Butterfly Gardening
I saw my first butterfly of the season the other day. I am but a rookie lepidopterist, so I don’t know what kind it was. All I saw was a streak of black, not nearly enough to be of help when looking it up in my field guide. As it swooped over my brown, sleeping garden, I worried about what in the world it would find to eat in these early days of spring. What was it doing here so soon?
The only thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t one of our Eastern black swallowtails. It’s wings didn’t have the right yellow spots and blue patches. I say “our” swallowtails because for the last two summers my husband, Mike, and I have tried raising swallowtails on our front porch. We got the idea, or I should say I got the idea and my ever-patient husband went along with it, from a man named Jim.
Read More»FAQ: Relationship between ants and peonies
- On April 11, 2008
- By Meleah
- In Bugs, FAQ, Perennials
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Q: Is it true that ants play a role in helping peonies bloom? It doesn’t seem true to me, but people always talk about how they’re needed to make the buds open. What do you think?
A: You’re right; it isn’t true. Ants don’t just go around kindly doing good deeds like helping flowers open. In this case, what’s in it for them is tasty nectar in the structure that covers the buds though they do help the buds, too, by keeping pests that might harm the blooms away.
Dealing With Ice, Snow and Winter’s Hungry Critters
Here are a few tips for helping your landscape make it through the winter unscathed by freezing temperatures, snow, ice and critters.
Let’s start with those de-icing salts people use to make sidewalks safer. These products are great for cutting down on slipping, but they wreak havoc on plants. Salty injury to deciduous trees and shrubs takes many forms but usually includes things like bud and twig dieback, stunted growth, and leaf scorch. Conifers, like spruces, pines, and firs often have mild to severe needle browning when exposed to salt spray.
To remedy the situation you could, of course, just skip the de-icer. But if you’d like to be nice to your plants without fear of breaking your neck, try taming your de-icer a bit by mixing it with another abrasive material like sand (50 pounds of sand to one pound of salt is a good ratio). You might also try a salt-free, de-icing compound made from calcium magnesium acetate or kitty litter. Rather than just throwing down a lot of de-icer on top of packed snow and ice, try sprinkling enough to loosen the ice and snow and then remove as much as you can with a shovel. Take care not to pile salty snow from driveways and sidewalks around plants and trees. Salt accumulation at the base of plants can force them into an early decline and eventually kill them.
Read More»What To Do With All Those Fall Leaves
This summer’s storms cost our neighbor a beautiful oak tree that was well over a hundred years old. Now, all they’ve got to remind them of it is a huge rotting stump in their backyard that stinks like vinegar crossed with something sickeningly sweet. They miss the tree and we miss it, too, because once it was gone we realized how our back patio now boasts a majestic view of crisscrossing power lines. I want to plant a tree near our garage to remedy the situation and my husband, Mike, agrees that’s a good idea. As long as we get one that doesn’t have any leaves.
You see, he hates to rake and, though I am not a candidate for any kind of Green Girl moniker, so far I just won’t budge on the leaf blower issue. We can’t buy one. Not even an electric one. And it’s not as if he’s griping unnecessarily. We already have three big oak trees that blanket our yard with so many leaves we both rake until our hands blister and bleed every year. But here’s where my little do-no-harm-to-the-world-by-raking plan goes awry. We bag our leaves and haul them to the curb for pick-up.
Read More»Lawn Removal Tips
- On June 08, 2007
- By Meleah
- In Turf Grass
- 0
They say a good friend is someone who helps you move. I want to revise that to read – a good friend helps you tear up sod. If you’ve ever tried to dig up your lawn to plant a garden you know what I mean. Yet a couple of weeks back my friend, Elizabeth, just up and volunteered to come over and help me get rid of the grass that covered half my front yard. (I tore the other half out last year.)
I’m telling you all of this because I learned some really useful things during this most recent sod-removal experience that I wish I’d known a long time ago. And I want to share them with you so you never have to go through as many tins of Tiger Balm (that’s hippie Bengay) as I have. Helpful tip number one: rent a sod stripper. Before this, I’d never tried one but I’d seen one used before by a former neighbor, a voluptuous, chatty young woman who gardened practically in the nude. (Weird.) I figured if she could use the thing, anyone could.
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