Monday, 29 April 2013

Overwhelming green...

A wet winter and spring has (finally) blasted "drought" conditions throughout South Carolina (for the first time in quite awhile). 

Drought and prospective drought has been on the radar for most of the last decade and a half, so this is definitely a welcome change.  Exceptionally wet spring conditions seemed to have tipped the balance (plenty of rain in March and April) -- the 2 1/2 inches over the last weekend were the 'icing' on the cake.

The explosion of green leaves expanding is notable; there are wonderful greens of all shades in the newly expanding leaves.  And growth, as cells plump up with water, is palpable.

The "flowered shirt" book tour continues...

Vero Beach Book Center display
When I talk to groups or attend a garden event, I wear a flowered shirt, so I think of this book tour as the "Flowered Shirt" tour and try to make sure that if I return to an area that no one will see me in the same shirt twice.

I have one more talk with a Master Gardeners group tomorrow and then I'll be finished with the first month of my three-month book tour. April has been the busiest month with 17 events including four two-day events! Whew!

On Earth Day, I spoke to a nice group at the Vero Beach Book Center. I was pleased that Marjorie Shropshire, the illustrator or "Organic Methods...", was there and I could introduce her to the group.

There are still a number of public events yet to come including ones in Pensacola, Tallahassee, Deltona, and my only south Florida appearance in Lake Worth (Palm Beach County). The Lake Worth event will be the only event where both Melissa and I will be making a joint appearance--so come on over. For all the times and dates see the North Florida Events page.
Earth Day at the Vero Beach Book Center. Even with the drizzly weather we still had a pretty good crowd.

At the Green Thumb Festival in St. Pete. April 27th & 28th. I shared a booth with Kelly Johnson, who wrote "Wings, Worms and Wonder," which has lots of proven ideas for working with kids in the garden and including gardens in the school's curriculum. Wow, what a festival. Thousands of people attended (bringing their garden wagons with them) and we both sold lots of books.  Several people who saw us sharing the booth wondered if we were related. It turns out that our families have connections, but as far as we know, we share no recent common ancestor. :-)
Pittosporum shrubs outside of the south side of the screened porch.

 

Around the garden

The previous owner had planted three Pittosporum shrubs as foundation plants next to the end of the screened porch. After eight years of trimming them back, we decided that they would never look good in this mostly shady spot, so we removed them. There is a fifty-foot wooded buffer between us and the neighbors on that side, so we have plenty of screening and privacy. I have some ferns that I've been holding for just such an occasion and will plant them in this bed instead.
My husband stands outside of the hedge for scale. I'll retake this view when the ferns are in place.

A small crop of sugar snap peas this spring was appreciated.
It looks like the vines are pretty well done as it gets hot.

 

Edibles on parade


As part of my booth display, I've been showing off my various crops as part of show and tell. The purple carrots are one of the ways I slow people down, especially if they have kids.

Our veggies are for more than just Show 'N Tell, they play a large part in our diet. When you grow you own edibles, it's like printing money! I hope you're growing food in your yard.
The new broccolis are now producing come-again crops.
Add these to the original plants from last fall & we have a broccoli bounty.
Tonight we'll have a lovely whole-meal salad using these
beautiful late lettuces.  I'll also fry some bread with olive oil
and garlic for croutons. Yummy!
This evening's harvest of parsley, 2 types of lettuce, Swiss chard, purple & orange carrots, wild garlic, come-again broccoli, Greek oregano, sugar snap peas, and an early-blooming onion, which turned into ...

... a lovely dinner, which except for the 7-grain bread (for the croutons), olive oil, vinegar, pepper, and Parmesan cheese, was made from the garden. To make the croutons, I browned the bread with chopped wild garlic in olive oil.

Be sure to come out and see me at an upcoming event soon, because the "flowered shirt" tour is over in June.  Thanks for reading!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Thursday, 25 April 2013

Fairy Gardens

I don't know about you, but I have have seen the sudden  rage for fairy gardens everywhere. Every garden center I step into has a dedicated section for these adorable little gardens. I have to admit that even I have a VERY small collection of fairy decor.


As I look around I find that these fairies live better than I do... I mean some of these fairies have cooler houses and more furniture than I do, not to mention is way cheaper than my furniture, seriously though!

