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Two Days for Pollinators

23 August, 2019 by amygwh

Butterfly perched on white zinnia flower in a garden

Today and tomorrow, August 23 and 24, are the days set for UGA’s Great Georgia Pollinator Census (GGPC). UGA’s goal is to create a “snapshot” of the pollinators in Georgia on these two days in August.

Since UGA research staff can’t cover the whole state in two days, they have called for “all hands on deck” — inviting the entire population of the state to help. I went to one of my favorite neighborhood gardens to participate this morning.

Sign for a community garden with painted images of children working in a garden, tomato plant, a pumpkin, carrots growing, a tree, and a butterfly

My day at the garden

A woman in blue shirt, shorts and a hat, with a clipboard, observing a patch of flowers.
One of this morning’s pollinator counters

A total of nine of us showed up to count pollinators, but the garden will be open again tomorrow, for people who couldn’t participate on a weekday.

We had a great time watching the insects, identifying butterflies, and being in a garden full of flowers.

The garden includes a patch of milkweeds, more than one kind, for the monarchs, and we found monarch butterfly eggs on the backs of some of the leaves. It is always heartening to see evidence that the monarch migration continues.

Some pictures from my morning:

  • Pollinator Census sheet for the GGPC
  • Carpenter bee on marigold
  • A fellow pollinator-counter
  • Sulfur butterfly on red Pentas flowers
  • Chrysalis for a swallowtail butterfly, on fennel
  • Fritillary caterpillar on passionflower vine

What we learned

One plant can be visited by five or six or more kinds of butterflies in just the fifteen minute window of counting time. The good news is that we didn’t have to identify the exact kinds, just know that they were butterflies. Many were skippers, and those can be hard to tell apart.

Also, some plants are visited by so many teeny tiny bees that counting can be difficult.

Two tiny bees in the yellow center of a red-petaled zinnia flower
Two tiny bees in the yellow center of a red-petaled zinnia flower

The husband of one of our pollinator counters did a “dry run” on a plant in their yard yesterday, the day before the census, to see how it would go. He saw a hummingbird moth (his wife identified it), and he had never seen one before. He was entranced.

Still another day to participate!

If you weren’t able to pitch in today, there is still tomorrow. Visit the GGPC website to read about how-to-count and to download a copy of the counting sheet.

Then, on Saturday the 24th of August, find a plant that has flowers on it and insects visiting the flowers. Set a timer for 15 minutes, then count the insects that visit the flowers.

You don’t have to have great insect-ID skills for this. The categories of pollinators are for just eight kinds, and the GGPC website includes a guide to download that shows pictures.

Filed Under: News, pollinators Tagged With: Community Gardens

Uncommon Crops at Area Community Gardens

18 September, 2018 by amygwh

The 2018 Annual Conference of the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) was in Atlanta this past week.  Bus tours of local community gardens were part of the conference. The bus tour option I chose (there were several – all looked good!) was for community gardens in Clarkston, which is a little Southeast of Atlanta.

Our bus tour guide, Bobby, said he’d heard Clarkston called both “the most diverse square mile in the U.S.”, and “Ellis Island South.” One organizer for a garden we visited told us that students from 65 nations attend the local high school.

Our bus stopped at the North Dekalb Mall Community Garden, the Community Garden at Clarkston Community Center, the Clarkston International Garden at 40 Oaks Preserve, the Friends of Refugees Garden at Jolly Avenue, and the Community Garden at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Gardeners at these gardens mostly do not speak English. Many are from countries in Southeast Asia and in Africa.

Uncommon garden crops

Cocoyam

One member of our tour group lives in New York now, but he grew up in Ghana. Luckily, he recognized the cocoyam that we saw in the gardens. Otherwise, I would probably still be trying to identify it! According to the cocoyam description at Plant Village, there are two kinds of cocoyam. The leaves of one type are edible at maturity, in addition to having an edible root. Leaves of the other kind are edible only when young.

Uncommon crops grow in Clarkston's community gardens

Thai basil

Thai basil and lemongrass are not totally unfamiliar (unlike cocoyam), but I don’t normally see them in community gardens. BBC offers many recipes that use Thai basil. In general, the leaves are used in pho (soup) and curries.

