Weekly Gardening Thread

2006— January is a resting time in the garden, for us and the soil. A brief respite- a time for reflection and planning, a time for winding down from the holidays as well as a time for beginning to gear up for the coming spring. Looking back on the year just passed; can you believe the weather extremes? Copious amounts of rain, a late spring and an even later fall. Hard to believe we didn’t get a killing frost until well into December, that even in December there were still leaves on the trees. As for reflecting and thinking back, this past year, indeed the last few- have been no good for gardening. Too much rain, too many times, drowned most of our gardens. We planted and replanted, and replanted some more, for all the good it did us. Between disease in our tomatoes and not being able to teach collards to swim, anything harvested last year was a blessing.

Our ancestors knew well the fickleness of weather, tried to keep canned or dried goods and other things put up, enough for at least a three to five years’ supply in case of bad or indifferent crops. These last few years would have tried even their patience. While most of us now garden for fun or as a hobby or as exercise, their lives depended on what they managed to grow. If we, in our area were still dependant on what came out of our gardens to survive, especially in the last few growing seasons, we wouldn’t have to worry about the obesity epidemic. They had to depend on the season’s crops not only for food, but for next years’ seeds as well. If they planted and lost all their seeds, they couldn’t just run down the street and buy more.

Unlike us, they welcomed the arrival of the first weeds of spring. Often, after growing seasons like the past few, when planted greens were hard to come by, wild greens were all they could get. Take dandelions, for example. One of the first plants to green up, they are edible. Every part of the plant is edible- the greens when they are first emerging, the roots, the flowers. Bitter, yes, but chock full of vitamins and minerals. A serving of dandelion greens contains more calcium than a glass of milk. Although I never remember her making it, one of my grandmas had a recipe for so called “dandelion wine”. Made from the blooms, it was more a cure-all than an alcoholic beverage. It was used as a gargle or mouthwash, an antiseptic, a vitamin drink. Think how many millions of dollars worth of vitamins we destroy each year in our quest to eradicate dandelions! On the other hand, if all the dandelions in the world were killed except one, next year there would be just as many, turning their cheerful faces up to the sun, a delight to toddlers everywhere and an aggravation to those seeking perfect lawns.

January in our area is a good time for maintenance work. Time to prune roses and grape vines, and time to get started pruning your fruit trees. If you prune grape vines now, it’s also time to try rooting some of the cuttings. Unlike roses and fruit trees, grape vines are usually grown on their own root stock, so starting new ones from cuttings will work. Roses and fruit trees are usually grafted, which means a plant that has a good root system is used for the bottom half of the plant, and a plant that has desirable blooming or fruiting characteristics is used for the top half. By grafting, which involves cutting two plants apart and binding the root stock of one to the trunk of the other until they become one plant; we get the best of both worlds. That’s why you sometimes see a knot or curve at the base of roses and fruit trees and why it’s also important not to plant grafted things below the graft. Often, shoots will come up from below the graft. These shoots need to be pruned off. They divert vital strength from the main plant and won’t be any good anyway.

It’s a great time to keep your garden plowed or tilled. The colder weather will help kill some insect pests and weed seeds. It won’t get all of the nasties, but turning your soil over will eliminate some of them. One of the worst pests, although not as obvious as some, is the cucumber beetle. A small yellowish beetle resembling a lady bug, most often with spots, sometimes with stripes, it overwinters diseases such as bacterial wilt and squash mosaic virus in its intestinal tract. When you plant your new crop and the cucumber beetle takes a bite, it passes the diseases on to this years’ crops. This is also a great time to mow, plow, or burn the weeds close to your garden. Not only will it expose weed seeds to the elements and to hungry birds and critters, it will remove host plants for other insects that are just waiting to pounce on your fresh plants as soon as they are planted, or your seedlings as soon as they emerge.

2007—Late January is time to try an early planting of potatoes, cabbage, peas, onions, broccoli- any of the cole crops that might survive. Maybe it has finally gotten cold enough to plant bulbs. The only problem with waiting so late to plant bulbs is you don’t much feel like doing it now!

January is a time to kick back in your favorite rocker or recliner in front of the fireplace and enjoy perusing the multitudes of seed catalogs that start flooding our mailboxes this time of year. Turning the pages until they are tattered and dog-eared, drooling and deciding, plotting and planning, never losing hope that this year’s garden will be a bumper crop. Wondering if this or that new variety can possibly be as great as the seed catalog makes it sound, trying a little of the new seeds and mixing them with the tried and true favorites.

