fighting weeds: an all-season approach, with mt. cuba’s duncan himmelman

The harvest video was on Hudson Valley Seed’s Instagram account, and one of that New York-based organic seed company’s co-founders, K Greene, talked with me about growing shallots and their more commonly grown cousin, garlic. He also shared some other ideas for succession sowing of edibles whose planting time still lies ahead—whether for fall harvest or to over-winter and enjoying in the year ahead. Read along as you listen to the Aug. 7, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) o

Everyone loves falafel—it’s a year-round staple, and the frozen options at Trader Joe’s make it incredibly easy to prepare. But today, you should probably rid your freezer shelves of any Trader Joe’s falafel: In the company’s third food recall this week, on July 28 Trader Joe’s recalled its fan-favorite Fully Cooked Falafel after being informed by the supplier that rocks were found in the food.

Want to add a bit of tropical pizazz to your late summer or early fall perennial border? Then ginger lilies (Hedychium species) are your answer. They are not true lilies but distant cousins of edible gingerroot and originate in Asia. Hedychiums are a sign of good fortune and health and are the national flower of Cuba. In Hawaii, they are often used in leis and are widely grown as a cut flower.

Called “the mystery plant of the herb world” by The Rodale Herb Book, “oregano” is the common name for a small multitude of plants that are mostly useless in the kitchen. Among them are many true oreganos, in the genus Origanum, and also many plants that aren’t. Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens) is a relative of lemon verbena, not oregano. Cuban oregano (Coleus amboinicus) is a succulent that tastes and smells somewhat like oregano and makes a good houseplant. It is used like oregano in Cuban cuisine. Italian oregano thyme, a member of the genus Thymus, also has the familiar oregano scent.Among the true oreganos there are choices for great beauty, like O. vulgare ‘Aureum,’ a golden-leaved form. (My sorry plant was probably just plain O. vulgare—not even pretty like the golden kind.) Sweet marjoram, a kind of oregano known as O. majorana, is more the stuff of French cuisine, and an excellent culinary herb. Pot marjoram, O. onites, is also savory-flavored.But if you want to cook with the classic oregano taste, you want to try Greek oregano, O. heracleoticum, which is a pungent

If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it

Brushwood Nursery, aka gardenvines [dot] com, was founded in 1998 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, out of a Lord and Burnham greenhouse Dan rented for $5 a year plus upkeep. (Such a deal!) Dan, a University of Delaware horticulture graduate, used to teach at nearby Longwood Gardens and worked with Conard-Pyle, where he got fluent in the propagation of Clematis, which most nurseries call “a nuisance crop,” he says, with their particular trimming schedules and rambunctious intertwining tendencies.Enter a business opportunity: a high dollar-per-square-foot greenhouse crop, and one that not everyone is good at–enter Brushwood. He started selling vines over eBay, eventually launching his own website, and recently outgrew the climate and space in Pennsylvania and moved to Athens, Georgia.The Brushwood collection now numbers more than 500 climbers, with Clematis as the main event—including ‘Omoshiro,’ top photo, which may be the first large-flowered one I ever buy (it’s more than 7 inches across, and fragrant). There are climbing roses, jasmines, passionflowers and more–but let Dan tell

THE FLYER PIQUED MY INTEREST: Dan Benarcik, part of the creative team at Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, Pennsylvania (a must visit!), would be lecturing nearby about “The Art & Craft of the Garden,” and how to personalize a garden using artistic elements, found artifacts, and ornamental containers. I quickly got a ticket—you can, too, for the June 16 event, including garden tours and a garden market, in Spencertown, New York—but also asked Dan to share some of his ideas and images (including the bromeliad-artemisia- urn-and-melianthus moment at Chanticleer, above) with us, no matter whether we can attend. A Q&A with this enormously talented plantsman and garden artist.

IT’S ALMOST TIME TO GIVE MY WINTER FRIENDS the twig dogwoods and willows some pruning, the only care they ask in return for year-round beauty.  But will I really have the nerve to cut my favorite of all, Cornus sericea ‘Silver and Gold,’ back hard? Why I love this easiest of shrubs…and how that love may have backfired just a bit.

A little about Michael:“That’s Michael Dodge,” I say, when I show people around the fall garden, as we pass a large group of show-offy, yellow-fruited Viburnum I enjoy all fall into winter. V. dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ is truly a standout plant.But the original Michael Dodge, the one that great shrub was named to honor, is a well-

In the early 1990s, when I was working on a book called “The Natural Habitat Garden” with my friend Ken Druse, we traveled the country interviewing native-plant enthusiasts and photographing their gardens. One memorable stop was the home of Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, outside Wilmington, which today is the botanic garden called Mt. Cuba Center, with more than 50 acres of display gardens on more than 500 acres of natural land.I’d never seen native terrestrial orchids before, or the vivid red and yellow wildflower called Spigelia marilandica anywhere, and that day I learned that some discerning and forward-thinking experts such as Mt. Cuba’s first horticulture director, the great Dick Lighty, were already busy selecting “better” forms of native plants for garden use–a trend that has accelerated and become one of the hottest areas of contemp

Y ES, THEY CAN MAKE YOU FEEL VIOLENT, author Teri Dunn Chace admits about weeds in “How to Eradicate Invasive Plants.” In fact, if authors named their own books, this new one might have been called, “The War of the Weeds.” But in that “two wrongs don’t make a right” way of thinking, Teri reminds us that getting out the big guns isn’t where to begin. Understanding who you’re up against, and being strategic, is.

Read along as you listen to the June 26, 2107 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).evaluating monarda with george coombs of mt. cubaQ. We’ve talked before on the show about your past trials of other native plants like Baptisia and Heuchera—and native plants are the mission of Mt. Cuba, which is both a garden for visiting and a research center, right?A. Mt. Cuba Center is actually a former du Pont family estate, the Copeland family estate, and they left their estate to become a public garden. What kind of sets us apart from others in the area is that we focus on native plants. We broadly define our nativity region as the Eastern United States.We do a lot of work promoting plants in a display capacity in the gardens itself, and then we also do research like what I do, trying to help