All things green

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

For years I have been looking for a way to keep my feet dry in the greenhouse and garden.  A lot of water gets sloshed around in the greenhouse  and my feet often  get wet and stay wet all day. The same is true out in the garden on a morning covered with heavy dew .

I’ve tried slip-on boots, the type that go over your shoes… they are too heavy to wear all day.

Galoshes are out of the question, for the same reason.

Disposable over boots are OK, but the don’t hold up to a lot of walking.

Wellington’s (known as “Wellies” in The British Isles) keep my feet the driest, but they are a little heavy and rub against my leg at the top of the boot when I walk.

This week the answer to my dilemma  arrived via UPS… a pair of “LawnGrips” garden shoes.

I opted for the short-top, non-steel toed model.

When I first put them on, they felt tight and uncomfortable. I was  disappointed because the advertisement claimed that they had a roomy toe area and gave your feet plenty of space.  I immediately took them off and planned to send them back.

The next day however, I decided to give them another try.  Low and behold, after about 15 minutes of walking, the shoe material started to relax and conform to the shape of my foot.

They turned out to be a very comfortable shoe, today I even  forgot that I had them on.

These LawnGrips kept my feet dry in the greenhouse and outdoors in the slushy mess we call snow.

The bottom of the shoe has a tread pattern with rounded edges that minimizes the sticking of mud  and debris to the bottom.  This avoids the biggest complaint I have about hiking boots in the garden…all of those tiny tread spaces tend to pick up and hold mud.

Like any product, it is not perfect and has it’s “Archilles  heel” :).  The top of the shoe has a stretchy porous material where the tongue is located. This allows water to get in if a direct stream of water hits that spot.  It’s a minor problem under most conditions.

So far I have not needed the put in an extra insole despite walking on the concrete greenhouse floor all day.

They are not available in stores yet but can be found at a number of vendors on-line.

They set me back about $85 , but if they hold up for the rest of the season, it’ll be well worth it.

Bob

“…you make lemonade”, the old proverb goes.

Does the same principle apply when Bob gives you lemons from the greenhouse?

The lemon trees have been providing us with lemons for a couple of weeks now.  There are too many for us here to use so the best thing to do is to start giving them away.

I picked a 1/2 peck this morning…

These lemons are a bit larger than the ones you see in the produce department.  They are tastier too. The variety is ‘Beares’ and they seem to be quite happy in the greenhouse.

Maybe, a slice of lemon in a cup of hot water will go down better than lemonade on this cold and damp winter’s day.

Bob

Today was a great day to take out some plants and spray them off.

If you have house plants that are infested with  pests such as spider mites, mealy bugs or scale, a good rinsing will go a long ways towards cleaning them up.

Tomorrow is predicted to be very mild as well, so, take those plants outside where you can spray plenty of water without being concerned about making a mess. 

The stream of water you use must be strong enough to knock off the bugs but not so strong as to tear or bruise the leaves.

Citrus trees have very tough leaves and seem to be able take quite a bit of pressure. Others plants however, are more delicate. Start with a fine spray and increase the pressure if needed.   You’ll have to judge it yourself.

I use a 3-hole nozzle that puts out a very fine, yet strong stream of water that knocks off just about everything without damaging leaves.

Take advantage of this January thaw while you can.

Bob