What natives are you growing in 2019 ×2
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
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What natives are you growing in 2019?
Comments (596)I'm not judging them all. Just the morons who brought over the invasives lol. :) But I still think that they should be more concerned for their natives, but same can be said for the people here too. I am of European decent. We have only been out of the last dark age for like 50 years. About the time we realized we were killing ourselves with all the pollution and eviromental repercussions. Their are native plant lovers in all those countries who are fighting their own battles. So it's pretty much the same everywhere. We have a member who lives in Sumatra and grows plants. It upsets her to see all the jungles plowed and drained for oil palms, but what can 1 person do by themselves. It comes down to teaching the children for the next generation!...See MoreJanuary 2019, Week 2, Making Grow Lists & Checking Them Twice
Comments (69)Rebecca, I am happy your drought is gone too, but sorry this dreary weather contributes to your aches and pains. I am hoping for warmer, drier weather for all of us, but not sure when we are going to get it. January always seems like the dreariest month to me. Stock will grow here, but it is pretty picky, and I have better results from it when I plant it in October or November which is the same time here in my area that you can plant pansies, flowering kale, flowering cabbage, dianthus, and snapdragons. Stock is not only a cool-season plant, but it is a bit pickier about the cool weather than some other cool-season plants seem to be. For example, dianthus goes in and out of bloom cycles here pretty much year-round, whether the temperatures are high are low. Stock doesn't do that. Stock blooms when the weather is cool, period. I believe it has to have temperatures in the 60s in order to set flowers and bloom. Once your temperatures are hotter, then it is pretty much done. If you can find some transplants in flower or ready to flower and plant them in early Spring, you can get a few weeks to a few months of bloom from it if the weather cooperates. I like stock but don't plant it often in Spring as we get too hot too early down here most years. It also tolerates cold less well than the other plants I mentioned above, so may need to be covered up in the winter and early spring on nights going very far below 32 degrees. It will tolerate some light frosts but not real heavy ones. Lupines? I haven't tried the ones that grow in northern parts of the country as I don't think they'd do well in our hot summers but I grow the kind of lupines that God gave us....Lupinus texensis, aka Texas bluebonnets. They either are perennial here or reseed in our clay, and some years we get big stands of them and other years we have smaller stands. Our clay really is too dense for them here at our house and I knew that when I planted them, but I figured that maybe if I was foolish enough to sow the seeds and plant them here, then maybe they would be foolish enough to grow and bloom at least a little bit....and they do. I also have grown the red-flowered variety of Lupinus texensis called Alamo Fire and it does pretty well here. In our area, all kinds of Texas bluebonnets do better from seed sown in the fall than in the spring. The bluebonnet seeds have a hard shell and sprout sporadically over a period of a couple of years. I do see fairly large (maybe one gallon, maybe two gallon) pots of Russell hybrid type lupines in stores each spring. They have them around the same time they have delphiniums in bloom in large pots, so maybe in April. To me, these are the kinds of things you buy, bring home and plant for instant impact, and you do so knowing they are likely to be relatively short-lived in our heat. If you don't expect them to thrive and flourish in our heat and can be content just to enjoy them while they last, I don't see anything wrong with buying them and planting them. I suppose they could be a big disappointment if a person bought them thinking they would bloom all summer. Yet, you never know---what if we had a cooler than average summer and they did bloom and survive? Cool summers aren't common here, but we had one in 2015. Nancy, I've grown Drummond's Phlox here and it did okay, but not well enough that I continued growing it. Drummond's Phlox is one of the smaller varieties and it needs well-drained sandy soil (which I really cannot give it). As for the taller garden type phlox, there's a handful of heirloom types that thrive here---we had someone in our neighborhood in Ft Worth whose home was just surrounded by the old magenta-flowering one grown back in the 1960s and prior. I don't know the name of it. There's a few of the taller garden phlox, like the variety "David", bred to be mildew-tolerant, but I haven't grown any of those. Jennifer, We have a fenced chicken run. We always have had one. I wouldn't have a chicken coop without one. I believe our run with the only coop now in use (we have four coops, and each has a fully enclosed chicken run) is 10' x 20' and it is fully covered in sturdy fencing, including a fence type roof. The chickens are fine when they are in it, but they hate being confined because they are used to free-ranging. I think that if they never were allowed to free-range, they wouldn't know what they were missing and they'd be content to be in the chicken run. We have lost more chickens to predators in the last 5 years than we did in the first 15 years, and I'm just done with that. If we buy more chickens, they are not going to be allowed to free range because it really is just setting them up to eventually become some predator's meal. Our predator problem probably is 20 times worse now than it was when we moved here. As land a few miles from us continues to develop, the wildlife gets pushed upriver to us. We have to change how we manage our chickens, or there's no point in having them any more. Tim is gone from home roughly 14 hours a day on work days, so he barely sees the chickens except on weekends and he is out of touch with our current reality with regards to the predator issues. I wish we were in a nice, quiet semi-rural neighborhood where chickens can free range and be relatively safe within their own yard, but we live in a wildlife jungle. It would help if I could convince him to fence our entire yard, but he hates fences with a passion. I don't know how to have chickens any more without an 8' tall fence around the whole yard. Dawn...See More2019 Herb Grow List
Comments (29)dbarron, I didn't go look. I'd have to venture into the woods and we were too busy with the grandkids all day Sunday. I could have dragged them off into the woods with us to see what we could find, but the youngest is only 4 and she thinks we live in a Bambi world where all the wildlife more or less love one another and everything lives happily ever after, so I hate to ruin that for her at such a young age. She'll learn soon enough. I also am not overly fond of stumbling upon animal carcasses because I'm just not into all that blood and gore. I thought I'd just wait and see where the vultures show up.....if they show up. Sometimes, you know, the larger predators carry their kill away. We are close enough to the Red River that they often drag away what they kill back down into the river bottomlands where they tend to roam, or sometimes the cougars cache it underneath brush. In particular, I do not want to find anyone's cache because that would be too scary. I'll tell you this, though. The deer usually come and eat their deer corn overnight. This morning, the deer corn we put out last evening was untouched. It didn't even look like bunnies or coons had been around (still muddy enough to see their tracks if they show up) overnight to nibble at the deer corn. This morning, the deer came around 8 or 8:30 a.m. to eat, and they came in a large herd, not in the usual small groups of 3 or 4. So, of course, at the very least we know that they heard what I heard, or they smelled death....or....somehow....they just know. I wish they could tell me what they know. There's not many predators that scare the deer so that narrows things down in my mind a bit. Rebecca, I do try to plan herbs somewhat, but they also have their own way of popping up in random spots---particularly the catnip. I think the cats sometimes carry catnip seeds on their fur and deposit it just wherever. When they do, I just leave it wherever it pops up. Grasshoppers love catnip and lemon balm, so both of them are early indicators of a developing grasshopper problem if I just pay attention. When I see the catnip and lemon balm leaves riddled with many, many small holes as the grasshopper hatch is occurring in Spring, I can tell from the damage level if it is going to be a bad grasshopper year or not, and if I need to order Semaspore or Nolo Bait and deal with the young hoppers or if the population is so small that I don't have to bother. That's one surprising way herbs have proven to be very useful in the garden. Dawn...See More2019 Tomato & Pepper grow list - what do you suggest?
