Cold Weather Plant Lust
- On February 22, 2018
- By Meleah
- In Perennials, Plant Spotlight, Uncategorized
- 0
Hey, so, before I start talking about plants, let me explain the confusion with my last post. You may have noticed that I was going on about how I’d changed the name of my blog to Livin’ Thing and yet all you saw was my old Everyday Gardener banner at the top of the page. Technical difficulties, folks. Technical difficulties. But all of that is fixed now, we think.
So onward and upward as they say. It’s been a long, excruciatingly cold winter here in Minnesota so I’ve been comforting myself with dreams about what to plant when the weather warms up. My list of “Wow, I love that!” plants gets longer all the time, so I just try to pick a few each year to try. No firm decisions have been made yet, but here are a few of 2018’s contenders, in case you’d like to look them up and see if you like them too. One thing to note, these are not new plants, just a bunch of not-often-seen lovelies that I’m thinking about.
‘Othello’ ligularia (Ligularia dentata ‘Othello’): I love ligularia for its gorgeous lily-pad-like foliage, and wonderful yellow flowers that open later in the summer when other things are tired and ragged. This variety seems particular nice because its blooms look a lot like daisies, and it grows to only about 2 to 3 feet tall and 18 to 24 inches wide. Like all ligularias, ‘Othello’ does best in shade to part shade, and requires more moisture than many perennials. So plant this with other water-loving shade plants like astilbe, foxglove, black snakeroot, Rodger’s flower (Rodgersia) and foam flower. Plants are hard to Zone 4.
‘Raydon’s Favorite’ aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium ‘Raydon’s Favorite’): Asters get a bad rap for being tall and gangly. But there are many asters out there that don’t behave like that. This one is among them, growing to just 2 to 3 feet tall and wide. If you’d like to keep bees happy with fall flowers, ‘Raydon’s Favorite’ is a great choice with its lovely lavender blooms. Full sun is best and plants are hardy to Zone 4.
Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum): This prairie native is really striking because plants can grow to 8 to 10 feet tall and about 3 feet wide or more. I’ve seen these in the back of people’s gardens a few times, and I’m always wowed by them. The name comes from the cup-like shape that is formed where the leaves of the plant meet the stems. It is said that wildlife and pollinators can sometimes get a sip of water from those rain-filled cups. That’s a reason to buy this plant, right there! The yellow blooms look like a cross between daisies and sunflowers. If you want to try these, put them in the back of the garden in a sunny spot. To keep them from being too tall and gangly, I recommend cutting them back by half in early summer before they set blooms. Plants are hardy to Zone 4.
Purple Japanese burnet (Sanguisorba tenuifolia ‘Purpurea’): I’m not totally sure about this one. Look it up online and you’ll see what I mean. With its little purple pipe cleaner-like blooms perched atop long grassy spikes, it’s either cool looking or just too weedy for my taste. But I keep going back to it because those little pipe cleaners are pretty neat. Plants grow to 3 to 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide. The long stems emerge from a nice-looking clump of foliage close to the ground. Hard to Zone 4, this beauty should be planted in full sun and needs moist soil.
‘Purple Prince’ epimedium (Epimedium grandiflorum ‘Purple Prince’): If you don’t have epimedium in your garden, run out and get some as soon as spring comes. I’ve only recently added some at my house, and I can’t say enough good things about these pretty perennials. Like most other epimediums, ‘Purple Prince’ has dainty heart-shaped leaves that last all season and look great. Purple, almost orchid-like flowers, appear in spring and plants grow 12 to 15 inches tall and wide. Full-sun to partial shade is best, and plants are hardy to Zone 4. This epimedium is not commonly sold but can be found online at Rare Find Nursery in Jackson, New Jersey.
‘Golden Fleece’ goldenrod (Solidago sphacelata ‘Golden Fleece’): If you haven’t yet noticed, I can be a sucker for late-blooming flowers. Not only do I appreciate having something in bloom from August and into fall, I love to see bees happily finding something to nourish themselves with when other flowers are long spent. Goldenrod is always a bee favorite and ‘Golden Fleece’ is unique in that it grows to only 12 to 18 inches tall and wide, making it much more compact that other varieties. Plants will do best in full sun, but can take partial shade, and are hardy to Zone 4.
