: Pieris japonica (pronounced Pie-air-iss juh-pon-i-kuh)
Pieris japonica (also known as Japanese Pieris, Lily-of-the-Valley Shrub, or Andromeda) is a compact, evergreen shrub with much appeal as a landscape plant. It’s versatile and works well in the shrub border, as a foundation plant, or massed in the woodland garden. Its attractive leaves emerge bronze or red, and it bears snowy white pendulous blooms in late winter and early spring.
We’ve been composting vegetative kitchen scraps all winter long. And as a result we’ve got a great start on the next batch of compost.
Here’s how our system works.
As many of you know, I love working in my herb garden. And many of you also know that I try to find the easiest way to accomplish tasks without suffering horrible consequences. The Garden Hopper Mobile Garden Stool has my name written all over it!
There has been renewed interest recently in including native plants in the home garden landscape. Native plants are typically considered to be those that were found naturally growing in a region as far back as pre-Colonial times.
Some people enjoy just floating around in the pool with no interruptions, nothing but the gentle lapping of the water against their skin, a frosty beverage in hand, and silence.
I’m not one of those people.
I never expected to be a compost junky but I’ve become one. No banana peel or pear core or basket of coffee grounds goes uncomposted.
I can already taste them. Juicy and warm picked fresh from the vine. The hardest part is getting them to last the short trip from the garden to the kitchen.
Tomatoes are warm season lovers. They pout and throw fits if you plant them out too early with cool night temperatures and unexpected cold breezes from the north. We plan on no earlier than Memorial Day weekend but will postpone if the weekend’s overcast and cool. And it’s worth the wait to have those seedlings spring to life under the hot summer sun and bulk up quickly in preparation of yielding handfuls of fruits.
Location, location, location. Tomatoes need as much sun as they can get. South or southwest locations are best where they get about 7 hours of sun per day or more.
These sun worshippers also appreciate being well-fed. Some compost or aged manure plus a handful of low-nitrogen fertilizer mixed into the soil does the trick. The soil should be fertile and well-drained since tomatoes are big feeders and resent wet feet.
It’s also best to plant them in places where you’ve planted them in the previous three years or so to discourage problems from soil-borne diseases. Containers work well for the small space gardener where crop rotation just isn’t feasible. And you can locate these easily in the sunniest parts of your yard.
Cherries, Beefsteaks, Heirlooms, or Paste. They all top the list of my summertime favorites.
text and photos by Ann D. Travers
Home brewing has enjoyed a resurgence over the past ten years or so. As a result, many beer lovers have found a new hobby with some cost savings benefit, too.
I remember my father pulling out the Jiffy Peat Pellets every spring. He’d fill Mom’s large glass Pyrex baking dish with warm water and let me drop in the round disks of compressed peat moss. I loved watching them float around the dish, absorbing all the water and expanding into puffy pots ready for sowing seeds into.
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