“Starting Fresh, Starting Local, Starting Now” is the theme for this year’s conference and references the reforms that are needed to ensure that our food production systems will be successful and supply nutritious, high quality foods to our communities! While the conference is geared towards sustainable farmers, there is plenty to interest consumers, home gardeners, food distributors, and anyone concerned about the quality of our food supply.

Pre-Conference Educational Programs

The conference kicked off today with a couple of pre-conference tracks, one focused on new and beginning farmers, and the other covering animal feed and forage. Tomorrow adds about a dozen additional tracks covering areas such as beekeeping, foraging and growing forest products, cheese making techniques, and the impact and alternatives of genetic engineering.

The main portion of the conference takes place on Friday and Saturday and includes two keynote speakers, a wide range of sustainable agriculture workshops, and an assortment of vendors providing ideas and products to assist in the garden or on the farm. Children are not only welcomed but there are specific programs and activities designed to include them in the fun and learning related to sustainable farming and gardening.

Line Up of Sustainable Agriculture Workshops

With over 100 individual workshops on tap it shouldn’t be difficult to find sessions that will catch your interest and provide new information or skills that can be applied back home in your own garden or landscape.

Here is a sample of the type of workshops that you’ll have to choose from:

• Birds of a Feather: Backyard Poultry Basics
• Practical Tools for the Farm & Garden
• Uncommon Fruits with Market Potential
• Mineral Nutrition of Healthy Plants
• Adding Wild Edible Plants to Your Farm-Based Business
• Blueberries, Planting to Harvest
• Plant-Based Healing: Crafting Herbal Salves
• Making & Using Charcoal to Enhance Soil Quality & More
• Pruning Fruit Trees, Shrubs & Vines
• Farming & Gardening to Conserve Native Pollinators

Other Farming for the Future Conference Activities

There will also be sustainable agriculture vendors on site offering everything from tools and powered equipment, to books, seeds, farm and garden supplies, and more. Other activities include a seed swap, exercise sessions, movie screenings, and live music entertainment.

If you find yourself hungry during the conference optional meals include a Social Hour Reception, a Thursday evening Winter Picnic, and a Banquet Dinner on Friday evening, all featuring sustainably and organically raised foods. The Farmer’s Market Café is also open during the conference offering an assortment of sandwiches, salads, snacks, and desserts.

For more details and information on this year’s Farming for the Future Conference you can visit the PASA Farming website at http://conference.pasafarming.org/.

Hydrangea frozen in time. 

Photography by Susan Weigel.

Gardening is a way of life. Every week we will post a photo that captures the essence of why we garden. If you’d like to share a moment of your own, please leave a link to the image in the comments section.

Heirloom Seed Project at Landis Valley Introduces New Class

Shayla Carey, media assistant for the Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum  sent in this press release about an event coming up in the next few weeks.  Registraton ends soon. 

At this “make and take” hands-on workshop, to be held January 19, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., HSP volunteer staff will teach registered participants to propagate plants from seeds, cuttings, and divisions.

“It’s about learning all the ways to start a plant,” says HSP assistant coordinator Beth Leensvaart. “We’ll be dividing rhizomes, bulbs, and root masses, as well as learning to root cuttings from perennials.”

Leensvaart cautions anyone interested in the class to sign up early. “Registrations will be taken until January 14, though we encourage you to sign up early, as space is limited,” she says.

The class fee is $30 and includes the plants that students will propagate. Participants must bring their own lunch. Proceeds from registration fees will benefit the HSP.

The HSP partners with the Backyard Fruit Growers in its next two offerings: the February Workshops and the Grafting Workshop. At the February Workshops, to be held on February 23, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., registered participants can learn about various home gardening topics, including beekeeping and pruning fruit trees, among others. The day will be split between two sessions—one morning and one afternoon—with the fee for each session set at $20.

On March 23, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the museum’s gardening class program concludes with the Grafting Workshop, another “make and take” class where students will learn to graft apple-wood scions to rootstock and can take home two of their creations for their own orchard. The fee for this workshop is set at $30.

For information on or to sign up for any of the Winter Workshop classes, contact Beth Leensvaart at (717) 569-0401 ext. 204 or visit http://www.landisvalleymuseum.org

The Heirloom Seed Project, begun in 1985, grows plant varieties grown by the Pennsylvania Germans from the early nineteenth century onward. The annual, perennial, vegetable, and field crop seeds the project grows are available for sale either through mail order or at the Weathervane Museum Store. The HSP also sells started plants at the popular Herb and Garden Faire, to be held this year on Friday and Saturday, May 10 and 11.

