Rain Barrel Workshop - Monday, September 13

The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and Clean VA Waterways are providing a Rain Barrel Workshop at Forest Hill Park in Richmond, VA on Monday, September 13th from 6:30 - 7:30 P.M. Learn about the benefits of rain barrels and how to install and maintain them. Each participant will go home with a pre-assembled rain barrel. This workshop is held at the Stone House in Forest Hill Park, which is near the intersection of Forest Hill Ave. and 41 St. Richmond, VA. Space is limited. To sign-up, contact David Jennings.

Cost: $65.00
Contact: djennings@acb-online.org – (804) 775-0951

Love of books is deeply rooted - thanks mom

There are two places where I love to get lost - in nature, or in a good book. Thankfully, my mother planted both of these seeds in me at a very early age by often taking me to the beautiful little woods in our small hometown and to the local public library. My love of both nature and reading have stayed with me throughout my life.

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month - "a time to remind everyone that a library card is the smartest card of all". If you haven't visited your local library recently, I encourage you to do so. Here are some excerpts from a couple of the books that I picked up on my last trip.

The Vegetable Gardener's Bible , by Edward C. Smith, ©2000 - I really picked this book up to learn more about which vegetables I might be able to grow at this time of year. I didn't even notice that "Ed's High-Yield W-O-R-D System for All North American Gardening Regions" is based heavily on using organic methods. In fact, "organic" is the "O" of the W-O-R-D system, which stands for Wide Rows - Organic Methods - Raised Beds - and Deep Soil. The book contains wonderfully detailed information about environmentally friendly topics such as compost, natural pest control and fertilizer, testing your soil, worms and many of the other topics that I have been studying over the last few months. In fact, if I had found this book earlier, I could have saved myself a lot of research time on the Internet. The second part of the book has detailed instructions for growing many popular vegetables. As is often the case, visiting the library allowed me to "preview" this book and decide that it is a must-have for my own personal library.

American Gardening Series Waterwise Gardening, by Lauren Springer, ©1994 - An excellent book on saving water in a landscape written in a fun, chatting-over-the-garden fence tone. Here are some excerpts from the introduction: "Waterwise gardening is just plain old common sense. Good gardening practice means adapting to the conditions at hand. Why have a garden that depends on large amounts of a resource that appears to be ever more expensive and elusive? Why not bank on the future and create a less needy garden? Even if there has always been enough water in your area, a drought-tolerant garden allows you to go away without cumbersome arrangements for watering in absentia. A garden in harmony with its surroundings, both in appearance and in terms of cultural needs, is a healthier, more beautiful garden. Plants that receive the conditions they prefer are better able to fight off pests and diseases. Plants that get by on less water demand less to look their best."

As usual, I also picked up a couple of fiction books while at the library. I've already been able to read the two new James Patterson novels as well as the latest John Sandford. All of that fun and knowledge for less than $2.00 (I was a little bit overdue on some of them!)

Some people say that public libraries are becoming obsolete because of computers and the internet but I know I will never feel that way. I could no more do without the public libraries then I could do without being outside in nature.

Thanks mom, for giving me both of those loves.

P.S. I still miss you.

To find your closest local public library, visit this site: Search for Public Libraries

EC's Fall Native Plant Sale, September 10th - 11th

Fall is a great time to add color to your garden and native plants are a great choice! What could be better than enhancing your garden with environmentally-friendly native plants that need less water, less chemicals and will attract pollinators to your landscape? Friday, September 10th and Saturday, September 11th, Environmental Concern, Inc. a non-profit dedicated to protecting the beauty of local wetlands, will hold their 11th annual Fall Native Plant Sale.

Take advantage of the plant sale opportunity on Friday from 9 - 4 and on Saturday from 9- 2, to see mature native plants growing in EC’s gardens, nursery, and living shoreline. The EC nursery staff, including three Certified Professional Horticulturists, will be on-hand to help answer your questions and select plants for your garden.

EC offers a variety of plants well-suited for Butterfly Gardens, Rain Gardens, Shade Gardens, Salt Tolerant Plantings and Songbird Hedgerows. Not sure which plants to try? We have plug sampler packs for each that offer a chance to try several species with great savings. Popular fall-blooming native plant species grown in our nursery, such as seaside goldenrod, New York aster, and seashore mallow will also be available for sale. Retail plant orders may be placed in advance, but must be ordered by 12 pm on Wednesday, September 8th.

Environmental Concern is located at 201 Boundary Lane in St. Michaels, MD.

For more information, call EC at 410-745-9620 or visit www.wetland.org.

Do bees chase butterflies?

Someone emailed me this question and I thought I would share it, hoping to find an answer for her:

Question: I have lots of container plants to attract butterflies and bees, both larval-host and nectar plants. Blue hyssop especially seems to draw a great variety and number of bees and now I don't see as many butterflies around. I wonder whether the bees are scaring off butterflies. Yesterday I observed what seemed to be a bee chasing a butterfly away from a flower blossom. Have you ever heard of this?

From Martha M.

My answer: Hi Martha. I know I have seen bumblebees and other insects that come to my flowers chasing off hummingbirds, but I have never seen it with bees and butterflies. Even with hummingbirds, I think it is more the hummingbirds flying away than the wasps actually chasing.

I do know that certain WASPS actually eat caterpillars. I was really surprised the first time that I saw it, but I know that a lot more of my caterpillars are just disappearing and I think it is the wasps.

-----------------------------------------

I told Martha that I would post the question in hopes of finding someone with a little more knowledge on the subject. Soooooo, has anyone else ever noticed butterflies and bees competing for the same plants? If so, can bees actually hurt butterflies? I'd sure love to know the answer myself.

In search of the Big "O": Finding Locally Grown Organic Produce

Sure, chocolate is sexy, in a guilty-pleasure sort of way. But when you are ready for a more meaningful culinary relationship, one that you can really sink your teeth into, nothing is quite as perfect as the pleasures of produce.

Consider the tomato, with it’s beautiful, clear complexioned skin. It is firm to the touch, it has a beautiful tantalizing aroma, your mind reels with all of the wonderful things you can do with it. And best of all, this particular plump beauty you have found is pure, big “O” organic! Or is it?

“All-natural”, “hormone-free”, “locally-grown” and “pesticide free” are all terms that you may see applied to produce and other products at your local supermarket or farmers market. But do those steps make a product “organic”? Not necessarily.

The term “organic” is actually a legal term which is defined and governed by the United States Department of agriculture.

The National Organic Program (NOP) is a certification program administered by the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) that requires all organic foods to meet strict government standards. These standards regulate how foods are grown, handled and processed. Any single-ingredient food that meets the criteria can carry the USDA label of 100% organic.

Anyone who has tackled the challenge of going organic in their own home gardens knows that the process does sometime mean more work. At home, the temptation to use just a little bit of pesticide or fast-acting fertilizer is sometimes too hard to resist. Organic farmers are strictly forbidden from utilizing any of those quick, but harmful, methods.

Under the National Organic Program, organic produce is grown without any antibiotics, hormones, pesticides or other harmful chemicals. Farmers use all natural fertilizers and often hand-pick insect pests. To earn the NOP Organic label, all of their procedures are carefully monitored by third party certifiers, including the entire handling, processing and shipping of the products.

September is National Organic Harvest Month. It’s a great time to support local organic farms that are taking steps to create products that are healthier for consumers and for the planet.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture has a great list of Maryland Certified Organic Growers, Retailers, Processors & Handlers (pdf).

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services provides this list of Certified Organic Producers.

"Organic" Vegetable Gardening at Home
The NOP Organic designation does not apply to gardeners that grow produce for their own consumption. However, to provide the same benefits to your produce and to the environment, here are some suggested tips for organic vegetable gardening.

Amend the Soil 
* Before planting, amend the soil with organic matter such as compost, manures, coffee grounds etc. Continue to do this once or twice a year.

Fertilizing 
• Use organic fertilizers which are plant, animal or mineral based. These are generally slow release and can’t burn the plants.

• Liquid seaweed (ex. Maxicrop) makes a great foliar spray for plants that produce food. Spray both sides of the leaves until they drip weekly for vegetable plants and monthly for fruit bearing trees, etc.

