6
Guy’s Greetings The calendar says spring, but my garden says summer. What happened, and where did it go, did I miss “April Showers”? I don’t know about you, but I feel one morning I could see the daffodils poking out of the ground and the next day they were in full bloom. I hope your flowers are giving you there best show this spring; mine surely are………………………..Guy Mark the Date Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 7:00 PM, general meeting at the Hagerman Fire Department, off Montauk Highway on the corner of Dunton Avenue and Oakdale. We’ve rescheduled our speaker, Master Beekeeper Raymond J. Lackey of Sweet Pines Apiary. He will have honey for sale for $10 per pound. For more information about him and beekeeping on Long Island, please visit the Web site at http://www.tianca.com/tianca2.html . We have invited the Bellport and Bayport Blue Point Garden Clubs to be our guests for the evening. Friday, April 30, 2010, 11:00 AM, Tree dedication ceremony for our Hometown Hero honorees on Baker Street and South Ocean Avenue sponsored by the Greater Patchogue Foundation Beautification Committee. “All the dirt you need to know . . . and a whole lot more! 2010 Board Members: President: Guy R. Vitale First Vice President: Diane Riviello-Voland Second Vice President: June Petruccelli Treasurer: Carol Tvelia Recording Secretary: Babette Bishop Corresponding Secretary: Carolyn Savastano Parliamentarian: Mary Ann Tchinnis Historian: Josephine Miller Immediate Past President: Carol Tvelia Garden Gazette Editorial Staff: Karen Ferb Jo Miller Paula Murphy Mary Ann Tchinnis Richard Waldman Please email submissions to [email protected] Or mail to: Garden Gazette P.O. Box 3030 Patchogue, NY 11772-0887 Submissions must be received two weeks before the general meeting in order to appear in that month’s edition of the Garden Gazette. April 2010

Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue Garden Club

Citation preview

Page 1: Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

Guy’s Greetings

The calendar says spring, but my garden says summer. What happened, and where did it go, did I miss “April Showers”? I don’t know about you, but I feel one morning I could see the daffodils poking out of the ground and the next day they were in full bloom. I hope your flowers are giving you there best show this spring; mine surely

are………………………..Guy

Mark the Date

� Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 7:00 PM, general meeting at the Hagerman Fire Department, off Montauk Highway on the corner of Dunton Avenue and Oakdale. We’ve rescheduled our speaker, Master Beekeeper Raymond J. Lackey of Sweet Pines Apiary. He will have honey for sale for $10 per pound. For more information about him and beekeeping on Long Island, please visit the Web site at http://www.tianca.com/tianca2.html. We have invited the Bellport and Bayport Blue Point Garden Clubs to be our guests for the evening.

� Friday, April 30, 2010, 11:00 AM, Tree dedication ceremony for our

Hometown Hero honorees on Baker Street and South Ocean Avenue sponsored by the Greater Patchogue Foundation Beautification Committee.

“All the dirt you need to know . . . and a whole lot more!

2010 Board Members:

President:

Guy R. Vitale

First Vice President:

Diane Riviello-Voland

Second Vice President:

June Petruccelli

Treasurer:

Carol Tvelia

Recording Secretary:

Babette Bishop

Corresponding Secretary:

Carolyn Savastano

Parliamentarian:

Mary Ann Tchinnis

Historian:

Josephine Miller

Immediate Past President:

Carol Tvelia

Garden Gazette Editorial Staff:

Karen Ferb

Jo Miller

Paula Murphy

Mary Ann Tchinnis

Richard Waldman

Please email submissions to

[email protected]

Or mail to:

Garden Gazette

P.O. Box 3030

Patchogue, NY 11772-0887

Submissions must be received

two weeks before the general

meeting in order to appear in

that month’s edition of the

Garden Gazette.

April 2010

Page 2: Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

Host(esse)s for April meeting: Margaret Atkinson Paula Murphy June Petruccelli Ruth Szuminskyj Much appreciated!

