GARDEN CLIPPINGS
GARDEN CLIPPINGS
By Beth Botts
Published August 27, 2006
It's time for a fresh start
If the summer
annuals in your containers have gotten leggy and scroungy looking,
maybe you can do better. Pull them out and plant fast-growing, cool
weather-loving salad greens instead. A fluff of fresh green or burgundy
red leaf lettuce can be lovely in a pot, or try the mix of salad greens
called mesclun. Sow the seeds, keep them watered and enjoy them until
frost.
Avoid unsightly bare spots by carefully harvesting
individual leaves for salads instead of whole plants. When leaves are 3
or 4 inches long, snip them out with a scissors, always leaving some
smaller ones on the plant to grow a bit more.
Greens also can replace fading annuals or fill in bare spots in terrestrial gardens.
No more pruning
Hold off on shearing formal hedges of yew, boxwood or privet until next year.
If you cut now, the plants will respond to the attack on their wood by
frantically sending out new growth. Those young green sprigs won't have
time to develop a protective hard bark before the weather turns cold
and are likely to die in winter and turn brown.
In fact, all
pruning of shrubs, except removing deadwood or branches broken by
storms, should now wait until late winter, when plants are dormant and
cuts won't stimulate them.
Bottles, worms, green
Got plants? Try worm tea. Got empty soda bottles? Send them off to New
Jersey to be filled with that rich organic fertilizer and raise a
little money for your school. The tea is brewed from worm castings --
what is left after earthworms consume food vegetable matter. Terracycle
Inc. pays non-profits for 20-ounce soda bottles, fills them with worm
tea produced in its New Jersey factory and sells it.
The
company has teamed with the Illinois Recycling Association to bring its
Bottle Brigade to Illinois. Schools can earn a nickle for each two
20-ounce bottles they send in (see terracycle.net/bb/ira). Find
Terracycle All Purpose Plant Food at Home Depot or Wal-Mart stores for
about $6 for 20 ounces. Order online at www.terracycle.net.
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
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