Month: April 2016

My mother is a vigorous lifelong gardener with varied and naturalistic gardens on her property in northwestern CT, and a small pond which provides a focal point behind the house. She also has a raised bed vegetable patch which produces broccoli, brussel sprouts,  lettuce, tomatoes and beans.  She finds that the rule in her garden is ‘one for me and one for the rabbits.’  Sometimes it’s two for the rabbits to her one. Recently I spent an afternoon gardening with my…

Where I live in Dutchess County NY, daffodils are one of the few bulbs deer do not graze so gardeners are planting more varieties of daffodils to get variation in their early spring gardens. After your bulbs are finished blooming, remove flowers so they won't put energy into producing seeds. For naturalizing, however, leave flowers and allow reseeding. At the NY Botanical Garden, daffodils are allowed to…

Sometimes in early Spring after bulbs have emerged from the ground and are beginning to flower, a sudden cold snap will bring temperatures down below freezing for a few days. More often than not, I’m amazed at the resiliency of these hardy plants. We are experiencing a cold scap in the northeast and we had snowfall on two consecutive nights earlier in the week in our Zone 6 region. The exact effect caused by a sudden cold snap depends on…