How To Deadhead Zinnias So They'll Bloom All Summer Long

What makes this cactus really special is the fact that it flowers only for the night! If you have it in your collection and want to make sure it blossoms, then follow our guide on  How to Get Night Blooming Cereus to Bloom.

Discover in detail about the Dallas Plant Zones that will give you an idea about which plants to grow in which area.

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

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Well, the answer is not tricky. Keep them well maintained, provide optimal growing conditions. Give access to full sun or provide some shade, if you’re growing a flowering plant like impatiens. Besides all these basic requirements, here is this most important tip, which can improve the productivity of your flowering plants–Deadheading.

You can create fresh or preserved moss balls to add interest to your floral arrangements. If using fresh moss or reindeer lichen, please don’t collect entire populations of them from a single area. Only gather small amounts from different places to allow the moss or lichen to regenerate. Commercial dried moss and Spanish moss that has been sustainably sourced can be purchased from your favorite craft store. The dried materials will last much longer than the freshly gathered ones.

Hudson Valley Seed Library’s motto is “Heirloom Seeds With Local Roots,” and they specialize in heirloom seed “rooted in the history and soils of the Northeast.” The co-founders’ goal for their first-year business is to grow all their seed locally by 2014, much of it on their land in Accord, NY. Ken Greene and Doug Muller want to rekindle the knowledge and spirit of seed-saving at a local level, “to close the loop from seed to seed that is necessary for a truly local sustainable local food system,” they say.I think it’s a great reminder for all of us, wherever we live, especially right now: We can save some of our seeds from year to year, and also share it. Fostering this kind of consciousness and engagement is what the Seed Library is excited about.Anyone anywhere can order from their web-based catalog, and there’s a way to get more involved: Join the Seed Library, for $20 a year, which includes 10 packs of seeds (plain wrappers, not the fancy ones a

I invited my favorite fruit expert, Lee Reich, author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening” and “The Pruning Book,” to come talk figs on my public-radio show and podcast. (I’m giving away a copy of “Grow Fruit Naturally;” enter by commenting in the box at the very bottom of the page.)I often refer to Lee as “the unusual fruit guy,” because one of his first books I read was “Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention.” Lee lives with blueberries and paw paws and medlars and kiwis and of course figs and more not far from me, across the Hudson in New Paltz, New York, on what he calls his farm-den (as in half-farm, half-garden) loaded with unusual fruits.Learn wh

LIKE A GRADUATING SENIOR in that pointless last week of school, I have lost all ability to concentrate. I hadn’t been sure, until I sat down to write this, exactly what was on my mind, but it is full, so very annoyingly full that I awaken every morning when it is still dark to the tape playing in my head. It is a droning, relentless list, with lots of static punctuating entry after entry of musts, to-do’s, and did-I-remember-to’s.Probably it is partly the disease of gardening that does this to a person come June. At this time of year in my neighborhood, prime planting season is dwindling down to a precious few days, the only ones left before the relentless summer wilts all but the most vigorous transplant, and the most vigorous planter.This is my gardening prime, I suppose, as I toil away alone, pea

On Saturday, September 5, just as Mercury goes retrograde again (heaven help us), Bob Hyland, Andrew Beckman and I will give a hands-on class from 11-1 at their Loomis Creek Nursery, near Hudson, NY. We’ll show you what to cut back, and not; review the basics of composting and offseason soil care; prepare to have fresh herbs on hand for the winter; teach you how to stash precious but nonhardy “investment plants” safely for the winter, make room for bulbs and lots more.All for $5, and a phone call to reserve a spot; we have a few remaining. Loomis Creek is at (518) 851-9801. (And p.s., that’s an oakleaf hydrangea up top, H. quercifolia, in the colors that are coming up soon.)Categorieshow-to

Decades ago, I inherited the big old Clivia plant that had inhabited the sunroom of the home I grew up in for years before that. All these eons later we still live together, Clivia and I, as we have at several locations in between, though now there are multiple plants, each a division and each monstrously bigger than the one I started with.And then maybe 15 years ago I bought a yellow-flowered Clivia [above] at a botanical garden plant auction, and last year a young plant of a Clivia species unknown to me arrived in the mail as a gift from friends….so you get the idea. I like clivias. A lot.Alan Petravich, who a

EVEN THOUGH WE HAVEN’T LEFT THE HOUSE in a week…winter, you know (and book-editing, and a pile of seed catalogs)…we get around, Jack the Demon Cat and I. In fact, this week we made the scene in Dallas, thanks to our new friend Mariana Greene, garden editor of The Dallas Morning News.