Hardy Duncecap succulent (needs to be indoors in winter)

Allium Pink Curly Onion will be put in the ground for the winter

A pretty combination of tiny succulents and sedum

My first collection of troughs

After letting my cement troughs cure for 3-4 weeks in plastic bags, I took them out, donned my garden gloves and planted them up this afternoon. I bought several succulents at a local garden center, some of which are winter hardy and others that are not. I plan to bring all my troughs indoors this winter so I can enjoy them. They are not large, so I can put them on the long kitchen windowsill that gets southern sun. Before putting the plants in the troughs I cut a piece of screen to cover the hole at the bottom, to prevent soil from draining out too rapidly. What I did NOT do is let the troughs sit for several days or weeks outdoors to allow the free lime in the cement to leach out. It is harmful to plants. So, I may do this after the fact and then repot this fall. For how to instructions on making your own troughs, see our youtube video by clicking here.

Nora pouring dry ingredients into wheelbarrow (instructions say wear a dust mask).

This weekend I invited a friend over to try a “recipe” for cement troughs with me. She was game. We started at 9 am and we were finished by 10:30, with our creations tucked snugly in plastic bags to set overnight.

After patting the cement mixture into the molds and poking drainage holes in the bottom, they were ready to be tucked into plastic bags overnight to set.

The next day I scraped off bumps and added texture with a serrated knife. These troughs will go back in their plastic bags for 4 weeks to "cure"

The next day I took the little troughs out of their molds and scratched marks into their surface to make them look more cement-y.  Now these troughs will go back in their plastic bags for 4 weeks to “cure.”  Our recipe also suggests you leave them outdoors over the winter to leach out the free lime, which is bad bad bad for plants. Like with gardening itself, there is some instant gratification, but mostly there is waiting. We gardeners don’t mind, do we?

I plan to do this again next weekend and I may try doing a few things differently. I will look for larger molds that are more like the traditional troughs. We are using the word trough loosely to refer to any cement planter that can hold little succulents and alpine plants that look so wonderful in them. The idea is to simulate a rock garden.

Here is the recipe I got at Oliver’s Nursery, an outstanding garden center and nursery in Fairfield, CT.

Planted Trough at Oliver's Nursery in Fairfield, CT

Hypertufa Trough Recipe

1-1/2 parts coarse perlite

3/4 parts sieved peat moss

1 part Portland cement, type 1, light

Handful fibermesh (available at masonry supply stores)

Wheelbarrow

Small shovel or hoe

Appropriate molds

Thin, large plastic bags

Womanswork gloves and dust masks

Wire brushes and other shaping tools

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly, making sure there are no pockets of individual ingredients. Add water slowly until mixture reaches the consistency of thick oatmeal. Water should be added a little at a time and mixed between additions. If the mix becomes too wet wait 15 minutes or so; the consistency may correct itself as the peat absorbs water. Or you may need to add more dry ingredients proportionately.

Troughs must be molded immediately after the hypertufa has been mixed; cement cannot wait! Line your mold with plastic, thin garbage bags work well. Try to minimize folds and creases. Use flexible molds.

Forming the trough. A handful at a time, begin patting the hypertufa inside your mold to form the bottom of the trough. Next build up the walls, carefully firming each new handful onto the last so that no weak spot develops. Try not to overwork the mixture. Too much kneading and patting changes the structure and wetness of the mix, causing walls to “slump.” (editor’s note: we patted ours to death and the walls did slump, but in the end I think it worked ok, so far.) Use finger to poke drainage holes in the bottom.  Place entire mold into a large plastic bag to set up overnight. Do not allow it to freeze at this point.

(More instructions will follow….)

Dorian overworking the cement.

Salvia 'May Night'

“Off with their heads” should be your mantra. The act of deadheading stimulates lower buds to develop and produce more flowers. Perennials such as Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’, purple toadflax (Linaria purpurea) and coreopsis bloom more or less continuously throughout the season.  Threadleaf coreopsis (C. verticillata ‘Moonbeam’ and others) are trickier to deadhead because they have lots of skinny stems that take a little more time to snip.  I recommend a lightweight compact scissor from Womanswork, which is small enough to be precise.

