Gardening in Mannheim, Germany

Good tomato harvest year

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:21:00 +0000

Having been delinquent once again about keeping up my blog, with such feeble excuses I won't even name them, I want to finally post a report on this year's very pleasing tomato harvest.

As I reported in a previous post, I have several varieties of family heirloom tomatoes from which I derive my own seeds each year. This year, in addition to these home-propagated beef, peach, and roma tomatoes, whose correct names are lost in history, I also purchased supposedly disease-resistant seeds from a commercial seed company (Sperli's Delizia F1 hybrid), and some bush tomato seeds from an organic seed cooperative ("Balcony Star").

I've been having a good harvest from all 5 varieties, but it has to be said that my self-propagated tomatoes simply taste better - remarkably so. The bush tomatoes have been producing a large number of smallish round salad tomatoes for weeks, pleasant-tasting but bland. The hybrid tomatoes are healthy and meaty, but also not really better-tasting than local tomatoes purchased in season from the green grocer.

None of my tomatoes have been affected badly so far this year by blight, with the exception of the bush tomatoes. This hasn't, however, daunted them in producing prodigious amounts of fruit. Here one of the bush tomatoes, on our fifth floor patio, i.e. without contact to other blight-carrying plants (you would think):

The yellow "peach" heritage tomatoes win hands down as the family's favorite tomato. I am worrying a little, though, that they might be losing their specific characteristics through cross-pollination, and will be doing some research on preventing that for the future. Last year, my peach tomatoes were much "yellower" than they are this year.

Last year's peach tomatoes:

Peach tomatoes from this year's harvest (the bottom two rows in the dish), with more red in them:

Still, they taste fabulous. Runner-up for favorite tomatoes are the roma-style heirloom tomatoes we call "paprika" tomatoes. They cut like butter and are mild with firmer flesh and little juice.

In the photo below from left to right: peach heirloom tomato, paprika heirloom tomato, Delizia F1 hybrid, Balcony Star bush tomato. My heirloom beef tomato has pretty much finished producing fruit this year, and we've eaten them all, sorry.

One new problem has presented itself this year. For the first time, we have a deer(s) in the garden! This is terrible! I've seen them twice when I've gone to the garden early in the morning, and see their tracks and droppings around the things they like to eat most: roses, lettuce, and tomatoes. In fact, they've pretty much ruined some of my roses by constantly biting off the buds and tender leaves and shoots. We've conferred with our neighbors in the allotment colony about this and reported it to the administration. The outer periphery of the allotments is protected by a deer-proof fence, but the gates are open during the day and the garden colony is large enough that once in, they can easily hide during the day.

So we tried various things such as hanging streamers of red and white cordoning at strategic places, etc., to no avail. Finally I resorted to wrapping or covering all the tomato plants in garden fleece, i.e. "bagging" them. This has been very effective, but doesn't look too great. It was fairly easy to do since all my tomatoes are in pots under the eaves to help prevent blight.

It could be that bagging the plants has reduced the harvest somewhat, but it's hard to tell.

Thanks for all your comments on my last posts and happy harvesting to all of you fellow vegetable gardeners.

Slug-resistant plants II: Love-in-a-Mist and Dame's Rocket

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:53:00 +0000

Both Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) and Dame's Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) are flowers I tried after reading that they are usually left alone by slugs. Into my second summer with them I can confirm that this is true.

These flowers are touted as cottage garden favorites, and have been grown in European gardens for hundreds of years. That and the fact that they are native to Europe appealed to me. Love-in-a-Mist (in German: Jungfer im Grünen) is an annual, and Dame's Rocket (in German: Nachtviole) is usually called a biennial or short-lived perennial. In my garden, Dame's Rocket only survived one of our mild winters, but both plants have self-seeded very generously.

In fact, in the meantime I've learned that Dame's Rocket is regarded in some U.S. states as an invasive species, although in my experience, Love-in-a-Mist deserves this honor much more! I've been battling Love-in-a-Mist all spring, literally ripping out hundreds of offspring from the original 10 or so I planted from seed last year. Here it is crowding out some of my herbs. One place it didn't invade were the rows of winter onions you can see in these photos, so it must not like their company.

Love-in-a-Mist

The photos above were taken at the end of May, but you can already see the myriads of seed pods being formed.

Love-in-a-Mist seed pod

The flowers and the foliage of this plant are very delicate and lovely, and so are the seed pods for that matter. They make great vase flowers. This makes it hard to rip them out! Another observation I've made is that whereas the original variety I planted was "Miss Jekyll", which has true blue blossoms, all the self-seeded plants bloomed white and I have no more blue at all.

Love-in-a-Mist

Dame's Rocket also self-seeded, but not anywhere near as prolifically as Love-in-a-Mist, although from the one single plant (purchased in a nursery and planted the fall before) I had last summer there were at least 20 offspring - but not 200. However, the new plants this spring were not as lovely as the original pink-violet plant. The blossoms were not as showy and long-lasting, the plant had less stems, and the color was not as intense. I found a photo showing my single plant of Dame's Rocket last summer, and the second photo shows a couple of its offspring this year. I think you can tell the difference.

Dame's Rocket last year from nursery plant

Self-seeded Dame's Rocket this year

I tried digging up a few plants of Love-in-a-Mist and transplanting them or potting them for the balcony - that didn't work. They didn't survive being dug up well at all. Dame's Rocket, on the other hand, was very easy to transplant, although as was the case with all the self-seeded plants, they just weren't as attractive as the original nursery plant.

Transplanted, self-seeded Dame's Rocket

Conclusion: I will definitely continue to have both these flowers in my garden as they are slug-resistant. However, in the case of Love-in-a-Mist I'll be cutting off the seed pods before they can self-seed, and will grow it from purchased seeds again next year in order to get the lovely blue blossoms. And although self-seeded Dame's Rocket is easy to manage, I think I'll invest in plants from the nursery again next year.

Another observation: bees and butterflies just love the Love-in-a-Mist.

Slug-resistant plants: Columbine (Aquilegia)

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:33:00 +0000

This post is part of my series on dealing with the slug problem. In addition to putting up barriers, I'm concentrating on growing plants that slugs avoid.

Collage of columbine currently blooming in my garden

One of my favorite flowers is columbine (Aquilegia). It has perfect timing, blooming right after the tulips and other spring bulbs have started to look seedy, and before many other summer flowers have opened. It is native to all temperate continents of the Northern Hemisphere, and was first mentioned in Germany, for example, by the famous mystic, healer, and gardener Hildegard von Bingen in the 12th century.

Columbine is easy care, self-seeding without being obnoxious, and beautiful in almost any setting. It's traditional in cottage gardens and can be found in almost every garden in Germany. I've hardly had to purchase any, since it keeps reappearing at various places in the garden, sometimes I suspect blown in from neighboring gardens. I've separated clumps and transplanted them, and I've traded with other gardeners. Right now, at the beginning of May, the garden is full of this elegant flower.

AND - slugs don't touch it. Go figure, since it looks so tender and scrumptious.

There are many varieties of Aquilegia. Its many vernacular names reflect just how widespread and anchored in garden lore this flower is. In English I found granny's bonnet, culverwort, rock bell, rock lily, and honeysuckle (Aquilegia canadensis, not to be confused with some varieties of Lonicera also called honeysuckle). We had Aquilegia in our garden where I grew up in Minnesota, and called it honeysuckle. There are sweet drops of nectar in the blossom spurs, certainly the source of this name.

In addition to the most common German name, Akelei, other names used include Elfenschuh (elf shoe), Zigeunerglocke (gypsy bell), and Narrenkappe (fool's cap).

Knowing how hardy columbine is, last year I bought an almost dead-looking plant from the bargain shelf of the garden center, and have been rewarded this spring with this beauty:

This one is low, but I have a similarly-colored variety that gets much taller and has double blossoms.

Columbine comes in colors ranging from white and pale pink to lavender and red through to dark purple. There are even some cultivars in shades of yellow, but I've never seen one. The kinds I have vary in height between about 30cm and 70cm (12 - 30 inches). The blossoms can be single or double, hanging or upright, and grow at the end of slender stems, sometimes widely spaced, sometimes in clusters.

I just love this tall, pale pink one combined with a lower, blue variety and bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis, another lovely slug-resistant flower) in a shady corner of the garden. Aquilegia grows in both shade and sun, but seems to prefer at least partial shade, judging by where it sows itself most copiously.

The tallest columbine I have is white, and truly looks bell-like. I've had to rip some of it out since it was crowding the saxifrage.

The following photos show off the various styles and colors of Aquilegia.

So if you don't have any yet in your garden, go right out and buy some of this versatile perennial. They can be planted or sowed right now.

Wild Bees, Bumble Bees, Hedgehogs - Gardeners' sustainable living project

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:46:00 +0000

This post is my contribution to Jan's sustainable living project over at Thanks for Today. She has a great thing going, gathering blog posts and other sources on how gardeners all over the world are trying in their own small way to make the earth a more livable place. Be sure to take a look at her project - and not *just* because there are great garden-related prizes to win.

I guess like many gardeners I, too, am trying to inflict as little damage as possible on the other inhabitants of my garden. This means not using pesticides, and trying to provide a friendly environment for creatures that have a hard time in our densely populated, highly industrialized area.

In addition to our birdhouse, which is occupied each spring by a pair of blue tits, I've tried to attract wild bees, bumble bees, and hedgehogs, but so far have only been successful with the wild bees.

Putting up "wild bee hotels" has been a "wild" success. Almost before we were finished mounting them on our garden cottage, various types of solitary wild bees started to inhabit the hotels, both of which I purchased from workshops which employ the handicapped. Up till now I think I've identified the Osmia bicornis or horned bee (rote Mauerbiene in German). There are some other larger, black species I cannot identify. Within days all the holes in the hotels were occupied and many of them sealed shut. It's a delight to watch the bees and listen to them hum, and they completely ignore us humans. These bees are important pollinators for many native plants and have trouble finding the kind of rotting wood they prefer for nesting in our well-kept parks and forests. The hotels should be mounted facing south, and protected if possible from the rain by a roof.

Of course it's also possible to construct such hotels yourself, simply by drilling holes of various sizes (3-5mm in diameter) into a piece of hardwood about 10 cm thick. You can also bundle up hollow reeds, for example from dried Miscanthus grass. The hotel on the right in the above picture also is intended to attract ladybugs, earwigs and butterflies, but I don't know yet if this will work. The bees certainly went for both hotels.

Bumble bee house: Very early each spring our garden is visited by plenty of bumble bees, and I very much wanted to also offer them a place to live. So I purchased a bumble bee house designed to meet these creatures' needs. So far no luck, though. I've tried putting it in various places, including sunken into the ground up to the opening, at the time of year when the queen bumble bees are looking for an abode. You can just see the house at the back right of this picture, under the blackberries and behind the Lenten roses. I really took the photo to show off the Lenten roses.

Hedgehog shelter: Hoping to attract hedgehogs as natural predators for my slugs and also because they are just so adorable, we built a hedgehog shelter in a quiet corner of the garden. At the base of the shelter is a wicker construction covered first with a tarp to keep it dry, and then with earth, branches and twigs.On the floor we put soft straw and dry leaves.

This was a project that even got my teenage daughter into the garden. Although the shelter is on the border to the nature preserve right outside our garden, to date no hedgehogs have taken up residence. Neighbors have told me that there were more hedgehogs in the allotment colony before the very effective fence was put up around the perimeter in order to keep out rabbits and deer. We're still hoping.

First spring manoeuvre in the war on slugs - building a raised bed

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:21:00 +0000

*see below

Dear readers, Sorry for my long absence. I don't know how some of you garden bloggers manage to produce such frequent and wonderful posts. And I know all of you are just as busy as I am in the spring. Please bear with me!

On to today's topic: I've already reported on my struggle with slugs in a post listing my experiences with plants they eat / do not eat, and in a post reporting on some literature I bought and read on the subject.

So this year, acting on the belief that, based on relative size of brain, I should be able to outwit these creatures without having to slaughter or poison them, I've decided to go all out and launch a strategic multiple offensive. Although my son encouragingly pointed out that they probably outnumber me at a ratio significantly more lopsided than that of our relative brain size, I refused to be daunted and have now completed my first tactical move: installing a raised bed with a slug barrier around it.

For various reasons - not the least being that we don't have electricity for power tools in the garden - I decided to purchase a raised bed kit from the Berlin-based Hogart company rather than build one from scratch. I'm providing the link for any interested readers in Germany because I'm very satisfied with their product and service and can highly recommend the L2 model raised bed we bought.

The raised bed is constructed of larch native to central Europe, a hardy wood resistant to rot. The kit included 6 pre-assembled side walls for a bed measuring approx. 200 cm x 100cm x 80cm; posts, screws and pre-marked drill holes; wire mesh for the floor to prevent voles, rats and moles from making their home in the bed; and heavy-duty plastic lining to protect the wood and help keep the bed moist. It also came with excellent thorough instructions.

raised bed and snail barrier parts

To assemble the bed, 120 screws were needed to connect the side walls to the posts. My husband got into this manly garden hardware task, which was also a good excuse to purchase a new battery-powered drill. Here's a shot of the almost finished bed.

The next task was to prepare a place for it on the lawn. Most advice says to place raised beds in a north-south orientation with lots of sun and easy access from all sides. I also wanted it near a water source, since raised beds need frequent watering. Once the location was chosen, we removed the sod and dug holes to sink the posts into.

After settling the bed into its final position, I painted the outside with organic, non-toxic oil to help maintain its beautiful warm reddish wood tone.

The next steps were to staple on the wire meshing and the lining.

The next task took longer than I thought - filling the bed. Two cubic meters is a LOT of space. We filled about half the space with branches, logs and twigs. After that came finer garden trimmings of all kinds, followed by the sod we had removed, grass side down. Fortunately, our garden colony's giant community compost heap is not far from our allotment, and I was able to fill a few wheelbarrows with branches there.

On top of the sod we emptied the entire contents of one of our bins of half-finished compost, and on top of that three sacks of organic compost I purchased from the city recycling center. I didn't want to use up all my own compost! The final layer was several sacks of purchased garden earth, and the bed was finally ready to plant.

For the first year, books and websites advise planting vegetables and flowers that need lots of nutrients, since raised beds are basically nutrient-rich compost heaps. I found somewhat conflicting lists on which plants these are, and ended up choosing bell peppers, leeks, kohlrabi, white radishes and red beets. The bell peppers and kohlrabi I had already propagated at home; all other seeds I planted directly into the bed. Raised beds can support more plants per square meter than normal garden earth due to their warmth - up to 8 degrees warmer than garden earth because of the fermenting going on below - and their nutrients. Because of the warmth I assumed it was alright to begin in late March, but at night I'm still covering the bed with fleece just in case.

Although a raised bed reportedly discourages slugs, I don't really believe it and decided to place a snail fence around the perimeter. I purchased the snail barrier from the company Metalltechnik Dermbach, and am also very satisfied with it, so much so that I've already purchased two more. Two square meters cost me about 40 Euros. Since this photo was taken we've sunk the fence about 10 cm into the ground, installed the corner pieces and screwed everything firmly to the raised bed.

Before putting up the fence around the raised bed, I tested a smaller 1 square meter version in one of the most slug-infested parts of the garden. I figured the ultimate test would be violas and zinnias, since these two flowers were devoured to the ground last year in this area. After almost a week they still haven't been touched.

Granted, it's been a dry spring so far, but I know that the principle these snail fences work on is effective, because last year I used snail collars that work the same way. They just cannot overcome the sharp angle. I watched a slug try unsuccessfully to surmount the snail collar on one of my sunflowers last year. Here are some of the collars protecting my sorrel.

While we were working this curious little guy watched from above!

That's all for today - happy gardening.

*Slug image at top of post courtesy of www.getridofslugs.com. I am not endorsing their book, because I'm not familiar with it, but figured they wouldn't object to me using the image if I provided the link.

Wordless Wednesday (ok Thursday)

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:49:00 +0000

Flowers currently blooming in my garden

I have a new camera (Sony cyber-shot DCS-HX1)

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:17:00 +0000

After envying the photography of other garden bloggers - especially of birds and animals - and studying other blogs on the subject of camera selection for garden photography, I decided the best thing for me would be a so-called superzoom "bridge" camera, i.e. a camera in between a DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera) and a point-and-shoot compact digital camera.

