Summer Xeriscaping Series: Parts 8 & 9

As fate would have it another semester of college rolled up on me in the week before last and suddenly I had to drop everything and get all that paperwork and the initial classwork done in a hurry. The good news is that I am now a student in North Carolina A&T, the bad news is that online classes are 'unique' and they absolutely caught me off-guard.  So today we have a double catchup post that covers the four plants from parts 8 and 9 of the summer xeriscaping series. This portion of of the series was supposed to cover the food plants, and flavoring herbs in far greater detail, however in the interest of keeping it to the point and with time in mind it has been boiled down to the four primary plants, and I've skipped the usual sub-topic. Next week's post will return to the usual format, so without further ado I bring you parts 8 and 9 of the summer Xeriscaping series.

Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum’ – Bronze Fennel, Zones 4-9

Bronze fennel is a dark colored foliage variety of traditional fennel. Normally most would reserve this plant to an ornamental role but it also serves as a drought tolerant replacement for traditional green fennel. Like green fennel; bronze fennel is a favorite food of the Black swallowtail butterfly. Earlier in the month I posted pictures of the caterpillars feasting on my bronze fennel demonstrating that they are especially visible when they are present. Now normally most gardeners might think “ACK! They’re eating my herbs!” But then fennel is so resilient that it often recovers from the caterpillars just fine and the bonus for that work is more butterflies to make your garden even more attractive.  Fennel is a rather tough perennial, the part you eat are the lacy leaves, which are often chopped up and added to all manner of Italian-style dishes but also have use in soups. Part of what makes Fennel drought-resistant is the fine foliage plus below or at the soil level the delicate-looking fronts emerge from a central crown. Basically the plant presents little surface area for the sun to heat up so it’s water needs are very small. For note, if you’ve ever seen what is labeled as “Anise root” in the supermarket that is probably a fennel crown.

Santolina sp. – Lavender Cotton, Zones 5-9

Santolina is one of those plants that gets little use in the common garden. Typically you will see it in gardening books as part of a low formal hedge along a path or as part of a knot garden. But the real power of santolina is its ability to ignore drought once established. The green variety is better for dry partial shade whereas the silver type is better for full-sun drought conditions. The two of them have the same remarkable scent which resembles a unlikely hybrid of Cedar and Lavender. At set intervals during the year santolina will also bloom and produce yellow bachelor’s button-like flowers which are interesting to look at but not showy. As an herb Santolina can be used to repel moths while its oils are useful as a more masculine replacement for actual Lavender. It bears mentioning that santolina grows just as well in New Jersey as it does in North Carolina giving it a great distribution. In the north it is typically called Santolina, where as in the south it is often tagged as ‘Lavender-Cotton’ due to it’s cottony fuzz and foliage coloration that resembles lavender.

Rosemarinus officinalis – Rosemary, Zones 5b-10

I suspect some of you readers out there knew I was going to get to Rosemary eventually, and here it is, one of the last Xeriscaping plants on the list. Before I go any further it is important to note that Rosemary is a tender perennial at best up north, some varieties such as ‘Arp’ are said to handle frost and freezes but I would still try to keep it potted and bring it in for the winter up north. For those of us from at least Virginia southward rosemary is a incredible hedge-forming perennial that can reach a height of five feet over time and effectively can replace some common needle bearing landscaping shrubs. Additionally Rosemary will thrive in heat, poor sandy soils and, utter neglect. What it wont tolerate is constant wetness and of course repeated exposure to freezing temperatures. As far as Xeriscaping is concerned rosemary is a easy winner since it can be shaped into topiaries cut into hedges and otherwise arranged to do whatever you want. If you consider that it is a powerful scent and flavoring herb and that the often straight stems can be used as flavor-imparting skewers for kabobs then the use for this herb is literally off the charts. Additionally there are numerous types of Rosemary, some that creep along the ground, others with arrow-straight stems and others with dramatic bloom or foliage. Lastly, lets face it rosemary is incredibly cheap to acquire so why not?

Solanum melongena - Eggplant

Few realize it but eggplant is a drought tolerant plant. I suspect this is due in part due to what we consider an ‘eggplant’ or in short the supermarkets have spoiled most rotten with giant purple eggplants. The eggplant is an immensely variable family of incredibly varied types flavors and shapes.  For example the following types are completely at odds with your traditional large purple eggplant.

1. Applegreen: Small round fruit that are bright green overall with the veins being white adding a neat crackled effect. Fruit are about 3” in girth.
2. Louisiana Long Green: An heirloom variety that produces narrow curved green fruit that are roughly shaped like a banana.
3. Striped Togo: This eggplant relative produces clusters of fruit (2-5) on tall columnar plants. Each fruit is striped with yellow and orange when ripe.
4. Turkish-Italian Orange: Looking more like a wild nightshade then an eggplant. ‘TIO’ produces medium-sized misshapen fruits between 2” and 6” of girth that are bright orange when ripe.
5. Purple Tiger: This is a good medium sized eggplant, the fruit are striped with white and varied shades of purple making it a dramatic replacement for plain purple eggplant. Fruit is medium to large sized.
6. Fox-Face: This variety is not edible and serves as a ornamental, the fruit are shaped roughly like a dog’s face with two or more protrusions sticking out towards where it is attached to the plant. Each fruit is also brilliant orange and when casually viewed they resemble Fox-heads.

Eggplant is one of those great vegetables, that plays by its own set of rules, you can use it for ornamentation or for food, but one this is universally clear. Most of the smaller fruited less heavily hybridized species have impressively low watering requirements and handle droughts with incredible ease. The down side is some of the larger eggplant species don’t set fruit in cooler weather so you have to make sure you know what you're using. As a final point, eggplant has been noted as being grown in arid climates for some time, I think this is due in part to it's fruit biology. Unlike a tomato which needs regular water to form and will split if it gets too much water, the eggplant's fruit is made of that white flesh that is moist but only barely so.  For example a ripe tomato  that weighs 123 grams has a water weight of 114, and thus is 93% water by volume. A eggplant that weighs a mere 41 grams will have a water weight of 38 and is 92% water by volume. In short the eggplant distributes its water more less is sitting around in the fruit. If you take into account the large leaves which shade the fruit, and the fruits leathery skin you have a fruit that has evolved to resist casual environmental damage and perpetuate itself successfully in a harsher climate. In fact most eggplant will callous over injured portions of the fruit long before they get a fungal disease unlike a tomato. In short, all but the designer genetically modified species of eggplant are practically optimized for drought and arid conditions.

