George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

A Garden Sanctuary

April 26th, 2022

   Soon after my daughter – then a junior in high school – left for a year-long exchange program living in the Netherlands, I found myself spending a lot of time in a particular corner of my back yard.

This was my early garden sanctuary view from a swing under a big black-cherry tree.

   I’d go back to this shaded far corner under a wild black cherry tree and think about what Erin might be doing… counting the days until her return, and above all else, praying that she was safe. (It’s what worry-wart dads do.)

   A few years later, when my trigeminal neuralgia face pain returned, I again found myself heading back to that little corner. I’d try to figure out what I was going to do next while attempting to distract the pain with the sound of my water garden.

   I purposely built a garden back there as a get-away – a place mainly to enjoy some quiet time away from the phone and computer.

   What I didn’t realize is that this space had become my garden sanctuary.

   That phrase didn’t ring a bell until I read a blog post last month by a western-Canada Master Gardener and author named Stephanie Rose.

   Stephanie runs an amazing website and blog called “Garden Therapy” that bloomed in the aftermath of her nine-year-long bout with severe headaches and crippling fatigue.

   Her coping efforts mirrored mine as she discovered how healing that one, special, tiny space of nature can be.

   “I would argue there isn’t a better recovery program in the world!” she writes of her garden sanctuary.

   For Stephanie, her space was a hammock chair under a deck, surrounded by flowers and plants.

   “Whenever I needed a moment outside but didn’t have the energy, I could sit and sway in the chair and still be among the plants,” she says. “Without my garden, I don’t even want to know what I would have done while dealing with my debilitating illness.”

   Stephanie found out first-hand what a trove of medical research has substantiated – that gardens can be therapeutic places.

   I think lots of others have figured that out, too, lately. After two years of COVID hideout, so many people have mentioned their gardens as tranquil retreats of peace, fresh air, and sanity.

The Three Waves of Veggie Gardening

April 19th, 2022

   One of the keys in Nicole Burke’s “Kitchen Garden Revival” strategy is grouping different vegetables into their plant families.

This patch is a “Wave-1” planting.

   Nicole says that when she first started gardening, like so many other beginners, she was overwhelmed at the thought of how to grow the many different plants.

   Her “ah-ha” moment came when she realized that botanists long ago grouped plants into families by their similar traits and growing habits.

   Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and kohlrabi all fall into the brassica family, for example, while cucumbers, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and gourds are sisters in the cucurbit family.

   “Instead of having to understand each and every plant on the seed shelf or every plant at the garden center,” Nicole said in a Great Grow Along webinar on her strategy, “you really only need to master a handful of plant families. Once you do, each time you want to grow something new, you simply find out which plant family it belongs in, and boom, you know almost immediately what season that plant likes to grow in and how well it’s likely to grow.”

   Nicole’s “Kitchen Garden Revival” book and her Kitchen Garden Academy online courses go into a lot more detail if this approach sounds interesting to you.

   I agree that anything we can do to simplify vegetable gardening will help beginners and encourage them to stick with it.

   The strategy that I gravitated to long ago was grouping plants by when they’re best planted.

   That boils down to just two basic groups – 1.) ones that grow best in cool weather and that can survive frost, and 2.) ones that grow best in warm weather and that will croak if hit by frost.

Where the Sidewalks Are Carpeted with Flowers

April 12th, 2022

   Once a year in May, the plant-loving residents of the Portuguese island of Madeira go wild with flowers and stage an event called the Madeira Flower Festival, which features flower-filled parade floats and sidewalks that are carpeted with cut blooms.

One famous scene from Madeira.

   It’s a great place for any flower-lover to be on a warm spring day.

   Lowee’s Group Tours and I thought local gardeners would relish a chance to see this festival first-hand, so we’re planning a trip next year (2023) to Portugal that includes a full day at the 2023 Madeira Flower Festival.

   The 13-day trip, operated by Collette Vacations, will run April 29 through May 11, 2023, and take us to the warm breezes and lush landscapes of Lisbon, the Azorean “green island” of St. Michael, and three days on the island of Madeira.

