The seed catalogs start piling up in January. |
We speak with tens of thousands of gardeners over the course of a year, and one of the questions we’re often asked—especially by new gardeners and people who have relocated—is "Where should I purchase my flower and vegetable seeds?"
If it’s a gardener from New England, the task is easy. We tend to recommend regional companies such as Johnny’s Selected Seeds (in Maine) or Select Seeds (in Connecticut). These regional seed providers select varieties that are well-suited to our unique growing conditions.
For other regions of the country, we don’t have the advantage of personal experience, so we’re asking for your advice! Please leave a comment below and let us know which seed companies you turn to—especially for region-specific crops such as tomatoes and peppers. We’ll compile a list of regional sources, and with that in hand, will feel confident about making good recommendations to anyone who asks.
Healthy turf grows on healthy soil. It starts with a simple soil test. |
It’s been quite a while since I tested soil samples from my lawn, but it’s clearly time to do so. The turf is looking a bit thin and the weeds seem to be gaining ground. I suspect that soil pH is the source of both problems. When the pH is out of kilter, plants can’t use the nutrients in the soil around them. It’s like standing at an all-you-can-eat buffet with your jaw wired shut. Even when the soil contains plenty of phosphorus, magnesium, iron, and other minerals, plants can’t use it them if the pH is too high or too low. No matter how much fertilizer you pour on, the plants will starve.
Lawn grasses in most northern areas thrive in a pH range of 6 to 7. Most ornamental and garden plants grow best when the soil pH is between 5.5 and 7.5. On the pH scale of 0 to 14, 7.0 is neutral. Soils that have a pH higher than 7 are considered alkaline and soils that are lower than 7.0 are in the acidic range.
Soil pH is essentially a measure of the chemical "charge" in your soil. The more positive ions, the more acidic your soil; the more negative ions, the more alkaline your soil. These chemical charges cause minerals to bind more or less tightly to the soil particles, creating a tug-of-war between plant roots and soil particles.
A soil's natural pH level is primarily determined by the makeup of the native soil and the amount of rainfall in the area. In general, soils in arid regions tend to be alkaline, while those in higher-rainfall areas are acidic.
The pH of your soil determines whether certain nutrients are available to your plants or not. It also affects the activity of soil microbes, and that’s especially important to organic gardeners. Microbes are the little guys that break down compost and other organic matter into nutrients that plants can absorb. When the soil is too acidic, microbial activity slows down, which can cause a nitrogen shortage.
Weeds can be a helpful indicator as to the pH of your soil. I live in acidic-soil territory and the weeds in my lawn reflect this condition. The turf is full of dandelion, plantain and sorrel, which all thrive in acidic soil. White clover, a plant that takes nitrogen from the air and transfers it to the soil, rivals grass in much of the yard. It’s a dead give-away that there's a slowdown in microbial action and our soil lacks sufficient nitrogen to feed nitrogen-hungry turf grasses. Up the road, our neighbor’s sandy lawn has large patches of yellow and orange-flowering hawkweed or devil’s paintbrush, which along with cinquefoil, is a common weed on dry, acidic, infertile soil.
I’ll be using a home test kit to check the pH this spring, but I recommend that less-experienced gardeners send their soil samples to a testing lab. For a nominal fee, you can mail a small sample of your soil to a state and county extension service or a private soil-testing lab. They'll send back a report that gives you pH and nutrient levels and recommendations for how to correct any problems. The kits are available either directly from the testing lab or often from local garden centers. Some labs will also test levels of organic matter content and for heavy metals. Not a bad idea if you are planning to raise vegetables on reclaimed urban or industrial soils.
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
Deer discovered my garden a few years ago, so I’ve been growing more plants from their do-not-eat list. It turns out that deer, voles, chipmunks, and rabbits find alliums— plants in the onion family— distasteful. That’s great news because alliums offer a broad palette of colors, heights, bloom times, and flower forms. They are easy to grow and make excellent cut flowers for fresh or dried bouquets. They don’t take up lots of space, either, which is a bonus in my already-crowded gardens.
The tallest and most architectural alliums have big, globe-shaped flowerheads on 3- to 4-foot stems. A group of deep-purple Globemaster or Gladiator alliums is a real eye-catcher, especially when planted with white or pink peonies, delphiniums, or tall bearded iris. The white-flowering Mount Everest is a bit shorter and looks sharp in front ofshrubs with deep-green or burgundy foliage or rising out of a groundcover of periwinkle (Vinca minor).
Drought-tolerant corkscrew allium (Allium senescens ssp. montanum var. glaucum) makes a good edging plant in the dry soil at the top of my stone retaining wall. I love the way its blue-green leaves twist like loose corkscrews. It blooms in late summer. Ozawa (Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa’) is another late-bloomer that flowers from autumn right up until snowfall in my Vermont garden. Its pink flowers pair well with coreopsis, gaillardia, solidago and other fall flowers.
The most dramatic allium in my garden, though, is Allium schubertii. Its foot-wide umbels look like an exploding pink fireworks display. They never fail to elicit comments from garden visitors and coworkers when I bring them to work in a vase.
Most alliums are sold as dormant bulbs and others as potted plants, depending on their growth habit. Order the bulbs this spring or summer to plant in the fall. You can buy fall-planted alliums at Dutch Gardens, starting in late April. Look for the potted species, such as corkscrew alliums, in specialty nurseries.
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
Freshly dug parsnips |
By the middle of March, the only food I’m still eating from last year’s garden are onions, shallots and garlic. I feel pretty good about that until I think about the fact that some lucky gardeners out there are digging parsnips right around now.
I love parsnips (roasted or roasted and then pureed), but have never been able to produce more than a handful of misshapen little stumps. Considering the fact that the ideal soil for growing parsnips is deep, sandy loam, I guess it makes sense that I can’t grow them. The native soil in my garden is about 12" of clay and stones on top of an impenetrable layer of hardpan.
Years ago I saw a Victory Garden TV segment in which Roger Swain demonstrated how he grew state fair-winning parsnips. His secret was to create a special growing chamber for each parsnip. After digging out a 20” deep by 6” wide hole, he backfilled it with a special mix of sandy soil. Then he planted a seed on top, right in the center of the hole. In typical Roger Swain style, he just happened to have a few parsnips lying around that he’d produced using this method and we could see with our own eyes that they were more than 16” long and as big around as your wrist. Wow.
If you'd like to try growing parsnips, remember that unlike most vegetable seeds, which remain viable for several years, you need to purchase fresh parsnip seed each year. Sow the seeds directly into the garden spacing them at least 4” apart in every direction. Germination is SLOW. It can take 20 days or more. The top several inches of soil need to stay consistently moist during this entire time. Cover the bed with a row cover if you aren’t confident the seeds will get watered (or rained on).
Parsnips take about 100 days to mature, so get yours planted early in the spring to ensure they finish growing before the days start getting short in the fall. You can harvest your parsnips in late fall and store them in a cool, moist location, as you would carrots (in a plastic bag in your refrigerator crisper or packed in moist sand inside a black trash bag in a cool basement or garage). Don’t start eating them until they’ve spent several months in cold storage, which is what turns their starches to sugars.
In cool climates, you can also leave your parsnips right in the ground over the winter. Just cover them in the fall with 6-12" of straw to insulate them and retain moisture. Make sure you dig and eat your parsnips before the ground starts to warm up (which would be right now). Once the tops begin to sprout, the roots become soft and spongy. Yuk.
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
Windowbox by Suzanne Dandeneau, Denver, Colo. |
Spring is almost here and now is a great time to drag out your pots, planters and window boxes and get them prepped for another year. Of course the best part about this job, is it means you can start dreaming about all the great new plant combinations you're going to put IN those containers.
With that in mind, we’ve put together a short slide show with 16 of our favorite entries from last year’s window box photo contest. It takes just a couple minutes to flick through the images. You’ll get to see some inspiring plant combinations that would be equally effective planted in regular pots. In most cases there are also comments from the gardener who submitted the photo. (Just scroll below the image to see the comments). Enjoy!
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
Windowbox by Molly H. Jordan, Richmond, Va. |
You can increase your pea harvest dramatically by using an inoculant. |
There are a couple tricky things about growing garden peas. The first is planting time. Plant too early and your peas may be stunted by cold soil and frost. Plant too late and your plants may start to shrivel up from the heat just as you get ready to start picking peas.
Every year is a bit different, but generally I try to get my peas in a full month before the last frost date. (Be sure to soak the seeds in water the night before you plant them.)
Providing adequate moisture is another essential for a good crop of peas. Peas have shallow roots and are very thirsty plants. The soil around your peas should stay consistently moist, and depending on rainfall, that may require watering deeply two or three times a week.
Proper trellising
is also key. But the easiest and most dramatic way to increase your yield is to apply an inoculant at planting
time.
