Admitting Gardening Mistakes

...hange and a unwillingness to admit mistakes. Take, for instance, the stone fruit trees in our front yard. The “new normal” that climate change has brought to our region–fewer chill hours and drought–has greatly diminished the health and productivity of most of our stone fruit. It’s time for those trees to go and for the execution of a more coherent and attractive landscape plan. As Hermann von Pückler-Muskau advises in his 1834 book Hints on Lands...

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Should I Try Tomato Grafting?

...graft tomatoes onto potato plants (two crops in one!) as well as graft tomatoes onto eggplants for plants that are more hardy in soggy soils. In the bad idea department, you can graft tomatoes onto tobacco (for nicotine laden fruit) and jimsonweed (for poisonous fruit–note this strange incindent). The Illinois Extension service has detailed tomato grafting instructions and notes on root stock selection here. So what do you think? Intrigued? Comme...

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De-Cluttering the Garden

...o room for plants that are sickly or just don’t look attractive. Ditto for fruit trees that have never produced. I’m with Piet Ouldolf on this: if possible, plants in our tended spaces need to look good year round (even when dormant) and they need to provide wildlife habitat. Rethinking the garden. Even the best gardener has to rethink and renew a garden periodically. Many perennials become gangly, trees shade out other plants and things just gene...

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The Fine Art of Determining Peach Ripeness

...ess to a few tools that can make ripeness determination easier such as this expensive gadget that measures firmness or a brix meter for determining sugar content. These tools could only be justified if you were planning on growing, shipping and selling fruit. More useful for us backyard growers is this gallery of peach fruit color stages. I’ve been picking them a little on the green side and letting them ripen inside in order to stay ahead of the...

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Saturday Tweets: Goodbye 2017

...u pic.twitter.com/oqlHpv0rsd — Peter Flax (@Pflax1) December 27, 2017 "Holypager", an artwork that eavedrops on unecrypted pager messages https://t.co/kZJLZrUT0y — Root Simple (@rootsimple) December 29, 2017 Typeface reviews https://t.co/70pwkf0KLC — Root Simple (@rootsimple) December 26, 2017 this is so great pic.twitter.com/jHiMMmRgqj — Cats (@SpaceCatPics) December 27, 2017 "Hedgehogs are doin it for themselves / Rolling on their prickly backs...

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