So I hope this two-month series has had it’s desired effect, that is to get you thinking about Xeriscaping as more then just planting succulents and cacti. Also I hope you have been presented with some ideas that will help you think both outside the box and get a nice crop in difficult environmental times. Next week’s article will be covering defensive landscaping which is a method of plant selection  that can increase the difficulty potential trespassers, burglars or animal traffic  will experience on your property.

As we come to the end of August and enter the prime of hurricane season I have to remind you to stay safe and  play it careful, Hurricanes and the damage they cause is no joke. With that said, see you next week and as always Keep ‘em Growing!

Summer Xeriscaping Series: Part 7 of 9

Welcome back to another edition of Lost In the Farmer’s Market, today we are covering the seventh part of the Summer Xeriscaping series which covers plants that are Xeriscaping-compatible but generally don’t have that typical desert plant stigma. Additionally as with the other parts of this series we have a small section called natural wonders, and a subtopic which in this case continues the theme of what to do when you loose your crop.

First off I thought I’d show you this guy a common cicada, these are the critters best known for making a lot of noise in the trees during the summer.

 This cicada is demonstrating his or her preparedness for a new Olympic sport; Anti-Predation Camouflage.

A side shot of the same cicada so you can see the full body shape note the seeming lack of mouth parts. Cicadas only have a straw-like mouth part to feed on liquids such as nectar.

Now there are several species of cicada each with a differing life cycle, the one in the picture above is of the type that has a one year life cycle. The cicadas that get the most attention are those that emerge every fourteen or so years causing a nuisance in both sheer volume and noise. Thankfully cicadas overall are totally harmless as the adults don’t eat and generally spend their remaining time seeking a mate and making noise. Also cicadas are a important food source for certain types of wasp and birds in particular.

The second natural critter is this guy, a medium-sized dragon fly.

 This dragonfly sat there  unlike most and let me get close enough to snap this shot, they are in credible fliers with excellent eyesight by insect standards.

 The same dragon fly stayed still allowing this frontal shot from the same close range as the last one, despite what it looks like dragonflies do not have stingers and use their legs to capture their prey after which their chewing mouth-parts are used to eat whatever they catch.

A mere eight inches below the caterpillars were eating the same fennel plants still and one, had already formed a chrysalis.

 Normally I’d not even bother but this one perched atop the chewed tops of the fennel plant that the caterpillars from last week defoliated. But there’s more to that, as of late I’ve been seeing lots of these guys flying about. Dragonflies are unique insects that have a voracious appetite for the one insect we hate the most, mosquitoes and often inhabit the same sort of environment. It is worth saying that yes the test gardens have regular dragonfly visitors but this year it seems to have permanent residents.  Recently the CDC released a map of the states in which West Nile Virus and thus mosquito populations are on the rise as seen here.

This map can be found at full size on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website.

This is the United States Department of Agriculture Drought map as updated on August 7th 2012. You can find it in it's real PDA format on their website, USDA.gov

The most recent drought map seems to suggest a bit more if you notice a lot of the places where west nile is worst seem to also be areas hit by severe drought. The places where there is no drought (knock on wood) have reduced amounts or none of the virus problems.  It could be a coincidence, or it could be a sign of the times,  it is up to you to decide.

Now about losing your crop, it is a heart breaking event to realize that not only is that disease or pest situation so bad you have to cut down your own crops. If you consider that a crop loss tends to occur randomly and you may have a portion of a season left; you then are stuck deciding if you should try again for the short term or let the fields lay fallow and try again for fall planting. In prior editions we covered how to clear your affected crops, and what to do in the instance of containerized gardens to prepare for a shortened season and heavy productivity. 

Continuing that trend is the next step, once you’ve restarted your garden, what do you do to keep it on track. The first thing you must remember is that when you have to restart a crop in a short season is that you essentially are racing against time. As you saw in the case of my own container gardens, three weeks ago I destroyed the effected crops, then for a week let the pots and stakes sit to allow any remaining pests or larva die off as their food source was eliminated. Additionally all soil was disposed of as top soil in an area of the garden far away from any food crops. The pots were refilled with new topsoil that was enhanced with poultry manure and new crops were planted.  This brings us to the matter of what to do now, since the summer season will be coming to an end at least in temperature somewhere in September it means we have about six weeks, so the only option now is to fertilize.

In typical greenhouse production operations plants for consumption are fertilized at some level every time they are watered which in purpose counteracts limits of a growing season and the lack of nutrient in the sterile potting mixes. For your purposes if you utilized an manure enriched soil when restarting your crop and picked short-season crops, fertilizing twice a week with a nitrogen-rich water soluble fertilizer is the way tp get your crops to maturity in just a few weeks short. I recommend using an OMRI listed fish emulsion fertilizer (5-1-1) at the suggested rates on the packaging. The effect of this is to prompt your plants to reach their maturity faster then normal. In essence you would be borrowing a trick from the agri-business to make turnaround shorter without the damaging use of petroleum or chemical products while reaping a decent crop in the short term.

The advantage to this method is that vigorous plants that are well fed tend to be able to fend off most casual diseases and pests by themselves.  Now that the aspect of accelerating production has been covered next is the main topic for today.

 You can see two varieties of Pomegranate here, the bigger one to the rear is 'Angel Red' and the lower one with the branch reaching towards the bottom of the picture is 'Nana' or dwarf pomegranate.

Here is a close up if a leaf on the Angel Red Pomegranate as you can see the glossy leaves are oval and thus are well suited to providing less resistance to wind and presenting less surface area to the sun thus loosing less water to dessication.

