Guest Post: Gardening Tips that will save your Time and Energy

Plan for Good Garden Production

Whether you draw your garden plans with pencil and paper or use a software tool such as the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Vegetable Garden Planner, you’ll need to think ahead to incorporate the following yield-maximizing strategies.

1. Grow High-Value Crops. “Value” is subjective, though growing things that would be costly to buy makes good sense, provided the crops are well-suited to your climate. But value can also be about flavor, which may mean earmarking space for your favorite tomato varieties and fresh herbs first, and then considering how much money you could save by growing other crops at home.

2. Start Early, End Late. Use cloches, cold frames, tunnels and other season-stretching devices to move your spring salad season up by a month or more. In fall, use row covers to protect fall crops from frost and deer while extending the harvest season for a wide assortment of cold-tolerant greens and root crops.

3. Grow the “Shoulder Season” Fruits. You can usually pick and stash June-bearing strawberries and early raspberries in the freezer before your garden’s vegetables take over your kitchen. Raspberries that bear in the fall and late-ripening apples are also less likely to compete with summer-ripening vegetables for your food preservation time.

4. Emphasize What Grows Well for You. Crops that are easy to grow in one climate or soil type may be huge challenges in others, so aim to repeat your successes. For example, my carrots are seldom spectacular but my beets are robust, so I keep carrot plantings small and grow as many beets as my family can eat. When you find vegetables that excel in your garden, growing as much of them as your family can eat will take you a huge step closer to food self-sufficiency. And don’t overlook the wisdom of your gardening neighbors.

5. Grow Good Things to Drink. In addition to growing what you eat, try growing tasty beverages. I allow rampant apple mint to cover a hillside because it’s such a great tea plant, and rhubarb stalk tea makes a tart substitute for lemonade. Freeze or can the juices of berries and tree fruits, or make them into soda, hard cider or wine. These days, well-made apple, blueberry or strawberry wines start at $12 a bottle, so learning how to make your own can yield huge dividends.

6. Plant Perennials. Edible plants that come back year after year save planting time, and maintenance is usually limited to annual weeding, fertilizing and mulching. Asparagus and rhubarb thrive where winters are cold, sorrel is a terrific perennial salad green, Jerusalem artichokes and horseradish grow almost anywhere, and gardeners in climates with mild winters can grow bunching onions or even bamboo shoots as perennial garden crops.

7. Choose High-Yielding Crops and Varieties. Few things are more disappointing than nurturing a tomato plant for three months only to harvest three fruits from it. Don’t let this happen to you! Network with local gardeners to find varieties known to grow well in your area, or see our list of the best regional varieties, and give them a try. Keep your mind open to classic, traditionally bred hybrids as well as superior open-pollinated varieties. With sweet peppers, for example, many gardeners need the disease resistance and fast maturation of hybrid varieties to make a good crop. The opposite is true with beans, lettuce, peas, winter squash and many other vegetables that don’t require hybridization to make them more productive.

8. Include Essential Kitchen Herbs. When we conducted our online mega-survey of the best garden crops, many gardeners told us about the rewards of growing culinary herbs such as basil, dill, mint and parsley, which are easy to grow yet pricey to buy.

9. Don’t Grow Too Much of One Thing. Last year, some friends who hadn’t gardened in a while proudly told me they had spent the weekend planting 50 tomato and pepper plants. Wow! At my house, 14 tomato plants and 10 peppers give the two of us a year’s supply of canned, dried and frozen goodies — plus extra to give away. Growing more would be a waste of time, space and precious soil resources. Unless you sell at a farmers market stand, aim to grow only as much as you can use.

10. Try Something New Every Year. Part of the fun of gardening is discovering new things, and few of us have ever grown many edible crops worth trialing in our gardens. Keep in mind that you’ll need to try cool-season crops in both spring and fall before deciding whether they are garden-worthy. Some crops (or even varieties) that are duds if grown in spring may amaze you with their exuberance if grown in fall.

Use Space Efficiently

It’s a rare gardener who has as much fertile growing space as he or she would like, and most of us work limited-space gardens as intensively as we can. (Keep reading for tips on how to “Make the Most of Small or Shady Gardens.”) In gardens of any size, try the following tips to make prime use of every bed and row.

