Terrific Tool: Garden Keeper Planner
I
looked at this one long and hard while attending the annual Garden
Writers Association of America meeting in Philadelphia in September.
The meeting includes an 80-booth trade show of new garden products,
and while much of what I saw will get its richly deserved comeuppance
in the next update, this product is a winner.
Is it a sign of maturity when one recognizes worth in a new concept one personally wouldn't be able to handle? I think it is. The Garden Keeper is the type of tool that many gardeners will use and derive great benefit from, even if the Renegade Gardener would probably lose it in the garage after a week, or leave it open in the rain.
Inside the zippered, waterproof case is a myriad of well-designed, clever features. Basically it's an all-in-one scheduler, planner, reference book and design tool. Divided into eight sections (Plot Keeper, Task Keeper, Plant Keeper, Record Keeper, Note Keeper, Garden Basics, Resources, and Odds 'n' Ends) the product was designed by an avid Massachusetts gardener who was frustrated by the jumble of plant tags, article clippings, seed packs, manuals, sketches, and personal notes she acquired while trying to create a garden.
She did her homework and created a product that will do the job when it comes to organizing the information that goes into creating your garden, sort of doing the old garden notebook scheme several turns for the better.
Since part of the Keeper includes a helpful encyclopedia of common perennial care and culture tips, I was won over by the fact that there are three different versions based on USDA Hardiness Zones, one for Zones 3 & 4, one for Zones 5 & 6, and one for those cheaters in Zones 7 & 8. Thank you for thinking of us northern despots.
She took the concept and prototype to Gardener's Supply Company, a good, old-money outfit in Vermont, and they snatched it up. Excellent choice on the part of both parties.
You can order The Garden Keeper by phoning (888) 228-9588, or visit their Web site to find out more about the product at www.gardeners.com/gk2.
They were handing them out free to us fancy-schmancy garden writers at the trade show, and I almost took one, but realized it's exactly the type of thing I leave on the bumper of my pickup, then drop off on Highway 494 at 65 miles an hour. I trust you, comrade, would do better.
Rabbits? Best Hasenpfeffer Recipe
Fall is the perfect season to rediscover this classic German favorite. The Renegade Gardener has tested many recipes over the years, and guarantees this one yields the desired result — all the way around.
Leave it to the Germans to figure out you can bake a bunny.
- 3 lb FRESH rabbit, cut into 3" pieces
- 1/3 c All-purpose flour
- 1/2 c Finely chopped shallots
- 1 c Dry red wine
- 1 tb Instant chicken bouillon
- 10 Black peppercorns, crushed
- 1/4 ts Dried rosemary leaves, crushed
- 2 ts Lemon juice
- 2 tb Flour
- 1/2 ts Salt
- 1/2 lb Bacon, cut into 1/4" pieces
- 1 Clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1 c Water
- 1 tb Currant jelly
- 1 Small bay leaf
- 1/8 ts Dried thyme leaves
- 3 tb Water
- 1/3 c All-purpose flour
Sprinkle rabbit with salt. Coat with 1/3 cup flour; shake off excess. Fry bacon in Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp; remove bacon and drain on paper towels. Brown a few pieces of rabbit in hot bacon fat; remove browned pieces. Repeat with remaining rabbit. Remove all but 2 tablespoons fat.
Cook and stir shallots and garlic in hot fat in Dutch oven until shallots are tender, about 4 minutes. Stir in wine, 1 cup water and the instant bouillon. Heat to boiling. Stir in jelly, peppercorns, bay leaf, rosemary and thyme. Return rabbit and bacon to Dutch oven.
Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer until rabbit is tender, about 1 1/2 hours.
Remove bay leaf and discard. Place rabbit on warm platter; keep warm while preparing gravy. Stir lemon juice into liquid in Dutch oven.
Shake 3 tablespoons water and 2 tablespoons flour in covered jar. Stir flour 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves in cheesecloth bag. Stir 1 minute. (If gravy is too thick, stir in more water until of desired consistency.) Serve gravy with rabbit.
Yield: 4 servings. Enjoy!
