The week of Valentine’s Day makes me think of my garden and springtime.
While not traditional Valentines Day flowers – like Red Roses, I always think of Bleeding Hearts in mid February. They look like what might happen after Cupid shoots its arrow.
This image is from my garden in May 2018. I’m always on a quest to find quotes to match my garden photography – this one seems right. If you have another hearts and flowers quote that you love, please share it via a comment.
Happy Valentines Day!
Gardeners can relate to the euphoria felt when finding seed and gardening catalogs while sifting through a pile of mail – usually holiday bills – as the darkness of winter sets in. The delivery of these catalogs in late December and early January bring excitement akin to the of the arrival of the old-time Sears Wish Book when we were children.
I have several gardening and seed catalogs in the rooms across my house right now, but there are three I keep returning to as I dream about my 2019 garden. In fact, I’ve just set a date to go through these catalogs with my friend Jane later this week. Together, we will make final decisions on what to order and then share the costs and, of course, the work as we look toward spring.
Jane is one of my BFF’s when it comes to gardening (and in everyday life in general, too!) I love it that she is very methodical when it comes to starting her plants from seed. She did this for the first time last year and her results were fantastic, with a variety of eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, and herbs – that she generously shared with me. Jane in the only person I know who has even successfully started rosemary and parsley from seed.
I used to be obsessed with starting my seeds in late winter/early spring. I had all of the shelving and other supplies like grow lights and warming mats. For a gardener, there’s nothing more motivating than the fragrance of soil wafting through the air while starting seeds when there’s still snow on the ground. Our effort of starting seeds indoors was quite successful and we’d end up with hundreds of seedlings – way too many for our small garden, so there were always plenty of unique plants to share with friends across the region.
Over time, the cost and commitment for the small amount of plants I could actually plant in our garden forced the decision to stop this late winter ritual. Now that I have a friend who is eager to start her seeds (she has much more space for a vegetable garden than I do), I’m looking forward to again, digging in to this favorite activity in 2019. I’ll share our progress as we move toward spring.
Meanwhile, an unexpected gift arrived at my doorstep last week – and it ended up being my first batch of seeds for 2019. My friend Maria and her daughter Sophia send me “Garden BonBons”.
I wish I had known about these ‘seed bombs’ when I wrote about great garden gifts for the holidays in late 2018.
Well, with Valentine’s Day right around the corner, these ‘Garden BonBons’ created by Moultonology are beautifully packaged just like fancy, high-end chocolates. But, they are not candy to eat, they are candy (seed bombs) to plant in the garden.
While I haven’t planted these yet (the ground is frozen in New Hampshire until May), I still love the idea and creativity they represent. One box is a mix of seeds for garnishing cocktails. The other is to attract bees and butterflies. I’m already planning document how they grow in a story later in 2019 – so keep an eye out for that update this summer.
As you may have been noticing, the days are getting a little longer now. (In New Hampshire, we can see a little daylight at 5pm!) Are you now inspired to take the step to turn the dreams of your 2019 garden into reality? What are some of your favorite seed and plant sources? And what seeds will you be starting this year? Do you go with the tried and true, or are you an experimenter? I’d love for you to share your thoughts with a comment.
“All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.”
Proverb
With the holiday season upon us, sometimes it’s hard to shop for your favorite gardener who can’t (or just simply won’t) articulate what they have on their secret wish list. And, even when you search online for ideas, the majority of suggested gifts for gardeners are compilations of things that retailers think every gardener will love – based on their need to move inventory.
Look no further, I’ve created a list of nine proven and tested gardening focused gifts – based on my own personal experience as a longtime gardener – to ensure you get at an ‘oooh’ and maybe even an ‘aaah’ when you choose some of them for your favorite gardener – or maybe even yourself.
“A shovel?” you ask. Let me tell you from my personal experience – Absolutely YES! This is by far my all-time favorite gardening tool – EVER. I came across it a few years ago at the Boston Flower & Garden Show. Not your average shovel or spade, the Spear Head Spade claims it was “designed to make your toughest digging 80% easier.” That’s a pretty big promise – and I can attest that it’s absolutely true. This ‘Made in the USA’ tool is light-weight but has a very sturdy construction – the handle and blade never bends, like so many other shovels and spades.
My Spear Head Spade was put to the test this fall in my own garden. Over 25 years ago, about a dozen Japanese Barberry bushes were planted along the perimeter of my front yard, inside the fence. They are beautiful shrubs and their prickly nature tends to keep deer out of the garden. However, now that this shrub is prohibited from being sold since being classified as an invasive species, this summer we decided to remove them all. A dreaded garden chore.