11. Plant in Blocks. According to Colorado State University Extension research, you can quadruple per-square-foot production of small kitchen vegetables such as lettuce, carrots and beets by planting them in blocks within wide beds rather than in rows. Block planting makes efficient use of space by keeping the spacing between plants tight and eliminating unnecessary pathways.

12. Try Vertical Gardening. When he moved from suburban Baltimore to a ground-floor condo in Albuquerque, N.M., lifelong organic gardener Ary Bruno went vertical to make the most of his limited space. By adding 3 to 4 inches of compost to his compact beds each spring, Bruno can grow trellised tomatoes, pole beans and cucumbers in his patio garden in summer, followed by greens in fall. Vertical growing can greatly increase your garden returns.

13. Interplant Compatible Crops. “When growing a summer crop such as tomatoes, I plant lettuce and spinach to grow in the shade of the taller plants,” says Bonnie White of Albany, Ore. “I also like growing a crop that takes a while, such as carrots, alongside a faster-growing crop such as radishes, which will be ready in only 30 days.” Find many more ideas for complementary crops in Companion Planting With Vegetables and Flowers.

14. Succession Sow for Steady Harvests. With lettuce, snap peas, sweet corn and other vegetables that mature like clockwork, make two sowings three weeks apart to lengthen your harvest season. Or, plant two varieties with different maturation times on the same day.

15. Use Seedlings to Run Tight Successions. Let’s say it’s June, and you want to replace bolting lettuce with summer squash. If you had thought ahead and started squash seeds in containers, you could pull out the lettuce, add some compost and plug in the squash, all in the same afternoon. Using seedlings tightens up the timing of succession planting (sometimes called “relay planting”), whether you’re replacing spring spinach with fall broccoli or following cucumbers with fall snow peas sprouted indoors.

16. Plant One New Edible Every Week. Eating squash every day can get old, but you won’t have that problem if your garden offers up small bites of unusual veggies, such as bok choy, bulb fennel, celeriac, escaroles, radicchio and white beets. I like to devote one wide row to “this-and-that” crops that I sow in small pinches. Organizing the garden this way keeps these crops from getting lost and gives me a place to try unfamiliar veggies.

Smarter Garden Harvesting

Growing a great crop is only half of the story. As each crop comes in, you’ll still need to pick, cook or store your fresh veggies with a constant eye toward preserving flavor, nutrition and other good eating qualities.

17. Pick Things at Their Peak. Aim to harvest in the morning, which is when plants are plumped up with nutrients and moisture. Preserve the flavor and nutrition of leafy greens, root crops and many other vegetables by refrigerating them, but don’t chill storage onions, sweet potatoes, shallots or tomatoes.

18. Replant Roots and Root Cuttings. “A friend told me how her mother-in-law used to plant the rooted bottoms of plants,” says Germaine Jenkins of North Charleston, S.C. “This works great with green onions and leeks, giving you brand new veggies in three weeks or less.” In climates with long, warm summers, many gardeners root cuttings taken from tomatoes in early summer and grow them as an early fall crop.

19. Grow Cut-and-Come-Again Crops. Chard is the best example of a vegetable that bounces back each time you harvest a handful of stalks and leaves, and many other vegetables will make a second or third comeback if given a chance. If cut high, broccoli, cabbage and even bulb fennel will grow small secondary heads, and bush beans that you keep picked (harvesting gently, using two hands) will often produce three flushes of blossoms and pods. Look for cut-and-come-again lettuce varieties, too.

20. Pick Early and Often. Many garden vegetables get harvested when they are technically quite immature — budding heads of broccoli flowers, barely plump snap peas or tender, little summer squash. Harvesting early and often helps keep vegetable plants in reproduction mode longer, which in turn increases yields. In a study from the University of Idaho Extension comparing summer squash harvested daily as baby squash with the same varieties picked every two to three days, researchers gathered more than twice as many baby squash from the more intensively harvested plants.

About the Author: Nick Wells has over 10 years of horticulture experience and has written over 30 gardening posts. Professionally he is a Network Engineer at https://www.fieldengineer.com/  but in his spare time he does gardening and loves to write about gardening and horticulture.

 

Gardening Yesterday

December is, of course, the holiday season, but for gardeners it’s also the reading season. In the garden, we play out fantasies, desires and longings, and the ensuing tussle with nature — sometimes gentle, sometimes violent — is for a beauty we can make. Like sex, quite a lot of gardening happens in the mind. This season, a few books that look back to the past may well stir your imagination.

