George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Prime Time for All Things Lawn

September 10th, 2024

   Whether you’re trying to start new grass or whip a sad lawn back into some semblance of decency, the weeks between Labor Day and early October are the year’s best.

This lawn could use a little attention.

   The warm soil, cooling temperatures, and more frequent rain add up to ideal grass-seed sprouting (usually).

   It’s also the perfect time to fertilize, which helps a lawn bounce back from the punishing hot, dry summer months.

   And it’s prime time for a host of lawn-improvement jobs, including aerating, “top-dressing” with compost, and dethatching.

   Here’s a rundown on what to do in three main lawn scenarios:

If you’re starting a new lawn…

   Early fall follows late-summer sprouting with good conditions for young cool-season grasses to establish roots. Fall-started grass then has a second good growing season in spring before having to face its first main challenge of a hot, dry summer.

   Grass grows best when it’s lightly tamped into loosened soil and then kept consistently damp until the seed is up and growing.

   The five-step process:

   1.) Test the soil. This tells you what kind and how much nutrition to add (if any) and also whether you need to adjust the acidity level of the soil (a pH between 6.5 and 7 is ideal).

   Garden centers and county Extension offices have do-it-yourself Penn State soil-test kits for $10. Or get a kit online at Penn State’s soil test lab.

   2.) Invest in quality seed. You’ll pay a little more, but grass varieties are available that perform far better than cheap seed against adversities such as drought, bugs, disease, and poor soil.

   Penn State University’s findings on the best-performing grasses in Pennsylvania are posted on the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program’s website.

Read George’s article on how to pick the best grass seed

Fruition Seeds Stops Selling, Plans to Give Away Its Seed Instead

August 27th, 2024

   The upstate New York seed company, Fruition Seeds, is taking a rather radical step for any business.

Petra Page-Mann in one of the flower beds at Fruition Seeds near Naples, N.Y.

   As of today, the producer of organic, Northeast-adapted vegetable, herb, and flower seed is shutting down its online seed sales and moving to what co-owner Petra Page-Mann terms a “gift culture.”

   From now on, Fruition will give away – not sell – the seeds produced on its 20-acre farm near Naples, in New York’s Finger Lakes region. It won’t sell or ship anything else, for that matter.

   Page-Mann and co-owner Matthew Goldfarb are laying off the company’s other 10 employees by later this fall and depending on volunteer help and donations to sustain Fruition’s operation.

   Gardeners will be able to obtain free Fruition-grown seeds in one of two ways.

   One is by visiting the farm directly, primarily on days when Page-Mann and Goldfarb schedule events. Those events will be publicized on the Fruition website, which is continuing without the shopping-cart feature.

   The other give-away avenue is from a series of on-the-road events that Fruition hopes to establish – an extension of the company’s past participation in seed libraries and seed swaps.

   Page-Mann and Goldfarb also plan to give away fruit and nuts from the more than 100 trees planted on the farm.

    “We can no longer commodify our beloved kin – these seeds – or ourselves,” wrote Page-Mann in announcing the move. “The call is simple. Seeds are gifts. Gifts are shared, not sold, not hoarded, or otherwise contained by control.”

   So after 12 years of conventional business in which the company reached an annual budget of more than $1 million, Fruition plans to subsist on trust and faith.

Watch for Jumping Worms

August 13th, 2024

   Earthworms have long been a gardener’s friend – aerating the soil with their tunneling, decomposing organic matter, and leaving behind nutritious “castings” in the process.

Note the light-colored band that goes the whole way around the abdomen of this jumping worm.
Credit: Cornell University

   But there’s a new worm in town, and this one is as destructive to the soil as good ol’ earthworms are helpful.

   The newcomer is commonly known as the “jumping worm,” an Asian species that gets its name from its distinctively hyperactive, thrashing habit.

   If you’re out there digging this summer and notice worms that seem to be agitated and writhing, you likely have jumping worms.

   Mid to late summer is when they’re most active.

   Unlike our “normal” European-native earthworms that calmly squiggle and benefit the soil, jumping worms are fidgety, ravenous feeders that deplete the soil of organic matter and nutrition.

   They’re really not all that new to America, though, since they apparently first arrived on American shores in the late 1800s from Korea, China, and Japan. However, it’s only been the last five years that jumping worms have become a noticeable problem in Pennsylvania.

   The state Department of Agriculture’s Invasive Species Council has now classified jumping worms as an “emerging threat,” while the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources reports sightings of this soil destroyer throughout Pennsylvania.

