Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Cone Crazy


Echinacea paradoxa


Tennessee Coneflower

The fall gardening catalogs are arriving in my mailbox, and cultivars of Echinacea, the horticultural industry’s new darling, are blooming on the front covers. But how do these newcomers fare in the garden? Over the last two or three years, I’ve planted several species and cultivars in the Echinacea genus in my zone 5, suburban Chicago yard. Here’s how they’ve fared.

In general, the cones required little care. Because I leave seeds for birds, I don’t deadhead. They have done well without supplemental watering in July and August heat. Choose where you will grow them carefully, because they form deep taproots and do not transplant well if they must be moved later.

Species Coneflowers
I’ve had good, old-fashioned E. purpurea for years, since long before the genus became the latest fad. It’s been a consistent performer in a sunny spot next to a walkway, blooming every July. Plant heights have reached 3-4 feet (chest high) with generous amounts of purple blooms. There has been little spread or invasion of other areas, with plants well-behaved for all of the past 10 years.

E. pallida (pale-purple coneflower) is in its second year as a resident of my garden, and I’m sorry I didn’t plant it sooner. It’s grown well in both full sun and light shade, with plants getting slightly taller, about 4 feet, in full sun than in the shade. So far, I haven’t seen any invasive tendencies, but I haven’t had the plants that long. The flower petals are somewhat longer, narrower, and lighter in color than E. purpurea. They droop below the central button of the flower.

E. tennesseensis (Tennesse Coneflower) is somewhat shorter than E. purpurea. The plants have grown quickly and formed looser clumps than the other species coneflowers. As my Tennessee coneflower is only in its second season, it hasn’t spread much. It is quite a vigorous grower, however, which sometimes is an early sign that a plant will become invasive. The blooms are roughly the same size as other species coneflowers, but somewhat pinkish in color. This plant is indigenous to cedar glades in Tennessee, and was thought to be extinct in the 1960’s. Because it is endangered in its native habitat, buy only plants or seeds guaranteed to be nursery grown or propagated. I have grown these in full sun, but they should tolerate some shade.

Also growing in full sun is my E. paradoxa. This plant, also in its second year, has grown more slowly than the other species coneflowers. It produces yellow blooms, but the stems on this plant tend to flop over. It might stay more upright staked or inter-planted with other tall plants, which would provide support.

Hybrid Coneflowers
Much of the hype surrounding coneflowers has centered on “new” hybrids. These are touted in catalogs as improvements on the native species and often are a cross between two natives. They feature unnatural colors or flowers with unusual or unnatural forms. Whether some of these unusual blooms are an improvement is a matter of taste.

The popular Big Sky™ series of coneflowers includes many plants with unusual colors and is bred by ItSaul Plants.

In its second year, my E. ‘Sundown’ (photo, right) has grown to be a large plant with flowers tinted in gradations of orange and pink. It’s a cross between E. paradoxa and E. purpurea touted in some catalogs as being a more prolific bloomer. I don’t see evidence that it produces more blooms than E. purpurea, but they are a lovely color. In full sun, the plant has been vigorous, and might even spread a bit with time. So far, it’s my favorite of the hybrids I’ve tried.

I’ve seen claims that E. ‘Fatal Attraction’ produces darker, more saturated blooms. I really can’t tell the difference between the flowers on my ‘Fatal Attraction’ and those on my E. purpurea. The plants are shorter and stockier than E. purpurea, which is as promised in the catalogs.

Another Big Sky hybrid in its second year, E. ‘Harvest Moon’ has grown slowly, even in full sun. The plant is smaller than my E. ‘Sundown’ though both were planted at the same time. Blooms are deep yellow to gold. Like E. paradoxa, the stems tend to be somewhat floppy. The plant seems generally less vigorous than the species coneflowers.

Growing E. ‘Double Decker’ is like having a bearded lady in my front yard. The blooms certainly stand out, and it’s hard not to look at them. But I wouldn’t exactly call them attractive. The three-year-old, 3-foot-tall plants produce flowers that look like a deformed coneflower daisy, with a second upward-pointing ring of small petals.

If you’re thinking some Echinacea would look nice in your yard, don’t hesitate to try fall planting. My plants did just fine when planted in September. And if you’re interested in trying seeds, which are an inexpensive way to grow lots of coneflowers, the best time to sow them outdoors is in the fall. Coneflower seeds must have moisture and chilling to break dormancy, and the easiest way to meet this requirement is to take advantage of winter weather.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Can a Wild Plant Be a Status Symbol?

Nothing says, “I’m a serious gardener,” like the plant that nobody else has. That’s how imported ornamentals became so popular in the first place. Landowners displayed their wealth and status in their collections of rare plants from far-away places. Now, over half the plants listed in wholesale catalogs may be from outside North America.