Situated on 100 acres in Lancaster, PA, Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum is a living history village that collects, preserves and interprets the history and material culture of the Pennsylvania German community from 1740 to 1940. The museum, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is administered by the Pennsylvania Historic & Museum Commission with the active support of the Landis Valley Associates (a registered charitable organization).

Garden Clubs Meet Throughout Winter

The Garden Club of Harrisburg, the Hershey Horiculture Society and the Penn-Cumberland Garden Club all have January programs that are open to the public.  George Weigel is the speaker at two of the events. You can see the details on the Events Calendar on this website.

Pennsylvania Garden Expo

The PA Garden Expo event for 2013 is February 22nd-24th. Check out the website for more information. This event is still being planned and more information will be added to the website, so check back frequently for updated information about the event.

The Pennsylvania Garden Show of York

‘Nature’s Symphony,’  is the theme for this year’s event and is worth checking out March 1st-3rd this year. It has been growing in size and interest every year with speakers, vendors and local floral judging.  More information is found on the website.

The 2013 Philadelphia International Flower Show

Lastly, keep an eye out for the  Philadelphia Flower Show trips with George Weigel. “Brilliant” is the theme for 2013 and  highlights the gardens of Great Britian.  It runs March 2nd-10th. George hosts bus trips to the show on March 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th. The trips sold out last year, so register early!

We had more heat, more storms, plenty of bugs and weeds, and a deadly new flower disease, but on the whole, I’ve seen worse. At least the rainfall was fairly regular.

So as we look back on 2012, what were the Harrisburg area’s biggest news items on the gardening front? I’d pick these five, in order:

 5.) We’re Officially Warmer

For the first time in more than 20 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its Plant Hardiness Map – the guide used by the plant industry to determine which plants are cold-hardy enough to overwinter where.

The new data shows that the country, on average, is 1 to 2 degrees warmer in winter than just two decades ago. And it also shoved about half of the Harrisburg area into the next warmer hardiness zone – Zone 7.

That means a big chunk of our area is unlikely to go below zero in winter.

The change matches what alert gardeners already have been finding – that we can get away with more borderline-hardy plants than before (nandina, osmanthus, crape myrtle, Arizona cypress, cherry laurel, etc.)

See more details and get a link to check your exact hardiness zone in an article I wrote about this, click here.

 4.) Milestones for Hershey Gardens and Ashcombe’s

Hershey Gardens celebrated its 75^th anniversary in 2012 by adding a tribute garden to founder Milton Hershey and announcing plans to bring back the ‘M.S. Hershey’ rose that was named in his honor prior to World War II.

Hershey astounded the world in 1937 by planting a new garden below the then-new Hotel Hershey that quickly grew to hold more than 40,000 rose bushes. The Gardens still display more than 5,000 roses (which is nothing to sneeze at… unless you’re allergic to roses), but it’s grown to 23 acres of all sorts of plants, including a popular children’s garden. (More info: www.hersheygardens.org.)

Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses began as a small roadside strawberry stand in the boonies of Monroe Twp. in 1962.

Owners Glenn and Mary Ellen Gross grew it over the years into one of the biggest, nicest garden centers you’ll ever visit, attracting customers from more than 100 miles away and cracking the garden-center industry’s Top 100 list in size.

It’s employee-owned and still going strong today. (More info: www.ashcombe.com.)

3.) Dead Trees

We had a couple of more heavy storms (June 29 and Superstorm Sandy) that blew down and cracked apart even more trees.

A lot of evergreens also croaked or turned brown – a lingering result of soggy soil from last year’s record-setting rains and/or the triple-digit heat of summer.

It’s been a rough last two years for our limbed friends. Maybe 2013 will be kinder.

2.) Impatiens Disaster

Out of nowhere, along came a deadly new strain of downy mildew disease that killed most everyone’s impatiens by late summer.

Impatiens are the No. 1-selling annual and are by far our go-to annual for the shade. They’ve always been cheap and easy to grow – but no more.

Plant pathologists say the disease spreads readily and may stay in the soil for as long as 5 years. So all of a sudden, it looks like we’re all be switching to Plan B for our annual beds for awhile.

