Chaste Tree

I have a dear friend who has a beautiful flower garden.  I have always admired her skill of being able to put plants in the right places so that they complement each other.  And, she has a talent for knowing when various flowers are going to bloom so that there is always something in bloom in her garden from early spring until late fall.

Last year she gave me several Chaste Trees that she started from seed off a large one that she has beside her house.  They are very special to me, so I have taken a lot of time to decide where to plant them.  This spring I set 3 of them out near my herb garden, one at the end of each bed.  They are still small, but they still bloomed this year.  Here's a picture of one of them.

I love the beautiful shade of blue of their flowers and wanted to know more about them and how they got their name.  I found that they are Native to southern Europe and central Asia and that they quickly grow into a multi-trunked tree about 10 to 20 feet tall.  They have a broad, spreading habit and get their name from the erroneous medieval belief that a potion made from them could curb the libido.  I also found that the Chaste tree is one of the very few winter-hardy trees out there that sports true blue flowers.  The tree is also said to have some medicinal value in treating PMS and menopausal symptoms. 

Can you see me now?

Tom cut some sunflowers this afternoon for us to sell at the farmers market tomorrow.  While I was trimming them up and putting them in water, a small beautiful little yellow spider fell off one of them onto the kitchen counter.  Here's a picture of it.

It is exactly the same color at the sunflower petals.  Can you see it in the picture below?

It is in about the 4:00 position on the sunflower.  I've been trying to figure out what kind of spider it is and have determined it is some sort of crab spider.

They are called crab spiders because they look a lot like crabs, having two powerful front pairs of legs angled outward and bodies that are flattened and often angular. Also, like crabs, they can move either sideways or backwards with ease

Crab spiders do not build webs to catch prey, but are hunters and ambushers and use camouflage-hunting techniques to trap their prey.  Obviously, this little guy is making good use of the camouflage technique.

Individuals of some species of crab spider can change color to match the flower on which they are sitting. It is, however, a very slow process that can take days.   I assume this spider may be one of these since his color matches the sunflower so closely.

There are over 3000 species of crab spiders! 

Heading into Fall

On January 24th, I posted a picture of spinach growing in our cold frames to illustrate how you can continue to garden through the winter.  After we pulled the spinach out of the cold frames this spring, we planted tomatoes in them.   This worked out well because we could close the lids when the plants were small to protect them against late frosts.

The tomato plants did quite well, but quit producing when the hot weather hit and have suffered for the last few weeks.  Usually tomatoes perk up when cooler weather comes and may put on a new crop of green tomatoes.  But these rarely have time to get ripe before it frosts.  So, this past weekend Tom and I pulled them up and planted lettuce seed. 

Even though it is still hot and seems like summer will never end, the days are getting shorter, the shadows are getting longer and it is time to plant a fall garden.  With lettuce, you have to protect it from the heat and water it every day until it gets established.  We have "shade" cloth that we put over the beds.  We leave the lids up and clip the shade cloth to the frame with large plastic spring clips like this:

I've been very diligent to go out and water the beds every evening and today I was rewarded by seeing tiny lettuce plants.

You can click on the picture to enlarge it and see the little plants better.

These plants will grow very rapidly when the weather cools off and we should have some nice lettuce to sell at the Farmers Market later this fall. 

After you garden for a few years, you get in tune with how the seasons ebb and flow.  And you learn to anticipate the new vegetables and fruits that come with the arrival of each one.  Just as I anticipated and craved fresh blackberries in June, I now look forward to fresh lettuce in a few weeks.

Rabbit Watch

There is a drama that is occasionally played out here on the farm.  This summer there has been a rabbit that comes out early in the morning and late in the afternoon and eats grass and sometimes just lays around in front of our shop building.  The building is located behind the house.  You have a good view of the building and the rabbit from our back porch.

I like to spend a few minutes drinking coffee on the back porch before I go to work in the mornings (normally about 6:45).  Sally, one of our dogs, usually joins me out there and she has begun to take notice of this rabbit as well.  Here she is watching the rabbit.  Her ears are at attention and are about as big as the rabbit's ears!

Most days she is content just to watch the rabbit, but occasionally it will do something that triggers her predator instinct and she starts to stalk it like this:

Now rabbits are wild creatures and only survive in the wild by being ever vigilant.  So, I can assure you that by the time Sally gets into her stalking mode, the rabbit is already aware of her and her intentions.  It is really funny to watch because Sally will slink out toward the rabbit in plain view.  The rabbit never seems very concerned but will eventually run off into the brush on the other side of the shop.  At this point, Sally runs as fast as she can, but never even gets close to the rabbit.  Here she is as she chases after the rabbit.

