Eriogonums lure butterflies

There have been many news stories about the plight of pollinators recently, and though the disappearance of honey and native bees has captured a majority of the coverage, butterflies have also seen their food supplies dwindling.

One attractive and easy remedy for urban gardeners is California buckwheats. Eriogonums are compact subshrubs that vary in height from the mat-forming foot-high E. umbellatum to the larger species E. arborescens and E. giganteum, which can reach 5 to 6 feet in height and width.

One of my favorites is E. grande var. rubescens, known as red buckwheat. This evergreen native of the Channel Islands (off the coast of Santa Barbara) forms a dense, low-growing (to 1 foot) mat that will spread to cover an area of at least 3 feet. It features delicate, spoon-shaped 1-inch leaves, grayish-green above and woolly white below. Plants begin flowering in June and continue late into the fall.

What makes this plant a must-visit for butterflies are the nectar-rich, rosy-pink clusters of flowers that float on tallish stems above the foliage. Las Pilitas Nursery notes that "Blues and Hairstreaks especially like buckwheats. The flowers, leaves and seeds are all used by many of the smaller mammals, and a good number of birds such as finches, juncos, larks, sparrows, towhees, quail and grouse."

Red buckwheat is an ideal plant for rock or dry gardens, where it can serve as an attractive high ground cover. It can also be used as a low border. Even in its nonflowering season, E. grande rubescens provides lovely, soft texture to any garden bed. Their flowers are also ideal for dried arrangements.

Read the full article here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2010%2F08%2F27%2FHOBM1EVAS8.DTL#ixzz0yCkX8XCP

Dogs: Not a Gardener’s Best Friend

DID Bertie Wooster mean to harm Barbara Geltosky in September 2008? The evidence against him is damning. For instance, the hole that Bertie, Ms. Geltosky’s 5-year-old Norwegian elkhound, dug in the garden was 12 inches across and 12 inches deep — the perfect size for a human foot.

“It was a hole I didn’t see,” said Ms. Geltosky, 59, a retired art teacher who lives with her husband in Malvern, Pa., some 20 miles west of Philadelphia. “I was getting compost when I went down. I twisted my knee badly enough to have rehab.”

Mr. Wooster, who is unemployed, declined to be interviewed for this article. Bertie — the name the dog answers to at treat time — is black and silver with tuxedo markings on his fur. This double-layered coat, which would make lustrous skiwear for Cruella De Vil, helps to explain his excavation habit.

In the dog days of summer, Ms. Geltosky said: “He likes to lay and be cool. Once it warms up, he’ll dig another one.”

Bertie works fast. A hole takes 10 minutes flat. Often, he’s chasing ground bees. Or he might be following his life’s great passion, vole hunting. “We’ve had to put flagstone right next to our patio,” she said. “My husband’s joke is that someday we’re going to have to pave the whole yard.”

This would be a particular sacrifice for Ms. Geltosky, who is a digger herself, and has ringed her house with perennial beds filled with five-foot-tall Tatarian aster and phlox.

Recently, she has been compelled to plant something with absolutely no ornamental value: a four-foot-high wire fence. “We had it shorter, and that didn’t work,” she said. Bertie “really wanted to be on the other side where all the plants were.”

Bertie is not alone in his appetite for destruction. If gardening is a battle — against drought, bug, weed, blight — the dog is a kind of bumbling fifth column, a saboteur who likes to roll on the grass and have his tummy rubbed.

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/garden/26garden.html

August Edition of The Kitchen Gardener

Check out our August Kitchen Gardener featuring kale!
http://sloatgardens.com/kitchen-gardener/2010/august10.htm

How to Grow a School Garden: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers

http://www.timberpress.com/books/how_grow_school_garden/bucklin-sporer/9781604690002

Today both schools and parents have a unique opportunity — and an increasing responsibility — to cultivate an awareness of our finite resources, to reinforce values of environmental stewardship, to help students understand concepts of nutrition and health, and to connect children to the natural world. What better way to do this than by engaging young people, their families, and teachers in the wondrous outdoor classroom that is their very own school garden?

It's all here: developing the concept, planning, fund-raising, organizing, designing the space, preparing the site, working with parents and schools, teaching in the garden, planting, harvesting, and even cooking, with kid-friendly recipes and year-round activities. Packed with strategies, to-do lists, sample letters, detailed lesson plans, and tricks of the trade from decades of experience developing school garden programs for grades K–8, this hands-on approach will make school garden projects accessible, inexpensive, and sustainable.

In this groundbreaking resource, two school garden pioneers offer parents, teachers, and school administrators everything they need to know to build school gardens and to develop the programs that support them.

Basic Succulent Care

Basic Succulent Care

First let’s agree on the definition of what a succulent plant is. All succulents are adapted to survive for extended periods without rain by storing water in some part of their body. The total number of succulent plant species number over 10,000. They can be found within a wide variety of plant families, such as the cactus, euphorbia, crassula, mesemb and daisy families.

Most succulents, including cactus, do not come from deserts. Most actually come from semi-arid areas where seasonal rainfall is erratic and even rainforests where they grow on rocky, sunny cliffs.

More succulents are killed by underwatering than by overwatering. They can tolerate going without water, as long as they are adequately watered before and after the dry spell. Generally the shorter and fatter the succulent, the more drought-tolerant it is. These extreme succulents would not survive in the average garden but are better suited for pots that are protected from the rain.

Indoor pots that dry out completely can be difficult to re-wet. Without the natural rain to gently soak the pot, many indoor plants stay partially dry even after being watered because the soil has shrunk away from the side of the pot. When that happens water will simply run down the sides of the soil ball and out the bottom of the pot. However if a succulent is left in a saucer of water for too long the pot will become waterlogged and the roots will die. If the pot is small enough, it could be immersed in water and then placed somewhere to drain so both components are adequately moistened.

The ideal climate is one without frost, temperate latitudes near the ocean with mild rainy springs (or summers). That sounds perfect to us too!

A bright, sunny spot with excellent drainage and good air circulation is ideal.

Help the SF Green Schoolyard Alliance win $250,000

We received this from the SF Green Schoolyard Alliance...hope you can help, too!



Dear Friends,

We've submitted a grant to the Pepsi Refresh Everything Project.Instead of spending money on Superbowl ads, Pepsi decided to take the money it would have spent and give it away, each month this year, inthe form of grants.

Our project is asking for $250,000 to conduct a year-long green skills workshop series for San Francisco Unified School District's 56,000students and their school communities. Part of the project is alsoaimed at re-foresting the district's schoolyards. Workshops willinclude rainwater harvesting installations, garden/outdoor classroomconstruction, native garden plantings, curriculum connections, and much more.

Here's the deal:
Projects must be voted on by the public to win. And each person canvote for the same project once, each day for the month of August.Voting ends August 31st. You must sign up to vote, but you WILL NOT be spammed, it's just tokeep track of the votes you have. Consider spreading the word, we will be forever grateful. Again, you can vote once a day for the month of August for a project. Please consider making our page one of your favorites:

Our page: http://www.refresheverything.com/greensfschools

Very Sincerely,

Rachel Pringle
Programs Manager
The San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance(415) 355-6979, Ext. 1566www.sfgreenschools.org

August E-newsletter: The Gardener's Notebook Online

Hope your garden is bright & beautiful this month...we're starting to pick fruits and vegetables ourselves. What a terrific time of year to be a gardener!

http://www.sloatgardens.com/enewsletter/2010/gardeners-notebook-online-august10.htm