Category: Outdoors

Seeds, journals, and how about a Nut Wizard?

New England skies in winter are often cloudy and dark, accompanied by sleet, slush, rain or snow. The sun sleeps late and goes to bed early. Gardeners sometimes give up and go to Florida. Not me, but there is much I do to make the holidays cheerful.

I put up blue holiday lights outdoors on trees and shrubs. And I think about gifts for my loved ones — most of whom are gardeners. Let’s see what I am helping Santa with this year.

First, there are books. Always good for long nights or cold days. A book I have enjoyed this year was written by a friend of mine, Jill Nooney. She wrote a wonderful book called Bedrock: The Making of a Public Garden (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2025, $50). Jill is a plant collector, a garden designer and a sculptor. Her book is not only the story of making a public garden; it is also full of design insights and an introduction to many unusual plants suitable for our zone. She writes well, and tells good stories, too.

Then there is entomologist Doug Tallamy’s 2025 book, How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard. The book is in the form of questions — 499 of them — and answers in a simple, readable form. It’s like sitting down with your favorite and wise uncle, but one who knows the science behind complex questions about what we can do to help save our environment. Hardback, $30.

I believe in supporting local garden centers and avoiding internet purchases. We need our local purveyors of plants, seeds and fertilizers. But an unusual tool might not be found locally: the Nut Wizard. This is a long-handled tool with a rolling wire device the size and shape of a football that picks up apples or nuts. When the device is full, spread the wires over a bucket or wheelbarrow and it empties. This is fun to use — kids love it, so Tom Sawyer will be proud of you for “letting” them use it. I got one long ago and I see that now there are several brands, not just the Nut Wizard, and several sizes.

For those of you on a shoestring budget, let me suggest a few no-cost/low suggestions, too. If you’ve saved seeds from your heirloom tomatoes or flowers, these are good gifts. If you have none, the seed companies have their 2026 seeds available well before Christmas. I called Johnny’s Selected Seeds and High Mowing Organic Seeds, two of my favorites, and they both confirmed next year’s seeds are ready to ship. So if you had good luck with a tomato or zinnia variety, give some seeds.

Maybe I am from a different era than you (or a different planet), but I like keeping a journal. I started at age 8, but I confess that these past 20 years my computer has become my record keeper. Perhaps you use your cell phone (I don’t have one). This year I am going back to keeping a handwritten gardening journal.

There are many available for sale, some just blank books, others designed for use by gardeners. Lee Valley Tools has a 10-year gardening journal, one big page for each day of the year, and 10 sections per page. I’ve had one, and if I were diligent in its upkeep I’d have some great data. But it’s a bit big and clunky, and I didn’t keep it in a handy place.

This year I found The Old Farmer’s Almanac Garden Journal for sale at my local bookstore. I bought one — I like that its pages are not dated. It has some nice art prints of plants and some nice quotes about gardening here and there. It only cost me $15.95, and it will last me more than a year.

Every year I recommend the CobraHead Weeder because it is the best darn weeding tool ever made. It’s a rugged single-tine hand tool shaped like a cobra up and ready to strike. It is neither right- nor left-handed. I use mine to loosen the soil to plant, to tease out long roots of grasses and weeds, or to get in tight places. At $39 from the website (www.cobrahead.com) it is a bargain. It’s a family-run business, the tools made in America. It has a hole for a bright colored string to help you find it if buried in the compost pile. Also available from good garden centers and seed companies.

Lastly, a friend recently sent us an amaryllis bulb that had been dipped in shiny red wax. It’s gorgeous, and for non-gardening friends it is excellent, too: no soil needed, no watering needed. Just put it on the table and watch it grow, blooming in four to six weeks. It sits nicely on its flat base of wax. I can’t wait to see it bloom!

So start your holiday shopping now. Give gardening gifts, and hope someone gives you something off this list, too.

Henry lives and gardens in Cornish, N.H. This column appears just once a month now, in his semi-retirement. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

Featured photo: Nut Wizard. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Rinse your pots, test your soil and more

By Henry Homeyer
listings@hippopress.com

After a severely dry summer, October brought much-needed rains, at least here in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire. It is particularly important for trees, shrubs and perennials planted this year to go into the winter well-hydrated, and it looks like Mother Nature has taken care of that. I always recommend watering new plants before the ground freezes if they are dry.