Amaranth

We actually saw more than one kind of amaranth. Some, I think, were grown for the leaves (cook them like spinach), and others for the seeds. I have grown a grain amaranth before, but my experience was that separating the seeds from the rest of the plant bits was not easy. Will Bonsall (Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening) wrote about  his amaranth experience, saying:

“Looking at my first amaranth crop I was somewhat disappointed to see that, although the yield of biomass was impressive, the grain yield seemed much less than, say, wheat, although they are said to yield comparably. When I hefted the bucket of grain, however, I was far more impressed. It was like lead, and I had to conclude that such a dense grain must really be as nutrient packed as they say.”

He had winnowed his crop on a breezy day, and he grinds the grain (passing the tiny seeds through a hand mill four times) to use in pancakes and waffles.

Tree collards

I have actually read about tree collards before, but it seemed likely that they would be attacked by caterpillars just like other cabbage-family plants, so I never looked into growing them myself. Maybe I should change that! The tree collards growing at the Clarkston Community Center garden looked great.

Roselle

Roselle with hibiscus-like flowers and red calyxes showing.
Roselle with hibiscus-like flowers and red calyxes showing. PHOTO/Amygwh

This is another crop that I had read about and then dismissed as one I would not be interested in. The bright red calyxes (flower parts) are used in teas like ‘Red Zinger‘, and I have never liked those teas. They seem slimy to me. However, while at Community Garden at North Dekalb Mall, I was offered a leaf to taste.

The flavor was tart, like sorrel (sheep sorrel in the yard, or French sorrel planted on purpose). Looking it up when I got home, I found that another name for roselle is sour leaf. Apparently, the plants are grown just as much for the leaves as for the calyxes.

According to the chapter on roselle in the book Fruits of Warm Climates, by Julia Morton, roselle did not used to be such an uncommon crop in the U.S.:

“Roselle became and remained a common home garden crop throughout southern and central Florida until after World War II when this area began to develop rapidly and home gardening and preserving declined. Mrs. Edith Trebell of Estero, Florida, was one of the last remaining suppliers of roselle jelly. In February, 1961, I purchased the last 2 jars made from the small crop salvaged following the 1960 hurricane and before frost killed all her plants.”

The book chapter also describes using the red calyxes to make a dish that tastes like cranberry sauce. Since cranberries do not grow well in north Georgia, this could be another reason to grow some roselle.

Hyacinth bean

Plenty of people grow hyacinth bean as an ornamental plant. It is beautiful! however, most of us have not eaten the amazing purple beans. Green Dean at Eat the Weeds offers this caution about hyacinth beans:

 “Mature and dry beans have got a high amount of cyanogenic glycosides in them. Not good for you.”

But, he offers this hope:

“Mature or dry beans must not be eaten raw. They have to be cooked. That means boiling soft raw mature beans or roasting as heat drives away the toxin. If they have dried — read they are hard — that means soaking overnight then boiling them a long time in a lot of water. Or, boil unsoaked dry beans in a lot of water twice. “

More hope: he says that young beans, leaves, and flowers can be eaten without all that extra work. Read his linked article find out how to prepare these other plant parts.

Bitter melon

Flower of bitter melon, with bee.
Flower of bitter melon, with bee. PHOTO/Amygwh

This vegetable seemed to be very popular at the gardens we visited. The vines covered many of the fences used to separate the garden plots. We were told that the fruits truly are bitter, but that the bitterness could be reduced.

Tennessee State University has published information about bitter melon, including its food value, which may explain why anyone would eat such a difficult fruit:

“Bitter melon has twice the beta carotene of broccoli, twice the potassium of bananas, and twice the calcium of spinach. It also contains high amounts of fiber, phosphorous, and Vitamins C, B1, B2, and B3.”

In addition, the fruits are used in herbal medicines in Asia, Africa, and India, for a wide range of complaints, from gout, to cancer, to graying hair (see TSU’s linked publication for fuller list).

Any uncommon crops in your garden?

My most “uncommon crop” is chicory (many kinds). I do snack on garden weeds while in the yard, which might count for something, but I am not an adventurous eater. When I was a child, the foods I was most likely to eat were peanut butter sandwiches, Cheerios, and canned green beans. These many years later, my list of acceptable foods is still not super-long.

The good news about chicory is that, like so many of the uncommon crops I saw last Saturday at the refugee gardens, chicory is unbothered by pests, and it is drought tolerant. Also, if I put chicory on pizza or in bean soup, I can eat it.

Next year, though, I might try roselle.

Hope your gardens are growing well!

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Community Garden, local food systems, Vegetables Tagged With: Community Gardens, crops

Fire Ants in the Garden – Organic Control

18 October, 2017 by amygwh

Fire ant mound at the base of a tree.

