Green gardening DOES matter

A bluebird at sunrise in my yard.
Bluebirds are important bug predators in the ecosystem.

At the beginning of a new year, there are many speculations on what might happen and to-do lists of what you could do to improve your own situation.  Normally, I shy away from making such proclamations, but this year I decided to make a short list on what gardeners could do to improve the planet and encourage wildlife.

One of the reasons for my making this list is learning that it takes 17 repetitions for most people to fully understand a new idea and commit it to their immediate recall memory banks. Even though I've been writing about green gardening for ten years at this point, there are still people who have not heard enough about Doug Tallamy and his research showing that even small patches of native plants have a positive impact on birds, insects, and other members of the local ecosystems.

So I wrote 6 easy steps to support wildlife in 2014 over on the Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens blog to show some examples of things and normal people can accomplish and how these projects will improve the planet.  As I reminded readers, There is no Planet B. 

A burmarigold (Bidens laevis) blooming on Jan 5 in a
wet roadside ditch in Clay County FL.

Winter in Florida

It's been pretty cold and windy here in north Florida, but yesterday it was in the mid-seventies and quite pleasant.  The cold is returning as I write this and tonight we'll probably experience a killing frost, but it won't last long.  Our landscape of mostly native plants will be fine, although I will harvest all of my sugar snap peas today and cover the vines with a blanket. They are close to the house, where it's a little warmer anyway, but I'll take the precaution so we can continue our harvest deeper into the winter.

I feel for my friends in the more northerly climes and the polar vortex that they have suffered through. They will continue to freeze their butts off as Mother Nature continues her rampage, but this doesn't mean that global warming is a hoax.

Plants don't lie

Even though climate change doubters are using this cold snap as proof of their politically-motivated beliefs, plants don't have a political agenda and they don't lie. As an example of what happens as a result of fewer cold snaps, mangroves have been moving northward as seen in progressive satellite images over the years. See this Science Daily story With Few Hard Frosts, Tropical Mangroves Push North,  Slate's article Winter does Not Disprove Global Warming and How global warming can make cold snaps even worse, as posted in Quartz.

Happy New Year!

I wish you a happy and prosperous 2014 that's filled with adventures that allow you to enjoy nature at its best.  Also, I'd love to hear what you are doing to enhance your yard to benefit wildlife.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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The holidays in Florida

Sugar snap peas are delish right from the vine.

Starting from the point of the knife: oregano, curly parsley, garlic chives, purple & orange carrots, sugar snap peas.

It's two days before Christmas and the rains are headed our way, so it was time to harvest some of the Christmas dinner.  The rain will bring a cold front, but it's 80º, so my attire was tropical. Here's the plan for this harvest:
- Sugar snap peas: the young ones will be steamed with butter, while the older pods will be used in the pesto dip.
- Purple and orange carrots will be cut in thin diagonal slices for dipping in the pesto, while the rest of them will be steamed with butter.
- Lime basil, curly parsley, garlic chives, and oregano will be used in the pesto dip.

We'll be having a large pear salad as part of our vegetarian dinner, but I'll wait to harvest the lettuce until right before it's needed. My daughter and her husband will be arriving tomorrow night. As usual, the cooking will be a team effort. Fun!


Merry Christmas from Florida

The house is a decorated as it's going to be with a few poinsettias and a couple of stunning tropical sage bouquets!

See my two other posts today: The magic of the mistletoes over on the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog.  One of the comments made me laugh: From Marilyn: '“…when we think about the magical and mythical mistletoe and how it stays alive even while its host appears to be dead.” And then, only to be shot down by some trigger-happy hemi-parasite poacher. Mangled movie title: “They Shoot Mistletoe, Don’t They?” Who knew? What a fascinating article.'


Wild things wreath!

The second post is Christmas is for the birds on the Florida Native Plant Society blog. My wild things wreath is the one you don't see in that post. But since I've added the cranberry chains, I have yet to see any birds investigate, but maybe I haven't been sitting at my computer long enough since then to notice or maybe they gave up.

I wish you and yours a wonderful Christmas and a joyous New Year.  Thanks for reading.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Greens and clear mountains

A quick trip "up the hill" for a meeting found me admiring the clear view of the mountains and a lovely sunset.

late winter greens from a previous year

A bonus from this trip was collecting greens (arugula, mustards, kale and turnip greens) from my unprotected raised beds. It's rather remarkable how they've bounced back from sudden low temperatures in the low 20°s a couple of times already -- low temperatures are predicted again for tonight.  The kale isn't surprising, but the arugula and mustards?

The mache and creasy greens look great and I've left them for harvest later in the winter! They're quite OK freezing solid, amazingly.

The remnants of the broccoli stems (totally frosted)make me feel better about the woodchuck muching earlier in fall - I probably wouldn't have had a harvest anyway.

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Back to normal?

Finally, our curiously warm and wet days for early December are trending back to normal, after being punctuated (on both ends) by severe freezes.