Marta McDowell’s BEATRIX POTTER’S GARDENING LIFE: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales (Timber, $24.95) is a biography written through plants. Potter, as we know from her charming illustrated children’s books, invented enormously lovable characters, from cheeky mice to naughty bunnies, all of whom inhabit a pastoral paradise that seems as vibrant as the creatures ­themselves.

Throughout her life, Potter found not only solace but literary inspiration in Britain’s fields, pastures and country gardens. During bouts of loneliness in her youth, McDowell tells us, Potter found solace “with her paintbrush and her pen.” While her art was wonderfully mature even then, her life wasn’t really her own until middle age. Less than two months after the death of her fiancé and just past her 39th birthday, she bought her first house, Hill Top Farm, in the Lake District, and made her first garden. In time she found a new and lasting love. As the years passed, she became an estate farmer and an early land conservationist.

In creating her country life, Potter finally inhabited the world of her children’s books, a world largely free of status and class. For herself, she chose not the grand sort of garden she knew from childhood holidays but a modest cottage garden, a sentimental, neighborly sort of place where flowers sprout up among the vegetables and between the paving stones, and plants are often gifts from neighbors or “pinched” on walks. McDowell suggests that even mean Mr. McGregor, the nemesis of the veg-pilfering Peter Rabbit, isn’t the owner of the kitchen garden in Potter’s book. He’s just a laborer struggling to do his job, wearing humble clothes as he kneels down to plant cabbage seedlings — on a footing equal to Peter’s own.

Beatrix Potter’s studious dedication to the natural world is matched by Queen Marie-Antoinette’s fantasy attachment to the same realm. The Petit Trianon, the neoclassical chateau given to his teenage wife by Louis XVI, was the ultimate rich-girl fantasy: a pleasure house in which to escape the golden chains of court life. In FROM MARIE-ANTOINETTE’S GARDEN: An Eighteenth-Century Horticultural Album (Flammarion, $49.95), by Élisabeth de Feydeau, we are told that Louis was “a noted connoisseur of female flesh” who while “preferring the delights of hunting and fine food . . . was a man besotted with his young wife, nonetheless.” Either because he was besotted or because he wanted her out of the palace, he set her up in this house to spend her days in a milk maid’s fantasy among her flowers.

De Feydeau’s book is organized like a herbarium, a collection of botanical paintings of the specimens found in the queen’s gardens, even though Marie-Antoinette never commissioned such a project. The result is a hodgepodge of illustrations along with a grab bag of accompanying information, some of it useful, much of it not. De Feydeau is a well-known expert in the field of perfume who has previously written a book on the Versailles court perfumer. It’s no surprise, then, that the most interesting tidbits are olfactory rather than horticultural: his noting, for example, that the crushed dust from iris rhizomes was used to color and scent the hair of the court’s ladies. We also learn that Marie-Antoinette had bearded irises planted on the thatched roofs of the Hamlet, her faux French village built on the grounds of the chateau, an early and very attractive form of green roofing.

The sleeper hit of the season is THE STORY OF KEW GARDENS IN PHOTOGRAPHS (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew/Arcturus/University of Chicago, $25), by Lynn Parker and Kiri Ross-Jones. The development of photography and that of the Royal Botanic Gardens happened at roughly the same time, making it possible to use this new technology to document the process by which Kew passed from royal hands to public ones, beginning in the 1840s, eventually becoming one of the most important scientific institutes and pleasure grounds in the world. Instead of presenting Kew merely as an obligatory stop on the English tourist itinerary, these photographs reveal the importance of the plants within the gardens and the global importance of Kew itself — through the prism of colonialism, trade, industry, medicine, warfare and even the values of Victorian England.

Kew is a wonderful collection of, well, collections: an idiosyncratic array of buildings and follies, of characters both human and animal, of books and art and photography — and, of course, plants. It even houses a collection of opium balls, boxes to store opium and pipes with which to smoke opium, but perhaps no opium itself.

Among the architectural treasures at Kew are the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world as well as Sir William Chambers’s chinoiserie pagoda and a rustic country-house folly that once housed exotic animals like kangaroos. In a pseudocolonial Indian red brick house are more than 800 paintings by the intrepid Victorian plant hunter Marianne North.

