Somebody asked where I wrote and what I was doing. Well, I write in magazines and other commercial accounts to make the bulk of my living (mostly things you’ll never read unless you’re reading news releases and sales letters)  Then I do a (free) newspaper column for small community newspapers (if you have a small community newspaper – tell them to write and ask about my column). I write these websites and ebooks as well and these are pretty much self funding now thanks to you folks clicking on ads and buying e-books. But I write some stuff for the heck of it. I gave you my lens last week – that’s where I write the short stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

And this week, here’s my blog. I just started this and it is intended to be a daily record of creating and maintaining my garden. You’ll get the unedited version of what I’m thinking (or mostly anyway) :-) as I write stuff and post pics of what’s going on. This is what I’m thinking that doesn’t fit anywhere else. It’s the fun stuff of my gardening.

http://doug-greens-gardening.blogspot.com/

New Articles for You

There’s no way I can list all the herb articles that got posted this week (moved actually) so here’s the main url that lists all the herb growing information on my sites.

http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com/growing-herbs.html

Want to ask a question? Click here to ask a gardening question.www.gardening-tips-perennials.com/askagardeningquestion.html

Your Questions Answered

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I have been told that herons are territorial and the pond store owner in our area says that a statue of a heron will help keep them away! Is this true?

Need some good water garden construction pictures?

A: Hmm, well that’s the word in official retail-dom for sure. My experience and some of my friends is that statues of herons work well for the first few days and then the bird figures it out. I have one friend that makes a fetish of moving his statue around every day and interestingly enough – has meaningful conversations with it. But would I bet the farm on a statue? Not a chance. Having said that – if you like the look of that particular statue – go for it. At the very least, it will be decorative. And there’s an article up on this topic that lists all the recommended “cures”. Good luck.

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I've got a lot of seedlings growing, and this morning I noticed on the okra plants (5" tall, very healthy) there are small, round, transparent eggy looking things!! I've read your section on pests and don't see any reference to eggs (if that's what they are). I've moved them away from the other seedlings...oh my god, I'm having a nervous breakdown...and washed the leaves off (they're on the underside). Can you tell me what they are/what to do please?? Thanks so much,

Do You Want to Grow Vegetables?

A: OK. Well the first thing to be pleased about is that the problem is on the okra. I never understood the fascination with this mucilage-tasting plant so let the bugs have ‘em sayz I. They could be several things but eggs is a good guess. And you’ve done the right thing by moving them away from other plants and washing them off. A little attention to the rest of the seedlings is in order (check under their leaves regularly). And if you see something (just about anything in the seedling stage) don’t hesitate to spray with insecticidal soap. At that stage, you want to nail most everything off the plant.

But washing the leaves and isolation of infected seedlings is a great first step to any garden problem in the house.

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We have sprirea (goldmound) that I am trying to keep fairly small but they seem to want to grow like bad weeds. This is the first of April. Would it be okay to aggressively prune these bushes to say 1/2 their height before the foliage starts to grow. Last year I pruned them incorrectly because instead of the regular size leaves they usually have they ended up the season with tiny little leaves and I don't know what I did. I did not see a pruning booklet on your site. Thanking you for your help in advance.

A: Yes, you can aggressively prune this plant. And there are articles up on the sites about “topping cuts” and “heading cuts” (do a search for these terms) that will explain the differences and how to prune any plant.

Tiny little leaves are not usually a sign of pruning. They are normally a sign of root damage and stress on the plant. If your shrub didn’t explode after the pruning – you have other problems that are more serious to the plant. Get out that compost and fish emulsion this spring – water and get the plant growing strongly.

Good luck.

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Reading of the Tiger Lily plants made me remember......Last week I looked at the seed I saved last year from my Tiger Lily plants. I had stored them in a zip lock bag. Bless my soul, if they were not already sprouting inside the bag. Now how do I plant them? The sprout, of course, is small and tender. Should I place the whole seed and plant under dirt or let the tender plant stick out?

A: This is a great question. When the seedlings start to germinate in the frig (my chestnuts did the same silly thing several weeks ago instead of waiting for spring) the thing to do is plant them. And how deep or what to cover depends on what is showing coming out of the seed. If you have a simple root emerging, then you can cover the entire seed (just barely). If you have a root coming out and an emerging “top” then you’re going to have to barely cover the root part and leave the top part lying on the soil surface. The top will right itself and head straight up in a few hours/day. The root will head down although you won’t see this.

The trick is to have “tender” hands and not damage the very tender growing plant. Be careful and don’t squeeze the stem too hard (bruising slows down growth) as you handle it.

Water with warm water to keep the little fellow growing strongly.

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I've often heard you and others say to cut the flower down to just above an outward facing bud but have trouble finding them. Help???

A: It will appear as a small “pimple” on the side of the cane and will get larger with age. Good question. I’ll take some pics this summer and post them so you can see what they look like.

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We had raised beds for many years, and enjoyed the benefits. However, we live in the southwest, where we get all our rain at once, then go months without rain. The permanent raised beds protected the soil in the winter wet. But it dried out too fast in the summer dry. We read that sunken beds- although more work, were a better choice for our hot dry summers.

Instead of sinking our beds, we raised the paths by using large flattish stones for a path on top of the existing gravel paths. Of course. Like any other organic gardener, we couldn't resist filling the last few inches of the beds with compost and mulch. Now the garden is the same level as the paths, though several inches higher than the original soil level. We used a dark red sand between the rocks for a decorative look. It has a very natural look

Because the whole garden is raised, we have no problems with puddling or drainage- even in really heavy rain. It solved a lot of our evaporation problems, plus the rocks absorb and reflect heat, so the garden has a few extra frost free days (weeks) in spring and fall. The rocks help warm the soil in spring also. It turned out to be the perfect solution.

A: I’ve included this in the newsletter because – once again – it proves there’s more than one way to garden successfully. You do have to garden in ways that are appropriate to your geography. My current garden – on an island surrounded by water – is going to have a vastly different micro-climate than my previous garden that sat on top of a small hill. Thanks for sending in this note.

That’s why I like doing this stuff – I get to learn something every week from you great readers.

From My Garden To Yours

It’s almost spring bulb season and I’m looking forward to it immensely. The garden has two kinds of daffodils and several large clumps of tulips so it will be fun to get a spring surprise in this new garden. One thing that is of interest is the survival rates of some of these bulbs. In the case of daffodils where I quite truly expected the buds to die because of the January start, they appear to be plumping up nicely. The tips of the leaves started out the most horrendous yellow where they had been burned but now most of these same tips are slowly greening up and appearing to recover. The flower buds were a freezer-burn shade of white/yellow when they first appeared and I wouldn’t have given you a nickel for them blooming but they too are plumping up and I now expect to see blooms. The somewhat cooler beds where the bulbs are later appearing are all fine. The tulips are later but the leaf tips look quite good so I expect flowers on these as well. I’m happy to say that my predictions of gloom and doom in the bulb bed are unfounded in my own garden.

I bought some bulbs on sale last week. I confess I hit one of the big box stores looking for some wood and there was a rack of inexpensive bulbs sitting as “teasers” beside the front door. “Oh well!” I said to myself, you need them anyway and this is a good price. I bought a package of fifty #2-gladiola bulbs and these will brighten up my garden for sure this summer. The really big ones you see in specialty catalogues will give you a large bloom but a slightly smaller bulb such as a #2 will give you an excellent bloom at half the price. When I was growing glads commercially, all we ever used were this smaller sized bulb.

I also couldn’t resist the roses on sale. The price was half-price for what they’ll be in another two weeks so I picked up nine of them and tucked them away in the unheated garage for another week while I dig the gardens. Any dormant plant can be installed now. As long as you can dig in your garden, you can start planting dormant stock. As the buds on those roses hadn’t started to swell, (it was the first day of the sale and they were outside) then they were dormant and could be kept cold and or put immediately into the ground. This is an important point to note. If the plant has not started to grow, it can be planted and it will be fine. It won’t know it was moved. However, if the plant has been in a cold frame or greenhouse and is leaved out at all or started to bud swell, you can't plant it and expect it to shrug off frosts or heavy freezing that we’re sure to get in the next month. Dormant is good – bud swell and leaves require protecting.

My tiller arrived this week and as long as the weather was decent, I will have run it around the garden to begin making garden beds. If those garden beds were made, I can tell you that my peas are planted. I can taste those sugar snap peas now.

Tomato Growing Secrets

I also planted my tomato and pepper seeds indoors this week. It was a week for starting to concentrate on the vegetable garden because all the perennial and annual seeds I started a few months ago are now all transplanted and growing. This is an excellent week for starting many of these tender transplants as they’ll be at the right height for a home gardener to transplant by the end of May and won’t be too stretched out. I’ll be waiting until the middle of April to plant the vine crops such as melons so my timing will be right on those as well. Onions are sown in the house and will be ready for transplanting in another three weeks.

The only problem I’m having is an old one. When I had my nursery, I used to do all the planning on a computer and figure out exactly how many flats I could grow. How many flats of plants could I fit into my 20,000 square feet of growing space over the course of a season? Then I’d start growing. But then some salesguy would come along and say, “Here’s a new plant to trial.” Or, “Try this seed.” Or a friend would offer me some rare seed that I couldn’t turn down. Before you knew it, I’d have more flats than I had space for. When the kids would ask me where to put the extra flats, I’d quite glibly tell them to find some room because I had figured it out and there had to be space somewhere. Naturally, there wasn’t and flats were put in the strangest of spots and somehow most of the time we’d manage to grow everything.

Now my ambition has clearly exceeded my ability to manage my space. The porch is full of plants. There are two full levels of plants in front of every porch window. The only unfilled space is the couch and the dog’s blanket. Don’t hold out much hope for the dog’s blanket. The kitchen windowsill now supports the geranium cuttings. The tropical plant collection resides in the living room (where it is thriving I note for the future) and I’m eying the bathroom window next. I’m not quite sure where the vegetables are going to go but I understand there’s a cold frame in my near future.

I’m not exactly apologizing to the kids for their inability to find spots for all my flats but I’m now prepared to admit that some of the problem might be laid at my door. Might. Next year I’ll be better. Promise.