Garden Detective

From left, Cyclamen, Dracaena (Corn plant) 'Limelight', Spathiphyllum (Peace lily)

Before buying an indoor plant, it's important to determine whether it's right for your home, and the most important requirement to consider is the amount of light that will be available.

Light requirements generally are noted on the plant tag as Bright, Medium and Low.

Think about where your windows are. Do you have the right light levels available for the plant? To find out, start by noting which direction the main part of your house faces. A Southern exposure offers the brightest light. Eastern and Western exposures will provide medium light, while Northern exposures likely will produce lots of shadows and, therefore, low-light situations.

Where are your windows? For every foot away from a window you distance a plant, the available light drops drastically. It's also important to consider whether there are a lot of trees outside that cut down on available light indoors.

Bright light plants should be situated within 4 feet of a south-facing window. There shouldn't be any obstructions between the plant and its light source. Medium light plants require bright, indirect light and ideally should be situated from 4 to 10 feet from a window that faces south, east or west. Low light plants should be kept out of direct sunlight, ideally more than 10 feet from windows, or right in front of a north-facing window with curtains or with trees outside.

Here are some plant recommendations for every light situation (common names are in parentheses):

Another thing to consider when contemplating where to place a new plant is whether the area is drafty. If windows aren't well insulated, or if there's an air-conditioning unit installed nearby, plant foliage will suffer. Leaves might blacken or drop. And some plants, like gardenias, will drop their buds in drafty locations.

Get your hands on a good reference book. Check out "Tempting Tropicals: 175 Irresistible Indoor Plants," by Ellen Zachos (2005/Timber Press, $29.95).

What did one snowbirding Long Islander do after hurricanes near her Florida home shook up her palm trees? Check out the Cheap Thrills blog to learn about the unique way Bay Shore's Suzanne Rall-Smith recycled them.

Focus the Nation is the largest teaching event in U.S. history devoted to finding solutions for Global Warming. This Wednesday and Thursday, millions of students at more than 1,500 schools, colleges and universities nationwide will participate in panels and workshops to brainstorm the issue. Here on Long Island, C.W. Post in Brookville, Division Avenue High School in Levittown, Hofstra University in Hempstead and New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury are among the participants. If you know of others, please comment in this space.

Many thanks to Roxanne Zimmer, a member of the steering committee at the College of New Rochelle, who has sent this along:

Dear friends of all things green,

FOCUS THE NATION is the first, country-wide climate change teach-in scheduled for this week, January 30 and 31. Activities include voting for environmental solutions.

Click on the link below and select your preferences. A brief
description of each selection is found on the web page.

http://www.focusthenation.org/chooseyourfuture.php

To see what the rest of nation is doing this week, click on
http://www.focusthenation.org/index.php

If you're in range of New Rochelle, click on www.cnr.edu

NY Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin is our keynote speaker. Events at the College of New Rochelle are free and open to the public, except where noted on the program. Feel free to contact me with questions.

Roxanne Zimmer, Ph.D.
Focus the Nation Steering Committee
College of New Rochelle
rzimmer@cnr.edu
(914) 654-5577

It amazes me how much junk mail I get these days. Going to the mailbox no longer is the anticipation-filled happy trip it used to be. Now, as I walk the 10 steps to my postal receptacle, I'm usually filled with dread, as a big job sifting through the junk invariably follows.

And you can't just toss everything, either. Credit card offers need to be shredded, and the unmarked envelopes of sneaky marketers need to be opened, just in case there's something of value in there.

I resent the imposition on my valuable time. But even more so, I resent the process that makes me an unwilling party to filling a landfill. What's more, there are a few catalog companies that send me not one, but several copies of each issue. I'll never understand that one.

Well, whether you care about the environment, or you just want to cut down on the time required to sift through the day's offerings, there's a new website that can help. Catalogchoice.org is a free service that, in its short 3-month life, has already helped nearly 400,000 people to opt out of receiving more than 5 million unwanted catalogs. The site's owners say that's about 60 million catalogs in a year.

So today, catalogchoice.org gets the Garden Detective prize for saving the environment -- and my sanity.

Photo by Charles Eckert

... And I can think of no better way to celebrate (aside from the obvious indulgence) than by ordering up some plants for spring planting.

How about some Bluejay Blueberry bushes? Bluejay bushes, available at Burpee, grow 5-6 feet tall and promise a very high yield of very large berries perfect for pies and preserves. What's more, these babies are ornamental -- with foliage that turns dramatically crimson in autumn.

And no self-respecting baker would consider strawberry pie without the rhubarb! John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds is selling Victoria rhubarb, which it touts as one of the easiest rhubarbs to grow from seed.

Pair that rhubarb with Festival, Surecrop or Earliglow strawberries from the Cook's Garden catalog. All three old-fashioned varieties are included in the collection, and you get 75 plants. That's a lot of pie!

Dig in!

My mailbag contains quite a few letters from readers complaining about their neighbors. The way I see it, either we haven't learned how to compromise in a diplomatic fashion or we've become intollerant. Or maybe we're just surrounded by inconsiderate people.

Granted, when neighbors prance around their backyards in the buff in full view of the children, plaintiffs have a valid gripe, in my opinion. But sometimes the lines get blurred when, for instance, someone isn't on board with their neighbor's choice of plants or fences. I wasn't in love with my neighbor's new solid white vinyl fence, but in all fairness, it's his fence. It's a free country.

A former neighbor loved wildflowers. Her front yard was, in my opinion, a mess. And she was so proud of it. You see where I'm going with this?

But years ago, I had neighbors who installed an "in ground" pool. I use the quotation marks because it wasn't in ground in the traditional sense. Instead of excavating to a depth that would accommodate the pool, they pretty much laid the pool on the ground, put in a 6-foot-tall retaining wall and brought in truckloads of topsoil to raise their backyard elevation. Next, a 6-foot chain link fence was added atop the wall.

Now, I'm no expert on local building ordinances, but that didn't seem right. The wall dividing our properties went from being 2 or 2 1/2 feet high, to being 6 feet high. And with the fence, we had a 12-foot barrier between us at some points. It didn't help that my property was downhill.

So I did the only thing I could do: I installed 14 evergreens to soften the hardscape. Did I want to do that? Absolutely not. Did I resent the expense? You bet.

People are angry that their neighbor's bamboo, for instance, is invading their yards. I feel your pain, but there isn't much you can do if your neighbor has a penchant for the invasive, yet legal, plants. Ditto for English ivy and a host of other perceived nuisances.

In a perfect world, a friendly chat with the neighbor would result in a compromise. But in the future, you might want to check with rottenneighbor.com before buying a new house. Just in case.

I know Gardens Around the World usually runs on Fridays, but I couldn't let today go by without honoring the great Martin Luther King, Jr., and telling you about the first garden solely dedicated to him in the U.S.

Built in 1989, Raleigh, NC's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Gardens is open around the clock for self-guided tours. It features a sensory-inspired bronze statue of Dr. King, which is life-sized and situated so that it can be accessible to those who are wheelchair-bound, visually impaired or otherwise challenged. After sundown, the statue is illuminated.

There's a King Memorial Wall that's constructed of 2,500 bricks engraved with the names of benefactors who helped make the park possible.

And, of course, there are the gardens. Visitors can walk among more than 5000 trees, shrubs and plants on the grounds.

Of course, there are many streets in the country named in MLK's honor, and many monuments commemorating him -- most notably the King Center in his birthplace of Atlanta, Ga., but the Raleigh site was the first garden dedicated solely to his memory, and not part of another garden or park.

The city of Columbia, Mo., has a unique Martin Luther King Jr. memorial at Battle Garden. The "environmental sculpture resembling a small amphitheater" comprises eight triangular columns of varying heights, each depicting an excerpt from King's writings.

City of Columbia Office of Cultural Affairs photo

There's a lot of buzz this week about clover fields. I don't quite understand why, especially since it's January, unless everyone on Long Island dilligently planted it as a winter cover crop.

Anyway, since so many of you appear to be interested, I feel obligated to write about the subject. After all, I'm here to provide advice.

Back in the 1950s, white clover was widely used in lawns -- deliberately. It held up nicely during heat waves and droughts. Since then, however, its use has diminished and now it's widely considered a weed in the lawn.

According to the Cornell Cooperative Extension, fields of clover are making a comeback in the northeast, but mostly in rural areas. But because so many of you are talking about putting an end to cloverfields, I'm assuming it's problematic.

Personally, I love when the little white flowers make an appearance in my lawn each spring. They're pretty and they smell delicious when I walk past them. But they can be problematic, as they attract lots of bees to the area and make a lawn look a bit wild.

For those who aren't as inamoured with them as I, the ending is simple: In beds and borders, simply pull them out by hand and be sure to apply mulch to discourange their return. In lawns, overseeding works well by providing a thick, lush lawn that will choke out clover, as well as other weeds. Fertilizing with with one pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn will promote the growth of grass but not the clover. And watch the phosphorus. Too much will encourage clover to grow rampant.

If all else fails, cloverfields are easily ended with conventional broadleaf herbicides.

Word today is that President Bush is considering doling out $800 tax rebates to individuals and $1,600 to households as part of an economic stimulus plan.

It didn't take long for me to connect that with my own personal, selfish desires. I'd like to convert that green into a different type of green. I'm already calculating how far that rebate would go at the nursery. I need bushes and shrubs and grass, as my backyard is little more than mud thanks to a cesspool installation last summer.

If all goes according to plan, what are you going to do with your tax rebate?

Since writing about the nude gardening movement last week -- and wondering aloud about its potential hazards -- others who share my concern have been alerting me to all sorts of gardening accidents.

Some sound too sensational to be true, but I did some poking around and confirmed many, indeed, are based on fact. Be careful out there; it's dangerous.

In 2004, Incubus singer Brandon Boyd severed 90 % of his Achilles tendon while repotting a plant. He allegedly credited the injury with having helped him cut to the front of airport security lines.

Last July, Brooklyn blogger Clueless Gardener severed an entire fingertip while deadheading.

In 2003, heavy metal vocalist Ronnie James Dio lost his thumb while tinkering in his garden. Some object, reportedly a garden gnome (though I wasn't able to confirm this) was knocked from a ledge above him. He sustained the injury when he tried to protect his head with his hand. The thumb was successfully reattached.

Then there's the fictitious Spinal Tap, whose drummers dropped like flies. While one spontaneously combusted and another choked on someone else's vomit (?!?), there was one who actually died in a vague "bizarre gardening accident." No further explanation was provided.

In a tragic life-imitates-art scenario, Jeff Porcaro, drummer for the band Toto, died in 1992 at the age of 38 from an allergic reaction to a weed killer he was applying in his garden.

Completely unrelated to actual gardening events, but noteworthy nonetheless, Angry Salad, a band I never heard of but whose name amuses me, released an album in 1997 titled, "Bizarre Gardening Accident." I wonder whether it's a nod to the Spinal Tap legacy. The CD contains a cover of Nena's "99 Red Balloons."

Last February, I ripped my fingertip open when it became caught between the slats of my garage door as it was opening. I was going in there to get some potting soil, so I think that counts as a gardening accident. It didn't require stitches, but I did have to wear a splint for 2 weeks.

I just hope no one was ever injured in a blogging accident.

While we're on the topic, and in the wake of The Great Long Island Tomato Challenge of 2007, I would be remiss if I
didn’t use this opportunity to provide a little coaching for next summer’s competition.

Though not necessarily new introductions, tomatoes with greatest size potential include Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, which I found available at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (southernexposure.com; 540-894-9480) and the Dutchman, seen at Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company (rareseeds.com; 417-924-8917).

Naturally, any of the giant Belgium or red Beefsteaks could qualify as contenders, and Burpee’s exclusive Supersteak hybrid looks good, though I didn’t have much luck last year with their highly-touted Porterhouse Beefsteak.

I can't promise any of these will rival Vincenzo Domingo's beast of an "Ugly" tomato last year (left), but I think you're up to the challenge. I know I am.

