(Via Home and Family: Gardening Articles from EzineArticles.com)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 11:04:59

As with any plant, orchids are prone to diseases that can effect their ability to flower and mature as fast as possible. This article will let you know how to spot some common disease, and what that disease might mean for your plant.

(Via Home and Family: Gardening Articles from EzineArticles.com)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 10:43:22

Flower boxes are back with a vengeance. Now that affordable alternatives to wood such as vinyl and PVC are available, window box gardening is back in full bloom after taking a break for a few decades. Window box planting is a fun and easy way to get your feet wet with landscaping and gardening.

(Via Home and Family: Gardening Articles from EzineArticles.com)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 10:21:19

Growing orchids under lights can be far more efficient than using natural light sources. It results in larger flowers and blooms more often. The process is a science though. This article will give you some good advice on learning how to grow orchids under lights.

(Via Home and Family: Gardening Articles from EzineArticles.com)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 10:20:14

Generally yellow orchid leaves are a sign of a diseased orchid, however that isn't always the case. This article will let you know why orchid leaves turn yellow, and what you can do to fix your plant if this happens.

(Via Country Gardener)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 08:18:00

(Via EnjoyGardening)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 07:55:02

Hits & Misses: Aussies & flea beetles
Question of the Week: My seedlings are stretching. What do I do?
The Business: Barbara Patterson

I spent this past weekend in Vancouver speaking to their branch of the University of Alberta’s Alumni. Talk about a change of scenery. To see rhododendrons and camellia in bloom after the crazy week of snow we had in Alberta was rather refreshing, to say the least. My wife gushed over the narcissus and tulips, while lamenting the fact that ours were just popping out of the ground. I thoughtfully offered that the snow just meant we’d have the opportunity to enjoy seeing a mass of blooming tulips not once but twice. Can’t say for sure that she bought into it!

Hits & Misses
Hit: Aussies
I’m rather smitten with a variety of kangaroo’s paw (Anigozanthos) called ‘Tequila Sunrise.’ It’s a tall, thin, annual grass-like plant with fiery orange-red flowers shaped like a kangaroo’s paw. I suppose the reason I like it so much is that it’s such an unusual-looking plant. Fortunately, this is a case where interesting also equals beautiful. A perfect addition to any container.

As their name suggests, these exotic plants are native to Australia.

Miss: Flea beetles
Sometimes ideas for the “Miss” category of this newsletter jump right out at me; other times they stare me in the face. Today they did both. Moments ago a shiny beetle landed on the H key of my computer’s keypad. He didn’t stay long before deciding the grass must be greener someplace else, but it was long enough for me to notice. Each year, typically in late April, these minute jumping beetles emerge from their winter dormancy and head out in search of a feast of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and alyssum. Flea beetles can be incredibly destructive, so I’m glad this one took the time to land on my computer, thus allowing us to prepare for the arrival of its destructive brethren.

Question of the Week
My seedlings are stretching. What do I do?
This is a very common problem with plants that are started indoors from seed. The cause is simple; however, the solution may not be easy for some gardeners. The trick to keeping plants from stretching in homes is to increase the sunlight the plants receive but to cool down the room that they are growing in. Household temperatures often hover around 24°C, but to avoid lanky plants, temperatures should be at a rather chilly 16°C. The most practical solution is to move seedlings outside to a bright (but not too sunny) spot for a few hours each day—providing the weather is warm enough (around 10°C). It takes a little bit of time but is well worth the payoff. Stretched, floppy plants will only make for weak transplants that won’t fare well in the garden.

The Business
Barbara Patterson
A few weeks ago, Bill and Valerie had the opportunity to see the progress on a statue of my mother. Barbara Patterson is the amazing artist that the City of St. Albert commissioned to create the piece. Barbara knew my mother for many years and has often told us she feels a special connection with her. The statue will be about one-and-a-half times real-life size and depicts my mother sitting on a bench, her arms outstretched to hug a young girl (Barbara’s niece was the model). Barbara has completed about 75% of the statue; however, you can see her vision very clearly. It really looks magnificent. The statue will be cast in bronze in the fall and will sit in front of St. Albert City Hal until it can be relocated in front of the planned interpretive centre at the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park. Barbara’s most notable work is the Famous Five bronze sculpture that is displayed in both Ottawa and Calgary.


When asked to describe the piece, Barbara said, “I think this statue represents a legacy of love and learning.”

