My Small Gardening Project

As Natalie left for a week of hiking in Big Bend State Park, leaving me to babysit the plants and animals, she told me I could get her newly bought plants planted in pots.

I started to look for pots and found a few. But they were either the ugly black ones that come with small bushes/trees, or old plastic ones that were dirty and stained from mold growth. And when I envisioned the plantings, I saw I  needed some more complementary plants.

What I found to work with

This is plastic and quite dirty and stained

So the directions in my mind changed to:
1) Change the look of the pots
2) Buy some more plants
3) Buy some organic planting soil for potted plants
4) Buy a diamond bit drill so I could drill holes in some nice pots

The weather didn't cooperate so I only got the pots washed and painted the day Natalie got back.  But I spent the next two days working on finishing up the project and  then Natalie hauled the pots to where she wanted them.

No pots were harmed in the process.

Yep - that's a good shade of blue

Lookin' better - that left pot is one of pair I gave Natalie the year she moved in

Had to make sure I have herbs and that leftover broccoli needed a home

That beautiful white pot got useful after I drilled a hole in it

Thanks, Natalie for letting me garden.  This is one of the things I mostly miss when volunteering.  But sometimes a refuge has a garden for me to work in.

Some of the pots got to live on the deck. 

Personal note: I'm on the mend from my carpal tunnel surgeries and will have my shoulder surgery tomorrow.  I expect to be pretty comatose several days.  The blog should come out slowly, if at all for the next month.  Natalie is taking me to Pennsylvania and handing me off to my daughter for Christmas.  We'll get back in time for New Year's. 

Nature's Stocking Stuffers

I got out in Natalie's yard on Tuesday morning while the light was still beautiful. Almost immediately, I was distracted by some of the flowers and butterflies. I had to grab my camera and take the opening orange/gold rose. Then I saw another. Then a butterfly. Soon I was looking for more flowers and ended up taking pictures of most of them.

This is about the least flowers we ever have here.  It's the dormant season, except for crops and flowers that like cold weather, like greens, pansys, petunias, and other bedding plants. The roses only have a couple of blooms at a time.  Afew of the sages are still blooming and attracting bees, butterflies, and flies that mimic bumblebees.

So each bloom seems like a blessing and it's fun to visit them each day. And their insect visitors make them even more interesting.

Soon after Natalie moved here, we bought three roses at the Antique Rose Emporium,  a great place to shop for old and English roses.  We picked the three varieties because they were supposed to grow well here in our high humidity. They  have all done pretty well - don't need any spraying -  but only have sporadic blooms right now. This orange one was just opening when I was taking pictures and I noticed it finished opening by the end of the photo session.The other two are yellow and their blooms are falling apart and not photogenic.

There are a few monarchs still flying around. Two weeks ago, just before I went to Louisiana, there were 27 monarch caterpillars feeding on several Mexican milkweed plants. When I got back, there were only a couple left, but most of the leaves were gone and the remaining caterpillars were eating on the seed pods and the stems.  I found a few of the chrysalises while I was pruning and weeding. 

 Then I noticed this tiny drama. These two guys were having a gobbling contest to see who could eat the last leaf fastest. I threw the game to the caterpillar when I plucked and stomped the snail. By day's end, there were only two caterpillars and one was eating a seed pod.

 We had a few other butterflies flying around this day.  A Red Admiral who prefers to feed upside down was checking out the purple saliva.

The grass skippers are almost gone. The ones that are left love this red and yellow lantana that is scheduled to be moved, either when it stops blooming, or in late January. Got to move it before spring which will happen the middle of February so the neighboring rose bush can get its space back.

Paper whites usually start blooming in December. However, this is currently the only blooming one in the yard. Its relatives are all still in bud.

Blue mist flower has volunteered everywhere, much to the delight of the monarchs, queens and other butterflies. This is the last blooming  mist plant in the yard. I'm busy cutting the seed heads back on the others to neaten up the garden.

The flowers of the abutilon bush (really a small tree) look like lanterns when they are back-lit.

