All things green

Anyone can grow fruits or vegetables in their own backyard.  No special garden plot needed!

Edible plants  can be tucked in a number of spots in an existing landscape.  The only requirement is enough sun which in most cases is 6-8 hours of direct sun.

Any vegetable can be grown but some look better than others, so they can be put in more noticeable spots.  Some plants that are being used for landscaping are swiss chard, parsley, everbearing strawberries, lettuce, kale, cabbages, peppers and many kinds of herbs.

Best results can be obtained if the soil is improved directly around the edible plant. Also, during dry spells, they will probably need supplemental water.

Blueberries and dwarf fruit trees such as apples, pears, peaches and plums are a good choice even though they need a few early season sprays.

Grapes on a fence or arbor can add quick privacy.  There is even a hardy Kiwi vine for our hardiness zone.

Just think of walking out into your own yard in the summer and picking peaches off your own tree.  Nothing tastes better!

bye for now,

Judy

I went out to the garden the other day to check out the beds that were planted last fall.

We had planted three beds, one bed of a leaf lettuce mix, one of spinach, and one bed of Bibb lettuce.

The Bibb  lettuce had a heat coil buried to keep the soil warm.  I fully expected that bed to be alive, and it was.

What surprised me was discovering that the other two beds were alive as well. They had nothing more than a plastic covering to protect them from the winter cold.  It got down to at least -19F at this garden location.

It was the snow cover that we had this winter that made the difference!  Under a foot of snow that was piled on top of the bed covers, the lettuce and spinach were still alive and waiting for a little warmer weather to start growing again.

You may want to think about making your own bed cover to get an early crop of lettuce this spring.  A bed cover placed over a garden bed can start to warm the soil. You can start some lettuce plants inside then gradually  let them get used to the cooler outside  temperatures. Put them in a bright yet cool location  (40’s to 50’s) for several days, then move them  into your outdoor covered bed to get a real early crop of lettuce.

Keep in mind that your lettuce that you grow in that bed will be better than anything you will find in the store. Check the prices at “Whole Foods” or some other high quality produce department to get an idea of what you might have to pay for lettuce that only begins to approach the quality you will be harvesting!

Once your bed cover is made, you can use it next fall to extend the growing season.

Bob

We are having a nice, long, snowy, old-fashioned winter here in Michigan.

Some gardeners I have been talking with are getting a little weary of all the snow and cold temperatures. Maybe you are too.

In long winters like this I like to take a page from our Japanese gardening friends.  They feel gardening is a year long process. For them winter is just another gardening season.

When a Japanese gardener plants his garden, he will consider how the plants will look in the fall and through the winter. He looks forward to snow in the winter so he can enjoy “sekku” or in English, “snow blossoms”.

In Japan, an evergreen tree is selected, in part, on how it will look during the winter. Stems and old seed heads of perennials will also make a good foundation for sekku as they collect and hold snow.

One good thing about this type of winter gardening is that once the plants have been selected and planted during the growing season, all you have to do is sit back and wait for snow!

Also, you don’t have to be in such a rush in the fall to “tidy up” the garden by removing all of the old plant stems. Some of the fallen and broken stems and any thing that has shown signs of disease  should be removed of course, but keep some interesting stems and leaves for your sekku.

So after the next snow, think about taking a different look at your yard and garden and take some time to enjoy your own snow blossoms!

Bob

This time of the year it’s very easy to over-water house plants.

There is a lot less light in the winter,so most  plants including Jade Plants, will not be as actively photosynthesizing and won’t need as much water.

Over-watering has symptoms similar to under-watering.
When you give a plant too much water, it can cause the roots to become water logged and eventually die back. When the plant loses its roots, it can’t take up enough water, hence, the apparent symptom of not enough water. The well-meaning person taking care of the plant gives it even more water making the problem worse.

A Jade Plant  is able to store water in its fleshy leaves and stems. When it dries out to the point of needing water, the leaves become soft and flexible.

If you think your Jade plant needs water, gently squeeze a leaf or two.

If it feel soft, it needs water. If it’s still firm, which in the horticulture trade is called turgid, no water is needed. The plant shown above needs no water, the leaf feels pretty firm.

This next plant’s leaves are soft and flexible, that means this plant needs water.

This squeeze-the-leaf  method works only on Jade Plants and other plants with similar fleshy leaves such as sedums and aloe.

Enjoy your indoor gardening!

Bob

One of the fun gardening projects you can do this time of the year is start your own pineapple plant. Even though most pineapples we eat are grown in Hawaii, you can actually grow a real pineapple in Michigan…for free!

Here’s how I do it.

First, you need a fresh pineapple from the produce department.  Look for the freshest looking one you can find. Of course you would probably do that anyway if you were shopping for produce.

Cut the top off normally and eat the pineapple…

Now, here’s the part that is different: instead of throwing away the top, use it to start your own pineapple plant.

You need to prepare the top before planting by trimming away any remaining pineapple fruit, so that you end up with a top that looks like this:

Then, pull off the lower leaves until you see some small bumps on the stalk, these will be the spot from which the new roots will grow. It will look something like this:

Then just place the prepared top into a pot of planting mix deep enough to cover those bumps and water it in. Place your plant where it can get some sun and water it when the soil gets somewhat dry. Fertilize it with a houseplant fertilizer as directed on the package and you should be all set.

The plant shown in this photo (on the right) has been growing for several weeks. Look at all those nice new leaves.

Here is that same plant several months later.

My pineapple has been growing in the same six inch pot for all that time. I would recommend that you move your plant into a larger pot as it grows.

This plant is a little over two feet tall… and has a real pineapple at the top!

As it starts to turn a little yellow,  I will harvest it to eat and then start a new pineapple all over again!

Aloha,

Bob

Our Poinsettias turned out wonderful this year.

The color and size were outstanding.

We grew about 250 poinsettias of various colors: marble-pink, burgundy, white, and of course, red.

We started giving them out about mid-December and sent the last ones out on the 23rd.

To keep your poinsettia going for as long as possible, you need to follow just a couple of simple guidelines.

First, keep in mind that most poinsettias die from over-watering. Your home probably has a lower quality of sunlight than the greenhouse from which it came, so your plant will be less actively growing and therefore need less water.

So, let the pot dry out some before watering. Then water the plant thoroughly until water flows out of the bottom of the pot.

If any water remains in the foil pot-wrapper, dump it out. It is this extra water in the foil that causes main reason of poinsettias dying prematurely;  waterlogged roots.

Don’t worry about fertilizer for your plant, it won’t really need much until spring. A half-strength dose of water soluble fertilizer once in a while should be adequate.

Also, keep in mind that poinsettias weren’t meant to last too much longer than the Christmas season.  They were bred for color, not hardiness.

Enjoy your poinsettia as a reminder of wonderful Christmas memories.

Bob

Some seed catalogs have arrived already.

Enjoy the pictures of flowers and vegetables for now, but, when you start to order seeds and plants, read the descriptions thoroughly. Look for plants that like your climate conditions,  paying close attention to the hardiness zone for each plant. Also note requirements for light, size and spacing.

If you are a beginning gardener, you’ll enjoy  your garden more if you don’t  try to push the limits. For example, if the plant description says it is hardy to zone 7, don’t think maybe it will grow on the south side of the house where it is “protected”.  You will be just asking for headaches and disappointments.  Get to know plants that will do well here in southeastern Michigan (zone 5/6).  If the description says it’s easy to grow, then it would be a good backbone plant for your garden.

Think about getting your garden soil tested. That way you’ll know for sure whether it is acid or alkaline. A complete test will also show what plant nutrients are lacking in your soil.  Some tests include the soil texture as well, that is, whether it is sand, clay or loam.

You also need to know if your site drains fast or slow. Some plants won’t tolerate “wet feet”.

How much sun or shade does your garden get?  Early morning sun until about noon, even though it’s for 6-8 hours, is more like “partial shade. While 6-8 hours of sun in the afternoon is more like “full sun”.

Look for plants that grow the way you want them to. Do you need a tall upright foliage plant in a certain spot? Then don’t talk yourself into ordering a medium-high, bushy round plant just because it has a flower color that you fell in love with.

As one gardening friend once told me, “now’s the fun time of gardening… no bugs, no heat, no drought, no aching back.  Just beautiful dreams of what you want your garden to look like”.

Happy dreaming.

bye now, 

Judy

We have a very interesting botanical event happening in the greenhouse right now. One of our Agave plants is blooming.

Agave plant in full bloom

This plant is about 3 or 4 years old and has decided to bloom after all this time.  This is actually fairly quick for an Agave though.  Their other nick name is “century plant” , so-called because of the seemingly long length of time it normally takes them to flower in the wild.

