Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

Lonicera sempervirens

Normally, Lonicera sempervirens (coral honeysuckle) flowers heavily in the spring, sporadically (one or two periodic flower clusters) through the summer, and then a bit more in the fall.

This plant is looking fabulous in late June -- practically in spring form! I imagine the cool temperatures in May and through much of June (it's warm and humid now) have been encouraging this.  Regardless, the flowers are lovely -- I just wish I could see them better from my studio/sun room windows (the windows on the right). The flowers are facing the opposite direction.

But, it just gives me more incentive to stroll around the house!

Read More

We have Met the Solution and It is Us

"We have met the enemy and he is us."



Pogo's wise words (via Walt Kelly) have been repeated
often in environmental circles, but have "people" been
listening?? I hope so.



I agree with Pogo and one of the reasons that I continue to write about green gardening and environmental issues is to convince others that each of us can make a significant difference. And when many people change the way they manage their own landscapes and lifestyle choices, the difference is huge. Mother Nature might be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Please see the Resources Page for further information on many of the green topics I've been concerned about over the years. There are so many ways that we can make a difference.

Here's an example of a lifestyle choice that will save a lot of money and help the environment at the same time. I posted this on my Facebook wall and Sustainable Gardening page, because I really do not understand the bottled water frenzy--it seems like such a rip-off.

Originally posted on EPA's Water is Worth It page.

We have Met the Solution...

I was pleased to see the opinion piece in the New York Times, We have Met the Solution and It is Us by Frances G. Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice. They attended the Rio+20 Earth Summit this year and observed that while the main document finally agreed upon by all the countries was so watered down that it is unlikely to have much effect, but they said:

It did offer some bright spots—such as progress on protecting the high seas from pollution, overfishing and acidification—although it left other dire threats unaddressed. Chief among these was failing to negotiate a treaty to protect ocean biodiversity. But what we must remember is this: Rio+20 is not just about a document. Rio+20 is a catalyst. It is the starting point for change, not the finish line. It is a call to action for all of us who now realize that we can’t just rely on government negotiators or verbose and hyper-compromised documents to save our planet.

We must do it ourselves

What Rio+20 did was shine a spotlight on the environmental and sustainable development issues we all know we must address. For at least a few days, it forced us all to pause, take stock and think about the legacy we’re leaving our children.

Now that the speeches are done and the negotiations are over, and the world’s leaders are heading home, it’s time for the rest of us to take action.

Individually, we must be efficient with the energy and the natural resources we consume and be ever cognizant of what the decisions we make today will mean for our children’s planet tomorrow.

Collectively, we must force our government leaders and our corporations to do what is right for our planet and its resources. We must press them to implement the commitments they made at Rio+20, and the commitments they made in other international agreements as well. And we must hold them accountable when they don’t. As we learned at Rio+20, government negotiators and thick documents can’t save the planet. But as we also learned, we can, and we must do it now.



Well said! (Emphasis is mine.) 

Okay, now I'll step off my soap box for now. 

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Read More

Tuscan kale

I've grow Tuscan kale before, but this plant doesn't quite fit.  It has the dark green crinkled leaves of dinosaur or Tuscan kale, but it keeps growing.  It's not Jersey kale (walking stick kale) -- I have seeds of that, but the leaves aren't right.

It must just be a robust Tuscan kale plant that has kept growing in this mild spring and early summer.

Tuscan kale

Happily, the leaves are tough enough to deter the cabbage white butterfly caterpillars, too.

Read More

Summer Solstice 2012

Sunrise this morning as we greet the longest day of the year--6/20/12.

Here's an informative solstice article over on the National Geographic website.



Last year's onion harvest--Granex Sweet onions were yummy!


Day length is an important consideration for gardeners, because plants are dependent on day length to regulate their life cycles. Here in northern Florida, we grow onions right through the winter, but we must use short-day or day-neutral onion varieties, otherwise they'd never form a bulb. In Maine, just the opposite is true--they grow onions in the spring and into the summer during the long days.

Sometimes plants flower in the wrong season because they've confused the temperature and day length signals. The Asian azaleas so widely grown here in the south almost always have some boom in the fall here. And now there's even a variety developed that's been bred to bloom twice a year called "Encore."

Observations in the Landscape

This morning as my husband and I were trimming back the wax myrtles near the driveway, I noticed this cool white cocoon amongst the trimmings. It's about 1.3 inches long and it's fairly hard. Some of the leaves were incorporated into the cocoon.

I had no idea what this was so I posted it on Facebook and had my answer within a few minutes. It's a Polyphemus Moth (Antheraea polyphemus) a type of silk moth. Here's a post by my friend Loret Setters about her experiences with this moth : Rip Van Moth-y.


And so we now slide backward into shorter days until the next Summer Solstice. Enjoy yours.

Read More

Roan Mountain

I had the pleasure of being on an excellent birding excursion to Roan Mountain today.  The Roan Mountain massif straddles North Carolina and Tennessee in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of the SE US.  

We saw interesting plants and plant communities (grassy balds and spruce-fir forests) and LOTS of new birds (to me) that hang out there, especially in the high-elevation spruce fir forests.  I should have been writing them all down, but I had a checklist, and was busily trying to repeat their calls in my iPod (via the earbuds).  Challenging.

Gray's lily

Rhododendron catawbiense (Catawba rhododendron)

Grassy bald at Roan Mountain

Rhododendrons and spruce-fir forest

A silhouetted bird (I've forgotten which one it was!)  There were a lot of new ones....

Read More

A more practiced fledgling robin

The fledging robin is looking much more practiced searching for earthworms and insects.  

Our mulch must be rich territory -- we had at least 8 robins poking around this afternoon along with this fledgling and mom.

I posted about them before (with equally ho-hum photos). 

They've been great to watch.

a fledgling robin

Read More

What if we grew food instead of turf?

I found this image on Facebook and shared it on both the Lawn Reform Coalition and Sustainable Gardening pages. While lots of people "liked" it, even more shared it on their own pages. I found even more shares on other pages--it's gone viral. So this simple idea seems to have captured people's attention.

In the last chapter of our new book "Organic Methods for Growing Vegetables in Florida," Melissa Contreras and I have included many ideas for how to turn your organic vegetable gardening into a profitable enterprise. We talk about how to participate in local farmers markets, how to start a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) alone or with a small group of other growers, and how to set up a migrant farmer service where you grow vegetables in other people's yards. We also discuss the pros and cons of becoming certified organic.

You can grow a lot of produce in a small area when you use intensive growing arragements with a minimum of space used for access, so why waste any time and money on a lawn? The book will be published in Feb. 2013. I can hardly wait; I think it will fly off the shelves.  The time is now!

What do you think? Is growing edibles instead of lawns the answer to climate change, the health crisis, and the poor ecomony?

Green Gardening Matters,

Ginny Stibolt

Read More