Persephone in Bloom

So Long, and Thanks for all the fish!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:06:00 +0000

I am writing to announce that I am taking an indefinite leave of absence from my gardening blog to free up time for myself as I work through some personal goals I have been attempting to pursue for the past 3 years.

Here and there, if time wills it, I may throw up (ha) a post about the garden or something of that nature, but as of now, I am am placing my focus on other things in life as they are of great priority to me [finishing my novels(s), getting a book of poetry together and etc] or else I'm going to have some serious issues in life later on if I don't complete those things.

There are many more consistently updated and better blogs than mine that I admire that I suggest people read, such as The Home Garden and In the Garden and another of my favorites, Plants are the Strangest People , all of which have a lot less parentheticals and tangents :P

As going a week or more (as I have) without a post pretty much declares a blog go dead on the internets, we could call this a blogbituary if you like.

Hopefully I utilize this extra time I have in a better manner and that I find what I am looking for.

Best to you all and if anyone has any gardening questions that they don't have time to research but care to throw my way, I am always still very happy to answer things or would love to research your question for you if I'm unfamiliar with the topic!

Vacation/Mini break

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 03:32:00 +0000

Hookay, life crazy now. On break/vacation until next week. Won't go crazier.

Combo days! Thursday Hort Lesson: Leave Morphology & Friday Foliage, Flowers and Fruits Photog

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:32:00 +0000

Busy busy busy busy busy. Holidays good. But, busy.

Since the weather getting a little cooler I've been trying to catch up with the garden for all the hours missed from the heat wave. So, I was outside for 4 hours yesterday chugging away, unfortunately not during the wee hours of the morning as I usually like, but I started at noon because from morning until then I was curled up in bed with a ridiculous tummy ache from eating 6 plums and 3 peaches (all delicious btw) from the 20 pounds of fruit the husband and I picked from out local Jones Orchard ($0.89/lb for peaches, nectarines and plums!) (but unless I turn them into jam fast, they need to be devoured!). Needless to say, my stomach protesteths at that much acidity and told me so.

Thus partly the reason why I didn't get to my regularly scheduled posting.

So, I am attempting to combine yesterday's planned leaf lesson with pictures for today as scheduled.

I really am interested in learning the horticulture terminology of leaves (and eventually flowers, fruits, roots and etc) because I (1) like knowing what the heck all those scientific papers are talking about when describing leaves especially on websites that talk about specific plant anatomy and I can't get a clear idea of what the plant looks like and (2) it makes for plant identification easier when you can use formal terms rather than descriptors such as "sort of zig-zaggy but curved and hairy...."

Leaf morphology is broken down in 3 sections: Shape (of one leaf/the leaf set), Margin (what the edge of the leaf looks like), and finally Venation (how the leaf veins are laid out).

There is a great diversity in leaf shape, which I was aware of but didn't realize all the subtleties until I encountered the leaf chart in the link below. Because of the diversity of simply leaf shapes I'll be focusing on shape in this entry rather than margins and venation.

This very handy leaf chart on wikimedia (you can blow it up to an easier to read size) is wonderfully detailed and I will only address and give examples of common leaf shapes/margins/venations that a person might encounter and those in my garden that I can show examples of.

Some common leaf shapes include acicular, rhomboid, lanceolate, linear, cordate, obtuse, deltoid, pinnatisect, elliptic.

The nice leaf chart explains beneath each of these names the characteristic of these names.

Acicular literally does mean needle shaped and those with that shaped leaves include many conifers such as firs, pines and some junipers.

Rhomboid shaped leaves are fairly common and an many trees exhibit this basic diamond leaf shape.

Lanceolate leaves are reminiscent the spearheads of lances, pointed at both ends, (but also a similar to those of the ensiformis shape which are thinner and pointier than wider in middle lanceolates) can be found in many types of grasses and daylilies.

(lemongrass, chilling in my tub. Pardon if these are old images, didn't have new ones on hand)

Linear leaves are as they sound, like lines and are single leaves with long even edges such as those of chives.

Cordate leaves are heart shaped (cord- being the Latin term for heart) and an example of a leaf of this shape can be seen in the redbud tree.

Obtuse leaves are blunt tipped, wide leaves such as those seen in smoke trees from the genus Continus.

Deltoid leaves like the muscles of your shoulder area are triangular such as those of aspens.

Pinnatisect leaves are often seen and vilified by those who enjoy perfect lawns, but enjoyed by gourmet salad eaters as commonly seen pinnatisect leaves can be seen in dandelions! Pinna-is Latin for feather with -sect meaning "to cut." These leaves are deeply cut up to the leaf's midrib. Many ferns that do not exhibit separate leaflets fall into this leaf category.

(do not pay attention to the mutated 2 headedness of this dandelion, please take note of the pinnatisect leaves!)

Elliptic leaves, just like rhomboid leaves are fairly common in many plants and trees. Some examples of these sorts of leave are citrus, apple and some viburnums.

(many, many elliptic leaves on a citrus tree)

The former are all very common leaves and while walking about my garden some more very interesting leaf shapes can be seen:

Tripinnate leaves, where there are multiple leaflets on one stem can be seen on a rue plant

Spatulate, or spoon shaped leaves like loose leaf lettuce leaves

Hastate (with lobes at its base) vs Spearshaped leaves of the garden sorrel plant.

Trifolium or ternate leaves or leaflets in sets of three are not unusual, commonly seen in clover and medic, but there are freaks of nature.... such as the 'Dark Dancer' red clover variety that can often have 4 leaves!

Pedate leaves are a version of palmate type leaves except they are divided at a single point usually. Not that uncommon either like the trifoliums above, and often see in Japanese maples or are very cool like in my Haight Ashbury hibiscus:

Finally, one more unusual leaf type that I get to enjoy in my garden is the whorled kind such as sweet woodruff that I take great delight in

Another excellent leaf chart and more leaf help (with a test!) here.

Finally, leaving (ha!) you with some foliage, flowers and fruits pics:

(self seeded Grandpa Ott morning glory, love this color so much!)

(Sunny dill days!)

(Self seeded Thai basil flowers slowly opening)

(Not so much contrast here, but Fruit Basket peppers going gangbusters, so happy! These will be delicious when fully orange ripened. Self seeded tatsoi mustard greens sprouted in the basket from when I hung the seed pods to dry near the basket)

Garden Creative: Lucky for you, no poetry!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Ha. So I stated that this day I wanted to be creative, and the plan was to do poetry, because I usually have a million nature inspired words to write upon that could be considered poetic, but then I realize hours later is pure... well, compost.

LUCKY FOR YOU, I instead have been creative in other garden crafty-useful and fun ways.

I keep my gardening boots in my sunroom, which is not airtight, but a relatively safe place to set plants away from too much sun or wind and other elements that can be problematic if I need to neglect them for a while. In the process, I have introduced all sorts of flora and fauna into the sunroom, namely spiders which I am in constant battle with to keep their webs and children at bay. I really need to institute a weekly clean up and purge of that area to make things saner in there... Plus this might encourage the spiders to just MOVE OUT and not continuously making homes in my baskets, under the table, in the corners of stands and etc.

The biggest problem I have, that I can't ignore are spiders in my boots. I get very bad reactions to spider bites, when, depending on the spider the bites can grow to the size of a grapefruit, or the itching is so intense that its take a month for it to stop and then months or a year for the bite bruise to heal. So, I keep a good eye out for spiders. I'm not scared of spiders, I'm just nervous about being bitten by them.

To combat accidental boot biting I've taken to stuffing rags into my boots so that I can foil the crawlers from nesting inside them and then surprising both of us when I put the boots on. Sadly I have found the rags to ineffective in completely keeping spiders out as the rags tend to slide down, exposing the top part of the boot, allowing for some space to exist between the top of the boot and the slipped stuffed rag.

I also wanted to be sure that my boots could stay upright and keep their shape, so, in deference to fancier boot devices, I thought and thought and decided that I need to make some sort of stuffed/filled boot shape keeper/spider obstacle. It needed to not be able to rot or mold (so the easy cloth tube sock wouldn't do it), and not attract pests/feel like a waste of food (so no beans or rice as filling).

I remembered that I saved an old heavy plastic duty rice bag:

and had some extra sand sitting around for random acts of soil mixing. So I began winging my little spider preventer.

Measuring? What measuring? Mostly I just halved, then quarter this plastic rice bag, retaining the stitched part to my use. I then halved that to form each "boot bag" that I'll fill with sand.

Essentially I restitch the already loosely stitched part to reinforce it, and made a bag with an opening to fill with sand.

After filling with sand I stitch up the top and tada...! It doesn't fit the boot, properly (too big down the bottom) because I don't measure.

Brill. So I squish some of the sand up and adjust the bottom half to be a little smaller and tighter with some cursory stitching and FINALLY it works! woohoo.

Round 2 worked out a lot better (do things in pairs, and finish the first one before going onto the next half of the set so you can learn from your mistakes I say!)

Hurray, now my boots will stay in shape and the spiders won't dare to build webs at the mouth of my boots and can't get inside!

One final bit of creativity:

I've been getting these beautiful multicolored cage free eggs from my farmer's market. The egg shells themselves are too pretty, so I decided to make something with them as a gift to the vendor people who I get my eggs from (since one of the them is unfortunately having to deal with bad luck left and right as of late). Plus, they're "pay what you can" eggs and the concept of this is so wonderful to me I think they deserved a little gift:

On the back of one for the lady who's been having issues in life I also wrote: "So things stop clucking up!" The metal chickens shown are also a slightly modified version of what I made for her originally (this is a round 2). The originals had the phrase written on the chickens, here I decided I liked using extra soda can metal to make small signs to say it.

Pretty much free little garden craft for me: ~~stolen~~ borrowed recycling soda/beer cans from neighbors, dired lawn clippings, wood glue on hand, eggs shells after contents had been used, bottle caps from already drunk beer, and special "Dark Dancer" red clover that I've been growing and has spread that insures 4 leaf clovers for true luck ;)

Happy Wednesday and hope any of this helped or was interesting!

