Doug's Blog

On February 11th I’ll be one of many celebrities participating in Recipe for Hope a fundraiser for Hair Peace Charities. The organization helps women with cancer.

Here’s a link with all the information about the event Recipe for Hope. It’s a great night and you’ll eat like a king or queen!
Here’s the recipe for what I’m making-
Seafood Stuffed Shells
1lbs of jumbo pasta shells cooked al dente
For filling
Mix the following ingredients
1 lb ricotta cheese
1 cup grated romano cheese

Sauce
Cook 2 chopped onions in 2 Tbs of olive oil on low heat for 10 minutes or until transparent. Add 8 cloves minced garlic and cool for two more minutes.
Add 1/2 cup butter
1-1/2 cups half and half
8oz fontina cheese grated
1 cup of chopped cherry tomatoes
3 Tbs chopped flat parsley
Use filling to stuff the shells in a baking dish, cover with sauce and back for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

8 oz cooked shrimp
8 oz grated Italian six blend cheeses
4 oz fresh chopped spinach
2 garlic cloves minced

Here’s a video that tells you all about Hair Peace. Hair Peace Video

Remember the 1970′s? Terrariums were big back then and they were so groovy. Well what comes around goes around and they are hot again.
Nothing could be easier than making a terrarium, they can be made with anything from an old fish tank to a beautiful container bought from a nursery. Even a two liter soda bottle can be converted into a terrarium.
Terrariums are a closed growing system, so they only need a little water every few weeks. The first layer is gravel, some charcoal which keeps the air clean and then a growing medium. One trick that Matt from Chapon’s Greenhouse alerted me to was to moisten the planting mix first to get it right where you want it instead of drowning the soil with water.
You can design either a dry or wet terrarium depending on what you like to grow. I love both.
Succulents are used for the dry one, and bog plants are used for the wet environment. Both are easy to find at a good nursery.
All the terrariums and plants came from Chapon’s Greenhouse in Baldwin. I’m so thrilled to rind terrariums again that I think I’m going to make a bunch. They have everything you need. Chapon’s is located at 4846 Streets Run Road Pittsburgh, PA 15236, (412) 881-1520. It’s a wonderful place to explore during the winter, it’s filled with plants you’ve never seen before. The staff is very helpful and friendly.

Tomatoes Garlic Basil and Grow Organic on sale for $17 each and A Gardener’s Notebook for $13, free shipping for a limited time only. All will be signed and personalized as requested.
Send checks to-

Doug Oster
PO 11013
Pittsburgh, Pa 15237

A Gardener’s Notebook is intended to help you record all the crazy details of life with your garden. We’ve both been journaling for years but we’ve never found the perfect journal, so we worked with our publisher, St. Lynn’s Press, to develop one.

Grow Organic teaches gardeners how to have a garden without chemicals. It covers flowers, vegetables, landscaping, fruits and berries, lawns and more.

Tomatoes Garlic Basil is Doug’s latest book is filled with great organic growing information for his three favorite plants. The book also includes 31 recipes, many have a deep connection to his family. Tomatoes Garlic Basil is also filled with wonderful stories from Doug’s life in the garden.

Once winter arrives, gardeners need something to keep them going until spring. Growing flowering plants on the windowsill will do just that.
There are lots of plants that are tough and will bloom through the winter.

One of my favorites is Flowering Maple. It’s not really a maple, but it does really flower. The leaves resemble a maple and the plants can flower with orange, red or white flowers.

African violets have a reputation for being fussy. Grow them on the dry side in good light, water from the bottom and the plant will last a lifetime. Some of the more recent varieties also have variegated foliage, which is a bonus.

Cylcamen are one of the few house plants you can’t let dry out. Keep them moist and they will bloom for months.

One of my favorite indoor plants is the Shamrock Plant, named for its four leaf cloveresque leaves. They are indestructible and will bloom all winter. some have cool, variegated foliage too.

The Goldfish plant sports pretty orange flowers most of the winter.
I put many of these plants out in the garden in a shady spot after all chance of frost has passed. The will often double in size and then can return to the windowsill in the fall.
All the plants used in the segment came from Chapon’s Greenhouse on Streets Run Road in Baldwin, (412)881-1520. Their winter greenhouse is unparallelled, filled with amazing plants. You might even find a winter tomato in there!

I’m so glad to be back from a long Christmas vacation, I’m lucky to have a job I love. My family and friends bet me I couldn’t go three weeks without working, it was hard as I kept running into stories, but I did it!
I’ll be posting lots of stuff over the next week to catch up.
Lets talk about holiday plants and how to make them not only survive, but thrive. Poinsettias, Christmas cactus and amaryllis are the big three and all enjoy life on the windowsill with the right care.
Poinsettias can live for years both inside and outside.
Don’t throw your poinsettias away after the season. Not only will they keep their color for months, they are a cool garden plant too. By the way they are technically poison, but taste so awful, no child or animal would take more than a bite. They would have to eat a a plate full just to get a stomach ache.
I like all the weird ones, different colors and forms, but they all have similar growing requirements.
The first job is to remove the foil, place the plant on a saucer, you can use the plastic ones they sell at the garden center or old plates from the thrift store. This will allow water to go through the soil, flush out the bad stuff and the plant can drain properly. They like it a little on the dry side, just poke your finger into the soil. If it’s dry a couple inches down, add some water. Depending on the temperature of the house and the amount of light it gets, that might mean once a week.