Best Book: Wildflower Field Guide
A Field Guide to Wildflowers of Northeastern and
North-central North America
By Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny
I stole this book
from my father's voluminous collection of essential tomes to
help me identify the plants I write about in "Lessons from
the Wilderness," though I informed him of this fact. He's
free to borrow it when he needs it.
They don't make 'em like this anymore, and in Roger Peterson's delightful introduction, you begin to sense why. Originally assigned as senior editor, he, "in an unguarded moment," volunteered to supply all the drawings, after the artist originally assigned to the project backed off.
Drawing most of the flowers in motels, into the lamps of which he would substitute his own 200-watt light bulbs rather than work in the gloom afforded their existing 40-watt glow, Peterson drove virtually the entire northeastern and north-central portion of the North American continent, "zigzagging from Minnesota to Maine and from Ontario to Virginia."
Over 1500 exquisitely detailed drawings later, the book was published in 1968 and remains the most valuable resource of its kind. Expertly drawn renderings of wildflowers are a hundred times more accurate and useful than photographs, as you will quickly learn. Descriptive prose that accompanies the drawings is smart, brief, yet thorough.
The book wisely classifies the flowers first by color, then by flower type, a system that makes identifying flowers so blessedly easy you'd wonder why many field guides published since this one have created a more convoluted approach.
If you ever have the desire to identify that flower blooming in May up at the cabin, or that patch of something that blooms in summer in the woods bordering your driveway at home, pick up this book. I have no idea if it is still in print; if you can't find a new copy, I just checked 21northmain.com, and note that they have numerous copies available. It is/was published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
If you haven't stumbled upon 21 North Main yet, it's a fabulous Web site that has linked many of the used, antique and out-of-print book sellers in the nation into one on-line store. I have ordered from them in the past and can assure you they are a business of utmost diligence and honor.
Best Book: Complete Perennial Care
The Well-Tended Perennial Garden
Planting & Pruning Techniques
By Tracy DiSabato-Aust
I'm a bit more
amazed by the value of this two-year-old book every time I yank
it from my reference shelf, which is often. Like a cookbook that
carefully details technique, this is the only garden book I've
found that offers utterly complete information on how to plant
and maintain a wide range of perennials, including those essential
to the Zone 2 through 4 garden.
"Design and Its Relationship to Maintenance" is one of the early sections; that's a helluva smart topic to write on, and one I've never seen. Bed preparation, how to plant, staking, division, and renovation of the established garden are very precisely covered.
The section on pruning has complete and precise information on all of the following techniques: deadheading, cutting back, pinching, disbudding, thinning, deadleafing, pruning to prepare for winter, and pruning to prepare for spring. You also get a practical rundown on the causes and cures to a large group of pests and diseases.
After that, the Encyclopedia of Perennials takes you through 150 or more plants and details their cultural needs, and even provides a planting and maintenance schedule.
Ms. DiSabato-Aust has a clear, no-nonsense, yet friendly writing style, with her years of experience and love of gardening apparent throughout. You can learn more subtle, advanced gardening tips in one of her paragraphs than some books give between the covers. Many wonderful, full-color pictures help illustrate the techniques.
This book received rave reviews when it was released, and still sells more copies per month than most gardening books combined. You'll find it in any bookstore with a garden section, or they can certainly order it for you. Published by Timber Press.
Read this one, and you are an expert. Combine it with Heger & Whitman's Growing Perennials in Cold Climates (see "Top Pick Archives") and you are looking at the only two perennial books you truly need.
Best Northern Gardening Magazine
Yes, comrades, there is a magazine
written just for us. Northern Gardener is the only magazine in
the world written exclusively for Zone 2 through Zone 4 gardeners.
Like you, I receive far too many gardening magazines. They all contain fine writing, terrific research, and page after page of the most breathtakingly gorgeous flowers, shrubs and trees I don't have a prayer of getting to grow up here in Minnesota I've ever seen. I steal a few things here and there on design, note the articles that do mention some plants I've heard of, then to the recycling bin they go.