Plant Spotlight: Tomatillos, Verde and Purple types!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:12:00 +0000

I've talked briefly on tomatillos in the past, but haven't given them enough verbiage on this blog and my excitement on growing them this year.

In my effort to find relatively easy, pest free things to grow that can hold for a good while without refrigeration, I came upon tomatillos. The fact that they sound like "tomatoes" helps too, because just about anything that sounds like/reminds me of a tomato seems to be delicious.

My first encounter with tomatillos was at an amazing international mart in my hometown over last Thanksgiving. I had seen and heard of tomatillos before as I am an authentic cookbook freak and there are a good number of Mexican recipes that cite tomatillos as an ingredient. The fruit itself is very eye catching: papery yellowing husk with a slight stickiness to it and a globular lime green firm fruit popping out from the husk. I didn't want to eat the fruit when I was away from home because I wanted to save the seeds properly and was afraid I'd lose them if I attempted tomatillo seed saving away from home, so I brought the fruits back and after a few weeks, and noticing with glee that they held very well at room and refrigerator temperature, I finally cut into them.

I had actually had never had a tomatillo before then and so I was very surprised by the flavor. It was an intense, green apple flavor with citrus-y tones and other ineffable notes that I can't describe. I was impressed, and my husband was too, and when gets impressed by a fruit/vegetable, I take note because he's quite a bit pickier than me about these things.

The seeds can be saved very easily, just like regular tomato seeds via the fermentation method, though I suspect they could also just be washed and dried for later use. My experience also seems to indicate that the seeds are very vigorous and I've had no troubles with germination.

Tomatillos, also known as Mexican husk tomato, or to get Latin-y: Physalis philadephica, are of the Solanaceae family, where tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are also members of. Closer relatives to tomatillos include: Love-in-a-cage, aka Chinese lantern plants, gooseberries and ground cherries; all of which are edible and can be eaten fresh or made into jams/jellies.

The green varieties of tomatillos tend to be larger and tarter with the purple variety, which I have not personally tried, but hope to this summer, is supposed to be smaller but sweeter and hold longer and are also less sticky than the green kind. The green and purple variety both produce about the same amount of total fruit in volume per plant, with fewer individual green fruits as they are larger, but more purple fruits as they're smaller.

There are few pests that affect tomatillos, though I did encounter tobacco/tomato hornworms on some seedlings recently, I have noticed very little damage on my older plants that are in the garden ground other than maybe some flea beetle nibbles.

I've read that the soil should be rich where you decide to grow tomatillos, but as they are like weeds in Mexico I've heard and if they are like the tomato plants from my compost bin, they'll be forgiving of the soil I'm sure.

Tomatillo vines like tomatoes can be stakes or allowed to roam, though obviously you'll get more clean fruit when staked. The leaves are like a mix of tomato and pepper leaves, though rangier in my opinion. Mine have still yet to show flower, but from pictures they appear to look like tomatoes for the most part with some darkness in the center.

Once the flowers are pollinated and the fruit begins, the fun too begins! The fruit swells and is covered by the calyces of the flower, which will form the husk. The husk covers the fruit and when it's time to harvest, like a turkey with those red pop up things, the fruit breaks the husk to indicate ripeness! How much easier can it get?!

Harvest as often as possible because like other fruits/vegetables, production goes down if you don't harvest. Storage is simple, refrigeration with husks on or off, though I've heard they last longer with the husks off. I've also read that single layers in a cool dark location allow tomatillos to store just fine for months. In addition, like some tomato tales I've heard, natives in Central/South America will just store entire yanked up plants with fruits on them hanging upside-down in a room just fine.

Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply sells both verde and purple tomatillo seeds and if you need other seeds anyways, they do have a current special of 2 free organic vegetable seed packets with every order from now until the end of the year, so take advantage if you already need seeds and want to try a new vegetable or variety! (<-- not affiliated btw, just like their free seed thing).

Many pardons for the lack of pics on my behalf. It's my first year growing growing them, and there hasn't been much activity or flowering, so it's a boring plant to look at now. Please follow the links provided if you wish for more pics or interesting uses for tomatillos:
http://www.google.com/images?q=tomatillo&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/mexican_husk_tomato.html
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-tomatillo14-2008may14,0,1107342.story

"Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be..."

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:18:00 +0000

Whew! I'm glad to know that I've not been the only suffering in this weather, as well as the only one who's garden has gone down hill! Granted I'm not suffering as bad as poor Dave here, so I probably have less excuse.

Still, can I please just blame the dog and the weather? My little bitchy (well, she is) has been consistently waking me up at 5:30am for the past couple of weeks and usually I just get up and roll with the hour that she wakes me up at (which used to be a tolerable 6:15am-6:30am) but anytime prior to 6am (even 6 in the morning is pushing it...) is just plain insane to me. So after a few exhausted pets from me, she starts scratching me like she's a mole and I'm a delicious bulb she wants and if I don't get up, the barking begins. Then I yell, she whines and I finally get up after cursing up a storm.

That's when I feed her and attempt to creep into bed again, but invariably she starts up again and I get no more than an extra 15 minutes of rest more. When I finally do really get up, I take my little time (because I'm annoyed at her) and clean up the kitchen, water some houseplants and stuff to dawdle a bit before taking her out since she runs on a 12 hour schedule, of food every 12 and walk every 12 and the later I take her out in the morning, the later in the evening too, which helps in this dagnabit hot weather.

Of course, this means that I've been getting up not only grumpy, but later than I like to get into the garden, and thus as it's warmer, I'm in no mood to garden for longer than a quick sprinkle of water on the potted plants to prevent them from dying. Mondays and weekends are worst for waking up at a reasonable hour, because you just want to have fun and go to bed late. I wish I was one of those lucky in the gene pool, super "no need to sleep" people, so that I could get my gardening done before it feels like high noon in the Sahara here.

But there appears to be hope!

Can it be? It really is! TEMPERATURES BELOW 90 degrees F for a few days! (Then it hits above 90s again on Friday, go figure, but still, respite!)

Perhaps this is over excitement, but I might be able to get some real gardening done again! Pull weeds! Oh joy! To eradicate weeds again! Spread more mulch-y stuff, clean the sunroom and garden area up, mow the lawn!

Being able to do these things again will be thrilling, considering how far behind I feel the garden has been and how awful it's starting to become. I am feeling very little hope for the vegetables this year. The heat I think has also been preventing good fruit set and I just pulled off 6 little hornworms off some tomatillo seedlings I had potted up, pests that I might have been able to prevent and noticed their damage earlier if I was able to spend more time in the garden were it not for the heat.

I'd like to note that I'm that breed of morning gardener. Morning are my time because it gets me up and at 'em, stretches my bones and gets my mind going. Plus, it's usually the least hot and buggy time of the day for me, especially when I perpetually must wear boots, overalls, and long sleeves when I garden to prevent from getting bitten up and lumpy. Even then, the buggers find my hands, wrists, neck and face to snack on if I'm out for more than 5 minutes.

Either way, I'm thrilled to have a few mornings below 70 degrees and will just settle to the thought that this summer's garden may be a wash and dream of fall.

Start of Friday Foliage, Flowers and Fruits photog

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:48:00 +0000

So, working on this organization and discipline thing with the blog (as usual) that will hopefully provide good content, learning for you and me, interesting dialogue and updates on my garden as well as assuring a good amount of photographs, consistently.

Here's the plan, feel free to comment and tell me if you think this is a good/bad idea:

-MONDAYs: Going ons in my garden
-TUESDAYs: Plant spotlight either in my garden, or of one of my interest
-WEDNESDAYs: Plant/nature poetry, sorry, need to get that creative urge out. If it's painful for you, skip this day
-THURSDAYs: Horticulture lesson, for my sake, I want to understand all those fun terms like pinnate leaves and crap
-FRIDAYs: Foliage, flowers and fruit photographs in excess for your weekend viewing pleasure (I hope)

So, I guess here's to kicking off my new Friday tradition!

The ornamental Black Pearl pepper is fruiting and looking gorgeous!

I'd like to call this pic, jestingly, "Spicy hot pic of myself" If you click on the pic, you can see clearer the reflection of me in the pepper berries.

More detail and still some reflections of me

I love the colors of this pepper, the fade of red and black! Tiny spiders making webs between the berries.

I find the foliage of Black Pearl very attractive too, a purple-green-black-bronze burnish.

A cluster of spider webby berries

Immature berries with lone purple flower

The contrast of the green background was nice I thought. These are like jewels! Who needs rubies or amethysts when there are these plants?

Hyacinth bean, or lab-lab bean I learned is another name for this plant recently. Lovely dark purple edible pods eventually.

Not a great pic, but interesting of inside of a rose mallow flower with focus on stamens. The petal ribs were a cool pleated effect I thought.

A little duller in color, but more equalized focus here again. Someday I'll get this one right.

Let's pretend to see beauty in destruction ok? This is the sawfly (that we identified earlier with Dr. Turpin from Purdue's help) damage. Specifically this is a hibiscus sawfly that has affected the previously shown Rose Mallow hibiscus and this Red River hibiscus. It seems that I'll need to get pyrethrin to treat the sawfly larval damage as neem hasn't worked. Luckily, I learned that the Haight Ashbury, and other hibiscus sabdariffa varieties are resistant to this sawfly, so the hibiscus that are delicious are being spared. Yea.

Closeup of damage. Lacey, could be pretty almost. Who needs to crochet when the bugs do it for you?