One fascinating chapter shows how Britain’s colonizing efforts opened routes for the dissemination, importation, study and cultivation of plants to and from locations as distant as Australia, Africa and India. One Kew emissary collected cinchona plants and seed in Ecuador, which were then sent to India, where they were planted and used to make quinine to treat malaria. The botanists and plant hunters of Kew were involved in the production of hemp in Africa, rubber in Singapore, coffee in Jamaica and tea in South Africa. (A remarkable illustration presents Chinese laborers carrying 300 pounds of tea bricks on their backs en route to Tibet.)

And there is a freak show of fabulous plants, like the 26-foot-high agave that had to be cut lest it damage the ceiling, and the giant coco de mer seed, which can push the scale upward of 66 pounds, collected in 1852 but not successfully germinated until the 1990s. And the gargantuan water lily species, named for the large queen herself, Victoria amazonica. Parker and Ross-Jones give us a wonderful photograph of a young girl floating apprehensively on an eight-foot lily pad.

Established at a time when leisure and nature were thought to be good influences on the working classes, the garden was seen as a useful venue for furthering the social good. Yet its director tried to keep out “pleasure or recreational seekers . . . whose motives are rude rompings and games” by not permitting public facilities on the premises. Fortunately, he lost this battle. England (and the world) is the richer for it.

Deck the halls with the Gulf Coast’s December greens (Bill Finch)

MOBILE, Alabama — Dashing through our snowless yards, we should be singing about the joy of lettuce, the glory of camellias, the 10 days of citrus.

It’s hard, I know. Our Old World heritage prepares us for a bleak and dreadful holiday.

Find what evergreens you can to mask winter’s bare branch blackness. Horde red holly berries and hang mistletoe to ward off the grey cold of December. Oh dark season of the year, when life and light hang in the balance. Here, have some lettuce. It will ease your manufactured pain. I’ve got several varieties growing right here in the garden, from Tom Thumb to Green Towers. That Flashy Trout Back lettuce is stunning and the Curly Simpson is really fine. Imagine that burgundy red Cherokee lettuce sitting in a salad bowl. They’re producing so abundantly in the warm sun of this bleak season, I pick them every evening and think of new ways to enjoy them. I’ve taken to mixing them with that lovely seer-suckered giant red mustard everyone is using as an ornamental. And it just wouldn’t be a proper winter salad without the walnut bite of arugula, which I wasn’t smart enough to grow in December until Ann Bedsole told me how easy it was.

Among the knowing set, winter salad greens have become the social lubricant of the holidays. Friends who’ve had my salad greens invite me back just so I’ll bring them some.

I know there’s nothing in your somber Teutonic Christmas heritage that allows you to celebrate anything as fresh and joyous as lettuce for the holidays. Christmas dinner, after all, is about making the old gray goose presentable while snow is heavy on the ground. It’s about serving up the last of the old year’s leftovers, boiled and roasted into oblivion, buried en casserole in sauce or cheese. At Christmas, we eat as if the whole world were shrouded in Bavarian darkness.

But jarring as it may seem in the midst of our imported Christmas traditions, lettuce is the proper decoration for December. It is a holiday delicacy precisely because this is the peak of the lettuce season along the Gulf Coast.

Lettuce hibernates from April through August. It can’t stand the heat, and even if it could, you couldn’t stand the lettuce. During those times of year, we entertain ourselves with tropical salads of basil and roselle. Ask me then, and I’ll be in the mood to tell you what all you can do when the lettuce isn’t with us.

But when the faux fir decorations go up and I hear the weary jingle of those Salvation Army bells, I naturally cheer myself with thoughts of fresh lettuce.

Plant it in September or October, and it grows right through the winter here, laughing all the way through our chilly nights. If you’re used to that hydroponically row-cropped greenhoused mush they sell at the grocery store, you might be in for a little shock: Honest lettuce fresh from your garden has the lush taste of a Gulf Coast December, when the sun is warm and moist and the evening mist is tinged with salt, just chill enough for a sweater.

If lettuce seems too alive and bright to serve in the midst of your hand-me-down Christmas traditions, put a red bow on all that unseemly garden green. Make a fresh cranberry and Satsuma dressing. We’ve discovered you can use pretty much the whole Satsuma, squeeze the juice, dice the peel into little slivers to mix with it, then decorate the center with pecans and a few whole slices of satsuma.

