It is time to stop with the advocating for our commercial products and to return to what we do best with our newsletters – teaching you about your horticultural heritage and motivating you to grow some heirlooms in your garden. With that in mind, we conclude this Christmas holiday with one of the greatest horticultural stories of the Christmas season.…
Gardening Gifts That Children Will Never Forget
Zinnia, Royal Purple MAKES A GREAT HOLIDAY GIFT – BUY NOW! Of all the gifts that you can give to a child, the gift of your time – time spent with a child – is unquestionably the greatest gift of all Time spent with a child gardening, of all the child-worthy activities, tops the list. Gardening brings children outside, gives…
November Flowers-Seeds That Should Be Planted In November
November Flowers-Seeds That Should Be Planted In November Mid-Atlantic Wildflower Mix Buy Now for Fall Planting Throughout the year, I spend most of my time, when I am away from Harvesting History, speaking to and with Master Gardeners and the members of America’s Garden Clubs and Historical Societies. One of the most pervasive and perplexing topics that I encounter is…
3 of the Spring’s Most Historic Flowers
3 of the Spring’s Most Historic Flowers Hyacinthoides Non-scripta – The English Bluebell Buy Now for Fall Planting We will be finishing the “Bulb Newsletters” in the next 2 weeks because you may be tiring of the subject, but we wouldn’t be Harvesting History if we didn’t persist in trying to teach you about the finer points of heirloom gardening…
7 Tulips Deer Don’t Eat
Species Tulip – Acuminata Buy Now for Fall Planting! This is the third installment in a series about a remarkable class of tulips known as the Species Tulips. If you are archiving these newsletters the other two installments occurred on 9-8-2018 and 9-22-2018. For those of you who have deer, squirrels, bunnies, chipmunks and other critters that like to…
Muscari Magic
> Grape Hyacinths Buy Now for Fall Planting! Without fail, whenever any of us venture into a Walmart, we are greeted by a kindly, gently smiling, usually older face that welcomes us into Walmart USA. The key words in this past sentence, as they apply to Grape Hyacinths, are WITHOUT FAIL, GREETED, GENTLY SMILING and OLDER for these…
Largest and Best Tasting Garlic
The 2018 Garlic Harvest: The Largest and Best Tasting Varieties 2018 Creole Garlic, Burgundy Buy Now for Fall Planting! Harvesting History spends a lot of time with our customers sharing stories with them at Harvest Festivals and Flower Shows, horticulture lectures, answering questions from emails and other social media platforms and speaking with many on the phone. At this time…
Forced Bulbs
Forcing bulbs is a process by which you trick spring flowering bulbs into blooming in the middle of winter. Forcing bulbs is an ancient tradition practiced by Europeans since the late 17th century. Anna Pavord, in her landmark book, Bulb, wrote, “Keen plantsmen soon discovered that it was possible to force hyacinths into bloom earlier than Nature intended. Nehemiah…
4 Beautiful and Exotic Narcissus Rarely Seen in American Gardens
N. Bulbocodium Conspicuous Golden Bells BUY NOW FOR FALL PLANTING All you have to do is whisper the word, narcissus, and visions of meadows of sunshine yellow flowers come to mind. In today’s world, with critters like deer, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, moles and voles feasting on many of our spring blooming bulbs, the narcissus has become the most popular…
The North American Natives
There are very few North American Native spring flowering bulbs. I know of only 5: Erythronium tuolumnense, Camassia cusicki, Camassia quamash, Allium cernuum and Allium amplectens. These five bulbs are rarely found in the gardens of Americans even though they represent our bulb heritage. Erythronium tuolumnense BUY NOW FOR FALL PLANTING Erythronium tuolumnense, AKA The Dogtooth Violet, is native…