I've been very happy with my Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W120, a digital compact point-and-shoot camera with 7.2 megapixels and 4x optical zoom. This camera has served me well and I recommend it highly. It's easy to use, small and light, and takes wonderful landscape photos, for example for vacation photography. Up till now, all my blog photos were taken with this camera.

Old camera: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W120

What it doesn't offer is a large zoom. Since I've been so happy with Sony up till now, I had a slight preference for also purchasing a Sony bridge camera. After reading lots of reviews, it didn't seem to me that there were significant differences in quality or price between Sony and its main competitors (Panasonic, Canon, Olympus) in this category of camera, so I went for the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 digital camera with 9.1 megapixels and 20x optical zoom.

New camera: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1

Compared to my little compact Cyber-shot, this is a large, heavy camera, even though many reviewers praise how light it is in comparison to others. When the zoom lens is extended to full length, it's somewhat unwieldy to hold, so I took the advice of many websites and purchased a tripod as well (a Cullmann Alpha 2500 lightweight tripod).

So far it's paid off that I got another Sony, since the handling is very similar to my small compact camera and I could start right in. Something some people object to about Sony digital cameras is that they require proprietary memory cards and batteries. The included memory card is so small that you pretty much have to buy a large one right away (I purchased one with 4gb). This didn't bother me, since I figure it's a one-time investment, and my experience with the Sony accessories for my other camera have been good.

This camera is chock-full of features and options! Up till now, I've mostly experimented with zoom photos of birds, and macro photos of plants. I set up the tripod, hid behind a bush and trained the fully zoomed out lens onto the bird-feeding area in my garden. Here's the kind of results I've gotten so far. The first taken with tripod, the others without. You can see the difference, I think.

Great tit (Parus major) - Kohlmeise

Long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus) - Schwanzmeise (I think)

European robin (Erithacus rubecula) - Rotkehlchen

Great tit and long-tailed tits

I'm going to have to keep working on this. Above all, I need a good place to sit and wait, at least partially out of sight, allowing me to get a little closer to the birds.

The other thing I've tried so far are close-ups, i.e. macro photos. However, I don't think the new camera is a significant improvement over my small camera.

As an example, here's a photo of a **slug** - yes, slug in February, chewing away at the sorrel. Apparently, these creatures are active at 10 degrees C (50 degrees F). Looks like I'm going to have to cross sorrel off my list.


slug on sorrel

So far, I've mostly used the "intelligent automatic" setting on my camera. But I'm looking forward to learning how to use all the manual options as well. Still, even then I doubt I'll ever achieve the kind of fantastic bird photography to be found, for example, on Sisah's, Diana's, and Carol's blogs, among others.

Early propagation of tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:21:00 +0000

Finally it's February, and according to most garden calendars I can now start propagating tomatoes from seeds. Last year I didn't start until March, and that was a little late for our warm area here in the Rhine-Neckar delta of Southern Germany. By starting early, I'll have very sturdy plants by April, when they'll go into large pots along the warm south wall of my allotment cottage.

This year I decided to purchase windowsill propagation sets from the garden center, rather than just planting seeds in a hodgepodge of yogurt cups and fruit trays on the windowsill. It's not really a luxury, since they are incredibly cheap. Here are the two I bought, including biodegradable cells, propagating soil mix, covers, and even some seeds (radishes, dill and sunflowers). I decided not to go for electric heating, since we have some very warm windowsills.

A friend who has been growing tomatoes for years gave me some seeds year before last. For over twenty years she has removed the seeds from the choicest fruits of her best plants and saved them for the subsequent year. Following her example, I harvested seeds from my three favorites of the plants I grew from her seeds. The seeds along with their gelatinous surrounding substance are placed on aluminum foil, allowed to dry (making them stick on), labeled, folded to keep out the light, and stored. I don't know the correct names of the original varieties, and after so many years of selection and propagation, the plants may not even conform to them anymore.

We call them "paprika", "peach", and "oxheart" tomatoes. The peach tomatoes are large and yellow (even their seeds, in the lower left-hand corner of the foil above, look yellow), the oxhearts are huge and meaty, and the paprika tomatoes are long, pointed and firm-fleshed. From last year's harvest:

peach and oxheart tomatoes from last year's harvest

sliced peach tomato - delicious!


paprika tomato

So I'll be propagating these three again. However, later in the summer most of my oxheart tomatoes developed some kind of blight, as did my neighbors' tomatoes as well. Since I have my tomatoes in pots under an overhanging roof, meaning they don't get rained on and have no contact with garden earth, I was less affected than others, but some of my tomatoes still looked like this:

For this reason I want to try some allegedly resistant hybrids this year, in addition to our own "heritage" tomatoes. This hybrid, Delizia F1, claims to be resistant to tomato tobacco mosaic virus (TMC) and to fusarium wilt, two widespread tomato diseases.

I've also ordered bush tomato seeds (Balkonstar, Lycopersicon esculentum) from Dreschflegel, a cooperative of 14 farms that produces and markets organic seeds. Many thanks to Sisah's blog for introducing me to this link, even though I ended up ordering more than I'll probably be able to plant (besides the tomato also paprika, pumpkin, zucchini, and lentil seeds, something I've always wanted to try).

Does anyone have any experience with disease resistant hybrid tomatoes?

What gardeners do in the winter Part II: Study their blog statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:12:00 +0000

Those of you who use Google's blogging tools are probably aware of the great statistics they provide on every blog. In case you're not, you can find them by going to your dashboard (most easily by clicking on the "B" in the upper left-hand corner of your blog), and then clicking on "Stats" in the "Manage Blogs" menu. Then just start clicking around and exploring how many views you've had, your traffic sources, your audience, referring sites, etc.

I was astonished to find out that the single search term which has brought the most visitors to date to my blog was "bean weevil". In turn it's not surprising that my post on bean weevils is the number two most-viewed post I've written, although I don't regard it as one of my most amazing posts. Since "bean weevil pictures" was also a frequent keyword, maybe people were just looking for images of weevils. Are these all people who keep lizards as pets and are looking for bean weevils to feed to them? As I discovered while researching for my weevil post, there are places where you can order live weevils online to this purpose. Somebody even got to my blog by searching for "butterfly farms with reptiles in Germany". I'm not sure which post they landed in, but it must have been either the bean weevil post or the post on Buddleia (see below).

Here are my top five most viewed posts:

Designing a traditional herb garden

What could be worse than slugs? Bean weevils!

A visit to the Schwetzingen palace gardens

Pruning the espalier fruit trees

Lantana and butterfly bush (Buddleia): Invasive species everywhere?

While looking through the sites that refer to my blog, I found some interesting blogs whose owners I thanked for the referral, and then reciprocated by linking to theirs. Intriguingly, there's a tattoo website ("tattoo designs vault") that apparently refers to my blog, although I couldn't find the link on their site and think it might be a scam.

Today, for example, I have had more views so far from Latvia than from anywhere else. Thank you any Latvians who may be reading this! Altogether I've had the most all-time views from the U.S., closely followed by Germany. Most viewers use Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox. But there are a significant number who use Chrome, Safari, and Opera. One percent of my viewers got there from an iPad, but the vast majority was using Windows as operating system.

So if you haven't done so yet, be sure to take a look at your blog stats - it's great fun.

Something else I'm sure many gardeners do in the winter is to nurture blossoming bulbs on their window sills. Here's my current favorite, and it smells even better than it looks.

What gardeners do in the winter Part I: Read - Five Book Recommendations

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:40:00 +0000

Inspired by Diana at Elephant's Eye and by my gardener's frustration at forced idleness in the winter, I'm going to look at the bright side of having more time to read and report on five off-topic, i.e. non-gardening, books I've enjoyed reading this year and would recommend. In no particular order, these are my picks; reviews below:

Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found by Suketu Mehta (2004)
Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age by Steven Hill (2010)
Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel (2009)
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman (1978)
Maria Stuart by Stefan Zweig (1935)

Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found by Suketu Mehta (2004)

Over five hundred pages of intricately detailed, excellently researched first-hand information on the fascination and horror that Bombay has become. It's hard to put it any other way. The author, an American journalist and writer originally from Bombay, makes a compelling case for why above all the Hindu-Muslim riots in the early 1990's (but also some very bad legislation such as the rent control laws) have transformed the city into an ungovernable place where underworld gangs and the corrupt, right-wing Shiv Sena party have replaced civil society. Mehta manages to befriend an array of players ranging from a chief of police to gangster bosses and hired killers, from Hindi film directors, actors and producers to fashion photographers and prostitutes, conducting long conversations with all of them and accompanying them on their daily business. Especially hard to stomach are the descriptions of everyday torture and murders by the city police. Especially poignant is his description of the sad life of a beer bar dancing girl - a strange form of prostitution in India (strange to Westerners), which is also very telling about this society's attitude towards women. And his account of how movies are made in Bollywood is astounding. The book is frightening, especially when it describes the globalization of crime, and doesn't leave much hope for change in this behemoth of a city. And it is absorbing reading, especially for anyone who has spent time in India and retains an empathy for this multifaceted country and its people.

Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age by Steven Hill (2010)

I was fortunate to be able to attend a lecture by Hill at the German-American Institute in Heidelberg a few months ago, and was so impressed that I bought his book and read it straight through. It speaks from the heart of any American who has lived and worked long enough in Europe to have benefited from this continent's (I'm speaking of Western Europe here) wonderful labor, health, welfare, leisure, cultural, urban, educational and political systems and laws. He makes a very good case encouraging Americans to look beyond their own borders and finally realize, for example, that health care for all is not "socialism", but instead an absolute imperative in any civilized society, and that labor protection laws will not lead to the downfall of capitalism. Chapter by chapter he describes why Europe's democracies will in the end be more sustainable and resilient than the U.S.'s if some badly needed reforms are not undertaken soon. He is by no means uncritical of Europe, and I found his slant on racism and discrimination in France and Germany very interesting. It's always enlightening when a knowledgeable person from outside the system (Hill is an American) takes a critical look at things. Well written and very readable.

Wolf Hall: A Novel by Hilary Mantel (2009)

photo from amazon.com - I already lent out my copy

This Booker Prize winner fictionalizes the historical figure of Thomas Cromwell to give us an intimate look at the court of Henry VIII during his wooing of and marriage to Ann Boleyn, the period that also saw the downfall of both Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More and the English monarchy's break with the Catholic Church. At first the book put me off, since Mantel has a gimmicky way of always referring to her protagonist, Cromwell, only as "he", making references within the context of a paragraph or event hard to understand, especially since in those days every second male seemed to be named "Thomas". But I got used to that and then became engrossed in the novel and the author's portrayals of Cromwell, the king, Catherine of Aragon, Ann Boleyn, Thomas More, Thomas Wolsey, and all the other figures from the amazing Tudor age in English history that still shapes life there today. Romantic and political intrigues, burnings at the stake in connection with the beginning of the Reformation, Cromwell's intellectual competition with More, Henry's battle with the Papacy and rivalry with the French court all come to life. Mantel is very critical of Thomas More, portraying the man famous for Utopia, later sainted by the Catholic Church, as a self-righteous, sadistic bigot. I can't wait for the promised sequel on Henry's marriage to Jane Seymour after he has Ann Boleyn executed. "Wolf Hall" is the Seymour family manor. So if you're as fascinated as I am by this period of history I highly recommend this novel.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman (1978)

This book takes us back even further in European history to the times of the Hundred Year's War between and within England and France but affecting the rest of Europe as well; to the era of the plague, of crusades, fabulous castle and cathedral building, the incredible power of the church, the papacy in Avignon, the repeated ravaging of entire countrysides and slaughtering of whole towns, antisemitism, chivalry and knighthood. "A Distant Mirror" because even looking back to a time over 500 years ago some of the same elements present in the calamitous 20th century can be identified. I found this book fascinating in part because of its almost pedantically rich detail on everything including everyday life, i.e. Tuchman's attempt to portray things "the way they really were". The reader learns that there were fashion fads among the wealthy, that there was constant traffic and communication within Europe - back and forth across the Alps and across the Channel - and a network of diplomacy keeping people in England and France up to date on the latest gossip at the German, Austrian and Italian courts. After a while I bogged down a little in this book precisely because there is just such a wealth of facts and details that I found it hard to digest them. But you can pick it up and start reading just about anywhere and learn amazing things about the contrasts, contradictions and dichotomies in 14th century life. It's a work of non-fiction; interpreted history at its best for non-historians.

Maria Stuart by Stefan Zweig (1935)

I read this book in the original German and am having trouble determining whether or not it's even available in English translation. According to amazon.com there is a book variously titled "Mary Stuart" and "Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles" by Stefan Zweig, but they are apparently out of print. If you don't read German and you're really interested, you might be able to obtain it from a rare books dealer.

As you can see, I am fascinated by English history. We are now a generation further than Henry VIII, and his (and Ann Boleyn's) daughter Elizabeth is now queen of England. This book by Zweig is an interesting genre of its own. He has faithfully researched all historical sources, but also speculates about the feelings and motivations of the protagonists in a way that goes beyond scholarly biography, making it neither a scholarly biography alone nor historical fiction. What I liked about it was that I felt for the first time after reading it that I truly understood the events leading up to the execution of Mary by her cousin Elizabeth. Or to be correct, Zweig's interpretation gives a psychologically and historically plausible version. Interestingly, I started to lose interest in the book once Mary was imprisoned in England for the last 19 years before her execution, although this is the part often focused on most in fictional portrayals such as Schiller's famous play or Hollywood movies. Perhaps not surprising, though, because what a life she led up till then! Full of violence and betrayal, glory and downfall. Scotland comes across as pretty primitive, to put it mildly. What I did NOT like about the book is Zweig's sometimes patronizing and misogynous attitude towards his two main female protagonists. He believes Mary was, typical for her sex, ruled by emotions, infatuated with her first and sex slave (my words, he puts it much more discretely) of her second Scottish husband, putty in their hands, etc. He firmly believes that Mary was an accomplice in the murder of her first Scottish husband. Elizabeth is portrayed as yes, intelligent and politically savvy, much more so than Mary, but as unbearably vain and also partly ruled by her sexual inadequacies. Still, I mostly enjoyed the book and its portrayal not only of Mary, but also of life and power politics of the times.

Do any of you have some winter reading recommendations? If anyone can recommend another biography of Mary Stuart, I'd love to hear about it.

Finally some birds on the suet feeder

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:28:00 +0000

At the Christmas bazaar put on by my daughter's school this year I purchased a beautiful wicker suet feeder to hang in the garden. It was hand-made by one of the mothers, who also made the suet ball inside it herself out of best organic ingredients. Nothing is too good for my garden birds (mostly tits) I thought, and rushed right out to hang it up.

On each trip to the garden I was then disappointed that the birds didn't seem to be accepting it, no matter where I hung it. I tried hanging it in the fruit trees, in the climbing roses and in the hazelnut, all places the birds like to hang out. But I ended up leaving it suspended from a fixture I use for hanging plants in the summer.

It was a beautiful sunny day today, 10 degrees C, the snow was all melted, and the wicker basket was almost empty! While putzing around on the other end of the garden, I noticed that there were several birds landing first on the metal arm, then perching on the basket and delving inside to reach the remaining suet. Every time I tried to approach to get a photo they flew away, so I had to take photos from pretty far away with the zoom on my very inadequate digital camera. I'm pretty sure the birds were all great tits (Parus major), the most common bird in my garden. Sorry about the quality.

So now I'm going to research how to make suet balls. And perhaps finally think about getting a better camera.

Overwintering the pelargonium geraniums

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:41:00 +0000

In the garden I've planted various perennial hardy geraniums (cranesbills); I have two scented geraniums in large pots (Pelargonium quercifolium "Royal oak" and Pelargonium capitatum "Attar of roses"); and in both the garden and at home on our balconies I have a number of the traditional balcony pelargonium geraniums.

Each of these members of the Geraniaceae family needs different treatment to survive the winter in the latitude where we live.

Hardy geraniums are, as the name implies, perennials in Central Europe and can just stay put through the winter, although some of mine made it through their first winter better than others.

Pelargonium geraniums cannot survive outside, and up till now I've just let them die and replaced them in the spring. The city of Mannheim sponsors a geranium market each spring in the city's central square, and we enjoy purchasing new petunias and geraniums for our balconies there each year.

This year, however, I really liked some of my pelargoniums, both the brilliant red ones on the balconies and a small bed of variegated ones in the potager (sorry no photos), and felt bad about just disposing of them on the compost heap. Secondly, a dear elderly gardening friend of mine was very keen on imparting her knowledge of overwintering geraniums to me. So I consented and here's the method she taught me:

The first step was to remove the plants from their pots/beds before frost set in and place them in cardboard boxes indoors. There they were to remain until the earth on the roots dried completely and the plants themselves became limp and "floppy". This took a couple weeks.

The next step was to shake all the earth out of the roots, clip off any overly long roots, break off all the blossoms and strip off any dead or wilted foliage. The result looks like this:

This makes rather a mess, and a pile of earth and foliage is leftover, so be sure you do this on newspaper!

After this, the plants are carefully packed in several layers of newspaper, and then sealed with packing tape.

Thus prepared, they can be stored in the cellar or even, in my case, in the unheated garden cottage in a cupboard, until spring. They need no water or light until then. In the spring they are replanted in their pots or in the ground whenever it's reliably warm. Here that's the end of April or after the "frost saints" in mid-May.

Scented geraniums also cannot survive the winter outdoors and are simply left in their pots and placed indoors in a cool, frost-free place and watered very sparsely until spring. Because of the consistency of their roots, the "packing" method doesn't work with them. This is unfortunate, as it takes up much more space to store them. I was able to store 15 "packed" geraniums on a small shelf.

I know from browsing and books that there are other methods for overwintering geraniums, but my gardening mentor has been using her method successfully for over 60 years, and that inspires absolute confidence!

I am looking forward to having the rose-scented geranium next to the swing again next summer,

and to having the oak-scented geranium next to the birdbath in the potager (the oak-scented one didn't bloom much, but the foliage was very strongly scented). I had it there in hopes that it would discourage mosquitos from using the birdbath, although changing the water every day was certainly more effective.

I'd love to hear about the methods anyone else uses for overwintering their various kinds of geraniums.

Four seasons in the potager - transformation of the allotment garden - Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:57:00 +0000

When I bought my allotment in late summer of 2009, one of my goals was to create a potager, sometimes known as an herb or kitchen garden, or in German Bauerngarten, with the elements traditional to this European garden style: symmetrical form, hedging, a centerpiece, and a mixture of flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

Now, a year and a half and lots of planning, digging and planting later, the potager is pretty much how I want it to be. For final post of the year 2010 I've put together a review showing the transformation throughout the four seasons.

August 2009
Here's what the area intended for the potager looked like when we bought the garden. It was occupied mostly by a makeshift tomato shelter and several beds of wax beans, bordered by roses and currant bushes.

September-October-November 2009
We removed or transplanted almost everything, tore down the tomato house, ripped out the wooden planks serving as paths, removed some of the lawn, hoed and improved the soil by adding compost, planted lupins as green manure (which were unfortunately greatly decimated by slugs - my first introduction to our slug problem), and began planting a boxwood hedge around the perimeter.

Before winter set in, we completed the outer perimeter of boxwood and planted some bulbs and perennials.

Winter 2009
My husband climbed the trees on the edge of the garden and pruned them considerably in order to let more sunlight into the potager. It was really worth it. After that, the garden lay dormant under the occasional light blanket of snow until spring.

March 2010
Finally I could continue! The main jobs to be accomplished in the spring were to lay the stone tiles for the four paths, create a circular area in the center where the paths would meet and the centerpiece, a birdbath, would be located, fill the center with gravel and plant a circular boxwood hedge around it. And of course to begin planting in the resulting four sections of the potager. My little boxwoods had all survived the winter well.

April 2010
It turned out to be harder than I had imagined to find a birdbath I liked. On a trip to Holland to visit an old friend, I stopped by one of that country's fabulous gardening centers on the way home and finally found one.

May-June 2010
Simultaneously with completion of the paths, gravel and hedging, the bulbs and perennials planted in the fall started to bloom, and I was delighted with progress so far!

Summer-Fall 2010
In the course of the summer I planted two of the quadrants mostly with vegetables and herbs, and two with predominantly flowers in a mix of annuals and perennials. In each section we kept at least one of the heritage roses I inherited from our predecessor. I revised my original planning to accommodate for the slug problem. If you're interested in my conclusions on slugs after a summer of observation, here's a post I wrote on it. The following shots are of early and late summer, respectively.

Winter 2010
This winter I'll be spending some time planning improvements for the spring - some things were too big or too small for their locations, some areas need a different mix of blooms, the zucchinis have to go somewhere else, and I'm considering putting some kind of tarp under the gravel to keep plants from growing through. This year we've had lots of snow, but the potager has enough contours now to look nice even so.

It's been a wonderful gardening year for me.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Merry Christmas - Fröhliche Weihnachten

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:46:00 +0000

I wish you all the very best for the holidays as well as happiness, health and prosperity in the New Year!
Barbara

My grandmother gave this December Angel to my mother when I was born. It has adorned our Christmas table ever since.

Some personal Roman highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:11:00 +0000

We've been back from Rome for a week and finally have our photos and thoughts organized.

Of course we saw all the fabulous Rome "top ten" sights, and I won't go into that. Instead, here's just a brief description of what the three of us liked best (husband, daughter, me). We have a family tradition of naming our personal high points and low points at the end of every trip.

My husband's high point was taking the glass elevator to the top of the Vittorio Emanuele monument at dusk and watching the sun set over Rome. In case you're not familiar with this huge structure in pure white marble, it was built in honor of the first king of unified Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, in the early twentieth century, and is considered by some to be an eyesore that doesn't really fit into its medieval and antique surroundings. But it is very impressive! You can take an elevator up to the roof and walk around under the two huge winged victory chariots that crown the monument. We did this at dusk, giving us a 360 degree vista of the sun going down over this amazing city. From up there you can see and identify just about everything - the Colosseum, Forum Romanum, St. Peter's, the hills surrounding Rome, the Tiber, etc. etc. It was a beautiful, warm evening, enhancing the experience even more, and a pleasant relief from our hectic day down at noisy, crowded street level.

My own highlight was taking an excursion to Ostia Antica, Rome's ancient harbor about 30 km from the city. Two thousand years ago it had a population of about 50,000 and was a thriving port city. The entire site is so well-preserved - much better than many of the antique ruins in Rome itself - that you can get a feeling for what it must have been like to live there - it must have been nice! Today it is also a lovely peaceful place.

Here's how I imagine a day in ancient Ostia. I wake up in my bedroom with tiled floor and walls of expert masonry.

After breakfast, I set off into town on the day's errands.

On the way to the market, I pass by the athletic field, where if I'm lucky I might be able to watch wrestling training.

Around the edge of the field are the various shops, all with appropriately tiled floors. I might stop into the fishmonger's.

Continuing on my way through city streets whose names are still documented,

I might pause for a moment of worship in the temple.

At the end of a busy day the family attends a production in the amphitheater.

In our case, we ate our picnic while sitting up high in the amphitheater and enjoying the view. Highly recommended! It costs all of one Euro to take public transportation out to Ostia from Rome.

Our last day was warm and sunny and we decided to return to the Piazza del Popolo in order to see the cathedral of Santa Maria del Popolo, and to walk from there to the Spanish Steps, which we had only seen in the rain on our first day. It turned out the city of Rome was putting on a free concert on the Spanish Steps, and this turned out to be great fun - and our daughter's high point of the trip.

The first performance was by the Roman police big band.

They were first joined and then followed by an American show band called "The Infernos" (of all things), who wowed the audience as I think only American show bands can do. The Infernos had an incredibly varied repertoire, including a perfect Frank Sinatra imitator

and vocalists and instrumentalists who could do everything from hits of the fifties, salsa, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, to country western! It was one of those serendipitous magical moments you sometimes experience as a tourist. A beautiful day, both Romans and tourists united in just enjoying the moment. It put us all in a great mood just to listen, and deserved its selection as high point.

All three of us agreed that our guided tour of the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica came in a close second as favorite undertaking. Our guide was a young Italian historian, and she did a great job. Other favorite sights were the two basilica San Giovanni in Laterano and San Paolo fuori le Mura, both breathtakingly pompous and sumptuous, the former with huge sculptures of the twelve apostles, and the latter with portraits of all 265 popes.

I wanted to visit the Botanical Gardens of the University of Rome, but kept forgetting how early it now gets dark and never made it in time. Next trip!

