It's always a joy to see fireflies -- here in the Carolinas, it's June when we see most of them. I don't know that much about fireflies -- just that the males flash to attract mates; the periodicity is meaningful; and different species flash at ground level, mid-level, and up in the canopy.We had a colleague years ago who studied them in the Smokies. He'd head off in June to lie on the forest...
Thursday, 26 June 2014
Ecosystem gardening, Florida, Ginny Stibolt, Growing edibles, native plants, Pollinators, Sustainability
Harvest-based tempura and more...
The harvest for some tempura.The harvest & recipeI had some okra, but not enough for good-sized batch of fried okra, so I supplemented it with 5 little sweet onions, some zucchini, and not shown here, about half of a garlic bulb.I don't have a deep fryer, but this method for tempura works pretty...
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Poison ivy, Virginia creeper, and other condundrums
I've been allergic to poison ivy since childhood, so I'm very familiar with how to identify it and avoid contamination. (I'm crazed about making sure our dogs - over the years - haven't picked up the urushiol from the leaves on hikes, etc. -- and if they have, it's always been bath time!)So, it's...
Monday, 23 June 2014
Swapping peas for beans
I never imagined that I'd be pulling out sugar snap peas, beet greens, and purple-podded peas just after the first day of summer. But I did that over the weekend, and we enjoyed the harvest.It took a bit of scrambling to round up the appropriate bean seeds for their trellis replacement, too. I had some of them at the ready, and thought that I had all of my seeds here, too, but apparently some...
Saturday, 21 June 2014
Purples in the garden
fading Aquilegia petalsI've been amazed at the brilliant colors that the fading Aquilegia petals have become. They're almost neon magenta. A quite un-natural color, but it's still a true color!Aquilegia, a fern, and rocks The corner plantings look lovely, because of them, and the robust...
Friday, 20 June 2014
Results: the nematode experiment
In looking at all the broccoli & parsley roots, there was very little damage by root-knot nematodes. Yay!The problem...For the last several years, the root-knot nematodes have damaged roots of several of our crops, but we were not aware of it until they were pulled up. Most of the time the crops...
Thursday, 19 June 2014
Deer herbivory pressure
Hmm, disappearing leek tops and parsley had me suspicious about woodchucks a couple of weeks ago in the Piedmont-- really, parsley eaten from the large container on the top of the front steps?But, seeing two sets of does with fawns today -- one outside my study window, and the other near the Madren Conference Center where my SCBG colleagues and I do rotating gardening call-in shows on YourDay (we...