Butterfly gardening offers beauty, fun
Article from LubbockOnline.com:
For a spring project that can get your family working and learning together — and also help some beautiful insects — try a backyard butterfly garden.
With just a little planning, you can create an attractive and welcoming habitat for butterflies through the warm weather months, says Rick Mikula, author of “The Family Butterfly Book” (Storey Publishing, 2000).
The biggest problem facing butterflies is destruction of habitat, Mikula says. Even if your garden offers just a few butterfly-friendly blooms in pots or containers, it can help the insects’ population — and improve the look of your living space.
“Any offering for butterflies in a garden, no matter how small, is like chicken soup for a cold,” he says. “It can’t hurt.”
The choice of nectar-producing plants on which butterflies feed varies by region. But wherever you are, Mikula says, your options don’t have to be fancy. Simple flowers such as varieties of Echinacea, daisies, asters and even some violets can serve as butterfly-friendly snacking spots. Non-invasive milkweeds can be especially appetizing to migrating butterflies, without taking over your yard.
“Even one or two plants lik…………………continues on LubbockOnline.com
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April 20
Regional gardening events April 20Regional gardening events April 20
Article from 25 – Philadelphia Inquirer:
For gardeners and other plant-lovers, here’s a sampling of regional events:
5K Run for Clean Air Cash prizes, contests, food. Martin Luther King Dr.; 5krunforcleanair.org. 4/21. 9 am-12 pm.
Bird Walks Sat. Call 215-345-7860 for more information. Peace Valley Nature Center, 170 Chapman Rd., Doylestown. Donation suggested: $ 2. 4/21.
Birding With Ruth Bird walk led by experienced area birdwatcher Ruth Pfeffer. Norristown Farm Park, 2500 Upper Farm Rd., Norristown; 610-270-0215. www.birdingwithruth.com. 4/26.
- Darby Creek Clean-Up Help clean Darby Creek. John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, 8601 Lindbergh Blvd. Registration required: 215-365-3118. 4/21. 8 am-12 pm.
- Earth Day at Newlin Grist Mill Help the park get ready for the spring & summer. Newlin Grist Mill, 219 S. Cheyney Rd., Glen Mills; 610-459-2359. 4/22. 1-4 pm.
- Earth Day Edibles Guided walk with focus on edible & medicinal plants. Lorimer Park, 183 Moredon Rd., Huntingdon Valley. Registration required: 215-947-3477. 4/22. 2 pm.
- Gardening Lecture With Suzanne Smith-Oscilowski Presentation on sustainable gardening practices…………………continues on 25 – Philadelphia Inquirer
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Butterfly gardening offers beauty, fun
Article from Vineland Daily Journal:
For a spring project that can get your family working and learning together — and also help some beautiful insects — try a backyard butterfly garden.
With just a little planning, you can create an attractive and welcoming habitat for butterflies through the warm weather months, says Rick Mikula, author of “The Family Butterfly Book” (Storey Publishing, 2000).
The biggest problem facing butterflies is destruction of habitat, Mikula says. Even if your garden offers just a few butterfly-friendly blooms in pots or containers, it can help the insects’ population — and improve the look of your living space.
“Any offering for butterflies in a garden, no matter how small, is like chicken soup for a cold,” he says. “It can’t hurt.”
The choice of nectar-producing plants on which butterflies feed varies by region. But wherever you are, Mikula says, your options don’t have to be fancy. Simple flowers such as varieties of Echinacea, daisies, asters and even some violets can serve as butterfly-friendly snacking spots. Non-invasive milkweeds can be especially appetizing to migrating butterflies, without taking over your yard.
“Even one or two plants lik…………………continues on Vineland Daily Journal
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Gardening Basics For Dummies®, Mini Edition
Your green-thumb guide to planning, planting, and cultivating a gardenWith some basic knowledge, the right tools, and a little work, anyone can transform a boring old yard into a beautiful garden. This friendly guide tells you how. From improving your soil to selecting plants and caring for them, you get just the information you need to start playing in the dirt.Open the book and find:The differences between annuals and perennials and how to care for eachHow to feed, water, and mulch plantsThe b
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Butterfly gardening offers beauty, fun
Article from FederalNewsRadio.com:
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Why Gardening Is Good for Your Health
Article from MSN Health & Fitness:
Gillian Aldrich started growing vegetables in her backyard three years ago, and she’s now working on planting a bed of hydrangeas, butterfly bushes, rose campion, andher favoritepale-pink hardy geraniums along one side of her property.
As she digs in the garden, her 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son often play around her, sometimes taking a break to dig for worms or pick strawberries. Instead of watching them, Aldrich is playing, too”my kind of play,” she says.
“When you sit at a desk all day, there’s something about literally putting your hands in the dirt, digging and actually creating something that’s really beautiful,” says Aldrich, 42, a magazine editor in Maplewood, N.J. “There’s something about just being out there that feels kind of elemental.”
Aldrich isn’t the only one who feels this way. Many gardeners view their hobby as the perfect antidote to the modern world, a way of reclaiming some of the intangible things we’ve…………………continues on MSN Health & Fitness
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Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful GardeningThis classic has now taught generations of gardeners how to use the natural benefits of plants to protect and support each other. …
Gardman R687 4-Tier Mini GreenhouseAny garden can accommodate this multi-tier mini greenhouse. The Gardman Four Tier Mini Greenhouse can be positioned on a deck, pat…
Shift to organic gardening is easy with bounty of new products
Article from STLtoday.com:
Q • I’ve been hearing more and more about this trend in organic gardening. Is this an easy transition to make?
Perfect timing — Earth Day is around the corner, and the “Go Green” initiative is getting more followers every year. Now is a great time to look at some organic options that are available for you to use around your home.
Organic lawn care is one of the latest trends to see growth in the United States over the past several years. More customers are seeking out natural products that are good for the environment. You will see more of these products in home improvement stores as it becomes more of the norm and less of a novelty.
Over the past five years, we have doubled the number of types of organic soils in our stores. Vigoro organic garden soil and Vigoro organic potting mix are just two examples of new organic products to St. Louis-area Home Depots this year. We now carry six times as many types of organic lawn and garden chemicals than we did five years ago. These items include a wide variety of regional and national organic plant foods such as Mater Magic, Dynamite, Scotts, Jobe, Espoma, Kellogg and Pree…………………continues on STLtoday.com
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Enchanted Gardening: It’s a small world
Article from Wicked Local:
According to the Perennial Plant Association, hostas are the No. 1 selling perennial in America. Gardeners appreciate their versatility, beauty and unique contribution to the home landscape. Hostas are shade tolerant and extremely hardy, and offer lush foliage with colors that include green, gold, blue and blue-grey.
Their leaves may be edged with white and cream, or variegated with splashed or streaked contrasting colors that brighten shady corners.
Hostas are native to eastern Asia and were introduced to the U.S. in the 19th century. They range in size from very large, such as H. ‘Sum and Substance’ (20-inch-by-15-inch leaves), to miniature, such as H. ‘Shining Tot’ (3-inch-by-2-inch leaves). Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in miniature and small hostas. They offer the same colors and forms as their larger brethren, packaged in a smaller size.
Miniature and small hostas can be used in the landscape as ground covers, such as the all-green H. venusta, and as edgers along garden paths, such H. ‘Stiletto,’ with its green leaves edged in white.
Miniature hostas are widely used in troughs, pots and rock gardens. When pla…………………continues on Wicked Local
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A tradition of gardening runs in the family
Article from Christian Science Monitor:
Being a locavore isn’t new. This writer’s family has been gardening and eating local for generations. Plus, enjoy a recipe for pickled beets.
Today the hot topics in food and gardening are CSAs (community-supported agriculture), farmers’ markets, slow food, the locavore movement, and organic anything.
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I have to laugh because long before all of these things were your basic home gardeners. I come from a line of gardeners on both sides of the family — my Italian grandparents who immigrated to this country and my German-Hungarian grandparents who made it here as well.
Gardens were necessities
My Italian grandfather, Rosario Scalise, planted a large garden in a lot next to the house where they lived with their eight children, one son-in-law, one grandchild, and Rosa…………………continues on Christian Science Monitor
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Pansy pots and spring gardening tips
Article from 9NEWS.com:
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Elements 4 Life marries landscaping, yard design & gifts
Article from CorneliusNews.net:
Posted on 09 April 2012.
Brandon and Amy Morris of Cornelius, with daughter Taylor, have started The Elements 4 Life on NC 73 in Davidson (David Boraks/CorneliusNews.net)
DAVIDSON – There are home decor shops and there are landscaping businesses. And then there are businesses like the one Brandon and Amy Morris of Cornelius opened last fall, called The Elements 4 Life Home & Outdoor Living. The new retail store on Davidson-Concord Road, across from the Bradford Store, offers both outdoor design items and gifts, and is a showroom for the couple’s 8-year-old business MINT Landscaping, for Morris Irrigation Nature & Turf.
The Elements 4 Life is near the entrance to the Summers Walk neighborhood, in a house formerly occupied by The Mustard Seed. It offers outdoor furniture, yard art, planters, and annual plants. The Morrises also plan to add greenhouses and a wider selection of outdoor accessories and landscaping plants as well as…………………continues on CorneliusNews.net
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Kent Garden Club offers classes in Home Gardening 101
Article from The Grand Rapids Press – MLive.com:
GRAND RAPIDS — The Kent Garden Club breaks new ground this spring with a project that encourages new homeowners to get answers to their gardening questions.
The Kent Garden Club Series: Home Gardening 101, offers grounding in the basics of gardening to new and young homeowners with the help of KGC master gardeners, teachers and gardeners who have years of experience.
Classes will be in classrooms at Habitat for Humanity, 425 Pleasant St. SW.
The eight sessions will be held on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings. Cost is $ 10 per session.
People can pick and choose which sessions pertain to their garden or landscape questions, or, attend all eight sessions for $ 64.
One-hour lecture sessions will be followed by an hour of hands-on advice for the new homeowners’ specific garden or yard problems. Homeowners are encouraged to email or bring photos of problem areas to the sessions.
The sessions
• Seeds aren’t just for the birds: less money, more garden — vegetables and flowers with just a li…………………continues on The Grand Rapids Press – MLive.com
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April 7
Extend the gardening seasonExtend the gardening season
Article from The Seattle Times:
Harvesting that first salad of the year, or enjoying one long after other gardens have succumbed to the cold, is always satisfying. By using some simple techniques you can get the drop on Old Man Winter and extend your gardening season in both fall and spring.
Grow the right produce. Go with greens that stand up to cool weather such as kale, corn salad, spinach and parsley. There are varieties of lettuce bred for cold weather, and they’re easy to identify by name: butter heads like Arctic King and North Pole, loose-leaf Winter Marve, loose-headed Rouge d’Hiver, Continuity Red, a red crisp head, and a butter head/romaine cross called Blushed Butter Cos.
One of the hardiest winter greens is kale, especially the top performer Winterbor. Give the unusual but delicious miner’s lettuce and corn salad a try, too, along with arugula, mizuna, French sorrel, Denali smooth-leaf spinach and both flat- and curly-leaf Italian parsley. Carrots, beets, Brussels sprouts, endive and turnips round out the list.
Warm the soil. Most seeds won’t germinate in cold spring soil. Clay soil holds a lot of water, slowing spring warming even more………………….continues on The Seattle Times
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Gardening for California’s dry climate
Article from San Jose Mercury News:
When Ruth Bancroft began planning her now-famous succulent garden in 1972, Northern California was in the grips of yet another dry spell, and Bancroft wanted to create a landscape that wasn’t as dependent on the one thing no one had much of — water.
Forty years later, California struggles still with periodic droughts, and Bancroft’s garden in Walnut Creek is thriving.
That’s a lesson the Bay Area and the world could learn something from, says Stewart Winchester, a horticulture instructor at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill. In measurements taken Monday, the Sierra snowpack is holding about 55 percent the normal level of water for this time of year, despite a late March flurry of winter weather. Last year’s particularly wet season is saving us from water rationing and higher rates this year because reservoirs remain full, but water officials warn that it might not be the case in 2013.
“The bottom line is that we’re always in a water-limited area,” says Chris Carmichael, associate director of Collections and Horticulture for the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley. “When it comes down to it, hav…………………continues on San Jose Mercury News
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Fiskars 9424 Garden Bucket CaddyOur Garden Bucket Caddy makes it easy to carry all of your essentials when you’re out in the garden. It fits snugly on a five-ga…
Gardening Basics For Dummies®, Mini EditionYour green-thumb guide to planning, planting, and cultivating a gardenWith some basic knowledge, the right tools, and a little wor…
April 4
Gardening by the AppGardening by the App
Article from New York Times:
MANY gardeners may prefer digging in the dirt to fiddling with a mobile device. But an increasing number of gardening apps now available might change that attitude, by helping with tasks like designing plots and choosing crops, and perhaps improving yields. The apps range in price from free to about $ 10 — although a higher price doesn’t guarantee a better or more sophisticated program. Here are 10 of the freshest picks for iOS and Android devices.
GARDEN TRACKER FOR IPAD ($ 3.99) AND IPHONE (99 CENTS)
This app allows you to design rectangular gardens of up to 2,500 square feet: enter the desired number of rows and columns to create a grid with a series of boxes, each one representing a square foot. Click i…………………continues on New York Times
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Gardening ideas: Tips for having a sweet-smelling garden
Article from Washington Post:
If someone gave you a spindly shrub named wintersweet to plant now, you might have second thoughts about going to the effort. It is twiggy, spindly and too big. But on mild days in midwinter it produces clusters of yellow-white blossoms whose fragrance travels many feet. The sweet scent is unexpected and hard to locate, but it fills the heart with the joyful anticipation of spring.
Of all the pleasures that plants bestow, none is more intangible or as powerful as fragrance. And yet, as the wintersweet tells us, it is fleeting.
Adrian Higgins
Adrian Higgins has been writing about the intersection of gardening and life for more than 25 years, and joined the Post in 1994. He is the author of several books, including the Washington Post Garden Book and Chanticleer, a Pleasure Garden.
Archive
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Fiskars 9424 Garden Bucket Caddy
- Garden bucket caddy featuring unique and clever design
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- Includes cell phone, beverage, and seed packet holders
- 8.9-by-10-by-13.4-inches at 2-pounds
Our Garden Bucket Caddy makes it easy to carry all of your essentials when you’re out in the garden. It fits snugly on a five-gallon bucket, freeing up the internal space for dirt, yard waste or supplies. Deep, large pockets provide ample space for tools, gloves, beverages and even a cell phone. Sturdy canvas construction is light, durable and easy to clean.
List Price: $ 16.99
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Gardening festival held in Tulare
Article from Visalia Times-Delta:
Some of us have green thumbs, and some of us don’t.
But over the weekend, some people with thumbs of a particularly bright shade of green gathered in Zumwalt Park to share their gardening expertise.
Former Tulare Joint High School District Superintendent Gerald Benton couldn’t have been happier about it. He came to speak with the Tulare & Kings Master Gardeners, which put on the event, to ask about the grass that was invading his St. Augustine lawn.
“I was just trying to find out what kind of grass it is, so I can eradicate it,” said Benton, noting that the other grass has been taking over more and more of his lawn.
He’s so frustrated that he pulled out a fistful of the invading grass and brought it here to see if the experts could tell him what to do.
But even master gardeners can be stumped, as they speculated that the offending lawn might be a rye. They told Benton to let it grow high enough to generate flowers so they can determine what type it is and help the man come up with a plan to save his lawn.
And even then, “It’s really hard to selectively remove grass from grass,” warned Michelle Le Strange of Visalia, one of the…………………continues on Visalia Times-Delta
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Ankeny Event Planner: Landscaping Workshop, Easter Services, DMACC Veterans …
Article from Patch.com:
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Home Vegetable Gardening -a Complete and Practical Guide to the Planting and Care of All Vegetables, Fruits and Berries Worth Growing for Home Use
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
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March 30
April gardening essentialsApril gardening essentials
Article from San Francisco Chronicle:
When planning the vegetable garden, don’t forget to include herbs. Purple and green basil varieties are a striking combination.
Now that spring is here, the garden will start getting out of hand. Weeds will flourish, snails will come out of hibernation, and throughout the Bay Area, wisteria will bud out in great profusion. The Chinese varieties (Wisteria sinensis) burst into pendulous clusters like fragrant, delicate clumps of grapes hanging from leafless stems. Japanese varieties (Wisteria floribunda) bloom later when their leaves unfurl, opening cluster by cluster in elongated, 18-inch-long drifts of blossoms. To have a wisteria that doesn’t bloom is like sitting down to watch a play that never begins. And while you can’t teach a young vine old tricks, you can encourage an older non-blooming wisteria. Now in early spring, feed it heavily wi…………………continues on San Francisco Chronicle
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Pasco gardening events
Article from Tampabay.com:
Plants and markets
• Longleaf Farmers Market, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday in downtown Longleaf, off Starkey Boulevard and State Road 54, New Port Richey.
• Fresh Market at Wiregrass, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 7 and the first Saturday of each month at the Shops at Wiregrass, 28211 Paseo Drive, Wesley Chapel. Features produce, Florida-grown plants and locally made jams, salsas, seasonings and sauces, plus the works of local artists. For information, visit tampabaymarkets.com.
• The Market, featuring plants and other gardening goods, runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 7 and every other Saturday at West Pasco Habitat for Humanity, 4131 Madison St., New Port Richey. For information, call (727) 859-9038 or visit West Pasco Habitat for Humanity on Facebook.
• Native Plant Sale, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at the Land O’Lakes Community Center, 5401 Land O’Lakes Blvd. This sale, hosted by the Nature Coast Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society, will include a variety of native trees, shrubs, wildflowers, vines, grasses and groundcovers, plus free literature, books and plant profiles to help buyers put the plants in the right place. Fo…………………continues on Tampabay.com
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