Off to Rome

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 09:15:00 +0000

Dear readers, I'll be in Rome with my family for the coming week and won't be blogging until sometime after that.
Until then happy gardening,
Barbara

A gnome's tale of discrimination and crime in the garden

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:22:00 +0000

It was the worst of times in the gnome world. The little folk with the helping hands formerly so beloved of all garden owners had come to be regarded as symbolic of a petit-bourgeois mentality; their owners were increasingly seen as Philistines.

Even in the gnome heartland, the very Shire of gnomedom - Southern Germany - garden gnomes, dwarfs, and imps were in ill-repute. Many had already left for the diaspora in far away places like Illinois and Wisconsin. Gardeners that still had gnomes often hid them away in sheds or relegated them to shabby corners of their gardens out of shame. There were reports of gnomes being locked up and even mutilated!

And on the other side of the mighty Rhine River, the powerful Front pour la Libération des Nains de Jardin (FLNJ - Garden Gnome Liberation Front) was on the rampage, purporting to liberate gnomes from a life of bondage, but in reality kidnapping and then abandoning them in basements, forests, public libraries and other deserted places.

It was only a question of time before the FLNJ started foraging to the East of the border, for there were age-old resentments between the neighboring countries that ran deep.

To be sure, there were still some sheltered havens in Germany where gnomes were appreciated and nurtured as of old, one of these being a large garden colony near the traditionally open-minded metropolis of Mannheim. Here gnomes could go about their business in peace, performing their time-cherished tasks -

pushing wheelbarrows,

carrying lanterns,

tending animals,

pondering life,

painting the spots on poisonous mushrooms,

and other important things like waving and carrying buckets.

But one misty fall morning, an alarm was raised in the gnome community. The lookout gnome on the morning shift was the first to hear the terrible news,

and messenger gnomes ran to all corners of the garden colony

to spread the word that an assembly was to be held to discuss reports of sordid crimes right here in ~~River City~~ the garden colony.

Something unthinkable had happened. While performing her morning chores, Snow White had been accosted by an exhibitionist gnome. To make matters worse, he had dressed up in the most sacred of gnome costumes.

But much much worse than this was the discovery of Johann Wichtel, stabbed with a kitchen knife right in his own allotment.

Now while big folk had occasionally been known to commit immoral acts towards little folk, crimes within the gnome community itself were hitherto unheard of.

It was an outrage. Fathers feared for their children,

Many started taking up arms and forming vigilante committees.

Rumors were rampant as to who the perpetrators might be. Could it be one of the reclusive giant gnomes who preferred the company of big folk to those of their own race?

Could it have been one of the many immigrant gnomes now entering the country under the new labor mobility laws of the EU? Who knew what they might be capable of.

Perhaps one of the economic refugee gnomes from Greece,

or one of the strange race of Belgian gnomes seen more and more frequently?

Would these immigrants ever be able to assimilate and adopt German gnome customs as their own?

To be sure, some of the native gnome habits had their dark side, and there were increasing instances of binge drinking among gnome youth, perhaps leading to crime??

The situation is grave. At the end of this sorry report we'd like to make this appeal to all gardeners: please consider giving your gnome a place in your home, perhaps among the houseplants, where he can be safe and happy. After all, we wouldn't want yet another magical race to disappear from the face of ~~Middle Earth~~ Europe.

All photos taken on original location in the garden colony Kleingärtnerverein Mannheim-Süd e.V.

The aster greets us as we pass....

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:00:00 +0000

The aster greets us as we pass

With her faint smile.

(Sarah Helen Whitman, American poet, from A Day of the Indian Summer), found at worldofquotes.com

I just knew someone must have written a poem about these beautiful autumn flowers, one of my very favorites. And "faint smile" is fitting, at least when compared to more flamboyant fall blossoms like dahlias or marigolds. On a recent dazzling day in the garden colony, though, I felt like they were laughing gaily rather than smiling faintly.

The most common type are the tall, light pink-purple asters seen in the photos above and below, found along fences and borders all over our garden colony:

There's also a lovely variety of reddish asters that don't get quite as high:

And just look at the riotous colors in this garden:

The owner of the allotment in the photo below invited me in so I could photograph from a more advantageous angle.

My all-time favorites, though, are the very pale, almost white asters in my title photo. These asters belong to my neighbor, and I am fortunate to have them along our mutual border, under the old gnarled apple tree. Below is the full-sized picture. What you can't see here are the hundreds of bees on the blossoms.

So of course one of the first things I planted last fall after acquiring the allotment were asters. I purchased four plants that were labeled as dwarf asters ("Kissenaster"). Here's my daughter planting the ones she picked out:

I'm sorry to say that two of the four plants were immediately devoured and killed off by slugs. The other two survived and are now blooming this fall. But they aren't dwarfs. I had intended them to form a pillow of blossoms below the roses, but instead they now intermingle with them, also fine.

My neighbor told me that once asters get to a certain size the slugs leave them alone. And indeed in the spring I watched the slugs happily eating the leaves of both his and my asters, but after a while they stopped and the plants did fine. In fact, they seem to already be proliferating.

Happy autumn gardening, everyone.

A late afternoon fall stroll in Luisenpark, Mannheim

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 16:57:00 +0000

This post is dedicated to Tina at In the Garden, who visited Luisenpark during her sojourn in Germany.

On a beautiful fall afternoon last week I visited Luisenpark, right near where we live in Mannheim. Both Luisenpark and its sister park, Herzogenriedpark, were created in their modern form on the occasion of the German National Garden Exhibition when it was held in Mannheim in 1975. The National Garden Exhibition (Bundesgartenschau) has been held every two years since 1951 in a different city.

The hosting cities usually go all out, investing a lot of money not only in the infrastructure of the exhibition itself, but also in park and gardening infrastructure for their citizens. The exhibition draws millions of visitors - over 8 million people visited during the 5-month duration of the Mannheim exhibition.

As it turns out, I've personally benefited from the infrastructure created in Mannheim for the exhibit, since the section of the garden colony where my allotment is was appropriated by the city on this occasion, leveled, divided into plots, and turned over to the gardening association. This happened in other parts of the city, as well.

The lasting legacy of the exhibition is above all the two large urban parks, especially Luisenpark. When I first learned about the parks I was somewhat taken aback that there is an admission fee, but I've come to greatly appreciate this. It helps generate adequate funding for upkeep and you get plenty for the price (including clean restrooms). There are also no dogs allowed in the fully fenced-in park, which is great when you have small children. It's a very safe space. My annual pass costs me 28 Euros.

When you enter the park from our end, the first sight you see is the "lagoon" (you are welcome to click to enlarge any photo).

It's part of the Luisenpark ritual to take the boat ride on the lagoon. The boats are propelled by underground cable and are completely silent. Here is my boat approaching as if by magic.

The boat glides by many sights, including these rushes, and flamingos on the bird sanctuary island.

The fall colors were spectacular.

But the real reason to take the ride, especially in the fall, are the giant carp that approach every boat, hoping for food. These creatures used to scare the wits out of my children when they were small, and they would dare each other to stick their fingers down their gullets.

When you get to the other end of the lagoon and disembark, the first thing you see are stork nests and the "stork TV", affording a close-up view of one of the nests. These storks spend the entire year in Mannheim, and are sometimes a bother to picnickers in the park. I've seen one snatch a bratwurst right off the table. By the way, if you want to watch stork TV, here's a link to the web-cam. Give it a try!

Proceeding on foot you pass by the main entrance to the park, which always features a large floral design using flowers appropriate for the season.

Mannheim has an important archeological and ethnological museum, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum, which is currently featuring a large exhibition on the Staufer emperors, including Frederick Barbarossa. In honor of this, Luisenpark has created a floral portrait of Frederick and his red beard. I couldn't get a good photo of it in its entirety, so am taking the aerial photo below from the Luisenpark website.

This park truly has something for everyone. One of my favorite places is the medicinal herb garden. The park offers regular tours of the herbs conducted by a local pharmacist whose hobby is researching traditional European herbal medicine.

Each section is dedicated to a different type of illness. Here's the section on colds and coughs.

The park includes many aviaries, an indoor butterfly garden, a cactus house, a fernery, an orangery, an aquarium, a reptile house, an outdoor theater, mini golf, an animal farm, as well as cafes, restaurants, and a wine tavern. Too much for a single blog post! To me, one of the greatest features of the park are the large meadows and playgrounds.

