Posted by wilde on July 5th, 2009 — Posted in Food, Vegetable
The bright red blooms of Bee Balm, Monarda didyma, also known as Oswego Tea, can be seen from a distance. The red color is truly a bright red – it surely attracts hummingbirds and butterflies.
Bee balm or Oswego tea in bloom.
Several irregularly-shaped, tubular flowers open at a time.
The bracts just below the rounded head of flowers are also red, but more on the maroon side of red.
A friend found a few plants growing near the Juniata River and gave us a couple for our native plant gardens. To match it’s native habitat I’ll be transplanting ours along the lane near the spring that runs after a good rain.
Once they’re established I’d like to harvest the leaves to try the tea. Does anyone here use bee balm as oswego tea?
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Posted by wilde on May 29th, 2009 — Posted in Food, Vegetable
I’m happy to report that the first Ozark Beauty strawberries were eaten this week. We started with six plants last summer and since they had to adjust to their new surroundings they didn’t put out runners, so we still have six plants. Flowering started four weeks ago. The nice thing about this variety is that they’re an everlasting type, meaning that they will bloom and produce fruit two or three times in a growing season, not just once.
You can’t get a fresher taste of strawberries than picking them fresh!
This time of year is very pretty in the woodlands. Violets have been flowering for a month and now the blackberry shrubs are in full color. Ok, they’re not exactly colorful as the blossoms are all white, but they do give a splash of color in the otherwise green and brown landscape.
The Solomon’s Seal and False Solomon’s Seal are blooming all over the woods. Perhaps the wet, cool weather has been the best weather for the forest flowers. I haven’t seen this many blooming forest-dwellers in previous years. The ones putting on the biggest show are the Maple-leaved Viburnum. Everywhere you turn the fuzzy-looking flower clusters are shining white. Stamens project up and out so the clusters of flowers look fuzzy from a distance.
Maple-leaved viburnum flowering in the woodlands.
White stamens project above the white petals of viburnum. Unopened flowers have a tinge of pink.
Also blooming now are deerberry, bastard toadflax, dame’s rocket, common violets, and a host of planted flowers in the garden, like pansies, dahlias, marigolds, johnny jump-ups, false blue indigo and irises.
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Posted by wilde on May 6th, 2009 — Posted in Food, Vegetable
Early this afternoon we dug up several white raspberries from a neighbor’s patch. The plants were going to be mowed down and we were lucky enough to know about this ahead of time. Since we’d been having lots of rain for the past week or so, the digging went fairly easy. Plants that we pulled out of the ground were placed in plastic grocery bags for easy handling and containment of loose dirt.
We planted the raspberries in three different places. The first area was a spot on the southwest side of the farmer’s lane in a partially open spot in the woods where the plants will get sun at mid-day and filtered sun for the rest of the day. This spot has several wild blackberries and elderberries so it seemed a likely place to dig in some raspberry canes. The second place was at the edge of the woods in the back yard and these plants will get late morning to early afternoon sun. The third spot was at the edge of the woods on the east side of the backyard and these plants will get sunlight from about noon to late afternoon. By planting in several locations we’re ensuring that at least some of the plants will grow to provide fruit.
Each raspberry plant had stiff canes from last year and some even had their flower buds developing on new growth. It will be interesting to note whether the flowers will continue to develop. Since they were dug up and re-planted within a few hours, perhaps they were not stressed too badly. It’s supposed to rain again tonight so the raspberries will be watered well.
The everlasting varieties of raspberry will bloom and set fruit more than once a year. In the fall all the canes will be cut down and fruit will arise the next year on the new year’s growth.
Now that we have about two dozen new raspberry plants, it will be interesting to see how they develop…and, eventually, how they taste!
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