Sedges Have Edges, Rushes Are Round, Grasses have Nodes...

It all started with a blizzard that pushed us right into excessive heat of summer before May was out. We hadn't had more than a few hours rain over the month, so little that, with the heat, high sun, and drying wind, even succulents were bowing to the ground.

By Memorial Day, rising heat and moisture became the cauldron from which storms could manifest. 

 

Our woods and garden had accumulated three inches of rain by Tuesday. Another five eighths came later that day. This broke the drought, for now, and not everywhere, but in our woods. It also spared two climbing roses that we transplanted along with an arbor from a rapidly shading garden, on one of the hottest days, when rain looked immanent, but wasn't.

Was it the rain, or the freshly loosened soil under the trellis, that brought my first turtle sighting to our clearing in the woods? By early morning, this medium-large sized snapping turtle, Chelydra serpentina, made its way up the slope from one of many watery sites and began depositing her eggs directly beneath the newly moved rose trellis. By mid morning she was gone and around her clutch, Betsy installed a fence to keep out likely predation by raccoons (just steps away is a perma-puddle with not-so-little raccoon "hand" prints scrawled across the bottom). In fifty or one hundred and twenty five days the little ones may emerge from the nest.

The rain also gave a much needed boost to the garlic on both farms. Already stressed by the latest of winters, drought had begun to take its toll. The garlic is about the size it would normally be in early May, although the date is early June. The rain also gave boost to the mass of thistle, grass, and lambsquarters in this new plot, all weeded this past Sunday with one more weeding likely before harvest.

In the other plot, the weed profile is completely different: smartweed, bindweed, and purslane. The garlic is generally larger here, although still less vigorous than should be at this time, with many lost cloves of artichoke, turban, asiatic, and creole. In either of these two plots I picked up my first embedded tick, the wood type, as I wore shorts for the chore, something I have not done before. For all my traipsing around in the woods and elsewhere, I have yet, until this moment, to have a tick embed itself. In fact one would not anticipate that the garlic plots are where I would pick up ticks given how much time I spend in the woods.

In the year old savanna gardens a cool season grass has come up to fill the blanks readily and, although attractive, my suspicion is that it was unlikely to have been seeded with the shortgrass or savanna seed mixes broadcast in these sites a year and half ago. Nothing triggers plant weariness or all out blindness more than grass identification, but grass identification is often needed and difficult.

A last minute reprieve was handed out by the folks at Minnesota Wildflowers, a site dedicated to visual identification of native Minnesotan plants and those we find among them. In this instance, my picture post on their FB page lead to an ID a few days later, prompting me to immediately begin pulling. I hazarded the guess that it came with the poor quality straw purchased from a local farm supply. It was only in those areas where I had spread the straw for erosion control that the new weed, Cheatgrass, Bromus tectorum, as well as common oats had sprouted.

It's only then, after a positive ID, that traits of a weedy species appear to express themselves clearly. Each day since, I continue to find more inflorescence hidden among the other forbs and grasses. Like any impressive weed, this grass exhibits the ability to grow from the base of other plants and set seed at heights of only an inch. At the same time, this winter annual (cool season) grass can take advantage of rising CO², thereby increasing its biomass, indigestibility, and fire threat. Not long after, I begin to see other grasses that appear similar to Cheatgrass, but maybe taller or with smaller inflorescence, maybe smoother stems or less blue coloration in the leaves and stem. What then?

Can you tell the difference between these two grasses? Side by side, you may notice differences, but in the field grasses can blur together.

Spot the different grasses in there? From this picture, it looks to be all forbs, but it is likely 40 to 50% grasses. As the shortgrass mix I scattered here two winters back consisted of predominantly Side-oats Grama, Bouteloua curtipendula, and Little Bluestem, Schyzachyrium scoparium, a sensible guess would be that some of these grasses are present. Little bluestem is fairly easy to identify as a warm season, low growing, bluish bunch grass -not the predominant grass here.

Upon closer inspection, the grasses become more visible. Non-weed, perennial grasses tend to grow slower than annual weed grasses, but also slower than the annual forbs such as the first-year predominant black-eyed susan. In this second growth season, the grasses are making themselves known and the black-eyed susan are spread more evenly and less thickly. The site also has plants that I have cell-tray seeded and planted last summer and fall as well as more mature plants transplanted from other locations.

