Freeze green beans whole to prevent sogginess. Blanch in boiling water for three minutes, cool in ice water, and blot dry before freezing.
Chop or slice onions and green pepper and freeze raw. Toss into cooked dishes straight from the freezer.
To quick-freeze berries, pour them, unwashed if possible, or well-drained, on a cookie sheet and pop into the freezer. When frozen, spoon into small plastic bags or containers and return to freezer. 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 »
A thriving row of cauliflower is a spectacular sight in the vegetable garden, but few people think they can have great success with it. I think it’s as easy to grow as any cabbage family crop. Cauliflower is less tolerant to hot weather than its relatives, though, so it’s important to set your plants out very early or plan on a fall crop. If the heads mature in the heat, they’re apt to have a bitter taste or go by very quickly.
For your first crop, set out some plants 3 or 4 weeks before the average date of the last spring frost. Pinch off a couple of the lower leaves.
As cauliflower heads get to be 4 to 5 inches across, they should be blanched by preventing sunlight from reaching the heads. Read the rest of this entry »
Chard has a lot going for it. You can plant it as soon as you can work your garden in the spring, and it will provide tasty, nutritious greens for months. Through cold weather or hot, it won’t get bitter, tough, or strong as long as you keep it harvested.
With wide rows you can get basket after basket of chard to can or freeze for the winter. To me, it’s the perfect green for a wintertime meal. It tastes good, it’s nutritious, and it’s a lot cheaper than store-bought greens. Read the rest of this entry »
Pull your storage onions when the plants are dead. The tops will lose their green color, turn brown, and start to wither. That’s the time they should be harvested. Don’t let them stay in the ground once they are dead.
A warm, sunny day is ideal for pulling onions. Leave them bottom side up in the garden for 2 or 3 days until they are dry.
Keep roots away from the ground. The drying kills the roots—they look like little brittle wires. When thoroughly dry, they’ll break off easily with a swipe of your hand. Read the rest of this entry »
Inadequate soil preparation before planting or sowing is a major cause of horticultural disappointment. Digging and the application of fertilizers and bulky organic materials are usually necessary to ensure that the soil is suited to the plants or crops that you want to grow. Drainage may also be required.
There are certain fertilizers that supply all three of the principal foods required by plants: nitrogen for leaf and stem growth; phosphorus for good root growth; potassium (potash), which helps to form and ripen flowers, fruits and seeds.
Vegetative propagation involves raising plants from cuttings and by methods like layering and division.
Success with this method depends upon providing the right conditions. Warmth and humidity are essential for good results in every case.
Pruning roses will not reward you with more flowers nextyear. However, it will control shape and maintain health. Wild (species) roses and hybrid shrub roses need no pruning — just the removal of dead wood.
Garden pools can look rather bleak unless you grace them with water plants. These should certainly include some waterlilies, with large, rounded, floating leaves which help to shade the water and exotic-looking blooms, mostly bowl-shaped, in summer and autumn.
Water plants are best planted during late spring or early summer. Most will be happy in ordinary fibrous garden soil in purpose-made planting baskets, but first you must line each basket with clean, coarse sacking. Before immersing in the pool, spread a layer of coarse gravel over the soil to prevent it from floating off and to prevent disturbance by fish. Baskets 25-30cm/10-12in square are suitable for most vigorous plants, but small versions, 20cm/8in square, are better for pygmy waterlilies and less invasive plants. Read the rest of this entry »
The most common problem with lawns is discoloured turf. Mainly this is caused by some adverse cultural condition such as drought, waterlogging, faulty feeding or poor mowing. However, there are pests and diseases that can disfigure, weaken or even kill large areas of turf, so you should always investigate discoloured areas early and apply control measures, if needed, as soon as possible.
These are the most common, and most troublesome, pests that are likely to invade your lawn. Read the rest of this entry »
Climbing roses will grow in tubs. Choose climbers rather than ramblers, as climbers grow more circumspectly and are less prone to mildew and other problems. The list is endless, but I would not like to be without ‘Zephyrine Drouhin’, despite her tendency to mildew, ‘Handel’, which is cream with rosy pink edges and has handsome bronze foliage, or ‘Maigold’, which is double yellow and beautifully scented. Some roses will flourish only on south walls while others are happy in a west or east aspect and others will even tolerate a north wall. Then there are those that are scented and those that are not, those that have one magnificent flowering and then call it a day and others that flower less prolifically but throughout the summer. Read the rest of this entry »
Verbena is an old-fashioned cottage garden plant that is making something of a comeback. It is really a perennial but is best treated as an annual; the new hybrids have dense heads of pink, white and purple flowers that still retain their scent. Take out the growing shoots to encourage bushiness and dead-head regularly. Verbena is usually sold in boxes of mixed colours and these mixtures are particularly attractive. It reaches a height of up to 10 inches.
