I’ve been picking tomatoes for a couple of weeks.
Famous Women Gardeners Throughout History
When you think about some of history’s greatest gardeners, you might first think of Robert Mendel, whose work with pea plants help define laws of heredity, or Frederick Law Olmstead, the famous landscape designer who brought us Elm and Central Parks. However, men are not the only ones creating beauty and inspiring change in the garden.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)
“The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.”
Born around 1098 in what is now Germany, Hildegard of Bingen began to experience visions at a very young age. She grew up to take vows in the Benedictine Order, and her life as a nun is filled with stories of her brilliance in writing, language, philosophy, and composing.
In addition to her many skills, Hildegard was known for her prowess in healing. She approached medicine as a type of gardening, viewing the herbs she cultivated in her monastery’s gardens as directly in correlation with the functions and humors of the human body. Her work in the garden inspired much of her scientific writing, and she is still today associated with veriditas, the idea that the health of humans is directly correlated to that of the earth.
Marie Antoinette (1755-1793)
“When the Queen took possession of her private domain, her interest was focused first and foremost on the garden…Marie-Antoinette set a new style, eager to create a setting for country walks and activities, reflecting her own personality: charming, modern and original.”
Former queen of France Marie Antoinette has a rather complicated legacy. While incredibly unpopular in her time, she is sometimes viewed as a victim of her circumstances under a modern lens. Whatever you may think of her personally, one thing is pretty uncontested: the woman knew her way around a garden.
Marie Antoinette had a private garden at Versailles known as The Queen’s Grove. She worked with landscape architect Michel-Barthélemy Hazon to create a place where she could wander freely, one that was focused less on the linear aesthetic as other parts of the grounds and more on the plants themselves. She imported shrubs, trees and flowers from North America, her favorite being the Virginia tulip tree.
The Queen’s Grove has been lost to time, but for those who wish to experience, there is hope: Versailles announced in 2020 that they are working on a $2 million initiative to restore Marie Antoinette’s gardens to their former glory, using the same plants and trees she so loved more than two centuries ago.
Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932)
“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.”
British-born Gertrude Jekyll is one of the most famous garden designers in modern history. Over her lifetime, she designed or planned over 400 gardens, and she was known for her use of flowering edges, vibrant varietals, and almost painterly swaths of color. She took inspiration from the Impressionist art period through which she lived, visible in the strokes of bright flowers set against verdant greenery in her garden designs.
Though very little of her work can be seen in its original glory, Gertrude Jekyll is still today considered a “premier influence in garden design” by both British and American gardening enthusiasts.
Edith Wharton
“Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than novelist, and this place, every line of which is my own work, far surpasses The House of Mirth.”
Though better known for her timeless classics such as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, writer Edith Wharton was a keen and skilled gardener. Growing up in Europe, she toured some of France and Italy’s most splendid gardens, even experiencing some designed by the great Gertrude Jekyll. She often wrote about gardens, both in her works of fiction as well as in one of her non-fiction pursuits, Italian Villas and Their Gardens.
She cultivated her own garden at her house, known as The Mount, where she lived with her husband, Edward “Teddy” Robbins Wharton. Her garden designs tended to break the popular mold: biographer Louis Auchincloss wrote, “In gardens and houses where it was fashionable to be haphazard and cluttered, she was chaste, classical and historically sound.”
Audrey Hepburn
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”
Audrey Hepburn may best be known as a star of the silver screen, but she shined in many other places. Hepburn was an avid gardener, and she made sure to plant one in each of the places that she lived. She once said that “Gardening is the greatest tonic and therapy a human being can have. Even if you have only a tiny piece of earth, you can create something beautiful, which we all have a great need for. If we begin by respecting plants, it’s inevitable we’ll respect people.”
Hepburn’s last on-screen appearance was as host of “Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn,” a documentary series that looked at some of the world’s most noteworthy gardens, infusing each with works of literature, art and history. The series earned an Emmy Award, which was granted to Hepburn posthumously.
Lady Bird Johnson
“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
Growing up in East Texas, Lady Bird Johnson loved watching the wildflowers bloom each spring. During her tenure as First Lady, she dedicated her time to beautifying the less-than beautiful areas of the country, namely along major highways.
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is now part of the University of Texas, and its gardens contain more than 900 native species of Texas.
https://blog.gardenuity.com/famous-women-gardeners-history/
Three of my rose bushes has growth the grew way way way to tall seems like over night. Now those single limbs are full of blooms and drooping severely. Should I trim or let them be for a while? Never had this happen where a single branch on multiple plants takes off like a shot.
My best Caspian Pink tomato plant is 6 feet tall so far, fairly bushy and has lots of tomatoes, although they are still small and green, maybe I’ll see the first ripe one in about 2 weeks with the real production starting in about a month.
