Earlier this summer I potted up a miniature bog garden in a bowl and it thrived! Even the dried sphagnum peat moss grew. Check Venus fly traps and pitcher plants for aphids before bringing indoors. Planted in early June, the bog garden is lush and healthy in September. North American pitcher plants (Sarracenia) stop growing during the winter. Pitchers may naturally turn brown. Earlier this summer I potte…
Make room for a planter of unusual, moisture-loving plants. After placing a fiberglass screen over the bottom of the bowl, I filled it with dampened peat. Long-fiber sphagnum peat moss covers the surface to prevent soil splashing and give a natural finished look. Bog and pond plants intrigue me, but I don’t have a pond or bog in which to plant them. But, when the water plants arrived at our garden center a couple o…
…nd what went into producing it. So how come I can’t have the right to know what’s in the food I buy in the store? That’s the goal of the Just Label It campaign, which last month submitted a record-breaking 1.1 million signatures to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in favor of labeling genetically engineered (GE) foods. And in polls by ABC, MSNBC, NPR, the Washington Post, Consumer Reports and others, consistently…
Miniature greenhouses make indoor gardening stylish and easy. A slim, unobtrusive T-5 fluorescent light fixture in the peak of the roof provides enough light for nearly any plant in the Wardian Case ($249). Wardian cases revolutionized tropical plant collection and cultivation in the 19th century. After Dr. Nathaniel Ward discovered that ferns enclosed in glass cases could survive London’s coal-smoke-laden air, explorers and merc…
Though cold winds chill the air and snow blankets much of the U.S., pesticide use remains a hot topic — and not only among gardeners. The most recent comments come from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Environmental Health, whose December 2012 policy statement makes a clear link between pesticide exposure and children’s health problems. Published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the 60,000-member AAP, “Pesticide Ex…
…tes hosts a trailer, brings it in when it is full, and returns with an empty one,” Cline says. Steve Cline sorts plastic pots and cell packs at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s recycling program, where they collect 100,000 to 140,000 pounds of horticultural plastic every year. Cline, former director of the Garden’s Kemper Center for Home Gardening, started the program in 1998. The botanical garden’s Pots to Planks program s…
…o freezing a large amount of corn at one time (500 ears!) but fun to see how it was done in most farm kitchens 50 years ago! This second guide is geared to more modest quantities of corn. I usually do two freezing sessions of 100 ears each. That’s about as much as I can take at one time. I should say as much as we can take. It’s a job I couldn’t do solo. The shucking, de-silking, cooking, chilling, cutting and bagging all have to happen within a…
Flat-leaf parsley I used to do much more canning and freezing than I do now. With our household down to just two, we’re cooking smaller meals and don’t need to have as much food around. But there are still quite a few garden crops that I squirrel away in my freezer or pantry, and one of those is parsley. I can chop and freeze a huge basket of fresh-picked parsley in about 15 minutes. With a half-dozen sessions like that throughout the…
…en the earth-friendly ones. At first, I tried neem, a relatively harmless spray that does wonders on aphids and controls blackspot on roses. It worked to control the larvae the first year, but I had to spray frequently (every 10 to 15 days). The second year, I couldn’t keep the larvae under control. My lily crop was hit hard, and I got few blooms. Last year, I decided to resort to a systemic called imidacloprid. The results were instantaneo…
Over the years, I have become a firm believer in the importance of fertilizing plants. One of my favorite pots this season (see plant list below) with two of the three fertilizers that I’m applying and one of my trusty watering cans. Over the years, I have become a firm believer in the importance of fertilizing plants. Now, when there’s a pest problem in my garden, I run for a fertilizer rather than a pest control. In most cases, I…