   “If you poke them, pick them up, or dig them up, they flail all about as a defense mechanism against predators,” says Penn State University entomologist Michael Skvarla in a Penn State Extension video on jumping worms. “They’ll flip all around. It’s very obvious once you’ve seen it.”

Why One Bloom Time Is No Longer Enough

July 30th, 2024

   American gardeners love their azaleas, lilacs, and hydrangeas for the spectacular spring floral shows these classic shrubs put out.

Endless Summer hydrangea is one of the best known of the new reblooming shrubs.

   But after a year in the making, the show is over in two or three weeks. Wouldn’t it be nice if these plants could bloom longer… or better yet, bloom again in the same season?

   That’s been happening more and more lately as plant breeders and plant-development companies have been delivering a host of reblooming versions of our favorite shrubs and perennial flowers.

   The two biggest deja-vu breakthroughs so far are in reblooming hydrangeas and reblooming azaleas.

   Minnesota’s Bailey Nurseries hit paydirt when it developed the Endless Summer hydrangea, a variety that produced softball-sized flowers of blue or pink (depending on soil acidity) in late summer and fall in addition to the main June bloom.

   Aided by its distinctive blue pot and heavy marketing, Endless Summer has become one of America’s top-selling plants. The brand now extends into six reblooming varieties, including the lacecap-flowered Twist-n-Shout, a deep-rosy bloomer called Summer Crush, and the new compact Pop Star.

   Numerous other reblooming hydrangeas have followed suit, including the Let’s Dance, Forever and Ever, Seaside Serenade, Magical, and Everlasting series.

   Louisiana plantsman Buddy Lee cracked the azalea code with an introduction he called the Encore azalea that rebloomed in fall after a first performance in May.

   The Encore line has since grown to nearly three dozen different azalea varieties, including 24 that are winter-hardy to the Harrisburg area’s USDA Zone 6b/7a climate rating.

    It’s also led to reblooming azaleas from other growers, including the Bloom-a-Thon, ReBLOOM and Double Shot series.

   The success of those two cases opened the floodgates for breeders to find rebloomers in just about every other shrub genus.

Putter Time

July 16th, 2024

   It might be hot and dry, but we’re now nestled in that easy-going time frame of the gardening year that I like to call “putter time.”

   It’s a period of relative calm wedged between the two seasons of soil-jockey fury – spring (when it seems like everything needs to be done all at once), and fall (when picking up after this season and setting the stage for next join forces).

   I like putter time because there’s no pressure to work through a lengthy to-do list before bad weather hits, ideal timing runs out, or the whole thing threatens to cross the line from “busy” to “overwhelming.”

   Summer is a time when the pace is more meander than sprint and when there’s leeway to stop, sniff, ponder, enjoy the blooms, and basically put off until tomorrow any noticed jobs… if you feel like it.

   Summer’s jobs are a lot lighter than spring or fall, too.

   Especially in May, the work includes heavy-duty mulching, exhaustive trimming and pruning of bushes and hedges, and the back-bending jobs of cutting spring-bulb foliage followed by planting and transplanting annuals, perennials, and shrubs.

   Come fall, it’s time to yank and haul the season’s spent plants, move those falling leaves where they’re piling up, and whip the lawn back into shape (which one year for me meant replacing the whole drought-killed front yard).

   But in summer, the jobs are mostly lighter, easier things like watering, snipping a few wayward branches here and there, yelling at the deer and rabbits, and cutting the grass (or not, when it’s so dry that the grass is turning brown).

   My summertime putter days largely consist of patrolling the yard with a five-gallon bucket in hand, ready to pluck out any weeds just getting started. I look at it as “harvesting compost.”

   With this kind of regular, slow-paced policing, I have virtually no weed trouble. Colonies never have a chance to develop, and I deny all weeds the chance to flower, set seed, and create tomorrow’s outbreaks.

   My weeding “tools” are mainly my index finger and thumb rather than hoes or a tank sprayer of Roundup.

   It’s only when ground is left bare and ignored that weeds have a chance to turn into the botanical monsters that they can be. I’ve had to tackle that, too (after inheriting others’ yards), and I can tell you that leisurely but regular putter patrols are a whole lot better way to go.

   My summer putter days also sometimes involve a little fertilizing of the veggies and potted flowers, some dead-heading and neatening of flowers, and occasionally some action to head off a particularly damaging scenario involving bugs or disease.

   But the thing I like most about summer putter days is that they give me an excuse to get out there and really enjoy the gardens up close and personal. They give the illusion that I’m out there “working” when I’m really just soaking up the setting.