Gardening
9 Garden Planning Tips for the Greatest Return
Celano is a patio type grape tomato that produces sweet oblong fruit.
photo credit: All-America Selections
We’ve all done it…gotten overzealous in spring and overplanted or planted the wrong varieties for our tastes and needs. Make this the year you plan your garden for the best return on your investment.
First, prepare a list before placing your catalogue order or making that first trip to the garden center. Without a bit of preplanning our carts end up filled with more seeds and plants than space available or varieties that are not suited to our growing conditions or our family’s taste.
Make sure each plant you select provides the greatest return on investment by including winning varieties with a visit to the All-America Selections (AAS) website (all-americaselections.org). This non-profit trialing organization has test sites across the US and Canada that trial and select winning varieties for their taste and garden performance.
Review your favorite recipes and consider growing the ingredients you need on a regular basis. Salad lovers may want to plant a container of greens that can be harvested daily. Sandy Lettuce and colorful mild flavored Red Kingdom Mizuna are slow to bolt, extending the harvest into warmer months. Add some super nutritious Prizm kale for your morning smoothies and salads. Prizm’s stemless stalks releaf quickly after harvest so you’ll have a continuous supply.
Fill a corner of the garden or container with a small-fruited tomato or two for salads, snacking and other daily treats. Red Celano grape tomato (a determinate for containers) and the light-yellow sweet Firefly tomato (an indeterminate for vertical or staked gardens) are attractive and very productive, ensuring more than enough for your whole family to enjoy.
Add a bit of crunch and color by growing Roxanne radishes. And don’t forget the cucumbers. Green Light cucumbers are seedless, sweet and prolific – great for salads or a refreshing summer drink. Keep a constant supply of these ingredients by making small plantings throughout the season.
Grow several containers of tasty and attractive Delizz strawberries. These everbearing plants will provide a pretty pot of fresh strawberries throughout the summer for your morning oatmeal or afternoon glass of wine.
Plant unusual vegetables you can’t purchase at the grocery store. Roulette pepper has the look and citrusy flavor of a habanero without the heat. And you won’t find anything like Yellow Apple tomato at the store. It has small unique apple-shaped fruit with a citrusy sweet flavor that’s perfect for snacks or stuffing with cheese.
Dedicate some space for those vegetables that are more expensive to buy than grow. Green peppers are a bargain in the summer, but the yellow, orange and red ones can cost two to three times more. Reduce the wait time and increase your enjoyment with early maturing colorful peppers like Orange Blaze or the yellow sweet peppers like Cornito Giallo, Escamillo or Just Sweet.
If you plan to freeze, dry or can your harvest, make sure to reserve some time during harvest season for picking and preserving. Select disease resistant productive varieties like Early Resilience Roma Tomato so you’ll have plenty of produce to preserve.
This is your year to produce a garden filled with just enough family favorites and unusual varieties that are less expensive to grow than buy.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including Small Space Gardening. . She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” DVD series and the Melinda’s Garden Moment TV & radio segments. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and was commissioned by AAS for her expertise to write this article. Her web site is www.MelindaMyers.com.
Antiques
Antiques That Got Away
Long time fishermen like to share stories about the ones that got away. We’ve been fortunate enough to auction some incredible items like Eliot Ness’s credentials, the memorabilia from Boston’s Durgin Park restaurant, and a coat Admiral Byrd wore on one of his expeditions. However, there are always things we wish we had gotten the opportunity to sell that slipped through our fingers.
When I first started to sell antiques, I bought a copy of the “Want Advertiser” every week, the morning it was distributed. The Want Ad was based in Sudbury, MA and magazines were distributed to most of the local convenience stores. The Want Ad listed a broad range of classified ad categories including cars, pets and antiques.
One week I saw that someone in Worcester advertised a photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s assassins at the gallows. I met with the seller but the $550 asking price seemed like a big expense when I was new to the business and only running my antique business part time. I thought about it more and decided I should buy it. I called the seller back a couple of days later and it had already sold. As a side note, after operating for 50 years in business, The Want Advertiser closed in 2006. Online classified ads like Craigslist eliminated the need for a print magazine.
I’ve seen some great items at appraisal events. Most people just want to know what their items are worth, but some want to auction their pieces. At an appraisal event at the Worcester Senior Center, someone brought in a collection of Victorian lithographed games to be evaluated. They were in pristine condition and I appraised them in the mid-thousands. The owner already had a handshake agreement with another auction house to sell them when I met with him. He honored his agreement and sold them with the other auctioneer. At another appraisal event in Barre we had some slack time and I informed the group about what type of items were selling well. When I told them that older baseball cards were very desirable, one of the attendees said he had many unopened packages of 1950’s era baseball cards in the original store display box. I was hoping to discuss auctioning them with him before the end of the event, but he left while attendees were still asking questions. There’s probably still a box of baseball cards worth tens of thousands sitting in a closet somewhere in Central Massachusetts.
I enjoyed meeting with the members of the Southbridge Women’s Club and appraising their items last week. My “Evaluating your antiques” class will take place on March 3rd at the Bay Path Adult Education Evening School. I’ll be appraising items at E.N. Jenckes Store Museum for the Douglas, MA Historical Society on May 3rd. Other events are being scheduled. Please see www.centralmassauctions.com for details on these and other events.
Contact us at: Wayne Tuiskula Auctioneer/Appraiser Central Mass Auctions for Antique Auctions, Estate Sales and Appraisal Services www.centralmassauctions.com (508-612- 6111) info@centralmassauctions.com