George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Vegetable Garden

March 30th, 2021

   If you’re investing the work into growing your own food garden – as so many stuck-at-home people did for the first time last spring – you may as well get the most out of it.

Raised beds and tight spacing are two ways to maximize veggie-gardening production.

   As you plant cool-season crops now (onions, broccoli, cabbage, etc.) and summer crops in May (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc.), here are 10 ways to maximize your yield and effort:

   1.) Raised beds. Hardly anyone has good soil, so don’t expect great results by just stripping off grass and planting.

   Loosen the soil at least six inches deep. Eight to 12 inches is even better. Then dig or till in two to three inches of compost, peat moss, rotted leaves, mushroom soil, or similar organic matter so the beds end up “fluffy” and a few inches above grade.

   Most people build boxes to contain the soil (stone, blocks, brick, recycled plastic timbers, or rot-resistant boards), but you can just mound up the beds without any edging.

   The loose, raised beds give you good drainage and allow veggie roots to spread with impunity. Four-foot bed widths are ideal.

   2.) Test the soil. Once you’ve addressed the soil quality, run a soil test to see if you need to adjust the acidity level (indicated by its pH reading) or add any fertilizer.

   The cheapest, easiest way is to buy a do-it-yourself, mail-in Penn State soil test kit. These are available for $9-$10 at county Extension offices, most garden centers, or online at Penn State’s soil-testing lab.

   The test report will tell you what to add (if anything) and in what amounts.

   3.) Go with the best “paybackers.” These are the crops that yield the most for the space and effort you devote to them.

   Ones that give some of the best bang for the buck are tomatoes, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, asparagus, the onion family (including leeks, shallots and garlic), lettuce, squash, rhubarb, beans, and snow peas.

Scrape Those Lanternflies Away

March 23rd, 2021

   Many of you no doubt noticed that new bug in town late last winter – the spotted lanternfly.

These are various stages of spotted lanternfly egg masses.
(Credit: Heather Leach/Penn State University)

   This rather large (pinky-sized) flying insect with the spotted grayish-tan wings (red underneath) has now made its way from its initial 2014 invading point of Berks County to throughout the Harrisburg area.

   Lanternfly adults have a 70-plant appetite (especially grapes and maple, walnut, birch, beech, cherry, and willow trees), making it a threat to a lot of our landscape plants if/when their numbers balloon.

   Although lanternflies are currently in their egg stage, this is actually the best time of year to deal with this latest imported pest.

   Lanternfly egg masses look like a gray smear of mud with a waxy covering. They’re typically seen clinging on tree trunks, firewood, stones, outdoor furniture, or for that matter, any solid, flat, outdoor surface.

A lanternfly egg mass on a tree trunk, left, and what newly hatched lanternfly nymphs look like.
(Credit: Penn State Extension)

   By smashing or otherwise getting rid of the masses, you can eliminate anywhere from 30 to 50 new lanternflies per mass.

   Penn State Extension recommends scraping the egg masses into jars or plastic bags with a small amount of alcohol or hand sanitizer in order to kill the eggs. Just scraping them off and letting the masses drop to the ground won’t do the trick.

See a Penn State Extension video on how to scrape spotted lanternfly egg masses

   Pay special attention if you saw spotted lanternfly adults in or near your yard late last summer and early fall.

Award-Winning Plants of 2021

March 16th, 2021

   So many plants to pick from… but which ones are the best?

   One bit of homework to go on is plants that have won awards from various plant-trial and plant-selection programs.

   Each year, organizations of growers, horticulturists, researchers, and other plant experts bestow awards on top plant performers – some new, some old but just under-used.

   Here’s a look at plants that have won honors for 2021:

Pennsylvania Gold Medal

A panel of experts assembled by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (best known for running the Philadelphia Flower Show) each year picks trees, shrubs, and perennials worthy of greater use in Pennsylvania landscapes.

For 2021, seven plants made the Gold Medal grade.

Redbud ‘Appalachian Red’

Redbud ‘Appalachian Red’

The vibrant deep-pink blooms really jump out when this small native tree flowers in early spring, even before the leaves emerge.

Like all redbuds, ‘Appalachian Red’ does best as an under-story tree in “woodsy” well drained soil out of direct afternoon sun. It grows about 20 feet tall and wide in 20-25 years.

London plane tree Exclamation! (‘Morton Circle’)

This is a cultivar of a large shade tree similar to sycamore – big leaves and bark that peels over time to reveal a white, smooth skin.

