Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made By singing 'Oh how wonderful' and sitting in the shade, While better men than we go out, and start their working lives By grubbing weeds from garden paths with broken dinner knives." - Rudyard Kipling How ya’ doin’ Gardeners Was it just me or was this another good week to be in the garden?
Garden reports: 100 Square Foot Garden: Mary Anne Normille The rain delay gave us a short workday, but long enough to get a lot done. Two trellises were completed that will provide support for the summer vertical-growing plants-- mainly tomatoes, pole beans, and cucumbers. The large number of tiny weeds that popped up with all the rain we've had were dispatched before they could become large weeds. Beets, carrots, and radishes were thinned to give them room to develop their edible roots - good germination so far. Some leaf miner damage was detected on the dinosaur kale, but the perpetrator was not found. Herb and Fragrance Garden: Kathleen Tsai The Herb & Fragrance team leader visited the National Arboretum last weekend for their plant sale and festival, and came back with some new and interesting items that were added to the garden this morning. We planted a santolina, Cuban oregano, nicotiana, and an ornamental pepper, all of which will add color or fragrance to the area. We also completed planting the center bed with three chocolate-scented daisies and a variety of blue heliotrope called "Scentopia." They joined the African blue basils and blue salvia already there. We continued thinning out the very prolific larkspur and also the apple mint. We were joined today by two interns who spent their time with us removing weeds from between the bricks. Needless to say, that is a daunting and tedious job but they did an outstanding job of it; we would welcome them back anytime. It should be noted, also, that during last Sunday's Grow It Eat It open house, we gave away more than thirty small plants to visitors; most of them were larkspur seedlings (we told everyone that they will self-seed) but also quite a few bee balm plants from Marty Isaacson's own yard. Visitors seemed to really like the idea of taking something home that was grown in the Demonstration Garden. We received many comments on the variety of mints that we have in the "mint vault" as well as the large variety of basils that are in the garden this year. The lovage also garnered lots of attention because of its size since it is already almost as large as it got the entire season last year. Edibles: Erica Smith We had a quiet day in the vegetable garden but still got a lot done. Over the next few weeks things will get much busier as we begin to plant warm weather crops and start harvesting cool weather ones. For today, we planted two short rows of Provider and Contender bush beans, which can tolerate cool soils, and relocated a few volunteer potato plants. (We never manage to dig up all the potatoes!) We also filled one of the sections of the newly deepened salad table (thanks, Joe!) and planted some heat-tolerant lettuce, Swiss chard, carrots, and fenugreek. And plenty of weeding and mulching was also accomplished. We started to construct the sweet potato enclosure (it's against voles - ask Barbara about it!) but the slips won't go in the ground for at least a couple of weeks. Next week we hope to get some trellises up for melons, cucumbers, and squash. In the fruit garden, we harvested some rhubarb and tucked in a female kolomikta kiwi next to it. The male is waiting at the other end of the trellis, but it'll be a few years before we're likely to see fruit. Bug Report: Darlene Nicholson Bugs are slowing returning and small bits of damage are appearing here and there. There was evidence of some Four-lined Plant Bug damage in and around the Butterfly garden (love the milkweed). They travel very fast and are great at hiding from us so I didn't get a picture of one in the garden this week. But keep an eye out for them. There is a write up in the big book. Let's take a closer look at this little crustacean. Looking like very tiny armadillos, they hide under boards, and garden debris. They are scavengers of plant matter. They can't do much damage to healthy plant tissue, due to weak chewing mouthparts. The question is, are these pillbugs (Armadillium vulgare ) or sowbugs (Porcellio scaber)? Pillbugs are the ones that roll up into a tiny ball when frightened-sowbug don't. Since I wasn't really aware that sowbugs existed, I didn't poke at them to encourage that behavior. After some research,(Whitney Cranshaw) I conclude that the ones pictured are pillbugs, as they lack the two small appendages protruding from their hind ends that sowbugs possess. The lifespan of both is about two years. Keyhole Garden and Bales: Robin Ritterhoff We had an even quieter day around the keyhole garden and hay bales. In part this was because the only two team members spent most of their time putting away the tent canopies that had had to dry in the