For parents who are challenged with trying to get kids to eat vegetables, the stringy and slightly bitter taste of asparagus can be a turn off. Enter Purple Passion asparagus. Unlike its green cousin, the purple variety does not have as much lignin. Lignin is what makes green asparagus stringy. In contrast purple asparagus is crisp and crunchy. With this and the fact it has 20 percent more sugar content than green asparagus, it is a wonderful vegetable. I find it is best eaten raw. In fact over the holiday, it made the most colorful salad addition along with yellow carrots and orange tomatoes…

The Short Hills Home Garden Club heard from Alan Detrick, an award-winning photographer specializing in macro or close up photography, particularly of garden and nature subjects, during its first meeting of the year on Tuesday. His moving photomontage set to carefully timed chirping of birds and music drew continual ooos and aahs from an enraptured crowd in attendance at the Cora Hartshorn Arboretum. Despite the cold weather outside, the evocative and varying images made one feel as spring was just around the corner. Located in Glen Ridge, Detrick and his wife Linda run a stock photography …

Now that winter has removed the blossoms and leaves from our landscapes, mistakes are all the more obvious and seem to shout out from everywhere. None is worse than incomprehensible activity pursued by some people referred to by state agricultural extension service representatives and master gardeners pejoratively as “volcano mulching.” "Volcano mulching" is the practice of mounding huge amounts of mulch up around the base of a tree. No one is quite sure how this practice got started. Some sources speculate it was started by someone too lazy to dig a hole to plant the tree. Or maybe despite …

I have been thinking of my winter project: How to grow seedlings. Last year I did an experiment with hydroponic gardening.  For about a month now I have been thinking of greenhouses. To be specific, so my husband does not get alarmed, little greenhouses. It all started with a trip to the hardware store early in December on the quest for a new snow shovel along with a long list of other items.  I noticed they offered a small greenhouse in a box I could almost carry home myself. But too busy with my mission, I did not let myself get distracted enough to pick it up. The holidays were not really …

Plantings of 2010 are now just a distant memory and it is time to look forward to the New Year. At the end of each year members of the Perennial Plant Association pick a perennial that meets its criteria of low maintenance, broad climate suitability and multi-season interest. Amsonia hubrichtii is this coming year's plant select of the year 2011. The Perennial Plant of the Year program was initiated in 1990. If you are a novice gardener a review of their choices over the years is a good place to start building a garden enhancement shopping list for the coming season. Also known as "Arkansas …

Walking into a grocery store, I nearly tripped over an adorable 19-inch Lemon Cypress tree in nice triangle shape of lime green branches with a tag that said "Smell Me." It does have a very faint hint of lemon but not in any way intrusive or unpleasant. Of course I had to adopt it. Then came the dilemma, which I should have thought of earlier: How to decorate it?  A friend admitted that this year in particular she was feeling very overwhelmed, and I have to say I am too. It seems every time I go to a store the options have just multiplied like rabbits. What started out as a sweetly-scented …

I go through a set of garden gloves every season. Cheap or expensive it doesn’t seem to matter much, though the truly cheap don’t last more than a month.  The problem usually is I break through a finger tip even with the really short fingernails that are a hallmark of a gardener. I have never had a pair that made into the next year until now. Granted this summer I did not garden as much because of the extreme heat and number of other reasons but I think these are the most rugged I have ever had. So here is my first suggestion for a holiday gift for the gardener in your life—a pair of West …

Here is a look at some other events for the holiday season that have a gardening connection.  Prepare to be inspired by the decorating skills of members of a host of New Jersey garden clubs who once again have decked the halls and rooms of elegantly furnished and historically rich Drumthwacket, the residence of the governor of New Jersey located in Princeton. Each holiday season New Jersey garden clubs conduct an informal competition decorating the lower floors with floral arrangements, greens and trees. Participating this year are clubs from all over the state including Essex Fells, …

This autumn the Short Hills Garden Club planted 700 unusual daffodils at three separate locations in Millburn-Short Hills—the Community Garden located across the street from the Neighborhood House on Sunset Drive, the Walbridge Rose Garden at Taylor Park and at the Millennium Garden across the street from the Short Hills train station. These locations comprise community service projects for the club. The bulbs will add another season of blooms to the area. With more than 25,000 registered cultivars (named hybrids) divided among the 13 divisions to choose from, the club selected to the new …

