Gentle Reader is a new start up born in London – Their/Our ethos is to “READ DIFFERENTLY”. AND this is but just one of the many reasons that I work with an epic start up called Gentle Reader. One thing for sure, I end up having 10000 tabs open and get confused. I realised how much content I actually consume and hours I spend online as a Marketing professional, whether press releases or algorithm updates or scoping new tech. However I would not consider “reading” a hobby of mine. I don’t mind a productivity book when I’m on holiday aka learning new skills from a badass. He's authored several books on organic gardening his latest is "DIY Autoflowering Cannabis: A New Way To Grow.You all know I am not a big fan of “reading’. His columns won the 2020 gold medal at the Garden Communicators International conference. Jeff Lowenfels has written a weekly gardening column for the ADN for more than 45 years. There is nothing easier or showier than these fantastic, self-blooming, just-add-water, bulbs. Members $5, non-members $7, Children 6 and under are free.Īmaryllis: If you can find some for sale, buy and grow them. Winter lights at the Botanical Garden: Enjoy 5-8 p.m., Wednesdays-Saturdays, through Jan. They are the best in selling what works here, after all, not some far-off seed house. In most instances our local nurseries are able to meet your needs. Type in dahlias, garlic, kale or iris, pumpkins or cosmos! The days are getting longer and it is time to start dreaming about this year’s gardens.įinally, as I always note when I can, you needn’t buy anything from the sites you visit. This is what the dead time of winter is for. I will list a few catalogs in the upcoming weeks, but the best thing you can do now is use your search engine to explore your gardening dreams. These are great seeds people, and they grow stuff that works well in our warming, but still short growing season. Territorial Seed is a great free print catalog to get. It costs $9.95, but if you are into annuals and vegetables, this is one for you to have, and it should keep you occupied for hours. It has Baker’s absolutely fantastic and horticultural photos of annuals and vegetables, all open pollinated, and lots of interesting reading to accompany the pics. That being my point of view, check out The Whole Seed Catalog from Baker Creek. My Greta sense is to encourage a limit on paper catalogs to one or two. We are going to have to develop the traditions to incorporate into this practice, together. We are able to get a second harvest of cole crops, at least. I also plan on encouraging Alaska gardeners to plant a second round of crops in July. In Southcentral, I say you can plant the second week of May instead of the last week, Fairbanks a week to 10 days later and Juneau - well, wait until the legislators get out of town! What these feats mean is the start date for outdoor gardening has advanced, and I am going to finally admit it openly. We now have enough frost-free days to grow giant, record-setting pumpkins, and more and more apple trees are surviving. And, we have had two summers in a row now where nights have been warm enough to set regular tomatoes, outdoors, without a greenhouse or cold frame. We used to be the only state which could not grow them through the fruiting stage. So, is it time to simply admit that it is warmer and incorporate that into the growing calendar? My friends Erik and Naaq took advantage of last year’s warmth and successfully harvested okra from an outdoors-grown plant. What will survive here has to adapt to these changes, and the hardiness map does not address that. Anchorage, for example, is shown on the map as Zone 4b or 5a, but I don’t think we have seen -25 degrees in some years.Īs important as hardiness zones are, plants in Alaska are being affected by earlier thaws and later first frosts. Anyone who gardens in the 49th state knows our climate has changed, even since 2012. Note this map was published eight years ago, and, knowing how long it takes the government to do things, probably uses data compiled well before that. You can look at the map online at to find out which zone your garden is in. Many gardeners refer to it when ordering seed to determine what is hardy in their area of the state. Lots of these catalogs still refer to that Department of Agriculture map showing the average, annual, extreme, minimum temperature. ![]() They use colorful, high-resolution pictures and are full of lots of information you wouldn’t find in a limited-number-of-pages, print edition. Online catalogs are easy to access and finally good enough to replace paper ones, which makes environmental sense. While there are still lots of seed sellers that publish them, no longer do I suggest paper catalogs. This year I have finally fully transitioned over. This time of year, I encourage you, gentle reader, to peruse gardening catalogs.
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