Poinsettias need some light, and will only last a couple weeks if used as decorations up a dark staircase. Move them onto a table near a window.

There’s no reason to fertilize any indoor plants this time of the year, there isn’t enough light for them to process the nutrients. Wait until March to add some liquid organic fertilizer.

When there’s no chance of frost (around May 15 in our area), poinsettias can go outside and will make a handsome plant in the garden. Some folks will bring them in and out for years. There’s a giant one in the back of the greenhouse at Janoski’s in Clinton, Pa. It’s not that old and is over six feet tall.

Getting them to bloom again is tough, requiring exactly 12 hours of light and the same time in the dark. That’s really hard to do unless you have a greenhouse. Back in the day gardeners would put the plant in the closet at night, then bring it back out into the daylight. What a pain, I wouldn’t bother. They will color up when they the light is right, but usually not as nicely as the plants from a good greenhouse.
There’s not much out there prettier than an amaryllis.
Amaryllis offer some of the most beautiful flowers for the holiday season. For the first season the bulb has everything in it that the flower needs. The job of the gardener is to treat the plant right to get blooms next season. I’ve got about a 50/50 record for re-blooming. I never throw them away and they will bloom when they are happy. Sometimes that’s every year, sometimes it takes three.
After the plant is done blooming remove the flower stalk leaving the tall, floppy foliage. Grow it as a houseplant all winter and start fertilizing in March. Mid-May it goes outside in the shade. Sometimes transplanting to a pot one size bigger will help. Keep feeding the plant every couple weeks through the season.
In August stop all watering and fertilization and bring the amaryllis back inside. I put mine down in the basement for six to eight weeks until they go into dormancy. The leaves will turn brown, which feeds the bulb. Then bring the plant back to the windowsill add a little water and hope for buds to emerge.
I rarely get them to bloom at Christmas, but anytime they flower, it’s wonderful. Usually it’s about being too busy at the end of the season and not getting them into dormancy fast enough. Others never make it outside, are forgotten about and bloom after given a little water.

The Christmas cactus is a perennial favorite gift for gardeners. It’s indestructible, usually killed with kindness. It’s not really a cactus, so it’s watered like any other houseplant, but prefers dry over wet. I like to grow them in eight inch and bigger pots so they don’t need watered as often and they get nice and big.
They are triggered to bloom in the same way poinsettias are. That means when growing on the windowsill they are often turned into an Easter or Thanksgiving cactus.

I forgot about one out in my unheated greenhouse and it received the perfect light to be in full bloom on Christmas day.

For many gardeners a Christmas cactus becomes a family heirloom passed down for generations. I’ve done stories on plants that were 100 years old.

Enjoy your holiday plants now and for years to come.

Tomatoes Garlic Basil and Grow Organic on sale for $17 each and A Gardener’s Notebook for $13, free shipping for a limited time only. All will be signed and personalized as requested.
Send checks to-

Doug Oster
PO 11013
Pittsburgh, Pa 15237
Happy Holidays!

It’s so easy to save the tubers and bulbs of tender plants like dahlias, cannas, caladiums, begonias and more.
Just dig the tuber or bulb and remove the foliage. Lay the bulb on newspaper in an airy location for a day or two. Do not wash it off, let the dirt dry on the bulb.
Fill a box with a 1/2 inch of perlite or vermiculite and lay the bulbs in the box so they are not touching each other.
Add another layer of perlite, then bulbs and continue the procedure until the box is filled.
Store the box in a cool place that won’t freeze.
Check the bulbs once a month for rot.
When chance of frost has passed the next year, plant the bulbs.

My radio partner Jessica Walliser and I will both be at all three Giant Eagle Market District stores this Sunday for a free cooking and gardening demonstration. We’ll be talking about unusual root crops, how to grow them and use them in the garden. 10am Bethel park, 1PM Robinson and 4pm Shadyside Giant Eagle Market District Stores.

My dear friend artist Johno Prascak and I will be just two of the celebrity wine pourers this Saturday 11/05/2011 from 6:30 to 8:30 at Mt. Alvernia’s Hearts and Hands Gala.
It’s $50 a head, there’s lots of food and wine and the proceeds go to help the Sisters of St. Francis and the Newman Community.

It’s important to get all the tender crops that were killed by the frost out of the garden. That’s where pests and diseases over winter. As long as the plant material is not diseased it can go right in the compost pile.
Now that most of the annual are gone, there are a few more things that can be planted.

It might seem strange to be gardening this late in the season, but two plants in particular will thrive deep into winter.

I always plant flowering kale and pansies as the annuals fade. Usually around the second week of October, but believe it or not, I’ve still got impatiens and coleus in the garden. They look sad and will be gone soon, it’s time to put them out of their misery. It’s been a long growing season.

I’m substituting the tender container plants with these hardy varieties.

Lets look at the garden timeline for my pots. March 17th pansies are planted in containers close to the house, then more in two weeks along with some other tough cool weather flowers. They were replaced in July with discounted annuals. Now we’re back to pansies and of course the flowering kale.

Both will add color and shake off cold temperatures. If the pansies are kept watered, many will often winter over, especially in a mild season. The kale will go until January until it gets bitter cold.

Site them where they can be seen from inside the house, or walking up to the front door.

You’ll be surprised how a few plants will bring a smile after slogging through a few inches of wet snow.

When the winter sun is right, the kale explodes with color.