The Rijksmuseum is exhibiting its most beautiful prints and drawings of tulips from the 17th and 18th centuries.
White County authorities say a man apparently killed himself after firefighters battling a grass blaze stumbled across an illegal dog-fighting ring and investigators found an indoor marijuana-growing operation on property where he lived.
ROMANCE - White County authorities say a man apparently killed himself after firefighters battling a grass blaze stumbled across an illegal dog-fighting ring and investigators found an indoor marijuana-growing operation on property where he lived.
Ask a Duval County master gardener your gardening questions from 9 to 11 a.m. Tuesdays by calling 359-4199 or 472-6397 and asking for extension 4199.
It's a warm-blooded fish whose rich, succulent taste has been highly prized for centuries. A single specimen once sold for $173,600 on the Japanese sushi market. Yes, that was for just one fish.
And, like much of the natural world, bluefin tuna are being loved to death. Populations of the prized delicacy have plummeted over 70% worldwide, according to the Washington Post. That's why ocean activists are cheering a decision by the Obama administration to support an international trade ban on bluefin tuna.
You can help by making smart, healthy seafood choices and opting for sushi that isn't made from bluefin tuna.
Something Fishy originally appeared on About.com Green Living on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 08:40:22.
SLUG pellets and spots on potatoes were among the topics being tackled by experts when the BBC visited Edenfield .
I recently posted about some of the "first signs of spring" I like to keep an eye out for, noting that my checklist includes:
- Pussy willows
- Skunk cabbage
- Red-wing blackbirds
- Spring peepers
I could easily have included other entries, such as spotted salamanders. The spotted salamanders arrive late to the party compared to their fellow amphibians, the spring peepers. But what the salamanders lack in precociousness they more than make up for in beauty. The mass migrations to vernal breeding ponds that they undertake annually is a sign of spring not to be missed.
Reader, Lynn was kind enough to relate another of the first signs of spring, one of which she is particularly fond. "You didn't list marsh marigold as a sign of spring -- always one of my favorites," says Lynn. "Blooms in late March/early April in southern Michigan." In the landscape, marsh marigolds are a useful plant for wet areas, thriving where other plants would drown.
A delightful way to observe the first signs of spring is to pack a wildflower book and hike out in the woods in search of the various types of wildflowers that appear early in the growing season. In addition to marsh marigolds, some of the early-rising wildflowers include:
- Spring beauty
- Hepatica
- Dutchman's breeches
Dutchman's breeches, like their relative, the bleeding heart, are among the most aptly named flowers, their fanciful moniker being highly indicative of their shape.
How about you? What are the first signs of spring that you await in your region? Click the link below to let us know.
Let us know: What Are the First Signs of Spring?
First Signs of Spring originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 07:12:29.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 About 8,000 people took the time to stop and smell a plant that bloomed at a garden center in Springfield, even though the plant stinks.
Special to the Tribune When it comes to gardening, Felder Rushing likes to get down and dirty.
Passion Flower Collection
Photo © Spring Hill Nurseries
I'm a huge fan of passion flowers. Last year was disappointing because I planted mine too late in the season. They grew like weeds (which they are in some places), but never flowered, and while I do love the foliage of passion flowers, growing them really is all about the bling of their outrageous blossoms.
This year I was uncharacteristically organized and ordered a collection of passion flowers from Spring Hill Nurseries. They're on sale until March 18.
Container Gardening Ecstasy - Passion Flowers originally appeared on About.com Container Gardening on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 08:00:33.
Ok, time to fess up - did you clean your hand pruners before you put them away last season? If you've already started pruning, did you give them a good sharpening at the start of the season?
There are few tools we rely on more than our hand pruners, but most of us don't really take very good care of them. Keeping your hand pruners clean and sharp can make pruning less stressful on your hands and on your plants. Ideally it should be done several times a year, but at least give them some attention at the beginning or end of the season.
Don't let your pruners intimidate you. They're basically held together by a screw or nut and taking them apart to clean and sharpen is a simple process. (And no, putting them back together again is not magic either. You can do it.) This pictorial walks you through the steps of cleaning and sharpening hand pruners.
Time to Clean Your Hand Pruners originally appeared on About.com Gardening on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 01:25:21.
I recently posted about dwarf trees, an extreme example of which is mugo pine. The popular mugo pine tree is such a dwarf that it acts as a ground cover. Talk about an odd juxtaposition of terms: We don't often speak of a "tree" as a "ground cover"!
