Meet Mike in Chantilly!
Mike will appear at the Capital Remodel and Garden Show on Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 25-26, at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Mike will speak at noon and 6 p.m. on Saturday and at noon and 2 p.m. on Sunday. Find out more on the show’s website.
Burpee unleashes a Gladiator
The star of the new catalog from the W. Atlee Burpee Company is a Gladiator — that’s the name of the new hybrid paste tomato they’ve bred (using centuries-old pollination techniques, not genetic engineering) to be ginormous. Shaped like a Roma, perfect for making sauce and meaty, non-messy sandwiches, the plentiful fruits of Gladiator weigh in at half a pound apiece.
Not big enough, you say? Among its dizzying diversity of love apples, Burpee also carries the beloved heirloom known as the Mortgage Lifter, which is legendary for both its award-winning taste and its massive size — three-pound fruits are not unusual.
Burpee offers live plants of both tomatoes and many of its other varieties — as well as seeds for all of them, of course…
Beat blight before it strikes
Gardens Alive has long been known as a premier supplier of nontoxic pest and weed controls, but at this time of year, their catalog is also filled with seeds (and live plants) — often of varieties designed to prevent problems before they start.
One premier stand out is the Iron Lady tomato, which has been shown to be naturally resistant to two of the most devastating tomato diseases: the nasty early blight and the even worse late blight (the latter is the same disease organism that triggered the deadly potato famine in Ireland in the 1800s). There’s no cure for blight once it takes hold, and no style or type of gardening can keep it away — the spores are either blown into your garden or not.
Proven blight-resistant varieties are rare — setting the stage for Iron Lady to be a bigger hero in your garden than Iron Man!*
(*Although I like the idea of having a repulsor ray on hand when I see Bambi harassing my hostas…)
Rare, unusual and downright quirky
As always, the new edition of the J.L. Hudson Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds is a treasure trove of rare varieties, old favorites and seeds for plants that most people didn’t even know produced seeds — all presented in a wonderfully quirky and downright libertarian style. (As they explain, they are “a public access seed bank” — not your typical commercial seed company.)
Among their always-eclectic listings are seeds to grow your own burn-soothing aloe, a vining asparagus originally found growing in Iran and Siberia and pink wild bean — a hardy perennial vine that’s covered with pink flowers that fade to a tannish orange in late summer.
The J.L. Hudson company is as quirky as their selections; you are specifically prohibited from using any of their seeds in genetic engineering experiments, and they have no phone. But you can order online (or request a copy of their wonderful print catalog).
Specializing in small spaces and old-school info
Renee Shepherd runs a ‘hands-on’ seed company. She proudly says that she personally writes the descriptions and — very detailed and informative — growing instructions on every packet of seed from her company, Renee’s Garden.
Renee has specialized in proving the seeds of fragrant flowers and gourmet vegetables for more than 30 years. This season, she’s highlighting her edibles for small spaces and containers — like Pizza My Heart, which, despite its name, is a miniature sweet pepper designed to be prolific in pots; Litt’l Bites, a cherry tomato so well-behaved that Renee calls it a window box plant; and Bee Heaven, a compact salvia whose nectar-rich flowers will bring in the pollinators your plants (and our survival as a species) depend on.
Instant gardens that are guaranteed
A garden wag once defined a perennial as “a plant having the ability to live for many years — had you not killed it.” Well, Bluestone Perennials has been helping gardeners try to defy that definition since 1972 by offering well-selected and carefully packed plants with a 100 percent guarantee. (No seeds in this “seed catalog” — just live plants.)
In addition to a dizzying array of individual offerings, Bluestone offers what they call “preplanned plant combinations.” Some are designed for those with special gardening “issues” — such as a package of 36 deer-resistant plants for those bothered by Bambi, and an instant shade garden of 24 plants for those lacking in sunshine.
They also offer packaged combinations of plants for growing a cutting garden, a butterfly garden, even a 15-plant package that provides nectar for pollinators.
