Growing With Plants Ideas, Tips & Guides

I love surprises, and that’s precisely what I got when I received an envelope from 10 speed press the other day containing of all things, a graphic novel about vegetable gardening written by my friend Joseph Tychonievich and illustrated by Liz Anne Kozik. But first, I should share some background here, about me. In my previous life, I was a creative director for Hasbro (you know, Transformers, My Little Pony, Marvel Comics, Star Wars, etc). Comic books were part of my everyday life, from Comicon to day-long meetings at Marvel Studios. Not that I am anything close to a comic book fan, but I can appreciate the medium and especially the higher-end category of graphic novels, like this.

I can remember the first time I read about Zaluziantkya – trying to pronounce it in my head before daring to speak it out loud. It’s one of those words that once you master pronouncing it, you just love to say it over and over again like a two year old. At the very least, you will impress your friends. Za-loo-zee-ann-ski-ya.

I never knew that the antonym of autumnal was vernal. Which makes sense, I guess as there is no word for springnal. With covid, I think many of us are embracing gardening more than we even have. Most garden centers and nurseries are reporting record sales (have you tried to order bulbs or garlic lately? Most everywhere is sold out!). So while the entire planet continues to deal with the nasty effects of Covid 19, I suppose we could say that for gardening – there’s been a bit of a silver lining.

Somehow, miraculously (and thankfully) seed starting season is just about here once again. Perhaps in no other year (or years?) has thinking about starting a garden ever been more essential.

I’ll admit it, I was a Heronista.

If you’ve been following along regarding the first phase of our big driveway reinvention project, I’m thrilled to share that we are nearly complete. The last of the really difficult trees to be removed has finally been completed (another 70-foot tall blue spruce that was nearly dead and a second one the died a few years ago but was being held up by Bittersweet vines!), so now – nearly a year later, I am onto the landscaping.

I know that people find it fascinating that I live and now garden in the house where I was born and where my father was born (he died in 2014 at a healthy 100). It not all that unusual, I think, in much of New England, and oddly enough, it’s not that odd for my neighborhood for some reason. In fact – on this driveway upgrade project, I had two friends help me from up the street who went to elementary school and high school with me.

The annual vine known as the Cup and Saucer vine is beloved by many gardeners. Their large, cup-shaped purple or white blossoms and their distinctive flaring corollas look very much like teacups. Many of us never really think about that, like. Like so many familiar garden flowers, the Cup and Saucer Vine or Cobaea scandens belong to a much bigger clan – it has many close relatives within the genus CObaea, all native to South and Central America. However, most if not all are still relatively unknown or even discovered. I decided to do a deep dive on the genus cobaea (or at least as deep as I could grow a few of the more hard-to-find species). My real goal here is to solve many people’s problems when trying to grow Cup and Saucer Vines. If you’ve even had trouble with germinating or getting plants to flower, then maybe you’ll find some bits of information here useful.

I like to use the analogy of cooks vs. bakers when providing advice on annual artichoke culture. The fact is that artichoke culture isn’t exactly easy, at least in the north where few, if any of us have been able to grow artichokes as they can in California, but things have changed given new methods and new varieties. It’s going to take some time to catch on, but expect your local farmer’s markets and farm stands to start featuring artichokes as more and more local growers are discovering the potential given new methods.

   Great confustion exists not only amongst us gardeners about what is and what isn’t a scented violet, but also with botanists. Luckly, with recient DNA sequencing the problem seems to have been solved. Yet while we those of us who care about such things will change what we write about and perhaps grow, plan on continuing to see lots confusing and incorrect information about Scented violets both in written media and on social media. Then, of course, there are those countless posts that confuse the African Violet with true viola species. I won’t address that confusion here, as most of us know the differences (they are a completely different plant, not even the same genus or plant family).