George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Shorten Winter with Florida Gardens

October 6th, 2015

Some of the leaves are turning already, and the nights are getting noticeably chillier.

Our February landscape doesn’t look like this.

You know what that means, right?

End of another growing season. And after that, winter.

I’m not a winter fan at all, especially the parts that involve skidding on icy roads, helplessly watching polar vortexes kill the borderline-hardy specimens, and shoveling snow.

It’s ironic how I don’t mind shoveling compost or digging soil, but I really don’t like shoveling snow.

The only good thing I can say about this pending winter is that at least the black flies will be gone.

One coping strategy that helps is getting out of here for at least a week or two – preferably some place where the warm sun still shines even in January.

My wife, Sue, and I have gravitated to Florida the last few years, and as you might suspect, we used some of that snow-bird time to check out Florida gardens. (Heading to central Florida yourself? Check out the 3-bedroom, pool-equipped villa our daughter, Erin, rents there.)

What a tonic it is leaving the frigid black ice of central Pennsylvania for the palm trees and blooming fragrance of central Florida. It’s like instant growing season.

That region happens to have a nice collection of public gardens within day-trip driving range of one another, too.

The rose garden at Orlando’s Harry P. Leu Gardens in January.

I’d love to show you six of them if you’re interested in shortening winter by a week while the rest of central Pennsylvania freezes its buds off. Lowee’s Group Tours and I have put together a trip to the gardens of central Florida for Tue., Feb. 2, through Tue., Feb. 9, 2016.

We’ll jet to Orlando for an 8-day, 7-night gardener’s winter get-away that includes visits to Orlando’s Harry P. Leu Gardens, Sarasota’s Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (my favorite of all Florida gardens), McKee Botanical Gardens in Vero Beach, Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Fort Pierce, Hollis Gardens in Lakeland, and Bok Towers near Lake Wales.

We’ll also take a backstage tour of the hydroponics gardens at Epcot Center’s Land Pavilion, spend a day checking out Florida’s native plants and wildlife at the Merritt Island National Refuge, eat some of the best strawberry desserts ever (they’re in season down there then), see a school of manatees, and have a free day to visit any of the Disney World parks (ticket included).

To sign up or get more information, email Chrissie Kelly at Lowee’s Group Tours at CKelly@lowees.com or call 717-657-9658 or toll-free 1-888-345-6933.

The cost is $1,995 per person double, including airfare, lodging, transportation, luggage-handling, admissions and 13 meals.

George Interrogated

September 29th, 2015

I made my National Public Radio debut earlier this month, appearing as the gardenish guest on WHYY’s Radio Times program in Philadelphia.

George with Radio Times host Mary Cummings-Jordan in the WHYY studio.

It was an interesting, question-filled experience – starting with the lady who welcomed me inside the studio door, continuing with insightful questions by host Mary Cummings-Jordan, and ending with a zip line of Tweeters, e-mailers and old-fashioned phone caller-inners.

Lots of people apparently have lots of questions when it comes to gardening. I got some really good and timely ones, too, which got me thinking that if these folks were wondering about these things, you might be as well.

If you’d like to hear the whole hour-long show, it’s available free for the listening online at WHYY’s Radio Times website.

But if you just want to scarf up some quick pointers, here’s the Cliff Notes version:

Q: My hydrangeas didn’t bloom very well the past two years. Am I pruning them wrong or was it the weather?

A: Both of those can de-flower your hydrangeas, assuming we’re talking about the common big-leaf types with the pink or blue flower balls.

This type of hydrangea forms flower buds the fall before, so a cold winter can freeze the already-formed buds. That happened widely the past two winters. But fall, winter or early-spring pruning cuts them off.

If you’re betting on a third cold winter in a row, build a burlap corral around your hydrangea(s) and stuff it with leaves as insulation.

Pruning-wise, cut these hydrangeas only right after they flower (or should have flowered). That means July or early August at the latest. Don’t even think about pruning them now.

Smarter Than the Average Squirrel?

September 22nd, 2015

Yeah, we vegetable-gardeners have to cope with heat, drought, surprise frosts, assorted bugs and diseases, the occasional hailstorm and much more. But anyone who’s grown vegetables for long would agree that the most aggravating challenge is animal damage.

Squirrels have nothing better to do all day than figure out where their next meal is coming from.

You go to all of the trouble and expense, only to go out one morning and find half the garden chewed to bits by (take your pick) deer, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels, voles or chipmunks.

Our backyard zoos have them all.

Agitated gardeners come to me all the time, hoping to find a horticultural Dr. Phil who can make their vegetable life worth living with some sage animal-protecting advice.

Here’s a typical story from one Hershey gardener: “Our corn was doing great this year, but then the d**** squirrels climbed up the stalks, stripped the husks and ate the corn right off the cobs! This has never happened before. Why this year?! My husband painted hot sauce on the ears, but they seemed to like that even better! Please help! If they touch the tomatoes, I will be REALLY angry!”

Who knows why this yard suddenly became the site of a squirrel cornfest?

We rack our brains trying to figure out what we did or didn’t do and get upset at the audacity of it all. From our point of view, these animals are rude, ungrateful thieves.

The animal’s viewpoint is much simpler… more like, “See corn, eat corn.”

That’s about as complicated as it gets in a squirrel brain.

Black Flies Making Garden Life Miserable

September 15th, 2015

Maybe you’re lucky enough to garden in an area where you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say, “Aren’t the gnats horrible?”

Notice the black flies landing on and swarming around this fist in the air.

But if you’re anywhere within 20 miles of one of the Pennsylvania streams and rivers where gnats – black flies, to be more accurate – breed, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Black flies are tiny flying insects that bite, fly up noses and swarm so relentlessly around people’s heads that you really can’t stand to stay outside for long.

If you think they’re worse than usual this year, you’re not imagining it. They really are because the state’s spraying program that has controlled them so well for nearly 30 years is no longer funded well enough for good control.

Spraying has been starting later and ending sooner for several years, and it’s to the point now where it’s under-funded enough that the bugs are winning again. And gardeners, golfers, farmers, outdoor diners, and really anyone who works or enjoys the outside are losing.

The problem has been getting so bad since August that I’m hearing from people like Andrea Blauch, who asked me the following: “Can you suggest a deterrent for gnats? I can no longer be outside because I have become a magnet. I am covered with bites. I am at the point I would cut down our trees if I knew it would help. I’m seriously considering moving.”

People who haven’t experienced black flies don’t understand how a little bug can be such a big enough deal to make someone stay inside or think about moving.

I understand completely. I live within a half-mile of the Conodoguinet Creek, and when the state stops spraying, it’s noticeable… and miserable. The thought of moving has crossed my mind, too.

Pennsylvania’s Two Newest Gardens

September 8th, 2015

Did you know that Pittsburgh now has a botanic garden?

Here’s part of Penn State Arboretum’s new Childhood’s Gate children’s garden.

Have you seen Penn State’s new 1-acre children’s garden?

Lowee’s Group Tours and I will show you both of those – and then some – on a 3-day, 2-night gardener’s mini-vacation coming up Oct. 15-17.

Hardly anyone around here knows about or has seen the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden, the nation’s first public garden built on reclaimed mine land. The first 60 acres of it just opened last fall.

Located 20 minutes southwest of Pittsburgh in a county park, this place is going to eventually cover 460 acres.

For now, it has five different woodland gardens, a lotus pond in what used to be a dead pond with the water quality of battery acid, an heirloom apple orchard, a meadow, a wedding garden and 3 acres of trails.

On the drawing board is the Fred Rogers Garden of Make Believe, which is going to be a “family garden” (as opposed to a children’s garden) drawing inspiration from the long-running PBS “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” show.

This one-time polluted lake is now the Lotus Pond at Pittsburgh Botanic Garden.

At Pittsburgh Botanical Garden, we’ll get a guided tour and have time to enjoy the serenity of what until recently was a weed jungle grown over top of a mine waste land.

But before we get to Pittsburgh, we’ll spend most of the first day enjoying the Penn State Arboretum, itself a very young garden that surprisingly few midstaters have seen.

We’ll have time to stroll the arboretum’s flower gardens, rose garden, tropical pots, water features and collection of trees and shrubs, but we’re going to focus especially on the new Childhood’s Gate Children’s Garden.

That one also just opened last year and is different from any children’s garden you’ve probably seen.