This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.
On Thursday David and I taught an all day long Master Gardener class about insects. What fun! Insects come in so many different colors, sizes, and shapes it boggles the mind. Some insects (the good bugs) are a gardener’s friend and some (the bad bugs) are foes. Learning how to identify friend from foe really helps in successful garden management. Your friends are the beneficial insects, the predators, parasites, or pollinators. Predators and parasites eat the insects that ruin your garden and pollinators pollinate the flowers on your fruit trees and vegetables. The list below is a continuation from David’s last blog post.
Butterflies and Moths. All of these insects belong to the order Lepidoptera, meaning scale-wing, because their wings are covered with minute, often colorful scales. Adults have four large wings and are often much appreciated for their grace and beauty. Their larvae, on the other hand, are caterpillars, cutworms, hornworms, corn earworms, tomato fruitworms, and many other very destructive pests of our food crops and ornamental plants. All lepidopterans have complete metamorphosis with larvae that are worm-like caterpillars which pupate in a chrysalis, cocoon, or in the soil. The larvae have chewing mouthparts and the adults have straw-like mouthparts for sucking up nectar.
Caterpillars come in many different colors and sizes. Some are very furry, some are quite smooth. Some are brightly colored and some match their background so perfectly they are very difficult to find.
We have a new cookbook coming out this spring—The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook. I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a mostly plant-based diet. This is more due to my lack of interest in cooking meat than anything else, but it works.
I’ve been looking through the pages this week to get a better understanding of the book. (As an aside—getting paid to read is maybe one of the best parts of publishing.) Though several recipes pique my interest, one really stood out: Black-Eyed Pea Chili. It sounds like a perfect Superbowl meal.
Though my beloved Patriots are not in it, I still love the Superbowl. I like the commercials, the silly halftime show, the energy, and the excuse to have people over to cheer, boo, eat, and drink. I always make a chili, and this recipe sounds like a perfect fit.
Portland in January can be pretty drab and dreary. The grey of the bare branches matches the grey of the ever present clouds, which match the grey of the pavement (often muddied and puddled by the grey rain). Even the numerous conifers take on a charcoal cast. With spring (and color!) several months out, I was ecstatic to receive an advance copy of Tom Fischer’s The Gardener’s Color Palette.
Every chapter represents a specific color (or color range), and each page profiles a different bright flower popping off the page. In these dreary Portland weeks it makes me think that maybe spring isn’t too far away.
Though I’ve always considered myself to be a green and yellow type of gal (both are represented in the book), I find myself constantly pulled back to the chapter on orange. There’s something about the soft peach of the Tulipa ‘Dordogne’ and the brighter tropical orange of the Fritillaria imperialis that makes me wonder how I can incorporate them into my garden this spring (or fall as is the case with planting tulip bulbs).
This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.
This week Kathryn and I are teaching Entomology, the study of Insects, to the Master Gardeners. Insects are absolutely fascinating animals, some are the gardener’s friend and some are foes. How can you tell which is which? Use this handy guide to help you distinguish between pests and beneficial insects on your plants.
Beetles, Weevils, and Curculios. All members of this group belong to the order Coleoptera, meaning sheath (coleo) wing (ptera). In this group, the wing covers (the two fore wings) are hard, often shiny and colorful, and completely cover the abdomen. These insects have complete metamorphosis. The ladybird beetle (aka, lady bug) is a familiar representative of this group and one of the most beneficial insects in your garden. Many destructive pests are found in this group, in addition to the beneficial ones. As a group they are rather clumsy fliers compared to many other insects. They have mouthparts adapted for chewing.
Beetle eggs hatch into larvae that are distinctly different in appearance from the adult insect. Some are C-shaped, white grubs with brown heads and three pairs of jointed legs. They live in the soil and feed on plant roots. Others, like the ladybird beetle larvae, look like tiny monsters crawling over the leaves of your plants searching for aphids to eat.
This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.
I am immersed these days in the language of botany. It is just as though I have signed up for one of those immersion programs used to learn a foreign language. Which I guess is what I am really doing, after all. I had Latin in high-school, but can’t remember much of that. But David knows the language well. And in the classes we teach on Plant Identification, we talk about the features of plant flowers that tell us its name.
