilient. During the drought a few years back, people were over-watering their plants. They killed their plants with kindness. Established plants, perennials, trees and shrubs only require one inch of water, once a week. And native plants don’t require that much water. If you have nutritious soil and add compost on a yearly basis, maybe you don’t need to fertilize.”

 

~ Photos courtesy of Chicago Botanic Garden

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Bunny Guinness’s top tips for spring gardening

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Thrips are the biggest problem for commercial growers. Patrick Allpress, who
grows a thousand acres and is chair of britishleeks.co.uk, recommends
lightly and regularly watering leeks in July and August when it is dry,
which gives good control.Patrick harvests leeks from July to May. They sell
baby leeks, ideal for stir fries and soups, as well as large ones.

Leeks can be sown from February to May, with the earlier ones under cover, so
get some varieties in now. The new hybrids such as Belton
(dtbrownseeds.co.uk) and Krypton (marshalls-seeds.co.uk) stand well through
the winter, have good flavour and are easy to grow.

Wasabi is my new hot vegetable. It is a beautiful plant, with mid-green, lush
leaves and white flowers. Tom Amery, of the Wasabi Company exports his to
Spain, Italy and Portugal. He says that over the years it has survived
minus 20C. They grow it in gravel beds surrounded by running water which
moderates the temperature. This growing method is called “Sawa”. I am
growing it using the “Oka” growing method (also used in Japan) whereby it
grows in soil or a pot. Mine is in a nine-litre (two-gallon) pot standing in
a saucer of water in heavy shade. In extremely cold winters, I bring it into
a more protected, shady site.

This is a must-have veg for cooks, and gardeners who love food. The pastes you
can buy are not a patch on the real thing. Research has shown that,
medicinally, wasabi is good for osteoporosis and cancer among other
conditions. I put the leaves in salad, fry them in oil and salt, and play
around with the tasty flowers, too. My plant is a year old and I will check
it to see signs of the rhizome swelling, which will probably happen later on
this year. I will lift it and use the main rhizome – by then 3-4cm (1-1½in)
in diameter and 5-10cm (2-4in) long – and then propagate new plants from the
smaller side roots. Pulling off the outside leaves (leaving the stalks on)
for eating, encourages the rhizome development. You can buy plants from the
Wasabi Company (£7.50, wasabicompany.co.uk).

Another favourite is my globe artichokes. I am about to make more by pulling
off several suckers from the outside of the plant. These will be about 20cm
(8in) long and have a couple of shoots. Pop them in a pot with grit and
compost, put in a shadyish spot and keep moist. I find this easier and
quicker than from seed.

You often find interesting seed packets when abroad. A couple of weeks ago, I
was in a Chicago supermarket, where Dill ‘Tetra’ (from Botanical Interests)
caught my eye, as it is a variety that is apparently slow to bolt. It is a
fabulous herb with fish and essential in gravlax. I will be sowing that
shortly, along with a figure-of-eight-shaped gourd called ‘Birdhouse’. Other
finds were seeds of Stevia rebaudiana, the sugar substitute – I have cut
back on sugar so may need it (from suttons.co.uk)
– and a penstemon called ‘Rocky Mountain Blue’, which is easy to grow, long
lived and blooms for a month or so. You are limited to five seed packets
outside the EU:sometimes they are a dead loss, but more often than not they
are well worth it.

