The new-for-2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map for Pennsylvania.

   After 8 years of work, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated the map for the first time since 1990, and it shows that most of the country is 1 to 2 degrees warmer in winter.

   That’s important because this is the data that plant-sellers use to determine what plants are likely to croak in a given area’s winter. Zone numbers are on all plant tags.

   Garden-center buyers generally steer clear of anything outside of their zone, meaning that gardeners who want to “push the envelope” have to go south to buy or order their border-line plants via mail.

   Up to now, the Harrisburg area has been rated a Zone 6 — indicative of areas where the winter low, on average, bottoms out between 0 and minus 10 degrees.

   Under the new map, about half of our area has inched into the warmer Zone 7– with typical winter lows of 0 to 10 degrees above.

   That’s not only consistent with what’s happening nationwide, it’s consistent with what local gardeners have been seeing in the trenches.

   Plants that we considered “iffy” in our winter just a few years ago are now fairly safe bets.

   We’ve had little trouble lately growing previously “southern” fare such as crape myrtles, nandinas, cherry laurels, hardy camellias, osmanthus and even passion vines and figs.

   One upshot is that the new map — posted online at www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov — might make these plants more widely available. It also is likely to affect the shipping dates of plants bought by mail.

   But before you rush out and plant a grove of palm trees, know that the hardiness map has its limits.

   Most important: There’s a big difference between averages and trends, which the hardiness map measures, and weather, which as any gardener knows, can be punishingly fickle.

   Just because the map says downtown Harrisburg only goes down to 1.3 degrees in an average winter doesn’t mean we won’t get a minus-15 night some week soon. That kind of one-time event is enough to kill an otherwise Harrisburg-hardy plant.

   Figuring out what data to use in the first place is part of what took this update so long.

   The last time the map was updated, researchers used readings from 1974-1986 — a colder 13-year period.

   This time, the team of climatologists, horticulturists and researchers decided that a 30-year window would be more accurate. So they used readings from more than 8,000 U.S. weather stations between 1976 and 2005.

Notice how the grass has browned first nearest the hot spot next to the asphalt road.

   Minute but important specifics also were factored in for the first time, such as whether an area was close to a body of water, atop a peak or in an urban “heat island” surrounded by concrete and asphalt.

   The result is a much more detailed map that measures differences down to the half-mile.

   The new map also added two warm-weather zones (13 total now), and further broke down the 10-degree zones into 5-degree subzones, designated by “a” and “b.”

   It’s very specific, and you can even go online and type in your Zip code to get an exact reading for your neighborhood.

   Pennsylvania now ranges from Zone 5a (-15 to -20 degrees) to Zone 7b (5 to 10).

   Most of the northern-tier counties, plus a mountainous band leading down through Clearfield, Cambria and Somerset counties, are in Zone 5.

   None of central Pennsylvania is in Zone 5 anymore, and most of the West Shore and the area surrounding Harrisburg is into Zone 7a (0 to 5 degrees).

   As you head out into the countryside and north of Harrisburg, the lows and the zone ratings go down.

   My Hampden Twp. neighborhood, for example, is Zone 7a with an average winter low of 0.3. Camp Hill (0.8) and Middletown (1.1) are in the same zone.

   But head out a little into Silver Spring Twp. and the rating changes to Zone 6b with a low of minus 0.3.

   Palmyra (-1.5), Hershey (-0.4) and Millersburg (-2.2) also are rated Zone 6b.

   Keep going into Hegins (-5.6) or Shamokin (-5.4) and the zone drops to 6a.

   That’s remarkably accurate to how veteran gardeners in these areas garden. Folks in Millersburg and Hegins usually wait a week or two longer to plant their tender annuals and tomatoes than do the Camp Hillers and Mechanicsburgers.

   Nevertheless, even the level of detail in our official “new normal” doesn’t matter as much as knowing the microclimates in your own yard.

   We all have specific spots that can vary by the equivalent or one or even two growing zones.

   That borderline shrub that you site next to a west-facing brick wall has a much better chance of surviving than the same one planted at the base of a slope where a surprise late frost might congregate.

   In other words, the hardiness map is a good guide, but it’ll never replace the wisdom of a gardener who’s paying attention.

    A look at some average winter lows and new plant hardiness zones.

Pennsylvania:

Bradford, Zone 5a (-16.2)

Altoona, Zone 6a (-6.2)

State College, Zone 6b (-4.4)

Pittsburgh, Zone 6b (-3.1)

Gettysburg, Zone 6b (-2.7)

Fort Indiantown Gap, Zone 6b (-2.4)

New Bloomfield, Zone 6b (-2.3)

Mt. Gretna, Zone 6b (-2.0)

York, Zone 6b (-2.0)

Dillsburg, Zone 6b (-1.3)

Elizabethtown, Zone 6b (-0.6)

Carlisle, Zone 6b (-0.5)

Mechanicsburg, Zone 6b (-0.1)

Lancaster, Zone 6b (0)

Penbrook, Zone 7a (0.4)

Longwood Gardens, Zone 7a (0.5)

Red Lion, Zone 7a (0.8)

New Cumberland, Zone 7a (1.1)

Steelton, Zone 7a (2.1)

Philadelphia, Zone 7b (6.0)

Elsewhere:

Minneapolis, Zone 4b (-21.8)

Boston, Zone 6b (-0.6)

Nashville, Tenn., Zone 7a (2.5)

New York City, Zone 7b (5.6)

Washington, Zone 7b (5.6)

Baltimore, Zone 7b (8.7)

Seattle, Zone 8b (18.6)

Orlando, Zone 9b (27.1)

San Diego, Zone 10b (35.2)

San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zone 13a (63.1)

Here's a January garden I like... St. Peter Greathouse on St. Thomas.

   It was magnificent, and it not only lopped nearly 2 weeks off winter, it gave me a look at plants and gardens of the Caribbean. Click here to see a slide show of pictures from the trip.

   Here are my top 10 observations on how gardening in the Caribbean is different from gardening in central Pennsylvania:

   1.) Caribbean gardeners don’t have to worry about deer, groundhogs and rabbits. However, goats might eat your pineapples on Antigua, and gardeners on St. Kitts gave up growing bananas because of the wild monkeys (two for every one person on the island).

   2.) Pest bugs are surprisingly rare. No Japanese beetles, no emerald ash borers, and people don’t even have screens in their windows. One of the main worries is a moth the size of a bat that produces one heckuva leaf-eating caterpillar.

   3.) Be careful when picking your mangos on St. Maarten. You might grab the tail of a very large tree-climbing iguana.

   4.) Like our tomatoes, bananas are so much sweeter when picked fresh. Coconut water is still bland – fresh or packaged – and cocoa beans are much better after they’re processed into milk chocolate. The beans are slimy but sweet. St. Lucians suck on them raw and call them “jungle M&Ms.”

This St. Lucian woody plant is nicknamed the "walking tree."

