Now, one of the things about bushes and perennials is that if there is anything at the ends (like the seed heads on these grasses and the dried up papery flowers at the ends of my hydrangea bushes), the snow will weigh them down and pull the entire thing down to the ground. With a woody plant such as a hydrangea, we’d end up with deformed plants in the spring. So, I took out my clippers and cut down the grass and snipped off the flower heads on the hydrangea so that we won’t have that problem.

Not that I got it all done, but this week, weatherwise, is supposed to be very good in the Northeast, with nice warm temperatures, so before dinner, I will get the rest of these done. As a side note, the temperatures will be in the 60s, so anyone still looking at a bit of outdoor caulking or painting can still get that done over this week.

Another thing I happened to notice is one of the beds in the garden has some interesting stuff growing in it. Actually, this is in the path between two beds in the vegetable garden and it is very interesting to see that the whole thing basically is now paved with good sized seedlings. Considering that we have had night time temperatures between 15 and 20 degrees F., this is sort of astonishing. The ground must still be in the 40-50 degrees F. range for anything to germinate and even then, it has to be something really hardy.

Ding! We have a winner. Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up: check out the shape of those seedling leaves. Heart shaped. Anyone guess what that is? Yes, you in the back? Mmmhmmm – that’s right. Cabbage Family!!!

If my memory serves, what was in the bed next to it were lots and lots of plants of various sorts of Chinese cabbages and mustards (which has been wonderful stuff; we still have some growing). Some of these DID bolt and go to seed during a dry period late in the summer, so these are the culprits. I could dig them up, I suppose but for the moment, I am more inclined to try another one of my experiments. I’ll mark these, mulch them with leaves for the winter and see what happens in the spring.

Another plant which we’ve been keeping our eyes on this summer and fall is the celery that we grew. This looks like celery but has a much stronger flavor and texture. I was very concerned when I went out after the snow and saw this: I tried to shake off some of the snow and some of the branches of the plant actually broke off in my hand. This plant was frozen SOLID. I walked away, thinking that we’d lost the entire thing and gave up on getting anything to save. A couple of hours later when I went out again, after the sun had come out and the snow had melted, I expected to see a pile of mush.

Instead, I saw this: The plant HAD been frozen solid but once the snow melted and the temperature started to warm up, it was good to go.

A good thing to remember.

But, how do you know if a bank is ‘locally owned’? And can you join any credit union you want to?

Well, ‘locally owned’ banks, in general are referred to as ‘community banks’ and if you want to find out which banks in your community are community banks, you can use a very nifty search engine sponsored by the Community Bank Association to do just that. Go here: community bank search engine You just plop your zipcode into the last box, click off the radius in miles and the engine will generate a list. After that, it’s up to you to do the investigating in terms of finding out which bank will be right for you (because after all, just because it’s locally owned doesn’t mean that it has all the services you might need, nor does it mean that the customer service is really great). There are all sorts of guidelines out there on evaluating banks: Solai How to Find A Local Bank

But, here’s my method (and actually I use this for finding doctors, dentists, plumbers and other people I need services from): Ask everyone you know: “Do you know anyone who works at xxx bank? What have they said about working there? Can you give me their phone number – I’d like to ask them some questions.”

The Solari article has reams of technical questions but I like to ask questions like: How is it to work there? What is your relationship with customers? Are you held to strict guidelines in terms of what you can do? How does the organization treat YOU as a person?

I figure an organization that treats its employees well as people, gives them responsibility and authority to take care of customers in the best way they know how is the sort of organization that wants its customers treated well too.

