Hi Gardeners
It’s a beautiful day here today with lower humidity and temperatures.
Yesterday afternoon we had a nice, soaking rain of about 7/10 inch, which keeps
me from having to water for a day or two. My zinnias are finally starting to
grow well and bloom. The tropical plants are happy too. The taro and elephant’s ear are getting huge
leaves.
My new Joe Pye weed is in bloom and garden phlox are
blooming. Some daylilies are in bloom and the lilies Casa Blanca and orientpet “Debby”
are blooming. Black eyed Susan’s and the
shasta daisy are still blooming. But it
looks like I’m about to have that lull in bloom, just as I am expecting
visitors to the garden in a week or two.
Isn’t that what always happens? Of
course, the annuals are still going strong, especially after the rain.
I’m starting to see lots of butterflies. The hummingbirds must have their babies out
of the nest and flying because there are little hummingbird battles all around
the garden. They fight so fiercely, then they come to the feeders and get
chased away by bees.
I was out with the dogs in the old pasture and kept hearing
a weird noise. It sounded like a hawk scream, but odd. There were a lot of blue
jays flying around and I thought one of them was mimicking a hawk. Then I
finally saw him, a young hawk, I think a red-tailed hawk, sitting in a
tree. He was practicing his call, I
guess. It was low and kind of muffled.
And after the rain the other day, which was late in the day,
I saw a turkey vulture perch in a dead tree and spread his wings out, turned so
that they were facing the sun. He sat there until the sun got too low to hit
him, drying his wings. I love watching the birds and this time of year there
are many to watch.
Oh, the weeding I need to do. And now I will need to mow again. The grass
is green and growing again. But when the days are like this, I still love
summer. I am hoping the hot and humid stuff has mostly passed. After all we are
a month pass the equinox and the sun is sinking lower each day. We lose a few minutes of sun every day
now. How time does fly.
Seeds
from China
You may have heard this already, but for those who haven’t
people in several US states have received packages from China that contain
seeds they did not order. These come in little plastic packages that fit in
your mailbox. They are often labeled jewelry or electronics, but the inner
package contains seeds. The outer
package may have Chinese lettering or say Chinese Post.
If you get one of these packages do not open the seeds. Save the outer packaging. Call 1-800-877-3835 or email SITC.Mail@aphis.usda.gov
Or go to this link and
find your closest USDA office.
Contact the USDA office and they will tell you if they want
the seeds and packaging or not and how to dispose of them.
Do not plant or handle these seeds. The motivation behind the
seeds is unknown but packages examined contained mostly weed seeds. It is thought the seeds may simply be a cheap
way to do a scheme called “brushing”.
The packages are sent to people and then fake reviews are put online
about a product to give it a good rating and the recipients name and other
information is used in the rating. But there could be other motives.
Since the seeds were not inspected before entering the US,
they could be a noxious weed, a dangerous plant or infected with plant
diseases. And they are illegal to have, and certainly illegal to plant. If you don’t want to bother with the USDA at
least dispose of the seeds by burning the seeds and package.
Since we are talking about Chinese seeds let me repeat a warning
about buying seeds on Ebay or Amazon. There
are all kinds of fake seed companies operating on these sites. They offer
things like blue strawberry and rainbow rose seeds among other more common
seeds. Inexperienced gardeners are often fooled by faked pictures of these
plants and lured by low prices.
There are no blue strawberries or rainbow roses and they
certainly wouldn’t be grown from seeds. Almost all of the seeds offered on
these sites aren’t what they are represented to be. Someone emailed me pictures
of strawberry seeds they received. The seeds were large, flat and light
brown. I have no idea what they were
from, some weed behind the seller’s house I would imagine. You can see what
strawberry seeds look like if you examine a ripe strawberry, they are the tiny
black specks on the outside.
Buy seeds from reputable seed companies with a US based
company. Seed companies from the UK and Europe usually have US outlets. They
are going to cost more and generally charge a shipping fee. But you will
actually get what you order. Ebay and Amazon just aren’t good places to buy
seeds. By the time you realize you have been fooled it’s too late to get a
refund in most cases. The Chinese and
other fake companies make a lot of money from those small, cheap packets of
seeds.
Fall
webworm (Tentworms)
A lot of people are getting excited and worried over fall
webworms, often mistakenly called tent worms. While the “tents” look bad, the
worms don’t harm the trees much. Often people damage the trees more with their
control methods- like using a blow torch- than the worms damage the tree. You can safely ignore the tents.
