Velcro Legumes

Sorry everyone, I was away from home for a little piece and didn't have the urge to write.  Or to garden in my brown, crinkly garden.  Frankly, given the extremely hot weather here and the glaring sunshine, I have pretty much cast the garden aside to survive or die on its own.  Before I left, a week ago, I did stand out most of the day in the 106F weather, watering everything in sight.  The plants seemed to appreciate it and it only took me two days to rehydrate myself.  I left the garden this past week to the good graces of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, who at least kept the watermelon and pumpkins alive.

But a quick walk outside today and I was reminded, by the pictured seeds clinging to my jeans, that life in the garden goes on.  Does anyone out there care to guess at the identity of the seeds pictured above?  I can harvest loads of them from now through Fall, sticking resolutely to my pants and socks as they do, just by walking out into the prairie.  They are seeds, and they look a little like ticks, don't they?  And they stick to you like ticks.  No amount of washing will get these things off my pants, they have to be hand-removed.  That's my job because Mrs. ProfessorRoush takes a dim view of my pants sharing this bounty with her undergarments in the family washer. 






Looks like a tick, but it's a seed?  This is either Desmodium illinoense (Illinois Tickclover) or Desmodium canadense (Canda Tickclover or Showy Tick-trefoil ).  Both are native wildflowers here in the Flint Hills, and both are members of the Fabaceae, otherwise known to normal people as members of the bean family.   D. illinois has a prominent banner, with a darker spot near the base as seen above left.  D. canadense is lighter on the top, more violet on the bottom  and lacks the banner, as pictured to the immediate right.  D. canadense  also stands a fuller with more leaves in my yard, while D. illinoense stays low and spreads out at the base.








The delicate flowers of these natives bloomed in late June and early July here, rising over the prairie grass on two-foot tall racemes to entice passing pollinators.   They grow in the driest spots in my garden, sustained by deep tap roots and leathery leaves, and they are native all over the hillsides.    The flowers turn quickly to seedpods that have fine hooked hairs that allow them to cling to clothing and fur.  Fascinating, isn't it?  A natural "Velcro" created and utilized by this genus for seed dispersal.  And a very effective one at that, since a well-covered pair of socks can take quite some time to "de-tick". 

So why, you might ask, do I allow these to grow when they pop up?  The beans, to my knowledge, aren't edible, and the flowers certainly aren't showy.  But I am aware that they are used in agriculture in several ways, both as a nitrogen-fixing groundcover and because they produce a number of insect repelling compounds collectively known as  antixenotic allomones.  I allow them to grow solely for their legumistic benefits to my garden soil and I make darned sure to cut off the stems as soon as they set seed.   Otherwise, I'm sure that I'd find my next round of weeding time doubled by the time it would take me to de-seed my clothes.

I HAVE GROWN CORN!

A miracle has occurred on the Kansas prairie.  I have, at long last, grown sweet corn in the Flint Hills.  Praise God and pass the butter and salt!

This may not be an earth-shattering accomplishment to many of you from other climes, and perhaps not to many farmers in this area, but I have been completely stymied for years trying to grow edible sweet corn in my own garden.  I have experienced years where I had poor germination (soil too cold?), years where the wind blew the knee-high corn flat before it could tossel, years where the ears didn't fill out (too hot for pollination?), and years where I had decent ear growth, but opened up the shucks to find that I'd raised only a superb crop of earworms.  I've had decent corn stolen at the last minute by raccoons, I've had seedlings mowed down by deer and rabbits, and I've even caught quail scratching and eating the seed as soon as I planted it.  Those are all minor pests compared to earworms in this area.

To borrow and modify for gardening a term currently popular among teenagers and young adults,  have, in summary, I been "corn-blocked" for a decade by wind, drought, earworms, raccoons, rabbits, deer, and birds.  The worst of all are the earworms;  not only do they leave me believing I've had a good crop until I try to harvest it, but earworms as a species are completely disgusting.  I refuse to just cut off the end of an ear full of worms and worm feces and then cook and eat the remainder.

My inability to grow edible corn is all extremely embarassing for me, a descendent of several generations of Indiana farmers.  My long-lost Indiana, where the soil drains better, where the wind is gentler, the rains more frequent, and the mid-summer heat less searing, is tailor-made for corn. You can toss corn down in Southern Indiana on the surface and it will grow and produce.  Heck, it grows as a volunteer annual from year to year if you leave too many kernels in the field.

This year, inexplicably, the Maize God decided to take pity on my efforts and allowed me a decent crop.  Not without some effort on my part, however, effort honed by years of hard-won lessons.  I selected my corn variety carefully, choosing Burpee's 'Honey and Cream' because the package noted that it had "tight silks".  I laid down some soaker hose along the rows and I have religiously watered deep twice a week after germination. I provided plenty of nitrogen fertilizer as the corn stalks rose.  As soon as the silks appeared, I sprayed weekly with cyfluthrin, stopping when the silks were brown, for a total of three applications over late June and early July.  I made sure the electric fence stayed in working order as the ears grew and the signs of deer in the yard became more frequent.

These six ears of merely slightly poisonous corn are just the first of what I hope will be a few nice meals for myself, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone.   I don't have any innate desire to upset all the diehard organic gardeners out there, but I firmly believe that any residual insecticide that penetrated the husks and survived the printed withdrawal period must surely be less harmful to my health than the earworm poop.  Probably tastes better too.  Anyway, I'm not worried about the insecticide;  I'll just feed the first couple of ears to Mrs. ProfessorRoush and if she doesn't develop tremors, than I can safely dig in.

