Posted on 01/16/2008 10:56:46 AM PST by Gabz
He seems we have many fervent gardener's amongst FReepers and so we thought this would be a great idea.
For right now I am willing to maintain the ping list, so please let me know if you would like on or off.
Freeper Garden Girl writes a monthly gardening column for her local newspaper and has graciously offered to share it with us for posting here to get our gardening threads off the ground.
Let’s have fun with this and share our experiences, good or bad, and hopefully some of us neophytes will learn something from the more experienced.
I’d like to be included, please.
Please add me to your ping list.
Perfect! Something got skipped in jan 07 cause my columns usually run@1000 words. I’ll try to do better next time. Told you I wasn’t sure about the formatting. Maybe just send one at a time?
Hope everyone enjoys it.
Thanks Gabz, for your hard work.
Will you add me to your ping list. I’m getting out of politics! lol
You’ve all been added.
I think this is going to be FUN!!!!!!!!!
Just post the rest of the ‘07 column.
I haven’t gotten around to even commenting on either one yet!!! I love them.
Please add me. May this be the year I have a garden again!! I miss it!!
Wonderful!!!!
I am so excited about this ping list.
I meant to get back with you two yesterday on the other thread, but got sidetracked.
I am also a writer, and have a monthly column (I publish in fishing and hunting magazines) to knock out right now. However, I’ll post more later, including answering some of your questions, gardengirl, from your post yesterday.
Great column GG.
From reading the thread from two days ago gardengirls’s columns are area specific, what area?
Thanks, it’s about time there was one of these. :’)
I’m tired of all the unsafe food, I plan on growing much more this year.
You might enjoy this.
Victory Gardens! Kill 2 ‘birds’ with one stone....GROW Something!
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=victory+garden
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.
Eastern NC, Zone 8, I do believe.
I’m in Eastern VA, on the coast like her, but I’m in zone 7. There is probably about a 3 week difference for planting for us.
When I lived in Delaware I was also in zone 7, but being 100 miles south I’m able to start 2-3 weeks earlier than I did there.
Eastern NC, right on the coast, so I have a little bit of a different perspective. We have very sandy, very acidic soil and often salt spray. It’s our own little microclimate, and gardening can be a challenge!
ROFLMSS!!!!!
That is great!
Think positive - theis WILL be the year for you for a garden again!
I am so excited about this ping list.
Me too. And someone yest mentioned recipes! Maybe we can go for a combo—sort of grow/catch/cook type of thing!
Haven’t got anything but the columns published yet,but I think you have to actually submit something to get it published! :) Talk about chicken!
Love to hear from you GA. Take your time—sometimes they write themselves and others....
I have a LOT of fun with this and my editor doesn’t care what I write about. That gives me lots of playing room!
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