Spring, Seeds, and Squirrels

Petals of the Bradford Pear trees are falling like snowflakes and spring’s baton has been passed on to the tulips, phlox, and dogwoods. Nearly all trees and shrubs have started leafing out. Two of my favorite perennials have started coming up and I patiently wait for their flowers, the peony (Paeonia) and wild indigo (Baptisia).

Peonies can easily be weighed down by their gigantic blooms, and I had decided to stake mine this year to be as efficient as possible with planting bed space. But before I could buy a support, I found something around the house I could use. An old iron plant stand with a scroll work top works perfectly!

There is still no sign of germination in my carrots, lettuce, or Swiss Chard. With good weather predicted, I hope to be spending lots of time in the garden this weekend. I’ll be planting more seeds: Sugar Snap Peas, bush beans, and the first rounds of parsley and chives. As well as more weeding and bed prep for future veggie planting.

Working in the narrow planting bed between my driveway and the property line fence, I noticed that my mint has become out of control. If anyone would like some mint of their own, please let me know! I have more than enough to share, but I would recommend planting it in a pot of otherwise contained area as it is AGGRESSIVE.

A new garden challenge of sorts arose last week; squirrels have figured out how to access the bird feeder. While squirrels don’t bother me that much, I would prefer they leave the bird’s food alone. So I’ve devised a plan, I’m going to add red pepper flakes to the bird food. This should discourage the squirrels without harming the birds.

Happy gardening everyone!

*The above image is the front of the Sugar Snap Pea seed packet from Botanical Interests. They are a great source for all things seed and have a wide selection of organic seed too. Lucky for me, I have found their seeds at my favorite local garden shop, Moore & Moore.

11 days til spring!

The Hellebores (pictured) are looking better everyday. Peonies are starting to come up out of the ground; their little red spikes look other-worldly. I’ve also noticed the Star Magnolias (Magnolia stellata, pictured) blooming around town. There is nothing quite like a deciduous magnolia’s bloom, and if I had room in my garden, I’d plant one!

Last weekend I cut back all of my Catmint (Nepeta) to reveal new leaves at the base of the plants. It has rained a lot here lately and the damp ground made weeding out maple seedlings that were overwintering in my planting beds much easier.

More daffodils (Narcissus) are popping up, including King Alfred, which is another good trumpet variety. Daffodils make fantastic cut flowers; cut three stems for a simple (and fragrant!) arrangement.

Another garden task to be done this time of year: soil testing. Soil tests are fairly cheap (about $7 in Davidson County), can be performed at your local county extension office. I recommend testing every two years, or every year if you’re trying to correct a serious problem like pH.

Also, I planted an onion that had sprouted in my kitchen; not sure how that will fare outdoors, but I plan on eating the sprouts in a future salad. Now is a good time to plan the veggie garden and purchase seeds.

I bought lettuce, Swiss chard, and carrots to try from seed this year. All of these should be planted 3-4 weeks before the last average frost date. So I’ve marked March 20th (first day of spring!) on my calendar to kick off my vegetable garden. To find your last frost date, check here.

According to the Environmental Working Group, carrots and lettuce are a few veggies that contain high concentrations of pesticides. This isn’t surprising since these plants all have ‘thin skins.’ Because of this (and so many other reasons), I’ll be eating as much as I can from my own garden, and relying more on my CSA this year.

To find a participating farm near you, visit localharvest.org. In Nashville, I recommend Fresh Harvest.

corn, corn, everywhere, but not a kernel to eat

Freddie and his siblings flew the coop a few weekends ago. On Friday night, all four were in the nest. On Saturday morning, there was only one baby bird. By Saturday afternoon, there were none. Thus concludes our short stint as baby bird guardians. I wonder if bluebirds come back to where they were born to lay their eggs?

Just when I think the garden is winding down, my red bell pepper starts fruiting like crazy. I think this was caused by my pinching it back a few weeks ago, I was tired of it growing and growing without setting fruit. I hope there’s enough time for them to mature.

The ‘Black Cherry’ tomato is doing well and still producing lots of little tomatoes. The ‘Roma’, ‘Big Boy’, and ‘Mr. Stripey’ are still producing fruit, but it has been weeks since we were able to harvest a tomato (tomato thief). If they get close, I may just pull them off the vine early and let them ripen inside.

In the last big storm we had, the top of my large Butterfly Bush toppled over; so I had to cut it back and it looks a little unsightly. That hasn’t seemed to discourage any of the butterflies, luckily. I’ll have to do a better job of pruning this fall when I can really see its structure.

The Roses Of Sharon are completely hitting their stride now. At first I was disappointed in the lilac blooms; but now I’m overjoyed because I have three different colors at once. The white blooms which I love and remind me of my grandparents are now flowering alongside the lilac and pink blooming shrubs. It’s a beautiful palate of colors.

The Evening Primrose is STILL blooming, especially now that our evening temperatures are cooling off. That plant has got to be near the top of my “no maintenance required list.” Other no maintenance all-stars include the Oakleaf hydrangea and catmint that I have in the front beds and have basically neglected all season, but you’d never know!

Summer is definitely winding down. We’ve had a few evenings where temps dipped down into the low 60’s! I love the cooler weather, but I’m missing the long days of summer already. However, fall is one of my favorite times of the year; what with grilling out and college football, does sit get any better?

I’ve started reading ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’, by Michael Pollan. This has been on my ‘plan to read’ list for sometime. I had read Pollan’s ‘Botany of Desire’ years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the craze, I had put off reading ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’, mainly because I thought it was an anti-meat eating campaign. So far though, the focus has been primarily on corn.

Turns out corn is in almost EVERYTHING: it feeds our livestock, fills our gas tanks, creates our processed foods, sweetens our sodas, and on and on and on. Corn and its cheap (government subsidized) products have a lot to do with our country's obesity and diabetes issues too. Not to mention our dependence on petroleum...

And while it’s not altogether new information, it has reminded me why it’s such a good idea to buy organic when possible. I prefer grass-fed beef (I felt like they were probably happier cows than feed-lot steer); but it wasn’t until reading this book that I was faced with the health and ecological consequences associated with the feed lots.

I’m finished with the first third of the book, having mostly to do with corn. The following are some of my notes from the book in the hopes that I may interest others in reading it. If you eat meat, shop in a grocery store, or have concerns about our reliance on fossil fuels, it’s a must read. Needless to say, I’ll be abstaining from chicken nuggets and reading more ingredient labels in the future!

 Government subsidies acct for nearly half of an Iowa corn farmer’s income.
 Without humans to plant corn every spring, modern corn would disappear from the earth in just a few years because it physically cannot reproduce on its own.
 Fritz Haber, the “father of chemical warfare” discovered how to synthesize ammonia while working on dirty bombs for WWI. His discovery, which won him a Nobel Prize, allowed us to fix nitrogen to the soil and completely revolutionized our industrial food chain.
 It takes more than a calorie of fossil fuels to produce a calorie of food in our industrialized agricultural food chain.
 Cargill is the largest privately held corporation in the world; Cargill and ADM combine to purchase 1/3 of all American corn.
 3/5 of our corn ends up on American factory farms, being eaten by primarily cows, who are not corn eaters by nature. Corn fed cows are problematic; this diet makes the cows sick, creates antibiotic and acid resistant bacteria, and creates a toxic waste dump of their feces.
 1/5 of America’s petroleum consumption goes to producing and transporting our food.
 From birth to slaughter (1200 pounds), a cow will consume the equivalent of 35 gallons of fuel, that’s a nearly a barrel.
 1/10 of our corn crop ends up in our gas tanks.
 The chicken nugget, invented in 1983 is the reason chicken has surpassed beef as America’s favorite meat.
 Of the 38 ingredients in a chicken nugget, 13 can be derived from corn.
 The most alarming chicken nugget ingredient: TBHQ; this toxic preservative is derived from petroleum and is a suspected carcinogen and known mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector.

photo credit

a bird in the hand...

