PBS's Victory Garden

[Cheryl Isaak]

Red - any other colors you want?

I have PLENTLY of orange daylilies and the double ones too

Ask some one else the lilac question, I just let mine do its thing. Move the phlox. C

[Ann]

enigma expounded:

Yes, wait til it blooms next spring. One caution, is it sending up any suckers from the roots?

[Val]

I believe Russ Morash was the original producer of Victory Garden. Its concept was based on the Victory Gardens grown in back yards and any patch of unused ground during the war when food was scares and rationed......good concept, great original hosts, wonderful show. I never missed it and give a huge amount of credit to that show for starting my passion for gardening, edible as well as ornamental. Roger Swain did most of his segments from his own personal garden, I liked him too. Russ Morash also came up with the concept for This Old House when he started personal documentation of the restoration of his own farm house and many people would come around asking him how and why questions. He was also the producer of the original Julia Child series on PBS.

Where did Marion come from? She was Russ's wife and a Julia Child wannabe. Go figure! During her tenure as "Chef Marion" it was well known that she wasn't the most beloved person on staff. IMO her cooking sucked (possibly the same method used to get herself the 'chef' slot) but that aside, there were some serious "diva issues" going on behind the scenes. But, how do you tell the producer his wife is a major PITA? My own, very personal take on the 'foreign travel' was that dear Marion whined incessantly enough about exotic vacations and since PBS had "hosts" and not "stars" and the pay wasn't on the commercial TV scale of today good ol' Russ figured out a way to get the old crone these 'working vacations' paid for by the studio budget.......there is no hard and fast basis for this conjecture, just my personal opinion.

About the time all the "visiting this lovely garden" segments started appearing with that droning, boring old codger the original hosts were either leaving for the great compost heap in the sky or just plain jumping ship.......why the hell would I care how they grew frikken palm trees on some remote tropical island or managed to heat a 4,000 square foot green house full of 'collected from extensive world travels' specimen plants, tended by 3 full time gardeners on some bazillion acre historical estate.....and Chef Marion giving her stupefying blathered commentary while was standing behind some person in Guatemala making wild boor and banana flambé casserole.....I stopped watching Victory Garden.

This Old House morphed into the "Norm can build it with more of those damned biscuits" show, and you too can take a decaying heap of rubble and make a lovely historical house for only who knows how many dollars of donated materials and labor if you can supplement this with a $3 million dollar second mortgage.

Watching Ground Force was more entertaining than informative, but I usually did enjoy it and got a few good ideas from time to time. When Titchmarsh left Charlie and Tommy were hard pressed to keep it afloat. When Ground Force came to America it really went down the drain. So much for one more garden schlock program to *not* take up time on a Saturday morning.

FoodTV has gone the same route. Apparently the majority of television production powers that be feel the public needs more entertainment (and I use the word loosely) than education and more "personalities" than experts in whatever particular area. Perhaps I am of the old school and have gone back to my honed skills of reading for research as learned long ago in school when you actually had to do such a thing to find an answer. In 30+ years I have amassed a rather large, impressive personal collection of BOOKS (*gasp*, what a concept, replace reading for the remote) on these subjects for personal reference and take extensive advantage of the massive amounts of information available on the internet to garner gardening and culinary skills and knowledge. I'm also a regular patron of the library, sadly for the masses; seemingly used less than ever. Happily, for me, there's seldom a line at the check out desk.

The other thing that always leaves me amazed (but no longer surprised) are the many simply common and/or commonly simple questions asked of this group that can be answered by a 2 minute or less search on the internet or, heaven forbid, a trip to the public library. How in the world do these people manage to find and post to a newsgroup but can't figure out how to use a search engine? Granted, discussions and exchanges of ideas and information between peers and mentors is a wonderful thing indeed, but when somebody asks what grows in their area because they are going to start a landscape business; or what can grow in my backyard, but never give the slightest clue as to their location are only a few of many posts that just make me shake my head and think........."Ohferchrissakes, these people are breeding and we let them VOTE too?"

And that, boys and girls, concludes the Tuesday afternoon mull and rant program on wreck.gardens.........

Val

[JoeSpareBedroom]

My favorite, a real classic from rec.food.cooking:

"Can I make my own lasagne at home? How?"

That's it - the entire message. No hint as to whether the person was asking about how to make the noodles from scratch, or the dish. The OP never returned to clarify this, probably because he/she/it came under heavy (and justly deserved) artillery fire within minutes of the message being posted. The assumption was that even though every lasagna noodle package in the universe contains a recipe, the person hadn't bothered to look, or do a web search, or (heaven forbid) hire a private detective for assistance in locating the nearest library.

[Pennyaline]

[...polite applause...]

Is there a refreshments table set up here somewhere?

[enigma]

Ann wrote in news: [e-mail]:

lots of suckers from the roots. i cut the ones that grow up between the rock steps & on the garden bed side. the goats & llamas eat any that sprout up on the pasture side of the fence. actually, come to think of it, i'm not sure if the suckers are from the white or the purple... but both need to be shorter. they're rather entwined where they are, & i'm pretty sure they were originally planted there in the 1920s, but it could have been as early as the mid-1800s... do lilacs respond to layering as a propagation method? lee

[Ann]

enigma expounded:

Good. I've seen old lilacs that are reduced to only one trunk, they don't seem to survive being cut back severely (the farm I work on has lilacs that hadn't been trimmed for over fifty years, two of them died when the Squire cut them back against my wishes. He's the boss, but sometimes I really wonder why he asks me).

Cut back each plant after they bloom - and take out the largest trunks completely. They say to get an overgrown shrum under control to cut back by one third over a three year period.

Yea, but why not just dig one of the suckers with roots and use that to increase?

[enigma]

Ann wrote in news: [e-mail]:

because i don't know which are from the white lilac. the suckers don't (or haven't yet) bloom, probably because they're so shaded by the huge overgrowth. there's several large lilacs in the clump. the white is on the lower edge & the tallest. it lost one trunk in the early spring snowstorm here. it has 2 major trunks left. i did move a sucker from another lilac the previous owner planted in dead shade. the main shrub fell over trying to get to light... the poor sucker had almost no roots, but i kept it well watered the first year & it's been growing. this year it really added a lot of fullness & looks really good. hasn't bloomed yet, but i figure it's been settling in. i think it may bloom next spring. if not, well, it fills up a blank spot by a stone wall nicely anyway. lee

[Cheryl Isaak]

Yes, I'd like a cup of tea with a slice a lemon...

C

[Jim Kingdon]

Depends on the phlox, as I understand it. We have some sun phlox and some shade phlox, and my books list quite a few kinds (both species and cultivars). Since you have a lot, maybe try a few plants and see how they do?

[enigma]

Jim Kingdon wrote in news: [e-mail]:

hm. well, it looks *exactly* like the phlox that is gtowing in full sun on the other side of the house. it does start blooming a week or so later, but i think that's because the shade garden warms really late in spring. is there a good website with different types of phlox photos? i can't say i've seen any like this in catalogs, but it's likely old & just reseeding itsself around. lee

[AlanG]

This reminded me of another interesting cooking show. It's called Cookin' In Brooklyn (Discovery Home channel). Laid back, down to earth host...episodes frequently combine gathering produce from local gardens...and then it's into the kitchen. The host comes off like the anti-Todd English.

[William Wagner]

I used to watch Biker Billy.

[Cheryl Isaak]

I may have to check him out. I hate Todd English. C

[Cheryl Isaak]

Oh my word - those recipes sound awesome. I might just make the rutebega pie for Thanksgiving. Cheryl