All the Dirt on Gardening

Photo: Succulent growing over the edge of the sidewalk softens the look of the hardscape and can survive our hot August. THE BLOGGING NURSERYMAN One of the many horticulture newsletters I subscribe to is the Blogging Nurseryman . It's California based but today's issue is relevant to all of us. By way of introduction, I'll quote Trey Pitsenberger's blog "A northern California nurseryman talks about the business of running a small garden center, competing in a hyper-competitive market, and anything else that crosses his mind." It's interesting because it provides an insight into the small, personal, garden center. One recent post was about the frustration of people coming to him for advice and then going to a big box store to make purchases. Then, bringing the plant in later to diagnose it's failure to thrive. Today's post was about a small family moving into a home and putting in a lawn. They had to water the new lawn, of course to get it going...

The American Penstemon Society has a newly designed website with a new www address. Here are excerpts from the current newsletter, delivered today, with a summary of the site's new features. The dropdown tabs include: Cultivation, Propagation, Identification, Distribution, APS , and the Library. The Message boards were created on the cultivation and distribution pages. The message boards are interactive and user’s may log questions. They are developing a sizable photo gallery. This site has a good start with a Java enabled (runs on any platform) gallery. "We hope as time passes, that the quality of the pictures will help site users identify and cultivate penstemons of interest to them." The American Pensetmon Society 2008 conference will be in Great Basin National Park (eastern Nevada) second or third weekend in June. I tried to log into the message board but was blocked - the new software may not be ready for prime time yet. I joined the APS because I'm dyi...

The Leaf Footed Bug is highly praised by someone at this website but let me tell you I don't enjoy them crawling all over my summer squash plants. We are in the buggy season and they are driving me buggy. Mosquito bites from picking blackberries, squishing mating beetles and leaf footed bugs on the cucumbers, washing squash bugs out of the summer squash and scraping their eggs off the bottom of the leaves, things I've never seen before on the amaranth. Makes me itch all over sometimes. Photo: I think we need some bug eating chickens! On the happy side, there are big fat butterfly larva on the dill that we grow for them. How do the butterflies find it? Everyone is talking about how many butterflies there are this year. And, small frogs jump out from under plants where we water now. They must have moved in when we had the 36 days of rain. POLLUTION FROM FARMING Today I interviews a PhD candidate in forest ecology at Oklahoma State University. We met at a recent Living Kitchen...

CHECK IT OUT If you have any interest at all in public spaces and landscape architecture, do yourself a favor and subscribe to a smart blog at http://www.asla.org/land/dirt/blog/ where you can sign up to receive an email notice when something new is posted. Operated by the American Society of Landscape Architects , the blog currently has articles about the walkability of communities, solar powered public art in Washington D.C., an art show in Florence, green roofs, the importance of parks and a tribute to Mrs. Johnson. I have never seen an article at the site that was dull, uninteresting or blah. Photo: Ice plant in a rock garden, 2007 MASTER GARDENERS CONFERENCE IN LITTLE ROCK Whether or not you were available to attend the conference, many of the presentations are available on line right now for a limited time. (They are taking them down in a couple of months.) Go to the Arkansas Master Gardener's website to view 46-educational, informative and amusing presentations. The...

In a sincere but misguided attempt to keep us safe, Homeland Security has imposed the kind of everyone-take-your-shoes-off-at-the-airport approach to a horticulture product, fermented fish heads. Organic gardeners around the world use products like bat guano, seaweed and fish emulsion to perk up their plants and feed the good organisms in the soil. Underwood Gardens "Home of Grandma's Garden Catalog" has been selling Fermented Salmon, all-purpose Liquid Organic Fertilizer, manufactured by Coast of Maine, Inc., in Portland, Maine. Testimonials on the Web site recommend it as a fertilizer for indoor house plants. In addition, it is 85 percent effective in repelling deer, rabbits, woodchucks and squirrels; and, it does an effective job against aphids and white flies. Then it was found to deter Japanese beetles when it is used as a foliar feeding spray. The manufacturer, Envirem, has been sending the Canadian product to the U.S. for eleven years and when the recent s...

The industry that brings us our glorious gardens is worried that we are going to abandon them. Sales at garden and lawn retailers totaled $34.07 billion last year, down nearly 15 percent from 2002's peak of $39.6 billion. One publication said that arthritic 50-year-olds are throwing down their trowels and that the younger Generation X and Y will never garden. Well, maybe that's true of some but not of me nor my plant enthusiastic friends. We seem to buying at our usual rate, if not more. Anyway the industry wonders what they can do to encourage us to buy more. Any thoughts? Comment here or send me an email at mollyday1@gmail.com . Photos: Two iris blooms from my yard Papa Geno's , located in rural Lancaster County, Nebraska is having an iris sale until the end of July. Breck's is having a sale on bulbs for all seasons of bloom - from iris to stargazer lilies. You could get together with a friend or three and order enough to get free shippin...

Photo: A plate full of those wonderful tomatoberry tomatoes from the seeds I got from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Unlike most bite-size tomatoes, these have walls and meat inside instead of just juice and seeds. The cucumbers are still producing and the peppers are loving the hot, dry days. The spaghetti squash is making fruit and vining like mad. The potimarron squash (Baker Creek Seeds) is lagging but looks promising. We are eating edamame (Botanical Interests) most days with lunch or as an afternoon protein snack. It's the third year I've tried to grow them and the first time we have had a decent harvest due to hungry bunnies. This year a web of fencing has forced them to move to other plants. And, eat they have - the corkscrew vine, the asters, the lower leaves of the eggplant, on and on. The weeds are relentless and now it's time to start watering again. After you water, lay down a few sheets of newspaper and cover it with mulch to keep the moisture close to the ...