Cold Climate Gardening

In 1878, Sherman Stowell sold to Elizabeth Brockett 30 acres of land which he had earlier purchased from George Jennings. I now live and garden with my family on some of that land, which Jennings or Stowell, or perhaps Ms. Brockett, had cleared of trees to make pasture. The forest is growing back, but it’s not the same forest. For one thing, several invasive plants are now growing here, everything from Rosa multiflora to Lonicera tartarica. And where are the trilliums?

Call me a romantic or call me ecologically correct, but I’d like to restore the native flora to my parcel of land, land that was sown to timothy and grazed by cows. How does one go about such a restoration? For starters, you have to know what plants were originally growing there. I’ve taken an informal survey of our property and catalogued all the natives I’ve found. I mention trilliums because they bloom along the roadside further down our country lane. What will it take to grow them here?

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Next week I’ll be reviewing The Truth About Organic Gardening by Jeff Gillman, and Jeff will be critiquing my use of a common herbicide. To add to the fun and excitement, Timber Press and I have joined forces to give you another chance to win a free book. One copy of Jeff’s book, The Truth About Organic Gardening, will be awarded to someone who correctly answers all the questions in this quiz provided by Timber …

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As I said when I announced the free book, one of the commenters would be chosen randomly to receive a copy of The Truth About Garden Remedies. I took a page from Pioneer Woman’s book and used the generator at random.org. to pick the winning comment. All the comments are numbered as they are received, and comment number 4 was chosen by the random number generator. That was Dee’s comment.

Enjoy, Dee!

Join us tomorrow when Jeff Gillman shows us how to analyze a new gardening gadget for the truth of its claims.

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After reading about some of these so-called remedies in Jeff Gillman’s first book, The Truth About Garden Remedies: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why, it’s gotten me wondering what it is that makes gardeners try them in the first place. Here are some of my thoughts; see if you can add to them.

Fear of the Unknown
Vinegar I know, coffee grounds I know, but what the heck is indole-3-butyric acid? Vinegar is in my salad dressing and I drink coffee, so they must be safe, but that indole whatever stuff sounds dangerous! We tend to think that familiar things are safe, and are more inclined to use them in our gardens. (Indole-3-butyric acid is a common rooting hormone, by the way.)

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Timber Press invited me to be one of the stops on Jeff Gillman’s blog tour. Jeff is “traveling” around the country, promoting his two books, The Truth About Garden Remedies: What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why and The Truth About Organic Gardening: Benefits, Drawbacks, and the Bottom Line, from the comfort of his office computer. Besides a review of each book, Jeff will be blogging two guest posts that we both think you will find informative and thought provoking. Also, two lucky readers will win a free book courtesy of Timber Press. Details on how to win a copy of The Truth About Garden Remedies will be in tomorrow’s post and in a forthcoming post I’ll tell you how to win a copy of The Truth About Organic Gardening.

I confess to being a bit skeptical of skeptics. It’s easy to set up a straw man–an opponent that’s easy to knock down–by tipping the odds in your favor. And it’s a lot more difficult to set up a rigorously fair experiment that can take into account all the factors that might influence the outcome–some would say it’s impossible. So I thought I would just page through this book and give you my reactions and observations, listed by the chapter headings found in The Truth About Garden Remedies. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jeff has something to say about some of my remarks.

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