Always harden off transplants for eight to ten days before you set them out in the garden. Expose them to short, then gradually longer periods outdoors. (If you purchase transplants, find out if they’ve been hardened off. If not, make sure you do it.)

If seedlings are in flats, slice the roots into squares with a knife about a week before transplanting. Repeat the process before removing from flat.

Feed transplants with fish emulsion the day before setting them out. If possible, transplant on a cloudy or drizzly day. Or set out seedlings in the late afternoon or early evening. It’s more comfortable for you, and the plants will thrive without requiring shade or constant watering. Read the rest of this entry »

For your perennial vegetables and fruits, pick a spot separate from or on the edge of (second best) the main vegetable garden. The easiest way to get a bed started is to stake it out the season before you plant. Cover existing sod with a thick layer of newspapers, magazines, or cardboard. A friend of mine declares that covering sod is the best use she’s found for cast-off issues of the Congressional Record. “They’re so thick nothing will grow through them,” she says. So they don’t blow away, pile something on top —hay, wood chips, sawdust, branches, whatever. By spring, the sod will have decomposed and added green manure to the soil without a struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

The family cat prowling the garden will control its population of chipmunks, mice, and young rabbits.

Cut plastic gallon milk jugs in half lengthwise. Punch a hole in the bottom to let out rain. Set ripening melons in these contraptions. They help prevent rot and keep mice and shrews from nibbling on the melons.

Are rodents feasting on your tulip bulbs? Plant daffodils instead. Their bulbs are bitter, so mice and chipmunks won’t eat them. Read the rest of this entry »

Sayonara, Japanese Beetles

Hire your children to save the garden from Japanese beetles. Pay them a penny a bug. In the evening, when the beetles won’t fly away, the kids can tiptoe along and brush them from plant foliage into jars of kerosene. Bet they won’t even be able to count their catch! Meanwhile, you can relax with a long novel or take in the evening news.

If Japanese beetle grubs are destroying your lawn, introduce milky spore disease, a microbial attack against the larval form of this insect. A little energy invested this year is well spent. Put a teaspoon in the ground every three feet for several years’ protection. It’s death to the grubs, but leaves the earthworm population untouched. Read the rest of this entry »

Lazy gardeners are willing to let a few bugs eat. “I simply plant too much,” says one gardener. “I give my crops rich soil and let them fend for themselves. There are all kinds of bugs, and I don’t have time to fool with them, so if they eat half my chard, I eat the other half.”

“Most gardeners panic when they see one bug eating,” says another gardener, who chides the “spray-happy people who rain destruction on a whole garden for one squash bug. I usually let them eat, and spray only when a crop is really threatened. ” Insect pests will eventually come into balance with their natural enemies, he suggests. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a root cellar, keep it cool in the fall when it’s full of produce by opening ventilators on brisk nights and closing them on warm, sunny days. That’s an easy way to keep the temperature and humidity at ideal levels.

Choose to grow thin-necked varieties of onions rather than thick-necked ones, and you’ll have less incidence of onion-neck rot in storage. Cure them in sun for a week or two after harvest, then lay screens in the rafters of your garage or attic and spread the onions one layer thick. Leave them there for a month or so. Make sure onion necks are thoroughly dry before clipping to an inch or two. Store in a cool, dry place with good ventilation. Read the rest of this entry »

Marjoram Origins

This is a small plant found in the eastern Mediterranean countries, southern Europe and north Africa.

Marjoram Essential oil

Steam distillation of the flowers and leaves produces an oil that ranges in colour from pale yellow to rich amber. It has a warm, spicy aroma.

Marjoram Most common uses

• calms and regulates the nervous system
• good for insomnia, depression and anxiety
• relieves aching limbs and rheumatic conditions
• helps nervous stomach and digestion Read the rest of this entry »

Geranium Origins

Of the 700 different varieties of geranium, around seven are used to produce essential oils. The most exquisitely scented essential oil is Geranium Bourbon, which is obtained from Reunion, an island in the Indian Ocean that produces half the world’s total supply, and Algeria.

Geranium Essential oil

Steam distillation of the leaves and stems, gathered before flowering, produces a yellowish green to brown oil with a powerful aroma. It is a joyful, mentally uplifting oil and a great favourite. Its perfume makes it a valuable addition to many therapeutic but otherwise unattractively scented oils. Read the rest of this entry »

BROCCOLI

Side-dress when the head begins to form. It may be only the size of a fifty-cent piece when you notice it, but go ahead and side-dress. Amount needed: 1 to 2 tablespoons complete fertilizer per plant.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

I usually side-dress brussels sprouts when I harvest the first small marble-size sprouts. Amount: 1 tablespoon complete fertilizer per plant.

CABBAGE

The best time to side-dress cabbage is when it starts to form a head. In my wide rows of cabbage, that’s when the leaves of the plants are about to completely shade the row. Amount needed: 1 tablespoon of complete fertilizer per plant. Read the rest of this entry »

Composting is one of the most important things we gardeners can do. A good compost pile recycles vegetable scraps and other wastes from the garden and yard. We can “harvest” some free fertilizer for the garden, save money, and lessen our need for outside fertilizers. Composting also helps the community because it reduces the amount of garbage other people have to deal with. One of my dreams is to see every household in a town with a compost pile. Read the rest of this entry »

A few summers ago I taught a short course on gardening for the University of Vermont. The classes were held at my test gardens. During a discussion about root crops, Willie, one of the students, said, “Dick, I grow real nice carrots, but I don’t like them too much. I can hardly eat them; they seem so woody.”

“How big do you grow them?” I asked.

Willie smiled, “Oh, they get real good size. I’ve got nice loose soil for them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Many of these seeds are chewed up and destroyed by animals and hers are broken down in the alimentary canal of birds, particularly of chickens, pigeons and seed eaters with strong beaks such as most the finches. A great number, however, have hard enough coats to remain intact while the fleshy parts are digested and are finally voided by the birds, sometimes after being carried for long distances. Birds which do not have the powerful beaks of true seed eaters do least damage; Read the rest of this entry »

Almost every plant produces many thousands or even millions of seeds during its lifetime, but to ensure the survival of the species it is necessary for just one of these to reach maturity. This vast wastage is in reality a form of insurance as at least some should survive to pass the seedling stage. Generally the smaller (and therefore the more vulnerable) the seeds, the greater is the number produced. Read the rest of this entry »

Once fertilization has taken place, the energies of the plant are directed to the successful development of the next generation. The fertilized egg cells are safely protected from the vagaries of climate, or damage by passing insects, by the surrounding mass of the ovary which lies at the base of the now fading flower.

Each part of the ovary has its own role to play in the growth and development of the new seed. Despite a few basic differences, the pattern followed by the growing embryo is characteristic of all plants. At fertilization the egg is made up of a single cell, but this soon begins its growth by dividing into two identical cells. Read the rest of this entry »

The temperature in a root cellar is always a compromise. It’s never equal in all parts of the cellar. Most vegetables never get the perfect temperature.

The temperature near the ceiling of many root cellars can sometimes be 10° F. or so higher than near the floor. This variance creates temperature zones in the root cellar. Your vegetables will keep better if you understand the temperature zones of your root cellar and store crops accordingly. Read the rest of this entry »

No two home root cellars function the same. You’ll have to learn about yours through trial and error. You’ll know better than anyone else which crops will keep a long time in your root cellar and which ones won’t.

Never put anything directly on the floor because vegetables need air circulation from all sides. If you set them on the floor, they will become moist underneath and start to rot much sooner. Set your boxes, barrels, and baskets on boards on the floor so air can circulate under them. Read the rest of this entry »

Trees which do not shed layers of dead tissues regularly have increasingly rugged bark as they age. This can often be observed by noting the relatively smooth nature of the top of a trunk in comparison with the older parts at the bottom. With age, the pressure from within causes the surface to crack and the resulting deep fissures are typical of many trees. The way trees develop such features can be diagnostic and one of the most distinctive is the Sweet Chestnut (Caslanea saliva) which usually cracks in spirals. Read the rest of this entry »

Generally, however, the vascular bundles in a straight piece of grass stem — Maize (Zea mays) being a good example — do not run parallel to the sides but weave from the inner part of the stem to the outer, returning inwards after the leaf traces have branched off. So the vascular tissue forms a series of spirals through the stem. As well as having a different arrangement in the stem, these vascular bundles are different in their individual make-up, there being no layer of cambium between the xylem and the phloem. This means that they cannot develop a woody, strengthening tissue as can dicotyledonous plants. There are exceptions, however, as in the palms and allied woody-stemmed monocotyledons. Read the rest of this entry »

How remarkable it is that the single cell that begins the life of a plant can develop in such an immense variety of ways. Looking at k a newly fertilized cell within an ovary, it is not possible to tell whether it will develop into a tiny alpine plant only a few centimetres high or a giant Californian Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) over 100 metres tall. The beginnings are the same, but as that one cell grows and divides so the characteristics of the new plant emerge. If it is to be an annual and complete its life-cycle within a year, then there is no need for elaboration of stem cells to give strength and durability. Read the rest of this entry »

The leaves fall to form a deep carpet beneath the trees, adding to the dead twigs, flowers and unripe fruit remnants already there. Every year trees shed more than 3,000 kg of waste products in every hectare of woodland and all this breaks down, together with the herbs of the forest floor to form a deep layer of litter. As this litter breaks down so the minerals and other organic substances which were stored in the leaves are released once more, and the resulting layer of humus acts as a natural fertilizer. Read the rest of this entry »