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Articles from Francis Rosenfeld | Selfgrowth.com
- Delightful Aromatics - by Submitted on Jul 11, 2020 from Francis RosenfeldAromatics come in two flavors: kitchen herbs and medicinals. A few herbs cross over from one category to the other, rosemary and lavender would be good examples of that, although using lavender for cooking is a bit of an acquired taste. Almost everybody has grown kitchen herbs on a sunny ...
Views: 638 - Eighteen and Snowing - by Submitted on Jan 08, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldI woke up this morning to a wispy snow flurry, the thin and icy kind that comes about when temperatures drop too low. Eighteen degrees, to be precise. It settled, unsure, in a thin, powdery layer that still lets the ground show through. I almost hesitated to disturb the pristine cover when I ...
Views: 638 - Caring for Bulbs During the Cold Season - by Submitted on Nov 07, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldWhen you plant bulbs, whether that happens in fall or spring, don’t forget to mix in a good measure of bone meal into the dirt, to help them set in and give them some food for the first year. Other than that, bulbs don’t need a lot of care. Because they are usually sprinkled among other ...
Views: 637(1 vote) - What Plants Need to Thrive - by Submitted on Jul 20, 2021 from Francis RosenfeldIf you ever drove by a flower meadow in the middle of summer, you must have realized that plants handle themselves very well without human assistance, as they’ve always done. The gardener is only there to cheer them along. A plant needs three things to thrive: sunlight, water and a proper ...
Views: 637 - Plants that Bring Luck - by Submitted on Mar 12, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldIt seems fitting, on Saint Patrick's Day, to make a list of plants that bring luck, you know, just in case. Let’s start with the classics: lavender and roses. No garden should be without them - lavender for luck, roses for love. Honesty and sage attract prosperity to the household. It is said ...
Views: 635 - Roasting Marshmallows - by Submitted on Dec 12, 2017 from Francis RosenfeldMy son had to stay home from school. Since the reason was a tummy ache he was required to rest for the day and not engage in his regular activities, all of which involve some kind of computerized device. After a long drawn discussion about being unfairly deprived of the activities he had been ...
Views: 635 - What's in a name - by Submitted on Mar 31, 2015 from Francis RosenfeldBeing vague in gardening often yields hilarious results. I will apply myself to relearning horticulture basics next season, and heed the experts' advice to be specific about what I'm planning to plant. Here are a few lessons I learned this year. Paying attention to the correct Latin ...
Views: 635 - Goldenrod, a medicinal? - by Submitted on Jul 18, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldI always thought of goldenrod as a dyer's plant and was surprised to learn that it has medicinal properties. Its Latin name, Solidago, literally means "to make whole", and puts goldenrod squarely in the wound healing category. It has other medicinal properties, too, mostly related to improving ...
Views: 634 - Caring for Bulbs During the Cold Season - by Submitted on Nov 02, 2017 from Francis RosenfeldWhen you plant bulbs, whether that happens in fall or spring, don’t forget to mix in a good measure of bone meal into the dirt, to help them set in and give them some food for the first year. Other than that, bulbs don’t need a lot of care. Because they are usually sprinkled among other ...
Views: 632 - Beautiful Flowers to Grow in the Shade - by Submitted on May 29, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe shade border rests at the end of summer, when it gets too warm and too dry for its taste. Since last summer was cool and rainy, the plants maintained the exuberant growth of early spring. The hostas were lush and full, the begonias were in full bloom and the toad lilies doubled in ...
Views: 629 - Fall Schedule - by Submitted on Nov 15, 2017 from Francis RosenfeldIf only a little late in the season, here are a few things for the fall gardener’s schedule. I haven’t even started most of mine yet, sadly. Mid-fall is the best time to move, divide or plant spring and summer blooming perennials. Fall perennials can be moved and divided at this time too, if ...
Views: 629 - Plant Catalogs - by Submitted on Aug 16, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldIf you are a dedicated green thumb, all you do after winter begins is sit around and wait for it to be over. Two long months of dreary weather later, the sight of spring catalogs gracing your mailbox is a hopeful sign of better days to come. Some people go by the buds on the trees, others by the ...
Views: 627 - Toad Lilies - by Submitted on Oct 10, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldThe summer is officially over, both in the garden and on the calendar, we just passed he point when the day becomes shorter than the night. The light shifted, a soft but impossible to miss change that always precedes the beginning of fall. As usual at the end of September I'm excited to welcome ...
Views: 627 - Misconceptions about Spring Bulbs - by Submitted on Dec 29, 2017 from Francis RosenfeldAnd here I thought that crocuses didn’t like my garden! To be fair, I never tried the yellow ones before, but I also thought the lack of acidity in the soil didn’t agree with them. Apparently I was wrong. I’ll take the opportunity to clear up a few misconceptions about spring bulbs. Shade ...
Views: 626 - Cooking with Roses - by Submitted on Dec 21, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldWhere I grew up, roses belonged in the pantry. Between the rose preserves, the rose syrups, and the rose water in pastry dough, the aristocratic flowers doubled up as bona fide cooking ingredients. What do roses taste like? They are a bit of an acquired taste. Rose preserves are extremely ...
Views: 625 - Magic Beans - by Submitted on May 21, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldI plant scarlet runner beans for their flowers - all the beauty of sweet peas with none of the high maintenance. Of course they are not fragrant, but nothing in this life is perfect. If you plant them as a crop, and during favorable years they do produce, don’t pick them green, you are not ...
Views: 625 - My Vegetable Garden - by Submitted on Apr 02, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldEvery year I’m looking forward to planting the miniature vegetable garden. I know this defies logic, given the amount of space I have available for it, but if I listened to logic I wouldn’t have ventured into gardening at all. It features the same plants every year: tomatoes, bell peppers, ...
Views: 625(1 vote) - What to Do with Herbs - by Submitted on Jul 11, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldGetting from the aromatic plant in the garden to the home made health or beauty product involves a couple of preliminary steps - preserving the herbs for long term storage and transferring their active ingredients into a medium easy to work with, usually oil. Drying is the most common way to ...
Views: 625 - Propagating Plants from Cuttings - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldStem, root or leaf cuttings are the nursery standard for the propagation of perennials, especially those whose clumps grow woody with time. The benefit of this method is that the young plants are true clones of their parents. Leaf cutting is the simplest and most miraculous of the methods. It ...
Views: 624 - Daylilies - by Submitted on May 26, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldIt’s not summer until the day lilies bloom and they usually do so before the fourth of July in anticipation of the joyous celebration. For a few weeks the whole garden turns blazing orange and after the flowers fade, their foliage slowly dies down to the ground to make room to the late summer ...
Views: 622 - Morning Glory - by Submitted on Sep 13, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldI plant morning glory every year. Always in the same spot, always the same variety - Heavenly Blue. I forget about it after I plant it, it is slow to start in spring and its foliage gets lost in the jumble when the mid-summer growth takes over the flower beds. Come August, its growth ...
Views: 622 - Rosemary - by Submitted on Oct 03, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldWhen you start looking into its qualities, rosemary can be quite intimidating, it seems to be good for everything: it makes hair grow strong and shiny, rejuvenates skin, boosts memory and concentration, sharpens eyesight, thins the blood and helps lower the risk of cancer. This impressive resume ...
Views: 619 - High Drama - by Submitted on Jan 20, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldIf you want to create drama in your garden, by all means, pick all white flowers. People don’t usually crave intensity in a cottage garden, which is a care free collection of gregarious annuals and perennials suited to comfort the spirit rather than stir it up. Most of the cottage garden ...
Views: 617 - Perennial Borders - by Submitted on Feb 13, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldOne of the myths of gardening is that once you planted a perennial border it is set in stone and it will come back, year after year, exactly the same. That is not true at all, I look through pictures of my garden through the last few seasons and it is almost unrecognizable from one year to the ...
Views: 617 - Why leaves turn - by Submitted on Sep 15, 2015 from Francis RosenfeldFor the less romantically inclined among us, who don't get misty eyed over nature's autumnal carnival of color but would like to know why the leaves turn, here is the full prose version of it. Foliage comes with three pigments: green - the chlorophyll, yellow-orange - the carotenoids, and ...
