All things green

There’s only 4 weeks left until Memorial Day! And yet they are forecasting snow showers for Monday and Tuesday!

My tomato seedlings are up and 3″ tall already. Pepper’s are up, too. I’m lucky to have a heated bench at the greenhouse. That speeds germination along . It makes such a difference. But a heating mat at home would do as well. Johnny’s Select Seeds and Seeds of Change both carry heating mats in their catalogs. You’ll want to keep that in mind for next year. Though who knows we may have a late cold spring.

If you started tomatoes and peppers right now, they should be big enough by the 2nd week of June. Which the way we’re going this year may be just the right time to put them out. If you put tomatoes and pepers out and they get chilled , it can stall their growth. Wait till the nights stay above 50 degrees. Unless you have protection that will keep the soil’s heat in.

For the past 16 years I have only used “soilless” potting mix for starting seeds and potting up my seedlings. so I’ve never had to worry about “damping off”, a disease that causes the stems of brand new seedlings to collapse and the plant to die. If you use garden soil or potting mix with real soil in it, (unless its been totally sterilized) you will be taking the chance that the “damping off ” disease organism is there in the soil and may infect your seedlings.

Once your seeds have germinated they need as much sunlight as you can give them in the house. Other wise they will get long and weak stems.

Don’t keep your seedlings too moist. Let the very top of your soil look a little dry before you water again.

If you notice little black “flies” coming off your soil around your seedlings (or any other houseplant for that matter), they you are keeping your soil too wet. Those are fungus gnats. If the infestation gets too severe it will stunt your seedlings because the larvae of the fungus gnat is a grub in the soil that may chew on your seedlings roots.

With 4 weeks to go till Memorial Day, it’s time to start seeds like annual coreopsis, cleome, zinnia, marigolds 4 O’Clocks, nasturtium and annual phlox.

During last weeks warm spell it was probably tempting to buy some annuals at the garden centers. If you did, keep those plants away from the frost. It’s forecasted to go down to 34 degrees Monday night.

Bye for now. Happy growing! Judy

2008 has been declared International Year of the Potato by the United Nations. It almost sounds like a humorous punch line should follow that statement. However, it’s true, the once lowly potato has finally received the recognition it deserves.

Contrary to popular belief, potatoes originated in the Americas, not in Ireland. Native South American Indians were raising the delicious tuber for centuries before the Europeans discovered how versatile they are.

They were actually brought to Europe by the Spanish explorers during the mid-1500’s. The Spaniards were looking for gold, but, I would argue that this single discovery is more valuable to the human race than any amount of gold could be. After all you can’t eat gold. It looks like the United Nations agrees with me.

It wasn’t until the 1770’s that potatoes gained widespread acceptance. Thomas Jefferson was a big fan of the new crop, he even served french fries at state diners during his term as president,

Historically, we all remember being taught about the most infamous event involving potatoes. It was the Potato Famine that occurred in Europe from 1845 to 1848 causing over 1 million deaths from starvation. Many countries were involved, not just Ireland. Although, the Emerald Isle was hit the hardest.

Potatoes are now grown all over the world. They rank #4 after corn, wheat and rice in terms of worldwide production. China is now the largest producer of potatoes harvesting about 77 million tons. Russia is second with 43, India 27, and USA rounding out 4th with 22 million tons.

As far as who are the biggest lovers of potatoes… the folks in Europe eat about 216 lbs of potatoes per person per year. Here on the North American continent we average about 128 lbs. for each man, woman and child. Not many are eaten in Africa yet. South Americans don’t eat many either, which strikes me as a little odd, since this is where potatoes got their start so many centuries ago.

Up in northern Michigan, the good and gentle townfolk of Posen, have been celebrating the potato for decades with their annual Posen Potato Festival. This festival draws people from all over the state and beyond. It looks like once again, Michigan is way ahead of the rest of the world!

Our bag of seed potatoes is just waiting for the ground to dry out.

Bob

I heard the news this afternoon on the radio (WRCJ). The price of spaghetti will soon be at an all time high.

That inexpensive pasta, loved by children and adults alike, apparently will be costing much more in the future. The price will be so high that many families will no longer be able to afford to serve it on a regular basis.

The Swiss Spaghetti Weevil, an insect that has not been a problem in the past, is, because of global warming, threatening the Swiss spaghetti crop this season. Switzerland is the world’s major grower of spaghetti.

The weevil is very difficult to control even with strong insecticides under the best of circumstances.

Readers of this blog have nothing to worry about. Tomorrow I will be discussing growing organic spaghetti trees in your own back yard.

Bob

Have we had enough snow yet? Will spring ever get here? I’m sure that the first weekend we have warmer weather many, many people will be outside cleaning up their yards!

Let me say - please don’t burn the pile of leaves and twigs that you rake up! All those leaves that have been hiding in the corners all winter should go in the compost pile. If you don’t have a compost pile, start one. It’s easy! Oh yes, compost making can be a science. If you like formulas and recipes and quick results then you’ll want to read up on compost making. there are lots of books and magazine articles out there that will tell you how. But you can get results almost any way you do it if you’re patient enough. The simplest way to have compost is to start a pile about 3 ft square. I like to put down a layer of sticks in the bottom. Then alternate a thinner “green” layer and then a thicker “brown layer”. The green layer can be made of veggie scraps from the kitchen, or grass clippings or green weeds that you have pulled. the Brown layer is made of dried weeds, tree leaves and twigs. Just keep adding ingredients to the pile. It doesn’t have to be true layers either. It can be all mixed up. And then you can either be patient and wait a year ( my way of composting ) or do the extra work to hurry things along by “turning “your compost pile. Which means shoveling or forking the pile into a new pile next to it, putting the top layers on the bottom and the outside edges of the compost into the middle of the new pile. Keep it moist but not soggy and it will turn into “gardener’s black gold”! there are ways and products out there to make it faster and neater, but really it’s simple to do. Once you get in the habit of using all the debris from your garden fill your compost pile , you’ll wonder how you ever let it get taken to the landfill.

Another word of advice for this time of year. don’t jump the gun on starting seeds. If seeds are started too early you’ll only have long leggy seedlings before you can plant them outside. for instance, tomatoes should be started only 6 weeks before you plant them out, which around here is Memorial Day!

Which reminds me, I want to spend a few hours this evening looking through the seed catalogs again. Bye for now

Judy

I had a fantastic gardening experience last week. I went to the Philadelphia Flower Show. It was amazing! Everywhere I looked I was awed by the great landscape design and beautiful flowers. Tulips, daffodils, azaleas,dogwoods, magnolias, calla lilies and more were in full bloom. Even wild flowers (which are much harder to force into bloom at the right time), virginia bluebells, trilliums and others. There was something for everyone’s style of gardening. Formal, small lots, city lots, informal, wild and tropical and exotic. One of my favorites (and it is hard not to have a long list of favorites) was a garden depicting a wild bayou with a decrepit shack complete with an realistic alligator in the pond, and native shrubs planted as if in a back woods with 20 ft tall cypress trees and even their “knees” (those woody knobs that grow up out of the swampy ground around the cypress tree that are used by the tree to get extra oxygen). That garden was very realistic looking with all the ground covered with moss and leaves and sticks and logs here and there. Superb design! It won some awards so the judges and the people liked it too.

The Philadelphia Flower Show is held in the Pennsylvania Convention Center and covers 10 acres! A third to a half of that was the landscape designs, another third was standard flower show entries such as houseplants, floral designs, topiaries and bonsai. And another third was vendors with great gardening stuff.

We(myself and two of my hiking buddy gals) got there at 8:30 in the morning and stayed till almost 8 at night. What an experience!

http://www.theflowershow.com/home/index.html

Bye now, Judy

It may not look like it but spring will be here soon. Now is the time to plan our gardens, before we get carried away with the routine chores of spring.

