Garden Journal

By Paul Barbano | May 18, 2011

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Paul Barbano

Recent Posts by Paul Barbano

• Garden Journal

  Bush vegetables have an advantage in gardens

  By Paul Barbano - May 16
  When American soldiers occupied the Philippines in the early 1900s they adopted the native phrase “bundok,” meaning mountains, to mean a remote or ...
  
• Garden Journal

  A cloche can protect plants from wind, hail, frost

  By Paul Barbano - May 09
  For spring gardens, the clock is running. A clock without bells, of course, would not really be a clock, because clock comes from a word meaning ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Unflavored gelatin makes for an excellent fertilizer

  By Paul Barbano - May 02
  In the late 1890s a LeRoy, N.Y. carpenter and his wife added strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon flavoring to powdered gelatin and created ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Members of mint family are easy to grow and versatile

  By Paul Barbano - Apr 25
  Soon enough it will be summer, a time for family reunions, with lazy days sipping a mint julep and pondering. Indeed, why a mint julep, as if ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Plant early-season crops for a very cool garden

  By Paul Barbano - Apr 18
  Lester Young was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who also played clarinet, trumpet, violin and drums. Young became famous as part of Count ...
  
• Garden Journal

  There are several secrets to dyeing fabrics at home

  By Paul Barbano - Apr 11
  Winters are almost by definition drab and colorless, so the colors of spring seem more vibrant and alive. Humans being humans, we want things to ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Celebrate spring by planting trees and shrubs

  By Paul Barbano - Apr 04
  April is a time for big ideas. On April 10, 1892, people planted a million trees to celebrate the first Arbor Day. The word “arbor” means tree. ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Add charcoal to create rich, quality garden soil

  By Paul Barbano - Mar 28
  Gardeners must always look ahead. For years, scientists thought of the Amazon River basin as a pristine land untouched by humans with the exception...
  
• Garden Journal

  Get out of the house and start planting

  Mar 21
  “The early bird catcheth the worm” dates back to John Ray's 1670 work, “A Collection of English Proverbs.” Early is best. And success in life and ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Star fruit can be cultivated indoors for fun

  By Paul Barbano - Mar 14
  When a young student showed his dad a nursery school drawing of his classmate Lucy O’Donnell, the kid called the picture "Lucy - in the sky with ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Fresh-picked greens have a sweet, clean flavor

  By Paul Barbano - Mar 07
  At times, the garden seems like an adventure, and other times it seems like war. As usual, the French have a name for both, the pioneer. It was ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Planting trees close together bears plenty of fruit

  By Paul Barbano - Feb 29
  Three on a match (also known as third on a match) was a superstition among soldiers from the Crimean War to World War I. Among soldiers during the ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Plan now for an edible landscape this growing season

  By Paul Barbano - Feb 22
  When horses are made to wait, they often get impatient and chew on the bit in their mouths. This “champing at the bit” soon became “chomping at ...
  
• Garden Journal

  February is a time for planning the garden

  By Paul Barbano - Feb 15
  It is February and one may wonder why we have winter at all. In Greek mythology, Hades kidnapped Persephone to be his wife, but Zeus commanded ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Mason bees pollinate flowers, trees, vegetables

  By Paul Barbano - Feb 15
  February is a time of romance - a time of the birds and the bees. Sadly, Colony Collapse Disorder has recently killed many of America’s honeybees. ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Mason bees pollinate flowers, trees, vegetables

  By Paul Barbano - Feb 08
  February is a time of romance - a time of the birds and the bees. Sadly, Colony Collapse Disorder has recently killed many of America’s honeybees. ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Compass plants’ leaves point north and south

  By Paul Barbano - Feb 01
  It is hard to know where you are going if you don’t know where you are. A simple north or south can do it. Astronomer Bruce Clymer of California ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Double-blooming flowers are twice the fun

  By Paul Barbano - Jan 11
  If one is good, then something double must be twice as good. Take doubles. And not just double meanings, but all of them. A double in baseball is ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Jewels of Opar makes excellent border filler

  By Paul Barbano - Jan 04
  Most of the plants we grow for food or pleasure have traveled from other continents before reaching America. Deep in the jungles of Africa, a lost ...
  
• Garden Journal

  What to do with poinsettias after the holidays

  By Paul Barbano - Dec 28
  Christmas, like all holidays, is really made of dreams. Anything is possible during Christmas, and the garden is no exception. Take a wild weed ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Rubber tree plants are low-care in the home

  By Paul Barbano - Dec 21
  It’s hard to predict what will make a song great other than it has a catchy tune. One such song won an Oscar for Best Original Song in the 1959 ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Banana plants attractive even when not in bloom

  By Paul Barbano - Dec 14
  Our sense of smell is strongly linked to our memory. A whiff of a fir tree will remind us of Christmas, or the smell of popcorn can flood us with ...
  
• 

  Chenille Plants can be warm and comforting

  Dec 07
  Winter in the garden can often be dreary and cold, sending us huddling under a cozy bedspread of tufted chenille. Chenille bedspreads were first ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Amaryllis will re-bloom year after year

  By Paul Barbano - Nov 30
  A perfect gift, whether to another or oneself, is something that you yourself grow, nurture and see bloom, then renew and even multiply. For the ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Curry leaf doubles as houseplant, addition to healthy dishes

  By Paul Barbano - Nov 23
  Tis the season of flavors and favors. Perhaps we even grovel or flatter at a holiday party so that we “curry favor.” Surprise - the curry of ...
  
• Garden Journal

  There is a knack to applying mulch

  By Paul Barbano - Nov 16
  Looks like the garden is clear sailing until spring. So when you clean the garden debris from “stem to stern” (from the front to the back of a ...
  
• Garden Journal

  ZZ plants are perfect to bring indoors in fall

  By Paul Barbano - Nov 09
  With the onset of November, most gardening is pretty much at an end. But the end is not always clear, as in the letter “z” which now ends our ...
  
• Garden Journal

  The Amish have preserved many classic vegetables

  By Paul Barbano - Nov 02
  They have been around for over 300 years and live in more than 200 settlements in 22 states and the province of Ontario. The Amish, with their ...
  
• Garden Journal

  It's time to prepare the garden for winter

  By Paul Barbano - Oct 26
  As the last plants finally die before winter, we may be tempted to think the garden is over, yet it is time to “hunker down," originally a ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Create a rumbustious garden this fall season

  By Paul Barbano - Oct 19
  For some, gardens mimic life and all is neatly groomed and planted in careful drifts or rows. But there are gardens and gardeners that are, in a ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Defend against frostbite with winter storage for tender plants

  By Paul Barbano - Oct 12
  The Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show featured fast-paced language and often quirky references to current events. In fact, many of the lines were ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Create a low-maintenance moonlighting garden bed

  By Paul Barbano - Oct 05
  In the 1880s if you committed crimes at night you were working by the "light of the moon." Eventually, if you held a second job, especially at ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Garlic will be the first thing to sprout in the spring

  By Paul Barbano - Sep 28
  October is a month that lurches somewhere between summer and winter, between the harvest or death of many plants and the new life of bulbs planted ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Miniature fruit trees can bear results quickly

  By Paul Barbano - Sep 21
  Ambrose Bierce in the Devil’s Dictionary calls patience “A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.” Children and patience don’t often go ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Rendezvous with a true native plant

  By Paul Barbano - Sep 14
  America rightly prides herself on independent spirit, self-reliance and adventure. For the trappers or “mountain men” who roamed the wild untamed ...
  