Peas are in the legume family, which means they have the unique ability to absorb nitrogen from the air as well as from the soil. But in order to achieve this special trick, their roots must be in the presence of a particular strain of rhizobial bacteria: Rhizobium leguminosarum biovar vicaea.
Wherever this bacteria enters the roots of the plant, it forms a hard little nodule. Inside the nodules is where the atmospheric nitrogen is converted so it can be utilized by the plant as a nutrient.
Healthy soils already contain many types of this beneficial rhizobial bacteria, but the concentration isn’t high enough to maximize performance.
A $5 envelope of inoculant contains about 1½ oz of powdered bacteria—a little more than 2 tablespoons. Though the package says it will treat 5 lbs of seed, I now use 2 packages on ½ lb of seed (planting a double row, 20 feet long) and see a significant difference in vigor and yield.
The directions on the package usually say to put your pea seeds right in the plastic envelope and shake them around until they’re coated with inoculant. I haven't found this to be very effective. Instead, I open a furrow down the entire length of the row, put in the seeds, shake a little inoculant over the top of the seeds and then cover them up.
Not all garden centers stock inoculant, so to be safe, I order mine by mail. It’s important to purchase a fresh supply each year. Make sure that you purchase the strain of Rhizobium that’s right for peas—both Johnny's Selected Seeds and Vesey's Seeds have it. Sometimes all that’s available is a blend that’s suitable for both peas and beans. That works fine, but remember roughly half of what you’re applying won’t be of any use to the peas.
Have you had good success using inoculants for your peas or beans? Leave a comment!
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
Sunflowers are now available in a wide range of colors and sizes—from little ones that get no more than 1-foot tall to 12-foot giants. |
If I could plant just one seed this spring (!) I think it would be a sunflower seed. Sunflowers deliver a whole lotta flower power in one summer. They require almost no attention at all, are fun to watch grow, and have an irresistibly happy personality.
A sunflower is also a one-stop backyard habitat station. All summer long, bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects of every kind are drawn to their pollen-rich centers. Bees pack their little leg pouches with yellow pollen until they can barely fly. Then, as fall approaches and seeds form, your garden will be filled with the happy munching of goldfinches, chickadees and sparrows.
Sunflowers belong to the genus helianthus, which is a North American native plant. There are dozens of helianthus species that have acclimatized to all kinds of growing conditions, from swamps and woodland edges to prairies and arid canyons. Fortunately for gardeners, plant breeders have had lots of fun playing with helianthus and the result is a fabulous array of growth habits and flower forms to choose from. The 2008 Johnny’s Selected Seeds catalog lists 42 varieties!
Every garden has room for at least one sunflower. There are 12-foot giants to amaze the kids, such as the old favorite Mammoth Russian and Kong, both available from Stokes Seeds, and Sunzilla from Renee's Garden. There are kid-size varieties, such as Music Box, and Big Smile and Teddy Bear that get no more than about 3 feet high. No time or space for a garden? Sunny Smile is bred to grow and flower in pots and stays just 15-20” tall. Multi-stem sunflowers are specially bred for cutting, with Valentine, Autumn Beauty and Sunbright being three of the best.
Sunflowers are now available in a wide range of colors, too. On one end of the spectrum is Italian White, followed by pale primrose yellow Pro Cut Lemon and Starburst Lemon Aura. For a classic golden yellow sunflower, you might want to choose Sonja. There are two-tone colors including Strawberry Blonde and Ring of Fire, and I’m also a fan of the deep burgundy and brown colors such as Claret, Velvet Queen, Moulin Rouge and Chocolate.
Teddy Bear sunflowers |
Though I don’t care for them myself, lots of people are mad about the pom-pom sunflowers, such as Teddy Bear and Tohoku Yae. For a totally new look, you might try Sparky, with narrow, quill-like petals around a dark chocolate center.
From this dazzling array of choices, I’ve picked just two for my 2008 garden. I’ll be growing Peach Passion and Chocolate Cherry. I hadn’t realized until I wrote them down here, that they sound like something from a dessert menu. All the better!
-Kathy LaLiberte, Director of Gardening
The overwintered salvia, with new growth emerging from the crown. |
Many years ago, I discovered salvias. It's one of those times when you think you're the only gardener who really knows about this new class of plants. The next thing you know, you're obsessed with a genus. And you find that you're the last gardener on the block to learn about these cool plants.
I'd discovered the true blue of Salvia patens and marveled at the inky black stems of S. guaranitica 'Black and Blue'. My friend Kathy taught me that it's OK to plant S. splendens —using the purple variety, not the classic, gas-station red.
