Garden Blog Great Idea

Rochelle @ Studio G had an idea to highlight garden blogs:

a really good way for us to unearth great sites and blogs, organize them, and give them some publicity so that they can grow.

... here are groups that I think gardening related sites generally fall into….please post comments if you think you have one to add or if you think it should be alternatively organized…

Garden Musings - (some hard facts, more general interest, inspirations, personal gardening journey’s, good writing. etc)

Growing for a Purpose - (Kitchen Gardens and resources for growing things that you will actually use, make money off of, propagate, eat, sell, etc.)

Landscape Maintenance - Sites mostly focused on taking care of your land, plants, bugs, equipment, etc. How To’s.

Landscape/ Garden Design - Focused on Design like interior design sites focus on design (accessories, lifestyle, and all the things that go into making a successful garden or landscape)

Landscape/ Garden Photography and other visually inspirational sites - How can we inspire people with out some good pictures?"

[...and several more, but I don't want to copy everything: you need to check in with Studio G]

She goes on to say...

"I am sure that I am overlooking something here. So let me know what you would add…."

Sounds good to me! Why not participate in a chance to discover some of the good garden blogs? Posted on January 28, 2009, this is just starting to heat up :)

Technorati Tags: blog showcase,

Sushi Soaps!

How cute an idea is this? Just don't let anyone get confused... because they look very real, don't they?

This put a smile on my face today. People are so creative.

clipped from demetersdance.wordpress.com They’re finally done!  Except for the container and the plastic grass divider, everything else is soap - the sushi, the wasabi, and the pickled ginger slices.  All the soaps have a tantalizing and refreshing Wasabi fragrance.

Three Lists of 5

Everyone's got an opinion. Garden Wise Guy listed Five Plants I Hate, and he included Impatiens (for a good reason: California climate). Somewhere in my blogosphere meanderings a list had included petunias (I was reading lots of blogs this morning!) and I even read that one gardener wouldn't plant anything that appeared in the flats offered in front of a grocery store.

That is never my opinion at all.

Years ago, I had read a defense of common flowers, and it made a lot of sense to me. I fully understand the repulsion for plants that are used so ubiquitously that the sight of another one leads to that glutted feeling one has after too many rounds at the "all you can eat" table. But I shifted my chair back from the repast and decided to recognize plants as each beautiful in their place, whether common or rare - just so they grow healthy and pull their weight in the garden plan.

In the spirit of Wise Guy's list, this post is setting forth my Ohio garden opinions. Why not?

List One: Five Common Annuals I Love

1. Petunias, especially the blues, purples, yellow, and cherry and vanilla types like Chiffon Morn or Red Morn. One major exception: I do not like white petunias, they look like wet kleenex in the garden.


2. Lobelias. I love them, their form, their colors, their diminutive size and texture.


3. Zinnias, with all their forms and colors, provide the sunniest aspect of the garden with the voice of summer.


4. Dahlberg Daisies. I love "small" as you can see, these tiny yellow daisies are tough, come back from seed in the oddest places, and can bloom well into fall if they are happy.


5. Nicotiana gives fragrance and subtle colors; it grows easily and mixes well with other plants while retaining its individuality (I should be so blessed!)
   

I have written about many annuals that I've grown and what I think of them, in my old 'Annuals' page.

List Two: Five Plants I Hate

There is only one plant I truly HATE, Bishop's Weed, but some that I dislike.

1. The purple leaf Norway Maple. It doesn't blend, it is overplanted, and Norway maples are greedy rooted trees that make everything under them struggle to survive. I would put up with that for a green-leafed version, but not the morosely colored purple one.


2. Juniper 'Pfitzeriana'. This plants sins are blamed on the gardening practice of shoehorning a large plant into a cramped space. Ouch. There are so many beautiful smaller junipers that there is no reason for this.


3. Clipped Forsythia. This one gets blamed on the gardening practice, too. There is nothing uglier than a forsythia clipped into an inch of its miserable life. Don't do it, or don't plant this poor plant.
4. Opuntia, hardy cactus, it looks wrong in most places here in Ohio.


5. Yuccas, for the same reason. It isn't that I wouldn't like some of these plants when situated intelligently, I just dislike their being plunked into the landscape and sticking out like a sore thumb. I love them in your Arizona gardens- and if I lived there, I would plant lots of them.

List Three: Five Seed Choices For 2009

1. Osteospermums. I love them and the plants always cost too much


2. Calendula. They don't come true from seed, so I am ready for more of the double flowered hybrids.


3. Mignonette. Hard to find, but I really want some in the garden this year.


4. Cosmos Versailles. Goldfinches love to feed on the seeds..reason enough to plant them.


5. Nigella. I am looking for the selected variety " Miss Jekyll Blue", since I don't like the mixed colors so well.
   

Let's Start Seeds

Most of my seed starting history began before I knew what the internet was! I used the pamphlets that the seed companies provided and my favorite old garden books to guide me. Other than that, it was through trial and error that I learned my way through the ups and downs of starting seeds.
but I think I should collate some resources online, so here is my beginning effort.

