More Fabulous Books

As a continuation of my previous posting Fabulous Books, please consider adding to your library Great Garden Companions by Sally Cunningham.   Sally writes for the Buffalo News, Buffalo Spree Magazine and contributes chapters to many other gardening books including an updated version of Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening.  

Sally Cunningham

Sally is a Certified Nursery and Landscape Professional, the Director for the National Garden Walk, a consultant at Lockwood's Greenhouse and has been teaching organic practices and landscaping for over 20 years.  Sally is happy to answer your gardening questions Sunday mornings on WIVB-TV.  I had the pleasure of working with Sally at Cornell Cooperative Extension in East Aurora.  



Another excellent book is "The Book of Little Hostas" by Kathy Guest Shadrack and Michael Shadrack.  The authors were recently featured in Buffalo Spree.  In June you can hear them speak at Lockwood's Greenhouse and Nursery in Hamburg or hop on the bus and tour their gardens on July 8th.

Little hostas are the rage.  So cute and tiny.  I've added Blue Mouse Ears and Fireworks to my shade garden.  What hostas do you have?  The Western New York Hosta Society is a great place to learn from the experts.  Membership is only $10 but the knowledge you will gain is priceless.

If you are new to hostas, the video below may be of interest to you.

Planting very early spring crops from seed

Square foot gardening - early spring crops

I found "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew an interesting way to design a vegetable garden.  Page 90 begins listing the outdoor planting schedule, i.e. plant spinach seeds five weeks before last spring frost.   In western New York our last spring frost is May 15th.  Five weeks before May 15th is April 10th.  Get your cold weather crops planted ASAP!

We set our garden up using two square feet in our raised bed.  Using a few nails and twine we established the pattern but soon we found that we could "eyeball" the pattern and therefore didn't identify the pattern for every two feet.  We used cedar shims to identify the plants, record the date planted and the harvest date.  I read somewhere about planting peas within sections of paper towel rolls.  The cold weather crops are planted and in a few weeks we will enjoy spinach, arugula, pak choi, lettuce and kale.