May Day Blooms

Pink Paeonie Papaver. My favorite bloom in the garden.

A small bed of 'Rocket' Snaps. This varietal does very well here in Central Florida. Last year they continued to bloom well into July before burning out. These get more shade in this bed than other locations where I've planted them, so I'm hopeful that they'll make it through to fall. I nursed several through the summer and fall in pots, and they're blooming for the second year now.

My familiar. On 'Prosperity', a really nice Hybrid Musk growing on Fortuniana in my garden.

I'm really excited by how well these Foxgloves ('Foxie') are doing in the garden this year. In the past, they've burned out quickly, but I got these into the beds in November, so they're really well established and seem to handing the dry and hot conditions well. Lots of water helps...

Barred Owl

Out fussing about the garden, picking tomatoes and cukes just as the sun went down, I looked up in time to see a barred owl swoop across the yard and land in the huge magnolia that dominates our side lot. He stayed there long enough for me to get my wife and son out to see, then flew to a new perch on the privacy fence at the perimeter of our property. He heard our whispers and turned his head 180 degrees to stare right at us. I felt a slight urge, something deep, hardly mammalian, tell me to run when its eyes locked on mine -- his glassy eyes were dilated and so predatory. He blinked a few times, then silently glided off into the brush.

Though we live in the middle of DeLand, ours is an old neighborhood, platted in the early 1920s. The century old live oaks that shade the block provide a haven (and plenty of tasty squirrels) for hawks and owls.

Though this is the first time I actually saw him, I hear his call at dawn and dusk: Who-cooks-for-you? Who-cooks-for-you???

Spring's bounty

A bouquet I picked for my secretary for 'National Secretary's Day', along with some cucumbers from the garden. The flowers are a mix of Alstroemeria, roses, snapdragons and whatever filler caught my eye. I included a gardenia for aroma... That one bloom filled the office with that tropical, heady, sultry smell of gardenias...

These are 'Cucino' cukes, an F1 hybrid that produces loads of finger-length cukes with thin skins and a dense, satisfyingly-melon interior. My kids love them. Oh, and some 'Yellow Currant' tomatoes. These have proved to be wildly and wonderfully vigorous. There are several hundred tomatoes already on a single plant. I'd call them more reddish than yellow, but they have a nice, typical balance of sweet and acid.

what's blooming in your garden?

let's see here... starting with the upper-left and ending in the center: 'Dead Mickey's Begonia (fibrous root); 'Céline Forestier'; Snapdragons finally blooming (with some peonie poppies in the back there getting ready to bloom); blooms on my new pomegranate (thanks, castorp!); Perlagonium 'Sensation Cherry' that I grew from seed this winter; pots of Alstroemeria; some Nasturtiums -- these ruffled yellow ones didn't bloom much in the winter, but now they're excellent -- slightly scented, too!; Foxglove 'Foxie'; 'Glamis Castle' (an English, growing on its own roots)

Veg in the mid-spring garden

A Yellow Currant Tomato (from TGS), loaded with fruit. This has been an exceptionally vigorous, branching plant that set fruit early.
Ripening Sungold Tomatoes. Considered by many on the Florida GardenWeb to be the best tomato here in FLA. Quick to set fruit, quick to ripen.

First flowers on my Black Beauty Eggplant.

Hot weather garden

I think I have a pretty good idea of what my summer garden will look like:

• Eggplants: one plain-Jane variety "Black Beauty" that I got at Lowes, the other "Little Fingers" from seed, courtesy of Tomato Grower Supply
• Quailgrass from ECHO (sowed and growing nicely)
• Edible Amaranth: Currently being devoured by flea beatles -- I need to re-sow
• New Zealand Spinach: I'm starting these tomorrow -- also courtesy of ECHO
• Sweet Potatoes: I'm ordering slips of a bunching variety "Porto Rico" from Steele Plant Company tomorrow
• Rattlesnake BEAN, SNAP (POLE): from Southern Exposure Seeds -- I just ordered these
• Mississippi Silver PEA, SOUTHERN: these grow in acidic soil, so I'm going to interplant them with the blueberries that are now flourishing at the border of my bed. Also from Southern Exposure.
• Okra (from Southern Exposure): BURMESE: 58 days. Burmese okra bears when plants are 18” tall and continues to bear until frost. The leaves are huge, typically 16” across. The slightly curved, virtually spineless pods range from 9 to 12” long. Pods mature from light green to creamy yellow-green. At 10” inches long, they are tender, sweet, and spineless enough to be eaten raw or added to salads. Pods are less gooey than other okra, a quality that gives this variety a greater
  appeal. (I am a big proponent of less goo...)
• Whatever cherry and grape tomatoes that manage to set fruit in the heat and humidity. Right now the Yellow Currant is growing exuberantly, as is Sungold. The regular tomatoes that I planted--Tiffany, Matina and Better Boy-- are growing very well with dozens of tomatoes on them. I know they'll peter out when the going gets rough. I also have several Matt's Wild Cherry going, but I got them started much later than the rest because they had such dismal germination rates.

