I subscribe to Digger magazine, the industry publication from Oregon Association of Nurserymen. I am always curious about trends in the nursery industry and this magazine is a good way to find out what home gardeners are buying.
The cover feature of the May 2010 issue is on topiary. While I can appreciate topiaries in formal gardens – with dozens of gardeners to keep them shaped up – I think they are poor choices for most home landscapes. … Continue reading this article “Shear lunacy”
The first thing that I did, gardening wise, when I moved to Minnesota from Georgia was to try all of the plants that I had grown to love in the South in the North — hoping beyond hope that perhaps someone had made a mistake when listing the hardiness zones of these plants. The result was a mess of dead lacebark elms, Japanese maples, and butterfly bushes. One plant that I did find could live, albeit just barely, was the beautyberry — a purple fruiting shrub that would survive as a perennial in Minnesota, just barely getting up to my knee — just enough to tease me.… Continue reading this article “Visiting Virginia”
Why, oh why, can’t someone engineer a sturdy, long-lasting, horticulturally-correct water breaker.
We have, at last count, six hoses in use at our very spread-out garden & farm. I go through a lot of breakers, and am down to two, which I rotate around. In dire need of some new ones (as well as a huge bale of TP), I perused the garden aisle at our local big box (rhymes with “Target”). Pistol grip schnozzles abound – these things that propel the water
like a 95 mph fastball. … Continue reading this article “Creative Uses For Old Water Breakers”
There were a few brave souls who ventured to ID the mystery plant – a trunk shot is not particularly helpful, I know. But I was hoping that its contorted nature might help a little. (It wouldn’t have helped me at all, but you all know by now that I am NOT a taxonomist.)
So our mystery tree is a curly willow (Salix matsudana):
…which may or may not be synonymous with Salix babylonica.… Continue reading this article “Mystery photo uncurled!”
One of the best cures for writers’ block for a Garden Professors is to spend a little time in front of the tube watching home gardening shows. Now, to be sure, there are useful nuggets of information that can be gleamed from an hour or so of gardening or landscaping on HGTV or PBS Create. But there are moments when I just stare at the TV in disbelief and go, ‘Have these people lost their frickin’ minds?’… Continue reading this article “Plastic grass and organic gardens”
In addition to the cool Poison Plants garden, I also found this curious trunk – what tree might this be?
This question will appeal to collectors of plant curiousities. Answer and more photos on Monday!
I missed my regular posting on Wednesday since (1) I’m on vacation and (2) I hadn’t had time to find anything sufficiently worthy of posting. (Of course I have a compost barrel full of snake oil products I could rant about, but even I get tired of that. Especially on vacation.)
Note the strategic head placement
But yesterday we visited the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens just north of Niagara Falls. We didn’t have nearly enough time to see it all, so I’ll share just one special corner.… Continue reading this article “A nifty garden to visit”
Year after year farmers in the US plants a lot of corn. A safe estimate is around 80 million acres with another 70 million acres or so going to soybeans. Corn comes from South America, soybeans are from East Asia. When we plant these crops we plant them in such a way that we exclude or, at the very least, limit the ability of native plants to grow. A safe estimate is that 99 percent of our cropland is planted in non-native species. … Continue reading this article “What About the Corn?”
By Dr. Charlie Rohwer
Since my last guest professor submission (buying organic food for health) garnered so much discussion, I thought I’d try to write about a less controversial topic: evolution. There’s no scientific doubt that’s where plants (well, all species of everything, really) come from, but what got me thinking about it recently was my Kentucky coffeetree.
My wife and I bought our first house a couple years ago, and for the previous 25 years at least, the landscaping had been severely neglected. … Continue reading this article “Our visiting Garden Professor and his Kentucky coffeetree”
I spent yesterday flying from Seattle to Buffalo and didn’t get a chance to post the answer to the puzzle on Friday. This was an easy one for our readers – the shrub is (was?) a mesquite, and the bushy growth in the photograph is mistletoe (as identified by Bob and seconded by Ginny and Jimbo).
I am pretty sure this mesquite was dead, as it had been a wet spring and everything was leafing out. … Continue reading this article “Friday puzzle solved – better late than never!”