If you want to make it an all-Gulf Coast tradition, you can skip the New England cranberries and substitute the tangy crimson buds of roselle hibiscus (we harvested those back in October, remember?). Maybe you can add a little satsuma vinegar from Baldwin County’s Casa Perdido vineyard or fresh Meyer’s lemon (from your own Meyer’s lemon tree) to punch it up.

And where would you get those satsumas? From your Gulf Coast Christmas tree, of course, the handsome evergreen that ties on its own holiday decorations this time of year. That’s a Gulf Coast holiday tradition we can save until next week.

Research: Gardening fights depression naturally

(NaturalNews) It makes sense that cultivating a garden of any type can help one’s state of mind, even preventing or resolving issues of depression. Focusing on nourishing plant life takes one’s attention to nature and away from negative “stinkin’ thinkin'” that fosters depression.

The energy field of natural settings also helps calm the mind. Ayurveda practitioners recommend walks in nature, not malls, to balance and harmonize one’s energies. Then there’s the sunshine received while gardening to promote more vitamin D3, which also reduces depression risks (http://www.naturalnews.com).

Finally, there are the fruits of gardening food, the food itself. Most food gardening is done without synthetic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides. So it’s organic despite not having the label!

It’s also very fresh and full of life. Agri-business products tend to lose nutrients while sitting around in warehouses and stores or in transit with long distance shipping.

Increasing food prices, increasing GMO infiltration, and increasing centralization of food sources that make the food supply more vulnerable to drought and other natural or man-made calamities can lead to losing confidence of how to eat in the near future.

A recently released movie, “Side Effects”, floats a definition of depression as losing confidence for the future. So if you’re concerned about the future of healthy food, food gardening may be a viable, healthy solution toward living without depression.

Some recent inspirational examples of small scale food gardening
The UK is renowned for individual or private small scale gardening, which historically has tended to be botanical. There have been several British newspapers and magazines quoting studies that prove gardening promotes an emotional and mental disposition that discourages depression. [1] [2]

But there has also been a rising interest in gardening foods over the past few years in the UK. Thus far the government has not interfered, at least not much.

One town in England has urban food garden plots in several public areas, even on the police station premises. All started by a small group of private citizens (http://www.naturalnews.com).

Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, Cubans were forced into a food supply crisis. They responded valiantly by growing food wherever they could on their own. And the Cuban government did better than look away, it helped promote and support that movement. [3] [4]

Even more amazing is the same situation of urban gardening has flourished in modern Russia. Today, a majority of Russia’s food supply is from small scale farming and family gardens that are encouraged and supported by the Russian government.

This Natural News article, “Russia’s small-scale agricultural model may hold the key to feeding the world” may raise both your eyebrows and astonish you (http://www.naturalnews.com).

That same thrust toward small scale private and collective volunteer urban gardening for food has cropped up in the USA as well. However, local, state, and federal governments have put up obstacles and enforced restraints against this grass roots movement instead of supporting it or at least looking the other way.

Despite this, a South Central Los Angeles food activist, Ron Finley, has boldly created an urban food guerrilla movement, taking over abandoned lots and public road medians and parkways with local volunteers using small-scale agricultural techniques to help feed the community.

In his TED talk, he lamented how “fast food drive-throughs are killing more South Central youths than drive-by shootings.” His guerrilla gardening approach has inspired young local volunteers who never had anything to do with gardening or even purchasing fresh organic whole foods before. [5]

Ron summarized it this way, “Growing your own food is like printing money.” Now that’s a solution not only for depression, but for encouraging healthy eating. “Food is the first medicine” is not just a clever expression. It’s the real deal. [6]

40 Gardening Tips to Maximize Your Harvest

The best way to keep top-quality, organically grown produce on your table year-round is to grow as much as you can, and preserve plenty to eat for when your garden isn’t producing. This is a worthy goal, as organic, homegrown produce is more nutritious, delicious and sustainable than the typical store-bought fare. To help your garden reach its potential, you can implement many creative growing and preserving strategies. As you attempt to grow more organic food, be realistic about the time you have to maintain your garden and manage its harvest, and don’t bite off more than you can chew.