Gazania is another perennial most commonly grown as an annual. G. x hybrida at 9 inches has dark green foliage with a grey underside; the daisy flowers are in the yellow, orange, bronze range though you can also have some deep pinks. They like full sun. Read the rest of this entry »
Alyssum is always associated with lobelia—usually planted alternately along suburban front paths and all right, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing. Once available only in white, it can now be found in pinks and purples that have more charm. Ageratum, too, now comes in some really deep shades of lilac and blue, which makes it more appealing for the front of the box. Again, pack it in tightly.
Dianthus, the annual, is increasingly produced for window boxes and also for hanging baskets. Most varieties flower in flushes, three or four times during the season rather than continuously, so it is a good idea to plant a second basket three weeks later in the hope that when the flush in the first one is over you can quickly replace it with the second just coming into its best. Read the rest of this entry »
The next most popular room in the house for growing plants is the kitchen. Since it is a working area in common use it is natural that the room should be at a comfortable temperature and the steam created by cooking provides a good supply of humidity. However where gas is installed for cooking, as with heating, there may be trouble from the fumes. Unfortunately, because it is a’ working area, space is often limited in the kitchen but a room divider in a combined kitchen/dining room can be turned into a real and interesting feature of the room with a little indoor gardening. Here orchids can be used successfully with other plants to great advantage. Read the rest of this entry »
These roses are remarkable for producing clusters of blooms, and flowering freely and continuously on hardy bushes. Although Floribundas are planted particularly for their colour display in the garden, the clustered stems can also be cut for informal flower arrangements.
The shape of the flowers may besingle (five-petalled), semi-double (two to three layers of petals), star-shaped (firm petals reflexing from a pointed bud) or cup- shaped (numerous petals from a dense, quartered centre). The forerunners of this group of roses were known as Polyantha roses and the next generations resulting from cross- pollination became known as Polyantha Hybrids. In the 1950s, well- known American rose breeder Gene Boerner coined the catchy name ‘Floribunda’ for promotion purposes, and it was soon adopted worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »
Colourscape roses are defined by their unusual and informal spreading growth habit and not by the shape of their blooms, which can look like Hybrid Teas, or Miniatures, or be produced in Floribunda clusters. Most Colourscape roses are less subject to fungal disease and leaf drop than their more glamorous cousins, addressing a universal demand for low-care plants. Many of the new roses released every year thus fall under Colourscape or Informal roses. They require little or no spraying and hardly any grooming during the season.
Low Shrub or Informal roses encompass many Heritage- style plants, and grow tobetween 1,2 and 2 m, either arching their branches or filling out to a rounded specimen, flowering all over. Read the rest of this entry »
The planting period for aquatics is between mid- and late spring. Most people will prefer to plant water lilies and other aquatic plants in special plastic lattice aquatic baskets. Small baskets are adequate for the plants recommended here.
Heavy loam is the best soil to use for aquatics. Place some in the bottom of the basket, firm it well, then set a plant in the middle and fill in with more loam, again firming well. Finish off with a layer of pebbles to prevent the surface being washed away.
Then gently lower the baskets into the water. It is best not to lower newly planted water lilies to the full depth to start with. At first lower them so that only a little water covers their crowns. Then lower them gradually as they grow. This is most easily accomplished by standing the basket on bricks and then removing the bricks one at a time as the lilies get larger. Miniature water lilies can be grown in water as shallow as 30cm (12in). Read the rest of this entry »
The water in a newly created pool will quickly turn green with algae and become like pea soup. To many people this is, of course, devastating. But people familiar with pools will not worry about it, for they know that the water will gradually become clear of its own accord, provided the pool has been well planted with submerged oxygenating plants and other aquatics.
On no account change the water when it becomes green, otherwise the problem will never solve itself. The fresh water will simply become green again. Just leave the pool alone to settle down and remember that once the plants are established the water will gradually clear up. As water evaporates the pool should be replenished with fresh water. Apart from this a pool will need very little attention for a few years. Read the rest of this entry »
One must be extremely careful when choosing marginal aquatics for a tub because some are very vigorous and tall. The following small-growing kinds, of restrained habit, can be recommended with confidence for the mini-pool.
ACORUS GRAMINEUS VARIEGATUS’ - A cultivarof the sweet flag, this plant has grassy foliage which is variegated cream and deep green. The flowers are insignificant. Unfortunately this is not one of the hardiest marginal aquatics; indeed, it is not completely frost hardy.
DOUBLE MARSH MARIGOLD (Caithapalustris `Fiore Pleno’) — This is one of the favourite marginals. It is a dwarf, compact plant with fully double, bright golden yellow flowers over a long period in spring and early summer. The bright green, shiny foliage makes an excellent background for the blooms. Read the rest of this entry »
