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WHO IS READY TO GARDEN?
If you’re in the LHV (lower Hudson Valley) and environs, maybe you’re like me, enough of this cold dreary snowy winter! Actually, snow is a good ground insulator, keeping it wet and protecting heat loss. I notice around Valentine’s Day my houseplants start to perk up too. With that harbinger of warmer days, plus the seed catalogs arriving in the mail, and daylight longer, I’m itching to get my hands in the soil.
One of my favorite perennials, hellebore, is now blooming through the snow (common name lenten rose). These are amazing deer-and-disease resistant plants whose beautiful flowers start in late winter, and remain through early Summer. Enjoy in the garden and not a vase, they don’t last long once picked. Check out this link for info/pix: https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/lenten-rose-helleborus-xhybridus/
Right now is a good time to plan – not plant – a garden. For a favorite, terrific hard-to-find variety of tomatoes, I usually order in January before they sell out. Consider changes you want to make, items and seeds you need to order or buy at your local nursery, what worked last season, and when to start. If you don’t know where to begin, first advice is to figure out where you are with regard to climate. Different parts of the country and even varying climates within a county are in different planting zones.
Here is a link to the US Department of Agriculture to find your home garden or area’s plant hardiness:
http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov
Rockland, Orange, Westchester County Cornell Cooperative Extensions all are great area resources for our LHV region, with programs and classes on home gardening. Cooperative Extension was created in 1914 as a part of the US Department of Agriculture’s land grant university system. Every state has this amazing educational resource, and in NY it is Cornell University. I encourage you to seek advice from an educational resource online, and not any ‘google’ post from amateurs!
http://rocklandcce.org/gardening/green-gardener-certificate-program
http://westchester.cce.cornell.edu/horticulture-environment
http://cceorangecounty.org/gardening
Check back often for more ‘LHV GARDEN GURU’ pictures and posts!