The focus of this blog posting is not a plant, but rather a precious animal that came into our lives this week. Freddie, as we have come to call him, is a baby blue bird that I found outside the back door Tuesday night. He was on his back and thrashing about just steps from where I park my car in the driveway. (It should be noted that we aren’t quite sure what this bird’s sex is, but he looked like a Freddie to me so we just went with it).

It took me a few seconds to realize he was a baby bird, because he didn’t even have all his feathers yet. Once I turned him over on to his belly (I was wearing gloves), he immediately fell back on his side, and started making the sweetest chirping sounds I’ve ever heard. Evidently, this little guy could barely even walk. I cradled him in my hands and he rested there, silent and exhausted. I have no idea how long he had been struggling.

I placed him, gloves and all inside the mesh fencing that surrounds the tomatoes, thinking he would at least be safe from most predators until I could figure out what to do. I called Walden’s Puddle*, a fabulous resource for injured and orphaned wild animals in middle Tennessee, and left a message.

Their outgoing message had some extremely helpful information. As per their instructions I looked for a nest but couldn’t find one. (It was getting dark, and there are not many tree branches that could be easily reached.) They recommend bringing nestlings inside overnight, and keeping them in a small box with rags.

When Whit got home, we went to work making an appropriate box/shelter for him and relocating him inside. It’s really important not to handle baby birds very much, they are so fragile. I was surprised at how involved Whit wanted to be with helping this baby bird. I could tell Freddie had gotten to Whit too, and we were both going to do what we could to help this little guy.

[It’s important to differentiate nestlings from fledglings, since fledglings should be left alone. Nestlings are baby birds without all their feathers that spend all of their time in the nest being fed and staying warm. Fledglings are baby bids that are fully feathered and experimenting with flight, while being watched from afar by their parents.]

Have you ever heard that momma birds will abandon their young because of the scent of a human? This is a myth! The only time a mother might abandon her young because of human interference is if she sees her eggs have been tampered with, because this means a predator may be nearby.

I could tell Freddie was hungry; Nestlings are usually fed once an hour. So as per Walden’s Puddle’s instructions, we attempted to feed Freddie soggy dog food. In this way, as Whit pointed out, even Cooper was helping our foster bird child. We put a small amount on the tips of our fingers and Freddie sucked away. Feeding Freddie was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever been a part of, Whit even got a little misty-eyed.

The next challenge was keeping him warm. Walden’s Puddle suggests placing a heating pad under the box, but we didn’t have one available. My electric range top stays warm when the oven is on, so we kept the oven on low all night and set Freddie’s box on top of the electric range. (Whenever I start to tell this part of Freddie's story, people always have the most horrified look on their face when I mention the word oven.)

On Wednesday morning, Freddie awoke with even more energy than the night before. It was surreal to hear a bird chirping in the kitchen. I was thrilled that he had made it through the night. We fed him some more, and I decided to work from home until Walden’s Puddle called me back and I could drop him off there.

But I was still determined to figure out where this little guy had come from, and set out to find the nest once more. Low and behold, I found it! It was in a flower pot about halfway up the Baker’s rack I keep on my deck by the back door. There in the back of the pot was a nest made out of moss, and three baby birds that looked just like Freddie!

This would mean that Freddie fell out of the nest (several feet down), somehow got to the edge of the deck (about 6’ away), and then fell another few feet down to get to where I found him. I was skeptical that he could do all this maneuvering but this had to be his nest! I called Whit at work to let him know and set about reuniting Freddie with his family.

I took a few last pictures of Freddie and then placed him back in the nest with his siblings. I peeked out the window a few hours later and saw what I presume to be the momma bird, worm in mouth, making her way to the nest. I wish the nest was positioned in such a way that we could watch the goings on from inside, but alas we cannot.