Views: 617 - Garden Textures - by Submitted on Sep 10, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe difference between planting and landscape design comes from paying attention to seemingly unimportant details and one of them is texture. Its impact is even greater in the shade, where very few plants bloom. A well balanced shade border will have all of the following: Broad leaved ...
Views: 615 - Second Wind - by Submitted on Jul 08, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldSomebody who is fated to live a linear life can’t easily grasp the cycles of nature; I’m envious, almost, of the way the garden gets to reshuffle the deck at the end of each year and start fresh in spring, one level up from where it was before. Sometimes this cycle skips like a record with a ...
Views: 612 - Bells of Ireland - by Submitted on Dec 17, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldHave you ever had this sinking feeling, when you want to try a plant you’ve never grown before and you look at the beautiful photos on the seed packet, that there is absolutely no way this botanical wonder will ever grow in your garden? I’m not one to dismiss instinct, it is usually based on ...
Views: 611 - Planters - by Submitted on Aug 07, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldThe planters get a little tired and overgrown by the end of the summer, when the ideal combination of colors, heights and textures or their original design gives in to the whims of nature. There is beauty in that disarray, the beauty of the natural hierarchy that establishes itself outside of ...
Views: 611 - The Fountain at the Center of the Garden - by Submitted on Aug 08, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldThe fountain at the center of the garden was a staple of medieval landscape design. Its simple yet powerful symbolism was derived from necessity, but speaks to that part of the soul that envisions water as healing and life giving. Nowhere is a tiny fountain more at home than at the center of a ...
Views: 610 - All Things Lucky and Green - by Submitted on Dec 28, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldIt seems fitting, now at the end of the year, to make a list of plants that bring luck, you know, just in case. Let’s start with the classics: lavender and roses. No garden should be without them - lavender for luck, roses for love. Honesty and sage attract prosperity to the household. It ...
Views: 609 - Time for a Little Winter Pampering - by Submitted on Dec 25, 2017 from Francis RosenfeldOne of the best things about winter is that one doesn’t feel guilty about indulging in a little pampering. After all, the weather is god-awful, there isn’t a lot of activity in the garden, and dry winter skin gives one every justification for a well needed home spa session. There is a lot ...
Views: 607 - Geraniums for Skincare - by Submitted on Jun 07, 2020 from Francis RosenfeldAfter a streak of sunny days, mother nature decided to bring the gloom, and I never pass the opportunity gloom provides to indulge in relaxation and pampering, isn’t this what rainy days were created for? The flower buds are on the brink of opening, but it looks like they decided to wait for ...
Views: 606 - Planning for Spring - by Submitted on Jan 23, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldUsually by this time I’m already overtaken by cabin fever and dreaming of beautiful summer days, but this year, with the exception of a few days of brutal cold at the beginning of the month, it seems weather forgot winter exists. I hesitate to mention this because I don’t want to jinx it; ...
Views: 606 - Container Gardening - by Submitted on Jun 21, 2020 from Francis RosenfeldContainer gardening sneaks up on you. You start with one potted plant and pretty soon the entire patio or balcony is covered in them, looking almost indistinguishable from the adjacent flower bed. If you have lots of plants in pots, keep them grouped. That way the containers get some ...
Views: 605 - Sleeping Garden - by Submitted on Dec 16, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldIf you were wondering what happens to your perennials during their winter hibernation, here goes. At the approach of winter they transform the sugars developed through photosynthesis into starch, which they can store inside their roots long term and use during the winter in the same way ...
Views: 605 - The Magic Hour - by Submitted on Jan 05, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldToday I was out in the garden before dawn and I watched the crescent moon fade slowly into daylight as carpets of clouds moved very fast across the sky. Slowly the birds and the moths started to emerge from their nightly hideouts, eager to catch an early meal before the morning rush. The ...