    5.) They’ve got some crazy plants in the Caribbean. The traveler’s palm looks like a huge green mohawk haircut on a pole, and its fronds always line up east to west no matter how you plant it. The screw pine is a tree that puts out a few dozen angled trunks that look like legs, hence the nickname “walking tree.” And the pink torch lily is a beautiful allium-like pink bloomer that apparently doesn’t like people. It dies if you touch it. (No, I didn’t touch it to see… I took our guide’s word for it.)

   6.) Everything seems to grow bigger and more colorful on the islands. It’s amazing what regular rain, abundant sunshine and a growing season that never ends can do. (For more on this, see my Patriot-News garden column coming up in the Feb. 2, 2012, edition.)

   7.) The Caribbean really doesn’t have seasons as we know them. Temperatures stay in the 70s and 80s all year long, and day lengths vary little. Some islands (and parts of islands) are drier than others, but the rainforest of St. Lucia gets 160 inches a year – more than triple the amount we got in our record-setting monsoon year last year. Their “seasons” come in just two forms: dry and wet.

   8.)The three Caribbean landscape plants I most wish we could grow are: bougainvillea (a bushy vine that’s covered in deep pink or lavender flowers); oleander (an upright shrub with narrow leaves and big pink flowers at the top), and clerodendrum (a small tree with spidery purple and white flower clusters).

The bougainvillea is a tropical plant I wish we could grow year round in our landscapes.

   9.) Caribbean gardens are filled with plants we think of as “houseplants.” Peace lilies and chenille plants are popular shade plants. Philodendrons, wandering jews and snake plants grow as groundcovers. Crotons grow as 6-foot-tall hedges, and cordylines, hibiscus and copper plants are popular sun shrubs.

   10.) Maybe we can’t grow all of the lush, colorful, tropical stuff, but Caribbean islanders can’t grow many of the beauties we can. I saw no dogwoods, no hydrangeas, no maples, no rhododendrons and very few roses. Without seasons, there’s no dormant time that triggers such landscape action as spring bulbs, May-blooming shrubs and fall foliage. I don’t think I’ll move there, but 80 degrees in late January sure felt good.

   Most of them are bus day trips, but these botanical jaunts also have taken me to Ireland, the Pacific Northwest, South Africa and this April, to the Netherlands.

   I love seeing what’s possible with plants in different settings. The diversity never ceases to amaze me, and I usually come home with at least a few new ideas and new plants I just have to try.

A scene from last year's Philadelphia Flower Show.

   If you’ve never been along on one of these trips, click here to check out the new 2012 schedule.

   A good “starter” trip would be one to see the Philadelphia Flower Show. This is an unbelievable spectacle that even non-gardeners appreciate, and it’s strategically placed at the beginning of March when we all can use a day among wall-to-wall blooming plants.

   A bus is by far the best way to see this show. It’s held in the middle of Philly (the Pa. Convention Center), and it’s a hassle to drive to, what with fighting the Schuylkill traffic, paying tolls and then spending another $20 to park.

   With the bus, you get dropped off and picked up at the front door. The driver deals with the hassles.

   The trips I do through Lowee’s Tours of Harrisburg have the added bonus of a traveling garden seminar on the way down. Besides playing garden trivia and giving away prizes, I’ve got a PowerPoint to help you get the most out of your show trip.

   It’s kind of like a military-strike plan. I show you the streetscape to plan lunch, the show floor to maximize flower-ogling time and some little secrets to escape the crowds (and get yourself some of the best bread this side of Europe).

   We leave later in the morning and stay later into the evening in order to beat the crowds a bit. We ran three trips last year and all filled, so we added a fourth this year: March 5, 7, 8 and 9.

   The price is $79 for everything, which includes your show ticket. To sign up, call Lowee’s at 717-657-9658.

   The second trip I’d suggest is the 2-nighter we’re doing July 27-29 to see Garden Walk Buffalo — the nation’s largest walking garden tour with some 370 gardens open to see.

   It’s huge, impressive and a ton of fun (if you’re a gardener, that is). This is one of the best places to get ideas for your own landscape because these are all ordinary folks who have done some interesting things in the yard.

Buffalo's Japanese Garden, which we'll also tour.

   Besides spending two whole days at Garden Walk, we’re stopping at a winery and Sonnenberg Gardens in New York’s Finger Lakes region on the way up. Cost is $399, including two nights hotel, four meals and a Lake Erie cruise.

   If you can swing just a day trip, think about the June 22 trip to see Jenny Rose Carey’s home garden near Ambler in southeastern Pa. Jenny is the director of Temple University’s Ambler Arboretum, but her own 4½-acre garden is my favorite home garden of all time (and I’ve seen a lot of them).

   You’ll see textbook examples of “garden rooms” there, and also some fun and interesting features, like her stumpery, her watering-can collection and a giant brass tea kettle that you might recognize from a past Philadelphia Flower Show.

   That trip is $115, including lunch and trips to the Ambler Arboretum and a second private garden that features conifers and bonsai.

   We’re also going to see New York City’s High Line gardens, the U.S. National Arboretum, and around Christmas time, three trips to the New York Botanical Gardens, Longwood Gardens and the U.S. Botanic Garden.

   Get more details on all of the 2012 trips at www.georgeweigel.net/georges-talks-and-trips. Lowee’s operates them, and Stauffers of Kissel Hill garden centers sponsors them (kicking in several $25 gift cards on each trip).

   Trips leave from East Shore and West Shore locations.

   An excellent web site for consumer reviews of these and just about all other mail-order companies is Dave’s Garden. It has a “Garden Watchdog” service that’s akin to a Better Business Bureau for gardening. Search out companies and read reviews at http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd.

   Here are 10 of my favorite mail-order companies:

Baker Creek catalog.

   1.) Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, Mansfield, Missouri. www.rareseeds.com. 417-924-8917.

   This down-home company has fast become THE source for all things heirloom. The flagship seed catalog is loaded not only with great old-time, non-Frankenfood varieties (the ‘Ali Baba’ watermelon from Iraq, the alien-looking ‘Reisetomate’ tomato, the variegated ‘Fish’ hot pepper) but some edible oddities you’ve probably never seen, like the Chinese red noodle bean, the jelly melon (an African cucumber-like fruit) and the ‘Rat’s Tail’ radish (has edible seed pods).

   The paper catalog is big, informative and has the best photography of any catalog out there. And the company now has a book, “The Heirloom Life Gardener” by Jere and Emilee Gettle (Hyperion Books, $29.95, 2011), an 84-page magazine, “Heirloom Gardener,” and an annual symposium. It’s earned a spot on the prestigious Dave’s Garden Watchdog Top 30 of all companies.

   2.) Territorial Seed Co., Cottage Grove, Oregon. www.territorialseed.com. 800-626-0866.

  If you’re a veggie gardener looking for excellent varieties — whether they’re heirlooms or the latest, greatest hybrids — this is one of the best mainstream catalogs.  

Territorial Seed catalog.

The artwork isn’t the biggest or flashiest, but the selection is outstanding. You’ll find lots of choices for every crop — not just two or three.

   I’ve always had quick service, good seed germination and decent prices. One of Dave’s Gardens Top 5 for vegetable seeds, too.

   3.) Jung Seed Co., Randolph, Wisconsin. www.jungseed.com. 800-297-3123.

   One of a 9-company operation (Totally Tomatoes, Vermont Bean Seed, R.H. Shumway Seeds, etc.), I like Jung because it’s got a good mix of vegetables and flowers and tends to carry most of the new introductions.

   I’ve always received what I ordered pretty quickly and have had good results with the seeds. Another good mainstream choice.

   4.) Pinetree Garden Seeds, New Gloucester, Maine. www.superseeds.com. 207-926-3400.

   Experimenters and small-space gardeners should take a look at this family-owned company, which specializes in smaller packets at low prices.

   Instead of the $3 a pack that’s become the norm, Pinetree keeps most choices under $2. Where else can you still find ‘Detroit Dark Red’ beets and ‘National Picking’ cukes for 95 cents a pack?

   The selection isn’t as broad as some catalogs, but it’ll hold down your costs and give you better quality than the dirt-cheap, poor-quality choices sometimes found at bargain outlets. Offers both edibles and flowers.

   5.) Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Winslow, Maine.  www.johnnyseeds.com.  877-564-6697. 

   The last of my fave-five seed companies is this employee-owned company that has a nice selection of exclusive varieties as well as organic and heirloom options.

   It also carries most of the All-America Selections winners and other new intros, and it offers flowers and garden products in addition to its strong suit of veggie seeds. Another of Dave’s Gardens Top 5 vegetable-seed sellers.

Brent and Becky's catalog.

   6.) Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, Gloucester, Virginia. www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com. 877-661-2852.

   Run by some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, this is the place for ordering just about any spring or summer bulb you’d ever want to grow.

   You’ll find endless variety choices in the most familiar bulbs (tulips, daffodils) but also a long lineup of really cool plants that you don’t see just anywhere, like Allium christophii (an ornamental onion that blooms like a purple exploding star), a yellow-blooming blackberry lily called ‘Hello Yellow,’ and more than a dozen versions of fall crocuses.

   One of the Dave’s Garden Watchdog’s Top 30 of all companies.

   7.) Renee’s Garden, Felton, Calif. www.reneesgarden.com. 831-335-8257.

   Also in the run-by-very-nice-people category is Renee Shepherd’s Renee’s Garden seed catalog. You’ll find a nice mix of heirlooms and hybrids here and especially a good selection of old-fashioned “cottage-garden” flowers like zinnias, larkspur and cosmos in addition to herbs and vegetables.

   The web site is rich in info, too (i.e. building a vole-proof raised bed, attracting beneficial insects, when to plant what.)

   8.) One Green World, Molalla, Oregon. www.onegreenworld.com. 877-353-4028.

   For unusual edibles, this mail-order company has every fruit tree and fruit bush you’ve probably ever heard of — and then some.

   It’s where I ordered a goumi berry, medlar tree and persimmon for my son, and it’s a source for such fare as Asian pears, honeyberries, goji berries, jujubes, Cornelian cherries and an interesting selection of heirloom apples.

   The plants will be small, so be patient.

   9.) Planet Natural Garden Supply, Bozeman, Montana. www.planetnatural.com. 800-289-6656.

   If it’s supplies and not plants you’re looking for, this company specializes in all sorts of natural and organic gardening products.

   Been searching for Jamaican bat guano? Planet Natural has it. Compost tea bags? Check. Beneficial insects? Check. Neem oil for bugs? Check.

   My prize Planet Natural purchase was the stainless steel compost pail that I bought for under my sink. It’s sturdy, doesn’t rust and doesn’t smell.

   10.) Gardener’s Supply Co., Burlington, Vermont. www.gardeners.com. 888-833-1412.

   Hundreds and hundreds of yard and garden supplies are available at this employee-owned company, founded by a group of Vermont gardeners. Gardener’s Supply offers just about everything from basics like fertilizers and plant supports to cutting-edge items like nitrile gloves and grow bags to bigger-ticket items like grow-light systems and teak furniture.

   Other than seeds and plants, if it has to do with gardening, odds are you’ll find it at Gardener’s Supply. Has a very good customer track record at Dave’s Garden Watchdog.

   11.) Kinsman Co., Pipersville, Pa. www.kinsmangarden.com. 800-733-4146.

   OK, I couldn’t stop at 10. Here’s a bonus pick…

   Not as big or well known as Gardener’s Supply, this Bucks County-based company has a pretty decent lineup of gardening accessories, including fertilizers, plant markers, a nifty garden labeler and hand tools.

   But its strongest suit is in unusual planters and plant supports. Some of the neatest are the “basket columns” (a way to turn your pots into mini-trees), the Down Under Pots (the plants grow out the bottom instead of the top) and a nice variety of metal hayrack planters, window boxes and multi-level planters.

When you think about all the things that can – and often do – go wrong, it’s a wonder anything makes it for very long.

Bugs munch on leaves.

Rabbits, deer and groundhogs chew plants to the ground while voles finish off the roots.

Various diseases can denude trees and shrubs, cause tumor-like growths on limbs or clog up plant vessels faster than a sumo wrestler on a doughnut-only diet.

And do you know the difference between damage from monsoon and drought (which we sometimes get in the same week)? A monsoon causes a fast, root-rotting plant death while a drought causes a slow, root-shriveling death.

The tough part for home gardeners is figuring out what’s causing – or about to cause – a plant’s demise.

That’s not even easy for professionals because unlike people, plants can’t point to where it hurts. Nor can they tell you when the problem started or what was going on around them at the time.

“It’s a lot like playing detective,” says Lisa Blum, a plant pathologist who taught horticulture for 18 years at Temple University before taking a teaching job at W.B. Saul High School, Philadelphia’s esteemed school for agricultural sciences.

Blum likes to call diagnosing plant problems “Plant CSI” because it’s so similar to the popular forensics Crime Scene Investigation TV show (except without the commercial breaks and dramatic confessions).

Unless you catch a groundhog waddling away with your cabbage between his teeth, all you’re usually going to have are sometimes-obscure signs and symptoms, she says.

Signs are direct clues – things you can see that are likely causing the trouble. That would include things like pepper-sized leaf fungi viewed under a hand lens; little brown “pellets” (rabbit poop) next to the chewed-off petunias, or as once happened to me, a gaping, fender-high gash in an oak trunk where a drunken teen-ager had driven his car down my sidewalk the night before.

“I love it when people seal a problem in a plastic bag WITH the insect or fungi that caused it,” Blum says.

Symptoms are tougher. These are how plants have reacted to a problem. The best we can do with them is deduce what might have caused the reaction.

That’s particularly hard because the same symptom can be caused by a lot of different things.

Take wilting, for example.

Then again, leaves might wilt from animals chewing the roots, or from Verticillium fungi clogging the vessels, or from intense heat, or from over-fertilizing, or from pot-bound plants in solid clay, or…  you get the picture.

Sometimes patterns of trouble on a plant can give you important clues.

Diseases, for instance, often work their way up a tree or shrub from the bottom, while problems on just one side can indicate things like sun or wind damage or possibly herbicide spray drift.

So what CAN you do besides throw up your hands and pray for God to cut you a botanical break?

For starters, know what plants you have.

“Usually, we identify a problem by comparing what’s normal with what’s abnormal,” Blum says. “So first, you have to know what normal is.”

A good example is the beautiful baby Korean stewartia tree I planted in my back yard a few years ago. Its bark has started peeling off, which seems ominous unless you know that’s what it normally does.

Ditto if you plant a larch or a dawn redwood that starts dropping its needles in fall. These are “evergreens” that aren’t evergreens… They’re conifers that lose their needles every year like maples lose their leaves.

Or if you’re buying a winterberry holly, be aware that only the females get berries – and only then when a male with an overlapping bloom time pollinates her.

Next, pay attention to your landscape. Take regular walks to enjoy the plants, and while you’re gawking and sniffing, watch for early signs and symptoms that something’s amiss.

Even if you have no idea what could be causing a problem, at least if you know the plant and know something’s not normal, you’ve got a shot at figuring it out.

Penn State Extension’s cadre of Master Gardeners is an excellent source of help. Most counties have them, and some, like Cumberland and Dauphin, have regular hours when they man phones or clinics.

Most garden centers also have staffers who can help ID a problem if you take a clipping or bagged bug in.

And these days, the Internet offers a growing number of sites with photos, question guides and free tip sheets to help zero in on exact problems and their treatments. (See below for some online and other help sources.)

I should point out that one of the worst things you can do is just start spraying something in hopes that it’ll magically cure the problem.

Maybe you’ll guess right. But then again, you might kill off the “good bugs” that are helping keep a lid on all sorts of other potential problems. Or you might make a problem worse or at the least, waste your time and money while needlessly polluting.

The smarter approach is to: A.) Make sure you’ve really got a problem; B.) Figure out what that problem is; C.) Determine if it’s a serious enough problem that you need to intervene, and D.) Choose the least disruptive treatment to get the job done.

That might not make great TV, but it makes boringly good sense.

   Some things that go wrong with plants and what may cause it:

* Plant is yellowing all over: Poor soil fertility; extreme heat; light is too intense or lacking; plant is pot bound.

* Young leaves are yellow: Not enough light; iron or manganese deficiency in the soil; excessive fertilizer.

* Old leaves are yellow: Nitrogen, magnesium or potassium deficiency in the soil; overwatering; natural aging of leaves; plant is pot bound; roots are rotting.

* Random leaves or needles yellowing or browning:Mite damage; herbicide spray drift; root or stem injury; stem galls.

* Holes in leaves: Caterpillar, slug or other bug damage; fungal leaf spot disease; hail or wind damage.

* Mosaic pattern of light and dark green on leaves: Viral infection; excessive heat; pesticide damage; nutrient deficiency in the soil.

* Leaves brown around the edges: Wind damage; excessive salt in the soil; lack of water; excessive fertilizer; pesticide damage; air pollution.

* Leaves falling off: Excessive fertilizer; lack of water; reaction to move or transplanting; cold damage; pesticide damage; lack of light; rotting roots; natural life cycle of plant.

* Leaves wilted: Under- or over-watering; excessive fertilizer; roots or stems rotting; rodent damage to roots; pesticide damage; frost damage; excessive heat.

* Weak growth and/or gradual dieback of branches: Lack of water; root injury or girdling roots; compacted soil; plant was planted too deeply; excessive mulch; poor soil nutrition; lack of light.

   Source: Penn State Extension, Dr. Gary Moorman

A few resources to help you track down plant problems:

* “Woody Ornamental Insect, Mite and Disease Management.” An 86-page guide from Penn State Extension that describes dozens of the most common plant bugs and diseases plant by plant and suggests treatments. $15. Order at this web site.

* A rundown with sketches on most of what can go wrong with plants and how to zero in on what it might be in your case: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/426/426-714/426-714.html

* University of Maryland’s Landscape Problem Solver. A free and superb online plant diagnostic web site that walks you through a series of choices (all with pictures) to help you zero in on likely causes. It’s at http://plantdiagnostics.umd.edu.

* Penn State University’s Plant Disease Diagnostic Laboratory. Based at Buckhout Lab in University Park, this service accepts samples of hurting plants, examines them and sends a report on the findings. Details are at http://plantpath.psu.edu/facilities/plant-disease-clinic

* Check out the book “What’s Wrong With My Plant?” by Dan Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth (Timber Press, 2009). It’s loaded with great images to help you match up your problems, and it tells you how to address the problem without poisoning yourself or the environment.

Those are all fruits, by the way. Tasty and nutritious ones, too. And very easy to grow with little pruning and no spraying.

Yet most people have never even heard of those plants, much less grown or eaten them.

Reich is a kind of new-age Johnny Appleseed, attempting to make America more fruitful by spreading the word about uncommon fruits rather than by spreading seeds with a pot on his head.

This former Cornell University fruit researcher and soil scientist has written a book called “Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden” (Timber Press, $24.95, 2004).

The gist of it is that American gardeners are pretty much out of the fruit loop. Of all the categories of plants we grow, fruit has become the forbidden one.

Reich thinks that’s because we’ve been jaded by our not-so-successful attempts at growing the more familiar crops, such as apples.

“If you want to pick the one fruit that’s the hardest to grow, it’d be apples,” he says, ticking off the pruning demands and long list of pests and diseases that apple-growers have to deal with.

Yet that’s the first fruit crop gardeners here tend to try.

Those beaten down on the apple front also tend to try cherries, peaches, apricots, grapes and strawberries – only to find the going isn’t much easier.

Cherries and grapes are quick to rot without regular sprays. Apricots get hammered most years by late frost. Birds, weeds and rodents are obstacles in the strawberry patch.

And peaches? Considering frost, rot, leaf-curl disease, Japanese beetles and the recent brush with plum pox disease, it’s a miracle that anyone actually produces a ripe peach. I cut down my peach trees after overcoming all of those, only to find groundhogs up in the trees eating almost-ripe fruits right off the branches.

“A lot of these fruits, the only way you’re going to get to eat them is to grow them yourself because they’re not available in supermarkets,” he says. “I think people are interested lately in more exotic stuff.”

Home gardeners have the advantage of not having to worry about whether a particular fruit crop can be picked by machine or whether the fruits all ripen at the same time to maximize labor efficiency.

We don’t have to worry about whether a fruit bruises while shipping.

We don’t have to care that it’s a bit gnarly looking instead of bright, red and shiny.

We don’t have to worry about whether it’s going to start going bad just three or four days off the vine.

Home gardeners can pick fruit at the peak of ripeness and eat it that day. That’s one reason why home-grown fruits taste better and are packed with more nutrition than even the exact same variety grown for retail.

“I especially like dessert fruits – the kind of things that you can walk down the garden and eat out of hand,” says Reich.

He also doesn’t like spraying or otherwise having to baby plants to coax the fruity reward out of them.

In other words, he likes the “kind of plants that you stick in the ground, water and weed for a couple of years, then pick fruit for 50 years.”

There are plenty of choices like that. Reich’s New York yard – and book – is filled with them.

Reich points out that you don’t have to grow fruits in orchards. Most of his uncommon suggestions look good enough to fit right into the landscape.

One of his favorite examples is how he replaced a prune-happy forsythia hedge with a line of Nanking cherries (Prunus tomentosa).

This no-spray shrubby member of the cherry family tops out at 10 feet (less with a single annual pruning), produces pink flowers in spring and then is loaded with small, red, sweet-tart fruits in June.

“The fruit doesn’t keep well, and birds and squirrels like it, too,” says Reich, “but it fruits so heavily that there’s plenty left for you. And it makes a great hedge.”

Another low-care small tree is the medlar (Mespilus germanica), which was popular as far back as the Middle Ages. It blooms white in late spring and then produces golfball-sized, apple-like fruits that have little spikes on the bottom.

“The fruit is not all that pretty,” Reich says. “But it tastes like a rich apple sauce with a little wine and cinnamon mixed in.”

And it needs no spraying.

Two other slightly larger and no-spray fruiting trees that Reich likes a lot are the American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) – “It tastes like apricots soaked in water with a little honey and spices” – and the native pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) – “The kidney-shaped fruits taste like banana with a hint of avocado, mango and custard.”

See below for 10 more choices that Reich believes are worthy of greater use.

Then hope the neighborhood Japanese beetles and groundhogs don’t develop the same new tastes that you do…

* Ten more uncommon but tasty and low-care fruits author Lee Reich suggests for central-Pennsylvania gardens:

   1.) Gooseberry (Ribes). Multi-stemmed shrub with grape-sized tart to semi-sweet fruits. Excellent in pies.

3.) Alpine strawberry (Fragaria vesca). A short, compact perennial that produces small red or white strawberries all summer. Also makes a nice edging plant.

4.) Lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium). A low, woody trailer that produces small blueberries in summer. Makes a nice groundcover and has great fall foliage.

5.) Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). A compact bush with glossy evergreen leaves and red fruits that are similar to cranberries.

6.) Hardy kiwi (Actinidia arguta or kolomikta). An attractive woody vine that produces hanging white flowers followed by sweet, smooth, grape-sized fruits (not the egg-shaped fuzzy ones like in the grocery store).

7.) Serviceberry (Amelanchier). Also known as “juneberry,” a small tree that flowers white and produces small blueberry-like fruits that taste more like almond-tinged cherries.

8.) Gumi (Elaeagnus multiflora). Much better known in the Orient, this 6- to 10-foot flowering shrub gets small, tart, cherry-like fruits in July. Also known as the “cherry silverberry.”

9.) Shipova (x Sorboyrus auricularis). A small tree that’s a cross between mountain ash and pear. Flowers white with fruits similar in taste and texture to pear.

10.) Clove currant (Ribes odoratum). Midwestern native shrub that blooms yellow in early spring and gets tart black fruits in early summer.

* Where to buy?

Local garden centers carry some varieties of uncommon fruits. For those you can’t find but want to try, here are a few mail-order sources:

* Edible Landscaping Nursery, Afton, Va. 800-524-4156. www.eat-it.com.

* Hidden Springs Nursery, Cookeville, Tenn. 931-268-2592. www.hiddenspringsnursery.com.

* Oikos Tree Crops, Kalamazoo, Miss. 269-624-6233. www.oikostreecrops.com.

* One Green World, Molalla, Ore. 877-353-4028. www.onegreenworld.com.

* Raintree Nursery, Morton, Wash. 360-496-6400. www.raintreenursery.com.

* Saint Lawrence Nurseries, Potsdam, N.Y. 315-265-6739. www.sln.potsdam.ny.us.

Helleborus 'HGC Pink Frost' blooming already.

   One is that the landscape is unusually colorful for this time of year.

   And second is that some of my plants are doing odd things they’re not supposed to be doing in early January.

   A nice surprise was the beautiful pink flower – just one – on my new helleborus (Lenten rose) ‘HGC Pink Frost.’ There it was – open in full glory among its still green and glossy foot-tall foliage.

   Helleborus are normally the first perennials to open for the season, but I didn’t think we were there yet. A January-blooming perennial is strange, but I’ll take it.

   Then on the opposite, western side of the house, I noticed a big, fat flower bud on my ‘Perfume Delight’ rose, looking to be just days from popping open. The plant still has some green leaves, too.

   I can’t decide if the confused thing thinks it’s still fall or whether it’s already starting on 2012’s bloom. Ditto for the ‘Pink Chablis’ lamium, which also are blooming pink with more buds on the way.

   The Virginia sweetspires also haven’t lost all of their deep-red fall leaves yet, but the showiest “hanger-on-er” is my spirea ‘Ogon’ (Mellow Yellow).

Spirea 'Ogon' still in fall-foliage mode.

   This superb shrub with the narrow, willow-like foliage is an eye-grabber all growing season with its bright golden color. But it’s supposed to turn russet-gold in fall, then drop its leaves for winter.

   The plant turned slightly russet back in November, but it’s stayed in peak fall form ever since. It’s still a loose, russet-gold ball of four-season fire here in early January. I guess it hasn’t turned sufficiently cold enough for Mellow Yellow to realize fall is gone, and it’s time to call it quits.

   I’ve heard of similar odd plant-bloom gymnastics going on elsewhere, such as at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, where the snowdrop bulbs are already in flower. Jamie Shiffer, the operations manager over at Hershey Gardens, tells me they’ve got bulb foliage poking up and a few roses blooming, too.

   The lack of any searing cold winds and single-digit temperatures has boded well for broadleaf evergreens, which often brown around the edges when snow cover doesn’t protect them.

   Despite the lack of cover, my evergreen shrubs such as camellias, nandina, boxwoods and hollies are looking pristine.

Leucothoe 'Rainbow' looking good in January.

   Two in particular looking better than ever are leucothoe ‘Rainbow,’ an arching little shrub that’s now a deep blood red, and osmanthus ‘Goshiki,’ a holly look-alike that’s now a variegated combo of light green and creamy white.

   Is it time to start thinking gardenias in Harrisburg?

   Even more striking are the evergreen perennials dotted around my yard.

   A lot of people don’t realize that there are a fair number of perennial flowers that don’t die back to the ground for winter. Species such as helleborus, liriope, coralbells, lamium, ajuga and some of the creeping sedums are examples of perennials that hold their leaves to varying degrees over winter.