I’ve had my Spear Head Spade for about five years now, and always found it helpful when digging in my root-bound garden, but kept putting off the chore of removing these shrubs. To my surprise, this spade significantly reduced the challenge of this feared gardening project. The sharp edges glided into the soil like a hot knife through butter. Had it not been for a few tap roots that were up to six inches in diameter and needed to be released with a saw, the shrubs would have lifted right out of the ground with just this spade in a matter of minutes.
While it may be difficult to gift wrap, you can be confident that this present for your favorite gardener will be treasured and they’ll thank you for years to come. Heck, you should even pick one up for yourself. Even if you’re not an avid gardener, this will probably be the last spade or shovel you’ll ever need to buy.
Here’s the other tool I’ve included on my list – and it’s something I’ve already been highly recommending to my own friends for the past year. While some people find the act of weeding to be therapeutic (my mom is one of those people), I find it to be one of the most boring of all gardening chores.
The challenge with weeding is that once you let that task fall by the wayside, you’re in trouble and it takes even longer to rectify your situation. Shortly after writing my Weeding Thyme story in 2017, I received a package from the CobraHead company asking me to try their new ‘mini’ tool (I’m a member of the Garden Writers Association and love when gardening focused companies share their product information with me – receiving the actual CobraHead Mini tool to try first-hand was an added bonus!)
I’d always seen the CobraHead in catalogs but never felt compelled to purchase one. Based on my experience with this tool, that was definitely a mistake. I received mine right after I’d already caught up on my biggest weeding project of the year, so it wasn’t until this spring that I was able put the CobraHead Mini to the test. I absolutely LOVE it and have other friends who have purchased their own who, like me, wish they’d had this tool sooner.
Like the Spear Head Spade, the CobraHead weeder is ‘Made in the USA’ and is extremely durable. It keeps its shape, no bending or breaking, even in the toughest of soil conditions. It’s sharp and has cut my weeding time by more than half. This gift is easier to wrap and will fit nicely into your favorite gardener’s stocking.
This product is made in New Hampshire by a very cool company called Talk it Up Tees. I live in the Granite State, and love that it’s from a local company. But, I especially appreciate this shirt because it communicates everything I love about gardening.
Honestly, it’s too nice to wear while working up a sweat in the garden, but I love putting it on at the end of the day when I relax to enjoy the results of my efforts. My friend Jane gave this shirt to my mom and me last summer – she found them at a lovely little shop down the street called Amelia Rose Florist. As a recipient of this gift, I think of Jane whenever I put it on. And I love that it’s a V-neck design, offers a woman fit and is very soft cotton knit.
After the holiday season, as the darkness of winter finally settles in, every gardener looks forward to longer days and the first flowers of spring. While providing longer days are out of your control, you can treat your favorite gardener to an early preview of spring flowers with tickets to this year’s Boston Flower & Garden Show, taking place March 13-17, 2019.
The show features life-sized gardens that are a delight to see just before the calendar transitions to spring. The event also offers an array of lectures and seminars – as well as a gigantic marketplace. (I actually discovered and purchased the Spear Head Spade at this show in 2014.)
According to the show’s website, “This year’s show theme is “The Beauty of Balance” which is a key factor in design decisions, plant and material choices, and in cultivating the right-size garden for our lives and budgets. We explore the harmony we create within our gardens, vases and living spaces.”
While I try to attend the show every few years, I last blogged about the Boston Flower and Garden Show in March 2014 after attending following a very long hiatus. I look forward to attending and writing about it again in 2019.
If Boston is out of your travel zone, search your area for regional flower and garden shows. Most offer tickets in advance and it’s a wonderful, thoughtful gift. Here’s a list of events across the United States. Another option is to tie your visit to a flower and garden show to a travel excursion. I know that one of my bucket list shows is to attend the Chelsea Flower Show in London some day. If you have some frequent flier miles to use up soon, that event takes place in 2019 in late May.
Alfred Austin said, “The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.” This is so true.
But with your hands (and often feet, too!) in the dirt, a good nail brush is a gardener’s best friend. Seriously, this little self-care item is often overlooked until it’s really needed.
For years, I’d been using small plastic brushes in the shower for my hands and feet after a day of heavy gardening, but love this German-made beechwood brush with natural bristles, recently purchased from Vermont Country Store. It’s another one of those items that a gardener may not splurge on for themselves, but it’s a gift that will be appreciated – especially in the early spring after those first few days of venturing out to finally stick those hands deep into the dirt again after a long, cold winter.