Views: 603 - Bulb Propagation - by Submitted on Nov 20, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldIf you love root division you’ll be happy to know that it works for bulbs too, via scaling, slicing, scooping and scoring. Scaling is a propagation method that seems almost custom designed for lilies, whose bulbs “bloom” naturally, turning them into tiny clusters that look like artichokes. ...
Views: 600 - Perennial Garden - by Submitted on Jan 19, 2021 from Francis RosenfeldTwo autumns ago I started a lot of perennials from divisions: irises, daisies, garden phlox, daylilies, and this is the year for them to start blooming. Of course, this fall I forgot to move the beautiful Pink Sorbet peony, which means it’s going to spend another spring trying to dig itself out ...
Views: 600 - Yarrow - by Submitted on Jul 05, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldA resilient weed, native to the northern hemisphere, yarrow grows wild in open fields and along the sides of the roads, and had only recently gained the privilege to be cultivated in flower gardens. Don't judge this humble herb to be ordinary, Achillea millefolium is a well documented medicinal ...
Views: 599 - Garden Textures - by Submitted on Jul 02, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe difference between planting and landscape design comes from paying attention to seemingly unimportant details and one of them is texture. Its impact is even greater in the shade, where very few plants bloom. A well balanced shade border will have all of the following: Broad leaved ...
Views: 598 - Garden Color Theory - by Submitted on Mar 11, 2019 from Francis RosenfeldThe most common harmonies in the garden are derived straight from art color theory: monochrome, complementary, triadic, and analogous. The monochrome scheme is pretty straight forward. Same color, same hue. Everywhere. The complementary scheme is one of the most used in professional ...
Views: 597 - Harvesting Rain Water - by Submitted on Jun 27, 2016 from Francis RosenfeldHarvesting the rain doesn’t stop at installing rain barrels, it involves the entire garden and its principal goal is to keep the water from running off the plot onto paved areas, only to eventually end up in the storm drains. Careful planning can create places for the rain water to slow down ...
Views: 597 - November Rose - by Submitted on Dec 21, 2020 from Francis RosenfeldI was walking through the garden trying to assess what is left to do before winter descends upon us for good and I ran into a lovely surprise. My miniature rose decided to brave two killing frosts and a freezing rain and bloom in the middle of November. Contrary to popular belief roses are ...
Views: 595 - Purple Belles - by Submitted on Jul 26, 2020 from Francis RosenfeldYou would think that hostas, like the shade plants with broad foliage that they are, would love nothing more than a rainy summer, right? Partially. They developed luxurious foliage, and yes, the large fragrant ones did bloom, but not as abundantly as they usually do. You are looking at a picture ...
Views: 595 - Medicinal Herbs - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe first time I saw an herb garden in a public park I asked myself what was the point of it? The fact that it occupied a small nook in the middle of the rose garden, at a time when all the roses were in bloom, didn’t help its cause very much. I know better now. Of course, I selected the ...
Views: 594 - Surreal - by Submitted on Aug 06, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe middle of July brought its favorites - the lilies, the phlox, the daisies. I'm not sure whether cone flowers really are supposed to grow five foot tall. There is fierce competition in the sunny border for the land and the light. I can barely make my way through the bee balms and the ...
Views: 594 - The Gardening Year - by Submitted on Mar 19, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldI was browsing through past years’ gardening articles and I got overtaken by this feeling of certainty and permanence. It is extraordinary how consistent nature’s cycles are, almost down to day for the first bloom, the last frost, the unavoidable late freeze. Keeping a gardening journal ...
Views: 593 - Fall Textures - by Submitted on Sep 24, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe best way to describe the September garden is a charming mess. The summer plants don’t know whether it makes sense for them to keep going, and when they do bloom they do so in bursts and spurts that have a jarring effect on the fall landscape, which is of a completely different ...
Views: 590 - Beautiful Flowers to Plant in the Shade - by Submitted on Jul 09, 2018 from Francis RosenfeldThe shade border rests at the end of summer, when it gets too warm and too dry for its taste. Since this summer was cool and rainy, the plants maintained the exuberant growth of early spring. The hostas are lush and full, the begonias are in full bloom and the toad lilies have doubled in ...
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