A Bud to Get Excited About

Apios americana Flower Buds

Something sweet and new for me in the garden this year. Witnessing the flower budding of the Apios americana vine that Uli gave me last year during my internship at Brooklyn Botanic. I have such sweet-smelling memories of that beautiful flower and gratitude for all my encounters in Brooklyn Botanic's Native Flora Garden. I haven't found the perfect permanent place for this vine in my garden plot yet, but I'm happy to see it growing in the pot it came in. For more on this fantastic native check out these posts at Garden Bytes from the Big Apple by one of the Ellens who writes and gardens.

This Week's Experiment

Allium vineale, Wild Garlic flower (bulblets) experiment in the vase

In an effort to fill my vases with things I can grow myself or harvest nearby and also to find out which of those things will last the longest, this week's experiment is with some wild-harvested Allium vineale flower heads. I have a feeling they'll do a little better than last weekend's broccoli flowers, which gave up the ghost almost immediately. Still, I probably should have harvested the garlic-tasting bulbs as well, the way this year is turning out for my garlic. Whether it's the weather or disease, it isn't turning out to be a good year for garlic for me and a few others down at Floyd Bennett Field. I've lost more than a few to some kind of rot already. To lose your crop seven months into the game is kind of heartbreaking, but not every year can be a good year for everything. At least I got broccoli.

Flowers in the House (ahem studio)

Fennel, Lavender & Yarrow Bouquet

I'm on the chain gang, the Flowers in the House chain gang that is. I picked up the trail here in Brooklyn at 66squarefeet. The tiny bouquet pictured here is made from edible plants grown in the community garden at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, with the exception of the Fennel, which was wild picked. The lavender and yarrow are leftovers from one of last week's bouquet, but they are flowers that I think fade gracefully. It's a bouquet that perhaps Piet Oudolf would approve of, I think, a somewhat decaying bouquet for a summer day on a somewhat dusty window sill in Brooklyn.

Bouquet of edible plants

Lesson in Metamorphosis

If you're not careful, the craft of gardening will lead you off in other directions and you may find yourself capturing a moth pupa you find in the soil and bringing it home to see what it becomes. Not long ago, Joe found a pupa just beneath the soil surface that looked a lot like the one pictured here, wrapped it in soil and foil and started the experiment. Now that it has transformed, we think it is in the Noctuidae Family of Moths (Owlet Moths). We're willing to say we think it might be in the subfamily Noctuinae, Cutworm or Dart Moths and that the insect in its larval stage is a pest in the garden, but that's about all the research we're willing to do. The metamorphosis was something to experience though. (More pictures of similar moths here).

First Saturday

of summer in Brooklyn. Some things that nobody planted, but are here nonetheless.

The first is a volunteer coneflower in my own garden plot at Floyd Bennett Field. The rest are pioneer weeds of disturbed places (Western Salsify, which looks like a giant dandelion to me and Old Field Clover, which I think is fabulous) passed along the way. I've been weeding like mad in the vegetable garden, but still it seems that I can't keep pace with the voracious growers, the weeds, so don't get me wrong. I don't take them likely. But I have to have some respect and some awe for the things that grow untended and that fill in the cracks all over.

If you own property or are planning a garden, you have to know that wherever you don't plant something or cover the ground with mulch, it's likely that something will grow and it isn't often that you luck out and end up with a fabulous plant that you wanted anyway, like Echinacea (Purple Coneflower). This is incredibly frustrating if you're trying to maintain a really manicured aesthetic for your property or raise vegetables or farm, but it's still a pretty aweseome display of the power of plants and seeds and rhizomes and life. I'm probably just like any other gardener in the fact that sometimes I just enjoy watching what comes up in the places that aren't wild exactly, the cracks that aren't tended or fall by the wayside, even if I spend a good portion of my time in my own garden destroying these survivors.

Western Salsify, Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn