I have seen no signs of diseased birds yet. But I have noted
that the orioles seem to have vanished already. There are hummers around, but
fewer than last year. Lots of chickadees and Carolina wrens this year at my
house.
We had rain early this morning, but the sun is out now, and
the humidity is awful. The heat and humidity make any gardening chores
difficult now, but some plants are happy in it. The taro and umbrella palm I
have are going nuts. My dahlias are now huge and flowering well. The garden
phlox have huge heads of flowers this year.
There are lots of things blooming right now in my garden. The
lilies are just about gone and only a few daylilies are still in bloom. But rudbeckia, shasta daisies, echinacea, lavender,
buddleia, rose of Sharon, coreopsis, some early mums and lots of annuals are
blooming. My hardy hibiscus and the ligularia will bloom soon.
I like hosta flowers and I have varieties that bloom from June
to September. The hosta Aphrodite is
starting to bloom now, it has huge white trumpet flowers that smell wonderful.
And there’s an old fashioned, narrow leaved hosta that was here when we bought
the place that’s coming in bloom. It has tiny purple flowers on long
stalks.
When you let hosta bloom and make seeds instead of
deadheading the flower scapes you’ll get baby hostas coming up in many places
and some of them are delightful looking crosses of your adult hosta. I find
little plants and transplant them around the place every year. So much easier
and nicer to the big plants than dividing them so you have more plants. And who knows that wild pairing may produce
the next star of the hosta world.
Food gardeners- time to think about next year
It seems like it’s been a pretty bad year for food gardening
in many places. If your garden wasn’t
flooded, it’s consumed by fungal diseases. Tomatoes aren’t ripening for some
folk and cucumbers are small and bitter. I think the type of weather we are
having, too hot, erratic temperature shifts, too wet, violent storms, is only going
to intensify over the next few years.
Gardeners shouldn’t give up. Evaluate what you could do
different next year. Maybe you could buy disease resistant varieties next year instead
of heirlooms. Maybe you need raised beds for drainage. Or a drip irrigation
system because your area is getting drier. Or maybe you should move, and I’m
not saying that lightly.
Some of you may need to reevaluate your desire to grow
without pesticides against your desire to produce food. With the stresses
plants now have from erratic weather organic growing can leave you without much
of a crop. Pesticides can be used safely
without harming the environment. You just have to use them wisely.
If you are looking for something a bit unusual for the garden that attracts hummingbirds and bees, you may want to try jewelweed. It’s blooming now in my garden and the plants are filled with buzzing bees. Hummingbirds go from each tiny flower to the next collecting nectar. And jewelweed is a native plant that will grow in a wide range of conditions. It may spread aggressively in some conditions so do consider that.
 |
| Jewelweed flower, seedpods below it |
Jewelweed, (Impatiens capensis), is a native
wildflower of Eastern North America. Another
common name for the plant is Touch- Me- Not, which comes from the seed pods
which explode when touched. Jewelweed also has uses in herbal medicine and could
be a candidate for the medicinal garden.
Jewelweed is a tall, rangy plant so it looks best in the
back of gardens and in informal settings.
It’s a good plant to use in rain gardens, native wildflower gardens and
partially shaded areas. It will grow in
full sun if the soil is kept moist such as near ponds or in wet areas. It will
also grow in deeper shade, but it will flower less. It prefers rich, water retentive soil and
doesn’t do well in sandy soil.
What Jewelweed looks
like
As a member of the impatiens family the jewelweed leaf is
very similar to the leaf of the impatiens we plant in our yards. They are
large, broadly oval, thin, and have toothed edges. Jewelweed grows much taller than garden
impatiens, with stems up to 6 feet in height if conditions are good. The stems are very succulent, can become as
large as your finger, and have prominent swollen joints.
The flowers of Jewelweed begin as small clusters of whitish
buds coming from a stem and leaf junction.
They are on top of the leaves as they begin but by the time the buds
open the leaves will have grown and the pretty yellow and orange flowers will
dangle beneath them on slender stalks. It begins blooming in mid-summer and will
continue until frost.
Jewelweed flowers are yellow and funnel shaped ending in a
narrow, curled tube called a spur. There is a flare of petals at the lower side
of the opening that are usually orange.
The yellow throat of the flower is speckled with orange and brown. The
flowers vary from 1/2 inch to an inch long.
There is another species of jewelweed that has flowers that are entirely
pale yellow.
While they are tiny, jewelweed flowers are incredibly
attractive to bees and hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds will often spend many minutes in a patch of jewelweed
hovering over each tiny flower for a sip.
In mid-day a clump of jewelweed will often be buzzing with clouds of
bees.
The flowers turn into long, slender seed pods that explode
at the slightest touch throwing the tiny, hard, dark seeds far from the plant. The
plant is an annual, which readily, some say too readily, reseeds in the garden
each year.
Getting started with jewelweed
It can be hard to find seeds or plants to get jewelweed
established in your landscape. Some wildflower catalogs may carry the seeds.
You can look for ripe seedpods in the fall on wild stands of the plant, and
then immediately scatter the tiny seeds in the area you want them to grow. Don’t worry about covering the seed. Rain and snow should wash the seeds into the
top of the soil. The plants should begin to grow in late spring as the soil
begins to warm up. You could start the
seeds inside in pots in early spring, but the seed will need to be stored in a
cool place such as a refrigerator for several months before it will
germinate. Plant seedlings outside after
the danger of frost has passed.
If you know someone who has jewelweed growing on their
property you may be able to get permission to dig up small plants in early
summer. The plants are annual, they won’t return the next year. But if you get
plants established in early summer, they should shed lots of seeds in early
fall and come back in multiples the next year. Remember, however, that jewelweed
is considered a native wildflower and you can’t dig it up on public lands. Keep
the plants well-watered after transplanting.
The weed part of jewelweed’s name is apt. Once established
in a good spot the plant will spread rapidly and may become invasive. You will never have to worry about finding
seeds again if jewelweed likes the home you provided. The plants are easy to
pull so thinning the stand to a reasonable number isn’t hard. Jewelweed doesn’t spread by suckering or the
root system, just by seed.
Jewelweed doesn’t seem to suffer from the diseases garden
impatiens have, such as downy mildew. It
doesn’t need fertilizer. It will need to
be watered if conditions get dry or the plants look like they are wilting.
Herbal uses
The leaves and stems of jewelweed contain an astringent and
a fungicide. The plant juice was used by
Native Americans to heal poison ivy rash and calm the sting of insect bites and
stinging nettles. Jewelweed often grows close to poison ivy or nettles.
For a rash or bite, the stems are crushed, and the pulpy
liquid is smeared on the rash or bite. However, double blind scientific studies
have found jewelweed has no effect on poison ivy rash after it appears. It may
be that using it as soon as you contact the plant will wash off or absorb some
of the oils before it can cause a rash.
In herbal medicine the juice of crushed plants is boiled
with soft fat or lard and is used to cure athlete’s foot and applied to
hemorrhoids. The plant, however, should not be eaten or made into tea as it is
mildly toxic.
This pretty plant is truly a “jewel” and belongs in the
landscape solely for its attraction to bees and hummingbirds if nothing
else. Find a place to tuck some jewelweed
into on your property and enjoy the show.
Leave the
monarchs alone!
I saw a post on social media where a woman was driving
somewhere, saw some milkweed, pulled over and looked for monarch eggs on
it. She found a bunch of eggs and
removed them all and took them home. People were congratulating her on her “find”. And this makes me really angry.
A neighbor asked me why some people might be in her field
pulling up milkweed. She didn’t mind the
milkweed being taken because milkweed is toxic to livestock, but she didn’t
like strangers trespassing on her property. I explained to her the fanatic
desire of some people to “rescue” monarch eggs and she laughed. I laughed too,
but it’s not funny.
If we thought robins were becoming endangered, do you think we would support people raiding robin’s nests and bringing the eggs home to hatch and raise? No reputable nature group or government agency would allow that, and you would probably be arrested for doing so. So why aren’t we arresting people who steal monarch eggs?
This raising of monarch caterpillars by everyone needs to
stop. People should not be out collecting eggs from wild milkweed and bringing
them home to raise in a jar. If you want to plant some milkweed in your yard
for monarchs, fine. But if they lay eggs
there, leave them alone, just like most of you would leave a robin’s nest alone
that you found in your yard.
People cannot do a better job of raising monarchs than
nature does. No matter how hard you try and how well you think you do raising
them, you don’t even come close to providing what living in their natural
environment does. We don’t need “farmed” monarchs.
It would be interesting to know how many of those snatched
eggs sat in the car until they died, got forgotten on a shelf, hatched but the
captors were too busy to go out and find milkweed for them to eat, hatched but
their kids squished them playing with them and so on. I bet we would find the death rate
staggering. Monarchs are not supposed to be pets or livestock. Caterpillars and
butterflies should not be handled.
Yes, the caterpillars die in the wild too. But that is
natural and normal. Nature weeds out the
unfit and allows the gene pool of the species to be improved by selection.
Researchers have said that captive raised monarchs are often weak and may not
know how to migrate. Some have deformed wings and other problems that nature
would have eliminated. But being raised in a protective environment allows them
to survive and possibly pass on traits that are not helpful to the
species. And lord help us if someone was
told to kill a defective caterpillar/butterfly they were raising.
Monarch eggs and caterpillars belong outside on the
milkweed, not in a cage in your house. I wish the DNR or some other government
agency would state that and start punishing people for collecting eggs and
caterpillars. If you want to see one hatch, turn into a chrysalis and then a butterfly,
maybe take one or two eggs, not whole plants full of them. Do not collect from parks, private property
and natural areas.
It is not your job to raise monarchs to preserve the
species. In fact, if you want to preserve the species it’s your job to leave
them alone. Protect some milkweed if you
want to help. There’s not even a consensus
on whether monarchs are endangered, but if they are, it’s extremely important
that you LEAVE THEM ALONE!
There’s a whole business now around raising caterpillars of various
types. There are cages, equipment, books and sales of eggs going on everywhere.
If a species is truly endangered, it should not be raised for sale. If people
are out collecting eggs from nature to sell, as some surely are, this is much,
much worse. Stop supporting this nonsense.
You are not helping to save the monarchs if you are out
stealing eggs laid in the natural environment. You are destroying the species. If
they lay eggs in your yard, on milkweed you planted, they still aren’t yours.
They are wildlife and wildlife belongs to the state, even if it’s on your
property. Leave them alone.
Let’s stop this fable that people are helping save the
monarchs by taking them out of nature and rearing them in captivity. You aren’t.
If anything, you are destroying the species. Just leave the poor monarchs alone.
"...August still stretched before us - long and
golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep."
- Lauren Oliver.
Kim Willis
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And So On….
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