Here’s another idea – community based credit unions. Now, there are a lot of employment-based credit unions – that’s really how the credit union got started. And in most cases, if you have a close (like, sibling, parent, etc.) relative that already belongs to their employment credit union, they can sponsor you to get into that credit union also. All credit unions are not the same size and may not have all the same services so it’s good to know all your options. Another option in credit unions (and these have only really grown in the past 15 years or so) are the ‘community chartered’ federal credit unions. These are based on the affinity of an area or municipality. For example, in my area, there are two community chartered credit unions. One of them used to be a giant employment based credit union, but when the industrial giant closed their operation here, the credit union faced losing all of their customer base so they got their charter changed to a community based one, where anyone living, working, going to school in our area could become a member. And since they were a huge credit union with lots and lots of advanced services in insurance, investments, trusts and estates and so on, this made them a very popular option for people who could not be members before. The other credit union actually started as a teachers’ credit union and went to community cased. Another credit union nearby started as a community credit union. But again, you can find credit unions in YOUR area by using the credit union search engine here: Find a credit union Again, you plop your zipcode and the radius of distance around you that you’d be willing to travel into the boxes, click off search and off you go. You will see a list with details on membership requirements. And also again, I’d find people you know who are members of those credit unions or who work there. We’ve been members of two credit unions over the years (and the larger one actually absorbed the smaller one when it ran into trouble) and I can tell you that the service and attention to us as customers has been absolutely amazing.

It’s worth taking the time to do the little job. Once you have chosen your new bank or credit union, go in and speak to a staff member and ask for ‘a switch kit’ – this contains the check list and all the paperwork you will need to get your accounts switched AND take care of all the automatic payments you have for car, insurance, utilities and so on. The whole process becomes very streamlined with a switch kit so ask for that and also ask for whatever help the new bank or credit union can provide to smooth the process with your old bank.

OK – for those of you out there who keep score:
23% of respondents want more sewing videos
21% of respondents want more articles on money management, jobs and personal economy
21% of respondents want more videos on cooking
15% of respondents want more videos on knitting
8% of respondents want more indepth articles and collections to download
5% of respondents are interested in interviews

And in a totally mind-blowing lack of enthusiasm, NO ONE wants pod-casts. I guess you guys are all visual creatures and need to either read it or watch it. No problems – will of the people and all that.

So, readers should expect some changes here, perhaps a more coherent schedule (like, cooking videos on the weekend, economics during the week or something like that) plus perhaps some physical organizational changes as well.

Onward!

Today, things look very different. The bags were a complete success, but they could have been a disaster, given the horrible hot and dry weather the Mid-Atlantic states had while we were away. Like any container planting, these needed attention, which was provided by our intrepid son, who stayed at home to work, take care of the chickens and turkeys, interface with Septic System Man and his evil minion, Electrical Pump Person, and water what needed watering.

He watered the basil-in-a-bag every couple of days during the hot spell, and saved it all. Thank goodness for him.

Now, I have to admit that the first thing I had to do was pinch back the incipient flowers at the tops of the plants when we got back, but I will be able to start harvesting very soon, and turning this into dried and frozen herbs and also pesto. Also, another advantage we had in saving this was that the bags were located in an area which gets shade from a maple tree during the hottest part of the day, which helped keep the contents of the bags cooler.

So, next year, if you buy the super-gigantic-hugey-anything larger and it’s going into a truck size of bagged grow mix or peat moss or even chicken feed, save…the….bags. Just roll them up and tuck them away so that if you end up in the same situation we did (too many seedlings and no place to put them), then you can get some compost and turn your bags into grow bags.

This works.

Another thing is that they really don’t handle stress well (there are days when your Aunt Toby feels much the same way). For some plants, even transplanting sends them into hyperdrive straight to seeds, the dreaded ‘bolting’. For others, any dry spells and they decide to go ‘toes up’.

And the dry spells is what I’m addressing here. Usually, I buy annuals in six packs because I am somewhat of a control freak when it comes to my window boxes and planters and put a lot of thought into what goes into the mix that is in them — I hate to have to water a lot and using vermiculite and compost tends to put a good spongy layer around the plants which holds water for more than 15 minutes.

This spring, as a quick ‘pick me up’ (some people use the liquor cabinet; your Aunty likes to throw a lot of color into the yard), I bought a couple of big hanging baskets, chock full of color. They looked great for about 3 days and then I had to start watering them.

And watering them.

And watering them.

And the DH was pouring the bin at the bottom of the dehumidifier from the back basement on them and I was watering them at the end of the day too.

And the little celestial gardener’s voice kept saying, “You got lazy and didn’t transplant the plants in those baskets and they were probably planted in you-know-what and that never holds water.”

