Monthly Archives: January 2010
Get Your Vitamin D!
It is so beautiful outside this afternoon, that you all should head outside to enjoy the sun and stock up on some Vitamin D! I have one lonely tray of Bok Choy seedlings that I’m growing under lights for a presentation I’m giving next weekend, and they are looking sadly leggy, despite being under lights 24/7. Since it is well above freezing this afternoon, I took them out to the Demo Garden to get some real sun!
You can tell the poor things have been stretching for sunlight! I have 4 types of bok choy planted: Joi Choi, Bonsai, Red Choi, and Mei Qing Choi. I’m giving a 30 minute presentation on growing and selling Bok Choy and the Kansas Farmers Market Conference (www.ksfarmersmarkets.org), so I thought it would be nice to have some samples on hand for everyone to taste. they should be nice and tender little plants by next weekend.
2010 Demo Garden Plans
The Master Gardeners had their first Demo Garden meeting this morning, and I think we’ll end up having lots of exciting things growing in the garden this year! Of course there will be tomatoes and herbs. The Family of 4 Garden will be making a return appearance, and we’ll be adding a Family of 4 Cutting Flower Garden. Check out the rough map below to see everything that will be coming to the Demo Garden this year!
New Garden Plans
If you look up to the top of the page, there is a new tab called “Garden Templates.” There are 21 different garden templates that you can use to jump-start your garden planning for this spring!
These garden plans are all 4 ft x 8 ft gardens, ideally designed to be raised beds. They certainly aren’t perfect, but if you are looking for a little help in figuring out how you should plan your garden, they might be just what you need.
Apple Trees in Winter
I may have mentioned this before, but then again, I may have forgotten. Our two columnar apple trees are currently growing in big pots (well, hopefully they are dormant right now!). Anyway, this may turn out to be a situation of not following your own advice.
Piles of trash? Nope, bags of leaves piled around the potted apple trees.
If someone asked me the best way to overwinter a dormant perennial fruit plant in a container, I would probably tell them they had 3 options:
- Bring the plant into an unheated garage or someplace similar for the winter.
- Dig a hole and bury it, pot and all, for the winter.
- Mulch the pot heavily so it is covered.
Instead of doing any of those things, what I chose to do with these two apple trees is to leave them in the garden, and just pile bags of leaves around the pots. Not quite mulching, not quite burying. (Hey, the leaves would just blow around anyway!) Our coldest temperature (so far) was 0 degrees. So not as cold as it could have been, but not warm either. I will be very interested to see if these two trees come through the winter without significant damage!
Frosty Morning
It was a nice, frosty morning here, and I couldn’t resist (after some prodding from my husband) going out to snap a few quick pictures.
Yes, this is a picture of what you think it is. It is a frosted bagworm on a crabapple tree.
The Demo Garden Blog 