Punica granatum – Pomegranate, Zone 6b-11

The noble Pomegranate, is one of those fruit-producing plants where the plant it self is virtually never seen, and yet the odd fruit is now in all sorts of beverages and in the produce aisle at the supermarket. If you have never eaten a pomegranate you have missed out; it is a wonderfully sweet and tart fruit and if you eat the seeds it also has this nice almond-like nutty flavor. No wonder the Greeks and Romans held it in similar regard to the fig what other fruit was good for you but also provided respectable levels of protein. As far as Xeriscaping goes pomegranate bushes are elegant looking well contained plants with rounded narrow leaves that resemble most narrow leaved evergreens in function. Obviously the leaves in this case are far larger, more rounded and in come cultivars have a reddish-bronze coloration when newly opened. What makes the pomegranate a Xeriscaping plant is its sheer resistance to drought. A prime case of this can be found in Fayetteville at the Cape Fear Botanical Gardens. The pomegranate specimen there produces a decent yield of fruit yearly but receives no irrigation other then what nature provides. Additionally I might add Pomegranates have virtually no pest problems in this climate and require little other then a little additional care post installation.

The Sweet Potato vegetable has heart shaped leaves and green or red stems, the ornamental has been hybridized to have a wide variety of leaf shapes and foliage colors.

Ipomoea batatas – Sweet Potato/ Potato Vine

The sweet potato in its two common forms, the ornamental annual and the annual vegetable is an efficient plant for Xeriscaping.  What makes the sweet potato efficient Is it’s resistance to pests and disease while bearing a strong tolerance to heat and drought. Both types of sweet potatoes produce tubers and both types of tubers are edible, sweet potatoes are a good source of numerous nutrients and the heart of the plants ability to withstand drought. The tubers of the potato vine are generally considered as a flavorless famine food and play less of a role in drought resistance. Ornamental potato vine instead relies heavily on its ability to root in soil where its vines touch to counter act the effects of drought and heat. Both plants are excellent ground covers which can choke out weeds with ruthless ability; even fire ants seem not to want to deal with soil where these plants are growing. The sweet potato vegetable is a good  long-season edible plant for Xeriscaping as it alone when grown under taller crops in tall raised beds can reduce the amount of time you spend weeding and help hold mulch in place reducing erosion and the need to water. The ornamental form respectively can be used in poor soils to again prevent erosion, reduce water runoff, and if need be add color to an otherwise unappealing area. As a final bonus did I mention, that both can be cultivated by stem cuttings, soil layering or saving tubers?  This means you could continually grow crops from little bits of last year’s crops reaping great rewards for little investments. In the test gardens 4-8 ounce tubers repeatedly yielded upwards of three pounds of food crops and the mother tuber could be recycled over several years paying for it self in about two years.

 Jerusalem Artichokes have a pretty flower that absolutely identifies their heritage and relation to the sunflower family.

 Much like traditional sunflowers Jerusalem Artichokes also display heliotropism, that is, their flowers naturally tilt to follow the path of the sun, even through cloud cover they still do this. Sunflowers as a whole might be the most cheerful plants you can grow.

Helianthus tuberosus – Jerusalem Artichoke

Jerusalem artichoke is one of those plants that is not as well known as it probably should be. As far as Xeriscaping plants go, in this years test gardens it has needed the absolute least water of any food-producing non-perennial plant in the entire garden.  In case the Latin name does not seem familiar the Jerusalem artichoke (aka ‘sunchoke’) is a member of the sunflower family and bears no relation to the actual artichoke family (Cynara).  Healthy stands of this plant can readily reach heights of six or more feet per individual tuber planted with a horizontal spread of three to four feet. Since it is in the Aster family its flowers are attractive to most pollinators especially assorted types of bees. Basically what makes this plant so great is that it produces large edible tubers that are an ideal substitute for potatoes minus the sugars and carbohydrates that can pose problems for diabetics. These same tubers are the core essence of its drought tolerance as are the plants trademark fuzzy leaves which greatly reduce desiccation. When grown in raised beds this plant can readily be a wonderful food source to be harvested in the fall when paired with sweet potatoes. Combined the Sweet potatoes act as a ground cover and benefit from the shade cast by the Jerusalem artichoke where as the artichokes benefit from the sweet potatoes ability to block out weed competition. Both plants respond well to fertilizer and shrug off poor soils but won’t tolerate prolonged wetness.

This brings us to an end for this episode of Lost in the farmer's market, next we we will be covering two xeriscaping compatible herbs and another often overlooked vegetable that one can be used in xeriscaping. Also the weekly sub-topic will continue on the same lines with any good things that happen to be caught on camera within the next week.  

As always folks, watch out for the wild weather; thank you for reading and Keep 'em growing!

Summer Xeriscaping Series: Part 6 of 9

Welcome back to another episode of Lost In the Farmer’s Market. Our goal here is to provide you a weekly resource for growing a better garden without all the back-breaking labor, chemicals or corporate shenanigans.

Today’s episode was set to be posted yesterday but occasionally nature forces me to change what I plan to post in part or in whole. The main topic for this post has not changed since part six of nine of the summer xeriscaping series is still nature aside quite useful. What has changed to some degree is the sub-topic which is an adjusted continuation of last week’s topic. Last week’s sub-topic covered what to do when insect damage to your crops renders them unproductive and beyond recovery. This weeks sub-topic will cover how to recover from such losses especially in the case of using container gardens to improve productivity while maintaining efficient use of water and space.

Now the natural menagerie of stuff that caused the delay of this article first off is this picture of the marble sized hail that fell in a major thunderstorm that occurred on the 2^nd of August. 

 

This is the third hail-thunderstorm that has hit Fayetteville and is a sign of the times. While the weather shifts, the storms will be come more violent and you start to see record highs and lows. Areas that used to receive regular timely rain will go dry or worse get too much. Remember folks you may not believe in climate change but at least have respect for the power of nature and be careful when storms like these come to pass

The second distraction was finally getting a picture of one of these little guys.  I’ve stated before that the test gardens are home to a reasonable population of both frogs and toads. On Sunday night I saw one hanging out between the container plantings.

Toads are generally active at night or on overcast days and are voracious eaters of insects. While I didn’t catch it on camera this little guy or gal had literally while I watched just eaten a cricket bigger then its head. Toads will generally eat anything they can fit in their mouths including smaller tads if hungry enough. However they are good at handling anything they can catch which means larger insect populations can be controlled if you do a bit to support a toad population. A pile of overturned broken clay pots can provide an adequate cover for toad populations. Additional areas of moisture like water features can provide a spawning ground that can produce decent resident populations. Lastly remember to avoid using vehicles or power equipment such as mowers around areas known to have active populations.