   This year, all of those are still in mid-season form in my yard, while a few usual fall-droppers still haven’t defoliated.

   My patch of barrenwort ‘Rubrum,’ for example, is brown, but the heart-shaped leaves are mostly intact and looking better than January’s usual bareness.

The calendar says January, but this corner of my yard looks like October.

   My two St. Johnsworts ‘Albury Purple’ are still holding onto vibrant deep-purple leaves with no signs of browning yet. I’d guess it’s October from the look of them.

   And best of all is a patch of creeping sedum ‘Angelina’ next to a swoop of coralbells ‘Dolce’ planted under a cutleaf Japanese maple. The sedum is still full and bright gold in color, while the neighboring coralbells are deep purple/burgundy.

   Who’d guess it’s January from the look of that?

   We’ve still got a lot of winter ahead of us, and I suspect we’ll get nailed at least a time or two before it’s over.

   But I’m liking what I’m seeing in this confused landscape so far.

Thankfully, most of the time these shrubs do flower. But sometimes, the shrub that flowered so profusely in past years is now barely putting out a blooming dribble.

Or that shrub that was flowering its head off in the garden-center pot is absolutely refusing to cough up so much as a bud in your garden.

Or maybe it’s that wisteria that was literally dripping flowers in the catalog photo is churning out nothing more than twining green branches and annoying roots in real life.

There are a lot of potential explanations for these non-performances.

Dr. Jim Sellmer, assistant professor of ornamental horticulture at the Pennsylvania State University, has fielded his share of calls about this, and he says bloom-deprived gardeners are usually “concerned, confused and wondering whether they had done something to cause the problem.”

In many cases, the answer is yes, they really DID unwittingly do something wrong. “Operator error” is at the heart of many a missing bloom.

One of the most common mistakes is pruning off the flower buds before they’ve had a chance to open.

“By February or March, many people are tired of being inside, and they heard once that then is a good time to prune,” says Sellmer.

While late-winter pruning is fine for evergreens and summer-flowering shrubs, it’s NOT fine for spring bloomers. If you prune these heavily, you might whack off every last one of their flower-buds-in-waiting.

“The best advice is to know when your plants flower,” says Sellmer. “A general rule of thumb is spring-flowering plants (ones that bloom March through June) should be pruned right AFTER flowering. Summer-flowering plants (ones that bloom July through fall) should be pruned in the dormant season or just before spring growth starts.” (See the list below for specifics.)

Also high on the operator-error list is putting the wrong plant in the wrong place – usually in too much shade. Some plants will bloom in part shade, some really need full sun and only a few will bloom in deep shade.

“Get to know the requirements of your plants before you buy them and place them in the landscape,” says Sellmer. “If the tag or one of the many references that are available say full sun is the right location, heed that and put them in full sun.”

Occasionally plants get “blind-sided” by sites that used to be full sun but are now shaded because a nearby tree grew. That’s one clue to consider if you have a flowering shrub that used to bloom well but has been going downhill.

Sometimes we cause trouble by being TOO nice to our shrubs. Usually it boils down to over-fertilizing.

While it’s true that lack of phosphorus – the middle number of fertilizer labels – can be a factor in poor blooming, it’s equally true that too much nitrogen (the first number) can cause overly lush foliage at the expense of flowers.

One way to screw up your plant’s nutrition is by over-using a fertilizer high in nitrogen. Most lawn fertilizers are very high in nitrogen, so if you’re putting down four applications of that right next to your shrub beds, you could be hurting your shrub flowers while you help your grass.

It’s also possible to overdo the nitrogen by repeated use of balanced fertilizers – ones that have equal or nearly equal amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (the third key plant nutrient).

Sellmer says he cringes when he sees ads that liquid fertilizer companies run encouraging gardeners to regularly apply fertilizer.

“You can keep a plant in a continuous vegetative state by hitting it too often with high-nitrogen fertilizers or too much of a balanced fertilizer too often,” he says. “We fall into the trap that more is better.”

Sellmer says one sign of too much nitrogen is looking at the branches to see how much distance there is between the leaf stems. If there is a lot of distance and if the branches are weak and “leggy,” that could be a sign that you’re overdoing it.

He also suggests a soil test so you won’t be guessing what product to add and how often.

If it turns out that out-of-whack soil nutrition is your main problem, it’s going to take some time to return it to balance. There is no Viagra for plants to get them producing immediately.

“Follow the recommendations that come back with the (soil) test and be patient,” says Sellmer. “Buy some annuals to intermix with the shrubs to give you that flash of color you’re dying for until your plants start blooming.”

Shrubs that have been moved also fall into this category. It may take a year or two for a transplanted shrub to get used to its new home and begin flowering again.

“Being dug up is a traumatic experience,” says Sellmer. “When you cut a plant’s roots, it starts trying to re-establish the natural balance between the roots and shoots. It will take time to re-establish, which requires significant energy and time… The plant’s growth rate will be challenged, and flowering will not be its first priority.

“Flowers are very expensive, in terms of energy, for a plant to produce and maintain. When under stress, most often the energy is directed toward solving the imbalance in the system.”

Transplanting isn’t the only stress that can lead to poor or no flowering. Planting shrubs too deeply, in the wrong light, in poor soil or in too-damp or too-dry sites are stresses, too. So are bugs, disease, rodent damage, air pollution, road salt and other environmental problems.

“Basically any stress that is put on a plant can hinder flowering,” says Sellmer.

The solution here is to do a little police work, look for cultural and environmental problems, correct as many of the wrongs as you can, and then give the plant a chance to bounce back.

Sometimes it’s not one big thing going wrong but a combination of these “smaller” things.

While pruning at the wrong time is one of those big things, not pruning at all might explain why a former star bloomer is now petering out.

Many flowering shrubs bloom best on fairly young wood – branches that are one to three years old. As branches age, they flower less and may even stop flowering at some point. If these aren’t removed to make way for young growth, the whole show starts going down the tubes.

Lilacs and mock orange are prime examples of this phenomenon. The solution is to remove about a third of the oldest growth each year so there’s always a steady supply of new growth hitting prime blooming time.

If all else fails, some shrubs (especially wisteria) respond to the rather drastic action of root pruning – severing about half of the plant’s roots about a foot out from the trunk. The theory is that the plant “thinks” its life might be endangered so it quickly tries to produce flowers in one last effort to procreate itself with the ensuing seed or pollen.

Sellmer thinks that if you get to that point, you’re probably better off trying another plant.

“There are too many plants available for the landscape for a wide variety of sites to limit yourself to this plant in this situation,” he says.

So go ahead and yank out the rebels if they don’t respond to your coaxing. That alluring little abelia in the white pot probably will be a lot more grateful anyway.

* Shrubs that are best pruned in winter or early spring before new growth starts: abelia, arborvitae, barberry, beautyberry, boxwood, burning bush, butterfly bush, chastebush (vitex), clematis (summer-blooming varieties), crape myrtle, euonymus, heather, holly, honeysuckle, hydrangea (summer-blooming varieties), potentilla, pyracantha, roses, rose of sharon, snowberry, St. John’s wort, spirea (Bumald and Japanese types), summersweet, Virginia sweetspire.

* Shrubs that are best pruned immediately AFTER they’ve bloomed: azalea, beautybush, bittersweet, clematis (spring-blooming varieties), cotoneaster, deutzia, dogwood, enkianthus, flowering almond, forsythia, heath, kerria, lilac, magnolia, mahonia, mock orange, mountain laurel, ninebark, pieris, quince, rhododendron, spicebush, sweetshrub, viburnum, weigela, witch hazel, wisteria.

 * Sidebar: Why didn’t my hollies get berries?

A similar problem to no-flowering shrubs is why hollies sometimes don’t get berries.

Females need a suitable male nearby (usually within 100 feet is fine) to provide the pollen needed to produce the berries. Without it, the female flowers will dry and drop off.

“Having flowers is only half the job,” says Dr. Jim Sellmer, assistant professor of ornamental horticulture at the Pennsylvania State University. “Having a pollinator – primarily bees – is also required. Watch your use of pesticides such as Sevin around flowering time. Bees are highly susceptible.”

Sellmer also advises planting other flowers that bloom at the same time as hollies to provide other pollen sources to help attract bees.

It’s also important to match males and females well. Hollies of different species do not cross-pollinate very well, so if you’re planting blue hollies, for example, make sure both the males and females are blue hollies.

The males and females also must be in bloom at the same time. That’s something that frequently goes wrong with winterberry hollies, the smooth-leafed types that drop their leaves in winter.

Some winterberry types bloom early and some bloom later. If you pick an early male and a late female, the bloom times might not overlap and pollination won’t occur.

Usually, nursery signs will tell you which males go with which females. If it’s not listed, ask before buying.

Sometimes the variety names make it easy to match-make. For example, ‘Blue Prince’ holly is a perfect mate for ‘Blue Princess,’ ‘China Boy’ goes with ‘China Girl’ and ‘Blue Boy’ goes with ‘Blue Girl.’

One male is usually enough to produce fruit on up to 20 females, so long as he is within 100 feet of them and there are adequate bees.

One other berry-stopping possibility is a late spring frost. If a sudden cold snap occurs when the holly flowers are opening, it may be enough to kill them before pollination and fruit setting take place.

Sound like something up your alley? Then give “forcing branches” a try.

OK, the term sounds deviant. But forcing branches really is nothing more than cutting live branches from trees and shrubs and causing them to bloom by putting them in water inside.

It’s one of those things that seems tricky but is actually incredibly easy – and cheap. Certainly easier than forcing bulbs. It’s a wonder more people don’t try it.

Plants that work best are those that naturally flower before May – things like fruit trees, lilacs, azaleas, rhododendrons, redbuds, witch hazels, forsythias and magnolias. These are species that produce their flower buds the year before.

Later bloomers such as butterfly bushes, hydrangeas, roses and summersweet can’t be forced because they will produce flowers on this year’s new wood.

Soaking the cut ends of forsythia branches in hot water.

Under normal circumstances, warming spring temperatures and lengthening days trigger flower buds to swell and open. Forcing fakes plants into speeding up the process.

The usual technique is simply to cut branches (or branch tips) and then plunge their cut ends in a bucket of very warm water. Temperatures of around 100 to 110 degrees are perfect – about as warm as you can stand putting your hands in. The branches should stay in that bucket for at least six hours.

Branches of a half-inch in diameter and less are ideal, and cuttings are best collected when outdoor temperatures are above freezing. Look for branches with plump buds. They’re usually the flower buds. Leaf buds are normally thinner.

The hot water helps move that first burst of moisture up into the stems. Also helpful is making a fresh angled cut an inch or two above the original cut before putting the branches in the water-filled vases in which they’re to be displayed.

Maximize display life by adding a little floral preservative, antibacterial mouthwash or lemon-lime soda to the water to prevent bacteria growth. One recipe calls for one tablespoon of mouthwash per quart of water.

Another option is to let the cut branches in the original bucket of water until they bloom. Then they can be moved into vases as needed.

Make a fresh cut whenever the cut ends are exposed to air. That exposure will lead to healing, and when the cut end seals, it can’t take up new water.

Most branches take two to four weeks inside before they bloom, although a few go as long as six weeks. Once in bloom, the flowers last about a week.

Add new preservative and top off the water each week. If the water discolors or begins to smell, replace it.

The earliest trees and shrubs to bloom are also the best ones to cut for earliest forcing. In general, the longer the time that branches are cut before their natural bloom, the longer it takes them to bloom inside.

Example: Forsythia branches cut around Christmas might not bloom for three to four weeks while ones cut in early March may open in a few days.

Chill time occurs at 40 degrees and less. Most of our spring bloomers will be ready to flower after about six weeks of chilling, but some of the late-spring bloomers need eight or 10 weeks.

The chart below lists earliest cutting times for some of the best forcing species. But don’t be afraid to experiment and see what happens.

If something doesn’t open, take new cuttings later. Odds are the second round will flower.

Even if you don’t get flowers, you’ll probably at least get leaves. Those can be ornamental in their own right. Japanese maple are particularly nice – especially the red, cut-leaf types.

Forced branches look simple but elegant in a vase by themselves. Or they can be paired with cut forced bulbs or cut flowers from the florist. Or try mixing several types of branches for a mixed branch bouquet.

Even if all fails and you get nothing, look at it this way… at least you got a jump on your spring pruning.

* Trees and shrubs to cut for forcing from January on: Cornelian cherry dogwood, filbert, forsythia, fothergilla, witch hazel.

* Trees and shrubs to cut for forcing from early February on: apple, cherry, crabapple, ornamental pear.

* Trees and shrubs to cut for forcing from mid-February on: beech, birch, Japanese maple, lilac, magnolia, PJM rhododendron, quince, red maple, serviceberry, willow.

   So if you’re torn between eating better (and cheaper) vs. “ruining” the back yard, think again. This is one case where you canhave it both ways.

Kenny Point's good-looking vegetable garden in fall.

   Vegetable gardens would look a lot better if we stopped trying to copy what farmers do, says Lower Paxton Twp. vegetable gardener Kenny Point. We don’t need vast rectangles, long single rows and 4-foot-wide paths since we don’t have to worry about driving tractors through it all.

   Point’s point is that a home vegetable garden looks better, yields better and is much easier to care for when it’s planted in wide, raised beds and mixed blocks instead of skinny, single-crop rows. (For more Point pointers, check out www.veggiegardeningtips.com.)

   His own garden consists of four, 5-foot-wide raised beds that are good-looking enough that they once earned one of the top three awards in a Patriot-News garden contest. That was competing against conventional ornamental landscapes.

   “I’ve just had such better results since switching from a row format to growing in raised beds that there is no comparison and no way I would go back to the traditional format,” Point says.

   Block planting lets him mix and match many different plants according to their colors, textures and sizes.

   When you think about it, edible plants have plenty of ornamental characteristics, too.

   Carrots have frilly foliage. Purple cabbage has wide, colorful leaves. Hot peppers have fruits that ripen in all sorts of bright colors and shapes. And ‘Bull’s Blood’ red beets have some of the darkest leaves this side of coralbells.

   The problem is we don’t take advantage of the great pairings these plants could generate.

   Instead, tradition tells us to line up a single plant until the row ends, then switch to something else next row over.

   That not only looks boring, but it doesn’t make sense when the goal no longer is to harvest gobs of stuff all at the same time in order to can or freeze it.

   These days the trend is toward growing a wider variety of produce for fresh eating – particularly items that are expensive or hard to find at the grocery store.

   Point says he doesn’t set out to design a decorative vegetable garden. It just works out that way.

   “I focus on mixing things up by planting a good variety of plants, keeping them healthy and managing the garden to avoid barren, unproductive areas,” he says. “I do make use of good accent ornamental veggie plants like palm kale, exotic looking cardoons and colorful rainbow chards.”

   Point even mixes in herbs and, yes, flowers – mainly to attract “good bugs” that feed on the pests but also to add color and interest.

   Across the river in the Carlisle countryside, John Greenbaum arrived at the same conclusion.

John Greenbaum's ornamental edible garden near Carlisle.

   His family veggie garden also is laid out in 4- to 5-foot-wide raised beds that veer off at right angles from a central wood-mulch path.

   The whole garden is situated below a swimming pool on a back-yard terrace that’s surrounded by a wooden fence on three sides and a stone wall at the pool end.

   Vining crops grow on the fence and on stand-alone trellises. Some are ornamental climbers, such as purple-blooming hyacinth beans and white moonflowers, while others are edible, such as cucumbers, grapes, peas and pole beans.

   This garden has even more flowers than Point’s  – about 25 percent flowers to 75 percent edibles. All except for a few nursery-bought marigolds are direct-seeded annuals such as cosmos, zinnias and annual dahlias.

    Like Point, the Greenbaums’ garden is a good-looking award-winner – taking an honorable mention in the 2008 Central Pa. Magazine “Art of Gardening” contest against all ornamental entries. But unlike Point, Greenbaum consciously shoots for a garden that looks as good as it tastes.

   “Since we spend so much time around the pool in the summer, we want the garden to look attractive,” Greenbaum says. “I try to mix in flowers as well as have some new crops growing throughout the growing season. I avoid plants that will die and leave empty patches, like potatoes. I put unattractive plants in a separate garden.”

   Keeping a veggie garden full and good-looking all season is a little trickier than, say, a flower or shrub bed, because the point of veggies is harvesting them.

   Greenbaum says the answer is succession planting – staggering the sowing and constantly replacing tired and/or harvested crops with fresh ones. This also maximizes production and keeps a steady supply of fresh produce on the table all season.

   “I like to have continuous harvests,” says Greenbaum. “For crops that we like to eat throughout the summer, I plant a new crop in a new block every two weeks. For instance, I’ll plant spinach and lettuce on May 1 in a block about 4 to 5 feet across, using about 5 or 6 feet of a 40-foot row. On May 15, I’ll repeat that in a space farther down the row and on June 1 again elsewhere in the garden.

   “When a block of greens goes to seed, I’ll tear it out and plant another fast-growing crop in its place. I do this for lettuces, beans, basil, cucumbers, Swiss chard, beets and more.”

   (For some of the best specific veggie varieties to try, click here.) 

   Greenbaum also plants short greens such as lettuce and spinach along the edges of bigger, season-long plants such as tomatoes and peppers. By the time the greens are picked, the tomatoes and peppers are taking over the space.

   Keeping the beds planted has the side benefit of warding off weeds – a sure-fire headache any time there’s bare dirt left behind.

   Both Greenbaum and Point will tell you this really doesn’t take as much work as you think.

   It amounts to frequent light putterings, watering and small replantings rather than the back-breaking tilling, hoeing and all-at-one-time planting of a traditional veggie garden.

   That kind of work demand is what causes a traditional veggie garden to end up looking so tattered and weed-infested by summer’s end, says Point.

   People bite off too much in May, he says, get worn out by the built-in deficiencies of farm-copying and give up after falling behind.

   “This can be avoided by consistently devoting as little as 30 minutes of your time two or three times a week rather than playing catch-up or resorting to marathon sessions after things have gotten out of hand,” Point says.

   Either way, the good news is that with an edible garden, at least you’ll have something to eat in the end to recharge your energy.

   That is, unless the groundhogs breach your good-looking fence.

    More ways to make your edible garden look good:

My vegetable garden is laid out in a Pennsylvania-German 4-square style.

1.)    Lay out your edible garden in a geometric pattern. The classic favorite is a Pennsylvania German four-square design, which features a central circle or block with paths splitting the remaining space into four separate corner gardens. Or consider a wagon-wheel pattern, a series of triangles or any design that strikes your fancy. Just keep the planting beds about 4 to 5 feet wide so you can reach in without stepping on the soil.

2.)    Think about hardscaping. Define the garden with permanent features such as stone paths between the beds, walls or fencing around the perimeter and maybe a vine-covered arbor at the entrance.

3.)    Upgrade the accessories. Instead of plain wooden tomato stakes and utilitarian vine netting, switch to more ornamental trellises or build attractive bamboo teepees.

4.)    Add a few focal points to key spots. These could include objects such as statues, bird feeders, bee skeps and favorite antiques and/or specimen plants such as cardoon, rhubarb or a fig tree.

5.)    Pair plants as you would with ornamentals, i.e. by size, by color and by form and texture. You don’t have to plant veggies in isolated lines. A cluster of spiky onions, for instance, might look good flanked by trios of red lettuce and back-dropped by taller pepper plants. Spot a few gold or red zinnias to finish it off.

6.)    It’s OK to repeat small amounts of a particular edible throughout the garden. This also makes it harder for bugs and animal pests to find everything.

7.)    Lean toward colorful veggies, herbs and edible varieties. Some of the best and brightest: ‘Bright Lights’ chard, Malabar spinach, purple cabbage, red lettuces, lavender eggplants, ‘Chilly Chili’ and other colorful hot peppers, purple basil, golden oregano, ‘Tricolor’ and ‘Pineapple’ sages and blue-leafed kale.

8.)    All edibles don’t have to go in an edible garden. Tuck veggies, herbs and fruiting shrubs in the landscape. Hot peppers go great with most annual flowers. Blueberries make a beautiful flowering and fall-foliage shrub. Eggplants and purple basil make a nice pot combination. Go by how a plant looks and what it does, not by the category it’s labeled under.