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 gardening 'personality') - Felder Rushing, whose Mississippi radio base needed to switch their focus to Hurricane Isaac.

Today's calls were typical, from ornamentals to vegetables.

I'm always reminded (and try to encourage folks) that learning about plants is fun, and rewarding.  Before adding landscape plants, learn about them.  Vegetables, ditto.   If you've  inherited an overgrown landscape, learn about what you have and prune things back judiciously.

Talk to your extension agent, too. He/she often knows a lot about what you're interested in planting.

Oh, and planting in fall is the best practice, too, throughout the Carolinas, even if maybe you can't acquire the right plants.  Try, however!

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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 Weber Stibolt, who's heading off to the University of Delaware this fall. He'd just come back from an orientation, which included two days on campus and four days hiking the Maryland section of the Appalachian Trail with a group of ten other freshmen.

Maryland native plants

While we were in the area, I couldn't help but notice some of my favorite Maryland native plants. Even though some of them are also native to northern Florida, I don't ever see them in the wild.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is wonderful in late summer with its bright red ovoid berries. They grow in very damp to moderately damp shady to semi shady areas. When you crush the leaves, they emit a spicy aroma.


Near this shrub, a male butterfly sipped salts and nutrients from a crushed rock driveway.

Spicebush has been collected in a few counties in northern Florida including one south of mine (Clay County). They are important larval food for several species of butterfly including the spicebush swallowtail (Papilio troilus) and the promethea silkmoth
(Callosamia promethea).

I bought a spicebush a couple of years ago and planted it near our pond, but it was a really wet year and the pond stayed high inundating the bush for several months--it didn't survive. Now I'm incented to try again.

Devil's walking stick
 

Here's another common Maryland plant that is also native to northern Florida that I'd like to see more of. The devil's walking stick (Aralia spinosa). When I took the Woody Plants course at the University of Maryland back in the 70s, the professor described it as coarse in texture and to use it only at the back of an otherwise civilized garden space.

A healthy specimen can grow to twelve feet tall and often nearly as wide. The huge, triply-compound leaves attach directly to the central stalk and can be four or five feet long. At the end of the season the leaves fall off leaving only a thorny central stem. Hence the common name devil's walking stick--only the devil could use it. And the species name "spinosa" also alludes to its prickliness.



A buckeye butterfly is only one of many pollinators swarming
around the flowers.

So why would I like to see more of this coarse and prickly plant? While in flower it attracts a wide array of pollinators and the purple berries are devoured by the birds. Besides, I just like the stories of the huge leaves and the thorny walking stick.


Unseen influences

So even though some of the habitats may look similar in many ways between Maryland and north Florida, there is something that makes these plants much rarer here.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Ginny and Weber Stibolt

P.S.
We had a wonderful visit with family and loved the send off party for my grandson, Weber Stibolt.  He had so many college credits before he started college (32), that he has already been declared a sophomore!  Now that's one way to save a lot of money for his parents. Way to go Weber!

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Butterflies

The buddleia in the far border has been attracting LOTS of butterflies.  Monarchs, tiger swallowtails, skippers, and more.

Buckeye on Buddleia

Silver-spotted skipper nectaring

It's been fun to watch the activity over the last few weeks!

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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, and kale late this afternoon.

Maybe the edges of Isaac will water them in for me; otherwise, I'll get them nicely settled in tomorrow.

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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 replanting?

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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 sight.  This is a blurry image from early morning (cropped, of course!).

It's probably a feeding cavity based on my bit of research, although I'm hardly an expert on bird behavior.  Not the time of the year for a nesting cavity, certainly, and pileated woodpeckers forage in dead and dying trees in search of a favorite prey item, carpenter ants, according to All About Birds, Cornell Ornithology Lab's online field guide site. 

Or perhaps it's foraging for some sort of other insect larvae, too.

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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 peppers that I've ever grown (in terms of being as close to as thick-walled as greenhouse peppers).

'Pizza' peppers

Here's an image of a couple of peppers from the garden (one from the Piedmont, one from the mountains). The larger one is from a well-watered mountain container, the smaller was on its own.

I left the edge of the lime in the photo for a size perspective.  They're not big, but delicious and the plants are productive!

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