The third distraction comes in the form of these little critters; some folks might think ‘arggg caterpillars eating stuff!”  I personally think hey cool, these guys are neat, and they’re the larvae of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly. While yes they are chewing up the bronze fennel they are on I did plant it as much for a seasoning as a food supply for them.

 The larvae of the Black Swallowtail are attractive in their colored banding, to the point you can see them feeding on a stand of bronze fennel from several feet away easily.

 If you look carefully this little guy or girl is flipping me the bird for poking it.

In the second image I gently coerced this caterpillar to extend its defensive organs which are called Osmeterium. Basically these little slime coated organs deliver a reeking chemical-pheromone designed to repel predators by contact-dousing them basically in the same way riot police might use tear gas.

With all the natural wonders covered next on the list of topics is the sub-topic. How does one recover from a massive crop loss caused by insect infestation? Say you’ve lost your back yard crops to an insect problem or pathogen and proceeded to cut everything and disposed of the dying plants then taken the next step to save what seems to be doing well. What can you do then as you look at the empty plots that used to be your grand spring garden, a comparatively barren expanse?

You can take the first step by recovering with fast-growing crops. Typically if you suffer a crop loss in full or partially you can rapidly turn around the situation with a crop that can produce within a season or about 60 days. Secondly make sure to start with fresh soil, and spike that soil with a non-burning soil amendment/fertilizer such as black hen.  Generally a 14” fluted pot will require about 0.5 to 0.6 cu of soil material to be full enough to be within 1-2” of the pot rim. Additionally once the pot is half full if you mix in about a half-pound of black hen you can provide a season’s worth of soil fertility for most crops. It bears mention that the primary soil you use is important, but you must be discerning, potting soil is nice but it comes in two varieties with slow-release fertilizer (miracle-gro products) or the types that lack this and may be lacking in nutrients (pro-mix). Instead consider using a high quality ‘lawn soil’ or top soil that has been enriched using coconut fiber or peat moss allowing it excellent drainage.

The plants you can get to make a fine replacement this late in the season are some what limited but you can still pull a decent harvest in limited space within sixty days before it becomes time for the fall crops to go in. Some plants that are great for rapid productivity include the following.

1. Tomatoes: most cherry, grape, currant, pea or paste types will do.
2. Squash: Yellow Summer and, Zucchini.
3. Cucumbers: Armenian, Space master, and other small types.
4. Peas & Beans: Snow Peas, Black eye peas, some varieties of bush bean.
5. Leaf crops: Loose-leaf cabbage, Malabar Spinach.
6. Annuals: Nasturtiums, Zinnia, Marigolds, Cosmos.
7. Select herbs: Dill, Parsley, Cress.

Recovering garden beds can be done in the same way except it’s probably a bad idea to dump all of your soil and instead start with enriching your soil using a manure product. Depending on the potency and type of manure product you may need to apply as much as a pound of poultry manure per square foot or twice that with composted cow manure. At witch the soil needs to be turned and new seeds or plants installed after. At the very least your late summer crops could provide early shelter for the fall crops and a continued harvest.

Ficus carica – Common Fig, Zones 7-11 (Perennial)

For note this is a ripe black mission fig.

The common fig is one of those Xeriscaping plants that many books pass over. This is a shame because figs are naturally accustomed to catching and using every drop of water they encounter while also acting rapidly on every bit of fertilizer they get. Add in the production of figs and you have an excellent plant that is efficient. Now the thing that makes them a Xeriscaping plant is that they often will produce fruit without your meddling and grow quite large while doing it casting excellent tree-like deciduous shade with time. The quirk of fig biology can be found in their roots, as they produce an exceptionally large number of feeder roots that are used to capture water and nutrient. This allows them to aggressively out compete most similar plants while making them a great choice for planting near hard surfaces such as driveways and cement paths as the roots will go under, not heave the surfaces and absorb every drop that bleeds through.  Interestingly enough the discharge water from laundry machines seems to have no negative effects on figs planted down hill from such a discharge.

Loropetalum chinensis ‘Daruma’ - Fringe bush

Loropetalum (Lore-o-petal-um) is commonly called fringe bush, and for good reason. When typically seen in the landscape its foliage quite striking regardless of cultivar. Typically you will find loropetalum in one of two foliage colors, purple or green, but some burgundy shades do exist. The variety pictured above is called ‘Daruma’ and is a slower growing member of the purple variety and as you can see it is seriously purple.

Foliage color is good and all and this shrub might sound like a one-trick-pony right? Wrong, actually fringe bush is also known for its equally intense bloom, as green varieties often produce white flowers and the purple ones produce anything from hot pink to fuchsia colored blooms. But wait, it gets better, the blooms aren’t like say rhododendron blooms, individually they don’t last that long instead these tiny flowers are visible because of their 2” long petals that look like brightly colored fringes like you’d see on some sort of decorative pillow. Typically a fringe bush will also be covered with these blooms giving the entire thing a wild haze of color that resembles some sort of Jimmy Hendrix-inspired trip involving illegal substances.  Yeah it’s that intense, and completely worth it.  The reason a fringe bush is included is because it is almost drought-immune once planted and established, shears into an excellent hedge and with time can get up to 6’ tall in some varieties making a gorgeous border shrub. All you need to do, is settle it in, give it decent soil with good drainage, and once established occasionally prune to shape it.

Scabiosa columbaria – Pincushion Flower,  Zones 3-8

I admit this one isn't in bloom but if you type in scabiosa in google you'll see why it's liked.

Scabiosa, probably has the worst Latin name ever, I honestly can’t get past the word ‘scab’. Either it was named by a person named that or some union-busting scabs picked the name; yours truly has not bothered to look to far into it.  Its common name is Pincushion Flower and once you’ve seen the blooms the common name makes perfect sense. The flowers are borne on 12” stalks typically and form clusters that do resemble pin cushions in a nice shade of blue. Newer varieties include white, purple, deep red, pink and even a shade that resembles black. The real reward to using scabiosa is the wide variety of butterflies it tends to attract. Now for Xeriscaping the scabiosa is tougher then it looks as it has similar durability as can be found in cone flowers but this comes at one requirement, better soil. Once you meet that soil requirement, you can use scabiosa in Xeriscaping plantings for its unique flower shape, and its relative drought resistance.

