The New Adventure

I promised I'd link you all up to my new blog once it went live, so here it is! If you missed the last post about why I'm starting a new blog, check out my previous post! That has my probably long winded explanation as to why I'm starting this new chapter in my writing.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope you'll follow me on this new adventure!

Plant a Pollinator Garden at Your Vacation Home!

Minnesota "cabin culture" as it has been called, is a normal part of life where I live. It's very common for a family to pack up for a long weekend at the cabin several times per summer, if not every weekend! In an article by CBS Minnesota, it's estimated that there are 122,000 "seasonal/recreational properties" in Minnesota alone. When you think about the Midwest (Wisconsin and Michigan also being popular places for people to own cabins) that's a lot of private property! Our family (primarily Minnesotans) own a cabin in Wisconsin, so this goes across state lines as well.

Sunset at the lake.

This weekend, as I was taking a much needed vacation to our family's cabin with my family and my boyfriend, I got to enjoy the wildlife, dense forests and lake views. Sitting on the deck, enjoying the mild weather we had over the weekend, I was also able to enjoy watching all the bees, butterflies and birds that visit the garden my grandmother has planted in front of the cabin. She has planted a lot of pollinator-friendly flowers and shrubs in a small strip along the front of the cabin that is not only nice to look at, but incredibly easy to maintain. We generally visit our cabin on weekends and for slightly longer vacations throughout the summer and into early fall. Sometimes, however, no one is there for weeks at a time, meaning that the garden is left on it's own. I know many others with cabins like ours have similar vacation patterns. But just because we leave doesn't mean the pollinators do! This got me thinking, what if all these cabins, vacation homes, camps, etc had a pollinator garden planted? That would be close to 122,000 pollinator gardens in Minnesota, plus however many seasonal properties you find in the rest of the Midwest!

The plot that entices our local pollinators.

It's fairly common knowledge that, currently, pollinators are struggling. Not only are pollinators at risk from chemicals now used in pesticides and herbicides, but they're also struggling because of climate change. It's important for us to do everything we can to help increase pollinator populations because, without them, our future will be pretty dire as well. Pollination by bees alone accounts for the survival of 30 percent of the world's food crops and 90 percent of our wild plants. Include pollinators such as butterflies and birds in that equation and the numbers get even higher.

If you have some empty yard space at your cabin or vacation home, here's a few things you can do:

Plant a Pollinator Garden

1. Plant native plants. Not only will these plants be better for your native pollinators, but they'll be easier to take care of. Native plants are better adapted to the climate you live in, so they won't need extra water or fertilizer and most are perennials so you won't have to replant year after year. Many native plants often also serve as larval host plants. 

2. If using non-native plants alongside natives, make sure to check with the grower that you're buying from that it's a low-maintenance plant that tolerates your local climate well.

2. Choose plants that have varying bloom times. That way, you don't have a bed of flowers that only bloom in the spring and then are useless to the pollinators for the rest of the season. It'll also ensure you have blooms every time you visit your cabin, whether it's June or August!

3. Choose plants with varying colors. Different pollinators are attracted to different colored flowers. This table from the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign is a simple way to plan which colors to add into your garden and also includes other characteristics that certain pollinators find appealing.

4. Plant in clumps. Keeping the plants together makes it easier for pollinators to buzz, fly or hop from one flower to the next.

The bee balm is one of the favorites.

AND it comes in many different colors!

Add Some Extra Resources

1. Adding a hummingbird feeder is a great way to attract these beneficial and entertaining birds to your property. Hummingbird feeders are sold at most hardware and home-improvement stores and sugar water is easy to make. Just remember: don't add red food coloring to the sugar water and clean out the feeder between fillings. Easiest way to do this at a cabin is to just clean it and fill it once per visit.

2. Leaving brush on your property in a brush pile is great for pollinators like bees that use places like that as nesting sites. It should be noted that bees that are nesting are not the same as bees building a hive. 