Taking pics of these new untouched by sawfly damaged hibiscus leaves was wonderful (Doesn't it look like it's indicating to you to come to it?). Slightly stupid breathless commentary I wrote in haste of this below:

I hold my breath as I take the pictures, one after another, not wanting to breathe because the inhalation of air would travel from my nose to my lungs, expanding my chest and raising my arms and moving my hands, ruining the picture. I begin to see stars and blackness creeping in at the edges of my vision. Beauty is literally suffocating me. The leaves, cupped up, catch the wind, cups of wind, holding distillations of air from who knows where. The leaves, full of wind, are able to move the entirety of the tree in one direction to another. The tree would travel and follow the wind if it could give up its rooty anchor, but it's content just to sip the wind that flows into its cups. I wonder if it would appreciate me digging it up and putting it on a well oiled wagon so that it might be able to travel with the wind as I can tell it yearns to, but it is too pragmatic and has set down deep roots. This is home to it, in my yard, and I am glad that it has stayed despite the bugs, despite my poor watering and neglect.

New leaves, what can be more beautiful?

This one reminded me of a chameleon, with little arms!

One final curl.

Have a great weekend and I hope your garden is doing better than mine!

Keeping away the Twilight fans and Babies everywhere! (click on title to get)

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:39:00 +0000

A week ago (I know, behind on posting in real time) my garlic was looking really scruffy and yellow indicating that it was garlic yanking time!

I've already done a post on garlic harvesting and braiding from a while back so I won't bore you with the details all over again.

When I harvest my garlic each year, I also re-plant it at that time to replace what I've pulled up despite many people saying that garlic planting time is in the fall. I figure if I have holes in the garden already, why not just plant more in them and my other reason is my garden is sort of self sustaining in the garlic growing area. The first year I planted, I planted so much garlic that it was way too much for one harvest and it seemed that the cloves I planted might have grown at different rates, some smaller than others, so I left those smaller ones in the ground for the next year's harvest. Some I think have even been in there for 3 years just because I wanted them to get bigger.

Well, this year was a little different. I still is a good sized harvest despite leaving some of the smaller ones in the ground as usual and there were quite a few beautifully sized bulbs to dry for use this year. Smelly joy!

The only change in the garlic harvesting/planting came from the garlic itself telling me something: They wanted to have babies apparently:

Lots of the garlic started sprouting flowers and growing bulbs at their tops like the Egyptian walking onion, but also bursting with little bulbs oddly from the middle of their stems too. I assume that it was their time and they had matured and these little bulbs can be considered seed garlic.

The mama bulbs that produced the seed bulbs were still small and I set them aside with the idea of replanting them too, but decided later as an afterthought that maybe they had run their course and it might be better to just simply use them despite their smallness (maybe their flavor's more intense?) I also made the decision not to replant the mama bulbs because there were so many little seed bulbs, those and the already too small bulbs still in the garden would get a little crowded if I added anymore extra garlic bulbs to the mix.

Currently I am leaving them to hang in the garage (pardon the mess o' sports equipment and tools in the background) It's a relatively dark place with what I hope is some air circulation to prevent rot and sprouting.

(pic of lone mid-section sprouted bulb plant)

(closeup of the midsection garlic, great color!)

Last year I dried the garlic in the guest bedroom, but it did stink the place up of garlic (made worse because I kept the door closed in that room) and as I have guests coming, it's not happening now unless I can confirm my guests enjoy garlic scent as air "freshener." My only concern about the garage is that it is rather hot and humid outside, the heat not so bad in the garage, but still, a bit of a concern. I suppose we'll see. Granted garlic is cheap if it goes bad, but it's obviously nice to use what you grow and that it doesn't go to waste.

(artsy photos of the garlic with my spiffy "it's Italian night!" tablecloth I found at the thrift store)

(who knew garlic could be so pretty?)

(I don't know what happened to this bulb for it to end up looking so weird... spirals of garlic cloves! Maybe I should plant these out in hopes that I can reproduce spiral garlic? Note: this is being propped up by a small bulb of garlic)

(Unpropped by another garlic bulb. It's like some sort of garlic unicorn horn, or a smelly seashell?)

This, and winter squashes (missing those so bad this year) are amongst my favorite things to grow because of their shelf life. Someday I'll get/make a root cellar and I might be able to keep carrots, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage and other goodies well into the fall/winter without refrigeration. Someday, one day I will!

I try to use the garlic up as fast as possible because there's nothing like peeling or chopping up your garlic to find that it's all gray-black and nasty smelling. Any recipe suggestions? Lots of Italian and roasted garlic use here, so if you've got something real good, send it this way!

OMG where did the time go? I blame Summer Soltice!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:16:00 +0000

Hallo, where did the time go? I was running around all day that I didn't get to really write up a proper post as promised!

Um, gardening updates/news: I inherited a large rubber tree/shrub plant in a pot from my volunteer place and pruned that sucker back and will be taking a bunch of cuttings for people who actually missed it. Apparently there was a bunch of naysayers about the poor rubber tree who thought it looked like a bunch of sticks. But it was in full rubber tree leaf glory! All dark purple-green glossy leaves! Ah well, beauty in the eye of the beholder?

I also had to re-pot up some orchids that I've been slowly killing the root system too because I 1) over watered and 2) forgot that they like to be a little root/pot bound. The good news is that freed up some of the large pots as I had to trim back dead orchid roots galore.

Um... it's still hot? But looks like rain is in the forecast. Which will probably mean fungus.... again. Blah. I might be bringing out the big guns now, like copper spray, we'll see; I'm not thinking my everbearing strawberries will be everbearing again this year.

And now, allow me to distract you with some pretty borage pics!

What I I especially like with the morning pics is all the DEW:

Ugh. Summer in Memphis.

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:31:00 +0000

So, I'll give some updates on the garden tomorrow, because as of late, it's been HOT here, and I have been a lazy bum, hosing the garden down on the 99 degree F days (F-days, no joke...) with heat indices in the 103-107 degree F areas.

I'm hosing the garden with sad, city chlorinated water despite having full rain barrels again because I want to be able to zip back and forth between the beds and give them a thorough, cold drink(I know they might not like the cold, but we'll pretend that they enjoy it). Plus lately I've wanted to be out of the heat before 8pm. Usually I like to be in there for an hour at least, and back in no later than 10:30am, but that's not happening here on out unless the summer magically cools off or I decide to change my sleep schedule to waking up at 5am (and messing up the dog's sleep/food schedule and having her wake me up daily at that hour)... so maybe I'll just work on that being more efficient outdoors thing.

Another problem is that I'm an utter newb and never remember to drink enough liquids before, during and after hot weather gardening and have a tendency as well to black out a little when I get up from stooping during gardening. The mom in law says that apparently petite people such as myself are prone to that. Great, another annoyance in being short. You'd think that there'd be less distance between my blood to my brain so that I wouldn't get all black-y out, but no.... being vertically challenged is a real bitch.

On happier news, I had an epiphany that led to me an overall revolution. After having given myself a permanent tan on my lower back due to insufficient high pant/too short shirts I have learned why farmers wear overalls, duh. I find that I probably look like some adorable mini-farmer now in them, and it really harkens me back to the 80s.

But yes, back to heat. Things are wilting and dying, not setting fruit and being in general ornery and annoying. First drought, then floods, now heat and humidity. A regular Memphis summer I suppose, so regular whining.

Back atchya tomorrow.

Introducing into the Garden: Sweet woodruff

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:38:00 +0000

Now this is the stuff that I was really after at my mom-in-law's place! (Thanks's mom!)

I have been lusting after more fun (and free herbs) and an herb that act as a groundcover, is rumored to be a bug repellent, and will work in the shade, and is commonly used in wine? Totally there.

This is a hard herb to come by (at least in my area) and when I saw that it was being sold at a local garden store I sorely wanted to buy it, but no, no, no my plant moratorium was still in place. I remembered vaguely in the recesses of my mind that my MIL had mentioned having it at some point and I fired a quick email to her before leaving for her place a couple of weeks ago to ask if she still had it.

YES SHE DID, and it was now taking off too. (And she was willing to share) Excellent....

The patch of sweet woodruff my MIL donated to me was ginoromous (ginorous=1.5ft diameter). I hadn't expected so much, but she wanted to help get me started, so I am one lucky garden nut!

Unfortunately as I was receiving the herb later in the year, I think missed I missed its glorious flowering that I read occurs in late spring/early summer. Granted there still might be time for it to flower, but after moving it and chopping it up I won't blame it for giving me the finger and deciding to settle down and root up rather than flower out.

Sweet woodruff, or Galium odoratum is well known in German culture for its use in maiwein or also known as maibowle where the dried sprigs of the herb are soaked in white wine for hours to days in some cases giving the wine a heady vanilla, honey herbal note. Sweet woodruff's aroma is only perceptible and useful in wine (and other food items commonly found in Germany apparently) when dried. Trust me, I crushed some up fresh in excitement and that was a letdown.

Apparently sweet woodruff contains a natural sedative, but also coumarin (which is probably part of the source of the sweet scent of this herb), so it is important to not over consume sweet woodruff because it can result in headaches and coumarin can be an anticoagulant.

Dave's Garden reviews seem to give sweet woodruff relatively good ratings from gardeners, though some people cite some invasiveness, though others apparently enjoy that slight invasivity. This could be the reason why Germans also give sweet woodruff the name waldmeister, or "Master of the Forest."

It is hardy from zones 5-8 and I'm excited to learn too that it is also partially evergreen so it will provide some green during the winter months. Beyond flavors/odors and medicinal things, the plant physically is very interesting too. I find the new leaves coming up from the center of older leaves and stems forming in the center as well to be very fun to look at. The flowers appear to be cute things and no work flowers makes me a happy gardener.

My new sweet woodruff has been halved ( as it was nice and large) and is experimentally being placed in two locations. One location is in full shade, keeping the lungwort company in a microclimate underneath some holly bushes where this is ample moisture from leaf mold/cover/mulch. The other half is in part sun with my mature oregano plants and I think as long as I keep my oregano bushy, and not too rambly when I do get lazy, the Galium will be happy and stay above the oregano at its expected foot tall height as long as I make sure I keep the moisture level good.

The following links provide recipes for maiwein and other random information I might not have covered about Galium odoratum as well as pics of it in flower that I don't have personally (yet!):
http://www.herbcompanion.com/gardening/7-herbs-that-grow-in-shade-sweet-woodruff.aspx
http://herb-gardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/growing_sweet_woodruff
http://www.altnature.com/library/sweet.htm
http://www.henriettesherbal.com/archives/best/1994/may-wine.html
http://www.paghat.com/sweetwoodruff.html

Introducing into the Garden: Lungwort

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:17:00 +0000

The next new addition to my garden from my mother in law's is lungwort:

(ok, so it's not at its prettiest here, because the flower show was over when I got it, and I had to plop it in the not most amazing spot... full of spiderwebs now, thus the not usual closeup pics I like to do. Note the cool hairy leaves though!) (Also, please look at the other links of the pics of lungwort to get a MUCH better idea of its grandeur)

I've got an eye for striking looking plants I think (meaning I'm only good at identifying those types of plants, more mundane looking plants and I'm worthless) and lately it feels like I've been seeing lungwort everywhere lately (at the Master Gardener's hoe-down, in Botanical gardens, yada) like once you see one red head, you notice 5 of them all at once in whatever location you're in (redheads are a bad example, but I like to insert them in here because my husband is one and I love it).

Bad example, I know, but maybe because I've been seeing them a lot they've become somewhat on the the mind and it's as though they want to be with me! "Take us home, Persephone! There you can see us everyday in the garden in our full glory! Come mid-spring winter we will be full of wonderful glorious flowers that will make you happy! Happier than daffodils or even hellebores can make you!"

Whoa, talk about some siren song those things have got there, so I asked for some of those too from my MIL and she kindly obliged :)

Unlike the Campanula that I blogged about last time, no on Dave's Garden gave lungwort any negatives or warnings about invasiveness, so hurray there, plant on other end of spectrum! (We like diversity here in Persephone's garden).

Besides just having cool foliage, I always thought about having lungwort (Pulmonaria saccharat) as an addition to my garden because I'd heard of its supposed medicinal herbal affiliations, which I soon began to suspect as folklore after much research. As its name seems to imply, it has to with the lungs, and how? Well, the spottiness of the leaves made ancient herbalists be reminded of disease lungs, and so they thought best that this was the herb to treat such problems (like walnuts and pecans are good for the brain because they resemble the brain.... which is not so far off apparently... but yes, association does not mean fact)

Still a very attractive flower in the borage family (which I am a fan of the herb) so in it goes!

Lungwort should grow no more than 18 inches high and 2 feet wide and is hardy in zones 4a-9b and is perennial (heart). It is partial to partial sun to full shade and so I've placed it in my little microclimate underneath a canopy of holly bushes where it should keep a good amount of moisture and leaves (which will become leaf mold eventually) and so it will hopefully stay happy there.

Apparently it is cool enough that someone bought it a domain name which is chock full of good info. Interesting info such as the variegation that is so loved in lungworts, the silvery bits, are actually air pockets underneath the leaves that keep the plant cool.

Eventually I might move the lungwort to a little sunnier spot, but as I am running out of room a bit... it's gonna stay there for now.

Introducing into the Garden: Campanula

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:04:00 +0000

Now that the DC trip stuff is over, let's get onto the juicy plant-y stuff, newest additions!

While at my in-law's house, my equally plant daffy mother-in-law showed me around her garden (this is tradition, if you go to any of the women's houses in this family, you give an obligatory garden tour). Mostly the tour was for, "see anything you like? Let's dig it up for you!" (Man, I wish all garden tours were like that)

One thing that caught my eye in her garden was this knee high plant with somewhat rangy looking toothed leaves but cute long, blue-purple colored bell shaped flowers. Being a sucker for bell shaped flowers (lilies of the valley, daffodils... sort of bell shape? and the like) I asked about it, and for a while she had one of those gardener moments all of us hate, where we just forget the name and it's on the tip our our tongue and it's driving us mad that we can't rustle up that darn name. So she starts vocalizing various sounds "Capa... cupa...Gah, isn't it terrible that I don't remember?!" and then it clicks in me what it might be, a plant that I've seen in catalog only, and had caught my interest there too. "Campanula?" I ask hesitantly, "Yes! That's it!" she says (and I do a mental air fist pump to myself at my success... it feels good to be able to identify stuff).

(leaf closest to flower is oregano, not the campanula's)

This was a very unusual campanula to me, most I've seen are very blue and very balloon-like when in bud and then open and star-like in its petals. Though the ones in the catalog are quite charming I found that I liked this one much more than the catalog versions. We slated this campanula as a "do dig for Persephone" plant and though I usually like to stick to edibles (as I often say) I'm getting the "flowers for the soul" thing more and more, especially as I can get tired of having to tend to my edibles all the time fretting about "will I be able to eat fresh veggies this summer if the bugs/weather/stupidity kills them?" Some regular ol' landscaping for prettiness can be easy on the eye especially when I care a lot less about their death if they go, and when they're easy to take of and perennial. Gotta love them perennials.

I forgot to ask my mom-in-law as to what variety this patch of campanula's name is before I left, so I did some research and for a while thought it was the Scottish harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) variety, but upon closer inspection it appears very much not the case...

Google image search to the rescue!

I didn't think I'd have a chance at finding it, but after some searching I suspect that it's either Campanula takesimana or Campanula punctata. If anyone has a good eye and can tell the difference between either an my pics and would like to point it out to me that'd be great. I'm leaning a little more towards the C. punctata because the bells are not so flared open at the edges as much as the other, but still uncertain.

My mother-in-law warned me that it was sort of invasive. "Excellent," I said and did a little Mr. Burns-esque finger tip waggle action. I should really stop with those "potentially invasive" plants I know, but space, must be filled! But it reminds me... mint anyone?

(I love how hairy it is. You know me and my love for hirsute-rific plants, hairy+bell shaped flowers=I'm there!)

For this campanula, leaning towards C. punctata it should get no taller than 2 feet tall, blooms late spring/early summer and is hardy from 4a-9b. Should be planted in sun to partial shade, but my MIL had it on the east side of her house where it was running around rampantly, and east side's where mine is too. I hear that it likes it relatively moist and I've been heartily dousing it in my 90+ F degree weather while it gets established. My bed drains relatively well though and it seems fine there for the week it's been chilling.

DC Trip was Plant-tastic! (part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 17:41:00 +0000

Alright, so I was terrible and didn't take many worthwhile pictures of my plant-tastic DC trip (and this is the worst verbal slide show ever...) I'll be briefer from here on out about "DC trip."

(UPDATE: Ho, ho! I have pics now from the trip! My wonderful sister in law has provided! viewing pleasure abounds!)

The National Arboretum was a blast, though a long, hot muggy blast, so more like a sweaty hike around the beautiful acres and legions of ground you'd expect an arboretum to cover. This area actually reminded me of the Memphis Botanic Gardens really with the amount of land a person covers. I've never been to an official Arboretum before and the Botanic Garden feel was compounded by the fact that this one had exhibits/divisions such as the bonsai section (it's all trees right, albeit tiny ones).

The bonsai were pretty splendor-ific, and intimidating (started in the 1800s?! and you're only 3 feet tall?!) The fact that something can be tended for many centuries, by generations of people is inspiring, but one swoop of some disease and all those centuries down the drain. Talk about an investment. There ought to be a bonsai market.

We came at a pretty good time as the azalea bonsais were in bloom. Tiny trees with ginormous looking blossoms on them! I thought that the flowers were supposed to become miniaturized too... I need to look into that, maybe I just saw dwarf plants bonsai-ed once, making their fruit and flowers appear more in proportion?

Some had some nifty scenes with tiny plants to look like larger shrubs and miniature figurines in them:

Um, they had a slightly larger landscape are complete with a small bridge that I danced/played Godzilla on:

I loved the garden's use of sedums as groundcover!

Pretty fun to look at the bonsai, though admittedly, and especially on a hot day, after a few dozen, one starts to look like the other (unless it's a truly startling one) and a person sort of wants to move on...

So off we went and checked out the Arboretum's AMAZING herb garden. Yep, this is another garden I'd love to own if it were possible. Lots of delineations of gardens (their list): "Dye Garden, Medicinal Garden, Culinary Garden, Fragrance Garden, Industrial Garden, and Beverage Garden feature the different ways in which herbs are important in our daily lives. The Native American Garden, Colonial Garden, Asian Garden, and Dioscorides Garden"
WOW. The highlight of the Herb Garden was a central brick area for resting that also had various herbs too of course, but had many, MANY pots of.... scented geraniums.

Needless to say, I went a little nuts. Like the little kid I sometimes act like, I had to smell every freakin' pot (and I think there had to have been at least 40 of them). I don't think any of them overlapped either in type! They were unbelievably lovely in all their various sizes, shapes, flowers and leaf types and almost all (minus those weird cedar/nut-what scents) were delightful. My husband and his brother sort of stood by the side for the next half hour slightly bemused, slightly helpless and impatient as my sister-in-law caught my geranium fever and by the time we were done my fingers smelled like something out of a perfume factory disaster. (Husband gagged when I put my fingers up to his nose).

The worst (and best part) was when I noticed that some of the geraniums were in seed. So, yep... there I went all Augustus Gloop-ish picking seeds fervently (only 3 plants had seeds) into my pockets. (1) I'd like to add that I wasn't shoving them into my pockets... just small little fistfuls. (2) I wasn't sure if they would be viable or germinate true anyways, because I understand that scenteds are either notoriously difficult to germinate by seed or aren't true and thus that's why cuttings are almost always necessary.