• Seed pots from newspaper.
• 10 Seed Starting Tips
• January Seed Starting Thoughts
• Seed Starting Musings
• Advice for Planting the Starts
• N.Dakota State U. Advice includes useful "Time and Temperature Chart"
• Seed starting w/pictures
• A-Z Chart- really comprehensive
• Virginia Tech good advice
  
• Germinating -wonder what to do with old coffee filters?

Snippets:

Zone 6

□ Order seeds for cool-weather crops: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, celery, lettuce, and peas.

□ Mid-month start cabbage family crops and onion seeds indoors.

□ Prepare the cold frame. Mound straw or leaves around the outside of the coldframe to help it begin holding solar heat.



Zone 5

□ Order seeds of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, parsley, and peas: all cool-weather crops right away. Plan your warm-season crops this month.

□ Get seed-starting equipment together.

□ Start onions seeds indoors toward the end of the month.

□ Dig up chives and begin to force them indoors.



Zone 4

□ Check viability of old seeds by sprouting a few of each kind in folded damp paper towels enclosed in a plastic bag.

□ Set up your seed-starting system.



Zone 3

□ Begin seed ordering from catalogs. ~from harvestwizard.com

Advice from TomatoFest. You might want to visit their site if you are growing tomatoes this year.
"I like to thoroughly combine the seed starting mix with warm water to make it useable since a dry mix is difficult to work with. You may want to let your seed starting mix sit wet overnight before using to assure that it is evenly soaked. The final product should be evenly dampened but not soggy wet."

"Wait for Germination:
This is the hard part. Be patient. Place your containers in a warm location out of direct sunlight. Light is ok, but not needed during the germination process.

If temperature is kept consistently and sufficiently warm, your tomato seeds will usually germinate within 5 to 10 days. Best to keep temperature range 70 to 80F (21 to 27C). The lower the temperature the slower the germination. However, temperatures below 50F (10C) or above 95F (35C) are poor for germination. (Some varieties need more time to germinate.) When seeds start coming up remove tray from plastic bag."
Info on Heirlooms

 Do you have a favorite link? Tell me about it!

Technorati Tags: seed starting links,

Slow Time In The Old Town

It's winter. I slow down with everything else...maybe it is true what they say about the blood thickening. I'm deciding how I want the coming year to go and what I want to do with the blog.

Beth Ann got me started on the seed search for this year, so I went to the seed aisle @ Anderson's and picked up a few packets, since they were having a 25% off sale. Just bought some of the usual: Heavenly Blue morning glories, nasturtiums, and a black hollyhock. The black holly hock because I saw a beautiful stand of them in the herb section of the Whetstone Rose Park last summer, and want to try them this year. I promised her a list of sites on seed starting...which I hope to post soon. But I'm slow as molasses lately.



Be sure to see Gardens in Ohio and A Botanical Wedding.

How Handy!

clipped from www.lehmans.com

Stainless Herb Scissors

Snip that fresh rosemary, mint, oregano and parsley quickly, neatly and right where you want them with these specially designed stainless steel scissors.

Technorati Tags: kitchen+gadgets, fresh herbs

Winter's Meeting

Reposting this poem from 12/20/04. I don't often write poetry.

Winter's Meeting

Winter has laid its cold hand upon me

Its chill reaching to close within

Like frost fingers searching

Numb channels, stiffened too much to shiver.



Chipped out in lacey pattern

Parts of me have swirled away

Caught up in blasts, twirled into the leaden skies

Disappeared from view, forgotten in the still.



Winter, so unbending cold

But stark in beauty

Stands in defiance, waits in covered quiet

Bidding remembrance, it shuns my ungloved touch.

-I.

Winter's Aftermath

We don't think too much about it while everyone is trading temperature reports and talking about record breaking lows, but at some point the clash between the weather we are experiencing and the cold tolerance of our plants will become something to reckon with. We won't know just how hard our winter was on our plants until late spring.

Even damaged plants may sprout and look like they survived in the earliest parts of spring, but if a plant was winter-killed you will know once the temperatures heat up.

If you have snow cover your plants are better protected; if you have mulches, so much the better and the roots are insulated against "heaving" happening from frost action. Something Northern gardeners often do is inspect their plants once the ground defrosts a bit, then use ones heel to push heaved plants back into the earth. (Things like heucheras are especially susceptible). Roots exposed to wind are more likely to cause plant's demise than the cold temperatures.

The University of Minnesota, where they know about such things, publishes information on effects of winter damage on trees and shrubs.

Technorati Tags: frost action, winter damage

Depressing Exercise: Count the Roses You Killed

Most of them died due to freak climate smackdowns, but still. I changed my gardening practices a few years after moving to this windy prairie environment, and I have some crazy holdouts in my garden... if I grow a rose here it will survive just about anything. But loving roses, I tried valiantly for years to grow -and lose- so many lovely roses. Thinking about this...thus started my decline.

It all started, innocently enough, with Angela, In The Cottage Garden. She is starting a lovely garden in Oregon, home of garden beauty(IMO)...I'm enamored with West Coast gardens. And it's not her fault, but she asked for suggestions for roses to try. Well, of course, I am cold-locked in Ohio so I just love to think up any excuse to dream about gardens and that led me off on a rabbit trail, like little Alice following her dreams and imaginations. Here, however, is where I went down a dark path: I had the bright idea that I would make a list of all the roses I've grown. Right now listed in a text file, but eventually I'll be changing and rewriting my roses pages, and then I will have posted the truth for all to see.

It was then I realized my crimes: I kill roses. I love them and kill them. How horrifying a thing to face! The creeping realization of what this means to my garden budget alone... well, let's just not go there. Reality is too cruel.

You know, I'm not going to complain about how 'THÉRÈSE BUGNET' takes over the garden... at least she grows and thrives, which I am now realizing is a rare event for roses in my garden.

=====
and yet, my plan is to choose the best candidates for survival and build my rose stock once again....
Redemption... or more criminal behavior?

Technorati Tags: , rose garden

Cold Frame Survival

My husband has been fascinated by survival techniques (goaded by dire economic predictions and concerns from our last power outage during Ike). He is finally coming into homesteading interests as it pertains to the garden. This used to be solely my domain. I dug, tilled, planted, and maintained the gardens -and everything in between the garden growing season in the yard; but now, just in time to offset my physical deficits, comes my husbands interest in developing gardening skillz.

We were talking about becoming serious in our vegetable garden this year, and as I went over the salient points we discussed cold frames. Once upon a time I had one, made out of recycled materials including old glass windows. Time and children demolished it. Plus I didn't have one of those handy dandy automatic openers.

Well... I think it is time to build another one and have come across easy direction via a video. So Handyman, this one is for you:
Martha Stewart shows you how to build a cold frame
Technorati Tags: homesteading,

Garden Magazines R.I.P.?

Here is one that has remained a favorite

John of "Liza and John's garden, (which has the most gorgeous photos EVER of cardinals-go see)made a comment that ties in to the conversation of numerous twitterers:

There is no way that magazines can make available the information that is instantly available through blogging. The better magazine publishers are starting blogs and web pages that make past articles available on line. that makes them blogger's just like the rest of us and they are offering information that is not in the publications.

They are not offering the personal contact that most garden blogs offer. Don't get me wrong a good magazine article is an excellent source of information and worth the cost.

Now there is a scary thought for hard copy media- and because it is a fact of life, there are many media businesses shuttering this year. Reading this article points out the magnitude via Shannon Paul.

So how does this all add up for gardeners?

I'd always been a heavy consumer of magazines, although it steeply dropped off for a number of years;this for reasons having nothing to do with blogging (started before the blogging phenomenon). Presently, I buy cooking magazines. However, I will never buy the same amount of magazines that I did in the past. I do, however, buy more non fiction books. Pretty much a Jane Doe when it comes to media consumption.

Blogging has replaced my need for quick and dirty information, and for entertainment reading, so does a garden magazine have a place in my future? Yes, but only if they change.

The trouble is that they changed in the past due to market demands, into slivered niche titles that were bloated with ads. Ads pay for the costs, that consumers don't wish to underwrite, and the niche idea is to gain loyalty. This is not working for today's magazine reader, it seems. I know it didn't work for me.

I think garden publications are going to have to consolidate, at least in topic coverage. And I don't know how successful Martha Stewart Living is in profits, but I know I buy her magazine, and at news stand prices. That is the type of brand and styling that garden magazines will have to make going forward, I think. Or come up with something totally new, but I have no ideas for that.

I like magazines, as I said, but they regurgitate information. In fact, that is a criticism for garden writing on the whole (I'll write more on that another time). Loyal readers are those who garner a bit of basic information and don't need to be paced through the baby steps each and every time. They need inspiration and news, and insider tips. Ok, that might be an unfortunate turn of phrase, but everyone knows I'm talking about gardening tips, right?

So, while putting garden magazines in the grave, I'm calling for a reinvention of what's offered to me in the grocery store magazine rack. Make it worth me stretching my budget yet some more.

What are your thoughts? What works for you in garden reading choices?