I've come to love many varieties that are not quite hardy up here in the north. However, they're fairly easy to overwinter as houseplants. The best part is, they don't seem to be as susceptible to pest problems. Well, so far, so good.
To freshen up the overwintered plants, I take cuttings in midwinter. These cuttings grow into fine, vigorous plants—without the woody stems of my winter survivors. By the time it's warm enough to put heat in the greenhouse again, the little plants are just coming on, ready for more sunshine than I can provide indoors.
The whole procedure is pretty easy. I start by snipping 2-3" shoots from my overwintered plants in February. I strip off most of the leaves, leaving just a couple sets. Then, I fill an APS-40 with moistened perlite or vermiculite. The cuttings go right in the medium. I usually plant every other row. When the first plants are ready to graduate to potting soil, I take another set of cuttings and plant the empty rows in the APS. So easy!
Who knew the APS was good for more than seedstarting? It's like those salvias: I thought I was the first to know, but other gardeners have been doing it for a long time.
-David Grist, Online Content Coordinator
One of last summer's salvias. |
As staff horticulturist, part of my job is to plant and maintain a display garden. I grow many of the newest perennials on the market and evaluate them here in zone 5. Improved varieties of some North American native plants were among the most outstanding plants in the garden during the 2007 growing season.
One of the most exciting groups of native perennials is heuchera (HUE-ker-ah), also known as coral bells. Low-growing rosettes of lobed leaves look great from early spring right through autumn. The wiry flower stalks hold dozens of sweet little pink, red, or white bell-shaped flowers. The new varieties come in a smörgåsbord of descriptive leaf colors, such as Caramel, Tiramisu, Ginger Ale, Peach Flambé, and Lime Rickey.They grow best in partly shady spots, but the fuzzy-leafed Heuchera villosa varieties also tolerate full sun in cool climates. For help getting started with these and other shade-loving plants, read Gardening in the Shade.
Agastache |
Black Adder agastache (a-guh-STA-key), another native, received lots of favorable comments from garden visitors, too. These sun-loving perennials bloom for months. The brushy, blue-violet flower spikes attract hummingbirds and flocks of butterflies. My favorite varieties are Black Adder, Blue Fortune, and kiwi-green Golden Jubilee. I bought potted plants, but seeds are available, too. Established plants sailed through our droughty summer with no watering and still looked great in September. As an added bonus, deer leave the anise-scented foliage alone.
-Ann Whitman, Staff Horticulturist
After pulling the begonia tubers in late October, I let them dry for several weeks. Then, I nestled them in moist vermiculite in a plastic bucket. When I checked in on the tubers in February, they'd already sprouted—even though the bucket had a lid on it! |
Mrs. B. called me late in October. The frost was coming and it would be the end of her begonias for sure. She was recovering from a fall and couldn't get to the garden, so I drove to her cottage during lunch and quickly uprooted the tubers—as big as potatoes. I'd never seen such big begonia tubers.
Last summer, Mrs. B. hired me to care for her garden because her husband could no longer garden. She was celebrating 90 years, so she needed a little help around the yard. For years, her husband had tended the magnificent garden that surrounded their cottage. The place overflowed with color from clusters of fiery salvias, rows of wax begonias and a row of three mature clematis vines that covered the gable end of the cottage.
The star of the show was a row of tuberous begonias, so big and healthy that they formed a low hedge beside the front door. Mrs. B's husband saved these every fall and started them anew in the spring. The huge, petal-packed blooms grew 4-6" across and were always enjoyed by everyone in the neighborhood.
The tubers were huge when they came out of the ground. At planting time, they'd hardly shriveled at all. |
Mrs. B. called me in November to check on the tubers. Had I gotten them out? She was glad to know I'd pulled them up in time. She also wanted to tell me that she would be moving out of her cottage and into an assisted living facility. And, she wanted me to have the tubers. I was honored.
When I packed the tubers in December, I worried that I would lose them to rot or decay. I worried that the legacy would end with me. But I checked them the other day, and one of the tubers had already sprouted—a cluster of stocky, 4" stems with tiny leaves. So, I drove to the garden center in a near-whiteout snowstorm to get some potting soil.
The tubers were as big as potatoes, but more flat. I recycled some 8" mum pots, which accommodated the tubers nicely. With some sunshine, they're sure to take off. By June, I should have some beautiful plants. And the legacy will continue, from one garden to another.
Thank you, Mrs. B.
-David Grist, Online Content Coordinator
P.S.: You can start a begonia tradition, too. Just check out this season's new offerings at Dutch Gardens.
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