The thirst for a coveted luxury item and status symbol fueled the tulip craze in Holland centuries ago. It now motivates people to order the latest hosta, daylily, coneflower, or peony from the expensive mail-order nursery of their choice, paying $30 to $50, and sometimes more, for a single plant. I’ve given in to the temptation. I have at least half a dozen different types of the now-trendy Echinacea genus on my lot.

I also have the only bottlebrush grass (Elymus hystrix, formerly Hystrix patula) on the block. Its unusual flower heads and large size (up to 5 feet tall) make it quite the eye-catching plant. Thriving in the shady spots in my yard its second year, it looks as good as promised by the catalog photos.

Acquiring the bottlebrush grass plants required considerable effort, though I didn’t have to bring it back from my trip to Asia. Not finding bare-root or potted plants, I ordered seeds from Prairie Moon Nursery, which specializes in native plants. I pretreated the seeds by chilling them in the refrigerator for 2 months. They then went into peat pellets for starting indoors, followed by time in a sunny window. Finally, the seedlings went outside a few hours each day for “hardening off” and then into the ground.

Compared to the norm of hostas (from Asia) and Kentucky bluegrass (from Europe), bottlebrush grass is “exotic.” But it’s from right here in North America, growing wild in some of Chicago’s forest preserves. The Chicago Park District included the plant in its restoration of the Hurley Park Savannah.

Here’s hoping someone makes it available to the masses. It’s a great shade grass, providing lots of drama and requiring little care.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Rhubarb Even Kids Will Eat

It's farmer's market season, my favorite time of year. I walked down to the one at Prudential Plaza this week, and admired all the flowers, breads, vegetables and herbs. I bought some of the wonderful Misericordia Irish soda bread we love, but I realized as I walked around the stalls that most of the herbs and vegetables were already growing in my backyard. I've been enjoying them for several weeks already.

Besides asparagus, my favorite springtime treat is rhubarb. This is a tough sell for some people. It's not available in the grocery store year-round, only in the spring. Rhubarb is unpalatably sour without sugar, and must be cooked before being eaten. It looks strange, like pink celery, and not everyone knows what to do with it.

With the rhubarb in my yard, I've been making strawberry-rhubarb muffins, an adaptation of a Cooks.com recipe. The first time I made these, my daughter begged me to cook them again. Because I'm a calorie counter, I substitute applesauce for the oil, and it works just fine. To compensate for the added sweetness, I reduce the sugar and add a little more oil.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

What's Blooming Now: Prairie Shooting Star

I put these little native wildflowers in my garden for the first time last year, and I loved them so much I had to add more. They aren't big plants, perhaps 8-10 inches across and 18 inches tall when in bloom. The leaves form small rosettes similar to a primrose, which is not surprising since the plant is a member of this family.

Last spring when they bloomed, I caught bees climbing into the flowers from underneath. They emerged dizzy, apparently sated, and covered with pollen.

The flowers of the shooting star (dodecatheon meadia) are white to a light shade of pink or purple. The ones in my garden, shown in the photo, change color as the blossoms age. As you can see, the flowers hang upside-down on the stalk. Prairie shooting star grows well in full sun to part shade and has, according to Illinois Wildflowers, been found in most counties in Illinois. The plants do go dormant during the hot summer months.

My library copy of the Tallgrass Restoration Handbook classifies them as "conservative wildflowers," which means they do not typically occur outside of the highest-quality prairie remnants or restorations. So far, however, they are doing well in my garden.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Lurie Garden—April 2009

About 10 days ago, on one of those warm early-spring days, I hoofed it down to the Lurie Garden to have a look at what was going on. Yes, I meant to post this much sooner, but I've been awfully busy working in my own yard lately. I spent the weekend mulching garden beds, picking asparagus, watching kids play in the backyard, and tying grapevines to a trellis, not in front of the computer.

What’s really interesting about visiting the garden before all the perennials have really leafed out is that you can see the structure of the plantings. It’s much easier to see how the plants are arranged before the leaves and flowers hide the clumps, or root crowns, in the ground. Once everything gets going, it’s nearly impossible to tell where one plant begins and another ends.

Inside the tall evergreen hedges that shield the garden from the rest of the park, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel (the garden’s designers) arrange the plants in large, naturalistic groupings. Plants are spaced much more closely than is usual in the typical suburban yard. The distance between the centers of most perennial clumps is not more than 2 feet, and often quite a bit less than that. The designers aren't interested in showing off discrete clumps or individual plants, as is common in the suburbs.

It turns out that dense plantings provide much more cover for wildlife than discrete clumps separated by neat stretches of woodchips. Consequently, Douglas Tallamy, in his book, Bringing Nature Home, recommends such denser plantings. My experience has been that dense plantings are also easier to maintain--the perennials tend to crowd out the weeds when densely planted.

A stream-like water feature and paved path divides the Lurie Garden into two sections, the “Light Plate,” with mostly colorful plants and wildflowers, and the “Dark Plate,” in which grasses and plants with more subtle coloring predominate.