barn after the Grow It Eat It Open House. Keyhole: Next week we hope to begin harvesting some of the onions, lettuce & mustard in the keyhole bed & plan what to plant next. We'll also have to add soil to bring the bed back up to its original level. Bales: We are considering how best to shore up our disintegrating bales. Somehow, this year's bales are much more weathered than those that formed our bale structure last year. They haven't heated up with our compost slurry treatment, suggesting that they had already passed that point over the winter. So we are considering supplementing them with straw and scowls. Ponds: Darlene Nicholson What in the world is this image? Well if you worked at Derwood last Tuesday you saw jumping and splashing and general craziness in an otherwise, serene pond. We were privy to at least 4 pairs of toads, several single ones and even a frog being extremely active. Yep, it's that time of year. But for some, things got a little strange. Yes that is a frog and toad mating and even the cute toad with the red petal hat seems to be contemplating whether or not this is a possibility. Since I am no expert in the matter, I decided to check with HGIC. Here is their reply. "Well, they're a little confused. Yes, the green one is a frog. Usually frogs and toads mate at different times. Occasionally a late frog is around when the toads start mating, and so she gets recruited. However,the union will be sterile." Enough pond craziness for the day? Not so fast. Maria recorded these toads trilling (mating sound) and played it back to the much quieter pond at the other end of the garden -- She got a quick response from a toad in that pond! She repeated the playback several times and always got a reply. BEST POND DAY EVER! Conservation Garden: Maria Wortman Today we spent time cleaning out beds by removing seemingly millions of tiny seedlings of the large Prunus serotina, black cherry tree. The black cherry is an important source of food for many birds, small mammals, deer, and other wildlife, but one is enough in our garden! We are still finding invasives such as oriental bittersweet and Rosa multiflora. Hopefully, in time, we will be rid of them! Getting to more pleasant subjects, our white and pink trilliums are fading, but a lovely newcomer has arrived; the Red trillium or Trillium erectum, so called because the maroon-colored flower is held high above the leaves on a stem. It is known by several other names, among them wake-robin and stinking Benjamin. The latter name refers to its smell of rotting meat meant to attract the flies that pollinate it, although we haven’t gotten close enough to the blossom to enjoy that experience. Fewer and fewer of these lovely flowers are seen in the wild, as they are vulnerable to the browsing of white-tailed deer. But we hope ours will spread, helped along by the ants which can move the seeds several feet from the mother plant. The Conservation Garden pond was buzzing – or we should say trilling — with excitement! “If you build it, they will come” was never truer. The pond was just cleaned out and refilled two weeks ago, and on Tuesday it was crammed with toads; those that were mating and those that were endeavoring to do so. Who can explain how they found their trysting place? An unpaired male was valiantly and untiringly puffing out its little throat and sending forth its plaintive trill, calling for the object of its desire. We hope he achieved his goal – he certainly deserved it. We recorded its song on a video and took it over to the other pond at the Butterfly Garden where we were told there had been seen another toad, though there was no sign of activity. We played the recorded trill, and in a few seconds there came from a corner of the pond the answering trill saying, “Hey, keep out – this is my territory!” We hope we aren’t accused of toad torment as we repeated this several times to the interest and amusement of quite a few MGs. By next Tuesday when we return, we expect to see the long strings of toad eggs floating in the pond. And so it continues.. Closing Comments: Lily and Bill
It was a good week talking gardening to gardeners, while in the garden. The Story of Cream Sausage Cream Sausage tomato was bred by Thomas Wager and named 'Banana Cream' tomato before it was introduced by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in 2004 as 'Cream Sausage' tomato. The exact date of the domestication of tomatoes is unknown, but by 500 BCE they were already being grown in southern Mexico. The Spanish brought the small yellow tomato to Europe and the Philippines. The climate in Italy allowed for many new varieties of tomato to develop with intense flavor. Alexander W Livingston took North American tomato varieties and upgraded them to a commercial crop. One of the easiest types of vegetables to adapt and breed, tomatoes are now grown worldwide. These large, yellow plum-shaped tomatoes are great for container gardens.
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