This just came to my attention. Barbara Damrosch dishes the dirt about these rodents in A Game of Whack-a-Vole: No sentiment please. No matter how reverent we gardeners may feel about the web of life there are times when the list of predators must include you. We're on the same page, Barbara.
November 2006
A Garden Blog with a Different Perspective
November 29, 2006 – Posted in: Recommended LinksMost garden blogs are written by home gardeners. A few are written by garden writers, and a few I've seen are written by nursery owners. The Plant Hunter - New Plants is the first blog I've seen written by someone involved in the process of bringing new plants to market. Tim Wood is currently the [...]
Roses for Cold Climates
November 29, 2006 – Posted in: Book reviews, Plant infoOne of the first gardening things I did when we moved here over fifteen years ago was to dig up the rose bushes and get rid of them. I didn't want to have anything to do with plants that needed to be babied to get through the winter and perpetually sprayed to get them through [...]
Uh-oh. Look who’s coming to dinner!
November 28, 2006 – Posted in: Garden chores, Pests, Plagues, and VarmintsThis is one of the better reasons for trimming back all your perennials in the fall. Less hidey-holes for the resident rodents. There are probably half a dozen of these holes in the Birthday Garden alone, and there are plenty in my other garden beds, too. Where's a feral cat when you need one? Or [...]
Frost, a Gardener’s Good Friend
November 26, 2006 – Posted in: Garden chores, Recommended Links, WeatherBarbara Damrosch makes the case that frost is a gardener's good friend. She points out that the action of frost on the soil helps to break it up and improve it, and gives suggestions on how to use this to your advantage. This is a more workable idea for vegetable gardens than for perennial beds, [...]
Shrubs and Small Trees in Cold Climates
November 22, 2006 – Posted in: Book reviews, Plant infoThe standard (and good) advice is to plan your garden first, and then plant the woodies, the trees and shrubs, before anything else. This advice is rarely followed. Why? Because most gardeners don't plan on being gardeners. It sneaks up on them. And what usually snookers them in is not a tree, but some ravishing [...]
Henry Mitchell: Eminently Quotable
November 17, 2006 – Posted in: Book reviews, MiscellaneousI love a good gardening quote, and Henry Mitchell is eminently quotable. It is a great joy the day we discover that we can learn things without having to make the mistake ourselves. (p. 81) What makes a good garden quote? Well, I could take the easy way out and say I know it when [...]
Glug, glug, glug
November 16, 2006 – Posted in: Hardscaping and Projects, WeatherUpstate NY is drowning! At least, my county is. It's been raining all week, so the ground was saturated, and then this afternoon it really started raining! Must be the kind of downpour they get in Texas all the time. I can't even check how fast it was coming down, because everyone in town is [...]
Garden bloggers tell their stories
November 16, 2006 – Posted in: Recommended LinksThis past September, Stuart Robinson of Gardening Tips 'n' Ideas interviewed several garden bloggers to find out what got them started. Just in case you are as far behind in your reading as I am, the intro is here, and you can easily follow the links at the top of each post to find the [...]
A Good Perennial Handbook
November 15, 2006 – Posted in: Book reviewsSooner or later, most ornamental gardeners wind up getting a basic encyclopedia of perennials. Usually sooner. The novice gardener, planning his or her first garden, needs to get some idea of "What's out there? And will it grow here?" Most of the general, try-to-cover-the-whole-country perennial encyclopedias make the cold climate gardener's job more difficult, trying [...]
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