3. Create a bug hotel, to house the many beneficial insects that will frequent your garden.

4. Add some sort of decorative dish that can catch rainwater so pollinators can get a drink. Filling the dish with partially submerged pebbles and stones is also helpful to the smaller pollinators like butterflies and bees.

Pollinator water dish. (Photo: TC Daily Planet)

What to Avoid

1. Pesticides and herbicides. Honestly, why you would need to use these at a cabin or vacation home is beyond me. You're not going to be there most of the year anyway, so having less weeds is not going to have a huge impact on your life. If you need to handle a pest problem with pesticides, research which options would be the least harmful to pollinators and the environment. Many chemicals have been found or are thought to be harmful to pollinators, so just skip them if you can and pull out those couple weeds by hand if they're bothering you.

2. Modern hybrid flowers, especially those with double petals. These often are bred only for the blooms and have no pollen, nectar or fragrance.

3. Covering bare soil with landscape fabric. Many pollinators rely on the soil to dig nests, and others like those native weeds that poke up through your perennials. 

There are TONS of design plans for pollinator gardens out there, so go use that Google machine and start planning yours! 

For more resources about creating pollinator habitats, check out the links below!

Creating a Pollinator-Friendly Habitat at Your Cabin

USDA's Gardening for Pollinators

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plant Database (find native plants for your region!)

The MN Zoo's Top Native Plants for Pollinator Gardens (for you Minnesotans)

Pollinator Guides by Ecoregion (download a guide specific to your area!)
US Fish and Wildlife Service Pollinators Page (get educated!)
Pollinator Partnership (TONS of resources)

The Pollinator Conservation Resource Center from the Xerces Society

The Garden of Misfit Plants

Every year I seem to have an unconventional garden set-up. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don't actually have a garden where I live. Why a landlord would decide to pave over any empty space in the backyard I will never understand, but the only option it has left me with is to find garden space elsewhere. Luckily, the Cornercopia Student Organic Farm that I am an intern at this summer offers it's interns a 10ft x 12ft plot to do with what they wish. Jackpot. After figuring out how to work the tiller, weeding out the plot and raking it flat, I was good to go. I had a few things of my own (mostly tomatoes and a lonely zuchetta plant) to put in the plot, but those only took up a small portion of the space I had at my disposal. 

My zuchetta plant which I started from seed is doing rather well.

This is where my orphaned plant garden began. Working on a farm, you often don't plant every single transplant that you grow out in the greenhouses. Usually it's a matter of growing too many transplants and not having enough space in the field for all of them. I've always had a soft spot for plants that aren't doing so great. I always feel so bad for them and just want to give them a fighting chance, instead of just watching them waste away in unwatered pots. This was the case with a good number of the plants I acquired. The basil, peppers and calendula were all leftover plants that were eventually going to get composted. 

One of the orphaned sweet peppers.

The other plants were the runts of their respective trays. Most of the melon plants were large and had several of their true leaves on them. The runts, however, barely had one or two true leaves, as you can see in the picture below. 

One of the runts of the Sweet Dakota Rose watermelon litter.

The last plants are brassicas that somehow ended up sprouting in the pepper plant flats and no one really knows what they are (my guess is they're broccoli). I popped them out of their adopted flats and put them in my plot just to see what they'd do.

So, in list form, my garden currently has:
-Tomatoes (5 plants, varieties can be found here)
-Sweet Peppers (4 plants)
-King Arthur Sweet Peppers (3 plants)
-Unidentified Brassicas (2 plants)
-Sweet Dakota Rose Watermelon (2 plants)
-Muskmelon (1 plant)
-Zuchetta (1 plant)
-Basil (5 plants)
-Calendula (5 plants)

I have a few more of my own Roma tomato plants and a pepper plant to add to the mix, but we'll see if I end up adding anything more to the mix. I'm glad that I have the opportunity to garden again this summer, no matter how unconventional it is. I'm also happy I can satisfy my inner nurturer that just wants to save as many orphaned plants as I can. I never want anything to go to waste in gardening, plants included. I never thought I would grow melons or brassicas this summer, but these misfit plants definitely changed my mind. I just hope all of them end up making it!

Spirea Pruning

Today, after working six hours at the farm, I got home and decided today was the day I was going to prune the spirea outside my duplex. My inner gardener cringed in horror every time I walked out my door and saw the sad sad state these poor spirea shrubs were in. I live in a rental duplex and am in no way responsible for grounds maintenance, but I honestly don't think these shrubs have been prune in years. Spirea are pretty tough plants, so they were still growing and flowering some under all that dead material, but I knew they would be much much happier if I could give them a little breathing room. I knew it wasn't the most optimal time of year to be pruning, but spirea can take a pretty rough pruning once and a while, so I knew I probably would be doing more good than harm.

Look at these poor things. Hidden under dead branches and weeds.

                                  

One determined gardener with pruners comes to the rescue!

Honestly, I didn't think it was going to take two hours. But after working a full day on a farm, I still was determined to get the job done. It's still a little weedy because the tiny patch of "lawn" behind it is mainly weeds and there's really not much I can do for that. I had a pile of dead sticks and weeds that was about 3ft tall by the time I finished. It was worth it to see how much happier the plants looked. One of the neighbor ladies who walks by with her dog approved also. 

                        

Random Farm Knowledge: Part 1

Working on the organic farm at my university this summer has quickly taught me a lot of things. Lesson Number One is to ask A LOT of questions. I feel like asking questions is part of my job. I've also started to accumulate a lot of random bits of knowledge. Most of this comes from my amazing supervisor who's been with the farm since it started and did her Horticulture undergrad and Ag Education masters at my university. Other stuff comes from trial and error (aka: Abby makes a mistake and then doesn't make that mistake again). This is the first part of the Random Farm Knowledge series that I'll try to do every so often.

1. White Dutch Clover makes an awesome row cover and cover crop. Why spend time weeding pathways when you can just seed it with clover and let that grow up instead? It also makes awesome pollinator habitat and just looks so darn pretty.

2. Cucumbers, watermelons, squashes, zucchini, etc don't like their roots touched. These plants can often be finicky transplants, and a big reason why is that if you touch their roots too much when transplanting, they get kinda upset.

3. You can eat lambsquarters. I've been pulling this weed out of gardens my whole life, not knowing that the small plants can be eaten in salads. Crazy.

4. Speaking of lambsquarters, quinoa is in the same family as the common weed, so herbicides that kill lambsquarters can also harm quinoa.

5. YOU CAN MAKE JELLY OUT OF DANDELIONS!!  You only use the yellow petals and it makes an amazing jelly. Our supervisor made it and we tried it on gingersnaps, which was awesome.

6. You can grow cold-hardy kiwis. So that's pretty awesome.

That's it for now! But hopefully I'll accumulate some more Random Farm Knowledge soon!

Daily Dose of Adorable

For the past three weeks, I've been going into a local K-12 charter school to teach Horticulture to 3rd and 4th grade students. Our 3-week long project was growing microgreens in each of the classrooms to teach kids about germination, parts of a plant and how we can eat plants in different ways to make meals healthier for us. The first time we went into the school and explained to the kids what we'd be doing and that we'd get to eat the microgreens on the last class day, there were a few "Well...I probably won't eat them..." mutters from a few of the kids. They think green, they think vegetable and they immediately throw up the red flag. However, you will probably hear this from anyone who grows food with kids, but if the kids grow something themselves, they have a MUCH larger chance of eating it. And I found this to absolutely true. The last day came, we harvest the microgreens (peas and sunflowers) and they went to town. They devoured the microgreens, going back for seconds and thirds. They were so excited at how good the greens tasted. "I didn't know you could eat sunflowers!" they squealed and some grabbed handfuls asking for a plastic bag to take them home in. I would consider that a success. 

So, for the second part of my cute story, here's all the thank you notes me and my teaching partner received. They're great artists, and I was so happy to see some of them say that they were more inspired to garden. This solidifies my opinion that kids are more likely to garden when they have a teacher or mentor help them along. Do you help any of the kids in your life work in a garden and grow plants? I'd love to hear about it!

How to Graft Your Own Tomatoes

Some of you may have seen grafted tomatoes cropping up in garden centers over the past couple of seasons. But what really is the difference between a grafted tomatoes and non-grafted tomatoes? Grafted tomatoes have turned up for many of the same reasons that we graft other plants. Tomato grafting first because practice in the 1960s when grafting was mainly done to make the tomato plants more disease resistant. Now, grafting is done for a number of different reasons. Sometimes growers graft tomatoes so that they are more resistant to abiotic stresses (salinity, drought, flooding) or they choose rootstocks that are better suited to their growing conditions (soil, temperatures, etc). This hardier rootstock is then attached to a scion (aka "the top part") of a variety that the growers want. In some cases, grafting can also cause the tomato plant to be higher yielding, extending it's growing season at the beginning and the end.

One common factor among grafted tomatoes that you'll see when you're shopping around your garden center this spring is that, usually, these plants are more expensive than your normal tomato plants. For some, the cost is worth it for the higher yield and higher tolerance to several factors. But if you want to try your hand at grafting and skipping the higher prices at the register, here's a step-by-step tutorial for grafting your own tomato plants.

Suddenly, Tomatoes

I may have gotten in a bit over my head today. After potting up tomatoes for the Student Organic Farm here at my university, there were dozens of extras left over. I maaaay have snagged six seedlings on top of the four seedlings I'm already attempting to germinate at home. And, oh yeah, we grafted some tomatoes earlier in class, so that's two more if both the grafts heal. So that's potentially 12 TOMATO PLANTS worth of fruit that I'll have to find something to do with this summer. Anyone know how to can?
There is a reason, however that I snagged all these seedlings. They're really cool varieties that I just couldn't pass up. The best part? All the plants come from organic seeds.

The new plants that have taken up residence on the kitchen windowsill are:

Sunrise Bumblebee: Props to whoever named this one because there's no way you could forget a tomato name like that.

Fox Cherry: This one you can find through Seeds of Change and is a vine variety.

Lemonade: Sadly, it's very difficult to find a picture of this tomato. Google only gives me recipes for tomato lemonade. It'd be helpful if I could remember what company supplies it, but I saw a seed packet once a month or so ago...


Indigo Rose: I'm really excited to grow a deep purple (or black, since that sounds more impressive) tomato. Another exciting part is anthocyanins, the chemical that causes the dark color, are powerful anti-oxidants.


Sun Sugar: This tomato has been named a favorite for sweetness and is an incredibly vigorous producer. 

Striped Roman: This one not only looks awesome, but is the best sauce tomato the farm grows.

So, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about growing all of these varieties. On top of these, if those grafted tomatoes hold up, I'll have Marvel Striped tomatoes to add to the list. I also just started some regular Roma tomatoes and some Amana Orange from seeds I already had. It's going to be a big tomato fest this summer and I can't wait to get started!

Teaching Days

The primary goal of our trip to England was to teach lessons at four different schools. The first was Brandelhow Primary School. I got to co-teach in a 3rd-year classroom where we did a lesson about apples. We read a story and had kids act out the different parts and showed kids the star in the center of an apple. We also had them taste apples. We're not allowed to take pictures with the kids for obvious reasons, but I've included a few pictures of their schoolyard garden.

A Garden Journal

While reading the gardening books I got from the library this week, I found so many ideas and snippets of useful information, I knew I was never going to remember them all. I found the solution to my problem when one of the books suggested creating a garden journal. Using a barely used sketchbook I found in the piles of notebooks and drawings in my room, I finally had a place to write, keep all the information, ideas and projects I was finding. I also can keep journal entries to track plants I'm growing, record observations on projects and plant growth and plan out future gardening endeavor.

 

Inspiration taken out of Better Homes and Gardens magazines.

I've jotted down lots of clever ideas for starting seeds, plants I had no idea were edible and projects for some point in the future when I have the time and the space for them. I've also gathered up all of my mom's old "Better Home's and Gardens" magazines and ripped out and included gorgeous garden photos for inspiration and smaller plant pictures for decoration in my journal. A few pages are also devoted to recipes that I've found in the gardening books.

