Improving Success Starting Seed

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February brings thoughts of spring as the time to sow seed for the 2018 gardening season approaches.

This month, I’ve spoken at the Wisconsin Garden Expo and at two regional Master Gardener groups on improving success with seed starting. The latest version of the handouts of this talk are available here.

This information is geared toward home gardeners and includes tips to improve germination and seedling quality regardless of experience level.

Enjoy!

Handouts on Improving Success With Seed Starting

New Online Resources & a few tweaks

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The Database section is now Online Resources with the addition of some good gardening resources, and relocating the career info there.

The inspiration for the change are these great resources for gardeners wanting to increase their knowledge of plants and gardening:

  • The American Horticulture Society (AHS) listing of Master Gardener programs by state. These programs are designed to provide intensive horticultural training and volunteer experience to gardeners. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about plants and get community volunteering experience.
  • The AHS listing of garden societies, clubs, and organizations includes both regional and national garden groups. Local gardeners are a wealth of gardening information, as well as shared plants.
  • National Gardening Association – a non-profit organization dedicated to education, health & wellness, environmental stewardship, community development, and home gardening. Well worth checking out.

I also added a link to Economic Botany magazine, the Society for Economic Botany’s quarterly publication. This archive dates back to 1947, with articles available in .pdf format. This can be very geeky stuff, but it’s absolutely fascinating information.

I also added a link to this site’s RSS feed and tweaked a few things here and there. I do also tweet and you can find me on LinkedIn.

Late Season Performance in the Raker Trial Gardens

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I managed to make it back to the Raker Trial Gardens for an end of season visit. I always find it worthwhile to visit trial gardens early in the season and later, to evaluate season-long performance. Here is a brief summary of the most notable perennials in the trials. Kudos to the Raker staff for yet another successful trial season. Continue reading →

Plant Databases

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I can really geek out doing plant research, and love libraries and databases. North Carolina State University has a sparkly and new database worthy of note:  Floriculture InfoSearch. It searches an interesting and wide range of sources: scientific literature, trade group and association magazines and websites, NC State University, and the American Floral Endowment Floriculture Archive (which includes literature back to the 1800s). I’ve found it such an excellent resource that I created a new page here, Databases. There you can find links to this and other plant-related databases worth investigating. Enjoy!