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Enter your keywords:Archive for December, 2009
THE EARTH : One Person Can Make a Difference
Last November I had a rare opportunity to be in Rome for the United Nation’s World Food Summit as a delegate for the World Sustainable Agriculture Association. An unusual thing happened at the Summit. People from all parts of the world were really talking about food security, what it meant, how to eliminate hunger, and what they can do about it back home. For the first time I felt there was an agreement among diverse people, organizations, and governments to look at the problems in-depth relating to the security of food.
On the Inside with Jacqueline Hériteau: Have You Ever Communed with a 100 Year-Old Maple?
The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden is everything a botanical garden can be: a glorious place to spend a golden fall day, a great center for learning, a storehouse of treasured native plants, and not too far from an interesting city—historic Richmond in this case.
But what is even more exciting is the evidence everywhere of this young botanic garden’s vision of the contribution it hopes to make. To introduce plants adaptive to central Virginia and to expand the plant palette is one way they state their goal. But it’s way bigger. They hope to teach future generations about the interdependence of people and plants. Holly Shimizu, who left her position as Assistant Director of the US Botanic Garden in DC to join the Ginter Garden, puts it this way:
THE EARTH :Back To Basics: Growing Food
Every year at this time I turn to the upcoming season with much anticipation.With the seed catalogs arriving, I spend time finding new varieties and old favorites that I want to grow.My thoughts also turn to the needs of the garden and preparations for the new season.This gives me the opportunity to review some of the basic elements that are needed in gardening.For those of you who are old hands at gardening as well as those who are new gardeners, I would like to briefly share with you a few important items that are essential for a successful garden.
Location of the Garden Site:
Feeding in February is ‘For the Birds’
February is National Wild Bird Feeding Month, the seventh observance since the event was established by the National Bird-Feeding Society.
The reason, of course, is that February is one of the most difficult times in much of the U.S. and Canada for birds to survive in the wild. For example, consider that:
* A typical backyard bird doesn’t weigh as much as two nickels
* They spend most of their waking hours searching for food — without the help of “hands” and “fingers”
* They may consume 20% of their body weight overnight just keeping warm enough to survive
February Home and Garden Tips
Many gardeners like to start their own vegetable and flower transplants. This is a good way to obtain unusual varieties found only in catalogs. To get started you will need to have a suitable growing medium and plenty of light to produce strong healthy transplants. Growing mixes made of peat moss, perlite or vermiculite are ideal. Unless you have a south facing window with strong sunlight, trying to germinate and grow seedlings on a window sill is usually not very successful. To overcome a low light problem you can grow transplants under fluorescent lights to supplement or replace natural light. Cool white tubes work very well. Suspend the light fixture about six inches above the seedlings. Leave the light on for about 14 – 16 hours per day. Sow the seeds indoors approximately 5-6 weeks before the last frost date. In Central Maryland the last frost date is May 10th and in warmer areas of the state this date is April 25th. Transplants need to be conditioned for the outdoor environment before planted. Do this by placing their flats outdoors on nice days in a semi-shaded location for a week before transplanting them to their permanent location.
Some Unusual Rose Conditions
This year the rose problems have been a bit different from other years. I thought it might be useful to list some of these to assist Master Gardeners when clients present problems with roses.
1. Symptoms of the first problem: In early June blossoms failed to open up normally This is referred to as “balling” of the blossoms. The edges of the petals were brown. The symptoms are more likely to occur on light colored roses. There are two possible causes listed in the textbooks. The first is botrytis, which occurs when we have periods of damp cool weather, so that’s hardly the cause this year. The second possible cause is an invasion of thrips. To check this, I opened the blossom and examined the petal base areas. There I found small, (1.0 nun) tan insects running around. Thrips do their damage by sucking juices from the petals. The trails for their successive penetrations shows a rasping pattern.
Your Garden’s Flowers : In Consideration of Why They Bloom
I will admit that I love flowers. I also love gardening. I am not the most proficient or the neatest of gardeners, and I have a taste for the less than manicured bed.
Why do most of us garden? I think there is a combination of an appreciation for the plants themselves and their attributes of beauty such as foliage, shape, stem color and, of course, their flowers. We wish to surround ourselves with the beauty of plants. We do so by in a sense, playing God on our little acre (or 1 /3 of an acre in my case). This is not altogether bad. But any time we pretend to be omnipotent, a little bit of humility is a good thing.
There are two aspects of our obsession with flowers that we have to think about: 1) do they bloom just for us, and 2) do the plants in our gardens exist in a vacuum separate from the surrounding environment? The answer to both questions is no.
On the Inside with Jacqueline Heriteau: Digging The Net
As though you didn’t know, SurferMania – and I do refer to surfing the Internet and other electronic highways – is sweeping the garden world. It’s a revolution and I’m here to tell you, it’s irresistible! That’s the word from an honest four-thumbed electronics nerd.
I’m not going to drop bauds and Ram and Mbytes on you. (I don’t know what those words mean, anyway.) But I do want you to know that the electronic universe has a whole lot of offer gardeners.
WHAT IS A LANDSCAPER?
A landscaper can be any individual or company offering services ranging from lawn care to maintenance, installation of plant materials, the contractor offering site construction services such as patios, desks, grading, or roadways, or the licensed landscape architect that offers design services. Generally, the businesses that offer landscape installation services beyond the services normally offered by lawn care businesses prefer to be called landscape contractors. Many nurseries and garden centers offer installation services and consider themselves landscape contractors, as well. Landscape contractors are not licensed, but are usually members of one or several organizations that set up standards for their industry. These associations include a Landscape Contractors Association, the American Association of Nurserymen, The Maryland Association of Nurserymen and the National Landscape Association (Division of the American Association of Nurserymen).
When is a plant considered native?
Interest in the horticultural use of native plants has grown considerably in recent years. Evidence for this includes numerous articles in gardening publications about natives and their uses, seminars organized by botanic gardens that feature principles of garden design using natives, and the increasing availability of native plants or their seeds in catalogs and specialty nurseries.
The question of “When is a plant considered native?” is a question that has arisen on more than one occasion in discussions among the staff at the State Arboretum of Virginia at Blandy Experimental Farm. At the grandest scale, a plant might be considered a North American native if it was present in the native flora when Europeans colonized the New World. Red maple, Acer rubrum, is an example.
