Weekly Gardening Thread --- Happy Mother's Day

Wow! What an arctic blast! Can you remember a colder Good Friday and Easter? It wouldn’t be so bad if it had been cold all along, but to be in the high eighties and then wham! Frostbite! And then, to add insult to injury, it stayed miserably cold with repeated heavy frosts until at least the tenth of April! Condolences to all of you who had your warm season gardens planted.

The weather will swing in the opposite direction like a demented weathervane soon enough and we will be miserable with the high temperatures. Sure doesn’t look like we’re going to have much of a spring this year. Looks like it’s setting up to be a dry season, too. On the other hand, the spring flowers and greening up lasted a bit longer than usual this year because of the cool weather. Some years, it seems the azaleas and other pretties are here and gone overnight. This year, with the cool spell, they’re sort of in slow motion—blooming and lasting for a bit. The trees, all russets and golds and bronzes, have kept their early spring raiment on for us to enjoy, instead of turning green right away.

Speaking of remembering—many of you are old enough to remember when summer time meant going barefoot. Except for trips to town or church, shoes were abandoned the day school let out and forgotten until school started back in the fall.

Remember how you had zigzagging paths through the yard so you could avoid the big patches of clover? Remember why you avoided those patches of clover? You went out of your way because the clover was alive and working with honey bees and you didn‘t want to get stung. First, because bee stings hurt, and second, because you knew if a bee stung you it would die. Now, can you remember the last time you saw a honey bee?

Clover is becoming scarce in our over-manicured yards, but honey bees are practically non-existent. Bees are critically important for pollination. There are bumbles, and wood bees, and other lesser bees. They all do a fine job of pollinating—but none of them have the added benefit of giving us honey.

Here’s a scary fact: something approaching 80% of the honey bees in the U. S. have disappeared this winter. Not died outright, because there are no carcasses. Disappeared. The hives are mostly empty, the honey left behind. And not just here—all over the world devastating losses of honey bees are being reported. The correct term for this disappearance of bees is Colony Collapse Disorder—a fancy name for no one knows.

Theories abound. For one, something similar happened in the forties. Some scientists think it has something to do with cyclic sun spots affecting the earth‘s magnetic field—sunspots were worse in the forties, as they are now. Bees use the earth’s magnetic field to guide them as they travel to flowers and then back to the hive. So they all got lost—at once? That’s about as plausible as all of them being abducted by aliens.

Several types of mites and various diseases also plague honey bees—but both mites and diseases leave bodies behind.

Pesticides have also been blamed, but which ones, and why aren’t all hives, especially if they’re in the same place, affected?

A simple explanation for pollination is this: the bees move from flower to flower, picking up a little pollen here, dropping off a little there, and presto! The plants are happy, the bees are happy, and we’re happy. The plants get pollinated, the bees collect pollen to make honey with, and we get our veggies and stuff. If there aren’t any honey bees to pollinate things, several things happen. We don’t get any honey, and crop yields go down—way down. Some of this can be counter-acted by shaking the blossoms of your crops together, mimicking the action of the bees. This can be done on a small scale, such as in your garden. What happens to thousands of acres of crops?

Of course, with the early warm spell, and then the week long freeze, we may not have to worry over much about not having any bees to pollinate anything this year. The cold weather damaged the fruit crops—grapes, fruit trees, blueberries, and pecans to name a few, and all suffered in varying degrees. The extent of the damage remains to be seen, but it’s a pretty sure bet that fruit prices are going to go out of sight this summer.

May is usually warm enough to plant the things that really crave heat—okra, lima beans, field peas. Sweet potato slips are usually available mid to end of the month.

End of May is time to spray your azaleas to head off lace bugs, and your junipers and arborvitaes and Leland’s to head off spider mites and bagworms. Spider mites are tiny, nearly invisible insects that suck the life out of plants. When they attack junipers and such, usually what you notice first is a branch or one side of your shrub turning brown. Left untreated, spider mites can eventually kill their host.

Bagworms aren’t the ones that build huge webs full of disgusting yellow striped caterpillars, the ones that began in April and are crawling all over everything right now. Technically, those are tent caterpillars, and there seems to be an overabundance of them this year. Yucky they may be, but usually the birds will take care of them. Most of the time, they’re too high for us to reach in order to spray anyway. Bagworms are caterpillars that make a nest of juniper needles and hang from the shrubs and trees like forgotten Christmas ornaments. Of course, with all the chemicals that have been banned, picking the bagworms off may be your only solution.

Big reminder: Don’t forget that Mother’s Day is this month. Flowers are always a great gift!

OOPS! Sorry! We’re all really busy! Here’s my article from this May. Hope you guys enjoy it!