To create a roundup of the best gardening tips on maximizing returns, I brainstormed ideas with the MOTHER EARTH NEWS editors. Then I talked with readers who left wise comments on our online gardening surveys (sign up for our surveys). The result is a checklist of 40 ways to make your garden more productive. Choose the ones that work for you, and enjoy maximizing your return on the time, work and money you invest in your homegrown food supply.
Plan for Good Garden Production

Whether you draw your garden plans with pencil and paper or use a software tool such as the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Vegetable Garden Planner, you’ll need to think ahead to incorporate the following yield-maximizing strategies.

1. Grow High-Value Crops. “Value” is subjective, though growing things that would be costly to buy makes good sense, provided the crops are well-suited to your climate. But value can also be about flavor, which may mean earmarking space for your favorite tomato varieties and fresh herbs first, and then considering how much money you could save by growing other crops at home.

2. Start Early, End Late. Use cloches, cold frames, tunnels and other season-stretching devices to move your spring salad season up by a month or more. In fall, use row covers to protect fall crops from frost and deer while extending the harvest season for a wide assortment of cold-tolerant greens and root

Garden Club members help make the season

The Garden Club also maintains three historic cemeteries in town, where members of some of Westport’s oldest families like the Bedfords, the Taylors and the Jennings are buried. Club members provide the funds for mowing, spring and fall cleanup and general care, only regretful that they don’t have the funds for gravestone restoration.

“Frankly,” said Andrews, “we are concerned that if we don’t maintain the cemetaries no one else will.”

The Westport Garden Club is 60 members strong, comprised of a group of people who come together because of an interest in gardening, horticulture and landscaping. The club is a member of the Federated Garden Club of Connecticut, and holds monthly meetings, often with expert speakers.

In addition to the hands-on work, the Garden Club also provides a scholarship for a Staples High School senior who is interested in environment and preservation, and funds a program for elementary school students about preserving the Long Island Sound. They also lend financial support to select organizations around town.

Said Andrews, “I originally went to meetings to learn more about gardening. I ended up becoming very close with new friends there. As you work, you always learn from others who have a wealth of sophistication and experience. You always take something away.

“We feel a lot of pride in our work. We are so glad we are able to do it.”

Garden Club to hold annual Poinsettia and Wreath Sale

Ice Punch, Jingle Bells and Monet are just a few of the poinsettia varieties available at this year’s annual Poinsettia, Wreath and Plant Sale hosted by Dos Valles Garden Club this Saturday, Dec. 7.

The sale, held from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Martin Gang Ranch, 28933 Cole Grade Road in Valley Center, will feature many items suitable for gift giving and home decoration. The sale is open to the community.

One highlight of the sale is the unusual varieties of poinsettias including the Red, White and Burgundy in addition to the aforementioned Ice Punch, Jingle Bells and Money varieties. All are high-quality and locally grown and come foil wrapped and sleeved, ready for gift-giving or use in the home.

Reservations for all plants and wreaths are available and can be done by visiting the group’s website at http://www.dosvallesgardenclub.org. The website also offers more detailed descriptions as well as photos of the different poinsettia varieties. Four-inch pots of many varieties will also be available at the sale.

The Dos Valles Garden Club is currently in its 58th year in Valley Center. The group offers gardening advice from many of its knowledgeable members.

The group meets at St. Stephen Catholic Church at 10 a.m., on the second Tuesday of each month where they discuss club business, horticultural tips and share and critique different types of floral designs. Many meetings feature a knowledgeable speaker on a popular gardening subject, a plant sale, and refreshments. Visitors are welcome to attend and join.

The same day as the monthly meetings, the group also offers hands-on workshops featuring instruction on gardening projects and a Greenhouse Plant Propagation session on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, also held at the Martin Gang Ranch. Other programs include designer’s workshops and floral design forums featuring expert floral designers, tours of member’s gardens and other field trips to local gardens and nurseries for advancing the study of horticulture.

Club members participate in supporting community needs and activities. From working at Adams Park, Blue Star Memory Garden and the Native Plant Garden, the group contributes to the beauty of Valley Center in many ways. Two Civic Beautification awards presented annually encourages homeowners and businesses alike to take pride in their places of residence and business.

Instruction on gardening techniques to local youth groups and participation in Farm education day helps to encourage future gardeners and provides forums to educate others of the importance of farming locally.

Roses and trees are planted annually by the group during a ceremony at Adams Park on Arbor Day. Each week a member brings a floral arrangement or potted plant to the Valley Center Library.

The group also helps to decorate the library for the holidays, participates in the Valley Center Western Days Parade and hosts several flower shows and plant sales throughout the year.

