Our greenhouse is moving along slowly, thank you very much. In the meantime, I have noticed that greenhouses come in all shapes and sizes.  For instance, my mother has a "greenhouse" of the type I would put in quotation marks. She lives 35 miles north of me in Sharon, CT.  This morning we visited a couple of garden centers in her neighborhood and presented the Womanswork line of garden gloves, then we went to her house…

We have two paperback copies of Rosemary Harris' Pushing Up Daisies to give away, along with a pair of Womanswork nitrile weeding gloves. Pushing Up Daisies is Rosemary's first novel, and it won her the "Anthony and Agatha" nomination for best first novel. This week she launches her third book, Dead Head, published by St. Martin's Minotaur imprint. I read it this weekend and it is as much fun as the first two were. Her books…

So spring is here and the summer and fall-blooming shrubs need to be pruned—right? Well, yes and no. Don't be in a rush. Beware of pruning too early, especially those silver-leaved beauties that have only just started into growth. Through bitter experience, I have found that it is better to wait a couple of weeks until at least 1" of new young growth is showing.  You can always cut back later, but too…

Welcome to my 10' x 9' greenhouse.  It faces south with a sliding door from the living room. When spring comes I can walk through it onto the deck where I pot up lots of fun combinations in planters. Many of the plants I use have been overwintered and propagated in my greenhouse.  My nitrile garden gloves live there too where they are close to hand. At the moment several varieties of velvety-leaved aromatic Cuban oregano (Plectranthus), a current favorite…

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 everywhere else.  Nora…

This year marks Womanswork's 25th year in business. We thought, what better time than now to say thanks to our garden glove fans with a little give away contest?  The Womanswork Story. But first some background on us. Womanswork was started in Maine in 1985 because there were no good work gloves designed to fit women's hands. A little black and white (and sepia) catalog was sent to a growing list of women who needed…

We spent the last 6 days in New York at the Jacob Javits Center, along with thousands of other people (perhaps tens of thousands). We stayed at the W Hotel on Lexington Ave and 50th Street. How appropriate. Eve was with me as we met with owners and representatives of retail stores across the country. They were all looking for new items and many of them seemed pleased…

When my husband Tom asked me why I wanted a greenhouse I said that I wanted to be able to can and pickle and preserve vegetables and fruits. He replied that those are not exactly things you do in a greenhouse. He has a point. I realized at that moment that I had constructed in my mind an elaborate fantasy that involved growing things from seed to transplant to harvest to preserving.  I pictured a factory production line in my…

We have decided to give away 3 pairs of garden gloves this week because we liked so many of your comments and gardening resolutions. We are sending a pair to Taylor who is 14, because we were inspired that someone so young dreams about gardening; we are sending a pair to LaManda Joy because we like her idea of teaching 5 people to garden and asking them to teach 5 others; and finally we are also sending a pair of…

Now that the holidays are over, in northern climates the ground is frozen. Now is the time to apply a winter mulch to keep the soil cold and insulate it from alternate freezing and thawing. The action of freezing and thawing, which occurs throughout the winter season, causes shallow-rooted and fall-planted perennials to be heaved out of the ground and roots to become desiccated. I find…