An early morning garden tour

Just after dawn on Saturday morning in the garden...

A male black swallowtail butterfly looks like a jewel with the early morning sun backlighting his wings.

The same butterfly with the sun at its back. He must have been newly emerged because
he stayed on this grass flower head for a long time.

A female butternut squash flower waiting to be pollinated. A squash flower requires
8 or 9 visits by pollinators before it will set fruit.

This luna moth has been through a lot. Adults live only long enough to have sex and lay eggs.
They have no mouth parts, so their energy comes entirely from their larval stage, which feeds on leaves of walnut, hickory, sweetgum, maple, oak, persimmon, willow and other trees. Around our yard they have plenty of larval food--sweetgum, oak and maple.

A blue bee lit on the dew-covered spiderwort just as I snapped the photo.

Earlier in the season, I dug a volunteer squash from between the peppers. Oddly, it turned out to be a birdhouse gourd. It blooms at night so even in the early morning, the flowers do not look fresh--I suppose it's pollinated by moths or bats.  This is also called a bottle gourd or a calabash, which reminds me of Jimmy Durante.

The birdhouse gourds I planted up near the pumpkins look like this now.  See "The birdhouse gourd adventure". Most of the seedlings that I transplanted to the rim of the swale did not make it, but I still have some good-looking seedlings that sprouted in the center. More birdhouse gourd adventures to come.

There are wonders to behold in the landscape. I'm pleased to share my current wonders, for tomorrow's will be a different story.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Rampant squash

I've had such poor luck in recent seasons with squash (even the squash vine-borer resistant varieties like Tromboncino) -- uh, woodchucks love it -- that I overplanted this year in the mountains.

What was I thinking?

The vines are rambling everywhere, down the slope, up trellises, through tomatoes, etc.  Yikes!

Tromboncino squash rambling down the slope, along with Butternut and Delicata

Tatume on the right; Tromboncino on the left

But we've had some tasty squashes for a change -- Tatume, Tromboncino, young Butternut and Delicata, and a couple of Eight-Ball (Ronde de Nice) before the plants succumbed to borers.

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Understanding plant communities & creating pocket meadows

The heading titles were my gardening companion's message and mine at the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference today.

It's been such fun to connect with avid native plant people of all persuasions (novice to expert!) over the last few days.

Learning is always good, at whatever point in the process of learning about native plants that we are:  as native plant enthusiasts, garden designers, nursery owners, and home gardeners.  There's a great mix of participants in the conference, representing all of these, and more.

I'm thinking again that I don't have a image to upload - but really, my end of the talk photo is what it's about -- what do you want to see out the door?

An endnote:  currently the pdf version of my presentation along with a species list is on the sidebar.

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The herb garden: a (mint) family affair

Spearmint is growing into the basil area.

My herb garden faces WSW and is just outside the back door. It receives no morning sun, but lots of the hot afternoon sun. This location is really handy when I need to harvest something quickly as I'm cooking.

Many of our classic herbs are in the mint family (Lamiaceae), mostly because they produce wonderful (to us humans) smelling volatile oils. These same oils help repel some of their predators.

I had a couple of problems with members of the mint family spreading too aggressively in my small herb garden. I needed to deal with these unruly herbs--and now.

Mint rhizomes had spread four feet from the original plants.

The first problem was the spearmint (Menta spicata). I'd sown some seed here a couple of years ago and a few sprouted. I placed them in two pots and sunk them into the ground. The mint in one of the pots died, so I was left with only one sunken pot. But this past year some more mints germinated and I had a problem that I needed to fix before "things" got out of hand.

Their sturdy rhizomes were more numerous than the visible sprouts threatening the basil plants would indicate. I pulled them all out. But I wanted to sink another pot of mint in the garden so I'd have enough mint for my teas and other cooking projects.  I coiled two lengths of rhizome into a pot filled with compost, watered it well, and sank it behind the first pot.

Two sunken pots of mint in the herb garden.

The other day I made a delightful cold cucumber soup with mint as the main herb. Here's a link to the recipe I used.  Except I used plain non-fat yogurt (with some water to make it about the same thickness as buttermilk), white rice vinegar, and I did not remove the cucumber seeds. Yummy; and quite refreshing for a hot day.

The rest of the mint I gave to two neighbors. I suggested that they plant the mint in pots, so they would not have a run-away-mint problem like I did.

Greek oregano makes a good groundcover--maybe too good.

The next problem was the Greek oregano (Origanum vulgare hirtum ). I'd purchased a 4" pot with a spindly little plant a couple of years ago. And it has turned into this massive carpet of groundcover, spreading onto the sidewalk and into the chives.

Chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are the smallest species in the onion family. A perennial onion that stays green here in north Florida year round. I've had this group of chives for five or six years now.

Between the chives and the rosemary is a good sized population of another onion family member meadow garlic (Allium canadense), which is a native here in Florida, but it dies back in the summer. So now there is an empty spot in the garden, but it will sprout again when the snow birds begin to return to their winter abodes here in Florida. Read my post, "A native herb amongst the Mediterraneans" for photos and more information.

Family feud: Mints vs. Onions
The onions would lose, probably.

The oregano had grown into the chives, and probably would have eventually choked them out altogether.  I certainly did not "need" all that oregano, so I carefully pulled it from around the chives, from the sidewalk, and from the sprinkler head. I uprooted some of the chives in the process and used them to start two new bunches behind the original population.

