Gardening by Mistake

There are baby poison ivy plants popping up everywhere in my yard.  I have never seen anything like this. It’s crazy. And it’s frustrating because no matter how many seedlings I pull, when I turn around I find more. The worst is that they like to grow under existing plants, so they are hard to see and hard to remove without disturbing the plants I want there.  Sometime soon I’m going to have to set aside a couple hours for nothing but poison ivy removal. I hate to spend my limited garden time doing that, but we’re being overrun.

The rain we had this morning was incredible. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it rain that hard for so long. The berm behind our yard was not up to the task, so we had a torrent of water rushing through the immediate backyard (good thing the dogs were inside!) and my rose garden was under so much water in places you couldn’t see the cinder blocks of the raised beds. All that water was moving fast as my garden is on a slope.

The drainage channel at the street which leads to a creek was insufficient for the volume of water, so it backed up into our entire front yard and then it actually covered the road several inches deep. The pictures don’t do it justice, but here they are anyway. On the picture of the street, everything on the street to the right of the tree is under water. The other picture shows part of our backyard.

And we’re still supposed to get more heavy rains this weekend. Not good.

It’s going to be a while before I can mow!

I was surprised to discover Monday that the native red mulberry tree in our back yard is already loaded with ripe berries. And I do mean loaded. I should have known. I’ve heard an amazing volume of bird noises from that tree lately. I figured there was a particularly loud (read: grackle) nest there. Judging by the number of birds that flew away a few minutes ago when I let the dogs into the yard, that tree is the current hot spot for our part of the neighborhood. My kids always give the birds a good contest. Yesterday they must have collected 3 cups of mulberries. My son ate probably 3/4 of a cup right then. He loves them as much as the birds do. Fortunately, mulberries have a long season; they don’t all ripen at once. I need to keep a couple of the berries and see if I can grow another one or two. I’ve got mulberry tree sprouts all over, but I think they are the exotic mulberry and I don’t want to encourage those, just the native species.

Ever since I read about this last winter, I wanted to try making chive blossom wine vinegar for my in-laws. They like to experiment with new and gourmet recipes and always appreciate new things like an herbal wine vinegar.

The first step was to get out to the garden and retrieve several cups (unpacked) worth of chive blossoms that were fully open but not past their prime. I took a few that were mostly all the way open but not fully open yet, as well. How much of the stem to include wasn’t mentioned by any of the directions I found for this, so I ended up taking anywhere from none to about an inch. I figured the stems would only add to the chive flavor.

The next step was to rinse the blossoms off. It was frustratingly difficult to get the ants out of the blossoms. I rinsed and rinsed, would think I’d gotten them all, and then out would come a couple more ants. If you do this, you might submerge the blossoms and swirl them around in the water. I rinsed mine in a colander and in hindsight that wasn’t optimal. Once you are done rinsing, you’ll need to lay the blossoms out for drying. It’s important to dry them because extra water can apparently make the vinegar cloudy. (You’ll want to have the bottle you’ll use washed and dried prior to use, as well). I laid mine out on a couple of washcloths and then covered them with another and pressed gently.

I then poured the white wine vinegar into the container I was going to use and then put the chive blossoms in after it. I pushed the blossoms down into the vinegar, put a lid on the container and set it aside. If you do this, make sure you do not use metal because it will react with the vinegar. In my case I used a glass container with a plastic lid.

The directions I read varied in how long to set the vinegar aside. In my case, I wasn’t going to see my in-laws for quite a while after this weekend, so the time was determined for me. I started my chive blossom vinegar 9 days ago. In that time, as you can see, it has turned a lovely pink color from the blossoms.

Once you feel yours has steeped long enough, remove the old chive blossoms, put the vinegar in its final container and, if you like, put in a couple new chive blossoms for decoration. I didn’t do that here because the neck of the bottle is so narrow I didn’t think the blossoms would ever come out again.

The directions I read were contradictory on the steeping period. Some said to place the bottle in the sun, like sun tea. Others said to keep it in a dark place because sunlight could make it get cloudy. I split the difference and just kept it on a counter that doesn’t get direct sunlight. It seemed to work beautifully.

