George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

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.

Showless

February 23rd, 2021

   The end of February used to seem like the turning point to me between winter and the gardening season because that’s when the garden shows sprouted.

It’s always nice to see living gardens when it’s still winter outside.

   Not that many years ago, we had the Pennsylvania Garden Expo kicking things off at the Farm Show Building the last week of February, followed by York’s Garden Show at the York Fairgrounds, and then a landscaping/gardening presence at the Pennsylvania Home Show (a.k.a. the “builders show”), also at the Farm Show Building.

   The granddaddy of them all – the Philadelphia Flower Show – capped the spring preview with the world’s biggest, oldest indoor flower show over 10 days inside the 10-acre Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.

   All of these shows featured flowers in bloom and the welcome scent of lawns and leaves, signaling that “real” spring wasn’t far off.

   This winter, none of them will happen.

   Both the Pennsylvania Garden Expo and the Pennsylvania Garden Show of York are extinct – the 13-year-old Expo going under after a last-gasp show in 2015 and PAGSY calling it quits after a 27-year run that ended with the 2019 show.

   The Covid-19 pandemic short-circuited this year’s Pennsylvania Home Show, while the Philadelphia Flower Show is the only one still scheduled, but not until June 5-13.

   I’m sure the Philly show will be high-quality despite going outside for the first time in its 192-year history. It’s just that it might not have the same allure since gardening season will be in full-steam mode everywhere else by then.

See details on the five trips Lowee’s Group Tours and I are planning to the 2021 Philly Flower Show.

   Indoor garden shows in late winter made sense because gardeners usually have had enough of cold and snow by then and are ready to feel some warmth and see blooming gardens, albeit contrived ones built on concrete floors and clothed in mulch mounds.

   I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Philadelphia Flower Show some 30 years ago. Back then, the show was held in the Philadelphia Civic Center.

50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See

February 16th, 2021

   I love public gardens. I’ve seen hundreds of them across America as well as Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, and as far away as the other-worldly Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa.

My new downloadable ebook focuses on the best 50 American public gardens.

   Lots of you have gone on our Lowee’s and Collette tours to many of them, so I know I’m not the only one who’s drawn like a magnet to these botanical gems.

   People sometimes ask me which gardens are my favorites. That’s a tough question. They all have their own distinct appeals.

   Since last year was a washout for travel, I did some thinking and dreaming instead and came up with a list of my 50 favorite American public gardens – in order.

   With the help of my designer daughter Erin, I put them into an e-book with one-page profiles of each garden.

   The profiles feature overviews and highlights of each garden, location and contact information, two photos of each garden, and a “George’s Take” look at what stood out most to me at each place.

   The “50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See” e-book is available now as a $7.95 download on my Buy Helpful Info page.

   Besides their sheer beauty, public gardens are an excellent resource to introduce gardeners (and future gardeners) to plants they’ve never seen. Gardens nearby or in similar climates are especially useful for giving ideas on what plants will work at home and how to use them.

My All-Time Favorite Vegetable Varieties

February 9th, 2021

   Picking superior varieties is especially important in vegetable gardening since there are so many choices with so much variability in performance.

It’s hard to beat ‘Big Beef’ as reliable tomato variety.

   No plant is perfect and bullet-proof in all aspects and all places, but it is possible to breed for specific traits.

   So what we have is a fairly large and ever-changing lineup of variety choices, each with different strengths.

   Some varieties were bred/selected for resistance to diseases or particular pest bugs, others for size or taste.

   Southern gardeners might want varieties that can take the heat. Northern gardeners might want varieties that mature in shorter seasons.

   The big push lately is to come up with varieties able to deal with our changing climate, especially hotter summers and “flash droughts” interspersed with ever-heavier rain dumpings.

Read more about how important variety-shopping is in a column I wrote for the Patriot-News/PennLive.com.

   In the vegetable garden, I gravitate toward reliable performers year in and year out that yield well in limited space and seldom run into bug or disease issues.

   I’ve also found that quick maturity is a veggie virtue. Being able to get a crop in and out as fast as possible means there’s less chance for anything to go wrong, i.e. animal raids or an overnight, havoc-wreaking weather event.

   I’ve grown and trialed hundreds (if not thousands) of vegetable varieties over the years. I compare old favorites to touted newcomers and have found that sometimes the newbies really are better… but not always.

   The following list is what I’ve found to be the best performers in Pennsylvania’s climate and soils.

   Performance can vary even from garden to garden in the same area, so maybe you won’t get the same results as I have.

   I also haven’t tried everything, so there may be even better performers that I haven’t yet discovered.

   Nevertheless, the following are varieties worth considering: