Cool weather signals start of fall gardening

A glorious thing takes place when summer heat gives way to the cooler temperatures of early fall. We get another opportunity to re-establish the vegetable garden with hopes of a grand harvest in the cool, fall climate.Fall vegetable gardening is in many ways better than its spring counterpart. Many vegetables seem to do best in the fall. Almost anything grown in spring will do well in the fall, with the possible exception of sweet corn and, according to some gardeners, tomatoes. Onions and garlic seminar Two of my favorite veggies to grow in the fall garden are onions and garlic. Onions and garlic grow very well in our Upper Gulf Coast environment. Best production is obtained when cool temperatures prevail over an extended period of time, permitting considerable foliage and root development before bulbing starts.

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GARDENING | Save seeds now for next year’s tomatoes

If you've been picking some particularly tasty tomatoes from your garden, get ready now for a repeat performance next summer by saving seeds. If you have more than one plant of your favorite variety, look for the healthiest plant bearing fruit most typical of that variety. Choose a fruit and slice it in half, not through the stem end but the other way. The seed-containing locules are now staring at you, so turn each fruit half upside down over a glass and squeeze enough to dribble out the seeds. Sprouting inhibitors around the seeds are why tomato seeds don't germinate within the juicy fruits. Get rid of these inhibitors by adding a little water to the tomato mush and letting it ferment. After two or three days, pour the seeds into a fine strainer, then rinse them and shake off the excess water.

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Gardening Bananas great for containers

I feel like I should begin this week's column by shouting out "uncle" to this torturous heat. Despite the oppressive temperatures, I still have gotten a lot of enjoyment from growing plants in containers on my deck this year. Two of the prettiest are bananas. My faithful readers know that I am a banana plant lover. I enjoy landscapes where bananas' coarse, textured foliage really makes for a tropical look. I have gotten into growing bananas in a container until this season. In 2005 when I was visiting the Proven Winners location in California, I was astounded at how incredibly beautiful bananas could be in large pots. Theirs was on a patio. If you think about it, it makes sense that bananas would work as well in a container as any other plant. There are a couple of prerequisites that will help.

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Gardening in September

September is a month of great changes in the garden. The days get noticeably shorter and plant growth slows to a crawl. However, we have plant problems, especially with insects and diseases, that must be dealt with. As the old saying goes, "Kill an aphid before the Equinox, and you kill a thousand next spring."

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Gardening book review: 'Living With Japanese Gardens'

This elegant little book points the way toward greater appreciation of the Japanese tradition in gardening, a tradition that values special places of serenity. The authors, who live in California, focus on the West Coast, where both have been designers of Japanese-style gardens for many years. The many fine photographs are inspirational as they demonstrate characteristics of fine Japanese gardens - reverence for nature; harmonious blending of plants, materials and, often, water; symbolism in idealized landscapes; and, above all, a quiet beauty and serenity. The overriding objective in creating Japanese gardens is wabi-sabi, a Japanese phrase suggesting sentiments of both desolation and solitude. Although the words do not translate adequately in English, wabi refers to the solitude of living in wilderness and sabi is the beauty that comes when the age and impermanence of an object are evidenced in its wear, patina and its imperfections.

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Unscrambling Gardening Terms

Horticultural terms can be confusing. What's a pinch how about a hard pinch, how about dead heading. You know chefs say use just a pinch and a horticultural pinch is just about the same. What we do is we go up into the tip of a plant and just roll out that very little portion up. Just a couple of leaves. What it does is cause the plant to stop branching and you'll get growth up here on the top of the plant. Now a hard pinch, on the other hand, lets go back a little farther. Just go ahead and pinch a little portion out. It doesn't get the branching, but it's going to be a little be further down in the plant. Now, how about dead heading. Now, that's kind of a fun term isn't it? What you do is you go on, and actually just pinch out the flower heads. You know, where they're done blooming.

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Gardening questions and answers for August

Question: I have some large, healthy hydrangeas that refuse to bloom other than perhaps one large bloom per year. Any ideas on what the trouble might be?Answer: Hydrangeas require full sun and adequate moisture for best bloom. If you are meeting these needs, the only other obvious cause of lack of bloom is improperly timed pruning. Prune the plants immediately after bloom, so that new growth will be able to develop flower buds in the fall. Pruning in the spring or early summer removes the fall-developed flower buds and will reduce or prevent blooms for that year.Question: When my air-conditioner unit started running overtime, I called an AC service company to check it out. The repairman told me that the cooling coils on my outside AC unit were clogged with cotton produced by cottonwood trees.

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