Please realize, that I was TOTALLY not thinking as I was doing this... just regular seed saving habit I suppose... instinct? Either way, my husband, who was flipping through the Arboretum brochure sort of coughed at me and my sis in law and pointed to a section that mentioned "no picking or taking plant matter out of the arboretum."

Oops. So, I stopped that rightaways.... but figured the seeds in my pocket could just stay in my pocket...?

Either way, my brother in law was having a mini-hey day plucking lavender all around. Guess we all have our perks.

I later emailed the Arboretum and inquired to some Smithsonian workers about why there was no nursery to sell extra plants/cuttings on site and I was essentially told that because it's government and non-profit they can't sell their items. BUT, when compost day comes in... there's a line of people waiting and they don't tell the people "no." Note to self: DC looks like a better and better place to live... Free entertainment, free gardens to visit and maybe even free plants....

We soon took refuge in the Native garden/Fern Valley which was blissfully shady. Native garden was as you could expect, native and things rambled unattended mostly and there were lots of wonderful ferns which is my husband's plant of choice (I'd like to add that he's not a fan of sunlight, so that might be a hint to his predilections).

There were, however, frogs in a boggy section that made the best sounds and had leopard spotted golden eyes which I adore, so we stopped to stare at those for a while.

So, of the MANY places to see in the Arboretum, we only got to THREE. Hopefully we'll get to trek over there many more times and complete the trip (and send a donation to the Arboretum...)

Finally my last bit of plant-i-ness (until I talk about the new additions to my garden Monday) is the National Botanic Garden, with the conservatory area being the area I spent most of my time in. I was unawares and short of time of some of the other areas, so that'll be for yet another trip!

The National Conservatory houses many different environments within its 29,000 square feet. While I could go through the list online, ones that were favorites and stuck out to me were the children's section, the sedum area and the tropical section which by far was the best.

The tropical section is tiered so that you can go up a metal walkway and follow the vertical height of tropical palms and other taller canopy plants. Along the way up he walkway tucked into the taller plants and hanging from the walkway or higher posts are tropicals such as bromeliads (usually a plant that doesn't interest me much usually but they had some very cool varieties I was unaware of and also probably not available in the regular store nurseries) and epiphytes like air plants and orchids of course.

During the walk up to the second tier my eye alighted upon a strange vine that somewhat thickish and had long slightly curved up leaves. The vine ran off of the tree trunk and onto the walkway which allowed me to inspect it closer. The leaves, when I got a better look, reminded me of the orchid leaves at my house, and the only orchid that was a vine that I knew of.... after searching around to find a tag, affirmed my suspicions, it was a vanilla orchid! And it had to be at least 50 feet long! (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating) but it was a very long vine!

The outside gardens were nice and I could see lots of edible action, but as it was blazing hot, the husband and I missed out on Bartholdi Park, the Rose Garden, and the Water Garden.

So, after 3 days of possibly boring material of verbal slideshow I'll get on to regular gardening programing with the introduction of new plants to the garden Monday. Have a great weekend and send some cool air my way, 93+ degrees F of temperatures headed my way this weekend and for about a week on and off!

DC Trip was Plant-tastic! (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:57:00 +0000

I left off cooing about DC's general landscaping and my appreciation for the government buildings and their style of planting as well as their plants of choice.

I'd like to devote this entry to the more garden-y areas I saw such as the Smithsonian, National Arboretum, and Botanical Conservatory.

While the Smithsonian has a small number of official gardens it takes care of and the ones in front of the museums (the Natural History one I mentioned in the prior post) I took a real shine to the National Museum of the Native American's garden around the building and a special one I'll get into later.

The National Museum of the Native American appears to be the newest museum amongst the Smithsonian and allow me to briefly laud its insides as well as its outsides. The exhibits are incredible, in depth and well done as well as very technological oriented. My husband and I spent the greater part of the day on the top floor (the 4th) itself which was just the introduction to Native Americans in North and South America. Politically correct they are. I was overwhelmed (in a good way) by the diversity of culture, food, beliefs, and etc of all the Native Americans I learned about. Much respect to their past (and present!) (and presence!)

Outside the NMotNA's awe inspiring brick and almost adobe looking building facade was very simple, very tastefully done landscaping, landscaping that I don't usually gravitate toward's, not that I enjoy ridiculously showing gardens either, but the colors were mostly muted of yellow,, browns and greens of grasses (to represent the grassland I would guess) punctuated here and there by, now my plant identification isn't perfect, but I could only believe them to be Indian pinks. Teehee.

I believe I saw sweet potato or potato plants and of course, there was CORN! The corn wasn't in vast swaths of course, but nice hills of them here and there. Strange to think of it, but I don't think there was any Three sister's growing action going on (no beans and squash with the corn). A large part of the front entrance was a water feature of a relatively calm pool that ran over various ledges, maybe resembling all those salmon fishing places I've seen in the past that Native American culture has been tied to. Water features can be a drain to resources and aren't the best environmentally, but hey, it's a museum and maybe the water get recycled?

As I look at the Smithsonian site mentioning the museum's landscaping I realize that maybe I somehow missed some of the parts of the landscaping/gardening? Wetlands? Didn't see it.

A quick shout out to the indoor gardens inside the National Gallery of Art (East side! *requisite 3 finger "E" shape sign*) btw on not just having plants in pots indoors, but since the place is so big, they have mini-gardens (which I am sure are low permanent planters) inside. Now that I think about it, I suppose malls and some airports feature these things too, but plants + art = plant art. And thus I am happy to have seen it in there rather than being surrounded by rampant shoppers or air travelers.

Lastly my favorite, and most surprisingly so, a garden that the Smithsonian holds is a little one, tucked between some buildings dedicated to one of the directors or some sort... sadly can't remember the name! A person could very near miss it if they were walking by because it has a short face, and is narrow and winding (as it's between buildings). It's not listed on the official Smithsonian website and this will drive me crazy to not be able to find it or know its name now. It's not the Rose or Ripley Garden listed on the site I am sure, because there was nothing grand like roses or iron-work in this garden.

Getting over the fact that I can't find it online anywhere and hope noone thinks I'm just a loony and making it up, this little gem of a garden is a garden I'd like, except that it'd need tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and beans tucked in it. It's cozy and warm and has MULTITUDES of interesting plants tucked away here and ready to catch the eye and surprise a person. Loads of herbs like nigella and basils dotted the beds and random voodoo lilies were placed elsewhere in other beds and in pots to have impact. Roguchi clematis rambled here and there and peeked out from behind some larger plants. Unusual sedums like a chocolate variety that I'd never seen before (and omg confession again, I broke a sprig off, which is heinous and goes beyond seed saving.... check to Smithsonian...again....) dotted the beds to eventually become groundcover.

I was lucky enough to talk to a groundskeeper person who was in the area planting something (I should have looked closer to what she was planting) and after talking shop for a while I said something along the the lines of "root-y stuff" and she looked at my husband and said, "Does she make up words like this all the time?" Heh. I explained that I don't tend to be very mature in my conversation style and she said she was only kidding (whew). But yeah, don't know what it is about my turning everything into an adjective just about.

Hmmm, so, as this is getting longer than I expected I'm breaking this up again and I'll conclude with National Arboretum and the United States Botanic Garden/Conservatory tomorrow and next week I'll talk of the cool plants I got from my family.

(I'd just like to note too that if I had intended to go to DC for garden viewing exclusively I wouldn't have been the newb that I was to not known that the Smithsonian also had an heirloom and Victory garden I could have seen >_<)

DC Trip was Plant-tastic! (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:08:00 +0000

...unfortunately, I'm terrible when it comes to traveling that I don't take many pictures.

I realize that this is especially unfortunate when person such as myself has a blog and many people who read it like pictures :\

Part of the reason why I don't really have pics of DC and the landscaping and plants I'm going to talk about is because I find that carrying a camera around and taking pics all the time makes me feel like I'm losing out on my fun and time when traveling (stopping and taking pics all the time and etc.) and when I take pics for 'looks' I take forever and as my husband and I were wanting to cram in a LOT of Smithsonian museum time, stopping often to take pretty pics was not exactly (pardon the pun) in the picture. Also, my sister and brother-in-law accompanying us on parts of this trip had super badass SLR cameras that put mine to shame and while I'm not competing with their camera-tude, I almost feel a sort of "what's the point?" in taking pics when their cameras are around (and I can try to ask for pics from them later), except for the fact that my eye is interested in very different things than their eyes and so I do end up regretting not having taken my camera with me more often when I find particular plants or textures interesting. Perhaps on another trip when I'm not having to rush!

But anyways, allow me to use my "talent" with words to whisk you off to a faraway place called Washington DC also known as, Our Nation's Capitol. Let us hope that I can give the required thousand words that picture gives to make up for the lacking of eye candy here.

I lived in the concrete jungle of Chicago a long while ago and never saw much interest in plants or landscaping, nor was it expected with their relatively short warm season I suppose. I've been to California many times and when it comes to plants there, they don't count when I can compare locations on plants, landscaping and etc. because plants are abundant and happy there all the time, any time just about. Californians barely need to do anything, and really don't to have trumpet vine running prettily and rampantly all year around, and have rosemary as a common form of edging on the side of the highway and so on and so forth.

So, I was pretty impressed getting to Washington DC to see a ridiculous amount of landscaping and diversity of plants not only our nation's capitol but in the random neighborhood my sister in law was in (granted, being the capitol of our nation they might be putting a special foot forward and my sister's neighbor was a bit of a plant nut which could be considered outside the norm).

Granted once again, Thomas Jefferson, a plant nut himself, may have caused this lasting impression for DC's plant cool-ness but nonetheless, allow me to be impressed that a non-tropical city such as this (in a state that's not tall like Cali and thus have a million zones) is so plant-tastic! (I must parenthesize here that I have not been to famed Buffalo and its Garden Walks too, so maybe we can just say that I've been a little sheltered since my incarnation as a plant-o-holic?)