A few hours later, Whit asked me how Freddie was doing and I looked out the window to see a little baby bird trying to stand up on the deck floor. I’m pretty sure Freddie had fallen out of the nest again. I quickly picked him up and put him back in his nest and started fretting about whether that had been the right nest, whether his siblings/mom had rejected him.

On Thursday, Whit counted FOUR baby birds in the nest and I was so relieved. Come to find out, blue birds often build their nests about 4’ off the ground. Also, they can have several broods a season and the older siblings typically help care for the new babies. It makes me feel better imagining an extended of family of birds watching over these 4 precious babies.

I’m hopeful Freddie and all the nestlings stay in the nest until they have more feathers and/or start to practice flying under the tutelage of their bird parents. I'm excited and nervous about watching Freddie and his siblings practice flight. I definitely feel like I have a vested interest in this brood and their well-being, and I look forward to updating everyone on their status.

A big ‘thank you’ to Walden’s Puddle* for providing us with the information necessary to help Freddie. It is such a wonderful non-profit organization, which like many these days is struggling to make ends meet. They are actually having a fundraiser this weekend, tickets and information can be found here.

*Walden’s Puddle is a non-profit organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of wildlife by providing treatment and care for sick, injured, and orphaned wildlife, as well as encouraging education which promotes a greater understanding and appreciation for wildlife and its habitat. Walden’s Puddle is unique in being the only professionally staffed non-profit organization and wildlife rehabilitation facility in Middle Tennessee.

Walden’s Puddle is properly chartered as a charitable non-profit corporation by the State of Tennessee and is approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501c3 organization. All donations are tax deductible. 615-299-9938 / P.O. Box 641 Joelton, TN 37080

baby tomatoes!

While replacing the tomato stakes last weekend, I discovered I had baby tomatoes! There are baby Roma’s, and Black Cherry tomatoes. Still no fruit on any of the pepper plants or Big Boy and Mr. Stripey, but all have flowers. I think I’m still on track to be harvesting the first tomatoes at the end of the month.

The status of the herb ‘garden’ is virtually unchanged. I did have an opportunity to use some mint in a recipe I tried last week, Jamie Oliver’s ‘mini shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce’ from his book, Food Revolution. It turned out quite well, click here for a link the recipe.

The Hollyhocks are still blooming (all white) and while I get annoyed with the mint most of the time, it is nice to have something covering up the Hollyhock’s unsightly legs. Also in the driveway planting bed, there are many flower buds forming on the Rose of Sharons, and the butterfly bush and black eyed susan’s that I relocated to the driveway bed are also doing well.

Out front, the Hellebores still have flowers, and the Oakleaf Hydrangeas are doing so well. This seems to be a particularly good year for hydrangeas in our area. ‘Not of this World’ is the first of my Daylilies to bloom, and the tiger lilies are still going strong. In the west side planting bed, the sedum is also about to bloom.

I’ve only had to water a few times all season, thankfully; that has saved time and money. I’m still fertilizing the veggies and herbs once or twice a week with a liquid fertilizer, but that’s really the only maintenance I’ve had time for lately.

the flood of 2010

My city, Nashville, is recovering. Last week, 15 inches of rain fell in less than two days, leaving much of the city underwater and without electricity or phone service. I’m told that Bellevue and Antioch got the worst of it; but directly across the street from me, my neighbor’s home became engulfed by a raging river of flood water.

I am one of the lucky ones with little to no damage. Some of my neighbors have spent a week cleaning up the debris and destruction. A lot of people are living in temporary housing while they work on their homes. Most people have electricity restored and they are making strides toward re-opening one of our city’s two water treatment plants.

Eight families in my immediate area lost all they have. When you drive down the streets, it looks like a war zone. The streets and cars are covered with a layer of mud. There are spray-painted X’s on windows. Waterlines come up halfway on some of the homes. Peoples’ whole lives are piled up at the curb, ruined. Fallen trees and debris are scattered everywhere you look.

