Gardening Tips

Jim died on the Ides of March, 2007, of lung cancer.

Live Christmas Trees

If this is the first year you plan to have a live Christmas tree, you may need to change your Christmas timing. If the tree stays indoor longer than a week to ten days, it may break dormancy and start to put out new growth, in which case it's between a rock and a hard place. There won't be enough light for it inside, but it will suffer if you go ahead and plant it.

With that in mind, dig your hole as early as possible, so the ground doesn't freeze on you while the tree is in the house. If you have a heavy clay soil, dig your hole wider than the tree's rootball but only half as deep, so it has good drainage, and mound up around the rootball when you plant it with half shredded hardwood bark mulch (or peat moss) and half dirt you removed from the hole. Mulch the tree thoroughly if the dirt you took out of the hole freezes on you, but by all means move it outdoors as soon as you can stand to.

Before you bring the tree indoors and again when you plant it, spray it with an anti-transpirant. Wilt Pruf is the one I'm familiar with, and your local garden center whould stock it. It's a clear liquid that will protect the needles from drying out in your nice dry home, and will also protect the freshly transplanted tree against the drying effects of winter winds.

Put your tree in a waterproof container, mulch around the rootball, and keep it moist. Your tree will repay the extra care you give it now with years of beauty.

Winter Gardening

Provided your winter garden was planted in time you should be harvesting delicious winter produce from your garden about now. For those of you, Gentle Readers, who've never gardened during the winter, well, you should try it. Vegetables grown in the winter are different - more tender for one thing - than those grown during the hot summer months. Another huge advantage is the total absence of insect pests - no frayed or holey leaves - and no weeds (a real bonus for you organic gardeners out there)!

Of course don't plan on tomatoes, peppers or sweet corn from your winter garden - these require the warmth of summer to grow - but there are a large number of vegetable crops that do surprisingly well from September to March: arugula, broccoli, brussels sprouts, all of the cabbages and kales, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cilantro, endive, garlic and the onion clan, kohlrabi, lettuce, parsnips, peas, radishes, rhubarb, rutabagas, salsify, snow peas, spinach, swiss chard, and turnips. Among the herbs parsley, sage and thyme do extremely well.

All that you'll require to garden in the winter are a few bales of straw around the perimeter of your garden site, some plastic sheeting and a few bricks to keep the plastic from blowing away. You can also sometimes find small sized portable greenhouses that will work just fine.

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