Can I get an AMEN?
While I was visiting some of the sites in my dear Portland yesterday with friends, my neighbor decided to pay someone to come in and pull up every invasive thing in his lawn. I had a word with him and offered to keep it trimmed, free of charge, on a regular basis, which he said I could do. The 8 o’clock sun has arrived and is actually hitting my tomato plants and not the Himalayan blackberry bramble that used to be in his lawn, nor is it gracing squills, mustards, burdocks, or morning glories. Unfortunately, they took out the lovely (but invasive and non-native) phlox that had so recently popped up and bloomed, but with every omelette comes a few cracked eggs. The lawn looks like it’s someone else’s and not my neighbor’s, the difference is that profound. I wish I had pictures of the before so that you could fully appreciate the after. I’m very pleased.
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I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t have much patience. I also tend to overreact and take extreme measures when it comes to protecting my garden plants. It’s probably a good idea for all of us that I’m not in a national security position because these tendencies wouldn’t serve me well there.
On Thursday, I checked the garden only to find that my Swiss chard had paper-thin discolorations over large parts of their leaves. I quickly ran up to my garden books and the internet to try and determine a cause. Not being able to find one, I assumed the worst: some sort of earth-borne fungus or nematode had infected my chard and I must save the garden by removing it before it spreads to other plants! I quickly ran out to the garden and chopped down all but two of the plants, leaving a forest of chard stumps in my wake.
THEN I called the friendly and helpful folks at Portland Nursery. The gentleman on the end of the line told me that with the recent erratic weather (hot days, cold nights, sporadic rain showers), the chard was most likely just suffering and in need of water.
I have a fridge full of chard to cook. Anybody want dinner?
No More
My secret is not about dirt, either.
I’m against non-native, invasive, noxious species. Those things that at some point we thought we wanted or needed but have now gotten out of hand and they just muddy up the waters for everything else that’s trying to grow and green. There are so many plants that I see growing wild due to man’s folly and it makes me think about what’s not living there because of it. With that in mind, I confess that I have introduced something into my garden that I really shouldn’t have: spring beauties (Claytonia virginica).
I brought these with me from Illinois when I moved to Portland. They’d actually been with me in the Chicago suburbs for a year or two. When I dug myself a portion of mint from my mom’s house, I inadvertently dug up some spring beauties too. I unwittingly took the beauties to live with me in the suburbs when I moved the mint. I was pleasantly surprised the next spring when the popped up alongside the mint. What I find ironic about my little beauties is that the western U.S. has a surprisingly high number of native spring beauties, but me, I’ve got a sample of a variety from the eastern U.S. I could have had any number of beauties and I chose these little ones. They had me at “hello”.
When this plant surfaces in the springtime (about 2-3 weeks ago to be semi-accurate) they stick long slender serpentine leaves up through the soil. As the leaves get longer and more robust, they next develop delicate stems and buds. Voila! A week later you’ve got the kind of flower any bride would be pleased to carry down the aisle.
So, I’m guilty and I’m a hypocrite. I do what I encourage others not to, but when a flower is so precious as to be named “spring beauty” how can you be mad at it? Look at the picture below and tell me they aren’t lovely. Can you see the tiny pink lines on the petals and the pink stamen?
First some updates:
I have been plagued and kept busy by the small white butterfly I mentioned in my last post. My collard is not even the hardest hit, even though it’s the largest brassica in my garden. I have a small kale plant I put in last winter that I’ve harvested once already. The small whites laid about 20 eggs on its leaves. I smashed (GRRR SMASH! SMASH!) every one of the little suckers into oblivion. The little flutterbys have also laid quite a few eggs on my kale starts that I have grown from seed. It’s very odd to see a plant that’s no bigger than a sprig of parsley get bombarded with eggs. I am vigilant and with any luck, I will be able to control the pests with my daily rounds.
Also, as of this posting, there are now 23 out of 30 holes filled in my bee house. I’m very excited and each day I go out to the box and check out what work has transpired. I do love my little bees.
I’m very pleased with the progression of two things in my garden: my Jerusalem artichokes and my strawberries. Almost all of my strawberry plants have not only put out stalks for flowers, but many of them have started blooming. We have some good warm sun today, so with any luck, the bees will find the blooms and help the plants makes some scrumptious little red berries!
I’m also happy that my Jerusalem artichokes have survived the winter and have started to emerge from the earth. Last fall, I harvested the tubers from the bottoms of the plants (for those that aren’t familiar with Jerusalem artichokes, they are a sunflower, native to the U.S. that produces an edible tuber). After I harvested, I transplanted the root systems (sans tubers) to a different spot in the yard. I got the nagging feeling after the transplant that maybe I should have left one or two tubers on each plant. After all, the plant makes the tubers as a means of storing energy. I thought that perhaps I had harvested a bit too much, leaving the plants with nothing to sustain them during the winter. Additionally, we had a mighty bad winter last December, where we got much colder weather and more snow than normal for this part of the country. I was just sure that I’d doomed the little suckers. Happily, little green sprouts started popping up through the ground this past week, indicating that my transplant was successful. I’m sure that I’ll have another great crop this year (although I might just take it easy on how many I take from each plant).