This grass, blooming now, is scattered through the site. It may be Fowl Manna Grass, Glyceria striata, but then again, I'm not sure. To become an expert in grass identification, one must make solid observations. The easy part is cool season, warm season or bunch or spreading, but in an ascending order of difficulty we have dull or shiny, pubescent parts or not, ligules formed this way or that, leaves folded or flat, sheaths fused or unfused, and on. It helps to know general things about a species, such as preferred habitat or weed status, but that only opens the door to more complex examination.

It is clear that the creatures appreciate these clearings repopulated with food and shelter. The milkweed planted two summers ago have begun to establish solidly among the grasses, monarda, goldenrod, asters, and much more.

These sites are a favorite of large and small dragonflies, monarchs, toads, and moths such as this Xanthotype species.

What's this? A new concept in contemporary landscape architecture? No, its a sheet of thick plastic designed to combat what was once grass, but now is one hundred percent creeping charlie, Glechoma hederacea.

It only took three years for it to go from sporadic lawn weed to total ground cover and the reason is largely due our garden choices. Putting vegetables in the lawn area, where we had our only sun, or making a hedgerow along the driveway edge created shade that charlie took advantage of. The wet weather over the last two years and our heavy clay soil worked well with our yard plans to bring us this new idea in lawns.

Why is it that a monoculture of grass is more desirable than a monoculture of charlie? After all, charlie feeds the bees and smells great when crushed (insert someone offering its medicinal value here). Is it a texture thing, a cultural, or visual thing? Lawn grasses, like charlie, are weeds around the world, but maybe we don't see grasses (remember grass blindness...). For us, a creeping charlie lawn comes down to at least three negatives: this "lawn" will always be the spring of more charlie invasions in the woods, the visual texture is off putting, and it's a pain to have to weed this out of every shady nook in the yard and garden.

Charlie hides out in the shady base of perennials, between stones, under dense shrubs, and just about anywhere there is shade and moisture. Its stolons spread in every direction, with a preference to run toward shade. At our place that means downhill, toward the woods, where it is becoming an increasingly problematic ground cover. Its seeds roll downhill in rainstorms and get stuck in clay-filled shoe treads, but worse is how its bits and pieces follow raked leaves onto slopes.

I have my eyes on several infestations, one of which looks not all that different from the lawn, but under the canopy of trees on a north facing woodland slope. In fact, charlie is giving garlic mustard that grows there a hard time, but the garlic mustard is much easier for me to eradicate, with or without its help.

After the plastic comes up this summer, the idea is to till the soil, add compost, and place thick sod in its place. It's a good idea if we do not grow vegetables here any longer. Maybe we should grow vegetables here, but add sand and brick between the raised beds? No matter what we do, charlie is instigating a lot more work and we've already plenty of that.

Beetle Daily

I've been watching these chrysanthemums for two weeks as they slowly unfurled into the flowers you see below. Inordinately early, these mums have me scratching my chin. August, maybe, but early July? 

Maybe double is the wrong terminology for this, so let me be clear: the bee balm stem leads up to the lower flower and then the stem continues through it, leading to yet another flower on top. Is that weird?

Nothing strange about these coneflower, but there they are, doing as well as can be. But it is unusual to have seen so few pollinating insects on them.

Or on the swamp milkweed, A. incarnata.

Or the butterfly weed, A. tuberosa.

Not even this creamy white mystery milkweed, A. mysteriosa, surrounded by the spreading, but also sparsely visited gooseneck loosestrife, Lysimachia clethroides.

Strike that. Yesterday I saw plenty of bumble bees, a few moths, and was even visited by a monarch.

The pom poms I ripped out from the south side of the house and used to frame the curving drive so that snow plows do not run straight over the lawn-ish front yard. A summer solution to a winter problem, these snowballs are simply massive this year. They do not turn blue or pink, a relief really. They fade to a pale pink and cream. Westward advancing Japanese beetles enjoy fornicating on these pillows, but so far have not delaminated any leaves.

The Japanese beetle, Popillia japonica. My grandmother used to give us a nickel for each beetle knocked off her roses into a cup of poison. Surprisingly, they are not yet as common in the mountain west and high plains as they are elsewhere, yet they are beginning to wreak havoc as they arrive. I hardly saw one over fifteen years of Big Woods summers, but this year there are many.

They were first observed on this year's potatoes, but again, they have not fed on the lamina (the fleshy part of the leaf). The potatoes appear quite well, have been mounded up with a yard or two of fresh compost-soil mix, and are surrounded by new, cedar raised structures. Harvesting will begin in a month or so.

