I was making Italian wedding soup in the crock pot for dinner tonight when I decided to pick some kale from the garden to use (in place of spinach or escarole) in my recipe. Still picking greens from your garden, you ask? Credit the warm winter we’ve been having! And kale is the hardiest of the bunch.

I’m also picking calamondin oranges, Citrus mitis,  from my indoor orange tree. The little oranges are so plentiful that they are weighing down the branches. I picked a few, to lighten the load, but left more than half of them on the tree. My neighborhood book club meets here in a couple of days, and I want the literary ladies to be amazed at the small tree loaded with fruit. After that, I’ll be making orange marmalade.

My last culinary surprise involves some rosemary cuttings. I bought a plastic packet of rosemary sprigs in the produce section at the grocery store, but only used half in my recipe. I stuck the remaining cuttings in water and placed them in the greenhouse window over my kitchen sink, to stay fresh. I forgot about them until now, a month later, and they have rooted. It is not typical to have woody plant cutting root from a grocery store packet, as I said in a recent post about rooting basil. But anything can happen!

It’s an extra exciting treat to have fresh produce from your own house and garden in mid-February!

Happy Gardening,

Sue

It’s always exciting to look through the seed catalogs and dream of what you want to plant in the garden this year. But with so many choices, how can you decide what to order? It can all seem overwhelming! Here are a few tips on how to approach your seed ordering in an orderly fashion.

1.   Decide what you want to grow.

List the plants you eat most of or can’t live without. Include items that you plan to dry, can or freeze. If you eat a lot of something, you might want to try growing it.

But also consider what is available locally for a reasonable price. This may influence whether you will devote space to a particular vegetable. For example, I love sweet corn and eat a lot of it. But it takes a lot of space in the garden to grow it. So this is one crop I choose to buy instead.

I  grow a great variety of greens, basil, and Italian parsley because I don’t want to pay several dollars per bunch for them at the market. Interesting hot peppers, heirloom tomatoes and easy things like zucchini, green beans and radishes are always worth growing, to me.

2.   From your list, decide which crops are best grown from seed.

Some things grow better direct-seeded rather than transplanted. Legumes, which include beans and peas; vining crops like squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons; spinach, salad greens, chard and kale; root crops like radishes, carrots and beets; herbs like parsley, cilantro, dill; and corn. So if these plants are on your wish list, you should order seeds.

Some things grow best as transplants, like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants; and some of the cabbage relatives including broccoli and cauliflower.  If you only need a plant or two of a certain pepper or tomato variety, buy them as transplants from the plant nursery. If you want a dozen broccoli plants, it’s cheaper to start them indoors from a seed packet.

3.   Check your seed supplies to see what you have left over from last year.

If you’re like me, you have partially planted or unplanted seed packets from the past few years. It’s worth checking these out before ordering in a new stash. Most seed is viable for 2 to 3 years, but this can vary widely according to the type of seed. You could do a germination test to find out if your seed is still good. Here’s how:

Count out 10 seeds and place them in a row on a damp paper towel. Roll the seeds up in the towel and place it in a plastic bag. Leave it in a warm place. Check it after a few days, and again after a week. Count the seeds that have germinated. If eight seeds are alive, your packet is approximately 80 percent viable; go ahead and use it. If only a few germinated, you should re-order, or sow very heavily if you just need a few plants.

4.   Peruse the seed catalogs and list what you want to buy.

The first time through a catalog, I make lots of black circles around things that sound interesting. I fold over corners to mark the spot. I return to the interesting plants and reconsider, X-ing some out. At some point, it’s time to compile all of the best choices onto a “master list”. Here is where you’ll notice if you came up with 10 kinds of beans to try and no beets. You can compare varieties and prices from your favorite catalogs, and eventually come up with your tentative list of seeds to buy.

5.   Decide how many plants you can really fit into the space you have.

Of course, that would be a spot that gets at least eight hours of sun, where the soil drains well, and with access to water.

If you have questions about how to space your vegetable plants, I described my method in this post about Planning the Vegetable Garden last year.

