Home and Garden Roundup for Week of 4/14/2008 - Garden Plants and Gardening Forum

lspichkin · 04-16-2008, 11:23 AM

A weekly roundup of the top stories from the Home & Garden sections of leading newspapers around the country.

The Los Angeles Times Home and Garden Section warns of the dangers of what happens when nonnative plants that we cultivate in our gardens, wreek havoc in the wild.

Quote:

"We need only one syllable to differentiate friend from foe in our gardens. Yet the word seems inadequate for a new generation of weeds -- plants that we find beautiful or delicious when we cultivate them but that have escaped into the wild to potentially catastrophic effect.

Brigham's eyes do not light up at the sight of fountain grass fluttering in the breeze along our roads. "It offers wildlife none of the forage of the native sunflowers that it displaces," she says. "What's more, it's not particularly good at stabilizing slopes."

Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

The Miami Herald Gardening Section lets you know what to there is to see and do in your garden in April.

Quote:

What's blooming in April: Litchi trees, wild pine bromeliads, heliconias, shaving brush trees and jacarandas.

Watch for: lubber grasshoppers to hatch. Step on them when they're tiny and you can terminate many with one foot.

Chuck Fadely/Miami Herald Staff -- Heliconia Rostrata

The Seattle Post Intelligencer NW Gardens helps you to figure out which tomato varieties to plant this year.

Quote:

Last year I didn't plant cherry tomatoes, and I heard about it from my wife and the grandkids, who got used to Sungold. So this year I've planted Sun Sugar. The skinny on this award-winning variety is that it tastes as good or better than Sungold and is far less prone to splitting. Four plants should hold off a family insurrection.

WxMom/Flickr

The Dallas Morning News Home/Gardening section gives you some tips for kick-starting your compost pile.

Quote:

"A friend of mine had a bad case of indigestion last summer, but not in his tummy. It was in his compost pile. "Nothing's breaking down," he said, eager to have plenty of black gold to spread on his garden in the fall. "It just sits there. What am I going to do?

Sooner or later the organic materials my friend had assembled in his pile would have decomposed, as organic matter always does. The bumper sticker that reads "Compost happens" tells a true tale. But there are ways to make it happen more in line with a gardener's urgent schedule."

anna banana/Flickr

The New York Times Home & Garden section answers readers gardening questions, such as which ground cover to choose for a sunny and narrow space.

Quote:

Classics like thyme, snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum) and liriope make low carpets that seem subdued even when in bloom. Ultra-dwarf conifers offer much more substance without being much more assertive. Ornamental grasses are modern, yet not hard-edged.

zero-g/Flickr

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