My cukes, chard, strawberries and blueberries are producing nicely. I have a small plot, so the yield every day is no more than a handful of this or that -- but it's a nice supplement to our household's larder.

We've more or less stopped buying veg from the grocer and now deal directly with our local organic growers, Lucky Gardens (aka Pauline's) and Planted Earth Farm.

Figs' secret sexual lives... REVEALED (by Alan)

Alan, my fellow blogger, answers my question about figgie sex...

I wrote....

Figs. I didn't see the flowers, but it must have flowers, right? Figs rule.

Alan answered...

It did, but you wouldn't have been able to see them. Figs are a bit odd in their reproductive behavior in that their flowers are inside of the fruit. Fortunately the types of figs that we grow here in the Southeast do not need to have their flowers fertilized to set fruit.

There is a class of figs called "caprifigs" that do need to be fertilized for which there is a very special type of wasp that performs the pollen carrying function. Unfortunately the wasps don't survive here so caprifigs are largely confined to the Mediterranean-like climate areas of the world.

.....Alan.

A final continuation...

Egyptian Walking Onions with some wheat growing through it -- I used wheat straw as one of my layers in composting this winter. Not bright. I must have missed these sprouts.

At the end of December, I planted Agina Cutting Celery (Pinetree). The leaves have an intense celery flavor. Slow growing so far, but a bit goes a ways...

Hibiscus acetosella 'Red Shield'. I thought when I bought it that it was Roselle, which would have provided some berries in the fall. Very pretty plant in any case.

And the continuation continued...

Figs. I didn't see the flowers, but it must have flowered, right? Figs rule.

Quailgrass, a few weeks after I planted it. Fairly slow to germinate.

Edible Amaranth from ECHO. I think it's flea beetles, damn them, that have chewed the leaves. It will outgrow the problem, but it's tempting to open up a can of Sevin on their asses..

Yellow Banana Peppers.

Update continued...

Foxglove 'Foxy' getting ready to bloom...

Ranunculus. Singularly beautiful, but very picky about water and temperature. I doubt I'll pant them again, or if I do, it'll be in pots: They must have full sun all winter, then a good deal of shade in April to bloom best.

Céline Forestier

Alstroemeria and some plain-jane geraniums.

A garden update in pictures...

The feds giveth...

...and Easy To Grow Bulbs taketh away. Good news on the income tax front allowed me to indulge in a bit of a consumer binge...

• Gladiolus Glorious Glads Mix
• Caladium White Queen (x 3)
• Achimenes Pixie Mix
• Dahlia Sunshine
• Eucomis comosa (Pink Pineapple Lily)
• Sprekelia (x 3)

I've never grown Ecomis nor Sprekelia, but my Florida Gardener's Book of Lists tells me that they can be left in the ground year-round here. The Achimenes are great in pots -- they love all the heat and humidity FLA has to offer. I need some Caladiums to brighten up a shady part of my front yard, and the glads are fun.

Squash Blossoms from Nize & Barbara's Garden

Michael's squash blossom recipe...

For about a dozen of Nize & Barbara's squash blossoms.

It looks more complicated than it is -- the whole thing can be thrown together in a couple stages, each taking a few minutes.

First, the filling. With a fork, mix the following:

• 4 oz of mild goat cheese (ile de france works well)
• a bunch of minced "sweet" herbs -- parsley, basil, chervil, minced
• a handful of toasted green pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds) toasted in a skillet until they pop (delicious snack!)
• salt & pepper to taste
• a splash of heavy cream to soften the mix
  

Stuff the blossoms with a tablespoon or so of the cold filling. You can roll it into balls and just poke them into the blossoms. Twist the top of the blossom closed. Chill the blossoms until they are firm.

Now, you can do one of two things:

1) Once they're chilled, warm some nice olive oil or butter in a large skillet, and saute the filled blossoms until they go all golden. Serve on a bed of lettuce or cress with a French vinaigrette (1 part vinegar/citrus juice + 3 parts olive oil). Tasty and very easy. They make a perfect appetizer or even finger food.

