Category: Plant Ideas & Info

If your natural surroundings are anything like mine, there is an untapped bounty of plants unrecognized for their nutritional and medicinal benefits. That’s what Sarah Lucas — a farmer, forager and teacher with Harlem Valley Homestead in Wingdale, N.Y. — told me when she visited my home. Almost everything I dismissed as a weed — noxious or benign — has a useful side, we just need to recognize it. Goldenrod, dandelion, garlic mustard, lady's thumb, knot weed, dock, even my…

For some perennials, it is especially difficult to move or divide them. You plant them, they thrive, then you decide to uproot them and they just don’t want to go there. Perennials that would just as soon be left alone include Baptisia, lupine, Oriental poppy, milkweed, Russian sage, goatsbeard, red hot poker, and peony. To learn ways to increase your success, our go-to horticulturist Ruth Clausen provides tips. When you move them and how you do it is critical. Learn…

Have you ever thought of creating a garden composed of flowers grown with the express purpose of being cut for floral arrangements? That's a cutting garden.  Once cutting gardens have been established, they tend to be low-maintenance projects that require just a little time each week for weeding and watering. How to Create a Cutting Garden Preparing the Site-- Like most successful gardening projects, cutting gardens require a bit of planning.  You can create a cutting garden within a vegetable…

The steps I put in leading down to the pond and stream are made of wood.  I chose to make wood steps because the cost of a stone path would be prohibitively expensive. The stones themselves and the labor to move them into position, given the length of the hillside (40-50') and the inaccessability of the site to a delivery truck, made that approach very expensive. After installing the wood steps I was happy with the choice as I felt…

Hay versus straw Hay is grown as food for livestock.  If you buy hay for your garden you will have seed heads that can sprout and create weeds. I learned this the hard way one year when I sprinkled hay over a newly seeded part of our lawn and large weeds emerged that were hard to pull out. Straw makes a great mulch and planting bed for your garden. It has no nutritional value for animals because it's made of…

Not all frosts are equal. You can find out more about expected frost and freeze dates at your local cooperative extension website or by searching 'frost dates' along with your town and state or zip code. You can match that information with the 10-day forecast on your phone's weather app. A light frost occurs when temperatures fall to between 29 and 32 degrees F. Some tender plants will die. A moderate freeze occurs when temperatures go from 25 to 28…

Queen Anne's Lace is the common name used for a variety of plants that share similar characteristics: flowers with a flat-topped, lacy white umbel and delicate foliage. Its foliage makes it a favorite in floral arrangements as a filler. The wild species, daucus carota, is growing everywhere in parts of the US at this time of year, and has been labeled invasive in many States. Although I still find it pretty growing by the roadside (and even in parts of…

I have three favorite bulbs that I like to grow in the summer. In my Zone 6 garden they have to be planted in the spring after the last frost. That's what I'm doing now. There are many other summer blooming bulbs as well, but these are my personal favorites, currently. The term 'bulb' applies to a large class of flowering and ornamental bulbouslike plants in their dormant condition, including corms, tubers, rhizomes and pips. White…

Last year I confided in my readers that several of my Amaryllis bulbs from the previous year did not rebloom as I had expected. So I followed Ruth Clausen's advice more closely and am giving it another try this year. Here are Ruth's instructions, and what I did wrong (at the end): After the blooms finish, cut off the dead flowers to stop the plants from using energy to produce seed. Cut the stalk as well. Leave the leaves intact…

Like many gardeners Marianne Willburn started small. First she had window boxes and containers, then she moved to a tiny duplex where she managed to squeeze in a small vegetable garden next to the parking area. As she and her young family moved to larger properties, hopscotching from California to London to Maryland and finally Virginia, the space given over to gardens kept getting bigger. But that’s where the similarity to…