All the Dirt on Gardening

Daylilies or Hemerocallis come in so many heights, colors, and flower forms that only a public garden could have a significant number of them in a collection. Even though yellow is not a flower color I aspire to have more of in our garden, this Kindly Light Daylily is one that is so lovely, it is hard to resist. Old House Gardens catalog describes it as "decidedly different" and the first spider Daylily. The roots are $7.50 each at http://www.oldhousegardens.com/display.aspx?cat=daylily&page=2 Daylily Diary has a gorgeous photo at http://daylilydiary.com/day_kindlylight.htm The American Hemerocallis Society's website says it blooms mid-season and grows to 2.5 feet tall. Click over to their site at http://www.daylilies.org  to learn more about these wonderful plants.  If you click on search all, you arrive at a link with 76,000 daylilies to browse. You will find that Daylilies can become the backbone of a flower garden because they are so eas...

Apples have a reputation for representing harmony. Just consider how common the sayings “in apple-pie order” and “don’t upset the apple cart” have become since they were popularized in 1796. And, the expression “As American as apple pie” means that something is approved of or normal. Most of us think of freshly picked apples eaten out of hand, made into pies, cakes and tarts, juice, apple butter and sauce. Some varieties are better for each of those uses.  Seventh generation orchardist and apple grower, Tom Burford, has spent his life among apples and apple trees in VA, where apples have been cultivated since the 1700s. Tom Burford at Albermarle In his new book, “Apples of North America” Burford says, “For 50 years I painfully watched the disappearance of the apple culture and the emergence of so-called beautiful apples, a source of malnourishment that even posed a consumption risk from chemical contamination.” In response to the reduction of apple varieties availabl...

 XMas tree farms in OK  Thanksgiving weekend is a popular time to buy and put up a Christmas tree while the family is together. Scotch Pine and Virginia Pine are two of the most popular varieties for our area. The Oklahoma Christmas Tree Association has a handy map of Christmas tree farms in the state.  Here are links for surrounding states that have associations Arkansas www.arktreegrowers.com Illinois www.ilchristmastrees.com Indiana www.indianachristmastree.com Iowa www.iowachristmastrees.com Kentucky www.kychristmastrees.com Louisiana www.southernchristmastrees.org Mississippi www.southernchristmastrees.org Tennessee www.tennesseechristmastrees.org Texas www.texaschristmastrees.com Tips from the experts Selection of a Fresh Tree The basic rule of thumb when purchasing a Christmas tree is to buy a fresh tree and keep it fresh.   There are two simple tests for freshness. First, check the condition of the needles. If bent gently, the needle from a fr...

Here's a link to a must read from The Dirt - http://dirt.asla.org/2013/11/16/what-makes-soils-healthy/ Here are a few quotes to entice you to click over - “Growing plants is the goal,” said James Urban, FASLA, Urban Trees + Soils, at the 2013 ASLA Annual Meeting in Boston . To grow healthy plants, one needs healthy soils, and landscape architects who understand soils and know how to call a soil scientist. In a wide-ranging talk, Urban and his co-presenter, soil scientist Norm Hummel, discussed the qualities and properties of healthy soils and how landscape architects can specify new dirt the right way, particularly in challenging damaged urban landscapes. ... "Urban said there are eight critical properties of soils, which soil biologists can test to determine if soils meet specifications. They include structure, texture, density, nutrients, PH, organic matter, and density, which are all “inter-connected.” More often than not, Urban said trees and plants don’t do well ...

  If you have shade, you'll love Dogtooth violets. Erythroniums have several vivid names including Fawn Lily, Trout Lily, Tooth Violet and Adder’s Tongue. There are 20 species of these sweet, spring-flowering bulbs.   They form clumps that grow to a maximum height of 4-8 inches. The bulbs look like a 2-inch long tooth (dogtooth) and the stems that shoot up in the spring hold pendants of flowers. Flower colors include lavender, pink, yellow and cream. Native to forests, separate species are identified as growing east and west of the Rocky Mountains. East of the Rockies, we can grow White Fawn Lily (White Trout Lily); Yellow Dogtooth Violet (Yellow Adder’s Tongue); Gray Dwarf Trout Lily; Yellow Trout Lily; and Dimpled Trout Lily. The Trout Lily name comes from the brown spots on the leaves, said to resemble brook trout spots.    Trout Lily Root and Leaf from Hiker's Notebook    Erythroniums that grow west of the Rockies include: Avalanch...

Although the jobs themselves are identified as being in England, Wales and Scotland, the Grow Careers website has plenty of information about hort careers for those who are interested in the field. The career dropdown menu starts with arborist and ... keep scrolling ... ends with soil scientist. Click on Plant Science as an area of interest and you'll be completely informed about that career. Such as:   Make a difference in developing new food crops and technologies which will help feed an ever-growing global population and aid their well-being. Help find urgently needed solutions to the environmental challenges we face. New pests and diseases are appearing all the time and we need scientists to help us fight them. .. . . . . There are many science careers either within horticulture or interacting with horticulture and the topics below attempt to give a general flavour.  However there are many more; for example engineers designing machinery or greenhouses and mathe...

Focus Taiwan has announced an online reference of life in their world.  Here's the article "All it takes is a click to learn about Taiwan's smallest owl or to listen to the sound of endemic green tree frogs, thanks to a new encyclopedic database that profiles almost 13,000 species of animals, plants and other life forms in Taiwan. The Chinese-language-only "Taiwan Encyclopedia of Life," officially unveiled Tuesday, is part of a global project that seeks to provide one-page profiles of all of the 1.9 million known living species on Earth, including fungi, protists and bacteria. Work on creating the database started in 2011, when Academia Sinica, Taiwan's top research institute, and the Forestry Bureau under the Council of Agriculture began collaborating. The following year, Academia Sinica signed an agreement with the global Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Secretariat to become its 16th partner. The Chinese-language encyclopedia was set up in October this yea...