how are your tomatoes? diagnosing troubles

Amy Batog

Sometimes as gardeners, we place all the emphasis on plants. However, a few well positioned ornaments and focal points can heighten the interest and drama within a garden.

Georg Arends was a German nurseryman who bred many perennial plants. His business was successful until the second world war and has been regenerated to be one of the oldest in Europe. It still remains within the Arends family.

It is interesting to see how gardening adverts have changed with the horticultural industry and modern developments. Yet a top fruit business has in some ways stayed the same.

Garden designer Alison Jenkins in her Somerset smallholding

I recently had a call from a South Carolina resident who lost power for more than 24 hours and wanted to know whether the foods in her freezer would be safe to eat. This is a very common problem in South Carolina winters and could easily affect you in the coming months.

Are you looking at plants in your garden and wondering why they aren’t flowering?

Various kinds of borers can impact crabapples, not just the apple-bark borer, I know now after reading the fact sheets from various Cooperative Extensions around the country. Unlike the one in the photo up top, with borer entry points at eye level, one of my trees has damage at the base, more like what you’d expect from a vole, but there’s a tell-tale sign, Dennis explained: the presence of frass, or sawdust-like reddish debris that’s a combination of wood particles and insect wastes. Where you once would have seen cambium, you see frass. Sometimes cracks in the bark will also ooze sap.If you have a strong stomach and want to see what I am up against, Clemson University and Colorado State have some lovely photos of borers. I would have taken the shots myself had I been able to locate the hideous creatures, but so far no luck. If you are looking for me tomorrow, I will be out there with pieces of wire probing the tunnel system that was once my tree’s infrastructure, to

No rain.That about sums up how I feel about the so-called gardening season of 2010. No rain.  Believe me, you don’t want to hear me say much more, as it gets ugly fast.The only good parts: few fungal diseases and lots of frogs (who stayed here with me by the little backyard pools in even larger-then-normal armies–as groups of frogs are called–since there wasn’t much moisture in the vicinity otherwise). Lots of a

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

YOU KNOW THE WAY A BEST FRIEND wants to know the details of your latest intrigue, based on whatever the friend likes most about objects of intrigue herself. (Forgive me, gentlemen; just swap all the pronouns in this post to suit.) “How are his manners?” she’ll ask, and “His sense of humor? His smile?” Here’s what I’d ask if I were your best friend and you had your eye on someone new, especially in the perennial department: How are his leaves? It’s leaves after all that dictate a plant’s character, hanging on as they do longer than most any flower.

As I said in my November 8, 2010 post, the A Way to Garden philosophy (developed through a very unscientific 25-plus years of digging holes) is that the garden is a 365-day companion, and that the season never ends.You can hear me talk about that notion in today’s podcast with my friends at Robin Hood Radio, by the way. Or in the “woo-woo video,” as I call it, that I made this past spring. It’s right here (though you have probably seen it):WITH THAT ‘WE NEVER CLOSE’ attitude, I will continue posting and also sending newsletters* in the hopes that all gardeners have plants on their minds no matter what the weather delivers—and speaking