{"id":4650,"date":"2017-03-10T09:49:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T14:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=4650"},"modified":"2025-08-24T11:03:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T15:03:30","slug":"4650","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2017\/03\/10\/4650\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Grass and Sweet Brown Soil"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The eves are dripping, snow is sliding from the roof and you can almost imagine green grass, pansies and preparing the soil for gardening.\u00a0 Smell the fresh brown soil.\u00a0 Really, it will come.\u00a0 In the meantime it is nice to enjoy a conversation about gardening with an old friend, Jeanne, as a glance out the window from time to time shows a six-foot-high snowbank sitting on the lawn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jeanne said a friend gave her a beautiful pot of daffodils this week, which she set right on her kitchen table.\u00a0 She is enjoying her amaryllis right now, too.\u00a0 She has a few different colors and this year she ordered some white ones to try. \u00a0Jeanne said that at one time her \u201csister had 50 amaryllis blooming all through her home.\u201d If you have tried amaryllis you know how hard it is to plan to have it bloom at a certain time, like Christmas.\u00a0 Jeanne said that there are quite a few variables that figure in if you want them to bloom at a certain time.\u00a0 The temperature, sunlight and humidity are a few things to consider when trying to get them to blossom.<\/p>\n

Jeanne does not worry about when the amaryllis will bloom.\u00a0 She plants hers outside after danger of frost in the spring and then they just grow and get good leaves in her raised beds over the summer.\u00a0 Jeanne warned, \u201cThey do seem to attract slugs.\u201d\u00a0 In the fall she pulls them and dries them out and places them in open plastic grocery bags, hanging them up in her cool cellar until January or February.\u00a0 At that time she removes them and repots them.\u00a0 Jeanne noted that she prefers heavier pots than the ones that the bulbs are sold with in stores.\u00a0 She prefers south-facing windows for the amaryllis, Christmas cactus and geraniums as well.<\/p>\n

Jeanne and her husband, who are both retired, are planning to start tomatoes, peppers, petunias, coleus, pansy and geraniums in the house soon and then they will move them to the greenhouse.\u00a0 She orders from several different seed companies such as Burpee, Johnny\u2019s and Fedco.\u00a0 Burpee is where she likes to get her tomato seeds as they have the varieties that she is looking for.\u00a0 But she has heard about a paste tomato, Grandma Mary\u2019s, that Fedco sells that she might try this year.\u00a0 Other varieties that they usually plant are: Big Boy, Early Girl and Roma: all of the bush type.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try something different every year,\u201d Jeanne said.\u00a0 This year she is trying a pelleted petunia that has fused two colors.\u00a0 The particular one that she is trying will have some purple and some lime flowers all on the same plant.\u00a0 There were only five pellets per package and they recommend just one pellet per pod.\u00a0 Last year she tried to grow bags of spinach, kale and lettuce, which gave them early salad makings.\u00a0 Another fun one was Job\u2019s Tears.\u00a0 They have seed pods that one of her granddaughters strung into a necklace.\u00a0 One problem with them was that they had very deep roots which were difficult to remove.\u00a0 Norman (Jeanne\u2019s husband) said, \u201cI don\u2019t think you should grow those again.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nicotina, a member of the night shade family related to tobacco, is another plant Jeanne has tried.\u00a0 But she found it to be invasive.\u00a0 She recommends very strongly against growing Strawberry spinach.\u00a0 She said, \u201cIt tasted all right.\u00a0 But it had small berries that seeded everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

One year they had a lot of chipmunks living in their barn, which got into their corn seeds.\u00a0 That summer they had corn springing up in the day lilies and all over the place.\u00a0 Unfortunately it wasn\u2019t the sweet corn variety.<\/p>\n

They planted Chinese lanterns next to the driveway one year.\u00a0 \u201cIt got crowded out by bamboo (Japanese Knotweed),\u201d Jeanne said.\u00a0 According to the \u201cPeterson\u2019s Field Guide: Edible Wild Plants,<\/em>\u201d Japanese knotweed is edible and good in stir-fries.\u00a0 Jeanne contemplated how the bamboo might have been started. \u00a0\u201cMy aunt\u2019s house had quite a lot around the outhouse out back.\u201d\u00a0 She wondered if they had been started that way, as they do make a pretty good and quick screen.\u00a0 That sounds like a possibility, but probably the only way to make them scarce is to start eating them.<\/p>\n

It was nice to have a reprieve from the winter weather as we head back into a cold spell.\u00a0 It is just a little reminder that we need to hold on and be patient.\u00a0 Spring will come.<\/p>\n

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The eves are dripping, snow is sliding from the roof and you can almost imagine green grass, pansies and preparing the soil for gardening.\u00a0 Smell the fresh brown soil.\u00a0 Really, it will come.\u00a0 In the meantime it is nice to enjoy a conversation about gardening with an old friend, Jeanne, as a glance out the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8890,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4650\/revisions\/8890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}