Category: The Gardening Guy

It’s flower time

By Henry Homeyer

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Here in Cornish Flat, this seems like an old-fashioned winter. Temperatures have been consistently below freezing, and the ground has had at least a light covering of snow most of the time. No deep snow, the kind that insulates the ground and keeps tender perennials safe, but enough to soothe the eyes when looking at the landscape.

But we gardeners are already thinking of spring. Fortunately, I planted many small pots of Tête-à-tête daffodils last fall and stored them in my basement, which stays at 40 degrees. The foliage is up now, and their roots are pushing through the holes in the bottom of the pots, so I know they are ready to bring up to the warmth of the house. I’ve been putting them in sunny windowsills, and many are blooming — and ready to give away. For me, this is a spring ritual: giving 4-inch pots of flowers to friends and neighbors.

If you are hungering for spring, you might consider going to a spring flower show. Unfortunately, many of the spring shows have given up. Boston no longer has its extravaganza, so the Connecticut show in Hartford is now New England’s big event. It has many nice displays and many great classes to attend. This year it is Feb. 20 to Feb. 23.

Then there is one of my favorites, the Vermont Flower Show in Essex Junction, Vermont, March 7 to March 9. It’s small enough to see everything in one day, but has lots to offer.

In Rhode Island there is the Home Show from April 10 to April 13, and it has a flower and garden portion, though I have not been down to Providence since the big flower show folded its tent in 2016.

For the travel-inclined there is the Philadelphia show, March 1 to March 9. It has been a spring tonic since 1829. The poinsettia was introduced to American gardeners at that first show, and Ben Franklin may have attended that year. Go on a weekday for smaller crowds, and be prepared to spend a lot but to have a lot of fun.

February is the month I go through my seed packets to see what I need to buy. Most vegetables and flowers stay viable for three years. Exceptions to that rule are all onion-family seeds and parsnips, so I buy them each year. I’ve found that shallots do very well for me and keep longer than onions in the winter, so I will buy new seeds and plant them indoors and keep them under lights starting in early March. Peppers of all sorts need a long time to get big enough to plant outdoors, so I also start them in March. Tomatoes I start in April, usually around the 10th.

This is also the time of year to pay attention to your houseplants. The days are getting longer, roots and shoots are growing, and they need more water. If you are trying to overwinter a rosemary plant, double the water it gets. A fully dry rosemary is a dead rosemary, and late February or early March is the time of year most of us kill ours. I admit to failing with rosemary by keeping to my weekly watering schedule.

If you have the mid-winter blues, buy yourself some nice cut flowers at your local florist. I prefer to buy from a florist, as they generally take better care of their flowers than big box grocery stores. Many years ago I went to the Boston flower market — leaving at 5 a.m. — with a friend who owned a florist shop to buy flowers for her shop. The flower market was the size of a football field and had every kind of flower you could imagine. What fun that was!

Some years ago the flower trade got a bad reputation because many of the flowers came from Colombia, South America, where the growers used pesticides liberally and paid their workers a pittance. But I believe that now many flowers in winter are grown in the States and done so with environmentally sound practices. You can always ask your florist where their flowers come from.

If you want cut flowers that last a long time in a vase, try alstromeria or lisianthus. Both hold up very well. Also excellent are chrysanthemums, asters, sea lavender and bells of Ireland.

Then there are a couple of gorgeous potted flowers that bloom for a long time at this time of year: cyclamen and Phalaenopsis orchids. The key to these is to minimize watering and to keep them out of direct sunlight. The cyclamen are cheap enough that you can compost them when they are done blooming (in eight to 10 weeks). Phalaenopsis orchids are more expensive but can be saved from year to year.

Lastly, this is a good time of year to think about your outdoor gardens and how you can improve them, come spring or summer. Start by looking out your favorite window. What do you see now that gives you joy? If you only grow flowers, the landscape is bleak.

Think about trees, shrubs and decorative grasses that you could add to the landscape. Would a nice miniature or weeping conifer fit into a perennial bed? A Merrill magnolia in the middle of your lawn could offer a nice shape and buds and bark that please you. It will bloom magnificently with large double white blossoms in April. It will give you something to look forward to. And after all, isn’t that part of the reason why we all garden?

You can reach Henry at [email protected].

