The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

Here we are in late summer, most of the flowers of the season have faded.  That means the honey bees have to work harder for their nectar.

I was watering the outdoor potted plants this afternoon and noticed the bees “working” the flowers of our Leonotis (Staircase Plant).  Usually I don’t see any bees on this plant but today was different.

The honey bees were seaching for nectar. Some were flying franticaly from flower to flower, while others were spending some time at each blossom.

Looking closer, I noticed that the “frustrated” bees (the ones flying from flower to flower) were trying to get nectar from the tip of the elongated flowers. (Please excuse the out of focus shot, it’s pretty hard to convince a bee to stay still for a picture)

While those working calmly and deliberately were gathering nectar from the base of the flower.

Looking closer at the flower, I discovered that the petals of a Leonotis flower are wrapped in such a way that it forms a funnel shape.

If a honey bee tries to get nectar from the tip, it finds that it can’t reach the base of the flower where the nectar is stored.  The flower is too long for the bee to stretch her tongue that far.

A smart bee learns that where the flower petals overlap, a small crack is formed at the seam near the base of the flower. This is where she inserts her tongue and is able to easily gather the nectar.

This was a very intriguing display of honey  bee behavior.  I could have watched it for hours, but I was running out of time and had much more watering to do.

 So, I just continued on with my work and let the bees carry on with theirs.

Bob

In In the centers of the beds, in the annual garden that I take care of, are the taller flowers.  Cleome ‘Violet Queen’ is 4 feet tall, with a cluster of pure, purple, funnel shaped flowers.  It starts blooming early and continues to bloom as it gets taller.  It has little thorns on it so I like to keep it away from the outer edges of beds so people don’t accidentally get scratched. 

One of our favorite flowers is Verbena bonareinsis.  It doesn’t usually have a common name listed, but I think Purple Haze would fit very well.  It’s three feet tall with only a few leaves near the base of the plant, and stiff, wiry stems with a cluster of smaller purple flowers on top.  Butterflies love it, since it’s not very full looking or thick with leaves , we let it grow where ever it seeds itself.  The flowers behind it can still be seen very well.  It adds a dusting of purple to the garden.

Each bed has a stand of sunflowers in it this year.  The one that looks the best in the beds is ‘sonja’.  Only 3 to 3 and a half feet tall, it blends in with the other flowers quite well.  Another bed has a sunflower in it that turned out to be 6 ft,  that one looks out of place with the other flowers.  ‘Sonja’ has a small flower head, 3-4 inches wide and dark yellow petals with a dark brown center.  Bloomed for quite a while, still is. Plus it attracts, like all other sunflowers, the goldfinches at this time of year.  They add alot of excitement to the garden, while they cling to the hanging sunflower heads and jab away at the newly formed seeds.

The bumble bees are buzzing around the cleome now. They push their way into the funnel shaped flowers to get to the nectar.

On the other side of one of the beds I can see the pale greenish tubuar blossoms of the Nicotiana ‘Lime Green’, a 18″ -24″ tall flowering tobacco.  I think I will under plant the cleome with this nicotiana next year.  The cleome gets bare at the bottom of the plant and the green and purple will look good together.

Butterflies and bees are all over this garden now that the morning has warmed up.  It makes it so alive in here.  So much to see. It really is a satisfying garden.  Sight, sound, smell and the warmth surrounding me totally make the work that goes into this garden worthwhile.

Happy Gardening, Judy

Harry Potter’s Nimbus 2000 may be the most famous witch’s broom in the world, but we gardeners have our own witch’s broom to be concerned about.  

A couple of days ago I noticed an unusual growth developing on our asparagus plants. It looked like a tuft of new green ferny leaves growing randomly on  the stems. Due to its distinctive shape, I knew immediately that it was Asparagus Witch’s Broom.

Witch’s Broom is a generic term used by plant pathologists to describe  growth of this type.  It can occure on plants ranging anywhere from potatoes to trees and have many different causes depending on the plant affected.

In the case of Asparagus, the feeding of a small insect called the Asparagus Aphid causes this abnormality.  If left unchecked, your Asparagus yields can be dramatically reduced. 

Many garden insecticides will kill this pest.  Organic gardeners can use rotenone and/or pyrethrum to help control these aphids.

Only the first several plants in one row of our Asparagus show signs of Witch’s Broom so now would be a good time to “nip this problem in the bud” before it gets out of hand.

No playing “Quidditch” with this stuff.

Bob

The garden of annuals that I take care of at work is looking very good right now.  Its peak blooming season is July and August.  It will have color in it even as late as early October if we don’t get an early frost. 

Though with nighttime temperatures in August in the low 50′s , I wouldn’t be surprised if we had temperatures in the low 40′s in September and frost before October this year.  Be ready to cover your tomatoes!

The flowering annuals are all in good shape.  I haven’t noticed much downy mildew this season, which is usually a big problem for this garden.  And the Zinnias are only now starting to get a little browning of the bottom leaves.  That’s a disease called  Alternaria Leaf Spot.                 .

I am vey pleasantly surprised that the 12 ” tall reddish orange Cosmos called ‘Cosmic Red’ are blooming very heavily.  We’ve deadheaded them three times this summer.  So, they take a lot of work but each plant has 30 blossoms on it and looks quite stunning. 

Next to it is the tall blue Ageratum ‘Blue Bouquet”.  The colors do well together, plus I like to use some blue in all  my gardens.

Next to it is a short 10-12″ bushy Zinnia called Zinnia ‘Profusion Apricot”.  It’s full of 1 1/2 – 2 inch single daisy-like blooms of various shades of apricot.  Just a little deadheading keeps the zinnia profusion series blooming well into the fall.  The description in the catalogs says it doesn’t need deadheading at all but I do a little just to freshen it up.

A King Fisher just “chuttered” overhead.  He flew so close and turned his head to look at me so that you would think that he was trying to figure out what a human was doing in that garden so early!

On the other side of this bed in front of  me is a new marigold( to me anyway).  It’s called ‘Fireball’.  It is 18″ tall, orangey yellow with a little bicolor shading it it.  It’s done very well and is full of blooms.  Marigolds are another flower that don’t need deadheading but we do  a little.  I probably planted it 12″ apart so it’s nice and thick. 

That’s all for now.  I’ll tell you about some more annuals  in my next blog. 

Bye now, Judy

If your onion stalks are starting to look a little yelllow and are begining to fall over, it means they are just about ready to harvest. Once they get to that stage, they’re done growing.

Our white slicing onions are doing just that:

To prepare our onions for harvest, we will knock over any stalks that haven’t fallen over yet on their own and let them dry a bit in the garden.

After lifting them from the garden, we partially dry them in an airy place out of the sun for a couple of weeks.  This drying process is called “curing”.  It helps the onion form that familiar onion skin which seals the inner part of the bulb and keeps it from damage.

After curing, we cut off the dried stalk (leaving a couple of inches) and store them in a cool, dark place until we are ready to use them. 

Not all onion varieties will be ready to harvest at the same time.  Take for example our red onions, which are still green and standing up tall. They are a couple of weeks or more away from harvest:

If you store your onions, plan on using the ones with the thickest stalk first as they don’t keep as well as the thinner stalked bulbs. 

Also remember that some varieties will keep in storage longer than others.  We always plant the “Copra” variety of onion for long term storage. It is a yellow cooking onion which is very pungent when eaten raw.  When cooked, the Copra takes on a wonderful sweet flavor. 

The rest of our onions were selected for their taste, color or shape.

Bob