Northern Gardener is different. I like it because every page, every plant, every technique, ever tip (every ad, for that matter) is useful to me and to my garden. It's also very beautifully designed (recently winning some top awards), professionally photographed (it's full-color through and through) and expertly written (though they slip up and publish an article of mine a couple times a year).
NG is published by the Minnesota State Horticultural Society and is the oldest continuously published magazine in the state. Formerly Minnesota Horticulturist, it has been written by northern gardening experts since 1866. That's not a typo—for 134 years. It isn't terribly advanced, either, instead providing clear information on plants and techniques for northern gardeners be they beginners or life-long practitioners.
How do you subscribe? You join the aforementioned M.S.H.S., which is the largest horticultural society in America, with over 20,000 members. It's Minnesota's big, public garden club, and anyone can join. There are members living in Wisconsin and the Dakotas and Manitoba, who've joined mainly to receive the magazine.
Membership gets you quite a bit more than the magazine, however, things like discounts on gardening classes held in the state, use of a very large garden library (accessible to all members via mail), a spring "green card" good for discounts on plants and trees at a huge number of Minnesota nurseries, even volunteer opportunities.
But the magazine is the Big Kahuna, and I assure you that out-of-state visitors to this site will be very impressed by it when they see their first issue. It's published nine times a year (they double up a few issues in the fall) and you will find it is the one gardening magazine you read cover to cover, then save.
Individual memberships are $40 a year. You can call the M.S.H.S. at (651) 643-3601 or (800) 676-MSHS to join, or check out their Web site (long under construction, perhaps it's up and whirring now) at www.northerngardener.org.
Great Garden Product Catalogue
This dusty jewel of a gardening
product catalog is so good I snatch it from the mailbox with
a glee I haven't felt since my punk rock days. It just started
showing up one year, soon after I joined the Garden Writers Association
of America. Come to think of it, right about then is when I started
getting spam e-mails from Garden.com, but unlike Garden.com,
Walt Nicke doesn't take me for some rube.
I don't know where to start, so I'll keep it short. Each issue starts off with a top-quality gardening article, written by one of a revolving bevy of talented garden writers. Then you're in for sixty pages of impeccably chosen, miraculously practical products for the gardener.
For instance, where else will you find authentic Sussex trugs? Long handled bulb planters? Garden tool and pruner sharpeners that work? British hand tools, German hand tools, Dutch hand tools, Asian hand tools? Propagation heat mats, which can be impossible to find, and at a decent price? Mini-sump pumps? Brass hose valves and components? English rose arches? The Fogg-it nozzle, which I wrote about a while back and told you to buy? The compost aerator, ditto?
I am barely scratching the surface. If it is a quality garden product that makes sense to own, it's in Garden Talk. Page for page it's the best product catalog I receive. Besides, when else will you crack open a catalog to find a witty, almost subliminal reference to Coleridge's Kubla Khan?
It's a little thing, black and white, only published twice a year, but you can tell it's printed with respect for gardeners and passion for the pastime. To request the catalog, phone (978) 887-3388, or visit them on-line at www.gardentalk.com.
Essential Web Site (aside from RG)
Yeah, I'm being a bit of a homer on this one, but for those of you looking for, um, serious discussion of northern horticulture (as well as you experimentalists who've stumbled onto this site looking for RenegadeGarments.com, but are also interested in gardening,) it's tough to beat the Web site for the University of Minnesota Extension Service.
I was on an island in northern Ontario in May, sipping tea and talking to a fine young Canadian arborist who specialized in Zone 2 & 3 trees, and he mentioned how much he uses the site.
Click the link above, but have some time on your hands. From the Home Page, click on Gardening & Horticulture under Topics of Interest, and when you're done messing around there, click on Yard & Garden Line to enter an entire new level of outstanding information for northern gardeners. Intense research, good writing, spiffy search engines — it's a helluva Web site, and a remarkable resource for northern gardeners.
Just don't abandon your old friend Renegade Gardener…
Technique: Buckets and Pails (and Why)
Anyone familiar with the site knows the Renegade Gardener shies away from mixing his opinion into the facts. Well, enough of that. You can't garden without buckets.