Take a break, Gabz! You deserve it!

Since pagan times, long before the birth of Christ, May Day has been an important day. May 1st has long been celebrated in various ways, most of them lauding fertility and growing things. The ancient Celts called it Beltane, and it was their holiday proclaiming the first day of summer. (Their first day of spring was February 1st.) Among other things, individual new hearth fires were lit from the previous night‘s community bonfire, both to purify, and it was thought, to lend life to the sun.
The Romans celebrated Floralia from April 28th through May 3rd, a holiday dedicated to and in honor of the goddess Flora—the goddess of fertility, flowers and spring. In medieval England, the start of spring was celebrated by going a-maying, or bringing in the may. This was done by going out into the woods and…um…gathering flowers and greenery to decorate homes with, most notably, hawthorne.
Hawthorne is thought to be sacred to the faery folk, and thus associated with all manner of things, good and not so good. The ancient Greeks used it for marriage torches, and brides wore a crown of hawthorne. Hawthorne has beautiful white flowers in the spring and red berries in the fall—it also has long, sharp thorns!
All these celebrations could get wild and a little…well, out of hand…what with celebrating fertility and all! The advent of modern Christianity toned it down quite a bit, but some of the ancient traditions persist to this day, moreso in other countries than ours.
Some of those traditions include dancing around bonfires and around the Maypole, a pole tied with streamers or ribbons. The streamers or ribbons are woven into an intricate pattern by the dancers. Choosing the May Queen, or Queen of the May is another. A young girl is chosen to be queen for a day and crowned with a garland of flowers. The May Queen is also known as the goddess of spring or the lady of the flowers.
Still another May Day tradition, a delightful tradition which has unfortunately fallen by the wayside, is the making and gifting of May baskets. May baskets are small baskets, usually made from items at hand. The baskets can be elaborately constructed or as simple as a cone of twisted paper. The baskets are then filled with freshly picked flowers and left on an unsuspecting person’s doorstep or hung from the doorknob as a special way of surprising someone and greeting spring.
As welcome as an unexpected gift of flowers, the hummers are back, darting here and there like jewels with wings. You can track their northward migration at hummingbirds.net. The first sighting for our area was dead on, as a customer told me on the 23rd of March that one of his was back and anxiously demanding to be fed! There is also a great deal of other useful hummingbird information on this site.
Amazing to think that the little things migrate back and forth across the Gulf of Mexico! They spend their winters in Mexico or South America, and then come back to spend their summers with us, often returning to the same place each year, and going as far north as Canada. Hummers don’t have a glide feature, so they have to fly all the way. Their wings beat something like 25 times—a second! They’re all heart and courage, wrapped in jeweled fluff.
Putting feeders out is a great way to attract hummers, but you can also plant flowers for them. That means you have not only the beauty of the hummers, but you don’t have to fill your feeders as much. The hummers will enjoy the flowers, and you will have more beauty and less bugs in your yard! Hummers don’t just sip nectar—they eat mosquitoes and other insects.
Hummingbirds like any flower that has a trumpet or bell shaped bloom that they can get their beak into, or any flower that has lots of nectar. Red is a great attractant to them—that’s why we color the nectar in the feeders red. Once you get them coming, you don’t have to have red in the feeders or have red flowers. Hummers like trumpet vine, azaleas, lantana, butterfly bush, salvia, hyssop, hosta, mimosa, bee balm, petunias, nicotiania, and a lot of other flowers. As a side benefit, butterflies like most of these plants, too! Oh, and make sure you plant some parsley or fennel for the butterflies—they really like to lay their eggs on those.
You can make the nectar for hummingbird feeders. Don’t put red food coloring in it, and don‘t use honey in place of sugar! Some recipes call for boiling the water first, some don’t. Use your own judgment. It’s a very simple recipe—four parts water to one part sugar. Unused portions can be kept in the frig. Keep your feeders clean and refill as necessary. If the hummers haven’t emptied it in a couple of days, you might want to dump it and start over. It can go bad quickly in our heat.
Bees and wasps and ants like the sweet nectar, too. Make sure your bee guards are in place—those little cage or flower looking things over the ends of the holes in your feeders. The hummers, with their long beaks, can dip into the syrup quite easily and the bees can‘t reach it. Ants are another story. Some people coat the strings they hang their feeders from with oil or Vaseline. There are also things called ant moats that you can put on the string as a barrier. They’re little cups with a hole drilled in the middle that fit over the string and can be filled with water.
Hope your spring gardens are doing great! With a little luck you might be enjoying a mess of May peas and new potatoes right here shortly! Lots of butter and some hot biscuits…
Whatever you’re planting, whether it’s flowers—food for your soul, or vegetables—food for your body, have fun!

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