Comments (13)I'm also in zone 5a, so what has been successful for me may grow well for you. These are my "standards", and the number I planted this year, happily growing under lights: 12 Mortgage Lifter, which is my favorite tomato and might fill the beefsteak spot 12 Great White, a little picky to start but prolific and is my Mother's favorite tomato 6 Pineapple, because they taste good 12 Golden Jubilee, another absolutely dependable and prolific producer here 3 SunSugar, for the 5 kids across the street 24 Rutgers for canning New this year, I do "experimental" plantings annually, just because I like to, LOL 2 Moonglow 2 Pruden's Purple 6 Hillbilly 2 Tasmanian Chocolate (cherry type) 2 Giraffe, supposed to store up to 5 months, we'll see about that... For peppers I agree that King of the North grows well and is big, but I also prefer other "sweet" types in place of the bell peppers. So, my current favorites, and proven successful here: 12 Ajvarski, I love these and they have a wonderful sweet flavor 3 Golden Bell 6 King of the North Hot: 6 Sugar Rush Peach, I've never seen anything so prolific. 12 plants gave me 3 BUSHELS of peppers last year. They aren't habanero hot, but they want to be. When I made relish and ground them in the food processor they smelled just like peaches. Flavor is sweet first, then hot. Plants were 4 feet tall. 3 Early Jalapeno 3 Lemon Drop New to me: 3 Orange Jalapeno 3 Yellow Jalapeno 3 Napoli frying peppers Good luck! I bought a box full of last year's seeds from our local on line auction, I have new varieties to experiment with for a couple of years! Annie...See More
7 years agoNo impressive pictures like yours. A not so steady hand makes for funky pictures. The lunar eclipse.
Jay 6a Chicago thanked Iris S (SC, Zone 7b)- 7 years ago
- 7 years ago
Well. I have my Christmas present laying around right here. As soon as I figure out how to set it up, I can probably get you some deer pictures.
Jay 6a Chicago thanked Iris S (SC, Zone 7b) - 7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
- 7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
This is one of those plants that doesn't look very nice but it's a great host plant for a few butterflies.Boechera canadensis, Brassicaceae, sicklepod.
Boechera canadensis.
Boechera canadensis.
Falcate Orangetip Butterfly.
Falcate Orangetip Butterfly.
Olympia Marble Butterfly.
Mustard White Butterfly.
Mustard White Butterfly.
Checkered White Butterfly.
Checkered White Butterfly.
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7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoThe nursery said the NJ tea will tolerate clay, everywhere else I found says sandy or rocky soil. I think it will do okay with infertile soil. Any soil needs to be well drained, so maybe high ground, full sun?
Jay I think these are indian plaintain, in a book I was reading, right? They look good in a meadow. Much better than when they're isolated.
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The bins are still covered with snow and we are getting more. My feet got cold while I was outside.Iowa prairies
- 7 years ago
So pretty! I really can’t wait for Spring. Trying to organize my pictures is slow going.
Meanwhile even my birdbath has pretty ice sculptures.
- 7 years ago
The only one matching at that time (and still is on their website) might become a pest. I didn’t have any seed pots and it’s also growing on the dog fence with grass on both sides. So if it goes the passion vine route it can just be mowed over.
Jay 6a Chicago thanked Iris S (SC, Zone 7b) - 7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
It's 9 degrees right now and supposed to drop below zero. The flowers on the Funastrum look similar to Dregea sinensis flowers.Dregea sinensis
Hoya carnosa
2 degrees now with a comfort level of minus 10. It's supposed to dip to 50 below next week.
- 7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
There are even more moths that use wild cherry as a host plant. I can't think of any other plant that feeds so many different species!
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/trees/plants/wb_cherry.htm
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Ok, seems I have a problem again. I was wondering about the blank spaces.
Jay 6a Chicago thanked Iris S (SC, Zone 7b) - 7 years ago
- 7 years ago
I posted 22 pictures since then. There's only 475 comments.
Can you see the butterfly?
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- 7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoOrbea chrysostephana
Orbea chrysostephana
Oxystelma esculentum
Oxystelma esculentum
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Iris S (SC, Zone 7b)