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JOURNAL November 2017

Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’ in the cat graveyard.

Back porch for the winter.

The Barrow of Thyme, emptied of 38 seedlings, all transplanted to ground two weeks before the first frost.

Gladiolus murielae, the Abyssinians, in their second year. Rabbits cut them to the ground twice last season. This year, I caged the glads until they were two feet tall and got a cat. They didn’t bloom this year but the leaves reached three feet.

Nandina domestica fronting Miscanthus gracillimus, early November.

Nandina domestica fronting Miscanthus gracillimus, November 30.

The Ride, facing West.

The Ride, facing East.

Woodlot.

Face Southeast.

Berries of ‘Major Wheeler’ honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens.

Berries of Amur honeysuckle, Lonicera mackii, a Top 5 invasive plant here. Its lovely twice a year, easily pruned, but I never stop fighting it.

Itea virginica ‘Spritch’ aka ‘Little Henry, now in it’s fourth year in the Pseudo-Shrubbery, 3′ x 3’. The parchment leaves in the background are a fragrant and variegated Solomon’s Seal, Polygonatum odoratum var. pluriflorum ‘Variegatum.‘ Green Velvet boxwood, upright Yew, Taxus media ‘Hicksii,’ and a deep purple and dwarf Barberry, Berberis concordia, swamped underneath. Most of the big fallen leaves are from the Catalpa.

Mailbox bed.

Hyssop, Pinus mugho, daylilies and fading wormwood, Artemisia ‘Powis Castle.’

Pots now scrubbed and safe from cracking frost in the garage.

Five pounds of Maitake mushrooms from a foraging friend.

Season over.

Orphaned NOID Opuntia made it through two nights in the teens.

Hostas and a juvenile Box on the front porch/

Hybrid Elderberry cuttings held leaves far longer than plants propagated from the wild.

Bidens aristosa cranking among dead neighbors.

Seedheads of Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy.’

Monty Don.

The new gravel bed. For two years, it was cardboard topped with five inches of wood chips. Monty Don used it as a litterbox. I dug down two feet, added a mix of gravel and chipped local limestone, and topped it with three inches of pea gravel and 40# of white river rock. Planted with thyme, irises, miniature roses, tulips and white Asiatic lilies. We’ll see the results next year. The cat doesn’t poop there anymore.

Gravel bed facing Northeast.

GRAPEVINE Giant Pumpkin, Wild Grapes, Chanticleer, Green Tomatoes, Sad Insects, Alcatraz Gardens, Potted Citrus, Smart Greenhouse, New Forests, Wild Poinsettia, Autumn Colors, Sweetbay, Earlier Bloomers, Feed the Birds

In 2014, Matt McConkie’s 1,817 pound pumpkin set the Utah state record. McConkie estimates the weight of this year’s pumpkin at between 1,900 and 2,000 pounds. Photo and story at the Salt Lake Tribune.

Hesperaloe parviflora, also known as red yucca and hummingbird yucca, is native to the Chihuahuan desert of west Texas. Photo taken in Arizona by Fritz Hochstatter via Wikimedia Commons.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. – Greek proverb

The Secret to Growing the World’s Largest Pumpkin
The current world record is held by Beni Meier, a Swiss accountant by day, who grew a pumpkin that weighs in at 2,323.7 pounds, roughly the same amount as a small car.
Smithsonian

Genomic study reveals clues to wild past of grapes
“Like most plants, grapes are typically considered to have been cultivated around 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, but our work suggests that human involvement with grapes may precede these dates,” Gaut said. “The data indicate that humans gathered grapes in the wild for centuries before cultivating them.”
Science Daily

Chanticleer Garden: A Hidden Gem Outside The City of Brotherly Love
Chanticleer’s six staff horticulturists are each responsible for the design, planting, and maintenance of particular areas of the property, including 15 distinct garden “rooms”, each on a scale of a good-sized residential garden, and each with its own look and feel. They all flow together and are seamlessly woven into rolling lawns, curving pathways, gentle hills, and woodlands.
Garden Collage

