Growing basil easily

Last summer, I first tried growing basil in flats. It was a smashing success. Harvested often, I had lots of tender leaves to use in pesto and for flavoring. In contrast, the plants in the ground had their usual tough leaves, etc., although bees and other visitors enjoyed the flowers.

So this year, I duplicated the method. Fabulous, again. These flats are the multi-harvested one on the right, and the newly sown one on the left.

Rain in the mountains

It poured yesterday. Lots of rain. Our small bog will be happy, as will the sedum garden.

It looked like a tropical rain forest.

An exuberance of flowers

A neighbor's garden (in the mountains) is in full bloom. It's a bit eclectic, and was a bit jarring in its colors early in the season, but now, it's quite delightful. (Do click on the photo for a larger view).


They planted their front garden this spring, but have kept adding along the way. (Their much younger neighbors told us that it makes them tired to watch - but hopefully, it'll be an inspiration).

Now, in mid to late summer, it looks lovely. And this is a (very) part-time garden, as the gardeners live elsewhere for much of the time.

It reflects the beauty of old standards (the zinnias and Shasta daisies) as well as perennial sunflowers, shrub roses, and others.

A summer bouquet

These summer flowers came from a local farmer's market here in the mountains. They're a mixture of native wildflowers (purple coneflower, phlox, and some sort of native grass) and horticultural favorites (Caryopteris, Scabiosa, and Buddleia).

An enforced hiatus from my garden for some minor surgery has me enjoying the pleasures of wildflowers in a bouquet.

Looking towards fall

It's hardly mid-August, but I'm thinking about fall vegetables. Will I have time to plant fall greens after a bit of a hiccup away from my garden? What about transplanting broccoli or brussels sprouts?

What should I recommend to folks next week in a Fall Vegetable Gardening class?

I'm looking forward to fresh lettuce and spinach, maybe some peas, and Asian greens like mizuna, pac choi, and mustards.

And, of course, I'm hoping that I'll still be harvesting some warm-season vegetables, too.

Morning light

Early in the morning, as the sun moves higher, it illuminates a small area near the seasonal creek in the woods behind our small house in the mountains.

The golden light was striking this morning.

Of course, the camera doesn't see it quite the way I did.

But the morning light is one of the things I enjoy here, looking out into the forest.

Rosehips

This is a remembrance from last winter's travels: rosehips on the grounds of Pompeii. I love the especially large fruits of shrub roses. and these were lovely in the morning light.

Sedum garden

Our small sedum garden is doing wonderfully well. In the mountains, afternoon thunderstorms have returned, bringing plenty of soaking rains.

Vegetable gardening successes and failures

Every year is different. Some vegetables (and varieties) do well some years, and others are challenged.

I've had lots of tomatoes this year, thanks to abundant spring rains, but largely of a few varieties. Thank goodness for sturdy hybrids that happily produce faced with the usual tomato diseases.

My second round of plantings (from tip cuttings) are doing well, too, along with heirloom tomato plants growing in pots (in nice disease-free soil, of course). The second round of squash is flourishing, too, although between squash vine borers and woodchuck herbivory, the early plantings are just about gone.

I've left the winter squash and tromboncino squash growing in the satellite garden (maybe they'll outgrow the woodchucks?). The tomatoes look good, maybe the eggplants will produce some non-bitter fruits (some of them have been truly nasty), and maybe the yard-long beans will shake off the aphids, which have been a major garden pest this year.

Asian tiger mosquitoes

When we first moved here in 1993, we didn't have many mosquitoes. Our house is on a gentle hill, and there's not any standing water nearby, so our native mosquitoes weren't a problem.

The advent of Asian tiger mosquitoes, however, as a problem throughout the Southeast has changed that. These mosquitoes are day-fliers, unlike our native mosquitoes, and can breed in damp soil, moistened by relatively small amounts of rain (think damp mulch) or in plant saucers, pot edges, etc. and love to hang around vegetation. Their bite stings quite a bit initially, but doesn't (yet) produce the itchy welts that native mosquitoes do.

Deet-based repellents are effective, but it's so unpleasant to spray just for a brief garden check, I find it hard to do that, unless I'll be out there for awhile.

This photo (from an excellent article about mosquitoes in National Geographic) shows the distinctive markings of the Tiger mosquito.

I'm thinking I need to get rid of ALL the empty pots, broken dishes, etc. that are behind the potting bench; they don't harbor standing water, but certainly could have a few tablespoons of moisture available on a saucer edge. Even the rimmed edges of traditional hanging baskets are probably enough to support their reproduction.

An article in NC Wildlife magazine first alerted me to their advance, as we wondered why we had started being bothered by mosquitoes.