Alternatives include begonias, coleus, browallia, caladiums and sweet alyssum. To see a video I did on this problem, click here.

1.) Harrisburg Bulldozes a Vegetable Garden

The year’s most outrageous garden story, by far, was when Harrisburg City Council President Wanda Williams ordered the bulldozing of a community vegetable garden on North Sixth Street.

She was getting complaints from some people in that neighborhood who didn’t want a garden and who said the tract was weedy and was being used as a hiding place for guns.

The Harrisburg-based greening group Green Urban Initiative had just spent $1,000 installing raised-bed gardens there to encourage city dwellers to try growing their own food on what had been one of the city’s many vacant lots.

Without notice and without giving GUI a chance to salvage the planter boxes (which one complaining resident called “coffins”), Williams had a city worker raze everything to the ground.

The city solicitor later said Williams lacked authority to order the razing, and Mayor Linda Thompson said she was appalled and not consulted. But it was too late by then. (More details are here in case you missed the story)

This happened at a time when Ames True Temper won an award last year for its new community garden, when the Harrisburg YWCA was honored earlier this month for its new vegetable garden for kids, and when Hershey Medical Center and several other Hershey entities announced plans to build a 1-acre community vegetable this winter on the Hershey Med Center campus.

Many, if not most, of our local schools now have teaching and/or vegetable gardens as well.

Everyone seems to think community gardens are a good thing these days. Well, almost everybody…

Kale after an early morning rain.

Photography by Susan Weigel.

Gardening is a way of life. Every week we will post a photo that captures the essence of why we garden. If you’d like to share a moment of your own, please leave a link to the image in the comments section.

At this time of year, the nice thing about there not being leaves on the plants and trees is Mother Nature shows off not only the bark and berries, but the structure and colors of her beauties.

Here are a list of plants, trees and shrubs that have impressed me this fall. These are just a few of my favorite plants for fall and winter interest. Most of these are in my back yard, but I took a few photos in my travels at other gardens.

Heuchera ‘Berry Smoothie’ This brightly colored heuchera has pinkish-white flowers in spring. It continues to maintain its color at this time of year. Deer resistant.

Height: 8 inches

Spread: 18 inches

Foliage: Scalloped shaped leaves that are pink to purple in color

Exposure: Partial shade

Moisture: Moderate

Paperbark maple (Acer griseum) This small to medium sized ornamental tree is slow growing and has year-round interest.  The exfoliating cinnamon-copper bark is best seen when the leaves have fallen.

Height: 20-30 feet

Width: 15-25 feet

Zones: 4-8

Foliage: Leaves are shades of yellow, orange, dark and vibrant reds, crimson and pink.  The leaves sometimes remain on the tree into winter.

Exposure: Full sun to partial shade.

Moisture: Average water needs.

Spirea Mellow Yellow ‘Ogon’ (Spireae thunbergii) This is a low-maintenance shrub that is as stunning in fall as it is in spring and summer. It has willowy-like arching stems.

Height: 4-5 feet

Width: 4-5 feet

Zones: 5

Foliage: Arching stems with white flowers in spring. Has willow-like, lime-green foliage in summer that turns russet/orange in fall. The colorful leaves are still in place in the garden in December.

Exposure: Sun to part-shade.

Moisture: Drought tolerant.

Red-twig dogwood ‘Midwinter Fire’ (Cornus sanguinea)The red stems of this shrub look great against a snow laden landscape. It blooms white in the spring and its berries attract birds.   ‘Midwinter Fire’ is low maintenance and it is a Pennsylvania Gold-Medal award winner.

Height: 5 feet

Width: 6 feet

Zones: 5-7

Foliage: Dark green or variegated depending on the variety.

Exposure: Full sun to part shade.

Moisture: Adaptable to many soils including wet soil.

Oakleaf hydrangea ‘Snowflake’ (Hydrangea quercifolia) This shrub provides four-season interest. It has large white flower heads in the spring. There are many varieties of this hydrangea. This type of hydrangea does not turn pink or blue as with some types of hydrangeas.

Height: 6 feet

Width: 6 feet

Zones: 6-9

Foliage: Has oak leaf shaped leaves that turn burgundy-bronze in the fall.

Exposure: Sun to part shade.

Moisture: Drought-tolerant.

‘Goshiki’ osmanthus (Osmanthus heterophyllus)  Also known as false holly because it looks like holly with its spiny leaves. This is a slow-growing, broad-leaf evergreen.  Barry Yinger of York County discovered this great year round shrub.

Height: 5 Feet

Width: 4 feet

Zones: 6-9

Foliage: Spiny green variegated leaves are speckles with cream and gold.

Exposure: Dappled light to part shade.

Moisture: Moderately damp.

‘Prairiefire’ crabapple (Malus ‘Prairiefire’) This four-season beauty gets covered with intense red-pink blooms in the spring. In the fall and winter is sustains glossy deep red fruits that attract birds. 

Height: 15-20 feet

Width: 15-20 feet

Zones: 4-9

Foliage: Has purple-burgundy new growth that turns green in summer.  Leaves become deep burgundy in the fall.

Exposure: Full sun.

Moisture: Drought tolerant.

Leucothoe (Leucothoe fontanesiana) This slow-growing evergreen is a good plant next to a water garden. It has small white flowers in the spring but they are not easily seen due to its large leaves.

Height: 3-6 feet

Width: 3-6 feet

Zones: 4-6

Foliage: Lateral arching dark-green, leathery leaves, 3 to 5 inches in length that turn reddish bronze in the fall.

Exposure: Part shade, likes protected from winter wind.

Moisture: Moist acid soil.

The key is to make early plans for a winter harvest, choose hardy vegetable varieties, and provide a little protection to extend the growing and harvesting period far beyond the timeframes of the average backyard gardener.

Making Plans for the Fall Vegetable Garden

When laying out the spring garden I always think forward to the end of summer and give consideration to the requirements of the fall vegetable garden. This entails grouping plants with similar growing seasons and times to maturity in the same bed or growing area. By planning ahead, the same block of space used for summer tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants can be freed up in time to replant with fall crops.

Many gardeners assume that cold temperatures are their biggest hurdle to growing fall vegetables, but if fact the reduced amount of sunlight and shorter day lengths are a much greater handicap to cultivating veggies during the fall and winter months. The challenge is to time those plantings so that the crops grow rapidly during early autumn and are ready to harvest before the bitter cold of winter takes hold on the garden.

It may require some trial and error on your part to determine the best time to plant a fall garden, but it’s better to plant too early than to get your crops in the ground too late. Record the dates that you planted, note the results as the fall crops mature, and adjust the timing in future seasons if necessary.

For a general planting schedule or timetable, determine the first average fall frost date for your region and work backwards to determine the appropriate time to plant those winter vegetables. But keep in mind that the fall crops will grow and mature slower under the lower light conditions of autumn than they would if planted in the spring or summer.

Choosing Hardy Vegetables for the Fall and Winter Garden

Right now my garden is still loaded with leafy greens, root crops, and even a few herbs that are ready for harvest and use in the kitchen. Following is a list of cold hardy vegetables that are ideal for fall production or extended harvests:

• Kale and Collards
• Spinach and Lettuce
• Turnips and Rutabagas
• Mustard Greens
• Arugula
• Beets and Carrots
• Parsnips
• Broccoli and Cauliflower
• Mache and Cress
• Leeks
• Brussels Sprouts
• Swiss Chard

Many of the hardy vegetables on this list will actually survive the winter months to send up new growth next spring. Root crops should be harvested before they become soft or develop woody cores in the springtime, but the leafy greens such as kale and spinach will produce additional spring harvests when allowed to over winter in the garden.

Adding Cover and Protective Devices to the Fall Garden

Finally, with just a little extra effort you can reap extended harvests by adding protective devices to shelter the garden and provide a few degrees worth of protection to those already hardy crops. For root crops a thick mulch of straw or shredded leaves is all that’s needed to make it easier to harvest the bounty even after the ground begins to freeze during winter.

Straw, leaves, or floating row covers can also be spread over beds of lettuce or leafy greens to help them over winter and add a little protection to tender young plants. For larger, more mature plants try using low hoop tunnels covered with greenhouse plastic, or cold frames.

These devices won’t keep plants actively growing throughout the winter but will help hold them in harvestable condition despite freezing temperatures. So try your hand at growing a fall garden and you’ll be rewarded with fresh produce for the winter holidays!

 Penn State Arboretum in the fall,    ‘Winterthur’  Viburnum.

Photography by Susan Weigel.

Gardening is a way of life. Check back for other photos that capture the essence of why we garden. If you’d like to share a moment of your own, please leave a link to the image in the comments section.

