Garden Gab By Nanette Wiser
Our publisher Renee is the queen of green thumbs. When my Peace Lily flopped over, she had two words for me: Bone Meal. Her first cucumbers are the stuff of dreams. And she’s not the only one gardening. We’re all getting dirty during our stay-at-home, forced work vacay.
Like baking, gardening is today’s hot ticket, from raised vegetable beds to herbaceous window boxes. We caught up with some Paradise gardeners extraordinaire in between ordering seeds and birdwatching, two more trending delights best done in your backyard or urban patio. When retail reopens, make time to browse local nurseries and glorious gift shops for garden accessories, such as Laura Fage’s Patina.
GARDENING IDEAS
Raised bed gardening means growing plants in soil that is higher than the ground. You can do this with some type of enclosure or frame made of wood, stone, or even bales of hay or repurposed material like old dressers.
I love hydroponic gardening, with tomatoes growing upside down as well. Restaurants have embraced garden walls, so let your lettuce and imagination fly with this video demo:
Vertical vegetable gardens enhance growing space, reduce insect and disease problems, and beautify decks and patios. You can use trellises, stakes, and obelisks to support vining tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, gourds, peas, and pole beans. Check out Vertical Vegetables & Fruit (Rhonda Massingham Hart) or Grow a Living Wall (Shawna Coronado).
Butterfly gardens are fantastic family projects. For caterpillars, consider plants like violets, milkweed, and asters. Learn more about milkweed, the only host plant for monarchs. For butterflies, Joe-Pye weed, ironweed, yellow coneflowers, goldenrod, and brightly hued asters are nectar-filled favorites.
Indoors or out, consider an herb garden with the Simon & Garfunkel theme: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, aromatic in a window box. Add lavender and make sachets for everyone. And there is no better guilty pleasure than looking through seed catalogs, what my mother used to call paper flower books. www.almanac.com/content/garden-seed-catalogs-mail.
What goes best with gardening? Lemonade and bird watching! This is another family fun activity and you can even make a scavenger hunt out of who can see all the birds! There are videos on how to Learn A Bird by Dan Gardoqui and You Tube offers other birding tutorials. Create a bird habitat in your backyard and you will see cardinals, blue jays, mockingbirds, warblers and more.
Consider planting firebush, American beautyberry and Simpson shopper or hang a bird feeder, even a hummingbird feeder. You can find them or make one yourself by rolling a pinecone in peanut butter, then seeds, and hanging from a tree.
Let’s not forget Mother Nature’s earnest pollinator, the humble bee. Locally, you can learn more about bees and beekeeping online (Facebook) by checking out Noble Nectar Apiaries, 3390 46th Ave N. Did you know that thanks to them, 100,000 honeybees live in the rooftop apiary at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg?
GARDENERS WE LOVE
The Waterfront Parks Foundation landscape architect Phil Graham Jr. is most pleased with the rows of red and white begonias and yellow shrub daisies beginning to take root. City of St. Petersburg Leisure Service Administrator Mike Jefferis said the city has continued to maintain the waterfront and plants annuals in each of St. Petersburg’s 150 parks, primarily around marque signs. They are changed twice a year. Annuals must be replaced frequently, which makes them relatively expensive, Jefferis said, adding that the foundation has helped to “amplify” the waterfront parks budget. The latest project is a collaborative effort between the Parks and Recreation Department and the foundation. The group bought the plants and hired Perry’s Nursery in St. Petersburg to do the planting, while the city adjusted the irrigation system for the new plants and will maintain the beds. The new plantings include 828 shrub daisies, 3,170 scarlet begonias and 1,310 white begonias.
Emmanuel Roux and Bill Bilodeau: The 15th Street Agrihood in DTSP has been in business for eight years, originally organized by permaculture volunteers. While the land ownership has changed, you can order a bag of produce for $4/pound. They grow 40 different kinds of vegetables, herbs, flowers and fruit trees. Here’s what our publisher Rene told PN about Emmanuel who is both French and funny: “Figure out what you want and he will either take the ripest or the best. He asked me if I like a particular vegetable and if I did, he would pick it. The produce that you want is put in a bag and then he puts it on a scale and it’s four dollars a pound! so you can get a lot of lettuce for that 4 pounds! It’s a little tricky finding the entrance around the block but look for the blue fence with the gate that is the entrance.” (727) 251-1879
Florida Botanical Garden: Lucky for us, the gardens are open for walking (wear your mask and practice social distancing). There are so many gardens for inspiring the backyard gardener. http://www.flbg.org/