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Marta Gouger
Marta Gouger is the managing editor online and Home and Garden editor for the Pocono Record so she's busy busy most of the time. Her passions (besides work) include gardening and quilting so she does everything she can to cut corners on housework ... Read FullCategories
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Author Archives: Marta Gouger
Marta Gouger
The perils of summer
Even if you love gardening, this year we had the heat and the bugs. And the humidity…and the sun. Hasn’t been pleasant at all.
The Pocono Record is fortunate because we have a one of the best weather watchers around. Ben Gelber is a meteorologist in Ohio, but his roots are in East Stroudsburg, and his [...]
Posted in gardening, gardening in hot weather, poison ivy 0 Comments
Where does your food come from?
What a great rain shower we had today. My garden is happy. I’m happy.
But my brother wife and his wife Kim are really happy. They are maintain a 55 x 110-foot garden up in Whitney Point, N.Y. Talk about watering challenges.
I don’t know how they manage it, but they have 78 tomato plants, beets and [...]
Posted in gardening 0 Comments
Dreaming of container gardens
This was going to be the year that I had success with container gardens.
Oh how fools dream.
I planted more containers than ever because I simply have run out of room in the ground. We wanted to plant more dahlias in our former vegetable garden so I planted lettuce in a container and put petunias in [...]
That’s a rose bush?
Gardening is like a job. It’s something you really have to do every day.
If you do, you get big rewards. If you don’t you spend the rest of the summer playing catchup.
Some things are obvious. You know you have to pay attention to weeds if you ever want to find your plants.
But if you [...]
Posted in gardening, rose diseases, roses 0 Comments
Nothing says “Happy Birthday” like a load of manure
Andrea Robbins Rimberg has just moved into her house in Smithfield Township when a red truck turned into her driveway with her birthday present. The truck was carrying a load of manure.
After she got over the shock of her family getting her a load of you-know-what, she laughed. Then she was truly grateful to her [...]
Every plant should have a place
O.K. we did it again. We ended up with many more plants than we could possibly fit into any of our gardens.
We always order a few (really more than a few) new dahlias in case we lose some over the winter. That’s how we ended up with more than 120 to put in the ground.
Each [...]
You can’t save flowers, silly
I always said flowers were for sharing but when the new neighbor kids came to call, I admit I was a little stingy.
The 5-year-old boy and his 7-year-old sister who is getting a cell phone for her birthday came over to say hello. Raymond came first, “Can I pick a flower for my mom?”
Who can [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, dahlias, flowers 0 Comments
Where did my butterfly go?
I have been on a weed-pulling mission. Every chance I get I go out and try to clear an area. After several exhausting sessions I finally made it to the perennials I planted last year.
I planted monarda and they multiplied. Not as fast as the dandelions, but they did multiply. As I kept going, pulling [...]
57 varieties of weeds
I spent the weekend following an age-old May tradition. Not talking about the Kentucky Derby, but the marathon process of pulling weeds from the garden.
Alas, they are everywhere. We have the common dandelion, Canada thistle, possibly lambsquarters and many to be named if I ever really get bored. I know I’m not the only one with [...]
Even the zinnias are standing taller