Now that everything is fading in the garden, there is an opportunity to thrill your visual senses and get into the holiday spirit at the Rutgers Greenhouse Poinsettia Open House on Dec. 1-3, 2010 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at their Floriculture Greenhouses. If you are interested in learning the particular requirements of what it might take to get your poinsettia to rebloom or how to best care for it, this is the place to visit because it's a teaching greenhouse. The free event offers an up close look at more than 100 different poinsettia varieties Rutgers Department of Plant Biology and …

I love leaves. The colors are magical. Every year the color combinations seem to be a little different. This is not just my imagination because a surprising number of variables influence the colors each year.   What occurs temperature and moisture-wise throughout the year make a difference. When a spring is warm and wet, the summer is moderate and you have warm sunny fall days with cool fall nights and delayed heavy frosts you get the best fall color display.  This year we had most of these conditions, particularly the perfect fall. Of course certain trees and shrubs are programmed to be a …

Last fall when the first swath of spring-blooming bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) was planted along the winding driveway leading to the ground of Greenwood Gardens, beeping road construction equipment moved along with the volunteers planting the bulbs. Last Wednesday and Thursday when  an additional  12,000 bulbs were planted by a group of 10 volunteers to widen the display, the main site of the construction efforts now are at back of the main house.   There the skeletal supports for the majestic stairway are taking shape, along with the foundations for the upper terrace with its 18-…

Who would have thought Haagen Dazs would have an interest in gardening, but they do. For a number of years now Haagen Dazs devoted a separate website to the plight of the honey bee. The honey bee population continues to be in crisis due to an event called Colony Collapse Disorder. It causes bees to suddenly leave their hive and die en masse. Scientists are not completely sure how and why this is happening but they are beginning to make a little progress understanding the problem. A recent study attributes the condition to a combination of a virus and fungus that attacks bees during wet …

To honor Amy Erickson, a beloved former employee of Caribou Coffee, the Minneapolis-based coffee house and specialty beverage chain, the company established specially-branded coffee and merchandise in her memory and in honor of others whose lives have been touched by breast cancer. This year Caribou Coffee went a step further and created "Amy's Garden." Amy's Garden exists both in virtual and real life forms. Since pink tulips were Amy's favorite flower, you can dedicate a bulb at any one of Caribou's coffee houses by filling out a pink tulip Post-it or submit an honoree online. Online you …

As a Master Gardener you are taught to advocate that home gardeners avoid planting fruit trees on their property. Why? Because fruit trees typically require a lot of maintenance, particularly spraying to remain healthy. There is usually far more work and expense involved in achieving a healthy crop than the average home owner realizes. An improperly maintained residential fruit tree is a potential host for diseases that put commercial crops at greater risk. In New Jersey it is not an insignificant concern in that state farms raise over 30 different apple varieties. Apple growing is an old …

People used to think, and some still do, that the prominent and brightly colored yellow plants blooming now, often in great numbers, along the roadside are a contributor to seasonal allergies. This is not the case. What you are seeing is wild Solidago or goldenrod. It just so happens that it blooms about the same time as the real culprit—the annual ragweed. They bear a slight resemblance to each other in that they are both tall with stalks of flowers. Ragweed's blooms always stay green and look more like a strand of seedpods. Unlike ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), whose pollen is very …

Last week I happened to be at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morristown  with a new Blackberry in hand, so I decided to explore their unusual offering—a new cell phone-directed walking  tour of parts of the grounds entitled "Plants of China: A Friendship and Peace Exhibit." Arising from the realization that a growing number of Asian families were visiting the arboretum particularly after a well received event in 2004 entitled "Focus on China" and at the suggestion of one of these visitors, Lesley Parness, the Arboretum's Director of Horticultural Education, was encouraged to apply for a grant…

A lone sunflower (Helianthus) in our community garden plot got off to a slow start from seeds I planted along its edge. Then the weather became perfect for it. Soon it was over six feet tall. It was not at all what I expected when the seed packet said "good cut flower." I imagined a single stalk that was two feet tall at the maximum. Instead the tall central stalk sent off a whirl of individual flower stalks emanating from it but with the unusual burnt orange-shaded gradient-colored petals I had hoped for. Sunflower varieties that do this are referred to as "branching." There are a few things…

Inspired by previous searches on butterflies, I decided to see what I might find close by built to attract them. The closest I could find is the Butterfly Garden at the Turtle Back Zoo, which was installed a few years ago by Essex County Master Gardeners. Having never been to the zoo and with school in session, I headed out this week to check it out. The Butterfly Garden is off to the right when you first walk in, up the hill in front of the Tortoisry or Turtle House. Everything is quite tall at this point in the garden.  Most plants appeared to have nearly finished blooming for the season. …