It has a swing for wheelchairs,

and swings for adults.

One of the newest, most spectacular features is the original Chinese tea house. This was built about 10 years ago in cooperation with Mannheim's partner city in China. Each and every stone and brick was imported from China, and Chinese builders were brought over and put up for months on the edge of the park while constructing it. It was closed for the evening when I walked by, but the interior is also very beautiful, and they serve traditional Chinese tea and small snacks.

There are sculptures everywhere, many of them donated. My favorite is the nymph washing her hair, in the midst of a labyrinth of hedges.

The park is a great place for lovers,

for people looking for peace and solitude, for example in the "sound oasis" with its subdued classical music,

for young people having a barbecue with friends (don't be shocked by the beer bottles on those kids' tables - it's legal here at 16),

for chess players,

and for lovers of majestic trees and woodland scenes right in the middle of the city.

For a bird's eye view you can also take the elevator up to the top of the television tower on the edge of the park, right on the banks of the Neckar River, and sit in the revolving restaurant. If you enlarge the photo below, you can just see the tower in the background. It's a favorite place to take visitors, since on a clear day you can see all the way to Heidelberg on one side, to the Palatinate forests on the other, and below you the industrial panorama of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen, including the huge harbor where the Neckar flows into the Rhine.

Considering the size of Mannheim (about 300,000 inhabitants), I think this park can hold its own compared to the parks of Europe's and North America's great cities.

First attempt at sweet potatoes, fall roses

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:52:00 +0000

One advantage of possibly boring people to tears with tales of my garden and also of celebrating as many events as possible there is that people are likely to give you garden-related gifts when they visit. At a barbecue last June a friend of mine presented me with a very pretty small potted green plant, reminiscent of a morning glory, with a label identifying it to my surprise as a sweet potato (Ipomea batata), with no further information on the cultivar. The label said it would grow into a 40 cm high bushy plant.

I was intrigued, as I had never considered planting sweet potatoes and knew nothing about growing them. Wary as always of slug danger when trying out new plants, I decided to plant it on the roof deck in a large pot, where it quickly developed long trailing vines that willingly climbed the offered trellis.

The instruction card said to harvest the entire plant at once in September or October before frost sets in, so yesterday I did so. Here's what I got:

I'm so excited! I may have harvested too soon, I think, because so many of the tubers are so small. It looks like the kind I have are white-fleshed. The largest one weighs 300 g (about 10 oz.). I'm planning to store some of them over the winter and plant them in the spring. They are such pretty plants that I'm happy to have them on the deck, but will at least try a plant in the garden next year. I'm saving them to eat with my middle son next time he visits, since he and I are the sweet potato lovers in the family.

And to finish this post, here are some photos of the still beautiful roses in our garden. Even in cases where the plants are almost devoid of leaves due to black spot, they continue to produce lovely blooms even in October. Unfortunately, I don't know the names of these beauties, since I inherited them from the previous allotment owners, to whom I am very grateful.

One year of slug experience - what works, and what doesn't, at least in my garden (including lists of slug resistant plants)

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:34:00 +0000

I wrote a post on slugs last year after planting lupins as green manure and watching them get devoured overnight by slugs. This inspired me to do some research on slug management, the result of which was I didn't want to use slug pellets and also didn't want to ruin my karma by constantly slaughtering the creatures. I also found some great books and websites on the subject of slug-resistant plants.

So where am I a year later? First off, we have a really bad slug problem. Our garden is on the edge of a Rhine flood plain and large nature reserve on the one side, and on the other are dozens of other allotments in our garden colony. It truly seemed like a hopeless battle. My main strategy was to plant only slug-resistant flowers and vegetables. After consulting many sources, here are my lists with my personal experience.

Herbs

chives
garlic chives
lavender
lemon balm
~~lemon thyme~~
lovage
oregano
~~peppermint~~
rosemary
~~stevia~~
St.-Johns-wort
thyme
valerian

These all worked pretty well and were mostly avoided by slugs. Exceptions: the stevia was almost annihilated, and the lemon thyme (Thymus citriodorus) was devoured overnight. The peppermint was attacked but survived, but I planted some on our roof deck just to be sure. The stevia I managed to save by putting a snail collar on it - see below, but I gave up on the lemon thyme. Didn't even try parsley or sage.

Vegetables

cucumbers
garlic
lamb's lettuce
leaf lettuce
leeks
onions
rocket
tomatoes
zucchini - I raised the plants from seeds indoors until they were quite large.

The only one of these that was notably attacked were the cucumbers, which were also fine after I put a snail collar on them. Here, too, there were many things I didn't dare try, like cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi, etc.

Perennials - negative list
I inherited many perennials from my predecessors in the allotment, but also planted some myself. Here are some that were incessantly attacked by slugs to the point that they just looked terrible, despite the fact that some of them are listed by some sources as being slug-resistant:

all of the at least five types of hostas I had
Centaurea montana (perennial cornflowers)
salvia of various kinds
lobelia of various kinds
Echinacea of various kinds (coneflowers)
marguerites
hydrangeas
asters
clematis

Although these flowers survived and even bloomed, I've now thrown them almost all out because I can't bear the way they look after slug attacks.

Perennials - positive list
These flowers weren't touched by slugs:

dame's rocket (Hesperis matronalis)
forget-me-not (Myosotis)
hellebore
hardy geraniums
astilbe
lady's mantle
roses
bleeding heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis)
columbine (Aquilegia)
day lilies
irises
common bugle (Ajuga reptans)
alum root (Heuchera micrantha)
saxifraga of various kinds
sedum of various kinds

Annuals - negative list

violas - forget it!
petunias - I planted some in hanging baskets two meters off the ground and still found slugs in them, god knows how they got there.
lantana - Wouldn't you think that these prickly, strong-smelling plants would repel slugs - hah!
sunflowers - By installing snail collars until they were about a meter high I managed to raise amazing sunflowers, but they are definitely beloved of slugs when young.
zinnias - Gave up and had them only on the roof deck, where they did beautifully:

Annuals - positive list
These flowers weren't touched by slugs:

moss roses (Portulaca grandiflora)
pelargonium geraniums
impatiens (Impatiens neuguinea)
nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

I also purchased a seed mixture of annuals resistant to slugs called (in German) "Sperli's Schleich Dich Blühende Schneckenbarriere".

This was a fabulous buy and produced many lovely flowers that were not touched by the slugs. Unfortunately, the package does not list what kinds of seeds it contains. I identified the following:

love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), both blue and white
some kind of rudbeckia
some kind of snapdragon

I've already purchased another package for next year. Maybe someone can identify the flowers in this mixture more precisely? In the first shot below are what I think are some kind of annual rudbeckia, and in the second shot you can see the lovely seed pods of love-in-the-mist below the rudbeckia, and in the background you can make out the pale blue of still blooming love-in-the-mist. In the lower part of the photo is what I believe to be snapdragons (click to enlarge).

I tried a few other methods of discouraging or getting rid of slugs, and found the following to be ineffective: coffee grounds, watering with moss brew, and beer traps. I also broke down and tried environmentally-friendly ferramol snail pellets. Both beer traps and pellets killed a few, but they were followed immediately by legions more. The only manual method that made a difference was simply gathering them up by the dozens (or hundreds!) at dusk and killing them, not a fun activity.

So my resume: 1) Be more consistent about only growing slug-resistant plants, and 2) snail collars work on plants with the right shape and size.

How about the rest of you?

New Christo and Jeanne-Claude project - in my garden

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:09:00 +0000

When I got to the garden one day last week here's the scene I found:

A large part of the garden had been covered with various tarps and fibrous sheets. What was going on? Well of course we knew that it wasn't really Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

A power line runs through the forest just behind our allotment, and one of the power towers is just off our back border. The city recently began renovating the towers, i.e. cleaning, sanding, and repainting them, for the first time in almost 50 years as my garden neighbors reported. The first ominous sign that our tower was also up for maintenance was the removal of all trees, shrubs, and underbrush within meters of the tower. Before they did this, it looked like this:

There was such dense growth around the tower behind our fence that we enjoyed a lot of privacy from the hiking, riding, and dog areas beyond the allotment. The clearing now made it seem open and exposed. So we'll be putting up willow screening until things grow back.