On that warm day in April, prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), grape hyacinths, blue anenomes, and daffodils were in bloom. Rather than planting little clumps of each here and there, the garden’s designers placed these plants in large, naturalistic groupings that covered good-sized areas. The garden designers used flower colors on opposite sides of the color wheel, in yellow and blue, also called complementary colors.

Although the garden is in the middle of downtown Chicago, I did spot some wildlife, such as the robin shown in the top photo. He was hopping around in the grape hyacinths.



One of my new favorite spring-blooming perennials in the garden is the prairie smoke (bottom photo). These small plants have pink flowers that produce wispy puffs of seeds later in the spring. They require hot, dry soil, and lots of sun. I managed to start some of these plants from seed last spring, with mixed results--it remains to be seen whether my prairie smoke seedlings will thrive or fail.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

This is the Illinois State Flower?

The first spring I moved into my house, the violets were thing that bloomed most prolifically in my yard. I thought they were cute. In fact, I liked them so much I transplanted them to the garden bed around the foundation of my house.

I paid for that mistake for several years afterwards. Once I found out that most people in the neighborhood consider them to be a weed, I spent several seasons trying to get rid of them.

The violets stayed firmly in the weed category until last Memorial Day weekend, when I went to the Madison, WI farmer’s market and found people selling them—at $5 for 3 plants—on Saturday morning. A sign nearby told browsers that they were the Wisconsin state flower. I wondered if I should reconsider my stance on the violets.

It turns out that they are not just the Wisconsin state flower, but the Illinois state flower as well. A group of school children anointed the violet with this honor over 100 years ago, in 1907. Who knew that was possible for a common lawn weed?

My new book, Swink and Wilhelm’s Plants of the Chicago Region, lists about 2 dozen different species of violet known to grow in the Chicago area. Differentiating them is difficult, and they are apparently known to interbreed. According to Illinois Wildflowers, the common blue violet (Viola sororia) is a native perennial plant. Leaves emerge from rhizomes, that bumpy little cluster I see where the leaves meet the roots when I pull violets out of the ground. The plants like to grow in moist soil and partial shade, and they do very well in my lawn. The flowers and young leaves are apparently edible, though bland, and can be added to salads in small amounts (I’m not sure I want to try this!).

Swink and Wilhelm describe the plant as “weedy” and common in abandoned fields, lawns, and degraded prairies. Judging by how much time I spend hoeing violet seedlings out of my vegetable patch, I’m thinking that description of these little plants is an understatement.

The U of I Cooperative Extension Office has posted an amusing poem about the violet, and it sheds some light on how children may have voted it the state flower. They are, after all, kind of cute, and kids do like to pick them. I haven’t gotten a little bouquet of violets as a gift from the kids yet, but I’d be willing to bet it’s coming.

I'll be pulling the violets this year, because if I let them, they wouldn't make room for anything else.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Butterfly and Rain Garden

There's this spot near my driveway that floods every year, and it seemed like a great place to think about eliminating the lawn.

So today, between rainstorms, I installed cream wild indigo, two echinacea cultivars, baptisia ‘Twilite Prarieblues', little bluestem 'Sioux Blue', Sullivant's milkweed (also called Prairie milkweed), purple milkweed, Illinois rose, bottle gentian, cup plant, and prairie shooting star. The plants are tiny, and the garden really doesn't look like much yet, but I'm hoping by July it'll be better. The sources for these plants were the Morton Arboretum's members-only plant sale, a nursery in Saint Charles called The Natural Garden, and a mail-order nursery in Wisconsin that specializes in native plants called Prairie Nursery.

The Sullivant's milkweed (asclepias sullivanti), which likes to be wet, went in the low spot that floods every time there's a rainstorm. I'm hoping that I guessed right on my plant requirements and that it'll do well there--but not so well it becomes a nuisance. An internet search tells me that in Wisconsin, Sullivant’s milkweed is a threatened species but that seems not to be the case in Illinois.

Baptisia ‘Twilite Prairieblues’ is a cultivar from the Chicago Botanic Garden—I bought it at the Morton Arboretum plant sale yesterday. It’s supposed to give me blue-purple flowers edged in yellow, though I don’t know if it’ll bloom this year.

I'm hoping these plants will also tolerate errant baskeballs. Yes, that pole in the photo is a driveway b-ball hoop. If not, I guess I'll be putting something else there next spring. The log mysteriously appeared in the garden during the winter. I'm not really sure where it came from, but it has some interesting lichens growing on it.

It's a good thing I was able to plant at all. My order for the space from Prairie Nursery came Friday, and rained for nearly 24 hours straight this weekend. The garden was really soggy, and there's a lot of water on my and my neighbors' lawns. Finally this afternoon, the rain stopped and I gave it a go so the plants wouldn't sit for a week in my cold frame.

