All the Dirt on Gardening

We took a quick trip to the Dallas Arboretum to see their fantastic fall displays. The weather was sunny and perfect for a stroll and lunch outside at the onsite DeGolyer Garden Café. Have a goblin friendly celebration!

Fall and winter are the ideal time to plant new trees and shrubs. Local garden centers and hardware stores have plenty in stock and some are even on sale. Fruit trees have the romantic aura of picking your own apples, peaches and cherries, which, in reality, is quite nice. They require a spraying schedule, pruning, fruit thinning, a deer fence and water during droughts. Homeowners can be disappointed by the reality of a garden-center recommended tree. The garden center staff tells you either how the tree performed in someone else’s growing conditions or what the grower said about the plant. Neither of these is necessarily a prediction of how the tree will grow in your soil. Pine trees and their relatives can succeed in our area. They take a beating during ice storms and tend to hold snow after the surrounding trees have bounced back. Austrian pines and other non- native varieties will live beautiful, albeit short, lives in our summer heat. Two trouble-free, native, shrubby trees to co...

Despite the cooler nights and wet cloudy days, the Moonflower Vines are gorgeous. Mostly a gardener's treat because they are planted where no one else goes, they make me gasp every time I walk over there. Ipomoea alba noctiflora syn. Calonyction aculeatum is a Morning Glory relative and may be blooming its heart out because of the cloudy days rather than in spite of them. Morning Glories open during the day and Moon Flowers open in the evening and early morning, as well as on cloudy days. Cold hardy only to zone 9, it won't survive the winter here in zone 7, but maybe some seeds will fall and keep this beauty coming back to climb all over everything in its path. Look at the bud before it opens and those purple stems in this photo taken yesterday. Have you tried Google for Gardeners yet? Here's the link . Try it and let me know if you find what you are looking for. I have not. I still find Dogpile.com to be the most efficient search engine, though I try every new one tha...

"We don't give nearly enough credit to plants. They've been working on us, they've been using us for their own purposes." Those words are first thing out of Micael Pollan's mouth on the Public TV special this week. That's a good start isn't it? Tune in! And, in an article in the November/December/January 2009-2010 Organic Gardening , Pollan talks about organic food, Michelle Obama and the local food movement. The issue is on newsstands now. Pollan sat down with Organic Gardening Managing Editor Therese Ciesinski. A few quotes from the interview in Organic Gardening: "organic is in danger of being co-opted" and that he's been on organic factory farms and "…if most organic consumers went to those places, they would feel they were getting ripped off." First Lady Michelle Obama "She talks about organic, but she also talks about fresh. Basically, getting away from processed food is key. And if you're eating produce, and it...

Fall decorations are popping up on porches and in front yards. Stacks of square hay bales, pumpkins, squash, corn and sugar cane stalks become fall symbols of the end of the harvest season. Most of these grow too large for the average home garden. Pumpkins and squash can take up an entire city lot as they sprawl and make fruit. One of the unique plants gardeners can grow for seasonal table arrangements is Pumpkin on a Stick, which grows upright and has 2-inch fruits. Introduced as “Scarlet Chinese an ornamental curiosity” by Vanderbilt University in 1879, they are still grown to amuse guests and decorating homes. The Latin name is Solanum Integrifolium or Solanum aethiopicum L. Other names include: Pumpkin Tree, Pumpkin Bush, Hmong Eggplant, and Mock Tomato. All Eggplants are in Solanaceae or nightshade family. Found in India, China and Africa, 2500 years ago, eggplant fruit was pea sized, orange and bitter. By the 1500s, German plantsmen had developed yellow and purple cultivars. Toda...

The Oklahoma Centennial Botanical Garden will be open Saturday October 24 and 31 from 10 to 1 for anyone who would like to stroll the paths and enjoy the fall scenery. Here's a link to the map and driving directions. It is free and open to the public. The park will close for the winter after these two dates.

Loggee's Greenhouse is offering Hot Lips Salvia plants and if you have never grown it, take a look. The photo is from their site. The first time we saw Hot Lips, it was blooming its head off last fall at the Tulsa Zoo. We had to have it. Blossom's Garden Center in Muskogee had the plants and we put in two. This year's weather was somewhat un-summer-like. Other than July, we had rain, rain, and more rain. So, our Hot Lips is just now doing its blooming best. But, it was about this time of year we saw them blooming beautifully at the zoo, too. So maybe fall is their time to shine. Plant Delights says Hot Lips was discovered in Mexico and that they are hardy to our zone 7. "This wild selection of the Mexican Salvia microphylla was introduced by Richard Turner of California after the plant was shared with him by his maid, who brought it from her home in Mexico. The fast-growing, 30" tall x 6' wide clump is adorned with stunning bicolor flowers with red t...