2) If you want to go all fancy, mix up a batch of tempura: One egg, one cup of ice-cold water, one cup of all-purpose flour. Dump all these ingredients in a wide bowl, and use a chopstick to mix them batter. You want to incorporate all the dry ingredients but keep some lumps.

Over medium heat, warm a deep skillet full of peanut oil (or other oil, but it's the South, so use peanut oil!) to about 350 degrees. (Depending on how heavy your pan is, this may take a few minutes: A pinch of flour will immediately dance in the oil when it's hot enough). Quickly dunk your squash blossom into the batter, let it drain back into the batter a bit (it should be very well covered still), and toss it into the hot oil with it for a couple of minutes. Tempura should never brown, but the batter should be slightly crispy.

Serve them, as below, on a bed of mixed greens or cress or nasturium blooms and leaves and some vinaigrette.

You'll have a lot of batter left over. and while the oil is hot, consider frying up some of B & N's other tasty veg, like green beans or collard greens or pea shoots. Dunk them all in the batter and toss them into the oil. Kids will love them dipped in soya sauce.

Easter 2007

An Easter bouquet of Dietes, Rosa Laevigata, Chinese Wisteria, Freesia, blooms from a fibrous-root Begonia (Dead Micky's Begonia), Alstroemeria, and some Salvia Leucantha. I love Dietes in bouquets, but the bloom only lasts one day (in the vase or in the ground). Fortunately, most of my Dietes are huge and each stollon has multiple blooms, which continue to open for several days.

I usually work in a bunch of roses for my Easter bouquet, but I've won a Pyrrhic victory against a nasty case of Black Spot this year by severely pruning many of my roses. They're putting on lots of health growth now, but I'm several weeks off from cutting blooms.

flowers-gardening - New York Times

flowers-gardening - New York Times: "I GREW up with roses that were sprayed so heavily with pesticides that I probably risked my life sniffing them.

But there were, and are, alternatives to roses that need to be doused in deadly liquids. At a recent gathering of rosarians at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Wilhelm Kordes III, a fourth-generation rose breeder from Sparrieshoop, Germany, showed images of his latest disease-resistant beauties, grown with no pesticides, distinguished by sumptuous shapes and velvety petals.

Kordes roses (www.kordesroses.com) have been workhorses for decades: I have Dortmund, a cherry red climber, introduced in the 1950s, growing in my own garden. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black spot on its tough, shiny green leaves. My father grew Crimson Glory, a hybrid tea introduced by Mr. Kordes’s grandfather, Wilhelm II, in 1935. But in Maryland, its satiny deep red petals needed plenty of postwar chemicals to keep the blooms perfect. Kordes dropped it in 2005, in favor of newer, more disease-resistant varieties.

Now, Earth Kind Roses, (earthkindroses.tamu.edu), selected by a kind of tough love research program started by Steven W. George at Texas A&M University, has a list of 13 roses that can withstand drought and heat and almost any kind of soil. And more roses are being tested in trial gardens around the country.

Marilyn Wellan, a past president of the American Rose Society, described the Texas A&M test site in Dallas, where 117 rose cultivars were planted “in the worst conditions,” she said. “They just put them in a hole, drip-irrigated the first year, and mulched with wood chips.”

“Those bushes were never sprayed, pruned or deadheaded,” Mrs. Wellan said. “By the end of the second year, all but 11 cultivars died.”

The survivors include 19th-century favorites like Mutabilis, a China rose, whose single petals open yellow, then deepen to orange and red; Perle d’Or, a peachy polyantha with a powerful scent; and Duchesse de Brabant, a pink cabbage-style rose with a tea fragrance, as well as modern shrub roses like Knock Out and Carefree Beauty.

"

Busy busy...

It's been a tremendously busy time of the year for me. I've had time enough to water, but that's about it. Today, though, was absolutely perfect weather, and I spent most of it out of doors, cleaning out my winter garden and sowing seeds for the hot and rainy season that is around the corner. Let's see, quickly...

• In my Parks dome...
  
• 10A-C Globe Basil
• D-F Genoa Basil
• 9A-C Pineapple Tomatillo
• 9D-F and 7, 8: Cleome Dwarf Spiders from Parks
• 5,6: Zinnia 'Ruffles Yellow'
• 3,4: 'Desert Sun' Zinnias (these performed very well for me last year)
• 1,2: 'Dasher' Zinnias (love those Parks $1 sales!)
• In some little pots...
• Bunny Tail Grass
• Green Cat Goose Grass
• From the awesome DeLand 'plante' sale, I got a Dwarf Cavendish banana and some Blackberries... I'm skeptical that the latter will do well, but the owner assured me... Both of these went into my garden today.
• In the veg garden, I transplanted/planted:
  
• Quailgrass
• Amaranth (both this and the above from ECHO)
• Genoa Basil
• Cucino cukes
• Lemongrass

Some other garden notes...

