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Inspiration for passionate a gardeners Gardening ideas from

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速

Sponsored by Osmocote速 Smart-Release速 Plant Food, the premier plant food for passionate gardeners. Reprinted from

hortmag.com

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pointersforplanters Th e B lo g s at P l a n t e r s P l a c e . c o m

Gardening is part science and part art. That’s why it’s so much fun. You can’t know too much about gardening and you can never stop searching for new inspiration. n the next few pages, Horticulture magazine and PlantersPlace.com® have teamed up to bring you a series of articles about some of your favorite areas of interest: kitchen gardening, fruit & vegetable gardening, managing pests, and growing perennials. PlantersPlace is an online community and resource for garden enthusiasts sponsored by Osmocote® Plant Food. Its purpose is to bring you useful information about gardening in a way that’s easy to access and understand. A key feature of PlantersPlace is our blog section.

Enthusiasts such as Jennifer Bartley, Ellen Wells, Amy Grisak, and Jenks Farmer offer fresh blogs weekly during peak gardening months, and monthly throughout the rest of the year, to further inspire your gardening projects. They are also available to answer any questions you may have. Some recent blogs are highlighted here. We invite you to sit back, take a sip from your favorite cozy beverage, and browse this supplement. Then, when you are finished with this issue of Horticulture magazine, come visit PlantersPlace.com® and discover a new source of gardening fun and information!

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thekitchengarden

T h e B lo g s at P l a n t e r s P l a c e . c o m | w i t h j e n n i f e r b a r t l e y

Want to plant, nurture, prepare and consume fresh produce? It could positively impact your whole life! Jennifer Bartley’s gardening columns at PlantersPlace.com will inspire you, and if you are like us, they’ll probably make you hungry, too.

harvesting garlic B lo g o r i g i n a lly pub li s h e d at P l a nte r s P l ac e.c o m 8/6/200 8

rowing our own garlic is really a remarkable thing— from one small clove in October I harvest one fat head with 12 cloves in midsummer. The garlic knows how to do this without any coaxing, intervention, fussing or worrying from me. It happily sends up shoots through the winter and yields different garlic delights through the growing season. First there are garlic chives in January—clipped even in the snow, then green garlic in April and May and finally, full, ripe heads at the end of July or early August. The garlic does all of this work while looking pretty in the garden. The green vertical shoots are attractive. Well, until the end of July when the leaves begin to turn brown and fall over. But this is the sign that it’s time to harvest the mature cloves. Dig the bulbs with a trowel or garden fork, being careful not to slice through any of the garlic then gently lift out the garlic. I inevitably get the trowel too close to the garlic and cut through a few so if this happens use the garlic immediately because you won’t be able to store damaged heads. Remove as much Jennifer lives in Granof the soil as possible with your hands; don’t use water. ville, Ohio, where she Cure garlic for longer storage in the house by hanging owns American Poin small bunches for two weeks. I keep mine in a large tager, LLC, a design basket in a well-ventilated room out of direct sunlight, company. She is also which right now happens to be my family room. Don’t a photographer, auworry; fresh garlic doesn’t have an odor as it cures. thor, and has served What am I going to do with all of this garlic? A few as an adjunct profeslarge bulbs will be kept for seed for next year. Some will sor at Ohio State University. Her most recent book be cured for long storage. The rest will be used to cook Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American with now. (Fresh pesto, for example). Go to Planters Potager Handbook, is published by Timber Press. Place.com to read the rest of this article.

meet jennifer

How does your garden grow? Mouthwatering tomatoes. Luscious berries. Vibrant blossoms. That’s just what you’ll get the first time and every time you use Osmocote® Smart-Release® Flower & Vegetable Plant Food. The secret is in our formula. It balances vigorous top growth with strong root development for four full months. Best of all, you don’t have to worry, because Osmocote is guaranteed not to burn when used as directed. Maybe that’s why passionate gardeners have trusted Osmocote for 40 years – no matter what they’re growing. © 2009, The Scotts Company LLC. World rights reserved.

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justveggies T h e B lo g s at P l a n t e r s P l a c e . c o m | w i t h e l l e n w e l l s

Ellen Wells, our Just Veggies blogger, writes about propagating, planting, growing, cultivating, and best of all, dining on vegetables of all varieties. If your garden has vegetables, Ellen’s column is required reading.

cool spring crops B lo g o r i g i n a lly pub li s h e d at P l a nte r s P l ac e.c o m 3/23/200 9

can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “I can’t wait to get into my garden” within the past few weeks. It’s been a long winter, and the economy has certainly made it feel longer, colder and darker than usual. What we all need is to get out of the house and into our backyards so the fresh spring air can clear the cobwebs—and the bad news—from our minds. But hold it, we’re still just a few days into the official start of spring. And in much of the country the last frost date is still several weeks away. It’s still raw outside, and spring rains will make gardening a bone-chilling experience for both you and any green thing that tries to push itself up from the ground. Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, you just hold your horses until there’s nothing but warmth and sunshine. Only the hardiest of veggies can make it through early spring weather. The top of the list of hardiest veggies is the pea. While it’s not my favorite vegetable, I plant them out of respect for their cold tolerance, plus I also just want to plant something out in the garden! You can plant pea seeds as soon as your garden soil is workable (i.e., when you don’t need a chisel to get through the frozen soil). Plant one row every week for three weeks to ensure a regular harvest. Careful, though; peas don’t like warm weather. Final sowing for peas is mid-April for Zone 6. Subtract one week for each zone warmer; add a week for each zone colder. Leafy greens are good for you, and with their tolerance of cool weather, you can introduce fresh, homegrown leafies into your diet early in the growing season. Again, as soon as the soil is workable, sow weekly rows of spinach, kale, collard greens, and Swiss chard. Sow those seeds right through the secEllen Wells is “editor at large” ond or third week in April for Zone 6 (add and subfor Green Profit magazine, tract weeks according to zones as above). Lettuce is a a Ball Publishing magazine leafy green, too, but wait about two weeks after spinach for people who own and run and kale to sow lettuce seeds outdoors. The good thing garden centers. Ellen also about lettuce is you can sow seeds right up until hot writes for the Boston Globe weather hits in summer. Go to PlantersPlace.com Style section and Design to read the rest of this article. New England magazine.

meet ellen

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pestpatrol T h e B lo g s at P l a n t e r s P l a c e . c o m | w i t h a m y g r i s a k

Amy Grisak doesn’t think of herself as a warrior but her passion in controlling pests qualifies her to be Secretary of War, the Pests Division. Bambi, beware!

being a gardening sleuth

Amy is published in Garden Design, Fine Gardening, Gardening How-To, Grit, Mother Earth News, Natural Home, Hobby Farms, and Hobby Farm Home. Amy is a regular garden writer for the Great Falls Tribune and appears on the Darla Shine radio program’s gardening segment. Visit Amy’s personal website at www.livinginseason.com.

here’s no question it’s maddening when you go out to the garden in the morning, and find half-eaten vegetables sitting below the plants or entire crops mowed to the ground. Before you can do anything to remedy the situation, you need to figure out what’s eating your garden. The easiest way to figure out what is visiting the vegetable patch is to become an old-fashioned tracker. Look for paw prints in the mud (water down an area if you’re dry) and for droppings. It’s easy to find photos of both on-line by searching for “raccoon scat” or “skunk scat.” Part of being a good tracker is knowing the habits of the animals. For example, groundhogs (a.k.a. woodchucks) are like big rabbits in the garden. They won’t pick specific vegetables. Instead, they’ll mow down the entire plant. On the other hand, raccoons and skunks will eat just about anything they can wrap their little paws around. They’re not picky. Go to PlantersPlace .com to read the rest of this article.

meet amy

B lo g o r i g i n a lly pub li s h e d at P l a nte r s P l ac e.c o m 7/8/200 9

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perennialsforever T h e B lo g s at P l a n t e r s P l a c e . c o m | w i t h j e n k s fa r m e r

Who doesn’t like beautiful flowers, thick, green leaves and well-groomed plants, season after season? Jenks Farmer tells us how to make these dreams a reality.

getaway

B lo g o r i g i n a lly pub li s h e d at P l a nte r s P l ac e.c o m 7/21/200 9

fter two intense days of planting giant bamboo (Phyllostachys bambusoides) Tom and I are taking a little vacation. So I’m washing off the mud and getting away from computers, and heading for Atlanta to get away from plants! We are going to a Joan Baez concert in the Atlanta Botanical Garden, but we won’t even look at the plants. Well, we may stop at Perimeter College to see the amazing fern collection that Dr. Sanko built. (http://www.ngeorgia.com/ georgia-perimeter-gardens.html) We won’t look at plants … much. Then we have tons of crinums to dig on Saturday, so it looks like our vacation may be for just one night, but we’ll have some much-coveted time together in the car. Go to PlantersPlace.com to read the rest of this article.

meet jenks Jenks is the owner of LushLife Nursery in South Carolina. He is also the curator and designer for Moore Farms, a private 25-acre garden, managing forestry planning and plant databases. You can catch Jenks’s articles in Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, Horticulture, American Nurseryman and several scientific journals.

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PlantersPlace.com features – •A sk the Expert – Browse more than 1,000 questions or ask about your garden.

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