Author: Lilac

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Gardening Humor

Garden humor by Mike Willis

One Walter Mitty fantasy of mine was to create cartoons- especially cartoons about gardeners. We gardeners can be a pretty funny lot. For example, do you know a gardener who can visit a nursery who doesn’t find a plant that he or she MUST have- even though there isn’t another inch of land on their property not planted with something, or every available inch of their house is filled with plants? I don’t know gardeners who can resist getting more plants. I know I am guilty. I guess gardeners feel that somehow or in some way we can stretch our property. Certainly this obsessive quality can be spoofed.

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Help Save the Planet- Build an Arboretum

Arboretum by Pictoscribe – Home again

If you would love your community to have more greenery, a pretty space with plantings- perhaps you could start a community arboretum. If one thinks that starting an arboretum in your town or city can’t be done on a small scale, think again. A new arboretum was recently started in Linwood, NJ on just 1 acre.  It was the vision of a retired gentleman and his wife who saw the 1 acre property for sale that held a defunct electrical substation surrounded by barbed wire and cyclone fencing with a concrete building.  No one seemed to know how to best use this property.  Mr. Lacy, who is now 77, proposed building an arboretum on it. (read this)

What is an arboretum? It is a botanical garden devoted to trees.

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Protecting Knock Out Roses

Knock Out Roses by hozn

TheGardenLady received this question from Sharon.

I live in Southern, MA. My knockout roses became overgrown this year so I cut them way back today. Do I need to protect them since they are cut down to about 1 ft high?

Spring is the time to prune your shrub roses- they say to prune when the forsythia is in bloom. The best time for rose pruning in your area should be in March after there are no more snow storms.

But you already did the pruning, so let us be optimistic. TheGardenLady believes that plants want to live. So let us hope no damage is done. TheGardenLady would protect these pruned roses as described in the post on Nov. 6th. And review the article on Nov. 28th, 2007 about winter care for Knock Out Roses.

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Native American Foods for Thanksgiving

Cherokee White Eagle Corn Cobs by unhappybrthday

This is the time of year to start thinking of recipes for Thanksgiving. There are those who like to make the traditional foods- whatever the traditions are in your family- because with a big feast, your family doesn’t want surprises; they want the comfort foods they have grown used to.

Then there are people like TheGardenLady who likes to include new or unusual foods into the menu. I belong to the ‘variety is the spice of life’ group and want surprises on the table.

One of the surprises I have been considering this year is to try to make Native American foods for the table. TheGardenLady read somewhere that the Pilgrims probably didn’t have too many sweets at their feast because they didn’t have much sugar. But surely they must have been taught to tap sugar maple trees for maple syrup. Unless whatever date at the end of November they really celebrated was too early for the tapping of the trees.  Continue reading “Native American Foods for Thanksgiving”

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Get a tax deduction for damage to trees from storm

Fallen Tree by Dendroica cerulea

Did you know that you may be able to take a tax deduction for a tree that fell down because of the storms? To get the deduction will require a specially-trained expert or consulting arborist to assess the value of the lost tree. Read this article to see how to apply for a deduction.

There is an expression that “It is too late to bolt the barn door after the horse was stolen” or some variation on that statement. (see here) TheGardenLady understands this, and this is why she has written two posts on how to prepare for winter or future electrical outages AFTER “Hurricane” Sandy hit. But with the news reporting earthquakes in areas not normally known as earthquake areas or with a second Nor’easter Storm that just hit New Jersey and New York, maybe it isn’t too late to give some suggestions for preparedness in the event of more horrible weather.  (My children have taken to referring to ThisGardenLady as Debbie Downer, the fictional Saturday Night Live character who always sees the down side of things that are happening in the world today. Watch this episode with Debbie Downer celebrating Thanksgiving.)

The Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a colder than usual winter for the Northeast and northern states, if one thinks the Farmers’ Almanac is able to read the crystal ball for prognostication or prophesy. I read that they claim  80% accuracy.