Growing Caspian Pink Tomatoes: What Is A Caspian Pink Tomato
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/tomato/growing-caspian-pink-tomatoes.htm
My garlic scapes are making their appearance.
EVERYTHING is doing fantastic. We’ve finally gotten rain and cooler temperatures and every day I go out in the garden, I can see stuff has grown.
Some of my beans are finally up. I started some zucchini too and that’s finally making it’s appearance. I have a second planting of Brussel sprouts and snow peas in for a later summer/fall harvest.
Course, I noticed when I was picking some lettuce the other day, the slugs are making their appearance. Little baby ones but there. So I spread slug bait around for them to snack on instead.
I also think I’ve won the war with the asparagus beetles. I’d go out every day with a jar of soapy water and knock the little buggers in. Like Japanese beetles, they have the courtesy of dropping off the plant when disturbed to it’s easy to catch them.
Good Morning! :-)
It’s been a cool and dry week here in Central Missouri. The inch of rain we got last weekend didn’t go very far. It was enough to keep me off the water wagon for a few days at least.
Spent a couple hours pulling weeds after work yesterday, and I expect to do the same again today. The weed cloth makes a world of difference in the time it takes to keep up, but there’s always some close work to be done so the rows stay clean.
I caught another muskrat making merry in my pond this morning. My friend Mr. Ruger sent the varmint 40 grains of high-speed lead poison. That’s the 2nd one I’ve dispatched over the past couple weeks. I’m sure it won’t be long before another one shows up.
Kitchen garden is doing well other than the looper plague that’s fallen on my cabbages. I should have skipped the DE and gone straight to the Sevin dust there. And speaking of DE... we’ve been seeing a few japanese beetles on the milkweed plants here and there around the place. We tried some DE on a few plants earlier in the week and it did the trick - the bugs were gone by the next day and haven’t come back. Now Mrs. Augie has a shaker bottle of it in her golf cart so she can sprinkle whenever she notices them.
Tomato plants are loaded with little green tomatoes, eggplants are blooming, gourds are going nuts, pole beans and cukes are working their way up the arbor fence. Squash and melons are just starting to vine. Carrots are lush. Spud vines are heavy and blooming. Dill has finally started to show up. Sweet bell peppers are blooming.
I need to make a run to the feed store this morning then it will be chore time.
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Question: we put rabbit manure on the veggie garden this spring. SIL farms rabbits and always has some to share. Do you think we will need to fertilize again this growing season?
High noon & in for a ‘cool off’ break. I picked up a yard of topsoil this morning (one of the major benefits of having the cap off the pickup bed!!!) & I have about half of the load shoveled off. The bed is in full sun, it’s 80 degrees & hot.
Looked around at the garden center before ordering the topsoil & spotted lavender plants that were not there last time I looked, a week or so ago. They had a Super Blue, which is what we wanted for the side if the house & could not find. I bought one, so now I have 2 lavenders for the new bed. I was told they had just come in from the farm, so they will go like hotcakes.
Another flower that deer do not eat is foxglove. I want one. No kids or pets to get into the plant. They self seed & are beautiful ... will go in near the hollyhocks (a few hollyhocks did come up from seed).
Laptop is being a stinker so on my phone & cannot post pics - will try to post some of the new raised bed later.
This is my old raised planter behind the garage. Several kinds of leaf lettuce and radishes.
And here's my question. These radishes (from the nursery) are about 3 - 4 inches tall and they all have maybe 4 - 6 stalks each and I'm wondering when I should thin them out.
Well, it’s been a day.
Drove 65 miles to pick up a new air compressor for the shop, then stopped at a “middle of nowhere” plant shop.
Bought a crap ton of decorative annuals for beside the walkway for a measley $26.00, and the folks GAVE me SIXTEEN different tomato plants, including the ONE I was looking for (Black Krim). I was also wanting a “Black Prince” but the last one was gone.
Everything is now in the ground. I’m just a bit beat!
We got a nice rain this morning. I just dumped 1.6” out of the rain gauge. It came over a fairly short period of time but the only part of it that ran off was what landed on a hard surface. Anything that hit land was sucked up with a quickness.
I watered all of the orchard trees and the victory garden yesterday so I’ll be off the hook for that until next weekend.
My task for the afternoon is to get the pond hopper boat out, deploy the aeration diffuser into the pond, and run a new mainline to the pump house. I should have gotten it running six weeks ago but the mild weather we’ve been having has made me lazy about getting it done.
I’d say we got 0.6” of rain here when Augie got 1.6” so I’ll be watering today. That’s normal for MO/Ozarks. There have been times my neighbor buddy 6 miles away gets zero rain while I get an inch and times when it’s been visa versa.
My tomato plants are quite varied in size.
