Page 5 - Michael Dirr News Today

Gardening: Required reading for your garden library By Henry Homeyer I know that many people — especially gardeners under the age of 40 — use the internet to find the answers to their questions. That is fine, but the internet is full of “fake news” and spurious assertions. I do use the web, but if I want to learn about something in-depth, I reach for a book. People who write books generally write about things they know. Gardening books are written by gardeners. Some years ago I taught a...

Nursery Management Saxifraga stolonifera ‘Hsitou Silver’ in bloom I recently watched the movie “Fletch” for the umpteenth time. One of the things that makes me laugh is all the aliases Irwin Fletcher invented during the course of his undercover investigation. Saxifraga stolonifera has an impressive array of pseudonyms as well, from strawberry geranium and strawberry begonia — it is neither a begonia or a geranium — to creeping rockfoil and roving sailor, and a few more. Whatever y...

Neighbors: In Wards hollow, thousands of happy little trees dot the land David Blanchette, Journal-Courier FacebookTwitterEmail 1of3 Pat Ward by his favorite tree, the paper bark maple.David Blanchette | Journal-CourierShow MoreShow Less 2of3 Barb and Pat Ward at the “sugar shack,” where they produce maple syrup.David Blanchette | Journal-CourierShow MoreShow Less 3of3 Johnny Appleseed, meet Pat Ward. The 73-year-old Ward, well-known throughout the Midwest as a tree expert, conservatively ...

APHIS updates Plants for Planting manual The update will include a section on the Canada Nursery Certification Program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recently updated its Plants for Planting manual to include a section on the United States – Canada Nursery Certification Program (NCP), which is a bilateral export certification program for nursery-grown plants shipped between Canada and the continental United States. The NCP in...