I've been reading Design Your Natural Midwest Garden by Pat Hill, and one statistic in it caught my eye. According to the author, there is no water runoff from areas planted with natives, such as a prairie, and water is generally absorbed into the ground. Turf grass (AKA Kentucky bluegrass) is roughly equivalent to asphalt, with about 75% of water lost as runoff. I thought this was particularly interesting, because flooding is a recurrent problem (and was a campaign issue in the recent election) in Elmhurst.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Buying Shrubs is Easier than Planting Them

I headed out to The Natural Garden, a little early because not many plants were out yet. But early spring is a great time to plant shrubs. I picked up some Illinois wild rose (Rosa setigera), a tall climbing rose with pink flowers, and leadplant (Amorpha canescens), a woody legume that grows 1-3 feet tall.

Normally, I wouldn't drive an hour out of my way for plants, but good-sized native shrubs aren't easy to find. Since I was there, I picked up some Virginia bluebells (Mertensia), in the upper right corner of the photo, and Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), the plant on the left, for the shade garden near my kids' Barbie playhouse. The Natural Garden stocks many local ecotypes, but I'm not enough of a purist to forego the convenience of mail order very often.

I got home on Saturday, just before it started raining for 3 days. Today was 60 and sunny, but I still haven't managed to get the shrubs in the ground. I planted the shade perennials on Sunday morning when the rain slowed to a drizzle, but digging large holes for shrubs in the rain didn't sound fun.

The Morton Arboretum's plant sale is this weekend--and that's always very tempting. But I can't buy more plants if I haven't got the ones I already bought in the ground yet. Oh well, guess that means I'm on a deadline now.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Weeds or Chemicals—Not an Easy Choice

I’ve been reading two books about the history and business of the lawn the United States—Ted Steinberg’s American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn and F Herbert Bormann et. al.’s Redesigning the American Lawn. Both books talk about the industrialization of lawn care, starting in the mid 1950’s, as part of the quest for a “perfect” weed-free lawn. The perfect lawn is a common target of native plant enthusiasts, such as Neil Diboll, who gives talks on the “State of the Lawn.”

Reading text about the toxic effects of lawn chemicals left me with a fit of guilt over TrueGreen ChemLawn’s visits to my yard. To their credit, they are very good at controlling the ground ivy and garlic mustard that would otherwise invade my perennial beds, but there’s something about those little “keep off the grass” signs that makes me uneasy.

Lawns have, for a long time, been an important fixture in the American landscape. With the expansion of the suburbs in the 1950’s, a weed-free lawn that blended with the neighbors’ became a mark of good citizenship. According to Ted Steinberg, Abe Levitt told Levittown residents in a weekly newsletter that “A fine carpet of green grass stamps the inhabitants as good neighbors, as desirable citizens.” Today, this is still the case in my neighborhood, and I want to be a good neighbor.

Having a nice lawn was not always a measure of good citizenship; in fact, the lawn as we know it was uncommon until relatively recently. Before the push mower was invented in the mid-1800’s, a lawn was strictly a luxury item and status symbol for private estates, kept short by grazing animals or teams of men wielding scythes. The push mower made the lawn accessible to ordinary homeowners, and a beautification campaign in the first few decades of the 1900’s encouraged people to plant lawns around their homes. In this spirit, the suburb of Riverside, IL, was planned as a community of houses surrounded by lawn.

When Levittown was developed in the 1950’s, lawn was planted as an inexpensive form of landscaping that would make the houses more saleable, and homeowners were required to mow their lawns once a week between April and November. The invention and popularization of the mass-produced, gas-powered mower made this possible.

For lawn care companies, such as Scotts and TrueGreen ChemLawn, the modern ideal of the perfect lawn is good for business. To keep the lawn as a deep green, weed-free carpet of grass, lawn care firms now apply or sell to homeowners pre-emergent herbicides, grub prevention treatments, post-emergent herbicides, and generous quantities of fertilizer (Scotts has recently reduced the amount of phosphorus in its fertilizers). Although the EPA just announced it would require testing of pesticides, it for many decades did not require detailed studies to evaluate the health risks of lawn chemicals. In his book, Steinberg describes the lawn as “like a nationwide chemical experiment with the homeowners as guinea pigs.” Lawn care companies typically say their products are safe when used as directed, or instruct people to read and follow the directions.

The lawn’s origins as a status symbol, its importance in suburban landscaping, and its usefulness as an outdoor play space make complicate the issue of whether or how to maintain one. A conventionally maintained lawn is a major user of water and petroleum, and keeping one weed-free requires more chemicals per acre than are used in agriculture. But doing away with a lawn entirely, or growing a weed-infested lawn, marks one as a “bad citizen” in suburbia.

As an aside, some plants now considered to be weeds, particularly clover, co-evolved with grass (fixing nitrogen for it) and were viewed as desirable in lawns as late as the 1950’s. Scotts at one time sold clover seed to homeowners who wanted it in their lawns.