Trend Spotting

Containers are making a real statement again this year. This one doubles as sculpture and was thoughtfully planted with a succulent that appears to be tucked behind its ear.

Giving Back
Thank you to everyone who made a donation to the Lois Hole Care & Nurture Fund in 2007. Through your generosity, we were able to disburse a total of $11,000 to the Youth Emergency Shelter Society and the Young Alberta Book Society. Both were organizations that our mother would be proud to support.

Upcoming…
Catch Jim weekly on City TV’s Your City, airing Friday evenings at 6:30 and 10:00 pm.
Jim appears on CBC Radio 740 AM Wildrose Country at 1:00 pm this Friday, May 2.

Did You Know?
Even plants can be uncongenial. When two plants are grafted together and are not completely compatible, swelling can occur at the graft union; it’s called “uncongeniality.”

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”
–Galileo

(Via The Blogging Nurseryman - The Art of Running a Small Garden Center or Nursery)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 07:20:41

If you would like to get a taste of how out of touch some of the big growers are a trip to Open Register and Gardening Gone Wild will enlighten you. The California Pack Trials are an industry event where growers try to entice wholesale buyers with the new introductions of flowers and plants. What caught [...]

(Via Home and Family: Gardening Articles from EzineArticles.com)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 06:15:43

This article shows why organic gardening not only saves on the cost of your food but also is much healthier for you and the environment. You can also make money by selling organically grown produce at your local farmer's market.

(Via Heronswood Voice )

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 06:14:23

Recently, on a lovely Saturday, I drove up to New York City to see the site where my grandfather, Jacob, worked in a nursery in Queens. He had just moved from Cincinnati, where he’d finished an 1890s era, “live-in” apprenticeship in his early teens.  Then he spent a few years in rural western Long Island, outside the town of Flushing, known for its many German immigrants and nurseries, as well as a large armory.  Grandfather joined the army and spent a few months in the Spanish American War achieving the rank of captain.  Like other bachelors in their mid twenties, he took to heart the reports in the press that the Spanish had committed atrocities against U.S. civilians.  Captured in the Philippines, he was tortured for a few days and released.  He wrote in his journal that his captors decided that since he hadn’t talked, he knew nothing.  He returned to Flushing a minor hero.  He received a medal, rode in a parade and sat for a portrait.  After a few weeks, he had enough of it and, in autumn 1898, began an odyssey back to Ohio to reconnect with his estranged relatives.  He succeeded with one of his brothers. However, he remained restless and eventually chose Chicago as his home, a city with a huge German-speaking population.  He married my grandmother, Anna, a German nurse who had immigrated, as a child, to Rock Island, Illinois.  They had a family of four sons and a daughter, of which my dad was the youngest.  In turn, I was his youngest, which is why a fifty-five year-old can have a grandfather who fought as a mature army captain in the 1898 “Philippine War”.

Time lines are even longer on my mother’s side.  My maternal grandfather was born on March 7th, 1872, to a Civil War veteran from the rural and remote “upland” or Piedmont area of South Carolina.  I have a small farm planted with loblolly pines on my maternal great, great uncle’s property in what’s called “the Deep South”, left to me by my mother.  In a bit of a coincidence, my mother sang as a teenager in a choir at a Baptist Church convention in Brooklyn in 1937.  Even then, Flushing and Queens were “out of town”.  Her father was a school teacher who married at 48 to a woman in her 20s.  He became the principal of the village school in Ware Shoals, a “mill town”—owned by the mill.  When it changed ownership, he was out of a job and this was just before the great depression.  When it hit, he was obliged for a brief time to move with my mother to a rural farmhouse so he could “work for food”, teaching farm children their ABCs in return for a chicken, vegetables and so forth.  Mom’s two younger siblings stayed in town with my grandmother who had gotten a job in the town dress shop. Eventually, grandfather and mom were able to move back to town.  He got a job as a grocery clerk at the “Big Friendly”, which soon became Piggly Wiggly.  Grandfather was a Greek and Latin scholar, so the customers called him “Professor”, and many had been his students at the grade school.  Today, the position would be a combination of stock clerk and “bagger”, since orders were usually phoned in or ladies would drop their lists off with him.  He’d box them up for pick up or delivery.

He passed away in spring 1942 in his mid-seventies, after working right up to the last year.  While in college during the late 30s, my mother met George Park, whose family owned Park Seed.  They dated and he “pinned” her, but she broke it off when she met my dad.

Small world.
 

(Via gardenauthor)

Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2008-05-01, 05:37:00