The Gardenangelists: Flowers, Veggies, and All the Best Dirt

Easter Lilies, Vegetable Transplants, and our Favorite Gardening Gloves

April 16, 2019 Carol Michel, Dee Nash Season 1 Episode 24
The Gardenangelists: Flowers, Veggies, and All the Best Dirt
Easter Lilies, Vegetable Transplants, and our Favorite Gardening Gloves
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Show Notes

Flowers:

The Easter lilies that you can buy in the store now are Lilium longiflorium, a type of trumpet lily. You can plant them out in the garden, zones 4 - 8, and they will come back each year. They like neutral soils, full sun, and cool soil. Don’t mulch right up to the stems or the stems may rot. Brent and Becky’s Bulbs has some named varieties including White Heaven.

Madonna lilies, Lilium candidum,  are often shown in church windows, but hardly grown now because of a disease, gray mold. Mary is almost always shown with a Madonna lily because it represents her virginity. Easter lilies, on the other hand, represent the resurrection. Madonna lilies like neutral soils, dry summers, can be grown in sun to partial shade. They have been in cultivation for 3,000 years!  Old House Gardens has Madonna Lilies.    

Both types of lilies will bloom around June-July when grown in a garden. Both are also taller in a garden, 3 feet and up, than when potted and forced into Easter bloom. 

Easter lilies are poisonous to cats ASPCA link.

Vegetables: 

What to look for in vegetable transplants. 

  • Plants should not be too spindly or root bound. Roots should be white.
  • Stocky, young plants are best. Elongated plants mean they didn’t get enough light when growing. 
  • No flowers or fruit on the tomatoes, peppers, etc. in a young plant, that could be a sign of stress.
  • No signs of disease which might show up as brown or yellow lesion spots on leaves, overall droopy appearance or foliage color just looks off… grayish or light.

Plants should be labeled to ensure you get the variety you are expecting. No one wants to see Habanero peppers when they were expecting sweet bell peppers. Or cherry tomatoes when they were expecting a beefsteak tomato.

If your vegetable transplants are greenhouse grown, make sure to harden them off before planting them out.

Plant tomatoes deep, deep, deep unless they are grafted.  

Looking for a new strawberry? Now is the time to plant Berried Treasure™ strawberry, a Proven Winners selections with red flowers.

Dirt:

It is always a good idea to wear gloves when working around plants, especially ornamentals, and wash your hands with soap and water after gardening. Euphorbias and other plants have a sticky sap that can irritate the skin.  Be safe, not sorry. Carol's favorite brand of gloves right now are Mud gloves (affiliate link)  Dee likes them too when it’s cooler and wetter outside. However, she’s fond of these bamboo gloves (affiliate link) when the weather warms.  

Dee also likes heavy duty nitrile gloves (affiliate link) or leather ones for beekeeping.  

Finally, women who garden live

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