By Tamara Galbraith

Calendula, widely recognized as the Flower of the Month for October, comes from the Latin word calendae, meaning "throughout the months." Gardeners who plant this long-blooming herbaceous annual will find it certainly lives up to its name.

Although members of the marigold family, calendulas' needs are quite different. They actually prefer cooler temperatures and evenly moist soil, and at 1-2 ft. tall, calendulas can get quite a bit bigger than your average marigold, too. If you're putting in transplants, use a slow-release fertilizer at planting time. We recommend Osmocote. Calendulas also do great in containers.

As your calendulas grow and flower, prune back spent blossoms to prolong blooming; some will continue to bloom into late fall, a nice treat since calendulas' predominantly orange and yellow flowers fit in with autumn's color scheme. In hot climates, calendulas will continue to grow throughout the winter.

Calendulas can continue to perform even after they're cut. Add the dried flowers to vinegar and use as a fish marinade or salad dressing. (In fact, the leaves themselves can be harvested for salads.) Tea made from calendula flowers is said to make a soothing eye wash, a mild treatment for skin irritations or a remedy for upset stomachs.

Give this hard-working beauty a try, and you'll be enjoying the calendula--as its name says--throughout the months!

Danny Vu
Green Thumb Garden Pro

Prices are skyrocketing, the economy is not in the best of shape--but we still have to feed nutritious meals to our families. What's the solution? Grow your own cold-weather vegetables! And if you've never grown a vegetable garden before, relax. It isn't rocket science, and the rewards far outweigh the effort. In fact, you can incorporate your vegetables into your floral gardens and increase the visual impact with different colors and textures.

If you've decided to commit to a vegetable-only garden, first pick a 10 square foot area with plenty of sun, as well as a reasonable amount of shade. Work the soil up to a depth of 6 inches, mix in some organic fertilizer, smooth out the surface, and you're ready to plant. Which leads us to...what can you plant?

Cooler weather means leaves, roots, flower buds and pods in the vegetable garden. Leaf vegetables include chard, all lettuces and spinach. If you're in an experimental mood, try planting collards, kale, mustard, endive and chicory. Keep the soil nearly constantly moist as leaf vegetables like their water.

Root vegetables include beets, carrots and radishes. Combine them with onions, leeks and garlic, and along with your lettuces, you'll be salad-healthy all winter long.

Broccoli and cauliflower represent the flower bud category. These plants "head up" best when temperatures at night average about 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit, so be sure to take a break from your gardening to watch your local weather man!

The pods are just that: English peas, snap peas, and sugar peas. (More common beans prefer a warmer season.) And your peas, like your leaf vegetables, like a regular watering schedule, just not as moist or as frequent as the leaf veggies.

When you're steaming your veggies, be liberal with fresh lemon squeezes. And toss the used lemon segment into the steaming water, along with freshly ground pepper, tarragon, and rosemary. This will infuse your vegetables and enhance their already-delectable taste. Bon appétit!

Lilies are often planted in spring, but you can also plant them now. The bulbs are less likely to dry out, which can result in failures. Most lilies prefer a slightly acid soil (pH 6-6.5), but some--including Lilium candidum--will do well in alkaline soils.

Lilies demand a well-prepared site, so dig the soil deeply and work in as much well-rotted manure or garden compost as you can spare. We recommend Whitney Farms All Natural Soil Conditoner. Add plenty of grit to improve drainage if the soil tends to be wet.

Lilies look best in groups rather than as isolated specimens, so excavate an area of soil to a depth of about 8 inches--large enough to take at least four or five bulbs.

Add a sprinkling of bone meal or a controlled-release fertilizer, as lilies are usually left undisturbed until overcrowded and therefore, feeding is more important than with bedding bulbs used for a single season.

Space the bulbs about 6 inches apart and make sure that they are deep enough to be covered with about twice their own depth of soil. Sprinkle more grit or coarse sand around the bulbs to deter slugs and reduce the risk of waterlogging.

Place small canes or sticks around the planting area before you return the soil. These will remind you to avoid damaging the emerging shoots when you weed.

Holiday cacti are not hard to take care of, if you remember not to overwater them; getting them to bloom on time is a bit more complex.

Here's how to do it:
In order for these plants to form flower buds for holiday blooms, they need extended darkness for at least four weeks.

Place the plant in a dark room or keep it covered (under a box or bag works fine) for at least 12 hours a day.

When buds appear (it usually takes around four weeks), the darkening schedule can stop.

As the buds get larger, move the plant gradually to where it will be displayed for the holiday, avoiding extreme temperature or lighting changes.

Continue to water and feed while the plant is budding and blooming. Water only when the soil is completely dry--these plants do not like soggy roots.

Should I use bone meal or bulb food when I plant my bulbs?

Answer:
We recommend bone meal at the time of planting, then applying a balanced bulb food once the foliage appears above the soil line in late winter/early spring.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Nitrogen can burn the actual bulb, which only needs the phosphorus and potash from bone meal in order to stimulate rooting. But once the bulb is sending out a stem, it needs nitrogen to become strong so it won't bend over from the weight of the flowers that it sets. This is especially important for bulbs with large heavy flowers, such as tulips, ranunculus, and hyacinth.

It's also important to dig the holes or trenches a little deeper than the bulb needs to be, applying some bone meal below the bulb, then a little more soil so the bulb doesn't sit directly on the food but has access to the food as it sends out roots (got to give those roots some incentive to stretch).

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