Before heading to DC proper I was thrilled to see that no one in my sis-in-law's suburb appeared to take particular care of their lawn. Weeds and clover everywhere! Score! No little tags proclaiming particular landscaping companies, no stupid crunchy fertilizer pellets ruined my walk as I took the dog out, no idiots watering their lawns at 2pm or after a rain. It should be noted that most of the lawns were somewhat on the smaller side and that there were lots of trees, but the notice that there were TREES (and lots of them) is a happy reminder of what a few good deciduous trees can do for a neighborhood in the cooling, habitat for animals, and less watering for grass way.

I was really pleased to see too that the National Lawn was also in the same state as most of the suburban lawns I saw earlier. Loads of weeds and clover, but it was still relatively green. Maybe I caught it on a particularly bad week, or maybe the Gov decided that it did have better things to spend their money on than lawn maintenance especially when how many thousands (if not millions) of people tromp all over it a day.

Despite all the buildings everywhere for all the many departments and agencies of whatnot and all in the capitol, any little bit of green space that could have just been relegated to a simple lawn mow job was actually really nicely landscaped with hardy, interesting shrubs and many perennials. I didn't recall seeing many generic annuals like petunias, but there were lots of smoke trees (love!) and mahonias (both of which are actually natives to Washington interestingly) and other eye-catching plants in those spaces with relatively little grass to cut. Maybe even less lawn to mow in total for a building than the lawn at my house (sad, really).

Another thing which I found pretty cool of note was the use of tall permanent concrete planters all around many of the buildings. These planters appeared to be there to delineate the sidewalk of the building from the street, eradicating the need/use of a grassy parking strip and probably also being safe for pedestrians from cars on top of being mostly easy to tend to.

Many of these permanent planters were simple: full of mondo grass, or other tall grasses, trailing naked jasmines and the like, but in a tall planter were sufficiently nice as a long set down a sidewalk. As you might have noted, these plants were all pretty nearly perennials, which is an awesome cost-saving thing. I found it sort of funny that the the Department of Finance building was one of a few locations that did not have their planters filled with any plants. Maybe they deemed it a unnecessary and a cost-saving measure? Come on guys, mondo grass is cheap! Even accountants need a little more green (in the living kind sense!)

Interspersed between the buildings were little gardens and the Smithsonian museums, all of which were landscaped not just prettily but interestingly. My interest is peaked at unusual plants, but even more so when the unusual plants (of no edible interest that I was aware of) are planted with EDIBLE plants. Lots of basils, and ornamental peppers and random herbs (or maybe it's just that I knew those plants were herbs that are edible or medicinal that made me interested).

The Natural History museum's entire perimeter was lined with many wonderful edibles one of which was nigella, aka love in a mist or black cumin, a plant that I loved as a child and didn't know what it was despite it running rampant in my mother's flower bed (until she decided she didn't like it anymore and ripped it all out). I only came to know what this plant from my childhood was a few years ago and I have been desperately trying to get it to grow in my garden. The seed pods in the museum beds were dry and ready to drop, and here is where I made a gardener's sin: I took a seed pod. *covers face* I do not condone stealing and think it's pretty abhorrent, but seed gathering I feel a little less bad about. "But what if everyone took a seed pod?" my brain asks. I know, I know, so bad and the Smithsonian doesn't deserve tourists like me, but a nice donation will be made soon-ish? There are many seeds and I don't really buy souvenirs, so I usually take a rock, some sand, a leaf, drift wood or the like as my souvenir when I go on trips, obviously most never on an institution's property... so this is my guilt and man, am I guilting here (as I should). Writing... check.... for Smithsonian... donation...(should I write "for the seed pod?" on it?)

This whole seed pod just brings down a whole slew of apple-Adam-Eve and 'Beauty and the Beast' tales in my head. If anything, I can say that a Smithsonian garden person working on another garden was going to offer me a pod of nigella anyways (after I had already taken one from the Museum of Natural History... but I didn't mention that...) No excuses though still.

But yeah, that whole seed thing, DC trip and more, tomorrow at my blog!

Not dead yet!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:00:00 +0000

You know, I didn't know that in Monty Python and the the Holy Grail, the official title of the character of the old man who "wasn't dead" (but was being forced into the 'dead cart' by who we can only presume to be his son) is called "The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't"

I'd almost like to claim that I'm the "The Dead Blog that Claims It Isn't" for all the times that I've left you all in a lurch except I'd be paranoid-ly looking above me for some sort of Monty Python-esque massive paper cut-out hand above me ready to bop my head.

So yes, for the second time in the past 2 weeks I must apologize for the lack of updates. Usually I am better about having posts interspersed and prepared to entertain you whilst I am running about on vacation (yes, that's the reason for my absence as many of you might have surmised since it was over Memorial Day weekend). I have a tendency to not want to proclaim to the world, via Twitter, Facebook, blog and the like that I am not in the house for an extended period of time for good reason. Not like I'm famous like Elvis or have a collection like the Kew Conservatory that I'm worried about but too many people tell the world when they're not at home and it's just not smart.

Anyways, please give me another day to recover from many days of nonstop walking around the Washington DC area (8-10 hours a day, 5+miles a day, not including the time spent upright in museums) and the 12-14 hour nonstop crazy drives my husband and I make to get to see family and fun because sleeping at night (when there's less traffic too!) is for newbs and we're just crazy like that.

Upcoming posts will be about the awesomeness of:

-Washington DC's plants and landscaping

-The National Arboretum

-The National Botanic Conservatory

-Having a family that trades plants with EVERY visit (you'd think that the plant varieties would equalize out at some point..) (this post will also highlight the plants traded)

Segueing into plant trading with family I have an admission that I am going to make that's relatively stupid (but the husband insists I need to update my foibles--- and I should, but still, blah.) but I broke my plant moratorium. Just this once! After I was stung by the wasp recently I was "le sad" and at the local farmer's market they were selling pretty, 6 inch tall coleus plants for a $1(!) and I, uh, believed it would dull the sadness and pain of wasp sting-i-tude(ness). The seller also gave me a piece of a pretty purple and green coleus that had snapped off, so it was like I got TWO coleus for $1(!).

I'd like to blame Dave at The Home Garden for influencing me many months ago to the idea of keeping, cutting and saving coleus cuttings for over the winter (and just to make more). I don't tend to like to purchase non-edibles, but having a yen for color lately and add in some easy propagation on TOP of being severely malnourished of new plant/interesting growth in the garden I succumbed. SIGH. There, I got that out. Guilt be gone? Except for some guilt that occurred in DC... but not in the plant purchasing way! More on that later and until then, thanks for your patience.

Not a fan of the shrubbery, but I gets it

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:30:00 +0000

After over a week of eating it, the kimchee got me. Really. And then I resurrected myself and was well enough again for another day of blogging!

Obviously, just kidding, but not kidding now, I'm sorry about the delay in posting. Things just have gotten really busy suddenly and I didn't have a bunch of posts lined up as usual to stay on task due to busy-ness reasons, so thus my absence on the internet.

For a short moment I had some difficulty thinking of a topic due to my busy-ness that has kept me from gardening as much. I'm really just waiting for things to grow anyways, but then a non-my-usual-edible-garden-y issue popped up in my head that I thought I'd address: shrubbery.

My house came with a plentiful supply of generic landscaping plants: azaleas, weigela, nandina, boxwood-like things, and lots and lots of hollies (some slow growers, the others, the tree kind, grow like the dickens).

It's a love-hate relationship with the shrubs. The happiness of having some relatively decent good bones and pre-made professional landscaper designed stuff that is relatively work-free and xeriscaperific, and there are the instant micro-climates that some of the taller plants make for lower, shade loving plants you might acquire such as bleeding hearts and some begonias for example. But it's pre-made landscaping also comes with the annoyance of a yard that you hadn't envisioned, full of sort of boring (inedible) plants (Ilex vomitoria anyone?) and some especially that are annoying as heck to maintain either because you have to trim them up all the time or like my Otto Leuyken and boxwood-like thing that was PRONE to pink wax scale aka strawberry scale.

A year ago the Otto Leuyken finally did kick the bucket due to lack of water and most likely due to the strawberry scale infestation despite after spraying multiple times with neem oil. Despite its branching and I tried to get rid of the stuff as much as possible, I suspect that the scale was just too tenacious and was able to hide well between the "elbows"/nooks of the branches and survived. I dug it up and tossed it leaving an unfortunate empty spot in its place.

Later that same year of 2009 I found the same scale on one of the boxwood things, cut it tragically short and attempted to pick out the scale and prune out dead and crowded branches (one of the most annoying and worst tasks ever). Things looked good, new growth was occurring... and then this year I found it again on the same plant. And then the next one... and next one... and next one.... until I realized ALL of the boxwood things in the same row against the house were INFESTED.

I pruned them ALL back severely earlier this year and sprayed and then after a while, I thought to myself, "Man, this stuff doesn't go away, and I hate these shrubs anyways. They do NOTHING for me except act as a strawberry scale hotel." So I said "screw it" and dug them up:

Oh my was that cathartic and thank you mom and dad-in-law for the tiny me-sized shovel you gave me for Christmas that helped me dig these bloody things up!

Surprisingly they weren't as tough to dig up as I was worried about in the first place. A little hopping on the shovel a few times were needed to cut roots here and there, but nothing terrible. Granted doing that for 6 shrubs did give me a little sweat, but I am not complaining if that means no more stupid pink bugs to deal with from hear on out.

In its place I think I'll let the oregano that I've used as ground cover cover up the holes where the shrubs once were. It's getting a little woody and I don't think I'd mind oregano "bushes" The root system isn't terrible I find, shallow enough to pull up if need be and I can easily hard trim the stuff back if I want to. Plus, it just means more oregano available, and how is that a bad thing? (unlike mint....)

