Sustainable Gardening Blog

Doncha love garden guests, especially when they’re gardening addicts AND gardenwriters?  Robin Wedewer is  Examiner.com’s  national garden writer and has her own blog, too - BumblebeeBlog. Think we had much to talk about!  Yeah, baby!

Can you tell something about a politician by the way he treats the little people?  Sometimes.  And in the case of Joe Biden, I think so.  He arrived in the Senate just a year after I began working as a "court" reporter for their committees, sitting just below the dais at hearings or alongside the senators at their business sessions, traveling with them to field hearings.

Still, senators talking to me directly was a rare occurrence, and in their defense, their schedules are crazy and these meetings aren’t exactly social events.  (Traveling offers much more contact, of course, like the time I was introduced to a Wisconsin senator in his living room, him standing there in his bathrobe, then barnstormed across the state in a tiny plane with him and 2 staffers.)  Occasionally someone would ask me about a book I was reading, and Dale Bumpers always did that, and he clearly enjoyed book talk.  Others would comment on what I was reading with undisguised surprise that it was more challenging reading than a Danielle Steele paperback.

And the mean old racist warrior Jesse Helms surprised the hell out of me with his courtly jumping up to pull out my chair, every single time.  I’d rather have equal rights anytime, but it’s cool seeing a politician pay a little attention when there’s no political gain in doing so, right?

My Worst Behavior Toward the Help Award goes not to any senator but to the young staffers handling the details of committee hearings - the self-important but well-dressed keepers of the realm that I had to interact with the most.  Ugh.  And through my 30+ years working for Senate and House  committees, as a group the most courteous people and winning my Best Behavior Award are members of the military - all branches, all levels, from the Joint Chiefs on down.

But what about Joe Biden, Obama’s pick for Veep?  His committee assignments and mine always seemed in sync, so I’ve seen a whole lot of him in action, and he was my top choice among the many Democratic contenders this year - because of his impressive performance as a lawmaker.  That’s what my head tells me; my gut remembers him as the least imperious, friendliest politician I’ve ever had the pleasure to chat with.  And those bagels he was giving out to the media throngs outside his house all week?  They reminded me of the time he and I were chatting, waiting for his subcommittee hearing to start, when he pulled his lunch out of a brown bag and offered me half.  I’ve always been a sucker for people who feed me.

 (Blog version.  It’s here in its entirety, with off-topic sidebar.)

In the News 

• Great coverage of the growing anti-lawn movement in the New Yorker.

• From Dow, an herbicide lethal enough to survive a cow’s guts and produce toxic manure.  Wow.

• Kudos to the Missouri Botanical Garden for their plastic pot recycling program [pdf], now winning awards.  Started in 1997, the program has kept 300 tons of hort waste out of landfills.

• Treehugger reports some good news about switchgrass - that it improves the soil and is looks promising as a  nonfood biofuel.  Speaking of fuel, can kudzu be turned into ethanol?  How about giant miscanthus? It’s proving to yield more biofuel per acre than corn.

• In more plant news, rubber is being produced from dandelions, which may turn out to be THE low-cost alternative to trees.

• While there’s still no definitive explanation for the Colony Collapse Disorder of honeybees, bumblebees aren’t doing much better, reports Adrian Higgins.

• And the Boston Globe reports the no-surprise news that lead in the soil is putting a crimp on backyard veg gardening. City Farmer has more to say about that, and other contaminants.

• Great story about urban farming in Cuba - improving diets and creating 350,000 jobs.

• Troubled by deer in your garden?  Hey, it could be bears - the kind that attacks gardeners.

• Here’s a thorough update on weed laws in the news.

• Also on GardenRant, an owner’s report about chimneas sparked a meaty discussion of firepits and outdoor fires of all kinds. Tempers rose!

New on Sustainable-Gardening

Exciting news: more contributors! Like who?

• Rainyside Gardeners’ Debra Teachout-Teashon wrote "My gardening practices aren’t so out there after all!"

• Garden Lady C.L. Fornari wrote about her favorite "Carefree Perennials" for sustainable gardeners.