“Yes, yes..you are right and I was lazy and I can’t get to them now.”

And it just got worse, so this morning, I just sucked it up and mixed up some compost and vermiculite (which by the way is heated and expanded mica, for those readers who like to astonish their friends with their scientific knowledge) and pulled down the baskets, pulled off the hangers, dragged around a bin to empty the pots into and took a look.

The picture at the top tells the entire story (cue sad “Gone With The Wind” music): roots all the way to the outside of the pot; and the entire pot filled with a combination of peat and perlite.

Light. Fluffy. The grow mix equivalent of meringue. Great for starting seeds in; great for home and garden centers which have staff people wandering around with watering-wands 12 hours a day or drip irrigation tubes running all over the place to every pot in the place. If you have constant moisture being applied, this stuff is aces and the plants always look tiptop, delicious, full of flowers and foliage and the marketability is just astonishing.

Except that no one at home HAS staff with watering-wands running about all day long or drip-irrigation going to all the baskets and flower boxes and running all the time. This type of mix, once the moisture stops, dries, gets hard, and shrinks up on the root balls. And the plants start to wilt and are stressed and would really love to just put their roots up, have a big glass of something cool and watch a good film.

Or die.

So. When your annuals start to look a bit long in the tooth, here is what Aunt Toby does. As long as the plants have not all gone to seed, they have some growth and flowers still in them but you have to fool them into thinking “OMG – the days are getting shorter and here I am with no seed heads; I’m a failure.” And the way to do that is to cut them back severely. Yes, they will look ugly for a bit, but it’s the best thing for them, really.

At the same time, you can repot as I am doing. First, as in the photo above, expose the roots and dig out the planting mix from the bottom and open up the roots. Be assertive (think Julia Child, the knife and the lobster). Fill the pot back up most of the way with good nutritious stuff — not more peat and perlite grow mix if you please. And water it well; if it’s sloppy, so much the better. Put the plant back in the pot and put more of your yummy stuff into the pot – tuck a lot between the plant(s) and the sides of the pot and put more on top and give the pot a good shoogle (that’s a technical term) to settle the stuff into any holes you’ve missed. Now, the pot is going to be heavy (you already put water into it) so put it into a shady spot or back where you had it before – on the hook, the deck or whatever. Now take a gallon of water and pour as much of that slow….ly….and…carefully over the top, a little bit at a time. And watch the bottom of the pot and when water starts to come out of the bottom, then stop. If you are a ‘put two plant spikes into every pot’ person, then go ahead and put those in there too. If you are not, you can and probably should whip up some compost or manure tea and water with that because the plants have been through a heck of a thing there and need the equivalent of chicken soup and a good rest.

The plants are going to look sort of shaggy for probably a week. During that time, they are sending out more roots, luxuriating in the new potting mix and settling in. Then they will start sending out new leaves and then flowers, which will get you more of a color show for the rest of the summer.

Which is the whole point.

Your job, Mr. Phelps, is to remove the leak, or rather, to remove the place in the hose where the leak IS.

To do that, you need about 10 minutes, a couple of basic tools and a hose mending kit that has, on its label the same diameter measurement as your hose (if you have a 1/2″ hose, get a 1/2″ hose mending kit and so on): A Phillips head screw driver, a box cutter or or utility knife with a good sharp blade, and a mending kit which consists of two screw downs and a coupler unit. There are actually other, more specific versions of the kit, with a male end or a female end, if you are trying to produce a hose which will screw into another hose, but that is a story for another time. These kits can be found at any hardware store or home and garden center. In our case, as you can see, we already had a leak in this hose that we fixed before — that’s why you see the couplers together in the top photo – ignore that for the moment and pretend all you are seeing is the leak coming out of that hose.

Step one: Remove the leak
You’re going to want something to cut the hose ON (rather than your leg or something like that – trust me on this, a utility knife under enough pressure to cut a hose will go into your leg and you do NOT want to spend your Memorial Day weekend time sitting in a hospital emergency room having to explain why you have a big gash in your thigh). We’re using a 2×4 here.

