Blog Action Day

Or should I say Blog No Action Day, in my case anyway.

On October 15th, Bloggers everywhere got together and talked about poverty. I had nothing to say, so I said nothing. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I don't see how gardening realistically helps relieve poverty in my community. Oh, sure, "plant a row" is a nice idea, but not very workable. So, when I plant a row, and harvest said row...then what? I can't take the food to the food bank...they only accept non-perishable items. Huh! I can't give it to my neighbors because frankly I live in a neighborhood of Army officers...no poverty there.

See? Not as simple as growing extra food for the poor. Besides...I can't have a vegetable garden anyway. I suppose I could give away 2 or 3 of my tiny little tomatoes that came out of the pots on my front porch. I only got about 20 to begin with.

Gardening isn't as easy of a solution as it may first seem. You want to help relieve hunger? Make a cash donation to your local food bank. Their shelves are empty...

Ladew Topiary Gardens

Monday Steve and I took advantage of the good weather and drove up to Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, MD. Ladew is 22 acres of flower and topiary gardens that the owner, Harvey Ladew, created into themed "rooms." Some of the rooms are as simple and focused as the "White Garden" with it's dazzling array of white flowers. Others are more complex, such as the "Garden of Eden" complete with an apple tree and statues of Adam and Eve.

Fortunately for us, Mr. Ladew wanted the gardens preserved after his death for everyone to enjoy. The Garden Club of America has named Ladew Topiary Gardens as "the most outstanding topiary garden in America." These gardens are among the first of their kind in the United States.

Enjoy this short glimpse into the garden...

I Always Knew it Would Be the Ferns

I found this on Gardenrant.com today.
Enjoy!

Update: I had to remove the video because it was messing up the layout of my blog, making the text difficult to read. Sorry!

A New Rake!

Oh boy! How nerdy can one be? But, I was wandering around home depot looking at gardening tools, and I decided to see if they had any narrow rakes. The amount of leaves that fall from the trees in Autumn here is nothing short of astonishing. So much so that the thought of trying rake in and around the shrubs in the front of the house fills me with dread. But I digress. So, here I am in Home Depot, and I spot what looks like a child's rake. The rake head is a plastic fan shape, just like the full-size ones I have in my garage. This one is about one tenth the size of my full sized rakes. I handle it and decide that it must be for an adult because the handle is long enough. I look at the tag and it says it is a "Shrub Rake." I handle it some more, wondering what exactly a "shrub rake" is. Is it for raking under the shrubs? Or...is it for actually raking the shrubs? It really doesn't matter because I'm buying it for getting under and behind the shrubs, and if it works for me then that's what it's for. (I looked it up, by the way, it's specifically made for raking under and behind shrubs)

Peony Envy

The Wayside Gardens catalog showed up today! This is the first time I've ever looked at one of their catalogs, and I definitely have a case of peony envy. I think every page has something I must have...someday. I wouldn't dare put one of those beautiful plants in the ground here. It would probably die from the wretched soil, and perhaps get nibbled to death by deer or slugs. I want the echinacea purpurea "Cotton Candy," gaillardia "Oranges and Lemons," hosta "Blue Mouse Ears," albizia julibrissin "Summer Chocolate,"...okay, enough, and that's only as far as page 10! But I have to have the "Benjamin Franklin Tree" on page 95. Okay, that's all...except all of the peonies...I can't wait until next summer when I get my own yard. I guess I'll wear out the pages of my catalog and dream of next fall *sigh*

The Kitchen Garden

When Steve and I were in Lancaster last month, we toured the grounds of Wheatland. As you may recall from my earlier post, Wheatland was the home of President Buchanan. I was impressed by the working kitchen garden there by the back entrance to the home.


I was a little taken aback by it's wild look. At first I thought perhaps it was untended and the herbs and vegetables that were growing were simply volunteers. Well, click here to see the photo from Wheatland's website. As you can see, this is how it is supposed to look.


This makes me think that all those perfect gardens that we see on in books, magazines, and TV are more for show than for real use. A real kitchen garden is going to be in constant flux. Some of the beds will be empty, some will be squeaking out the very last of the season's harvest, some will left fallow on purpose, while others are freshly prepped, waiting for next season's seedlings to reach up through the soil.


I'm looking forward to starting my own kitchen garden next year when we get our own place. I hope mine is as abundant and beautifully wild as this one.

Potting Up the Basil

The basil cutting has really grown a lot of roots over the last couple of days, so I decided to get it into a pot today.

I found a cute little pot with a built in saucer that I thought would be perfect for the kitchen window.

I covered the bottom with a few marble chips and, with the basil cutting centered in the pot, filled the pot with soil. Et voila! Even Bali seems impressed!

And don't worry, Bali has learned through the magic of "Bitter Yuck" to only smell, not taste, the plants.

Oh, Deer

We live across the street from an abandoned golf course, which is home to a herd of deer. I really thought it was fun having deer in my yard…until I started gardening. The deer usually keep to the golf course during the day, but like to wander into the yards at night. If you were to drive through my neighborhood you might notice the lack of color. Every flower has been nibbled to the ground all up and down the street.

I’m not giving up and I’m not giving in. I decided to fight the deer a couple of different ways. The first is to use some sort of deer repellent, and the second is to plant deer-resistant flowers. Both have had mixed results.

I did notice that the deer ate my hibiscus…now it looks like a green twig in the middle of my flower bed.
They also ate my impatients, which apparently are like candy to deer.

They didn’t, however, touch the rudbeckia….hmmm. So I did some research and found several lists of plants deer like and don’t like. The lists confirmed my experience. They like impatients and don’t like rudbeckia. I saw that deer are not supposed to like asters or vincas, so I headed out and bought some of those to test them out. After day one, no problem. Day two however showed the vincas were nibbled a little and one was pulled right out of the ground. The asters were still untouched. I just went ahead and sprayed deer repellent all over everything and called it a day.

Deer repellent…where to begin…I read everything I could find about different types of deer repellent, such as bars of soap, rotten eggs, etc. None of these things really sounded very useful. I dug a little deeper and found the name of a deer repellent that is supposed to be the most effective…Plantskydd. Plantskydd is made from blood-meal, which, as I found out the first time I used it, means it is blood. You spray it on the leaves of the plant and the smell of blood scares the deer. It works pretty well, it really does. However, it is blood. So now you have bloody flowers in your yard, and they kind of smell like rotting meat (I have a very sensitive nose). I have noticed that the staining does wash off, but then it seems less effective and so it needs to be sprayed more than once a season as recommended (maybe once a week is better?).

So, the saga of the deer in my yard continues.

Basil Cuttings

I saw an episode of Rebecca’s Garden in which she described how to bring herbs like basil in for the winter. I have a pot of basil on my back stairs, so I decided to try growing cuttings from it. I don’t have many jars around as I’m an avid recycler, so I found some cute little vases at IKEA to use. Aren’t they pretty?

I did just as Rebecca instructed by cutting a piece of the basil plant, stripping off the lower leaves, and simply keeping them in water until roots begin to appear. Every day I checked them, changed the water, and saw…nothing. She didn’t mention how long it would take to see root development. I was beginning to think my experiment in preserving plants through cuttings would end up exactly like my pot of chives…nothing. Then, this morning I inspected the vases, and found little roots, and not just a couple, a LOT!

Now for the next step…pot them up and keep them alive. If this works, we’ll be having my famous Bolognese sauce, loaded with basil of course, all winter. Stay tuned…

Tanger Arboretum

Last weekend my husband and I spent the weekend in Lancaster County, PA. We’ve been to Amish country many times, and honestly- how many smorgasbords, Amish farms, and quilt shops can one enjoy in a single lifetime? Instead of doing “the Amish thing” we decided to drive around the town of Lancaster itself and see what we could find to do. As we drove around the downtown district we noticed signs for Wheatland, President Buchanan’s home. We followed the signs to a beautiful historic neighborhood. Much to our delight we discovered that Wheatland is also the home of the Louise Arnold Tanger Arboretum. The arboretum provides detailed maps of all the gardens and trees on the estate for the visitor to explore all on his or her own.

Now, not being from the South (I’m a Pacific Northwest Girl), I don’t have much experience with many of the trees I saw there. For example, I don’t know much about Magnolias. I didn’t know that the magnolia grandiflora produced a fruit. But, there it is!

I also had never even heard of a Franklin tree (franklinia alatamaha). What beautiful flowers! John and William Bartram discovered a grove of these trees in Georgia back in 1765 and named it after their good friend Benjamin Franklin.

Of course, the arboretum contains the obligatory Crape Myrtle (lagerstroemia indica). Being rather new to this part of the country, I’ve mistaken them for late-blooming lilacs from a distance. I want one.

Wheatland boasts a kitchen garden of its own, which I will discuss another day. However, I did find these Black-eyed Susans beautiful. They are much smaller and more delicate than the giant cone-flower variety I have in my own yard. I prefer the smaller ones, I think.

We finished our tour with a moment in Wheatland’s flower garden, brimming with phlox.

Patio Princess

I decided this year to try growing Burpee’s “Patio Princess” tomatoes. Since we aren’t allowed to put anything resembling a vegetable in the ground here (more on this subject another day), I thought these tomatoes bred specifically for container growing might be just the ticket. Burpee says they will send the plants (3) to you based on the proper growing time for your region. Mid-April my tomato plants arrived on my doorstep. They were in terrific shape and the timing was perfect. Unfortunately, I was not quite ready to plant them, even though the weather was fine. I placed them under the grow lights with my herb seedlings for about a week until I was ready to plant them. When things settled down and I was finally ready, I planted them in terra cotta pots and placed them on my front steps where they would get the most light.

They have produced quite beautifully, and we pick small (2 inch or so) tomatoes nearly every day. The flavor is very mild (milder than I was hoping for), but they are nice for topping a fresh salad.

I must say I was surprised by a few things concerning Patio Princess. My plants look nothing like the picture featured on Burpee’s website. Their plant is compact with the fruit trailing over the sides of the pot. Mine, on the other hand, grew much taller than I expected (2 feet), and once the fruit began to grow in size I was forced to stake the plants for fear of the fruit tearing the plants apart from the weight. Patio Princess is closer to a miniature version of a regular tomato plant, and might be more aptly described as a dwarf tomato plant.

Overall, I count the Patio Princess a success where space is limited or rules don’t allow a vegetable garden. I plan on planting these again next summer.