Zebra Swallowtail

Ruby-Throated Hummy

http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/data_images/1132.raw.jpg Hen

Garden Gazette Page 2

� Tuesday, May 11th, 2010, 7:00 PM, Bellport Garden Club Public Meeting at the South Country Library. Joan Smith is the guest speaker demonstrating "Artistic Floral Designs"; we will raffle 6-7 of her arrangements. Please do come! Praise from the president of the BGC: “First let me congratulate you all on a really wonderful luncheon. It was beautifully organized and great fun.”

� Saturday, May 15, 2010, 9:00 AM—4 PM, Annual Plant and Yard Sale in

the community garden at South Ocean Avenue and Terry Street. Bring all your (as well as your friends' and relatives' great, fantastic junk and potted labeled plants to sell to benefit our scholarship fund. We need workers too, so please sign up at your earliest convenience.

� Sunday, May 16, 9:00 AM—4 PM, 2010, Rain date for Annual Plant and

Yard Sale. � Monday, May 17, 2010, 10:00 AM, Sayville Garden Club Luncheon at

Lands End Restaurant, 80 Browns River Road, Sayvillle. The speaker is Irene Virag. $40.00 check payable to the Sayville Garden Club should be mailed to 144 Handsome Avenue, Sayville NY, 11782, by May 3. Additional info: Kay Porter, 567-3567; Pat Osarchuk, 567-2203.

Did You Know?

Butterflies need trace minerals which they can't get from flower nectar, so they gather in areas where there are puddles of water with dissolved minerals and drink the water. This is called "puddling". At the muddy or sandy puddle (often located near animal dung), the butterfly sips water rich in mineral salts and other essential nutrients (mostly sodium chloride and nitrogen-rich solutions) that have leached from the surrounding soil and rocks. Male butterflies do more puddling than females. The dissolved salts and minerals may be used to make pheromones (that the male uses to attract females) and sperm.

If you’re thinking about growing a butterfly garden or just want to know more about butterflies, check out http://www.thebutterflysite.com/. Explore 12 butterfly topics with over 125 pages packed full of butterfly information at this family-friendly site. The butterfly pages contain articles written by entomologist Randi Jones, MSc, as well as butterfly links to sites all over the web for even more information on butterflies. All information is updated frequently.

http://www.njaudubon.org/SectionBackyardHabitat/CreateaGarden.aspx has a wealth of information to get you started if the idea of attracting butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds to your garden sounds even more appealing. [Ed.: One of my favorite visitors is the hummingbird moth, below. First time I saw it, it took my breath away.]

Page 3: Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

One of two new gardening essentials—the only two you need these days!

EasyBloom

Fertile Earth Waterstik

Garden Gazette Page 3

Serious Dirt from Richard Waldman A woman gardening wearing only a yellow thong and pink gloves has brought neighborhood complaints and new rules. Boulder Housing Partners plans to amend its rules so that tenants cover up when they're outside. Several passers-by told Boulder police earlier this week that 52-year-old Catharine Pierce was topless while tending to her yard. Last year, she was threatened with eviction for gardening wearing only pasties and a thong. Police responding to Wednesday's reports decided Pierce wasn't breaking any laws. What do YOU think, innocent or guilty? Cast your vote to [email protected]. Read the full AP story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35960364/ns/us_news-life/. Spring Gardening Gadgets: When Technology Kills Instinct by Eyder Peralta http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125126277&sc=emaf Spring Gardening Gadgets: When Technology Kills Instinct by Eyder Peralta http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125126277&sc=emaf I didn't quite get into gardening until I moved to Washington, D.C. The house we bought came with a luscious garden that felt too precious to ignore. So, I pruned and fed and watered. I also asked around to see if anyone could figure out what that plant was with the delicate white flowers that smelled like spring. The more I got into it, the more little tools I bought. Last spring, I bought a soil tester that told me my Gardenias were yellowing because my soil wasn't acidic enough. Then, as I started planning for this spring, the techie in me got rolling. I looked into the EasyBloom Plant Sensor and the Fertile Earth WaterStiK and the Hydrofarm Germination Station. One of them you stick in the ground, let sit for 24 hours, then plug it into your computer and it brings up plants that will love that space. The Germination Station comes with a heated mat so your seedlings will grow up in the most hospitable of environments. And WaterStik? There's no more looking at the leaves to find out if your plant is parched. No, you just press a button and a light tells you whether to water. At some point, I had every intent to buy all these things. Then I thought: At what point is reliance on technology cheating? You know like saying you baked a carrot cake, when you really made it from a box. Here's the thing: In world that's increasingly virtual, gardening is one of those few things in life whose basics still remain. Sun. Soil. Water. It's one of the few things that gives you tangible fruits from manual labor. It's also one of those things that's driven by experience, because no matter how much you read up on the net, the conditions in your backyard will inevitably be different. So the more I thought about those gardening gadgets, the more I was reminded of the lady I buy my flowers from. She's tall with long, white hair and always wears a straw gardening hat. She has to be in her '70s and knows with a certainty I've rarely encountered which plant is best suited for each person and each garden. Last year, just at the beginning of winter, I saw her at the monastery near my house. She was wearing a sun hat and no jacket. I saw her deadheading roses, twisting the top of thorny, dead flowers with her bare hands. I use gloves; I use garden shears; I was impressed. But more than anything, it was that scene that made me walk away from those gardening gadgets. Sometimes, I thought, technology complicates. Sometimes technology takes instinct out of the equation. Sometimes, it's just better to dig in and get dirty.

Page 4: Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

An unusual technique: http://strawbalegardens.com/ [Thanks, Paula! Ed.]

For the ultimate in quick and easy productive gardening, growing plants in straw bales would have to be the outright winner. No soil. No garden edging. No digging. Just a bale of hay. When we think of growing plants, we tend to assume that soil is the only medium that we can plant into. It's just not the case. Most organic materials provide a great growing medium for plants. So, how do you do it? Here's a 10 day preparation schedule from North Carolina gardener Kent Rogers:

• Days 1–3 Water the bales thoroughly and keep them wet. • Days 4–6 Sprinkle the bales with 1/2 cup of ammonium nitrate (32-0-0) per bale per day, and water it well into

the bales. I didn’t have any trouble finding ammonium nitrate from my local ag-supply store. They sold it in 40-pound bags. I have heard, however, that some people have had difficulty finding it in more urban settings. Ask around.

• Days 7–9 Cut back to 1/4 cup of ammonium nitrate per bale per day and continue to water it in well. • Day 10 No more ammonium nitrate, but do add 1 cup of 10-10-10 fertilizer per bale and water it in well. • Day 11 Transplant your plants into the bales. I used a spatula to make a crack in the bale for each plant.

Place the plant down to its first leaf and close the crack back together as best you can.

If you go buying ammonium nitrate in bulk you're probably going to raise some security alarm bells, especially if you live in the US, UK or Australia. Plus, ammonium nitrate is expensive and hard to find. There are some alternatives however, with urea being the next best option (46-0-0), and an organic substitute is poultry manure. If you want to use the chicken manure then you will need to prepare it in a bucket by just covering it with water and leaving for 2-3 days to rot. This will remain as a liquid that can be poured over the straw bales at the same rate as the ammonium nitrate.

Once your plants are in the straw bale it's just a matter of maintaining them as you would in the soil. The only proviso to this is that because a straw bale has a greater surface area (the top plus 4 sides) it will have more chance of drying out. I would advise that you grow two bales together with their long sides butting up against each other and then continuing a row with more straw bales end to end. This will significantly reduce the surface area and evaporation won't occur so readily.

This method of growing plants is mainly successful with vegetable crops and predominantly those that grow above the surface. The only vegetables that won't grow well in straw bales are your umbellifera (potatoes, swedes, carrots etc) and your alliums (garlic, leeks, onions etc). You will need to continue adding your chosen fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, urea or poultry manure every 3-4 weeks. Plus, you might want to use a liquid fertilizer as well.