In my garage I have three, five-gallon buckets with handles, and two, one-gallon pails with handles. One or more gets used in the garden every day.
One five-gallon bucket hangs from the handle of my lawn mower, secured by the same short rope I tie to keep the deadman bar from flipping down and shutting off the engine every time I choose to stick my fingers dangerously close to the whirring blades as I pull sticks and twigs from in front of the belching, creeping mower. Into the bucket they go.
Need a bit of compost from the bin because you're moving one or two perennials around and need a little fresh organic in the holes? Why lug the wheelbarrow back there? Grab a bucket, fill it up, get to work. If the compost isn't quite ready, you can chop it with a shovel right in the bucket.
When I dig a hole for a perennial mid-season, it's a pain to shovel the dirt between and around the other perennials that are staying in place. I put a bucket at shovel's reach and shovel all the dirt into it. Need to amend the soil? Add a little compost from that other bucket and chop it in.
Planting a bed near the road, you're always tempted to shovel the dirt onto the pavement when you plant, but then have to scoop it back up with a rounded shovel because your big snow-scoop shovel hasn't been seen since that blizzard in February. Dump the dirt in the bucket instead, then you just lift the bucket and pour the soil back around the new plants.
The small pails each have a bypass pruner inside, so I can grab a pail and pruner and head out for a bit of weeding or deadheading. I believe there is a pub in York called the Pail and Pruner, where I once dined on a pickle and cheese sandwich washed down with this killer ale. Weeds and plant debris go into the pail, which I take from bed to bed before winding up at the compost bin. Saves creating little piles of debris scattered all around your yard that you have to go back and collect.
Essential Garden Scheme: Holding Pits
This week's Top Pick is a secret I learned from a good gardener, several years before reading about it. It's pretty simple. It is also an essential addition to your yard if you are going to get serious about creating an above-average-looking flower garden.
Somewhere on your property, find a place for a holding pit. The holding pit isn't one of your garden areas that counts, it's a storage plot for perennials that aren't currently being used in your main gardens.
Pictured is my holding pit, in a corner of my back yard. Right now I have some daylilies left over from division a year back, lilies that came the same way, a butterfly bush I started from seed four years ago and can never figure out what to do with, some ajuga that's biding its time, three PJM Rhododendrons moved from my front yard last fall so they wouldn't get destroyed by the remodeling currently taking place, some Pyrethrum started from seed; you get the idea. I counted ten varieties of plants in there this week, but stuff moves in and out of there all the time.
There are a few suggestions for placing and building them; rather than waste time here, those of you who wish to learn more can check out a short column I wrote on the subject a while back, Behold the Holding Pit.
Must-Have Watering Tool: Foggit Nozzle
My previous "Top
Pick" was the most useful gardening tool you'll never find
in a gardening store or catalog; this time around it's the most
useful gardening device you'll have a difficult time finding
in a gardening store or catalog.
It's the FOGG-IT "Waterfog" nozzle, used around the world by professional growers and nurserymen, but for some reason rarely promoted or sold to home gardeners.
I own several, of course, and with the threat of drought upon us I may buy more, then sell them at a hugely inflated price so I can justify buying $75 hostas.
Known in the trade as a fogger or fogging nozzle, it's threaded to fit on the end of your hose or watering wand. Turn on the hose and this nozzle turns the water into not a fine stream but a mist, a fog, that carries thirty feet or more in the wind.
The nozzle breaks the water down into such fine particles that plants draw the water in through leaves, needles, stems and trunks much more readily than they do when soaked or sprayed by your typical garden spray nozzle or watering wand.
It's an essential device for growing healthy evergreens and shrubs in the north. In the fall I use it to mist all my rhododendrons and Arborvitae, ensuring they retain moisture as they begin hardening off. If we get a thaw in the winter, I turn the water back on to the front of my house, grab a hose from the garage and fog trees and shrubs to keep them from drying out when winter temperatures climb above freezing and the sun starts beating down.
