• Now available for $24.95 including shipping.

• Now available for $21.00 including postage.

• Search

  Search for:

• Recent Articles

  • Holiday Gifts for the Gardener 2023
  • Reflections on 25 Years of Writing a Gardening Column
  • Late Fall Chores in the Garden
  • Tips for Growing Great Garlic
  • Putting the Garden to Bed

• Vendors I Like

  Click Here to buy from Cobrahead

• Cobrahead

  This is the best darn weeder made in the country, and I think I've tried them all. I use it to dig weeds, tease out grass roots, and mix soil at planting time. Neither right nor left handed, it is lightweight and strong.

• West Lebanon Supply

  I buy all of my organic fertilizers and soil amendments at West Lebanon Supply. They carry several lines of seeds, watering devices, tomato cages, landscape fabric and much more. They also sell pet supplies - and allow dogs in the store!

• E.C. Brown Nursery

  E.C. Brown Nursery has an amazing selection of high quality trees, shrubs and perennials. The staff is incredibly knowledgeable. Looking for something unusual? E.C. Brown Nursery probably has it.

Learning about Gardening

While it’s true that I spend a lot of time studying and reading about plants, much of what I know comes from paying attention – outdoors, in the garden. Observation is a great teacher, I recommend it to you. Here are a few of my recent observations.

Blazing Star

Last week I was admiring a nice stand of blazing star, also called gayfeather (Liatris spp.). It is a spiky plant with bluish-purple flowers (or occasionally white) and in my part of the world it is just coming into bloom. The flower stalks stand up anywhere from 18-36 inches in clumps that increase in size each year. I’ve not had much luck with it – mine has tended to disappear after a year or two. I have tried 3 or more different species of it, none of which was long lived.

The owner of the Liatris offered me a clump or two, saying that her stand – 50 or more plants distributed over a 20 foot circle – was made up of “volunteers” that had all come from one plant. I was amazed to discover (when I went to dig out a clump) that they were not rooted in the earth. They were growing in the 2-3 inches of bark mulch that was sitting on weed mat that is impenetrable to roots. A light bulb went on in my head.

What I learned is that Liatris does well in dry, lean soil – or no soil at all (bark mulch has little nutritional value to plants). It needs no fertilizer. I have a garden with rich soil full of organic matter, and in most places on my property the soil stays moist, even in dry times. In the winter it can be downright soggy. Looking in Steven Still’s book, Manual of Herbaceous Ornamental Plants I read confirmation: “One should avoid soggy soil situations during the winter.” Aha! I should have checked before I planted. He also notes that Liatris blooms from top of the stem downward, the opposite of most flower spikes.

Digging out a small dandelion in my vegetable garden recently I got the entire root by loosening the soil around it with my CobraHead weeder. As I was about to toss the weed into a bucket I noticed an inch section of the root was as almost as thick as a pencil but the rest was much smaller. Aha! I≠d had help in my garden, and one of my weeders had pulled a dandelion but broken off the root. That small section of root had spawned a new plant.

The lesson from that dandelion? Be careful pulling weeds, particularly those that are perennial or have tap roots. Even a small section left in the ground will produce a new plant. I know people who rototill their gardens year after year, chopping up dandelion roots, grasses and annual weeds. The annual weeds can be killed by tilling; grasses and perennial weeds usually are not.

If you hear a root snap when you are weeding, a plant will probably come back. So loosen the soil well, and try to get the entire weed. Weed when the soil is moist, even if it means watering before weeding. And use a good tool like the CobraHead (www.cobrahead.com) to get under weeds to loosen roots.

Snakeroot

It’s been hot and dry recently, which is not a great time for transplanting perennials. But I was installing a new garden bed, and we had a spot for a large plant. I wanted a full-sized bugbane or snakeroot (Cimicifuga racemosa) for the spot, although few nurseries sell plants the size I wanted. But I had one in my garden – a volunteer that had elbowed its way in. A gorgeous plant, it stood over 5-feet tall but was shading out the neighboring plants. It needed to go.

I hadn’t dug a snakeroot in a long time, but decided it was worth a try after Anne Sprague at Edgewater Farm in Plainfield, NH told me that it has a shallow root system and transplants quite well (things with deep tap roots or fleshy tubers are not so easy to transplant).

I dug the plant early in the morning, and re-planted it with half an hour. I dug it out with my drain spade. This is a pointed spade that is long and narrow: 16 inches long and only 5 or 6 inches wide, available at your local hardware store. I went around the plant, poking my spade under the roots at a 45 degree angle and lifting it slightly by pulling down on the handle. Once I had gone all around the plant, I pried it up and scooped up the plant.

Superthrive

Yes, that snakeroot took some special care for a week or more. I checked on it, watered it daily, even talked to it – words of encouragement cannot hurt. I also administered a solution of Superthrive (www.superthrive.com), a concentrated vitamin and hormone mixture that seems to reduce signs of plant stress. It’s expensive – $12 or more for 4 ounces, but only half a teaspoon is needed in a 2-gallon watering can. I’ve been using it for years, and seen stressed plants recover remarkably quickly when they get it. It’s not a fertilizer, but I often mix it in with some liquid fish fertilizer when I transplant.

Gardening for me is a passion. I love digging in the soil, planting, seeing new plants develop and grow. By observing well and remembering what works, I have created some very special gardens. You can, too.