Never Met a Bug I Didn't Like

Are you surprised that anyone would say that they never met a bug they didn't like? Give me a minute to convince you...

Will Rogers, one of the greatest political wits in pre-World War America, once said that he never met a man he didn't like - I was amazed when I heard that.  Really, Will?  Have you met some of the rude, mean-spirited people I've run across?

But as I get older, I'm beginning to see his point of view - people, animals and bugs (or insects to be correct), all have a role to play in our natural world.  Even those miserable mosquitoes that terrorize us fair-skinned folks - they feed our lovely birds!

Of course, I've never personally met a termite or an Africanized bee so I guess I really can't suggest that I'd love every insect I met (sorry, Will).

But for years now, I've heard people say that the "bees" frighten them at picnics or in their backyard.  They are pleased to hear that pesticides have killed vast amounts of them. But they're actually plagued by yellow jackets in the summer - the yellow and black bandits who want to steal your hamburger as summer winds down (they need meat to get their colony through the winter). Bees (honey bees, bumble bees, mason bees, leaf-cutting bees...) are one of the essential pollinating insects in our world. The USDA calculates bees are one of the pollinators helping to grow 1/3 of all US agriculture by transferring pollen from plant to plant. Name a food you like and a bee (or another flying insect) probably helped get it to your table.

A bee on a carrot flower

Okay, you may say, what about those ugly earwigs? They scuttle around in the dark discarded refuse of the yard, showing up unexpectedly when you bring a bouquet into the house. As unpleasantly surprising as they are (imagine how upset they must be to see you), they're also important in our world - they're one of nature's composters, along with worms - plus, they love to eat aphids! With a little management, you can direct them away from the stems of the new veggie plants and toward the decomposing leaves.

Did you know that some insects are zombies?  Well, not really the zombies of Hollywood, but the parasitoid insects lay their eggs inside (INSIDE) the bodies of other insects. And when the eggs hatch.....ewww.  Remind you of a movie series from the 1980s? Cool, right?


All these lovely insects are allowing us to live in their world (a rough estimate: 10 quintillion - that's a 1 with 19 zeros) so we should figure out how to get along, shouldn't we? Can we really expect to kill them all? What would we do without our birds, butterflies and sweet little lady bugs? 

Check out this fascinating publication about Beneficial Insects:
https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/files/project/pdf/pnw550.pdf

A Child's Garden

Did you play in a garden when you were a child? Do you garden with children or grandchildren now? Or do you have little visitors that you'd love to spend some fresh-air time with? I may have a few great ideas for you.

If you follow my little musings here, you know I love the OSU Extension publications about horticulture. But the best educational sites want to talk about public gardens that will interest children - a great idea, of course, but why should we leave our own homes to interest children in nature? I want to be able to walk out my door and into the imaginative world children visit every day, don't you?

I've learned about some really fun garden designs I'd like to try this summer:

• A teepee corner - using about six tall bamboo poles, at least 8' long (1"x1" posts will do but there must not be any rough edges to splinter little hands), plant them in a circle with the tops touching and lash them together a short way from the top.  The design should allow enough room inside the circle for a child to sit comfortably.  If I plant some runner beans, morning glories or sweet peas at the base of each pole, by mid-summer it will be a shady, private space just perfect for a small person's hideaway. 
• A playhouse - plant sunflowers in a square or rectangle, spaced closer than the seed packet suggests with a "doorway" left unplanted. Around the square, plant some pole beans to climb the sunflowers. To a child, this could be a fort or a house or a secret retreat with birds coming to eat the ripening seeds. 
• A Pizza Garden - divide a circular bed into "slices" and plant your favorite child's favorite pizza tastes: roma and cherry tomatoes, green peppers, onions, thyme, oregano, basil. Grow some calendula for a topping of edible flowers on the pizza. 
• Spell their name in flowers - it's amazing how much of the alphabet can be found in the garden. Asters, Bachelor Buttons, Calendula, Daisy, Echinacea, Forget-Me-Not, Gallardia, Hollyhock, Iris, Johnny JumpUp, Kale, Lamb's Ear, Marigold, Nasturtium, Obedient Plant, Petunia, Queen Anne's Lace, Rose, Sunflower, Tansy, Ursinia, Verbena, Wormwood, Xeranthemum, Yarrow, Zinnia. What wonderful memories any child will have of a garden named just for them!
• Instead of a child's sized garden, plant a Giant's Garden - there are varieties of many vegetables that could qualify for county fair prizes.  Try Crimson Giant Radish, Dawn Giant Leek, Sweet Chinese Giant Pepper or Atlantic Giant Pumpkin. Read the seed packet carefully so you choose a giant that can be started indoors and will be harvested before the cold arrives in September/October.
• Help an older child, discover all the sensory plants - think of all the senses: touch, smell, sight, even hearing.  Plant fuzzy plants like Lamb's Ear, smelly plants like Lavender, unusual foliage like Partridge Feather, noisy plants that move and rustle in the breeze like Ornamental Grass. With a good  bench in such a garden, a young person's imagination can roam entirely new worlds.