 

Some ideas and facts about tomatoes. 

The biggest bonus about keeping a journal is, however, having a place to write down those hard to remember varieties or to-do list so when it slips your mind later, you can go back and find it. This can be really helpful when you're off to the greenhouse or garden center and can't for the life of you remember that tomato cultivar or that variety of hydrangea you wanted to try. I know that I'm terribly forgetful when it comes to things like this, so I think the journal will be able to help me keep my head on straight.

 

Some herbs categorized by different flavors.

I'm having a lot of fun with it and would recommend making one to anyone who hasn't already. I'm definitely not the first person to think of keeping a journal for gardening ideas and garden planning, but I'm certainly a fan after having so much fun making mine. Since I like to draw my plants as well as grow and write about them, I'm using a sketchbook with large, blank pages and lots of room to write, draw and plan. I'd recommend this if you think you'll be sketching your future garden ideas. I love journals and sketchbooks because they can be as different as their writers are different. You can have one as simple as plant names and the dates you planted them, or as complex as conglomerations of pictures, plans, recipes and inspiration for gardens you'd like to have years in the future.

Winter Break in Michigan

Now that I'm a little more than halfway through winter break, I've finally made it home to Michigan for the first time since August. The band trip to Houston kept me away until after New Years, and fall semester kept me so busy that I couldn't even spend a weekend at home. So it's certainly nice to be back for a two week break from campus and the Twin Cities.

 

Here's my band on the field in Houston before the bowl game! 

I'm one of the little gold dots in the "8"!

The best part about coming home is seeing all the plants my parents have. Almost every room in the house that gets some sort of light has greenery tucked in the corners. The front window that gets lots of southern sun in the winter has our largest tropical plant, gorgeous flowering African violets and a Christmas cactus just finishing up a cycle of blooms.

The kitchen is also full of mason jars full of cuttings of the coleus with lovely root systems starting. Some of these are the coleus plants I started in my plant propagation class last year that we had outside our house this summer. These cuttings will be able to go back out in the spring for another year of potted summer greenery.

Once I got back, I booked it (pun intended) straight to the library and checked out a big stack of horticulture and gardening books. A lot of my free time has since been spent reading and taking notes in the garden journal I've fashioned out of a barely used sketchbook. To keep this post from running too long, I'll have another post about making a garden journal later this week.

A few snippets and ideas I've found:
1. Freeze smaller, edible flowers or their petals in ice cubes to make a pretty, decorative addition to your summery drinks.
2. Use plastic take out containers to start seedlings in early spring. Since they already have a clear cover, you won't have to put a plastic bag over them. Be careful of plastics, however, and stay away from plastics 3, 6 and 7. You can find this number on the bottom of the container.
3. You can actually eat daylily buds before the flowers bloom. One book recommended sauteing them like peas!
4. Pinks can actually be infused in wine or vodka and some begonia petals can be eaten but are sour like lemons.

Some of my time has also been spent reading the book my younger sister got me for Christmas, "A Victorian Flower Dictionary" by Mandy Kirkby. It's a fascinating little book with pages of flowers and their meanings, often accompanied by little snippets of literature or poetry.

My discovery of the week, however, has been a really fun gardening program you can watch for free on Hulu.com. It's simply called "Organic Gardening" and it's a gardening and horticulture program out of Australia. Since it's such a different climate than the one many of us are living in up in the Northern Hemisphere, some of the things in the gardens down there might not work in our gardens and their seasons certainly are different than many of ours. But it's still very interesting from a horticultural perspective in learning about how gardening works in a different part of the world. And, of course, some of the gardening advice, such as how to prune apple trees and ways to fix common garden problems, are the same as anywhere else. You can find the program here if you'd like to check it out. Ever the multi-tasker, I've enjoyed watching it while writing in my garden journal and finding magazine cuttings to decorate it.

In my next post, I'll be talking more about the making of my garden journal (along with some rather fuzzy photos of the journal taken with my phone camera) and some ideas for getting your own started, if you don't have one already.