Fall webworms make a web like structure on the ends of
branches that encloses leaves inside, which the worms feed on. They occur in
mid to late summer. In spring the Eastern tent worm makes tents in the branch
crotches and the worms leave the tent to feed on leaves.
Insects often have years when they seem to have a boom in
population, and this seems to be a boom year for fall webworms. You know, why
not? It’s 2020.
For more information and removal tips read this article.
Side
dressing sweet corn
If you are growing sweet corn and it’s starting to tassel,
it’s time to apply a side dressing of a high nitrogen fertilizer. This means sprinkling the fertilizer on the
ground between your plants. If you are totally organic there are organic
fertilizers, but you could use blood meal, I guess.
Corn is a heavy feeder and unlike some garden plants, needs
a lot of nitrogen to produce a good crop.
Nitrogen is the one nutrient in the garden that disappears quickly. When you fertilize at tasseling time, you’ll
have a better chance of getting lots of big ears of corn.
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| Male flower tassel center top, silks the female flower at the ends of the ears |
Sweet
Corn pollination information
Corn has two types of flowers on each plant, male and
female. The male flowers are at the top of the plant and are called the
tassel. Female flowers are formed in a
husk at the junction of leaves and the corn stem. You probably know them as “silk”. Each strand of silk is a single female flower
and produces a single kernel of corn. They’ll still be attached when you shuck
the ear to eat it.
Wind shakes a cloud of pollen down on the silks to pollinate
them. Wind can blow pollen to nearby
corn plants too. How the wind blows can affect how well your corn ears fill out
with kernels. That’s why it’s good to
plant corn in blocks, rather than a single row. Pollen from a single row can just
blow away and not get many silks pollinated. When you have ears of corn where
only one side has kernels developed, it’s caused by poor pollination.
Corn is the one common garden plant where this year’s pollen
can affect the taste or shape of this year’s harvest. That’s why it’s not a
good idea to plant sweet corn close to field corn or popcorn. The kernels that
develop from cross pollination won’t be as tasty or tender. And popcorn might
not pop as well if sweet corn grew nearby. Separate corn types by at least 100
feet.
You can sometimes grow two types of corn near each other if
you carefully plan for when they will be pollinating so that one is far ahead
of the other, but that is tricky to do.
Some types of sweet corn need to be isolated from other types of sweet
corn for the best taste also. You’ll see
these listed in catalogs with a warning about what types of corn they should be
isolated from. These are usually the
more expensive, super sweet varieties.
Hybrid corn is produced by planting rows of different
varieties next to each other. Then the tassels are removed from one
variety. The ears from the de-tasseled
corn will be hybrid, since they could only have been pollinated by the other
variety. This used to be a job that farmers hired high schoolers to do every
summer. The hybrid ears are generally used as seed corn for next year.
When corn is pollinating avoid spraying anything on it. Pollen
isn’t carried by insects, but it needs to be fluffy and light to be successfully
delivered to the silks. Oily insecticides for example, might keep pollen from
landing on the silks.
Sweet corn takes a lot of room in the garden but if you have
ever had sweet corn just after picking it, you will immediately want to grow
corn every year. There’s just nothing to
compare with sweet corn picked at the right stage, brought into the home and
cooked immediately and then eaten.
Hanging
basket, containers and annual beds in mid- summer
If your hanging baskets, containers and annual beds are
starting to look a bit straggly it might be time for two things, a fertilizer
boost and a cut back. If you act now
your plants could bounce back and give you many weeks of color until frost
comes.
Some people use the fertilize with every watering method of
caring for baskets and containers. If you tend to water with the hose though,
you may not be doing this. I use a granulated, slow release fertilizer in my
baskets and containers when I plant in spring. Then I don’t worry about
fertilizing them until right about now. If you used this method in the spring
or you haven’t been fertilizing now is the time to do it.
If you want to use a granulated slow release fertilizer
simply follow label directions for the amount to use, sprinkle it on top of the
planting medium and water it in. If you want to use a liquid fertilizer mix it
according to label directions and apply.
Most liquid fertilizers do not last long. You may not want to use them with every
watering but every week or every other week would be a good idea. Those of you already
using diluted fertilizer every time you water don’t need additional fertilizer.