This has been quite a year for sap-sucking. Two months ago I spotted whole garlic mustard plants, usually untouched, being drained by black or gray aphids. This particular arrangement, upside down with rear legs unattached is peculiar, but I've seen it before and twice this year.

Here, photographed at a client's garden, the same upside down arrangement, legs pointed out and upward.

The orange aphids love A. incarnata, swamp milkweed, that I planted along the sunny north edge of the clearing around the new studio.

Is it a hard year if they've sunken to sucking on my blue grama grass?

A closer look, not the aphid I was expecting: Russian wheat aphid, Diuraphis noxia, an invasion of a different sort? Maybe, maybe not. Witch hunt. Sad.

In other news, our seeded cucumbers are producing and look quite healthy (no mildew). They are climbing up a cedar framed heavy duty fencing Betsy and I put together (it was her brilliant idea -it attaches to the raised bed).

The home garlic is forty percent harvested, and Hudson Clove garlic is now much further along with most varieties harvested. I'm teaching a two part garlic growing course at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum this fall and spring. Sign up, fly in, do a little leaf peeping, and you're all set.

Wow. All the tomatoes are in. The only vegetable I got in on time was the potatoes in late April. The last bed of yellow, leggy tomato starts was planted on July 11th. Above, the first to get planted in late June or early July -I can't remember. We have three and a half, ten foot long, tomato beds filled with arboretum classroom freebie heirlooms and random, old seeds that happened to sprout. Black vernissage, chardonnay, cream sausage paste, San Marzano paste, stone ridge, black krim, brandywine, and forgotten others are the line up.

An early chardonnay, a large cherry type, is very tasty with a touch tough skins.

Likely a young vernissage, the stripes will remain dark green and the pale green will ripen red, giving the overall "black" color. 

Black beauty -one must remember to wait for the green to turn red.

A Prelude to the Understory

After two full seasons of intensive looking, I still find unfamiliar plants. Sometimes I photograph, sometimes I pluck a specimen (depends on the quantity). A fraction of those make it to the concentrated search for identification. Of course, identifying a plant isn't always remembering it, and that takes something more: a drawing perhaps, a meal, maybe, or some other triangulation of anchoring interactions that commits a new identity to memory.

Mosquitoes in the dark and damp woods can make any phone photographer's shot a blur. When in doubt and plenty, pluck a branch, preferably in flower. If you can get to it quickly, bring the pluckling to your computer. If you can't, photograph it on the hood of a car, and get to it later. Here, a plant that beguiled me through the garlic mustard harvest. I now know it as Canadian Wood Nettle, Laportea canadensis.

Above, a plant that must've been easier to miss across prior years in a dark woods. Now, freed from other obsessions, I saw it everywhere, understory. It's form is suggestive of both invasive species and Eastern Forest native, a counter distinction to the many invasive forbs that to a degree appear "out of place" in our woods. Awareness of such differences is both a product of experience within the Eastern Forest, but also a diminished plant blindness.

This "new" plant was challenging due to its small white or maybe green-yellow flowers, its casual umbell, and my age-induced farsightedness. The umbell, trifoliated habit, and seed tipped identification toward an anxiety-producing, naturalized reversion of Aegopodium podagraria, goutweed or bishop's weed to you and me. We have two large colonies of goutweed on the southern slope, but something wasn't quite right about this ID. I had to dig deeper. I had to zoom closely on the seeds, had to engage with leaf sheaths, and most importantly, I had to learn to see double serrated leaves. Those cues in hand I was able to find this plant's true identity: Canadian Honewort, Cryptotaenia canadensis. Why this subtle plant has a name composed of "hidden" and "tapeworm," I do not want to discover.

Sedges fill a minor savanna between the road to the east and the house to the west, the little wetland and great wetland bounding it on the north and south sides. Oaks used to dominate this dry mound, but basswood and maple are encroaching.

Oaks die or fall in storm winds, as this large one had two summers back. The oaks, when dominant, create a canopy pierced by sunlight, an environment the sugar maples do not provide. The understory is complex; already colonized by sedge, ephemerals, and a lower dose of garlic mustard than is typical in more moist, down-slope locations. Maybe the clearing's relative isolation has allowed more native species to proliferate than in other tree-fall clearings nearer the house and adjacent, cultivated properties.