Today I want to broaden the topic of conversation a bit. A tree can be considered a "small tree" without qualifying as a "dwarf." For example, I consider Kwanzan cherry trees to be small trees: they're small in comparison with a mature red oak tree. But they're not dwarf trees: You wouldn't plant a Kwanzan cherry tree in a foundation planting.
So with that distinction out of the way, let me ask you: Which are the best small trees? Click the link below to inform us of your favorites.
Let us know: Which Are Your Favorite Small Trees?
Small Trees: Which Are Your Favorites? originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 08:25:27.
ONE of the most distinguished country hotels in the district is redesigning its gardens a ' and is inviting the public to get in on the act.
March has arrived, and I know that I'll need to turn my attention now to cleaning up the yard and getting my plants ready for the growing season. I'll undertake these tasks with a smile, as their performance is essentially a rite of spring (Oh, that word has a wonderful ring to it!). But after enduring the long winter, I know that I, too, could stand some TLC. Couldn't you?
Consequently, at the heart of my to-do list for March is the promise that I will not let any of the first signs of spring go by unnoticed. You see, every year at about this time, I begin looking for particular signs of spring in the wild. It's sort of a mental checklist that I maintain, as a way of deriving maximum satisfaction from what I believe to be the most exciting time of the year (in my region). My checklist includes:
- Pussy willows
- Skunk cabbage
- Red-wing blackbirds
- Spring peepers
I feel gypped if a spring comes and goes and I have failed to appreciate the arrival of these, its harbingers. I must admit that I'm more diligent about this part of my March to-do list than I am about some of the other parts. But for those more diligent than I, I recommend consulting Marie Iannotti's list.
"A regional gardening calender for the month of March can give you general tips on what to plant and what to wait for, but spring in the garden is unpredictable and gardeners will have to use some common sense," warns Marie. This handy resource, organized by region, will help you find the most relevant advice for what you should be doing at this time in your own yard. The March to-do list furnished by About's Gardening Guide suggests tips for each of several distinct regions of the U.S. and Canada.
Photo ©2006 David Beaulieu (licensed to About, Inc.)
Related resource: Enjoy a Silent Spring
March To-Do List for the Yard originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 08:55:27.
It is time to think about green manure as a cover crop. If you did not plant it in fall, early spring is the time to get it done. Green manure simply means planting a crop that is fast growing and tilling it under to add organic material to the topsoil.
Depending on what variety you are planting, you do this in late summer or fall(called winter crop)or very early spring. You want to plan on turning the fast growing seed into the soil 1 month before spring planting, so check your dates! Some choices for early spring sowing are:
- Oats
- Clover
- Hairy Vetch
By no means are these the only choices. Here is the perfect situation that warrants asking at your local feed or small town hardware store. These are the places that you will find the seed in bulk, and either a customer or a employee willing to share their knowledge with you.
Photo © Flickr user Linda N.
Time To Consider Green Manure originally appeared on About.com Herb Gardens on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 06:42:06.
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Q: How do you make your own potting soil? A: First, ask yourself what type of plants you will grow because the soil mixture will vary.
Tampa - Roughly 200 people turned up at the Lowe's store on South Dale Mabry Highway this morning, hoping to be featured on an episode of DIY's "Yard Crashers." More than 100 people were waiting at the store at 7:30 a.m. -- 30 minutes before the doors opened.
If limited time or garden space challenges you to decide between an ornamental landscape and a vegetable or fruit garden, you may want to look at both of these areas from a new perspective.
I love companion planting. It puts a whole new spin on planning the garden. It is the equivalent of a seating chart in a classroom. You put the rowdy bunch up front(like mints and the like) to keep an eye on them, and put the kids that get along well next to each other.
Companion planting is like that. Just like in nature, plants that grow well together thrive. There are two avenues of companion planting. The first one is just planting things that compliment each other's growing habits, and watering needs. You certainly learn fast, that a wildly growing cilantro bed will choke out a slower growing thyme, and plan accordingly.
The second avenue is to plant companions that will attract and harbor beneficial insects for the other plant. This is why you see my recommendation to plant dills etc. nearby but not next to a tomato. You want the insects to live in the dill, but eat the damaging insects of the tomato. Dill(and other herbs in the carrot family) does not grow well next to the tomato, so having some distance is important. It is well worth the effort for the safe haven that dills, fennels and others, offer the parasitic wasps that will keep your tomato horn worms at bay.