Botanical Illustrations show the technical features botanists use to identify plants. Here are some for you to enjoy:
The genus Penstemon illustrates features of the family Scrophulariaceae.
This year I’ll be helping to staff the booth at the Columbus CENTS show. CENTS, as you can see from the logo, is the “Central Environmental Nursery Trade Show”, but it’s better to say “CENTS” because a) it’s shorter, and b) people who aren’t in the know do a double take. “The what show?”
Of course, my favorite show name, hands down, is the PANTS show. The Penn Atlantic Nursery Trade Show. How can you not get a kick out of saying “I’ll be attending the PANTS show?” The only way it could be better is if it offered short courses, like CENTS does. Then you could attend a short course at the PANTS show, and all would be bliss.
Juvenile musings aside, I’ve never worked this show before, and am excited to find out if West coast shows differ from East coast shows. Plus, I’ve been informed that Jenni’s Ice Cream is not to be missed, and it’s right near by. There is nothing like ice cream in January.
Come visit us, January 25-27, in booth 2004-2006. See you there!
Growing up, we were considered to be the country mice of the extended family as we lived on a one acre plot about 45 minutes from the “big city.” All of my cousins, aunts, and uncles lived on medium sized suburban city lots, and it was just understood that we lived in the wild, though my family religiously mowed the lawn at least once a week spring through fall.
Our huge expanse of a front yard was mostly lawn, as was our back yard, and even though we had fir, cedar, and fruit trees placed sporadically about, our street was about as suburban as you can get in the middle of the country.
It wasn’t until I moved to a small suburban apartment complex with an almost perfectly manicured lawn and grounds that I began to realize the similarities between the two places and started wondering what truly is wild.
In comes William Robinson — with Rick Darke — and The Wild Garden. William Robinson pioneered the naturalistic gardening style in Britain (home of the perfectly manicured lawn and sculpted boxwoods), and his style continues to influence gardeners across the globe today.
Timber author Rick Darke updated Robinson’s classic with gorgeous new photography, and some introductory chapters, and he has recently written an article for The American Gardenermagazine that describes exactly “What is Wild?” (Link goes to a PDF.)
William Robinson and Rick Darke have shown me that you don’t have to live in the country to have a naturalistic, “wild” space.
Fern over at Life on the Balcony wrote a post in December about her gardening resolutions for 2010. Seemed like a good idea to me, so I’m going to follow suit. Yes, I am a bit late, but what’s wrong with a few late resolutions? I can’t really get much planting done for another month anyway. Now’s the time to set impossibly high standards for myself.
January’s bloom day is pretty grey in my backyard. I was over at a friend’s house recently, and her daphne is starting to flower. It was such a pretty, bright spot of color in the middle of the winter, and it makes me want to plant a daphne for myself. For now, though, my Belated Bloom Day post consists of green things.
My bulbs are coming up! This is the first time I’ve ever planted bulbs, which makes it doubly exciting to see them growing.
The profusion of moss in my front yard tells me that I have drainage and soil quality problems. But it’s so pretty — it’s nice to have a bright spot of green.
Otherwise, there’s not much going on in my garden in January. Oh well — back to the seed catalogs.
This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.
If you’re like most people there are plants somewhere in your personal environment with which you are unfamiliar. You don’t know their names, either the common names in English or the scientific names in Latin. This happens very often when purchase a “pre-owned” home and the former owner’s garden and landscape now belongs to you. Sometime in the first year of ownership, as the various plants in your landscape grow, flower and set seed, a mystery plant will appear.
You might or might not recognize this plant if it showed up in your garden. And you might not know it's a pernicious weed!
Jan 29, 2010 
On Thursday David and I taught an all day long Master Gardener class about insects. What fun! Insects come in so many different colors, sizes, and shapes it boggles the mind. Some insects (the good bugs) are a gardener’s friend and some (the bad bugs) are foes. Learning how to identify friend from foe really helps in successful garden management. Your friends are the beneficial insects, the predators, parasites, or pollinators. Predators and parasites eat the insects that ruin your garden and pollinators pollinate the flowers on your fruit trees and vegetables. The list below is a continuation from David’s last blog post.
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