   We start the trip with a flight from Washington’s Dulles airport into Lisbon and spend the first three days discovering Portugal’s capital. Highlights there include sampling Portuguese food and wine, touring historic sites such as the Jeronimos Monastery and Tower of Belem, and traveling to Sintra and the gorgeous Estoril coast on the Riviera, a longtime favorite get-away of Portuguese kings.

   Then we fly to the Azores and the island of St. Michael for four days, where we’ll see one of the finest gardens in Europe – the Terra Nostra Botanical Park. While on St. Michael (the largest of the nine volcanic islands that make up the Azores), we’ll do a walking tour of Ponta Delgada, feast on a lunch cooked by volcanic heat in the Furnas Valley, tour a tea plantation and a pineapple plantation, see a pair of crater lakes in which one is blue and one is green, and have an option to go on a whale-watching adventure.

Should We Be Cutting Back on Peat Moss?

April 5th, 2022

   Peat moss has long been our go-to, store-bought, plant-growing medium, useful for everything from starting seeds to growing potted plants to “lightening” our lousy clay soil.

Most potting mixes are heavily composed of peat moss.

   But its widespread use is under fire lately as some argue that gardeners should move away from peat moss altogether for environmental and climate-change reasons.

   The main issue is that peat moss serves as a super-sponge when it comes to soaking up carbon that otherwise would end up in Earth’s warming atmosphere.

   Although peat bogs cover just 3 percent of the Earth’s surface, they store more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined – including trees – according to International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

   Harvesting peatland bogs reduces that layer and sends peat out in forms that are burned as fuel or that quickly decompose in gardens, releasing the stored carbon into the air.

   Fossil fuels also are burned in harvesting and transporting all of the peat, plus harvesting reduces a natural land use that harbors rich biodiversity, mitigates drought, and heads off wildfires.

   The whole issue is especially heated in Great Britain, which is phasing in a ban on most forms of garden-use peat after some 90 percent of its once expansive network of peat bogs has been harvested or degraded.

   Some in Britain, including the Royal Horticultural Society and its best known gardener, TV celebrity Monty Don, are doubling down on a quick end to peat use in gardening.

   Don, for example, calls peat-harvesting “eco-vandalism” and flat-out says, “Gardeners should not be using peat… There is no need. There are plenty of alternatives to peat.”

   Here as there (and despite the alternatives), it’s not easy convincing gardeners to give up such a staple product – especially considering that not even the horticulture industry and many of its leading experts and growers are convinced this is something we need to do.

Gardening for the Greater Good

March 29th, 2022

   Some of my favorite times on this planet are when it’s just me and my plants in the yard on a warm, sunny day.

Does it get any better than this?

   Words such as “peaceful,” “fulfilling,” “refreshing,” “rewarding,” and “joy” come to mind to describe these days, which also offer the physical benefit of exercise in the fresh air.

   But as self-satisfying as gardening can be, it’s also an activity that leads to multiple benefits when done in multitudes.

   “Gardening for the greater good” is the term that the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (the group that runs the Philadelphia Flower Show) has been using lately to describe its big-picture efforts to foster programs that benefit our ecosystems and communities.

   PHS’s consulting horticulturist and avid gardener Nicole Juday Rhoads recently came up with four principles that resonated with me on how gardening helps both us and others.

   I thought I’d share her list…

   1.) Celebrate gardening. “A garden is an expression of your own personality, your growing conditions, and your interests. Let your creativity run wild, and you will be sure to inspire others along the way.

   “After all, there is no ‘right way’ a garden should look. Plant what you love – foliage, flowers, or food. Almost any space can be gardened – from a rooftop, to a windowsill, to a container. Think outside of the (window) box, indoors or out. 

   “Pursue knowledge and information. Gardening is an endlessly fascinating activity.”

   2.) Choose your plants with intention. “Plants are the ingredients of healthy, beautiful gardens that support environmental best practices and local businesses.  

   “Use the power of the purse to buy local and support independent nurseries and growers. Ask your garden center to carry plants and seeds that have been organically raised. Choose plants that support wildlife, especially pollinators. Select plants that are not dependent on chemicals to look their best. And remove invasive plants in your garden.”

   3.) See your garden as part of the ecosystem. “Your garden and what you do in it are part of a larger natural system. Garden in recognition of the environment all around you.