View towards the forest (ravine)

We love this view, converted from weedy overgrown ivy-ridden trees to developing native woodland garden.

The view from this window convinced us to buy our small house in the mountains, within walking distance of downtown Asheville (and it wasn't even cleared of invasives, then).  We'll eventually relocate there -- it wasn't our original intent, but makes sense now.

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Edging project: risks & rewards

Some ongoing fall projects are re-edging the lawn along the back yard and weeding out the shady triangle area. I last edged the shady triangle in the spring, but it's been a couple of years since I edged along the lawn east of the triangle.

Risks of weeding with beggar lice or tick-trefoil.

Rewards of wildflowers in the garden.

Raking the loose soil back into the bed and away from the edge of the lawn in preparation for the chips.
The 3 Stokes asters (with the oblong leaves to the right of the rake) had been obscured by the tick-trefoil.

Previously embedded in the lawn, flush sprinkler heads need clearance so they can remain effective. This one makes a full 360 degree pass.

Broom sedge blue stem (Andropogon virginicus) is blooming in the shady triangle.

Below is the end result of the weeding and the edging of the shady triangle area. I'd planted the two magnolias (to the left of the photo) as seedlings years ago in spots that I thought were far enough away from the edge of the wooded area, but I should have given them another six feet. We've trimmed away branches of the sweetgums behind them to make room, but I should have planned better. The one on the left is the traditional southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) and the other one is a sweet bay magnolia (M. virginiana).

Shady triangle after weeding and edging. I probably should have trimmed back the goldenrod earlier in the season

Moving toward the east (on the left side of the above photo) I continued to redefine the lawn edge and to take out another 12 to 18 inches of lawn.

Surface roots of trees are not good for lawn, but ferns don't mind.

The netted chain ferns (Woodwardia areolata) make a good border and have already spread out into the lawn. so another 18" of lawn is added to the compost pile.Yay!

The other part of this edge project is to trim back branches and to remove trees or shrubs that are moving into the lawn area. I was pleased to see a beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) growing along the edge, but a water oak sapling was leaning on top of it. I removed the oak to allow the beautyberry to grow, but as it grows larger, I will need to move the edge farther out into the lawn area again!

A beautyberry shrub has a water oak sapling leaning over it.

Now that the oak is removed, the beautyberry will have a chance to grow.
The shady triangle begins in the upper right of this photo.

A self-sown magnolia is too close to the sprinkler head.

Cinnamon ferns (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) have sent up their fall fertile fronds that look like cinnamon sticks.

I root pruned the magnolia that is too close to the sprinkler head and I'll transplant it to someplace more appropriate in the winter. That will give the roots a chance to recover from the root pruning to form a tighter root ball. I was just going to move it a couple of yards back into the wooded area to provide better privacy from the neighbor next door, but there is already a smaller magnolia already growing there. Mother Nature beat me to it. Now I have to decide where I need another magnolia.

I took a morning off last week to be a substitute teacher for a continuing education class on native plants in the landscape at University of North Florida. There were 15 enthusiastic students. Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

I hope your fall gardening projects are giving you pleasure.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Still hummingbird visits!

There was still lots of hummingbird activity today on the feeder and the Salvia leucantha (Mexican Bush Sage) outside of my study window.  Apparently, I'm not alone, based on this Journey North e-newsletter.

The migration is winding down, though, and it won't be long.

I enjoyed thinking about plants & container design this evening with a drawing inspired by a Sarah Price design in Gardens Illustrated (Issue 183 from last spring, I think).  Brilliant.  Her work, not necessarily my rendition!  Her container plantings are amazing.

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Final hummingbird visits

A young female hummingbird visited the feeder today. It always feels a bit wistful to say goodbye to them for the year.

This is the time, though, that we "normally" see last hummingbirds.  They're cued to photoperiod, apparently, not so much temperatures, in their journey south, so pretty much on schedule.

A search for "last hummingbird" posts brought up dates of Oct. 12, 16, 14, and a sighting at the botanical garden on Oct. 24, over the years I've been blogging (now over 6 years).

Amazing and fun to keep track.

It's so much fun to watch them visit the feeder on the porch rail.  Here are some images from a post on Sept. 17, 2011.

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Rayless sunflowers, fall seedlings, & more

Rayless sunflower & native bee.

When I replaced a 10' x 14' section of lawn with a native garden, I planted several rayless sunflowers (Helianthus radula) as part of the mix. Months later, they are blooming much to the delight of the butterflies and native bees.

These flowers are not showy from a distance because they are missing the showy florets around the edge that look like petals. When we think of sunflowers, we expect to enjoy a big show, but the show here is more subtle and draws you in closer.

I wrote about this plant and reported on the progress on this native pollinator garden in my monthly post over on the Native Plants & Wildflife Gardens blog: "The beauty is in the eye of the beholder."*

*Just to satisfy my curiosity on this cliché, I looked up the origins of the saying. This particular phrase, "Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder," is a paraphrase of Plato's writings and the theme has been repeated in various ways by different people, including by Shakespeare, over the centuries.  See this phrase finder website for more details.

Unexpected projects

Has this ever happened to you? You think one bed is fine the way it is, but then someone makes an offhand remark that forces you to see it differently or maybe you have some nice potted plants, but you suddenly realize that the plants are too large for their pots. The two realizations then merge into one or more unexpected and larger than anticipated projects.

Potbound! Two potbound yuccas are finally set free!

Untangling the yucca roots.

Two different yuccas were pot bound. One ended up in the cactus bed out front, the other in the butterfly mound. Here's a link to my post "Potbound!" on why it's so important to free the roots before planting.  

Before: The cactus in this hot corner bed were getting messy after more than six years.

After: A few cacti are left, but most were ripped out--very carefully! The new arrangement of all the larger lava rocks piled together makes a stronger landscape statement. I pulled out some of the ferns that had been growing into the cactus area and laid in some wood chips. You don't often have cacti & ferns mingling together,

The butterfly mound was a mess.

The coreopsis seedlings are planted in the lower
left corner and are mulched with pine needles..

In looking around the landscape for a good place to plant the second yucca, the butterfly mound jumped out as the right place.  Removing those messy non-native bulbs (The hidden gingers and the orange cannas) would be a big job, but it was time. And so this was the second unexpected project.

The yucca is happily planted and is already showing brighter green in its leaves, but this is not really a true "after" photo since there is more work to do here...

The mound started in 2005 after one of the four 2004 hurricanes had severely damaged a sweet gum tree in the middle of the back yard. Instead of grinding the stump out, we built the butterfly mound.  In recent years, I've moved to more natives and more natives have moved in by themselves.

Here's a link to my original post on the butterfly mound, "From Stump to Butterfly Haven" and I'll post more about its transformation when it's not so beat up.

Coreopsis

Coreopsis seedlings right out of the pot.

Some of the seedlings in the pot had spawned new plants that are attached via rhizome.

I'd brought a six-inch pot of tickseed (Coreopsis lanceolata) back from my Sept. 21 appearance down at the opening of the Green Marketplace in Cocoa. It was time to get them into the ground. I was surprised to see how many of the seedlings had already put out rhizomes and had generated new plants. I planted half of them next to the yucca in the butterfly mound and the other half in the newly created butterfly garden where I'll be slowly removing yet another patch of turf. The tall tropical-looking leaves are more of the ginger lilies that were already in place.  Previously I'd transplanted a bunch of scarlet sage (Salvia coccinea) and a snow squarestem (Melanthera nivea) from other places in the yard.

I mulched the seedlings with pine needles and not the arborists' wood chips because it's easier to control and is less likely to react with the soil and decompose.

See a previous post on the beginnings of this bed.

I added half of the coreopsis seedlings to the front expanding butterfly garden.  

Sorting seedlings

I'd planted two cabbage seeds in each of 5 holes: 5 seedlings emerged, but two were from one hole. 

Now which ones are parsley seedlings?

Now is the time to transplant the seedlings while they are still small. Once you've grown some of these plants from seed, you'll figure out soon enough which are the wanted seedlings and which are the weeds. There are six visible parsley seedlings (two with a first leaf), two chamberbitters (Phyllanthus urinaria) with the oblong leaves of various sizes, and at the bottom are four weedy sedges. I pull more chamberbitters than any other weed.

Note the early morning evenly-spaced water drops along the edges of the cabbage seedling leaves--the result of guttation. During the day, water flows freely through the plants and evaporated into the air.  At night the pores (stomata) close up because there is no photosynthesis, but the water is still flowing, so the excess is excreted through special glands (called hydathodes) that are evenly situated along the leaf margin.

At the St. Johns County Home & Garden
Show, a special weekend appearance.