Harvesting and Storing Green Tomatoes
Just as I do at the beginning of spring, I begin to watch the weather in October.  If the night-time temps start to drop in the low 40’s, I go ahead and remove all the tomatoes left on the vine and bring them in the house.
The Blonde Gardener

Insects are In Serious Trouble
Insects are the lynchpins of many ecosystems. Around 60 percent of birds rely on them for food. Around 80 percent of wild plants depend on them for pollination. If they disappear, ecosystems everywhere will collapse.
Atlantic Monthly

Doing Time in the Gardens of Alcatraz
The image of inmates in faded blue dungarees tending to roses and cutting long-stemmed gladiolus for floral arrangements is extraordinary, bearing in mind the violent histories that cast these men out onto the island.
The Planthunter

Citrus in pots: how to grow, and overwinter it, with Four Winds growers
“How can I overwinter my potted lemon tree indoors?” It’s the question of the moment from readers, as cold weather comes on.
A Way to Garden

Solar ‘smart’ greenhouses produce both clean electricity & food crops
“We have demonstrated that ‘smart greenhouses’ can capture solar energy for electricity without reducing plant growth, which is pretty exciting.”
Treehugger

Vikings Razed the Forests. Can Iceland Regrow Them?
The settlers slashed and burned the forests to grow hay and barley, and to create grazing land. They used the timber for building and for charcoal for their forges. By most accounts, the island was largely deforested within three centuries.
New York Times

Wild Poinsettia
Euphorbia cyathophora never fails to get a compliment and a second look when it begins to bloom in late summer or early fall. That’s also when the innermost parts of each bract turn a vibrant red giving rise to the common name of fire-on-the-mountain.
Clay and Limestone

Colors of Autumn
In my garden, the colors of fall have come into full force, and there’s even some left after the atmospheric river that brought heavy rains and winds to the Pacific Northwest.
The Practical Plant Geek

Purple and Gold
I first saw American beautyberry 30 years ago when we visited the Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo. I was floored when I first saw them. I had no idea we had a native shrub with such gorgeous royal purple berries.
Sweetbay

Early bloomers: Statistical tool reveals climate change impacts on plants
“My mum reports her snowdrops are blooming earlier each spring in her English garden,” says Utah State University scientist Will Pearse. “Are her observations, like those of thousands of citizen scientists across the world, indicating unpredictability in temperature, precipitation and other weather patterns?”
phys.org

Top 10 Foods for Winter Bird Feeding
The following ten foods are extremely popular with backyard birds all across North America.
Bird Watcher’s Digest

A garden really lives only insofar as it is an expression of faith, the embodiment of a hope and a song of praise. – Russell Page

Male Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis. “The male Northern Cardinal is perhaps responsible for getting more people to open up a field guide than any other bird.” – All About Birds, Cornell University. Photo Wikimedia Commons.

Giant Sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum, in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, near Visalia, California. Photo National Park Service.

JOURNAL October 2017

That Liriope needs thinning and transplanting. I hesitate to call it invasive, all successful plants are, but it is certainly vigorous. A member of the lily family.

Dapper caterpillar on Petunia. Still unidentified.

Geometry.

Hosta “Empress Wu” spent her first two years in a big clay pot. Now she’s under the mulberry tree: morning sun then dappled shade. Covered in birdshit for a few weeks while the mulberry is fruiting but that’s why we have hoses. “Empress Wu” is touted as the largest Hosta in cultivation, so far. Five feet tall by nine feet wide. The little cage behind contains nettle seedlings.

Seedlings that spent the season in pots are now in the ground.

The jalapenos were generous this year. They perished after three nights below freezing.

Chenille seedheads of Amaranthus “Hopi Red Dye.”

Fading lilies with Artemisia, Chamaecyparis, and blue-flowering Perovskia.