Methods of Insect Control 
• Insecticidal soap. • Ultra-fine Horticultural Oil.

• To control caterpillars use Bt. (Bacillus Thuringensis)

• Mechanical Controls such as Agrofabric row covers, staking or caging plants & sticky traps.

Weed Control
• Mulch, mulch, mulch!

• Corn gluten is not only a natural preemergent herbicide but it is also a great source of organic Nitrogen..

• Vinegar has been found to kill annual weeds!

10 Tips to Conserve Water Outside

1) Mulch your gardens - Mulch is great for retaining moisture, helping your plants through times of heat and drought.

2) Mow your grass to the right height - The taller the grass blade, the deeper the root system becomes. Grass with deeper roots is more drought-resistant.

3) Water at the right times - Watering in the early morning or late evening when temperatures and wind speeds are the lowest will reduce water loss through evaporation.

4) Calibrate your irrigation system - A few tuna cans can help you calibrate your irrigation system so you know how long to irrigate

5) Install micro-irrigation - Install a drip or other water conserving irrigation system. Slow drip and deep root watering systems can save up to 60% of all water used in garden care. Professionally installed and maintained irrigation systems will further help conserve water.

6) Install rain barrels - Rain barrels collect and save rain, which provides wonderful pure fresh water for plants and landscapes. A rain barrel will save most homeowners about 1,300 gallons of water during the peak summer months

7) Use permeable surfaces- pavers, gravel and other permeable surfaces help keep the water where it belongs - in your yard!

8 ) Choose an eco-friendly landscape company- a good eco-friendly landscape company can help you save water and prevent stormwater pollution

9) Find a WaterSense Irrigation Contractor- All too often, landscape irrigation wastes water—up to 1.5 billion gallons every day across the country. WaterSense irrigation partners can help you reduce your water consumption, save money, and maintain a healthy and beautiful landscape.

10) Shower outside! - I've known for a long time that my friend Paula has an outdoor shower. I always thought she added it because they have three people living in a one bathroom home. But yesterday she told me the wonderful added benefit of allowing all the water from her shower to soak into her lawn and landscape!

Why are the good looking ones so naughty?

Back in July, I wrote about the 12 Relationship Rules for Gardeners. This tongue in cheek post compared the challenges of creating a healthy landscape with the challenges of building a healthy relationship.

Rule number 7 mentioned that choices based on looks alone are often more trouble than they are worth. Such is often the case when we add non-native, invasive species to our landscapes.

As defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture: Invasive plants are introduced species that can thrive in areas beyond their natural range of dispersal. These plants are characteristically adaptable, aggressive, and have a high reproductive capacity. Their vigor combined with a lack of natural enemies often leads to outbreak populations.

As gardeners, it is sometimes tempting to want to add some of these plants to our landscape. After all, a plant that self-propagates or spreads to quickly fill in a large area can seem like a good thing. But once invasive plants take over our native plants, the result can be:

• an area's natural biodiversity is destroyed
• native plants can eventually become permanently eliminated
• the animals that need native plants for food and habitat cannot use many of the non-native ones
• it can costs billions of dollars to control invasive exotic plants

Native plants, on the other hand, generally require less water and less chemicals, which make them much friendlier for the local environment.

Once you decide to start creating a more eco-friendly garden, some of the decisions you have to make may be tough ones. But in the long run, choosing native plants, or at least NON-invasive species, will be much better for the environment and much easier to maintain.

Here are links for more information about invasive plant species in the area:

Invasive Species of Concern in Maryland

Invasive Alien Plant Species of Virginia (pdf file)

Native Alternatives to Invasive Plants (pdf file)

More about worms - fishing for answers

I recently wrote a post about the wonders of earthworms in a garden.

While working on the post, I was going to mention how I sometimes get earthworms for my garden.

Every now and then if I accompany my husband to a bait shop, I buy a small bucket of worms and take them home and drop them in my soil. I’ve been told that isn’t really a good idea and that they will die there. But since they would have died as bait on the end of some fisherman’s line, I figured dying in a pile of nice moist compost in my yard might be just as acceptable an end for these “sacred” creatures as being strung on a hook and chomped in half by a hungry fish.

But in my continuing effort to learn the correct “environmentally friendly” way of doing things, I wanted to check with a "worm expert" before I recommended this method. What I found out was that the harm that I was doing might not be to the worms, themselves, but to the environment because I was introducing a non-native species.

I contacted Tami S. Ransom, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia who has done some research on introduced species.

Here is what she said.

Hi Betsy. I saw that you had already posted your blog about adding earthworms to gardens. The only thing I wanted to bring to your attention is that all of the earthworms that you buy as bait or for compost piles are invasive earthworms. In urbanized areas, such as the target area for your blog, invasive earthworms are already well-established. Pretty much any earthworm that you find in your garden is a non-native earthworm. And, it is true that these non-native earthworms can be beneficial for gardens.  

However, if you post a follow up to your original post, you should caution your readers that if they decide to purchase earthworms for their gardens, they should avoid purchasing "Alabama jumpers". These earthworms in the genus Amynthas have been recently introduced from Asia. Because they are recent invaders, data about their effects is still scarce. However, it does appear that they can damage forest ecosystems. When introduced here in the South, they seem to thrive. I've seen riparian areas here in Charlottesville where it appears they are denuding areas of leaf litter and reducing the understory plant community. 

Here's a link to a recent story about these Asian earthworms: 

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/110507/news_20071105041.shtml 

As I said, in urban areas, it's probably not too big of a deal to put purchased worms in gardens (as long as they aren't those Asian ones!) The European invasives are already here to stay. All the compost worms that people buy are also invasives. But, if you are trying to be eco-conscious, then making your already established worms happy is probably the best way to go :)

Thank you Tami. As always, I appreciate all the wonderful scientists and scholars who are willing to help us all learn the right way to "take care of our share" of the planet!

National Eat Outside Day - August 31 - Pick Your Pleasure

Did you know that August 31st is National Eat Outdoors Day? This annual event celebrates the end of summer vacation with a day of outdoor dining. Have your coffee and bagel on the patio, take a sandwich to work for an outdoor picnic, or treat your special someone to a night of fine dining under the stars.

Of course, if you grow anything that’s edible, your favorite Eat Outdoors activity might be strolling through your own garden and sampling the fruits, vegetables and herbs that are ripe for the picking.

Another great activity that gardeners will particularly enjoy for National Eat Outdoors Day is to visit a pick-your-own fruit or vegetable farm. There are plenty of pick-your-own farms to allow you the true gardeners experience of eating produce fresh from the tree, vine or plant. Below is listing of some of the local farms and what they have available to pick for the next few weeks.

Butler’s Orchard– Germantown, MD – raspberries, blackberries, apples

Crooked Run Orchard– Purcellville, Virginia - apples, plums, Asian pears, red raspberries

Great Country Farms– Bluemont, VA – potatoes, concord grapes

Heartland Farm and Orchard – Markham, VA – peaches, apples

Hollin Farms– Delaplane, VA – Peaches, Black Berries, Tomatoes, Greenbeans, Okra, Sweet Peppers, Summer Squash, Eggplant, Bitter Melon, Chinese Long Beans

Homestead Farm– 20 miles nw of DC in Montgomery County, Maryland – currently has apples

Larriland Farm – Woodbine, MD – peaches, apples, tomatoes, sweet corn

Rock Hill Orchard – Mount Airy, MD – snap beans, red raspberries, apples

Stribling Orchard – Markham, Virginia – peaches and apples

To find more pick your own farms near you, visit this website  PickYourOwn.org

*Note: All information was taken from farm websites. Please call ahead to verify dates and products available for picking.

Win $5000 for your youth garden project

Take the Green Thumb Challenge! Green Education Foundation (GEF) and Gardener’s Supply Company have teamed up on an exciting funding opportunity for established youth garden projects nationwide!

The organizations are calling on schools and youth groups to submit chronicles of their garden projects in a race to win a $5,000 prize. The award is designed to support the continued sustainability of an exceptional youth garden program that has demonstrated success, and has impacted the lives of kids and their community. Read more