Roadside flowers in Clay County.
Swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolia)

Last weekend I took a break from gardening and writing to participate in the St. Johns County Home and Garden Show. Renee Stambaugh of Native Plant Consulting invited me to share her booth. It was fun to talk to people about native plants, sustainable gardening, and edible gardening.  I sold a few books, too. On the way over I took some photos of amazing roadside flowers in the sunlight.

I hope you're finding time to enjoy the beautiful fall weather in your gardens or out and about.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Salvia x 'Anthony Parker' and other Salvias

Flowers of Salvia x 'Anthony Parker'

Pathway to HCC

Salvia elegans & Salvia x 'Anthony Parker'

Salvia elegans (Pineapple Sage)

It's time for wonderful fall-flowering sages, and all the rain over the summer has resulted in dramatic growth.  Pineapple sage (S. elegans) and a wonderful sage that was new to me (Salvia x 'Anthony Parker') - a hybrid between S. elegans and S. leucantha (Mexican Bush Sage) were in full flower yesterday along the path to the Hayden Conference Center.

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An early fall compost pile

Some of the new chips had been sitting in the truck for a few days so they'd
already started composting. They were steaming hot and had turned gray.

Normally I do my major compost building later in the fall when we have lots of dead leaves on hand, but several events occurred this year to speed up the process.

1) I'd depleted my compost supply in building the new edible beds and I had saved a pile of sod that we'd removed, which was waiting to be composted.

2) Some of chips we received last week had been on the truck for several days and had already heated up and turned gray with fungal spores.

As we moved the chips from the county right-of-way, we used the gray chips for a couple of fill jobs and I saved one cart load for compost. Since it had already started to decompose, it would serve as a good starter for a new pile. This part of the load was filled with pine needles, leaves, and small twigs.

Most of the load consisted of excellent fresh wood chips with very few leaves, which we carted off to use for mulching. It took a couple of days but now the fence in back in place and we still have a good-sized pile out there behind the fence to use in a more leisurely manner.

We had plenty of grass clippings, but I used them sparingly.

3) My husband experimented with the timing of the lawn mowing to see if he could wait three weeks at this time of year. He waited, but it generated a lot of extra grass clippings and then it rained.

The clippings are a good "green" material for the compost pile, but since these were so wet and clumped together, I'd need to spread them out thinly in the layering of the pile.

Building a compost pile

As I described in the compost chapter in Sustainable Gardening for Florida, building a pile with alternating layers of "green" and "brown" materials within a week or two ensures the proper ratio and speeds the composting process.  I call this a medium maintenance pile because after I get it built high enough I'll let it sit for a month or so and then I'll turn it once. Three or four months later, depending upon the original materials, I'll have good compost. Meanwhile, I'll throw newly collected compostable materials in a holding pile until I start the next pile.

I use the garden fork to even out the pile and make sure
there are connecting pathways between the layers.

I emptied one watering can of rain barrel water over the whole pile.

And so the first phase of the pile will sit for a few days
before I add the next set of layers on top.

I start a pile by scraping the ground so that it's even and weed free. The size of this footprint is about five feet by two and a half feet.  The piles are supposed to be no narrower than three feet, but my potting bench is behind where I'm standing and I wanted maneuvering room.

The first layer was pine needles and small sticks. Then I alternated layers of the removed sod, spoiled wood chips, grass clippings, and dead leaves. Since leaves haven't started falling here in great quantities, I raked leaves from under wooded area next to the driveway.  Normally, I would not bother raking here, but I needed them to provide a completely dry layer.

By the end of this stage, the pile is about sixteen inches high ending with a layer of the chips. I have grass clipping and sod left over, but I used the whole load of chips.  Now I wish I'd dumped one more of those loads of spoiled chips here. I'll work on adding more to the pile next week after I complete some other tasks. By the time it's done, the pile will be at least waist high.  The pile needs enough mass to heat up.

The veggies are growing

Most of the seeds have sprouted, but not the spinach or parsley. At this point the seedlings are vulnerable so it's crucial that they receive extra irrigation unless there is a good rain and that the weeds are pulled.

It's possible that all of the sugar snap peas have sprouted even though they were packed for the 2009 season. They are growing tendrils now so sometime this week, I'll train them to climb the tomato cages. We are looking forward to eating this sweet and crunchy crop.

The sugar snap peas are up!

A tiny green tree frog sat on the porch rail in its streamlined mode all day. This may be the one that visits my office window at night to dine on the bugs attracted to my light. We're a team--he gets free bugs and I am entertained.

And so October begins--it's the last of our five wet months for the year. Enjoy the fall.  It's a wonderful season for gardening here in north Florida.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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