Agaves are native to the southwestern part of this country and “south of the border down Mexico way”.  The ‘Blue Agave’ variety that grows in the Mexican state of Tequila is used to make… you guessed it…Tequila.

I don’t know what variety this one is since Judy rescued it from going into the compost bin at the Botanical Gardens.  At that time the plant was just a small  one inch diameter “bulblet” with no name.

Agaves only bloom when they have stored enough energy in their roots and leaves. How many years this takes depends on the species.  After blossoming and forming seeds, they die, trusting that the seeds will carry on the next generation.

Even though this Agave of ours is planted in a small 8 inch pot, the flower stalk is 10 feet tall! It has been alternately ignored and well tended throughout its life.  It couldn’t have had life too hard since it took quite a bit less time than a century to bloom. We had a few last year that were in 6″ pots and their stalks reached nearly 6 feet.

This Agave is planted in an 8" pot. Note the swollen bulb-like stem.

I counted over 120 flowers on the flower stalk! Wow! Each flower will produce a bulblet that will go on to produce another plant. I’d say that is pretty good odds that the next generation will survive.

Our Agave produced a ten foot tall flower stem containing over 120 flowers. I can barely reach the lowest set of flowers.

The new seeds will go into a 20 inch pot.  I wonder what will happen…

Bob

Now it feels like November.  Cold, rainy and dreary.  Gone are the Indian Summer days. Summer’s garden seems long past.

But with a little bit of effort a few weeks ago, I am able to make a pot of chili today using fresh tomatoes!

The day before we had that really cold night (not just the first frost when we covered our tomatoes, but this time it was going to get below  freezing so we knew the covering up wouldn’t do much good) it went to 28 degrees where my garden was.  I had picked all the tomatoes I could.  This was just a few days after that total day long rain that made the tomatoes start cracking , they swelled up so much.  I picked the red ones with a little cracking and all the green larger ones, some with a tinge of red and some that were totally green but otherwise perfect with no blemishes.

My goal has been for many years to have fresh tomato salad for Thanksgiving dinner. Some years a few tomatoes make it, some years they don’t .  So the perfect green tomatoes are wrapped carefully in newspaper and put gently in a cardboard box, then placed in a cool dark place.   They need to be checked every week or so. Take out any that show mold or black spots.  Put them on a sunny window sill and they will redden up after a few days. Cut out the bad parts of the tomato and use the good .

So, today I sorted  the tomatoes I kept in the garage and made a pot of chili with them.  This is the second time this fall that we have sorted through them . There’s still 1/4 to1/3 of them left for Thanksgiving.

Well, the tomatoes are simmering nicely.  I’d better get back to my chili making…  it smells delicious!

bye now, Judy

During this week of nice weather, we will do a lot of clean up.  Odds and ends of plants sitting around that didn’t get planted for some reason or other, such as too small or ran out of room in  a certain spot., etc.
 
We are fortunate to have at the Gardens some very useful coldframes.  They are dug down into the ground about 4 ft, enclosed with cement block with a dirt bottom.  The cement block extends a block high above the ground on the south side, and 2 blocks high on the north side.  We used to have glass windows that fitted over them but they deteriorated.  Now  we have translucent fiberglass panels that cover them up.  As deep as it is, it stills freezes in there, but that is okay. What we want them to prevent is wind burn drying out the over wintered plants.  Also it reduces the quick freeze and thaw that can cause disastrous effects for over wintered potted plants.  So cold frames are for hardy plants that, because they are still in pots, need a little extra protection.
So into the one coldframe that I use, which is about 12 ft by 5 ft wide, we will put in some leftover heuchera’s which didn’t get planted.  Plus some very small wood anemones that I thought might get lost (read: weeded accidentally out) in the big Gateway Garden.
More leftovers are mums, rudbeckias, 2 Alberta spruce trees 3 ft high, sedums that I use in pots on the terrace in summer and odds and ends of perennials that I can use to fill in holes when plants die in the Perennial Garden.
Homeowners can construct a temporary coldframe using haybales as walls and old storms door as covers.  In spring and fall keep an eye on the coldframe so it doesn’t overheat. In fact don’t put the covers on until things freeze which is probably in December.   Translucent covers are probably the answer to that problem.  Expensive plants (like the bonsai trees that a coworker takes care of here) can be further protected by putting sand around the individual pots in the coldframe.
Winter’s coming but we have a respite this week and I am trying to take advantage of it.
Bye now, Judy