Annuals in the ground may not require fertilization, especially
if you fertilized when you planted them. If the plants look dark green and
full, they may not need fertilizer. However, if they look pale, yellowed or
spindly a fertilization may be in order. Granular fertilizers work best for plants
in the ground.
Should you trim plants back now? Many annual plants look
better and flower better if cut back around this time in summer. Petunias that are
straggly and long are a good example. Older varieties are more prone to doing
this, newer varieties may stay compact and blooming all season. Other plants that benefit from a pruning back
are lobelia, straggly ivy geraniums, sweet potatoes that have gotten straggly, million
bells, osteospermum, nemesia, bacopa, and any of those trailing plants added to
containers.
When I do a pruning back, I take off about a third of the
plant. They bounce back quickly from this. If you are going on vacation and don’t mind
the plants not blooming for a couple weeks to a month, you could prune back the
plant to about half. Prune off any dead
stems, dead flowers and anything that looks really bad.
Other annuals do best with a good deadheading, cutting off
dead flowers, but stems should not be cut back. This includes begonias,
snapdragons, zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, salvia, most geraniums and any annual
plant with a single stem. Just remove
the dead flowers. Coleus is a kind of in
between plant, some varieties that get long and lanky, with lots of bloom stalks
might benefit from a prune back, more compact, bushy types can just have flower
spikes removed.
I have pruned back plants that like cool weather, like
pansies, diascia and calendula, back to an inch or so from the ground, after
they have yellowed and start to look bad. In fall with good weather these may
perk back up and bloom again.
The common ditch lily dies back in hot weather, if you
remove the dead foliage it will probably green up again and look better in cool
weather, although it will not bloom again. It is a perennial.
Oriental and Asiatic lilies, canna, dahlias and other bulbs can
be trimmed back after the stalks have yellowed. They won’t bloom again this
year and are perennial plants. Do leave the stalks to finish maturing and turn
yellow if you want bigger, healthier bulbs the next year.
Gladiolus
Want to know about growing the gladiolus for cut flowers? You may want to read this article.
Hopniss
or Groundnut
 |
| Apios americana, Hopniss, groundnut |
How would you like a vine that’s native, edible, medicinal,
and has pretty chocolate colored flowers? I have some growing rampantly in my
yard, but I bet most gardeners have never heard of the plant. Hopniss or
groundnut, Apios americana, is an unusual plant that more gardeners
should try growing. I’m going to call it hopniss because groundnut is also a
common name for the peanut. It’s also
called Indian Bean or Indian potato.
There is one other species of hopniss in the US called Price's
Groundnut (Apios priceana). It is extremely endangered and found in one small
area of Illinois. The flowers of this species are a light pink. It has one larger tuber instead of many small
ones.
Hopniss was a staple in the diet of many Northeastern Native
American tribes and may even have been selected for certain traits and grown as
a cultivated crop. It’s native from southern Canada to deep in the southern US
from the east coast to the Rockies. It is becoming rarer and is listed as
endangered in some states. A few
nurseries grow the plant and Louisiana State University has tried to develop
hopniss into a commercial crop. Other universities have studied the plant for its
medicinal qualities. There is a small
commercial crop grown in Japan.
The native habitat of hopniss is at the edges of moist
woodlands and along rivers and streams in moist bottom lands. Hopniss is a vine
or it sprawls over the ground if it doesn’t have something to climb. It will
climb to 8 feet or more in a good site. The leaves are arranged
alternately, pinnately compound, consisting of 5-7 oval leaflets. They remind
me somewhat of wisteria leaves.
Two butterflies use hopniss as a larval food plant, Epargyreus
clarus (Silver-spotted Skipper) and Thorybes bathyllus (Southern
Cloudywing). Deer feed on the foliage and small animals eat the tubers.
Hopniss flowers are intriguing. Bloom time is mid to
late summer, with August being the bloom period in Michigan. The plants
produce clusters of “curly” looking milk chocolate colored flowers, with a
flared “hood’ consisting of two fused petals, two tiny petals near the bottom
and a curious curved tube in the center that protects the pistil and
stamens.
The end of the tube appears to be buried at the top of the
hood but if you so much as touch the curved tube it will coil away from the
hood wall and the tip will slowly split, first the pistil and then the stamens
will poke out. You can watch it slowly happen. I imagine
that an insect landing on the hood area or the curved tube would also provoke
the reaction. After the flowers curved part has been activated the
hood folds around the curved tube and is said to be “tripped”.
