Entries from March 2004
In all fairness to Burpee, I received those seeds from them the day after I said I hadn’t but still several days after Park. They are all (the tomatoes) planted now with the Early Girl up and growing. About roses: in Mich.U.P. I am pretty leery about planting hybrid teas, too, going for shrub roses or climbers that are hardy at least to zone 4. Jung’s has a number of zone 3 and 4 roses listed. John Cabot and William Baffin are zone3 climbers that are hardy left on the trellis. They list some teas that are on their own rootstock. I wonder how those would work up here? I have a zone 3 client who wants to grow …
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Good link. But they neglect to mention that many antique roses are black spot resistant as well. I’ve never sprayed a rose for black spot, and my family has always grown roses. I’m under the impression that the tendency to black spot susceptiblity came into rose breeding with Chinas & thence into teas and then modern hybrids. I could be wrong. But I don’t grow any teas (too dicey in a climate with -20F temps in the winter) and the only rose I have which gets it is a David Austin I bought in a fit of greed in seeing its flowers. The rugosas, bless ‘em, are nearly immune. My antiques are too. …
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If there is a rose in your future, you may want to consult the Purdue Plant and Pest Diagnostic Laboratory’s list of blackspot-resistant roses. As the article states, gardeners”could increase their leisure time and decrease their fungicide expenses by using disease resistant and tolerant roses.” There are so many different rose cultivars out there, why ask for trouble by planting one that’s prone to disease?
Sigh. As soon as I wrote that, I realized there’s probably dozens of rose aficionados out there who could make a cogent argument for planting a disease-prone rose. But that’s not me, okay? I once thought all roses had to be sprayed to a fare-thee-well to amount to anything, and it put me …
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I mentioned ordering more tomato seeds. I am trying Park’s Whopper. I received seeds from Park in about 5 days. It has been over a week now, and I haven’t received what I ordered from Burpee. From the looks of things, I won’t get those Walls o’ Water out anytime soon. We’ve 8-10″ more of snow, and though it is going to be up in the 40’s this week that 3 feet out there isn’t going to melt away very soon. I had hoped to get the tomatoes going sooner so I could get them out really early. Need some more seed planting medium, too.
By the way, I’m going to try growing strawberries in growing …
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It pays to check out the sidebars of the blogs you visit. That’s how I discovered Diary of a Plain Dirt Gardener, which was listed on the sidebar of Hands in the Dirt. Paul Krantz, author of DPDG, happens to be the Executive Editor for
Better Homes and Gardens Online and Midwest Living Online, so I’m sure he’ll have info that can be found nowhere else.
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I just learned that “aphid” is the plural of “aphis” from Jungle Jim at Scenic Nursery. “Aphids” is apparently incorrect, although it is so widespread I bet at least some dictionaries include it as acceptable.
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March 19th, 2004 · 1 Comment
Tuesday morning at precisely 8 o’clock it started snowing, and didn’t stop until it dumped a good seven inches on us. No surprise to any long-term residents around here, who are mostly grateful that it wasn’t a blizzard. Two big clues that winter is not returning in force: the light is all wrong and the snow doesn’t stick to the road for very long. Any snow that falls this time of year is the inverse of Indian summer, but there isn’t a handy little phrase for it. That is to say, a show of winter when spring is on the way is similar to the show of summer after autumn’s first frosts have hit. There ought to be a word …
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