Growing Beets - It Rarely Gets Easier Than This Heirloom Beets To Purchase Heirloom Beet Seeds Click This Link Check Out The Harvesting History Collection of Plant Videos on YouTube For most of the US it is now time or will be in the next 45 days to plant beets. Before you turn up your noses in disgust at the mention of beets, listen tow hat we have to say. I disliked beets so much that I didn’t eat them for 40 years. Then someone introduced me to roasted beets and someone else showed me the glorious beet chip with seasoned salt, and now I cannot get enough beets. Beets are closely related to Swiss Chard. The tops of the beet (commonly referred to as beet greens) have been consumed by man
View more-
-
Ballerinas in Floral Disguise Part I - The Oriental Lily Check Out The Harvesting History Collection of Plant Videos on YouTube The lilium genus, surprisingly, is only indigenous to the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, but it has been so popular for so many centuries that it is worldwide in distribution. There are many, many species native to North America, Asia and Europe. Flowers are of many different sizes and shapes – some highly fragrant, some not. Lilies were a part of the Greek and Roman civilizations. New World lilies and the lilies of China and Japan were quickly and eagerly embraced by Europeans and the British. Since the Renaissance, the development and cultivation of lily cultivars has proliferated, but it was not until the late 1800s that the
View more -
Kale and Collards-Some of the Cold Hardiest Vegetables in Existence Kale and Collards are probably the earliest cultivated variations of the European wild cabbage. Kale is known to have been widely grown by both the Greeks and the Romans. From a scientific classification point of view, kale and collards are considered to be the same plant – just two different varieties. Sometimes collards are described as a kind of kale. However, diehard Southerners will tell you that collards are collards and kale is kale and they are very different. Kale, also known as Borecole, and collards are non-heading, leafy greens that are among the most cold-hardy vegetables grown. Kale is definitely a cool season crop whose sweet flavor is substantially enhanced when the plant is exposed to several
View more -
Check out our detailed videos on growing potatoes and growing potatoes in tires on YouTube! To see our Starting Potatoes in the ground or in tires videos on You Tube click this link Potatoes cannot be shipped if the temperatures are below freezing. We will ship to the west coast when we have 5 consecutive days above freezing temperatures. We will ship to the midwest and east coast when we have 3 consecutive days of above freezing temperatures. For this newsletter, we are going to be talking about standard potatoes. Harvesting History sells two kinds of potatoes: the fingerlings and the standards. Fingerlings are long, somewhat ‘finger-shaped’ potatoes. The standard potatoes have a round or oblong shape. We will be discussing fingerling potatoes in our February 2, 2019 newsletter. Potatoes are
View more -
The Flowering Vine, Morning Glory Heavenly Blue To purchase Morning Glory Heavenly Blue Seeds click this link In terms of ornamental grandeur derived from floral displays, the most underrated assets we have in the horticultural world are the flowering vines. Blankets of yellow, red, purple, white, blue orange and just about any other color you can think of have embellished dirty old fences, chipped pillars and columns, rusted stair railings, neglected sheds and disfigured walls for centuries. Cascades of opulent colors have introduced drama and elegance to building facades, balconies, porches and bridges. Unfortunately, in today’s world where instant gratification is the only acceptable gratification, flowering vines are a rarity. They are a rarity for the simple fact that vines take time to grow. You can’t run
View more -
Tomatoes To purchase Harvesting History Tomato Seeds click this link Today’s newsletter was created to answer a question that we receive frequently, “Help me to choose some tomatoes for my garden. I do not have a lot of space.” In today’s gardening world, the problem of limited space is ubiquitous from city dwellers with only a roof top or a balcony, to suburban homeowners with only a deck or patio, to rural farmers who can only protect a small space from the critters, to seniors, everywhere, who refuse to abandon their much beloved tradition of summer tomato growing and consuming the luscious fruit warm from the vine. The “Complete Tomato Garden” will have 1-2 different varieties of tomatoes from each of the three kinds of tomatoes: plum/paste,
View more -
Greetings Harvesting History Friends and Neighbors! The 2019 New Year begins today and with it the start of the 2019 gardening season. This season our newsletters will focus on three types of gardeners: • Traditional Heirloom Gardeners, • Teachers Who Inspire Children to Become Gardeners and • Container Gardeners This newsletter’s topic, the first of the season, is DAHLIAS. For the money invested, dahlias are one of the best values in the ornamental world. From mid-summer until the first hard frost of late fall, these lovely plants will produce a profusion of blossoms which beg to be cut and placed in a vase. The more the plant’s blossoms are cut, the more blossoms the plant will produce. For the gardener who always wants a vase of fresh flowers to grace the
View more -
Greetings Harvesting History Friends and Neighbors! The 2019 New Year begins in 3 days and with it the start of the 2019 gardening season, but we are getting a jump start on the season with our first newsletter of the 2019 season today. This season our newsletters will focus on three types of gardeners: • Traditional Heirloom Gardeners, • Teachers Who Inspire Children to Become Gardeners and • Container Gardeners This newsletter’s topic is PEAS, one of the oldest, most beloved fruits of all time. Peas probably originated in Eastern Europe or Central Asia and are among the oldest of the cultivated crops and one of the most important to civilization. It is thought that mankind began to cultivate plants and seeds around 10,000 BC and archaeologists have found evidence
View more -
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. The Poinsettia Story Of all the flowers and herbs associated with the celebration of Christmas, the poinsettia is considered the quintessential Christmas flower. The poinsettia and the amaryllis are the only New World plants that have come to be a part of the Christmas holiday. The legend of the poinsettia is that one Christmas Eve, a little Mexican girl –child of a very poor family – was crying
View more -
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 the difficulty many accomplished gardeners have with growing certain flowers from seeds. Some of our most beautiful flowers pose real challenges, but these challenges can be easily overcome if these flowers are planted in November. Today’s newsletter is going to discuss many of the flowers that do best when planted in November or even as late as December. Planting flower seed in November/December is really easy. It is just
View more