*Bunny Guinness won Garden Writer of the Year at the LSL Property Press Awards

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Tips for spring gardening

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It’s the time when gardeners begin quickly clearing winter’s debris before lawn-mowing starts – and suddenly composters seem far too small.
But people with compost boxes can use those blown twigs and snipped-up shrub prunings as an aerating layer between the weeds and kitchen waste or as a good base in new compost areas.
Winter mulches should be removed to make room for planting. Also the slug eggs underneath need to be exposed to birds. The leafy and grass-clipping mulches (plus baby slugs) are best put on the compost. This is the one place where slugs belong – these critters are very good at breaking down green material.
Outside, it’s time to plant peas, broad beans, arugula, corn salad and radishes. Inside, you can start broccoli, cabbage, kale, celery, lettuce and sweet onions. A heat mat is useful for speeding up germination, but the top of a refrigerator is also a useful warm spot.
Peppers need to be started early inside because they’re not fast growers. Tomatoes, zucchini and squash are. That’s why their timing is a gamble. Because they germinate quickly and grow fast, it’s not hard to get into a situation where they’ve got so huge you have to do something, but it’s too cold to put them outside.
Heavy feeders like squash, zucchini, tomatoes and corn benefit from beds topped up with nutrients, which could be organic fertilizer or compost or manure. Compost is also a good mulch for flower beds. Some gardeners fertilize flower beds every year or two and top with bark mulch to deter weeds.
Hardy annuals that can be sown outside now include calendulas, annual poppies, Nigella, larkspur, and alyssum. As soon as we can be sure frost won’t return, nasturtiums, cosmos and phacelia can follow them.
Trees and shrubs can still be planted, but with spring plantings, it’s important to be sure you can water them regularly through hot summers. These new plantings need extra water for at least the first year.
Most potted spring-blooming bulbs can now be planted out in the garden. Hyacinths are especially useful since they are reliable bloomers and can handle shade. By now snowdrops will have finished flowering and if they’re due to be transplanted (or potted up for plant sales) this is the ideal time.
News flash: The Alpine Garden Club of B.C.’s spring show and sale will take place from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 6 in the Floral Hall, VanDusen Gardens, 5251 Oak St., Vancouver. Free admission. Sales are cash or cheque only.
Send garden questions to amarrison@shaw.ca.

© Royal City Record

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Easy gardening tips

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Tips for getting a jump on the gardening season

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Winter shows no signs of letting up in many parts of the country, and many gardeners will try to defy the odds, throw care to the wind and accelerate the beginning of the planting season with reckless abandon.

Fortunately, the downside of such a gamble is minimal. Perhaps a few flats of mushy annuals will need to be replanted. But if you’d like to improve your odds of beating Mother Nature at her own game, try a few of these tricks to jump-start your gardening season.

Apply a thick layer of organic mulch around the base of all plants. It keep the roots warmer, and helps to maintain the soil temperatures at a more even level, which can reduce the chances of the ground freezing or heaving.

Mulch will do nothing for any winter damage that occurs above ground. But as long as what’s underground is still alive, there is a good chance of partial or full recovery above.

On certain plants, such as spinach and strawberries, you can cover the entire plant in a layer of straw mulch to add an additional barrier of protection for the roots and foliage. The mulch is light enough so that it won’t smother the plants, and will allow enough light in for plants to function.

Physical barriers are another effective way to retain and capture a few extra degrees of heat while keeping killing frost off young plants. These protective covers can be the difference between survival or not, particularly for tender new plants that are placed in the ground before the last risk of frost has passed.

One common choice is known as a floating row cover. It is typically made of fabric that is strong enough to withstand the weather, but light enough to lay directly upon the plants — creating the appearance that the fabric is floating, hence its name.

Or you can support row-cover material with metal wire, conduit or PVC pipes stuck into the garden beds. The material is placed over the frame supports a few inches to a foot above the plants. It is then pulled tightly and secured around all the edges with bricks, soil or whatever you may have that is convenient and sturdy enough to hold it in place.

Row-cover material made for such purpose is designed to allow light, water and air in but provide a protective barrier from frost and pests. When the sides are secured around the bed completely, several extra degrees of warmth can be retained and could make the difference in survival for marginally hardy plants.

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Tips To Care For Gardening Tools

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Gardening is not just a house chore, it is an art which needs technique and precision. As every art form, gardening also has its ways and methods. Every gardener needs certain equipment for maintaining the garden.

There are certain tools which need to be handy and in working condition to be a good gardener.

Tips To Care For Gardening Tools

In this article, we shall discuss garden tools care maintenance required. Gardening tools are important for every gardener and they should be cared for properly. You may follow these tips to care for garden tools and equipment.

POT VEGETABLES TO GROW THIS SUMMER

Keep it clean – When you use your gardening tools, they are meant to get dirty and dust covered. To maintain the life and working efficiency of your tools, you must wash them thoroughly and clean all the mud on it. The mud does not go easily if not removed instantly. The soil removing only needs a couple of minutes. Therefore, do not keep your tools uncleaned and care for gardening tools.

Keep away from moisture – The garden tools are generally made form iron and other metals which can rust when brought in continuous contact with water. You must dry the tools as soon as the garden chores are over. This will prevent any rusting of tools because of the moisture. Keep the tools away from water sprinklers and water outlets. You will be giving good care for garden tools by keeping them away from water.

Oil the tools – To avoid further rusting of tools, you can apply a layer of oil on the tools. This helps in preventing any damage to the tools. It is a good tip to care for garden tools. Dip the tool after use every time. Before covering with oil wash the tool. Also, be careful in what oil you are using as the oil will come in direct contact with the garden plants the next time you it. This is a tip for garden tool maintenance, care and proper use.

Keep the tools sharp – There are several garden tools which are used for cutting and trimming. You must sharpen the blades of the pruners, trimmers and scissors at regular intervals. It will help in garden tool care and maintenance. This will also ensure that you will have your trimmers and scissors at handy whenever needed. This is garden care tip for garden tools.

Chemical Applications – There are some garden equipment which are supposed to be used for spraying fertilizer and storing chemical pesticides. The equipment can rust and damage because of the chemicals in contact. Therefore, clean the garden tools thoroughly after any chemical related applications. This is one important garden tools care and maintenance required. Also, use gloves when using garden tools for your own hygiene and safety.

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Tips for Organic Farmers Growing Tomatoes from Seed

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Each tomato inflorescence usually has between 4 and 12 flowers that are formed and mature sequentially on a raceme. Individual flowers are perfect, with six bright yellow petals that curve outward, away from the flower as the flower matures. The ovary can have anywhere from 2 (especially in cherry types) to 15 or more locules, which contain the ovules. The six stamens have compact fused anthers that form a yellow cone, 0.5 to 0.75 in (1.3 to 2 cm) long, that surrounds the pistil, with its style and stigma that usually terminates within the cone but can occasionally extend slightly beyond the tip of the cone, which has a small opening. The anthers have slit openings on the interior of the cone, and when pollen dehisces it will shower out of these pores with any kind of motion of the flowers, whether from wind or insect visitation.

As the anther cone of the flower usually points downward, the pollen will thoroughly cover the bulbous stigma, it is well within the anther cone as it is with most modern tomatoes, or the cone is exerted out of the tip of the cone as it often is with many heirlooms. The pollen, which is shed over a 2-day period, will usually pollinate its own stigma within the anther cone, supplying the pistil with plenty of pollen to fertilize a full complement of ovules.

However, the stigma is often receptive a day before pollen shed and remains receptive 2 or 3 days after the pollen from its flower has shed. This means that there are opportunities for crossing to occur, especially with the exerted stigma of the older varieties. When the style pushes the stigma out of the end of the anther cone, it is exposed to possible insect activity. While tomato flowers are not visited by a wide number of insect species, they are often visited by several types of bumblebees (Bombus spp.). Bumblebees have a unique way of clinging to the flowers upside down while vibrating their wings rapidly and shaking the pollen out of the cone onto their abdomen. If the stigma is exerted then it is possible that pollen on their abdomen from a previous flower can be transferred to the flower they are currently visiting, producing a cross-pollination. This is obviously much less likely to occur with more modern tomato varieties, which have stigmas that are well encased in the anther cone; other insect pollinators, however, will sometimes pry the flowers open and cause a cross to occur.

Climatic and Geographic Suitability

Tomatoes can have problems setting seed at temperatures that are too high or too low. At temperatures above 90°F (32°C) and below 60°F (16°C) the pollen of many varieties will be affected and fertilization of ovules will be impeded, both resulting in poor seed set. In extensive experiments with tomato pollination in the 1930s, Ora Smith of Cornell University found that the optimum temperature for pollen to germinate on the stigmatic surface is 85°F (29°C); at 100°F (38°C) or 50°F (10°C) pollen germination was virtually stopped. Smith found that even at favorable temperatures pollen tube growth is slow, taking 2 to 3 days to reach the ovules following pollination. This means that, even if temperatures are favorable at the time of pollination, any temperature swings below 60°F (16°C) or above 90°F (32°C) may severely slow or stop the growth of the pollen tube on its journey to the ovules. Therefore, even when the temperature for pollen tube growth is at or near the optimum during the day, if the temperature drops to lows at or near 50°F (10°C) during the night, any of the pollen tubes that started their journey within the last day or two can stop growing. Alternatively, in hot climates the pollen can germinate and start growing during the cooler temperatures of the morning or evening and then be stifled when hot temperatures approach or exceed 100°F (38°C) in the middle of the day. Once the pollen tube stops it usually will not resume growth. If this happens repeatedly over the course of the several days that the flower is receptive then there is a good chance that most of the embryos won’t be fertilized; hence the fruit won’t “set” and will abort.

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• Tips to improve your gardening in spring (391 views)

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