SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Have no facility whatsoever when it comes to gardening. In fact, plants cower when they see me. But thankfully, there's help from Jessica Damiano, a master gardener who writes the newsletter "Weekly Dirt." Welcome back to our program, Jessica.
JESSICA DAMIANO: Thank you so much. Happy to be here.
SIMON: Spring is quite close, and many people are thinking about what to plant, how to plant it. That seems all straightforward, right? We sow the seeds. Nature grows them. What could go wrong?
DAMIANO: Well, there are a few things that can go wrong, especially if you're shopping for seeds and don't really understand what it is you're buying or what they expect from you.
SIMON: I'm sorry. What the seeds expect from you?
DAMIANO: Yeah. The seeds expect things from you. They need to be treated a certain way.
SIMON: Well, you recently wrote a column about seed packet lingo. And...
(SOUNDBITE OF SEED PACKET SHAKING)
SIMON: By the way, the print on seed packets is amazingly small.
DAMIANO: (Laughter).
SIMON: Let's begin with some basic lingo.
DAMIANO: How about - would you like me to quiz you?
SIMON: Sure.
DAMIANO: OK. So this one should be easy for you. What does broadcast mean?
SIMON: It means, like, talking into a microphone, and people hear you.
DAMIANO: No. Actually, broadcasting is something that is done with very small seeds, typically. And that just simply means sprinkling them as opposed to planting them one by one, which you would do with larger seeds.
SIMON: OK. So you'd, like, put them in your hand and shake them out?
DAMIANO: Yep, or throw up in the air and let them lay where they fall.
SIMON: Oh. OK. All right. Try me again.
DAMIANO: Biennial.
SIMON: It means you buy them ennially (ph).
DAMIANO: Close - very close. A biennial is a plant that completes its life cycle in two years. So as opposed to an annual that lives one year, and a perennial will live two years or longer and come back every year in regions that experience winter, a biennial lives just two years. So the first year, it's going to give you green leafy growth. And only in its second year will it produce flowers and then seeds, like parsley and hollyhock.
SIMON: Thank you. OK. I'm learning. Let's try again.
DAMIANO: How about scarify?
SIMON: Oh, my. Scar - is that, like, a slash on something?
DAMIANO: Yes. That's exactly it.
SIMON: Oh (laughter).
DAMIANO: Ding, ding, ding.
SIMON: Yeah. Hold on. Let me shake these seeds.
(SOUNDBITE OF SEED PACKET SHAKING)
DAMIANO: Some seeds need to be scarified. Means you need to scratch them, maybe with an emery board or a nail file, or somehow compromise the hard surface because the seed has an especially tough coating on it. And when you compromise that, it will facilitate germination.
SIMON: What other terms should we know?
DAMIANO: Well, it kind of sounds like scarify, but it's stratify.
SIMON: Stratify. So in other words, putting them in different levels.
DAMIANO: You're on the right track because the way things historically have been stratified is by putting seeds in layers of soil and putting it in cold storage. Some seeds, just like bulbs - tulip bulbs, daffodils - they need to experience winter in order to grow and bloom the next year. So if you put them in a refrigerator in fall and keep them there until spring planting time, they will think that they've gone through winter, and then they will germinate in spring.
SIMON: Oh, my gosh. You pull an old switcheroo on them. I mean...
DAMIANO: Yeah.
SIMON: Do they ever complain? You're the ones who told me that they expect things of us. I mean...
DAMIANO: Yeah, but we're in charge, aren't we?
SIMON: Master gardener Jessica Damiano, who writes "The Weekly Dirt" newsletter with not one, but two green thumbs. Thanks so much for being back with us.
DAMIANO: Thank you so much for having me. Have a great day.
(SOUNDBITE OF TIM RENWICK'S "ENGLISH COUNTRY GARDEN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