Point being in this whole ordeal. Got a shrub you really hate and gets infested way too often? Stop fighting it! It's not worth it! Dig it up, let it go and find something that gives you infinitely less grief! Life's too short to waste on plants that just can't cut it.

Revitalized root pruned citrus and forbidden fruit

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:25:00 +0000

So, remember a while back I decided I really needed to prune the roots of one of my potted citrus plants because I knew it was root/pot bound?

Well, I think it seems to be doing a-okay!

In fact, better than just ok it seems. The pic from above was from 2 weeks back and presently, it's glorious bursting out in its full foliage, fuller than it's been in a long time and maybe even when I first got it!

Talk about revitalization the plant!

It even has some flowers! (not photographed b/c they were getting old and wilty)

Since this grapefruit tree is doing so well, I am tempted to root prune the navel orange tree now, especially as the fruit I was so excited about:

Got either knocked off by the wind, or I suspect birds or squirrels (gah, squirrels, I really hates them). So there's nothing really stopping me from root pruning except some worries about the heat as it's a bit late in the year.

But if I don't do it now, or sooner, rather than later, I'll have to wait until next spring and if it's root/pot bound I'd rather give it the opportunity of all this sun to soak up and strengthen itself for the winter now with the potential to flower away this winter/coming spring. Past reading seems to indicate that prune then shouldn't be an issue, so I've had good luck with the grapefruit, why not expect the same with the orange?

Randomly, as I have a proclivity for living green mulches (ok, groundcovers...) so I don't have to mulch the wood chips/ pebbles/hay/etc way (though some of those ways are necessary) I decided to add some sedums to the citrus pots in hopes that their covering the surface will keep moisture in relatively well , assuming that they both decide to not compete for water... granted sedum root structure is shallow, I'm relatively unworried. If anything I think if the sedums do well, they'd look pretty spiffy hanging off the side of the pot and maybe this way too I will be inhibiting the little weeds that keep cropping up in the pots.

After summer's over I'll most likely take the sedums out of the pots and replant them in the sedum pathway where I originally got them from because I've found these sedums get very leggy and scraggly looking inside, rather unattractive when I eventually need to take the citrus in.

Have a safe Memorial Day Weekend folk!

Mini-update to previous ants post

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:33:00 +0000

In regards to my latest post on ants that I discovered in my herb bed...

The great Tom Turpin from Purdue University's entomology department emailed me identification on my little guys:

"These are Lasius ants. Sometimes called piss ants. They tend aphids (which might be a problem for plants) but cause no direct harm to plants. So your saffron bulbs are safe but the presence of the ants might mean that there is a healthy population of aphids on some plants in the vicinity. Regards."

(heh, "piss-ants" Ok, a little puerile, but I'm amused mostly because I'm a fan of entomology as well as etymology I've heard it used a few times, really! It's in Merriam Webster:

Main Entry: piss·ant

Pronunciation: \ˈpis-ˌant\

Function: noun

Usage: often attributive

Etymology: pissant ant, from ¹piss + ant

Date: 1945

sometimes vulgar : one that is insignificant —used as a generalized term of abuse

and from dictionary.com:

Also, piss-ant.

Origin:
1655–65, in sense “ant”; piss + ant, prob. orig. on the model of pismire

Link To pissant

Word Origin & History

pissant

1661, "an ant," from first element of pismire (q.v.) + ant. Meaning "contemptible, insignificant person" is from 1903.

Anyways, thus far I haven't noticed an ant problem in my herb bed, but thanks for the heads up Tom! I'll probably inspect it closely tonight and possibly give it a spray-spray of soap or neem or just knock 'em off with water.

Admittedly, it would be kind of cool (and uncool) to see ants milking aphids like farmers. But I'll just tune into the Discovery Channel (if I had tv...oh, yeah, the internet!) if I really want ant-milking-aphid action.

Work Hazards: Wasps

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Wed, 26 May 2010 00:36:00 +0000

Marking my calender today, my first wasp sting ever. Woohoo, I'm alive?

I had seen a wasp hanging around the bird house I just got for a buck at a garage sale and after I thought I had made sure it went away I went to check on the little drawers beneath it to make sure nothing was trying to make a home in it other than birds.

I think that's when it and I may have collided because 10 steps later after checking the birdhouse I felt like what was a thorn stuck in the wrist area of my sleeve. This actually didn't disturb me so much as I often get stuck by stuff in the garden (someone's going to tell me to wear gloves aren't they... though I think the wasp could have gotten stuck in there too). I was surprised of course when I tugged at my sleeve and couldn't get the thorn loose and then exposed the wasp which then flew away.

Mostly I was worried about having a reaction (too many horror stories growing and re- showings of the movie "My Girl" I guess). The sting itself wasn't so bad, but the interesting aspect of this experience was that I was able to force myself to stay calm (very weird for a highstrung person such as myself) and within a minute I called my neighbor who's a nurse (and interestingly allergic to bees/wasps, making her perfect to help me in case I went into a anaphylactic shock). She told me to hold a minute and she would be right over.

I washed my hands to get all the dirt off and stupidly began putting dishes away and fretting about the mess of the house all the while feeling a little dizzy.

Usually I try to tough things out and figure out how to handle it on my own, but the idea of having a reaction and dying was enough to keep me from trying to just "let it go." I was also very lucky because my nurse nieghbor ususally works the 3rd shift and she was off today and awake/alert (I had talked with her earlier that day) so this helped things immensely.

In my weird calm daze, my nurse friend immediately put meat tenderizer she has on hand at her house on the sting (which looked like a fairly small red mark on my hand). As I was dizzy from either dehydration or anxiety she got me to put my head between my knees and cold washclothed my neck and then made an ice bath for my hand to place in and bring down/prevent any swelling.

After I got a little less dizzy, she dried my hand off, put some topical benadryl on the wound and covered it with a bandage. I took some aspirin on my own to try to offset further swelling. Then I ate some coffee gelatin and chocolate (dark) to make me feel better.

(that's 'ouchie' not something else my husband thought I wrote)

Other than swelling, little twinges of pain here and there and my wrist oddly popping a little more than usual, I think I'm taking my first wasp sting pretty well.

From what I remember seeing when I was stung, it looked to be what they call a big red wasp, which, other than being big, isn't a terrible one is what I've been told.

I also was told by my nurse lady that even if you don't show signs of allergy to a sting now, you can have a reaction if you get stung again. I guess the first sting primes a person's immune system?

I don't blame the wasp, just does what it does. Reminds me of Aesop's tales, those wolf or scorpions won't change their nature, you just have to accept them as they are. I still won't be putting up any wasp traps (they're pollinators!) but perhaps just a little more vigilance should be necessary on my part when I see a wasp hanging around from now on.

Oddly enough, I've found this sting (of course it was treated very quickly) more tolerable than some of my mosquito bites I've had in the past

For more info on what you should do if you get stung by a wasp or bee and how to avoid getting stung:
http://nasdonline.org/document/962/d000800/first-aid-for-bee-and-insect-stings.html

Game, mâche, set!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:50:00 +0000

So, for the longest time I thought I had heard that mâche, aka corn salad, aka lamb's lettuce aka RAPUNZEL (a new name find for me, and one that I think I'll use for now on as I am a sucker for fairy tales...) was perennial.

No clue how that got stuck in my head that it was perennial, but somehow it did and now I am chastened to say that it's really a bloody ol' annual. Maybe I was reading up on too many perennial vegetables, and getting it mixed up with something like Good King Henry (because they sound so alike...) but I made a mistake and I apologize for my stupidity if I accidentally mislead anyone there.

Back to mâche/rapunzel though.

All in all, growing this vegetable was not so successful as I'd like, not in the 'it-didn't-grow-for-me' way but in the 'I-didn't-use-it-much-because-I-didn't-force-myself-to-eat-salads-more' way.

This is a cool weather green that seemed to grow very very slowly in the winter when it did sprout and then warm weather came upon us so quickly that this thing bolted like the dickens and got yellow-y and un-worthwhile to eat fast.

While there were plentiful little cute leaves to eat, I loathed to eat them because they seemed so tiny and though I had also heard you could eat the heads whole like some smaller lettuce varieties, the idea of extinguishing my plants in 3 bites was not very agreeable to me.

So, instead the leaves went somewhat to waste (which I hate) except for the fact that I guess that energy went into making surprise...

(and this was just from one plant... half of the seeds were still in the bed/between cracks of the bed)

....SEEDS for me!

So, maybe I will grow mâche (rapunzel) again and try to utilize it better now that I can feed a whole herd of goats with the amount of seed I saved.

I noted too, when brushing up my knowledge, that you can use it in omelettes and OMELETTEs are right up my eatin' alley.

LINKS OF INTEREST:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1370492
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/62221/
http://www.floridata.com/ref/v/vale_loc.cfm

Ants in my Plants!

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:46:00 +0000

Pittering around the herb garden a couple of days ago, I noticed something odd around an area where I had tossed a light handful of fertilizer some days ago: movement.

Lots and lots of tiny movement.

Closer inspection proved that I had a whole helluva of a lot of ants. And they were carrying BABIES. Well, EGGIES... or PUPAE (to be really scientific).

(sorry about the fuzzy pics, as they are tiny and my camera isn't the greatest, this is what I've got)

There was a lot of activity going on, workers swarming back and forth with their little white bundles. It looked like the main nest or whatevers was based in circle of my borage plants and directly on top of where my saffron bulbs are. It looked like they were ferrying things between that nest and another a couple of feet away from the rue/lemon balm.

My initial reaction:
"Aw crap! Need to make powdered sugar-borax balls to kill them!"

Mature reaction soon thereafter:
Ok, what a minute. Don't need to kill them, just because they are plentiful and you have no idea if they are beneficial or not and because you get rid of them when they party inside the house. It's time, for some RESEARCH!

As I'm not one for ant identification, I decided to google and see what might come up while I try my luck again emailing Professor Turpin from Purdue University's illustrious entomology department to see if I might be able to come up with anything.

