Kohlrabi

Hi kids, each year I feel like I grow the same vegetables over and over again, although they may be new variations of them, they are still the same thing. I wanted to mix it up this year and try something a little bit different, Kohlrobi. Now back when I lived on the farm we grew Kohlrobi and it was beautiful. So I wanted to give it a try this year. I found some kohlrabi starts at the local nursery so I picked them up and started to plant them, planting two different crops so that I could stagger out when I would harvest my plants. And boy did they do well. The whole plant is edible from the leaves to the bulbous stem. 

So let's take a look on how to grow them. If you ever grown cabbage, broccoli, or cauliflower then you'll be a pro at with Kohlrobi. It's in the same family as the other brassicas so it enjoys the same type of climate. Start them off early in the years they can get a better start growing and I'm little bit cooler environment. Amend the soil with organic matter and watch them grow. Now with my Kohlrobi that was really all I had to do, but My second crop might have been a little bit harder since I started to get cabbage moth caterpillars on my plants. They only affected the leaves and not the bulbous stem. The chickens loved them though!

If you are seeing wholes in your leaves bug you don't know who is doing the damage, look under the leaves and this is the little buggie that you will find. Now you can spray the plant to kill the bugs, but I just find it easier to pick them off. And the thing is, it's so much easier to just pick them off and do the 'real' organic pest control form.

Now the bed that I have them in now is very good soil with lots of rich humus. Plant them them in the spring about the beginning of May. Now every two weeks plant some succession crops so as to continue your harvest. Now I harvested my first pair in the second week of June and am still harvesting here in the second week of July. 

Harvesting:

So when do you harvest this alien looking veggie? When the bulbous stem gets to be around 4 inches in diameter is about when you should harvest. It will still be young and tender. The danger with harvesting later is that you may risk the kohlrabi becoming fibrous inside. Although I many times pick them 5-6 inches wide and they are still delicious!
When it does come time to harvest there are a couple ways. The correct way that I first started doing but then got tired so I switched to the lazy. 

Correct Way:

As indicated here in the picture, the proper way so as not to disturb the soil would be to find the base of the plant and snip it with a pair of snippers.












Incorrect Way:

   To pull the whole plant out of the ground, roots and all (like an onion), and lop off the root-ball of dirt.

Both ways are correct and both ways give you a good result.

Later I will post a recipe for a kohlrabi fitter!

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Gardens, nurseries and pollinators

As a gardener who favors native plants, pollinator-friendly plants, and generally "plants that work for a living," I always enjoy visiting gardens that support flower visitors, whether they're cottage gardens full of nectar- and pollen- rich plants from wherever, or native meadow gardens.

I loved visiting Chickadee Gardens, Scott's garden, and Joy Creek Nursery, especially because of the abundance of flower visitors.  I took lots of photos in each of these places - here are just a few.

bumblebee on Dahlia

bee on Eryngium of some kind

Joy Creek nursery view

honeybee on Agastache

bumblebee visiting a Penstemon cultivar

bumblebee and Monarda cultivar

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Terrible taro and other invasives

The taro removed from the bulkhead garden.

Removing invasives, sooner rather than later

Just this last April, we redid this weird bulkhead space to fix a slumping problem. At the time, I thought I'd removed all the taro roots and corms (Colocasia esculenta) and the soil we used to fill in the space was from another area of the property with no taros. So in just these few months, they've rebounded. I pulled this whole bouquet from this space which is approximately 4' x 4'.  I'll have to check for new growth more often. I also pulled out some native elderberry  (Sambucus nigra subsp. canadensis) volunteers, which are small trees.

Note on taro (aka dasheen): it was brought from Africa by slaves and then again in 1910 by the US Dept. of Agriculture as a potato substitute for the south. Big mistake. Several people suggested that we include it as a crop in "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida," but I refused. If it's invasive, we should not be encouraging people to grow it. Another interesting feature of this plant as a crop, is that every part contains calcium oxalate crystals, which can irritate your mouth and other tissues. To prepare the corms to eat, you have to boil it in at least three waters and then grind it to a powder.

While I was working on the taro removal, my husband was cleaning out the area between the intake pipe for the irrigation system and the bulkhead. A nice stand of ferns had colonized the area. I decided to replant them along the bulkhead where the turf grass didn't grow well. After standing back to look at the reconfigured space, we decided to remove the turf from the whole area for easier mowing. And here I thought we got to scratch a small item from the giant gardening to-do list, but no, it became a bigger task. Has that ever happened to you?

After my husband cleared out the ferns and other plants that were growing between the intake pipe of the irrigation system and the bulkhead, he cleaned out as much of the built up soil to make this space less attractive for new plants to set up camp there. You can see the pump in the background.

A few of the removed ferns with their squished roots and rhizomes.

After looking critically at this space, my husband and I
decided to remove this ridiculous chunk of lawn between our boat-lift bulkhead and the neighbor's concrete pad.

The sticky clay soil under the grass made this job much more difficult.

I had some tropical sage (Salvia coccinea) that needed to be removed from the edible gardens where I will be turning them under with marigolds in a couple of weeks. (See below.) So I added them in front of the previous garden space to make this more of a butterfly garden. There is no gutter for the boat lift bay roof, so we placed a board along the drip line for easy access to the bed and to protect the soil. We mulched the whole area with about three inches of arborists' wood chips. We've had them since September, so they are well-composted.