Line up the hose (you did turn the water off, right?) and holding the knife so that the blade is at 90-degrees to the hose, make a forceful straight cut down into the hose. Your goal is to have a cut that is relatively smooth but also with edges that are straight so that when you couple it all up, the edges come together smoothly. So, make your second cut to remove the other side of the leaky part of the hose. You will now have a piece of hose which actually has other uses (like tie downs for bushes and trees and so on – another story for another time). Put that aside.

Step Two: Putting the hose pieces back together
First: Take one piece of hose in your right hand and slip one of the screw on couplers onto it (in our illustration, they are green) and let that slip down the hose.

Second: Take the other piece of hose and slip one of the screw on couples onto THAT one and let that slip down the hose.

Third: Take the first piece of hose and taking the black coupler unit, screw that into the cut end of the hose. You will probably have to twist your hands around back and forth to get it in. Be patient. It’s going to be tight and you want that. Your goal here is to get the cut end of the hose to meet the black raised ring in the middle (see photo). Now, slide up the green screw on coupler that is already on that piece of hose, back up the hose toward the cut end and line it up with that black raised ring, too (see photos) and using your screw driver, tighten the screws on it so that it is good and tight.

Fourth: Take the other piece of hose and screw the cut end of THAT piece of hose onto the other, non-occupied end of the black coupler unit, making sure you twist your hands around so that again, these cut ends also butt right up to the black raised ring in the middle. Now slide up the other green screw on couple that you already put on this piece of hose, toward the cut end, line it up with the black raised ring too and lining that coupler up so that it matches the first one (see photos), tighten those screws up nice and tight.

Voila! Hose just about good as new.

We love outdoor kitties and although I know there are a lot of folks here who love their kittehs and keep them indoors, I am more than happy to encourage cats who like to take up the odd residence in our garage and barn. Not that we feed them or anything, but I certainly don’t chuck rocks and we have had over the years some very home bound felines who we took to the vets for spay/neutering/shots and so on, just to keep things in the family so to speak.

But the other afternoon, after the DH and our son came in from the barn, they mentioned that they had seen a creature out in the field that they had never seen before. Upon description, I knew that our ‘wild kingdom’ episodes would be taking on a whole different dimension because this, my friends, is no ordinary little bit of fluffy wildlife. We have seen all sorts of critters up in the field and have seen the results of visits from bears and other creatures, but to see one of these sent a chill from my head right down to my toes.

Fisher, or as some people call them, ‘fisher cats’ (versus ‘pole cats’ which is a name for their weasely cousins, the skunks). This is number two on the Weasel Hit Parade, after Wolverines. Fishers, depending on which sex, can range from 30 inches to 47 inches and can go up to 11 pounds. In the last century, they were hunted and trapped to near extinction but have made a huge bounceback in the Northeast.

They are also ferocious predators of literally anything, which means that any wildlife that wants to get into our garden is a target (Yay! Fisher Cat!), and our chickens and turkeys will be in danger as well (Boo, Hiss). On the other hand, they are the only predator which will successfully and for choice, go after porcupine. They climb anything, including trees.

So, the trick is to make getting AT the livestock just annoying enough that they move on to other more lucrative wildlife like the bunnies and woodchucks and won’t bother the chickens. I realize that we might have some losses this year but we are in hopes that the moveable pens are tight enough and hug the ground closely enough that they can’t wiggle under and grab anything for a quick drive by meal.

At least, that is the theory. So, if I had to put out a menu for them, I’d have to go with Fricassee of Lapin and Chuck de Bois rather than Coq au vin.

For more on fishers, go here: fisher
(photo courtesy of guppiecat )

Well, if it’s something that you would be putting into a pot and putting onto your deck or into a flower box, then go ahead and put the plants into a big pot and keep it in a sunny place and keep it watered. Even if it’s nice in the day time and gets chilly at night, you can always put it out on the deck in the pot during the day (as long as it’s warm in the daytime) and drag it in at night.

But if we are talking about something like bushes or trees? The number of times I have gotten directions with plants that say something like, “If you can’t plant right away, open the plants and put into a bucket of water,” is legion.

Don’t do that.

