Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities,

by Amy Stewart

Published by Algonquin Books, 2009

A creepy little book from author Amy Stewart, Wicked Plants has been on the best seller list at indie and mainstream bookstores alike, since its publication date.  It’s a must-read for fans of I Must Garden products, because our products are made from plants that smell wicked to animals.  If the animals tried to keep us humans out of their gardens, they might use some of the plants detailed in Wicked Plants.  Better to be safe than sorry!  Here’s what this frightful delightful book has in store for you!

Practical Information about Plant Poisoning

The book is not intended to be a comprehensive field manual for poisonous plants.  Stewart writes  “If this book entertains, alarms, and enlightens you, I’ve done my job.  I’m not a botanist or a scientist but rather a writer and a gardener who is fascinated by the natural world.”  At the back of the book, she lists field guides and references for further reading for those who want more  in-depth information and photos.

She also writes, in the introduction to the book called “Consider Yourself Warned,” that she is most definitely not a medical professional, and that Wicked Plants is not intended to replace information from the doctor.  She cautions “And if you suspect that someone has been poisoned by a plant, please do not spend precious time flipping through this book in search of symptoms or a diagnosis. . . Don’t try to figure it out on your own.  Instead, call a poison control center at 800-222-1222, or seek immediate medical attention.”

After dispensing cautionary information about how to use the book, and how not to use the book, the fun begins.

The Design Makes the Book

In addition to soaking up all of the interesting trivia contained in Wicked Plants, you’ll find yourself  enthralled and impressed by the book design.  The outside cover is a sickly-tinged lime green, with a drawing of what looks like an old, wrought-iron cemetery gate on the front.  Inside, the pages look like old parchment, and are illustrated with botanical etchings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs, and fantastical, creepy illustrations by Jonathon Rosen.  The main text is black, and the etchings, illustrations and sidebars are sepia brown.  Plant section headings are written in a font reminiscent of an ancient old man scratching away with an ink bottle and quill pen.  In other words, the medium fits the message.

The stories of murder and mayhem with plants would be as true, and possibly, as interesting if presented in a straightforward glossy plant book, but they would not be as fun.  Fun, with a dose of learning, is clearly Stewart’s aim.

What Makes a Wicked Plant?

Ahhh, the definition is different for everyone.  In this book, there are the following categories of wicked:

• Deadly: plants like oleander and castor bean that kill with just the tiniest amount of poison ingested.
• Intoxicating:  morning glory, diviners sage (which has been in the news recently), and other trip-inducing plants.
• Destructive:  such as Kudzu, the “plant that ate the South.”
• Dangerous: includes poison sumac, angel’s trumpet, ragweed, juniper, and other plants chock-full of allergens.
• Painful:  habenero chile, which has enough intensity to make your face and hands go numb
• Illegal:  opium, and other controlled narcotics
• Offensive:  plants that stink, sting, or are carnivorous.

Plants That Changed the World

Some plants change the world because of the good they do.  Bark from the cinchona tree makes quinine.  During World War II, the availability and use of quinine, which comes from the trees, affected the outcome of many conflicts.  Those who had them, or territories that could grow them, for the essential source of quinine, the first effective treatment for malaria, got ahead.  Those who didn’t, or could not effectively produce and distribute medicine from the tree bark, and were fighting in tropical jungles, lost men by the tens of thousands-to illness, not bullets.

Other plants change the word with negative impacts.  Many of these are detailed in Wicked Plants, giving readers a new appreciation for what some might mistake for common weeds.

Erythroxylum coca, the plant from which the drug cocaine is derived, is a native of Peru.  Nobody would argue with the deleterious effects of this drug in individual neighborhoods and world-wide politics.

Papaver somniferum, the Opium Poppy, is the source of income for many farmers in Afghanistan, continually de-stabilizing the region and funding questionable activities on the international stage.

Lythrum salicaria, purple loosestrife, has destroyed acres of wetlands, due to its invasiveness.  While their impact on overall world climate change may be minimal, in comparison to other issues, the wetlands they have overtaken, and species they have pushed out, are a part of environmental destruction causing problems around the world.