Succession plantings for vegetables

Those of us in warm climates have LONG gardening seasons, and fall vegetable gardens do wonderfully well, with the hardiest kales and cabbages overwintering for spring harvest. Often winter varieties of lettuce and spinach overwinter, too, providing a head start on late winter and early spring growth.

It's hard to imagine on a hot, humid August day, when parched plants are grateful for the hose.

My second round of squash and tomatoes are doing well, although the dry weather is encouraging powdery mildew on squash leaves.

Not surprisingly, the root-knot nematodes problems in the main vegetable garden weren't vanquished by the supposed predatory nematodes, but I did get quite a few squash and beans from early plantings before they went into decline (and show the definite knobby galls of root-knot nematodes on their roots).

But fall is not far away, and I'm thinking about the different varieties of kale, spinach, and lettuce (as well as beets, chard, and turnips) to sow in the coming weeks. And maybe I'll put in a round of fall edible flowers: calendula, borage, nasturtiums, and violas.

This time of the year is definitely trying for Southern gardeners. A friend who writes the weekly garden column in our main regional newspaper had a great piece today that describes our August gardening dilemmas. It's hot, it's humid, and we need to be out there early in the morning or in the evening. And those darn Asian mosquitoes that have invaded the Southeast in recent years are really annoying (they fly all day long and reproduce in a drop of water). So even those of us who never had mosquitoes before have these, making repellents (however nasty) an unfortunate necessity.

Do our gardens reflect us?

I'm firmly of the opinion, that yes, if we ARE gardeners, then our gardens echo us, our interests, plant passions, and style, whether it's naturalistic or formal.

As a wildlife gardener, I feel at home with plantings that mimic natural landscapes, include a diversity of plants (often native, but not always), and provide microhabitats for all sorts of critters.

But I also love vegetable and herb gardens and their promise of productivity as well as beauty.

Eclectic and whimsical landscapes are also fun; they always seem to reflect the gardener, whether s/he is someone that I ever meet or not. Artists have especially interesting landscapes, if they're interested in using plants as part of their palette.

What's missing in so many commercial and public landscapes is any sort of expression of what the landscape is about; there's no sense of place or personality, but simply an assortment of extremely tough plants arranged in unimaginative designs.

Hooray for gardeners like this one, who have taken a conventional landscape and made it their own!

Click on the photo and take a closer look: notice the carved wooden black bear to the right of the fountain.

Fall vegetable gardening and seeds

I have a lot of seeds already. Really. This is just one very small bit of my overall collection.


I determinedly tried to give away as many as I could in programs and events last spring, but of course, this just allowed me freedom to order more.

I actually was dog-earing pages in my Territorial Seeds 'winter' catalog yesterday. Hmmm. And my friend CEN gave me a bunch when she moved to a (much) colder climate, so really, I don't need many more for this fall season.

But the allure of another perfect winter lettuce variety, tender collard cultivar, a delicious young spinach, and maybe even a tasty beet or two is certainly alluring, especially when woodchucks are eating the squash in the satellite garden, and they're suffering from powdery mildew, in any case.

And what about the kitchen garden next to the Discovery Center (the visitor center for the botanical garden where I work) and the participants in fall vegetable gardening programs, and the folks with donated Earth Boxes through our Upstate Locavores network program. All will need fall vegetable seeds. Or so I'm thinking. It's a good thing that seeds are a wonderfully inexpensive indulgence.

Public landscapes

I'm really tired of cookie-cutter commercial and public landscapes. It's SO refreshing to bumble on a business with an interesting landscape or a public area that's actually creative and reflective of the surrounding region.

This legal office in Portland, Oregon had a lovely landscape.

I've found that there's a bit of synergy that can work in a community. If one business starts to do something different, then their neighbor catches on, just like in residential communities (which can be equally unimaginative).

How about this oil change place in Asheville, North Carolina?
(click on the photo for a larger version)

Up and down this busy street, there are now pockets of truly nice plants, in front of offices, furniture stores, quick check places, etc.

Parking lots don't have to be a monoculture.

A new bank in my town features an elaborate new landscape of lawn, crepe myrtles, Japanese hollies in rows, and purple-leaved heucheras in full-sun (hmmm). It's a contrast, to be sure, to the nicely developing and diverse 'Gateway Park' put in by the city several years ago. I guess I should be glad that our small city requires landscaping at all, since it does result in green, but I just wish that landscapers (and developers) would be a bit more creative in their approach.

I think that landscaping creates a mood that creates a better environment for businesses of all kinds, from banks to groceries to doctors' offices. I know that I, for one, enjoy visiting my current dentist with his dental cubicles looking out into gardens and bird feeders a lot more than previous dentists that I've had.

A recent visit to a medical specialist found his office surrounded by lovely plants (several substantial white oaks, very nice shrub plantings, and a recently installed pond that he put in himself). What's not to like about that?