Maquis 1

Maquis 2. Few people in Kansas are familiar with the maquis biome, though similar to the prairie, so my affectation usually goes uncontested. What barely qualifies this bit of the garden as maquis is Mediterranean plants, lavender and thyme primarily, and dry, rocky soil. Faking a maquis doesn’t come easy in Kansas clay: two feet under these plants is an eight-inch layer of pea gravel, three 40-pound bags and a lot of digging.

Fruits of Solanum atropurpureum, common name “Malevolence,” generally considered hardy to Zone 10. It has re-seeded for three years in this Zone 6b garden.

Dahlia “Bishop of Llandalff” struggles in our unpredictable weather. Zinnia “Will Rogers” doesn’t.

Tropical Thunbergia alata flowers profusely in September and October, turns to mush at first frost.

Butterfly barrow.

The shiitake mushroom logs, at top, gave at least 20 pounds this year. The oyster mushroom logs were deemed a failure until this bloom after the first frost.

Oyster mushrooms, “White Pearl” here, flush in cold, damp weather. Sauteed with garlic and jalapenos then scrambled with eggs.

Centuries of practical experience recommends removing all fruit buds in the first producing year of any fruit tree, to allow that fruiting energy to be directed to plant growth. This two-year Meyer lemon, eight inches tall when it arrived, had four baby fruits in Spring. I couldn’t resist keeping one.

The purple (more like hot pink), coneflowers were re-seeding selfishly in the garden. I prefer the whites. I corralled the pink rogues in new beds by the bench. The goldfinches are crazy about the seeds.

“Heavenly Blue” morning glories are accurately described. I threw a handful of seeds at the base of this trellis when planting the Dead Log elderberry bed in August. And they bloomed. They seem to do better with afternoon shade here.

This wild fellow reminded me to check the mushroom logs.

Laurus nobilis, the Mediterranean Bay tree, my dear friend. Bought as a three-inch start five years ago, now four feet and seemingly amenable to my topiary dream. It comes on the back porch every Winter.

Pokeweed and snakeweed.

Okra “Stewart’s Zeebest” was so productive that I’ve had enough for this year. Glad these bugs can use the rest.

Pineapple sage, Salvia elegans, with few blooms in too much shade. In full sun, they flower with abandon but require daily water. Trying to find the balance.

Little Path facing West.

Chinese “Five Color” peppers are remarkably cold-tolerant. This photo was taken after a 28-degree night. Very hot; use sparingly for salsa and Arrabbiata.

The Ride, facing East.

Poison Ivy coloring up.

Gravel bed in progress, for Thymus, Dianthus, small bulbs and miniature roses.

View from the table.

Suppertime.

JOURNAL September 2017

My ideal garden is a cross between a Victorian family farm and Ninfa. What I usually end up with is a cross between an unkempt laboratory and a set for the Planet of the Apes. “Right plant, right place” and “Nature bats last” are my primary principles, both inferring tolerance for a high degree of informality. Last Spring, I was stymied by a visitor who described the garden as “kind of municipal.” Was it the zinnias? Another friend called it “a good place to take a nap.” Whatever the garden is, this was it’s most floriferous year and I have the birds and bugs to prove it.

The Barrow of Thyme.

The yellow flowers of Bidens aristosa in the foreground, orange Thunbergia alata–one of the many plants called Black-Eyed Susan–on the tower behind. Red Amaranthus cruentus “Hopi Red Dye” on the lean.

The last of the “Poona Kheera” cucumbers.

Burnt-orange blooms of Helenium “Flammendes Kathchen” jostling with purple Shiso, Perilla frutescens, and Hopi Red Dye amaranth. Naked stem of red Ricinus up front. I’m a big fan of Rousseau.

Unknown pink-mottled, burgundy-leaved Coleus behind the fire pit.

Bottom to top: the waxy, variegated leaves of “Jack Frost” privet, Ligustrum japonicum; that unknown burgundy Coleus, which takes a surprising amount of afternoon sun; Ipomoea batatas “Sweet Caroline Bronze”; and, in the barrow, Zinna “Profusion Apricot,” yellow and white Lantana camara, and an expiring zucchini. The white Lantana, typically hardy to zone 10, over-wintered in open ground, zone 6b. A native/naturalized Euonymus climbing the elm tree.

