Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

The revolution will be supervised.

I really should read my own blog.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

When we show up, we win.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Bloom Where You Are Planted

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Bloom Where You Are Planted

by | 44 Comments

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Elsewhere, from commentor Lapassionara:

There have been so many lovely photos on Sunday morning that I have hesitated to send pix of my weedy mess. The top photo is of a hydrangea bloom, but it is not the main point of this post. Instead, the theme is weeds.

There is a back story. Several years ago, before the pandemic, I saw an interesting exhibit at the home garden center at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It was about the benefits of dandelions. I learned some facts that I stored away in my memory, but it did not change my attitude about these common weeds. I continued to battle them. More recently, the mysterious algorithm that reads my mind brought up a post on FB that discussed the virtues of dandelions. I was skeptical, but when we returned from a month-long trip in late April, I discovered that a host of dandelions had taken over one of my planting beds. As you can see, they are tall and lanky, and numerous.

According to the wisdom of the internet, the long tap root of a dandelion can help break up compacted soil, bring nutrients from deep in the soil to near the surface, and provide other benefits. Given that I had a host of other yard chores to attend to, I decided to leave them be for now. I’m sure my neighbors think I am nuts.

These weeds are milkweed. I have decided that I will let them stay in this sunny spot, in hopes of attracting Monarch Butterflies. Garden centers actually sell milkweed now. I am happy to share mine, for those of you in the St. Louis area.

Perhaps later in the summer, I will have some fabulous photos of flowers to share, but for now, I am learning all I can about the virtues of weeds.

***********
Small brag: This week, we got the year’s first ripe tomatoes from my mail-order garden. A couple of hybrid Chocolate Sprinkles (from White Flower Farms), and the first Chocolate Amazon (from Laurels Heirlooms; the plant arrived in bloom). All 15 plants are growing strongly, and tidily velcro’d to their individual tomato ladders… right now, that ‘rootpouch garden’ on the asphalt driveway extension is the best-looking part of our yard!

And a question, for you master gardeners: Serenade, tragically, seems to have been ‘discontinued by the manufacturer’. What do y’all now recommend for fighting tomato blight and/or powdery mildew?

What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    Van Buren

    I have a neighbor who is a beekeeper, which is my excuse for doing nothing about the fact that my front lawn is 90% clover.
    Probably not as despised as dandelions, though.

  2. 2.

    satby

    ‘@AnneLaurie, I used Serenade too, so I had to look up alternatives just now. I knew copper fungicide is one organic alternative, and I’ve used the Gardensafe one too.

    @Lapassionara, There was a reason last week everyone saw only the front of my house! Today is chain saw day for the weed saplings growing in my nemesis bed in the far back of my lot. Wild cherry, mulberry, elm, and tree of heaven all are trying to take over.

  3. 3.

    Lapassionara

    @Van Buren: I like clover a lot. I would trade in the dandelions for clover any day. Yet, they persist.

    There are some very brazen bunny rabbits hanging around my yard. They have been dining on my Black-eyed Susans. I wish they would eat dandelions, or nutsedge, but they are not helpful in that way at all.

  5. 5.

    CCL

    We like dandelions and clover. Indeed, have planted red and white clover instead of lawn seed. That, and Better Half decided to try the No Mow May, which has now extended to “Mow just a few pathways June” and turned the place into a pollinator heaven and a “gardener’s sneeze-autorium.”

  7. 7.

    eclare

    Lovely daffodils SC!

    And def send in a photo when those massive dandelions are blooming.

  9. 9.

    Lapassionara

    @satby: they have not been sprayed, but they are definitely not young, so I’m not sure whether anyone would like to taste them. Evidently, the root can be ground up and made into a tea that is supposed to be beneficial.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack

    We had beautiful weather here in NoVA yesterday—high in the 70s, humidity around 35%—and it looks like the same today. Happy dance! Left some windows open a bit last night to let in a breeze. Currently sunny and 57°. Brr!

    In D.C. in the summer, anything under 90° and 90% humidity is to be celebrated.

  11. 11.

    Gvg

    It took me years to learn that the dandelion that grows in Florida lawn is not the same species, and here it works just fine to pull it up. No long persistent taproot and it’s not a perennial species. No particular virtues and that many vices. I pull if I am weeding other thing in the area.

    We have many invasive weed species for hot wet climates that don’t grow in most of the country. They can be overwhelming and it’s best not to let them get out of control. I worry about dove weed which can smother a lawn and dogs are allergic too. Contact dermatitis caused when they roll in it. There are others I don’t want.

    I have decided I don’t like red clover. I know the benefits of clover but that species has seed pods that are razor sharp and I have had some encounters with it. I just don’t want to put up with that.I like to sit on my lawn sometimes and rarely walk barefoot.

    I the long run with my small lawn, I plan to have less lawn anyway. Flowerbeds are easier to keep weed free. You just mulch a lot. When I had a larger lawn, I didn’t monitor weeds so carefully. They couldn’t overwhelm there. Here with a small yard, the ones I have decided are weeds need to be fought. The word weed means a plant growing where it isn’t wanted. That is something to be thought about carefully. In Florida the real concern is invasive plants, often prior ornamentals, that take over whole ecosystems.

  15. 15.

    germy shoemangler

    @eclare:

    A great face.  He looks comfortable in his brand new car.

    There’s a cat in our neighborhood who likes to patrol our yard.  We like him because he keeps the rabbits and squirrels on high alert, so our lettuce and other vegetables don’t get chewed.

    I leave food outside for him sometimes as payment, which he accepts happily.

  18. 18.

    grandmaBear

    The ducks we had used to love to eat dandelion greens (not to mention the chard and spinach). Unfortunately we had to give them away when I broke my leg in February. I only got out of the cam boot in May, so I was late getting my garden together and the weeds are pretty overwhelming.

  19. 19.

    Steeplejack

    Ooh, I just remembered I have three fat, juicy Post crosswords to do. And the Wordle. I did the Times crossword last night. They usually post it at 10:00 p.m., but lately it has been going up way early.

  20. 20.

    JPL

    SchroedingersCat Your painting is beautiful.
    Lapassionara Thank you for sharing the information about dandelions and it does make sense. They spread so quickly though.

    I decided to put herbs in pots this year. I had a herb garden, but it was overtaken with weeds. I pulled out what I could and covered the area with cardboard and then additional dirt. I’m hoping next year to replant it.

  22. 22.

    narya

    My understanding is that dandelions have been used instead of hops to bitter beer.

    A friend has a brick patio–installed by the previous owners–for a back “yard,” and whenever I help with weeding the stuff that grows between the bricks, I think about the phrase “matter out of place.” I don’t remember the details any longer, but the sense I remember would mean, in this context, a notion that WE decide what counts as a “weed” or not. Plants aren’t inherently good/bad, weed/useful (or attractive, I suppose); we imbue that meaning. I am increasingly deciding that golf courses (and yards, to echo our Blogfather?) are, from a climate change perspective, a field of weeds.

  23. 23.

    sab

    Back in the early 20th century the wife of one of our prominent industrialists planted a creeping variety of veronica in her lawn. It has now spread all over our part of town. I love it. Low, green, with tiny lavender flowers across the lawn all summer. We also like our lawn violets.

    I like lawns, but I don’t insist on them being grass. I grew up in Florida so I find large patches of tall weeds/plants unnerving. Snakes, you know . Shorter plants seem safer.

  24. 24.

    Geminid

    @Van Buren: My friend Debbie set up a couple beehives on the property I caretake. They did well, but not well enough to harvest honey last July 4 (Debbie did get 80 lbs. out of two hives she kept at another location). This spring she inspected the two hives and treated them  for Varoa mites and hive beetles. She planned on adding “supers,” or upper boxes to the hives when she returned from a trip to Georgia to help a sister who needed a surgery. Then her daughter in Miami tore up her knee so Debbie’s trip was extended.

    In the middle of all this I saw one of her hives swarming, a dense cloud of bees swirling next to the hive. They were waiting for scouts to come back and report on a more spacious home. I let Debbie know but there was nothing to be done at that point.

    Debbie is finally coming out today to see who is left. She told me before that beekeeping is not a lot of work in total, but you have to be there at the right time.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    Chocolate Sprinkles is one of my 5 tomato plants this year, thanks to the high praise of the Anne Laurie spousal unit.  I spotted 5 tiny little balls on the tomato plant last night, and I can’ wait until they grow up and ripen so I can try them.