If there is only one thing I’ll take away from my first year of WSing, it will be to cover all my pots with screen before the spring seeds start flying. I spent more than 4 hours today weeding my little pots. I’ve gotten 80 pots cleared out, but that still leaves another 120+ to deal with. I suppose there are a couple good points to this: It’s a reason to give each plant a close examination and it gives me some idea of what I have out there and how many of each. One thing I’ve noticed: the echinacea that survived the big flood might as well not have. They are pitiful little things. For now I’m leaving them alone, but I may decide to yank them and use their pots for something else. All the rain we’ve continued to get post-flood has made them extremely unhappy.

This past winter, before I sowed my pots of aster oblongifolius, I checked to see what information I could  about germination rates. I read more than one person say it has a low germination rate. Since I really wanted to have some, I sowed a lot of it. Well, it turns out the lowest germination rate was about 50%. So of the gazillion seeds I sowed, I now have about half a gazillion seedlings. Oh my goodness! It’s a good thing my parents just moved and my mom wants a butterfly garden. Guess who’s getting a lot of asters!

For years now, I’ve wondered what the tree growing between two of my rose beds is. This tree suckers from loooong near-surface roots. I find little hackberry sprouts coming up 20 feet away. When I tug on them, I can see that they are attached to a shallow root which seems to go on forever. Reminds me of bindweed in the way you can pull a root carefully and follow it along for many feet. Like bindweed, I’ve hated that tree with a passion.

Tonight, I finally identified it, which is good. What is not good is that after looking it up, I now know that it’s a native AND it’s a great tree for wildlife. Twenty-five birds use it as a source of food for fall and winter– a season when food is never plentiful.

Lady Bird Johnson’s Wildflower Center’s Native Plant Database says, “Hackberries are among the best food and shelter plants for wildlife. The fruit is relished by birds.” It also says Celtis occidentalis is a larval host and/or nectar source for:

• Wild Cherry Sphinx
• Tawny Emperor
• American Snout
• Question Mark
• Mourning Cloak

So, my fantasies of killing the tree and turning it into a snag covered with bittersweet or other native vines, will remain only a fantasy. Darn it!

CNN has an article Top Ten Gardening Mistakes and I took a look at them last night. On my way to the article, I said, “I bet I’ve made them all” and my husband laughed. Surprisingly, there were some I didn’t make. I’ve made plenty of mistakes; I guess I’ve just specialized in the less common ones.

So, how do you do on the list?

I’ve lost count of how many maple and seedlings I’ve had to pull in the last few days. They are sprouting everywhere— including in my WS pots. I won’t do WS next year without covering those pots to keep those blasted seeds out of them.

It’s about time, I know, to be getting done with spring tasks. I pruned all but a half dozen or so rose bushes now. As I was pruning today, I discovered a third robin’s nest. That’s 6 nests that I know of in my yard so far this year! I imagine we’ll have two more once we get the kids’ nest boxes hung up outside.

I tried to do some weeding but the ground is too wet. (Since Monday we’ve had about 3 1/2 inches of rain). Clumps of mud were coming up with the roots. I hate that I have the time and the mood and the nice weather but I can’t weed. Who knows when those factors will all align again!

I’m debating on how to proceed with some of my aster oblongifolius.  These are winter sown babies. They need to be separated from their clump in the pot and given new homes. I’d planned on potting them up individually, but now that I’m looking at them, I’m thinking about planting them directly into the garden. Planting directly into the garden idea is more appealing since it removes a step. The advantage to growing them on a bit in their own pots is that they could achieve more size before being left to fend for themselves. Of course, in the spirit of my Darwinian gardening philosophy, I don’t have to worry about the plants anyway. I think they’ll go directly into the garden. Maybe even tonight! (Now I just have to figure out where I’m going to put them!)

I knew of its existence, but until today I had never visited the Discovery Center is Kansas City. It’s an outreach center by both the Missouri Department of Conservation and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. It’s near the Plaza, in an urban setting which disappears as soon as you enter the parking lot. The staff there really know their stuff, too. A person could learn a lot there.

I didn’t get to explore or see much of the 10 acre site today because I was a parent volunteer with my son’s 3rd grade class field trip. But I’m already planning on returning very soon! There are native plants everywhere and they are labeled. I’m hoping to be able to identify some that are in my own yard. There are wetlands and I’m hoping they have some rain gardens, as well, since I’d like to add one some day. Aside from learning about native plants, it is also a serene and beautiful place to visit.

The 3rd graders got to do some neat stuff. Some had birdwatching lessons. Others, like my son’s class, made bird houses to take home. It’s a great field trip for the schools because it’s free. (I see on their website they do some home schooling activities, as well. I’ll have to remember that for my daughter next year).