Sowing more seeds

It's been a tough summer in the vegetable garden. The late freeze in April, the drought and heat for most of the summer, and now really low soil moisture levels combined with higher soil temperatures, make it hard to coax along even the fall greens.

Seedling in the flats are coming along OK, but the seeds sown directly in the garden are taking their time. I haven't been optimistic enough to plant anything in the satellite garden, as I think the thirsty woodchucks will appear out of nowhere to devour any young kale, chard, or lettuce plants that manage to germinate.

But we've just had a lovely downpour for quite awhile, thanks to some left-over moisture from the hurricane in the Gulf, and hopefully got at least 1 1/2 inches, maybe two. This would be excellent for recharging the soil layers farther down. I'll sow another set of seeds of greens and lettuce tomorrow, I think....

Waterwise gardening

In this summer of extreme heat, and severe drought here in South Carolina, it's hard NOT to think about drought-tolerant plants. We have tried to establish a low-water use landscape, but that doesn't mean no water, especially with recently planted perennials, shrubs, and trees.

We've both gotten really tired of dragging the hoses around to water these young plants that we don't want to lose, but anything planted this year needs water to survive the high temperatures, hardly any rain, and too much wind conditions that we've had. Our plants would normally thrive, after establishment, on normal rainfall, but rainfall this summer has been anything but normal, and even the toughest drought-tolerant perennials have wilted in the late afternoon sun. Trees, with their much more extensive root systems, and shrubs haven't been much affected, and certainly reflect their higher drought-tolerance.

Conditions this summer have me thinking about waterwise gardening (a 'new' alternative term for xeriscaping), as we basically don't believe that putting in irrigation systems is a sustainable option. I think the term 'xeriscaping' makes people think about desert landscaping or high elevation drought-adapted western plants, but I like the term 'waterwise gardening.' Even though I know we're hardly in the low rainfall zone at an average of 50" annually, our local cities and muncipalities are encouraging voluntary water use restrictions, and some are now mandatory in a severe drought year.

Being a waterwise gardener means choosing plants that can withstand dry spells, and flourish without lots of supplemental water. Here in the SE, we can grow lots of great plants that fit that description. Clues to drought-tolerance come from native habitat (grasslands, prairies, dry woods, etc.), plant habit (deep tap roots or fibrous storage roots), leaf color and texture (gray leaves are reflective, waxy or thick leaves are water-loss resistant).

Some of my favorite 'tough plants' from this summer have been blazing star, purple coneflower, black-eyed susans, oakleaf hydrangea, Salvia species of all sorts (including the purple Salvia leucantha shown above, Vaccinium (blueberries), Rosemary, Nepeta (catmint) hybrids, garlic chives, anise-hyssop, and certainly all the native trees. Only the relatively thin-leaved tulip poplars, maples, and dogwoods have looked really stressed, where, in contrast, the oaks and hickories are looking fine.

Lush leafy landscapes and abundant lawn grasses transpire large amounts of water and often need additional water added beyond the regular rainfall amounts.

I'm looking around and seeing what in our landscape might fall in that category. Fortunately, most of the native plants (perennials, shrubs, and trees) from this part of the U.S. are well-adapted to long periods of summer drought, and have been pretty nonplussed faced with weeks and weeks of no rain and extreme heat. The exceptions are many of our favorite plants that are native to the mountains, but not all of them. There are also some of our native understory trees that have large, thin, leaves and show water deficits quickly, too.

But, I do want to have a garden that I won't worry about if we're away in the summer and am not around to do water triage. Of course, my container plantings will be on their own, too, in that case, too!

Hoping for rain again

We were lucky at the end of August -- lots of folks around us didn't get the welcome relief of the heavy thunderstorms that added over 2 inches of rain to our garden. The state drought response team has just raised drought levels to severe in SC - here in the Upstate (roughly the expanse in SC between Atlanta and Charlotte, NC), it's particularly bad. Our garden is a low-water use garden (except for the pampered vegetables and the much less pampered container plants), although they do make do with hand-watering and don't have soaker hoses that run for hours on them. A neighboring county is calling for water conservation, and only watering lawns (!) before 5 am. In my opinion, it's a bit much to water lawns at all, but we're not lawn people. We have brown patches that have developed in our Zoysia lawn areas.

But we're still monitoring plants that have been planted in the last few years, and watering them regularly. Anything that's been planted in the last three years needs water, when it's so exceptionally dry. Deciduous azaleas, Itea, Joe-Pye weed, Frasier magnolia --these are all thin-leaved natives used to regular rainfall, ditto for some of the forest understory species such as dogwood and redbud.