• Blueberries: Some are ripe and ready to be picked tomorrow morning...
• The blueberry cuttings I got this winter: They're covered in leaves and today I gently pulled one from its pot to find... ROOTS! Hurray!
• Strawberries: Lots of berries out there, but I realize that a small berry patch (mine is 10x15) will yield no more than a couple handfuls a day. To really supply a family of four, you'd need no fewer than 75 plants. That said, the berries are beautiful and tasty, and I've used no pesticides and only a bit of synthetic fertilizers this year. I cannot tell the difference between Sweet Charlies and Chandlers. The Chandlers I got as bare-root, the Charlies as potted plants. They didn't produce much during the winter, but they've surely earned their place in my garden.
  
• Figs: First leaves, fruit's already formed.
  

Useful weather data... Long Range Temperature and Precipitation Forecasts

From the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service. The charts show the probabilty for two scenarios:

• hotter than normal/and cooler than normal; and
  
• more precipitation than normal/less precipitation than normal.
  

The intensity of cooler indicates the probability of exceeding or falling short of the norm, while the white areas (EC) indicate equal chance of exceeding or falling short of then norm. (It does not indicate, it should be noted, that weather will be "normal," just that no preponderance of evidence indicates a warmer/cooler or wetter/drier -- a subtle but important distinction.)

Thus, dark brown means it is very likely that temperatures will exceed the norm while dark blue would indicate that it was very likely for temperatures to be below normal. Notice that degree or intensity of deviation from the norm is not indicated, only probability.

Here's the prognosis for April, 2007 made mid-March:

So, evidence would indicate that we have a slightly better than average chance of a warmer (but how much warmer?) spring and early summer and a roughly equal chance of a wetter or drier period over the next three months.

For our rainy season -- July, August and September -- it looks likely we're significantly more likely to have a wetter and warmer period than historical averages:

The accuracy of these instruments isn't terribly high, but they I suppose some indication is better than no indication.

Spring in Central Florida

Ranunculus

Freesia.

Delphiniums.

Blue-eyed grass

One of our native irises, Blue-Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium atlanticum). Very tough, very perennial, very cheery.

From the comments:
Given where I found it I probably don't have sufficient soil moisture for it at my place. Mores the pity.

It's been my experience that B-EG is very drought tolerant, thriving on neglect. I had a bunch of these in a ceramic pot, outside of irrigation, during the driest summer EVER in Central Florida, and they came through unscathed. Under irrigation, they spread quickly and are easily transplanted.

Freesia

I noticed yesterday that my freesia has begun to bloom -- a cherry-red stalk from the freesia that I planted a year ago December. The new blooms are mixing it up a bit with a Buddleia here. Several other plants from the same batch are getting ready to bloom. I'd say about half the freesia I planted a year ago are back this season, about what I've come to expect in perennial bulbs here in FLA. Up north, of course, they'd have proliferated. Here many of them succumb to the heat, humidity, and excessively-drained soils.

A garden update in pictures

Pea vines ('Tall Telephone') have reached the top of my seven-foot frame.Fava bean ('Windsor) blossoms.

Blueberries ('Emerald')

Chickasaw Plum blossoms.

A brief natural history of Arugula

I've been very happy with the 'Apollo' cultivar of Arugula that's been growing in my garden all winter. I can harvest a couple of salads worth every ten days from a single square foot of the garden. Totally pest free. Healthful. Tasty.

Arugula refers to several species, including Eruca sativa (Eruca means rough or harsh, presumably referring to the peppery flavor of Rocket; sativa refers to a cultivated rather than wild plant) and some spp. in the Diplotaxis ("double rows," referring to the double rows of seeds) genus. The Eruca, which I believe is the one almost universally called Arugula here in the States, is in the Brassicaceae, so closely related to cabbages and mustards.

It was a well-known herb in ancient times, gathered for eons as a potherb, and surely part of the horta (χορτα), the mixed greens gathered by Greeks and Etruscans that formed one of the bases of their diets.

We find it, for instance, mentioned in the Book of Kings:

4:39 One went out into the field to gather herbs [oroth, widely believed to be E. sativa], and found a wild vine, and gathered of it wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of stew; for they didn’t recognize them. So they poured out for the men to eat. It happened, as they were eating of the stew, that they cried out, and said, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” They could not eat of it.

Mmmm. Death in the pot. (My guess: Zucchini!) Guess they should have brought back the Arugula.

In most cultures where it is indigenous (the Mediterranean basin and some parts of western Asia, particularly Turkey), it has been considered an aphrodisiac, but it was more than a classical Spanish Fly: I've found it cited as a cure for freckles, baldness, and intestinal worms. Its healing virtues are lauded as a cure for children's coughs, as a way to increase milk flow, and as a way to "take away the ill-scent of the arm pits." Given that one book I came across referred to the smell of Arugula as "like rancid bacon," one wonders if this might not be another case of the cure being worse than the disease. (Personally, I like the bitter and peppery smell of Arugula, and I'll often mash a leaf between finger and thumb while watering or weeding.)

I read that Pliny advises one to eat Arugula seeds before being whipped: Anyone who does so shall be "so hardened, that he shall easily endure the pain." The Talmud teaches us that it can be used to treat eye infections.

Most cookbooks I've glanced in claim that Arugula first gained popularity here in the States in the 1990s, taking its place alongside roasted red peppers during the mania for all things Mediterranean. However, I read in a 1960 New York Times article ("A Green by Any Name; Pungent Ingredient Is Cause of Confusion for City Shopper Arugula -- or Rocket -- Is the Secret of Experts' Salads") that Craig Claiborne, the Times food critic, found the herb everywhere in New York City: "Most Italian chefs know [that Arugula] is the secret ingredient of their salads-about-town." He lists a half-dozen stores in the area that sell bundles of the stuff for fifteen to nineteen cents, about the price of spinach. (The Publix down the street sells a couple ounces of "baby Arugula" for close to $4!)

Galen, the Greek physician whose theories dominated 'medicine' for over a thousand years, proclaimed Rocket to be "hot and dry in the third degree" and therefore unfit to be eaten alone. He instructed that the herb be eaten with "cold herbs" like lettuce and purslane. Galen's advice aside, I eat the stuff straight with a cheesy vinaigrette or stacked high on a roast-beef sandwich. It's an undemanding herb, and the 'Apollo' cultivar is ready to pick within a few weeks. The seeds germinate at nearly 100% and transplant easily from a seedling tray into my garden. I've tried the wild stuff, but it grows much more slowly and the leaves are far smaller and have an unpleasant rubbery texture.

(The photographs are, from top down, 'Apollo', "wild" arugula (E. sativa) and 'Selvetica')

Garden crops for Florida Summers

From a gardening standpoint, we have three seasons here in Florida: We have an extended fall, which runs from the first cold, dry airmass that hits Florida sometime in late October until the last frost date, sometime in February. Spring lasts from mid-February until the onslaught of the wet season, which starts most years the first half of June. Summer lasts until late October, etc. etc.

You can, with good timing and a little luck, grow really just about anything during fall and spring. For instance, I often buy mums in late October for a little color and to replace my summer annuals (zins, dahlias, tithonia). Those mums bloom for a couple of months, go dormant in December, and then, if I'm patient, will bloom again abundantly in March. I buy pansies and Johny Jump-ups in November, with the first sustained cool spell. They bloom constantly and reliably all the way until at least the end of May the beginning of May. Biennials like Foxgloves (Foxy) and Poppies, when planted in November and December, bloom in March and April. The "cold season" (November through the beginning of May) find my roses in full glory.

But our summer is a lot like the winter up north: Many plants -- flowering and vegetable -- cannot make it through June and July, and those that do usually die of fungal issues during September's combination of shorter days, hot nights and constant deluge. By October, I need those mums to add a life back to the garden.

Anyway, I've really been into the whole veg gardening thing. I've pulled pounds of Collards, tons of Rocket, bunches of carrots, turnips, lots of lettuce, some strawberries, fennel... Just recently, my peas have started to produce prolifically. My favas look to be not far behind.

I'm now ramping up my spring garden, with a couple dozen tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and various warm-season greens like chard and spinach hybrids. I expect to switch over to warm-weather gardening soon, pulling up the brassicas and cool-weather plants and replacing them with the Solanaceae (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, etc.). I've got dozens of seedlings ready to transplant into my intensively-planted beds.

That phase of the garden, though, will come to an end in June. Fungal diseases, nematodes, insect damage and dry spells just make it not worth my while. What to plant then?

I ordered some vegetables for summer planting from ECHO, which should do pretty well here in Central Florida:

• Quailgrass (Lagos Spinach)
• Edible Amaranth
  
• New Zealand Spinach
• Roselle (Florida Cranberry, Red Sorrel)
• Ethiopian Kale

Descriptions of all these plants can be found here.

In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert - New York Times

In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert - New York Times: "Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago."