January 22 weekly newsletter

It’s really cold out there - but at least it’s sunny.  My thermometer reads 7 degrees and the wind chill is supposed to be -10 out there and I believe it.  I had to bundle up like an Eskimo to go to the barn this morning.  Most of the animals appear to be fine- they have dry draft free quarters in the barn and straw to burrow into.   I worry a bit about the one cat that showed up here before Christmas.  She isn’t used to being outside. But her chances are better out there than inside with my dogs.  I brought out warm chicken noodle soup to the cats this morning- yes I am spoiling them- and gave them a hot meal.  Some of the chickens helped eat that, the little cannibals.

Our weather is supposed to moderate by the weekend and we may get some snow Thursday.  We actually need a bit of snow anyway as our winter is not replenishing our soil moisture as it should be.  When you make plans for those gardens in the spring think about setting up a drip irrigation system or at least a sprinkler system in case the drought continues.

Winter on the farm 

My brother tells me that Australia is having drought conditions again this year.  His grass has dried up and he is having trouble feeding his cows.  People around here are reporting having trouble feeding their animals too, as hay is scarce and expensive.  If you are in need of hay try this site Michigan Hay Sellers List or call Phil Kaatz at the Lapeer MSU Extension office 810-667-0341.

Red Squirrels

I posted an article at the end of the newsletter about red squirrel damage to spruce trees and I want to add that I have been noticing lots of feeding damage on cedars (arborvitae) also.  The squirrels chew off the tips of cedars to get at the tiny cones.  They also eat the buds off maple and other trees.  This year there may be more damage than usual because the mast (nuts and acorns) production was low this fall due to our weird spring weather.

While other types of squirrels may also due some damage to trees the red squirrels are the worst offenders.  Red squirrels are the small reddish squirrels with white bellies and a white ring around their eyes.  They are nothing but arboreal rats.  They will also enter your attic and even get into basements and crawl spaces, just like rats.  I have some in my attic again this winter and its driving my dogs nuts.  In the warmer parts of the day they are active running around and fighting up there and the dogs are jumping on my plant tables and windowsills trying to get closer to the squirrels they hear in the attic.  I now have lots of coleus cuttings in water because they knocked over a large plant.

I read up on red squirrels- you can follow the links from the article below too- and I found out that they will actually eat baby rabbits and that one of their favorite foods is mushrooms.  They will eat anything, which I know, and are quite vicious with each other and other animals.  They say people hunt them for meat - but with 9 types of tapeworms and 25 types of fleas to name some parasites that frequent them, I wouldn’t want to eat one.   

Rat poison doesn’t seem to work on them.  Rat traps will kill them but they are quite good at avoiding them.  Shooting works if you can hit them.  Some people say to put out corn, nuts and sunflower seed to keep them from eating your trees but other studies have found that’s not very effective.  You don’t stop much of the damage and it allows them to raise more babies with the extra food.

 

New concerns about Imidacloprid

 

Imidacloprid and thiamethoxam belong to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. These are insect growth regulators, and were touted as fairly safe

pesticides. They are generally applied as systemic products and not sprayed on.  Imidacloprid is registered for use on 140 crops and used in 120 countries. Now two studies done at the, at the University of Stirling, UK and at INRA in Avignon, France and published in Science say that the pesticide is part of the reason that bees are disappearing and failing to reproduce well. 

 

The latest studies found that when bees consume pollen and nectar from plants treated with neonicotinoids they tend to lose their memory, failing to find their way back to the hive or not remembering how to perform their hive jobs.  The hive often doesn’t produce enough food for its workers and slowly dies.  A hive exposed to the pesticides also fails to produce new queens.  The loss of bees and other pollinators is a serious threat to agriculture and raises the cost of food.  Poor pollination can also affect other plant species other than crop foods and may lead to reduced numbers or extinction of native plants. 

 

Bayer and Syngenta, the largest producers of neonicotinoids, dispute the latest research, saying their own research failed to find significant damage to bees.  European countries are considering a ban on the pesticides.  Many, many trees are treated with imidacloprid products - remember what was recommended for Emerald Ash borer?- and still are.  It’s not known if other animals experience any effects of the products but gardeners may want to think seriously about using these products.  Never use these products on anything that produces food or even near food crops.

 

Quinoa

 

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is a grain crop grown primarily in the high areas of Peru.  For a long time it supported the indigenous peoples of the area very well.  Quinoa has an unusually high protein content for a grain and that protein contains all the essential amino acids that meat does. Suddenly quinoa has become a food fad, especially among vegans and vegetarians, using it as meat replacement. 

 

The demand for quinoa has caused the cost of the grain to skyrocket in Peru and South America in general, making it hard for poor people to buy the nutritious grain and instead they must buy imported foods of lesser nutritional value. Even those who grow the crop are choosing to sell it to major marketers instead of eating it themselves or selling it to local markets.  While it may produce some additional income for them, the farmers are not getting rich; they are paid very poorly compared to what the grain sells for in trendy European and American health food stores.

 

Quinoa is not an easy crop to grow and there are no large growers outside of Peru.  That’s not to say that with research and some trials that quinoa couldn’t be produced in other places.  But now with the high cost of fuel to transport it thousands of miles from where it is grown and the damage that removing the crop from its native land is doing to the nutrition of poor people it’s not a positive food choice for Americans and Europeans. 

 

Before I had read about the problems that food faddists had caused with this grain I had circled quinoa in the Territorial Seed catalog as a crop I wanted to try this year.(www.TerritorialSeed.com)  It is actually quite ornamental with spires of pretty red, fuchsia, burgundy, cream or yellow flowers.  The leaves are eaten like spinach as well as the plant producing a nutty flavored grain when mature.

 

Territorial gives a few cultural suggestions but doesn’t mention that this is generally a cool climate crop, even though it takes a long time, about 120 days, to produce a grain crop.  I don’t know if successful grain production could be obtained here.  But for you vegetarians and vegans- or others- who want to try the crop, growing it here would be preferable to buying imported quinoa.  Why not give this unusual crop a try this summer?  Let me know how your trial went and I’ll let you know how mine goes.  For those market gardeners out there this might be a crop that could bring you some cash, if you can get it to grow successfully.

 

More heritage flowers

 

Last week I wrote about heritage flowers in this newsletter and I published a similar article on my Examiner garden column.  Scott Knust, of Old House Gardens, wrote me to say how much he enjoyed the article, and sent me a catalog.  Looking through the catalog made me remember other heritage flowers of my youth, especially the summer bulbs. 

 

My paternal grandmother was not much of a gardener but every year she planted dahlias, rows of them in my grandfather’s vegetable garden.  She would go to Canada in the spring and bring back new varieties to plant by swapping some of her old ones with Canadian relatives.  In late summer she made great bouquets of the flowers in her house, with dozens of colors and styles of dahlias.

 

One season working in the Extension office I helped a gentleman with a problem he was having with his dahlias and he returned the favor by bringing me a bucket of all kinds of beautiful dahlia flowers.  Since then I have grown some dahlias every summer and I am slowly expanding my collection. 

 

A modern dahlia, variety unknown.

Dahlias used to be quite popular, and there are hundreds of varieties, with a broad range of colors, flower styles, pom pom, cactus flowered, dinner plate and so forth.   You see the small bedding dahlias offered in garden stores but the large, gloriously extravagant dahlias generally have to be purchased as tubers from catalogs.  Old House Gardens (www.oldhousegardens.com) has a number of heirloom varieties, some of whose names I remember from my childhood but there are many modern varieties too.  I remember grandma being proud of her Jersey Beauty( pink) and Lavender Chiffon dahlias.  One of the dahlias I remember growing is the beautiful Sellwood Glory (purple with white edges).

 

Gladiolus are another old garden favorite that aren’t being grown much in modern gardens.  I remember that every farmer’s market stall used to have big bouquets of them in buckets of water in late summer and almost every person in the market would be carrying a bundle home.  I grew them for the 4-H fair flower competition as did many other kids.

 

I admit there are challenges in blending them into garden beds but if you look at some of the older varieties such as Atom, a petite red flowered glad with each flower edged in silver that’s loved by hummingbirds; you might change your mind about adding them to the garden. Another great small glad is Boone, which has apricot flowers flushed with a little reddish throat.  These wiry glads need no staking and some have actually survived Michigan winters to return again.

 

Other summer bulbs that need more attention are Crocosmia, Tuberose, rain lilies( Zephyranthes) and Acidanthera ( now classified with gladiolus).  My daughter in law picked up a package of marked down Acidanthera, also called Abyssinian Glads, and planted them against a south facing wall last spring.  By late summer they made a beautiful, fragrant mass that she loved.

 

Cannas have enjoyed a bit of recent popularity for their large, attractive foliage which lends a tropical flair to the garden.  However there are some interesting heritage varieties you might want to try out there.  One of the rarest is Ehemanii which has dangling, trumpet shaped rose pink flowers instead of the usual canna flowers.  It can grow 8 feet high. 

 

People sometimes complain about having to dig up and store these summer bulbs over the winter but you don’t have to do this- how much money do you spend on annuals, tender perennials and tropicals each year that you don’t worry about saving?  If you are buying some of the more expensive heritage bulbs you may want to save them and an easy way to do it is to plant the bulbs in pots and sink them in the ground.  When frost kills the tops bring the whole pot inside to a cool place for winter storage.  I use this method for many bulbs.

 

I won’t discuss the lilies and daylilies we need to preserve this week- maybe next week.   Lilies have always been a favorite of mine.

 

Drink some hot chocolate and keep warm.

 

Kim Willis

 

 

 

More Information

 

Here’s the article I wrote for Examiner on heritage bulbs if you would like to read it.

 

While many of us are familiar with the movement to grow more heritage food plants to preserve genetic diversity and discover better taste, fewer people seem to be interested in preserving heritage flowers. Many heritage flowering plants are annuals and our gardening tastes have shifted to perennial plants. What annual plants we do grow are usually restricted to some flashy new varieties of familiar bedding plants like impatiens, petunias and marigolds.  Read more;

http://www.examiner.com/article/growing-heritage-garden-flowers

 

Another good article

 

If you want a fast growing vine in your Michigan garden to cover an unsightly fence or climb your trellis, plant some morning glories. An old fashioned climber, morning glories thrive almost anywhere and will provide you with beautiful color from summer to heavy frost. For those gardeners with limited space there are new varieties of morning glories that are suitable for containers and hanging baskets.

http://www.examiner.com/article/garden-plant-profiles-morning-glories