How to Get Wasps Off Your Deck or Patio

I got tired of chasing wasps from our back deck with a sprayer filled with insecticide. The insecticide seemed to harm us more than it harmed the wasps, whcih would soon return. I also became tired of having wasps chase (and sting) me. So I did some research and came up with the following environmentally safe advice from an HGTV garden expert:

Wasps are territorial, so a natural way to remove them from your deck or patio is to make them think that another wasp nest is close by. A simple but effective way to do this is to take a used paper lunch bag, fill it with air, tie it at the bottom with string and hang it from a branch .

Author Tells of Being Bitten By the Gardening Bug, Battling Woodchucks - Health - redOrbit

Author Tells of Being Bitten By the Gardening Bug, Battling Woodchucks - Health - redOrbit

Here's a book that appeals to me. I'm going to look it up later on Amazon.com. It's fun to read the commentaries which follow after the formal reviews. Of particular interest to me was the battle with the groundhogs. I think most rural gardeners have had some experience with those cute but destructive furry creatures. Apparently, the author of this book never heard of shooting at them or "having them on a plate" along with the garden vegetables he grew. There was a man I knew a while back who made a great stew of goundhog meat. He had a peculiar and colloquial voice.

"Waaaallll (well), bring 'er in and I'll a skin 'er," he told me once when I'd shot a groundhog.

I hadn't shot at a groundhog again until last year when there was a particularly voracious one who had made a home under a shed just a few feet from the vegetable garden. You can keep on reading because my story has a happy ending. Fat as he was, that groundhog, I took aim and missed, watching while he scurried across the yard and into the woods, never to be seen again. I checked for blood; there was none. Clean miss. Happy ending.

Spelling Test: Culantro or Cilantro?

Well, both spellings are right, and they're different plants in the same family.

I wonder if the security cameras at Walmart caught me snacking on one of their plants. Don’t worry, though, I did buy the plant after nipping off the tip of one leaf.

It was called “Culantro” and that’s the correct spelling. I had to taste it because it’s often mistaken, misspelled, and misnamed for its close relative “cilantro” or “coriander.” So I found out it tastes just the same, only a bit stronger, and bought it.

I also planted it the same day, albeit in the wrong place. I took a gamble and placed it in a sunny spot before reading the card that said:

“Culantro grows naturally in shaded moist heavy soils near cultivated areas. Under cultivation, the plant thrives best under well irrigated shaded conditions.”

The plant is rich in calcium, iron, carotene, and riboflavin and its harvested leaves are widely used as a food flavoring and seasoning herb for meat and many other foods. Its medicinal value include its use as a tea for flu, diabetes, constipation, and fevers. One of its most popular use is in chutneys as an appetite stimulant.

The name fitweed is derived from its supposedly anti-convulsant property.
I bought another herb, too; Thai basil has a licorice or anise taste in addition to the familiar tastes of basil. But more of that later. Right now, I’m going to replant the Culantro in a shaded, moist spot as the growers recommend.

Green Gardening: Honeybees get a boost from supplement

Green Gardening: Honeybees get a boost from supplement

Suburban Lawn Struggles

Fiscally Fit - WSJ.com Terri Cullen writes an interesting column for the Wall Street Journal. She writes about practical things, mostly, and has a common sense approach. If you live in the country, as we do, you might like to see how things work in Suburbia.

Sharp growth in vegetable gardening

DutchNews.nl - Sharp growth in vegetable gardening

Uhh....this is in Holland where the supply of land is much more limited than it is here. Yet, the Dutch have an attachment to farming and gardening that is sometimes lost in America. America has a vast amount of land that can be used to gorw vegetables. We're so lucky here in America-- yet, we prefer Chem-Lawn to John Deere -- Use some of that yard space for a vegetable garden, people!

Expand Your Gardening Vocabulary

Gardening was always so much easier when I was a child. A tomato was a tomato, corn was corn, and the word "flower" applied to as many plants as I wanted. Now I realize what little I know, but still, I'm having fun. Here's a gardening quiz and I'll give you answers at the end. Hopefully, we'll both learn something and perhaps have a little fun in the process.

1. What is the probably the most powerful garden design factor?
2. What time of day and weather conditions are best for planting?
3. What is the difference between an Annual and a Perennial?
4. What is oxalis?
5. What nutrient deficiency can result from over liming or from lime leached from cement or brick and is often found in regions where soil is derived from limestone and in areas with low rainfall?
6. Which plant nutrient is responsible for the healthy green color of your plants: nitrogen, phosphorus or potash?
7. In gardening terms, what does deadheading mean?
8. What is a biennial?
9. What is the term for plants that are resistant to pests and diseases, are often more vigorous and productive and can withstand cold winters?
10. What is the more common name for the perennial myosotis sylvestris?
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Okay, now the answers. I'm sure you'll get them all right. That wasn't so hard, was it?

