Enjoy Year Round Color With Window Gardens
Like hundreds of other plant lovers, spend many happy days in their flower garden. But, always when the last chrysanthemum had been cut down by killing frost there was the dreary time, between late fall and spring, when all growing things were withered and no flower bloomed.
After one of these ruthless frosts, which snuffed all color from the world and made it sad, Mrs. Preston decided to build a winter window garden in her home.
Since then she has had twelve months of color. A scarlet amaryllis, almost hidden by the foliage of an Easter lily, glows in the window. A novelty in gloxinias, called Lady Slipper, blooms year after year in the same pot with only a short rest period between flowering. Several potted geraniums bloom in their sea son and two of them (Nutmeg and Rose) have fragrant, spicy leaves which add greatly to their desirability and lend an interest even when the plants are no longer in bloom.
A Gloriosa lily, with strange flowers, has climbed 6 feet to the top of the window to crown it with its gold and crimson beauty. There are orchids, some of which bloom during the winter holidays to furnish corsages for friends.
“I used to grow gardenias in my window,” says Mrs. Preston. “Now I have something new. It’s called Fleur d’Amour. It looks like a gardenia, doesn’t it?” she said, pointing to a plant with shining leaves and white gardenia-like flowers. “It has a gardenia-like fragrance, too, that I find captivating.”
The most prized plants in Mrs. Preston’s winter garden, however, are her African violets. It would be difficult for anyone to find a more colorful collection. Some are the usual ones bought at nurseries but quite a number are those Mrs. Preston has raised from seed.
One of her seedlings, grown-up, was mentioned in a magazine that gave the plant special mention for being outstanding in foliage and bicolored blossoms. Many of the other violets were also grown from seed. On the second shelf, near the curtain, is one of several doubles. There are also a number of singles, red, pink and white.
The window garden faces the east and south. It affords abundant light all day. The rack on which the violet plants on the right are seen was constructed so as to give perfect drainage. Underneath the rack is a galvanized iron, water-tight pan filled with cinders. It absorbs any surplus water accidentally spilled in watering. This pan is always moist and so acts as a humidifier to offset the too dry atmosphere frequently found in our modern homes.
Seeking assistance on backpack gas leaf blower is just one of our strong points. Click on the link to visit http://www.plant-care.com/leaf-blowers.html.
Different Varieties And Uses Of Onions
Have you ever come home from work dog-tired on a cool evening and smelled fried potatoes and onions? In my book, they belong alongside freshly baked bread as a “welcome-homer.”
If you, too, are a confirmed onion eater, no matter what anyone says then you might like to know what varieties are best suited to the many. different uses of onion.
There are hundreds of varieties of onions, but we seldom use more than four or five.
Here are some facts that will help you “know your onions.”
“Bunch” onions are those which are used green. They may be used in salads and relishes.
There are many varieties of the “dry” onion type. Any of these can also be used green. Some are better winter keepers than others.
Some are excellent keepers and good for general use.
A small, mild variety is good for creaming and for glace onions. They are best when used before fully mature.
Spanish onions are a good all-around variety but cannot be kept too long. They are good fried or creamed.
Of course, if you are a real, honest-to-goodness onion eater, you’ll want to grow a few red ones. Now, there’s a real onion!
Leeks are a less-known member of the onion family. They are used mainly in Vichyssoise and are sometimes used in a casserole with a cheese sauce. Leeks may be stored like celery.
We should not fail to mention our old friends, the chives. There are few garden plants as adaptable and useful as chives. If your family doe knot care for an overpowering onion flavor, chives are for you. A very few seeds will give you all you can use for years plus a share for all your friends. An occasional trimming with the power mower will keep young, fresh, new tops at their flavorful best.
In the fall, you can bring a small clump into the house for your kitchen window. They will provide plenty for the winter.
Chives are excellent in potato salad and cottage cheese if added just before serving.
You can’t always get what you want but you can find what you need on the topics like underground watering systems. You can benefit from our years of experience, visit www.plant-care.com.
A Snowy Evenings Garden Adventures
Most Enthusiastic gardeners agree that gardening is a grand adventure with thrilling experiences at almost every turn. Yet as I look around among my gardening acquaintances. I am amazed to find that many miss much of the joy of their hobby by limiting their activities to the few short months of summer.
There are many ways the hobby of gardening can be an absorbing enterprise the entire year, and one of them is by allowing the seed and nursery catalogs to carry you through strange and exciting adventures during the winter.
There is an idea abroad among matter-of-fact gardeners that a seed or nursery catalog is merely sales literature for ordering plant materials. Their catalogs are discarded after their needs are ordered so as not to clutter up the house. They miss the pleasure and instruction which can be theirs from the correct use of catalogs.
To make clear what one gardener thinks is correct use, let me recount a few of the exciting adventures that have come my way during the years in which I have let seed and nursery catalogs be a part of my year-round living, but please overlook the perpendicular pronoun if it becomes too prominent!
Let us assume that this winter evening a raging blizzard prevents you from going out. A new seed catalog has arrived in the day’s mail. Your evening is not lost, because your catalog will provide you entertainment if you will approach it in the right manner. As you sit down in your snowbound living room, let us suppose that your catalog falls open to the muskmelon section and that your attention is directed to one of the new hybrids.
Its description is so enticing you wonder what gardeners did before the days of hybrids. Then begins a delightful journey into the past, and if I happened to be the snowbound gardener, the journey would go something like this: I would reach for my file of old catalogs to be reminded of some of ths; good old varieties perhaps no longer available. I could no doubt recall the first time I tasted the superb quality. Then my glance might fall on an old Maurice Fuld catalog, and fancy would surely run rampant, finally coming to rest, no doubt, on a Japanese variety-perhaps, with “the sweetness of `honey dew’ and the delightful flavor of a high quality pear.”
From here, I might travel the uncertain road followed by De Candolle throughout the world in his search for the muskmelon’s origin. I would see Africans on the banks of the Niger gathering and eating little wild plum-sized melons which Thonning named Cucumis arenarius; and inhabitants of Northern India eating the wild form, which Roxburgh called C. turbinatus. A variable plant with fruit from the size of a plum to that of a lemon, its flesh may be sweet, insipid (such as some of the modern kinds we grew the past sunless summer) or slightly acid.
My mental wanderings would next take me to the hills of Persia, now Iran, where in modern times the world’s best melons are grown. Then, if I had more time and did not get too sleepy, I could follow the muskmelon from its introduction into Europe, perhaps about the beginning of the Christian era, to the present, savoring many of my own cultures during the years that I have grown muskmelons. Eventually I would return to the new hybrid described in my new catalog.
As you can see the world of the landscape and garden does not only happen in the greenhouse or outside in the dirt.
Seeking assistance on ligustrum bonsai care is just one of our strong points. Click on the link to visit http://www.plant-care.com/1601-ligustrum-bonsai.html.
Sponsors
 |
 |