Organic Gardening

In planting primroses I’ve discovered that they look best when set in a casual unplanned manner. Group, say, seven in one area, staggering them nonchalantly along the way. Establish three more just there as the path turns. Then on the opposite side, a little further on, five more, and beyond—thirteen. Perhaps there by that old stump, plant one, in the sheltering arms of its buttressed roots.

Maintenance of the Primrose Path is practically nil—chiefly keeping the new plantings free from weeds. There is no need in a wooded area to provide winter cover, for nature does it most skilfully with falling leaves from the trees overhead. These leaves, constantly decomposing, help nurture beneficent bacteria in the soil, and provide constant plant food. In a drought year, or a prolonged dry spell, the plants may need water, but no other care.

Plants may be divided every third year or so and the best moment is right after blooming. The crowns separate easily as the primrose is lifted from the ground and gently parted by hand. Water each clump immediately after resetting and every few days for a month thereafter. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two ways to have colorful plantings and still hold the line on upkeep. In addition to bringing flowers from woods and meadows to your garden, you can let some of your garden flowers run wild.

Many perennials that grow in dignity in a well-ordered, well-weeded border will, if permitted, contribute the same color, fragrance, and beauty to another area. Suppose you let them run loose in your own tiny or large meadow or woodsy area.
Wherever you set them to naturalize, bee balm, spiderwort and dianthus become as independent as the native flower, needing no watering, weeding or feeding. This is an ideal way to simplify gardening at no sacrifice of beauty in the ground or indoors in cut flower arrangements.  After all, most if not all of our garden flowers were once wild; the domesticated state in which we are accustomed to seeing them isn’t their natural one.

I was first inspired to experiment with this idea one day towards the end of summer when I found iris and corn trying to occupy exactly the same spot in our vegetable garden. I uprooted the iris, but it looked so good I simply could not throw it away. Neighbors took some but there were still plenty of clumps left. I took them down the South Meadow to a spot where it is sunny all day and slightly boggy. With no heart for digging in the tough grass, and also in the spirit of experimentation, I merely dumped the plants, though I did take the trouble to set them right side up. Picking up some loose hay that lay nearby (the meadow had had its annual cut a few weeks before) I tossed it over the rhizomes and promptly forgot them. Yes, you’ve guessed it. The next year, up came the iris, all blooming like mad.   They’re still going strong. Read the rest of this entry »

A hedge of forsythia tumbles over a wall along a road near us. In May it is a sheath of spun gold. Forsythia came originally from Asia, and is a member of the olive family. This indestructible bush whose flowers appear before its leaves makes a fine loose casual hedge. Under plant forsythia with grape hyacinths and scilla. To expand your forsythia planting divide the roots. Do this in spring, fall, or anytime. Merely loosen the soil at one side, and gently pull off a stem with some roots attached. Prune off half of the top growth when you set the new plant.

You can bring forsythia branches indoors in late winter or early spring and they convert your house into a private flower show. This picking also serves as important pruning; it keeps the bush open to sun and air, especially in the center. Flowers next year, as a result, extend down into the heart of the shrub. Lynwood Gold from Ireland is a deep shade and a wonderful variety.

Another good early-flowering shrub is Scotch broom which grows wild at the seashore, thriving in sandy dry soil. The branches are green to the ground, and in April and May golden pea-like flowers appear in the leaf axils. The foliage is straight but flexible and responds to a sweeping breeze in a most delightful manner. For a fine hearth brush, trim off some of the branches and bind them together. Read the rest of this entry »

Flowering trees are an effortless way of annually acquiring a great number of blossoms to enjoy, either as they grow outdoors, or in indoor bouquets. Many are lovely for several weeks. Here are some of the lower-growing kinds that will thrive almost anywhere in a tangle or a planned array.

Grow a dogwood for its beautiful pink or white blooms, brilliant red autumn berries, and rich mahogany foliage. A dogwood grows fast and, if five or six feet tall to start, may well bloom the year after transplanting.

The Sargent cherry flowers in late April; the blooms appear ahead of the bronzy young foliage, and seem literally to hide the branches and trunk. No wonder the Japanese have festivals at cherry blossom time! Read the rest of this entry »

One of the first flowers to  emerge in our snow garden at the end of the winter are snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). Pure white and delicate they are, with wax like single and double flowers.

Each cup-shaped blossom has six petals. The outer three are white, and the inner three striped green. Deep in the cup is a small cluster of yellow stamens. The blossoms hang down, so be sure to tip one up so you can observe the charming formation within. If you have a magnifying glass handy, take a really good look. The inner rims of the double flowers are “scrunched” and crinkled pale green.