I like using herbs to compliment my vegetable garden. They not only look nice, they offer a place for my beneficial insects to live and I often plant them with the idea that they are FOR the insects they attract. I plant more in another area for my own needs. There are many herbs that benefit tomatoes. With tomatoes being so popular for most growers, it is easy to put some herbs that will be seasoning the tomatoes, right alongside the vine.
Companion Herbs For Tomatoes originally appeared on About.com Herb Gardens on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 13:52:14.
Azaleas should be pruned for uneven growth after they finish blooming in March. Beware the ides of March is as good a piece of advice for the gardener as it was for Julius Caesar because of the attack of late-season frosts, which are particularly dangerous when plants are beginning to leaf out with new growth.
A series of lush, fluid watercolor and graphite amalgamations of flora and fauna are at the heart of My Garden Pets, a major new installation by New York-based artist Emilie Clark at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden .
The snow is pretty much goen around my house and the first thing that seems to be greening up is the creeping ivy. Or maybe it's the rosettes of garlic mustard. I haven't gotten close enough to check, but I'm finding it very frustrating that my two nemeses are back already. Clearly those bags of pullings I left to fry in the sun last summer didn't do the trick. Can the dandelions be far behind?
Is your idea of weed control getting down on your hands and knees and pulling? There are easier ways and they don't have to be nasty, harsh chemicals. About's Landscaping Guide, David Beaulieu, gives us 5 kinder gentler ways to get rid of unwanted plants in Weed Control Without Chemicals.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti
Weed Control Without Chemicals originally appeared on About.com Gardening on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 01:01:29.
When I was looking at our Forestry Guide's list of Arbor Day dates because I wanted to start celebrating the days here on my site, I realized that it's Arbor Week in California.
California is one of just two states that have chosen two state trees (the other is Nevada). They had originally said that the redwood is the state tree. The problem with that is there is more than one species of redwood, so no one knew which one was the "true" one. They decided to solve the dilemma by declaring that both the giant sequoia and the coast redwood would be the official state trees of California.
- Photos of California's two state trees
If you're in California, how are you celebrating Arbor Week?
P.S. New Mexico, you're up next - Friday March 12th this year!
Happy Arbor Week California originally appeared on About.com Trees and Shrubs on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 19:38:47.
The gloomy countryside of North Yorkshire, England permeated the books of the Bronte sisters.
Their lush, otherworldly forest is threatened by bulldozers, roads and other development. The local tribespeople are fighting back, but they're up against a powerful conglomerate of mining industrialists.
Sounds like the plot of Avatar, but the indigenous people who live at the foot of Niyamgiri Mountain in eastern India don't have blue skin, tails or a multi-million-dollar budget. All they have is a beautiful, ancient homeland whose forests, rivers and air may be destroyed by the Vedanta Resources' efforts to mine bauxite in the region.
I'd like to report that Vedanta is being unfairly vilified, but the fact that several investors (including the Church of England) have sold their stock in the company due to concerns over unethical company practices tells me there's a big, bad developer here right out of Central Casting.
When life imitates art, the results can be unnerving.
You Thought Avatar Was Fiction? originally appeared on About.com Green Living on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 18:53:09.
Plant multiple pots of hyacinths in one big attractive container. Keep soil moist but not wet.
Those of us in the Northeast enjoyed a beautiful couple of days this past weekend. As this wild and snowy winter comes to a close, spring fever will come hard and fast.
I usually recommend some vigorous raking of the lawn around this time of year, even some dethatching once the temperatures come up a little more. In a conventionally maintained lawn there is the assumption of a spring application of pre-emergent weed control to prevent early spring crabgrass germination.
However, Paul Tukey's recent blog over at Safelawns.org reminds us that an organically maintained lawn is a slightly different creature. Raking the lawn in the spring stirs up crabgrass seeds, giving them the advantage at a time when the lawn is not active enough to compete.
Corn gluten meal can be used as an organic alternative to chemical pre-emergent crabgrass control, but it doesn't quite deliver the same results and the lawn would probably be better off without an early spring raking.
If you must get out there and rake your organically maintained lawn you should overseed as well. Stirring up those crabgrass seeds are all they need to warm up and begin to germinate.
Spring routines can differ between organic and conventionally maintained lawns originally appeared on About.com Lawn Care on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 18:57:17.
