After writing about the unusually bad scourge of Japanese Beetles earlier in the month, I thought I’d continue on down the “garden bugs” path. The Japanese Beetles have died down, but now we have oodles of these pretty black and yellow-spotted waspy things around. They’re everywhere, and in large numbers. I planted some buckwheat over our potato garden bed, and it is covered up with them. The point of the buckwheat was as a primo late-season nectar source for our honeybee hives as they prepare for winter.… Continue reading this article “Digging these wasps!”
Tag: awesome
Tell us how you really feel…
I nearly caused a wreck trying to get this photo.
Feb. 19, 2014. Blacksburg, Virginia
Must be a gardener!
Podcast #5 – Selling Sustainability
Everyone (including me) hates how the word “sustainability” has been overused and misused. Yet there are some good concepts associated with the word that can help gardeners make rational decisions about products and practices. This week’s podcast deconstructs sustainability into specific actions that gardeners can easily follow:
- Discovering and nurturing the natural processes that keep your gardens and landscapes healthy and functional
- Choosing plants and products wisely to conserve natural resources
- Creating gardens and landscapes that don’t require constant inputs of packaged fertilizers and pesticides
The podcast illustrates each of these points. … Continue reading this article “Podcast #5 – Selling Sustainability”
Weird Plant Wednesday!
Greetings, all! Things seem to be pretty slow in the blog-reading world…middle of summer, vacations, etc. Plus we’re all out there gardening, unlike the dead of winter when we’re deprived of this joy, so the next best thing seems to be reading about it. Thanks to all who check in with us, even if just occasionally!
I’m taking over the Wednesday slot for a little while – I have a backlog of cool/weird/new/unusual plants to share, and Weird Plant Tuesday just doesn’t bring the alliteration.… Continue reading this article “Weird Plant Wednesday!”
A Garden Professor migrates east, albeit briefly
I was AWOL last week, as I had 3 presentations to get ready for 3 different states all in the span of 4 days. Yow! But they are over and done, and I’ll try to keep up on the blog from now on.
This is a short but amusing post (to me anyway). My second talk was in Virginia, where I spoke to Master Gardeners at their annual conference. The speaker right before my talk was fellow GP Holly Scoggins. … Continue reading this article “A Garden Professor migrates east, albeit briefly”
Er, Too Much Coverage?
When botany and advertising collide. Here we have the latest from AT&T.
The advertisement description’s in quotes.
“We open on an urban setting and see a vine begin to grow up a
pillar.”
What kind of vine?? It looks like a mutant clematis, though the leaf arrangement’s wrong, and there are no orange large-flowered ones. Oh well, let’s not be picky. At least it’s some kind of ornamental plant. We’ll call it Clematis broadbandii. Definitely non-native, though.… Continue reading this article “Er, Too Much Coverage?”
Pure Nelida: the story of one Viva Farms participant
Nelida was born in a subsistence farming community in Oaxaca, Mexico. She escaped an abusive alcoholic household at 14 by going to live with her (soon to be) husband’s family, who took her in, then took every opportunity from that moment forth to remind her what a burden she was for them.
After marrying at 16, the young couple migrated north to the US in search of a better life where they found farm work. They toiled 12 years on commercial farms in California, then headed further north, seeking farm work in the lush Skagit Valley in Washington State. … Continue reading this article “Pure Nelida: the story of one Viva Farms participant”
Some Super-Cool Stuff
For the past ten years or so I’ve worked to try to transfer information about horticulture to people. It sounds simple, but it actually took a lot of time and effort to figure out the best way to do it, and I’m still not there yet — and probably never will be. The reason that I mention this is because I appreciate it when another horticulturist, such as my fellow garden professors, work to get information about horticulture out to the public. … Continue reading this article “Some Super-Cool Stuff”