Featured photo: These daffodils are ready to bloom on a sunny windowsill. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Coming up: more cardoon, better record-keeping

I’m not a big fan of unrealistic New Year’s resolutions such as “keep my papers organized and desk tidy,” for example. But I do like to spend some time each January reflecting on the gardens of the past year and making decisions about what I will do in the coming months.

Let’s start in the vegetable garden. In 2024 I planted about 24 kale plants of all colors. In 2025, I shall be more moderate. Yes, kale is healthy for us and freezes well, but I was lax in picking and freezing it in the fall, and wasted some. Shame on me. I use it mainly in stews and soups, or frozen in smoothies.

A new salad green I loved and which, unlike lettuce, never bolted or bloomed, is sold as dandelion. No, it’s not the dandelion we have in the lawn. It’s an Italian “dandelion” that is actually a different species. It is sold fresh in our Coop, I tried it and liked it, so I started some from seed indoors last March, a variety I think is called ‘Clio’ from Johnny‘s Selected Seeds. The leaves get to be 12 to 16 inches long, and they will regrow if cut, so I harvested it all summer and well into the fall and it never blossomed. I shall plant six plants again this year. FYI: It tolerates some shade.

Also on the vegetable front, I grew cardoon this year and will do it again. It is a very large leafy plant in the artichoke family. It does not bloom like artichokes, but you eat the midribs of the 3-foot-long leaves in fall. I chopped the midribs, boiled till tender, and baked in a cheese sauce. They tasted just like artichokes but created a lot more food.

This past summer was sunny and, for the most part, dry. We had a great tomato crop, and our flowers performed well too. I did have to water new plantings, as we got little rain.

We are out of sunny spots to add shrubs, so in 2024 we dug out a patch of goutweed — my nemesis — and planted nine shrubs and a Japanese red maple in an area of part shade, part sun. I was careful to water daily for two weeks, and then twice a week for the rest of the summer. The shrubs included two native viburnums and two mountain laurels, and three native hydrangeas, including a great variety for shade called ‘Haas Halo’ (H. arborescens). All did well.

The viburnums are Zone 5 and I have mostly considered our location a Zone 4 (with temperatures most winters colder than minus 20). But in recent years we have not seen lows of even minus 20 degrees, so I am willing to try some Zone 5 plants. Elsewhere I planted a kousa dogwood, a Zone 5 plant that I have tried and lost to winterkill more than once. The Stewartia tree I planted three or four years ago is also Zone 5 but is doing nicely. I’ll be 79 in April, and by gum, I’m ready to take some chances.

What else worked this past year? Opening our gardens to visitors. We worked hard in the spring to rid ourselves of weeds, sharpen edges of beds, and fill in empty spots. We opened our gardens on select days to various groups and invited friends for a glass of wine and a walk around with us in the early evening. No, our gardens were not perfect — none ever is — but these events were a great time. Try it!

I’ve had three honeyberry plants for three or four years now but have not gotten any berries as yet. The bushes (Lonicera caerulea) are in the honeysuckle family and the blue berries are very tasty, I’ve been given some. But so far I have not been able to pick my own. They have not earned their place. I shall tell them this spring to produce berries or they will be gone. I’ve been told that birds love them and will pick them before they are fully sweet and ready for me to eat. The berries turn blue, but are not ripe for a while after that.

The Catalpa tree I planted six years ago as an 8-foot-tall tree is now 35 feet tall and provides shade for us to sit and relax. It is a great tree, blossoming in July. I prune the top each year now to keep it from reaching its 60-foot-tall potential. It is a bit weak wooded, so I want to keep it from getting too big. The shade it provides encourages me to sit and relax in the garden, something I want to do more often in 2025.

I am saying a sad farewell to my Merrill magnolia that I planted in 2004. It bloomed reliably each year on my birthday in late April with huge double white blossoms. The shiny green leaves were gorgeous all summer, and the buds in winter look like pussywillows on steroids. It has five stems and stands about 60 feet tall and nearly 40 feet across at the crown. But it seems to have died last summer and unless it miraculously recovers in the spring I shall have it cut down. Sigh.