Have you planted a Child's Garden?  What did you grow? Will you share with us in the Comments below?

But Are You a Serious Gardener ;)

You Know You’re a Serious Gardener If…

• You can remember the frost dates better than your own birthday.
• No matter what hardiness zone you live in, you try to grow plants from the next warmest zone.
• You carry more photos of your garden on your phone than photos of your family.
• In a national park you have to resist the urge to pull the weeds.
• On vacation thousands of miles from home, you shop at every garden center before thinking about how you’ll get the plants home.
• You’d rather spread homemade compost on the garden than go out to dinner.
• You know far too much about manure and you share that information with strangers at dinner parties.
• You drive around the neighborhood hoping to collect leaves for your compost pile.
• You get positively excited to find a new source of manure.
• Your garden shed is better organized than your house.
• You never have dinner before sunset during the summer.
• You carry a water bottle on your walks to water any neighbor’s plants that look thirsty.
• Your fantasies revolve around owning a greenhouse.
• Your garden book collection rivals Barnes & Noble’s.
• You relax from a 40 hour work week by spending 20 weekend hours in the garden.
• You know Sevin is not a number.
• You know NPK is not a government agency.
• You look at a child’s sandbox and immediately see a raised bed.
• You know exactly how many bags of fertilizer your car can hold.
• You realize you’re encouraging the garden plants out loud.
• You weed the pots in the big box store while shopping.
• At the garden center, if you overhear two strangers wondering if a plant will grow well in our area and you know it won't, you just have to butt in...
• You drove four hours to visit a nursery that didn’t have what you wanted, but spent a hundred dollars anyway.
• You too quickly go from despair over a dead plant to delight over the chance to buy a new one.
• There are plant tags in the bottom of your purse or jacket pocket.
• You see a suffering plant at a big box store and have to save it by bringing it home to your plant hospital.
• You hunt down the Lowe’s clerk to point out the potted perennials that need watering.
• You leave the house with clean hands, but by the time you reach the car, your nails are grimy.
• Your fingernails are the shortest they've been since birth.
• You lose the storyline of a BBC show because you’re trying to  identify the plants in the background.
• You stop talking mid-sentence when you see a plant you don't recognize.
• You try to save every puny little plant that really should go into the compost bin.
• You divide perennials to make more - knowing your garden is full already.
• You accept plant starts from everyone, not even caring what is being offered.
• You happily give away plants since it means you now have room to plant more.
• You pot up any small plant you can’t identify in the garden just in case it’s not a weed.
• You love sharing extra plants but won’t allow anyone to touch your compost pile.
• Instead of throwing out the sprouting potatoes in your vegetable drawer, you plant them
• When it rains, you tell everyone “we need the rain” while secretly appreciating the break from weed pulling chores.
• You excuse the weeds by telling yourself that they’re just "native plants.
• The shed, the garage, closets & crawl spaces are all filled with old nursery pots.
• You own at least 3 floppy hats and two pairs of nasty garden-only shoes.
• You have more garden gloves than earrings.
• You visit coffee houses just to collect their used coffee grounds.
• You delight in the harvest of the first tomato. The $25 and 20 hours of labor to produce it are irrelevant.
• You save all 144 tomato seedlings even though you only need 6.
• You postpone vacation until after the vegetable garden is harvested.
• You spend too much time wondering if your weirdly shaped potato looks more like George Washington or your grandfather.
• On laundry day it's not unusual to find seeds in your pockets. You can't remember where the seeds came from but you plant them anyway.
• Your neighbors don't recognize your face because that's usually not the end they see.
• You hesitate when your spouse says there's not enough room in the house for both her/him and the houseplants.
• You have to kill a certain plant at least three times in three different places before it occurs to you that maybe you should quit trying.
• Your idea of winter fun is sticking your hand in the compost pile to feel if it's hot.
• While you’re waiting in the doctor's office, you find yourself removing dead leaves from the houseplants.

And last (but very definitely least)  

• Your last name is Moore and you named your son Lon. 

 I wish I could take credit for these, but they've been culled from the websites of  a lot of talented writers. 

How many apply to you? 

The High & Dry Desert Life

If you've checked out my posts on this blog, you know about Xeriscaping - the wonderful design idea that we can have beautiful gardens and yards while respecting the natural resources of our desert landscape.