It was 71° yesterday.  Very odd. It's triggering some early flowering, but not like last year oddities, that's for sure.  But I remember a Christmas Day (in Austin, while growing up) that was 80°F and in coastal GA, we had very mild winter days, too.

There have been plenty of falls over the last two decades, too, where we haven't experienced a hard frost (much less freeze) by the time we leave for winter break.

The Japanese cherries keep flushing out!   At this rate, it'll be interesting to see how many flower buds are left for spring.

At the Garden (where I work), our director spotted a Hepatica acutiloba in flower (it's normally one of the first flowers in spring, but December?)

Here's a post from several years ago, remarking on late February flowers.

Hepatica acutiloba

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A lovely hike

A gift of an unexpected Sunday afternoon in the mountains (thanks to a plumbing issue requiring Monday attention) was a lovely hike along a short segment of the Mountains-to-Sea trail, along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Remnant snow made the trail slippery in spots, but the views were lovely.

Galax and mosses were nice, as were the abundant Christmas ferns.

Woody's pawprints on the road (Blue Ridge Parkway, closed currently at this point because of the pre-Thanksgiving snow), pointed the way home.

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Another pileated woodpecker

The red oak tree directly seen from our deck has (a relatively recent) old dead branch poking out to the right of the main trunk.

It's a magnet for woodpeckers, not surprisingly,

-- we've seen downies and red-bellied woodpeckers visiting our feeder frequently,

Since the dead branch has occurred, we've been delighted to see pileated woodpeckers foraging, too.

The tree is relatively close, but not so close that good photographic shots are easy (at least with my long "normal" lens - 18-200 and older digital camera, a venerable Nikon D100)!

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Clay County Delegation Hearing and Plan Ahead!

Speaking at the Clay County Delegation Hearing.

I spoke before the Clay County Delegation hearing on Nov. 18th. The delegation includes our state senator, Rob Bradley and 2 representatives that claim part of Clay County in their districts: Charlie Van Zant and Travis Cummings. I spoke to this same group last year, which I wrote about in my article: "Supporting Wildlife Beyond Your Garden Gate."

While I still wanted to make the same case that preserving Florida's wildlands is not anti-business, I used different examples and changed the handouts.  So here is my handout to them--I'd printed on green paper. It includes a summary of my presentation and some references for more details.  Again I offered to be their go-to person if they had questions about environmental issues.

Preserving Florida's environment is NOT an anti-business policy

Ginny Stibolt; gstibolt@sky-bolt.com; 904 xxx-xxxx; www.GreenGardeningMatters.com

There were 91.5 million tourists in Florida in 2012. They spent $71.8 billion, generated 23 percent of the state’s sales tax revenue and created jobs for more than one million Floridians.  (85 visitors support one Florida job.)  But no one comes to Florida to see a shopping center or a dried up mudhole instead of a clear flowing spring because a bottling company was allowed to pump out our water at almost no cost.  We need to invest in our natural resources to attract even more tourists.

The sugar industry in Florida is heavily subsidized but they are damaging the Everglades and then the taxpayers and others are left with the bill for cleaning up their mess.  Shouldn't we let the free market take over?  If they can't make it without our help AND pay the cost to correct their pollution, then it's time to let them go out of business.  The Everglades are much more important dollarwise than the dirty sugar industry. Rarely can one government program insult so many for the benefit of so few.

Texas state parks are meticulously cared for and have extras like bird hosts who lead field trips each day. Florida has some wonderful state parks, but with budget shortfalls, they are struggling and it shows. Restore the budgets for our state parks.  They have a lot to offer, but it's not free. Aren't we better than Texas?

The plan to sell off "surplus lands" is not working well.  And the original deals to acquire many of these parcels was complex with private landholders, trusts, municipalities and others with the stipulation that they would become part of Florida Forever.  As a biologist I can tell you that even small chunks of open lands serve as important habitat, especially for migrating birds and butterflies.

Some species of songbird populations have dropped more than 80% since the 1960s.  How are we going to attract all those birders here if we wipe out those habitats to put in another development or shopping center?

Florida's natural ecosystems have value. Please do what you can to make sure they are preserved.

Resources:
Article on the "Surplus Lands" sale:  www.heraldtribune.com/article/20131117/article/131119658
Article on coddling the sugar industry: www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-end-the-sweet-deal-for-big-sugar/2151569
Audubon Florida: www.FL.Audubon.org

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Plan Ahead!

A road project in Orange Park FL. What's wrong with this picture?

When Mother Nature plants her trees, she doesn't always leave enough room for their full adult sizes, but as humans we should be smart enough so that our woody plants have enough room to grow and are placed so that they won’t need much corrective pruning to fit into the landscape, but guess what?  We are not that smart.  See my latest post over on the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog: Plan Ahead! 

 I hope you have a bountiful Thanksgiving.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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