That does it for this episode of lost in the farmer’s market, I know it was a long one with a brief delay but I hope it was useful and informative.  Next week we will have another triple Xeriscaping plant group that dips into the vegetable and fruit side of the topic. Additionally the sub topic will continue on with the bit about what to do when you’ve lost your crop to insect pest damage and how to boost growth towards that rapid harvest of your efforts. 

Thank you again for reading, and as always folks keep ‘em growing!

Summer Xeriscaping Series: Part 5 of 9

Welcome back to another somewhat belated episode of Lost in the Farmer’s Market, as you may know the entirety of the months of July and August are devoted to the Summer Xeriscaping series and to day will be the fifth installment. In addition to the main feature is an included mini-article about a useful garden topic that relates to current goings on in the test gardens and or seasonal topics to help you produce more with less cost.  This week’s mini-article is about handling severe crop damage.

Generally when a pest of one sort or another begins to damage your preferred crops you have to determine when to take action, this process is called an ‘Action Threshold’. By definition an action threshold is a series of points that determine when to take action and what action to take. Not always is a pest problem worth doing anything about some times these pests are handled by nature itself. A good example of a problem that requires no action is when a tomato horn worm is found, but is covered with cocooned wasp larvae. In this case no action needed, another example is to see you have an aphid problem but a lot of them are dead, dark colored and have circular holes in their abdomens, again the problem is being handled by nature and thus no action needed.  Now take the problem currently on going in the test gardens. Since spring there has been an ongoing whitefly problem, normally these pests would simply not be a problem; I wouldn’t even waste the time to use insecticides. But they started to damage the nightshade crops seemingly favoring the eggplants first then the tomatoes. This is where the action thresholds I mentioned before come in; until the food output started to suffer I had planned to do nothing. As the white fly fed they damaged the plants, produced honey dew and that brought in fire ants, and on that spilled honey dew sooty mold began to kill off the leaves. When severe defoliation results, it then becomes an issue of the final threshold being reached, at this point little can be done and thus there are two options.  Option one is to allow the plants to fail and don’t bother to replant.  Option two is to cut down all effected plants dispose of any possibly contaminated soil if the plants were in pots, let the areas sit empty for a week and then replace all plant material and hope for a fall crop.  The difference is based on how determined you are and what sort of garden you have. Replanting for a late summer or early fall crop is not a big deal in fact cutting your losses can some times provide a better overall result even if you see some gardening downtime.

 In this case as you can see I had to cut down the worst affected plants in order to have a chance at a later harvest. The next step here is to treat all  remaining plants with systemic pesticide.

 In the case of potted plants all the effected plants have been cut down and the potting soil disposed of to prevent any new infestations due to eggs in the soil. Shortly after this picture was taken the pots were washed out, allowed to dry and a few days later refilled with new soil enriched with black hen.

Eucalyptus cinerea – Eucalyptus 7-11

Eucalyptus follows it's own rules when it comes to form and shape if you want the best oil content harvest new growth.

Eucalyptus up north is considered an annual unless grown as a houseplant during the winter. In southern areas like USDA zone 7 and southward Eucalyptus is a perennial.  It is important to note that Eucalyptus starts out as a somewhat loose shrub with a naturally weeping habit.  Given time Eucalyptus can develop into a thirty foot tall tree with a loose habit and especially attractive bark.  When mature the flowers of Eucalyptus are quite a stunning sight being fluffy in appearance and typically white in color. That said Eucalyptus produces large amounts of nectar that Honey bees can harvest to add a unique flavor to honey itself. Additionally the essential oils of Eucalyptus are quite effective as a decongestant and are used most notably in varied cough syrups and lozenges.  When used for garden purposes Eucalyptus is best used as a roughly horizontal centerpiece. The foliage is grey-silver in color and is quite effective in breaking up rough straight lines or providing loose foliage for informal barriers. I do have to note that Eucalyptus is a very slow growing perennial and may take decades to get to full size but with careful pruning you can keep it a reasonably neat shrub  and of course have little shortage of aromatic eucalyptus boughs for your home.

Echinacea purpurea 'Magnus'  – Purple Coneflower

Echinacea purpurea – Purple Coneflower

The coneflowers are members of the aster family and are best known in the trade as a group of durable summer-blooming perennials with deer resistance and excellent drought tolerance. Admittedly Coneflowers have become incredibly popular in the last decade with both the rise of Xeriscaping and organic gardening, as a result of this numerous cultivars now exist with previously unthought-of colors beyond the traditional purple (E. purpurea). If you add in the varied medicinal and ornamental forms of coneflower like those listed below you get a much wider range of color.

Echinacea angustifolia – Narrow Leaf Coneflower (pale purple)

Echinacea pallida – Pale Purple Coneflower

Echinacea paradoxa – Yellow Coneflower

Echinacea sanguinea – Sanguine  Coneflower (Red-Purple)

Echinacea tennesseensis – Tennessee Coneflower (Lavender-Purple)

Most if not all coneflowers being native have good tolerance for the natural weather of the continental united states which makes it an excellent choice for any good Xeriscaping design. When considered in conjunction with vinca and Eucalyptus  the coneflowers make an excellent tall color and foliage accent for the bed around the base of a eucalyptus tree. If one considers the variations in bloom color that include purple, red, pink, lavender yellow, orange and white the possibilities for use as a color-support perennial are virtually limitless.

Catharanthus rosea – Madagascar periwinkle

Madagascar Periwinkle is one of those annuals that comes in a great variety of bloom colors yet despite this it tends not to steal the show as does other more popular annuals such as petunias or million bells.

Madagascar periwinkle is one of those annuals that is sold country wide as a drought and deer-tolerant bedding annual. Madagascar periwinkle is often commonly called ‘vinca’ in the nursery trade due to its casual resemblance to the perennial ground-cover known as vinca.  Vinca the annual bedding plant is not actually related to the perennial ground cover but it’s ability to effectively block out weeds with dense green foliage and produce a attractive flower once mature.  The key to annual vinca’s drought tolerance can be found in the features that also make is undesirable for browsing. The waxy leaves and stems produce a white latex sap when damaged which both acts as a repellant for creatures wanting to eat it but also serves to reduce water loss during times of drought. When paired with a similar plant such as Eucalyptus the vinca can be used to form a low border to keep the weeds down. Additionally the green foliage is similar in shape but can be planted in contrast to the Eucalytus’s silvery coloration. For note  Madagascar periwinkle is also known under additional Latin names Vinca rosea, Ammocallis rosea, and Lochnera rosea.