As I was uprooting the runners, several toads, large and small, jumped away. Not only is the oregano a beautiful groundcover and a butterfly magnet with its flowers, but now I know that it also provides habitat for my garden bug predators.

A toad flushed from its hiding place
in the mat of oregano.

Other mint family members in my herb garden

The sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) is an annual. It can reseed, but won't spread with rhizomes. It is planted toward the back of the garden. Like most mints, it roots easily in water or damp sand. I'm rooting some now to plant in the garden in the fall. Read my post, "The royal herb: sweet basil."

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is a woody or shrubby mint family member that is planted in the right-hand corner of the garden. I trimmed it way back last fall, so it's still a reasonable size now. When my husband and I walk by, we bush a hand along the rosemary to unlease its intense aroma. Anything that causes you to breathe deeply and say, "Mmmmm!" or, "Ooooh!" is a good thing.

The last herb in my garden right now is some sweet leaf (Stevia rebaudiana), a member of the daisy family (Asteraceae) that came back from last year's plants. I used the leaves in some teas and tried using it in some sweet salads, but we did not care for the super sweet taste. I'm not sure why I left it there; maybe I'll find a better use for it.

After I cleared out the rambunctious mint family members, I mulched the whole bed with street needles--pine needles I gather from the neighborhood streets.

I think all of my actions have resolved the family feud in my herb garden--at least for a while.

When I was done, the herb garden looked much neater.

How does your herb garden grow?

Green gardening matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Visit a wildflower hotspot sometime soon!

My gardening companion and I are off to a conference focused on gardening with native plants this week (in Cullowhee, NC).  It's a great conference, and long-running (25+ years, I think).  It should be great.  I've been a number of times, but not as frequently as I would have liked.

Check out this recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Wildflower hotspots! 

Who knew that there were specific garden tours for wildflowers, but sign me up.

Here's the link to the story from Wildflower Ecology. 

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Is gardening political?



The White House's organic vegetable garden

 The other day I posted this photo of Michelle Obama out in the White House vegetable garden on my Sustainable Gardening for Florida Facebook page. I asked the question:

"Do you think Michelle's garden has changed the nation's mindset about organic gardening?"

 

I was expecting a discussion on organic vs. standard gardening, or maybe a comment on the raised beds. But no, the first two comments appeared to be politically motivated:

 

"...is she actually working in the garden herself ... or does she have someone else pull weeds and hoe ???"
"...I think most people have the same thought."

 

Then a couple of people countered with:

"You guys..she started a garden..brought attention to gardening..brought attention to healthy foods that come from a garden..and you want to find some kind of fault..are you kidding me?????? You think most people have the same thought? No they don't..GOOD people recognize GOOD works... and most people are good..BECOME good people and find the good..GEEZ..this crap has got to STOP!"

and
"She promotes gardening across the country, serves produce from the garden at State Dinners bring further attention to the garden and the results and has written a book about it."

 

When I finally logged back into the Facebook again, I said:

"Gosh, we're all gardeners here, aren't we? I think she has opened an important discussion and made a significant difference in how people think about vegetable gardens. She has introduced many of the local school kids to gardening, too. If we get kids involved in gardening now, the future will be better for them and for all of us.
And the profits from the book sales goes to the National Park Service, which maintains the White House property and so many other parks that house our natural treasures."

 

The first commenter came back with:

"and alll those people in white shirts re secret service personal protection --- eh ??? well , she is ussing and promoting monsato seeds and what not , i wouldnt trust her any further than i could throw a cow !"

 

And so it continued... Someone pointed out that "the seeds for The White House Garden are from High Mowing, a seed company that is so far removed from Monsanto that the difference is night and day." I could have pointed out that the people in the white shirts are the White House chefs who have fully particpated in this project.

 

So, IS the organic vegetable garden on the White House property a controversial topic? 

 

What I recall is that the big chemical companies were quick to criticize the project saying that the garden could not succeed without their chemicals. That Michelle was giving ordinary Americans the wrong idea.

 

Some say that this is politics as usual and that the unrestrained anger toward the Obama's and anything and everything they do is fair game.

 

I disagree.

 

Some of the first ladies have initiated some great projects that seem to have been appreciated by the whole country and not made into a political scandal. Ladybird Johnson had a wonderful vision of beautifying the country and her legacy is the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Barbara Bush worked on literacy in the country and wrote a book from her dog's point of view. Laura Bush also worked on various literacy projects, which were appreciated by the left and right.

 

For example, my leftward leaning friend and author, Lucia St. Clair Robson, was invited to and attended an authors' breakfast at the White House. She went out of respect for the office and to particpate in lively discussion. Later she received this Christmas card from Laura.

 

 

 

Today, I think that people lack that respect.  It's a sad state of affairs when even gardening becomes political.

 

Can't we all just garden together for the greater good?

 

 

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Nectaring after the rain

front meadow planting

An exceptionally rainy spell (three+ days) finally broke, with bright sunshine late this afternoon.

Tiger swallowtail and bumblebee (notice how battered the flowers are!)

The swallowtail just kept working the flowers!

A tiger swallowtail was taking advantage of the dry weather to get some serious nectaring done. This individual spent almost 15 minutes working on a flower spike of this Liatris, supported from flopping by a green plant stake.

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