• Florida’s Ginny Stibolt urges readers to "Just say no to poisons". 

• And back to me, I try to cover the lawn basics for early fall: "How to start a new lawn," "How to overseed a crappy lawn" and "How to patch bare spots."  And thanks to Jeff Ball for all his help!

• Poison Ivy Update is all the latest advice, including comments from GardenRant readers.

• Weeds and Weeding is an overview of our Job One this time of year.  Then in The Weeds in My Garden I get up close and personal, with photos.

My So-called Second Career

Sustainable-Gardening.com has its first sponsors! They’re in the sidebar on every page and on the About Sponsors and Partners page.   Thanks and welcome!

New articles on OrganicGardener.com:

• Earthworms, those Fertilizing, Rototilling Wonders of the Soil
• Master Composters are Here to Teach
• Easy-Care, High-Impact Hydrangeas
• How to Water your Garden  
• Find a Gardening Blog Near You 
• Learn to Grow Food Organically and Sustainably

SO, here’s what it takes to grow the plants listed as blooming this month.  Unless pruning, feeding or supplemental watering are mentioned, I’m not doing it.

Shrubs:

• Big-leaf hydrangea - moderate water in periods of moderate to severe drought.
• Hydrangea paniculata ‘Tardiva’ - water only in prolonged drought.
• Roses ‘Knockout’ and ‘Carefree Wonder’ - water regularly, prune once.  In their first year they received no fertilizer at all and bloomed well.  This year I’m experimenting with two feedings to see if it makes a difference.
• White Meidiland rose - prune once a year.
• Spirea ‘Anthony Waterer’ - prune once a year.

Perennials: 

• Garden phlox - cut down in the fall.
• Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ - cut down in late winter.
• Russian sage - cut down in late winter.
• Globe thistle - cut down in fall.
• Sweet autumn clematis - cut down in fall.
• Pulmonaria - water in periods of moderate drought.
• Salvia - cut down in fall.
• Purple coneflower - cut down in late winter.
• Rudbeckia - cut down in late winter.

Annuals:

• ‘Wave’ petunia - water frequently, remove after hard frost.
• Hyacinth bean vine - water frequently, remove after hard frost.

Now see why I call this a sustainable garden?  Not counting the blasted annuals, of course.

A/k/a Garden Blogger Bloom Day, a tradition started by that notorious instigator, Carol at May Dreams Garden. 

Hell Strip
The curbside, or hell strip, is looking good, with garden phlox and sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ peaking.

Front
In the front yard there’s Russian sage, globe thistle, sweet autumn clematis, and a pink ‘Knockout’ rose in bloom.  And in what used to be lawn the ‘Wave’ petunias and hyacinth bean vine are mighty colorful (photo on GardenRant).

Back
In the back yard  some rebloom on the Meidiland white rose shows in the photo  right but what I really want to show off is the awesome foliage of this pulmonaria in front of it.  The leaves looked nice enough in the woods where I used to have them but stayed small.  Now that they’re getting morning sun, though, they’re making quite a show, even long past their blooms.  And P.S., my experiment in moving them into afternoon sun ended in failure - in the form of burnt-up leaves.

More blooms in the back garden are thanks to the shrubs ‘Carefree Wonder’ rose,  big-leaf hydrangeas (fading but still packing a punch),  Hydrangea ‘Tardiva‘ at its peak (top photo), spirea ‘Anthony Waterer’ in its rebloom; and the perennials Salvia ‘May Knight’, purple coneflower, black-eyed susans, coreopsis, and red clover (which blooms purple).  I know it’s a mighty short list compared to Carol and most gardenbloggers, if their mid-month reports are any guide.  I try to make it up in the winter, when I start bragging big-time on the evergreens in my garden.

Clover photo credit. 

Being interviewed by other gardening bloggers is so much fun, I just keep saying yes.  Recently it’s been to  Robin Wedewer, of Bumblebeeblog and now the National Gardening Examiner, and to Stuart Robinson, everyone’s favorite Australian gardener and author of Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas and the gardenblog directory on steroids, Blotanical.

• Robin’s interview is here on Examiner.com.