Here are a couple of fairy gardens that are portable! What a great idea! This way you can move your faires where ever they are happiest.
Portable fairy garden: Baby Cabbage Fairy in mushroom home.

Portable fairy garden: Mushroom home

Portable fairy garden: Fairy looking with violas.

Portable fairy garden: okay, so not a fairy garden, but could easily be turned into one.

Portable fairy garden: Fairy looking dainty with birdbath

Portable fairy garden: I love how the little fairy is trying to get her cat down from the tree., as the turtle watches

Also The Little Hedgerow is a link to find fairy garden supplies, just in case your local nursery is CRAZY and doesn't have any fairy garden supplies. They have some really cute supplies pictured below.


A small selection of Fairy Garden Supplies from The Little Hedgerow store at Etsy.

A wildflower chat

My gardening companion and I had fun talking wildflowers recently on Your Day, a daily radio show (Monday-Thursday) produced as a public service of Clemson University Radio Productions. It airs throughout the state on the SC ETV Radio Network at lunchtime, running for an hour.

Normally, when I'm on, my SC Botanical Garden colleagues and I answer gardening and general plant questions, but this show was pre-recorded, so Tim (Spira) and I were able to focus on wildflowers, their ecology, where to see them, and share our enthusiasm for them with listeners.  Quite fun!

Tim's been out doing a lot of field work for his second book (the first was Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont: a Naturalist's Guide to the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia), so he's been following flowering of wildflowers since late in February.

There was lots to talk about as well as mentioning what we're looking forward to seeing, too, out in the natural world.

Listen to the April 18 conversation here (from Your Day's archives for that week.


Monday, 22 April 2013

A return visit to "The Pocket"

Pocket Falls
The Pocket is a magical botanical wonderland on Pigeon Mountain, GA.  It's a rich cove forest with limestone underpinnings, so is rich with species diversity because of the neutral soils.

A return visit (my third this spring) found all sorts of great wildflowers, including this one.
Phacelia
And interesting critters, too.

A foraging land snail

Friday, 19 April 2013

#1 in Southern Garden Books

Tuesday morning, this happened!
While the "Organic Methods..." book has been hovering in the top ten for Southern Garden Books on Amazon, this is the only time I caught it at the #1 spot.  Yay!  Thanks to everyone who is buying our book.

I'm having a great time talking to people about organic and sustainable gardening on my tour. This weekend, I'll be in St. Augustine and next weekend I'll be in St. Petersburg. Check out my public events calendar: it all ends in June.

Green Gardening Matters!
Ginny

Wednesday, 17 April 2013

Coral honeysuckle

Our coral honeysuckles are in full bloom now -- they've been amazing as the plants have become larger (and gathered resources).  It's a wonderful marker of mid-spring, arriving along with the continuing ruby-throated hummingbird migration.

My past blog posts (about coral honeysuckle were more numerous than I'd expected), but reflect how lovely and significant the peak flowering of Lonicera sempervirens is for me.

Here's a photo of the kitchen door Lonicera a couple of years ago.

Lonicera sempervirens
 Hopefully, I'll be able to add a photo of our front gate plant tomorrow, if weather permits.  It's thriving.

Monday, 15 April 2013

A book review from Tallahassee

A book review from Tallahassee Writers

Here's another excellent review of our book. Reviewer Jenny Crowley ends her review with this:

Stibolt and Contreras have constructed a book that appeals to all who wish to grow and produce organic foods in Florida. It is also a book that will interest those who care about our planet and our environment.

Florida Gardeners, the authors want you to “…have fun eating from your landscape.”

Read this book and rejoice!
Cool! I love it when someone appreciates not only the good information, but also the spirit of our book.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Sunday, 14 April 2013

Trees with shadows

view of trees from Biltmore

Yesterday, the sun's angle in the late afternoon created crisp shadows -- in dark contrast to the green of newly-mown pasture. This view from the terrace at Biltmore is spectacular at any time of year, now with the soft greens of emerging leaves on the Blue Ridge mountains beyond.

We'd gone to the Biltmore gardens to see how the tulips were coming along in the Walled Garden. This week's warmth turned out to have been excellent encouragement!

I always love seeing the tulips, one of my first horticultural loves (even if they don't exactly "work for a living" -- my primary screen for plant selection -- meaning wildlife-supporting or edible, but they certainly have a good story (special dispensation for that!)

These trees and the view were even more spectacular.


