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By August, does it feel like the best is over in your garden? Spring and summer bloom is usually abundant, but by late summer the garden may look tired. With just a little extra care you can make your display last until early Fall by growing perennials that keep blooming throughout the season, or produce a second flush later in the season. [caption id="attachment_337" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Salvia 'May Night'"][/caption] "Off with their heads" should be your mantra. The act of ...

Smith College, my alma mater, has a vibrant and lush botanical garden that attracts people from all around the world. It features a collection of over 10,000 living plants on the campus as well as 60,000 pressed specimens. If you ever find yourself around the Northampton, Massachusetts area, you should stop and visit. It's free and offers a chance to see a spectacular arrangement of trees, flowers and plant life. To learn more about the Botanic Garden of Smith College, keep reading. How The Botanic Garden ...

  In the process of creating a successful public private partnership between a garden club and a state park in NY, a historic section of the Hudson Valley Highlands was reinvigorated with native plants, and a pollinator community of bees and birds was established. In addition, the contribution of Jane Colden, America’s first female botanist, was given a voice. Colden, who left behind a voluminous manuscript of her botanical notes, with outline drawings of leaves, lived in NY’s Hudson Valley r...

My friend the horticulturist Ruth Clausen told me about a great activity to do with kids indoors.  She calls it "garbage gardening" because it involves planting vegetable scraps that would otherwise be headed for the garbage pail or compost heap. Ruth asks, 'What sounds like more fun to a child than growing garbage on a windowsill?' It's a good question. Start with carrots and onions, potatoes, pineapples and other vegetable waste, and use recycled cottage cheese or yogurt containers as your pots. Be...

In one of the classes I took at the NY Botanical Garden I learned about the container gardening concept of "Thriller, Filler, Spiller". When you're selecting plants for your container, the Thriller is the central plant that grows taller than the others and is the focal point. The Filler is the plant or plants that surround the Thriller, and the Spiller is the plant that spills over the edges of your container. I followed this concept with the container I planted at my home, shown here. The Thriller plant...

In this issue-- Mulch Your Garden Beds After the Ground Freezes What to Know About Houseplants and Your Cat Gardeners Make Their New Year's Resolutions Mulch Your Garden Beds After the Ground Freezes Where I live in the northeast the ground is just about frozen. This is my cue to protect the plants in my garden that have shallow roots.  This includes any new plants that have not had a full season to get established. Why now? The purpose of winter mulching is to keep the ground around these pla...

A Tuna Can Becomes A Tray Decoration If you know someone who is homebound over the holidays, this is an idea that will bring a smile to their face. I belong to a garden club and each year at our December meeting we put together little tray ornaments and deliver them to groups such as Meals on Wheels and local hospitals. We make over 300 of these tray ornaments. Here are the supplies you will need: -1 block of Oasis® floral foam (can be purchased at a florist or garden center) -1 empty tuna or ...

In this issue: Host A Farm-To-Table Thanksgiving Discover the Legacy of the first World Trade Center Host A Farm-To-Table Thanksgiving-- We’ve all witnessed the growth in farmers markets, but the latest trend is indoor, year round farmers markets. When I heard this I decided to host my first farm-to-table Thanksgiving.  I located a website that tells me where the closest market is to me at this time of year.  Our Pawling Farmers Market is a summer-only open air market , but there is one two t...

[caption id="attachment_230" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Tom stirring tomato sauce for ziti"][/caption] Womanswork hosted another evening meal at The Lunch Box in Poughkeepsie last week. On a typical evening The Lunch Box serves 150 people who need a hot meal. They also serve lunch on week days but this has expanded to include dinners whenever they can get volunteers like us to do it. The numbers of people in need of services like this have been growing here in Dutchess County, NY, like ev...

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love By Kristin Kimball-- I was charmed by this book, the story of a pair of first generation farmers building a working farm in upstate New York, powered by draft horses. There’s enough practical information in the book to be instructive to other young farmers inspired to follow in this couple’s footsteps, but for me the book’s charm lies with the story telling talent of the author Kristin Kimball (shown below). At the beginning of the book Kristin is si...