• And Stuart’s is here on Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas.
  

Over on Organic Gardener.com I’ve posted about two increasingly popular species of Hydrangeas - the paniculata and the quercifolia (oakleaf).  Here’s the link.

Top photo: Quercifolia ‘Snowflake’.  Bottom: Paniculata’Tardiva’.

I went visiting this week, to the garden of Robin at Bumblebee Blog and Examiner.com (about an hour east of me near the Chesapeake Bay) and discovered not one but two blog-post-worthy gardens.  On GardenRant I wrote about her stylish kitchen garden, and here I’m hoping to inspire my coaching clients with photos of her four-season foundation garden. 

The best thing about this garden - to my eyes - is all the evergreens, plants that are basically forgotten most of the year and certainly when people are excited about gardening, driving to the garden center, and buying what looks good - whatever’s in bloom!  You know what that means?  Those evergreens don’t get bought, unless the gardener’s been at it a while OR gotten advice from a professional.

So, what’s here?   Framing the front door are  two ‘Green Giant’ arborvitaes and some ‘Gulftide’ osmanthus, a nonberrying ‘Harbor Dwarf’ nandina, and , with ‘Encore’  azalea - all evergreen - and some impatiens in front of them.

And in the close-up below, the simple planting along the front of the house farther from the front door, thus not wanting to call attention to itself, are good-old Ilex crenata ‘Compacta’ and ‘Dragon Lady’.  Like boxwoods and ‘Otto Luyken’ cherry laurels, also good choices for this northern exposure, they look good every day of the year.  Summer brings out the easy-care hostas and ferns in front of them.

 Now how hard is that?

For some fun browsing, just follow this link to directories of organic farms all over the world and the internships they’re offering to frankly stronger folks than I.  Also, more tolerant of hardship, but they’re an adventurous bunch of aspiring farmers and if I were just out of college I might just join them. 

Then I simply HAD to write Find a Gardening Blog Near You.  

And Organic Gardener hired their second feature writer, known in the blog world as Commonweeder but in real life as Massachusetts gardenwriter Pat Leuchtman.  So far, Pat’s taught me about Growing Raspberries and Growing Organic Herbs.

As I told Christopher C of Clyde, NC, when it comes to blogging memes I’m a virgin (no jokes, please).  But because he "tagged" the GardenRanters in a nice way and practically begged us for a little more information about ourselves, I promised him I’d play.  And while this meme calls for 6 "random" things about the blogger, I notice that participants list 6 potentially interesting things because truly random things might be how many toothbrushes they own and similarly forgettable details, so to hell with that.  Anyhoo, here goes.

1.  For readers who’ve noticed me asking about every social event "Will there be dancing?" here’s the story behind that.  It started, as it does for so many girls, with ballet, tap and "modern jazz" but then progressed to swing, Cajun, Zydeco, Texas two-step, contra, squares, Appalachian clogging, African, assorted ballroom, and other categories I may be forgetting, and Israeli folk dancing could be in my future for all I know.   I used to write about "participatory dance" for DanceView Magazine.

2.  I also used to be an adventurous world traveler but trekking in Nepal - in January no less - and then touring India ALONE cured me of that particular obsession.  Now I’m a total homebody.

3.  To prove the point, my only sibling has lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for 7 years now and I’ve only visited once.

4.  I did have ONE terrific business trip -  to work at the World Court in The Hague, after which I spent a fun-filled weekend in Amsterdam on my own dime (thus staying in a $12/nite flophouse).

5.  In my career as a court reporter in D.C. I’ve had lots of boring assignments and a few really juicy ones involving famous people, important events or scandal.   Want some names?  Okay - Monica Lewinsky, Bill Cosby, Claus von Bulow and Liv Ullman come to mind.

6.  Warning to parents of preteens and teens: This story could keep you up at night.  At 12 or 13 I routinely climbed out my bedroom window to joy-ride across the countryside with a bunch of neighborhood hellions, but never got caught.  My dad found out about it decades later from my sister and was FURIOUS. 

There, I think I’ve answered the meme without getting in trouble with anyone or telling on any of my husbands.