The birdhouse gourd adventure

A 3-year old birdhouse gourd sprouts in the compost.

Three years ago I thought it would be fun to grow a birdhouse gourd vine. They are not really edible so I'm not sure what my original motivation was. One of the vines did extremely well, scrambled into some nearby tree branches and grew to about twenty feet high with numerous gourds hanging from the tree like Christmas tree ornaments.

Some of the gourds ended up in the compost and sprouted just like this one. I was on my book tour (for Sustainable Gardening for Florida) and was a vendor for several gardenfests. The timing was right for two of them and I'd potted all the seedlings into 4" pots and gave them away to kids. I'd kept one gourd as the sample so they could see what they'd get. When the seedlings were gone, I stuck the sample gourd into some branches of a shrub in a thicket. I thought some bird would break into it and build a nest, but that didn't happen. Last winter, I put it onto the compost pile.

Last week I saw that the seeds were still quite viable and had sprouted in the compost again.

The new spot for the gourds at the edge of the cleared area.

I've been working on getting some beds done in time for some fall pumpkins. (More on this later.) I did not wish to provide any room in my regular beds for the gourds, but I had a spot at the edge of the clearing that I could use for them.

I'd saved out a bunch of dead leaves from various gardening activities. I've been using them as a water-retention layer at the base of the beds I've been building. I had some leftover leaves. I dumped two wheel barrel loads of leaves for the gourds. (I'll use the rest of the leaves for building a new compost pile.)

I dumped a load of finished compost on top of the leaves and fashioned a squash mound with a center swale. I planted the best-looking seedlings around the the edge of the mound and broke up the rind and the less mature seedlings and placed them in the center of the swale. After all that, I watered the whole mound and especially soaked the center. I will not use too many resources--water and otherwise--to grow the gourds, but if they do grow as successfully as the one vine three years ago, I will make a purple martin apartment house and install it down by the lake. Maybe inviting more purple martins into the yard will reduce the mosquito population.

Top view of the planted seedlings with the rind and the less mature seedlings in the center of the squash mound swale.

I will keep you updated on my gourds, pumpkins, birdhouses, and more.

Green gardening matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Mystery squash, easy basil, and fall vegetables

I've been down in the Piedmont for a couple of days -- for an evening hike at the Garden with a bunch of fabulous Summer Science Research high school students and a vet check-up for Woody (his partially-torn crucial ligament is being monitored -- happily, he's improving again).

Thankfully, we've had enough periodic rain that everything looks good, even though the lakes nearby (Lake Hartwell) and the ponds at the Garden are way down.

Interestingly, there's a mystery squash in the satellite garden.

I'd pretty much given up on squash in the Piedmont because of woodchucks in the back woodlot, but perhaps they've gone elsewhere now.  This "mystery" vine (quite healthy) is producing small butternut-shaped squash that have outer markings like young tromboncino squash, and were totally delicious as part of my dinner tonight, along with some young leeks and a red 'Pizza' pepper.  Yum.

I'm planning on planting long-season fall vegetables later in the month, continuing through August.  It's SO hard to think about sowing seeds and planting when the temperatures are in the upper 90's.

Young basil in flats up in the mountains have already yielded some exceptionally- tasty pesto. I hope they'll have been well-watered in last night's thunderstorms.  It's a great way to grow basil.  I've been doing this for awhile and it's totally superior to trying to coax edible leaves out of older basil plants in the garden.

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Maypop, a native butterfly & bee magnet

Passionvine, purple passion flower, maypop (Passiflora incarnata) is a beautiful perennial native vine with a wonderfully complex flower with crimped petal-like tepals. It dies back to the ground in the winter, but pops up in more places the next spring–in May usually.

Like most gardeners, I love beautiful plants that attract many pollinators. And for a vine like this, adorning the trelliswork is the ideal location. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Find out what became of this beautiful vine; read my post over on Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens.blog...

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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The first beans, tomatoes, and squash

I was a bit late in planting some of the summer vegetables, but they've flourished in the initially cool late spring and now hot early summer temperatures.

Remarkably, I've harvested peppers and tomatilllos, usually a no-show until late summer.

There are LOTS of tomatoes developing and the first ones close to harvesting.  Woo-hoo!  And the various vining squashes are looking good, too -- no sign of squash vine borer moths or larvae (maybe they were confused by the strange winter and spring weather and somehow my plants will escape???)

This year, I do have mostly C. moschata squash varieties (trombocino & tatume) as well as butternut, and delicata), which are resistant to the borers, anyway, so maybe we'll have some squash this year!

Supposedly most winter squash like butternut and delicate are tasty enough as immature squash.  We'll see.  Apparently almost all squash aside from ornamental gourds (which are bitter) are at least decent-tasting, based on my limited Google search.

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Garden Writers: Who Are We Writing For and Why is it Important?

When I write about why I let some of my basil flower,
who is listening?

When we write online, who is reading and what are we trying to accomplish? Haven't you wondered, as your words fly off into the void of cyberspace, where your message will land? Will the readers even speak English; what type of gardening do they practice; or are they just looking for pretty pictures? Articles for magazines and newspapers are easier to target, because we know the demographics of the readers. When we write for an Internet audience, we may have access to traffic totals or find out what search terms were used to reach our pages, but we really have no idea who's reading, except for those who are motivated to respond. Knowing the search words and what people are looking for helps us target our future writing, but responses from readers are the most important and interesting feedback. They often pose questions that spur further writing.

Over the past few years, some garden writers have discussed and lamented the disappearing garden writing for newspapers and garden programming on TV. The New York Times has a section called home and garden, but the number of garden stories continues to shrink to maybe one or two a month. HGTV now has no real garden shows--quick landscaping yes, but not real gardening. Even when garden stories run, they may be syndicated with little relevance for their local audience. For example, the Miami Herald recently ran a story on a Michigan woman's butterfly habitat. Very little of her experience will translate well to the tropics of south Florida.  Why can't they solicit stories from the region--there are plenty of butterfly habitat stories in south Florida? So, maybe our online writing is filling the gaps left elsewhere.

To find out what changed everything for my writing, read the rest of this story over on Garden Rant.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Natural gardening, meadows and informal perennial borders

Natural gardening to me means mimicking nature, recreating the way that natural processes result in the plant communities and successional habitats that we see, encouraging plant combinations that work, look and feel like natural places.  It's what I like to see at home.

Meadow habitats are particularly challenging, since they're so successional, and maintained by disturbance, whether it's grazing, mowing, or fire.

But they're such wildlife-friendly habitats, and normally lovely in terms of plant combinations, flowering interest, etc. that I've wanted to keep incorporating them into our gardens.

But meadows aren't easy, since they're prone to proliferation of more aggressive species (think about species like common milkweed, Indian grass, river oats, and goldenrod, here in the SE US). They love to take advantage of richer garden soils and become thugs quite quickly, as many prairie and meadow species are inclined towards leaner soils.

the current view of the pocket meadow in the mountains

another view of a native parking lot planting at the Botanical Gardens of Asheville

So my inclination towards "pocket" meadows, more or less manageable informal patches made up of natives was kindled.

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More pocket meadows

I'm been on the lookout for informal plantings of native grasses and forbs (herbaceous perennials) --- these are the pocket meadow plants and plantings that I'm wanting to promote in an upcoming talk. 

More expansive meadows (at least in the eastern U.S.) are hard to manage, as they want to become woodlands and forests (natural succession at work).

But smaller 'pocket meadows' -- more like informal native perennial borders-- are a lot more satisfying, promoting pollinator visits as well as providing habitat for seed-eating birds like goldfinches, in the fall.

Here are some wonderful examples in the parking lot for the Botanical Gardens of Asheville and the adjacent greenway plantings along Weaver Blvd. (in Asheville, N.C.)

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