ginko as on iplant (medicinal plant info app on my iphone) native to north china concidered the oldest tree species high ewsisstance to desiese insects and pollution the leaves have been placed in books to repel bookworms food applications inner seeds are edible if roasted in achient chiunese and japenese cultures they were used to prevent drunkenness medicinal properties antibacterial antifungal antioxidant astringent creberial tonic circulatory stimulant expectorant kidney tonic rejuvinative sedative (cuts here but in such a way i think theres more) medicinal usage tea tinture capsules different parts have different properties leaves are antioxidant brain tonic circulatory stimulant and rejuvinative the nuts are antibacterial antifungal antitussive astringent expectorant and sedative as with properties different parts of the plant are used tor different purposes the leaves are used for alzheimeers disease anxiety asthma blindness blood clots cereberial arteriosclerosiss deafness dementia depression hearing loss hemorrhoids impotence macular degeneration memory loss nerve deafness pain in the extremeties plebitits poor circulation reynauds disease senility skull injuries stroke tinnitius varicose veins vertigo and vision loss the nuts are used foe asthma bladder irriation cancer catarrh diabetes diphtheria dysentary weak kidneys incontence typhoid tinnius tuberculosis frequient urnination vaginial infection and prepherial vascular desiese ginko helps to relax blood vessils so that more nutrients can be delivered into the body it helps the brain uselise oxygen and glucose better and improves perferial circulatiion yet does not keep one awake it increases cereberal blood flow and the rate at which information is transmitted also has an anti-agretory effect on blood platelets WARNING! fruit from female trees may cause contact dermatitis or mouth lesions do not eat the pulp of the fruit the nut is not suggested for long term use excess use may cause fever headache and irritability side effects from using ginko leaves are rare however large amounts have been reported to cause gastrointestinal disturbances and headaches ok lol i hope that helps some? i have to laugh with the long list of what it can treat to the SHORT list of side effects \-\-arent modern medicines treat one thing and a LONG list possible side effects?\-\- im learning i need to NOT trade with those too new or if i do ask them to send first if they refuse put those on my want list then continue on and that i need to get out and get more pictures in and from my garden between making seed packs and trying to start an inventory of my seeds of some sort i havent taken enough time to care fer them or get pictures but they still do well also that with gardens in 2 locations the further one will NEED mulching next year and rebuilding the closer i think even tho its gonna bug me we may cut back on some plants and changing our arrangement around

debra_boston and others I am glad the photos will inspire a visit! thanks for looking! I didn't know what to expect either for summer. Surely with the drought I thought it wouldn't be lush but it was exactly opposite of what I had thought :-) It really gives ideas on what to plant in August for people looking for ideas. I've now been there each season and can truly comment that whatever season you visit it is worth a visit. Don't forget there is a plant sale Saturday Sept 11th. I am planning to go (even though I don't need any plants...) Saturday, September 11 9am - 3pm FREE ADMISSION all day! 6th Annual Gardeners' Emporium: Fall Plant and Garden Accessory Sale  Several regional non-profit plant societies & specialty nurseries Conifer, Cactus & Succulent, Garden Vision Epimediums, Greystone Gardens, Miniature Plants, Daylily, Hosta, Popes Pots, The Proper Season, The Farmstead, Royal Crest Farm, Bamboo, Fiske's Gardens, Federation of Mass Farmer's Markets, Cut It Out, and Stonegate Gardens.

Christie: I remember how much you love butterflies! I'm jealous that you got to actually hold the little beauty! We're supposed to be in "dry" season right now, which means butterflies for us here, but it's been unusually rainy for the past month now...butterflies are hiding. When I was working in Pennsylvania, we had a store event and I ordered 1,000 butterflies for a release..Half monarchs and half fritalliry (sp?)... When the time came for the release, it was amazing!! Imagine a "cloud" of monarchs shooting up into the air at once... The fritilliry guys just went straight to the grass. The crowd was in awe and the faces on the kids would give you goosebumps! We staged a bunch of butterfly friendly plants around the area of the release and sprayed the area with water. The poor things were so hungry after their journey that the flocked to the plants! What a great photo event for the crowd! They had a chance to come up close and photograph the butterflies feeding and the butterflies were so hungry and dehydrated they didn't care.. After the feeding they flew away happily ... I like to think that today, there are a bunch of new generation flying around the fields of Gettysburg, PA just because of me... Wouldn't that be nice???