No gardener wants to encounter fire ants in the garden, but sometimes we find that they have moved in, unwanted. Getting rid of these pain-inflicting invaders can take some persistence, but options for organic control do exist. Knowing a little about the biology of these ants can help a gardener plan a successful counter-attack.

Flattened fire ant mound with deer hoof print in the middle.
Flattened fire ant “mound” shows deer hoof print. PHOTO/Amygwh

Fire ants do not tolerate freezing weather very well. If you treat a fire ant mound in fall, even if the whole mound isn’t dead within a few weeks, enough workers can be killed that the rest of the colony doesn’t survive the winter.

In spring and fall, too, most of the ants in a colony will be closer to the surface, so that a mound drench type of product has a good chance of reaching all of them.

In other words, both fall and spring are when organic controls are more likely to work well. Killing off smaller colonies in fall will also reduce the number of new colonies next spring, when mated queens that survived the winter will fly off to start new colonies.

The very first control to try, though, doesn’t use any products at all. On a cool day after a rain (when more ants are nearer the surface), pour a few gallons of boiling water on the mound, starting by circling the mound a foot or so away and then pouring the rest right on the mound. If this doesn’t kill the whole colony, move on to “Plan B”, a purchased mound-drench or a bait. (NOTE: Boiling hot water can burn people when accidentally spilled, and it will also kill plants near the mound it is being poured on. Please handle boiling water carefully, and do not use it near trees, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, or other desired plants.)

Another option is called “bucketing”. You gather up a few buckets, dust the inside with talcum powder or corn starch (to keep the ants in), and on a cool morning dig quickly into the mound, dumping shovels full of dirt into your buckets. Dig deep enough to find the bottom of the mound. Add a generous squirt of dish soap to each bucket, and add water to drown the ants. This works on small mounds, but not on old, deep colonies.

Organic-approved products for killing fire ants typically contain either d-Limonene (from orange oil) or a spinosad compound (from special bacteria) as their active ingredients.

One organic produce that contains d-Limonene, to be used as a drench, is Orange Guard Fire Ant Control. The d-Limonene products have worked pretty well in our area community gardens.

An organic product for fire ant control that uses spinosad as the active ingredient is Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew by Bonide. Instructions for using it as a mound drench are pretty far down the label, but they are there.

Whatever product you choose, be sure to follow package directions carefully.

Remember to NOT disturb a mound in any way before using a product on or around the mound. If the ants are disturbed, they go into “defense mode”; a whole lot of ants will boil up out of the mound where they can’t be reached by a drench.

Fire ants are not easy to eradicate, and new colonies will continue to move in from surrounding areas if they can, even when old colonies are killed off. It is their way.

However, gardeners can be persistent, too. Knowing the best times to work on the mounds for best effect helps keep our gardens fire-ant free.

For more information and the recipe for a DIY orange-oil-based soil drench, see Fire Ants in the Garden, Part 2.

Filed Under: Bugs and Other Insects, organic pest control Tagged With: Community Gardens, fall garden, fire ants, pest control

Planning for the Community Gardening Year

22 January, 2017 by amygwh

Rows of raised beds, bounded with boards, in a community garden.

Garden planning, for all kinds of gardens, needs to take into account a long list of factors for best success. The sun/shade conditions available, common disease and pest issues in the area, and the local climate zone are examples of what we gardeners might want to consider.

The garden’s multiple purposes are also important. Is it going to provide cut flowers to bring inside? Is it providing herbs or vegetables?

Another consideration is whether we are going to save seeds produced in this year’s garden to use in growing plants for next year’s garden. Planning for seed saving will help a gardener choose good varieties for that purpose, and also help the gardener know how many plants to grow.

Seed Savers Exchange keeps information about seed saving online, to help gardeners get started. I also, though, will be giving a presentation about Planning for Seed Saving next week, on Wednesday, January 28, at the first 2017 meeting of Cobb County’s Community Gardens group.

The group is a kind of “advisory committee,” that meets four times each year. Its members are community garden leaders, members, and supporters who work together to keep Cobb County’s community gardens vibrant, productive, and fun.

At the meetings, we (I am a member) share notes about what is going well in our gardens and gardening communities, and we help each other with problems that may have arisen. It is a great group!

The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m., at the Cobb Water System Training Lab classroom, at 662 South Cobb Drive, Marietta. You don’t have to be a member to come to the presentation, and it is always educational to hear what is going on in other people’s gardens.

 

 

 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Community Gardens, Seed Saving

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