More at www.nicholsgardennursery.com/strawbales.htm, www.county.ces.uga.edu/chatham/hay_bales.htm, www.co.clay.mn.us/Depts/Extensio/ExAPHydr.htm

Paula also directs us to a fabulous slide show, Spring in Japan, at http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/147297/Giappone-in-Primavera.

Garden Gazette Page 4

Page 5: Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

With the tragically premature loss of gardening guru Ralph Snodsmith last week, where can people turn now to have the garden dilemmas solved? One possibility would be The English Lady Landscape & Home, Organically Improving Our Lives One Project At A Time, Maureen Haseley-Jones, aka Mo, The English Lady, and her son Ian J. Sveilich are members of a family of renowned horticultural artisans whose landscaping heritage dates back to the seventeenth century.

She is the founder of the well-known and established company The English Lady Landscape and Home that works throughout the Northeast. Today Maureen is a much credited and sought after designer and expert in all matters green and garden. Her “cheeky, self-effacing style as the “garden guru” on WRCH Lite100.5 FM radio has earned her a wide fan base.

Maureen lectures throughout Connecticut on a broad range of landscape design and environmentally holistic topics. She also writes timely articles for various newspapers and magazines throughout the state, in addition to having her own weekly gardening columns in “The Shoreline News” and “The Valley Press” and begins a three part series about vegetable gardens, in the spring of 2009 in “Nutmeg Magazine”.

Beginning in 1648 their family were tenants at Powys Castle in Wales and worked the landscape for the Herbert family who were in residence. In 1680 they refined their craft under the auspice of renowned architect William Winde who designed the terrace gardens in the style of Renaissance Italy’s landscapes. Powys Castle is still considered by many landscape experts to be the best example of seventeenth century gardens in Britain today.

Maureen learned her creative design skills and horticultural acumen from her mother and grandmother and was “speaking garden” from the time she could talk. She honed her construction skills while working in the family business in the U.K. Her formal horticultural training was at the world-renowned Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in Surrey.

The New York Sunday Times said of Maureen that “one of life’s unexpected experiences was discussing manure with an English Baroness,” and Connecticut magazine found Maureen “anything but tweedy.”

Baroness Maureen Haseley-Jones, who also has an honors degree from the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama, once understudied on the English stage the famed actress Angela Lansbury of “Murder She Wrote.” She also qualified to race on a Formula One team in Europe, raced a Lotus in the Monte Carlo rally as well as Mini-Coopers in road rallies in Northwest England.

Visit at http://theenglishlady.com/blog/. Or WHC-TV Channel 5 West Hartford Cable Television Maureen is the featured guest on "Life and Style with Sara". You can watch it online: http://www.whctv.org/.

WRCH Lite100.5FM Maureen is the ‘all things garden and green guru’ on "In Your Garden With The English Lady". Call in with questions every third Thursday of the month from 8:00-9:00 AM or you can listen

online: http://player.play.it/player/player.html?v=4.4.35&id=159&onestat=wrch

Garden Gazette Page 5

Page 6: Straw Bale Gardening ~ New York, Patchogue

"Sweet April showers / Do spring May flowers."

Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, 1557

Patchogue Garden Club P.O. Box 3030

Patchogue NY 11772-0887

“Come grow with us” Founded 1996

Timely Tips for May

� Apply summer mulch to perennial beds and borders.

� Fertilize roses every 2-3 weeks and spray weekly.

� All annual flowers can be safely planted out after mid-May.

� Prune spring-flowering shrubs immediately after flowering.

� Prune halfway back new growth on needle evergreens if desired.

� Plant dahlias, cannas, and daylilies ‘til the end of the month. Plant glads now through late June. Plant tuberous begonias and caladiums out in shady protected areas.

� Fertilize annuals and vegetables and stake tall perennials that could be damaged by wind or rain.