New book, book tour, and more

The Art of Maintaining a Florida Native Landscape

The Art of Maintaining a 

Florida Native Landscape 

Yay! My new book is now available for preorder from Amazon. I've covered a wide array of topics, which I think have not been covered sufficiently in other books and online resources.

List of Chapters

1. Introduction to Natives and Their Ecosystems
2. Planning Native Plant Projects
3. Invasive Exotics
4. Site Preparation and Landscape Editing
5. Selecting, Planting, and Caring for Natives
6. Propagation Techniques
7. Minding Your Edges
8. Managing Freedom Lawns, Lawn Replacements, and Meadows
9. Creating and Maintaining Groves, Hedgerows, and Fencerows
10. Landscaping in Moist Habitats
11. Beyond Your Yard
Appendix I. Suggested Native Plant List
Appendix II. Types of Mulch
Glossary
Resources

Illustrations are by Marjorie Shropshire

Marjorie has done a wonderful job with her illustrations, which make complex topics easy to understand.

This one answers the question, "What to do with a messy lawn tree?"

Book Tour

I'll be a speaker at the Florida Native Plant Society's conference at the end of May, but since the book won't be out until August, my official book tour will be from August 31st until November 15th.  See the Appearances tab for an up-to-date list.  Email me at garden@sky-bolt.com

As tempting as it is to have fresh tomatoes from your garden, summer is NOT the time to plant them even though distributors for big box stores are trying to sell them to us. Wait until late August and you may end up with a moderate harvest before winter sets in. We included a detailed planting calendar by region in Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida 

Have you planted your summer cover crops yet?


Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Read More

A lovely white rose

When the Garden Blogger's Fling was in Asheville a few years ago, I was lucky enough to win a gift certificate from a rose grower as a raffle gift.  She was a Florida rose grower who grew all sorts of heirloom roses, etc.

I'm not a rose person who's willing to coddle them, so I picked the hardiest white climbing rose that she had in her catalog.

It's done just fine.  It drops all of its leaves early due to some sort of leaf spot, but flowers quite nicely.  This spring is the best ever!

Read More

Bird communication

An illuminating piece about birds at the NYT!

Read More

Tomatoes, peppers, basil, and eggplant

I finally managed to snag warm-season transplants last week, and they're now in the ground (with the usual dance around spinach, lettuce, garlic, and the peas that are finally growing rapidly -- probably just to be zapped by hot dry weather).

Soon to follow are the direct-seeded warm season veggies, although not that many. 

I sorted through my seeds today, matching up space to seed and will need to be careful.  I'm mindful of climbing squash in the front garden looking AWFUL in mid-season, because of powderly mildew!

I think I'll sow pole beans of various sorts tomorrow, set up additional trellises, and do a woodchuck barrier in the lower bed, so it might actually be productive, too.

My gardening companion disturbed the woodchuck burrow this afternoon, but I know that s/he will have multiple tunnels.  S/he ate our neighbor's tomato plants a couple of days ago.  I wouldn't have thought that tomato foliage would be high on a woodchuck food preference list, but perhaps they're hungry...

Read More

Chives and vegetables

The chives that I brought last year (from dividing long-established plants) are huge, witness to the power of organic fertilizer, I suppose. 

They were never this big in my Piedmont beds, which were amended, but obviously not as well as I thought!

chives in flower

I've already planted the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant (as well as herbs) that I snagged at the Mountain Herb Festival this last weekend at the WNC Farmer's Market. 

I tried to be moderate and select an appropriate variety for the space that I have, and what we really like to eat- cherry (Sweet Million and Black Cherry), slicing tomatoes (a variety) as well as paste tomatoes (an improved San Marzano) for roasting and freezing.  The peppers included an ancho and a Romano pepper which sounded like my favorite pizza peppers (which I would have grown from seed if I'd time).  I may still do some peppers from seed (there's usually plenty of warm season growing time, even here in the mountains).

Read More

Home in the mountains

It was a whirlwind weekend of moving up furniture and boxes last Friday, shedding furniture at local consignment shops,  sorting boxes to the right spaces, unloading and distributing them, shedding even more, etc.

But it was good work. It didn't take as long to get things back into a semblance of home as it did to shed things.

And it wasn't so difficult to honor the old house that we were leaving, after all.

It's a good house, with great bones, and it looked nice even though empty, waiting for the next owners, whose truck was in the driveway.

I'm grateful for the encouragement (and discipline that was imposed by a smaller house) around shedding.

We've done well. We have space for everything, although I'm still in reorganization and shedding mode (and will be for a while!)

Our favorite pieces of furniture from our old house came with us.

Our old sofa has replaced the main sofa (an overstuffed, tufted sofa filled with feathers, which I hated for reasons from tufts to allergies).  The sleeper sofa has given way to the matching loveseat to the upstairs sofa.

And starting to rearranging things and get everything settled (all the boxes are gone, now, hooray)  will be an ongoing process, but it's finished enough, now, to feel even more at home.

Our more rustic antique pieces have simply made us feel more at home;  I still have too many "decorative" items, but as  I pare them down, we'll still be at home.

Read More

Moving to a new garden

We've been so fortunate to have a new "piece of earth" to move forward to -- there's so much that we've established of a new garden, over the past 6 years, from my raised beds for vegetables and pocket meadow in front, to the native woodland garden below the house (my gardening companion's work).

We loved this house when we first visited because of the view into the ravine forest (now greatly enhanced), because of invasive eradication and addition of understory natives.  These were fall views in previous years.

I was reminded of this as I was looking in my past posts and photos for a new blog header and thinking that I didn't really have the photo that I wanted.

It'll come.

I'm wistful this week as we approach moving day on Friday from our old house and garden, but am totally fortunate to have a wonderful new space to look forward to.

With an exuberant-looking pocket meadow in front!

Read More