#bs-botany

[bs-botany]

Let’s Talk About Lavender

It’s everywhere: perfumes, teas, and even cookies. Lavender is one of the most popular plants around these days, but did you know there are actually different types? It shouldn’t be surprising since all plants have so many varieties, but it’s not something often mentioned.

I purchased a handful of dried lavender plants last year. I’ve never ever grown plants that way! They were completely dried to a crisp, and I honestly thought there was no way they would grow.

I was wrong.

They grew beautifully, and smelled even better. Because they’ve had to come out of a dried state, they haven’t flowered yet, but I love these little plants!

They plants have grown so much they’ve actually grown over the side of the pot that I have them in, and now they’re starting to trail all over the ground!

I’ve also been studying herbalism a lot lately and working with teas, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to pick and dry some fresh lavender! I went to grab some but realized something: I’ve never really known what KIND of lavender I have. Before drying it, I decided to do some research.

The most commonly used lavender is a type of English lavender which is what is used in everyday food items and scented items. Another kind of lavender used for ornamental displays in gardens is Spanish/French lavender. This type can be used in herbalism with a very well trained herbalist because of its highly medicinal properties - tiny doses given by a professional is perfectly fine, but if you grab a handful of this and put it in your tea, you can end up very sick (there have been documented cases of this happening).

So I realized I better make sure I knew what kind of lavender I had growing! I tried to identify it online, but photos provided showing the differences between the two types of plants with just the leaves didn’t make it entirely clear how to differentiate them. I’m sure if I saw both plants in person it would be very easy, but I only have one plant and it looked like it had characteristics of both the safe English version and the not-so-safe Spanish/French version.

Thankfully, I always save the plant tags, but it took some digging to find the original tag buried under these plants! I was crazy excited to see that the tag said these were Munstead Lavender plants, which is just another name for English Lavender - so they are safe to add to my tea!

I just wanted to use this as a cautionary tale - if you’re ever going to eat a plant, please, please, PLEASE make sure you know 100% what kind of plant it is. If you’re not sure, do some research and reach out to local plant experts for help. In the end if you’re still not positive, pass on the opportunity until you can know without a doubt what plant it is that you’re dealing with.

-B

[bs-botany]

Lady Bugs Get the Job Done

Have you ever wondered what lady bugs eat? They actually eat other insects and are a fantastic form of natural pest control. Their diet primarily consists of aphids, which are very small insects that suck the juices out of plants which, most of the time, ends up killing the plants.

Interesting side note: ants and aphids have a very interesting relationship! Ants actually FARM aphids. That’s right, they farm them. Some species of ants actually protect and nurture aphid colonies, and the aphid colonies, in turn, provide juices they create from what they suck out of the plants to feed the ants. So, if you notice you have aphids AND ants, you have a bit of an uphill battle to get rid of both species.

Thankfully (sort of) I discovered that I only have an aphid infestation in my greenhouse. I swear, it was the WEIRDEST thing. One day I went in and noticed a couple of strange looking insects on a flower on my blueberry bush. They were very localized, so I just broke off that piece of the plant and tossed it outside into the harsh winter. I wrote it off and didn’t think much of it.

That is, until I noticed that my strawberry plants were starting to form buds, and those were COVERED in those little insects I discovered earlier. After consulting with an amazing agronomy friend of mine, we officially established that I had aphids. Looking around the greenhouse, I realized, to my horror, that almost all of my fruit plants somehow were now home to hundreds - if not thousands - of aphids.

I mean, come on! Who would have thought that in the middle of winter, aphids would somehow find their way inside my greenhouse and thrive? My agronomy friend said she had seen it happen before in other greenhouses, and no one was ever really sure how all those aphids got there. She suggested a few insecticides, but I’ve been trying to take a completely natural approach to gardening. That’s when my friend reminded me that lady bugs would do the job.

I had learned at some point that lady bugs ate aphids, but I had completely forgotten about that! Then I faced my next challenge: where could I get live lady bugs in the middle of winter?

Enter: Amazon. It was actually very easy to find several people willing to ship lady bugs to me, and I settled on ordering from Bug Sales (click HERE to find their listing on Amazon). Yes, I ordered a whopping 1,500 lady bugs - I knew I had a lot of aphids and would need all the help I could get to remove them! The lady bugs shipped very quickly, and they arrived in a small box with several holes poked into it. Inside the box, they were in a plastic container filled with shavings.

I received my package in the evening, which was perfect because the instructions included with them said to first, water your garden to provide water for the lady bugs, and then second, place them in the garden at dusk or dawn. I sprinkled them on the plants that needed the most help and let them do their thing.

It was very interesting to see them during the day thriving in the greenhouse, and then at night when you went in, you would not see a single one! I also have a cute little ‘bug hotel’ (also purchased from Amazon from Niteangel Pets) so the lady bugs have some options on where they want to sleep.

After a couple of weeks, I was amazed at how well the lady bugs were doing! But, they seemed to have picked their favorite plants and stayed on those rather than flying around to other plants with aphids. I returned to Amazon and purchased more (another 1,500!).

This time around, it was a little more difficult to get them. It was slightly colder outside than the first time I ordered them, and my postal carrier saw that the box they came in was stamped with ‘LIVE BUGS’ so they did not want to leave them on my porch. Unfortunately, my local post office is open later in the day which does not work with my work schedule. Besides that, I was VERY worried about the lady bugs because one of the other instructions sent with them is that they need to be refrigerated (can be for up to two weeks, but past that you will lose them) until they are ready to be placed in your garden or greenhouse. Putting them in the fridge causes them to slow down and even become dormant. This means they don’t need food or water, but if you introduce them to heat, then they become active and need the essentials to live which are not included in their shipping container.