Kale, chard, spinach, and lettuce

When we first moved to the south over 20 years ago, I had never eaten kale, collards, mustard greens, or turnip greens. I don't recall eating much spinach either, as a child, since it was largely available as the canned sort. And my mom was a decent, but relatively uninspired plain cook, from a farm cooking background. Although I grew up eating broccoli and green beans (frozen), my education with vegetables and fruits started in the SF Bay Area markets during my graduate school years. I first had fresh brussel sprouts (good), fresh mushrooms (delicious), fresh local Gravenstein apples (great), peaches, apricots, and plums straight from the Central Valley (fabulous), and learned about so many unusual vegetables in the Chinese and other ethnic restaurants that were springing up in the late 70's and early 80's in the melting pot that was the SF Bay Area even then.

But moving to SE Georgia in the mid 80's was interesting in a different way. Southern cooking with its greens, fried fish, and biscuits and gravy were a long way from the plain cooking of my youth or the Schezuan restaurants in Chinatown. A new, older colleague who was a keen organic vegetable gardener was amazed when I said I had never eaten kale, or turnips, or collards. I quickly learned to appreciate the greens at a local restaurant, where the fried whiting was a Friday night standard. A bit salty, by today's tastes, but delicious with a bit of Texas Pete.

Today, I stir-fry homegrown greens of all sorts with olive oil and garlic, and we thoroughly enjoy them. And I've grown all sorts of 'ethnic' greens from the Tuscan kale, to Russian kale, to Asian mizuna, to the pac choi. All delicious! The high-end Italian dandelion greens were more bitter than I expected, requiring par-boiling, but hopefully quite the spring tonic. And hopefully the radicchio (that was such a favorite of our nursing female squirrel) falls into that category as well.

Hummingbirds are everywhere

We've had fun watching the hummingbirds whizzing around the garden lately. Right now, it seems that we have five. An adult male, 3 females, and a juvenile male. The adult male has just arrived, probably passing through on his way south, but the others have been here for a while. The females chase each other around, but fairly companionably, and they seem to be friendly with the juvenile male. Yesterday, it almost looked like one of the females was the 'mom' and the juvenile male (he only has a few red feathers on his throat) was wanting her to feed him. We have two feeders near the porch, where we eat during nice weather (basically April to October), with an additional feeder on the other side of the house. But there are also the nectar-rich flowers of the Salvias (S. guaranitica and S. coccinea) and the coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) and the Buddleja flowers for nectar. There are lots of insects, too, in our garden.

My gardening partner has been busy this weekend moving mulch --lots of freshly chipped trees from our campus that the tree service fellows were happy to give us (we gave them a nice 'tip'). He's moved one truckload already, to nourish the front woodland garden. The second two loads will add mulch to the back garden, and other areas. Organic matter is solid gold to add to your garden.

The lovely hummingbird image is from Early Birds: Common Backyard Birds by Millie Miller and Cyndi Johnson, Johnson Books, Boulder, CO.

Passionflowers and carpenter bees

At mid-day in the meadow, the passionflowers open up. Our native passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) is a lovely sprawling vine (sometimes a bit too sprawling, but it's easily pulled up when it gets out of hand). Each flower only lasts for a day, fading quickly. They're pollinated by carpenter bees, who drink the nectar pooled at the base of the flowers. I noticed this bee busily working one of the flowers about noon. Check out the pollen on its back! It's such a great example of how flower shape is adapted to promote cross-pollination. As the carpenter bee takes up nectar, pollen is continuously brushed on its back, to be transferred to the next flower visited.

This bee had so much pollen on its back that it was getting down around its mouthparts. Apparently, the pollen doesn't taste good, so she/he busily cleaned up, taking a break from nectar drinking.

Summer bees and flowers

There are so many kinds of native bees, in addition to the introduced honeybee. They've been fun to learn about and observe in different flowers.



The big carpenter bees with their smooth black abdomens are the biggest, except for the occasional queen bumblebee. They visit a variety of different flowers, and are strong flyers. They're not above 'robbing' nectar from Salvias, either, poking holes at the base of the flowers, thereby circumventing entering the flower 'correctly'.

All of the smaller bees are fun to watch gathering pollen. These were visiting native Helianthus hirsutus and Rudbeckia fulgida flowers in the meadow.





There's a specialist bee that collects pollen from these portulaca flowers in one of my containers, but I wasn't able to catch it in a photo.

The view from my study

The birdfeeders are in full view when I'm at the computer. The usual parade of Carolina chickadees, titmice, and cardinals is always fun to watch. This morning, a flash of yellow alerted me to a visit by a male goldfinch. I'd recently filled up the thistle feeder, but he wasn't eating thistle seeds, but avidly eating black oil sunflower seeds in one of the main feeders. I took a few quick shots through the window, and then went outside to see that a female goldfinch was now on the same feeder.