Hopefully your harvest thus far has not suffered the same insect maladies mine have in the test garden, but even if it has I do have a few pointers as a final thought.

1. Always identify the actual problem and treat that as opposed to treating the secondary issues. 

 (ie the white fly are the main problem the sooty mold and fire ants are secondary)

2. Try to use non-chemical methods first and in the right proportions.

(In treating white fly I first used Neem Oil and to reduce the sooty mold cotton swabs soaked in rubbing alcohol, lastly I used diatomaceous earth to counter the fire ants.)

3.  If all other options are exhausted use limited amounts of chemicals but make sure you know the side effects of the active ingredients.

(for example Imidicloprid a common systemic insecticide can have negative impact on honeybees and, Malathion can kill honey bees if they come into contact with the spray. Both have absolute application limits which must be heeded as well as time limits after application to harvesting.)

The next episode of Lost In The Farmer's Market will continue the Xeriscaping series, where we will be covering two xeriscaping shrubs and a durable perennial all of which are quite dramatic in color and use. Also  our sub topic will be 'The science of productive container gardening' which is all about producing food in limited space despite droughts.  

Thank you again for reading and as always folks keep 'em growing!

Summer Xeriscaping Series: Part 4 of 9

Welcome back to another episode of Lost In the Farmer’s Market and the fourth installment of the Summer Xeriscaping series. The two plants covered today are Yucca filamentosa, Spanish Bayonet and Delosperma cooperii also known as Ice Plant. Also as part of the topic I thought it might be important to cover a critical agricultural resource without which we might have a greatly reduced yield of some of our favorite foods. Indeed the sub-topic today is all about pollenators, and what you can do to keep a reliable bunch of them coming to your garden to help increase productivity.

Let me start by stating that pollinators are a diverse group that includes our well known favorites such as Moths, Butterflies, Bumblebees and Honey bees. Additionally  did you know that wasps, beetles, certain types of fly, midges, thirps and even ants all play roles in the entire picture that makes up the insect pollinator group. If you add in certain species of bat, humming birds and even some kinds of lizard and non flying rodents the chain of creatures that can be considered a pollinator gets even larger.

In today’s post however what I am focusing on today is how to attract and support populations of pollinators for the purposes of keeping natural balance. Biological balance is important because it often can reduce pest problems assure heavier fruit set and can reduce the amount of pesticides and chemicals you use. Reduction of pesticide and herbicide use can reduce the risk the targets of such chemicals gaining any form of immunity which makes it easier to get what you want without going out of your way to obtain it.

First off,  supporting most pollinators is easy while planning your gardens, you must remember to leave space for multi- season blooming perennials and annuals. These long bloomers are the plants that sustain the pollinators, and as they go about their business they will hit up the stuff that’s producing food materials for you. For instance, Echinacea or cone flower if healthy will start blooming in late string almost through the fall, paired with Asters, Chrysanthemums, Zinnia, Sunflowers and French Marigolds you have a nearly constant supply of both pollen and nectar. Plus given the variety of cultivars the color choices are incredible so this mix works in any landscape with a decent amount of sun.

Expanding the mix don’t for get the wasps and hornets. I know what your thinking, ‘why the hell would I help wasps and hornets?!’ The group known as Hornets/wasps or vespidaceae have a bad rap. I’ll admit that yellow jackets, bald-faced wasps, European hornets, and most paper wasps are not my favorite creatures, but I know they serve a purpose and if given a decent clearance should never be a problem. Prime example, have you ever seen a wasp just hovering over the foliage of a plant for no real reason? What they are doing there is hunting they’re looking for the colonies next meal. Typically that meal will be something like a caterpillar which works in your favor. Even with the bad reputation there are some good wasps out there that don’t get much notice. Beneficial wasps include the Fig wasps without which the figs we eat might not be so plentiful, and the Cicada-Killer which acts as a biological control for adult cicadas, and lets not forget the tarantula hawk, a large wasp that hunts tarantulas keeping them in check. Then there are the parasitic wasps that hunt garden pests such as tomato horn worms and take care of the problem. Generally wasps are heavily attracted to the nectar of a few things, Mint, and surprisingly they love the flowers of mature ivy. I might add if you want to see biological diversity, plant a stand of mountain mint and wait until it blooms, there will be more species of pollinator on those blooms from the wasp family alone then most have ever seen. Just remember don’t get too close and always give wasps a wide berth, also killing their nests don’t do it unless it poses a clear and unavoidable danger. For instance if the nest is at head height in a tree over a path that’s a hazard, if it’s under the overhang of a roof where people might pass, that’s a hazard, but if it’s thirty feet up in a pine and not near any frequently used structure, leave it alone.

The key is to plan your garden to provide them what they need from spring through fall, as though you were planting to provide yourself with materials to survive. Any garden with a decent number of pollinators will also have a better fruit set and will support it’s gardener/s far better. Also remember which pesticides harm pollinators the most, for instance use Malathion and Imicloprid carefully as both have a effect on honey bees and honey bees are known to forage distances of up to 30 miles.

Honey bee swarms can have between a few hundred to thousands of individuals. I might add that is a White Pine they are on, and more then a week later they are still there…apparently having taken up residence in an old Carpenter Bee nest.

Bumble Bees despite producing no useful amounts of honey are excellent pollinators and are one of the few alternatives for greenhouse pollination of tomato crops. This one is on the flower of a cotton rose, a member of the hibiscus family.

This is some sort of wild bee species visiting the Jerusalem Artichoke, which for note is in the sunflower family and attracts bumble bees and honey bees as well.

Yucca filamentosa – Spanish Bayonet 4-10

In most general use for the garden I tend to think of yucca as the most aptly named plant in the universe.  The issue generally is that most gardeners then to plop the plant down as they see fit with little consideration for its shape and form or requirements. What you get is a large angular plant that often does not look very good by itself. Thus, the joke that ‘yucka’ is aptly named.  Most yucca in common cultivation have the rough form of especially coarse grass that happens to flower in late spring or summer. Additionally yucca also tends to form dense impenetrable ‘colonies’ by virtue of its heavy rhizomatous growth when it is happy and placed well. Newer cultivars bear yellow or white variegation, and may have differing foliage colors ranging from exceptionally dark green to almost chartreuse colorations. Additionally select varieties of yucca are available in more clump forming shapes to single-stalked varieties that are more columnar and contained.