1. Color is probably the single most powerful garden design factor.
2. Evenings of cloudy days is the best time to plant. If you have to plant during the heat of the day or on sunny days be sure plants are watered thoroughly immediately after planting.
3. An annual goes through its life cycle in one summer, and a perennial will bloom summer after summer.
4. Oxalis is a common perennial weed.
5. Iron deficiency.
6. The plant nutrient responsible for the healthy green color of your plants is nitrogen.
7. Deadheading is removing faded flowers by pinching off the flower head. The plant will spend its energy producing more flowers instead of seed. This encourages more flowers and creates a longer blooming period. Also pinch the central growing tip of the plant. This will produce side shoots further down the stem, creating a bushier plant that will produce more flowers.
8. A biennial is a plant with a two year life cycle, that produces leaves in the first season, then flowers and sets seed in the second season.
9. Referred to as hardy plants.
10. The more common name for the perennial myosotis sylvestris is forget-me-nots

Hot Pepper Habanero - Pepper, Hot - Vegetables - Burpee

Hot Pepper Habanero - Pepper, Hot - Vegetables - Burpee

I usually indulge myself every year by planting a rather large number of hot peppers. The practice is wasteful in terms of land use but I can't resist. Truth to tell, I can hardly eat one of these 10-alarm babies each year but I plant them anyway. I can them or give them away. On the other hand, I snack on a variety of mildly hot peppers that I also plant. Somehow, hot peppers seem to me patriotic. Plant some, you'll see.

Red Lettuce, Arugula, and Barack Obama

Lettuce is a cool weather crop so it's suitable for early spring planting. This year I'm determined to enrich the soil with organic fertilizers. Above is a variety of red lettuce which adds a little visual impact to a salad. I learned about Arugula from the Elite Presidential Candidate Barack Obama and so I planted some of that, too. I've no idea what it looks like. I had to go to an old-fashioned plant and feed store to find arugula. What next? Birkenstocks and Brie?

The Judas Tree

The blooms come early and long before the leaves mature. The Judas Tree is said to be the tree from which Judas Iscariot hanged himself. Naturally, a tree of such elegance and delicate beauty would be renamed. In Pennsylvania, it is called the Eastern Redbud. It send out roots to propagate. It's stunning to see a whole hillside covered with Redbud in the early spring...

Native flowering Dogwood blooms seem to float...

Once established, the native Dogwood sets deep roots but is inclined to travel..... While between the woodpile and a forsythia in its waning days, a bleeding heart begins its wary entrance...

Spring is about Hope

Gardening: Succession Planting

Even the Wall Street Journal is getting into the gardening act. A couple days ago , the WSJ featured an article about suburban homeowners tearing up their green lawns to establish gardens. Can’t blame them—it’s tough to eat grass. With the rising price of food, gardening makes more sense now than ever. Yet, the WSJ article told of neighbors who complained of having to look at brown earth rather than green grass. What about those hungry people who complain of having too look at vast expanses of inedible green lawns? No mention of that.

I’m working on a small garden now and I’m remembering the problems we had last year when everything matured at mostly the same time. I managed to can a large number of hot peppers but not much else. I gave as much away as I could but some was wasted. This year, I am planning to engage in “succession planting” whereby you schedule maturation in a more orderly fashion.

I planted some tomato varieties by looking at the maturation dates. “Early girl” tomatoes are just that….expected to mature in about 60 to 65 days. There are other varieties which take longer to mature so you can plant some of each type.
With early vegetables like peas, lettuce, spinach, radishes and others, you can plant in short beds with planting intervals scheduled every two weeks until the weather gets too warm. Be sure to rotate what you plant and to rip up all the old vegetables the minute they begin to bolt.

Spring Garden Strategies

It's early spring. The water is rushing into the gorge and spewing from the waterfall down below. Yet, there is a degree of uncertainty about it all as the days go from frigid to warm and back again. We're behind with the indoor seedbeds and I'm looking at the high prices for hothouse plants in Wal-marts, Lowe's, Home Depot and the various local gardeners. The high prices are caused, in part, by the rising energy costs for transport, storage, and even for greenhouse production. It would have been a good year to get plants from seeds and I'm hoping it's not too late.

My obsession for the past three years has been Provence Lavender. Obsession comes from not being able to obtain any. So I bought some seeds this year and put them in a seed box. The minute I do that they pop up in the stores for $3.00 a plant. They are healthy plants. The pent-up lavender emotion of three years compelled me to splurge. Long before the flowers show, lavender has a wonderful, pungent smell that wafts in the air and clings to your fingers.

We've decided to expand the garden farther out into the law area behind the house. That involved skimming the topsoil grass off with the loader and moving it to a bare spot alongside the house. We quarreled about the kind of deer fence we'd put up, settling on something thin and unassuming.