My hope is that many of you will bookmark this post and provide a link whenever you come across posts written by others in search of a remedy for problems caused by a saturated medium. As a member of Garden Web/ Houzz who has been assisting members with their container gardening adventures since 2004, I’ve discovered that an extremely high % of the problems growers bump up against are related to excess water retention in the media (soils) they use. The cause of some of these issues, like poor growth and spoiled foliage, are often very apparent. In other cases, where insect infestation and diseases are at issue, the cause might not be isolated as facilely; still, root systems in poor health and with limited ability to function efficiently due to excess water retention in the medium, affect the plant’s metabolism, which in turn affects the effectiveness of the plant’s natural defenses against diseases and insect herbivory. So, where we might be inclined to levy blame for low vitality levels in plants affected by the insects/ diseases we can readily see, in most cases the opposite is true. Low vitality/ weakened plants that result from poor root health, caused by excess water and an insufficient volume of oxygen in the root zone, is the reason underlying most cases of root/foliage diseases and insect predation. Without question, the best way to resolve problems related to excess water retention is by using a soil that allows you to water correctly. This means using a soil that allows you to water to beyond the point of saturation, so water is draining freely from the drain hole(s) w/o the plant being necessarily punished by a subsequent period of soil saturation that limits root function and damages root health. Understanding what drives water retention in container soils probably represents the largest step forward a container gardener can take at any one point in time. Read more about it here. Perched water is water that is so tightly held by the force of capillarity it won’t leave the pot, even though the force of gravity is exerting its downward pull. Capillarity is the sum of the forces of cohesion and adhesion and what causes sponges to be moist, even after we thoroughly wring them out. Cohesion causes water molecules to stick to other water molecules, which is why water forms drops. Adhesion causes water to stick to dissimilar molecules, like those in soil particles and pot walls, and is the reason that drops of water can be observed adhering to even perfectly vertical surfaces. Acting together, the cohesive and adhesive forces in container media are regularly observed to be stronger than gravity, thus preventing water from moving downward and out of media through the drain hole(s) that should be a part of every conventional container planting. When capillary attraction is stronger than gravity, water ‘perches in the soil above the container’s bottom. Since it is primarily the saturated fraction of the medium that acts to limit root health/ function, anything we can do to reduce the amount of saturated soil in a container, the less potential soil saturation has to limit root health/ function. Finally, to the point of this post, which focuses on how to use ballast to limit the volume of soil in any container that is capable of holding perched water. First, though, it is important to note that the amount of perched water a soil can hold varies from one soil to another and by container size shape; BUT, the height of the perched water table supported by any given soil will be the same in any container size/shape used. That MG Moisture Control Soil you might use, the one that supports 6” of saturation at the bottom of the pot? No matter what the size or shape of the container, when the soil is saturated, it will always support 6” of saturation, i.e. until that ht. is reduced by way of evaporation or evapotranspiration. If we use a “drainage layer” of stones/ gravel/ packing peanuts …, it doesn’t increase drainage. E.g., if we have a pot that is 12” deep and a soil that supports 6” of perched water at the bottom of the pot, adding a “drainage layer” simply causes water to perch to a ht of 6” above the drainage layer. Whereas the max height of the drainage layer would be 6” from the container’s bottom w/o a drainage layer, adding a 3” “drainage layer”would cause water to perch above that to a ht of 9”, which is actually an effort that ends up being self-defeating. Let’s use our mind’s eye for a moment to visualize what using ballast can do for us in terms of reducing retention of unwanted or excess water. We already learned that the potential ht of a perched water table remains constant for any given soil. For this visualization, we will use a soil that supports 4” of perched water/ soggy soil. Let’s also imagine that our container is 9x9x10” deep. The potential volume of soil saturated with perched water is equal to 9x9x4, or 324 cubic inches. But what happens if you place a 4x4x8” brick in the bottom of the pot as ballast before you fill it? The brick takes up 128 cubic inches of space that would otherwise be occupied by saturated soil. Let’s add 2 bricks, so the amount of soil that can hold perched water is reduced from the 324 cubic inches w/o the 2 bricks as ballast, to only 68 cubic inches, with ballast - less than 1/5 the amount before adding ballast. With a little planning, you can reduce the volume to less than 10% of the amount of soil saturated before adding ballast, which goes a very long way toward providing a remedy for woes related to saturated soils. One very important consideration relates to the fact that there must be a continual soil column that extends from the top of the soil to the bottom of the pot. If you had an 8x8x12” pot and were using a soil that supports 4” of perched water, adding 2 – 4x4x8 bricks would fill the bottom of the pot, which would cause water to perch 4” above the bricks; but, if there was a small crack between the bricks that allowed an unbroken soil column from the soil mass above the bricks to the bottom of the pot, the only perched water in the entire configuration would reside in the soil occupying the small space between the bricks. In addition to using ballast, there are other tricks that employ some simple science that allow you to reduce the amount of water a given soil can hold. You can read more about them here. You can read more about them here. The first link I left, at the end of the second paragraph above, explains a concept that makes growing proficiently much easier on multiple fronts. I highly recommend you take the time to become familiar with it to the degree that by default, it's part of the compendium of container gardening knowledge you can apply at will. When you understand and put the concept it explains to work, using ballast won't be necessary. If you think it might be helpful, I can provide a few sketches I drew that should help to clarify some of the info provided. Take care. Al