If you have any other suggestions, post them, and let us know which variety provided you with the biggest tomatoes last year.

Given that January is National Mailorder Gardening Month, it comes as no big surprise that catalogs have begun trickling in. I’m expecting I’ll have a nice collection covering my dining room table by the end of the month. Last week, I posted a slide show about new flowers and trees and shrubs that have been introduced for 2008. This week, I’ve put my money where my mouth is — literally — and added photos and descriptions about new edibles to grow this summer. Click the photo below to get started.

Hey, it's a fantasy, but it's just as relevant now as it was in 1988. Gotta love the Talking Heads!

Instead of spraying chemicals on your plants next spring, how about being a little proactive and rocking the boat for those pests now, before they get out of control.

It's not too late to get out there and till the soil. It might be a bit hard, but today's wet weather and above-freezing temps are sure to have softened it just enough.

Tilling now will disrupt the life cycles of many insects that can damage your plants next season. Breaking up the soil will expose larvae and pupae to the cold, harsh elements and make them vulnerable to, well, death, reducing their population next year.

This also will disrupt weed seeds that have settled in the bed. And that's a double-whammy. Insects that overwinter in your garden beds survive on weeds that sprout up before your perennials or vegetable plants take their places.

And be sure to clean up debris and dead plants, if you haven't already; they provide shelter and food for those overwintering pests.

Next, cover the area with mulch or leaves to keep it from eroding and to keep remaining weed seeds from germinating in spring.

It seems we've been spared the huge snowfall that was predicted for our area overnight. Sure the snow fell, but with 42-degree temperatures, it didn't have much of a chance of accumulating on the ground.

That's great for me, because I hate digging my car out in the morning and my car has absolutely no traction in the snow. It's unfortunate for my kids, especially the 10 year old, who ritualistically and somewhat superstitiously put a spoon under her pillow last night and slept with her pajamas on inside out in the quest for a snow day off from school. But what does this mean for all your dormant perennials and bulbs?

Well, the freeze-thaw cycles aren't good for them either. Just a few days ago I ran some errands wearing only a denim jacket. A week before that, I was barely visible beneath my down coat, scarf and hat. In the meantime, the bulbs and perennials in our gardens are heaving in and out of the soil. As it loosens its grip on them, it sends them on a ride closer and closer to the surface.

As temperatures fluctuate from above freezing to below freezing and back again, the soil freezes and thaws -- contracts and expands -- causing some perennials and bulbs to lift out of the ground. This is called "heaving."

Shallow-rooted perennials, like Chrysanthemums, Coreopsis, Gaillardia and Scabiosa are more susceptible to heaving. For them, this can mean broken roots. And an exposed crown can kill the whole plant. For bulbs, well, you might as well set the table for the squirrels and ring the dinner bell.

So today, get out there and inspect your beds and borders. Check for lifted plant bases or for bulbs that poking up through the ground, and step on them. It's that simple. Just push them back where they belong with a stomp of the foot.

Then, if you haven't already, protect them for the rest of the season with a nice layer of mulch.

Whoa! I had no idea nude gardening was such a popular pastime. I must have been living under a rock all this time -- fully clothed, of course.

I can't link to some of the sites that have been brought to my attention because of the photos on those pages. Though not provacative in any way, for the most part, they do depict gardeners in what many would consider vulnerable states.

The Naked Gardening Association contends, "Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude." Family friendly?

The terracottain blog contends that Shakira "loves nude gardening." Remember, her hips don't lie. And the Metro.co.uk site reports on a New Jersey man's "bold commitment to inappropriate nakedness" when he allegedly was arrested in September after "a family spotted him having a shower in his front garden."

There's more. The casual gardener* offers "straight-forward techniques" for gardening nude to reveal "the naked truth of your life and doing." For Jon, who commented on my last posting on the subject, I can only hope those techniques include the avoidance of power tools.

And according to ShobizSpy, actress Eva Mendes is on board, too. The site says "she is so comfortable in her own skin, she even weeds her flowerbeds and trims her bushes while she’s completely naked." It quotes the actress as saying, "I love being naked. I do everything in the nude, even the gardening! We’re Cuban, and it’s a hot island. Why not go nude?”

The movement even has been reported by the mainstream media. Here's a video from CNN about a naked guy who upset his Oregon neighbors. Don't worry, it's a news report. The kiddies can watch.

So where does this leave the rest of us? Those of us who garden not only fully clothed, but who don special hats and gloves and shoes when we head out to become one with nature?

* UPDATE: Casual Gardener Shawna Coronado isn't advocating nude gardening at all. At least not in the way we're talking about here. She -- and her upcoming book -- promotes a kinder, gentler, fully dressed nude gardening technique. Find out more here.

I just stumbled upon an international holiday of sorts that began in 2005. I'm not quite sure where, or more to the point, why, but it seems World Naked Gardening Day is for real.

They even have a web site. A web site I can't link to if I want to have a nice, warm, job-security feeling over the weekend, what with Newsday being a family paper and all. But I can tell you about a little program called Google that might help you find it all on your own. Without any help from me. Whatsoever.

Saturday, May 3 will be the 4th annual World Naked Gardening Day, during which people from all over the world will be encouraged to "to tend their portion of the world's garden clothed as nature intended," according to the hitherto elusive website.

Though the photos on the homepage gave me pause, the quote highlighted on the right side of the screen rivaled them: "When you're out there with a gentle breeze on you, every last hair on your body feels it. You feel completely connected with the natural world in a way you just can't in clothes."

I don't even want to think about thorns, mosquitoes and pruning accidents.

Though we're experiencing a nice warm spell here on Long Island, a couple of weeks ago, 50 mph winds were whipping outside my window. Though I'm an optimist by nature, intellectually I know this mild weather can't last.

Regardless, my garden isn't about to perk up anytime soon. Save for some strawlike ornamental grasses, berries on a few shrubs and a trio of red twig dogwoods, my landscape looks pretty bleak.

But there's plenty to be excited about, as new plant introductions for 2008 are being unveiled across the country. Scores of roses, annuals, perennials, woody ornamentals and ground covers are new to the U.S. market this year. And that's enough to warm my outlook, even on the most blustery of days.

To view some of my favorite new plant introductions, click the photo below to start the slideshow:

Sesame Street's Kermit the Frog laments his lot in life in his song, "It's not easy being green." But practice makes perfect.

I admit it: I'm an imperfect environmentalist. I talk the talk and try to walk the walk, but every now and then I falter.

I compost (usually), (try to) use mostly renewable or at least biodegradable products and never, ever use pesticides in my garden. But it's the 'usuallys' and the 'try tos' that I want to talk about. Or rather the times when it doesn't work according to plan. Like the other day, when I secretly put a can in with the regular trash because the recyclables had just been taken out and I didn't want to have to put my coat and shoes on and walk to the curb with it. Or the times when my counter-top compost crock is full and so I just throw all those beautiful food scraps into the garbage because I'm too busy to take the crock outside and empty it into the composter. This usually happens when the weather is bad, which it is, generally, from November through April.

It all reminds me of the old Steve Martin joke: "Always carry a litter bag in your car. It doesn't take up much room, and if it gets too full you can always toss it out the window."

On the bright side, I've made a New Year's resolution to try harder. This was spurred by a little surprise I found in the stocking hanging from my fireplace mantle on Christmas morning. Though my husband insists it was a hint from Santa, I'm pretty sure he's behind the conspiracy. John, who works as a commercial real estate property manager, is on a renewed environmental frenzy. He has even completed courses for a "green buildings" certification. And he tossed a sideways glance at me just last night when I threw a tin foil ball in the trash.

The stocking surprise was a desk-sized calendar titled, fittingly, "The Lazy Environmentalist" and it contains "366 days of great tips for easy, stylish green living." I'm really excited about implementing the daily tips, offered one to a page, if for no other reason than I currently have only 365 days in a year. If the calendar lives up to its title, I might save a whole day by meticulously following its advice.

Today's tidbit (It's Islamic New Year, I've learned) is about Eco-Vacationing. It touts adventurecollection.com, a travel company that can customize high-end phenomenal experiences while practicing eco-conservatism and "responsible tourism."

OK. I can't take any time off right now, and even if I could, I certainly couldn't afford to "visit Europe's castles and reach out and touch the spires and turrets from...a hot-air balloon." Nor do I have the physical endurance to "scale the east face of Mount Everest." So I might have to pass on this tip and settle for the Disney World vacation I have planned to celebrate my daughter's 16th birthday this spring.

Yesterday's tip, however, hits closer to home: "For taking out the trash, use bags that are biodegradable so they won't still be here long after you're not. BioBags are made from next-generation plastic derived from corn -- as in corn on the cob." I really like that one. Check out biobagusa.com.

Are you a lazy environmentalist? Confess your sins below and pledge a fresh start.

I've always considered myself resourceful, but this container-gardening video suggests a use for baby diapers that had eluded even me. Check it out:

Note: The diagram above is more of a reflection of my poor Photoshopping skills than of my pen-and-paper sketch. Use your imagination.

I had a dream last night that my garden was in full bloom. My Knockout rose bushes were twice the size they are now, and there were absolutely no weeds to battle. Plus, my backyard, which right now is little more than mud due to a cesspool intallation last summer, had a beautiful curvy border along the back fence.

I suspect those images entered my subconscious due in part to my longing for an end of winter, but mostly from how I spent the last hour or so before going to bed last night. As I was flipping through my programmed favorites on my remote control (HGTV, Food Network, all the HBOs, Travel Channel, various news channels and VH1), I stumbled upon a movie I had never heard of titled "American Dreamz," starring Mandy Moore and Hugh Grant. Not the impetus to intellectual debate, to be sure, but entertaining nonetheless. A few minutes in, I spotted a beautiful garden border way in the background of an outdoor shot. Thanking technology for the DVR on my cable box, I hit rewind and then pause and then ran for a pad and pen.

Though I couldn't quite identify most of the plants (they were way in the background and probably would go unnoticed by most viewers) I did get some initial inspiration and sketched it out from there.

So now I have a plan that includes a ground-hugging blue spruce, a spirea, a smoke bush, a hot pink crape myrtle, some climbing passion flower (or clematis), a Montauk daisy and some Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and catmints. I've already got some low-lying junipers along the fence, a red maple on one side and a Leyland cypress in the corner so the "bones" are taken care of. It's simple, but it's just what that spot needs.

I can't wait to get to work. What are you dreaming about for Spring?

I found some great sales going on right now at online garden retailers. Start the New Year off right with more tools in your shed and more money in your pocket. Check these out:





Gardeners Supply Company is having a post-holiday gardeners sale. I like the Carnival stakes pictured at left for $9.99.

Save 50% off this selection at Breck's Bulbs Plus, take $25 off a purchase of $50

Save 35%-50% at Park Seed with these web-only specials. Plus, they're having a $1 seed sale.

Henry Fields Seed and Nursery is currently offering $20 off a purchase of $50 or more.

There's a small half-price sale going on at Bluestone Perennials. Most plants ship in Spring.

I found this quirky set of hose guides at Amazon for $9.99 (originally $30). Since I'm not the most careful waterer -- and I don't have an automatic sprinkler system -- I'm ordering a couple of sets to protect my perennials from getting trampled (again.)

I like the monogramable gardening gloves from Red Envelope pictured below. And at $22-$27, they'd make a nice, affordable gift, even for myself.

Coupon codes

Use XKET8303 at Dutch Gardens for 25% off a minimum $30 purchase

CNB83002 gets you 15% a purchase of $25 at Gardeners.com

Newyear2008 gets you $25 off a $50 purchase at Spring Hill Nurseries

736 gets you a free bag of mixed crocuses with any bulb order at Bluestone Perennials

At Wayside Gardens, get a free upgrade to express shipping with code EXPRESSUP

Please comment below to let me know if any of these codes no longer work, or you have a code of your own to share. Happy New Year, and happy shopping.