In the end, I decided to try organic lawn care. On the recommendation of a friend, I called Fertilizer King, a Chicago-area company. They promised applications of slow-release organic fertilizer and weed control for a little less than what we've been paying TrueGreen Chemlawn. I was sold on this, and I’m hoping it’ll be good enough to keep the most troublesome weeds at bay. But I may also have to give up having a lawn that looks like a golf course—which is, but the way, one of the most intensively managed types of lawns, heavily watered and treated with chemicals to keep it looking perfect.

Canceling TrueGreen ChemLawn for the summer was surprisingly easy. The very polite and friendly customer service rep on the other end of the phone said she was sorry to be losing our business, made a note of it in the system, and said we should feel free to call them back if we changed our minds.

I’ll probably miss the golf-course look, but it’ll be nice to do without the keep-off-the-grass signs.

Monday, April 13, 2009

I Can’t Resist Free Plants

One of the first gardening books I read was Catriona Tudor Erler’s The Frugal Gardener. My favorite chapter has always been the one called $ave Money on Plants.

I am a plant collector, and I can’t resist a good deal. And one of the best deals around is the free plant, which isn’t found at any garden center.

Last week, when I got an e-mail through my Wild Ones chapter about someone giving away free plants, I excitedly e-mailed her my cell number. I’m still waiting to hear back, but I’m hoping!

When we first moved into our house, my co-worker heard that I was planning a garden for my back yard.

“My husband has a big garden,” she said. She offered us some plants from it. So one evening we drove to River Forest and I acquired Century Plant (Agave Americana), Canadian Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense), Bee Balm (Monarda), and Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). We spent an hour oohing and aahing over his enormous garden, and he gave me detailed instructions on how to grow every plant he was digging up for me.

During the housing boom, I transferred many plants from “teardowns” in town. One spring, I was out walking my infant daughter when I saw a demolition sale at a house with a well-established garden. While the grandmotherly woman in charge cooed over my baby, I asked if I could pay her to take away some of the plants.

“Oh, take all you want,” she said. “They’re just going to bulldoze it anyways. No charge.”

I walked straight home and loaded my daughter, my favorite spade, and some garbage bags to carry the plants into the car. I drove straight back.

While the baby napped in her car seat next to me, I dug and loaded several hundred dollars’ worth of shrubs and mature perennials into my car. That expedition netted me the Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) in the photo, peonies, daylilies, hostas, and other garden standbys I didn’t have at the time. Most of these aren’t natives, and I’m now struggling with the issue of what to do with some of them (because I like them), but that’s another story.

It’s wrong to take plants without asking, but I’ve learned never to be afraid to ask. People say “no” only rarely. Especially in the spring when they are dividing plants, gardeners are happy to give some away. In fact, trading or giving away plants is part of the fun.

So now that it is spring, feel free to ask! If your neighbors are like me, they’ve probably got extras.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Thank Goodness You Don't Have to Be Martha to Enjoy Asparagus

I got my May issue of Martha Stewart Living, which makes for good escapist fantasy every month, and discovered that Martha had written a column on how wonderful fresh, home-grown asparagus can be.

“What I discovered, growing on my own,” she writes, “was that fresh-picked asparagus are so much better than anything I had ever had before.”

In the photo in the magazine, she stands smiling in mud-free rain boots, with an umbrella in one hand and an expensive-looking basket filled with asparagus in the other. There's no word on how she picks asparagus while holding the basket and the umbrella.

I second Martha's opinion on asparagus, without reservations. Unfortunately my kids and husband don’t agree. They claim not to like it, or refuse to try it. I don’t fight them too much on this one, because I don’t mind having the asparagus all to myself.

Martha’s description of how she orders and grows asparagus, however, is probably enough to frighten away anyone who doesn’t have a staff to do the heavy labor or isn’t a glutton for punishment. She says she ordered plants from Mister Spear in California, which does not advertise plants for sale on its Web site and where cut asparagus starts at $29.95 for a 3-pound box. At least the other vendor she lists, Nourse Farms, does sell plants, starting at a cost of about $20 for 25 plants, which is too many for my small one-person asparagus bed.

Other places I’ve seen asparagus plants for sale include the local hardware store, Menards, Home Depot, Stark Brothers, Park Seed, and many of the other mail-order seed companies. Look for all-male varieties, because these are more productive.

Like most “how-to’s” in Martha Stewart Living, the planting instructions can be greatly simplified. I recommend the advice of the Ohio State University Cooperative Extension Service or the University of Minnesota Extension Service. Both offer guidance that is more detailed and actually doable for people without a staff of gardeners. Instead of urging readers to dig trenches 18 inches deep and 12 inches wide, and then mound soil 5 inches, as Martha does, the academics suggest digging the furrow no deeper than 5 to 8 inches, which is obviously far easier. Both recommend chemical fertilizers or well-rotted organic matter. I add a bag of mushroom compost, from my local nursery, to the asparagus bed every year.

