Flowers in the Vegetable Patch: What I Will Grow Next Year

 I always get pleasure out of flowers and try to put some in my veg garden every year:

African Blue Basil, a bee magnet

 

Zinnias, beloved by butterflies

Black-Eyed Susan Vine (heads up, it's a little "spready").

The main reason I do this is not for the aesthetics, though the combo of larger, colorful flowers and veggies is entrancing.  I try to include flowers to increase the number pf pollinators that visit my garden-good for me, good for them.  If you do any nature reading, you know that pollinators, and all insects, are on the decline. So, plant some flowers to help them.  

 

I want to add a caveat to my selections above: The above plants, though beautiful and useful to pollinators, are not all natives. In fact, only the zinnia is native to the US, but in the southwest, not Virginia. Yet, not all native plants fit within the constraints of a vegetable garden, but certainly do use them in other areas of your yard when you can.  This article makes the case for increasing the use of native plants in pollinator gardens:

https://vnps.org/the-right-kind-of-pollinator-garden/

I have many native plants in other areas of my yard and will write more about them in the spring.

Happy Post-Thanksgiving...and a lagniappe

 Lagniappe "A little sumptin' extra"

No garden tips, tricks of thoughts today, but I will have something for you next week. Hope your covid Thanksgiving was satisfying and safe!

Got this coupon with my groceries and it simultaneously made me laugh aloud and say "ick":

 

The best way to connect to nature is to be IN nature!  Not sniffing factory-made approximations of the scents of nature. 

Leave the Leaves...and the Pine Straw, too.

 

I was going to save this image above to show when I write about the unexpected delights of gardening, and might still use it later. Instead, I want to write about leaves, fallen leaves specifically.  I see a great deal of effort spent blowing (more on that below), raking, bagging, and, in many cases, transporting leaves to the dump.  I find this to be a wasteful activity, thought I know the pleasures of physical labor outdoors on a sunny and crisp fall day.  But I am going to suggest something that is no longer a radical gardening position: leave the leaves (or use them).  Here are some reasons:

A tree exerts a great deal of energy producing leaves, and it makes the most sense to me to return them to the soil.  Leaves add nutrients, structure, and organic matter to the soil, all things trees and plants need to thrive.  Why toss these gifts of nature?  

Many creatures, including butterfly and moth chrysalises, overwinter wrapped in leaves for protection.  Tossing them out, or shredding them with a mower, kills these critters.  Butterflies and moths (all insects actually) are in great enough decline already, and this is one thing you can do to help them.

Leaf blowers are highly polluting machines, that stir up all kinds of allergens and particulates into the air (dust, mold, animal poop-ick), damage hearing, and annoy your neighbors.  They blast the leaves and kill the delicate critters mentioned above. Gentle raking or sweeping is far better for the critters ...and for you.

Like birds? Ever see them hop through leaves, dig s bit with their beaks, and eat?  Yep, they are eating the critters I want to protect, but I also want to protect birds, many of them facing a steep decline.

Saves money: using renewable leaves and pine straw saves money- you don't need to purchase much mulch or soil amendments. Saves gas too, from driving to a dump (and using a gas-powered leaf blower). And, saves landfill space and reduces plastic (if you use plastic bags to bag them up).

Native plants: many native plants love and need leafy ground covers to thrive!

How do I deal with leaves (and pine straw)?

When I can, I let them lie where they fall.  When I am concerned that the leaves will smother my plants, I gently (to protect overwintering critters) rake or sweep them under the tree, or onto my fallow vegetable garden beds.  Sometimes, I compost them-leaves add great structure to compost, the necessary carbon to my nitrogen-heavy compost offerings (kitchen waste and coffee grounds).  But this is my last resort, as composting can kill overwintering critters.

So, leave your leaves, please!

Which is better?

 

Which leaf is "better"?

I like to take daily walks through my neighborhood, visiting favorite trees and other plants.  I count these trees among my friends, though some are just acquaintances. I like to think as I walk, and one of the things I think about is why are certain plants selected by landscapers?  I think you know where this is going.

Landscapers and landscaping advice books often recommend that homeowners and business owners select plants that show little or no insect damage, among other things. That way, these plants stay pretty much unharmed by nibbling creatures. This creates a uniform and "tidy" landscape...and one that is often full of non-native plants. From this perspective, the leaf on the left in the photo above is better ans it has no insect damage.

But what does this mean for our ecosystem and the life cycle of native creatures?  For example, trees with leaves that are not eaten are useless to many creatures.  They might as well live in a sand desert. Native insects evolved to feed on native plants, and other native creatures evolved to feed on these native insects.  Did you know that an overwhelming majority of birds need to feed caterpillars to their young so the young can survive?  No caterpillars, no next generation of birds. Generally, seed eating is sufficient for some adult birds, but inadequate for almost all developing birds.

Here's an example:

"Quercus—Oaks support an astounding 543 species of Lepidoptera, including Polyphemus and Imperial moths, Banded Hairstreak, Striped Hairstreak, White M Hairstreak, Juvenal’s Duskywing, and Horace’s Duskywing. There are about 60 native species of Oak in the United States, which are divided into two groups: the white oaks, and the red oaks." from:http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/top-10-best-woody-plants-in-conservation-gardening.html

It's great that native oak trees are such champions at feeding butterfly larvae, and, as stated above, these larvae are essential for birds.  This kind of thinking addresses the concept of "ecosystem services," that is, what does the plant do for the ecosystem as a whole?  Does it feed native creatures, provide food and shelter for wildlife? Does it clean the air and water, produce oxygen, provide shade, and prevent erosion?  These are far more important than having a pretty and undamaged plant and a tidy landscape.  From this perspective, the leaf on the right is far better!

I have just touched on this topic, for more info, and to learn what to plant, check out Doug Tallamy at

https://homegrownnationalpark.net/

Do some good, plant native!

2020 Experiment...Ginger

 

Ginger growing in my zone 7a garden

 

2020 was the year of the pandemic garden, but for me, it was gardening as usual, or unusual. Every year, it seems, I want to try something new, be it a new variety of a old standby, or a new crop altogether.  This year it was ginger, a tropical plant and marvelous addition to Asian food, a great tea ingredients (the leaves can be dried and used as tea, too), and wonderful in my fave, tomato ginger soup.

 

Another plant, close up. Pretty, eh?

 

Ginger is the hardest plant I have ever grown (yes, even though I have mostly given up on cucumbers due to those nasty cucumber beetles, ginger is harder).  Ginger is tropical: it needs heat, water, and lots of organic nutrients. Its long growing season means that you are growing it for baby ginger, the most prized of all the stages anyway.  How did I do it?

 

In January, I went to my favorite Asian grocery (you can also order ginger to plant online) and selected rhizomes with as many fingers and eyes (growth points) as possible. I got home and cut the ginger into chunks, with two eyes at least per piece. I let it air dry overnight to cure.  Then I planted each piece in a large (5 inch?) peat pot in seed starting mix, placed them in a tray, watered them with warm, filtered water, and covered the tray with with a plastic dome lid.Then I put it on a heat mat under florescent bulbs placed as close to the top of the dome as possible.  After a week to 10 days, the baby gingers sprouted. I let them grow until they touched the plastic dome top, then removed it, and enclosed the shelf in plastic sheeting to increase humidity. I kept the heat mat on the entire time the plants were indoors.

You cannot plant ginger until June, when the soil and air temps are warm enough. I planted them in enriched soil, mounded them with compost, spent potting soil, and coffee bean chaff from my local coffee roaster. I kept it well watered, but not damp all the time, and regularly fed it more compost, vermicompost tea, and diluted fish emulsion.  I harvested it in early September...and...it worked!

 

Part of the harvest

Part of the harvest, cleaned and ready to go

 

Here is what I did with it.  First, ginger freezes well.  Clean, cut up into sections, and freeze. The skin scrapes off easily with a knife when you are ready to use it, but the skin is so tender, it hardly matters.  Second, I put sections into a glass jar, topped it with white sherry, and put in the fridge. Keeps for months, can be sliced and added to stir fries. Lastly, I made my own pickled ginger for sushi...yum!

Oh, also....I am drawing it!

 

Next year, I will try to grow turmeric as well!

 

Happy garden planning!

Pawpaws...and a new botanical term

 

                                                                         Pawpaws

I am often surprised when my gardening and hiking friends have never heard of the pawpaw, Asimina triloba. The pawpaw is North America's largest native fruit!  It generally grows by rivers, but is also being hybridized and marketed as various varieties (e.g Shenandoah, Susquehanah).  There are a few reasons my friends might not have not heard of this fruit. First, my friends might live outside its range:

Elbert L. Little, Jr., of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, and others - USGS Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center: Digital Representations of Tree Species Range Maps from "Atlas of United States Trees" by Elbert L. Little, Jr.

Second, they might not hike in the correct ecosystems (rivers). Third, the pawpaw is very fragile and is not suitable for commercial production (yet), though breeding programs might take care of this in the future... but you still can't buy it in a grocery store.

There are a few other strikes against the pawpaw. It has quite a few large seeds (see photo below). It sends up suckers readily (vegetative reproduction). The wild pawpaw produces a little fruit, because its flowers are poor at getting fertilized. It is also not self-fertile. Wild fruit can vary in flavor, with the best fruit tasting a bit like banana, mango, and maybe a tad bit of pineapple. [Side note: Spanish colonizers mistook the pawpaw for papaya,and the name evolved to pawpaw]. This is where breeders have stepped up, creating hybrids with: larger, more consistent fruit; smaller and fewer seeds; better fertilization and; greater hardiness away from river environments and in more northerly climates.

I grow wild pawpaw trees that I started from the wild seed of a tasty fruit. Because my trees are from the same individual (remember they are not self-fertile), I have started hand pollinating them in spring from a few wild pawpaw flowers from another individual [sorry for all these digressions, but it can be hard to determine if you are collecting from different individuals unless they are quite a bit away from each other. Due to reproduction by suckering, a single genetic pawpaw can appear as a string of trees a quarter of a mile or more along a riverbank].

Let me share exactly why I have been really lucky in hand pollinating, and introduce a new botanical term, trioecious. You know that plant reproduction can be complicated, right? Bear with me. Plants can have flowers of only one sex, male or female (monecious). This means a single individual can be male, or female, but not both. Plants can have flowers of both sexes on one plant, male flowers AND female flowers (dioecious).  A plant can have individual flowers that have the parts of both sexes (hermaphroditic), having what are called "perfect flowers."  Generally, each species is ONE way... But pawpaws are trioecious, a tree can be either all male, or all female, or a mix of both. I guess I am lucky that I started seed that resulted in all female trees or a mixture AND that I picked enough  flowers that were pollen bearing (male) for pollinating. [Note: I pick very few flowers]. You know I am going to pay close attention to this next season!

                                                Small "wild" fruit with seed exposed

But, I am still glad I took the gamble and started growing them. Pawpaws are the only host plant for the zebra swallowtail butterfly...and that's worth it right there.

So, grow two varieties of hybrid pawpaws, central Virginians!  They need adequate water when young. If they are in full sun, they will need a shade cloth for the first few years, or you can grow them in part shade.  Edible Landscaping in Afton, VA has them at: https://ediblelandscaping.com/products/trees/Pawpaws/

Red Dragon Cabbage...What I Will Grow Next Year

 

Red Dragon Cabbage, Washed and Ready to Cook

 

I realized as I was selecting garden seeds, I was favoring plants that were red or purple!  Aside from green, these are the two most often-used colors in my colored pencil box. Red Dragon Cabbage is a Napa-style cabbage, heading but not like the standard bowling-ball cabbage.  Planted in early spring, it sprouts easily and grows well, at least until the cabbage worms inevitably arrive.  You can see a little damage on the leaves in the photo above...harvested in the nick of time!  If you do get cabbage "worms" (actually caterpillars of the cabbage white moth), you can wash the leaves after soaking them say, for an hour, in a sink full of salted water (about 2T). And pick out the deceased critters...don't be squemish! Don't let them soak too long, then give them a wash and drain in a colander. Sadly, the pretty electric-purple leaves turn green when cooked. (NOTE: there is another option to dealing with cabbage worms: I feed them to my carnivorous pitcher plants!).