6.   Refine your list accordingly, and place your orders.

Be sure to try a few new items each year, and add a few flowers to plant amongst the vegetables to attract pollinizing insects. Consider growing open pollinated flowers and vegetables if you want to start saving your own seeds. And consider switching to organically grown seeds, to help sustain the health of your soil, our ecosystems, and your family!

Do you have a favorite seed catalog or a special way to organize your seed buying? Leave a comment below.

Happy Gardening!

It’s Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (GBBD) again. Thanks heavens! This is a great reminder for me to post a blog. I’ve been hit-or-miss at posting since I broke my collar bone last spring. It still hasn’t healed completely, and this has really restricted my gardening efforts. Whch has made me loath to blog. Not logical, but true! So the good news is, I’m blogging today in honor of GBBD, which happens the 15th of each month.

The bad news is, there are only two things blooming today. And one of them is a repeat of what was blooming last month. That would be the Christmas rose, or Helleborus niger, pictured above. So if you still aren’t convinced that you need a few of these beauties to spice up the winter garden, think again.

In the front yard, I have another Hellebore, commonly called the Lenten rose, Helleborus orientalis Brandywine(TM), that is taller and later blooming than the Christmas rose. It blooms in early spring. Both of these perennials grow and bloom well in dry shade under trees - once they are established, of course. And the handsome evergreen foliage looks good in the other three seasons, too. So there is no excuse not to try one, especially if you have a difficult dry shade spot in the garden!

This is witch hazel, Hamamelis x intermedia ’Arnold Promise’. The yellow winter blossoms look terrific in front of the blue spruce tree, don’t you think? This shrub can bloom any time from December thru February, depending on the weather. It is a vase-shaped plant growing slowly to about 12 or 15 feet tall, and has interesting leaves with fair yellowish fall color. An extract of the witch hazel plant is used medicinally as a skin tonic, but ‘Arnold Promise’ is mainly used as a landacape plant that looks good in every season.

Happy Gardening!

Conifers are trees and shrubs that bear cones instead of flowers. Conifers add structure to the landscape. And because most are evergreen, they are especially appreciated in a barren winter setting. Think how naked my garden shed would look without the evergreens in this image!

The large plant to the left is a blue spruce, Picea pungens ‘Glauca’, prized for its distinctive gray-blue color. I repeated the color with the upright juniper next to the shed door. This is a Wichita Blue juniper, Juniperus scopulorum ‘Wichita Blue’. It has thrived in this hot and sunny site. The little “roundy moundys” at the corners of the shed are yews, Taxus sp., transplanted from elsewhere in my yard after the shed was built. I wouldn’t say they are thriving, but they are hanging in there. Finally, to the right and behind the shed are some arborvitae, Thuja occidentalis ‘Emerald’, hiding an ugly fence. You can just see them as backdrop behind the leafless Dawn Redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, and a dormant tan-colored switch grass, Panicum virgatum.

Among the best conifers for Cincinnati are the spruces. The fast-growing Norway spruce, Picea abies, has a stiff pyramid shape that becomes rugged with age as the older branches droop. It’s extremely hardy and wind resistant. Isn’t it fabulous?!

Considered by some to be the most attractive spruce is the Oriental spruce. This is Picea orientalis ‘Skylands’. There are a number of cultivars of oriental spruce, but ‘Skylands’ has beautiful golden foliage. And just look at the spring cones! I wish this plant was in my garden, but I took the picture at Hidden Lake Gardens in Michigan last spring.

The image above shows Canada hemlock, Tsuga canadensis. This is a large deep green tree with an unusually graceful appearance. Numerous dwarf, weeping and variegated selections are sold. This is one of the conifers, along with the yews, that will do well in shade. In fact, it suffers in our hot dry summers if not given afternoon shade. I especially like the Sargent’s weeping hemlock. You can see a magnificent example at the Civic Garden Center here in Cincinnati. I love the small cones!

The dwarf Hinoki Falsecypress, Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Nana’, is another of my favorites. This small evergreen is a slow grower, putting on only 2-3 inches a year and reaching perhaps 6 to 8 feet after many years. I love its fat conical shape for structure in the garden. I took this picture at the Cornell Plantations on the Cornell University campus.

Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea’, golden threadleaf Sawara cypress, is a shamelessly bold plant with bright golden yellow, thread-like branches. It will grow 15-20 feet tall and makes quite a statement in the garden. The more compact ‘Filifera Aurea Nana’ is a denser, much smaller shrub, shown above. I see this compact form used more often in Cincinnati, as a foundation shrub or for color accent.

Lest you should think that all conifers are evergreen, let me recommend the Dawn Redwood and the Bald Cypress. Both lose their needle-like leaves in the fall, but still make a statement in the winter garden with their beautiful bark, pyramidal shape and interesting cones. In the top picture, the deciduous tree to the right of the shed is a Dawn Redwood. I love this plant! I can see its roughly shredded reddish bark from my kitchen window, although it doesn’t show up well in the image.

Happy Gardening!

A friend has asked me how to grow herbs indoors during the winter. Since she started using fresh herbs, the dried version just doesn’t cut it any more. She spends a lot of money on the little sprigs that are for sale in the grocery store produce department. She would prefer to save that money and the hassle of going shopping for her herbs by growing her own.

Probably the easiest herb to grow indoors is basil. You can start it from seed, or do what I did for the above plant: grow it from cuttings. Basil sprigs often (but sadly, not always) root really well from cuttings. Near the end of summer, I often pinch off a few of the growing tips – about 3 inches long – from my outdoor plants and root them in water. In this smaller image, you can see a few basil cuttings and a lot of coleus cuttings that I took last fall, just before a killing frost was predicted.

Removing all of the leaves that will be underwater, I simply place a half-dozen cuttings in a glass of water and set the glass in my bright kitchen window. After lots of roots have formed, I pot up the cuttings using regular potting soil and a 4-inch pot. Since the roots are all tangled together, I don’t even try to separate them, but pot up the whole batch together to make one rather full pot.

Sometimes you can find rooted cuttings or small plants of herbs in the produce department at the grocery store in winter. These plants or rooted cuttings are supposed to stay fresher longer than the typical cut herbs used for cooking. You might experiment with potting up or rooting them. If the plants start to wilt, then just go ahead and use them up in your recipe instead of trying to grow them on.

Unfortunately, woody-stemmed herbs like rosemary and sage do not root as easily as basil. Parsley and cilantro are grown from seed. Basil, along with oregano and marjoram, are the easiest of the herbs to grow from cuttings.

Happy Gardening,

Sue

December 15, and what is blooming? Not much. We are having an unusually warm spell (60 degrees!) and continuous drizzle, though I’ve braved the elements to get these few images. And I’m finally learning that the only thing normal about Cincinnati weather is . . . that it is never normal!

Above, the intrepid perennial Hellebore. This one is Helleborus Cinnamon Snow (TM). I’m expecting it to keep blooming through next March, at least, if it behaves like it did last year. Below is just a seedling of Black-eyed-Susan, or Rudbeckia sp. Obviously, the seedlings are more tenacious than the cultivars!

I could only find these two flowering plants to photograph. Luckily we have evergreens, berries and seedheads to keep our interest. And since the berries and seedheads developed from flowers, I’ll show you a couple on this bloom day to round out my post.

The bright red berry cluster is on a Heavenly bamboo shrub, Nandina domestica. This plant is marginally hardy here in zone 5, but does well in this protected spot against the east wall of the house.

The seedheads below left are on the perennial Sedum ‘Autumn Fire’, which grows in front of the Nandina.

On the right are the seedheads of the wonderful, blue-spiked chaste tree, Vitex angustifolia, best grown as a shrub in our zone.

Happy Bloom Day and Happy Gardening!

Sue

In the winter, it’s especially nice to have green plants around the house as an outlet for our “green thumbs”.

In my opinion, though, it’s a lot easier to grow plants in the garden than in the house. My houseplants often suffer in the winter because of the low light conditions, dry air from the heating vents and accumulations of dust. Not to mention that it’s a lot trickier to get the watering right in an indoor environment – I tend to err on the dry side.