We had a trillium at our old house and now we didn't so we planted a package of trillium seed in the shade beside the foundation. Ditto, the snakeskin orchid. I have no clue about either one, and these do not always flower in the first year.

Agastache: A Tongue-twisting Indestructible and Deer Resistant Plant

The plant is a tongue twister, but your friends will be impressed if you can say “agastache” or “anise hyssop.” But even if you can’t, the plant is a nice addition to your garden, particularly if you live in deer country.
Much has been said about “deer resistant” plants. To my way of reckoning, the only deer resistant plants are the ones planted where there are no deer at all. Deer are the ultimate survivalists and will eat “deer resistant” plants with relish when they are hungry enough. That usually means the period toward the end of winter, or during periods of mid-winter deep snowfall.

Given a choice, deer are very much like the rest of us. They prefer one type of salad greens to another. Agastache is one plant they will avoid when there are better things to eat. Agastache is also called “anise hyssop” and, as the name would imply, has a strong odor which is unpleasant to deer.

Agastache blooms on 4-inch-long spikes that are covered with small lavender-blue flowers. The blooms attract butterflies and bees. Planting agastache will help insure that bee colonies survive. Agastache is durable and can be grown in sun or partial shade. It tolerates dry conditions and requires little maintenance. Once in a while, the deer will help the plant by nipping the ends of its 2 to 3 foot stalks before moving on to greener pastures.

Life in the Bamboo Jungle

How to Trick Forsythia Bushes into Early Bloom

Things You’ll Need: pruning shears, a bucket of warm water, a sunny area...



In the cold climates, the ideal months to pick Forsythia stems for "forcing" is February or March. Any later than that, and they'll bloom some warm day without your help...

Make some cuttings from the Forsythia bush with a sharp pruning tool. It is important that you select a warm day to do this as the stems will be less brittle. Brittle bushes snap are easily damaged. Try to pick the stems with the most buds. The length is up to you but it's much easier to handle shorter lengths. Let the size of your vase(s) be your guide.

Take the cuttings inside where you've filled a bucket with warm water. Place the cuttings in the bucket of warm water. Some experts recommend that you re-cut the bottoms of the stems while they are submersed under water in order to protect the fragile "wounds.

Saving the Planet Through Inertia, Laziness, and TV

Well right now’s the time of year when you’re supposed to be looking through seed catalogs and planning your garden. While I don’t disdain such activity, I can’t say it gives me a great deal of satisfaction either. After a time, you know what works and what doesn’t. You also know what part of your property gets the sunshine and what part the dark. Remember that spot along the treeline where the sun rises? That’s the East. From there, the sun heads South. Eventually, it ends up in the West. Once in a while, it evaporates into the ether. That generally means it’s a cloudy day. The wet stuff is rain, sleet, or snow. If it’s snow, you can plan your garden by drawing lines in it with your boots as you long for spring, but I prefer to shovel it.

About the only thing I like to do this time of year is prune the trees and grapevine. I only do that on a warm winter day. You run the risk of hurting the plant if the branches or vines are brittle from cold.

The other think I think about is those plants you buy in containers from K-Mart or Wal-Mart. The discount stores have the least expensive selections but not always the finest plants. People who work in the discount stores seem not to like their plants too much. It’s as if the plants are undergoing basic military training in preparation for the Big One. The Big One is the war where the urban homeowner recently located to suburbia drives to the store to load up a bunch of plants they will torture until dead. Really, I don’t think that such gardeners as these are so much sadistic as they are inclined to be distracted. Many homeless plants bought from K-Mart or Wal-Mart become the victims of adult attention deficit disorder. Some are half-buried because the people who adopt them find the soil too hard to dig with those cute little garden tools they found in Home Depot or Lowe’s. A common mistake made by urban gardeners is to believe that all plant life originated in the Sahara Desert. This type of gardener does not believe in spoiling the plant with an excess amount of water. That notion ties in neatly with other ideas of environmental conservation. Laziness, slothfulness, inertia, watching television—these are the things which will save the planet, so long as they are combined with the fasting which will be inevitable when the food supply fails to appear in the summer months.

Gus: In Memoriam

I’ve heard it said that if you die and go to heaven, you will meet there with all of the pets you ever had. I’ve just buried my beloved dog, Gus, and it comforts me a great deal to know this is so. It’s probably the only reason one would ever want to go to heaven anyway. Seeing the pets you lost during your lifetime is certainly an inducement to the “good life.”

Gus was always very good to us and I learned a great deal about life that I didn’t know before we joined up with him. To some people, it may seem a bit lunatic to say that a dog helped you find your way in life, especially a mongrel dog like Gus, but the fact is that Gus was unmatched in nobility and courage and determination and that opinion applies to all the animal world which includes humans, whether aristocracy or low-born.