Through its fundraising, Dos Valles Garden Club has donated to college scholarships for students majoring in horticultural or agricultural-related fields and helped to support organizations as well as local elementary, middle school and high school agricultural departments.

Grow Herbs, Feel Better

At the end of most days, 81-year-old botanist Jim Duke pours himself a cocktail. Hardly a Scotch on the rocks, this healthy concoction he’s aptly dubbed Creme d’Mentia is a blend of herbs, steeped in diluted vodka, that are thought to boost relaxation, mood, memory, and overall brain health (see recipe on page 2 of this article). “It lifts my spirits and lowers my anxiety,” says Duke, who worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 30 years and is the author of The Green Pharmacy book series.

Wild herbs were used as healing remedies long before records were kept—Otzi, the 5,300-year-old Iceman found in the Alps in 1991, had medicinal mushrooms among his personal effects—and they’ve been an integral part of  Eastern medicine for centuries. Today modern medicine is beginning to realize that herbs may ease the symptoms of many ailments, from the common cold to arthritis, because they contain important health-promoting compounds such as antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.

Growing your own herbs is easy and fun, and the fresh leaves are more potent than dried ones. All you need are some pots, soil, and a sunny spot (see “How to Get Started,” below). We’ve collected five gentle but effective herbs that are ideal for amateur gardeners—they’re simple to grow and will thrive in just about any environment. Better yet, they have few side effects when consumed in small amounts, and you can take them with most pharmaceutical or over-the-counter drugs. If you’re on blood thinners or have a serious condition, consult your doctor first.
How To Get Started

Plant your herbs in a sunny spot. During the growing season, cut them back frequently to encourage growth. Keep them moist. If your local nursery doesn’t have these herbs, find them at horizonherbs.com or richters.com.
Peppermint

First cultivated near London in 1750, peppermint has been shown to be an effective remedy for indigestion. “It calms the muscles of the digestive tract to alleviate intestinal gas and cramping,” says Tieraona Low Dog, M.D., director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine in Tucson. A cup of warm peppermint tea may also thin mucus, loosen phlegm, and soothe sore throats. Apply it topically to take the itch out of bug bites or to ease muscle cramps, arthritis, and headaches.

Growing tip:  “Snipping can begin two to three weeks after a plant is established,” says Tess Delia, a garden and flower designer in Piermont, New York. “Be sure not to strip the stem bare or you’ll compromise the plant.”

Arab doctors in the 9th and 10th centuries called lemon balm the gladdening herb and prescribed it to dispel anxiety and heart palpitations. More recently, a panel of physicians, pharmacologists, and scientists appointed by the German Ministry of Health endorsed the herb for relieving tension, anxiety, and restlessness. There’s also evidence of cognitive benefits. In a small study published in Neuropsychopharmacology, 20 healthy young adults reported increased memory and improved mood after ingesting lemon balm. Another study found similar results among Alzheimer’s patients.

Growing tip:  Like peppermint, lemon balm is fast growing. If you plant it in your garden rather than in a pot, be sure to give it a lot of space.

The use of rosemary as a memory enhancer dates back at least to early Western civilization. Greek students wore garlands of rosemary around their heads, and students in Rome massaged their temples and foreheads with the herb prior to exams. According to Jim Duke, the herb can also reduce joint pain. To make a topical ointment, soak rosemary needles in almond oil for two weeks, filter, then rub the oil onto sore joints as needed.

Growing tip:  Rosemary is best grown from a plant and performs well in a container.

Health Benefits: Increases memory; reduces joint pain
Valerian

Used throughout history as a sedative and sleep aid, valerian gets its name from the Latin valere, which means “to be in good health.” “Just the smell alone of the sweetly scented plant is enough to put some people out,” says fourth-generation herbalist Christopher Hobbs, author of Herbal Remedies for Dummies. Research conducted on 16 insomniacs at Humboldt University of Berlin, in Germany, found valerian extract helped them nod off faster and improved the quality of their sleep.

Growing tip:  When valerian is used for medicinal purposes, cut the flowers as soon as they appear (otherwise, they take energy from the leaves). Opt for the Valeriana officinalis variety, which can be used medicinally.