The Ride, facing west.

The Ride, facing east.

Canna x generalis “Red King Humbert” blooming late. I would grow this for the foliage alone. Below, bush basil, wild aster and a potted banana seedling.

The Little Path, facing west. Bottom right, a toppled castor bean, Ricinus communis “Carmencita”; bottom left, the first blooms of the “Bluebird” aster, Symphyotricum laeve. Above are the ripening stems of “Scheherazade” lilies and the flopping stems of bee balm, Monarda fistulosa. The Chamaecyparis flopped upon is the second plant I put in this garden seven years ago. I owe my stolid Chamaecyparis friend two things: more shade from the afternoon sun, and to look up it’s full name. The rosy flowers of Sedum, ahem, Hylotelephium “Autumn Joy” attract an amazing number and variety of insects.

“Bluebird” aster sprawling on Rattlesnake Master, Eryngium yuccifolium, on the right, and a variegated Yucca filamentosa “Color Guard” at left. A blue “Moonglow” juniper seedling, Juniperus scopulorum, center right. Chives, red valerian, thyme and yarrow fill the gaps.

Okra does well here and I try new types regularly. “Stewart’s Zeebest” is a Louisiana heirloom touted as spineless, extra tender, smooth (no ribs), and heavy yielding. So far, its living up to it’s press: seven-inch pods are perfectly tender. Blaring red “Will Rogers” zinnias share the bed.

The Main Path, facing north. Right of center, the Popcorn Cassias, Cassia/Senna didimobotrya, have been struggling lately, shedding leaves and refusing to bloom. Might be too damp in that spot this year. Leaning in from the left, the extraterrestrial orange flowers of Lion’s Ear, Leonotis nepetifolia, a nuisance self-seeder this year–a mint, after all. Most of the plants are at least eight feet tall. In Autumn, they start to lean, a very efficient method for increasing their territory. If the plants aren’t pulled before the seed ripens, and the stems are allowed to fall, in Spring you’ll find clumps of easily transplanted seedlings coming up at least 10 feet from the parent. Lion’s Ear is a powerful hummingbird attractor.

The last tomato, “Amana Orange.” Misrepresented as an Amish heirloom, it was selected by Gary Staley of Brandon, Florida, in 1984. The fruit tended to crack this year but we had unusual summer rains. The fruits are a fetching shade of apricot-orange, the texture is meaty, the taste is good–more sweet than acid.

The Snake Path looking patchy. Baked, then drenched, all summer. The Blue Bed on the left is due for an overhaul. A storm at the end of the month flattened the Impatiens balsamina “Peppermint Stick,” and there was too much shade for the pineapple sages, Salvia elegans, to produce a decent flush of bloom.

Probably the last bloom on “Winter Sunset” for the season. It spent this year in a pot, recovering from a near-fatal rabbit encounter. It will go back in the ground in a couple of weeks.

Hosta “Guacamole” on the fade, attended by a self-sown orange Impatiens. The yellow Coleus to the right of the Impatiens is also self-sown. Serious zone-pushing this year. The plume poppy, Maclaeya cordata–those deeply cut, gray-green leaves–could use more sun.

The Dead Log elderberry patch was planted from cuttings in early March, in a small clearing between a mulberry tree and a walnut tree. The plants get three or four hours of direct sun a day, then mostly dappled shade. They’re looking well. “Heavenly Blue” morning glories on the trellis.

Potted Meyer lemon under-planted with a peachy Portulaca. Surrounding pots contain Agapanthus and “Apricot Profusion” zinnias.

Pelargoniums on the back patio.

Facing east. Snake Path on the left, Little Path to the right.