It's not known for sure what pollinates hopniss. Leaf cutter bees and flies do visit the
plants. Leaf cutter bees have been seen to trip the “tube”. Honeybees occasionally
visit the flowers, but since honeybees aren’t native, they are not the original
pollinator. However, the subject of
pollination may not be important, as many plants do not produce seeds.
Hopniss comes in two strains, a diploid and a triploid. This
refers to sets of genes that the plant has. It’s impossible to tell whether hopniss
is a diploid or triploid by looking at it. In the north most hopniss is triploid
and does not produce seeds. Reproduction
is from the little tubers the roots form.
Farther south and in a distinct region around the Black River in central Ontario,]some
stands of hopniss are diploid and produce narrow, bean like, slightly curved
pods. The pods have maroon seeds that darken to chocolate brown when dried. The
pods split when mature and “shoot” their seeds.
Flowers and seeds of hopniss are edible. The flowers are used medicinally in the
treatment of diabetes. The beans were dried and ground into flour or boiled and
eaten by Native Americans.
It’s the little tubers that form along the rhizomatous roots
that earn hopniss the name groundnut and that are the primary food product. The
tubers form along the roots like knots in a rope. They are about the size of your thumb or
smaller. They are dark brown on the outside and creamy yellow inside. The texture is much like a potato.
These little tubers have about 3 times as much protein as
potatoes and a different type of starch called oligosaccharides. They also have lectins, a chemical found
in raw beans. They are high in iron and calcium. The tubers should always be
cooked before they are eaten. Even so
some people who eat the tubers will experience extreme gassiness and bloating
and may have diarrhea. It is said that a
sensitivity in some people may build up after consuming it about ten times, causing
an allergic reaction.
Native Americans collected hopniss tubers and dried them on
mats for winter storage. They were powdered and used as a flour or boiled in
soups. Some tubers were sliced and fried as we do potatoes. Hopniss was boiled
in maple syrup to produce a type of preserves.
The taste of hopniss is said to be like a nutty potato and quite good.
Hopniss was one of the native foods that the first European
settlers had to survive on the first winter after they arrived. It remained a
popular winter survival food for many years. Hopniss tubers were introduced to Europe and
other places. Japan embraced them as an edible crop as they were similar to
another Japanese crop.
Hopniss is said to be a signal to archeologists that an
Amerindian site is nearby, so maybe my yard is located on one. The plants
were here when I arrived and this house is over 100 years old. Henry Thoreau is said to have eaten them when
his potato crop failed.
 |
| Hopniss on old fence |
Growing hopniss
Hopniss is a perennial plant and if you want to grow it you
will probably start with tubers, not seeds. Just plant the tubers on their
sides in about 3 inches of soil. It
likes light textured, moist soil in full sun to light shade. The plants fix
nitrogen in the soil like soybeans, so they need little fertilization. It can
take several years for the vines to grow until there is enough tubers for a
harvest. Hopniss is hardy to at least zone 4.
If you grow hopniss for the flowers or for a screening vine,
remember that they spread quite quickly in spots they like. They can take over
a lot of fence or cover a lot of ground. The vines die back in winter and come
back from the ground. Most flowers in
the north will not make seedpods.
Hopniss has few insect or disease problems. They may die
back in very hot, dry weather.
Growing hopniss as a crop is tricky because of the perennial
nature of the plant and the years needed for a crop. You dig up the vines in
early fall after the first frost to collect the tubers. You can’t pull the
vines out of the ground; they need to be dug.
Save some tubers to replant, right there after harvest. Tubers are stored like potatoes, in a dark,
cool but above freezing place.
Medicinal uses of hopniss
Hopness flowers are used to lower blood sugar. I believe a tea
is made with them. Boiled tubers are used as a poultice on wounds. Eating the
tubers is said to lower blood pressure, cholesterol and triglycerides and is
being studied for those purposes.
There are chemicals in the tubers that have anticarcinogenic
properties and one compound, Genistein-7-O-gentiobioside, is being
studied as a treatment for breast cancer. It may also be helpful in colon and prostate
cancer.
Hopniss is an interesting native vine with pretty flowers
and many edible parts. You may want to include it in your garden.
Sources for tubers
"We
might think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it's our garden that is
really nurturing us."
-Jenny Uglow
Kim Willis
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permission.
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