Three Red Deuce from the Amish store. They were short, stocky and had flowers. I pulled the flowers off of one and let the other two go on to tomatoes. Those two ended up each having three tomatoes but the plants are still short and not real healthy looking. The one I pulled flowers off of is a nice dark green, twice as tall and wide and has a few tiny maters and a bunch of flowers. I should have pulled the flowers off of all as was my instinct. Not worried much about this variety because it’s used as a commercial tomato which means thick skin, keeps well and has no flavor just like what’s in the grocery store. I pulled the maters off of one to see what happens. Now new flowers yet so maybe I did it in. They’re determinate.
Three tomato plants I got from Lowes. Early Girl, Cherokee Purple and Black Cherry. They were and still are small but look healthy are are starting to take off.
My seed starts. Three Chadwick Cherry and three Tappy’s Heritage. All healthy looking but vary in size. All were treated the same so I must have hit some high nutrients spots when transplanting. One’s gone from 18” to 42” in 2-3 weeks.
An issue with using the lean and lower trellis is the variety of plant sizes due to being multiple varieties and buying tiny starts and adding to the ones I started from seed. I have mater plants from 12 to 42 inches tall.
That 42” tall one is right next to one half the height and the 42” would be leaned in the direction of the short one before the short one will even reach the trellis to start leaning it. That means I’d lean the tall one over the short one.
I added some rope going from one trellis to the other and will lean in that direction on the rope instead of leaning it over a shorter plant. The nice neat lean and lowering is out the window and things will look quite interesting(weird).
Moral of the story. For lean and lower, all one variety in a single row and same size to start with is best. Also plant them all at one time with the taller ones on the end that the direction of the leaning will be. That way the tall ones can be leaned first while the others are still reaching for the trellis.
In summary; year two, still learning.
To follow up from my posts last week regarding watering timers, I stumbled across Amazon item # ASIN B0BLGH79GH.*
Well, now this creates a bit of a dilemma. THIS timer will allow me to set any watering duration needed, up to 23h 59m, daily. This is exactly what I’d want for a misting program to attempt to keep plants cool on a long hot afternoon. (I think I really need 8 hours max, but that’s ok.) Other features like the rain delay look good.
Negatives are, #1, that I never heard of this company before and of course the product is from China, so who knows about customer service, one can’t take it back to a local retailer, etc.
2nd is mildly weak reviews (I almost always go for above 4.7 on Amazon). However, reading through the reviews it appears most of the problems are with the WiFi versions, and I don’t need WiFi: This is just an experiment in which I need to keep costs down.
3rd is that reviews mention weak water flow, which is mildly problematic if I want to use the same multi-function spray head (will simply be at the end of a hose) to water (”shower”) something else conventionally. A solution may be to dig out an old spray head with a messed up trigger mechanism (”always on”, etc.) and simply “y” off to the timer / mister. Now, where is that box of spray heads I’ll never get around to fixing... And maybe even a “y” with a bad valve (just need the “y”, really, no shutoff’s to go bad!)
4th is that what type battery is needed / how many / what type is not listed. And does this thing eat them? Under “Product Information” is listed “Batteries 1 Lithium Metal batteries required. (included)” but this does not seem to match the picture shown of the battery compartment.)
5th is that sometimes with Amazon ordering “options” go awry. (My latest was recently attempting to buy 8 lb. Trilene XL fishing line in the “Fluorescent Clear/Blue” color option, instead of “Clear”. Amazon sent me “clear” anyway. I notified them of the mistake and they promptly sent a replacement. Which, of course, turned out to be “clear”. So, then they sent me a refund and told me to reorder. I’m holding off a bit... Anybody want a deal on a spool of “clear”? I’d already bought one of the big service spools of “clear”!)
Back to the timer: Thoughts? Anyone know of a “brand name” alternative with up to 8 hours “on” time, from, say, a big box retailer? (Menards, Home Depot, Rural King, Tractor Supply, Lowes, etc.?)
BTW, I looked into temperature controlled valves and all I found were very pricey - mostly industrial stuff, I think.
For those of you sometimes using “chemical” sprays, here is a useful resource (label & SDS info.) for many products:
https://www.syngentaprofessionalproducts.com/labels/
Sitting looking out the window at the garden and shade cloth which is pulled back right now. We’ve been pushing up to close to 90 degrees here lately and they’re calling for 93/95 for Sat/Sun.
Weekly Gardening Thread from a year ago, https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4072009/
Lots of mentions of “Hot”, “Heat” & “Degrees”. 90s in WI in June and was high 90s here in MO most every day.
Still dropping down to 60s at night right now but I think I’ll pull the shade cloth part way out this Sat morning. Let the plants get that 40% shade by mid day. Will be July a week from from Sat.