Wheaton Garden Club

Assuming we will all have Herb Gardens, the tip of the month is how to make a classic herb salt-that is good on just about anything. Nothing compares to the flavors of fresh herbs picked footsteps from your door. Preserving herbs in salt is an old method that works beautifully for three reasons: it’s fast, it’s easy and it’s delicious.
The method is simple: chop herbs and salt together, either by hand or with a food processor, then spread the mixture on a sheet pan. The salt dries out the herbs preserving their vivid flavors for months. You can improvise endlessly on the basic formula by improvising your own mix of herb.
Basic Tuscan Garlic Herb Salt:
4-5 garlic cloves, peeled
Scant ½ cup kosher salt
About 2 cups loosely-packed pungent herbs such as sage, rosemary, thyme, savory, or small amounts of lavender.
Cut each garlic clove lengthwise through the center, remove sprout, (if any) in the center and discard. Continue reading “Cheryl’s Tip of the Month – April 2016”

“In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.”
– Mark Twain
• Apply organic matter, compost, and manure to soil.
• Seed cool-season vegetables outside, such as peas, lettuce, carrots, broccoli, Brussels sprout, Swiss chard, kale, onions, parsley and spinach.
• Cover tender plants if late frost is in the forecast.
• Plants started indoors should be hardened off outdoors in cold frames.
• Begin fertilizing houseplants again.
• Clean up your garden. Continue reading “Horticulture Report – April 2016”

Cheryl’s beautiful Blooming Branches.

“Come with me into the woods, where spring is advancing, as it does, no matter what, not being singular or particular, but one of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”—Mary Oliver

It’s not hard to see the signs of spring all around. I’ve seen my first Robin. After Wednesday’s rains, worms were on the driveway. There are buds on the trees and tulip, sedum and daffodil greens are poking through the dirt. Your Hellebores might even be in bloom. But March is a guessing game in the Midwest garden. It is warm one day and snowing the next. We wonder Continue reading “Horticulture Report – March 2016”

Now that we have our flower order forms, I thought this would be the perfect month to focus on the gardening concept of “polyculture”-a system that encourages gardeners to leave the realm of familiar and explore planting arrangements that support conservation and plant diversity. Visualize a bed full of vegetables all over the place, masses of color and different textures instead of traditional rows. Polyculture tries to imitate nature by growing a range of different crop varieties within one growing Continue reading “Horticulture Report – February 2016”

Growing Wheat Grass

• Wheat berries are sold at Health food stores or on line. The seeds and grass are both edible.
• Soak wheat berries over night.

Continue reading “Cheryl’s Horticulture Tip of the Month”

“Marvel Meal,” a mixture of peanut butter and other items, is fun to make and is a favorite of chickadees, titmice, wrens, and even bluebirds. It can be pressed into the holes of a log feeder or smeared directly onto the bark of trees. It also can be frozen into blocks and put in a suet feeder or sliced into chunks and placed on a feeder tray.
Recipe for Marvel Meal
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup vegetable shortening
• 4 cups cornmeal
• 1 cup flour
• 1 handful of sunflower seeds (optional)

February is National Bird Feeding Month
On February 23, 1994, Congressman John Porter from Illinois, read the following resolution into the Congressional Record proclaiming February as National Bird Feeding Month:
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize February, one of the most difficult months in the United States for wild birds, as National Bird-Feeding Month. During this month, individuals are encouraged to provide food, water, and shelter to help wild birds survive. Continue reading “Horticulture Report – January 2016”