Of any benefit I could think of that ants might be of use in the garden, the only one was of aeration from their tunnels. Online searching seemed to indicate this to be true, and also pointed to me that common garden ants are scavengers of old, dead materials, cleaning up after other things or pests. Ants also are pollinators (a plus obviously) and in addition are predatory towards the eggs and larvae of fleas and other pests, news that is GREAT to me.

The negatives now:
If you find ants underneath pavers or stone/foundation things you freqently walk on or need held up, the ants need to go as they can collapse these structures with their tunnels.

You might also be aware that quite a few ants like nectar (just like bees as pollinators!) and they can be a nuisance if you enjoy picking or sniffing flowers when there's an infestation nearby.

Some of you may have also heard that some ants like to "milk" aphids, which is true, and the ants will protect the aphids to retain their food source "milk" of honeydew that the aphids produce. Though, a good indicator for aphids, it can get bad, and messy if there are aphids and ants together. As long as you get rid of the aphids, the ants will find other sources of food and will not be an issue.

(more close-up individual ant portraits)

For now, I can conclude that they are not carpenter ants, as they are not large-ish or black and I don't think they are fire ants as they seem non-threatening and didn't swarm a ladybug that I placed amidst them.

So, until I get word from someone of bug identification brilliance, these guys are a-okay where they're at.

Dancing queen: Dark Dancer Clover

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:06:00 +0000

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for clover. The poofy flowers, the soft structure of the leaves... knowing the difference between it and medic and oxalis :P

When I was a kid, I was the one on the softball team in far left field, dawdling, throwing my glove in the air or on the ground looking for 4 leaf clovers. I mean, what 8 year old is going to throw a homer my way? (It did happen; twice, I recall, and my team was not happy with me.)

I think I've found 4, maybe 5, four-leaf clovers in my lifetime that I'm sure I pressed between pages of books for safekeeping, only to lose track of which books they were in over the years.

It's not as though I really believed in the nature of luck to be gained by 4 leaf clovers, just the simple rarity of them was enough to sustain my interest and I suppose the pleasure of whiling away the time enjoying the simplicity of such small treasures.

Even as an adult, I can't go past a patch of clover without giving it a cursory glance for 4 leafed stalks.

Well, right now I've got Mother Nature beat. Or you might say, scientists have made the magic a little less special because I purchased some time ago Pre-P.M. (Pre-Plant Moratorium) this little lovely:

All Hail to Dark Dancer Clover!

As you might expect, the burgandy on green hue is what first caught my eye, but upon closer inspection, I noticed a four leaf clover, then another, and another, and more!

Dark Dancer is gifted with not only beauty, but luck too! (Sounds like the fairies gifting Sleeping Beauty doesn't it? Well, except for that one stupid bit of bad luck...)

I'm in love with Dark Dancer, and though she's blessed with all her gifts, I've seeded in my front and back lawn some basic red and white clover so I can have patches of the plain ol' stuff to lie on my belly in and while away the time look for 4 leafed treasure.

ADDENDUM: The OTHER reason I've seeded my front and back lawn with clovers is because we don't really fertilize our lawn, and as clovers are nitrogen fixers thus fertilizers, which I hope it will do our lawn good.

Red clover has the interesting property too of a being a favorite food of slugs I've read and research seems to indicate it as being an excellent diversion crop for crops such as strawberries. Granted, as my husband scoffs, 'why are we feeding pests?' it's a little counterintuitive to be letting pests you hate get a free dinner, but we can just hope too, that with a little Slugg-o in the clover patch, maybe those slugs won't be coming back...

I've also heard that planting clover in a lawn can encourage moles because many bugs seem to like clover and when you bring bugs, their predators (the moles) will not be far behind. So far my clover patches aren't too large yet, but this was just a warning for those who might be interested in clovering up their lawn too. If I get any extra moles, I'll mention it.

ALSO, more info on Dark Dancer:

Dark Dancer, like all clovers, is perennial here and is known to spread relatively well to vigorously. While I really wanted to plant it in my lawn, the husband thinks that would be 'weird' and so I've taken his opinion into consideration and planted a small patch at the edge of a flower bed...near the lawn, in hopes that it might make it's escape and spread, spread my pretties!

Another point of interest is that, despite its appearance, Dark Dancer is actually a white clover. I know that it's the flowers that determine the white/red variety of clover, but a person could easily assume that the red leaves would mean red flowers or just red clover-ness. Hmm, now I sort of wish the flower did come in red because that'd be rather pretty and I just like red.

FINALLY, just a crazy thought because I'm weird:

Speaking of nitrogen fixers, did you know that when there's a thunder storm, with lots of lightning, it makes the ground more fertile? When lightning strikes, the energy breaks nitrogen molecules in the air enabling it to bond with oxygen and this forms nitrogen oxides which then dissolve in rain and gets carried down to the earth. SO, other than the amount of energy to create this, wouldn't it be awesome to create some sort of 'lightning sprinkling water wand' that we could go around using in our gardens (or that we could rent?) and zap our gardens into fertility? Spiffy and Thor-tastic!

LINKS OF INTEREST:

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/101691/

http://www.monrovia.com/plant-catalog/plants/2821/dark-dancer-white-clover.php

http://provenwinners.com/plants/detail.cfm?photoID=6228

http://www.paghat.com/cloverdarkdancer.html

http://gardening.about.com/od/gardendesign/ig/Plants-to-Walk-On/Trifolium-repens-Atropurpureum.htm

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/N/NitrogenCycle.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n1_v133/ai_6284571/

Monday morning, is for kimchi making! (and Tuesday posts are for those who post late about Monday...)

noreply@blogger.com (persephone) — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:07:00 +0000

(Yesterday I didn't get to update as promised because I have been busy busy with guests, so please forgive me for this late post.)

As many of you are experiencing, at least down in the South here, it's warmin' up and many of the cold weather plants are BOLTING.

The cilantro's gone to flower (off to become coriander if you so wish), the mustards are sending up stalks too and the corn salad (aka mache) has long gone by the wayside of anything near delicious.

My turnips and radishes have also begun to send up flower stalks and show off a few pretty purple flowers.

A few of those useful for next season's cold planting, but to salvage some for food use, I needed to think quickly about how best to use them. Unfortunately the husband is not a fan of either of those vegetables and I can't eat them all on my own in enough time especially before it all becomes unpalatable. So after thinking, thinking and thinking I realized: KIMCHEE!

I can't get the husband to want to eat kimchee either, but at least this will allow me to preserve the vegetables that I can eat it slowly on my own over time. I thought about searching for some recipes online, but what wouldjaknow, reliable Mother Earth News read my mind in their most recent issue (got a subscription from the in-laws for Christmas).

Spiffy, so now I just needed the veggies... M.E.N. lists using turnips, radishes (tops if wished), horseradish, garlic, ginger, carrots and scallions in their recipe. I didn't have too many red radishes, and so I used what I could, the turnips were white Asian ones:

...ones that I had forgotten to thin out and grew a little weird and... obscene:

(sorry about the knife and "surgery" that happened to the turnip guys, don't mean to make you uncomfortable...)

To make up for the lack of radishes and relatively small amount of turnip-y-ness I used some small Chinese cabbage. I didn't have 'official' scallions and so I raided some stalks from the Egyptian Walking onion.

My carrots were 2 years in the ground and flowering (and too woody obviously for use). I've decided to use carrots in the garden now for loosening the soil and when they flower, the umbels of carrots have such tiny flowers that they are good for attracting especially nice pollinators. It's so cheap to purchase a bag of carrots it's hard for me to justify growing them when I could use the room for other things.

Perhaps I will grow some of those awesome purple or red carrots that I can't find in the stores usually that would make it worthwhile.

After a lot of chopping I finally was ready to brine the veggies in a jar! As it turned out, the cabbage gave the recipe more heft and caused the recipe to double and I needed to add more brine than it called for. To make sure that the vegetables become fully preserved, it's suggested to immerse cover (use a plate)or use a plastic water weight (plastic bag full of water here) over the jar of vegetables and brine so that there's no spoilage and contact with air.

After the veggies sit in brine overnight you taste for saltiness level in the morning (which is what I did today, Tuesday morning) and then you add the seasonings. I would have used horseradish, ginger, garlic and fresh chili peppers grown here, but they were not ready/ in season and I had used all of mine already from last season anyways.

So, alas... note to self to make this recipe again in the winter when all those things are in season in the garden (duh). (Ooh, then I can have jars and jars and JARS of kimchee! I wonder if I can, can it so that it doesn't take up room in the fridge... mmm)

We had all these seasonings in the fridge/pantry on hand as we cook Asian-y food often enough, so that was helpful. I used whole red chilis (though the recipes states powdered Korean chili is fine) and had a mini workout by grating ginger (gotta stay buff somehow!) Technically you're supposed to make a paste of the rest of the spices/seasonings which I proceeded to do for 2 minutes with a small mortar and pestle of mine, but then gave up and just dumped my relatively finely minced/shredded seasonings in the vegetable and brine mix and decided it would probably be fine. After stirring everything around well, you cover with a dish or water weight again to begin, FERMENTATION! (a beautiful process that all delicious things in life use: wine, beer, pickles, etc.)

(ta da! Seasoned kimchee, ready to bum around for a week and get sour! please note: the stove was just a convenient place to put the jar for the pic. I found that it leaked some brine after a while when the plastic water bag weight settles a bit. No actual cooking over a hot stove was done during this mini-project)

The recipe tells me to let the jar go for a week like this and to check on it every day for sourness level and make sure that it's still covered. Hopefully I don't die of botulism or something... My understanding, like my past failed experience with pickles, is that if the stuff doesn't taste good, you did something wrong, and you need to toss whatever you tried pickling (because why would you want to keep it anyways?)

So, if you don't hear from me after I try this stuff in a week... you'll know the reason.