The Hort

The official Tumblr of The Horticultural Society of New York (The Hort)   www.thehort.org   FACEBOOK   TWITTER   INSTAGRAM

[thehort-blog]

Spring is finally here! Check out these baby radishes and lettuce that are sprouting at the PS 161 learning garden.

[thehort-blog]

Did you know that North Carolina is the only place on earth where Venus flytraps grow natively? 

We had so much fun learning about carnivorous plants with Midtown Carnivores at our annual children's event, that we wanted to share what we learned. Hop over to our blog, Water Daily, to check out more facts about different species of carnivorous plants, and to see what else we've been up to lately!

[libutron]

Waxy Gills | ©Ken Beath

Hygrocybe miniata (Fungi - Basidiomycota - Agaricomycetes - Agaricales - Hygrophoraceae). - Australia

[thehort-blog]

Did you know that the Hygrocybe miniata or vermilion waxcap can be found all over the world? Come learn about the connections between mushrooms and plants at the first talk in our spring lecture series with the New York Mycological Society: Mushrooms and Plants: Connecting the Dots, with Gary Lincoff on February 5!

[thehort-blog]

Are you a Horticultural Therapist, or know someone who is? We're looking for someone to join our team! Check out our job posting page to read about the open position as well as our many internship opportunities!

[thehort-blog]

Our Director of Children's Education encountered this fuzzy friend over the weekend, could it be a sign of a mild winter?

The Old Farmer's Almanac says... maybe...!

Originating in the late 1940s, the folklore says that the longer the brown band on a woolly bear caterpillar, the more mild the coming winter will be. Conversely, shorter brown bands mean a harsher winter. 

What do you think? Read more about the history of entomologists' thoughts on woolly caterpillars' season-predicting characteristics at The Old Farmer's Almanac.

[thehort-blog]

Do you love the tomatoes you have been getting from the market lately? Do you love them so much you wish you could grow them yourself? Guess what – you can! Or at least you can try.

Seed saving has been around since the beginning of agriculture but the simple skill set was phased out in favor of purchasing seeds annually. In fact, the traditional practice of saving and exchanging certain varieties of seeds has become illegal for farmers because of patents placed on plants by big seed companies.

That being said, there is nothing to fear from homegrown seed-saved tomatoes! But how do you do it?

Hop over to our blog, Water Daily for directions

[thehort-blog]

Check out this great story Fox News did on our GreenTeam! Bonus—the video shows a sneak peek of some of our newly-installed school gardens!

[thehort-blog]

Congratulations to our Container Gardening Contest winners! The first place winner (from Brooklyn, NY) included some very thrilling fountain grass for his "thriller." The second place winner (from Madison, WI) chose to use rattlesnake coleus to give her container a more subtle "thriller."

As inspiration for your 2014 containers, check out what other plants our winners used.

[offwhit-e-blog]

[thehort-blog]

Mushroom awe

[bluedollarbillzmusic]

[thehort-blog]

Happy Friday, everyone! Here's to a plant-happy weekend...

[thehort-blog]

Thirty high school students in our Greening Western Queens Green Infrastructure Institute created a vertical garden at PS 85 in Astoria. 

They planted parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and other herbs in the pockets for the elementary students to eat in the Fall.  Our green infrastructure training, in partnership with Global Kids, runs until August 2.  

Learn more about our Children's Education programs and our involvement with Greening Western Queens on our website.

[thehort-blog]

Have you ever planted a container garden? Now is your time to try!

Enter images of your masterpiece in our Container Garden Competition by August 16th for your chance to win a beautiful hydroponic planter from Modern Sprout and Farrow & Ball!

[thehort-blog]

What to eat this week: Cucamelons! Also known as Mouse Melon or Mexican Sour Cucumber, Melothria scabra is part of the Cucurbitaceae family and is native to Mexico and Central America.

Also, they are delicious.

[thehort-blog]

Did you miss the Barge Celebration? It was a lovely night filled with fun, music, and DIY projects at the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Read our recap and check out our Barge Celebration photo set on Flickr and then head over to our website to join our email list so you don't miss upcoming events!

[thehort-blog]

We made the cover!

Check out the current issue of Edible Manhattan to read the featured article about our GreenHouse program on Rikers Island written by Carrington Morris and photographed by Lindsay Morris.

Our very own Hilda Krus, Director of GreenHouse and Horticultural Therapy Programs is quoted explaining the uniqueness of our program on Rikers:

“A lot of the state facilities have horticulture, but it’s not necessarily therapeutic,” says Hort therapist Hilda Krus in reference to other correctional institutions nationwide. “It might be a vocational program, or it might be ground maintenance.” She’s been director of the GreenHouse program since 2008 and speaks with an exceptional combination of gentleness and strength in her German-accented intonations. “Those three elements our curriculum has—hands-on vocational training, indoor and outdoor classroom education and horticultural therapy—that combination is relatively rare.”

Read the full article here.

[npr]

Scape velocity: Green garlic takes flight

If you’ve never grown garlic, here’s how you do it: On a bright cool fall afternoon, before the ground has frozen, you pry an ordinary, unpeeled clove of garlic off the bulb. You plant it in the ground, about 4 inches down and pointy side up. Maybe you cover the soil with some straw to protect it from extremes of heat, cold and drought.

Then comes the easy part — you forget about it. Thanksgiving comes, and a procession of seasonal holidays in which a lot of garlic is eaten, but none is given much thought. Thus ignored, the buried clove sleeps on while you sample chocolates in February and when the maple runs in March. And then, one day while venturing out into the winter-battered garden, still frost-edged and filled with flattened weeds, you see it — a small firm shoot poking up out of the ground like a miniature dorsal fin, glowing a brilliant emerald in an otherwise plantless wasteland.

Read more and discover three recipes (sure to give you garlic breath) on NPR’s Kitchen Window blog.

(Photo: T. Susan Chang/For NPR)

[thehort-blog]

Though it seems like summer just started, this makes us excited for fall, or as we like to call it, bulb-planting season.

[laughingsquid]

An Animated History of the Tulip

[nybg]

We’re well past the bloom boom of the tulip for 2013, but what you’re looking at is pretty much a Monty Pythonized history of the bulb. That’s evergreen, as Tumblr posts go.

And if you can’t conceive of an ornamental garden plant virtually tanking a national economy, well, this is a must-watch. —MN

[thehort-blog]

We've been talking a lot about the cut-flower industry around here lately. This (very cool) video provides a fascinating look at the history of one of our favorite perennials.