Check out Erin's new garden blog!

My friend Erin just started a blog for her garden!  Surf on over to Windfall House Potager and check it out!  Hmm... do gardeners surf... or dig?  Anyway, I dig her blog, and I hope you will too.

Armchair gardening with a little help from NPR

The winter solstice is almost upon us, so it's dark, cold, and if you're here in the rainy part of the Pacific Northwest, wet. My socks get soggy if I even think of going outside, so I'm turning my thoughts to indoor pursuits--like reading. Fortunately, NPR just posted 2009's Crop of Great Gardening Books - how very timely. All of these look interesting, but my first choice is the last one on the list, Amy Stewart's Wicked Plants.



I've often thought of designing a garden containing nothing but poisonous plants, so this one is right up my alley.

Anyone else out there in blog-land have some favorite gardening books to recommend? 'Tis the season for some armchair gardening.

Rainy Day Gardening Roundup

One of the reasons I named this blog Rainy Day Gardening was that blogging--and reading blogs--is a great way for us gardeners to get our fix on rainy days. I haven't done as much of either as I would like, but this morning I pried myself away from Facebook long enough to visit some of my fellow bloggers. There are some wonderful writers out there, most of whom make me sound like the two-bit hack I am. Here are my latest discoveries:

• Blunders with shoots, blossoms, 'n roots - a fellow Portlander chronicles her garden experiences
  
• Weed Whackin' Wenches (oh, how I wish I'd thought up such a cool blog name!) - Two Seattle gardeners with a passion for gardening and chocolate share their wit and wisdom (and recipes--yay!)
  
• Garden Muse - Another Seattle gardener whose posts are more like photo essays. I wish I had her talent for photography!
  
• And if you want more garden blogs, check out Blotanical.
  

New Facebook group for Portland-area gardeners

In the shameless self-promotion department, I'd like to report that I've started a Facebook group for Portland-area gardeners called PDX Gardening. It's only been around for about a week, so it's still small and quiet, but I hope it'll become a more happening place soon. If you're on Facebook, stop on by and join!

Literary Gardening

I'm reading an article in Computers in Libraries (trade pub for librarian computer geeks) about Hennepin County Library's BookSpace, a site designed to match readers and books (readers advisory in library jargon). Being something of a book nerd, I decided to try out the site. While browsing through their nonfiction recommendations, I found a section with the wonderful title of Literary Gardening. Is that the perfect thing for a garden-obsessed former English major or what?

Now that the weather is turning cold, and my garden is a soggy mess (I don't call this blog Rainy Day Gardening for nothin', ya know), it's the perfect time to catch up on some garden-related reading. If you feel the same way, check out their Literary Gardening list (Heh heh... "check out"... I made a library pun... get it? Yeah, OK, now you know why I have to keep my day job.)

Seed and plant catalogs and web sites = rainy day shopping

OK, Meg, you asked for it, you got it -- Janet's guide to garden catalogs and online shopping. The best thing about winter IMHO is the absence of bindweed. The second-best thing about winter is stepping into a steaming bubble bath with a stack of seed and plant catalogs to peruse. Aaaahhhhhh... Plant catalogs = porn for gardeners. I wonder how that sentence will affect our hit rate from Google searches. As usual, I digress...

Winter is a great time to shop catalogs and web sites for seeds and plants. There's not much to do outside, and it's usually too cold and miserable to cruise the nurseries. Plus, you can order bare-root plants this time of year and have them arrive early in the spring, the perfect time to plant them. I'm including only companies from which I've actually made purchases, so this is by no means a comprehensive list. I hope readers will add their favorite sources in the comments.

Seeds
I've done business with all of the following companies and had great experiences:

Territorial Seed: Territorial Seed is based in Oregon, so it's a great source for varieties that do well in our cool Northwest climate. They offer a great selection of vegetable seeds, as well as flowers, herbs, onion sets, seed potatoes, and other stuff. They also sell some live plants. You can request a free print catalog from their web site, or you can browse and order online. If I know exactly what I want, I go straight to the web site, but if I'm not sure, I find the print catalog to be a great reference. If you prefer to see what you're buying, you can find Territorial Seed at some nurseries, including Portland Nursery.

Totally Tomatoes: Like to grow unusual varieties of tomatoes? This is the catalog for you! I bought from them for the first time last year, and I was delighted with their selection. If it's a tomato, they probably have seeds for it: heirlooms, hybrids, funky colors, varieties for containers... they're all there. They also have a great selection of pepper seeds, both sweet and hot, along with a few other vegetable seeds.

