Gardening

I've just started reading the recent issue of Mother Earth News and pleased to try out and explore the new Garden Planner. The first step is to set up a quick account, decide if you want email reminders that include planting tips, hints and a reminder to actually plant at the appropriate times, excellent idea!! Once you register you will get an activation code sent to your email address, next you enter your zip code, your frost dates are placed on your personal calendar and you have other options including if you want perennial updates as well as vegetables.

Once you get the preliminary information entered you will enter the size and type of space you are planning. My first project will be the vegetable garden for 2011, which included some perennial vegetables like Asparagus. I am just now setting my gardens up and will update you as to the time it takes to set up the plan and ease of using their new planner. I see that they offer a lot of tutorials and a great help section for me to view, like most people I will just right into the planner only to read the instructions later..

What's Bugging Me

The warm months of summer bring these beasts to my gardens and I dread their arrival. According to Wikipedia the species Popillia japonica isn't much of a pest in Japan due to natural predators but that isn't the case here in the states. They were first discovered in the US in 1916 and thought to have hitched a ride on iris bulbs before commodity inspections began.
Each year, from late June to Mid July, my roses, grapes, cannas, peas and many other plants take a lot of abuse from these little devils. I have to beat them out to the raspberries as they love to suck the juice out of the ripe fruit before they can be picked. Huge holes are chewed in the leaves of many of my plants and my roses have the blossoms eaten before they can open.
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What's going on in the garden

It is still snowing in Vermont and there isn't a lot going on outside, all the activity is indoors at this point. The gardening catalogs are coming in and seeds will be ordered soon. I have been using an online garden planner to organize and track progress, it will be interesting to see how helpful this site will be. On the left is a photo of the Night Blooming Cereus that we have been growing for a few years. Last year it bloomed for the first time but for some reason it did so the long weekend we were out of town, we missed the whole thing. Our goal for this summer is to have a bigger and better bloom that we can catch on camera.