Unfortunately, both Martha and the Big 10 horticulturalists are correct in that asparagus is a long-term investment; you won’t get a big crop until the third year.

Martha urges her readers to blanch asparagus in a sauté pan, which is interesting advice I might try, or to steam it in an asparagus pot, which is bulky and costs $45.00 on Amazon. I often cook my asparagus in the microwave by laying it in a large flat casserole, adding a little water, and covering with plastic wrap. Oven roasting is a technique best left for inferior supermarket asparagus.

Just for fun, I calculated the cost of Martha’s asparagus, artichoke, and fava bean salad based on online sources and using her recommendations when possible. I “purchased” the smallest container required to make the recipe. Since Martha and I agree that good, fresh asparagus does not come from the grocery store, I splurged on that.

4 lemons ( $3.56, Peapod)
3 artichokes ($4.50, Peapod)
whole milk ($1.99, Peapod)
2 c. white wine ($11.99 for Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc, Peapod)
green asparagus ($29.95, Mr. Spear)
white asparagus ($39.95, Earthy Delights)
fava beans ($7.95, Cybercucina, I could only find dried online)
ricotta salata ($3.99, igourmet.com )
extra virgin olive oil ($4.99, Peapod)
buttermilk ($1.09, Peapod)
scallions ($0.89, Peapod)
salt and pepper (You have this at home, right?)

Total cost: $110.85 for 8 servings

If you don’t subscribe, you can pick up your own copy of Martha Stewart Living at the grocery store to try this recipe at home. If white asparagus from Earthy Delights is too much for your budget, you can try blanching your own at home. Martha provides instructions.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Planting grapes and raspberries

It's an early closing today at the office, because of Good Friday, and all I can think about is getting home to plant the bare-root grapevine and raspberry brambles soaking in a bucket of water in my laundry room. They came a couple of days ago in the mail, and I've been keeping them damp and cool in my attic since then. But it's really time to get them in the ground, so I started soaking them in a bucket to rehydrate them last night.

It seems that every time I go on the Elmhurst Garden Walk I see that at least one homeowner has a little patch of rasberries, one of the easiest fruits to grow at home. Because raspberries are so expensive at the store, and because my three bare-root plants cost me about $10.00 (plus shipping) and will bear for years, raspberries are a great value. They're a fantastic "starter fruit."

Pre-construction, I had my own little patch of raspberries in the backyard, and they were great. But the bulldozers left me with just a single plant, just enough to make me want more.

When we first moved into the house, I planted Concord grapes from some cuttings given to me by a friend. Over the last 10 years, I've gotten bushels of grapes. Unfortunately, Concord grapes have seeds, and they are purple, so my kids won't eat them. Thus, this year's grape (Marquis) is a cold-hardy green seedless variety that the kids will eat.

The Concord grapes make great jelly, and one year I made about 20 pints of grape jelly from the one plant in my backyard. But canning isn't a project I can, or want to, take on every year.

Of course the recession has spurred a new interest in frugality and growing your own food. There's even a vegetable garden on the White House Lawn this year. Homegrown fruit, which is often overlooked, is worthy of space in the garden. I'm already anticipating the first taste of those homegrown grapes or raspberries, still warm from the sun, though it may not come until next summer.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Tomatoes I Have Grown From Seeds

Starting tomatoes from seed is one of my favorite early spring projects. It’s inexpensive, easy, and a reminder during April snowstorms that summer really is coming. Part of the fun of starting tomatoes from seed is trying new varieties. It's also fun to give away "extra" plants to my coworkers or neighbors, so I always start too many.


Here’s a brief run-down of some I've tried. Most have an indeterminate growth habit, which means they need tomato cages or staking.

Italian plum tomatoes are a fixture in the garden because they are great for cooking, sauces, and freezing. I don’t have time to bother with canning, so I freeze my surplus tomatoes whole in zippered plastic bags. When I need some for soup or chili, I defrost them in the microwave, and hit the bag with a rolling pin a few times. Voila! I have crushed tomatoes.

When I first grew Roma 10 years ago, I didn’t know I could find them at the garden center. This is a fleshy, mild-flavored Italian-type plum tomato. They are not juicy. I still grow these, but I now buy the plants at my local nursery. Yields are almost always high, and I have had no disease problems. According to Wikipedia, this is the type of plum tomato usually found in supermarkets. However, home-grown tomatoes are much more flavorful than those from the store.

Two years ago, I tried Health Kick. This is one of the high-lycophene tomatoes, which supporters tout as having cancer-fighting properties. While I’m skeptical of health claims for food, Health Kick had a stronger, richer flavor than Roma. Fruits were typical plum tomatoes, about 3 to 5 inches long and more oval than round. Health Kick was available at some garden centers last year. My yields were good, though perhaps slightly lower than for Roma.