After a scrub down with the Gardener’s Nail Brush from the Vermont Country Store, I treat my overworked hands to Crabtree & Evelyn’s Gardeners Hand Recovery. I first tried another scent of the Hand Recovery almost 20 years ago, thinking it was a lotion. It’s not – it’s a exfoliator and moisturizer filled with shea butter and macadamia nut oils. During gardening season, use this product a few times a week on clean dry hands. After a thorough scrubbing, you simply wash the product off your hands for what seems like a miracle result. Almost better than a professional hand treatment at a spa. (I sometimes use it on my feet, too!)
The scent of this product is clean and fresh, so it’s perfect for both women and men. Even better, it’s created without mineral oil, parabens, or lauryl sulfates. Treat your gardening friends to the gift of hand recovery – it’s easy to wrap or slip into a stocking – and you can make it an even more thoughtful gift by adding a nail brush to go with it.
This is my favorite luxury gift for gardeners. There are several sets of these bells of varying sizes across my garden. The 65″ black bells hang from a tree in the back garden. My mother refers to them as the church bells (the garden is our church). There’s nothing more calming than the soothing sounds of these chimes. Sometimes it’s just a simple plink here and there. On more windy days, the sounds are symphonic.
Don’t settle for just any chime – a little investment in the quality of QMT Windchimes‘ Corinthian Bells – made in Vermont is worth every penny. If you’re not shopping for the holidays, keep this gift in mind for house warming gifts.
If you’ve read my previous posts, you already know that I write a lot about dirt (actually soil). After all, what’s a garden without good soil? I’ve shared my ‘dirt’ experiments where Coast of Maine Organic Products was the undisputed winner. And this past summer, I wrote about this company’s products when they supported a Science Cafe event we put together in Nashua on the Science of Gardening. (I am just a happy customer/fan, and don’t work for the company, so my recommendation here is straight from the heart!)
While bags of soil are difficult to wrap as a gift, you can find a local retailer for this product line to ensure that your favorite gardener is ready to start digging come springtime. They have an excellent seed starter mix, and I swear by two other specific products: 1) the Quoddy Lobster Compost (we dressed all of our beds with this blend this past fall to prepare our garden for 2019.) 2. Stonington Blend (I use this for my herbs and lettuce containers and have had constant success throughout the season.) Their fertilizers are excellent too. Visit my friends at the Nashua Farmer’s Exchange to either pick up a gift certificate for spring time purchases – or go all out and gift wrap your dirt – I dare you!
What’s a garden without seeds? The challenge is to find seeds that match the skill and needs of your gardening recipient. Some seeds, like parsley and rosemary take a long time to get established, which can frustrate a beginning gardener. For gift giving, go that extra step and give seeds that make an impact – and offer something really unique.
I discovered the Hudson Valley Seed Company at the Boston Flower & Garden Show in 2014. (I’m seeing a theme through this story that the Boston show has introduced me to a lot of my favorite gardening products and solutions.) And in 2016 was given an interesting variety of these seeds as a Birthday gift.
Recently, I was thrilled to find them at a great little shop in Merrimack, NH – Barn in Bloom. I picked up some varieties of basil seeds last spring. These seeds are packaged as gorgeous works of art. That to me, is a gift within a gift. Better yet, they have seed selections you won’t find at your typical garden center or big box store. Check out the new releases for 2019 from the Hudson Valley Seed Company – and impress your art loving gardening gift recipients. (I’ll admit, I save the packages from the seeds I receive, as well as buy, and hang them in my gardening shed simply to keep the beautiful artwork.)
So there you go, nine creative, but practical gifts for your favorite gardeners. While this list may not be as popular as the annual release of Oprah’s favorite gifts, I can assure you that any of these gift ideas will be appreciated by gardeners at any level.
I’d love to know about your favorite all-time gardening gifts. Share your thoughts with a comment.
Voting is like gardening.
You need a plan.
Know which seeds to sow.
Boldly remove weeds that are invasive.
Remember that too much fertilizer (BS) does more harm than good.
One of my favorite things about being a gardener is being able to share this hobby with friends. Whether it be offering results of a successful harvest, sharing plant cuttings and divisions, or other items from the garden, I feel that such ‘treasures’ or gifts from the garden are much more personal and heartfelt than anything that can be bought in a store.
Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time documenting the flowers and visitors (mostly birds and insects) to our garden through my photography. The more I practice with my camera, the more I realize that the lens is a good way to share how I see and experience Mother Nature. Having the camera in my hand also makes me slow down to look for things that I normally would notice – for example, the fuzziness of a bumblebee.
Last year, I sifted through hundreds of images to create a package of note cards to share our garden in a new way with some of my friends. As far as I can tell, they were appreciated and I’m starting to get comments (and not so subtle hints) about certain images I’ve shared on social media in 2018 that could be good candidates for my next batch of cards. (I’m both flattered and a little intimidated by this feedback!)
