Community Gardens in Salta, Argentina

By Linda and Sandy Grimwade

We are spending 6 weeks doing volunteer work in the city of Salta in northwest Argentina. It is a beautiful old colonial Spanish city with about 700,000 inhabitants. Situated at an altitude of about 4,500 feet in the foothills of the Andes, and only 90 miles from the Tropic of Capricorn, the city has a wonderful climate of mostly warm dry days and pleasantly cool nights. It is springtime, and trees are coming into leaf, bulbs are flowering and the barrows on street corners are full of wonderfully flavorful strawberries. Despite this favorable climate and pleasant situation, there are significant areas of the city where signs of poverty and poor nutrition are clearly visible.

Sandy giving a lesson on plants in Spanish

Under the auspices of the city government, we have started a project to introduce education about the benefits of home gardening, and to build small vegetable gardens in “comedores” -- food kitchens run by local people to give children in poor areas at least one good meal per day. The Argentine diet is heavy on protein, carbohydrate, and, increasingly, sugar, but fruits and vegetables are quite expensive, and there is little tradition of growing your own. Armed with materials from Philadelphia Master Gardeners and the Harvest for Health program (thanks to Jackie Simon), Sandy, with Linda’s help gave his first of 4 talks, in Spanish, to about 20 children and 12 parents in one of the comedores a few days ago. We then helped the excited kids to plant tomato, pepper and squash seeds in potting soil-filled cups, started cleaning out an area about 3 feet by 9 feet and building a low wall for a raised bed. 

Children with their pots of seeds

Over the next few weeks we are planning more short talks on caring for a small vegetable garden and will plant seeds of herbs, beans, chard and other greens, as well as setting out the seedlings once they have grown. We hope we will leave here with small gardens growing at several of the comedores and a group of enthusiastic helpers to keep them going. We are also planning to introduce some tasty vegetable recipes.

It is gratifying to be able to share our Master Gardener knowledge with parents and children who are so enthusiastic and willing to become involved.

Fall Containers for Your Garden

Michele K. Koskinen

Ornamental Cabbage and cold hardy pansies

Fall is here and most of the summer plants will not survive the cool nights and moderately warm days. Many gardeners don’t renew their containers for a variety of reasons. Changing from the summer to fall winter plant selections is often perplexing because we don’t see many of our favorites. They are unsure of how long the containers will survive and plants other than the quintessential MUM are often difficult to find. So let’s reboot that thinking.

Selection of plants for this time of year uses the same rubric as the summer months. The place and how the container will be viewed, planting zone, type of light ( full sun to full shade), the design basics of thriller, fillers and spillers and the container you use.

To save time and money you can also use the same container and plants to make a summer container and then reuse it with a fill in fall plant. 

            

Summer Container:     Japanese blood grass,
Geranium, Alyssium, and Eurphobia

Fall Container:    Japanese blood grass,
garden mum, and Euphorbia going to seed

Every container needs three types of plants: thrillers, fillers and spillers.

1. A thriller is a taller plant that steals the spotlight,towering above other plants in the container. In general, the height of a thriller plant shouldn’t exceed more than 1 1/2 times the pot height.

2. A filler plant clusters around the thriller, filling in the space between its stems and soil.

3. Spillers cascade over pot edges in a waterfall of flowers or foliage. In autumn containers, low growing ornamental cabbages frequently fill the role of spillers, despite their lack of trailing growth.

Spillers typically belong near pot edges, thrillers fill the center, and fillers land between the two. If your container will be viewed from one side only, place the thriller toward the back of the pot.

For zone 6/7 the following are suggestions for your containers. There are many other plants you could use that will be in your nursery. Pick you favorite and add a new inspiration.

Aster (Aster spp.) – Daisy-like blooms in shades of pink, white or purple. USDA zones 4-9. 1 1/2-5 feet tall x 6-24 inches wide. Sun to part shade.

Garden mum (Chrysanthemum) – Cheerful flowers in various forms and hues, including orange, red, purple, yellow and white. USDA zones 5-9. 12-26 inches tall and wide. Sun.

Pansy (Viola x wittrockiana) – Colorful flowers open in many hues, including purple, yellow, burgundy, white and almost-black. USDA zones 7-10. 6-9 inches tall and wide. Sun to part shade.

Coral bells (Heuchera hybrids) – Leaves unfurl in shades of mahogany, orange, purple, silver, chartreuse and various combinations of these – and other – hues. USDA zones 3-9. 6-10 inches tall and wide. Sun to part shade.

Elijah Blue fescue (Festuca glauca ‘Elijah Blue’) – Blue leaves form grassy tufts. USDA zones 4-10. 6-18 inches tall x 6-9 inches wide. Sun to part shade.

Image from an article in Fine Gardening

Ornamental cabbage (Brassica oleracea) – Colorful cabbage-style leaves with centers of pink, white or lavender, as well as variegated blends. Annual. 10-12 inches tall and wide. Sun to part shade.

Pink muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaris ‘Regal Mist’) – Green grassy leaves topped with pink-mauve feathery seedheads in fall. USDA zones 5-10. 36-48 inches tall x 24-36 inches wide. Sun to part shade.

Sedum sieboldii – Blue-green succulent leaves on trailing stems. USDA zones 2-10. 6-12 inches tall and wide. Sun.

Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima) – Silky seedheads glow in autumn light. USDA zones 5-10; 18 inches tall x 12 inches wide. Sun.

Variegated Japanese sedge (Carex oshimensis ‘Evergold’) – Creamy yellow leaves edged in green. USDA zones 5-9. 8-10 inches tall x 18 inches wide. Sun to part shade.

What is this plant?

Michele K.Koskinen




On a recent visit to Cape May I observed a plant that had no leaves, a tall stalk, and flowers like a lily. I asked the owner of the home and she explained they were perennial amaryllis and they were in the garden when she purchased her house.. They grow leaves in the spring that die off, and magically, the stalk and the flower appears in August. She also said many of the older homes have them in abundance so they must have been planted years ago.

Finding a plant I have never seen is always fun. They could be very common but often overlooked or not spectacular but new to my eye. What is this plant?

Thank goodness for phone camera's. Web search to the rescue....

This plant belongs to the Amaryllidacae family. 

It is planted in the fall with the tulips and other spring bulbs. Leaves appear in the spring, die off, and the flower does not bloom until August.

It is cold hardy and naturalizes by bulb offsets.

It is an heirloom bulb from 1882 and probably brought        from China.

It is often called resurrection lily,naked lady, spider lilly,

autumn amaryllis, and magic lily. 

There are 13 to 20 species in this family.  

They are a great companions to perennial foliage plants that have already bloomed.

Readings of interest:
chicagotribune.com/
wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoris_(plant)
missouribotanicalgarden
franklincountymgs.blogspot


My name is  Lycoris squamigera   If anyone has this plant share a photo on our facebook page. Did you purchase it or was it in the garden when you purchased your home?                  

The name of the moth is....

I recently published a post about a beautiful moth and ask if anyone knew what it was. Ray, Jessica Sandy and I all agreed it is a Eumorpha Pandorus.

Eumorpha pandorus

The Pandora sphinx moth, also called the Pandorus Sphinx Moth, is a North American moth in the Sphingidae family. It is a large, greenish gray moth with darker patches and pink edges and small pink eyespots. Wikipedia

Scientific name: Eumorpha pandorus

For more information:

butterfliesandmoths.org

bugguide.net

wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumorpha_pandorus

News from the Edible Landscape Demonstration Garden

Grape Arbor Garden Entrance

Hip Hip Hooray!! We have won first prize for community vegetable garden in the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's City Gardens Contest! The dedicated volunteers who have worked tirelessly from early spring through the hot days of summer are doing a victory dance and chanting "We're Number One!" Well, maybe we just have broad smiles on our faces. Gardeners tend to be more modest folks.

What we are definitely doing right now is planning for next season. The garlic that was ordered two months ago from a mail order catalog will be arriving soon and to be planted next month. Successful plantings for this year have been noted, as well as those that were a bit disappointing. While this season has been the "year of beans", thought is being given to what vegetables to hightlight in 2014. Tomatoes seem to top the list. Crop rotation to avoid disease infestation is always a major consideration and challenge in a relatively small garden. Finding a different spot each season for the nightshade family plants (tomatoes and eggplants) can be tricky.

The gardeners have also begun the necessary fall housecleaning. Some of the summer plants including many of the beans have finished producing and have been removed. Some fall crops have been planted and the battle with our four-legged friends has begun. The rabbits have feasted upon the peas and lettuces. The curly endive and arugula have been spared. Row covers over the broccoli, cabbage, collards and pak choi that were so effective in the spring, have done little to deter the hungry insects. Life is never perfect in the vegetable patch.

Brown Turkey Fig

The fig tree this year has been amazingly bountiful producing well over fifty pounds of lucious fruit. All of the gardeners, the Horticultural Center staff, friends and families have enjoyed the harvest. The home canners in the group have jars and jars of fig jam in their pantries.

We have had numerous visitors to the garden, beyond the critters. Many folks have left messages at the sign in box --- "Thank you, thank you, what a beautiful oasis you created" --- and a personal favorite: "As good as Longwood". Kind words inspire us all!