Connecticut Garden Journal

The sudden temperature dip has got us scrambling to finish up our winter plant protection projects. We got lulled into a false sense of eternal fall by warm weather in early November, but now we've got to get going. Our young trees are the first plants to protect. We add tree wrap around the trunks to keep rabbits, mice and voles from munching on the tender bark. This also prevents the bark from s...

It's like clockwork in our house. Once the days shorten and get cooler our holiday cactus start blooming. Depending on the plant, we have cactus blooming until spring. That's because holiday cactus aren't just one type of plant. There are Thanksgiving cactus, Christmas cactus and Easter cactus, all blooming at different times. When shopping you can tell them apart. Besides the flowering times, the...

Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us. It will be good to gather safely with friends and family again to celebrate. To make the meal more festive consider decorating your table with plants. You can use a variety of living plants and cuttings to make a centerpiece or smaller place settings to accentuate the holiday. Here's some ideas. For live plants, select a houseplant that dazzles with color. Some...

As the colder weather settles in, many gardeners wonder what to do with annual plants that are still alive. One of the tougher annuals is the geranium. Geraniums or Pelargoniums are mostly grown as potted plants because of their penchant for flowering non-stop all summer and fall. If you have a variety you particularly love you can easily overwinter it indoors. Here's how. The first way is simple....

We all know the famous holiday song, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.” It harkens back to a time when chestnuts grew in abundance in our forests from Georgia to Maine. Unfortunately, the chestnut blight wiped out most of the trees about 100 years ago, but we still can grow versions of the American chestnut in our yards. The American Chestnut Foundation has been working to develop b...

More and more researchers are finding our soil is a dynamic, diverse place loaded with microbes. It's estimated one teaspoon of healthy soil can hold more than a billion microorganisms. That's amazing! These bacteria, fungi, protozoa and other creatures are living and thriving for themselves, and working to help our plants grow. Probably most common of these soil microbes is mycorrhizae fungus. Th...

Halloween is coming up fast and one of the traditions around this holiday is pumpkin carving. It's fun to take the kids or grandkids out to a local pumpkin patch, select a few prized fruits and bring them home for carving. You certainly can decorate the pumpkins in other ways such as painting or “dressing them up”. But carving is the way to go for many families and I have some tips for...

October is a great time to plant shrubs, trees and vines. The air and soil temperatures are still warm so plant roots continue to grow and there's great sales at many local garden centers. One of my favorite vines is the climbing hydrangea. If you have a partly shaded North or East side of a house, garage or barn, consider growing a climbing hydrangea. Hydrangea petiolaris will flower in part shad...

We don't grow corn. After watching our neighbor spend hours erecting barriers in his garden to unsuccessfully keep the raccoons out of his sweet corn patch, I'd rather let the local farmers do the hard work. But this doesn't mean I don't grow any corn. We do grow popcorn. I've found over the years that raccoons aren't interested in popcorn. It's certainly not as sweet as sweet corn, so maybe that'...

October is garlic planting time, but there are other onion family plants that can be sown in fall as well. Come the mid- to- end of October consider planting shallots and walking onions. You probably have heard of shallots and perhaps used them in French recipes. The French love shallots for their sweet, mild, onion flavor. Shallots come in a few different types. The red skinned and pink fleshed,...

If this summer has taught me anything about current weather trends for gardening, I should expect more extreme, summer weather events in the future. It seems we bounced from hot and dry weather to humid conditions with torrential rains all summer long. One way to help mitigate the problem of torrential rains is to build a rain garden. Rain gardens are sunken areas in your lawn, planted with perenn...

It's apple season and we've all heard the story of Johnny Appleseed. According to folklore, he wandered the Midwest in the early 1800's planting apple seeds. He was eccentric, often walking barefoot and wearing a burlap sack. While the folklore is mostly true, I thought I'd elaborate. Johnny Appleseed was born John Chapman in Massachusetts. He wasn't just an errant, wandering apple seed planter. H...

Every September I break out the hot water bath pot and start canning tomatoes. This is something I remember my mom doing every year and it always seemed she'd choose the hottest, most humid days to can her tomatoes. I still can in honor of Angela, but also because I love the taste of canned tomatoes in winter sauces and soups. I've changed mom's recipe to make it a little easier. I can tomatoes sl...

Asian pears have become popular for their pear-like flavor with an apple-like texture. This pear was developed in China, but spread to Japan and Korea and now is grown around the world. We love the crispness of the fruit and the delicious, sweet, pear flavor.   We grow a few different varieties of Asian pears. 'Twentieth Century' has a yellow skin, soft flesh and mild flavor. We really l...

I have a great fall perennial for you. It produces an abundance of white or pink, daisy-like flowers in later summer and autumn, it's deer resistant, spreads by seed or rhizomes so fills in an area quickly, tolerates wet soils and is a fantastic pollinator plant. Interested? It's Boltonia. To most gardeners, Boltonia looks like an aster. In fact, its common name is false aster. Boltonia grows 3- t...

I first ate kerala or bitter melon, when I went to India in the early 1990's. I remember eating bitter tasting vegetables when I was in the Peace Corps in Thailand, so I wasn't too surprised by the flavor. What I really liked was how local villagers cooked it. Roasted, stuffed, steamed or sautéed it added a depth of flavor that I love. I've grown kerala in our garden for years. This year I'...

It happens every spring. I look where the hardy hibiscus is supposed to be growing and I see nothing. The bulbs are blooming, the spring perennials are flowering, but no signs of our hibiscus. Instead of panicking, I've learned to be patient. I know hardy hibiscus takes its time in spring. While hardy hibiscus is late to emerge, it makes up for lost time in July and August. With the hot, humid wea...

When I suggest growing mint to a gardener, they sometimes go running. Mint has a bad reputation of spreading, sprawling and generally trying to take over the world. But not all mints are created equal when it comes to plant growth. Certainly, peppermint, lemon mint, spearmint and their off shoots, such as chocolate mint (it smells like chocolate but doesn't smell like it), will spread quickly and...

They're back!!! Every year at this time I start searching for the tomato hornworm. It's not hard to see the damage. These caterpillars of the hawk moth start out small on the tops of tomato plants. As they eat, they grow and turn into 4 to 6-inch long monsters! Well, maybe they aren't that scary, but they can cause lots of damage on leaves and fruits. Once you start seeing some munching of the lea...

Our zucchini and summer squash are cranking out fruits everyday now. The winter squash and melons are vining and life is good in the vegetable garden. But, this false sense of security won't last long. Unless you're diligent, squash pests, such as squash borers and bugs, will attack without any advanced notice. You'll know you have squash vine borers by the the vine suddenly wilting mid day, even...

It's poppy season. Poppies are bright, cheery flowers that grace gardens from spring until fall. While there are some early blooming poppies, such as the red Flanders poppy and the Oriental poppy, it's the seed grown, summer poppies that I love best. These include the California poppies and bread seed poppies. Seed grown poppies germinate in spring and flower starting in early summer. California p...