Garden news roundup

This time of year, I like to read about gardening more than I enjoy getting out and sweating in the heat and humidity. I always pick up good ideas and feel re-energized enough to tackle the weeds and blackspot. Here's what I especially enjoyed this week: 

In The Boston Globe, Cultivating the beauty of the late-summer garden, Ellen C. White gives advice in ringing late-season blooms inside the house. I loved it when Missy Bahret said to change the water in the vase daily because if it didn't look like something you'd want to drink, your flowers wouldn't want to either!

In The New York Times, Anne Raver talks about moving perennials and herbs and root-pruning shrubs and trees that you plan to move after they go dormant. When transplanting perennials, "I mix a bit of rock powder [such as Amozite] into the base of each hole to help release nutrients from the soil and encourage root growth," she writes.

Did you Raver fans know that The Times maintains an archive, so you can go back and find articles you might have missed, forgot to clip, or just want to read it again?

Urban gardening is a hot topic at the moment, and the Monitor's Back Story page had an interesting profile of Bill Tall of City Farmers Nursery in San Diego. And while it's not exactly gardening per se, I enjoyed reading about farming in Alaska.

I'm a big fan of letting technology make my job easier. In the San Jose (Calif.) Mercuty-News, Donna Birch of the Modesto Bee tells about a home irrigation system that replies not on preset programming but on information from the Internet: Log on and water the garden.

In Britain, the Telegraph interviews a man who practices straw-bale gardening. The title of the article, Gardening: blood, sweat and HLM, reminded me that I need to get back outside and pick the burgeoning tomato and squash harvest before the birds decided to nibble on the crop.

That mean saying goodbye to reding about gardening and actually doing some. Now, where did I leave my watering can?