August 30 – Come Birding Along With Me!
We are enjoying the fall migration of birds again, those that visited us last spring on their way north are now headed south, along with the family they produced up in their specific breeding areas. The tiny warblers are flitting through the bushes, working each branch, looking for lunch. This has been a buggy summer, but without our feathered friends it would have been much worse. I wish I could correctly identify all my visitors. Gave up on that long ago. The fall birds are even more difficult to name than the spring migrants. In the fall there are the current summer’s hatch and many have not developed their adult plumage. Our bird book reads “adult male in fall resembles spring adult female. Immatures are also yellow below. May be confused with ______”. And so I am confused to say the least.
Courtesy of 1000 Birds.com
My favorite book is the National Geographic Society Field Guide to the Birds of North America. The first time I positively identify a specific bird, I date the picture. Thumbing through the book I recall some very unusual migrants; a scarlet tanager in May of 1999 or the wood duck spotted floating in the pond in 1997.
Birding is a delightful bonus to the world of gardening, one I would highly recommend. You can take it to any level you want, the casual backyard feeder or one that travels the country filling up his life list to the brim. Join us, keep your eyes open and start listing.
Subscribe to the comments for this postAugust 21 – Containers Need Plenty of TLC Now
Whew! The canner has been steaming all week as the tomato patch is turning out bucketfuls of those red orbs destined for the jars and some good winter eating. First I get the quota of stewed tomatoes and salsa out of the way and then it is on to tomato juice and tomato soup. I have kept records through the years so that we get through all the food I preserve in a year. No sense using up food and fuel when the stuff will just fossilize in the jars or freezer for umpteen years, and never gets used. By next April I want to be using up the last of the strawberries and by June all the broccoli should be gone. It takes some retraining your brain to think “cellar and freezer” instead of “grocery store” but the dent in your food bill will give you some encouragement.
Shirley's Containers
Finally in August most containers hit their peak bloom. Yet, we still have two good months before Jack Frost makes his first visit. There is still a lot of color and foliage left if you will stay on top of things for another six or seven weeks. Keep up a regular fertilizer program to begin with. I use Fertilome 20-20-20 every ten days. Mixing a heaping tablespoon in a 2 ½ gallon bucket and pouring it over each container pretty well takes up a morning, but the continued blooms are an ample reward. The pots are almost packed full of roots. It takes a lot of water, sometimes every day to keep things from wilting. Since I use so much foliage in my containers, I sometimes get rampant growth that tends to get floppy. Regular pruning and pinching keep coleus in bounds and the geraniums in buds. We’ve had a brutal couple of weeks as far as hot temperatures are concerned. We have not had any rain since July 5 here at the farm. Still the containers are greening up the deck and I’m looking forward to cooler days.
August 12 – Window Boxes Spice Up The Landscape!
This continued heat, day after day, is stressing the best. Any gardener who has been at this very many years has learned the valuable gardening principle of plant the right plant in the right place. So it was, with a bit of trepidation that we installed three flower boxes under the windows of our breakfast room. Any mistakes here was going to stare at us for the rest of the season.
Shirley's window boxes
The room attaches to the north side of the house, one window in full shade, one window with a few midday hours of sunshine, and the west window baking all afternoon in the brutal sun. I wanted to plant all windows the same, but that was impossible. The east window that is in full shade was planted in a variety of tropical house plants commonly found on end tables in living rooms. A few coral impatiens were tucked in among the dracena plants and English ivy. The plants have about doubled in size and the impatiens are blooming. No sign of disease, insects or leaf scorch. I will bring the houseplants inside for the winter and repeat the same planting next spring. The north window is also thriving, planted with three red dragon wing begonia, an angel wing type that looks very fragile but is a work horse in container gardening. Between the begonias is creeping Charlie, cascading down below the box. The west box has struggled in the extreme heat and bright sunlight of mid-afternoon. No matter how much I water, the sweet potato vines do wilt a bit, but come right back as the evening temperatures moderate. All three boxes are watered as needed and fertilized with Fertilome 20-20-20 about every 10 days.
Since we enjoy these window boxes from inside and well as outside the house, it has been a delight to discover plants that thrive under varied conditions. The best part of the whole project is watching the hummingbirds check out the red begonias just inches from the glass. Even Molly, the resident garden cat approves.
August 9, 2010 – Summer’s Rose of Sharon Is A Landscape Hit!
Here on the Great High Plains we enjoy so many different shrubs that spark up the landscape in the spring months. Mix lilacs, snowballs, weigela, spirea and honeysuckle vine with the spring bulbs and the garden is almost on overload. But wait! It’s not over just because spring wanes. The beautiful summer flowering shrub, rose of sharon is waiting in the wings. Related to the tropical hibiscus of Hawaiian fame, it is perfectly winter hardy in our 5’/6 zone.
Courtesy of davesgarden.com
Rose of sharon can grow up to ten feet high and spread six feet wide. However, newer dwarf cultivars are on the market which increases the opportunity to use them in many ways in the landscape. Although they are naturally a multi-stemmed shrub, rose of sharon can be pruned in the early years to a single stem, calling it a rose of sharon tree.
It would love full sun and well drained soil. Blooming in white, pink, red, lavender or light blue, the flowers are single or double, depending on the cultivar.
Rose of sharon offers us a lot of color when other shrubs have long ceased blooming. It not only blooms late, but leafs out late as well. Don’t give up on it in the spring, thinking it has winter killed. Water well and wait—the color is coming!
August 3 – The Little Tree That Couldn’t!
Growing fruit in western Kansas is a bit iffy, to say the least. K-State says we may get one apricot crop every ten to fifteen years. Maybe one peach crop every four to five years, if we are lucky. Apples and pears are a bit more reliable. So we keep trying. And this year it all came together! Peaches, apricots, pears, apples and cherries are on the menu.
Damaged Elberta peach tree
We had a young July Elberta peach tree set on it’s first crop this spring. A tree so loaded with tiny fruit, I knew it could never carry the load. So we laboriously thinned, carefully leaving one peach every four to five inches, fertilized and poured on the water. Things were so promising.
Over the weekend I was beginning to be concerned as the tree was really leaning and branches were almost touching the ground. I promised myself that Monday morning we would get serious about trying to prop up the branches and give them some assistance on bearing the heavy load.
Sunday night the tree gave up. It split right down the middle, half of the tree is on the ground. So much for good intentions. The tree is a total loss, however I think we can salvage much of the crop if we can get to it before the possums do.
It is a bitter lesson in proper pruning and delayed intervention. We will plant a new tree next spring….that’s the nature of a western Kansas gardener.