 

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

Bird songs and spring migrants

All of our "regular" garden and backyard residents (at least the males) are singing up a storm, establishing territories for their nesting sites and to attract mates.  Northern Cardinals and Northern Mockingbirds are some of the most frequent songs that I'm hearing now - along with Carolina Chickadees and Carolina Wrens. They're favorite familiar birds in our Carolina gardens and natural areas -- learning their calls is just like recognizing the voices of your friends is what I tell students on field trips (visiting the Garden where I work)!

I haven't had time to get out on birding excursions so far this year, but reports from our local birding group are reporting all sorts of good sightings.

And this report on Weather and Songbird Migration, at Journey North, my favorite real-time observation/citizen science site, predicts an exciting couple of weeks ahead for seeing the return of many of our spring migrants, either as they're passing through, or staying through the warm season here.

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Spring's in the Air

Our pinxter azalea finally is blooming.
It's late this year.
Normally, here in northeast Florida, our springs are too short and summer comes too soon.  This year has been different. When the hummingbirds arrived a couple of weeks ago, we thought they might freeze their patooties off in the chilly night temperatures that reached down into the 30s. But they have continued to visit the coral honeysuckle flowers (Lonicera sempervirens) each day, so I guess they are tougher than they look.

Azaleas

Our native azaleas (Rhododendron canescens) are blooming a little later than normal this year, but the Japanese azaleas bloomed early and their flowers were ruined by the late frosts. I'd like to start replacing the aliens with natives--maybe this is the year to start the process.

Mining the lawn

Because we have a "freedom lawn," which is free of pesticides, fertilizers, and over-watering, there are many types of plants other than St. Augustine grass that grow there. Some of these volunteers are desirable plants that I transplant to non-lawn areas of the landscape.

Blue-eyed grass in the lawnBoth the native blue-eyed grass (S. angustifolium)
& the yellow non-native (S. rosulatum) look the same
in the lawn.
Both the native blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) and the non-native (S. rosulatum) look pretty much the same when embedded in the lawn, so I'd transplanted some of the yellow ones to a mulched area, which became obvious after they bloomed. I removed them after I snapped the photo and replaced them with the blue natives. Now that they are blooming, I can tell the difference. :-)

Rainlily (Zephyranthes atamasca)


The other obvious lawn volunteer right now is this native rainlily (Zephyranthes atamasca).  This was growing in a wetter area of the lawn where I also find soft rushes. I transplanted this beauty to the mulched area that you can see at the top of the photo. It's near the blue-eyed grasses that I'd also removed from the lawn. They often grow together in the wild.

There are a few other lawn treasures, but I'll talk about those in a later post.


The end of the cool-weather crops


The extended cool weather has been good for the cool-weather crops. My second crop of broccoli has produced some beautiful, purple-tinged heads (curds), but if I'd known how prolific my first crop was going to be, I wouldn't have bothered to plant it. The handful of florets (in the left photo below) is probably the 30th harvest from the original 8 plants. As the plants try harder to bloom, they are producing the florets faster and faster, so these come-again broccolis are sweeter than the original curd. Eventually, I'll let them bloom when the second crop starts producing its own come-again florets. The pollinators will like those flowers.

The first crop of eight plants keeps on
giving!
The second broccoli crop.
The onions and the garlic will be ready to harvest soon. Then we'll get ready to plant some okra in those beds. This year, I will be planting a bunch of marigolds in with the okra to try to keep the root-knot nematodes in check, not that the okra cares, but to protect the crops that follow it. To be an effective deterrent, you have to turn the marigolds into the soil at the end of the season.
A green anole keeps watch for white flies and other
evil-doers on our broccoli.
Some of the sweet granex onions are beginning to bulb out.
Lupines growing in our neighborhood. I've tried planting seed over the years, but have not been able to
establish a population on our property. I guess we will just have to enjoy these wild populations from afar.

I have started my book tour so please make an effort to come out and see me at one of my upcoming events. See my event calendar to find one near you. Thanks to everyone for buying my books!

Green Gardening Matters, 
Ginny Stibolt

Monday, 8 April 2013

A second hummingbird

last year's view in late March
This morning, a second hummingbird of the season! 

I think it was a female, but the light wasn't good enough to tell.  S/he was visiting the Carolina Jessamine flowers outside my study window.  So nice to see.

This year's view is quite similar to last year's!