New Year, New Habits

Repeated below is our post from 2009 when I first reported on the water loving skunk cabbage. In 2021 the RHS have decided that the proliferation of this plant is endangering native species and they should not be grown in the UK. The RHS say ‘after flowering  seed heads should be cut off and burnt’ this should help the spread of the rouge amongst our aquatic plants in areas such as the Wye Valley and Lake District.

Poke bowls, fish salads, originated in Hawaii and then became popular in California. The popularity of this dish has spread across the United States in 2018 and into 2019. According to Eater.com, the number of Hawaiian restaurants has doubled in the past two years. Poke bowls can be a healthy meal, and they offer a lot of diversity in one dish. So, it is easy to see why they are so popular.

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.– Christian Lous Lange (Nobel Peace Prize winner, 1921)

Such expressions by Church and other artists in the Hudson River School marked the start of the American environmental movement, many experts believe today. Standing in my neighbor friend’s garden recently and looking out at the same landscape they did, I was reminded how few of us get to witness that kind of majesty very often, and how precious a resource such viewsheds are. No wonder they inspired an entire movement.Today a number of historic sites like Church’s astonishing home near here called Olana are working to protect their viewsheds, in part thanks to work by groups like Scenic Hudson, and to unique events like the one coming up Nov. 1 for Olana’s benefit (see details of their ‘Viewshed Tour’ below).Nearer to New York City, the dramatic stretch of Palisades acr

I have two other Abies concolor here (I know, there’s evidence of my former“everything in threes” insanity again), the other two grown naturally, unshorn, and therefore quite different-looking. I won’t tell you what I paid for the big guy, all thick and a perfect pyramid and already near 10 feet tall when he came to me to live on my hillside of a backyard, among the crabapples and a giant island of ornamental grasses. The others were scrawny little things, maybe 3 feet high, though each is more than 15 tall now.The white, or concolor fir, a Western American native species ranging from Colorado to Southern California, New Mexico and into Mexico, can grow to 100 feet in the wild, apparently, but in a garden setting you are more likely to see it get to 30 or maybe 50 feet in time, and half as wide.Its long needles, which are particularly silvery-blue in the cultivar ‘Candicans,’ curve outward

ONE SQUASH SLEPT ON THE WINDOWSILL, another in the cabinet beneath the sink. Both stayed firm (and presumably delicious) all winter long, and then some—far into the next year. Lia Babitch and Ian Robb, co-managers of Turtle Tree Seed in Copake, New York, may store their ‘Butternut’ differently, but the greater mission they’re part of is the same: to offer biodynamic, open-pollinated seed to gardeners and farmers that’s been selected to be the very best it can…which if you’re a winter squash means sticking around a good long while. Meet these gifted gardeners and more of their very special seed varieties.

I spoke about some notable natives with my friend Andy Brand of Broken Arrow Nursery, with whom I often hosting half-day workshops in my Hudson Valley, New York, garden, when we focus on upping the beneficial wildlife quotient in your own backyard with better plants and better practices. Andy has been one of the experts I’ve pestered for ideas as I’ve been doing that in my own garden in recent years to good effect.Andy is manager of Connecticut-based Broken Arrow, and he’s a serious amateur naturalist, and founder of the Connecticut state butterfly association. (That’s a photo by Andy of a red-banded hairstreak on a Clethra blossom, top of page.) Learn where many familia

MELISSA CLARK IS ONE OF US. The prolific cookbook author and “The New York Times” food columnist has a homegrown Dahlia (her young daughter); knows a rutabaga from a turnip (so many people don’t!), and is intrepid in harvesting year-round farm-and-garden gleanings—if not in her own backyard, then in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market, where she has been a year-round customer for years, come hell or ice age. With her latest, “Cook This Now,” the hard part will be figuring out which of 120 recipes to start with. Win one of two copies I’ve bought to share—and get her recipe for Carroty Mac and Cheese right now.

I actually have no certain diagnosis; so many of these issues look somewhat alike, unless you are a plant pathologist, and so far I only have a relative few affected leaves. I nevertheless love Cornell’s diagnostic tool, a photo-driven system arranged by plant part (leaves, stem, fruit).What I do not seem to have, thankfully, is the late blight that’s been the source of the most dramatic headlines, and of a thorough story by Adrian Higgins of The Washington Post, late last week. This dramatic outbreak has also prompted warning bulletins from Cornell and other extension services. My plants have none of its characteristic early sign: dark stem lesions.This is the affliction (affecting tomatoes and potatoes) that caused the 1840s Irish Potato Famine, and it has never been recorded this early in the United States, apparently, nor this extensive

These non-native “ladybugs,” introduced by the Department of Agriculture to help combat certain agricultural pests, have made themselves right at home in America—and in my house, too. In fall, the south-facing side of the exterior can be teeming with patches of them, as they look for places to tuck into and overwinter. The USDA imported lady beetles from Japan as early as 1916 as a beneficial insect, to gobble up unwanted pests on forest and orchard trees, but it was probably later releases, in the late 1970s and early 80s in the Southeast, that took hold. Today, multicolored Asian lady beetles have made themselves completely at home around the United States, easily adapting to regions as diverse as Louisiana, Oregon, and mine in New York State.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE CONIFER, the “beautiful one” to your eye? I could only narrow my list down to 10, plant-mad person that I am, but with hints of the winter landscape in the cooler air, I’m thinking of just how important evergreens are. And not just to me. Coniferous trees and shrubs also provide important winter shelter for birds, and many small mammals depend on their seed, as do various bird species. Conifers’ value as nesting spots is another reason to plant more.

I’ve been open as part of their Open Days scheme for 15 years (hard to believe) and even before all that am proud to have introduced the Conservancy to what has become a signature project, the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden (which was part of my “beat” when I was garden editor of “Newsday” on Long Island). Later I visited and covered many of their other projects in the pages of “Newsday” and then “Martha Stewart Living.” Read all about it–along with details of extra goodies like plant sales and guest lectures at this year’s open garden days at my place.And join me in saying a giant thank you to the Conservancy for all they have done for American gardens and gardeners.