¡ Germidado de semillas mas rapido!
¡ Incrementa el exito en ingertos y germinado do semillas!
¡ Se incluye informacion que es de …

Oops! Sorry! I'm reading the wrong side of the box. Here we go …

Seedling Heat Mat
by Hydrofarm Gardening Products, Petaluma, California

I met these folks at a trade show over the winter, and was impressed by their full-line of high quality seed-starting and indoor-growing products. They make a nice heat mat (10" x 10" and 20" x 20") for placing under seed trays while attempting germination. Cool Website, here's the link: www.hydrofarm.com.

Tell them you found them via Renegade Gardener!

Outstanding Gardening Book

Second Nature, a gardener’s education
By Michael Pollon

I meant to feature this book last fall, so that those who might be interested could read it over the winter. I didn’t get to it, but made a note to feature it early this season.

I’ll keep this short. Ten years ago, well before I thought of becoming a garden writer, my wife bought me this book. To this day, it is the best book I’ve read on the essence of gardening. Honest, funny, thoughtful, erudite, and charming, it is a joy to read (and I’ve read it a good four times).

Pollon is (was?) the Executive Editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing on the garden and nature has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Best American Essays. The book is published by Atlantic Monthly Press, is still available in large bookstores, or they can probably order it. You’ll find it at your library, too.

It’s a gem.

Way Cool Watering Can

Saw these for the first time this spring at Lynde Nursery in Minneapolis. Check this out:

• It holds two gallons, and has well-defined, easy-to-read calibrations up the side beginning at one gallon. Metric on the other side, for ten year-olds and our Canadian friends.
• The big hole on the top, for filling, is off center. I don't know about you, but I always have a watering wand attached to the end of my hose. I add a tablespoon or two of water-soluble fertilizer to the bottom of a typical watering can, then can't get the wand into the watering can to add water and stir the mixture, because the handle of the watering can runs right over the top of the hole. That's why this hole is off-center.
• The end of the spout swivels. One way, it's a plain, narrow hole, for quickly watering shrubs or anything with bark around it. Rotate the white end piece and you've got the more gentle spray option, where the water showers out through little pinholes.

Somebody sat down and designed a better watering can. They are manufactured by Akro-Mils. If your nursery center doesn't carry them, here's a Web site: www.akro-mils.com.

One of these days, I have to start charging for advertising.

The Toro iMow Robotic Mower

I've long contended that mowing the lawn is not gardening, just as washing the dishes is not cooking. Finally, the Toro Corporation, a very fine Minnesota company, proves it once and for all.

They have just brought to market the iMow, America's first self-propelled, hands-off, fully robotic lawn mower. Cute, and as dumb, as a bug, I remained uncertain just what to think of the product long after I had tired of the television commercial.

I've finally decided it's a great product. All you do is lay down a perimeter wire system, drop the iMow in a corner of the lawn, push a button, then go inside to watch baseball and drink beer. The iMow first mows the perimeter, then crisscrosses the lawn in a series of irregular zigzags until you decide the patches it has missed aren't enough to worry about. Or, you can attach a handheld controller with cord and direct it to cruise over the final, offending tufts.

The extremely quiet iMow is powered by a rechargeable 24-volt battery, meaning it uses no gas, no oil, and emits nothing except the seeds to the realization that human civilization is nearing either its nirvana, or its end, depending on if you were an honor student in high school, or read Vonnegut during morning detention.

I want two, so that I may modify them with steel spears and spiked wheels and flame throwers, then start each in a different corner of my yard and place bets with the neighborhood children over which iMow will be left standing after the two inexorably meet, mid-lawn. It's uncertain if they generate enough speed to get air off jumps, so true t-boning may be out of the question, but still, there are possibilities. Turf war.

I love the iMow because it is the lawn care industry saying, "Mowing the lawn is a pain in the ass, there is no human enjoyment or fulfillment to be had, so we are taking the human out of the equation." They are eclipsing lawn care from the category of gardening, which is just. Gardening intrinsically involves the body and mind. No secretive gaggle of mechanical engineers are currently meeting behind the corporate curtain designing a robotic machine that will deadhead phlox, divide daylilies, or install a curving, bluestone path.

Or are they?

Good New Wildflower ID Book

What's Doin' the Bloomin'?
By Clayton & Michelle Oslund

Perusing the gift shop at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul while taking a break from chaperoning an insufferable fourth-grade field trip, I discovered this book and bought it after flipping through only a few pages. It's a new pictorial guide to wildflowers of the Upper Great Lakes regions, Eastern Canada, and Northeastern U.S.A.

While no means complete, it should be on every wildflower-enthusiast's reference shelf. Clayton is a retired botany/horticulture professor, and Michelle his garden-loving wife, and retired teacher. Both contributed to the photography and text, and both are excellent.

The neat thing about this book is that they have arranged the nearly 400 plants covered according to bloom time — beginning with the earliest spring arrivals (Skunk Cabbage, Trailing Arbutus) and taking the amateur plant detective through the growing season all the way to fall (Swamp Dewberry, Northern Bugelweed).

As I have mentioned prior, when it comes to identifying plants growing in the wild, photographs have certain advantages and line drawings have certain advantages. A photograph of Hairy Honeysuckle is all one needs to nail it, whereas line drawings are required to discern between the dozens of varieties of Solidago spp.

What I've found is that adding this book to my arsenal makes for a great companion to Peterson & McKenny's essential wildflower guide, A Field Guide to Wildflowers. I used both extensively out in the field during my recent trip to Ontario. Using one to corroborate a hunch from the other was of great advantage.