View from the table, September 26, 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRAPEVINE Old New Flower, Dangerous Garden, Moon Carrot, Missouri Elderberry, Chickadee Summer, Desert Garden, Secret Garden, Blue Chrysanthemum, Harvest Moon, Tree Tales, Garden Grows

Tropidogyne pentaptera. 100-million-year-old fossilized flower identified and named by OSU researchers George Poinar Jr. and Kenton Chambers. Photo George Poinar Jr., Oregon State University. See article from Science Daily below.

The marvelous Moon Carrot, Seseli gummiferum. Photo Rotary Botanical Garden, Janesville, Wisconsin.

Botany is the school for patience, and its amateurs learn resignation from daily disappointments. – Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Madame de Tessé (25 Apr 1788). From Thomas Jefferson Correspondence: Printed from the Originals (1916).

Seven complete specimens of new flower, all 100 million years old
“The amber preserved the floral parts so well that they look like they were just picked from the garden,” Poinar said. “Dinosaurs may have knocked the branches that dropped the flowers into resin deposits on the bark of an araucaria tree, which is thought to have produced the resin that fossilized into the amber.”
Science Daily

Step Inside the World’s Most Dangerous Garden (If You Dare)
The duchess thought she might want to include an apothecary garden, but a trip to Italy set her on a slightly different course. After visiting the infamous Medici poison garden, the duchess became enthralled with the idea of creating a garden of plants that could kill instead of heal.
Smithsonian

Moon Carrot
Seseli gummiferum is quirky, and definitely not quotidien.  There are only so many plants that look like endearingly awkward craft projects that any one garden can handle.
Louis the Plant Geek

The Missouri Elderberry
Nearly 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates called the elder plant “the medicine chest of the country people.” In fact, the elder leaf, flower, and berry can be used in salves, infusions, and syrups to relieve coughs, colic, diarrhea, sore throat, asthma, and the flu. And get this: You can chase mice away with an infusion made with fresh elder leaves or use elder flowers to soothe a burn. It’s a talented plant. And it’s native to Missouri.
Missouri Life

Midsummer at Chickadee Gardens
Peak flower season is upon us and, as I see the temperatures rising to record highs, I am reminded to observe what the garden has to offer. These flowers might not last long if our predicted 108 degree temperatures are realized this week, so it is time to enjoy.
Chickadee Gardens

The Wild Desert Garden
This past spring I witnessed the superbloom in the California deserts. It was a sensation.
Gardening Gone Wild

A Secret and Possibly Non-Existent Garden
For various reasons (which I frankly didn’t quite understand) the man who created this garden is no longer tending it: there was construction taking place in part of it. Maybe it had been sold? All I know is that the pictures you’re saying may be some of the last taken here, which should give them a certain added poignance…
Prairie Break

The Scientific Feat that Birthed the Blue Chrysanthemum
To make chrysanthemums blue, researchers from the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization inserted a gene from the bluish Canterbury bell into red mums. The presence of this gene modified anthocyanin in the mums, producing purplish flowers. To achieve a truer blue, the researchers added a second gene from the butterfly pea into the mix. That did the trick.
Smithsonian

11 Things to know about this year’s Harvest Moon
All full moons are special, but the Harvest Moon has some unique features that make this month’s moon a marvelous must-see.
Treehugger

Telling the Tales of Trees Around the World
Trees can live without us, but we cannot live without trees.
New York Times

As the Garden Grows
Looking at old photos of the garden can really bring home how much has changed in just a few years.
The Practical Plant Geek

It’s humbling to think that all animals, including human beings, are parasites of the plant world. – Isaac Asimov

Scutellinia scutellata. Eyelash pixie cup, eyelash fungus, eyelash cup, scarlet elf cap, Molly eye-winker–all are common names for this diminutive fungus. …This species is common across North America and Europe, and recorded from every continent (yes, even Antarctica). Photo and text via Botany Photo of the Day, UBC Botanical Garden.

Amaranthus caudatus “Love Lies Bleeding.” Photo AnRo0002, Wikimedia Commons.