Plant snowdrop bulbs 3 inches deep and about 3 inches apart and have about eighteen to a square foot. They also do best if allowed to form a good root growth before winter deeply freezes the soil, so set them out at the same time as the eranthis. Read the rest of this entry »

A broad, rich green lawn may be a fine thing, but to have a meadow for a lawn is even finer. A meadow-lawn needs mowing only once a year, requires no rolling, no watering, no feeding, and you can be gaily unconcerned about moles, slugs, and crabgrass that may turn up in it.

Only a narrow strip of mowed green grass surrounds our house. The rest of the “lawn” is all meadow-sunny meadow. Parts are high and dry, parts are low and boggy.  A stone wall stretches along one boundary-a wall where maples, ironwood, laurel, elm and wild cherry grow. Nearly 200 kinds of wild flowers thrive through the seasons in the meadow. Many were there when we moved; some we have added. Other new ones have simply appeared. In the nine years of our occupancy the flowers have doubled in quantity and quality-largely, I suspect, because we have delayed the annual mowing of the meadow from June till late August which gives the plants a chance to reseed and multiply. And what a wealth of material is here for indoor bouquets.

When you begin dealing with wild plants, just about anything can happen, most of it good, and much of it a surprise. Down in the meadow, I often find some new flower I have never seen before. Rushing to one of my books on wild-flower identification, I soon make the acquaintance of the meadow’s new inhabitant. Read the rest of this entry »

March has been called the 3:00 A.M. of the year-it isn’t quite winter and it certainly isn’t spring. The weather cannot be depended upon-a warm sunny day momentarily may freeze into a blizzard, and a blizzard may melt away under a seventy-degree sun.

The only thing predictable about March-as a few million people have already noted-is its complete unpredictability. Here in Connecticut we can be pretty sure of snow during the month.

But through all the weather’s vagaries we had the surprise and joy of a lovely little winter flower garden beside the front door. The gap between winter and spring was gaily bridged by this garden’s rainbow of color. While on our place we have a minimum of cultivated areas and flower beds, I wouldn’t be without this one little garden spot even if it demanded a lot of care-which it doesn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

You may think of hay as that sweet-smelling stuff that fills the lofts of country barns with something soft for the young to bounce on. Perhaps in your youth hay came down a chute in the barn and you fed it to your pony, hoping he wouldn’t nip your fingers. Or is hay to you that beautiful fragrance over New England meadows in early summer, when it lies freshly cut, neat and combed?

Whatever your previous concept, one thing is sure: If you are looking for a guaranteed low-labor method of soil improvement, hay can be one of your best allies. A thick layer of ordinary field hay will actually prepare any area for planting, literally transforming a piece of nubby ground into soft soil ready for growing things. And no digging and sod removal are involved. All this will occur in eight months to a year, depending on how tough the field is.

Suppose you have a desire to plant flowering shrubs, or a hedge of the self-sufficient multi flora roses at the wilderness edges of your place, or where the area is thick with weeds, field grass, heavy turf. Perhaps the very thought of plunging a spade into such matted earth fills you with dismay. A disc harrow and tractor seem needed to penetrate. Suppose you would like to set out some fruit trees, but the place for each tree must be dug and prepared at least 3 feet in diameter, which is a prospect to give you pause. But with the hay treatment it will be easy to prepare these or any areas you wish to plant. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever seen pinks (dianthus) spreading its charming gray green leaf tones and giddy little fringed and fragrant flowers through the Cape Cod cemeteries and along the roadside, you’ll know you must have them on your own home property. What a variety of dianthus are yours for the growing.

White, pink and mauve flowers with fringed and tangled petals —fragrant always. These long-lasting lovely little harbingers of early summer are utterly irresistible.

Consider the area where you’d like to naturalize dianthus. They need full sun, will hold their own in field grass if given a good start. They like light sandy soil but will thrive in poor soil if it is on the sandy side, not clay. When you have selected a possible area for your project, buy a few plants and set them out and see what they do the next year. This we did in a part of our meadow where the black-eyed susans and daisies grow. The few plants thrived so we started our project. Read the rest of this entry »

Producing your own hybrids can be profitable. Your first step will be to take pollen from one flower and place it on the stigma of another. The best time is when the blossom has been expanded at least 3 days. The pollinated flower will drop off, and you will notice the formation of a half-sphere—this is the seed capsule, within the calyx. Seeds ripen in 6 to 8 weeks when the capsule splits. Clip the capsule to keep the seeds from falling onto the soil. Remove and store in a cool dry place. Vitality of seeds diminishes with age.

There are endless possibilities in gloxinia hybridization. Most of the species will cross successfully with hybrid forms. And since the species have a richness and flexibility of foliage that is lacking in modern forms, they should be good material for you to use in your hybridizing program.

Should some of your hybrids impress you and your customers as really choice, you may want to work on the strain. Do it by self-pollinating the plants or by pollinating the hybrids with one of the parents, depending on which trait you wish to encourage and enlarge upon. Read the rest of this entry »