My kids love to eat small cherry or grape tomatoes straight off the vine, and I usually include these. If I have room, I choose a red and a yellow variety.

I first started growing Juliet many years ago and grew it from seed although it’s now possible to buy plants at some garden centers. Juliet was quite productive. Fruits look like small Italian plum tomatoes. They are larger than the grape tomatoes at the grocery store, ranging in size from one inch to three inches long.

Sweet Million, a variation on the popular Sweet 100, produces very small (1 inch or less) round fruits on each plant. Fruits are sweet, with a strong, rich, tomato flavor. It is worth the effort to grow from seed, and my one of my kids’ favorite tomatoes. Another kid-pleasing sweet cherry tomato is Sugary. Fruits are oval, with pointed ends.

Yellow tomatoes are often less sweet and more acidic than the sweet red cherry tomatoes. They also have a milder tomato flavor; some Internet reviewers describe them as "bland." Yellow Pear contrasts nicely with red cherry tomatoes in a salad. Fruits are broader at the blossom end than at the stem end. Ildi, another yellow tomato, produced lots of oval fruits in my garden.

Many people love Brandywine for its strong tomato flavor. However, I found that yields were lower in my garden than for other varieties. One year, I got only two or three tomatoes on a plant. But yes, they did taste fantastic.

This year, I started Sugary, Ildi, Yellow Pear, and a new variety, Peron Sprayless.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Cleaning Out the Birdhouse

A few years ago, I salvaged a little birdhouse from a teardown across the street. Every spring, we put it out in the back yard, and watch the birds come to investigate. They fly up to the hole, try to squeeze inside, poke their heads out and look around, and then fly away. Sometimes they fight over the rights to the birdhouse.

Last year, I placed it in the midst of some tall plants, and two small birds decided it was to their liking. They built a nest, laid several eggs, raised their young, and left. We sat in the hammock and watched them nonchalantly land near the birdhouse, look around to make sure the coast was clear, and then go inside.

Now that spring's here, I had fun prying open the birdhouse to empty it out. The nest was a thick bungle of twigs, grass leaves, mud, and feathers wedged tightly into the birdhouse.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Are All Trees Created Equal? Choosing Replacement Parkway Trees


For the last seven years, I’ve been nurturing a silver maple (acer saccharinum) seedling that I found growing in the backyard. The Siberian elms (ulmus pumila) that came with our house were nearing the end of their 60-year life span, and I wanted a replacement. We carefully moved the seedling to a spot away from power lines and older trees, and waited. It’s now about 15 feet tall.

When I started researching native plants, I was happy to find out that my little silver maple is a species that is originally from the United States. It is, in fact, one of the most common trees in the country. It’s also on the City of Elmhurst’s list of prohibited parkway trees and cannot legally be planted on the parkway. Silver maples apparently have wood that is susceptible to storm damage, and fibrous roots that can crack sidewalks or invade city sewer systems. My tree is nowhere near a sewer line, sidewalk, or house.

Elmhurst code prohibits nine different types of trees, as well as trees that produce fruit for human consumption. The prohibition seems to have more to do with issues of convenience or safety than ecological concerns. Many of the trees on the list grow quickly, resulting in weaker-wooded trees more likely to drop limbs, have vigorous root systems, or produce fruits that might be “messy.”

Some species on the approved tree list, such as the Norway maple (acer platenoides) and Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana cultivars) are cited by native plant experts as problematic because of their tendency to become invasive, choking out plant life in wild areas.

The Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health notes that non-sterile species of the Callery pear have escaped and are invading natural areas throughout the eastern United States. In Maryland, it is listed as an invasive species of concern, and can be seen covering roadsides there. In 2005, the city of Champaign, IL, decided to no longer allow Callery pears to be planted on public rights-of-way. Though Elmhurst, IL allows the tree, it’s best to plant another type as an alternative.

The Norway maple, like the Callery pear, has invaded natural areas. This tree’s dense canopy and shallow root system make life very difficult for any plants that must grow beneath it. Often, Norway maples are surrounded by bare ground. The National Park Service and numerous other environmental preservation organizations list Norway maple as a species that has invaded forests, fields, and other habitats.

The Morton Arboretum recently recommended Ten Tough Trees for planting in the Chicago area. Of these, several are on the City of Elmhurst’s list of approved trees for parkways. Instead of the Callery pear or Norway maple, consider the hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), Kentucky coffeetree (gymnoclaudus dioicus), bur oak (quercus macrocarpa), or gingko (Gingko biloba) from the Morton Arboretum’s list.

Other trees not on the City of Elmhurst’s approved list, but which are native species, are the swamp white oak (quercus bicolor), sugar maple (acer saccharum), and red maple (acer rubrum). The liberty elm (ulmus Americana) is a variety of the American elm that is resistant to Dutch elm disease, and may be a good choice if you like elm trees.