Because of the drought, there is virtually nothing left blooming. Everything has gone by. The only bloomer in my garden (in early November) is a small native tree, witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), which is loaded with small curly yellow flowers on its branches. It is pollinated by the owlet moth, one of the few pollinators still active now, after many frosts. The seeds are not formed until spring, and it is not until next fall that the seed capsules burst open, sending seeds up to 45 feet away.

Winterberry is not blooming now, but it is loaded with bright red berries. A native shrub, it grows in swamps and wet places in the wild, but it also can be used in regular garden soil. It is dioecious, meaning that there are male and female plants. Fortunately the nursery industry labels their stock as male or female. Only one male is needed for most plantings. It looks great in a vase with cuttings of witch hazel or with sprigs of evergreens.

But on to the late fall chores. Now is the time to empty your clay and enamel pots of their soil. If not, they are likely to burst when wet soil in them expands on freezing. Best to rinse out and put your favorite pots in the garage or barn. Plastic and fiberglass pots won’t break.

What about your lawn? If you have a heavy leaf load, I recommend raking up the leaves. Oaks and other heavy leaves can impede growth in early spring and can encourage snow mold. If you don’t have a smothering load of leaves, you can just mulch them with your lawn mower and leave them in place. They will add needed organic matter to the soil, helping you to have a nice lawn next summer. To avoid snow mold, give your lawn one last mowing, cutting it a little shorter than usual.

By now you probably have brought inside all potted house plants that summered outside. If so, you may have a nice crop of aphids on some of them. Look for sticky excrement on leaves, and tiny aphids. You can get rid of the aphids two ways: first, take the pots outside and rinse the leaves (top and bottom) with the hose. Or take a shower with your plants! Only kidding; just rinse them off in the kitchen sink or shower. Alternatively, you can spray them with “Safer Soap” or your homemade equivalent: one tablespoon of mild dish soap in a quart of water. Spray the leaves and rinse after 20 minutes. It will dissolve the fats in their skin, drying them out and doing them in.

This is a good time to test your soil. In the spring the wait is often long. Now you can get quick results and make improvements to the soil if need be. Each state has a Cooperative Extension Service that offers soil testing for a minimum fee. In my state the standard test includes recommendations for adding fertilizer, pH, mineral content, organic matter content, and a test for lead. If your vegetable garden is near a house that was built before 1970, when lead paint was outlawed, you should get it tested for lead. For an additional fee you can get your soil tested for cadmium and other heavy metals, too.

When you buy blueberry plants the soil they come in is at the proper pH (a measure of the acidity). But as the roots extend outward, they may not have the proper pH. If your blueberries are not producing well, get the pH tested. They need very acidic soil, 4.5 to 5.5 on the pH scale. This is a good time of year to add soil acidifier or elemental sulfur if your soil is not acidic enough. Sprinkle soil acidifier around the plants, extending out 2 to 3 feet from their centers. This will improve production in a year or two. You may want to get the soil around your bushes tested for pH, in addition to a general soil test for your other gardens.

This is a good time to do some pruning. After leaf drop you can really see the branches. You can ask yourself, as you look at a shrub or tree, “What will this branch be like in five years?” If it’s growing toward another branch or shooting through the middle of the shrub, you should remove it now, while it is still small. I never prune a woody plant in the first or second year after planting — it needs all its leaves to produce food for the roots.

If you have cleaned up your vegetable bed and removed annual flowers elsewhere, it is good to cover the soil with chopped leaves. Weed seeds are blowing around now. Don’t offer them a good place to land and spend the winter. I don’t usually pull annuals in the fall for that reason. I just snip off the tops and pull the roots in the spring.

Generally we are most active in the garden in the spring and early summer, but this is the time to do some planning. Put on an extra layer of wool, grab a notebook, and take a walk around your gardens. Make note of places that need more or different plants, and do some research about what would do well there. We have a long winter ahead, so do your homework!

Henry is an organic gardener living in Cornish, N.H. He is the author of four gardening books and frequently lectures to garden clubs and library groups. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.