The news tells us about people in other places who consider their finances when they use water: if they have money, they grow lush lawns and exotic plants. If they're working joes, they have brown all around and worry about paying the water bill when they take a shower. But water is like the air we breathe - it's both our own and everyone else's. We are responsible for the entire planet whether we like it or not.

I once had a neighbor who was single and childless.  He told me he voted down all school levys since he didn't have any children and wanted lower taxes.  Amazing, right?  I guess he didn't care who would be running the local government, businesses, and the economy when he grew old and dependent. He must believe an ignorant populace are fine stewards of the future.

As you can tell, I'm very passionate about being a part of this global village - we're all related when it comes down to it - we all have the same ancestors and our children could all very well live together. My son in Korea breathes the fouled air that blows from China. Our Central Oregon skies were cloudy with smoke from Siberia last week.  And the snow that falls, pristine, on our mountains, will eventually melt and flow, river by river, to the same ocean that brought the refuse from the Japanese tsunami to our shores.

So - is it anyone's water to use frivolously?  With a warm winter and the hot weather arriving so early this year, we need to be very conscious of our very deep footprint on this place we call home.  

Happy (Belated) Earth Day!

Check our this great publication that shows how to design an earth friendly garden https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/sites/catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/files/project/pdf/ec1530.pdf

Oh Deer!

Like creatures of the night, the deer slink into my yard silently, ravaging everything in sight. It seems that nothing is safe and there's no place to hide! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

But, really, it is possible to have a garden that the deer only nibble on, subtly tasting here and there, deadheading a few flowers, pruning a few shrubs.

Once we accept the idea that we can't eradicate every deer (rabbit, vole, beaver) (yes, I have beavers in my area who have removed quite a few backyard trees), we learn to live side-by-side with them.  In a sense.

I don't plant aspens but the ones that come up are allowed to grow, knowing that the beavers will remove them in about 5 years (they're aspen connoisseurs since they wait until the little trees are really tasty, I think). During cold winters, voles tunnel into my greenhouse - to stay warm, I suppose.  I make sure there are no plants at ground level for them to eat (learned that lesson the hard way).

The deer and I have reached a compromise - I watch from the window and re-direct them when they go for the Delphiniums (they don't like window tapping) and just supervise when they trim the Baby's Breath and the Scabiosa. The apple trees are fenced until they're tall enough to grow apples above a deer's head.

Otherwise, I grow a lot of deer resistant plants - no such thing as deer-proof and don't let anyone tell you there are. OSU Extension Service has some great publications with the best plants to grow here (http://extension.oregonstate.edu/deschutes/wildlife-damage).  I've got Thyme ground cover, Lavender, Shasta Daisies, Bachelor Buttons, Basket of Gold, Sweet William, Lady's Mantle, Russian Sage, Blue Oat Grass, Butterfly Bushes, Spruces, and Atlas Cedar. I know that the native plants will do well for drought and deer resistance so I've tried to incorporate some of them in the yard - Lupine, Penstemon, Bleeding Heart, Spirea. (Serviceberry is a great native tree but the beavers took 3 of mine one year). Plants that I absolutely must have (!!) get a sprinkling of one of the many deer avoidance products - last year I had great luck with Critter Ridder, although it's pricey.

I've also learned that the list has some plants (like the Delphiniums) that my local deer love to eat to the ground. They even eat the leaves, but not the flowers, of the little blue Grape Hyacinths every Spring. Very strange.

Looking at the OSU Extension list, a gardener can feel pretty optimistic that they can have a gorgeous garden in spite of the co-existing wildlife.

Design a Garden Room

Did you design your own garden? Are you like a neighbor of mine who sees plants at the store and brings them home, not knowing where they'll be planted or how they'll look in her yard? Or have you given up and your home is surrounded by green lawn, from the sidewalk to the foundation?

Designing a garden is pretty intimidating - my first garden "design" was a disaster with large plants that grew over smaller ones, plants that loved water growing next to plants that liked dry conditions (neither plant was happy) and orange flowers blooming up against purple ones.  It made such an ugly yard that I never wanted to be in it, no less maintain the plants.

Then I read a brilliant article about Garden Rooms.  It's an old concept that people are re-discovering: think about how you want to use your yard or garden and design for it. We do it all the time inside our homes, this is just an extension of that idea.

I have a shady area that just begged for an arbor where I could sit on a warm summer afternoon, leaning on a pillow and drinking a mint julep (I don't know what a mint julep is, but it sure sounds refreshing, doesn't it?). A big box store had an End-of-Summer sale a few years ago and I picked up a pretty metal arbor with built-in benches for a great price. The next Spring I planted a Silver Lace Vine at the back and it's given me oodles of shade and tiny white flowers every Summer since. It needs a bit of pruning back every year but at the end of a busy August day I really appreciate the sitting room I've created.

My home sits north to south, so my large side yard faces east - my 'room' there is almost a secret garden with a simple wooden bench facing the small lawn and surrounded by blooming shrubs (Forsythia and Daffodils in Spring, Butterfly Bushes and Clematis in Summer, annuals all season long). Since the sun moves slowly  across the space, it has a gentle, quiet light that is very peaceful and I often sit there between garden tasks tossing a ball for the dog.  This area is a playroom - a great place to sit and work on my garden journal or watch the grandkids play a vigorous game of croquet.

The south side of my home is the work room: it has a greenhouse, a cold frame and vegetable beds. It's filled with bright light 12+ hours of the day and feels very active with birds, butterflies and bees constantly flying past. It's like a kitchen with regular activity producing wonderful results.

The front yard is, as most people expect, the entry hall - semi-formal plantings of spruce trees lining the driveway, grasses along the walk, flowers at the front door.  It's designed so that the plants will look good in every season (or at least have interesting textures even in the Winter), colors are complementary (the same shades and/or opposite colors on a color wheel) and are low maintenance so they're always ready for visitors.

Of course, I also have that ubiquitous storage room, the place where the compost pile 'lives', the woodpile is stored, the trash barrel sits.  It's hidden behind the garage and surrounded by a huge False Spirea (Sorbaria sorbifolia) which hides the ugliness quite well. Not always pretty but very important to everyday life.

What will your garden rooms look like? Do you have a dog who needs a sawdust pile to roll in? Some pre-teens who need room to play soccer (and a seating area to rest)? Or maybe you'd like a dining patio surrounded with plants that make you feel like you're at a Pacific Island resort? The possibilities are endless if you let your imagination roam. Take your time, do some sketches, look through a few library books and you may be surprised with how much fun it can be to design your own Garden Room.

Here's a fun publication to get you started:  http://tinyurl.com/oj2l29y

Weeds Weeds WEEDS!

You've heard of a Field of Dreams - the Master Gardeners recently tackled a Field of Weeds at the OSU Extension Office Demonstration Garden. We're pretty lucky to know what exactly the plant is that we're digging out but it doesn't make the job any easier, despite working side by side with some great friends!

Of course, knowing who we are, we first had to identify the weed that was a "wall-to-wall carpet".

  What a pretty little flower!  

But that sweet little thing (it's Jagged Chickweed) will be shooting seeds near and far in a week or two - overwhelming every other plant we might be putting in the garden. So! Begone with you, pest!

Seriously, we always identify the weed we're pulling since

1. it might not be a weed - it could be a plant from last year that has re-seeded and we may want to let the new plant stay (I've got cornflowers, sunflowers, larkspur and hollyhocks growing in my yard that I haven't intentionally planted in 4 or 5 years!).
2. it could be an annual weed that has already dropped its seeds (it's a Winter weed) and we'll need to be more alert to seedlings coming up in the bed after we've planted it.
3. it could be a perennial weed and it's become invasive. Some of these miserable excuses for plants have "vegetative structures" that grow deep underground, resurfacing to torment us year after year. (do you think I may be taking this a little personally?).
4. it could be a biennial weed - last year it may have been just a pest but this year it'll be producing seeds to keep itself going in my garden for many years to come (okay, that time it was personal!).

The next thing a weed-savvy gardener needs to do is figure out when the weed will be in flower - some are Summer weeds, some are Winter. It's very frustrating when homeowners tell us that they sprayed the weeds with a very toxic herbicide and Tah-dah - they Died!  I know, however, that the plant they showed me is one that had finished its life cycle, set its seeds and was dying anyway. The pesticide didn't kill it, the natural cycle did. They put poisons into their own environment without reason.

So this is what we need to ask:

• is this little plant a weed?
• is this a weed that will flower in this season?
• if I use an herbicide, what will be the least toxic and most effective one for this kind of weed? And when should I use it?
• has this weed already finished flowering and won't be affected by any herbicide?
• can I just pull this weed - root, stem, flower and all - and eliminate the need for herbicides?

When that day spent weeding at the OSU Extension Service office was over, we all stood and looked back at our former Field of Weeds and knew that even Shoeless Joe would have been proud of our work in the future Field of Greens (and Pinks, Yellows, Reds and occasional Blues).

These are a couple good resources from our own Oregon State University publications:
http://mint.ippc.orst.edu/weedidentification.htm
http://forages.oregonstate.edu/nfgc/eo/onlineforagecurriculum/instructormaterials/availabletopics/weeds/lifecycle

If you have any questions about weeds in Central Oregon, call the Master Gardener Plant Clinic at any of the OSU Extension Offices in Crook, Deschutes or Jefferson Counties.  They'll be happy to help answer any gardening questions you may have.