Check Out My “Rules, Schmules” Post for Timber Press

Timber Press, publisher of my new gardening book with Jeff Gillman, “Decoding Gardening Advice: the Science Behind the 100 Most Common Recommendations,” asked me to write a few blog posts for them this month as part of a special promotion for the book.

Here’s a link to my latest post, which includes a before/after photo of my front yard. It makes my back hurt just to look at that picture!

Not surprisingly given the book’s title, I wrote about gardening rules and how a lot of them don’t matter as much as people say they do. And then, well, some advice is best taken. I learned that the hard way and I imagine I’m not done learning that lesson. I hope you’ll check my post out here.

Plant Trees Now—And Be Sure to Water Them

Everyone talks about spring being the best time to plant trees and that is true, usually. But fall is also a great time for tree planting as long as you don’t choose birch, firs, oaks and most fruit trees. Those do best when they get a spring start for reasons that are not really understood, though some think it has something to do with tree’s root systems. Trees with a large taproot that grows deep into the soil — rather than a network of finer roots closer to the surface — should not be planted in the fall, they say.

I’ll just add that my own completely unscientific research confirms that birch do better when planted in the spring. I have three birch trees, well, two now. The survivors were planted in the spring and the dead one was planted in the fall. It kicked the bucket in less than two years, which is when I Googled to find out what was up and discovered that I probably sentenced the poor thing to an early death by snapping it up at a fall plant sale and putting it in the ground.