JOURNAL August 2017

Entrance to main path looking North.

Six inches of rain in 60 hours. Five inches of mulch were swept from the Snake Path to smother a seedling thyme hedge 20 feet away. Balsam responding with first scarlet blooms.

The Ride, facing due West.

August 16. A woman in a red Trans-Am going at least 50 in a 35 zone “lost control of her vehicle” and took out the mailboxes in my neighbor’s drive.

And cruelly pruned a Yucca and flattened a Miscanthus. It was a hit-and-run but the driver behind her got the license plate number. The Yucca is already sprouting and what’s left of the Miscanthus is blooming. If only humans were still as adaptable and resilient as plants.

Beanville. First attempt at growing bush beans in containers, a yellow flagelot. I get a handful of beans most days. They adapt well with daily watering and weekly fertilizing with fish emulsion and the occasional sprinkle of coffee grounds. I over-planted this time: the big pot on the stump contains seven plants. Three next year.

Clematis terniflora. Rampant, to 30 feet in trees. In my garden, this is a tough and cursed weed. And you too would curse it as I do, until late August. For two weeks it scents the air with sweet vanilla. Everyone in the neighborhood enjoys it. It is a Type 3 Clematis, cut hard above the lowest bud break in March.

Leaves of Canna “Red King Humbert” at 7pm.

Flower of Canna “Robert Kemp” at 7pm.

View from back door.

Down the steps.

Off the patio and towards the garden with approaching storm.

Amaranth toppled by a storm. Unless they’re hurting a neighbor, I leave plants to do what they do. Now that the stem is closer to horizontal, every node has a new upwards shoot. Rosarians know this.

The pink flower is Centranthus ruber, a personal gardening triumph for 2017. I have known this plant for much of my life, in Spain and California. Loves free drainage, which takes years of careful soil work in a clay-heavy Kansas garden. This is my third year of growing these plants from seed and I had good germination this Spring. This one bloomed in a pot, perhaps a lesser triumph but I’m very pleased. I have eight more fattening up in my short patch of sandy, gravelly soil and, as a gardener, I expect more triumphs next year.

This elderberry patch was planted with six-inch cuttings in February 2017. “Heavenly Blue” Morning Glories climb the trellis.

Eclipse. Mostly clouded. Leonotis nepetifolia, seven feet so far.

Eclipse. Swallowtail caterpillars undeterred from chomping on fennel.

Eclipse. At the darkest, chartreuse and yellow leaves glowed.

“How does it feeel?” Monty Don joins in on the chorus of one of our favorite garden work songs.

Persicaria virginiana, Virginia Knotweed. Many gardeners here pull this plant as a weed. I find it subtle and elegant. It does run quickly but easily controlled.

Petunias are often tricky in this humid climate but I always pick up a few from Vinland in Spring. They are good companion plants, a Solanaceae. This one, a NoID, appears far more blue in photos than real light, but its a real doer–non-stop blooms since July.

The shy blooms of first-year Lilium “Black Beauty,” an oriental hybrid (L. henryi x L. speciosum). I’ve had it reach seven feet in gardens past.

A Griffith Buck rose, “Prairie Sunset,” in bud.

“Prairie Sunset” in bloom. The fragile blooms usually last for three days, fading to white, unless beautiful iridescent beetles find them.

Third flush on the shiitake logs. We’ve had at least 30 pounds so far.

The Wheelbarrow of Thyme.

View from the table, early August.

Helenium “Flammendes Kathchen, Perilla, Polygonum orientale, “Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate.” The burgundy plumes of Celosia “Dragon’s Breath” in the background, left.

Solanum atropurpureum in fruit.

Colocasia esculenta.

The bright, fleshy leaves of Talinum paniculatum ‘Limon,‘ Jewels of Opar, are a good salad leaf. Like purslane, Talinum is classified as a succulent. The pink flowers and scarlet seed capsules held on long stalks are charming. A regular self-seeder now.

Sambucus canadensis “Burroughs Creek.”