The photos took hours to pull together – after all, it was hard to find just a few favorites. I also added quotes to the back of each card to correspond with the photo. Here are a few examples:
Finding appropriate quotes definitely took more time, but was a fun research project. Especially when looking for good thoughts about dragonflies – I was surprised that there really aren’t any inspirational quotes about this beautiful insect, so I’m always looking for new ones – feel free to leave a comment on this post to share your favorites with me.
With the 2018 holiday season quickly approaching, I’m thinking about doing another set for this year, but plan to focus on a theme – such as hummingbirds. I’m confident that I’ve successfully captured some unique shots of these favorite summer residents during 2018. The other option is butterflies – though, I could include both and have a “Winged Things” theme.
In addition to note cards, I’ve also created other treasures from my garden, but they aren’t always for everyone. Sage and rosemary smudge sticks have come in handy as fun gifts to share, especially for friends who need to cleanse their aura. Here’s one of the giant sage sticks I made last year – not fancy but it serves its purpose and put all that sage to good use. (I was surprised to see that it burns quite slowly, like incense.)
My big garden gift trial was in 2016 when I created homemade patchouli oil two years ago. I consider this a half success because it takes a long time for the fragrance of the patchouli to cure, so initially, the oil didn’t have the fragrance I was expecting.
When I first created it, the fragrance smelled more green and grassy than the deep ‘hippie’ fragrance one expects from patchouli. Given this and the time and cost involved to buy the right oil, bottles, and to make the labels, this was a one time project. (I still have a few bottles left over – and it smells better than every…finally! I never realized so few people appreciate the fragrance of patchouli – more often than not, I was offered a “thanks but no thanks” when offering this garden gift.)
So, those are the three garden gifts I’ve created in recent years – note cards, dried herbs, and scented oil. Some people have suggested calendars or framed photos, but I see those items as less personal. When I create a garden gift, I put part of myself into it. How do you give a piece of yourself to others through your garden?
When news of a hard frost came as an alert on my mobile phone yesterday, I went to the garden to pick the last of the zinnias to bring indoors and to say good-bye to the perennial flowers that were still blooming late into the autumn.
The temperature was a chilly 45 degrees with a blustery wind, but I had the urge to do a quick last minute garden tour – with this one under my belt, I promise to capture more garden tour videos throughout the season in 2019. But for now, here’s my farewell to the 2018 garden.
Click here for a Garden Tour in under 7 minutes.
PS….Amazingly, the day before this video was taken, I found this gorgeous ruffled daylily in bloom. Just as everything was winding down for the 2018 gardening season, this beauty made a guest appearance. (Making this morning’s freeze even more sad.)
While there are so many things I love about time in the garden each summer, the daily ritual we call “Hummingbird Watch” is my favorite. During this 90 minute period, just before the sun sets from late April until early September, the hummingbirds – all ruby-throated in southern NH – can be seen flitting from feeder-to-feeder and flower-to-flower — and sometimes even from gnat-to-gnat — across my garden.
I’ve never met a person who isn’t delighted to have these tiny creatures visit and take up residence in their gardens. But interestingly, even the most savvy nature lovers I know often wonder how to continuously attract hummingbirds to their outdoor sanctuaries.
There’s a lot of information online about techniques, tips, and tricks to draw more hummingbird visitors to your garden or yard. However, I’ve found that some important details are often omitted behind the headlines that offer advice for attracting and keeping hummingbirds nearby. Here are three proven tips I’m sharing from my own experience that will hopefully set you up to start your own Hummingbird Watch Ritual.
A male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird visits one of our garden feeders in early spring.
In mid-May, when I ask my neighbors and friends how many hummingbirds they’ve seen since putting up their feeders, they often tell me that they haven’t seen any at all. They sometimes even blame me for keeping them in my garden (which is not a valid argument for their lack of visitors!)
The first questions I ask are, “How often do you change the food, and what are you using in your feeder?”
The response is almost always that the feeder has had ‘food’ in it for weeks, or even months and is never emptied. So, that’s a BIG RED FLAG as to problem number one. The best advice I can provide is to keep your feeders clean – which means emptying them, cleaning them, and refilling them with fresh nectar aka: sugar water at least weekly – twice a week during heatwaves in mid-summer.
If your sugar water is cloudy – that’s a hint that you’re overdue to change the food. Same thing if you see black particles or scum floating in the water. That’s mold and fungus and can poison the hummingbirds that visit your feeder. I’ve found when I clean my feeders (with a few drops of Dawn dish soap) every five to six days, there is less buildup of mold in the feeder.