Awesome Things About Ants
- On February 20, 2018
- By Meleah
- In Bugs, Natural Wonders, Uncategorized
- 1
Hello Everyday Gardener readers. Welcome to Livin’ Thing. As you can see, I’ve renamed my blog and successfully transported my past posts, and you, to this lovely new space where I plan to write about gardening, of course, but also all sorts of other livin’ things, including humans. Rest assured, though,that I do not plan to write about dieting, as a neighbor friend feared when she misread my new blog title as Livin’ THIN. Ha! No.
No, for this post I’d like to talk about ants. As a Master Gardener, I often volunteer to answer questions at our booth at various events, like the State Fair and farmers markets. People ask about all sorts of different things, but mostly they want to know how to kill stuff: gophers, moles, voles, rabbits and bugs of all types, especially ants. People really seem to hate ants, and I don’t get that because, with the exception of horrors like fire ants, they are actually quite beneficial, harmless and fascinating to watch. Also, I’ve seen the movie A Bug’s Life too many times to count and, well, if that doesn’t change your perspective on ants, nothing will.
But let me try. Here are just a few reasons why ants should be considered friends rather than pests to get rid of:
They are Fun and Interesting to Watch
My husband Mike and I spend quite a bit of time watching ants while drinking wine and eating supper in the backyard. Sometimes we conduct “experiments” to see what they’ll do. Like the time we put a small dollop of hummus on a low table and watched as one ant found it and took a teeny tiny bit back to the colony. Within minutes a long line of ants was marching up the table leg from a crack in the patio, each one gathering a portion of hummus nearly too small for us to see before carrying it back down the table leg to the colony below. On and on they went, and we imagined them putting a call out underground that went something like: “OMG, you would not BELIEVE what we found out there, you guys!” By morning, almost all of the hummus was gone, but there were still a few ants working to get every last bit. We hope they enjoyed it. Also, further totally unscientific testing revealed those ants preferred mashed potatoes over hummus if given the choice.
Thrilling Blog Changes Coming Soon
- On January 04, 2018
- By Meleah
- In Uncategorized
- 0
Hello dear blog subscribers.
This is just a quick note to let you know that I will be soon be changing my blog a bit, including giving it a new name—Livin’ Thing.
If I do all the technology stuff right, fingers crossed, you will simply start getting my blog in its new form at http://livinthing.com/
If things go off the rails, well, I may send out another message begging you to please subscribe to the new site. I don’t think that will happen though because everything’s going to work splendidly, right? Totally.
See you soon. – m
How Raccoons Turned Our Gardens Into a Toilet
Here’s a fact you might not know, and probably, actually, don’t want to know: raccoons like to defecate communally. Yep, that’s right, they like to poop as a group, which is fine, I suppose, until the place they decide to call their toilet is already your front yard. Gross? Totally. But that is what happened at our house this summer, and I want to tell you the story, partly because it’s disgusting and bizarre, but also because maybe you’re like me and you think it’s fun to learn interesting stuff about other living creatures. If so, stay tuned. If not, now is your chance to RUN AWAY.
Here is the thing: I love wildlife to the point where I know I drive some people mad when I’m all, “Oh, calm down. It’s just a few gopher holes and, no, I won’t tell you how to kill them.” Or, “Yes, squirrels and chipmunks do damage some plants and take bites out of tomatoes. But they’re cute and the outdoors belongs to them as much or more than it does to us. So, no, I won’t tell you how to kill them.”
This live-and-let-live mindset is plain old good karma to my husband, Mike, and me. So when a family of raccoons started visiting our yard most nights this summer, we watched in wonder as they emerged from the sewer (Linden Hills’ sewers seem to be filled with raccoons) and trundled in a line down the path to the huge oak tree near our front door. Up the tree they would go, and then they’d stare silently down at us for a while before getting bored—or maybe comfortable—with our wine drinking and card playing or whatever. Pretty soon a couple of them would scooch over to the bird feeders and start shoveling food into their mouths with both paws. We noticed right away that, unlike squirrels, who behave like maniacs when they have to share food, the raccoons were very polite to each other, even going so far as to move out of the way so that somebody else could get closer to the good stuff.
All of that snacking must have left the coons feeling parched because every morning, one of the two water bowls we leave out for thirsty critters was always empty. The other, smaller bowl was mostly empty too. But that bowl was always filled with mud, sticks and a bit of bird food or berries. Curious, I looked it up and learned that raccoons often dunk their food in water before they eat it. Scientists used to think that’s because they were washing their food, but further study revealed that raccoons dunk things in water to make their paws more sensitive to touch. Why? I’m so glad you asked. You see, raccoons don’t have the best vision, which is partly why you often see them tapping their paws on the ground rather than just looking right at stuff. Anyway, what raccoons do have is the same nerve groupings in their forepaws as primates, including humans. Getting their hands wet, scientists have found, increases nerve responsiveness, amping up their sense of touch so they can better understand important stuff about whatever they are about to stick into their mouths.
Freak out and scream, “RABIES!” if you want. But the truth is, and you can look this up, most raccoons do not have rabies and even if they do, transmission to people is extremely rare. Our raccoon family showed no signs of aggression, and Mike and I really enjoyed having them in our lives. The one worry for us was our dog, Lily, who thinks all creatures want to play with her. So we were careful not to let her our after dark. If she just had to go, we went with her, and everything was fine.
Well, everything was fine until the pooping started. I was filling the water dishes one day when I noticed a neat pile of really dark little turds. At first I thought they might be from a cat because half the neighborhood lets their cats live outside (do not get me started on that topic). But this poo was black, like charcoal, and oddly tube-shaped. I took a picture, which I chose not to share with you so; you’re welcome. I looked it up and sure enough—raccoon poo. We weren’t thrilled but figured, hey, everybody has to go sometime, and threw it away. (Yes we know raccoons can be infected with round worms. We wore gloves.)
A couple of weeks passed and there was more poo, only this time there were three piles instead of one. Adding to the grossness was a huge mound of barfed-up berries, which seemed to have come back up whole, so I guess they didn’t agree with somebody’s tummy. After that, things got worse fast and we were waking up to five, six, even seven piles of poo (some from coons who clearly needed to see a gastroenterologist), as well as an increasing amount of barf. So now our yard was not only a toilet, it was also a vomitorium. AWESOME.
Again, I turned to the Internet for answers, and that’s when I found out that once raccoons find a lovely place that feels safe and comfortable, they turn it into their own personal group toilet. I can sort of see that, I guess. But for a lot of reasons, Mike and I don’t want to muck out our little friends’ crapper and vomitorium every day. So, though we were sad to have to do it, we stopped filling the bird feeders, took away the water dishes and sprinkled fox urine granules all over the place, which is supposed to scare critters away. I can tell you this; the stench of fox urine has scared us away from our front porch. But we’re still dealing with some poop and barf, though less often. So, yeah, lesson learned. Now if we could just figure out a way to install an actual outdoor toilet that they could use.
Nice Plants for Northern Gardens
- On October 03, 2017
- By Meleah
- In Natives, Perennials, Plant Spotlight, Uncategorized
- 0
Before I start nattering on about plants I like, let me first tell you that, as always in the fall, the Little Free Seed Library is up and running at my house. You’ll find it on the boulevard on the corner of 45th Street and Washburn Ave. South. I’ve already started putting out seeds I’ve collected from our gardens, and neighbors have been dropping off more. I hope you’ll consider bringing some seeds to share, and if you do, please bring them in envelopes or baggies that are clearly marked with the name of the plant. I’ve put small, coin-sized envelopes in the seed library so people can choose seeds from larger envelopes, and pack them up easily to take home. (For more information on the seed library, check out this blog post.)
Okay, now let’s talk about plants. I like to buy a few new plants every year. It’s fun to have something new in the garden, and it’s always interesting to see how they do—or don’t do, as is the case with nearly every Japanese anemone I’ve ever planted except Anemone tomentosa ‘Robustissima’. That beauty has survived whatever my brown-thumb problem is with these plants.
Anyway, I’d like to tell you about a few plants that I’ve tried and come to love over the past couple of years. First up: Astilbe ‘Chocolate Shogun’. The dark purple foliage of this unique astilbe looks beautiful in my shade gardens where I’ve paired them with hostas, ligularia and yellow-leaved ‘Sun King’ Japanese spikenard. Hardy down to horrifyingly cold Zone 3 (Minneapolis is Zone 4), ‘Chocolate Shogun’ grows 18 to 24 inches high and does best in partial shade. Even when established, these plants need to be watered so try to group them with other plants that like a little extra moisture, such as ligularia, dwarf goatsbeard and foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia).
If you’ve never grown epimedium, let me introduce you. There are several varieties to choose from for our region. I’m partial to Snowy Epimedium (Epimedium x youngianum ‘Niveum’), which is hardy to Zone 4. These delicate-looking shade-loving plants grow 6 to 8 inches tall and up to 18 inches wide. The heart-shaped foliage is pretty enough to make this a must-have for me, but the miniature white flowers that appear in early spring are a much-needed respite from winter.
Feeling pretty sick of bee balm looking great and then getting covered with disgusting powdery mildew by July? Me too. That’s why I’d recommend Eastern bee balm (Monarda bradburiana). Hardy to Zone 4, plants grow to about 2 feet tall and wide, and they are nicely clumped rather than floppy like some bee balms can be. Plant these in full sun to partial shade and bees and hummingbirds will zoom in to enjoy them.
I’ve got a couple of different varieties of goatsbeard in my gardens, but my current favorite is ‘Horatio’ (Aruncus ‘Horatio’). Hardy to Zone 4, plants grow to about 3 feet tall and wide and will do best in partial shade—though they can tolerate full sun. I love the dark green leaves on this variety, as well the white, fringed blooms, which have a faintly sweet smell.
Lungwort (Pulmonaria) sounds like a horrid plant, but it’s really quite lovely despite its name, which came about because the plants’ leaves were long ago used unsuccessfully to treat lung infections. Over the years I have added many varieties of lungwort to my gardens. All have their good points, really, but Pulmonaria ‘Raspberry Splash’ is my favorite. Hardy to Zone 4, these plants grow to about 12 inches high and are said top out at about 18 inches wide. In truth, the ones in my front gardens are much wider, so huge, in fact, that people often wonder if they are “some kind of spotted hosta”. Plants will do best in partial shade and are covered in early spring with raspberry-colored blooms.
Gardening Q & A
Summer is winding down, which means it is once again time for my semi-annual roundup of some of the more unusual, or at least less-common, gardening questions I answered this season. Hopefully there’s something here that you’ll find interesting or helpful.
How do I save tomato seeds?
It’s easier than you might think. Scrape the pulp from a few of the same tomatoes into a jar with some water in it and stir. Put a lid on the jar and let it sit for a three or four days at room temperature, stirring a couple of times a day. You want seeds to drop to the bottom so add more water if you need to and continue to stir. Once there are many seeds on the bottom of the jar, skim off floating seeds and any mold, if you see some. Carefully pour out some of the water and add fresh water before skimming the top again. Once the container looks clean and there is little to nothing floating, pour off all of the water through a fine strainer and spread your seeds out to dry. I use a dinner plate, but you can also use screen or a cutting board, whatever works.
Can I use Milorganite to condition straw bale gardens before planting?
I’d say gardeners have to decide this for themselves. Here are the facts: Milorganite is a fertilizer made from treated sewer sludge from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. The sludge, which comes in pellet form and smells kind of gross, but not in the way you would think, is marketed as being great for trees, shrubs, lawns and home gardens. It is also a good deer and rabbit repellent. The problem is, while Milorganite is deemed safe for consumer use by the US Environmental Protection Agency, testing has shown that it contains contaminants that the treatment process cannot remove, such as heavy metals, pathogens, pharmaceuticals and other toxic chemicals. Because of this, I steer clear of using it on or near edible plants. If you’re going to plant a straw bale, there are many other safe, organic fertilizers to choose from.
I want a red-blooming delphinium. Is there such a thing?
Happily, there are some varieties of red delphinium, and I would suggest ‘Red Caroline,’ which has coral-colored blooms that darken to red as they mature. Like most delphinium, they will do best if you stake them so they won’t topple over. Pollinators and hummingbirds love these flowers, and plants are hardy to Zone 4, so they will survive our horrifying winters. While you might find these in garden centers, it’s probably easier to go online and order either seeds or plants.
Is garlic a good insect repellent?
Yes, it definitely can be. You can buy various types of garlic-based sprays and oils, or you can make your own by tossing two large cloves of garlic and 4 cups of water into a blender. Strain the mush through some cheesecloth once or twice and dilute what’s left with another cup of water. Test the garlic repellent on a plant or two that you don’t care about so much before spraying it widely; just to be sure you’re not causing any damage. Tests have shown that whiteflies, some types of beetles and aphids are all repelled by garlic, though be aware that your garden’s going to be a bit smelly for a few days.