Remember that scene in "Cast Away" where Tom Hanks starts his first fire on the island and dances around shouting to the sky, "I have made fire"? Well, that's me today. I HAVE GROWN CORN!

Portland's Duchess

I'll show you a rose today that has continually surprised me.  Surprised me because I wasn't expecting much from it and I got these great big, hot pink flowers.  Surprised me because, in general, I'm not a fan of hot pink flowers and yet I like these.  Surprised me because the repeat bloom has been better than I expected. 

That rose is 'Duchess of Portland', a Damask Perpetual that was known prior to 1775 and who gave birth to an entire rose class named after her. This reported hybrid of 'Quatre Saisons' and Rosa gallica officianalis is one of the few reblooming roses  grown in the Western Hemisphere before the China roses and their hybrids took Europe by storm.  Perhaps because of her ancient heritage, 'Duchess of Portland' can be found under many different names, including Portlandica, The Portland Rose, Rosa Paestana,  Rosa damascena portlandica bifera, and Scarlet Four Seasons' Rose.  There was some suspicion that she DID have some 'Slaters Crimson China' in her background, but Internet sources say that any China heritage was disproven through DNA analysis at Claude Bernard University in France. 

'Duchess of Portland' has semi-double blooms (10-16 petals) with a diameter of 4 inches in my 6A climate.  Four inches might not seem like a large bloom size compared to a Hybrid Tea like 'Peace', but the flat shape and the small number of petals puts this rose in a class with 'Altissimo' for standing out in the garden.  There is a strong sweet fragrance to reward any nose that dares to part the golden stamens.  It is also her lipstick-bright pink color that sets this rose apart, almost scalding your eyes if you look at it too long.  Officially, this color is labeled as "red", in the same way that many Old Garden Roses that were really fuchia or pink were labelled  "red", because that was the best red tone in roses available in former centuries.   Personally, I think it is time to stop calling these roses "red."  They're pink, okay, can we just agree to call them that?  I've had two bloom flushes already this summer, with a few sporadic blooms in-between, and I hope yet to see another flush as cooler weather returns in the fall.  The bush is round in form, extending about 3 feet in all directions, very healthy and drought-resistant, and she sets a few orange hips as the season ends.

Some roses just have more history than others, and 'Duchess of Portland' is one of the former group with history to spare.  She is the mother of the entire group of Portland roses, which once numbered in the hundreds but has dwindled to 15-20 commercial varieties.  The origin of the name was from a namesake Duchess of Portland who was a plant collector around 1780.  And yes, she may be old, but she's still very much worth adding to your garden.  Just don't expect her to hide among other roses, because she was bred to stand out.

   

Yucca Dabble Do!

It has been almost 2 years since I wrote of my attempt to find and then to grow Red Yucca, or Hesperaloe parviflora, here in Kansas. I had first seen this native Texas plant used as a common xeri- landscaping plant in Las Vegas, so I thought I'd give it a try here in dry and windy Kansas. Originally, I purchased three Red Yucca and one yellow-form (Herperaloe parviflora 'Yellow') from High Country Gardens.  The yellow-form Hesperaloe was a larger plant and it bloomed last summer and again this summer, growing slowly but steadily in a protected sunny exposure spot.  In fact, right now, I'm starting to think it is in a spot that's a little too shaded by an adjacent Caryopteris clandonensis.

The small fragile Red Yucca plants, however, really got put to a test in the Flint Hills environment.  All three were planted in a slightly raised bed surrounding a crabapple tree next to my driveway.  This put them directly in one of my worst wind-swept, sun-burnt, winter-cold-exposed beds.  Seriously, the next closest westward wind break for this bed is probably the Rocky Mountains.  As an added bonus, the soil in this bed was originally dull orange subsoil clay.  Daffodils, mums, petunias, you name it, they have all died in this bed.

I'm pleased to report, however, that the  Red Yucca's have done well.  From 4-inch tall plants with 3-4 leaf spikes each,  all three now have a good clump of basal foliage about 12 inches tall, and two of the three bloomed this summer on top of three-foot-tall racemes, as pictured at the left.  The blooms are red outside and yellow inside and are waxy enough to stand up well to the drying winds we've had on the recent hundred-degree days that cause the roses open and shrivel by the end of the day.  And talk about your long-blooming plants! One of my two plants first started blooming at the end of May and still looks as fresh as it did at that time.  I've been holding my breath, thinking that the prairie winds would surely break off the fragile-appearing raceme, but it has so far withstood the worst winds of the summer, including one blast with peak 70-80 mph straight-line winds. The second of my precocious bloomers opened up about two weeks ago and quickly reached the height of its neighbor.

As flowers go, you could safely say that I'm not personally excited by them, and at present this is a mere curosity.  I may change my mind, however, if these plants reach the size and exuberance I saw in Las Vegas.  I haven't seen the hummingbirds that this plant is supposed to attract yet, but I'll give it a few years to make a large mass before I call that part of the experiment a failure.  Till then, other gardeners in the dryer climes of the MidWest might want to give this plant a try.  Heck, as the climate here dries and changes, the native Hesperaloe may make their way to us anyway, becoming weeds in our gardens.