If I see any, I use a diluted bleach solution and small brushes to clean my feeders thoroughly. (The other incentive to keeping them clean weekly, is that it’s a lot less work, and sometimes a quick rinse of hot water is all that’s needed.)
What are you feeding your hummingbirds? Are you buying packaged mixes from the store? Or do you make your own nectar? To save money and provide food with no chemicals, start making your own fresh sugar water with basic white sugar – sucrose. When mixed with water, it most closely resembles the natural nectar that hummingbirds get from flowers. Don’t use honey because it will promote fungal growth. And stay away from raw or organic sugar as it contains a higher amount of iron that can harm your little visitors.
At first glance, this appears to be a female hummingbird. Look closely for the speck of red plumage on the neck. This is juvenile male Ruby-Throated during a late summer feeder visit.
The Audubon Society instructions advise using 1 part sugar (plain, white sugar) to 4 parts water to feed hummingbirds – and no red food dye. Boil the mixture until the sugar dissolves. Then let cool before filling your feeders.
Since I fill several feeders, I use 1 cup sugar to 4 cups water. During early spring, when the hummingbirds first arrive and late summer and as they fuel up for their mid-September trips back to Mexico and Central America, I make the mix just a little sweeter/stronger and cut back on the water by about a half cup. I have a friend who uses a much stronger mix, but have read that this isn’t good because too much sugar can damage the liver of hummingbirds.
If you make extra sugar water, you can refrigerate it for about a week. This will save you time as you fill your feeders weekly – even more so when experiencing heatwaves that will require more frequent food changes.
Finally, I keep my feeders up until the end of September. While most of the hummingbirds who visited all summer leave by September 10, we get stragglers from up north as they join the annual migration. It’s fun and honestly, a little bit rewarding to see an occasional visitor stop by to fuel up on sugar water and nectar from late blooming zinnias through September 30.
The gardens at our house are primarily well-established perennial gardens. They’ve always attracted hummingbirds, but after putting a little extra thought into new plantings (all gardeners add new plants to their gardens every year, right?), we always think about what will attract hummingbirds and other pollinators, including bees and butterflies.
While there are three feeders across the garden, I look at them as supplemental to the flowers that are planted to provide a continuous bloom for our enjoyment – and food for the hummingbirds throughout the summer. This not only makes the garden look beautiful throughout the summer, but it’s also one of the best ways to keep hummingbirds coming back to visit. Did you know that hummingbirds eat as much as half of their weight every day – and feed five to six times per hour?
Over the past few years, I’ve learned to pay attention to what flowers and trees the hummingbirds like to visit for their feedings and for resting. One of the resting areas that I know to look up to is the very top of the Weeping Cherry tree in the back garden. When I see one up there, I know that there are at least three more in the nearby flowers.
Lookout Point at the top of the Weeping Cherry tree. A sign if the hummingbirds are active.
The past two summers, I’ve kept my camera with me while in the garden, especially during the daily hummingbird watch ritual I mentioned earlier.
While I’ve caught great shots of these incredible creatures at the feeders, I’ve wanted more ‘natural’ photos of them visiting the flowers in our garden. (I post many of these on my Instagram page, also called Garden with Grace).
Here are some of my favorite new shots of the hummingbirds enjoying the flowers in our gardens over the past year. You may be inspired to add some of these to your own landscape. Keep in mind to plant flowers for your specific zone. We are in zone 5B in Nashua, NH. So you may or may not have success with all of these.
In addition to the photos captured here – other flowers the hummingbirds visit include Purple Siberian Iris and Purple Lilac in the spring. And Zinnias! They love the secret zinnia beds scattered across the back gardens. Zinnias are annual flowers, but I keep the seed heads each autumn to start next year’s garden. If there’s not a butterfly flitting among the zinnias, you can usually find a hummingbird. (I’m hoping to catch that photo next summer! – UPDATE- On September 21, I captured a good photo that includes a zinnia and have added it to the end of this post.)
Cardinal Flower aka: Lobelia Cardinalis
Lucifer Flower, aka: Sword Flower, aka: Crocosmia. This is new this year and big hit!
Lucifer Flower, aka: Sword Flower, aka: Crocosmia. This is new this year and big hit!
Here’s another of the Lucifer Flower, with St Francis (Patron Saint of Animals)
One of the few annual flowers – Fuschia. This always attracts the hummingbirds late summer.
My first and all-time favorite action shot of a hummingbird above a trellis of Alabama Crimson Honeysuckle on a clear, cloudless late summer afternoon.