Despite all this, it’s definitely worth the effort to grow houseplants. After all, they’ve been linked with lowering stress, purifying the air, and improving morale. They add interest and warmth to your decor, and may even serve as conversation starters. Most people who see my calamondin orange tree, above, with its flowers and tiny oranges, make some sort of comment!

Selecting the right plants for the environment makes all the difference. That’s why I like the Better Homes and Gardens list of 24 of the Easiest Houseplants You Can Grow. Each plant description shows a great picture of the plant growing indoors and contains complete growing  information. I agree with almost all of the choices: these are plants that most people could easily grow!

• Pothos (shown at right)
• Philodendron
• Zeezee Plant
• Arrowhead Vine
• Grape Ivy
• Hoya (shown in the middle image with jade plant)
• Corn Plant, Green Dracaena, & Dracaena
• Ponytail Palm
• Rubber Tree
• Schefflera
• Fiddleleaf Fig
• Cast Iron Plant
• Chinese Evergreen
• Jade Plant (shown in the middle image with Hoya )
• Deiffenbachia
• Pepperomia
• Snake Plant (shown at the bottom with Boston fern)
  

Here are my exceptions to their list, and why:

• Croton – if you let it get too dry a single time, it’s toast! On the other hand, if you water too much, it loses leaves from the bottom up.  But I love the colorful foliage!
• Boston Fern – starts shedding terribly part way through the winter. This is because it’s hard to get water into the dense root ball without taking the plant down from its hanging spot and submerging the entire pot in a sink full of water for 20 minutes or so; then letting it drain before returning it.  Having said that, it does usually live through the winter, and perks up when cut back and set outdoors in spring.
• English Ivy – some years it does well for me. In other years, it either dries out or gets spider mites or both. Could go either way.
• Norfolk Island Pine – a great little tree. But this is a plant from a temperate climate – not a tropical plant. It wants a cool, moist winter and just isn’t entirely happy indoors. I treat it as a seasonal guest in my home.

It is the 15th of the month, and that means it’s Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day, when we bloggers report on what is blooming in our gardens. I’ve done a lot of garden clean-up this past week, but I left the cool season annuals that were still blooming intact. Cool season annuals do best in the cooler spring or fall weather. Think of pansies, violas and ornamental cabbages. And then there are these . . .

Above is an image of pot marigold, or Calendula officinalis. This perky annual is easy to start from seed and freely self-sows around the garden. It has edible flower petals that look cool in a salad. Calendula is a staple of the herb garden, where it is used in cosmetics and to lend blonde highlights when used as a hair rinse. I always grow some in my vegetable garden to help attract pollinators.

A few years back, I broadcast a seed packet of forget-me-nots, Myosotis oblongata ‘Azure Bluebirds,’ from Renee’s Garden. Now I’m rewarded with plentiful tiny blue blooms each spring, and a few in fall, too.

Snapdragons, Antirrhinum majus, actually prefer cool weather. When I lived in the San Francisco area, we grew them right through the winter. Here, they persist until we get a hard freeze. They have an edible flower, too. The fuzzy gold foliage in the background of this image is my asparagus patch!

This is not the best picture, but it shows a purple snapdragon  towards the right with a single blossom of Gaillardia ‘Mesa Yellow’ to the left, amid a plethora of the round seed heads. The real surprise is the white Alyssum ‘Snow Princess’ in the foreground. This Proven Winners introduction is like regular old-fashioned garden alyssum on steriods. One plant covered a two foot circle, even in my less-than-ideal clay soil, and thrived through the heat of summer as well as our early frosts. I’ll definitely be growing it again.

One last surprise – the short-lived perennial plant Scabiosa, or more pleasantly called Pincushion Flower. I cut this plant back in late summer, and it rewarded me with this cute bloom now.

There is always something interesting to look at in the garden, even on a rainy day in November. Happy Gardening!

Eleven seems to be the magic number today. I’m celebrating 11/11/11 by providing the top 11 gardening chores for November. Here’s what I’ve been working on this past week, and hope to complete in the next few days:

1.  Planting bulbs. I’ve added 100 tulips, 50 daffodils, and 100 crocus bulbs. This is the time to plant garlic, too. Here’s how to plant garlic. You can continue planting bulbs right up until the ground freezes.

2.  Moving plants. This is a great time to re-arrange plants to make more pleasing combinations and relieve crowding. I must do this now, while my ideas are fresh in my mind!

3.  Creating walkways. All gardens need paths for the gardener to enter to cut flowers, pick vegetables, collect seed or do other maintenance chores. Some of my paths are single stepping stones that are hidden once the plants grow up in summer. . .

While others are more definite.
4.  Removing faded annuals. I cut off their tops at the soil line. I usually chop up the tops and leave them in the bed, too – unless they are too full of seeds. The roots and tops decompose over the winter to enrich the soil.

5.  Cutting back perennial plants.  Just those whose tops have turned brown and crisp. But I try to leave some intact if they have seed heads to feed the birds. Here is more information on cutting back perennials.

6, 7, 8.  Weeding, Edging, Mulching. I’m going through each landscape and flower and vegetable bed, giving them this cleanup treatment. It is very satisfying to see the beds all cleaned up and mulched with wood chips or chopped up leaves – or both. Here are some pointers on edging your beds.

9.  Fertilizing the lawn. Apply the last “winterizer” fertilizer application some time during the next few weeks.

10.  Composting. I set up a pile just off my patio, to use for kitchen waste when the ground is too snowy or muddy to tromp out to the composting area behind the shed. (See above – I’m using the Compost Sak) I have also started several bins of just shredded leaves,  for covering the food scraps in my winter piles, and to make soil-improving leaf mold or mulch. Here is a post on how to get started with composting.

11.   Citter control. For deer and rabbit control, I’m using a combination of repellant sprays and wireless deer fence. Learn more about deer control. For moles, voles and field mice, I set out mousetraps, baited with peanut butter. These are set in activity areas, at the end of tunnels, underneath an overturned bucket or flower pot. I’m using a castor oil mole repellent. Also, wire mesh tree guards protect tree trunks from rodent damage.

For more November Gardening Activities, see the handy gardening calendar at the Trusty Gardener website.

Happy Gardening, and Happy Veteran’s Day!

Sue

I was surprised that he wanted to do this – he usually balks at felling plants that are still alive – but I was overjoyed at the chance to get rid of these shrubs that are considered to be invasive because they are encroaching on our native plants in nearby woods and wild spaces. More about this at the end of the post . . .

The excavation exposed a large blank wall, our air conditioner unit, and at one end, some yews that need to fill in where the burning bushes used to reside. Not a pretty picture.

So we put up some trellising to hide the air conditioner, and then I planted some tiny Arbor vitae, roses and other treasures. I never spend big money on big plants, and these were actually free sample plants, so think of four-inch pot size. You really have to use your imagination to visualize this garden full grown!

In the mean time, I filled in with some annuals that I started from seed. You can see that the sunflowers are towering above the height of the garage door, almost to the second story window . . .

These sunflowers are loved by birds, but I am hoping to harvest some of the seeds myself to make a tasty snack. There are some purple Amaranthus, which are grown as an edible “grain” crop, and the leaves are also eaten as a salad green. The third edible plant in this garden is the hyacinth bean vine, Dolichos lablab. The beautiful purple bean flowers mature into a broad, purple bean pod. Both the pod and the individual seeds are edible, but should be thoroughly boiled first.

Decorative plants in this garden that are not edible include orange and yellow Zinnia angustifolia, some ‘Kiwi Fern’ and ‘Trusty Rusty’ coleus started from cuttings, and the feathery-foliaged, red-flowered cypress vine shown below.

You can’t see the woody plants amid the annuals, but they are there and will increase each year. For now, I kind of like the riot of colorful annuals that greets me each time I pull up the driveway.

Happy Gardening!

Sue

FYI: What exactly is an invasive species? According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, invasive plants like the burning bush usually have fast growth rates, high seed production, and efficient seed dispersal and germination. Since these plants are not native to Ohio, they lack the natural predators and diseases which would naturally control them in their native habitats. There are about 60 species on the list of Ohio’s Invasive Plant Species, including a few that are regularly used as landscape plants in Ohio. Check it out!