Happy New Year ! It ’s hard to believe that 2014 has hail and gone so quickly , but despite its warp velocity , 2014 was certainly a successful year for the garden .
A Year In ReviewHere in westerly Pennsylvania , we managed to fudge the tardy blight that harry other parts of the land , and we saw only a few instances of impatiens downy mildew . It was a crazy class for fungal disease as a whole because we had coherent rain throughout the total growing time of year . Typically in age with this much rainfall , we see a rise in many dissimilar fungal pathogens , but these two issues thankfully seemed to detain off . However , that was n’t the case for basil downy mildew , powdery mildew and black spot , all of which raged through many gardens this time of year .
On the flip side , the veritable mien of rainfall meant that the 2014 gardening season require very picayune auxiliary irrigation . I did n’t even have to irrigate my containers but possibly a dozen or so times all summer long . The vegetable garden got watered only once in later August . Even the birdbaths seldom needed refilled .
All that rain , with a little assist from my mulching prowess , made for a striking year in the veggie patch and repeated gardens . I had thebest tomato harvestI’ve had in years , and the celestial pole bean continued acquire until November ! I ’m still deracinate the occasional carrot and beet , enjoying them roasted in the oven with a bit of sea Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and olive rock oil .
Next Year ’s GardenWhile a gardener never has ascendance of the conditions , he or she does have ascendency over what ’s planted in the garden and how it ’s cared for . Like many gardeners , I often expend the calendar month of January taking ancestry of the previous year ’s garden and planning for the do season . I relish the germ catalogs , with their coloured images and playful descriptions . Somehow I end up with more hotdog - eared pages than not . The 2015 seed catalogs hold so much hope for the hail class , filling my head with estimate and inspiration .
I ’d like to briefly precede you to two plant life I ’m excited to grow in the forthcoming time of year . One is a fall favorite and the other is run to be an exciting , Modern experiment .
DigiplexisOne works I grew for the first prison term in 2014 that will make a definite retort in 2015 is Digiplexis ( figure above ) . A crown of thorns between our aboriginal foxglove and a cousin from the Canary Islands , this flora really took my breath away . Tall spikes of snort crimson and orange flowers bloomed non - quit all summertime long . Although it ’s audacious south of USDA geographical zone 8 , here in my zone 6 garden it ’s treated as an annual . There are a couple of variety of Digiplexis on the market and all of them are somewhat arresting . I ca n’t look to maturate it again this year . I ’m going to try it in my front garden to test for bothdeerand drouth resistance . I ’ll let you know how it fit .
Ketchup n ’ Fries TomTatoAnother plant life I ’m look forward to trying , this one for the very first metre , is the Ketchup n ’ Fries TomTato from Territorial Seed Company . It ’s the first commercially available ingraft tomato - potato diversity that ’s in reality considered to be successful . They ’ve been on the food market before , but they proved more of a novelty than a productive harvest . To make the plant , the shoot system of a cherry tree tomato is grafted to the solution system of a tater . Because the two are closely related , a spousal relationship forms and the two grow as a single industrial plant . Each plant produces tomatoes above ground and potatoes below . Two crops from a individual plant is pretty exciting stuff . I ca n’t wait to give it a attempt !
Here ’s wish you a successful and happy 2015 — in the garden and in life !
