The Uses and Benefits of Boysenberries

Biological controls work best when it is warm and activity is highest. The more pests the more there is for the control to eat and treat.

It’s a glorious July Saturday. The sun is showering this corner of the world with warmth and optimism. The earth’s bounty and human toil, and some craic, surrounds us, and you can hear the stream nearby and the birds in the trees. There is abundance and productivity and nature and community and generosity.

I don’t know about you, but I love a product that can be used in a variety of ways and has staying power, especially in the home and kitchen. I recently discovered fall/winter squash and the varieties and versatility that they provide. I knew about the typical winter squash that you see in the grocery store like Acorn, Butternut, Spaghetti, Pumpkins, and decorative gourds, but have been introduced to other varieties like Honey Nut, Kabocha, Carnival, Turban, Banana, Red Kuri, Sweet Dumpling, and Buttercup.

While romantics look to mid-February as a time to impress their favorite Valentine with chocolates and flowers, experienced gardeners know now is time to show their plants love through careful pruning! In a recent blog, Kerrie Roach discussed fruit tree pruning. Here, I will concentrate on ornamental landscape plants. While it is time to prune many plants, as usual, there is an exception to the rule. Do not prune plants that flower from late winter to mid-May, such as azalea, forsythia, and weigela, in winter. Gardenias also fall into this category but don’t bloom until June. Pruning now removes flower blooms resulting in a sparse spring floral display. Wait until after these plants complete flowering this spring to prune. For an extensive list of the optimal pruning times for individual plants, visit HGIC 1053 Pruning Shrubs.

Want to know how to get two distinct flavors from one plant? Well, the plant known as Coriandrum sativum can provide just that. C. sativum is commonly cultivated as a low growing, vegetative herb known as cilantro that adds a savory flavor to many foods and dishes. However, not everyone knows that the seed produced by C. sativum is commonly referred to as coriander. Coriander is used whole or often ground as a spice to provide delectable flavor to many traditional and newer fusion-type meals. The herb and the spice come from the same plant, just different parts. For this reason, C. sativum is referred to with two different common names.

I’ve made it clear in this blog that Winter is my least favorite season. Therefore, I always seek winter-blooming flowers to raise my spirits. However, before the yellow-flowered daffodils bloom to give me hope that Spring is coming, I rely on the soft-textured drooping gold threadlike leaves of golden threadleaf sawara cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Filifera Aurea’).

Since the book “Planting in a Post-Wild World” came out in 2015, co-authored by Claudia West with Thomas Rainer, I’ve been gradually studying their ideas and starting to have some light bulbs go off, on how to be inspired to put plants together in the ways that nature does, in layered communities.Claudia joined me on the July 17, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to about some of the practical, tactical aspects of plant community-inspired designs that we can app

Now before you go thinking dirty thoughts about my wood frog friends up in the top photo, who by the way quack like ducks to my ear, know this:They are simply engaged in amplexus (doesn’t that sound tame and scientific?), in which the male (in this species the smaller frog) clasps the larger female around the back. This goes on for some time, and they don’t seem to be one bit shy. The embrace began right out at poolside, where 15 other frogs were sunning themselves, including the few in the background of the photo below. Eventually the

M AY IS MADNESS. I have already said that in the monthly chores column. But it’s madness otherwise, too: garden tours to prep for; workshops I’m giving with friends; a garden contest I’m judging (as in, free prizes!); a sister in the news to brag about…and oh, I need your help with the Urgent Garden Question Forums here, too.

American goldfinches breed later in the summer than most songbirds, says Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds, timing their mating to coincide with peak thistle-seed production. The thistle figures into the equation in two ways: They feed the seed to their young, after they use some of the downy fiber from the seedheads to line their nest.And what do they use to hold the nest together? Sticky spider-web silk, the preferred Super Glue of other bird species, too, including various hummingbirds, vireos, warblers, bushtits and even the handsome indigo bunting. Apparently the stuff i

FULL SUN (or light shade in hotter zones), and well-drained soil that’s high in organic matter is the basic regimen (though the sweetbay magnolia, M. virginiana, can also take a wet spot). Give the others those requirements, plus a light layer of aged organic mulch, and they generally will thrive. Fertilizing isn’t needed, says Andrew. (At Scott they only mulch the circles of trees in lawn areas, using a combination of leaf compost and one-year-old composted wood chips.)Magnolias are not the easiest to plant under, however, because of their fleshy, moisture-hogging root systems.  “Some plants that can take dry shade will make a go of it,” he says, suggesting Epimedium, or Asarum, or Christmas fern. Among bulbs, try Scilla, or Chionodoxa, or even toadlilies (Tricyrtis), he recommends.Magnolia grandiflora, the so-called Southern magnol

At least dear H. niger dared flower when nobody else really did, or could.May 5—my first Open Day of the season—looms. Uh-oh; I was getting nowhere except panicky, save but for a few big beds of hellebores I’d cut back so far, against my better judgment and usual admonition never to work in frozen or mucky soil.The moles and voles, incidentally, seem undeterred by any such conditions, and when the snow disappeared there were signs of their handiwork—including an impressive series of mole hills, above, signs that those fossorial insectivores (underground-dwelling insect-eaters) were tunneling energetically deep below. I never trap moles, but am far less benevolent toward the unrelated plant-eating rodents whose name starts with a “V.” (More ontelling the two apart.)Then it started snowing again at mid-week, and dipped to around 20F, and the rhododendron leaves curled up like t