I was overjoyed to spot a strongly growing specimen of poke milkweed, Asclepias exaltata, a foot from the fallen oak. I tray-planted 50 seeds of this less common milkweed last year. Only six sprouted, then five took faint hold along the edge of our septic field; five that have since been moved to the new, mostly shady clearing behind the studio. I've decided that poke is not as easily grown as swamp or common milkweed, but it is the only milkweed common to shadier, woodland locations, and I'd like to have some growing out there. Maybe I will try again, next year.

Although I intended to keep the mound of fallen oak and poke milkweed clear, time and garlic mustard always seem to get away from me. Askance of plans, among mosquitoes excited by a coming storm, a moment was wedged to clear any observable, green seedpod-bearing garlic mustard. As the lightning became daylight visible and thunder claps louder, I decided to discontinue what is always an ever expanding circumference of mustard weeding. Today, nearly all remaining second year garlic mustard is yellow fading into beige. Seeds by the thousands are lined up for distribution on sites already occupied by thousands more. If a rift in time should open, I will get into the woods, shod in mosquito net cap, to clip and bag the drying stems from areas newly colonized.

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I spend a fair amount of time identifying plants: weeds, natives, and cultivated for myself as well as others. Texts roll in with pictures of pokeweed or Fallopia japonica, multiflora rose and daylily. Most pictured plants are easy to identify because most are coming from yards carved out of the Eastern Forest. In them are cultivated plants or common weed species of Eurasian provenance. In making yards -clearings designed to lessen our work (ha!), lower our exposure to pests, and provide a platform for leisure, we offer opportunity to ambitious plants.

In the process of putting up our studio building, I created about two thousand square feet of opportunity. The area is now covered in subgrade clay over topsoil because when we dig, what is beneath ends up on top. Many desirable plants won't flourish in this subgrade soil, but the adventitious do. Given my positive experience growing native milkweed, I ventured to grow several native plants for the sunnier part of our studio clearing before the weeds take hold.

I imagined a medium height grass and forb savanna underneath the tall basswood on the south side of the building and under the red oak on the north east corner. I winter seeded Prairie Moon's short grass inexpensive seed mix and savanna enhancement mix, both of which had some species from their exposed clay mix. Sowing seeds felt like leaving too much to chance, so I also stratified hundreds of individual species seeds through winter, then cell tray planted them in April. But, an unexpected hot greenhouse day in early May boiled many of my seeds laying patiently under their moisture-preserving cellophane wrap. Most were lost, although some did sprout near the cooler edges, and those are now large enough to be potted up.

Growing native plants from seed is not always easy. Cultivated plants have been bred and selected for viability, commercial or otherwise. Natives, however, maintain their original, sometimes fussy seed-sprouting needs. Multiply cold, heat, or cold and heat by time, then add light or darkness, subtract or add moisture, and you may have a formula that produces a native sprout. I have several more young native plants to pot up, and at least 50 clumps of grasses (mostly blue grama, side oats grama, but also a few rattlesnake and prairie brome) in need of the same. Before planting these in their final places in mid to late August, I will till in a portion of the ten cubic yards of compost mix we had delivered last month. This may give the native plants a fighting chance among the highly competitive weeds.

Some of the remaining compost will make it into raised planters I have been building. Below is one of two I have placed around my already growing potatoes -the only vegetables I got in on time this year. As they grow, I have been adding compost mix. When all is done, there will be eight raised beds, a prospect I am quite happy about. Two years of growing vegetables in beds surrounded by the lawn and excessive summer rains have led to lawn that is nearly seventy five percent creeping charlie. The other twenty five is clover that co-existed nicely with the grass. Raised beds will be easier to work, weed, plant and harvest, but most of all I appreciate the architectural structure they add to the vegetable garden on a small front lawn (of creeping charlie). For all my interest in wild-ish native planting, I still like the perception of order in the vegetable patch.

