May 2010
28 posts
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Monthly Garden Report for May
I was all set to give an excellent May Garden Report since the weather had been behaving more like East Coast weather with rain every four or five days and mild weather. Then, the snow storm hit leaving 2–5 inches of wet heavy snow which flattened everything. So things aren’t as nice looking anymore. In fact, many plants looks as though someone sat on them.
I had come to some important...
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I never thought I'd be sorry for a snail... →
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Gardeners named Susan
Is it just me, or does there seem to be an awful lot of gardeners named Susan? It first came to my attention when I came upon a garden blogroll somewhere and there were a lot of Susans on it.
This is odd, because growing up I almost never ran into Susans. I was it—Susan en seul. I bumped into other Susans occasionally when I moved around after college, but when I finally settled here, they began...
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“If life gives you lemons, stop complaining because you’re probably living...”
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Hey, America! Snow's a comin'!
When I lived in Boston, I would often notice that when I talked to my family who lived in Utah about the weather, we would often get hit by it about 5 days later. This was especially true when it came to winter storms. It was interesting to see how the jet stream would march across the country fairly faithfully.
I thought I would mention this today because it is SNOWING. It’s May 24th, and...
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Growing Fruit Trees from Benchgrafts
The plant stork arrived several weeks ago via California when my apple tree bench-grafts arrived from Greenmantle Nursery.
A bench graft is made when you graft scion wood to a rootstock. When you see fruit trees for sale in nurseries, you usually see them after these grafts have taken and grown into one- or two-year whips, which you then cut off and train into a young tree. The advantage of...
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Why Do Birds Loot Nests?
I found two dead baby birds on the lawn and I was fairly upset about it. I even let out an audible gasp of horror over it. Earlier this season, I saw a blackbird pick a baby bird out of its nest; that was disturbing, but I figured it has to eat or feed its young. But why do some birds—I’m looking at you, bluejays—throw out nestlings for no apparent reason? Are they asserting their territory?...
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NY Times Article on Upside-down planters →
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WatchThey Might Be Giants—takes you back, doesn’t it? They have morphed into puppet form and have producing a series of educational songs and videos for kids. A recent foray discovered this fun video on Conifers.
I agree, TMBG, they are my kind of trees.
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“If a blog falls in a forest of blogs, and no one is around to read it, does it...”
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Plant Breeding for the Everyman
Top: A Muscari that has some double flowers. Bottom: Usual Nepeta coloring in the foreground.
I’m not as vigilant at deadheading as I should be. I enjoy the beautiful decay that seed heads invite into the garden. This means that I get a lot of new seedlings. Most I weed out, some I don’t. Those that don’t get weeded out usually make more of the same and are either tossed or...
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Ants in My Plants
This evening, I thought it was a good time to transplant my tomato plants. I’d staked out a great spot for the big one. I’d put down a paver in the meantime to help me access areas in the veg bed around it and to keep me from planting anything else there.
I had noticed ant activity around the planter shortly after I put it down a couple of months ago, but didn’t think much about...
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Welcome to the Summer of Volcanic Ash
It’s cold, and I’m blaming you, Eyjafjallajokull.
In 1783, when the Laki fissure system in Iceland erupted over an eight month period, it sent an ash could that many speculate reached up into the stratosphere. This cloud dimmed the sun across Europe and much of Asia. In America, record lows occurred that winter and destroyed the food harvest. According to historic record, the last...
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I Cheated with a Hybrid Tomato
I confess. I bought two plants at the local Costco: an ‘Early Girl’ and a ‘Celebrity’ hybrid tomato.
Back in my days of working at a nursery, these were the bread and butter of home-grown tomatoes. Every May, home growers would buy these starts along with the ‘Sweet Million’s and ‘Beefsteak’s and these were what we knew tomatoes to be. Then...
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Purge the Spurge →
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“What if the Pilgrims had landed at La Jolla instead of Plymouth Rock?”
– “There are good reasons why American horticulture is so heavily influenced by east-coast gardening; all you have to do is visit the innumerable ravishingly beautiful public and private gardens there to see why this is so….
“For a variety of reasons, including the obvious one...
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I speak for the trees...
A couple of months back, Wired.com of all places ran a slideshow article on the world’s oldest trees.
I’m pleased that they listed Pando in the Fish Lake National Forest. I new the colony was old, but I didn’t know it could be as old as a million years! Knowing that it is that old makes it even more troubling to know that field studies show these colonies are currently in...
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Better Blogging at a New Location
I realize that it’s nervy to move the blog right after I began it two months ago. It’s even nervier to make it a tumble blog and move it to a new host.
I have my reasons.
I didn’t care much for Blogger’s format. I just felt that the format didn’t lend itself to reading and managing posts with several pictures was awkward. This format will offer greater flexibility...
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Said it's 'Daybreak' if you'll only believe
A big glory moment going on in the back is the Daybreak magnolia I ordered from Forestfarm is blooming for the first time. It may be just a stick of a tree now, but when it blooms, oh what a stick!
I actually found out about this magnolia from seeing a clip from Martha Stewart’s show of all places. They had several varieties on display from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to celebrate the 75th...