Womanswork Booth at the National Hardware Show

The Womanswork booth looked very inviting with its company branded directors chairs, its displays brimming with garden gloves, sun hats and Garden Wheels, and our famous video playing in the background (our video was produced and shot by an emmy-nominated director Joe Locarro).

We stayed at The Marriott Grand Chateau which was a nice, smallish non-casino hotel. Just our style. We got around the city on the Monorail, which gives you a birds eye view of the city as you glide from one casino hotel stop to the next.

Monorail in Las Vegas

Las Vegas grows on me a little each time I go, but I am always glad to leave the clanging sound of slot machines behind and come back home.

What sounds like more fun to a child than growing garbage on a windowsill?  For a “Garbage Garden” start with carrots and pineapples, potatoes, and other vegetable waste bound for the garbage pail. It’s educational and cheap too. There’s no need for pots either. You just recycle cottage cheese or yogurt containers (poke drainage holes in the bottom).

To start your garden cut ¾” or so off the top of the round end of a carrot. Press the cut end into a container of damp potting soil, and put it on a sunny windowsill. Keep the soil moist, and a green forest will soon start to sprout. Cut leafy pineapple tops (wear gardening gloves to protect from prickles) with only ¼” of the pineapple left on. Clean away any flesh and let it dry overnight. Firm the top into a few inches of damp potting soil. Keep it moist and in several weeks— voila!  Roots.  

Garbage Gardening with a Potato

White potatoes grow quickly. Look for old ones with nubbins of developing shoots (called eyes). Cut a potato in half, each with 1 or 2 eyes, let it dry overnight, then plant it cut side down. Keep moist and you’ll have an indoor garden in no time. 

A good way to introduce older children to vegetables is with the Vegetable Garden Wheel. It helps them identify different popular vegetables and gives them the information they need to plan out a complete garden. The information is presented in a fun to use spinning format with lots of color.

Vegetable Garden Wheel

Potato after just 3 weeks

Mom's Greenhouse

Our greenhouse is moving along slowly, thank you very much. In the meantime, I have noticed that greenhouses come in all shapes and sizes.  For instance, my mother has a “greenhouse” of the type I would put in quotation marks. She lives 35 miles north of me in Sharon, CT.  This morning we visited a couple of garden centers in her neighborhood and presented the Womanswork line of garden gloves, then we went to her house for lunch. This is her “greenhouse.” It was purchased by mail through one of my favorite gardening companies, Lee Valley, and it consists of a lightweight metal frame with 2 shelves,  covered in clear plastic with a zippered window for entry. She puts her seedlings in there during the day, while the sun is shining , but she brings in her trays at night since temperatures are still low in northwestern Connecticut. In fact tonight they are predicting a frost in her area.

Another type of “greenhouse” is the window extension. You can have this built onto an existing window. It offers sun from the top and 3 sides and is very useful for a few seedlings and potted houseplants.

The next level up in greenhouses is the free standing greenhouse kit such as the one shown below. These greenhouses are often sold as “do-it-yourselfers” and are situated in an area of the yard where they can get full sun.

Finally, there is the type that is part greenhouse and part sunroom. Although our greenhouse will not be ornate like the ones shown here, it is more along the lines of these greenhouses because it is being designed to fit the architecture of  the house. In winter it will get full sun but in summer a large oak tree will shade it so it won’t need as much ventilation and cooling as most free standing greenhouses do.

The Conservatory Greenhouse

Free Standing Greenhouse from a Kit

Window ExtensionGreenhouse and Sunroom

Greenhouse and Sunroom

Garden Mystery Give Away

We have two paperback copies of Rosemary Harris’ Pushing Up Daisies to give away, along with a pair of Womanswork nitrile weeding gloves. Pushing Up Daisies is Rosemary’s first novel, and it won her the “Anthony and Agatha” nomination for best first novel. This week she launches her third book, Dead Head, published by St. Martin’s Minotaur imprint. I read it this weekend and it is as much fun as the first two were. Her books fit into the category of cozy mysteries. I found this definition at suite101.com. “Cozies are the kind of stories one might read while curled up on the couch with a cup of tea.”  There’s no gore or gratuitous violence.

The main character in Rosemary Harris’ ”Dirty Business” series is Paula Holliday, a cheeky 40-something woman, newly single and launching a landscaping business in a small town in Connecticut after being downsized from her big city career in video production. It turns out she has a knack for getting to the bottom of things, and finds herself at the center of a whodunnit in every plotline. Her landscaping business figures in her stories, which makes it a bonus for gardeners to read.

Rosemary Harris' Third Garden Mystery

Perovskia atriplicifoia

Through bitter experience, I have found that it is better to wait a couple of weeks until at least 1″ of new young growth is showing.  You can always cut back later, but too early pruning may indeed toll the bell for butterfly bush (Buddleia, shown here), common sage (Salvia officinalis), Russian sage (Perovskia), bluebeard (Caryopteris), lavender, etc.  A friend of mine living in the Delaware Valley had a crescent-shaped bed with a row of tall butterfly bushes running down the spine.  One spring, they were pruned hard just as the sap was rising and the buds were beginning to break. The following week there was an extended cold snap and every last butterfly bush was killed! It was a disaster and very hard lesson for her.

When I decide to prune these shrubs, I always wear sturdy and comfortable garden gloves to protect my hands, and am sure to use sharp hand pruners and loppers (www.felcostore.com). To encourage vigorous new growth, prune hard towards the base where new shoots are emerging.  Cut above a bud on a slant so rain runs off the  top of the cut. The harder you cut, the more vigorous the plants will grow. Every few years take the whole plant down to about a foot from ground level to increase vigor and control size.

Salvia officinalis

Ruth's Greenhouse

Welcome to my 10′ x 9′ greenhouse.  It faces south with a sliding door from the living room. When spring comes I can walk through it onto the deck where I pot up lots of fun combinations in planters. Many of the plants I use have been overwintered and propagated in my greenhouse.  My nitrile garden gloves live there too where they are close to hand. At the moment several varieties of velvety-leaved aromatic Cuban oregano (Plectranthus), a current favorite of mine, are being propagated through cuttings. Coleus and Streptocarpella do well, the latter in full bloom along with mini-fuchsia (Fuchsia cana). I keep geraniums, especially scented ones, growing and blooming through the winter. Chives, parsley and mint are residents too, of course. I’ll be starting seeds any day now—sweet peas in cardboard egg cartons, sweet alyssum (8 weeks to bloom), and spinach.

Plants are Propagated with Cuttings

Propagating plants with cuttings is an easy task. Clip a 1 ½” to 3″ long piece of a young shoot from the mother plant, recut where leaves emerge, remove the lower leaves, and insert the cutting into damp rooting mix: perlite or vermiculite. Water gently. I enclose the whole thing in a plastic vegetable bag, blow it up, and secure tightly with a twistie. This balloon-like cocoon prevents the cuttings from drying out. Keep them away from direct sun or they will cook.

Tom stirring tomato sauce for ziti

Womanswork hosted another evening meal at The Lunch Box in Poughkeepsie last week. On a typical evening The Lunch Box serves 150 people who need a hot meal. They also serve lunch on week days but this has expanded to include dinners whenever they can get volunteers like us to do it. The numbers of people in need of services like this have been growing here in Dutchess County, NY, like everywhere else. 

Nora Madonick, a new friend in town, has volunteered to help us whenever we do these evenings. She recommends that we recruit others to help us in the future and that we split the responsibilities of cooking the meal.  I agree!  I wanted to see what it felt like to cook for such a big group and now I know!

There is a strong connection between gardening and food, and Womanswork has made a commitment as a company to help fight hunger, starting locally. We will keep building our network of friends who want to volunteer with us so we can continue to volunteer at The Lunch Box.  We are more than a garden glove company.

Time allowing, there is a dynamic group called The Poughkeepsie Food Project, that I want us to get involved with also.  PFP has a community garden and farmers market, and has programs aimed at teaching the value of “growing your own” to teens and others. They make large food contributions to people in need as well. Tom and I spent a recent Saturday brainstorming with them on ideas for the coming season.