Nicotiana tabacum, tobacco, has, in the words of Stewart “taken the lives of ninety million people, led to the establishment of slavery in the American South, and spawned a global industry worth $300 billion.

Eupatorium rugosum, White Snakeroot, is the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother, when he was just 9 years old.  Who knows how his life, and consequently the lives of many Americans, would have changed, had his mother lived?

The Plant Mafia

In addition to descriptions of “superstar”  individual wicked plants, there are chapters and sections detailing plant sub-groups.  One of the funniest, as well as potentially most useful chapters is the “Botanical Crime Families” chapter.  It gives more information about plant families that people commonly come into contact with, and which contain many poisonous or otherwise dreadful members.  Detailed in this chapter are the Nightshade family, with potatoes, petunias, and tomatoes.  The cashew family makes an appearance, as does the spurge family with its popular house plants like the rubber tree and poinsettias.

We can be fooled into thinking that if one plant is edible, its relatives are, too.  That’s not necessarily the case.  A careful reading of this book will dispel that, and other common myths about how to deal with the wild world of plants.

For plant aficionados, trivia buffs, and people who love weird facts, Wicked Plants is a sheer delight.

The Organic Lawn Care Manual

By Paul Tukey

Published by Storey Press, 2007

One of the most valuable books for homeowners to hit the market recently is The Organic Lawn Care Manual, by Paul Tukey.  Tukey is the editor of the regional gardening magazine “People, Places, Plants,” which has a focus on gardens in the northeast, and sustainable/organic techniques.  The Organic Lawn Care Manual is a useful book for homeowners maintaining lawns, even if they are not, or do not want to, use completely organic methods.  Other lawn care books give useful information for maintaining lawns, but do not delve as far into the biological “happenings” under the lawn, which greatly impact lawn health.  Understanding the information in this book, even if you care for your lawn with conventional methods, will help you have a greener, healthier lawn in the long run.

This Book Gives Big Bang for the Buck

List price for the paperback version of The Organic Lawn Care Manual is $19.95.  It is worth every penny.  You’ll find yourself pulling this book off the shelves time after time to reference it for a variety of tasks.  Here are the main topics covered:

• Evaluating your lawn care needs
• Parts of the grass plant
• Overview of major and minor nutrients needed by grass
• Soil 101: structure, components, how to improve your soil
• Grass species: profile, care needs, regional distribution
• How to install a new lawn
• How to renovate a lawn
• Using compost and natural fertilizer on the lawn
• Lawn care calendar
• Watering do’s and don’ts, equipment overviews and water saving tips
• Lawn weed identification and control
• Lawn insect identification and control
• Lawn mower and maintenance equipment overviews
• Alternative plantings in lieu of a lawn

Each section is fully illustrated with diagrams and full-color pictures.  Some of the information is presented in tabular form, for easy reference.  Virtually every aspect of lawn care is given a thorough treatment.

Organic vs. Conventional Lawn Care

Certainly, in the short run, it might be easier to manage a lawn using synthetic chemicals and broad-based applications.  In the long run, however, it is less expensive and much more environmentally friendly to manage the lawn with organic methods.  As the book details, even replacing some of your synthetic inputs like fertilizer and weed killer with organic alternatives like compost, compost tea, and corn gluten (as a pre-emergence herbicide), make a difference.  Now, more than ever, organic lawn care alternatives are available in mainstream garden centers, and online.

As is frequently mentioned in the book, using good maintenance techniques is beneficial to the lawn, regardless of whether you maintain with organic or conventional methods.  The healthier the lawn, the less time and money you need to spend caring for it.  Simple techniques like watering properly, maintaining sharp mower blades, mowing at the correct height, and planting the right grass type for your area go a long way toward reducing costs.  Because most of us learned to take care of the lawn in the traditional “Mow, blow and go” fashion (mow the lawn, edge with a trimmer, blow the stray grass off the sidewalk, and call it a day), the information in the book will be new-and might even dispel some common lawn care myths that are holding back your lawn from optimum health.