I’ve done it in the past and guess what? The reason I can’t get them into the ground right then and there is the same reason that the plants are still in the bucket two weeks later and when I have planted them later, the plants have died. Toes up. The plants ‘drowned’ while they were in that bucket, no matter how often I changed the water.

The ticket is to get them in the dirt, any sort of moist dirt, ASAP. You can deal with the actual planting in a bit as long as the dirt is moist and the roots are covered up well.

Heeling in is an old technique but for some reason, it is not covered extensively in gardening books. I went through every book in our library at Chez Siberia and the only book that covered it AT ALL was the Rodale Organic Gardening Encyclopedia (which is a good reason to keep that book on your ‘books worth having’ list and when you go to used book stores or library sales or whatever, getting it). We ordered some hazelburt trees and an amelchior (what is referred to in some areas as ‘Shad Bush’, “Shad Blow”, or in Canada, as “Saskatoon”), which showed up on Monday of this week from the nursery in ‘so far in upstate New York that they really CAN see Canada from their kitchen window”. Their directions were to get those babies in the ground, even if the top was frozen (which it was because of the cold wet weather we got last week).

What we found was a) the top of the dirt in the garden WAS frozen, but when the DH hacked through it down a couple of inches, the dirt below was nice and soft. Perfect.

Here’s how to do this: Dig a trench with a sloping side that is deep enough to handle the roots. Lay the tree or bush into it, roots down and throw the dirt from the trench on top of the roots, burying them. Then if the dirt is not moist, water. Make sure the dirt on top of the roots does not dry out.

At the same time, if you already have not done so, take the opportunity to follow the directions that you got with the plants to dig the appropriate size hole in the place where you will want to put the plant permanently.

Now, just a thought for this fall – let’s say that you want to get bushes or trees this fall but don’t have a place for them yet or you get a bargain on some bushes and don’t have time this fall to get them in. You can use the same technique, though I would suggest that the best place to heel them in would be a) NOT on the south side of your house and b) ON a side of your house that is the most protected from the wind as well. This way, they will have some protection over the winter and in the meantime you can decide where you want to put them and get the holes ready in the spring.

Don’t be afraid to use the internet or mail order to order trees and bushes – Americans have been doing this for at least 150 years, with a lot of success. But you need to just think through the idea of where you will put them if you are not ready for them when they arrive.

There you go.

But back to enjoying the winter. Recently, I read a listing put out of books to get through the winter, which all seemed to be children’s books, but no matter. At the time, Aunt Toby thought, “Well, this might keep a 7 year old occupied for a couple of days holed up at home but definitely would not keep anyone older going. One of the books on the list that I would recommend, for adult or child, is practically anything from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series. Because her books generally are time-period based, in that she covers one or perhaps two years in a book, the seasons with their customary activities are central to the story. Now the list out this past week named “The Long Winter” as their choice and it is a really good one, but there are others where winter plays a big role. “Farmer Boy”, about Almanzo Wilder (Laura’s husband) and a period of his childhood when his family farmed near the Canadian border in Northern New York is a good one, too, though “Little House in the Big Woods” has a lot to say about the winter as well. Reading these books as an adult is an entirely different experience from that of young readers – you will pick up far more of how hard it really was for the Ingalls family during the winter, and in “The Long Winter,” it is obvious just how close to starvation the families in the little town were and how brave and desperate Almanzo and his friend Cap Garland were to go off into the snow to try to find wheat for people to eat.

But for something a little bit more uplifting — one of the ways to make winter more bearable (if not enjoyable) is to actually get outside and see what is going on in the winter. Anyone who stays inside all the time in the winter is missing out on some very enjoyable activities and I am not just talking about feeding birds, skiing or snow shoeing. But most of us don’t have a clue how to translate the signs that are out there, and for that I’m going to recommend a book. “>Winter Nature Guide There are others that are more specialized and it’s worthwhile searching on ‘trees in winter’ or ‘plants in winter’ to find those as well. Using a guide such as this, you can bundle up, leave your house and get outdoors to see what is going on when the world is blanketed with snow. It’s fascinating to see just what animals are out there, and with a field guide such as this one, you can analyze animal and bird footprints. You can also find these guides in used book stores and on used book sites. Definitely worth having.