The spring equinox for 2010 falls on March 20. What is the significance of this day? Well, as Larry West says in an article on the spring equinox, "equinox" is Latin for "equal night" (as in daylight hours and nighttime hours being equal). Says Larry: "The idea is that on the first day of spring there are exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness, but it rarely works out that way. There is always a time each spring, and again each fall, when the hours of light and darkness are equal, but it usually occurs before the vernal equinox and after the autumnal equinox."
That's okay with me. All the numbers aside, the fact is, the chief significance of the spring equinox for the plant lover is that it marks the first day of spring! So the spring equinox in 2010 can't come fast enough for me. And as Larry notes, "In spring, the Earth's axis is tilted toward the sun, increasing the number of daylight hours and bringing warmer weather that causes plants to bring forth new growth."
Resource related to spring equinox 2010: Groundhog Day and the Spring Equinox
Spring Equinox 2010 originally appeared on About.com Landscaping on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 09:16:35.
Landacre wrote in with an interesting problem. He husband planted potatoes, but "...all he got was a green bush and the same potato attached at the bottom." I've had years when my potoatoes weren't very large, but I've always gotten a few from each plant. And since growing anything underground for the entire season is a leap of faith, it's got to be very disappointing to pull up nothing.
Poor potato production is usually caused by one of two things:
- The temperature stayed too warm. Potatoes like to cool off in the evenings. Keep piling on the soil, as the plant grows, or at least give it a good 4" of mulch.
- Too much nitrogen, too little phosphorous. We always talk about wanting our plants to develop a good root system, but this is one time when it really matters. Choose a fertilzier with a low 1st number (nitrogen) and a high 3rd number (phosphorous)
Potatoes also need a lot of water, especially while they're in flower. But since the tops of the plants grew well, water probably wasn't the problem. Have any of you experienced this and do you have any advice to share with Landacre?
Photo: © Marie Iannotti
Gardening Question of the Week: All Tops, No Potatoes. What Happened? originally appeared on About.com Gardening on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 01:37:37.
"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegetable Gardening'' by Daria Price Bowman and Carl A. Price Everybody's eager to jump on the veggie gardening bandwagon these days, but let's be honest, not everybody knows what they're doing.
Jack Nicholson reportedly asked his friends to urinate in his garden to help keep raccoons away.
It's a day of wedding bells for some gay couples in Washington.Tuesday is the first day same-sex couples can pick up marriage licenses and tie the knot in the city.
Spring begins two weeks from today, but you know you've already got the early onset of gardening fever if ... You watched this week's "The Bachelor'' and found yourself more interested in the gorgeous tropical plants in the St.
As we march toward spring, attention turns to outdoor gardening, even though the weather holds us back.
Homeowner Karmen Hopkins listens as Andrea Ingalsbe explains the airflow gauge, the chief instrument in a blower door test that measures draft.
So, I promised you my recipe for a seed starting mix that works well for making soil blocks. Well, I'll do better than that: here's a seed starting mix recipe that's perfect, whether you're starting in soil blocks, flats, or cell packs.
A few notes about my recipe: it is based very, very loosely on Eliot Coleman's seed starting mix, which he outlined in "The New Organic Grower." His is much more involved, but I simplified it a bit and still managed to keep the most important ingredients. I mention in the article that you can use peat or coir, but coir is much more environmentally friendly (peat bogs are completely destroyed when peat is harvested, destroying habitats for many forms of wildlife) and can be found at many nurseries. If you can't find it at your nursery, check your nearest pet supply store -- you can often find coir there in the reptile supply section, because it is a popular bedding choice for pet lizards and the like. You can also find coir fairly inexpensively online.
If you use this mix (or any mix, for that matter) for making soil blocks, the key is to get it sopping wet. You'll want to feel like you're five years old again making mudpies. When you pick up a handful and squeeze, a little bit of water should trickle out. If you're using it in flats or pots, just get it evenly moist, then go ahead and plant your seeds.
I love this mix because I don't have to mess around with fertilizing my seedlings -- all of the nutrition they could possibly want is already in the mix in the form of vermicompost and greensand. If the plants seem to need a little pick me up, I do an occasional foliar feed with vermicompost tea. But that, my friends, is another post!
Make Your Own Mix for Seed Starting originally appeared on About.com Organic Gardening on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 11:57:14.
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