Land O'Milkweed

I will, one day, get to planting these. Just another day of siding, and another day of painting the siding, and then one more for the door, save at least another five for the deck, and just one or maybe two for the steps. Maybe then I'll get to planting these. But only after I dig around the outbuilding and install the groundhog barrier, and dig a trench for the drainage tile, lay the tile, and machine the fill until it slopes nicely, and once done I can excavate the gravel so it can be reapplied in layers, each compacted, so the concrete floor that also needs to be poured won't crack, which would be a shame because we cut two inch foam and placed it all around, or at least we will in August, but not before the exhibit is hung. I ought to make more work for that show, and I did say I would take my photos to the printer for printing, and there's framing, then, but after that I can plant these milkweed. Although it won't be in July, because the show, you know, but also the class I teach, in Vermont, and the lecture to give, and the prep for each. September is a good time to plant these, the fall -yes, but only after the electricity and heating is put into the outbuilding, because it wouldn't be sensible to frame for insulation in September if there is no heat to insulate, but after that I can get to planting these milkweed, well before it freezes. Could it wait just a bit more, because the brick walkway needs to be laid, especially before that freeze. Is it time to blow the leaves? Well that mustn't wait, and after all, with the cleared leaves there will be a clearing in which to plant these milkweed, so that will be a good time to get to these. Will there be a freeze? Oh, well I should get the garlic in, and wrap up the last of house painting, and who wants to work stiff-fingered in the cold? It'll best be done, as soon as can be, but first I need to put up the walls and install the lights, because what is a shop and studio without walls or lights? After that I can probably get to planting these milkweed. You know, it's been warmer, later, more often than not, so I'll get to these on a nice fall day, a warm afternoon, but only if there's nothing left to do that needed to be done, more so, anyway, than planting the milkweed.

Summer Solace

One of the benefits of getting to one's vegetable garden first, before summer's work begins in earnest, is not having to think about the garden at all when you are knee deep in summer's work. It grows itself, mostly, with an intensity only paralleled by the solstice's long day.

  

One of the beauties of growing garlic is that it's harvest hardly coincides with any garden task other than weeding. By now, the first of the garlic is near completely exhumed (briefly hesitated to dredge up this word), and like any darkling, it mustn't be cast into the bright light. The first pulling is in the shade of the porch, but the full harvest is likely to be dispatched to the cellar. Here, in the midst of harvest, is Xian, a Turban strain, and one of the best for flavor and earliness. Turban's lodge, or fall over, as a way of telling unsuspecting gardeners that they need help -getting out of the ground.

At about the same time sizeable beaks are swirling above the Asiatic strains -here Asian Tempest and Japanese. These will be harvested next, not long after the Turban strains, and sometimes before.

Meanwhile the Porcelain strains have had their scapes (flowering stalk) cut, ready to be pickled or grilled or sauteed or...just don't leave them in the fridge too long before doing something with them. Behind the Porcelain are the Rocambole (shorter in the middle) and Purple Stripe. 

The French Grey shallots have also been pulled. I find that the height of the crabgrass is a useful indicator for timing the shallot harvest. Left behind are the Artichoke and Silverskin strains, those hardy bulbs that we use through next winter and deep into the following spring. 

When the the crabgrass first sprouts, it's the best time to get your peppers in, but I didn't heed the crabgrass this season. No, I put the peppers in a couple of weeks early -listening to the lambsquarters maybe. They're doing fine anyways, although I do think they are showing a little too soon.

Broccoli? Yes! And from seed no less. In spring? Yes! And no cabbage moths to boot. A quick, small-headed variety seed-started on May one and hardly two months later boom -broccoli. Go figure. I've got some of those very same starts in their deep cells holding back growth inside the greenhouse. They'll be put into the garlic beds as they clear.

Green beans? Not so fast. I seed-started these in the greenhouse on May one and planted them out a two or three weeks later. Nice flowers, no beans yet.

Cucumbers before June 21? Why, yes. I purchased a cell pack of four Spacemaster cukes from Shady Acres and planted them in pots raised well off the ground.

They won't ever reach the ground, that's why they're called spacemaster. They do put on an impressive display of cucumbers and have produced a handful of medium sized eaters before the solstice. I've seeded my own, too, to replace these after they give up.

Tomatoes, well that's asking a lot, isn't it? But among our six strains (of three varieties -plum, grape, and, uh, heirloom beefsteak?) these grape tomatoes, called Red Pearl, are way good producers.

 

In fact the deer are warming up for BBQ season by snacking on our Speckled Roman plum tomatoes. I grew these at the Beach Farm, and deer aside, expect them to do really well here.

Dill, cilantro, basil, and at the very bottom, cutting lettuce. In the background -common milkweed that has grown in this spot for eons, or at least since this house was built, so maybe the late nineties. Infringing on their bed are the potatoes. They are so big they require their own post. Look for that.