Tabla de contenidos para January/ February 2024 en Horticulture

EDIBLES YEAR-ROUND WHETHER YOU’LL BE breaking ground on your first garden come spring or you’re thinking of expanding an existing plot, there are many productive ways to grow vegetables. My own first garden was a small in-ground space that, while weedy, showed me just how delicious homegrown tomatoes, beans and cucumbers tasted. Since then, I’ve grown vegetables in straw bales, hügelkultur beds, containers and raised beds with great results. No matter what method you use for growing vegetables, do it on a site that offers at least eight hours of direct sun each day. If you’re new to food gardening, start small. Spend a season or two flexing your green thumb and building your skills before you jump into a large plot. To help you start planning your 2024 garden,…

One of my favorite lessons in the Fundamentals of Gardening course I teach for the New York Botanical Garden is on plant propagation, or as I like to call it, Making More Plants—borrowed from the title of an excellent book by Ken Druse. Over the years, I have watched the wonderment in the eyes of hundreds of students as they realized that their gardens can be plant nurseries, that they can create their own plants from what they already own. Learning how to propagate is a seminal moment in the life of every new gardener as they establish the seasonal tasks that will shape the routines and rituals of their craft. There are two main types of plant propagation: sexual, from seeds; and asexual, from plant parts (also known as…

If you follow plant lovers online, you probably have an ever-growing and never-ending list of must-have plants. When I began my plant journey, this was me. Every time I would open my phone, I’d see a new plant that I never knew existed, and I would add it to the list. Just when I thought I was finished, bam! The ’gram would hit me with something new. Of course, I’d have to hit the nursery or plant shop (online or in person) to try and find it. Couldn’t find it? No problem, I’d still get a new plant. The more plant-filled spaces I saw, the more I tried to fill my space with plants. The temporary euphoria from buying new plants was hard to resist, so I’d just get that…

GARDENING LIFE HAVE YOU EVER SHARED your love of gardens and gardening with children, your own or someone else’s? It can be as simple as showing a three-year-old how to make a snapdragon flower open and close its “mouth” or as involved as working with a third-grade class to plant a three-sisters garden (corn, pumpkins and beans, organized as Native Americans traditionally did, with beans vining up cornstalks and pumpkins spreading below to shade the soil). Whatever the gardening wonders or techniques being shared, the impulse is often the same: the belief that children benefit from direct learning in the natural world. A garden offers a great place to do that. While that belief has inspired much informal sharing about plants, it also undergirds a long tradition in the field…

DEEP ROOTS I’VE NEVER BEEN ABLE to grow hardy cyclamen. I have several educated guesses, which I define as guesses forged in failure, as to why. First, they came as frail, newly dug plants from generous friends. Having no reserves to counter whatever neglect followed a typically frenzied planting session, they simply disappeared. Also, cyclamen goes dormant (invisible!) when everything else is green (visible!). Therefore, they fell prey to whatever frenzied planting or weeding sessions later took place. But the most correct guess is probably this: I wanted them too much, thought about them too much and tried too hard. All the best plants, I’m convinced, are just like most of my high-school girlfriends were. They get freaked out by too much attention. And then they die. (The plants, I…

EACH YEAR, plant brands release exciting new cultivars to market, the results of years of breeding, selecting, trialing and propagating. New plants are bred to enhance traits that make them stand out against comparable cultivars—and in your garden. On these pages we’ll take a look at new cultivars that offer fragrant flowers (along with other benefits!). Note: Although all these plants will be sold at retail in 2024, their availability may be limited because they are new. Keep an eye out for them reaching your area in the future if you can’t find them yet. We’ve also included some cultivars released in recent years that should now be easier to find. FLAVORETTE HONEY-APRICOT ROSE ROSA × ‘BOZNATAFRA’ New from Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs, Flavorette Honey-Apricot is unique among roses in…

YOU MAY HAVE HEARDthat where poison ivy grows, jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) is a remedy that will grow nearby. But do you know about Rhodiola rosea? In mountainous parts of the world with severe winters, where humans struggle with the fatigue of rarified air and susceptibility to colds and flu due to the icy weather, this member of the crassula family often grows nearby and offers them protection against the harsh climate. And it might do so for you as well, even at more clement altitudes. Rhodiola rosea—also known as golden root, Sedum rosea and roseroot, among other names—is related to succulents like the jade plant (Crassula), Sedum, Dudleya, Kalanchoe and Echeveria. It’s a tough little perennial growing only about a foot tall, with yellow to green flowers in May to…