Rich Farm Garden Supply: I ordered some heirloom seed from them in 2006 and was pleased with what I got. They have the best selection of heirloom squash seeds I've found, plus lots of other heirloom vegetables, flowers, herbs, trees, and shrubs. HOWEVER, a quick check of the Garden Watchdog reveals a slew of complaints, including several people accusing them of fraud. Under those circumstances, I can't recommend them, but if you decide to give them a try, be careful.

FYI, I buy a lot of my seed from seed racks in nurseries, grocery stores, and discount stores like Dollar Tree and Big Lots. The discount stores don't usually have a great selection or unusual varieties, but if you aren't picky, you can get basic veggie and flower seeds for $.10 or $.20 per pack. Not bad!

Plants
I buy most of my plants from local nurseries, unless I want something unusual or I find a bargain. But I have had good luck with the following:

Logee's: Logee's specializes in tropical plants for the home and greenhouse. They have a great selection of unusual items, making their catalog fun to browse even if you don't plan to buy anything. Everything I've ordered from them arrived quickly, well-packed, and healthy. I just took a quick look at their web site while writing this entry, and already I've found an unusual citrus tree I simply must have, but I'm not sure where to put it. Maybe I should convert my bedroom into a sunroom. Their web site should come with a warning: Visiting this site is hazardous to your bank account!

Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District Native Plant Sale: This one isn't mail-order; you have to pick up your plants in person. But you can download a pre-order form online, and the prices are great! If you have a big restoration project or other need for lots of Pacific Northwest native plants, it may be worth a drive to McMinville for their sale.

Trading and other options
EBay: EBay can be a gardener's dream for both seeds and plants, but watch those feedback ratings so you don't get ripped off.

Garden Exchange on GardenWeb: Nothing brightens up a dreary winter like trading plants! I've acquired all sorts of interesting plants through trades. You say you don't have anything to trade? Don't be so sure! What's common as, well, dirt in your neck of the woods may be a rare, exotic item halfway across the country. For example, I've had good luck trading marionberry and boysenberry starts (which root by themselves when I don't prune my berries at the end of the season) with people in parts of the country where these berries aren't so common. I also trade things that I can propagate easily from cuttings--not much effort for me, and I get cool new plants for just the cost of postage.

How to avoid getting ripped off
No matter what you're shopping for, including plants, it's wise to research a new business and proceed carefully, so you don't end up with poor-quality merchandise. The best place to research garden-related vendors is the Garden Watchdog, part of Dave's Garden. Here you'll find customer comments and ratings plus responses from the companies when comments are less than complimentary.

If I had read this book last spring, I might not have time to write this post

(Note: The above link goes to the 1994 ed, but my review is based on the 1989 ed.)

While excavating my spare bedroom a couple weeks ago, i ran across a stash of gardening books I'd bought at a plant sale last spring (Yes, that does tell you how long it's been since I cleaned my spare bedroom. Sad, isn't it?) Anyway, one of them, Winter Gardening in the Maritime Northwest, caught my eye. We're heading into winter, and I'm dying for something garden-related to do. There's always winter sowing, but it's still a bit early (i.e. warm) for that. And of course I could pull weeds, but that isn't much fun.

Back to the book. I curled up with it on a foul, rainy day, with high hopes that it would give me some good ideas for the next sun break. Alas, no. If I wanted to have edible stuff in the garden to play with now, I should have planted it last summer. Bummer. Who thinks to read a book about winter gardening in June? That said, this book is a useful companion for rainy day gardeners, because it includes detailed information about growing a variety of cool-season crops into late fall and, in some cases, winter. Here's an outline of the contents:

Chapter 1: The Principles of Winter Gardening
This chapter covers Northwest climate (especially the difference between the northern and southern regions of our wet little paradise), site (with great info on how to choose sites that will stay as warm as possible during the cold months), some principles of organic gardening, and more.

Chapter 2: Cloches and Frames
In which we learn the various ways to fend off the winter cold with various forms of protection. Interestingly, greenhouses aren't mentioned. I need to find a book on growing edibles in greenhouses in the Northwest.

Chapter 3: Sharecroppers
No, this chapter isn't a digression into agricultural economics in the American South a hundred years ago. Rather, it's a catalog of garden pests and how to deal with them in mostly nontoxic ways.

Chapter 4: Which Vegetables and Herbs to Grow
The longest section of the book, this chapter is an alphabetical list of vegetables and herbs that grow in the cold months, with detailed information on planting times and varieties to choose.

Appendix A gives brief information on winter gardening in other parts of the country, referring to available books on the topic. Appendix B lists winter crops for livestock, Appendix C is a directory of seed sources and organizations, and Appendix D is a list of resources for further reading.

Now I just need to keep my copy handy for when I prepare my seed orders for the spring. So much for instant gratification.

Don't coddle the codling moth

11/25/07: edited post briefly to correct spelling and fix a typo.

Last time I wrote about how to use wormy pears, because I've been too lazy to control the codling moths whose larvae infest my fruit. This morning I read a useful article in Gardens West (a great Canadian gardening magazine that I recommend highly) on how to control codling moths. The article isn't online, unfortunately, but you can buy the issue (October 2007) from their site for $3.18 CAN (about $3.29). I'll include the main points here, but if you want their instructions for making your own coddling moth trap, please buy the issue.

The article includes background on the codling moth life cycle and the damage they do. The codling moth pupates over the winter, then emerges in spring to mate. Females lay their eggs on your fruit tree, sometimes on the fruit itself. When the larvae hatch, they eat their way through your immature apple or pear to feed on the seeds at the core. They leave behind the ever-attractive brown trail made of larva frass.

Brief, immature aside: Have you ever noticed all the clever, academic-sounding terms we have for... um... poop? I hadn't heard "frass" till I read this article (according to dictionary.com, it means "insect excrement"), but now I think I'll throw it around in casual conversation.

Husband: "How was your day?"
Me: "Frassy!"

OK, maybe not.


Back to our entomology lesson... After the larva has feasted on your apple seeds, it emerges to look for a good place to pupate. According to the article,

A safe spot can include cracks or grooves inthe bark of the tree (or any other piece of nearby wood), leaf litter or even just in the soil (pretty much anywhere protected from the ravages of winter weather or predators).

Codling moths are hard to control with insecticides, because the larva is sheltered inside your formerly-appetizing fruit all season. So, according to the article, we have to try different methods:

1. Constant vigilance and hygiene: Check your developing fruit and destroy any that show moth damage. Other articles I've read emphasize cleaning up around your trees in the fall to get rid of leaf litter and other places the moths can pupate.
   
2. Traps: You can buy pheromone traps that will lure horny male moths inside. This gives a whole new meaning to that line from the old Roach Motel commercials: Moths check in, but they don't check out. It's basically a fake no-tell motel for moths. The article includes instructions for making another kind of trap that provides an attractive food source as bait. Those work for both males and females (and there has to be a joke there somewhere, but I'm not going to look for it).
   
3. Pheromone distractions -- bits of plastic impregnated with pheromones, intended to confuse the male moths so they can't find the real females. (And yeah, there's probably a joke there too, but I'll spare you).
   
4. Trunk banding -- wrap the tree trunk in corrugated cardboard (for exact instructions, see the article) to create an attractive place for the moths to pupate. Once they're tucked away for their winter sleep/metamorphosis, remove and destroy the cardboard. Yes, you too can be the Freddy Krueger of the insect community.
   

I guess I don't have any more excuses for having frass-contaminated fruit. Since I'm way too lazy for constant vigilance, I think I'll try the pheromone traps and homemade food traps. Mwaaahaaahaaaaa...

Award-winning horticultural books

As we gardeners contemplate the end of another season, it's time to start looking for some indoor activities to help us pass the cold, dark days (which seem to be starting earlier than usual this year, darn it). One of my favorite winter pastimes is reading gardening books, and I just found a site that will help me pick some good ones. The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries gives an Annual Award for a Significant Work in Botanical or Horticultural Literature. Their site lists the winners back to 2000 with links to press releases that describe the books. The neat thing is that these are books you might not just casually pick up while strolling through your local bookstore. They're a little more specialized than the typical gardening book, but they all look interesting. I'm looking forward to diving into a few of them while curled up in front of my fireplace this winter.

Forget business school -- plant a garden!

I just ran across an article in Fast Company called Unearth Growth By Digging in the Dirt. It's not a gardening article, but I thought it would be fun to post it here anyway. The author's premise is that business is more like gardening than war or sport, the two most common sources of business-related metaphors. He makes some good points about both business and gardening, my favorite of which is:

Gardening has no end. There is no finish line. It is about a journey not a specific destination.

I think he left out a couple things that apply to both gardening and business, though:

• Gardens and businesses both need regular, careful attention. You'll have a much nicer garden if you spend a few minutes a day on it rather than several hours a couple times a month. Without regular attention, pests and problems fester, and what would have been a little job becomes a major one. The same is true of business, or work life more generally. File that one under Lessons I Learned from Bindweed.
  
• You can't nurture every plant carefully, but some are worth the extra trouble. If you have an entire garden full of fussy plants, they will drive you crazy. Time and energy are limited quantities. But some plants are so spectacular, they're worth some extra trouble to grow. I've found the same is often true of employees. File that one under Lessons I Learned from Citrus Trees.
  
• Not all plants are the same. Each species has unique needs, and sometimes individuals within a species differ from one another. A little observation to see what makes a particular specimen thrive can pay big dividends. Likewise, each person (employee, co-worker... whomever) in the workplace is a unique individual. Take the time to get to know each person and what makes him/her tick, and you'll work with others more successfully. File that under Lessons I Learned from Almost Every Plant I've Ever Grown.
  

Now put down that business book and pull some weeds!

Armchair tomato gardening

OK tomato gardeners, it may be cold and grey outside, but we can still indulge our passion for love apples. Ronni Lundy's In Praise of Tomatoes: Tasty Recipes, Garden Secrets, Legends & Lore offers an excellent opportunity to daydream about last year's tomato patch while learning something that may help us with next year's crop. If you're looking for a guide to growing tomatoes, look elsewhere. But if you'd like to learn about the history of this popular garden vegetable, get some new--and creative--recipes, and admire some gorgeous full-color illustrations, this is the book for you. It includes a useful chart of tomato varieties that gardeners will find helpful, but otherwise the emphasis here is not how to grow tomatoes, but why to grow them. After drooling over recipes for green tomato ketchup, red tomato and lemon jam, and spicy red tomato cake, I'm ready to start planning for next year's crop.

A Celebration of Heirloom Vegetables

I just finished a great book on growing and cooking with heirloom vegetables. A Celebration of Heirloom Vegetables: Growing and Cooking Old-Time Varieties (by Roger Yepsen) covers 25 types of heirloom veggies, from the familiar squash, beans, and melons to kohlrabi, rutabaga, and tomatillos. Each chapter includes varieties, brief growing and harvesting instructions, instructions for saving seeds, and beautiful full-color botanical drawings. The chapters end with recipes, from simple to complex, some with an international flavor. Kitchen gardeners will love this book.

Free online gardening books from Project Gutenberg

The Plain Dirt Gardener just posted about some free old garden books online at Project Gutenberg. See http://dgroups.bhg.com/n/blogs/blog.aspx?nav=main&entry=19&webtag=bhgplaindirt.

Book review: Companion Planting

The wetter the weather, the more armchair gardening I do, so I've read yet another gardening book. This one is a volume in Rodale's Successful Organic Gardening series, entitled Companion Planting. The first two thirds of the book introduces various topics related to companion planting - Companion Planting Basics, Companion Planting for Pest Control, Interplanting, Creating a Planting Plan, Planting Companions, and Caring for Companions. These last two cover gardening basics like soil preparation, plant spacing, watering, fertilizing, etc. The last third of the book is the most valuable - a plant by plant guide that lists companions, enemies, and growing guidelines for a wide range of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers.

Unlike many of the Rodale gardening books I've read, this one has big glossy pages and lots of beautiful, full color photographs. But it's also very useful, especially for gardeners like me who are new to companion planting. Now if only the rain would stop, so I could put some of the information I learned into practice!

Growing Profits: How to Start and Operate a Backyard Nursery

About a year ago, I started thinking about how I could make some extra money gardening. Why not get paid to do what I love? So when I stumbled across Michael and Linda Harlan's book, Growing Profits, I decided to give it a read. I'm very glad I did!

In about 200 pages, the authors cover how to get started, including resources needed, determining what to grow, where to get supplies, and the basic tasks required to nurture plants for sale. Then they go through the various stages of plant growing, from initial propagation through growing on to larger and larger sizes. The last two chapters cover producing a quality plant and marketing your products.

The book is full of practical tips that aren't obvious to the average gardener, e.g. buying and reselling wholesale stock and the relationship between growing time and price. I especially liked their creative suggestions, like how to find used nursery cans and how to profit through buying and reselling loss leaders and end-of-season clearance items at retail outlets. But the chapter on marketing was, for me, the most valuable part of the book. The authors cover a wide range of possibilities, from selling stock to retail nurseries, other wholesalers, and landscapers through selling from your home, farmer's markets, and flea markets. They include information on how to approach nurseries, wholesalers, and landscapers to convince them to try your plants. An appendix lists contact information for state associations of nurserymen.

If you've ever thought of earning money through gardening, this book is for you. Now I just have to find a place to store all the plants I want to grow and sell!

Heirloom Melons and Squash: Eye Candy for Gardeners

I've spent the last few dark, rainy Portland evenings ogling heirloom squash and melons, courtesy of two gorgeous books by Amy Goldman: Melons for the Passionate Grower (2002) and The Compleat Squash: A Passionate Grower's Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes, and Gourds (2004). Both books provide a bit of general growing information, but most of the content is pictures -- full-color still life photos that show off the beauty of these sometimes-strange-looking fruits. Both books include brief growing information for each variety and a list of sources for seed. All are open-pollinated, and the author includes some information on the how and why of seed saving to preserve these endangered varieties.

Such beautiful books are the perfect antidote to dark winter days! In the depths of winter, it seems possible to have a perfect patch of heirloom melons in Portland. Never mind that attempting to grow melons in Portland is a bit like Samuel Johnson's description of second marriages: the triumph of hope over experience. But hope springs eternal, so I'll be sending off for some heirloom melon seeds.

Here are links to the books at Amazon:

Lasagna Gardening, a/k/a sheet mulching

I am a lazy gardener. There. I said it. I hate tilling, hoeing, weeding, and watering. I'd much rather plant seeds and plants, propagate, harvest, and sit on a bench in the sun admiring the results of my not-so-hard labor. Yet the clay forms an impenetrable slab, the weeds grow, and the summer sun dries my poor plants out every day. What's a lazy gardener to do?

Well, a couple of years ago I picked up a book by Ruth Stout called How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back. It's a wonderful book, in which the author describes how she was able to have a huge garden with minimal work by sheet mulching or sheet composting, piling organic matter around her plants rather than digging in finished organic ingredients. That year I snatched up bags of leaves and other yard debris from unsuspecting neighbors and layered it over a part of my vegetable garden in the fall. Come spring, I didn't have to weed or till! Not bad.

Earlier this year, I found a newer book that describes similar techniques in lots more detail: Lasagna Gardening, by Patricia Lanza. It's a great book for beginning gardeners. Lanza spends about a chapter describing lasagna gardening in loving detail, but then she spends the rest of the book actually telling you how to grow stuff. She covers edibles -- vegetables, herbs, and berries -- and flowers, with lots of practical tips and helpful drawings. A few years later she published Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces, which is even better because of the wonderful recipes she includes.

I have become a lasagna gardening convert. I've layered newspaper and leaves on my tomato patch and front yard flower garden, and I'm planning to make more garden lasagna as soon as the weather warms up a bit this year. I have better soil and fewer weeds -- even the horsetail struggled to come up last year through my 8" layers of mulch.

To purchase any of the books mentioned in this post, just click a link below:

Book Review: A Handbook of Community Gardening

Naimark, Susan (ed.). A Handbook of Community Gardening By Boston Community Gardeners. New York: Scribner's, 1982.

The Handbook of Community Gardening by Boston Urban Gardeners is a collection of chapters and essays on various aspects of community gardening. It contains 5 parts:

• An Introduction to Community Gardening - covers what a community garden is and the history of community gardening
  
• From Idea to Reality - how to organize a community garden and find the resources you need
• Site Selection and Development - finding land, laying out the garden, soil, compost, water, fencing, and landscape planning
• Tending the Garden - plants, maintenance, dealing with vandalism, and more
• Beyond the Garden: Developing Local Food Systems - alternatives to owning land, farmers' markets, food co-ops, permaculture, and more

It also includes some great tables: Cost Estimates for a Community Garden (actual costs are out of date, but it's a great list of what you need to budget for), Recycling Resources (what kinds of recycled resources you can use and where to get them), Sources of Funding for Community Gardens, Guidelines for Proposal Writing, Common Natural Fertilizers (with nutrient content), and The Fifteen Most Nutritious Vegetables You Can Grow.

I'm preparing to organize my first community garden, and I found this book really helpful. It includes great practical information on issues to consider and steps to take, as well as some of the philosophy behind community gardening.

The book appears to be out of print. Try your library, or follow the link below to purchase a used copy from Amazon.



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Posted by Janet to Rainy Day Gardening - Books at 10/26/2005 09:01:00 PM