OK, time for one last resolution: I will keep better records in 2025. I just haven’t found the right way to keep them. I start a yearly notebook, and record some plants. But not all. I’m often too busy working in the garden and plan to do it later. My camera is a good way to record things and I take photos of everything that blooms. But I have literally tens of thousands of photos, and most are largely just organized by date. This year I will do better. Happy gardening, and best wishes for 2025.

Henry’s column appears monthly. Reach him at [email protected] or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

Featured photo: Cardoon has silver leaves and is easy to grow. Start from seed indoors early. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Final garden chores to do before winter

Winter is fast upon us. The shortest days of the year are ahead, but gardening is done for most of us. That being said, in early November I still had flowers in bloom outside: My witch-hazel trees were gorgeous, twisty-petaled yellow flowers, even after a light snow and several hard frosts. And I still had a few blossoms on one of my ‘Knockout’ roses.

If you planted any trees or shrubs this year, make sure they go into the winter well-watered. We’ve had dry times this summer and fall, so a slow, deep watering is needed now. A woody plant’s roots are still growing now, even after leaf drop, and until the ground freezes around them.

I’m not sure why, but I saw very few Asian jumping worms this summer. Perhaps the hot, dry weather inhibited their spread. I think I only have them on one portion of my property, but I am being careful about the possibility of spreading egg cases. I like to chop up my fall leaves and save them for use in the garden, but I don’t do that with leaves in the area where I’ve seen those dreaded worms. Instead I just use them for mulching beds already infected with the invasive worms.

This is the time of year to think about protecting our woody plants from deer predation. I can’t afford to encircle our 2.5 acres of gardens with an 8-foot-tall fence, the best way to protect plants. And Rowan, our 4-year-old golden-Irish setter mix, helps discourage deer but he lives indoors and sleeps by the fire all night, just when hungry deer are marauding. Winter is when they want to munch your rhododendrons and other yummy things.

There are several ways to discourage deer. I have found that garlic clips attached to branches about 3 feet off the ground are good. I buy some called “Fend Off Deer and Rabbit Odor Clips.” These are little green plastic cylinders that contain garlic oil. They repel deer for up to five months. Unlike sprays that wash off after a hard rain, these really do a great job. I’ve seen footprints of deer that approached tasty shrubs, sniffed and walked away.

If you have had deer eat the lower branches of your yews, a favorite evergreen for deer, you can also protect your plants by wrapping them with burlap. Yes, tedious, but it is 100 percent effective. I have done it for years for a client.

Voles, chubby rodents with short tails, are common everywhere and love to nibble on the bark of young trees, particularly fruit trees. You can protect your trees by placing a cylinder of quarter-inch “hardware cloth” around them. It comes in 18-inch rolls, which you can cut with tin snips. Wear gloves, as it’s razor sharp when cut. But don’t let your tree engulf the wire, which it can do in three years or so.

A quick reminder of how to prune fruit trees: Start by removing any dead or damaged branches. Next evaluate the overall form of the tree: Is it a handsome plant? Can sunshine get to every branch? Is there clutter that should be removed? If so, get to those branches next. Evaluate the future of any branch in question: What will it be like in five years?

Branches on the outside of the tree that are headed back to the center of the tree should be removed. And of course, remove those pencil-thick upward racing water sprouts before they become big. Rubbing or crossing branches? “Off with their heads,” as the Red Queen would say in Alice in Wonderland.

It is not too late to plant spring bulbs. Selection in stores and online may be limited, but there is no such thing as a terrible tulip or disgusting daffodil. Daffodils are, generally, more successful than tulips as they are slightly toxic and not eaten by deer or rodents. But next spring you can surround or cover your tulip beds with chicken wire to keep deer from eating them. I generally plant 100 tulips in my vegetable garden each year to use as cut flowers and as gifts for friends and the elderly. I treat them as annuals, pulling the bulbs to make room for tomatoes or lettuce in summer.

If the previous owners of your house planted shrubs around the house, snow from the roof may slide off and break branches, particularly if you now have a steel roof. You can save them by making little plywood A-frames. Do this by screwing legs made of strapping or hardwood stakes onto lightweight plywood. Drill holes at the tops of the legs allowing you to connect front and back with a piece of wire so you can spread the A-frame out as needed, and fold it up to put away in spring.

Be sure to drain your hoses and put them away before winter.

Thanksgiving is just passed and I celebrated the harvest, as well as my good health, good friends and family, and living in a safe part of the world. I make a point of celebrating by serving vegetables that I have grown myself. This year I had, from my garden, potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, kale, Italian dandelion greens and garlic. And we planned to make extra applesauce to give to our guests.

So do a little more work in the garden now. It will help dispel the winter doldrums.

Featured photo: A simple plywood A-frame will protect a shrub from snow and ice coming off the roof. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

How many gardeners does it take to plant a garlic bulb?

For some of us, planting time is long past — but not for me. I am always busy in the fall, planting everything I can. It is almost time to plant garlic, which is my easiest crop of all. And I’ll soon be planting spring bulbs, both in the ground and in pots for forcing.

Garlic is by far my least labor-intensive vegetable crop. I start by weeding out one of my wide mounded beds and loosening the soil well. I use my CobraHead Weeder to loosen the soil and to make shallow furrows 8 to 12 inches apart. I sprinkle some granular organic fertilizer in the furrow, and run my hand tool through the soil again to work in the fertilizer.

Each garlic bulb has four to eight cloves, which need to be separated for planting. Plant them 3 to 4 inches apart and about 3 inches deep. Cover and press down the soil over them, watering if the soil is dry. Lastly mulch with a thick layer of straw or mulch hay. I use 8 to 12 inches of loose straw, which gets packed down to 4 inches by the winter snows. Garlic will grow up through the mulch, but most weeds will not.

I also plant a lot of spring-blooming bulb flowers in pots for early blossoms indoors and as gifts to friends. I mix used planting mix from summer pots with good compost and plant daffodils and tulips in planters and my window box. You can pack the bulbs close together in pots, and they need only a couple of inches of soil mix above and below them. Store them in a cool, dark place — 35 to 50 degrees is best. But even a cold garage will work if they can establish roots early and then snooze a little if the soil freezes.

Daffodils take about 12 weeks of dormancy before they should be brought into the warmth of the house, but tulips do better with 16 weeks. Little things like crocus can be forced in 8 to 10 weeks. Be sure to label them with the date planted and variety. Water lightly once a month. My favorites are Tête-à-Tête daffodils — small early daffodils in bright yellow. I pack four bulbs into a 4-inch pot and share them in February and March when friends need a pick-me-up.

This is also the time to plant bulbs outdoors for spring. Most bulbs like a sunny location with well-drained soil, but you can also plant bulbs under deciduous trees if they get enough sun filtered through them, or before they leaf out. If you have a site with good sun but moist soil, there are a few bulbs that will work. “Thalia” is a white blossomed, late-blooming daffodil that does well even in fairly wet soil.

Camassia is a bulb plant that prefers damp soil. It produces blue to purple flowers on tall stems — up to 3 feet tall with hundreds of small blossoms. A good sandy loam is best, but it will do fine in any sunny soil that stays moist during the bloom season. It is not of interest to deer, and will keep coming back for years if happy where you plant it.

Tulips, on the other hand, are delicious to deer as flowers, and to rodents as bulbs. To foil the deer I plant 100 tulips in my vegetable garden most years and surround and cover the bed with chicken wire. I grow them as annuals, pulling the bulbs after they bloom.

Over the years I have planted hundreds, nay, thousands of daffodil bulbs. Most survive and thrive — nothing eats them. I have a patch of daffies from bulbs I dug up at my boyhood home in the early 1970s — some 50 years ago. To keep them producing well it’s good to top-dress the soil with “bulb booster” or a good slow-release organic fertilizer either now or in the spring.

To plant 25 daffodils I dig a hole about 6 inches deep, a couple of feet long and about 18 inches across. I loosen up the soil in the bottom with my CobraHead Weeder, a single-tine cultivator. I sprinkle a cup or so of organic fertilizer in the bottom and work it in, working in a bucket of compost too. Then I plant the bulbs, pointy end up. I tend to plant them 3 or 4 inches apart. If it is sandy or full of clay, I mix the soil I use to refill the hole with a 50-50 mix of good compost and soil.

So take a sunny afternoon and go plant bulbs — either outdoors, or in pots for forcing. It’ll be something to look forward to all winter.

Featured photo: Seeds and roots of dock, a big weed. Photo by Henry Homeyer.

Yes, that is a squash in the spare bedroom

It seems to me that summer has been zooming by. Of course, I did plant many vegetables two to three weeks earlier than usual and crossed my fingers that Demon Frost would not appear. It didn’t. We’ve had a very sunny summer, and my garden is thriving.

I planted 35 tomato plants this year. Why so many? I eat tomatoes three meals a day when they are available and like to have enough to share with friends and neighbors. But most importantly, I freeze them to use for the rest of the year. I eat stews with a tomato base all winter, and love having tomatoes that I know are organic and picked at their peak of perfection.

If you have a big vegetable garden, you probably should have a freezer. I have two. I cook with frozen vegetables from last year until this year’s crop comes ready.

You can freeze whole tomatoes in freezer-grade zip-close bags. Make sure the tomatoes are clean and have no bad spots. Close the bag right up to a straw that you place in the corner of the bag and suck out the air. Quickly pull the straw out and finish closing the bag. Put several bags in a single layer on a cookie sheet and put in the freezer. Nine medium tomatoes will fill a quart bag.

When you need some for a soup or stew, just take a few out, rinse them under hot tap water and the skins will rub right off. Put them on a chopping board for a few minutes and you can dice them.

I grow eight to 10 Sun Gold cherry tomato plants each year. They are a delight popped in the mouth right there in the sunshine, but I usually dehydrate most of them. I cut clean, ripe Sun Gold cherry tomatoes in half and place them cut-side up on the tray of a food dehydrator. I start the process at high heat — say 150 degrees — for 30 minutes, then drop the temp to 125 or 130 so that I don’t damage the vitamins in the tomatoes. You can take them out when brittle, or earlier when they are leather-like. They store well in a dark cupboard, in the fridge, or in a freezer.

I love kale fresh or frozen. It is great in winter stews, smoothies or colcannon, an Irish kale and potato dish. I blanch kale and other brassicas by dropping the chopped leaves into boiling water for a minute, then removing them and dropping in cold water in the sink. I drain, spin dry in a salad spinner, and spread out the kale on a cotton tea towel and blot dry. This process is easy if you have a blanching pot with an inner pot that has drainage holes so you can pull all the leaves out quickly.

Most green vegetables need blanching to store well in the freezer. This includes Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beans and squash. The quick boiling kills the enzymes that cause aging, making for a better product. I don’t blanch tomatoes, peppers, fruit or leeks. But for best results it is good to eat frozen foods in Year 1, not Year 4 or 5.

The easiest way to keep food for eating all winter is to store it in a cool location. I have a cold basement and a cool area in the entry area of my house. Potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi, rutabagas store well in the basement with high humidity and temperatures in the 33-to-50-degrees range. Cabbages store well there, too, but a fridge is better for long-term storage.

Other veggies need low humidity and cool temperatures. Those include onions, shallots, garlic and winter squash. I keep them on a wooden rack I got from Gardener’s Supply, their “orchard rack.” I have that in the main part of the house where I have a woodstove — hence low humidity. But I keep them near the mudroom, which is unheated. You can also keep squash under the bed upstairs in a spare bedroom with the heat off and the door closed.

When picking vegetables or fruit for later use, it’s important to pick when ripe — which is not always easy. Apples are easy. Pick one, slice it open and look at the seeds. If white or green, not ready. If the seeds are black or brown, they are ready to pick. They dry well for snacks all year.

Winter squash and pumpkins are trickier. You should use pruners to leave some stem when you pick, and that should be dry and a bit brittle. The outer skin thickens and toughens up more, the longer they stay on the vine. I recently ate a butternut squash that I’d stored on a shelf since last fall, and it was delicious.

Green beans get tough if you don’t pick them when ready. If you start to see the individual seeds as prominent lumps, they are probably over the hill. Cook some up and you may still find them edible, even if not perfect. Some varieties, such as “Kwintus,” are tasty even when big.

Garlic? When the leaves start to dry up at the base of the plant, you can pull them. I’ve been told to cure them in a cool, dry place before cutting off the stems. They are said to absorb some nutrients from the stalks into the bulbs.

The bigger your garden, the more you can store for winter. But you can also support your local farm stand and buy some produce in bulk for storage. I recommend it.

Featured photo: A straw used to remove air from a bag of cherry tomatoes. Photo by Henry Homeyer.