So, let’s look at the photograph at the top, which I took recently on my deck, so I can give you an idea of how a guide like this works. Looking at the print, I see five definite ‘toes’ (actually, what we’re seeing at the ends are the marks made by the claws), so I look for the page that has ‘animals with five toes’. All the prints are grouped by number of toes and then by animal family and then by size. The print itself was pretty small – greater than an inch but certainly not two inches (and you have to make allowances for the fact that the snow was extremely wet and it was relatively warm, so there might have been some warping from temperature change). So, possums, muskrats, and raccoons are out (also, possums have a print that looks more like the way a human hand does in terms of having a separate ‘thumb’ so that’s definitely out).

Squirrel or mouse? Well, mice prints are much too small (and don’t group like this) and squirrels actually show 4 digits on the front paws and five on the back feet(bet you didn’t know that; I certainly did not). This leaves (cue scary organ music) The Weasel Family (da-dum!).

Weasel tracks are too small to match this. And skunks, mink and martin are all in the same length area, though martin tracks are much wider (and martin’s are more of a forest animal so that chances of one deciding to hop onto my deck are pretty small). Skunk tracks are longer than they are wide, mink are basically the same width and length. From the print, this is longer than it is wide, so we are looking (oh dear…) at a skunk track. Some skunk woke up early and was wandering around. My only worry is that the poor bugger has taken up his winter rest under my deck (worse things have happened but I’m not sure if I’d discuss them here).

So, that’s how a guide like this works – actually a lot of fun and very educational. Just the thing to get the kids out of the house. Bundle them up and take them out, preferably when the sun is not blazing off the snow and giving everyone a headache. Take along a thermos(tm) of cocoa and some snacks and have at it.

And if this encourages you to go out and get started in snow shoeing, well, so much the better.

But I digress. One day, this gentleman, who had heard of my interest in growing things (i.e., “She grubs around in the dirt; we can’t do a thing with her”), brought me some funny papery-looking black things which he explained were seeds produced from one of his amaryllis bulbs when a bunch of them had bloomed at the same time. He’d done a little bit of romancing the amaryllis (stamen to pistol) and one of the plants had formed a seed pod, matured seed and he had seed to share. No one had any idea what would happen, but I stuck them in a box of potting soil, kept them moist and covered and voila! Little amaryllis plants, which I gave away.

There is nothing to say that as far as flowering plants in your garden, that you can’t do the same. Perhaps you will come up with something new and interesting. Seedsman the world over (Thompson and Morgan being the most famous for this) encourage home gardening scientists to hybridize plants to see if they can come up with something new or different (Burpee has been looking for a white marigold for years using this method). Some of the easiest (in that the bees and other insects do most of your work for you; all you have to do is take notice of the seed pods and save them once they’ve dried out) to use this method with are plants such as day lillies, irises, and hostas. Of course, if you want to do things a bit more scientifically and in a more controlled way, you can select the two lillies, or two irises, or two hostas (you want to match plant type) that you want to marry, use the pollen from one on the pistol of the other and close off with a small paper bag so that wandering insects don’t introduce pollen you don’t want. Once they have created seed pods that mature and dry, you can remove the seeds and store them in a cool dry place or do what I did below.

Last summer, while wandering around the garden, I noticed all the maturing seed pods on my day lilies and gathered up the shiny black seeds. I literally just jabbed them into holes into a plastic box that I had some potting soil in, made them moist and covered them up and forgot about them in a shady corner of the greenhouse. When it got cold and I had to bring plants into the house from the greenhouse, nothing was going on, but I brought the box inside and left it on a table near a sunny window in the living room. And now we had little plants. Isn’t that exciting. There is nothing like seeing a seed come up. Pretty soon, I’m going to plant each plant into a pot of its own and this spring, I’ll put them out in the garden and we’ll see what we get. Nothing more exciting than that.

For more about hybridizing day lilies, go here
For more about hybridizing hostas, go here
For more about hybridizing irisgo here

(scientist graphic courtesy of dzingeek)