Testing the placement of the drip board with a hose attached to the irrigation pump.

The finished product—for now. Yay!

A couple of side adventures from the bulkhead task...

Whenever we see these invasive snails in the lake, we smash them with a shovel and add them to the compost pile. Just think of all that nice calcium.

Treasures found in the chip pile.

In the edible beds

Our come again cabbage is still going strong after 7 months of harvests. I first wrote about this stub of a store bought cabbage in January. I harvested four medium-sized heads and an untold number of leaves. While it looks a little moth-eaten now, the leaves are still sweet!

A volunteer tropical sage amongst the okra. I allow these pollinator-attracting plants to grow pretty much where they sprout in our edible gardens. I transplanted a bunch of volunteers from a bed that's ready to be turned to the new bulkhead garden space.

Even though it's been shown to be invasive,
nandina is still for sale and widely planted.

Are you harboring this invasive in your yard? 

Get rid of it now, not only is it displacing native plants in natural habitats, it's also poisoning birds like the cedar waxwings. It's also poisonous to your pets.

I posted this photo on Facebook and it was shared by more than 100 people and seen by more than 5,000 people. There were many comments including people who said that their nandina had never hurt anything and birds even make their nests in it.

The thing is that if a plant has been determined to be invasive, it has already done damage in natural ecosystems. It's not someone's idealistic whim, but a rigorous procedure. See the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Counsel's (FLEPPC) website for more information.

As homeowners we can do our part by keeping them out of our yards so that our birds don't carry their seeds to nearby wild areas. Invasives, both plant and animal, have cost billions of dollars (both pubic and private monies) annually. Don't be part of the problem: don't buy invasive plants, and remove them ASAP from your property.

Beautiful Florida natives!

A beautiful flatwoods sunflower planted itself in my
wildflower garden.

The first beautiful scarlet rosemallow of the season at the edge of our front pond.

Summer skies in Florida!

A hazy beginning to the day after a heavy rain. This is a color photo, but you'd hardly guess that.

After a hazy sunrise (see above) the sunset over the lake was beautiful.

Summer clouds before the storms

Summer clouds on the same day...

A sepia-toned sunrise preceded a day of rain. No gardening took place on this day.

I hope to see you soon at my presentation at the Fleming Island Library in Clay County on August 12th at 10am. the Fleming Island Garden Club coordinated this event, but it's open to all.

Garden early in the day during the summer!

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Exploring the Columbia River Gorge

I loved these photos that my gardening companion took, while on one of the wonderful waterfall hikes along the Columbia Gorge and then at Trillium Lake, in the Mt. Hood National Forest.

Visiting a waterfall in the Columbia River Gorge

May we all enjoy these great places for many seasons to come!

Checking out the wildflowers on the dam at Trillium Lake

This one was at Trillium Lake, on the flanks on Mt. Hood.

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Nocturnal symphony and fireflies!

At home in the Southeast after a wonderful trip to Oregon, visiting fabulous gardens during the Garden Bloggers Fling, and having a week prior to explore some of the mountains and the coast -- what's striking me this evening (as I've started looking through my MANY photos of gardens and natural areas) are the night sounds this evening -- out the open windows.

It was quite warm here today, but we're off again in a couple of days, so turning on the mini-split doesn't seem necessary, especially as it's cooling down again tomorrow.

The nocturnal symphony is in full swing.

Field crickets, tree frogs, and cicadas are producing a wonderful "welcome home" night song -- which isn't part of the experience of western states.

The flashes of fireflies are part of the the gallery forest view, too.  Magic.

I've brought back with me so many visual memories of remarkable gardens, big and small, packed with special plants from all over the world.  I love the amazing artistic flair and aesthetic qualities in these gardens.

But I'm really glad to be home, too, in the Southern Appalachians, with the tree frog and cricket seranade.

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Canna 'Musafolia'

One of the things that I love most about my blog is that I'm able to look back from year-to-year and look at the things that succeeded and maybe some other things that didn't succeed. Well today I wanted to share with you something that I know will be the future addition to my garden next year. It's called Canna 'Musafolia' or banana canna; and as the name suggests it resembles a tropical banana plant.  Now I'm pretty familiar with most cannas but I've never heard of this one before. I plant different cannas every year and they always give me such a show  (that is if the squirrels don't dig them up). Normally the ones I grow are for the flowers and for the unique foliage and Canna 'Musafolia' is no exception. It can grow up to 10 feet tall by Midsummer and even taller in ideal conditions.

In the Great Lakes region where I live (zone 5b), getting the tropical paradise look, that so many love, is an extreme challenge. Because of our cold winters anything tropical die back. But with banana canna it is now possible to have the backyard hammock and Corona sitting by the pool in your "banana tree". 

I learned about this particular Canna when I was catching up on  "A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach", I never heard of it before so I looked it up online and my mind was blown. Although I have yet to figure out where exactly I'll place it in my garden, I know that I will be growing it next year. And hopefully if all goes well (please squirrels give me a break), I'll be posting pictures of my own beautiful 10 foot tall cannas. 

Below are some photos that I pulled from online. 

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Traveling in Oregon

It's been a lovely circuit back along the Columbia River, visiting more waterfalls along the way, tracing some of Lewis and Clark's journey, and spending time in Astoria,  before heading south along the coast.

TS botanizing at Trillium Lake

Upper Horseshoe Falls

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