LADYBUG SAYS...AREA GARDENERS BLESSED WITH A GOOD GROWING YEAR

Reflections on a gardening year just past a new year of pleasure ahead, and some other related thoughts.

Looking back, 1992 was a good year for those who love plants and digging in the soil. Spring weather was good, the summer moderate and rainfall came at appropriate times.

Flowers, shrubs and trees showed their gratitude. In protected places, some mums and roses bloomed until early December. Gazanias, an annual loving warmth, had three gold daisy-like flowers on December 20th. Vegetable gardens flourished under the benign sun and the favorable rainfall. Bounty aptly describes the harvest.

The only mar on this remarkable season was inherited from 1991. The hard freeze on Nov. 7 damaged azaleas, roses and a few other plants that had not had time to harden off. Some did not recover.

The man who grows the vegetables in this family predicts that the coming spring will be one of our most beautiful. He reasons that there have been enough cold snaps into the low 30s and high 20s to harden off those plants that suffered most last year from the hard November freeze.

The Ladybug is not so sure. She sees many flowering shrubs and trees heavy with swollen buds and fears a really cold blast out of the north would nip them and have the opposite effect to what he predicts. We shall see.

While winters can be bitter, and we may be entering one like that, they always are broken by brief periods of moderation, i.e. the so-called January thaw. These periods are a good time to get out the pruners to remove dead wood, cross limbs, water sprouts and excess growth from trees and shrubs. We have kept our flowering crab tree small by pruning it each year during January or February, taking out the top growth and shaping it up. This may reduce the abundance of flowering seen on a full-grown crab apple, but it has the advantage of smallness and very few apples, which can be a nuisance in the fall.

Speaking of trees and pruning brings a thought to mind. Tree lovers deplore the loss of millions of American elm trees to Dutch elm disease. Very few have been spared. Years of research by the Elm Research Institute in Harrisonville, N.H., have borne fruit in development of a resistant tree called the American Liberty Elm.

Boy Scout troops throughout the country--more than 400 of them--have taken part in the largest tree restoration in history. The goal is to plant 1,000,000 American Liberty elms by the year 2000. Scouts have planted more than 200,000 trees, but have a long way to go. Cape Girardeau is among the thousands of cities denuded of this truly magnificent tree. Johnny Elmseed kits may be obtained by Scouts or any organization wishing to join in this national program. Write Johnny Elmseed, Elm Research Institute, Harrisville, M.H., 03450, or call toll free, 1-800-FOR ELMS.

Moving onward in this meandering column. We have placed our fall lettuce and clumps of parsley under cloches of protection in sub-freezing weather. Leaves are piled around the cloches and we should be able to enjoy Bibb, Black Seeded Simpson and some variety we don't remember until the first really bitter cold spell. Some turnip greens, mustard greens, kale and Swiss chard also remain in the leaf-mulched garden and we plan in a few days to dig some parsnips (our first attempt) for a winter meal.

Friends gave us a Shiitake mushroom patch which we are tending with care. We've picked a few and Ladybug has used these in some of her cooking. The square block, into which mushroom spore have been planted, is expected to last four to six months with several "flushes" of mushrooms to be harvested.

Off now on another tangent. We're having a great problem with house finches. This is a bird that has taken over feeders in our area in recent years, and seems to be expanding its population. A cousin of the purple finch, it has taken command of the big sunflower feeder with dozens of the greedy little creatures fighting for food. The cardinals are almost entirely excluded and use another feeder that is not as popular. Titmice and chickadees try to get a seed now and then, but can hardly fend off the house finch deluge.

The seed catalogs have begun arriving in the mail. We probably will have more on this later as their numbers grow. They give a lot of pleasure and education through their colorful illustrations and descriptions of the flowers and vegetables available to gardeners in the months ahead.