“Gifts Your Plant-Loving Friends Might Dig - Hartford Courant” |
| Gifts Your Plant-Loving Friends Might Dig - Hartford Courant Posted: 26 Nov 2009 03:10 PM PST You've finished planting those daffodil bulbs you forgot about, thrown the last rotten tomato over the fence and performed the last tick check of the season. It's time to start shopping for holiday gifts for all your gardening friends. A fine clay pot is an extravagance many gardeners won't buy for themselves, so they make perfect gifts. Seibert & Rice of New Jersey (seibert-rice.com) imports handmade terra cotta pots from Impruneta, Italy, and offers them for sale at atmospheric prices and a promise they'll survive frosty weather. Indulge your gardening friend with a collection of "tom pots," ranging in 1-inch increments from 4 inches in diameter for $30 each to 8 inches, for $80. The company's shallow 7½-inch bulb pot, perfect for a collection of spring-blooming ephemerals like Iris reticulata and miniature "Jack Snipe" daffodils, is decorated in bas relief that looks like a Renaissance antique, for $55. Need a conversation piece? Kinsman Co. (kinsmangarden.com) offers "down under" pots. A variation on the popular upside-down tomato bags, the pots look like traditional vases with a bulbous bottom and curved opening at the top. But there's no bottom. The idea is that you stuff the traditional opening with coco fiber, turn the pot over, and fill the bottom with potting soil and a plant, preferably a sprawling type usually reserved for hanging baskets. You grow the plant in the upside-down vase for a few weeks until the roots take hold. Then you invert the pot and hang it from its specially designed hanger. That ensures a lot of double takes at the sight of a vase-like planter that inexplicably has plants growing from the bottom. The pots cost from $13.95 to $40.95, depending on size and design. Fine tools always are appreciated and pruning saws are one instance where you get what you pay for. The plastic-handled 14-inch curved-blade pruning saw from Corona is an easy-handling and efficient tool, available from Orchard's Edge for $20.45 (orchardsedge.com). But for a truly impressive gift, spring for the Japanese-made Silky Oyakata folding saw from Dieter Schmid Fine Tools (fine-tools.com). Of course, you'll have to pay more than the price of the saw, about $50, for delivery from Germany, for a total of $106.82, but it's worth it. Technological improvements have found their way into the lowly work glove, so a good pair no longer means stiff horsehide and loose cuffs. New gardening gloves made of nitrile plastic are a vast improvement. A kind of heavy-duty version of physicians' latex gloves, the nitrile types are stretchy and form-fitting, with a strong nylon knit back that breathes. They allow the wearer enough tactile sense to feel around roots and stems, yet are puncture- and abrasion-resistant. I like the version offered by Lee Valley Tools Ltd., which are inexpensive and come in four sizes at $7.50 a pair (leevalley.com). If you need something for rougher duty, try Bionic Elite Gloves at YardLover.com, which are made of lightweight cabretta leather but have stretchy neoprene inserts over the knuckles for more flexibility, at $39.95 a pair. Wildflower fanatics might appreciate a copy of "Wildflowers in the Field and Forest: A Field Guide to the Northeastern United States" by Steve Clemants and Carol Gracie of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens (bbg.org). It costs $67.50 in hardcover and can be inscribed by the authors at no additional cost. Gardener's Supply Co. has a nice take on the rooting vase: simple containers in three colors of recycled glass that can hang from their own wire handle. Place a cutting in the water-filled vase, hang from a sunny window and watch them root. They cost $11.95 each (gardeners.com). Love Jack Russell terriers but don't want them digging up your garden? Gardener's Supply has a wire topiary frame shaped like an attentive Jack Russell for $74.95. Fill the form with sphagnum moss and plant with ivy or boxwood. A few months of growing and disciplined clipping, and you've got a happy companion without the energetic digging. (Dog topiaries start at $59.95 for a dachshund or poodle and run up to $189.95 for a Labrador retriever.) Finally, a new device allows your computer to tell you what plant will grow in what spot. The EasyBloom Plant Sensor, for $59.95 from PlantSense in California ( www.plantsense.com), looks like a badly executed plastic daisy but has a USB connection on one end. First you plug the sensor into your computer's USB port, where it's programmed with software. Remove the sensor, and poke it into the soil in a spot where you'd like to plant some plants. The sensor collects information about the spot for 24 hours, after which you bring it inside and plug it back into your computer. It connects with the EasyBloom website, where it interprets the data. Depending on what mode it's operating in, the website will compile a list of recommended plants for the location or a diagnosis of possible problems a plant might be encountering in that spot. If you can't tell whether your site is sunny or shady, dry or wet, or if you like the idea of an online plant list, here's your solution. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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