• Garden Journal

  You just might find a 'sport' amongst your bulbs

  By Paul Barbano - Sep 07
  A fluke, an accident, a stroke of luck, good fortune or indeed even a miracle is not unheard of in the garden. Sometimes among a field of flowers, ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Strong herbs for strong bones

  By Paul Barbano - Aug 31
  There is an old tale of a band of thieves robbing the dead and the dying during a European plague. When caught, the thieves offered to reveal ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Be thankful our September isn't missing 12 days

  By Paul Barbano - Aug 24
  If summer seems rushed and it seems September is here too soon, pity the people of 1792, who went to bed Sept. 2 and woke up the next day, Sept. ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Vegetables need regular deep watering in August

  By Paul Barbano - Aug 18
  Neronius showers bring Claudius flowers? For a brief time, the month of May was renamed “Claudius” and the Emperor Nero changed April to the month ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Fall-blooming crocus bloom quickly

  By Paul Barbano - Aug 10
  In the heat of August it is hard to imagine the coolness of autumn. The dry, searing August sun broken only by thunderstorms and high humidity ...
  
• Garden Journal

  A summer cocktail will refresh your spirits

  By Paul Barbano - Aug 03
  Ah, summer, ah, the garden, and ah cocktails! While drinking has a long history, the cocktail, at least as a word referring to a mixed drink, only ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Heliotrope actually turn to face the sun

  By Paul Barbano - Jul 28
  That flowers are for romance goes without saying, and the Victorians were perhaps the most romantic of all. A small purple flower with the ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Nearly impossible to kill a plant by deadheading

  By Paul Barbano - Jul 21
  Summer jams bring up images of bright jars of berries and fruits shimmering in the sunlight. Or a summer jam can also be a musical session where ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Snails and slugs can be eradicated from the garden

  By Paul Barbano - Jul 14
  Monsters in nightmares and in the garden only come out at night. Then they terrorize and feed, often only leaving sickly traces of their presence. ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Milk not only helps prevent disease, it is a good disinfectant

  By Paul Barbano - Jul 07
  Milk has been used for food, for paint and even for luxury milk baths. Marco Polo tells of Mongolian Tatar troops carrying sun-dried skimmed milk. ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Ground layering can create larger plants faster

  By Paul Barbano - Jun 30
  The earliest glass jars were wax sealers because they used a layer of wax on top of the food to keep the air out. John Landis Mason, a Philadelphia...
  
• Garden Journal

  Red haws make Washington Hawthorn a winner

  By Paul Barbano - Jun 23
  If you hedge your yard you protect it from noise, intrusion and wild animals. A good hedge can keep your animals in and others out. Noted trader ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Interplanting allows gardener to eat like a king

  By Paul Barbano - Jun 16
  In the convoluted world of British monarchies, who becomes reigning king or queen goes to a simple issue; the sovereign must be a legitimate ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Fresh lemon balm leaves are a delicious choice

  By Paul Barbano - Jun 09
  Since ancient times, the gummy sap of balsam trees was used to treat wounds. The Bible’s “balm of Gilead” is one of them. Today our word “balm” ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Stinging nettles have many unexpected uses

  By Paul Barbano - Jun 02
  Mary, Queen of Scots did not invent golf, but she may have invented the caddy, or at least the English word caddy, said to come from Mary's use of ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Runner beans are a colorful addition to the garden

  By Paul Barbano - May 27
  She defeated the Spanish Armada, was famous for the arts, including the rise of Shakespeare and Marlowe, but it was her heavy make-up of white ...
  
• Garden Journal

  ‘What’s up, Doc?’ with varieties of baby carrots

  By Paul Barbano - May 19
  If Bugs Bunny has a Flatbush Avenue accent why is his catchphrase from Texas? Bugs’ famous line was a casual "Eh... What's up, doc?” usually said ...
  
• Garden Journal

  Time is always on your side with Colette pears

  By Paul Barbano - May 12
  Some things just get better with age. If, as the Rolling Stones sang, “Time is on My Side,” it seems that time truly was on the side of the song. ...