Lawn Care Myths-Busted

There isn’t a specific myth busting section in the book; however, from reading and digesting the information contained within, you’ll find yourself thinking a little bit differently about these topics:

Myth: If you maintain the lawn organically, it will be full of weeds.

Busted!  If you transition from conventional lawn care to organic lawn care, it will take a bit of time to clear the lawn of weeds, and you may still have to pull a dandelion or two, but following the techniques and using organic pre-emergence treatments like corn gluten will help you grow a lush, green lawn without harmful chemicals in a short time.

Myth:  There are no organic weed killers.

Busted!  There are a number of ways to kill weeds without using glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup).  Solarization, boiling water, vinegar and corn gluten pre-emergence all help remove or prevent weeds.  Additionally, by giving your lawn good care, you will prevent many of the problems that cause weed invasions.

Myth: There are no good electric or motor-free lawn mowers.

Busted!  Every year there are more and more options for gasoline-free mowers.  Fiskars will be releasing a new reel mower, called the Momentum mower, in late 2009 or early 2010.  It is almost easier to push than a regular self-propelled gas mower.  (That’s not in the book! We got to try it out at the Garden Writers Conference recently.)

Myth:  You can’t overseed in the winter if you have an organic lawn.

Busted!  You can overseed warm-season turf, and still maintain your chemical-free lawn.  In fact, competition from annual ryegrass (the preferred overseeding grass), will keep some weed problems at bay.  Additionally, because rye is a legume, it fixes nitrogen in the soil, converting it to a form available to the grass.

Success Stories

One of the best things about The Organic Lawn Care Manual is that it includes success stories from businesses, homeowners, public gardens, and municipal spaces that have transitioned from conventional to organic lawn care.  There are pictures, testimonials, tips and hints from real people who have actually enacted the techniques presented in this book.  Inclusion of this information does two things:  it proves to skeptics that this type of lawn care can be done, and it incorporates information from someone other than the author, and from people living in different climate zones.  Lawn care in California is not the same as lawn care in Kentucky.

If you only Buy one Lawn Care Manual

Buy The Organic Lawn Care Manual.  It is a fantastic reference and resource for professionals and homeowners, alike.  Covering virtually every topic necessary to give your lawn the best possible care, it is one “gardening tool” you won’t want to be without.

The $64 Tomato:  How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

The paperback cover of The $64 Tomato quotes a line from the New York Times Book Review of the book:  “Gardening as an Extreme Sport.”  The reviewer hit the nail right on the head.  William Alexander’s account of his first ten years with his garden at his “Big Brown House” on the hill in a small town in upstate New York provides a rollicking tale of adventures in vegetable growing.  If his plan was to inspire people to have a garden, I’m not certain that he has succeeded.  However, if his aim with the book was to make people think about their gardens, how they maintain them, and at what cost, he has met his goal.

With worry about a global food shortage spreading across the globe, and people starting vegetable gardens to grow and preserve their own food Alexander’s book is as useful and timely today as it was when it was published.  In 2006, the “green movement” was just starting the meteoric climb on its S curve.  People were not yet bombarded with green choices, green advertising and green panic.  In 2006, the book was a fun book about gardening.  It is still a fun book about gardening—and just a fun book in general—perfect for a plane ride or a day at the beach.  I laughed out loud several times.  Today, though, the book does live up to its review from Life Magazine  as “Both an Inspiration and a Cautionary Tale.”

A Perfect Storm
The $64 Tomato illustrates the perfect storm that forms when an upper middle class person with lots of yard space and grand ideas decides to plant an environmentally friendly garden—free of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, plastic mulch and tacky garden ornaments.  (He narrowly escaped the tacky ornament predicament.  The chapter about his wife’s yearning for a large, pink obelisk would make any serious gardener shiver with horror.)  Conditions are still ripe for such a storm, as more people become interested in growing their own food—whether to avoid pesticides, avoid rising food costs, or take up a “nice hobby.”

