There’s a NEW holiday tradition being added to St. Louis’s social calendar this year! “Holiday Magic” comes to America’s Center, December 4-6, and it promises to be an exciting and entertaining event for families and shoppers. Enjoy wood carving demonstrations and hands-on crafts, a dazzling light show with over 40,000 holiday lights choreographed to holiday music, and a full-scale indoor carnival.
And best of all . . . Walter Knoll Florist will be there with a special treat for children . . .

It’s gonna be great – we’ll have hundreds, maybe thousands of white poinsettias for kids to paint – as well as protective gear to keep their little outfits tidy – so come on down and get in the Christmas Spirit!

As we prepare and set up our booth for the big show we are also installing over 75 real live Christmas trees around the center-complete with lights!

And our booth will have lots of fully decorated trees and ideas as well as special “show” pricing – there will be ornaments and garland and wreaths and swags you can buy and take with you and we will also have on display our Holiday Arrangements (you may have seen them on our Holiday Unwrapped 2009 brochure we mailed out last week) – so come on down, bring the kids (and $5 of course-proceeds benefit Mathews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club). Tell ‘em Di sent you!

Speaking of poinsettias – you know it’s an old wives tale about them being toxic, don’t you? Well, although we don’t recommend you eat them, they are NOT poisonous.

Here is a pic of a poinsettia painted by a 73-year old!

How about a blue or purple poinsettia?

Can’t get down to the Convention Center this weekend? Don’t despair – visit our garden center at California and LaSalle and see all our poinsettia varieties – here’s a sampling!

It is so fun when the kids come for a field trip to Walter Knoll Florist.  This group from Lindbergh School district got to learn about potting begonias at our LaSalle Garden Center location.  We love to show off our stuff, so if you have a group that would like to come for a tour (children or adults) we’ll be happy to show you around.  Who knows, maybe you’ll get to re-pot some begonias yourself!

I know of two types of garlic – soft neck and hard neck. Toward the end of summer last year and on a whim with an abundance of garlic bulbs I planted both soft and hard neck garlic. I separated the cloves from the bulbs and planted each “toe” root end down about two inches deep. I can’t remember if we had a lotta rain or if I was just diligent about watering, but within a week or so they had sprouted leaves and by the time we had our first cold snap they were probably a foot tall.

They quickly died back only to pop out of the dirt in the spring along with the daffodils, arugula and chard.

By mid April the hard neck variety was already beginning to flower – not really a flower per se but “scapes” began to appear on the central stalk of the hard neck plants.

Well it turns out that the scapes when young and tender can be snapped off as far down the central stalk as is tender and then cooked up like asparagus. They had a wonderful mild garlic flavor with just a slight crunch to them when I used them in a stir fry.

As the scapes develop on the plant they make a couple loop-d-loops and then straighten back out – this process took about 2 weeks, once they straighted back out the stalks lose their tenderness and I read it is either time to cut them off or let them go to “seed”. Each scape becomes a mini clove of garlic. I cut about half of mine off and put them in a vase where they continued to develop into mini cloves – after about a month they have formed cloves and are beginning to develop the characteristic purple skin.

I have now harvestest about a third of the plants – and this is done when about half of the leaves have turned brown – some of the bulbs are pretty small still and these are the hard necks that I did not remove the scapes from. My home grown garlic is very mildly flavored right now – I used an entire large fresh creamy white head in a batch of humus over the weekend and needed to add a store bought clove to bring it up to the garlicyness I like in humus! I imagine as they continue to dry they will develop a stronger garlic flavor.

The soft neck variety does not produce scapes. And I am finding it is more strongly flavored than the hard neck. This year I will plant even more garlic – and both kinds – the soft neck is what is used for the braided garlic you see around and I want to have enough to make a braid next year. This weekend on PBS’s Diary of a Foodie, the Gourmet Magazine show, they featured garlic and I learned that the soft neck variety will store for 6 months and the hard neck for 4.

Click here for a fun very interesting NPR interview with a garlic grower in California

It is spring and this is some of what is new at the florist row greenhouse at Walter Knoll Florist.

Well I suppose the cool nights just can’t keep this tom from turning! I planted late in the season, I think late May if not the first week of June, I am lucky to have any tomatoes. I purchased seedlings at the WKF Lasalle Greenhouse where you can get expert gardening advise from the experienced staff there! Come and see the large selection of plants – we’re located across the street from our main headquarters on St Louis’ famous Flower Row at the corner of LaSalle and California.