I’d like to share a few photos that I snapped while I was outside in the garden today. The garden itself is really starting to take off with the warmer weather that we’ve been having lately. I have a number of volunteer tomato plants that came up from an heirloom assortment I grew last year. I’m sure they’ve hybridized now, but the outcomes have produced some very unique looking flowers (below).

I’ve planted Nasturtium throughout the garden as a pest deterrent, and a wonderful peppery addition to salads. The Nasturtium leaf reminds me an awful lot of pennywort in our aquarium.

I’m also beginning to put some of my aquarium plants outside in the pond to grow for the summer. Already, at least four frogs have taken up residence in our small watering hole; more than in any previous year. That’s okay with me, however, as they certainly bring more intrigue to the backyard.

We’ve been picking a huge amount of lettuce greens from the garden. We have 8-9 different varieties, so our salad plates have been very full and tasty. In combination with a handful of strawberries, we’ve loved our early harvest.

On Monday, our first tiger lily flowers opened up, revealing one of my most anticipated photo subjects each year. The colors that these flowers exhibit is nothing short of breathtaking. Even the unopened pods are pretty with striking orange colors.

I’ve been spending some time picking the flowers off of our thyme plants in order to encourage them to keep producing more leaves. The small purplish white flowers are abundant and fast replenishing after every picking.

The pea vines are now several feet tall and producing the first pods of the season. The white flowers are a nice precursor to what I hope will be a plentiful yield of peas this year.

Finally, it looks like our spinach season is over before it really even began. I got the spinach seeds in the ground too late this spring, so we only managed to snag a few flavorful leaves before the plants began to bolt from heat. I will replant in the fall, and try to overwinter them for a great harvest next year. I also have some warm-weather spinach in the ground now, which I hope will soon satisfy our spinach fix.

I would love to hear how everyone else’s gardens are progressing. Please feel free to leave a note in the comment section.

Spring is one of my favorite times of the year, with the cold weather slowly being replaced with the warm, the greening of the trees, and of course the start of the gardening season. I’ve been spending a lot of time in my backyard tilling soil, mixing in compost, and otherwise prepping my beds.

I’ve also sowed several seeds a few weeks ago, which are now beginning to spring to life. I got the Spinach in a little bit late, but the first real leaves are beginning to show up on my plants. Other gardeners have told me that I should sow Spinach seeds in the fall to have an even earlier crop. That’s on my to-do list for this fall.

Our chives are always one of the first things to pop up in the spring, and now they’re fully grown in. Our oregano, tarragon, mint, thyme, and sage have also sprung back to life from the winter. Unfortunately, 3 feet of snow seemed to kill our rosemary, so we’ll have to replace that soon.

I’ve sowed the seeds for a couple of root vegetables, Dragon Carrots (purple carrots) and beets. Both are popping up and starting their growth. I also have some swiss chard and several lettuces in the ground.

After planting our small strawberry patch 3 years ago, I’m hopefully that this year will finally be the year we have a decent harvest. The plants all look very healthy, with a lot of flowers. Since we do only have a small area dedicated to them, I need to cover them with some bird netting, as I believe the birds were the main consumers of the berries last year.

I love watching our vines spring back up after reseeding themselves from the previous year. Yesterday, I spotted the first string bean shoot emerging from the soil, and our snap peas (pictured above) started popping up a couple weeks ago. I put a couple cucumber and squash plants in the ground to try and get an early start on them, covering the plants at night, but it’s still too cool for them to really take off it seems. Either way, it’s so exciting to be out in the garden, watching for new surprises everyday. The only downside: my aquariums suffer from a bit of neglect. I’d love to hear what you’re planting in the comments section!

On Saturday, GWAPA’s meeting was hosted by Michael Szesze, the owner and operator of Carnivorous Plant Nusery, in Derwood, MD. Michael runs an impressive local and online business, exclusively selling bog plants, with a huge emphasis on carnivorous plants. He currently has two greenhouses, filled with healthy plants.

