Upstate Gardeners' Journal

01/09/2025

THIS PAGE MARKED SAFE FROM FALSE CONTENT.

We have never depended on FB to do the work for us. The posts and content shared here will continue to have a curated selection of events, humor, art, and a wide range of gardening information — just as we always have always shared. The FB announcement of no fact checking will have no impact on this page.

Photo: A fun selection of DYC, “damned yellow composites.” From Wikipedia: “A damned or damn yellow composite (DYC) is any of the numerous species of composite flowers (family Asteraceae) that have yellow flowers and can be difficult to tell apart in the field. It is a jocular term, and sometimes reserved for those yellow composites of no particular interest.”

01/07/2025

01/07/2025

Just to be clear about words, "invasive" always mean nonnative plants. Native plants can be "aggressive" but not "invasive" in their native range.

01/07/2025

Don't even think about cleaning up the garden.

01/07/2025

Plants, seeds, garden ornaments,....

01/02/2025

Normalize appreciating the insects in your gardens and natural spaces! Share your favorite 2024 insect sightings!

12/28/2024

“In the past, we asked our landscapes to do one thing, and that was, be pretty,” Tallamy said. “Now we have to ask them to do two things: be pretty and ecologically functional. That's the horticultural challenge of today.”

But it’s one Tallamy believes can be achieved.

Sometimes, he wishes he could speak to his 10-year-old self and tell the young boy to dig another pond for the toads to colonize. Restore. Conserve. Focus on keeping nature’s ecosystems intact, he would say.

“We have to do both,” Tallamy said. “Yes, we have to conserve what’s out there, but we have to get in the mindset that we can really put a lot of it back.”

https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2024/december/doug-tallamy-native-plants-insects-ecosystems/

Doug Tallamy, the TA Baker Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources, is on a mission: Encourage people to rid their property of invasive plants and replace them with native species, which provide critical habitat for insects and birds.

“Everybody has a responsibility of doing things that sustain their little piece of the earth,” Tallamy said, “and there are a whole bunch of things one individual can do to help in that regard.”

Read the story about Tallamy’s impact.
https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2024/december/doug-tallamy-native-plants-insects-ecosystems/

12/28/2024

A thought for the New Year .......

Photo Credit: Linsey Duffy, NGC Photographer Group

12/28/2024

The winter solstice is traditionally the start of the Winter Sowing season. With so many holiday activities at this time, many gardeners wait until early January to begin. Below is information on how to winter sow seeds.

WHAT IS WINTER SOWING?
Winter sowing is a fun and easy way to start seeds outside during the winter. You plant your seeds in miniature greenhouses made from recycled plastic containers, and then put them outside in the snow and freezing cold.

Why Winter Sow?
Inexpensive and environmentally friendly.
No hard and fast rules.
Produces strong, healthy plants!
Grow unusual plants you can’t find at the nursery.

How to Winter Sow.
You will need soil, containers and seeds. You can either purchase seeds or harvest them from your garden. Also have something to label your containers, a sharp tool, and tape.

When to Sow Seeds.
December 21 and February – winter sow perennials that need cold stratification.

Mid – Late March – winter sow hardier annuals.

Late March – Early April – winter sow tender annuals, vegetables and herbs
If you are in warmer gardening zones (zones 6 and 7), you can bump your winter sowing up a few weeks and even start in December.

When purchasing seeds be sure to look for clues on the seed pack, words like:
"hardy"
"direct sown as soon as the soil can be worked"
"direct sow in early spring"
"chill seeds before sowing"
"can withstand frost”

Native Plant Seeds are Ideal for Winter Sowing
• Northern Blue Flag iris versicolor
• Butterflyweed asclepias tuberosas
• Swamp Milkweed asclepias incarnatas
• Cardinal Flower lobelia cardinalis
• Great Blue Lobelia lobelia siphilitica
• Purple Coneflower echinacea purpurea
• Black-Eyed Susan rudbeckia fulgida
• Showy Goldenrod soldiago speciosa
• False Sunflower heliopsis helianthoides
• Jack-in-the-pulpit arisaema triphyllum
• Jacob’s Ladder polemonium reptans
• Blue Phlox phlox divaricata
• Scarlet Sage salvia coccinea
• Turtlehead chelone obliqua
• Common yarrow Achillea millefolium

If you would like to learn more about Winter Sowing check out the Charles County MG video " All the Dirt on Winter Sowing" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhqT1kUVSk0

Winter sowing milk jugs photo- Jann Rabin

12/24/2024

12/24/2024

Love me some Apricity ☀️

12/24/2024

Guilty as charged!

12/24/2024

Want to improve your winter tree identification skills? Here’s a good tip: Look for marcescent leaves.

Marcescence describes leaves that have turned brown and are still attached to trees. These withered leaves often persist on the trees until spring.

As you might expect, marcescence isn’t a feature displayed by too many woody plants. When you see a marcescent tree or shrub, you can narrow down your ID choices to a relatively small number of species.

In the temperate woodlands of eastern North America, marcescence is often displayed by hornbeam (Carpinus), beech (Fagus), witch-hazel (Hamamelis), hophornbeam (Ostrya), and oak (Quercus).

No one is exactly sure why marcescence exists. Here are a few hypotheses:

— It allows plants to photosynthesize longer into the autumn season.
— It deters herbivores from browsing twigs and buds.
— Marcescent trees provide shelter to animals that in turn provide nutrients to trees.
— Marcescent leaves, when they finally fall off, provide pulses of nutrients to their host trees.
— Marcescent leaves, when they finally fall off, smother new growth of competing woody plants in the spring.

All of these statements can be true to some degree, but it is uncertain whether any one of them is the true reason for marcescence.

Still, you and I can use marcescence to our advantage when attempting to identify woody plants. A good first step is to learn which woody plants are marcescent in our region. We can then seek out these plants, spend some time with them, and fall in love with the process.