Newsletter10

Hello fellow gardeners!

I�m ready for SPRING, aren�t you?! I�ve been thinking of ways to bring some of the colors of spring indoors. Here�s a few ideas I came up with:

1. It�s not too late to force bulbs indoors. Sometimes just the act of planting something, anything, is helpful in getting us into the spring mind-set. Most bulbs will do well on a sunny south-facing windowsill, but hang a fluorescent light over it too for the darker days because though they do need the extra light, they absolutely need the coolness of the windowsill so they won�t shoot up too quickly and become all leggy foliage and not much in the way of flowers. Clip spent flowers regularly. Plant a new pot of bulbs every week for the next 6-8 weeks to get continuous blooms until you can see early bulbs coming up outside. When the flowers are spent, continue to water them but gradually taper it off so the bulb can have a chance to store enough energy for another blooming season. You can either keep them lightly watered until you can plant them outside if they finish blooming just a few weeks before Spring in your area, or you can let them finish their cycle and then pull them, dry them out and store them until fall for replanting then. Remember it will take a couple years for a forced bulb to regain it�s original splendor outdoors.

2. Southern gardeners can start some annual planting already, depending on how far south you are. I�ve seen the weather reports where even the deep south is getting frost and even some snow (Texas!!!). Those in the mid-Atlantic states have been dealing with northern-type weather. Imagine those 2 to 12 inches as merely a typical winter afternoon to us up here in North! I can remember still having snowbanks in late June. In my neck of the woods in Upstate New York we really didn�t get any snow until the week before Christmas. We had a spot of it in October, but that went away quickly and we�ve been lucky. Oh, that�s it, I just jixed us, didn�t I! More snow to come...

3. Go to your local greenhouse and buy some houseplants. A nice selection of varying shades of green will look lovely on the mantle or even in a sunny bathroom. If you have tropical plants, put them under a warm, very soft shower for about 1/2 an hour and them leave them in there to bask in the humidity for another couple hours. They�ll love it!

4. When your flowering shrubs or trees, such as pussy willows, forsythia, witch hazel and cherry trees, start to show plump buds, snip off a few branches and put them in a vase of water in a sunny spot. Don�t clip too early or the buds will just shrivel and fall off, and don�t clip too late or they won�t blossom until about the same time as they would have outdoors anyways. Cut them around noontime as the branches will be most filled with sap and the blooms will be nicer.

5. Start planting slow-growing seeds indoors. If you don�t have any seeds left over from last year or even before that, your local home center or greenhouse might just have some of last years seed packets left over and on sale really cheap. It depends on the brand name whether they will be there or not. I know Burpee, Agway, BH & G, and most major brands buy back what was not sold, but call around first and see if there are any left.

Some ideal seeds for planting now are:

verbena
ageratum
candytuft
columbine
lobelia
pansies
begonias
geraniums
salvia
snapdragons
stock
torenia
heliotrope
lantana
datura
salpiglossis
statice
schizanthus

For further information, you can follow this link to my very first newsletter all about planting seeds:

http://www.geocities.com/gardening_tips/Newsletter1.html.

As always, you are encouraged to e-mail me with questions, tips of your own, links, recipes, anything to do with gardening. I finally got the rest of my newsletters posted on my website. If you have your own website about gardening, I invite you to join my webring �The Gardener�s Exchange� and my newest webring �Best Home Gardens of the World�. You can find the rings on my main website at:

http://www.geocities.com/gardening_tips/Gardening_tips.html.

My new website is at:

http://www.geocities.com/worldgardens/WorldGardens.html.

I�ve just started it, but I made a page of some really cute animated .gif images and will be adding more pages of clipart and great garden photos I�ve been collecting from other websites around the world. If you have pictures of your home garden, PLEASE e-mail them to me ([email protected]) and I will post them on this new website with any information you would like to give about it.

I look forward to hearing from all of you. For those who have already sent me questions, recipes, etc., thanks! I will address your questions soon. Plus, there are so many great recipes I can�t decide which ones to send out first!

Finally, welcome to all new subscribers who have joined this little family of gardeners. We�re a pretty closeknit lot who have a lot of fun!

Happy Growing,

DBS