As I page thru the catalogs ( and this is especially true if you are a new gardener) I try not to pick a plant just because I love the flower. I pay attention to the descriptions of the plant. The backbone of a good garden should have plants with descriptions in the catalogs that sound like the following phrases : easy to grow,hardy and vigorous, long blooming, disease resistant, long lived, not fussy about soil, equally happy in average soil or moist soil, reliable, and easy culture. Those kinds of plants will be dependable. They won’t need lots of time consuming care and fussing with.

Sometimes it’s hard to resist putting a shade loving plant on the south side of the house because it matches the color scheme there. But I know it won’t be happy there and then I won’t be happy either. The same thing goes for putting a sun lover under the edge of a tree. You’ll probably have to move it later and that’s twice the work.

I try to pay attention to the micro climates in my yard. The spot near the driveway that I see in the sun every morning is probably in the shade most of the day. I need to remember that when I’m planning.

Here’s a short list of easy plants that I use often. For a sunny, well drained spot, plant yarrow, coreopsis, sedums, lavender, German Iris, gaillardia, agastache, daylilies and daffodils. For average soil neither very moist or always dry, plant lady’s mantle, purple coneflower, catmint, liriope and cannas.

Nows the time to dream but be down to earth about it. That’s what makes a good gardener.

Bye now, Judy

Many gardeners are becoming interested in growing butterfly gardens. I will be putting together a list at work at the MBGNA gardens, for an exhibit garden about attracting butterflies. Today I’ll write about flowers that the adult butterflies readily come to for nectar. An even more ambitious garden is one that includes plants that the larvae of butterflies need to eat, but that will have to be another blog.

Butterflies are looking for flowers that have lots of nectar and a good landing platform for them to cling to. Small tubular flowers are especially adapted to the butterflies’ probiscus- its’ specially shaped tongue that works like a straw. These tubular flowers cannot be too long or the butterfly cannot reach all the way down to the nectar which is usually at the base of the petals.

So after a quick look at my favorite flower catalog, Select Seeds, I’ve come up with this list of flowers for attracting butterflies.

Thyme

Valerian

Heliotrope

Asclepias incarnata (common name-Red Swallowwort)

Phlox

Allysum

Verbena (all the different kinds of verbena are good. The Verbena bonariensis is very easy to grow here in Michigan)

Thistle

Scabiosa

Columbine

Chrysanthemum

Herbs (many of them are good nectar flowers)

Milkweed (attracts at least 17 different kinds of butterflies)

Queen Anne’s Lace

Liatris (common name Gayfeather)

Gaillardia

Butterfly Bush

Echinacea purpurea (common name Purple Coneflower)

Violets

Lilac

Yarrow

Rudbeckia hirta (common name Black Eyed Susan)

Monarda (common name Bee Balm)

Lupine

Marigold

Daisy

Lavender

Other things you will want to consider when you plant your garden is to have a sunny site yet sheltered from the wind. Butterflies get tossed around by a breeze fairly easily. A shallow container of water is good too. Even just a mud puddle is beneficial to them. They need to absorb some minerals from the mud.

If you want an in depth look at butterfly gardens go to the Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Backyard Wildlife Sanctuary web site and click on Butterfly Gardens.

Happy Gardening! Bye now, Judy

Here is a virtual Valentine’s Day gift to you, a loyal reader of our blog. 

We only wish that we could give you these Valentine’s Day Flowers in person!

Bob and Judy

All too often, when we look around at our landscape in Southern Michigan, what we see is actually not Michigan plants, but alien species of plants from other countries. Any roadside has quack grass, brome grass, Queen Anne’s Lace, chicory, and dandelions growing along it; all weeds and all aliens. Of course not many Native Michigan plants would grow in a spot that is constantly disturbed by snow plows in winter and lawnmowers in summer. Prairie plants, which are Michigan natives, could grow along our roads if they weren’t mowed, and in a very few places they do.

Alien plants colonize disturbed areas very quickly. Their seed usually likes to germinate in freshly disturbed soil such as a roadside. Weedy aliens are not choosy about rich or lean soil. They are considered weeds just because of that and also because they produce so many seeds which are distributed as far and wide as possible. Native plants are usually choosier about soil and habitat, but once established and growing well, they can usually hold their own as long as the soil is not disturbed.

Historically our native prairies thrived in spots in Southern Michigan because those sites were regularly burned. Either started by lightning strikes or intentionally set by Native Americans. So prairie plants are usually deep rooted and have crowns where the growing stems emerge from, safely below the surface of the soil where they’re not killed by fires.

Some species of oak trees are adapted to fire, too. Their bark is thick enough that the living inner cells of the tree are not damaged by the heat of a grass fire sweeping through. So historically in numerous spots in Southern Michigan we had landscapes of widely spaced oak trees with special prairie plants growing in the soil in between the oak trees. These are called oak openings or sometimes referred to as savannas.

When Michigan was first settled, the first places to be farmed were usually these open areas. The settler would naturally be attracted to spots where he didn’t have to go to all the labor of cutting down the trees before he could begin to plow the soil and get a crop in. For this reason many of the oak openings and their special plants were lost. Since the Native American were pushed out, other oak openings were not burned anymore. So in the few openings that weren’t plowed, the shrubs and saplings of the adjacent woods started to grow in the rich soil , shading out the oak opening prairie plants. The edge of the woods slowly crept into the prairie and displaced the prairie plants.

One of the exciting aspects of habitat restoration (and I mean exciting!) is the use of fire to reclaim those prairies. Controlled burns have been used now at least for 20 years to help the prairies that are left, keeping them healthier by burning out the aliens, shrubs and trees that cannot survive the fire and reclaiming their lost edges.

In another blog I will tell you about the places in S. Michigan were these kinds of restoration practices are happening.

Bye now,

Judy

There was an unusual conference in Lansing last Friday and Saturday. It was the Stewardship Network’s “The Art and Science of Habitat Restoration”. Dedicated nature enthusiasts from all over Michigan convened to learn more about restoring native habitats.

Michigan is very fortunate to have numerous unusual habitats. From lakes and forests, swamps and marshes, bog and fens, to prairies and sand barrens. Along with the habitats are some rare plants and animals. We have plants in Michigan that are found nowhere else on earth. So it’s no wonder that we have alot of dedicated people who are ready and willing to do the often back breaking labor of restoring habitats that have been damaged.

We’ve lost huge amounts of native habitats to sprawling development. But we also lose unusual habits to changes in drainage patterns, roads being cut through natural lands, ORV use in delicate ecosystems, damming up rivers or straightening rivers. We even lose habitats to other plants - very aggressive weedy plants that take over and crowd out the native plants. Those weedy plants are usually alien plants brought to this country from overseas. Examples are purple loosestrife, brome grass and even some shrubs. We don’t usually think of shrubs as weeds, but certain ones are, such as common buckthorn, autumn olive and bush honeysuckle.

So what do people do when they restore native landscapes?  The majority of the work is weeding out the plants that have invaded the area.  Some alien plants are pulled out before they set seeds.  Some are cut. but if common buckthorn is just cut, it will send up new shoots producing more buckthorn than before,  so the stumps of the cut shrub must be treated with herbicide to kill all the roots.  The herbicide is “painted” on, not sprayed, with a special sponge tip applicator.  This puts the herbicide only where it is needed.  With certain herbicides this method can even be used in wetlands.

Restoring native landscapes is a fairly new science,  so this conference was very useful in sharing the details of methods that work the best.  The people attending ranged from scientists and biologists and botanists to regular people that volunteer their time doing the labor.

I’ll write you more next time about the speakers and classes at the conference, places that have been restored and plants that have saved.

Bye now, Judy