Exclamation! is a fast-grower that can reach 55 to 65 feet tall and 40 to 50 feet wide and is tolerant of and resistant to most abuses. Best in full sun.

Hydrangea Bobo

Dwarf panicle hydrangea Bobo

Many compact and heavier-blooming versions of the old-fashioned “PeeGee” hydrangea have come along in recent years, and this is one of the showiest.

Bobo produces large, cone-shaped, white flowers in July that take on shades of pink and then rust as the season progresses. Plants grow a stocky four to five feet tall and wide in full sun or light shade.

Sweet box ‘Fragrant Valley’

Little known even though it’s one of the most fragrant landscape plants on the market, this plant is a glossy, broad-leafed evergreen with a somewhat boxwood-like appearance and a trailing habit.

The small white flowers come out in early spring. ‘Fragrant Valley’ is a particularly sweet-smelling variety. It grows about 18 inches tall and spreads three to four feet, ideally in shade.

Seed Slam, The Sequel

March 9th, 2021

   I hope you got your 2021 supply of seeds already.

Seed-buying has been more of an adventure than usual again this year.

   If not, you’d better get busy ASAP because we’re seeing another seed slam in which seed-sellers can’t get seeds in the packets and out the door fast enough to keep up with another huge-demand year.

   For the second year in a row, seed companies find themselves caught in a vice between COVID-caused, order-filling handicaps and another spike in gardening demand. The result is order delays, sellouts of popular varieties, and in some cases, temporary ordering shutdowns.

   It’s not so much a “seed shortage” as it is a series of bottlenecks in getting seed from the growers into gardeners’ hands.

   “There’s plenty of seed around,” said Jeanine Bogard, manager of Syngenta Seed’s Home and Garden Vegetables program, during a National Garden Bureau panel discussion on the issue. “It just might not be in the specific variety people are looking for.”

   “It’s mainly an issue of being able to fill packets fast enough to get them to customers in adequate time,” adds Nathan Zondag, vice president of operations for the Wisconsin-based Jung Seed Co.

   Seed sales blew off the charts last year at this time when COVID lockdowns began and stuck-at-home Americans figured it would be a good time to grow their own food. The idea escalated when empty food shelves started appearing in grocery stores.

   An estimated nine million new gardeners came out of the woodwork last year, says Curtis Jones, co-owner of the Colorado-based Botanical Interests seed company, and the vast majority of them intend to stick with it.

   Massachusetts-based Griffin Greenhouse Supplies surveyed 1,000 of those first-time gardeners and found that 80 percent said they planned to continue gardening in 2021.

   Despite seed companies ordering more seed to head off a repeat of last year’s COVID-fueled ordering slam, seed-buying is an adventure once again.

   Between gardeners ordering early and even higher demand than last year, many seed companies have been back-ordering, selling out of selected varieties, taking longer than usual to fulfill orders, and in some cases, temporarily suspending orders or resorting to daily quotas and waiting lists.

Longwood Gardens’ Massive New Re-Do

March 1st, 2021

   It’s hard to imagine Longwood Gardens getting much bigger or better.

Here’s a rendering of Longwood’s conservatory complex re-do.
Credit: Longwood Gardens

   This magnificent botanical legacy of industrialist Pierre du Pont already graces 1,100 acres of Chester County countryside with elegant formal gardens, fountains that rival Versailles, a meadow garden that alone covers 86 acres, and just about every plant cultivated for garden use.

   It draws a million or more visitors every year from around the world… and deservedly so.

   Of the hundreds of public gardens I’ve seen, I can’t name any that I like better or that are more impressive than Longwood.

Order George’s new e-book on “50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See”

   Armed with a very healthy endowment from du Pont, Longwood isn’t done growing and improving.

   In case you haven’t heard, Longwood is about to embark on the biggest single improvement project since the Gardens were created more than a century ago – a three-year, $250-million redo and expansion of Longwood’s conservatory complex.

   The project will add a new West Conservatory the size of a football field, move an entire iconic garden out of the existing conservatory into its own new glasshouse, and add a new restaurant overlooking the flagship Main Fountain Garden.

   Longwood CEO Paul Redman calls it a “massive project and the most complicated project we’ve ever embarked upon… It’ll be a new garden experience like none other.”

   Longwood and most of the existing 17-acre conservatory complex will remain open during the work, which is scheduled to be done and open to the public in the fall of 2024.