The pansys that Zootie and I hauled home in a wagon after my car ended up in the shop on pick-up day are growing well and making faces.

And we are still getting a few eggplants - these are ready to harvest and will make a meal for two. The tomatoes are starting to color up. We have to pick them almost green or the squirrels feast on them. So far we have only parsley, dill, and cillantro growing but I hope to get several kinds of lettuce, mustard, spinich, Swiss chard, and bitter greens growing soon.

Before I knew it, an hour of fun was done and I was behind on gardening and getting my stuff packed up for 4 days of birding and paddling. I'll be doing the Bolivar Christmas Count, in the portion that is Anahuac NWR, on Thursday. AND I had had a previous  thirty minutes of fun, walking on the beach with Natalie and two dogs, watching the sunrise, and enjoying the shore birds and sounds of the waves. So I was well gifted with all these little stocking stuffers.

Garden Like You're Saving the World

There are many reasons to have a garden: to collect favorite plant species,  to have a calm, happy space, to make your property more attractive, to help live a long happy life, to have a place where butterflies and birds can add their beauty, to grow the healthiest and best tasting fruits and vegetables, to help maintain plant diversity.

But today a keystone group of animals (keystone species are necessary to preserve their ecosystems) is under severe attack, from loss of habitat, pesticides, and  introduced diseases. That group is the bees. Many have gone extinct and others are severely threatened. Wild hives of honeybees may be completely gone and 35 percent of the U.S. honeybee population between 2006 and 2009 have disappeared in from the colony collapse syndrome or other causes. There are 4000 known species of these bees in the U.S., so doing just a few changes in your garden can help many different species of bees continue their pollination jobs.

Bees evolved from wasps and with flowering plants as they changed from meat eaters to pollen and nectar eaters.And plants have evolved to become more attractive to bees and other pollinators. Some orchids go so far as to smell and/or look like a female bee. The poor male gets a dose of pollen rather than love.

A  100 million year old bee fossil preserved in amber

Today bees help fertilize some 250,000 flowering plants and a third of all our foods, including most of our fruits and vegetables.  Without bees, most of these plants would not be able to form seeds and continue to exist. And crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants which can make some fruit by wind or self pollination, need bees to be truly productive.

One area in China has already learned, too late, the importance of bees. Indiscriminate use of pesticides has eliminated their bees and they have had to resort to hand pollinating their apple trees for the last two decades.

Workers in China hand- pollinating fruit trees - all apple and pear trees have to receive this treatment

Our native bees are uniquely adapted to fertilize our native plants, including members of the squash family and other new world vegetables and fruits. And bumblebees and some carpenter bees can shake the pollen out of tomatoes and other flowers by a process called sonification, allowing them to fully fertilize a flower on one visit while honey bees may take up to 7 visits to do the same job.

I'm working on a bee display, building bee houses and learning about our native bees. I'll share information on the various species with you in future posts.

But we can all begin to use our property to protect bees:

Grow plants that bees need - grow several varieties of early, mid-season, and late varieties of blooming plants of the types and colors attractive to bees.  They especially love blue and yellow plants but see blue/purple nectar guides on yellow and red plants. (They don't see red but do see in the ultra violet range so flowers show up with different colors and patterns to them than to us. )

Use this general list and check with your Native Plant Society for plants native to your region. Another easy way to determine species of each genus native to your state is to use the Lady Bird Johnson Plant Database.
Fill in the genus name, then use the "Narrow Your Search" feature on the right to enter the name of your state, before scrolling  down to the search button on the bottom.  You can then open each species, and scroll down to the USDA database link for that plant. This will allow you to see if the plant has been reported in your county.  This allows you to use plants that naturally grow close to you.You may also find seed sources by checking out the data base of native plant suppliers in your state or region.

• Aster - Aster
• Currant - Ribes
• Elder - Sambucus
• Fireweed - Chamerion
• Goldenrod - Solidago
• Huckleberry - Vaccinium
• Larkspur - Delphinum
• Lupine - Lupinus
• Madrone - Arbutus
• Mint - Mentha
• Oregon grape - Berberis
• Pacific waterleaf - Hydrophyllum
• Penstemon - Penstemon
• Rabbit-brush - Chrysothamnus
• Rhododendron - Rhododendron
• Salmonberry - Rubus
• Saskatoon - Amalanchier
• Scorpion-weed - Phacelia
• Snowberry - Symphoricarpos
• Stonecrop - Sedum
• Wild buckwheat - Eriogonum
• Willow - Salix
• Yarrow - Achillea

And do remember that plants bred to be showy often don't offer bees pollen or nectar.  Use the simple, native ones instead. Single flowers are better than doubles. Also let some of your herbs and vegetables go to flower. 

Don't use pesticides. Use garlic oil and BT to control mosquitoes. Use mechanical means of pest control first.  And remember that having pests is a sign of imbalance. Be sure to use organic fertilizers and things like compost teas to keep your plants unstressed and healthy so bugs won't attack them. Your soil needs to be alive, so don't kill it with chemical fertilizers.  Let the living organisms in the soil naturally nourish your plants.

Provide places for bees to maintain their nurseries. Seventy percent of the native bees live in holes in the ground. Thirty percent use hollow stems or rotten wood to make tunnels. Bumblebees live in holes made by mice and ground squirrels, old mice nests within bunch grass,  hollow trees,  and other cavities. So keep some ground clear of plants or mulch and keep messy dead stems and branches where you can. Provide bee houses for a neater solution.

Provide mud - if not is nearby - for your mason bees.

Provide fresh water. A birdbath works fine, just clean it every day or so.

We gardeners are entering our dreaming and planing stage as we contemplate our growing season just past and look forward to next year's gardens. While we read plant catalogs, we can also inventory what plants in our garden are useful to bees and figure out what other plants we might like to add. And this is a great time to build bee houses. I'll post about mine soon.

Another neat way you can help, and all while enjoying your garden, is to join the Great Sunflower Project and document the bee species that visit your garden.

And finally, you can recruit more people to work to save bees.  Post information on your facebook page, get fellow garden club members and other gardening friends involved, see if you can start bee projects in public spaces such as parks, fire stations, and libraries. We need to know the kinds and numbers of bees in our areas and then work to build their numbers.

These are some of the bees I've discovered on the refuge. 

Halictus -

Bombus centralis -

Osmia -

 
For further fascinating reading, check out some of these papers and books.

 Bee Basics:  An Introduction to Our Native Bees

Note:  You can download PDF files, then send them, as attachments,  to your Kindle Fire address and they will show up on your Kindle as books.  Very handy for these books that are free as PDFs but cost $$$ for the print version.  

How to Build a Bee Garden

Tomato Pollination Graphics

Give  Bees a Chance

Ten Reasons to Use Bumblebees for Pollination

A little good news: Extinct British Honey Bee Rediscovered

A Red List of Bees - shows status of some bees and shows a need for lots more research on other bee species. 

Book: Attracting Native Pollinators - This is a wonderful reference and has a Kindle version.

Guide to Eastern Bumblebees

Guide to Western Bumblebees


Pollinator Syndrome Traits Table

Pesticides That Kill Bees

The Universial Language of Flowers

I recently spent a Friday morning watering my friend Natalie's garden before bringing her dog back with me to the refuge for a weekend of babysitting. Natalie lives in Galveston, which is heading for one of the hottest and driest summers of record, so I planed to thoroughly water all of her garden to hold it until she finished helping her college daughter change apartments.

Part of Natalie's front yard.

I started watering at dawn and was in the side yard and almost finished  when a little Mexican lady came to the fence and called "Lady".  I thought she was one of the tamale ladies I've met while working in Natalie's front yard (they drive around the neighborhood in a beat-up car and honk and stop where they see people outside) so went to see what she wanted. She said "I no English".  Then she started talking in Spanish and gesturing that she wanted one of each color of zinnea - red, yellow, and white - from Natalie's garden.  I told her one momento - I'll get some scissors - and mimed cutting.  She nodded and I gathered up scissors and added water to a  plastic gi'me cup and went back out and cut her a bouquet of flowers with her exclaiming all the while. She immediately picked up a spent head.  I told her "no I'd give her better ones". But she mimed picking the seeds and planting them so she looked for heads with seeds while I finished picking the fresh zinnias.

Two varieties of red zinnias with yellow bells in the background

Then I cut a branch of lantana and pulled most of the leaves of of it and mimed planting it. She eagerly said "yes, yes", and we added it to her cup of water and flowers.  I also gave her a cutting of Turk's cap which I again mimed planting.

Yellow double zinnia

She thanked me profusely in two languages and walked away, leaving me with a happy feeling from getting to share my love of plants with another person who also loves them.

I love the yellow centers in this zinnia

 It's been awhile since I've been able to share plants. But when I first lived in Houston, my neighbor and I decided to garden the median strip between our two driveways together.  Whenever I needed to wack something back, she made me make cuttings of the prunings because otherwise she felt like the cuttings were dying babies. Then whenever someone stopped to admire our gardens, we would offer them rooted cuttings. It was a great way to get to know our neighbors in a city where people mostly drive in and out of their neighborhoods and don't know the people who live around them.

A blue salvia that is a beautiful conterpoint to Natalie's apricot house

Sorry that I'm so far behind on posting.  But my tour is coming to a close here and I'm busy making arrangements to visit friends and relatives before starting another tour. I'll have a lot to write about soon. And I'm busy trying to get the new trees at Anahuac NWR in a state  such that the next watering person can find them.  I'm spending a few hours each day cutting baccharis from near them and hauling a mulch to the ones that still need it so they can survive longer between waterings. Pray for a tropical storm or small hurricane to come our way. We could use about twenty or more inches of water right now.

Fighting the Good War on Veteran's Day

Today, as usual, I spent some time in my ongoing battle against Nutgrass, AKA Nut Grass -  Purple Nutsedge – Cyperus rutundus.  This is an international invasive that causes massive problems around the world and great economic damage to farmers. The country of origin is not known but it came from some warm place and loves lots of hot sun  and some water, both of which it easily finds here.

Some of the more mature nutgrass

My weapon of choice, the trusty Chopper Doper

The nuts of nutgrass

The nutgrass army was waiting  in their trenches, both over and under the landscape cloth in the butterfly garden. I came armed with my cultivator/hoe, fondly called Chopper Dopper, a 5-gallon bucket, and gardening stool.  Soon the battle commenced with me loosening and then feeling for the connecting fibers between the nuts of nutgrass.  These guys are impervious to beheading, It's the hidden nuts that are their life force. Soon I was getting out whole squads of them at once, then going back to find the nuts still gripping the landscape cloth. Platoons of them filled my 5 gallon bucket at the rate of one per hour.

Two nuts clinging tenaciously to the landscape cloth under the mulch. One is at the bottom middle of the picture and the other is to the left near the top of the picture.

 Finally I had almost routed the entire unit from the 5 or 6 square feet that was this day's battle ground. Soon, that is in another 3-5 days, I'll have an entire section of the garden cleared out.  Then I'll have to be diligent on fiinding the survivors before they can regrow more troups. I'll also be assisted by my ally,  Frogfruit, Phyla nodiflora, a wonderful  little plant that also grows very aggressively here. I plan to take pieces of plants, with a little root attached,  and just move them over to the area that I will have twice weeded visible nut grass. The frogfruit  will soon spread and help prevent nutgrass from becoming a monoculture again.  And it will provide food for butterflies and bees while making it's cute little white flowers.

A small cleared area.  This takes a couple of hours. 

And more battles waiting for soldiers:

The Cattails are taking over around the VIS pond.  They are on my battle list as well.

Ragweed is another invasive. Rain will help be be able to pull the plants up but the millions of seeds will sprout again next year.