Walking through the nursery, it could have been easy to overlooked all kinds of interesting plants. The sheer number of pots was quite staggering. Michael explained to us that carnivorous plants are pretty easy to keep provided you follow a few strict rules. Provide a nutrient-free environment, water with nutrient-free water, and don’t overfeed.

He pots all of his plants in a near 50/50 mixture of peat and quartz sandbox sand. For some plants he may adjust the ratio slightly, but he says that if you start with a 50/50 mixture, you’ll be able to grow just about any carnivorous plant. He collects his own rainwater, linking all of his home’s downspouts to a subterranean series of cisterns to store the water.

Outside of the greenhouses, Michael keeps several boxes of carnivorous plants. He is able to overwinter these plants in place, covering them and monitoring the temperature under the cover to ensure that it does not reach 22 degrees F. He explained that 22 degrees F is the bursting point for most vascular plants, so if you maintain the temperature above that, your plants will be fine.

Michael recommended against explicitly feeding carnivorous plants, as enough insects will find their way to the plants on their own. He leaves his greenhouses open during the summer to allow critters to come in and fall prey to his plants. He has also effectively used carnivorous plants as a fly and pest control method on his porch.

In addition to the grow houses and boxes, Michael has maintains an attractive bog/pond area in his backyard. Many of the plants in the pond are not specifically bog plants, but he has filled the surrounding areas with the peat/sand mixture, so various carnivorous plants line the pond’s border.

Despite being a steamy rainy day, I very much enjoyed visiting this Carnivorous Plant Nursery. In addition to perusing the greenhouses and grounds, we also held our regular GWAPA aquatic plant auction. There were some serious deals to be had on plants this month!

Of course, the dangerous thing about going to places like this is that now it’s tempting to try and start a little bog to try and grow these plants. I was able to forestall that impulse at the meeting, but I could foresee a bog plant or two in my future. Comments welcome!

After our tissue culture workshop on Saturday, one of the attendees offered to take a few of us on a tour of the U.S. Botanical Gardens Production Facility where she volunteers. I have been to the U.S. Botanical Conservatory downtown in the city, but the production facility is a set of more than a dozen greenhouses which support the conservatory and other federal initiatives.

Simply put, this tour was a plant geek’s heaven! The size of the greenhouses are tremendous, and the vast quantity and variety is probably beyond compare in the country. The only thing I noticed they were missing was a large aquatic plant section, but that’s more than forgivable.

They had one greenhouse entirely dedicated to houseplants. Why would a place like this waste space on plants you can pickup in any hardware store or garden center? They provide a service to congressman who need plants for their offices. Each office is allowed to pick out up to six plants per year. If they kill more than that, they’ll have to get their own plants!

Just like at the conservatory downtown, the premier greenhouse at the production facility is their orchid room. I’m not someone who knows a lot about orchids, but some of the other members in my group were pretty bowled over by the species they saw in this room. One of the volunteers told us that this facility is one of two in the country that is legally permitted to grow out restricted orchids if they are confiscated by growers or poachers possessing them illegally.

The facility does have to use pesticides to control pests from taking over their greenhouses. They mentioned that they often see the notorious D.C. cockroach, which is several inches in length. Aphids, bacteria, funcus, and others give them trouble just like in any garden. Of course, some favorable intruders take up residence as well, such as the common tree frog above.

One of their other greenhouses consisted entirely of succulents and cacti. Of all of the areas, this greenhouse by far had the most bizarre looking plants. These cacti were so specialized to their environment, that they looked other-worldly. Some looked like rocks, plastic, wax, etc. Really neat plants!

Of course, I did finally find a few aquatic plants. I remembered that they had some Cryptocoryne in the gardens downtown, so I knew that they must have some in the greenhouses. Sure enough, we found several pots of lush Cryptocoryne wendtii, both red and green varieties. We also saw some Anubias species, and a couple of other water plants.

Another greenhouse had bog plants, including many varieties of sundews (shown above), venus flytraps, pitcher plants, etc. With so many carnivorous plants in one place, I did wonder if they have to add flies to the greenhouse, or if they artificially feed them. Unfortunately, I never got to ask that question.

We noticed in one of the other greenhouses that the majority of the plants had either purple leaves or flowers. Before we could ask, our volunteer explained that purple is Michelle Obama’s favorite color. Therefore, for an upcoming event involving past and present First Lady’s, they are preparing a slew of purple plants to transplant into the White House garden, and other beds.

The shear variety of plants in this facility was astounding. I took far more pictures than I can narrate in a single post. Therefore, the rest of my post is made up purely of some other pictures I took there. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed my visit of the U.S. Botanical Gardens Production Facility.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was inspecting my beast of an Amish Squash plant the other day, and on one of the neighboring zucchini leaves, I noticed that a tiny little frog had taken refuge. In past years, I’ve always had bullfrogs and common pond frogs take residence in my raised brick pond, but I’ve never seen a tree frog in my backyard before.

Doing some research online, I suspect that this is Hyla versicolor which is supposed to be one of the most common tree frogs in my area. The common name is the Gray Tree Frog.

He wasn’t particularly fond of my camera, and kept inching away from me. Quite typically, he had to have a piece of mulch stuck to his back, so that I couldn’t get an unencumbered picture.

I love the pads of tree frog’s feet, when spread out, gripping the surface of the leaf. It’s amazing how similar these local frogs are to their Amazon counterparts that I photographed last summer. Of course, the coloration of those frogs were a bit brighter in many cases.

After chasing this guy across a few zucchini leaves, I decided to leave him be. I hope he stays around for awhile, as a small army of frogs might come in handy once the squash bugs and cucumber beetles arrive!

I haven’t officially planted my raised brick pond yet, but somehow I’ve managed to just about completely fill it up. About a month ago, I tossed out a whole bin of clippings from my aquariums into the pond to stay damp until I could get around to planting them. Well, with the exception of the crinum pot, I never got around to planting anything. Instead, a number of stems have started growing up out of the water, anchored by the frogbite roots, which are getting thicker every day.

So far, the most prolific stem plants are Ludwigia arculata x repens, Limnophila aquatica, and Rotala sp. ‘Nanjenshan.’ Otherwise, some Didiplis diandra is still around as well.

I’ve only partially stocked the pond with a few Endlers thus far. I’m hoping to put out the rest of my Endlers before long. To this point, I have just enough to discourage mosquitoes from taking residence in the water. The frogs still haven’t managed to find the pond yet — something I hope happens soon because I love taking pictures of those guys.

The frogbite is starting to send its leaves up out of the water. I have some water lettuce floating in the pond as well, but only a few small pieces. I’m hoping to have more of that this year than frogbite, just for a change of pace from last year.

One of the interesting things that I have going this year is Marsilea quadrifolia growing emersed in the same pot as my crinum. What’s interesting is how delicate the four-leaf-clovers are right now. I have a pot of this same plant growing immersed inside, but the leaves are much darker, thicker, and waxier. Outside, it doesn’t look much different than the clover you seen growing in your lawn.

Another change from last year is some water sprite that I threw in there. Within a week, it was already growing up out of the water, despite not being planted in any container. I wasn’t planning on growing water sprite, but the price was right at one of the club auctions, so I decided to give it a try.

Otherwise in the garden, flowers are starting to bloom. White icicle radishes just produced flowers this week. I’ve never grown root vegetables before, so hopefully it’s not a problem to let them flower. Any expert root-vegetable gardeners out there? The radishes themselves don’t seem big enough to pick yet. (I pulled a couple already in anticipation.)

Also, the lilies are in full bloom and a beautiful bright orange! I love this picture above of an ant traveling down one of the flower petals toward the center of the flower.