Growers use them for misting seedlings and adding humidity to greenhouses when growing tropicals. I will be using mine often this summer to keep my evergreens and deciduous trees and shrubs properly moistened. Rumor has it it's going to be a dry one.
They come in three models, super fine, fine and the one above
that. All you really need is the middle, all-purpose nozzle,
although the super fine nozzle is good for floating a rain cloud
out fifty feet to startle the kids playing boot down the street.
Renegade Gardener got his gratis from nursery friends, of course,
but I believe if you check with garden supply houses in your
area and specialty garden supply catalogs, you can locate one.
They're not very expensive. You can also buy them on-line at
www.frostproof.com.
You want one of these.
World's
Greatest, Least-Known Gardening Tool
This week’s top pick is:
a) A tool I used in my garden twenty minutes ago;
b) The first tool I used in my garden this spring;
c) Without equal for dividing perennials, removing dandelions,
weeding in narrow cracks between patio stone, cutting down native
grasses in the spring, cutting open root-bound pots and slicing
garden edging to proper length;
d) Not available in any garden store or garden supply catalog
between here and Venus.
It is the Sharpkut II knife. If that’s not ringing any bells, it was known in earlier incarnations as the Quickut knife, and originally as the Ginzu, and has been sold for years on late-night TV and by live pitch people at the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show, the Minnesota State Fair, and other consumer events of far lesser quality.
You know the pitch-the guy cuts the handle of the hammer, then the head of the hammer, then cuts through a soda can, then slices a tomato so thin you can read the newspaper through it (“Why, if I cut it any thinner, it would only have one side!”)
I’ve been using the knife in the garden for over 15 years and would be lost without it. Ready to divide a big hunk of overgrown hosta that has been sitting in cement-like soil for the past ten years? Spraying a giant clay ball with a hose for two days in an attempt to wash off all the soil around the roots so you can gently pull hosta apart is how beginners divide. Dig the thing up, turn it on its side, and saw it in half, aggressively, then quarters, then eighths, root ball, soil, rocks and all. Yesterday I sawed through the punky crown of some Amsonia I had been meaning to divide for the past three years.
The knife is serrated but much more so than a regular bread knife. This thing is like a surgically sharpened hand saw. You can literally saw branches off a crabapple tree with this knife.
The blade is super thin and flexes, so you can twist it to carve out the size of perennial divisions you’re after. The tip has two points- allegedly for serving slices of pot roast-but it works great for weeding in cracks. Or stick it in the ground at an angle near dandelions, then slide it like a lever under the plant to cut the root before easily pulling the offensive weed from your lawn, all without disturbing the soil. Use it in the fall for cutting down stout perennials, and in the spring for hacking your tall grasses down.
I cut open big black nursery pots with it, score root balls, and yes, it will cut right through plastic lawn edging easier than anything I’ve used.
Where can get one now? Remember, it’s not sold in stores! The Renegade Gardener gets them free, of course, but you can order one today by calling a very nice company called Syndicate Sales in Hopkins, Minnesota. You will need to buy the regular show package, where you wind up with two of the knives (“Buy the knife here at the show and I give you a second, equal knife free. Give it to your neighbor to help me advertise”). They will charge you a whopping $19.95 for two knives.
Then forget your neighbor. You need two in the garden. Or one in the garden and one in the kitchen-it happens to also be the best bread knife in the world.
Syndicate Sales: (612) 932-2993. Be sure to tell them the Renegade Gardener told you to call!
Best Books
Over the years I've acquired far too many gardening books. When I started gardening I was a sucker for a great cover or title, and figured that any tome with a hard cover, color photos and a hefty price tag was essential to my library. Consequently, on my shelves I have books I don't use for reference any more, typically because they don't have much to say about gardening up here in the north.
Here are the two books I pour over all the time. One is a new classic, the other an old standard, but I present both to you as the Renegade Gardener's TOP PICK in GARDENING BOOKS.
Best
Book: Perennials for Zones 2-4
Growing Perennials in Cold Climates
by
Mike Heger and John Whitman
This is the new (1999) book everyone's talking about, and for
all the right reasons. Heger and Whitman, both Minnesotans, have
more than 70 years of gardening experience between them, and
have created the single best book available on growing perennials
in northern regions.
They've picked the 50 best perennial varieties for cold climates and explain, in smart, straightforward and easily understood fashion, everything you need to know to grow them successfully year after year. Site preparation, bare root vs. potted plants, watering, mulching, fertilizing, staking, deadheading, sun/shade requirements, winter prep, growing problems, pests and diseases, where to buy, it's all here. Includes encyclopedic listings of virtually every wild and nursery cultivar relative to the 50 varieties ñ 1,700 perennials in all.
The book is big, thick, heavy, beautifully photographed and not cheap. Own it, however, and you are an expert perennial gardener. Available at all area bookstores, via mail from the Minnesota State Horticultural Society (651-643-3601 to order) and Amazon.com.
Best
Book: Trees & Shrubs for Zones 2-5
Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs
This is the number-one reference book used in northern regions by horticulture professors, landscapers, nursery growers and gardeners. Includes varieties suitable through USDA Zone 5, making it especially useful to those of you in Minneapolis and St. Paul where, with proper care, Zone 5 micro-climates can be achieved. Thorough, accurate and complete.
Best price I've seen is from the Minnesota State Horticultural Society bookstore (see number above) which has it on sale for 20% off now through the end of April.
Own these two books and you have a library containing everything you need to know on the topics of growing trees, shrubs and perennials in USDA Zones 2 through 5. But if you'd still like to own additional, albeit worthless gardening books, e-mail me — I have some dust-collectors I will let you have cheap.
Best Plant Catalogues for Zones 2-5
Nineteenth-century
garden guru Henry Ward Beecher famously cautioned all gardeners
not be "made wild by pompous catalogs from florists and
seedsmen," but then he didn't have to look out his window
at a polar bear eating vanilla ice cream in a blizzard from December
through March.
So in case the mood strikes you to be made wild this winter, I give you my TOP PICKS among mail-order plant catalogs.
Shady Oaks Nursery Catalog, Shady Oaks Nursery, Waseca, MN Be still my heart. This catalog - thick, big, glossy - hits my mailbox in January and it's like 've just received Vanity Fair, Northern Gardener, Newsweek and a Victoria's Secret catalog all rolled into one. I take it with me wherever I go, for about the next two months.
From a design, layout, photography, and Zone 3 - Zone 5 plant selection standpoint, this is the greatest plant catalog in the world. As the name implies, this giant nursery in southern Minnesota specializes in field-grown, hardy perennial flowers, vines, groundcovers and grasses that perform in part-sun all the way down to full shade conditions (long the curse of my dark, dense, tree-infested little half-acre). They do huge volumes of mail-order business in the spring, and your order will arrive in tip-top shape, but it's much more fun to use the catalog to pick and plan, then drive to charming Waseca after they open (usually by May 1,) tour their display gardens and buy the stuff in pots.
Even though I keep telling them to charge ten bucks, their catalog is free if you call (800) 504-8006, or drop them a line at P.O. Box 708, Waseca, MN 56093
Ambergate Gardens Catalog, Ambergate Gardens, Chaska,
MN
Not near the aesthetic flash and bash of Shady Oak's catalog,
but the more you grow and know perennials the more you'll realize
what a gourmet menu this catalog presents. Scant on pictures
save for a half-dozen pages of color plates in the middle, the
thorough but blessedly low-key descriptions and strict botanical
accuracy educate as much as they entice.
At Ambergate you're dealing with one of the top perennial growers in the state, offering a wide range of plants, from full sun to shade. They have a nationwide reputation for shipping large, healthy divisions. But the best reason for shopping Ambergate lies in selection - in addition to the common cultivars they offer some wonderful, less-common perennials you won't find your neighbors growing, plants you'll never learn about if you only hang at the big retail nursery centers.
Call (612) 443-2248, leave your name, address and word that you found them via Renegade Gardener, and you'll be placed on their catalog list at no charge. Retail nursery is just outside Victoria and opens around May 1.