their name. Simply trace out his or her name in the loose soil and trace a big heart around it. Then plant a variety of fast-growing greens (leaf lettuce, radishes, watercress, arugula) in the furrows made by your tracings, water, and wait for his or her name and a big green heart to appear. Chances are your little ones will not only enjoy helping, but they will want to eat salad too!
I have always thought a kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest orangery or artificial greenhouse.
—Joseph Addison
Making May Baskets
When I was young, my brother and sister and I used to make May baskets for all the houses in the neighborhood to celebrate May Day. They were incredibly easy to make, and we would get such a thrill out of hanging them on front doorknobs, then ringing the bell and running to a hiding spot where we would observe the face of the recipient. It was then I first learned the particular pleasure of anonymous giving.
To make yourself or your neighbors a May basket, gather flowers (we always picked the first wild flowers of the season, but store-bought are okay too) and make them into an attractive bouquet. Tie the stems together with a rubber band. Moisten half a paper towel with water and wrap around the ends of the stem, then place a small plastic bag around the towel and tie with another rubber band. (This is to keep flowers fresh.) Set aside.
To make a cone basket, get an 8 ½ x 11-inch piece of construction paper. Hold the paper upright in two hands, as if you were reading a letter. Turn slightly so that the left corner points down at you. This will be the bottom of the cone. Roll one side so that it is tighter at bottom and more open at the top. Stick your hand in the top to expand the top opening and at the same time tighten the point at the bottom. Staple or tape the outer flap. When you finish, it should look like an waffle-type ice-cream cone. To make the handle, simply cut a half-inch wide strip from the long side of an 8 ½ x 11-inch piece of construction paper. Staple one end to each side of the cone. (You can also use ribbon or raffia if you want to.) Place flowers inside and you are ready to make your delivery!
The garden is a love song, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.
—Jeff Cox
Plant Passalongs
My husband and I both have green thumbs, and it can get to be somewhat of a problem. Our houseplants never die, and we are constantly having to pinch and hack them back. We feel guilty just throwing all those potential new plants into the compost, so we are always running out of room. I take plants into the office, but that’s also getting overpopulated.
Recently, however, we have come across several non-plant people eager to get started and therefore happy to take a number of cuttings off our hands. Most of these folks are young (probably because you are either a plant person or not). We’ve given them as college graduation presents, first house presents, and new relationship presents. We always include fertilizer and instructions, and we always try to give plants appropriate to the light levels in the person’s abode. Because this was a great solution to a “problem” of ours, it’s been surprising to realize how pleasurable it is to start someone off on an interest in plants. They seem so happy; I recall my own first houseplant forays, and I’m left with a satisfied glow that no other gift-giving has ever provided.
The music of the night insects has been familiar to every generation of men since the earliest humans; it has come down like a Greek chorus chanting around the actors throughout the course of human history.
—Edwin Way Teale
The Art of Plant Propagation
Early spring is the best time to make new houseplants. There are four ways that plants propagate, ranging from easy to hard (I for one refuse to do air layering), and some plants respond only to one or the other.
1.Division: You just take a plant out of the pot, divide it into two or more clumps, roots and all, and replant into two or more pots. Plants that do well with this method include African violets, wax begonias, most ferns, agapanthus, and many orchids.
2.Offshoots and runners: Plants such as spider plant, strawberry geranium, and mother fern create ready-made babies, complete with tiny roots, as appendages that are considered runners. Bromeliads, clivias, and piggyback plants’ offspring grow adjacent to the mother. In either case, I just detach the baby and plant it in a tiny pot out of direct sun, giving it plenty of moisture. (With runners, there’s a way to do it while it is still attached to the plant, but that’s too much work for me.)
3.Stem cuttings: My mainstay. Simply cut off a stem, strip off lower leaves, and place in water. (Don’t touch the surface of the cut—bacteria from your skin can make the stem rot.) In a month or so, it will have rooted, and you can transplant it into a pot. Avoid rot by placing a couple of charcoal chips in the bottom of the container. Many houseplants will root this way, including coleus, fuchsia, philodendron, Swedish ivy, miniature rose, pothos, and wandering Jew. For cactus and succulents, let the cuttings dry for at least twenty-four hours, and root in rooting medium such as perlite or vermiculite.
4.Air layering: Required for dieffenbachia, dracaena, ficus, and split-leaf philodendron. To find out how to do this, ask at your local nursery.
Flowers preach to us if we will hear.
—Christina Rossetti
Plant Swapping
Usually, passing along plants is a two-person exchange, but it is possible to set up a larger-scale swap. You could perhaps do it through your local agricultural co-op or set something up like a flea market or garage sale. Run an ad in the classifieds and tell all the garden club people in your community. I know of one group in Texas that had two hundred people show up! All you need are tables and a few rules. Here’s how the Texas folks do it: They hold it in a place that can stand the dirt, require that donated plant be a “good” one—no unrooted cuttings, seeds, diseased plants, etc.—and limit the number of plants you can bring to swap. They ask people to label the plants they bring and include care instructions (Sun? Perennial? Drought-tolerant? Indoor?) As people bring in plants, each plant is given a number and a corresponding slip of paper with the same number goes into a hat. Then the hat is passed around and you get the plant with the number you draw. After that, people mill around trying to trade, if they don’t like their plants, or get cuttings from the plants they lust after. If you have a smaller crowd, of course you can just have people barter between themselves for the plants they want and skip the numbers. Either way, the purpose is to have fun, mingle with plant people, and go home with something new.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
—William Shakespeare
Into the Kitchen
Everything is good in its season.
—Italian proverb
Easy-Does-It Asparagus
The ancients believed that asparagus was an aphrodisiac. It certainly tastes good enough to be, but even if it isn’t, the prospect of your own tender shoots each spring should entice you enough to give it a try in your garden. It takes about three years to get enough asparagus to make planting it worthwhile, but a maintained asparagus bed will last for twenty years, so you’ll get plenty of spears for your efforts. While asparagus prefers cold winters, it will grow just about anywhere in the US. The trick is to dig a one-foot-deep trench and half-fill it with compost and ¼