Technorati Tags: print media, garden magazines

Garden Bloggers, Future Past

While we hear the main stream media bemoan the advent of blogs, you have to wonder what we missed over the years. This is one reason why garden bloggers are becoming more and more important to the gardening world. They are the ones bringing up subjects that we need to address in our businesses.-Trey, The Blogging Nurseryman

Trey wrote another provocative post that got my thinking juices flowing, helped along by a comment by Doug Green, who certainly is expert in the garden world on many levels.

See? this is why I love the blogging world :)

Other garden related comments from this morning had to do with the demise of favorite garden magazines. I have mixed feelings on this. In a way, all media is going through a sifting process. As it switches from the patriarchal type of oversight of "what the people need to hear and how they need to hear it" to "the user lets you know what is needed" we are seeing lots of 'growing pains'. Doug wrote an entire series on this phenomenon starting with this post,"What I've Learned From Garden Blogging".

With the addition of Twitter, blogging is quite powerful in moving information and making it widely available. Now, how you want to use it is up to you, but that alone is a tremendous resource for businesses. Data, real time people created data, gives you information on becoming more efficient as a business while becoming more of a service to your customer. That is win-win. That is a beneficial use of technology, I think.

As for magazines, I don't think they are going away, but I think the refinement process is going to consolidate them into something that people truly want enough to pay for. The age of profligate consumerism is over, and with it the luxury of having many choices that end up as waste. For some that is something to mourn, and for others something to celebrate, but that is our present reality. We are entering a new day in many ways, and I suppose we need to read the horizon to understand what we are going to face today.

But, as gardeners, we ought to be used to that.

Thanks Trey, for again rendering service to the garden blogging community (and others!).

Gothic Gardening

Hope you readers like this humorous look at poisonous plants. Amy Stewart, I love you! Cute, funny, and informative all at the same time. As pretty as monkshood is, I denied it a place in my garden for just that reason, "better safe than sorry".
Technorati Tags: Amy Stewart, poisonous plants

Lonicera Fragrantissima

Annie and Melissa twittered back and forth about this plant, mentioning Elizabeth Lawrence while they were at it. So I went to see what she is noted as saying about it.

”Nearly every garden in the South has a large ungainly Christmas honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima, that is dull at its best, shabby at its worst and never the least bit beautiful even when in full bloom.” -Elizabeth Lawrence

That comes from her book which is on google.

This opinion is in the same category as those about lilacs. While true, it doesn't convey the sentimental and perhaps irrational love for a plant with a certain fragrance at a certain season. The winter honeysuckle is a plant that grows big and has rather dull leaves and tiny flowers... that part is entirely true, but the sweet lemony fragrance that lightly, but flirtatiously, floats on the air in the late winter is a beautiful thing. One that I look forward to each year.

It was quite garden friendly when I grew it in the back of my city garden, by the alley fence and under the big old sweet cherry tree that was part of the garden when I moved there. Now I have a large hedge of several plants that are at the back part of my drive. They suffered dieback one year and I cut them all down to the ground- they have now resumed their six foot stature. It is a personal choice, but I very much love them and think they ought to be part of a garden that holds fragrance as an important factor. But then, I grow lilacs, too.

Also mentioned here, and here; and in Spring Blooming Plants . Something official from Auburn U. (the photo above and more on this plant ID page).

Fine Gardening gave it a mention in their good article on winter plants, all blooming early in spring in my Zone 5a climate.

Technorati Tags: Elizabeth Lawrence, fragrant shrubs

Tracy DiSabato-Aust

Tracy DiSabato-Aust is our local garden celebrity in Central Ohio. I rate her books as top notch- she manages to write authoritatively, yet with complete accessibility for gardeners of all levels. I just experienced one of the perks of Twitter and that is to find out that she twitters and has a site ( I just didn't know)

On her site was posted a video that gives us a look at some choice plants while introducing her book, "50 High Impact, Low Care garden Plants" which fit right in with my garden mission !

Take a look at her video, and pick up some tips for your 2009 plant choices-


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Garden Mission

Helen Yoest of Gardening with Confidence had the idea of writing a mission statement for our garden. I'm giving it a try.

I think my garden's first purpose is to be hospitable. I want it to welcome flora, fauna, and humans alike. I want it to be welcoming, and not over burdensome for me to maintenance. Foremost is this welcoming aspect... which is very American in demeanor. Room for swings and running children, as well as bonfires and cookouts, with quiet places and seating areas tucked in.

I have a very large space, so integrating those things is easy, but the fact that I am aging and need to lighten to workload on this body (that won't suffer a laborers duties anymore) means a change in how it is planted, and what it is planted with. So the second part of the garden mission is that it is kind to its gardener.

The third part of my garden mission is to provide. I want it to provide vegetable produce, plenty of flowers, some fruit, herbal and floral fragrance, and a safe peaceful background for our family's enjoyment.

To coalesce these things into a simple set of words, this years garden should endeavor to:

Welcome life, host peacefully and kindly, provide abundantly.







Technorati Tags: mission statement,