Gardeners sometimes take it for granted that everyone knows the basics of how food grows.

That’s not always the case.

That was the aim of a new Junior Gardeners Vegetable Garden that members of the Penn-Cumberland Garden Club helped set up earlier this year at the Harrisburg YWCA.

The garden turned out to be successful enough to win a Pennsylvania Horticultural Society 2012 Community Greening Award — one of just three earned in central Pennsylvania.

Spearheaded by Francesca McNichol, chair of Penn-Cumberland’s Junior Gardening Committee, the club and the YWCA lined up a private grant from a generous local family to build eight raised-bed gardens next to the YW’s building above the southeast corner of Cameron and Market streets.

Seppi Garrett of Your Garden Solution installed the square-foot raised beds, while Ed Abolins of Abolins Landscaping installed the fencing that kept animal marauders at bay.

About 35 kids ages 6-12 in the YW’s after-school program planted and tended the garden. They dug the dirt, watered the plants and harvested and ate the fresh produce.

“They see me and the ladies coming, and they get so excited!” says McNichol. “They run up and say, ‘What are we going to do today?’”

The answer to that question varied visit to visit.

Besides the actual hands-on work in the gardens, the kids learned how to start plants from seeds, they learned how to can pickles, and they made bluebird boxes.

One week, a nutritionist from Giant Foods brought in less common fruits and vegetables for the kids to sample.

And the year ended with the kids making two kinds of soup from their own harvest — a vegetable soup and a kale and sausage soup.

“The kids wanted thirds on everything,” McNichol says of the soup day.

Most of the produce throughout the season was used by the YW’s kitchen for lunches.

“They were all so good about trying things they never had before,” says McNichol. “Everybody seemed to like mint. But you’d be surprised that even little kids like arugula in their salad.”

One of the projects already in the works is learning about bees and honey.
The garden and its young gardeners will be honored in a Dec. 3 awards ceremony at the Governor’s Residence — to be hosted by First Lady Susan Corbett (an avid gardener herself).
It’s one of 67 Community Greening Awards the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has named for 2012 in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. PHS is best known for running the Philadelphia International Flower Show.
This is the third year Penn-Cumberland has won a PHS Community Greening Award, having won one for its work with the Ames True Temper Community Garden in Hampden Twp. last year and for the landscaping around Mechanicsburg’s former train station the year before.

Two other central-Pennsylvania gardens won 2012 greening awards.

One went to the Gettysburg Garden Club and the town’s Golden Living Center for the Memory Garden planted outside the center’s Alzheimer’s unit. That garden was planted with old-fashioned flower varieties (especially ones with sensory and tactile properties) to help Alzheimer’s residents recall pleasant memories. Local high school students helped Gettysburg Garden Club members plant it.
The other central-Pa. honor went to a new enviro-friendly garden planted at the Strasburg Business Place in Strasburg Lancaster County. This business complex went beyond the usual sparse and low-care plantings to add a wide variety of plants with varied textures and forms, including a collection of native plants. Plans are to convert a retention basin there to a wetland garden.

More on all of the 2012 Community Greening Awards are at PHS’s web site at http://www.pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org/events/communitygreeningaward.html.

YWCA.junior.gardeners.cabbage Harrisburg YWCA Junior Gardeners celebrate a fresh cabbage they grew in their own new award-winning vegetable garden.

Leslie Light Sobel, of the Penn-Cumberland Garden Club (PCGC), recently was awarded the Garden Club Federation of PA, District IV, “Perennial Bloom Award”. Like the perennials that make an outstanding contribution to the beauty of our gardens year after year, this award is given to those select individuals that have made our garden clubs grow and bloom with their continuous support of the clubs’ goals and objectives through out the years.

Leslie is a Life Member of National Garden Clubs, Inc., and the Garden Club Federation of PA (GCFP), District IV (Mid-Atlantic Region), having served the State Board in various capacities from 1997 to 2005, She is an active member and past president of the Penn-Cumberland Garden Club. Leslie is a Master Flower Show Judge and served as Central Area Judges Council Chairman from 1998-2001. She is also a Landscape Design Consultant and was named to the GCFP Honor Roll of Exceptional Horticulturists in 2004. Leslie is currently serving as the American Daffodil Society’s Regional Director. She won a blue ribbon at the World Daffodil Convention and Show in Portland Oregon in 2000.