Azaleas love left-over tea and tea leaves. So do houseplants such as philodendron and rubber plants.
Spread a thick layer of manure on the asparagus patch after the ground freezes in fall. It does double duty as winter protection and an early source of nutrients in spring. Read the rest of this entry »
A drop of mineral oil on corn silk will keep out worms. Apply to tip of each ear when silks begin to brown, with a medicine dropper, pump-type oil can with a long spout, or a plastic dishwashing detergent bottle. Do it a total of about three times, once every five or six days. What’s lazy about this, you wonder? When you harvest the corn, most of the silk will come off with the husk for worm-free and silk-free ears.
If you can prevent plant disease with good cultural practices, then you’ll never need to use extra time to fight them: 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 »
“I never bend over to pick bush beans,” John Page says. He explains that, since most of the beans come at once, particularly in determinate varieties, there’s no sense in courting a backache simply because you hope to get the few beans that will appear after the main picking. “Just pull out the bean plant, take off all the beans while you’re standing up, and throw the plant in the compost.” Have a second planting under way for another harvest. 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 »
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 »
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.
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 »
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 »
Trees and shrubs within semi desert areas have their own defenses against drought. These usually take the form of a deciduous habit, the plants losing their leaves as the hottest season commences, together with the ability to store water within their roots and occasionally their trunks. The famous Baobab (Adansonia digitata) of Africa has an almost bottle-like stem. Other plants spend the difficult season completely dormant. Read the rest of this entry »
Too many people think head lettuce or Iceberg lettuce has to be bought at the market.
I grow wonderful crops of head lettuce and yet every year some new visitor looks at my bright green rows and says, “Hmmmm. I didn’t know you could grow that here.” Well, you can and it’s easy.
All you need is some cool weather in spring or fall. Get started early; head lettuce needs as much time as possible developing in cool weather, so the earlier you can set out some plants, the better. They will have the best chance to head up before the scorching days of summer.
Great Lakes, Iceberg, and Ithacavarieties have all done well in my garden. I start them indoors in shallow flats or pyramid planters about 6 to 8 weeks before the last expected frost date.
The most important step in early planting is to harden off the plants very well before setting them into the garden. After they are about 4 weeks old, I start giving them some time outdoors. That way they can handle unexpected cold snaps and even a light frost. Read the rest of this entry »
You can’t plant peanuts from the stores if they’ve been roasted. To find a seed source, look in the mail order catalogs. If you live in the South, a garden store should have them.
Most peanut varieties need 4 or 5 months of warm growing time. If your season is shorter, try
Early Spanish peanuts. They take less time and bear very well. Read the rest of this entry »
Peppers are the prettiest plants in the garden, especially when they’re loaded with dozens of red, green, orange, and yellow peppers.
Peppers are easy to grow, but people have trouble with peppers because they push them too hard. Giving them too much fertilizer is the number one mistake. I have a big stack of letters from people who say, “My plants are tall and dark green, but I don’t have any peppers yet!” This is a sure sign of too much fertilizer.
Peppers don’t need much fertilizer, and what they get should come in small doses. Give them a teaspoon of a complete fertilizer like 5-10-10 at planting time and no more than a teaspoon or two at blossom time.
Each year I grow pepper plants that at first glance seem awfully small, yet when you look closely you discover 15 or 20 peppers on each plant. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a guaranteed way to get hard-to- germinate parsnips and carrots to come up in a few days!
Parsnips, carrots, and other slow-germinating seeds take so long to come up—often 2 weeks or more—that weeds often overtake the row.
If you’d like to get these slowpoke crops to come up in just a few days (or if you want to speed up other crops such as onions, lettuce, beets, etc.), my wide-row seed tape planting idea is for you.
My grandson Brian is a real carrot fan. When he sees the feathery carrot tops in the garden he can hardly wait to start pulling up his orange snacks. Kids like discovering buried treasure and I’ve taught Brian how to find the biggest carrots in the row—by looking for the darkest green tops. (Works almost every time.) To get the most of your carrots‘ vitamin A and other minerals, don’t peel them. A good scrubbing with a vegetable brush is all they need.
I try a lot of carrot varieties each year, all lengths and shapes. My friend Ed told me about the Danversvariety which I grow every year. He said it was developed a long time ago in the area around Danvers, Massachusetts. When he was a kid he weeded carrot fields there by hand for a summer job and received $4 a week! Read the rest of this entry »
Blossom end rot can be a killer. Your tomatoes may be growing just fine and starting to ripen, when suddenly there’s a hot, dry spell. After a few days you notice large brown or black spots showing up on the bottom side of all your tomatoes. This is blossom end rot. The rot spreads and the prospects for a great harvest suddenly go out the window.
There is no cure for blossom end rot once it hits your tomatoes. The best thing to do is pick the tomatoes that have been hit and toss them on the compost pile. No use wasting any of the plant’s energy on damaged goods. Read the rest of this entry »
I have a new technique for coaxing my horseradish bed to produce the straightest roots I’ve ever seen. Straight roots are the easiest to clean and process.
First, let me explain that I harvest most of my horseradish roots quite early in the spring.
The taste is real hot in spring and I like hot horseradish.
I fertilize after the harvest and let the plants get about 6 inches tall. Then I till half the bed as deeply as I can. This chops up the roots and mixes the pieces into the soil. Many of the pieces are near the surface where they will quickly sprout and grow again. The important thing is that my roto-tiller leaves the soil so soft and fluffy that the roots have an easy, unobstructed path down into it. 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.
Description: A robust annual plant, up to 60 cm high. Stem hollow, simple or branched, covered with bristly hairs. Leaves elliptical, wrinkled, rough, the lower ones on short petioles, the upper ones sessile. Flowers, on long stalks, are about 2 cm in diameter with a calyx of five sepals and a 5-pointed corolla, usually blue, sometimes white. Flowers from June till September. Fruit ovoid, light brown.
Origin and Distribution: Origin uncertain, thought to be southern Europe. Easily propagated by seed and naturalized in many places. Read the rest of this entry »
Description: A biennial to triennial, rarely perennial plant, with a black, nearly unbranched root. From the root rise several stems forming short branches in the upper part. Stems 30-80 cm high, covered with rough hairs.’ Basal leaves in the first year are up to 20 cm long, narrowing into a petiole; during the flowering period they are already dry, and only the lanceolate shorter stem leaves, sessile at their cordiform base, remain on the plant. Flowers relatively small, with tubular corolla, first crimson-red, later deep violet-blue. Flowers arranged in short, dense coils, flowering from May to September. Read the rest of this entry »
