It's amazing how small gardens can be productive. I feel like I don't have very much space in my raised beds in the mountains, but coming back for the weekend, I harvested LOTS of beans, ripe peppers, and squash. This after harvesting everything last weekend, including all the small beans and squash. The tromboncino and Tatume squash and the remainder of the tomatillos and tomatoes will...
Friday, 31 August 2012
Thursday, 30 August 2012
Fall planting
I'm a gardening answer person periodically on a call-in radio program for our university's Your Day Public Service Radio feed that goes throughout the state. It's fun, and I'm glad to encourage gardeners of whatever knowledge level to learn more and have fun doing it. I pitched in today as a last-minute guest for my friend and colleague, Bob Polomski (and substitute for a much more well-known...
Maryland flora I pine for
A view of the Naval Academy from across the Severn River with a fringe of cordgrass in the foreground. I spent much of my adult life just north of Annapolis, a delightful place for so many reasons. Last week my husband and I made the trip north to familiar territory for a send-off party for grandson...
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Butterflies
The buddleia in the far border has been attracting LOTS of butterflies. Monarchs, tiger swallowtails, skippers, and more.Buckeye on BuddleiaSilver-spotted skipper nectaringIt's been fun to watch the activity over the last few wee...
Monday, 27 August 2012
More planting
I'm wondering how we'll eat all these greens, if the seeds I'm sowing are productive, unless the resident woodchuck in the back woodlot creeps out! But I have barriers that I'm planning to use, too.I spent yesterday evening turning over the beds in the satellite garden in the Piedmont, and cleaning out the Oxalis that had colonized my containers, and sowed more lettuce, spinach, turnips, chard,...
Friday, 24 August 2012
Cleaning up
I spent quite a bit of time today cleaning up the raised beds in the mountains today. This meant editing some tomatoes that were not producing very much, along with some squash plants.I'll add some mushroom compost and organic fertilizer over the weekend, and sow more fall greens and lettuce!Uh, having two vegetable gardens is way too tempting. How can I resist replanti...
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
A pileated woodpecker
Behind my office is a Southern red oak in decline. Limbs have been trimmed and the top has already broken, although we're not inclined to take it down just yet.My colleague pointed out to me this morning that a pileated woodpecker was busily working a cavity high up on the trunk - what a great...
Monday, 20 August 2012
Pizza peppers...
I love thick-walled and productive pizza peppers. One source is Territorial Seed, where they describe them as hot, but I haven't found them to be hot at all. They're juicy and delicious. Totally Tomatoes may offer the same variety, hard to know.And they're certainly the most substantial...
Sunday, 19 August 2012
adding native perennials, meadow gardening, natural gardening, naturalistic gardens, Noel Kingsbury, Piet Oudolf, traveling
Looking forward to garden visiting
In just about a month, I'll be visiting gardens in Germany and the Netherlands for a couple of weeks on a self-guided garden study tour.I've been wanting to do this for several years, after I started learning more about the 'new wave' gardening trends practiced by Dutch, German, and English garden designers, creating naturalistic gardens, and often using many of our North American natives.It should...
Saturday, 18 August 2012
A gift of peppers
Coming back down from the mountains for the beginning of another fall semester, it was a gift to have a green and flourishing garden. Yes, it's overgrown, the meadow is a mess (but there was a southern-bound monarch flitting around the scruffy common milkweed plants, too). The zoysia lawn that came with the house is looking great, thanks to intermittent rains throughout the summer. ...
I don't love crape myrtles, but...
A crape myrtle in Ginny's back yard.I don't love crape myrtles (Lagerstoemia indica & spp.) because they are sooo over planted in Florida. Most species are native to India and other parts of Asia, but they certainly do well here and new varieties are released each year. The Atlas of Florida Vascular...
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Not more queen palms!
A restaurant wins a landscape award with its queen palms, but why?The St. Augustine Beach Tree Board and Beautification Advisory Board for landscaping awarded this restaurant with their Best Commercial category. See the article in the St Augustine Times, The Groove landscape wins honor.The...
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Scarlet runner beans and window boxes
The scarlet runner beans have been a standout in the front garden beds - the leaves haven't been bothered by anything and the flowers just keep coming. Bean production isn't high, but that isn't really the point with scarlet runners. They're lovely!Window boxesThe window box plants continue to look...
Monday, 13 August 2012
Foraging for mushrooms
The vegetable garden is continuing to produce. Trays of tomatoes and tomatillos seem to be coming out the oven each day, with beans and squash to be eaten or frozen, too.But a weekend mushroom foray with our neighbor, who's a mushroom expert, found a variety of interesting mushrooms.The highlight...
Sunday, 12 August 2012
Do You Know Snow Squarestem?
Great purple hairstreak on a snow squarestem.Snow squarestem or salt and pepper (Melanthera nivea), a member of the daisy family (Asteraceae), attracts a high volume of butterflies, skippers, bees, wasps and even hummingbirds. It has only white disk florets in its flower head. Unlike a sunflower, it...
Friday, 10 August 2012
Cats in the Landscape Controversy
USA Today posted an article House cats kill more critters than thought by Elizabeth Weise, which reported on a study where 60 cats near Athens Geogia were outfitted with tiny crittercams to record what they did while they roamed around their neighborhoods. The results were startling and showed...
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
Beans
Yard-long beans, greasy-cut beans, Italian Romano beans, and French filet pole beans have been on the menu for weeks, but the supply finally overwhelmed our ability to eat them in a timely fashion.So, it was time to start blanching them to freeze, and this nice assortment has ended up as freezer packages...
Monday, 6 August 2012
Front meadow
I really wish I had a decent camera at the moment - the iPad 2 is pretty minimal (awful, actually). I miss my trusty Nikon D100 left at home in the Piedmont through forgetfulness and a hurried exit!But I enjoyed the front meadow this evening, and even these sub-par photos reflect the scene. (As an addendum,...
Two Geezers and a Shed!
The garden shed in its original place was too far from the house to be useful.When we purchased our house back in 2004, it came with an 8 x 10 foot garden shed about 180 feet behind the house, which is about half way down to the lake. In this position, it was too far from the house and garage to store...