Plea to Preserve the Gardening Past

March 10, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

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Source: Garden Organic, on-line newsletter, home page, March 2009.

The Heritage Seed Library needs your help keeping heritage vegetables alive in a world where fewer varieties are available every year and hybrids dominate seed catalogues.

The only organization of its kind in the UK, the Library is dedicated to preserving and spreading open-pollinated vegetable seeds. It sponsors a seed swap, puts out a catalogue each December, and provides seeds for school gardens. It’s constantly working to identify and cultivate more heirloom varieties, which it then makes available to members.

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Posted in Organic Gardening, Vegetables

Dead, dead, definitely dead

March 9, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

Rosemary, dead

It’s official: I have killed my rosemary plant by under-watering it. (Whatever that straggly thing off to the right is, it ain't rosemary.) 

I feel like a pregnant woman who knows the facts of life but who finds herself asking, “How did this happen?” In both cases the answer is pretty straight-forward; there really aren’t that many routes to the particular result; yet the question remains.

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Posted in Indoor Gardening

Touch Your Tomatoes: thigmomorphogenesis

March 8, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

Yes, that’s what I said: thigmomorphogenesis. It may sound like a horrible spontaneous infection or a non-word entirely, the pseudo-scientific version of a thingamabob, but it’s not; it’s the horticultural term for the fact that plants’ growth patterns are altered by physical touch and agitation, whether by wind, rain, snow, contact with other plants, or—and now we’re getting to the heart of the matter—touch. All of these things cause upward growth to slow and stems to become sturdier.

The picture below shows a tree that didn’t get to experience it.

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Source: Linda Chalker-Scott, Aug. 2005 horticultural myth on thigmomorphogenesis.

This phenomenon (but not, I’ll admit, the term, which I had to look up) came to mind as I read a recent post at A Way to Garden. Margaret’s comprehensive list of “tips for growing better tomatoes from seed” is all-around useful and informative, not to mention engaging. No surprises there, to anyone who reads her regularly.

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Posted in Plant Science

Spring? You’ve got to be kidding!

March 6, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

Snow chairs

What is all this nonesense about spring? I spend a few minutes looking around at other blogs, and I’m about ready to sell my house (as if anyone could do that these days!) and move south.

Mr. McGregor’s Daughter has a post titled “It Really Is Spring;” Always Growing has one called “Happy for Warm Days;” Benjamin of The Deep Middle announces that the "Sandhill Cranes Are Here," The Giraffe Head Tree has a "New Look for Spring." and the Heirloom Gardener is blithely (rashly, if she could see my scowl) writing about "The First Tree to Flower in the Garden," the witchhazel. Even though Gotta Garden has a post titled "Snow Flowers," the snow gets short shrift and the flowers are many and lovely.

Now if you visit my garden, I'd be happy to offer you a seat, but I don't know if you'd want to accept the offer, and there sure wouldn't be any flowers to admire, as the photograph above demonstrates.

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Posted in Personals, Weather

Bozeman Explosion: this is not a metaphor

March 5, 2009 by The Manic Gardener

I've removed the slide show (put together by local news stationn KBZK) that used to be at the end of this post, as it was making everything else run ver-ry s-l-o-w-l-y. You can link to it here, though.

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I was going to write a post celebrating the big snowfall we had last night, but given that a big chunk of Main Street blew up this morning, that seemed a little crass. Six inches of heavy, wet snow can’t be making things any easier for the dozens and dozens of emergency personnel trying to put out a gas-main fire, figure out if anyone was in the three buildings destroyed, and rescue them if the answer turns out to be “yes.”

I was driving to a doctor’s appointment around ten this morning when I saw the big, dirty plume stretching across the sky from—where? Somewhere downtown? Further west? I couldn’t tell. But something big must be burning. At the office one of the staff, who was following the story online and on the radio, told me that “Boodles exploded.”

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Posted in News flash!, Personals