(Via Gardening Question of the Day (from the Old Farmer's Almanac))

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2007-12-08, 20:00:00

What's the best way to prolong the life of my Christmas cactus? (answer).

From The Old Farmer's Almanac.

(Via Girl Gone Gardening)

Posted by admin to Freya, car, herbs on 2007-12-08, 12:04:00

30*, feels like 23*, 66% humidity, NNE 7 mph wind, cloudy, Freezing Rain Advisory I have my baby car back!!! WOHOO! Although I liked the rental Mustang Convertible (for like a minute) I must say my little Hyundai Accent is a much smoother ride and I feel a whole lot safer in it as well! For a little inexpensive car it's better then a lot of more expensive cars out there. Before I left this

(Via EnjoyGardening)

Posted by admin to Current Articles on 2007-12-08, 11:12:08

First published November 29, 2007

Earlier this month, I spent a couple of days attending the annual Green Industry Show and Conference in Edmonton—an event that highlights the latest information and technology pertaining to the world of horticulture. It’s an annual pilgrimage I always look forward to and the kind that’s always enlightening, sometimes frightening and, occasionally, rather amusing. Here’s a peek at the highlights, starting with the enlightening.

Dutch treat
From across the Atlantic, the Dutch are once again proving themselves leaders in the world of greenhouse technology. Currently, their researchers are investigating greenhouse coverings that allow light to pass through (which allows for plant growth), while trapping some of the remaining solar energy to generate electricity. Clearly, the Dutch believe the future of the greenhouse industry lies in treating greenhouses as net providers of energy that can act as giant solar panels. This technology is still a few years down the road, but the idea of greenhouses as electricity generators is nothing short of fascinating.

Scary business
I sat through a seminar called “Pests of Concern for Nursery and Greenhouse” that featured a litany of pests threatening horticulture in Canada. Two particularly worrisome culprits earning the honour of being singled out were the emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorn beetle. These two impressive and extremely destructive pests have made names for themselves by tunneling through and destroying thousands of trees in the eastern U.S. and in Canada. Of the two pests, the emerald ash borer has proven to be the more discriminating eater, restricting its palate to ash trees; whereas the Asian longhorned beetle enjoys a less restrictive diet and consumes a wide variety of hardwood trees. To date, neither has hitchhiked its way into the prairies or B.C, but one can’t help but wonder if their western trek is inevitable. It is possible, but if we’re smart and don’t move pest-infested firewood around the country, we just might escape their wrath. I must admit, however, it’s the “smart” part of the human equation that scares me.

Right after the borer and beetle session, I attended Dr. Ken Fry’s seminar, “Environmentally Sustainable Pest Management.” To make things interesting, Dr. Fry linked his microscope to a projector so we could view some insect pests and predators on the big screen. A few attendees seemed a little squeamish when the metre-long bugs began inching across the screen, but I can attest that anyone who averted their eyes definitely missed out on a great show—particularly when a gigantic foxglove aphid decided for some inexplicable reason to flip on its back, with all six of its legs flailing. Now, that might not seem like a strange thing, but had this been a horror movie, it would be equivalent to the scene where the teenager (who has, of course, just stepped out of the shower) hears a strange noise and tiptoes outside to investigate. You just know its not going to end well. Now, Dr. Fry didn’t provide a scientific explanation for why the aphid decided to stretch out, but it was certainly made quick work of by the predaceous insects that entered stage right. Pass the popcorn.

Last but not least
I think any good conference should come with at least one good laugh, and this conference delivered. The year’s source of amusement was a video demonstration of a piece of equipment called the Rodenator. For lack of a better description, the Rodenator is a two-metre-long critter cannon. Wait; it gets worse. This contraption earned its name because the business end of it shoots a gaseous mixture of propane and oxygen down gopher holes and permeates an unsuspecting rodent’s labyrinth of tunnels. The mixture is then—ignited!— and the resulting shock wave “eliminates” the pest problem within seconds. The video that I watched (with one hand clasped over my mouth), shows a helmeted employee literally blowing up varmint burrows in a manner that would make Yosemite Sam proud. Blowing up animals in your yard? What’s up with that, Doc?

Needless to say, the Green Industry Show delivered the goods once again, and I contentedly left the conference centre feeling a mixture of emotions—a bit of trepidation about exotic pests, a little more enlightened about horticulture, and last but not least, overwhelmed with desire to watch Caddyshack. Not a bad work week if you can get it.

(Via grow this)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2007-12-08, 09:57:00

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” 
Marcel Proust (1871 – 1922)

My maternal grandmother’s garden was her six daughters and one son, lovingly raised. My mother not only raised nine, she knew the names of every plant in the world; or so it seemed. My daughter once predicted that she would someday be explaining her mother’s automobile crash as due to attention I paid to roadside flora at the expense of attention paid to the actual road. A habit I got from my own Mom, who, by the way, was probably just as good a driver as I am.