The book is published by Plant Pics, P.O. Box 3224, Duluth, MN (a good sign right there), 55803-3224. I forgot what I paid for it, probably around twenty bucks.

Superior Granular Fertilizer

Country Cottage 10-10-10 Perennial Flower Food

Iwas turned onto the Country Cottage brand by the product buyer at Dundee Nursery in Plymouth, Minn., one of the first garden centers in our area to carry the line. Here's what makes it a Top Pick:

Unlike many other granular fertilizers, this stuff includes the following secondary nutrients:

• Calcium (promotes early root hair formation and stiffness of stems)
• Iron (aids production of chlorophyll, gives leaves a dark green color)
• Sulfur (an essential ingredient of protein, it encourages vitality all the way around)
• Magnesium (helps regulate uptake of other plant foods, and acts as a carrier of phosphorus through the plant).

Check the side panel of whatever brand you're using. I'll bet it solely contains N-P-K, the three primary nutrients. Most manufacturers don't bother to include essential secondary nutrients because it takes longer, costs more, and they don't think gardeners care.

I care, and hope you do too. Country Cottage is a family-owned operation that was recently purchased by A.H. Hoffman in New York, but that corporation wisely left the CC staff intact.

Quality of granular fertilizers varies greatly; this stuff is made by people interested in producing the highest quality product achievable. I'm in my second year with it and firmly believe it outperforms other brands.

Rice Hull Compost

Ran into this stuff for the first time this season at Tonkadale Greenhouse in Minnetonka (boy, has that place turned into a great garden center) and was intrigued enough to ask a few questions. Here's the story:

Lou Gerten over at Gerten's Greenhouse in Inver Grove Heights is always looking for the perfect potting soil concoction. They make their own at Gerten's, as do many good growers, and Lou heard about composted rice hulls. They are lightweight and keep soil from compacting, so it remains fluffy and friable, making for good root development and air circulation in the root zone.

Turns out there was a source in New Orleans, and when shipped in bulk up the Mississippi river on barges it became quite affordable. So Gerten's started bringing it up the river and experimenting with it.

Experiments were so successful they now sell it in bulk form at Gerten's. If you are making new garden beds or in any way amending soil, composted rice hulls dug or rototilled into your soil beats the pants off peat moss. A lot of gardeners don't realize how quickly peat moss wimps out and compacts to the point where it really isn't doing anything to keep your soil friable. The benefits diminish pretty quickly after one full season, I've found.

Rice hulls, on the other hand, take a long time to break down, lasting three to five years. In a pail they look and feel a lot like coffee grounds, but work up a handful, squeeze it, and you realize how brittle and almost sharp they are.

Rice hulls have neutral pH and no nutrient value. They do not retain moisture. The whole point of using them is to keep your soil structure light and friable so plants perform at their best. The folks at Tonkadale tell me it is the absolute best relief they've found for clay soil. Obviously, rice hulls work fine in tandem with peat moss, and/or compost from your bin.

Over at Tonkadale they bag it up and sell it to the public (pictured), while at Gertens you can buy it in bulk and tote it home in your pickup (or, they'll deliver; the minimum delivery amount is half a yard, which, as all good Renegade Gardeners know, is nothin').

Comprehensive Native Plants Book

Native Plants for Northern Gardens, by Dr. Leon C. Snyder

This book was the first comprehensive guide to native plants worthy of use in the northern residential landscape, and it remains one of the most valuable books of its kind.

Trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, biennials, annuals, grasses, prairie plants, ferns, water and bog plants native to the Upper Midwest are described and suggestions made for their use, with good attention to detail when it comes to plant use and culture. While not every plant is pictured, many of the over 400 plants are, many of the fine photographs taken by Mr. Snyder during his world travels.

The author was director of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum from its founding in 1958 until 1976. He was also Head of the Department of Horticultural Science at the University if Minnesota from 1953 to 1970. I was fortunate to meet Dr. Snyder and work with him in a few small ways prior to his death in 1985. He had completed text for this book, but it was not published until 1991.

If you've gotten on the native kick, either in the urban setting or out in the country, this book will prove invaluable to those involved in native restoration projects. You'll find it at good book stores, or they can order it. It's published by the University of Minnesota Andersen Horticultural Library (1991).

Must-Have Gardening Book

Making More Plants - The Science, Art, and Joy of Propagation
By Ken Druse
(Clarkson Potter/Publishers, November 2000)

If I had a dollar for every e-mail I've received from gardeners asking propagation questions, this Web site of mine would have a search engine AND make your computer dance when you pulled up the home page. Yes, you can propagate every plant you grow, and yes, there is an awful lot to learn about doing so.

That's probably why gardeners usually become comfortable with one form of propagation – division – but shy from the rest. No more. Propagating from seed, stem cuttings, leaf cuttings, root cuttings, layering, grafting (and yes, division), you'll learn it here, aided by copious photos, smart layout, and an authoritative yet friendly writing style.

It's obvious the author and editors went to great lengths to create a book easily understood by the average home gardener. And we're not just dealing with garden flowers – how to propagate shrubs, trees, exotic houseplants, bulbs, tubers, and corms is all explained clearly and completely.

This is an incredible facet of gardening in which most gardeners never even dabble. I'm so excited about some of the stuff I've learned from this book I just cannot wait for next year. You get to use tweezers, plastic bags, rubber bands, razor knives, potions, powders, and petri dishes. Igor, bring me that plant!

Ken Druse (www.kendruse.com) is one of the big guns in my industry; never met the fella but I hear nice things about him. He's written numerous books, among them The Natural Garden and The Collector's Garden. He's the garden editor over at House Beautiful magazine, and he has hit a homerun here.