I was worried that my postal carrier didn’t know this and was trying to keep the lady bugs nice and warm (which is totally understandable! I didn’t even know that until I first purchased these lady bugs). I contacted the post office (after hours, again because of my work schedule), and told them the lady bugs needed to be refrigerated and because of that, it was perfectly fine to leave them on my porch. The next day when I came home I found the lady bugs on my porch, and when I first took them out of the box, I was terrified to discover that not a single one seemed to be alive or even moving. I put them in my fridge for two days while I prepared the greenhouse.

Today, I took them out of the fridge, happy to discover that they were all alive and ready to go! I put them in the greenhouse, and they are now hard at work with the other lady bugs from my first order, getting rid of my aphid issue. The other awesome thing is that the lady bugs are helping to pollinate my flowers as they waltz through them on the hunt for their next meal - I have several strawberries growing thanks to them!

I have also noticed something else very curious: I have two compost tumblers inside my greenhouse (I’m trying to use hot compost to heat the greenhouse, but that’s a story for another day). Shortly after I started adding items to those tumblers, I found myself being overrun with moth flies (also called sewer flies). They are totally harmless (and actually kind of adorable - the name ‘moth flies’ comes from the fact that they look like teeny tiny moths!). They got their other name of ‘sewer flies’ because they congregate around sewers or drains and eat - you guessed it - compost/sewage. They don’t hurt plants at all, and even though they deal in some nasty stuff, they don’t transmit any sort of diseases to humans.

So, other than being annoying, they don’t bother me. However, since adding the lady bugs to my little ecosystem, I have discovered that the moth flies have SIGNIFICANTLY decreased in numbers. While I know that correlation is not causation, I also know that lady bugs eat insects - while there is no information online that I can find that states for sure that lady bugs eat moth flies, I can’t help but think that they do!

Overall, I’m very happy with my lady bugs, and they seem equally happy with their new digs in my greenhouse. Once spring is officially here and I can open up the greenhouse, I will do so and let the lady bugs free to maybe also take up residence in my surrounding gardens. In the meantime, we will coexist together to keep the greenhouse thriving through the winter.

[bs-botany]

Seed Starting Is Done!

It took a little longer than I had anticipated, but I officially have all of my seeds planted! At least the ones that I’m starting indoors. The grand total comes to 262 seeds. I have 26 slots available still, but I’m not going to fill those with any of the seeds I have now. I think I will leave those open in case I collect more seeds along the way.

I officially started most of the seeds in January, but I had ordered a few that were on back order. I just received those and planted them today, but since some time has lapsed since I started those original seeds, most of the original set have germinated.

So, are you ready for the final roster? Below is the final count, and there’s a J for Jung Seed or B for Burpee to differentiate where the seeds came from.

24 lorz Italian garlic cloves (B)

2 dwarf french marigolds (these were a gift)

12 sweet leaf stevia (B)

6 orion fennel (B)

6 lime basil (B)

6 krausa parsley (B)

6 spearmint mint (B)

6 Greek oregano (B)

6 mammoth dill (B)

6 rosemary (B)

6 lemon balm (B)

5 borage (B)

5 za’atar marjoram (B)

3 curled chervil (B)

5 thyme (B)

5 sage (B)

2 licorice sweet marigolds (B)

5 German chamomille (B)

5 white corona cauliflower (B)

5 green gem brussel sprouts (B)

5 candy apple sweet bell peppers (B)

5 sun king broccoli (B)

6 sandwich tomatoes (B)

4 solitaire watermelons (J)

4 baby boomer tomatoes (B)

5 born to be mild peppers (B)

6 mini piccolo watermelons (B)

6 honey bun cantaloupe (B)

4 sugar crunch cucumbers (B)

4 creole red onions (B)

4 granex yellow onions (B)

5 evergreen long white bunching onions (B)

6 steakhouse tomatoes (B)

6 real deal hot peppers (B)

6 mangoes (B)

4 lemon cucumbers (B)

4 Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers (B)

10 Mary Washington asparagus (B)

6 heavy weight sweet bell peppers (J)

12 carnival blend sweet bell peppers (B)

6 honey dew melons (B)

6 depurple cauliflowers (B)

6 whatamelons (B)

6 dawn giant leeks (B)

Did I mention that my garden is going to be HUGE this year? And this list is only for the seeds I’ve started indoors - I have several more that can only be started outside.

My next step is to transplant some of the seedlings that have grown larger than the seed starting cells can handle. Right now, that’s ALL of the garlic cloves I planted, but I’m out of potting soil currently (imagine that!). They will have to wait until I can get some more.

I have to say, it’s so crazy how pungent the garlic is - the minute you open the door to the room where it’s located, the smells just smacks you right in the face. I’m just as ready to get those planted outside as they are to be outside!

Right now it looks as if everything has germinated. Today I just planted the last 6 items on the list above (heavy weight bell peppers, carnival blend peppers, honey dew, depurple cauliflower, whatamelons, leeks). These are some extra special varieties that I wanted to talk a little bit about.

The heavy weight bell peppers are supposed to produce some of the LARGEST peppers on the market. The carnival blend consists of various colors of bell peppers - including white and purple! The honey dew melons are normal, but I’ve never grown those before. The depurple cauliflower is literally purple cauliflower. The whatamelons are a crazy variety from Burpee - the melons originate from Turkey! I’m really excited to taste test them. I have also never grown leeks before, and these are supposed to be a large variety.

That’s all for now. I will keep you updated as my garden for 2020 progresses.