Sally returns after a couple of minutes all out of breath and panting hard.  She has already done a hard days work.  And, we can breathe a sigh of relief that she has once again saved us from the evil rabbit that lurks in the bushes!

Black and Yellow Argiope

If you are afraid of spiders, you might ought to stop reading here because the blog tonight is about spiders.  This is the time of year for spiders.  You have probably noticed (or run into) the webs that are being spun by those huge spiders that like to make their webs right across your doorway every night.

Tom has been telling me about a couple of spiders that have webs out in the garden.  So, today I went out there to take a look.  I was delighted to find a Black and Yellow Argiope, one of those big spiders that builds a web that has a zig zag pattern in the middle.  Actually, I didn't know what it was called until I came back to the house and did a Google search for "spider zig zag web".  Tom says there are 4 of them are at different places around the farm.  This one  made its web between the rows of tomato plants.

I wish you could see the spider a little better.  It is really beautiful.  Black with yellow spots and black legs.  These spiders eat flying insects that get trapped in the web, mainly aphids, flies, grasshoppers, bees, and wasps.   They prefer sunny places to build their webs and each night they eat their web and build a new one. 

I'm fascinated with spiders because there are so many different kinds and they spin many different kinds of webs.  This spider is called and "orb web" spider because its web is circular.  There are even spiders that carry their young around on their backs!

Maybe I should have been a entomology major instead of a math major.

Water-saving device

I'm somewhat embarrassed to share this.  But since this blog is about gardening sustainably, and saving water fits in with that, I thought "What the Heck!".  So, here goes.

As I've mentioned before, the house out here on the farm needed some TLC when we moved in.  We spent most of last year working on the outside....new windows, new roof, new siding, new geothermal heating and A/C system.  So, finally, this summer we started on the inside.  The first project was redoing the downstairs den.  I'm not a fan of carpet and my goal is to get rid of all the carpet in the house.  So, we started out by ripping up the carpet in the den, putting down new porcelain tile and painting the room.  This took about 6 weeks to accomplish since we only had limited time to work on it at nights and on weekends.  But, it was well worth it to see the finished product.

Another project is to redo the master bathroom.  The tub and lavatory are PINK and are stained and chipped.  The tile was obviously a DIY project done by some past owner and the bathtub faucet leaks.  But, this is going to be a big project and I've decided to hire a contractor to do most of this.  So, it's going to take awhile to get all the players in place to do this project. 

In the mean time, this leaky faucet is driving me nuts.  I don't want to spend any money or time replacing it, since we'll just be tearing it out in a couple of months (hopefully).   But, I hate to see all that good water go down the drain.  I tried catching it with several different containers.  Nothing worked very well. 

Then one day I came home to find the following set up in the tub:

Tom had come up with the idea of using one of our watering cans.  The water drips directly into the snout and is ready to use to water plants whenever we need it. The can holds about 2 gallons and we empty it about twice a day. It really has come in handy during this dry spell!

Jim's Climbing Okra

We have some dear friends who are a few years older than us.  We have known them for many years.   Jim does a lot of back-yard gardening.  Earlier this spring he gave me some seed that someone had given him.  He said it was "climbing okra".  Hmmmm.  Well, I had to try this, but had trouble finding room for it.  I finally decided to harvest all the lettuce in one of the cold frames and plant it there.  It was late in the spring when I finally got it planted and it took a long time to come up.  I had almost given up on it when a few plants finally poked up through the soil

Tom rigged up a trellis for it out of some short pieces of cattle panels he had on hand.  We don't have any cattle, but use cattle panels for a lot of things.  They are normally used to build pens for sheep or goats or cattle, but if you are creative, you can figure out a lot of good uses for them.  Here's a picture of one someone bent into an arch in their back yard.

Anyway, it took the climbing okra a long time to start growning, but when it did, it really took off!  Here is a picture of it now.

For the longest time, it was all leaves and no flowers.  Then a couple of weeks ago, it started blooming.  Now it has bunches of pretty yellow flowers.  I've been watching it closely for signs of any "okra".  Finally, this week I found one.  This is what it looks like:

It does look something like a piece of regular okra, but I am relatively sure this is a variety of luffa gourd.  These can be eaten when young and tender and are a standard staple in many Asian cuisines.  If you let them grow, they get rather large and develop a fibrous core that can be dried and used as a pot scrubber, hence the name "dish rag gourd".  These are also sold in many bath shops as body sponges.  We grew some one year and I sold them at the farmer's market.  I had several customers surprised to learn that these "sponges" came from a plant and not the sea.