Alabama Crimson Honeysuckle. Resting on a leaf while enjoying sweet nectar.
Looks closely to see this bird’s tongue sample the new buds of the Endless Summer Hydrangea.
I finally captured a photo of a hummingbird visiting a zinnia in my garden on Sept 21 – well after I assumed they left for the season.
“May my faith always be
at the end of the day
like a hummingbird…returning
to its favorite flower.”
The photos in this post were all taken in my garden in the summers of 2017 and 2018 and belong to the owner of this post. If you’d like to use any of these photos, please request permission via a comment on this post.
You can have the most artistic ambition and grandest plan for your garden, but the reality is a ‘green thumb’ really doesn’t happen by accident. While William Kent once said, “All gardening is landscape painting,” a beautiful, bountiful garden filled with annuals, perennials, and vegetables is actually a work of art and science.
The Science Cafe Nashua recently hosted it’s July gathering at the Riverwalk Cafe in Downtown Nashua (New Hampshire) to discuss why it’s important for gardeners to understand how science impacts their gardening aspirations. The discussion on “The Art and Science of Gardening” while free to attend, was a ‘sell-out’ with all 80+ seats at the cafe filled with gardeners ranging from novice beginners who participate in local community gardens driven by GrowNashua to expert master gardeners with beautifully designed landscapes that are worthy of Fine Gardening magazine.
While the midsummer topic was compelling, it was the strong lineup of panelists who brought people to the cafe during the midst of a week-long July heatwave. For two-full hours we participated in a Q&A session with gardening experts including:
Gene Harrington, owner of the Nashua Farmers Exchange;
Cameron Bonsey, executive with the Coast of Maine Organics (he traveled from Portland, Maine to join us!);
Isabelle Burke, an expert gardener with the Merrimack Garden Club and beekeeper who represented the Merrimack Valley Beekeepers Association;
Dave McConville, a permaculture designer and educator with GrowNashua; and
Paul Shea, the executive director of our Great American Downtown who also happens to be a “Master Gardener” certified by the UNH Cooperative Extension.
The Art & Science of Gardening Panelists during the July 11, 2018 Science Cafe Nashua. (L-R: Gene Harrington, Cameron Bonsey, Isabelle Burke, Dave McConville, Paul Shea)
The lively discussion covered a full range of gardening topics, including how to control blight (specifically in tomatoes and peppers) to why we see so many rabbits in the Nashua area, and what’s the best way to ‘feed’ soil.
Here are a few of my big ‘ah-has’ from the panelists who did an excellent job at explaining how science impacts gardening. (If you’re reading this blog after attending this Science Cafe Nashua session, feel free to share what you learned with a comment.)
Smokers – You can attract blight! Nightshade plants like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant are in the same plant family that include tobacco. Paul Shea explained that nightshades are very susceptible to blight – it’s a big issue and can wipe out entire tobacco farms.
With the smaller scale of a backyard vegetable garden, blight is typically spread when leaves touch contaminated soil. Helpful hints to avoid blight included keeping plant leaves trimmed well above the soil line and watering at the bottom of the plant to drive moisture directly into the soil versus via leaves.
Here’s what really surprised me. Gardeners who smoke can be more prone to finding blight on their plants – the two reasons are that some gardeners leave cigarette butts (remember tobacco attracts blight) in their gardens and the nicotine from tobacco sticks to fingers and spreads to plants when touching, pruning, and picking. This nicotine residue of tobacco attracts blight. So, gardeners who smoke now have another reason to stop their habit if they want a bountiful harvest.
Bees don’t like the red flowers. A question was asked why bees haven’t returned to one participant’s garden this year. After some discussion with Isabelle Burke, we learned that the person seeing fewer bees this year changed their garden color scheme and has almost all red flowering plants and very few purple and yellow flowers, which are favorites of bees. This surprised me for a few reasons – since pollinators include hummingbirds, and they like red, I just assumed that all pollinators, including bees, were attracted to that color. I also didn’t realize bees are drawn to color. I thought they were only attracted to the scent of flowers.
Nashua is being overrun by rabbits. Gene Harrington told us that rabbit populations have an 11 year cycle and our region appears to be in year seven or eight of that cycle. So we should be seeing fewer bunnies in coming years. He shared that he’s heard over the past few years from more customers who are seeing rabbits and, of course, they reach out to Gene to find solutions to their rabbit problems. Apparently, the best way to control rabbit damage is to put up fencing/barriers around the plants that they find delicious to eat. Another option is to plant things rabbits don’t find so delicious. In my case, the rabbits in my neighborhood love the clover that I’ve been planting as an alternative to grass, so I will just keep buying clover seed to replace it. (But I will confess, I actually enjoy seeing bunnies hop through the garden and just hope that the experience of another Science Cafe participant doesn’t happen while I’m watching – his garden bunny became lunch for a red-tailed hawk – which are also prevalent in our region. I guess everyone needs to eat.)
Soil lives and breathes – we need to treat it well. Cameron Bonsey talked a lot about soil. He likened the work of creating soil blends at Coast of Maine to the craft brewery movement in New Hampshire. He explained that their employees experiment with different mixes for different purposes. I specifically asked him about their Stonington Blend that I blogged about late last year. He explained that soil is all about biology and something things plants respond differently to different mixes of nitrogen, castings, etc. He also talked about the importance of mulch and how it feeds soil. Cameron quipped that “all the organic matter under the mulch is eating and greeting – there’s a great party going on under there.” This is why it’s better to mulch with a compost-based product and not cheap wood chips that take forever to break down and don’t provide nutrients back into soil. (Hearing this made me feel good as we stopped spreading bark chips in our garden because of this and started to mulch with compost instead.)
GMOs are not a natural evolution. There was a question about the scientific aspect versus personal feelings on the surge of GMOs (genetically modified organisms). This seemed to be a sensitive topic to both the person asking the question, as well to the panelists asked for their input. Dave McConville, the panel’s permaculture expert shared that GMOs are not a natural evolution, while not speaking for or against them. I urge you to learn more about permaculture at Dave’s website – here’s a teaser, “Although permaculture is first and foremost a design process, it is also a philosophy, a life style and a framework for making decisions. Permaculture gives us a toolkit with a set of ethics and principles, design processes and proven strategies to help us design a better culture.”
Ultimately, I learned that true gardeners – no matter how long we’ve been digging this hobby – are always eager to learn from one another and to share our own experiences, including the successes and failures. What worked this year, might not work next year – and there’s often a cause that someone learned before us. For example the gardener who wants to see more bees left the Science Cafe with the the information not to plant all red flowers next year and perhaps add a little more lavender – a favorite of bees.
Speaking of lavender, here are a few more photos from the July 2018 Science Cafe Nashua at the Riverwalk Cafe. Let’s start with the top two photos that include the fabulous “Gardener’s Gimlet” made with local lavender syrup that was offered as Riverwalk’s special craft cocktail of the evening in honor of the Science Cafe event (the woman in the top right photo with the gimlet is Jane Ruddock, co-owner of Riverwalk and quite the expert gardener herself). The other photos are of the full house of gardeners asking questions and sharing ideas and experiences.
~Janet Kilburn Phillips
One of my favorite things about gardening is to find creative uses for harvested items, especially the herbs. Over the years, I’ve dried herbs to create interesting crafts with everlasting flowers such as lavender. However, a favorite way to save and savor some favorites from the garden involve cocktail infusions.
When I have an abundance of hot peppers at the end of each summer, I buy a bottle of plain vodka. Something like Smirnoff works well (though I do have a friend who chastises me, insisting I should only use top shelf spirits – – let’s just say that we agree to disagree!). I toss in a few spicy peppers that have been partially cut to the new bottle of vodka and within a week, it becomes a spicy ingredient for a fantastic Bloody Mary! And as the Pepper Vodka ages, it gets even hotter — so I simply top the bottle off from time to time with more plain vodka. It’s seems like an endless bottle by mid winter. By the next summer, I’m really to start all over again.
In years past, my neighbor usually had so many peaches and plums that he resorted to begging his friends to take them from him – or he secretly delivered them to our homes, whether we wanted them or not! With his harvests, I’ve infused the peaches and plums in brandy.
Other experiments included pears infused in brandy and rhubarb infused in vodka. (Those were never made again, but were worth trying. In the end, it was a waste of good pears and rhubarb that could have been better used in a baked item where they would be enjoyed more.)
This year, I tried two new infusions. Blackberry Brandy and Lemongrass Vodka.
My friend Bobbi lives at the NH seacoast and is a fellow gardener. I love that her garden has a blackberry and blueberry patch, along with some pear and apple trees (and a pony named Sachi!) At the end of last summer, I paid her a visit and returned home with armfuls of peaches, pears, blueberries, and blackberries. The peaches, pears and blueberries were saved for eating. But, the blackberries were picked with the intent to make a batch of Blackberry Brandy for the 2017 holiday season.
Blackberry Brandy is very easy to prepare. I simply took a large (sterilized) glass jar, added the blackberries (about 1.5 c) and a few tablespoons sugar (since the berries were more tart than sweet this year), lightly muddled the ingredients and then poured a bottle of E&J Brandy over the mixture. I let it sit in my cool, dark basement for 8 weeks, and stirred the dark, thick contents of the bottle weekly. Then I strained it through cheesecloth and bottled it. I’m pleased with the results, but will add more blackberries if I try this again next year.
The surprise creation of the summer was the Lemongrass Vodka. I’ve grown lemongrass in the garden on and off for the past 20 years. Lemongrass plants are sometimes hard to find, so I simply get a stalk of lemongrass from the grocery store in the spring, put it in water, let it root and plant it in the garden in early summer (sometimes in a container, sometimes in the ground.) It makes a beautiful filler plant and sparks good conversation when friends wander through the garden and realize that it’s very fragrant.
I browsed online for ways to create an infusion and all suggested cutting up the inner parts of the lemongrass stalk – some suggested chopping it in a food processor, but I just hand cut it. The stalks on my lemongrass were cut a few weeks before I did this project, which make them smaller, drier, and less pliable. You can see in the photo on the left, the lemon grass just sitting in the jar of freshly poured vodka. Within two weeks, the spirit took on a beautiful golden hue.
My Lemongrass Vodka has an herbaceous fragrance and taste with just a light citrus background note. I’ve tried a few cocktails with the infusion, including using the spirit in a straight up dry martini with hint of vermouth. I’ve also tried it with a bit of Lillet instead of vermouth. Both options were good. Most recently, I mixed equal parts of Sake and Lemongrass Vodka and served it very cold. That was also nice — and a little lighter as far as the hit of alcohol from a straight vodka cocktail.
I ended up with enough Lemongrass Vodka to fill two small bottles – one for my bar and one for a friend who appreciates unique cocktails as much as I do. He and his wife are on a kick now making a lot of Asian cuisine, including Ramen dishes. I’m looking forward to hear how they create an Lemongrass cocktail to pair well with their newfound culinary experiments!
As I look ahead to planning my 2018 garden in the coming months, I hope to find new items to grow to bring to the bar. Perhaps this will even be the year to create an official Cocktail Garden! (Afterall, it would be an ideal setting for the perfect party!)
Good-Bye 2017 Gardening Season!
It’s been three weeks since our first hard freeze in southern New Hampshire. Work in the garden has been winding down. It’s time to rake leaves to create more mulch/compost, clean and store delicate statuary and birdbaths, bring in hoses, etc. Planting spring bulbs should be fun, but after a long season, even that project feels like just another chore. (I’ll think differently about that when I have 50 new tulips blooming come spring, though!)
I’ll be honest. I think every gardener needs a winter break – especially following a successful gardening season.
Overall, 2017 was an excellent season. The zinnias were spectacular! We had a decent harvest of fresh herbs and greens, tomatoes, and peppers. The wine cork mulch project far exceeded expectations! And the hummingbirds arrived and departed exactly as expected – delighting us every single day during their nearly 6 month visit.
The were only two disappointments. 1) The lack of peony flowers in June and 2) the ever constant ‘sad, sod situation’ of the lawn. (Planting white clover seemed like a genius idea this spring. I was even bragging about how great the yard looked in May and June. Then ‘Beatrix Potter’ arrived! Our new resident wild cottontail bunny enjoyed the clover in July — eating all the lush green back to the roots. Oh well, I guess everyone needs to eat and that was the only havoc wreaked our new garden visitor.)
And here it is, late November and I’m just sharing some of the 2017 stories now. My original intent with my ‘Garden with Grace’ blog was to document each growing season – in detail. That said, while I’ve had the best of intentions, as well as at least a dozen gardening stories (constantly!) in my head, I’m not as consistent with sitting down to write during the summer months.
Hello Instagram!
Thankfully, I can look back to my photos – especially those on Instagram – to remember annual gardening highlights. I invite you to FOLLOW ME via: https://www.instagram.com/gardenwithgrace/
I’ve been using #BloominginMyGardenNow for a few years now and never realized that it’s pretty much MY hashtag until a friend in the media called it out for me. (By the way, as a marketing and communications professional, I think that’s pretty cool, and admit that I’d tried to create a hashtag to be my own, it would’ve been a lot more difficult!)
It’s amazing how a basic mobile phone camera can create such detailed photos of flowers and in some cases, insects. I don’t use any filters on my Instagram photos, so what you see, is what I see. On the days I’m searching for inspiration, I scroll through my Instagram feed to either write, plan for next year’s garden, or just remember past moments in the garden.
So my documentation of each gardening season is, indeed, getting done. Not in the way initially intended or planned, but it works nonetheless….very much like the actual act of gardening, itself.
Garden with Grace 