In light of this, I’m taking some time off from blogging about my garden and would like to remind people of ways they can help Nashvillians. In the photo, you can see Anderson Cooper wearing the ‘We Are Nashville’ t-shirt by CoolPeopleCare. You can purchase these to directly support flood relief in our area. Find out more on their website.

a word about Crape Murder

I saw something on my street this weekend that I’ve seen hundreds of times before, and it still gets me every time; someone cut their Crapemyrtle (Lagerstroemia spp.) trees almost to the ground. Maybe murder is too strong a word, since more often than not they come back very much alive. However, there is no need for this plant cruelty and aesthetic nightmare.

Some people feel this is the best way to maintain these trees. Other Crape murderers feel they bloom better with this treatment. Conversely, with proper (sometimes yearly) pruning, a Crapemyrtle specimen can take on the loveliest of forms. And with time, your Crapemyrtle branches will develop into the most wonderful example of mottled bark you have ever seen (see photo). Here's a link to some helpful information regarding proper pruning techniques for Crapemyrtles:

http://pubs.caes.uga.edu/caespubs/pubcd/C944/C944.htm#Pruning

Crapemyrtles are wonderful small to medium-sized (15-25’ in height), non-native, summer-flowering, deciduous trees. They come in a variety of colors ranging from white to pink, to purple, to red, and every shade in between. Some varieties even have nice fall color on their fine textured foliage. Crapemyrtles come in a variety of shapes; more formal specimens have only a single trunk, others can be multi-trunked.

My favorite examples of this tree are in Georgia. The Founder’s Memorial Garden at The University of Georgia in Athens, and gardens throughout the Savannah/Charleston area immediately come to mind. This photo is a particularly old and refined specimen located at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.

Dumbarton Oaks is a beautiful (once private, now public) garden to visit if you’re ever in the Georgetown area of D.C. It was designed by the first female landscape architect, Beatrix Jones Farrand, through the patronage of Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss. It is a real gem!

hollyhocks

During a trip to LA in the summer of 2008, I visited the Hollyhock House. What makes this visit so special to me is the souvenir I brought home: Hollyhock seeds from the Hollyhock house! This iconic piece of architecture sits perched atop Olive Hill in Hollywood. From this site, so aptly chosen for its views of the Los Angeles basin, you can see the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Hollyhock house for oil tycoon heiress, Aline Barnsdall. Hollyhocks were her favorite flower and Wright used stylized representations of them on architectural details and furnishings throughout the home. Completed in 1921, during Wright’s self-described ‘California Romanza’ period, Hollyhock House represents Wright’s first project in Los Angeles. The 36 acre parcel was originally envisioned as a theatrical community. However, because of artistic and budgetary differences between Barnsdall and Wright, only three structures were ever realized.

Today, only the main house and a secondary structure remain on 11 acres. The unkempt, sparse interiors and lackluster gardens left me wondering what had happened to the glorious house and grounds I had seen in countless architectural books. The only saving grace for me, were the Hollyhocks. The architectural stalks and backlit blooms of this incredible flower stood as a living witness to FLW’s inspiration. Amazingly, I found not only beautiful flowers, but also near bursting seed pods. I stuffed as many into my camera case and pockets as I could without looking too ‘obvious’. Never in my life had I wanted to grow Hollyhocks, but now I wanted to cultivate a multitude of them.

That was a year and a half ago. So what of my hollyhocks? Well, they were germinated over the winter of ‘08/‘09 in a greenhouse. I planted several of the beefier specimens in the skinny planting bed between my driveway and neighbor’s fence this past summer, here’s hoping they survived our record breaking cold winter. And the remaining seedlings currently reside in a greenhouse. 100 seeds became 18 seedlings, which have whittled away to 6. Since Hollyhocks are herbaceous biennials or short-lived perennials, I don’t have much time. If I could get just a few to bloom this year and hopefully go to seed, I would be beyond thrilled. Here’s to FLW’s brilliant marriage of architecture and horticulture.

For more information on the Hollyhock House, please visit their website.