Health Benefits: Acts as sleep aid; has sedative effects
Sage

Research conducted at the Allergy Clinic in Landquart, Switzerland, last year found that sage combined with echinacea was as effective as the painkiller lidocaine in relieving sore throat pain. Plus, studies show that the herb’s bacteria-fighting heft makes it a potent breath freshener. To make sage mouthwash, steep 1 tablespoon sage leaves in 1 cup of hot water for 5 minutes. Strain and gargle.

Growing tip:  Sage is best started from a plant, because it can take up to a year to establish itself. The best medicinal variety is Salvia officinalis.

Health Benefits: Eases sore throats; freshens breath
To Make a Tea With These Herbs

Pour one cup boiling water over six leaves (for valerian, use 2 T. chopped root). Steep for five minutes, strain and sip.

Holly wears the crown – Gardening tips for Christmas from Alan Titchmarsh

What a year it is for holly! Lots of berries everywhere, thank goodness – all the better for making garlands and cutting those sprigs that folk still seem fond of stuffing behind pictures.

Generally speaking, September, October, April and May are the best months for planting evergreens, but holly is such a tough old brute – and a British native tree at that – it does not seem to mind being planted even at this time of year, provided the ground is neither frozen solid nor a dense quagmire.

So if you fancy having your own supplies of berries in the years to come, why not plant a holly bush of your own?

Now there is one snag here: I’m afraid I have to talk sex. Most holly bushes carry male or female flowers, seldom both.

In order to have a berrying holly bush, not only will you have to buy a female variety, but you will also have to make sure there is a male in the vicinity to allow for pollination and the production of berries.

Added to this, there is the confusion about names. If I could have only one holly bush it would be the variety ‘Golden King’. It is female. You think that’s confusing?  It is even more baffling when I tell you that ‘Golden Queen’ is male.

Not to worry – plant one of each if you can then you will have a holly bush with wonderfully golden variegated leaves and – in the case of  ‘Golden King’ – berries as well.

Do not worry that the bushes will eventually eat you out of house and home.

They are relatively slow growing and if you plant them with a view to cutting a few stems every Christmas you can keep them within bounds by means of this annual pruning.

They make great back-of-the-border plants and are a terrific backdrop to other plants in summer.

Look around and you will find all kinds of variation in both leaves and fruit – some of the berries are red, others orange and there are even yellow varieties.

Some leaves are variegated, others dark green, some have very few spines on the leaves, others, like hedgehog holly Ilex aquifolium “Ferox” have so many spines they erupt through the centre of the leaf as well as appearing on the edges.

There are even blue-leafed hollies – well, blue-ish leafed – to add to the variety.

None of these is too fussy about the growing conditions. They will do well in sun or shade, though leaf variegation will be less dramatic in deep gloom, and they can cope with most soils.

Plant a container-grown holly now and if it is already in berry you can risk taking a few sprigs this Christmas as well as looking  forward to masses more in the Christmases to come.

Garden Media Guild awards: plants and politics at the Gardening Oscars

The Garden Media Guild (GMG) awards are the gardening world’s annual opportunity to gussy up, schmooze and generally congratulate themselves for a job well done. It is jolly in an unthreatening kind of a way, and people who’ve been tend to return.

This year’s ceremony took place Thursday, at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane. Matthew Wilson presided over things with a tolerable mixture of self-effacing charm and smarm. Lamb was served, widely agreed to be “better than last year.” Even Raymond Blanc seemed to enjoy it.

To speed things along (there were 20 prizes to give out), only two attendees were allowed to speak for any length of time. Dr David Hessayon gave a mildly incoherent ramble of the gardening books industry, in which he may have announced his retirement. Alan Titchmarsh steadied things with a call to arms for young gardeners. He seemed to have recovered from being booted off next year’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage, as he invoked Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to get youngsters out of their hoodies and onto allotments. Or possibly still in their hoodies, but onto allotments. Stirring stuff, at any rate.

There was glory for the Telegraph table. Tim Richardson won Inspirational Book of the Year, while Mark Diacono won Book Photographer of the Year, and his occasional colleague Jason Ingram was Photographer of the Year. Val Bourne was shortlisted for three awards – although sadly won none of them. She remained her cheerful self.

Best Publication went to Gardeners’ World, because it usually does. Unofficial Too Cool For School badges for Monty Don and Alys Fowler, who won but were absent. The lifetime achievement went to Stefan Buczacki, who promised to keep ruffling feathers and speaking harsh truth to horicultural power.