Yucca filamentosa ‘Clark’ – Spanish Bayonet (Zone 7-8)

This cultivar is one I’ve developed unlike the normal yucca it’s got a waxy-blue-green color that holds up in full sun and seems to have a faster then average growth rate.

There are even incredibly slow-growing types that remain small for a long time and thus can be inter-planted as a plant anchor for a normal scale garden bed. Finally when you start looking at other species of yucca there are shapes and forms resembling immature long leaf pines.

That said, yucca is often horribly misused,  the key to yucca is remembering it resembles exceptionally coarse grass and does it’s best when supported by lower growing plants of finer foliage in front and larger contrasting foliage plants to the rear. The columnar forms of yucca can be used as a ‘faux’ tree or palm substitute as a centerpiece. I might add the flower stalks are quite impressive but only mature yucca will produce these so if the plant you buy is too small it may be a while.  As I mentioned before; most common yucca are rhizome forming, and thus will spread at a relative rate to how soft the soil is and how well cared for they are. In fact a yucca kept in a plastic pot too long will eventually puncture the pot. Additionally Yucca are useful in the garden as they will tolerate the hottest driest areas with poor soil. With fertilizer and good soil yuccas like Prickly Pear respond well and show noticeable growth. Lastly the one thing a Yucca will not tolerate is being constantly wet, like the cacti and succulents a yucca will begin to suffer root rot if planted in constantly wet soils.

Delosperma cooperii – Ice Plant

Ice plant is one of those garden center staples that is still picking up proverbial steam as its recognition increases. As far as the garden is concerned Ice Plant is a welcome addition to the succulent & cacti arsenal as it can do two things reliably whereas any number of succulents and cacti cannot do both at once. Unlike a lot of succulents Ice plant gets its name from the appearance of its foliage which is covered with a sparkling coating of frost or ice. The appearance of an Ice Plant’s foliage can be striking when light hits a mass planting of Ice plants the right way and the best part is it appears this way all year.  Just using the foliage alone with some

Remember that second thing that the ice plant does well? Surprisingly when it comes to the Ice Plant half of its appeal is the veritable sea of flowers they produce between late spring into early fall.  Typically Ice plant is found in some shade of bright pink, however yellow, red and orange tones are occasionally seen making the Ice plant an excellent performer as far as succulents go.

As another advantage to using the Ice Plant as a bedding perennial is that it propagates easily from cuttings without rooting hormone. All you need to do to make more Ice plants is to take stem cuttings 3-5” long from stems that are not actively blooming. Take the cuttings you have collected, trim off the leaves off the lower parts of the cutting and insert in moist but not wet soil. The cuttings if kept reasonably moist should root in a few days to a few weeks depending on the vigor of the mother plant.

With all that covered, next week will be part Five of the summer xeriscaping series and the plants covered are Eucalyptus and Madagascar Periwinkle.  I hope you found today’s post useful, and are considering some of the stuff covered so far, if you’ve got a suggestion or drought proof plant idea feel free to send it in. Thank you again for reading and as always Keep ‘em Growing!

Summer Xeriscaping Series Part 3 of 9

Welcome back to another edition of lost in the farmer’s market, this episode was planned to be posted on Sunday the 15^th, but other situations forced it to be delayed until now. Ironically an aspect of what was to be discussed in the post scheduled for July 22^nd occurred this weekend and so I’d like to share a bit of that with you, and of course the intended topic and a bit about some good plants for Xeriscaping.

First off over the last few nights I noticed a particularly large lump in one of the white pines out in the backyard. As the lump was on a long broken and dead branch at first I thought a piece of bark or wood had partly come loose. Finally late in the day on Sunday I saw that the limp was rounded and about the size of a basket ball. It was dark out so I could not quite ascertain clearly what it was. Several possibilities came to mind…wasps, tent caterpillars or maybe some new critter took up residence. As it turned out I was somewhat correct as the mass on the bottom of the branch turned out to be this.

 

This is a honeybee swarm. In this state they’re largely harmless if you don’t do anything crazy like poke it with a stick.

Honey bees will swarm like this for a number of reasons, including colony overpopulation, poor hive management by a bee keeper, colony stress or occasionally some times the present queen is not performing well but may be too strong to remove so the colony splits.  At the center of the mass in the picture above is a queen, and the swarming mass is there both to protect her and to maintain a preferred temperature mimicking the temperature of the inside of an established hive. For bee keepers a swarm like this is quite literally cash money because one can get a free colony with queen if you can get up to the swam mass and capture it in a hive box or some other device. Often swarms of this size may have upwards of a thousand individuals which makes for a short turn around from capture to growth and production. These bees seemed especially dark in color suggesting they may be one of the Russian breeds. The best way to handle such a situation is to call a bee keeper to collect the bees. Where swarms decide to land and mass is completely random and over the years I’ve seen them mass on fences in the engine compartments of unused cars, on branches and even in unused barbeque grills.

Todays intended mini-topic was going to be about watering and with the endemic drought situation across the Midwest it may be rather important to talk about this critical issue. With that said here’s a bit about watering methods.

This is a staple of efficiency for the homeowner, a soaker hose attached to a rain barrel.

To be fair, for a rain barrel to provide enough pounds per square inch to make a connection to an soaker hose worth while the bottom of it must be about three feet above ground level. Any column of water will have about 1/3^rd a PSI per foot of height so on an average rain barrel like the one pictured the top of the water column would be about six feet off the ground once full which allows for it to pressurize a 25’ soaker hose very efficiently. When used in this way at night the water used will suffer less evaporation and since most plants tend to do their growing between 2 and 5 am roughly depending on temperature the water is there and available when they do their growing or further mature their fruits. The downside of this arrangement is that the outlet (Soaker Hose) needs to be at a lower height then the source (rain barrel) also this cannot be a permanent arrangement, frost and freezing can rapidly destroy a soaker hose. Additionally for a soaker hose to be effective it has to be as close to the soil as is possible which may mean using steel landscaping pins to hold it in place. One of the major perks of a soaker hose is the variety of critters it can attract, In the test gardens it isn’t uncommon to find a variety of toads, frogs and lizards hanging out near the soaker hose Birds also enjoy the hose during the day as it’s a source of water and in the process they also find would-be garden pests to eat. As a final note the one thing not seen in the picture is the rapid-fill manifold on the rain barrel. My rain barrels are fitted with an overflow port from the factory and what I did was to attach a manifold which allows me to run a garden hose from the overflow port so overflow is redirected into the muscadine grape beds. But this overflow is fitted at the end so a normal hose hooked to the house’s water supply  can be attached and during a dry period the barrel can be force-refilled if there is no rain.

Watering devices like this one vary in shape size and efficiency, the key to using them is matching your usage and area to their capacity.

Sprinklers are found in numerous styles and designs ranging from hoop-spray sprinklers like the one above to oscillating models, impulse sprinklers, travelling types, rotating spike types and occasionally you might find a bubbler type. The idea is that once hooked to a hose these sprinklers can be run for a set amount of time such as an half-hour or more and achieve some similar effect to a natural rain. Basically sprinklers rely on constantly watering an area over time to do their job. The problem is that they water everything in their radius and if they don’t match the area you intend to water they can be very wasteful. Admittedly if you are into having a green lawn the oscillating and impact sprinklers are reasonably efficient for that. Bubblers, Hoop-spray and low height rotating types are more efficient for garden use as their water projection is usually less then ten feet.

A rain wand is a very effective way to water especially if it has a on-off valve so you can control the flow.

The rain wand is a great alternative for watering for those with troubles bending kneeling or otherwise with mobility issues. Typically found in lengths between 12” to 36” these devices are really good at watering hanging baskets, and reaching into shrubs without doing any damage. Additionally the rain wand applies a gentle spray of water that causes very little soil erosion and to a certain extent can allow for better coverage of more soil for less working time and relatively a reduced amount of wasted water.

Lastly we have the old-school pistol type nozzle modified with a rain wand’s sprinkler nozzle.

This modification would be used to allow for better watering efficiency, reduced erosion of soil. While lacking the finer level of control of the rain wand it does have a better water projection range.  This combination allows you to do a bit more with simple tools at a lower cost.

Opuntia humifusa – Prickly Pear zones 3-9

Opuntia humifusa – Spineless Prickly Pear zones 3-9

Prickly pear is a common weed/herb/fruit/vegetable it’s category depending on how you view it. The new pads are edible and a staple of South American cuisine. The fruits are also edible make a pretty good jam or are edible fresh and can be bought in most stores with a ‘Mexican’ ethic aisle Goya also carries both the pads and the pears jarred or canned. Occasionally you might find the pears in the fruit aisle in some supermarkets though the variety they come from still has spines so you need to be wary of the small fine spines called ‘glochids’.  Biologically prickly pear is built to survive it is one of the few cacti that can potentially survive the winter as far north as zone three with protection. One of the neat features of this plant is that a single pad can produce an entire new plant while it may take quite some time for a prickly pear to grow large enough to produce pears you can get incredible amounts of growth with typical liquid fertilizers making for a lot of potential vegetables. As far as Xeriscaping use the prickly pear virtually requires no irrigation is pest and disease free and will tolerate utterly deplorable soils. What it will not tolerate is constantly being wet, and soils that do not drain well. Like most plants the higher quality soil that you place a prickly pear in the better the quality of your harvest.

In landscape use thankfully someone had the smarts to breed a spineless variety that has all the same size and form minus the prickly parts. The effect is that the plant is upright with numerous oval pads that with age take on an stretched ovoid bubble shape each one bearing a sort of olive-drab color with reddish tinges around the internodes. Basically the prickly pear is an ultra-coarse foliage plant that requires finer support or some sort of backdrop until it is old enough to flower. New pads for note are bright green and bear fleshy ‘pseudo-leaves’  that eventually fall off as the pad matures.  Paired with darker  or silvery fine foliage a prickly pear can be a solid evergreen anchor for a Xeriscaping bed.

Portulaca grandiflora – Moss rose (flower of Samba Peppermint hybrid)

Portulaca grandiflora – Moss rose (Samba Fuchsia hybrid, note that the leaves fold up at night)

Portulaca oleracea - Purselane

I know I talk about purselane quite a bit here in this web log. That’s because like Prickly pear it has many unrealized uses the problem is that most gardeners are often too busy looking at the bad and ignoring the good. Ignoring most of what you might find at Lowes or Home Despot and other such ‘big box’ stores which by the way is the rank and file moss rose. Today I’m talking about the new cultivars which may look different but keep all the great features that make them so useful. For note, P. oleracea is edible and in my ‘weeds you can eat’ series earlier in the year you can find how to do that and what nutritional value it has. The first thing to know is that both types of purselane is that cuttings root readily without any chemical or hormone. This makes spreading this annual about the yard very easy. Additionally purselane tends to return from seed so there is a chance that when used in an area (such as near a sidewalk) with consistently warm soil you may have a yearly volunteer batch of purselane. 

Purselane is a drought tough annual, it can withstand almost much as Prickly pear especially when well-established. As noted before one form is edible and as seen in the pictures above its flowers are no slouch. Purselane does have a few interesting uses, when acting in support of sedum for it’s flowers where as sedum has the foliage angle covered the two become an impressive weed blocking mat that can readily blow Moss Phlox out of the water. When color matched and paired as a weed-blocking groundcover mat for an upright prickly pear then you have a especially dramatic center piece. Additionally Purselane looks great dangling out of window boxes and hanging pots as well as in wrought iron urns.

As a final note Spineless prickly pear can be grown indoors in the role of winter time accent plant if it is an upright form. Some of the more ornamental forms of purselane can be used in the same role if started from cuttings in the fall. With that said this does wrap up a slightly belated episode of Lost in the Farmers Market, Just for note the Neighborhood Grange/ Sustainable neighbors meeting is at the Cape Fear Museum in Fayetteville North Carolina this Sunday at 2:00pm. In the upcoming episode of Lost In The Farmer’s Market I’ll be covering two more Xeriscaping plants, Yucca and Ice plant, and the myriad varieties of pollinators upon which we depend and their value to Xeriscaping.