Projo Garden Blog

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September 6, 2008

• 12:57 PM Beth on Flowers can be wow-ers!

  Pat, I'll try to find a picture of the cake and put it on the blog at a later date. I made one with a different theme every year when they were younger. I did a zoo one year, a killer whale, a beach, a soccer field, a pumpkin field, the Muppets, and others. When I look back, I don't know how I found the time to do such big, elaborate cakes. On the Italian side of my family, we always had one special cake whenever there was a party. One of my aunts used to take it on all the time and I think when I moved out of my parents' home, I decided to carry on the tradition. I love to bake everything from scratch anyway, so to do it for my own daughters' birthday was a great honor. Having an art background doesn't hurt, either. In addition, my mom taught us to celebrate every occasion, no matter how small – so no matter how busy my husband and I are on April 29, we always celebrate with a homemade cake after dinner.

  
  

  September 6, 2008

• 12:25 PM Karen Anne on Flowers can be wow-ers!

  Pat, I grow nasturtiums from seed. The trick is to soak the seeds in water overnight or for a day, until you see them start to sprout, before planting them. The shells are very hard for them to get thru otherwise. I used to buy the seeds, but this year I collected some, and am saving some in the house and leaving others in my planters over the winter, to see what happens. Hopefully they will just come up next year, like my portulacas. I do help the portulacas along by spreading the seeds from the seed pods around in the planters, otherwise a lot of them would wind up on the deck.

  
  

  September 5, 2008

• 8:52 PM pat on Flowers can be wow-ers!

  Hi - Beth, I, too, love nasturtium - flowers and leaves. Did you grow them from seeds? I still have no luck growing anything from seeds, except for those self-seedling such as Borage, Torenia, Morning Glory, pansies and Cosmos. Wish I could see the picture of your cake with the brick road and poppy field. I am away from my garden again and wondering how things are growing and what are still blooming. I can hardly wait to get back and tend to my flowering plants.

  
  

  September 3, 2008

• 12:37 AM Home Garden on A gardener's confession: It's not only me any more

  I run into the same problem, if only there were 30 hours in a day! We can't guilt too much about it because other things to take priority, just don't forget about the garden

  
  

  August 29, 2008

• 6:16 PM Karen Anne on A gardener's confession: It's not only me any more

  Thanks, Pat. I was in a snit for awhile, at the All Hillary All the Time stuff on a couple of projo blogs which shall be nameless, and no pro-Obama comments allowed through. Actually, with the new system that lets through unmoderated comments, there were three comments on Harrop's article a day or two ago, and then they disappeared :-) Let's see if this one survives. Obama's winning the nomination makes this small potatoes, however.

  
  

  August 25, 2008

• 10:09 AM arlene on A gardener's profile - some personality traits

  Your hard work and hours of love and caring nurtured your beautiful garden and I thank you for sharing your garden delights with me! Mother Nature sure has been your best therapy and if plants could talk! What a wonderful reward your garden is to you and you are always so kind to share these photos.

  
  

  August 23, 2008

• 8:10 AM pat feinstein on A gardener's confession: It's not only me any more

  Yes - that's right. Well - Tasha Tudor, the legendary gardener lived until the age of 92 and did her garden the old fashioned way, "by hand". It's nice to see your name again. I started to wonder where you've been.

  
  

  August 23, 2008

• 6:01 AM Karen Anne on A gardener's confession: It's not only me any more

  Hi, Pat, From someone setting up my 50th year high school reunion - Every day you wake up on this side of the grass is a good day :-)

  
  

  August 22, 2008

• 8:26 AM barbara langevin on A gardener's confession: It's not only me any more

  .. Hopefully you will spend time in the garden and enjoy its beauty and fragrance and work as a labor of love. I tell everyone who comes into the greenhouses and admires our work that it is not work at all - but therapy. It is a place I lose all negativity that touches me and I find amazing joy in the colors and fragrances that surround me and also attract the most beautiful butterflies and hummingbirds. Occasionally I am really lucky and one will brush my face or hand. I can hear the tiny wren feet tapping on the black weed block as they scamper past to help us with “bug patrol”. So please do enjoy there is no guilt to assuage, just a wonderful place to re-charge your spirit and senses. We do miss your flower blogs. So glad to see you back. Love, Barbara

  
  

  August 18, 2008

• 2:17 PM Kathy on How I spent my summer vacation: At the landfill

  Hi Paula, It must be something in the air, but I posted this on my blog about a half hour before I read yours! I went to the East Providence Eco-Depot and found it to be fast and friendly as well. It's good to see someone else had the same positive experience I did.

  
  

  August 16, 2008

• 10:57 AM Karen Anne on How I spent my summer vacation: At the landfill

  It pays to weed...eventually. I have a garden bed of rhubarb and horseradish. The horseradish is mostly a memorial garden to my Dad, who used to grow this up the city, it's been in for a few years here, and I have never actually harvested it. Boy, does horseradish grow. The plants are bigger than the rhubarb. I guess this year I will have to actually dig some out and make horseradish. Meanwhile, the weeds have been growing too, and at my age, I do not run out and weed much, so the weeds have gotten 2-3 ft tall. l This morning I ripped the weeds out of that bed. Last year I had planted an August Beauty Gardenia (zones 7-9) at the end of this garden, thinking it was worth a try to see if it would survive over winter in RI, since I had a wonderful hedge of them out in CA. By spring, it was dead as a doornail. I broke off some branches looking for green, nothing. In my usual fashion I left it there, planning on "some day" lopping off the top and letting the root ball disintegrate in place. When I pulled out the weeds that were hiding it this morning, voila, an 8 inch high August Beauty in full glossy leaf. I had something vaguely similar happen with a yellow Lady Bank's rose (zones 8-10 or 7-11, depending on who you believe), which was in an even more dubious situation, since I planted it in a deck container. My first attempt died over winter (I think, who knows now, as I pulled it out), but the second one survived, I think because I watered it over the winter. Here's a link to a photo of Lady Bank's, it is not a conventional rose, rather a small flowered arching shrub: http://www.amypadgett.com/ladybanks.htm I have to get my brain out of the California watering schedule, which is water in the summer (dry season), but no watering in the winter (rainy season.) Here I can get away with much less watering overall, but I do have to do some all year round, even when the ground seems frozen. Except I never water the lawn here. It occasionally browns a little, but always comes back. I think that may have to do with it being organic, so it sends roots far down, since my neighbor's conventional lawn has big brown areas long after a dry spell. Also, is there anything quite as nice as volunteer plants? I have been putting out whole sunflower seeds for the birds, squirrels, etc. and now I have sunflowers coming up in a few places.

  
  

  August 6, 2008

• 7:07 AM Garden flags on Gardening's memory benefit

  Comment - Thanks for the useful information Thanks

  Garden flags

  
  

  August 4, 2008

• 9:24 AM Beth on My new red menace steals a summer pleasure

  Thanks for writing about the beetle. I never would have known what hit them. I got several from a neighbor and haven't been paying attention this year. I was thinking, why not spray your chosen treatment and then protect the bees, etc. by covering your lilies afterward with a row cover or some kind of mesh? You may not able to enjoy the beauty of the lilies this year, but maybe you will next. Saw this on iVillage Garden Web (there's a photo here, too): http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/neweng/2002040522017914.html Hand-picking should be the first level of control if possible. Constant vigilance and quick removal and disposal of beetles, eggs and larvae can control an infestation on a small number of plants. Make sure the critters are actually dead! If you squash them, don't leave the squashee in the garden. Some gardeners drop them into a can of water with vegetable oil on the top. If you suspect the beetles may be lurking around your lilies but you don't see any, carefully dig in the top half inch of the soil - no deeper! They hide just under the surface, so be ready to get them when they pop out. Roxanna reports the following tip: "I recently read somewhere what seems to be a good tip, and pass it along to you in case you want to include it in your FAQ info: the adults are easily spooked when you try to pick them by hand, and if you "miss" them, they tend to drop to the ground where THEY LAND UPSIDE DOWN, and since their tummies are black, they effectively vanish. The suggestion was to place a light-colored cloth under the plant before you hand-pick in order to be able to see the nasty little things if they fall." If this isn’t feasible, then treatment with Neem is the next choice. Neem will repel beetles and kill young larvae, but must be applied every 5 to 7 days after the eggs hatch. Merit (imidacloprid) is a systemic insecticide which may work if applied to the soil in early spring. Many New England gardeners are also reporting good results from the use of products containing imidacloprid when applied later in the season. Bayer manufactures several products containing systemic insecticides, both in spray and in granular form. The Bayer Rose and Flower Spray has provided excellent control for many gardeners, without serious toxicity issues. However, it's important to follow the label directions to prevent destruction of bees and other beneficial insects while the spray is drying. The general principle is to apply the product when beneficial insects are not around, and to let it dry. This is probably a good idea with any insecticide since they are not specifically targeted to one insect species. Other chemicals of relatively low toxicity include the following: *10% household ammonia, applied to the newly emerging lily sprouts and surrounding soil (reported by northerner on of Ontario, Canada). *Pyrethroid insecticides (Permethrin is one) kill adult beetles (reported by the UMass Extension). *Spinosad insecticides kill larvae (reported by the UMass Extension).

  
  

  August 3, 2008

• 11:17 AM Paula Constantine on My new red menace steals a summer pleasure

  Good question. If this were a ubiquitous pest, I wouldn't bother. I tolerate many pests in my garden. Because I know they're in everyone's garden. But because the lily beetle is not so widespread in Rhode Island yet, I don't want to be the lily beetle Typhoid Mary of the East Side/Fox Point, so I'm denying the beetles their favorite breeding ground in my yard. It won't stop them, but I won't feel like I'm contributing to the problem. It's true what you said about the predator/prey balance though. For beneficial predator species to survive, they need some prey (the bugs you don't want) to live on. Kill all the prey and the predators you like die or move away. Then they aren't there when the bad prey return. But at this point, the lily beetle, which is an invasive species from Europe, has no natural predators here, and the parasitic wasps are only an experiment at this point. I'll plant lilies again some day. Just when I don't feel like there's a big red dot over my house.

  
  

  August 2, 2008

• 6:20 PM trudy on My new red menace steals a summer pleasure

  I wonder if ripping them out is a good thing? If they can survive, perhaps leaving them will attract a natural predator of the beetle or result in more resistant varieties. When I first converted my yard to organic, it was overrun with "pests," but after 2-3 years everything stabilized, as predators appeared and a balance naturally happened. That has made me leery of trying to eradicate every "problem" critter. Besides, has any attempt to prevent such critters from spreading ever worked?

  
  

  July 30, 2008

• 11:46 AM Karen Anne on Hornworms - they're probably eating your tomatoes right now!

  Don't cups etc. around the base of tomato plants protect against hornworms, or is that just for slugs and snails? I'm growing my tomato plants on my deck this year, and so far, cross fingers, no hornworms.

  
  

  July 28, 2008

• 4:56 PM Beth on Hornworms - they're probably eating your tomatoes right now!

  They are no doubt amazing, and I've already confessed to a number of garden war crimes committed in years past. Nowadays, I snip the leaf, worm holding tight, collect them in a bucket and toss the whole mass of them into the woods, far from MY food. If they like poison ivy (not sure if they do), then they probably don't mind the relocation a bit. But in my earlier years, long before I evolved into an organic gardener, there were no rules! Bottom line is, you have to pay attention to your garden and keep them under control somehow. Or you don't have tomatoes!

  
  

  July 28, 2008

• 4:44 PM Paula Constantine on Hornworms - they're probably eating your tomatoes right now!

  Yes. Hornworms are repulsive. But the moths they and their close relatives hatch into are amazing. They include the hummingbird moths -- dead ringers for hummingbirds. (Entomology is for people smarter than I.) So don't go all scorched earth on them. Tolerate some creepy things so there can be moths and buterflies for everyone!

  
  

  July 28, 2008

• 8:42 AM trudy on Earn your lawnmower beer, the old fashioned way

  Hi, Paula, Why did your Mom choose the Neuton 6.2 instead of the 5.2, which seems noticeably lighter and cheaper? I might try an electric mower, so my concern in the hassle of getting one that whimps out on the grass, but I don't want to spend more money than necessary :-) Thanks.

  
  

  July 21, 2008

• 2:53 AM lennon on A daughter's love is cordless and rechargeable

  Trudy, I've quickly learned a lot about different kinds of lightning, and vastly different kinds of damage. "The most serious tree injuries caused by lightning are from the acoustic wave (shock wave) radiating from the lightning path core (momentarily reaching approximately 500 to 1,500 psi of pressure)." Arborist News That would do it. Trees with no apparent damage frequently die from what happened down in the roots, too. I think this one has to come down.