My chamomile pot overwintered last year, and has quite a few flowers right now. I think I’ll actually have enough to harvest for tea this season. The bees seem quite drawn to these flowers.

And of course, whenever I’m out in the garden, Bella, one of our dogs who is obsessed with everything outdoors is always by my side.

I realize that I haven’t posted in about a week, which is quite a long time compared to my normal rotation. We’ve been blessed with wonderful weather outside, and I’ve been afflicted with a drive to take every available second of my time, and spend it working in our garden. Yes, the aquariums have suffered a little bit, so for now, I may as well update you on the garden.

I’ve started putting a few things out in the raised brick pond, with the most prominent being a severely trimmed back onion plant that I got from another GWAPA member. I potted the two stalks in their own pot with some fresh aquasoil, and planted Marsilea quadrafolia and Riccia fluitans around it. Unfortunately, I think the tannins in the aquasoil has stained the water a bit brown for the time being.

Elsewhere in the garden, I’ve prepared a number of beds, transplanting some plants into the soil, while in others, I’ve planted seeds, such as the Okra seeds above.

I’ve setup my usual tripod for pole beans, but this time, am experimenting growing some grape tomatoes underneath the same tripod, which should hopefully act as a nice tomato cage. I also added some everbearing strawberries in the bed around the tripods, which hopefully should be fully established by next spring.

The grape vine has new growth shooting out all over the place, with countless little grape clusters starting to form like the one above. Last year, nearly all of the grapes were enjoyed by birds (or possibly neighborhood kids), so we’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out this fall.

Also leftover from last year, the collard greens have all gone to flower, sending up 6 foot tall shoots, covered with pretty yellow flowers. The blooms have really added a nice touch of color to the garden while most of the other plants are just starting to get going.

We’ve got a vast array of herbs in the garden, which eventually end up in some wonderfully seasoned, fresh meals throughout the summer. So far, this years’ herbs should include parsley, oregano, rosemary, dill, sage, lemon grass, lemon basil, Thai basil, Italian basil, lavender, marjoram, catnip, spearmint, cilantro, chives, and chamomile.

Finally, I’ve hung up some beautiful baskets of purslane from a great local nursery near us. Hardy, ever-blooming, and drought-resistant, they’re almost the unkillable, beautiful flower. And did I mention that they’re pretty?

Now that most of my garden plants are in the ground, I’m hoping to get back to my aquariums. Aquarium updates coming this week, I promise!

It’s almost one of my favorite times of the year — gardening time. Yes, of course, I garden aquatically all year round, but seldom am I able to actually serve any of my aquatic plants to guests for dinner. Each year, our backyard garden has grown a little bit, stealing grass from our dog’s domain.

It’s kind of how many aquarists (myself included) start with one tank, and soon have so many fish and plants packed into one, that they decide to expand to 2 tanks, and before they know it, they’ve got aquariums spread throughout the house.

For our garden seeds this year, we came across a wonderful non-profit organization called the Seed Savers Exchange. Their mission is to promote the use of heirloom varieties of vegetables in gardens so that these plants are not lost to the myopic selection of seeds that agribusiness generally makes available in big box stores. I believe this fuels the gardener’s version of collectoritis as they offer purple carrots, yellow tomatoes, tons of potatoes, native american vegetables, and on and on.

A few days ago, we planted the seeds in a seed-starting dome, and today I noticed that a number of seeds have sprouted into little plants. The various squash varieties have been the most prolific, but our tomatoes and cucumbers are also on their way. Only the various varieties of peppers we planted have yet to break the surface, but that’s to be expected.

I’m a bit new to starting plants from seed as most of our windowsills are too small for flats, and our dogs and cats are too nosy for other areas. This flat is sitting next to one of my aquariums with a strip light over top. I hope it’s enough light. I can’t wait until it’ll be warm enough (about a month) to transplant these guys. Is anyone else suffering from garden fever?