    I do have a solution for your powdery mildew (no pun intended).  Make a solution that is one-part milk and 7 parts water.  Spray it on your plants that have powdery mildew.  Do that for several days.  After it rains (and then the leaves dry) be sure to spray again.

  28. 28.

    schrodingers_cat

    Thanks so much guys for your kind and appreciative comments.  They are encouraging. This was a first after a long time. I am also experimenting with brush calligraphy. Will share later.

    I want to try my hand at drawing people next.

  31. 31.

    pika

    Love the photos and the beautiful watercolor! I took a good look at the milkweed photo, though, and I hate hate hate to say it but unless I’m mistaken, those are young nightshade plants, not any form of milkweed or butterfly weed: very poisonous. I made the mistake a few years ago of not nipping some nightshades in the bud, came back after being away, and found that they had gone way past their purple flowers stage and right into the casting little mini-tomatoes fruit all over everywhere. As I have dogs, I had to spend an entire day picking all the fruits out of the dirt by hand after I pulled up all the plants. I so agree with you about letting lots of things just grow where they land, but if I’m right, and that’s nightshade, it should be pulled up now before setting fruit.

  32. 32.

    Jeffery

    I planted milk weed years ago to help the monarch butterflies. I have yet to see a monarch caterpillar on any of the milkweed that has spread throughout my garden. The only time I see a monarch caterpillar is when I plant dill. Then they are all over it.

  33. 33.

    oldgold

    Ever since I changed the snail victuals from Hamm’s beer and kale to Sam Adams and Belgium endives, PETA has left West of Eden alone. That is, until this week.

    As the gardener who put the pro in crastinate, tract and long, over the past few years I have not planted West of Eden until the Fourth of July

    PETA’s new complaint: the June bugs are going hungry.

  34. 34.

    Eric S.

    While hiking in Marin County recently I came across dandelions in the wild, i.e. in the woods and not on a lawn. I was surprised at their height. I saw multiple over 2 feet tall. Logically I assume they had to grow taller to get their share of sunlight.

  35. 35.

    Geminid

    @Eric S.: There is a kind of dandelion like that in Virginia. They grow in fields and forest edges. Their leaves are smaller, and so is the flower perched up on a tall stalk.

  36. 36.

    sab

    I went to our metroparks natural plant festival, and they had a nursery selling ironweeds. I have wanted those for years but too socially responsible to dig one up in the park. Two weeks later. It’s so far happy in its pot, but I can’t decide where to plant it. Must decide this week.

  38. 38.

    frosty

    @Van Buren: My back yard is half clover. I’m going to encourage it. I read that it was an acceptable ground cover 100 years ago before Scott’s warped us all. Coincidentally, the age of the house.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @frosty: I like white clover as a ground cover. Clover thrives in a sweet soil, so a little lime helps it.

    Crimson clover is a favorite of mine. It grows taller than white, with a very pretty flower. Crimson clover is an annual, and is often planted in fallow gardens. If seeded in November (in the Mid Atlantic), it makes a nice stand by March. Crimson clover seed is relatively inexpensive when purchased at ag supply stores, about $13 for 3lbs. The Madison, Virginia Co-op sells it even cheaper, by the pound.

  41. 41.

    Nancy

    I am attempting to learn to love dandelions, too. My problem is the neighbors. They never complain but get lawn services to chemically destroy the water table. I’m sure that is not their intent but that’s my thought when I see the trucks arrive. And that’s why I try to pick every dandelion flower I see in my yard, frequently impossible due to the numbers of plants. I remind myself that each flower produces hundreds of seeds so I’m reducing the need for my neighbors to poison the environment with each flower I remove.

    I have read that early dandelions are good for pollinators since other flowers are not blooming yet. I don’t attempt to deflower those blooms.

    I now need to state that your tall dandelion plants are awe-inspiring. The earth around them must be so healthy.

  44. 44.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: So my friend came out to look at her hives. One was in good shape. The one that swarmed a few weeks ago still had a small poplation and there was a laying queen, so she thinks it will be ok.

    When Debbie was leaving there were bees hanging out in the back of her truck. She had some frames she was taking home to clean plus some honeycomb. She said they would ride on to town and probably join a new hive. Evidently bees are accepting of strays as long as they are just a few.

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