Hope you enjoy your well earned rest and here’s hoping this year will give us a much better gardening season.

Here’s the rest of the 07 column, I hope! Happy New Year! Doesn’t it seem kind of strange to celebrate such a momentous event in the midst of winter? There’s no great holiday or Holy day to mark it’s passing. From a gardening standpoint, spring would be a much better time. Fact is, celebrating January first as the first day of the new year is a relatively recent thing.
Around 2000 B.C., in Mesopotamia, the new year was celebrated in mid-March, around the time of the vernal equinox. From a gardening standpoint, this makes a lot more sense! That’s closer to the time that most serious gardening begins.
The Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, about mid-September. That still makes some sense. Most crops would have been harvested or were close to being harvested, and it would necessarily have been time to start planning for next year’s crops.
But wait! The Greeks celebrated the start of their new year on the winter solstice, about mid-December. Nothing going on in the gardening world in the middle of December, at least around here.
The early Roman calendar designated March first as the start of the new year—but the calendar only had ten months! January and February weren’t added until around 700 B.C. The first time the new year was celebrated on January first was in Rome in 153 B.C. when the new year was changed from it’s date of March first. January first was the date that the two newly elected Roman consuls, the highest ranking officials in the Roman republic, began their one-year tenure.
In medieval Europe, like many other holidays, the new year celebrations were considered pagan. In 567 January first was abolished as the beginning of the new year. At different times and places throughout medieval Christian Europe the new year was celebrated on December 25, March first, March 25, and Easter!
The Gregorian calendar reform in 1582 restored the first of January to new year’s day status. Some countries were slow to accept it and until 1752, the British Empire and their American colonies still celebrated their new year in March. Whew! Got all that straight?
No matter how or when you celebrate your new year, here’s hoping you have a happy and safe one!

Regardless of when the new year technically starts, now is as good a time as any to start thinking about this year’s gardening plans. January is a good time to catch up on lots of pesky little things that you didn’t have time for last year.
If you didn’t write it down, and most of us don’t, now is a great time to try and remember. How many rows of what did I plant, and where? What varieties did I use, which ones did I like and which ones did I hate? Which ones did really good and which ones weren’t worth a flip? How many seeds or plants did I use for that row? Was it enough or too much? When did I plant or harvest? Too late or too early or just right? Do I really want to try those enticing new varieties that look so scrumptious in all the seed catalogues—filling my mailbox with paper and my head with dreams? When is Easter this year, so I know when I can really start gardening?
To answer the last question—Good Friday is on the sixth of April this year and Easter falls on the eighth, so we don’t have as much time as we thought we did. The gardening season will be upon us before we can blink! Can’t help you with the other questions, though. Can’t remember my own answers!
February and March are usually our coldest months, our cold being very relative. Try and keep your garden tilled—it will help kill some of the weed seeds and insects that overwinter in the soil and dead weeds.
Now is a good time to prune roses if you haven’t gotten it done yet. Keep in mind that shrub roses need to be pruned every year because they bloom on new growth. Climbing roses don’t need to be pruned unless the canes are diseased or in your way because climbers bloom on old growth.
It’s also time to prune grape vines and try your hand at rooting the cuttings if you want more grape vines. Of course, many of us already cut our grapevines so we could use the vines for wreaths and other crafts!
January is not too late to plant bulbs if you haven’t done it already. Bonus is that you won’t have to fight mosquitoes or fire ants to get the bulbs in the ground! A good rule of thumb is to plant the bulb at twice the depth of the size of the bulb. Bulbs are great—the trick is to remember where they are so you don’t plant something else on top of them!
Hyacinths will soon be showing themselves. With their cheery colors and wonderful fragrances, they are the first to show in a long procession of bulbs that require little care and come back year after year to surprise and delight us. Tulips, beloved by many, are one of the few bulbs that don’t do well here because it doesn’t get cold enough. They’re fine to plant as annuals but if they come back, they usually come back smaller and smaller each year until they disappear altogether. That is, if the squirrels don’t get them first.
Mid to end of January, depending on the weather, is time to start planting cole crops again—cabbage and broccoli, maybe some lettuces, potatoes, a few onions.
If this sounds like a broken record, that’s because it is. Gardening is a broken record that just keeps playing the same tune over and over. Sometimes it starts or ends in a different place, but the words and the melody never change. Till the soil, plant the seed. Dig and toil, fertilize and weed. Then it’s chop, chop, chop and harvest the crop. Second verse, same as the first.

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