 

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5 things to do to keep more comfortable during electrical outages from storms

blackouts are fun by sandcastlematt

In the last post, TheGardenLady listed five things you should do to prepare your plants for the upcoming winter.  Here are some more tips to keep in mind if you lose power when it’s cold outside and you lose your power, as TheGardenLady did after Hurricane Sandy hit.

1) If you have a gas range but no heat warming your house, warm your kitchen and surrounding rooms by filling your largest pots with water, bringing  the water to a boil and then lowering the heat and letting the water give off steam. The steam can raise the temperature in your house by about 10 degrees so that it feels comfortable. TheGardenLady uses her biggest soup pots, putting one on each of the 4 burners. This is what our grandmothers did before central heating.  Keep the pots filled with water, adding water as they boil down but don’t let them boil so hard they put out the flame and don’t let the water boil out.

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5 things TheGardenLady wants readers to do to get outdoor plants ready for winter

Battening down the hatches by murkredi

Fall and early winter is the time gardeners should be getting yard and garden plants ready for winter cold. Here are five things TheGardenLady wants readers to do to get outdoor plants ready for winter.

1) Check trees for diseased, dead or broken limbs of trees and cut them off so that they don’t fly off during a storm.

2) Put potted plants into your garage if you have one- take out the plants on sunny days to revive them- or put the planters with the plants in your basement window wells.

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What to do with damaged trees after Hurricane Sandy

Calm Before the Storm by pheαnix

TheGardenLady’s heart goes out to all the people who lost so much in the wake of the massive storm Sandy. I cannot fathom how people are coping with all the devastation.

For those who were lucky to just lose trees or branches, I offer a little advice.

If there are broken branches, don’t hesitate to have them cut off. This is not real pruning- you can cut off dead or damaged branches any time of the year.

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Plants in the Container – Thrillers, Fillers and Spillers

One of Polly’s Pots

You have the containers that you want to fill with plants and those containers have one or more holes in the bottom. You have covered the hole or holes with something that will keep the soil in but will let excess water trickle out and you have filled the container with good soil. Remember, the better the soil, the happier and healthier the plants will be. TheGardenLady wrote that you can buy potting soil in the stores. There are those purists who don’t like to buy their soil in bags, saying it is not alive and healthy. They prefer all compost. But gardeners will have success with good bagged soil. And when you have saved enough compost, the next time you make containers, you can use your own compost. That is why it is so very important to compost all your garbage and lawn clippings and leaves.

So what can you grow in a container? Just about anything that grows in the garden. If you have a container large enough you can plant trees. If you have very small containers you can plant alpine plants. You can plant just one plant in a container. For example, there are containers called strawberry pots where people like to plant strawberries. Or you can use them for planting succulent plants or herbs. (see here)  You can plant more than one plant of the same kind like Begonia ‘Dragon Wings Red’  that will create an impressive show.

And you can use your containers to grow a variety of plants. This is what I am hoping readers will do.

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Is there an eco-friendly way to repel woodchucks?

Family Dinner by anoldent

In June, TheGardenLady filled two huge planters with flowers to decorate the deck for an upcoming party. I planted the thriller and filler plants in the urns and my spiller plant was the ornamental sweet potato vine. The planters looked pretty and the spiller plants happily spilled down the sides of the urns and started vining up the side of the deck. I was so pleased with the look.

I was pleased, that is, until the other day when I noticed that the leaves of one of the vines were completely missing. I wondered what could have eaten the leaves so completely from one urn but not on the vine in the other urn. I didn’t think slugs or snails could have eaten the entire leaves- I had never seen slugs or snails on the vines but had seen some of the leaves riddled with holes. This was different. Now there was not a leaf on one of the vines. Since it is fall, I wasn’t worried about losing the annual plants. But I was mighty curious to find out what animal was dining on my sweet potato vines.

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