Pianta Landscape Design

Giant cabbages in Alaska

Although you wouldn't know it from this blog, I have been back from my Alaska vacation for a couple of weeks. In addition to watching the wildlife (wolves, grizzly bears, Stellar sea lions, tufted puffins), hiking, and hanging out in a remote village that I suspect served as an inspiration for the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure, I also spent some of my vacation checking out the Alaskan horticultural scene. Over the next few posts, I will show some garden-related photos I took along the way.

I took today's photo at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks botanical garden, which includes huge test plots for vegetables and ornamental plants. These two kinds of plants merged in the botanical garden's display beds, as you can see. I found these giant, edible cabbages mingled with annual bedding plants in ornamental gardens all over the state. 

Summer vacation July 4 - 18

I'll be away on summer vacation from July 4 through July 18. If you send me an e-mail while I'm gone, please don't be offended if I fail to respond right away. I'm going somewhere without reliable e-mail access and may not be able to send you a reply until I get back. Happy July!

Switching to Organic Lawn Care

Bernadette Giblin, owner of Safeground Organic Landcare, will give you the scoop on switching over to organic lawn care later this month at the Agawam Public Library. In her talk, she will explain "how to transition away from synthetic lawn care chemicals to an organic land care program that gives you a beautiful lawn through improved soil health."  Bernadette is a NOFA Accredited Organic Land Care Professional. Her talk will be presented by Greenscapes.

Where: Community Room, Agawam Public Library, 750 Cooper Street, Agawam
When: July 21, 2008 from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Bonus: Refreshments! Door prizes!
RSVP to Anne Capra, Principal Planner at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and western Massachusetts Greenscapes coordinator, by e-mail or phone (413-781-6045).

Hail storm hits West County

 
I have been in hail storms before, but I have never witnessed one like the one we had here in the Shelburne Falls area yesterday afternoon. I arrived home (and, luckily just made it from my car to the house) moments before these nuggets plummeted to earth. During breaks in the storm, I ran out into the front garden and collected these samples for my six-year-old son's amusement. (He was thrilled. Huge frozen ice cubes shaped like river rocks are falling from the sky? Oh, boy! What's going to happen next?)

This morning, I did a quick run around the front garden to see what kind of damage the hail produced. Amazingly, nothing terribly serious seems to have happened, even though some of these hail chunks left half-inch-deep craters in the ground around some of my ornamental plantings. I haven't checked out my vegetable garden yet. It's way up in the field behind my house, or, put another way, too far away from the coffee machine for a 5:30 a.m. stroll. With any luck, the plants up there will have made it through the storm as well as the ones near the house.

How widespread was the hail yesterday? Did you have damage in your gardens? If you did, send me a picture and we can talk about how to repair any plantings that suffered in the storm.

Garden maintenance guides, part 4

As I have mentioned before, I believe that careful observation is key to the long-term success of a garden.  It is not surprising, then, that I include a garden observation log at the end of my maintenance guides.

This form provides a place to keep regular notes about when plants bloom (for instance, Aruncus dioicus, shown here, is in bloom now), when particular pests arrive in the garden, any plants that may not be thriving, watering schedules, and more. All of these details can help the gardener head off problems in the future and be successful in the long run.

If you would like a copy of the garden observation log, you can find one in PDF form over here. If you would like more information about garden maintenance guides or garden coaching services, please let me know.

The "secret social life" of plants in NYTimes

The science section of this morning's New York Times has a fascinating article, "Loyal to Its Roots," about the ability of plants to identify friends and foes. A time-lapse video posted with the article on the paper's website shows one plant "sampling... the airborne chemicals released by nearby plants, a bit like a dog sniffing the air around a dinner buffet" before attacking "its victim."

Garden maintenance guides, part 3

Knowing the Latin names for your plants can be very helpful when you want to discuss your plants with other people, such as fellow gardeners or staff at your local nursery. Few new gardeners relish the idea of learning Latin names, however, and committing Latin names to memory takes time. To help clients become familiar with the Latin names for their plants, I organize garden maintenance guides by Latin names. At the back of each guide, I provide a look-up table that shows common names for plants in the guide with their Latin names.

Garden maintenance guides, part 2

Following yesterday's introduction to Pianta's garden maintenance guides, today's topic is the guide's  meatier second section. This section contains detailed information about all of the plants growing in a client's garden. Each plant has its own page, with site-specific care information provided under the headings "regular maintenance," "pests and diseases," and "other concerns." At the end of each page, there is a space for the client to make notes about any issues or questions that arise concerning that particular plant.

A garden owner can use this section in three ways. First, it can be used to gain more information about how to perform a particular garden task mentioned briefly in the quick-reference calendar section at the beginning of the guide. Second, it can be used as a general overview, allowing the garden owner to become familiar with the plants he or she is growing. Third, it can be used as a place to make notes about the plant, for future reference. My goal for this section of the maintenance guide is to provide clients with all the information they need care for their gardens successfully.

Next: Looking up Latin names

Garden maintenace guides, part 1

The current heat wave - 92 degrees in early June - definitively ends the spring planting season here in western Massachusetts. What now?

If you maintain your own gardens, as my garden coaching clients do, this time of year marks a shift gears from planting to nurturing.

There are things that you can do throughout the summer months that will help your gardens stay beautiful and help them look even better next year. The tasks that you need to undertake are specific to your own property. If you don't know what those things are, you are not alone. Many people look out on their gardens in the summer and just see a mass of undefined... work. They know they should do something in the garden, but they are not sure what to do, or when to do it.

To help my clients let their gardens thrive, I create customized maintenance guides that contain maintenance information specific to each garden.  In the next few posts, I will show you what these guides contain, using illustrations from a guide I finished recently for a client in Greenfield.

Each guide begins with a "Garden Maintenance Calendar." This section is basically a week-by-week to-do list, summarizing tasks explained in greater detail later on in the guide. Tasks that need to be done once a week (or more frequently) come first, followed by things that need to happen once a month. One-time events that need to happen at a particular time of year are also listed in this section.

The purpose of this section is to provide a quick what-should-I-be-doing-now reference for the garden owner.

Next: How-to information for each plant in the garden.

Deerfield's 2008 Garden Day this Saturday

Historic Deerfield's annual Garden Day will take place on Saturday, June 7. The theme this year will be "Savoring Herbs." Activities will include garden tours, clinics, and an herb sale. There will also be two talks, one on "Composting and Soil Health" and another on "Historic Gardens." A complete run-down can be found on the Historic Deerfield's website.