Recent travels have found me noticing out-of-the ordinary parking areas and streetscapes, container plantings, and office entrances. Why shouldn't this be more the norm?

Dog vomit slime mold

Fresh hardwood mulch is a great substrate for this amazing-looking slime mold. Remarkable in all of its stages, it progresses from a gelatinous yellow stage to darkening crusty stages, all rather alarming in appearance.

We had at least 20 different individuals in various stages of maturity on fresh mulch last weekend.

Sometimes called dog vomit fungus, it's a slime mold (Fuligo septica). This informative article in the Chicago Tribune describes its biology nicely.

An ancient organism, it's not a plant, animal, bacteria, or fungus, but it's well-adapted to doing what it evolved to do: break down organic matter.

An innovative vegetable garden

I've been admiring vegetable gardens lately. Mine is looking quite nice enough, but is showing the stresses of drought and (excessive) woodchuck herbivory, not to mention dry weather-induced powdery mildew on (non-predated) squash leaves.

This lovely garden is tucked into a second lot behind a renovated house in Asheville, NC. They've created a studio/shed/office (?) behind their house that frames the vegetable garden.

It's delightfully laid out with green metal edges, and Southerners will appreciated the tobacco plants next to the asparagus.

And isn't this rainbarrel cool, screened by an attractive wall of tumbled stone?

Native animals, closer than usual

Visiting the Western North Carolina Nature Center for the first time (encouraged by the seasonal butterfly house), we enjoyed an up-close view of some native mammals, reptiles, and amphibians that we normally don't see.

Bobcats, red wolves, gray wolves, gray fox, and coyotes were among them, but our favorites included a very lively male bear (he splashed and played in a large pool with a rope toy, climbed a tree, rolled a log, and clambered up a tree stump).










A river otter, waiting for dinner, posed on a rock.

And these turtles, in an attractive turtle pond, basked quite close on several logs, strategically placed. (I wish we had a small pond like this in the Children's Garden at the SC Botanical Garden!)

A seasonal butterfly house

The Western North Carolina Nature Center has a lovely small seasonal butterfly house that I hadn't visited before. Displaying native butterflies (monarchs, gulf fritillaries, painted ladies, buckeyes, sulfurs, giant swallowtails, and others), it's a simple, but very effective display.

A hoop house, covered with black mesh, entering and exiting through double-screen doors is the basic set-up: inexpensive and nice. Raised beds support a variety of nectar plants and many other donated plants creating a nice border mix.

This monarch butterfly benefited from a purple coneflower inflorescence.

An outdoor butterfly garden bed completes the display. Great fun, indeed.

We'll be breaking ground in a couple of weeks for a new Butterfly Garden installation at the Botanical Garden where I work. We're excited about adding lots of host plants for butterfly caterpillars in addition to the nectar plants!

A July harvest

The tomato plants in the satellite garden continue to thrive. Currently the Sungold, Tomosa, Chelsea hybrid, and Super Marzano (grown from Totally Tomatoes seed) are the most prolific. They seem to be suited to the current droughty conditions, are resistant to the usual tomato diseases that are cropping up elsewhere, and keep growing, flowering, and fruiting.

This was today's harvest.


I've got a second round of tomato plants coming along -- from tip cuttings and seedlings. I'll see how the heirloom Black Russian tomatoes fare, along with more Super Marzano and Sungold.

Young broccoli, brussel sprouts, asparagus (an experiment), and basil are doing well, too, along with happy summer squash. Who knew there'd be so many this year. Maybe the particularly cold winter zapped most overwintering larvae or pupae of the squash vine borers that are the usual difficulty for summer squash here.

My gardening companion noticed this little tree frog (we think) this evening when he was going to return some tools to the garden shed. He didn't disturb it so I could take a photo (how nice).

Squirrels and radicchio

Adaptable local wildlife seem to be quite happy eating 'local' and enjoying the delicacies that I provide for them.

Our woodchuck (quite at home in the brush pile way back towards the woods) is feasting on tromboncino squash leaves, much to my annoyance, but at least s/he doesn't like tomatoes, eggplant, or yard-long beans. Fortunately, there's so much other summer squash this year, thanks to the relative absence of squash vine borers, I can't really complain. (Uh, I do keep setting my Havahart trap, but this woodchuck is much too canny to think that's inviting, even with Chuckster bait).

To my amazement this evening, though, I saw a squirrel (again) scampering off down the side fence with a huge radicchio leaf in (presumably her) mouth. She stopped, and started nibbling, but when I came closer, ran off with her prize.

I didn't have my camera, but there was definite evidence last year, and the year before that, I saw this (nursing) female squirrel enjoying a radicchio leaf in about the same spot. Quite remarkable.