The City of Elmhurst says on its web site that it plants 300 to 400 trees annually, 90% of them replacement trees, at an average cost of $110.00 per tree. About 250 to 300 trees are removed each year.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Feed the Caterpillars! Why I'm Growing Milkweed, and You Should Too.

Last summer as an experiment, I bought three milkweed plants from the Morton Arboretum’s plant sale. About a month after we put the young plants in the ground, the kids and I spotted our first striped monarch caterpillar on one of the leaves. Clearly, the butterflies found the plants a welcome addition to the back yard.

This year, I’m planning to strip the sod off the low spot in the back yard that always floods, near the sidewalk, and plant water-loving natives, including more milkweeds. Milkweed (Asclepias) is the only source of food for monarch butterfly caterpillars. Douglas Tallamy, in his excellent book, Bringing Nature Home, notes that many insect caterpillars can eat only one type of plant. Consequently, monarch caterpillars eat only milkweeds—not lawn, hostas, or lilacs.

If we don’t plant milkweed, monarch butterflies cannot produce more monarch butterflies. And at least 11 other types of butterflies need milkweed plants.

Monarch Watch says that monarch butterflies are threatened by humans’ destruction of their habitats. Roads, shopping malls, and suburban housing all have destroyed areas that monarch butterflies need to feed their young and reproduce. Because some people consider milkweed to be a noxious weed, much of the butterflies’ food source has been destroyed. According to the Save the Prairie Society, today less than 1/100 of 1% (0.01%) of Illinois’ original prairies, which covered most of the state, remains. The landscape of Elmhurst, IL, where I garden, probably once looked much like the Wolf Road Prairie.

The Illinois Wildflowers web site lists three different milkweeds that are native to Northeastern Illinois and its original prairies and may be suitable for home gardens. Several milkweeds are on the Wolf Road Prairie’s plant list. I’m listing both Latin and common names here, because plants are often sold at specialty nurseries by Latin name. I encourage you to click on the links to view photos of these beautiful plants, which I can’t publish here without permission.

Prairie Milkweed (Asclepias sullivantii), also known as Sullivant’s Milkweed, grows 2 ½ to 3 feet tall and has broad leaves. The plant produces pink flowers in mid-summer. It requires full sun and moist soil conditions, making it a good choice for that wet spot in my backyard.

Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa interior) grows 1 ½ to 3 feet tall and resembles a small bush. The 2- to 4-inch flowers appear in midsummer, and the plant produces 4-inch seed pods. The long-lasting and colorful flowers make this a showy plant. The plant needs full sun, and well-drained soil. I bought this plant at the Morton Arboretum’s plant sale last year.

Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) requires full sun and dry soil. The plant, 2 to 3 feet tall, is unbranched and has 2- to 3-inch clusters of white flowers. It originally ranged through most of Illinois, except the far south part of the state.

Purple Milkweed (Asclepias purpurascens) is an unbranched plant about 2 to 3 feet tall that I bought last year at the Morton Arboretum plant sale. Leaves, as for other milkweeds, are dramatic: 6 inches long and 3 inches wide. The plant does well in well-drained soil and full sun to light shade.

Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnate) grows well in moist to damp soils and full sun to part shade. It is a good plant for a spot that floods regularly. It grows 3 to 5 feet tall and produces clusters of pink, white, or light purple flowers. The plant’s roots are specialized for growth in wet soils.

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) may be too invasive for many home gardens.

Because these plants are unlikely to be available at the local Home Depot any time soon, gardeners must rely on other sources to obtain them. Online nurseries, such as Wisconsin’s Prairie Nursery and Minnesota’s Prairie Moon Nursery are mail-order sources but may not carry local genotypes—plants reproduced from stock originally growing in Illinois prairies. The Natural Garden, Inc., a local nursery in St. Charles, sells several types of milkweed—Swamp Milkweed, Common Milkweed, and Whorled Milkweed.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Sprouting Native Plant Seeds Indoors

I'm very excited. I just made the rounds of my seedling flats, and it looks like they are finally sprouting.

I've been growing simple annuals and vegetables from seed indoors for a while, especially tomatoes. But I began experimenting with starting seeds of native plants indoors last winter and am doing it again this year.

Really, the easiest way to start native plants from seeds is to sow them outside in the fall. But I haven't been organized enough to order them in time to do that. So instead, I followed the instructions in Prairie Moon Nursery's useful cultural guide, which comes with my seed order.

Most of the seeds need to be cold stratified. I do this by filling little plastic Ziploc bags with damp vermiculite, adding the seeds, and storing them in the refrigerator for the specified amount of time, usually 60 days. I then transfer them to flats and put them in a warm spot, like on top of the refrigerator, to germinate them.

This year, the copper shouldered oval sedge and sideoats grama came up quickly. They're now growing in my front window. The wild hyacinth and Virginia bluebells weren't doing as well. I'd given up on them but left them going and it looks like maybe, just maybe, they are starting to sprout.