Just in time for the Oscars: Potatoes take center stage on the red carpet in this exclusive short video. It features our own Jim Dempsey, nominated for Best Instructor, and Starla Willis, nominated for Best Cinematographer. Good luck to both!
And… if you want more information about growing potatoes, check out “One Potato, Two Potato, Hopefully More” and “Fried Green Potatoes.”
Carolyn
Video by Starla
Rain Garden Class and Installation
9-10am Lecture in the Community Hall
10am-1pm (or as long as it takes!) Installation in the east lawn Tuesday, March 1st
Location: 11001 Midway Road, Dallas, Texas 75229
A Rain Garden is a planted shallow depression in the landscape that collects and stores rainwater runoff from roofs and other impervious surfaces until it can infiltrate the soil. Also known as bioretention areas, rain gardens are planted with appropriate hardy and attractive plants to provide color and beauty to the landscape and help conserve water and protect streams and rivers from pollution and erosion. Our training will prepare you to capture and conserve rainwater in a beautiful garden.
Led by specialists from Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service:
Dr. Fouad Jaber, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in Integrated Water Resources Management, and Dr. Dotty Woodson, Extension Program Specialist, Water Resources
You will learn:
Open to the public. Stay for just the class or help as long as you can in the garden – all are welcome. The class will also qualify as Master Gardener education hours.
In case of rain, please check dallasgardenbuzz.com for further information.
Rain or Shine, Come to our Square Foot Gardening Class, Tuesday, February 23 at 11am
at The Raincatcher’s Garden of Midway Hills
Taught by Stephen Hudkins, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, Dallas County Master Gardener Coordinator.
We will meet in the Vegetable Patch. If raining, go to Fellowship Hall.
Address: 11001 Midway Road, Dallas, Texas, 75229
Public Welcome, Master Gardeners can receive education credit.
Brussesl sprouts are an acquired taste. Hardly anyone under 12, puts them on their plate. But taste buds change and recipes for Brussels sprouts salads, soups, and au gratin direct us to digest this nutritious crop.
Brussels sprouts at The Raincatcher’s Garden
In Texas we plant Brussels sprouts in the fall. Brussels sprouts like cold weather. It’s a long season crop with 90 days to maturity from transplants and 100-110 days from seed.
Would you like to grow better Brussels sprouts? Dorothy has a gardening tip:
video by Starla
Ann
Education Opportunities at The Raincatcher’s Garden of Midway Hills
Square Foot Gardening by Stephen Hudkins, Tuesday, February 23rd at 11am in the Vegetable Patch.
Rain Garden Installation by Dr. Jaber and Dr. Woodson, Tuesday, March 1st at 9am, Fellowship Hall.
All welcome, Master Gardeners can receive education credit. Leave a comment if you need more information.
As many gardeners know, one of those easy-to-remember hints for when to prune your roses, is that you should prune nearly all your roses around Valentine’s Day, except for climbers and spring-blooming only roses.
However, with this year’s unusually mild winter, where several varieties of roses are already in full bloom, I found myself wondering whether they should be pruned now or not. Ann Lamb says that her Julia Child rose is prettier this winter than it has been in any other time, so should she prune it now? Thank goodness, Dallas County Master Gardener has several Consulting Rosarians in their membership, so the question was put to them. Many thanks go to Susan Flanagan, Certified Master Gardener and Consulting Rosarian, who along with some of her Rosarian friends sent this response:
“I just now talked to a friend who knows a ton about roses. There are a few roses (hybridized by Paul Readon) that are spring bloomers only but they don’t do well here.
So my advice is to go ahead and prune all your roses. Cutting off the current blooms will not impede the coming spring blooms. If anything, they will make the roses stronger, as you are pruning out the dead, diseased and crossing limbs as well as the very thin ones. And you are cutting a portion of the top branches. The spring bloom will usually display bigger than the ones that are blooming now. And again, if you have any climbers that are spring bloomers only, then prune them after they bloom just as you would prune once blooming plants like bridal wreath spirea and forsythia.”
So, if you want, go ahead and make yourself a beautiful bouquet of roses for Valentine’s Day from those roses that are blooming now. Then prune your roses as you usually would. With this year’s mild, confusing winter, we may receive ”two for the price of one” flushes of blooms.
Carolyn
Picture by The Redneck Rosarian
Chocolate Beet Cake with Beet Cream Cheese Frosting
You may be thinking of Valentine’s Day but we are salivating over the recipes in our cookbook, A Year on the Plate, only a few short months away from being published.
This cake scored the highest in all categories in our tasting this week. But how can a cake be garden inspired? The secret is in its main ingredient. Can you guess what it is? The clue is in the name.
By the end of the year this recipe will be in your hands and ready for your valentine when you purchase A Year on the Plate. Hope that’s ok, this recipe is only a heart beet away!
Ann
Picture by Starla
Cake baking by Carol
A school of fish, a mob of crows, a gaggle of geese, A “herd” of aphids? Well, if you are from an ant species called “dairying ants” or “sugar ants,” you might call groups of your aphid charges just that.
Above: A Herd of Aphids
As many gardeners know, aphids can be a common problem on plants, especially during the heat of the summer. These soft bodied insects suck plant sap, wither foliage, and cause a generalized lack of vigor in plants. Aphids come in many colors (yellow, white, green) depending on the type of aphid and the plant that they are feeding on. One of the most interesting facts about aphids is that some are said to be “born pregnant.” Though many aphids mate and lay eggs to reproduce, some aphids are capable of a true “virgin birth.” These parthenogenetic generations are produced by unfertilized females.
Aphids not only suck plant sap which eventually withers the foliage, but they can spread diseases from plant to plant. When feeding on a plant, aphids excrete a sugar substance from their anus. This substance, called honeydew, is very sticky. It can also form the substrate for a black mold which blocks out the light from a leaf, thus leading to the further decline of the plant.
Above: Yellow Aphids Close Up
In the garden, ants and aphids are often seen together on infected plants. In my experience, beans, peas, and okra seem to be some of aphids’ favorite plants and harvesting produce from these plants is often a challenge from biting ants. These ants are drawn to the honeydew, which is a perfect food for the ants. To increase their supply of honeydew, the ants tend aphids like cows. These sugar/dairying ants “milk” aphids by stroking the aphids with their antennae until they release a drop of sweet honeydew liquid. They even keep their “charges” from straying by chewing off the aphids’ wings. In the fall, the ants carry aphid eggs into their nests, to be carried back out in the spring and set on the plants.
If you are having problems with aphids and ants in your garden, there are several environmentally safe methods of aphid control. One of the best methods is to spray the plants with a hard stream of water. This will kill some of the soft-bodied insects (it decapitates them) and the water will wash many others off the plant. This method is said to be 80% effective, even better than some chemical controls.
Another environmentally safe control method is to be patient and “let nature take its course.” Within a very short period of time, where you see aphids, you will also see lady bugs (lady beetles) laying their bright orange eggs on the leaves of infected plants. The lady bug larva, which looks like a miniature spined alligator, is a voracious consumer of aphids. Studies have shown that each larva can eat up to 40 aphids in a single hour. This has earned the larva the name of “aphid wolf.” Other important beneficial insect predators include soldier bugs, damsel bugs, big-eyed bugs, spiders, assassin bugs, syrphid flies, gall midges, and lacewings.
Above: Ladybug to the Rescue!
So if you are having problems with aphids and sugar ants, before you get out the chemicals, try some of these low impact methods of aphid control. Not only will you be able to get aphid damage down to an “acceptable” level, but your biting sugar ant problem will decrease also.
Carolyn
Pictures by Starla
DALLAS GARDEN BUZZ 