giveaway: rose marie nichols mcgee’s herb q&a

Mary Ann Van Berlo has been gardening on this 2.4-acre riverfront lot since fall 2012. The yard was still a construction site when she moved in, so all the gardens were installed after that.

Growing herbs makes your garden look nice and gives you the advantage of spicing up your meals with fresh greens. Creating a herb garden requires only a small chunk of effort and, after investing a little bit of time as well, you will bear the fruits of your hard work soon enough. Even if growing herbs outdoors or indoors doesn’t require plenty of gardening knowledge on your side, you might still want to check our extensive guide on how to grow a herb garden.

Can you tell what this frosted yellow flower is that is starting to show colour and now getting into full scented blossom? It still thinks it is 2015 and our mild wet weather has contributed to a range of ongoing flowers.

This selection of top ten Roses to grow as cut flowers has been chosen for their scent and the length of the vase life. If Roses are picked as the buds are breaking they will last at least a week and if they are picked fully open it will be several days.

It is mid July and the Roses have performed very well with an abundance of flower, scent and leaf growth. With the June flush over here are some quick tips to boost your Roses for the rest of the season.

If you feel Herbie, the plants not the films, then sniff out the comments below:

While old gallica and rugosa roses are largely trouble-free, other types of rose are often troubled with disease. Bred to bear large flowers over a long period, many are plagued with problems such as mildew, blackspot and rust. Traditionally, rose breeders and growers would treat their roses with fungicides to prevent or cure these diseases, so they weren’t considered much of a problem.

THE ACTION-PACKED BOOK is constructed like the tastiest lasagna, with unexpected supporting ingredients tucked everywhere: tips for using leftovers; vegetarian-friendly substitutions; easy recipes for add-ons like dressings (will it be Tahini, Ranch, or Asian Apple Vinaigrette?); nine clever ways to use quinoa to boost protein in other dishes; conversation-starting dinner games to turn you into a deipnosophist (“a person skilled in table talk”); even variations on the act of grace. “The Family Dinner” is a collaboration between David, producer of the film “An Inconvenient Truth” and a trustee of the National Resources Defense Council (above left), and Danish-born Kirstin Uhrenholdt (right), a gifted cook whom David calls “a magical, whimsical Mary Poppins/Tinker Bell presence”—a quality that really comes through in the recipes. I felt happy—and hungry—reading every one. Bring on the Crispy, Smashed Potatoes and the Sloooooow Cooker Curry and the Vietnamese Soup in a Teapot! And don’t forget homegrown artichokes:But there are other voices, in essays and quotes

When I have garden tours, everyone asks what “that silvery-green tree by the vegetable garden” is—even many experts—because you don’t usually see it looking like a tree.And even though I know somebody changed its name, at first I answer, “Salix rosmarinifolia…I mean…” then stop myself, and get it right.The reason you won’t see this looking like a 15-foot-tall, 20-foot wide small tree is that as with other “shrubby” willows, regular rejuvenation pruning is usually practiced.“Will get leggy unless cut back hard periodically” is the kind of advice you’ll find in refer

Start with a cold-hardy cultivar if you plant to try to overwinter rosemary in the ground in other than a truly frost-free hardiness zone. ‘Arp’ is the best known, along with ‘Hill Hardy’ (also known as ‘Madalene Hill’ after the late herb gardener from Texas; ‘Arp’ was her discovery, by the way, the result of her search for plants that could take not extremes of cold but the Texas heat). Oregon-based Nichols Garden Nursery’s owner touts ‘Nichols Select’ as being a toughie, too.It’s “as hardy as any I’ve grown, probably Zone 6B, and the flavor is terrific,” Rose Marie Nichols McGee in an interview one spring. “It was planted 25 years ago at our home and survived minus-7 degrees F once. I think this is your best for a long-lived rosemary.”The U.S. National Arboretum website trialed many cultivars, and how they fare on all scores. Even in USDA Zone 7A,

From the first time I landed on her popular blog Posie Gets Cozy, I knew there would be a connection—again, though I was the hopeless (and embarrassed) girl who hemmed her junior high school dressmaking project right onto the lap of the skirt she was wearing, and when the bell rang for next period had to go there “wearing” both.Alicia (self-portrait, left) welcomed me into her sewing circle, anyhow, charming me in the funniest Alicia-style ways. I mean, what’s not to like about a woman you don’t even know who says, “I want to be a gardener. Like Margaret.”A woman who emails you—though you are still total strangers, really—and asks you about the potato she has planted in a smallish flower pot, and how to care for it? (Answer: Get it out of the confines of that pot, a.k.a., my curriculum of How Not to Grow a Potato 101.)A woman who sends you link

WHAT WE CALL STONE FRUITS all grow on trees in the genus Prunus, and have a hard, stony pit inside them (their seed), with fleshy fruit around it—unlike so-called pome fruits (see below).Apricots, cherries, nectarines, plums (and therefore prunes), and some interspecies hybrids of the above, like plumcots and pluots, are all stone fruits. So are peaches (like the ones in the 1940 harvesting photo by Lee Russell, in the Library of Congress archive, top, or just above in the print from Boston Public Library’s).And then there’s the trick-question one, the stone fruit you think of as a nut. What’s that?Almond, of course: Prunus dulcis.What’s a Pome Fruit?I KNOW, IT’S STONE FRUIT WEEK, but hey,