📚Books are for learning — and for sharing
Hello, friends!
Like most books, gardening books instruct, inform and inspire us, albeit sometimes in different ways. Some readers enjoy the poetic musings of verbose authors. Others prefer to scan pages of glossy photos for ideas to implement in their own gardens. Falling into the latter camp, I’m more of a nuts-and-bolts type of girl. You won’t likely find me going on for pages about how my heart sings when I see my daffodils (although it does), but my posts and articles will provide information about the newest, prettiest, hardiest and most unique daffodils — and how to grow them and make sure squirrels don’t ruin the party.
On the bookshelf, as in the garden (and in life), our differences are what make us complete. So I’d like to start our own collaborative Weekly Dirt book list.
Take a moment to tell me about the gardening book that helped you the most in the comments below. It can be the worn and dog-eared one you relied on when you planted your first seedling and still reference from time to time, the one with photos of faraway gardens you hope to visit one day or a brand-new release you’d like to recommend to the group.
I’ll start: I’ve relied on “The American Horticultural Society A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants,” by Judy Zuk and Christopher Brickell, for as long as I can remember. It’s since been revised a couple of times (mine is from 1996) and may now be out of print, but I see it’s still available used from various sources. “Carrots Love Tomatoes,” by Louise Riotte introduced me to the concept of companion planting many years ago, and I’ve been hooked since. And, of course, there’s the comparatively new (2009) “Bringing Nature Home,” by Douglas Tallamy, which is more than an eye-opening book — it’s largely, if not wholly, responsible for the current native plants movement. It will change the way you see the natural world — in a good way. There are many others, but those are my standouts.
Tell me about yours in the comments ⬇️ below (or by clicking the speech bubble under the subject line or at the end of this newsletter), and I’ll compile and share them with The Weekly Dirt community to create our own collaborative reference library.
📬Question of the week
DEAR JESSICA: Unknowingly, we planted some seeds and grew the gourds in this photograph. We have not been able to identify them, nor learn if they are edible. My husband thinks that they must have been in our homemade compost, but none of us saw the seeds or deliberately planted them. I believe that all gourds are edible. Kindly confirm. —Sharada Jayagopal, East Williston, NY
DEAR SHARADA: By definition, gourds are technically not eaten but rather used for ornamental purposes, while squashes are their edible cousins. But semantics aside, your garden volunteer looks like a yellow acorn squash. But don’t dig in just yet.
Thank you for answering my questions and sharing more details via email, specifically that neither you nor your husband eat acorn squash, which tells me it wouldn’t have been in your homemade compost pile. So the question remains: Where did this squash or gourd come from?
I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, but we do know that seeds can be transported great distances by birds and other wildlife, and cross-pollination can occur in the garden. If you tossed other varieties of squash into your compost, that could be cause for concern. Or not. Let me explain.
Hybrid plants are created when the pollen from one plant pollinates another, with or without human intervention. If you were to plant those hybridized seeds, the plants that grow will not be “true” to their parents. Instead, they will resemble one of their grandparents, which, in this case, may have been a yellow acorn squash.
So far, so good. But what gives me pause is a rare occurrence I heard of awhile back called “toxic squash syndrome.” Not remembering all the details, I did a little research and learned that sometimes squash are pollinated by wild cucurbits and have the potential to create toxic offspring. This can happen with any cucurbit, from acorn squash to pumpkin to zucchini — even those grown from purchased seeds, if the parent of those seeds had been cross-pollinated by a wild squash. It’s possible.
However, this doesn’t mean you’re taking your life into your hands every time you eat squash. The good news is that if this were to happen to a plant in your garden, you would know it the moment you attempted to eat its fruit. Toxic squash are extremely bitter — like, inedible bitter. So if ever a squash of any variety has a strongly bitter taste, spit it out and throw it out. Otherwise, you can consider yourself safe.
If you’re interested, here’s a very good article explaining the phenomenon in more depth.
Photo by Sharada Jayagopal
Will 2021 be “Illuminating” and “Ultimate”? We can dare to hope…
Earlier this week, the trend forecasters over at Pantone announced their 2021 color of the year — and it’s actually two colors: Ultimate Gray and Illuminating Yellow, which the company calls “a marriage of color conveying a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting.”
Why should we care? You know how in 2016, everything from cellphone cases to shoes came in a muted shade of rose called Millennial Pink? That’s because Pantone selected it as color of the year. And 2020’s Classic Blue coronation was eerily predictive of what the company called the “calm, confidence and connection” we’d need “as we cross into a new era.” That was roughly three months before “Covid-19” became a household word. It’s also the color of hospital scrubs and melancholy, so you can choose your own adventure when deciding for yourself why Classic Blue was a prophetic choice.
So what does yellow and gray mean for us? For one, Pantone, which bills itself as “the global authority on colour and provider of professional colour standards for the design industries,” sets the annual stage that marketers, advertisers and clothing designers act upon, and the same can be said of plant breeders and wholesalers, so those colors will likely come to a nursery, garden show and plant catalog near you. You might even find yourself adding black-eyed Susans and Stella d’Oro daylilies to your garden this year — just to be on-trend with the cool kids.
Photo by Pantone
💡If you do one thing this week…
Apply winter mulch over bulbs and roots of perennials after the ground freezes. Shredded bark mulch works best for general garden use, but use pine needles or shredded oak leaves around acid-loving plants like rhododendrons. Never use oak leaves without shredding because they're notoriously slow to decompose and tend to clump together into a nearly impenetrable barrier on the soil surface.
🌱📅Free shipping upgrade for last-minute shoppers
If you’re looking for a last-minute gift for your favorite gardener, have no fear — I’ll upgrade your media mail shipping to 2-day Priority for no additional charge when you buy through this link. (For delivery by Christmas, best to order by Dec. 18.)
📧Send me your feedback!
I welcome your comments and suggestions, so please send them along — as well as any topics you’d like to see covered and questions you’d like answered in the Question of the Week section.
If you’re sending photos of your garden, please include your full name and the name of anyone depicted, your hometown, details about your plant or garden, the name of the person who took the photo, and a sentence granting permission for its use in this newsletter and archives.
Until next week, stay safe. Be well. And always keep your mind in the dirt. —Jessica
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"Crockett's Victory Garden" was my first gardening book. "Total Tomato" was inspiring and full of helpful information for those of us who struggle with tomato blights, bacteria and fungi and other problems but struggle on anyway. It's out of print but someone (hint, hint) should do a new version. "Shady Lady's Guide to NE Shade Gardening"--invaluable for those of us w/o sun. "Five Plant Garden" helpful for those of us who are not good designers. "Sunset Northeastern Garden Book" (I had an earlier Sunset guide that I liked better but I gave it away.) Barbara Damrosch "Garden primer" for lots of basic information.
Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy