GARDENING TIPS

Can you feel it?  Spring is getting closer!  With the vernal equinox this month, our green thumbs are itching and our garden beds are twitching in anticipation of new life right outside our doors.  If you haven’t done so already, plan out your vegetable garden on a sheet of paper so you can use your space most efficiently.  Plan for some companion planting to strengthen your plants and repel pests--remember, nasturtiums and marigolds repel white flies and aphids!—and don’t forget to rotate the vegetables in the garden to reduce insect and disease problems. 

Now is a great time to choose seeds from our great selection, and begin starting those tender annual and perennial seeds indoors, as well as those tasty tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.  Starting seeds indoors in March gives you a huge jump on the gardening season. Seeds can be started in pots, trays, egg cartons or even in cottage cheese cartons.

Turn your compost pile soon, and get ready to prepare the vegetable garden soil for planting by adding well-rotted manure, peat moss, or compost to the soil.  It won’t be long until you can plant those snow peas, and other cold-hardy vegetables.  Snow Peas are a hardy annual vegetable that can be planted as soon as the earth can be worked.  Don’t be afraid of them getting caught in a spring snowstorm; when the snow melts, these hardy plants will resume their growing.

Now, look up from the garden bed and check your trees and bushes.  Don’t prune trees that bleed, like birches and maples, until their leaves are fully developed, but go ahead and finish pruning your shrubs and ornamental trees before their growth starts.  Hold off on your little flowering shrubs, though; prune those when they finish flowering.

If you haven't done so already, clean, oil and sharpen your stored tools.  And if you whiled away some long winter hours by making birdhouses, now is the time to put them outside.  It won’t be long before our feathered friends will be looking for nesting sites.

MARCH CALENDAR OF

2 Dr. Seuss (author) born, 1904
7 New Moon
8 International Women's Day; Plant a Flower Day
9 Daylight Saving Time Starts
14 Learn about Butterflies Day
17 St. Patrick's Day
20 Vernal Equinox: First Day of Spring
21 Full Moon; Johann Sebastian Bach born, 1685
22 International Goof Off Day
23 Easter
24 Harry Houdini (magician) born, 1874
25 National Family Day

YART remembers and honors Mildred Tolbert - a YART artisan and regular, a long-time Taos local, and an honored Taos artist. Her glass art and her book, Among the Taos Moderns, are YART bestsellers.

In her last few years, Mildred received well-deserved and widespread artistic recognition in the form of her 2005 photographic exhibitions at the Shipley Gallery, her 2006 exhibition at the Harwood Museum, and as an Honored Artist in the Originals 2007 show at the Millicent Rogers Museum. Paintings from her art collection now belong to the Harwood Museum along with her donation of seven thousand of her negatives.

Millie blessed the world with her contagious smile, historic photography, and independent spirit for 88 years, and her memory will live on and continue to inspire others.

Mildred at her Taos home, July 2006 photo credit from her book

"Last summer when Yart opened, Mildred was a regular visitor. She was very encouraging and excited for our new venture and pretty soon she was a part of it. First she brought us her book Among the Taos Moderns. It has been our best seller. And she honored us with her glass art.

It was exciting to see her get the recognition she deserved these last few years.

We will miss her and that smile that would light up the room." Kathy Kronawitter

Mildred New York photo credit from her book

"Mildred Tolbert turned 88 last year. I rented the apartment connected to her house. Her will, strength, and independence was very apparent even in her old age.

One day I came out of our house after a big snowstorm and Millie had gotten her car stuck in a ditch. She carried this heavy sand bag across the yard, proceeded to dig her car out of the snow and hesitated when we demanded she hand over the shovel.

Through her art, Mildred captured an incredibly potent moment in Taos history - the boom of tri-cultural resonance, a time when art and artists came to Taos. Not only did she fully experience the times, she captured it with her art... before the plaza was paved and fiestas lingered late into the night with natives selling and trading, Los Ranchos de Taos still abundantly fertile, the big families still sharing small adobe casitas, and the newcomers filtering in their artistic hippie commune ways." Kayla Gano

The average Taos gardener has long since stopped viewing rabbits as cute little critters with fluffy butts, and now sees them as destructive oversized rodent pests.  While the determined gardener experiences success by building a veritable fortress of rabbit-proof fences around their garden with accents of chicken wire and high voltage, others are still searching for a more peaceful and aesthetic solution to these pesky vegetarian thieves.  YART understands this dilemma and brings you the following five tips so you can plan ahead for this year’s pest prevention:

Unfortunately neither bad pick-up lines nor crude jokes have any effect on rabbits.  Instead, plant some naturally repellent plants in and around the rabbits' favorite victims.  Rabbits avoid foxglove (Digitalis) and monkshood (Aconitum) because they’re poisonous.  Other plants simply smell gross to rabbits or repel them for other reasons; a good bet is to plant some Mexican marigolds, dusty miller, garlic, onions, lavender, and especially catnip!  And if some four-legged furballs are on your side, remember that the smell of a garden frequented by a catnip-craving cat will also smell quite foul and fearsome to Bugs Bunny and company.

Fill 1-gallon (4-l) glass bottles with water and set them among your plants. Sunlight bouncing off the glass will startle the bunnies and send them fleeing.  Other reflective YART yard art may do the trick as well.

No, don’t shave their fluffy tail or open their tiny trench coats.  Instead, remove brush and keep grasses low so those timid rabbits don't have anywhere to hide.

Ferrets are skilled rabbit-chasers, and if your request to borrow a weasel draws strange looks, see how they react when you beg for ferret poop instead.  Hopefully a pet shop or ferret-owning friend will stop laughing long enough to help you out and you can scatter the droppings around your plants.  If you have a menagerie that includes indoor cats, keep in mind that soiled cat litter from a cat that has killed and eaten wild animals is one of the best organic rabbit repellents around.  If the smell isn’t a nuisance to you, spread the dirty cat litter, while still fresh, around your garden once a week.

Attract them away from the garden, that is.  Plant a patch of clover or alfalfa away from your main garden to divert the rabbits' attention and satisfy their voracious appetites.  If you can’t beat them, feed them the stuff you don’t want.

Soup,
My partner has a terrible time waking up in the mornings, and I always spend way too much time helping her get up.  It’s getting frustrating!  What should I do?

Signed,
Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,
Have you tried licking her face?  That always works for me.  Other ideas include noisy flatulence near her facial area, digging holes in her blankets, and barking loudly at the closet door for no reason. As a last resort, just let her oversleep.  Perhaps the natural consequences will prove effective.

Namaste and Woof,
Soup

A Girl's Garden
by Robert Frost (born 26 March 1874)

A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!

"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.

Come check out our unique selection of Seeds of Change seeds.  We have more variety than the common packets found elsewhere in town, including many suited to our short growing season.  Come see for yourself!

Peg and Alita are starting plants now in our greenhouse, so this spring YART customers will be able to pick up fully grown plants!  No need to wait all summer to enjoy those geraniums!   

Kathy is offering free private floral instruction all month.  Simply call and make an appointment, and learn to make a lovely dried floral arrangement any time during the month.  You buy the materials, and instruction is free.