But what I was really worried about was possible damage to the garden. I'd already watched them working on the next tower down, further away from the allotments. It had looked like they were sand-blasting, causing large clouds of debris and hours of noise. But as I was standing dismayed in the garden surveying the number of trees and shrubs that had been removed just outside of our lot, the foreman of the maintenance crew approached and explained that they would do all they could to not damage the garden, including covering everything with protective sheets and tarps, and that the workers would all use umbrellas to catch falling debris. Also, in our case they would forgo sand-blasting, instead scraping the decades of moss and dirt off by hand.

And indeed that's what they did. Here they are working on the tower with upside-down umbrellas:

And here a view of some of the workers on their way up:

I'm very grateful to the whole crew for taking such care. It seems they know that gardens are the apples of their owners' eyes. The only damage done were a few bent rose blossoms. And the tower should be good for another 50 years now!

Battling the garden jungle

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:10:00 +0000

Are any of you other gardeners out there having a late summer battle against jungle-like vegetables and flowers? I'm afraid I misjudged just how huge some things can get. Here are some examples.
Zucchinis
Next year the zucchinis will not be in the potager proper. They do not conform to the rule of thumb that no plant should be taller than the horizontal dimensions of the bed it's in. Also, I'm only going to have one plant instead of two. I have moss roses (aka purslane) I grew from seed (portulaca grandiflora) that only blossom when the sun shines on them, and the zucchinis have effectively prevented this. So every day I chop off huge leaves - up to two feet in diameter - to give them and also my boxwoods some light. The zucchinis are supposedly a climbing variety. That may well be, but they have conquered every pole I tried to fasten them to, just too heavy. One day an entire plant had collapsed on the ground, and I needed my husband to lift it. (Please click to enlarge.)

Here views of the moss roses right after I chopped off some zucchini leaves and a little later after they'd then gotten some sun. What you see on the stevia is a snail collar. If you have a slug problem like I do, I highly recommend them. My stevia was almost completely devoured and is now doing nicely.

Sunflowers
A gardening friend gave me some small seedlings after I'd admired her sunflowers last year. I planted them in one of my rose beds, carefully protecting each of the small plants with a snail collar. They turned into hardy plants, and when they'd reached about 2 meters in height (about 6.5 feet) I expected them to start blooming, as hers long since were. Here a shot of how they looked at this height.

But no, some of them didn't even have marked buds at this height, and they just kept growing and growing, jack-and-the-beanstalk-like. They've now reached over 3 meters (over 12 feet) and are starting to bloom, with up to 20 blossoms per stalk! I'm afraid some of the roses and my potted tomatoes along the wall of the cottage might not be getting enough sun, but think they are spectacularly worth it.

The flowers are already attracting birds and bumble bees.

Nasturtium (Kapuzinerkresse)
My predecessor in the allotment had attempted to build a brick compost container, which turned out to be impractical since it had no earth contact and was impossible to empty. He soon realized this and had just closed it with a board. I decided to fill it with earth and see if it would work as a raised bed. As a first try I planted nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) in it with great results. No aphids either. They haven't blossomed a lot, but the leaves are beautiful and a perfect cover for a previous sore spot in the garden. I am having to cut it back, though, in order to get to the compost bins.

Blackberries
OK, I admit that our sprawling blackberries are running riot because of pruning mistakes, although I do sort of enjoy the jungle-like feeling they give our patio enclosure. Our neighbor has kindly offered to help us prune them this year. HIS blackberries are perfect, and he's already pruned them for the winter, leaving just one or two stalks per plant. I'm sure we'll have a better harvest if we're more severe about pruning. I have to frequently chop away at them to ensure the survival of the Kerria japonica (Ranunkelstrauch) we planted in the spring.

Hiking through the Swabian Highlands

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:16:00 +0000

From August 18 - 22 I hiked with two girlfriends through the Swabian Highlands from Metzingen to Blaubeuren. The Swabian Highlands are an area in Southwest Germany between Stuttgart and Ulm, known for harsh climate, moors, sparse population, castles and beautiful scenery. We arranged to have our luggage transferred from hotel to hotel, making the hiking - about 15 miles a day - much easier.

We began by hiking straight up from Metzingen to the top of the bluffs marking the border of the Highlands.

From the top there were spectacular views of the town of Metzingen below us, and the Hohen Neuffen castle ruins in the distance (at least I think that's which castle it was). Please click to enlarge.

Once up on the high plateau, we walked through some of the moorland characterized by juniper bushes and, for example, carline thistles, which I'd previously only seen in the Alps.

Our first day's destination was the pretty town of Bad Urach with its picturesque market square. Our hotel was also in the typical half-timbered style.

Near Bad Urach we passed the Urach waterfall.

The next day we headed for Feldstetten, our next destination, passing many lovely meadows on the way. Please do click to enlarge.

In the Swabian Highlands, towns are fewer and farther apart than in most of Germany. Every time we did come to a town, it seemed every house had its own kitchen garden full of flowers and vegetables. Marigolds, dahlias, hibiscus and hollyhocks were abundant.

Balconies were also often full of flowers, mostly petunias and geraniums.

On our way from Feldstetten to Blaubeuren on the third day, we first passed through typical agricultural scenery. The wheat variety known as spelt is grown here, as are, traditionally, lentils. The cornfields and beautiful skies were sometimes reminiscent of my college days in Iowa!

The second half of the day led through a large protected forest reserve which is being left alone as a biotope. Here we encountered some of the wild orchids the Highlands are known for.

This area really seemed like an enchanted forest. We found a small shelter for taking a rest and wouldn't have been surprised to encounter Hansel and Gretel.

After spending the night in the beautiful town of Blaubeuren, we decided to spend our last day hiking around its environs rather than hiking on to Ulm as originally planned. Blaubeuren is famous for the karstic spring which is the source of the Blau River. The spring is in a pool of water in the forest that looks incredibly blue, known as the "Blautopf" (= pot of blue). Here are some views from the hiking trail around and above it.

Here another view of the bucolic River Blau outside of town on its way to flow into the Danube in Ulm.

Blaubeuren is also home to a large monastery, unfortunately without the cloister gardens I was hoping for. Perhaps because it housed only monks and no nuns?

After our last day's beautiful hike we headed for the railroad station for the trip home. On the way I noticed that the city had planted wildflowers in many public spaces such as along sidewalks and embankments. They were a lovely farewell following a great hiking vacation.

If anyone's interested, I can recommend some of our hotels along the way. We also had excellent food everywhere we went, including trout from the area.

A visit to the Schwetzingen palace gardens

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:41:00 +0000

In early summer I visited the Schwetzingen palace gardens with an old friend. It's one of those places that's so close by that I don't seem to get around to going there much. But I should! What a fabulous place. There are many great websites (also here, and here is a very good brochure in English) on these gardens if you're interested. In this post I'll concentrate on the incredible tree-lined avenues in the park.

Although the gardens include many highlights such as a large formal French-style garden, English-style landscaping, a mosque, temples to various Greek gods, lakes, fountains, an orangery, and of course the palace, it was the trees that struck me most this time. Almost anywhere you look there are axes of perfectly symmetrically trimmed trees offering astonishing perspectives on the many sights (click to enlarge any photo).

Here's another view of the same ensemble.

When the palace and garden were originally built in the 18th century, at the same time a tree-lined boulevard was built from Schwetzingen castle to Heidelberg. It was lined with mulberry trees in the hopes of encouraging the silk industry! Not much is left of the six-mile avenue or the mulberry trees, but within the palace grounds there are still plenty of avenues. This one reminds me of an aqueduct.

In the photos below, the formally-pruned "hedge" of trees forms the border between the baroque French garden and the more English-style landscaped garden beyond it.

Some more impressions:

And just so you don't get the impression there are no flowers in these gardens:

And to close, here's a shot of one of the parrots that have invaded many of the area's parks, also in Mannheim. They survive the winters here and apparently are originally from South Asia. I believe the correct name is Alexandrine Ringneck Parakeet. Some people have come to regard them as an invasive pest, as they drive native birds away from feeding places. But it's always astonishing to encounter one. (Better click to enlarge this one.)

I highly recommend a visit if you're ever in southern Germany. Schwetzingen is very close to both Mannheim and Heidelberg.