All the Dirt on Gardening

Trapping Weevils and Saving Monarchs USDA By Dennis O'Brien  October 1, 2012 Ensuring the monarch butterfly's survival by saving its milkweed habitat could result from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) studies initially intended to improve detection of boll weevils with pheromone traps. Charles Suh and his colleagues at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Areawide Pest Management Research Unit in College Station, Texas, have found a pheromone formula that is attractive to a major milkweed pest, the milkweed stem weevil. The discovery stems from research originally designed to help improve pheromone lures used in Texas to monitor the boll weevil, a major pest of cotton. The lures haven't always been effective, so the researchers worked with the pheromone manufacturer to improve the pheromone lure used in the traps. The researchers set up traps along roads in Texas to compare the standard and experimental lures for attracting boll weevil...

Worldwide, 2.5 million acres of garlic are grown to meet the needs of our kitchens and natural health pharmacies. Most of that garlic is grown in Asia, specifically China. CA has the largest growing area in the U.S. It is one of the easiest fall-planted crops you can grow in a kitchen garden. Garlic can be planted from the seeds of the flower but only under special conditions so most garlic growers just use cloves of garlic as seed. When you buy a head of garlic at the produce stand or farmer’s market, you break it apart into cloves before cooking with it. Each of those cloves has the potential to produce a head of garlic. Garlic planted now will be harvested next June. You can tuck seed in any flower or vegetable bed or in a deep container where it will mature over the winter and next spring. Sharon Owen at Moonshadow Herb Farm plants by the moon and will plant her garlic Oct 8. We usually plant ours between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Select seed from recommended garli...

Wallace Online is the first complete edition of the writings of naturalist and co-founder of the theory of evolution Alfred Russel Wallace. Including a comprehensive compilation of his specimens - much of it never before seen. The project is directed by John van Wyhe, assisted by Kees Rookmaaker, at the National University of Singapore, in collaboration with the Wallace Page by Charles H. Smith. The works of his co-author, Charles Darwin are at http://darwin-online.org.uk/ Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) came from a rather humble and ordinary background. His father, a solicitor by training, once had property sufficient to generate a gentleman's income of £500 per annum. But the family's financial circumstances declined so the family moved from London to a village near Usk, on the Welsh borders, where Wallace was born in Kensington Cottage on 8 January 1823.  When Wallace was six years old the family moved to Hertford, north of London, where he...

This year our garlic bed will have a variety of garlics including Rocambole and Porcelain hardneck, softneck, artichoke type. Our shipment from Keene Organics included Russian, Romanian, Italian and Asian varieties. Artichoke garlics are productive and problem free so they are the most commonly grown commercial varieties.They are also adaptive to a variety of soils and growing conditions. These are the supermarket garlics. Mature early and are ready to sell before the others. Plants are shorter than other varieties. Not tolerant of extreme cold but are fine in southern heat. Porcelain garlics can grow up to 7 feet tall with thick, broad leaves. The bulbs are large and white, with the most therapeutic allicin of any variety. Porcelains are considered expensive to grow since each bulb makes only a few large cloves.  They produce bulbils in their flower head/scape. Rocambole garlics are hardnecks (make scapes). They are among the most widely known and grown hardnecks. Thou...

We plant natives, nectar flowers and larva food, put out over ripe fruit and Gatorade, create mud spots for adult males, leave weedy places and leaf litter in place, avoid pesticides and herbicides where possible. Swallowtail with chewed wing But, we cannot protect every butterfly from every predator.     Butterfly egg on milkweed We dig and overwinter tropical milkweed so it is in place as soon as the weather warms enough for Monarch migration in the spring .    Swallowtail caterpillar on Rue Each year we increase the number of Rue plants. They are biennial so you'll lose some each year. Seed starting is an annual event now. Onion bag netting on Rue with caterpillar underneath When caterpillars become visible, I top the plant with netting saved from bulb shipments, onion bags, etc. Orb spider with Swallowtail caterpillar Sadly we cannot prevent all predation. Even spiders gotta eat.   Butterfly caterpilla...

Here's an incredible new resource for exploring D.C. from the American Society of Landscape Architects - http://www.asla.org/guide/ Click on a neighborhood to see some scenes and click on map to get the lay of the land.

Now that summer is waning and fall planting season is here, Oklahoma State University Extension Specialist, Mike Schnelle, has advice for homeownersabout which trees and shrubs could be good choices for our area. “Wait through this winter before you decide to remove a leafless tree in your yard and replace it,” Schnelle said. “The drought has put many trees into early dormancy. They may still be alive and could leaf out next spring.” The unusual weather of the past two summers has taken its toll on some of the most rugged native plants and Schnelle acknowledged that native shrubs and trees had to be watered this year to keep them looking their best. “The best trees under the worst stress can be vulnerable to insects and diseases,” said Schnelle. “But, with that said, there are several plants to recommend that require no chemical insecticides or pesticides.” One superior small tree is the Oklahoma Redbud (Cercis canadensis), a grafted tree with lavender spring flowe...