Anyone thinking about gardening for pleasure should read this book first.  It is not that Alexander does not enjoy gardening—far from it.  He is a wonderful and adventurous cook  (the paperback edition contains several recipes highlighted in the book), and makes full use of all of the common and uncommon produce he grows.  He does, throughout the course of a decade with his garden, learn things that you can only learn from experience—or someone else’s experience.  Some of the lessons he learned, I would rather skip.

Superchuck and the Neighbor’s Deer Farm
The book is full of characters-two legged and four-legged (and six legged and eight legged).  My favorite character was a groundhog named Superchuck.  Despite Alexander’s 10,000 volt electrical fence charger, and multiple above and below ground fence lines, Superchuck manages to decimate the entire crop of prized Brandywine tomatoes one summer.  Alexander tries to trap Superchuck in a “Havaheart Trap,” which he re-names the “Haveaheartattack Trap” after a nasty run-in with a mistakenly captured possum.  Superchuck remains completely uninterested in the apples and other bait placed in the trap.  No, Superchuck has a taste for tomatoes and learns how to jump through the electric fence between surges from the charger in order to get to the tomatoes.  I won’t divulge the eventual way that Superchuck met his demise.  You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Years of backbreaking gardening in brick-quality clay and enduring the onslaught of white-tailed deer turns even Alexander’s mild-mannered physician wife into a zealot.  When one of her patients asks her how to get rid of dear, she says “KILL THEM!” at the top of her lungs.  Nothing is more aggravating than spending hours and hours carefully cultivating and anticipating the taste of fresh produce and then waking up one morning to see the garden torn to shreds.

Remembrance of Things Past. . .
My favorite part of the book involved the apple orchard.  Part of the reason Alexander started his garden was so that he could grow produce free of synthetic pesticides.  While selecting plants for his planned organic apple orchard, a fellow town resident tells him that “there are no organic apple orchards in upstate New York.”  Of course, he has to prove the man wrong, and prove to himself that he can grow apples without synthetic insecticides.  He decided to plant the orchard in the first place because he remembers idyllic summers in his father’s (supposedly) pesticide-free apple orchard.  After several miserable seasons involving apple maggots, squirrels, apple scab and more, he resorts to purchasing a container of broad-spectrum insecticide spray from his local hardware store.  Upon opening the container, he writes:

“I was startled by a distinctive, familiar smell.  You know how a certain smell can, through some miracle of brain chemistry, transport you back to a place and time, awakening a lost memory?  That’s what happened when I opened the orchard spray.  But these madeleines transported me back to the pesticide of my youth!  I knew that smell!. . . Could it be?  Could I have so romanticized my father’s “organic” apple raising that I and wiped out any conscious memory of pesticides?  Or had he perhaps sneaked in a little malathion now and then when I wasn’t looking?”

At that moment in Alexander’s narrative, he eats the proverbially forbidden fruit, and, as he explains, loses his innocence.  He realizes that his vision of a happy, joyful garden, free of any problems, is impossible.  At that point, his perspective shifts from a dreamy, anything is possible viewpoint to a more practical and balanced viewpoint.  He still remains fanatical about fingerling potatoes and recounts stories of gardening (or not) with his wife and children, but the “cautionary” part of the “cautionary tale” enters the picture.  He never stops experimenting, but he thinks more about what he is doing in the garden, whether it involves a revolving door of vegetable givers (don’t leave your car unlocked or you will end up with a front seat full of zucchini), or sun drying tomatoes.

The $64 Tomato
At the beginning of the second-to-last chapter, E.B. White is quoted.  “We will gladly send the management a jar of our wife’s green-tomato pickle from last summer’s crop—dark green, spicy, delicious, costlier than pearls when you consider the overhead.”  And so William Alexander does the math to calculate the cost of each of his 18 Brandywine tomatoes harvested that summer.  For all who enjoy gardening, and those who are considering the “hobby,” The $64 Tomato serves as a kind of reverse-instructional manual about growing produce affordably.  Depending upon the type of soil preparation you do, the varieties of plants you grow, and your local weather, neighbor and animal conditions, a vegetable garden can save you money, or cost you a lot of money.  Luckily for us, William Alexander shows us, in a fun and painless way, how to avoid the $64 tomato.  The takeaway message:  Start with a really tall fence, and go from there.  (Or, shameless plug, get some I Must Garden Deer Repellent.  It works!)

For anyone who loves to garden, or anyone considering planting a garden, The $64 Tomato  is the best and most fun primer available.

Rose Pruning Basics

There are some pretty basic rose pruning techniques that will serve you well, no matter which type of rose you are working with–Hybrid Tea, Floribunda or Modern Shrub Rose.  (You have to be careful with climbers in terms of winter pruning.  Some climbing roses flower on old growth.)

These techniques work with all roses:

• Always prune out crossing branches.  Use your eye and don’t be afraid.  Roses suffer from mildew and fungal problems if there is not enough air circulation.  Removing crossing branches will help open the inside of the plant for air movement.
• To further open up the plant, prune out more branches that are growing in toward the center of the plant.  You do not want to prune out all of these or you will end up with a hollow vase-looking plant.  A rule of thumb, though, is to prune just above an outward-facing bud.  When that bud breaks, or sprouts, in the spring, the branch will grow out, away from the plant.
• Check for crowding at the base of the plant.  Some roses sucker more than others.  You do not want the stems to cluster right next to each other all over the plant or they might inadvertently end up girdling each other.
• Height is a personal preference.  I would not recommend cutting a rose shrub all the way to the ground unless you want to drastically reduce its size, but roses can survive a pretty harsh pruning.

Type-Specific Pruning

• Hybrid Tea roses:  These are truly the “delicate flower” of the rose family.  That said, they do benefit from a hard winter pruning.  Cut stems back about 2/3 of the way, remembering to cut back to an outward-facing bud.  (This is especially important in hybrid teas because you are growing for their flowers, not for shrubiness, and they are much affected by airflow problems.)  You will also want to thin canes, or stems, that are three years old or older to renew the plant.
• Floribundas:  These require a hard pruning as well to prevent the inside of the plant from becoming overly crowded with small twigs.  In the winter, when the floribunda plant is dormant, remove any large, old stems completely to the ground.  Cut back newer, longer stems to about 2 ft.  Cut back any remaining smaller branches to aobut six inches long.  You will be left with a drastically reduced mass, but it will re-sprout in the spring, refreshed.
• Modern Shrub Roses:  All roses are shrubs, but not all are pruned to achieve a shrubby habit.  Shrub roses are pruned to maintain shrubbiness, as they are able to handle this type of growth without succumbing to fungal problems.  In the winter, thin out very small twigs, and reduce the height back by 1/3 to 2/3.

Roses are great for winter gardeners because they give you an excuse for getting out in the garden, on even the coldest of days!

Seeds of Change

Seeds of Change grows, harvests and sells organic and heirloom flower, vegetable and fruit seeds.  So, some of these plants are not “new” in terms of a new hybrid (they don’t do hybrids), but are new cultivars of existing species or new to the commercial market.

Crimson Violet Strawflower:  I remember cutting and drying strawflowers with my grandma when I was little.  This one is a beautiful deep burgundy and will look beautiful in the garden, and can be harvested, dried and made into bouquets or potpourri.

Staro Chives:  Chives are pretty easy to grow.  Stems on this variety are a little larger and thicker than regular chive varieties.  It can be used almost in place of green onions.  That saves $$ in cooking, and I’m all about that!

Bandit Leek:  I love leeks, and the idea of growing a plant named “bandit.”  The website description promises thick stems with no bulbing upon harvest.

Thompson & Morgan

T&M has been in the garden seed business since 1855.  I have ordered from them for many years and trust their seed sources.  Of course, you can always end up with a bad seed (literally), but I have had good luck with their new releases in the past.

Agastache aurantiaca Fragrant Mixed:  Agastache is one of my favorite plants.  It grows from frost to frost and blooms continuously without much care.  Fragrance would be a bonus!

Cosmos bipinnatus Double Click Rose Bonbon:  Cosmos are super because they can be sown with abandon, and sprout prolifically.  This one looks more like a dahlia, but less expensive!

Nasturtium cobra:  This one has dark burgundy, almost black flowers that do well as trailers in pots.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

Johnny’s is an employee-owned company that started as a one-man operation.  Johnny’s is well known for its quirky catalog, now available online.  Their farm in Maine produces every seed they sell.

Tanacetum cinerariifolium: This is the plant in the chrysanthemum family from which natural insecticide compounds are extracted.  I NEED this in my garden.  In the summer, we are overwhelmingly overrun with mosquitos.

Red-Gem Marigold:  I love Lemon Gem and Orange Gem, so why not Red?  These don’t look like your typical pom-pom types of marigolds, but more like delicate daisies.  They are also edible!  (I can serve them on salads with my aphids!)

Of course, there are hundreds of different plants I would like to grow.  These are just a few that caught my eye as the latest new offerings from the catalogues.

Supplies

Paper to recycle

Small seeds–marigolds and forget-me-not seeds work well

A screen

Rags

Blender

Flower petals

Water

Instructions

This is a MESSY process, so you are probably going to want to do it near or around a sink.

Tear the paper into small pieces and fill the blender halfway with paper and about 2 cups of water.  Blend to a pulp.  After the paper has blended, you can stir flower petals in for added “interest.”  If you want to naturally color your paper, put the flower petals in with the paper before blending and blend the petals.  Pour out a bit of the mix onto the screen, and spread it out to the finished size you want.  Use the rags to press the water through the screen.  As soon as you have squeezed the water out, you can press seeds into the paper mix and carefully peel the paper off of the screen.  Leave the paper out to dry.

You can decorate the cards, cut them and shape them as you like once they are dry.  This is a fun way to make a gift tag as well.  Make sure you let the recipient know that he or she can tear up the card, scatter it in the garden and flowers will sprout.  It is a card and a gift, all at once!

Easy to Root Plants

Chlorophytum comosum:  Spider Plant

You can find these plants at almost every garden center and grocery store.  Spider plants love bright, indirect light.  They produce little plantlets on strong stems trailing out from the center of the plant.  Simply snip off the plantlets and stick them in a cup of water to root.  Once you see the roots soften and start to grow, the plant is ready to pot.

Epipremnum aureum: Golden Pothos

Pothos is one of those plants that interiorscapers love.  It can grow almost in the dark.  In the rainforest, it grows from the ground up into the trees, with the leaves getting larger the higher the plant grows.  (Most likely to take in more light.)  To root pothos, cut a section from the mother plant that is about 12 inches long.  Strip off the leaves on the lower six inches of the plant and place in water.  The plant will sprout roots at the “nodes” or places where the leaves used to be.  Once the plant has roots, transplant into moist potting soil.

Saintpaulia: African Violet

Once you start propagating these, you will lose your mind.  (Not literally, but they are so easy to propagate that you will soon have a houseful!)  Simply snip off leaves with at least 1 inch of petiole (that is the “stem” that connects the leaf to the rest of the plant).  Stick the petioles in moist soil and let them root.  Once new little leaves begin sprouting from the base of the leaf, you can pot up your baby plants.

The best part about giving houseplants for gifts (besides the fact that it is cheap!) is that you get to give your friend a piece of your garden.  Your friend can grow the plant to maturity and then, root cuttings for their friends.  I have a whole little houseplant garden of plants from friends.  This sounds kind of corny, but even though my friends are far away, in a way, I still have them with me!

My roommate at the time had grown up on a farm in Iowa.  We were first-year students in the Longwood Graduate Program.  I had always gardened, but not grown vegetables since I was probably nine years old.  The lettuce was my first foray back into veggies.  It would be my last, for a while.

Over the next few weeks, I tended my pot of lettuce and ran out and snagged a rebound boyfriend.  By the time he was ready to come over to our place for dinner, my lettuce plants were robustly growing and ready for harvest.  I picked enough for a couple of dinner salads, washed and dried them and dressed them with some store-bought vegetables.  My roommate gave us our privacy at the dining room table as we munched our homemade pizza and homegrown lettuce salads.  Only after he had left did she come out of her room and ask what he had for dinner.  “My lettuce!” I excitedly shared.  A look of horror crossed her face.  “How did you get rid of the aphids?”  “What aphids?” I asked.  “Organically grown lettuce always has aphids on it.”  My stomach sank.  Did I serve my new boyfriend (rebound or not) aphids?  I had already done the dishes!  I could not tell!  A quick check of the plants out on the porch confirmed that, yes, I had served him aphids.

“Silly girl,” my good natured roommate said.  I said that if he asked what the tasty green things were in the salads, I would tell them they were a garnish.  She didn’t think I’d get away with that.  We both hoped he just hadn’t noticed.  She taught me to wash the lettuce in a baking soda and water solution so that next time, my salads would be aphid-free.  I have not, thankfully, had a repeat incident. 

Which brings me to another great product from I Must Garden and that’s the Insect Control. Like all the I Must Garden products its totally natural so I can use it indoors without worry of spraying pesticides. More importantly it’s extremely effective, I won’t use anything else now.

Tons of Tomatillos

I had my first vegetable garden when I was about six.  I think I grew tomatoes, and not much else.  I was way more interested in flowers.  I stayed a “flower child” for years and years until I started working as the Curator of Landscape at Fort Ticonderoga in New York.  The main garden for which I was responsible was The King’s Garden, a one acre, restored Marian Coffin designed garden from the 1920s.  Outside of the walled King’s Garden were six original vegetable garden plots.  During my tenure, we re-planted three of the plots as demonstration gardens:  A Garrison Garden (military vegetable garden), a Children’s Vegetable Garden, and a Three Sisters Garden (Native American garden).  The vegetable gardens were 50ft. by 50ft., and in my mind, were huge. I was going to need lots of plants to fill up all of that space…or so I thought.

In the Children’s Vegetable Garden, I planted about 20 tomatillo plants.  When my grower dropped them off for me, he said “I don’t think you need that many tomatillos.”  “We’ll be fine,” I said with my typical youthful disrespect for authority.  Oh. My. Goodness.  When the tomatillos started to produce, they did not stop.  And, because this was Ticonderoga, New York and not New York, New York, nobody had any idea what to do with them.  So, we let them sit.  (Now I know better–salsa, chutney, enchiladas.  Oh, well.)  They sat, all winter long.  Then, we tilled them back into the ground as we prepared for the new season, come spring.  Then, all million little tomatillo seeds sprouted and grew and grew and grew.

What was I thinking?

Well, the answer to that is “I wasn’t!”  I definitely learned my lesson.  Now, when I start my new vegetable garden at my new house, I will plant, maybe, two tomatillo plants.  And I will be certain to pick up any stray tomatillos so they don’t sprout all over everything during the next year.  I learned, boy did I learn.  Sometimes it is a good idea to listen to experienced gardeners.  They really do have good advice!

Protecting your Spring Flowering Bulbs

• You can use ground red pepper to help protect your bulbs.  If you are going to do this, it is probably worth the time to go to a wholesale store and get a very large container of pepper.  When you plant the bulbs, liberally sprinkle ground red pepper in the hole, then put the bulb in the hole and sprinkle more red pepper over the bulbs.  Squirrels might dig up a few bulbs, but they will stop after a few mouthfuls of pepper.
• Some people build little chicken-wire cages in which to plant their bulbs.  This works by blocking squirrels and (large) chipmunks from the bulbs, but still allows the bulbs to sprout and grow through the cage.  If you are planting a large area, this is not a very cost-effective method, and you will want to dig up the cage in the spring after the bulbs bloom.  You should not use a chicken-wire cage if you are going to plant bulbs for naturalizing.
• Squirrel repellent is one of the best ways to keep squirrels from chomping away at your plants.  You can use a combination of spray and granules when planting bulbs. Thoroughly spray bulbs with I Must Garden Squirrel Repellent, let dry and then plant as usual. You can mix some granular repellent in with the soil as you plant and finish with a sprinkling of repellent on the top of the soil when done.

Try some of these tried-and-true tested methods to keep the squirrels away from your bulbs, and get ready to welcome your beautiful spring flowers.  (In about four months!)