And for all that, I have precious few childhood memories of my Mom’s or my Grandma’s garden. I remember when they widened University Blvd at Four Corners, they had to move 3 or 4 houses at the intersection of Lorraine (sp?) where the Safeway parking lot now stands.

What I remember is that upon finding out the houses were going, Mom, naturally, wondered what was going to happen to the unsuspecting hydrangea bush in one of the doomed front yards. One long summer twilight I went with her, pulling a red wagon with a shovel in it, the 6 or 8 blocks from our house to rescue said hydrangea. Upon being approached by a security guard – there had been “vandalism” in the empty houses – Mom persuaded him to let her rescue the doomed plant.

That bush thrived in our yard from that day on, and once Mom put some chemical on its roots to make the flowers turn from pink to blue, or back. She explained pH, about which I know more to this day thanks to her, than thanks to high school labs and freshman chemistry. It’s a good thing that I didn’t know then, the meaning of the word “volunteer” as referring to spontaneous gifts of plants in the garden. Such knowledge might have transformed my childhood memory into a sort of post-traumatic nightmare of extreme rendition and severe interrogation.

Recalling this memory makes me suddenly understand why I don’t retain more than cursory memories of straggly childhood tomato plants. Mom and Grandma lived frugal lives in lean times, and they raised large families on single incomes. But somehow I got the love. It is thanks to them that I now have at least a dozen Martha Washington, trailing ivy, and the other plain pelargonium plants thriving in my yard – not one of which I bought. Once I figured out how easy it is to propagate this forgiving flower, I gently purloined cuttings of each from roadsides in my neighborhood to procreate them in my yard.

My last sight of Mom was the day I pulled away from the parking lot of the adult independent living community where she died within the month. I could see her on the balcony of their third floor apartment, built on the site where my public school kindergarten once stood. She waved goodbye with one hand, and held a watering can in the other. She was on her way to water the small herb gardens she nurtured in window boxes outside neighboring apartments.

Imagine the kind of garden my Mom would have had if she lived now. Had my Mom (or her Mother) been able to afford the time or invest the money, I like to think the gardens they would have made for me to remember would be like the ones I make now.

(Via An Iowa Garden)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2007-12-08, 08:09:00

Elizabeth Lawrence in her book The Little Bulbs, (without a doubt, in my mind, the finest book of American garden writing) introduced me to Carl Krippendorf, who gardened in a large woodland (which he called Lob's Woods) in Ohio. He built a house there as a young man, where he and his wife Mary lived for 64 years, during which time he steadily every year planted huge numbers of flower bulbs of all manner, which became naturalized. After his death his woods was sold to Stanley Rowe and a group of other naturalists and became part of Rowe Woods, which then formed the base for what would be the Cincinnati Nature Center, now over 1000 acres, with Krippendorf Lodge, Carl's original house, still preserved in his woodland full of flower bulbs that still bloom every spring.
I cannot imagine how delightful it must have been for Mr. Krippendorf to plant bulbs over the 64 years that he lived at Lob's Woods, and to ramble through his beautiful woodland each spring to see what was in flower, with hills and a clear creek crossed by gray bridges and lined by damp limestone ridges festooned with ferns, with large slabs of flat rock for steps leading up the sides of the steep slopes leading to yet more hills and valleys; all adrift with daffodils, and a myriad of other flowering bulbs.
Elizabeth Lawrence's small book is subtitled A Tale Of Two Gardens, for much of the first part of her book is devoted to letters written back and forth between her and Mr. Krippendorf, talking about what was blooming in their respective gardens: As soon as spring is in the air Mr. Krippendorf and I begin an antiphonal chorus, like two frogs in neighboring ponds: What have you in bloom, I ask, and he answers from Ohio that there are hellebores in the woods, and crocuses and snowdrops and winter aconites. Then I tell him that in North Carolina the early daffodils are out but that the aconites are gone and the crocuses past their best.
The pang of regret that I feel for having met Mr. Krippendorf only in my imagination doesn't just relate to his wondrous garden, however; but rather also to the lyrical gardening soul that one glimpses in his letters to Miss Lawrence, as in one written one gloomy February: I do think the last two days were the darkest I ever saw. The ground leaves have dried out, and have not the rufous color they have when wet. When wet they seem to emanate light.

In the spring when I first wander up and down hill in our modest little woodland here in eastern Iowa, looking for the first snowdrop lifting its pale flower to the warming sun, or brushing aside dead leaves to look for the first tiny winter aconite buds, I like to think Mr. Krippendorf would have enjoyed walking and talking with me.

(Via Plant Care)

Posted by admin to Plant Diseases, Plants - General, Troubleshooting on 2007-12-08, 08:02:35

Spider mites are one pest many homeowners have on their houseplants but are not aware of them because of the mites size. You may need a magnifying glass to see them. (...)

(Via gardenauthor)

Posted by admin to Christmas tree ornaments on 2007-12-08, 07:53:00

©Deb Lambert 2007

Photos courtesy of CBI, ©2007