Stinkbugs on My Mind

No, not really, but they make good fodder for articles these days. Personally, I only see a few here and there in the city. They drop in through my bathroom skylight and end up in the bathtub. I hear from friends that actually have sheds and other outbuildings full of them. Plus, they are all over the news as the critters are busy worrying about summer crops, so I guess stinkbugs won't go away soon.

Last week I needed a quick article for Examiner and wrote "How to protect your garden from stinkbugs". Then I forgot about it and didn't post it until today, mainly because I was busy playing with Squidoo. I'm investigating this as a different source of residual writing. I used to get residuals from old articles I wrote for eHow. But, they had an author buyout recently because everything is now commissioned by Demand Studios (which I also occasional write for).

So far I'm enjoying Squidoo and the freedom to add lots of stuff. (I often end up with too much research to put in those 400-500 Demand Studios articles and Examiner also likes things short.) I never played with it before because it seemed a bit confusing. Well, I put aside other things on Friday and Saturday to just spend time learning and got my first Squidoo lens up. I called it "Stinkbug Invasion!" which is not the best title, but it works. I will add more later, but for now I just wanted to finish one for the expierience. I have other topics for there in the hopper, time permitting.

This great photo of stinkbug eggs and nymphs at various stages is by Gary Bernon, USDA-APHIS, on Wikimedia Commons. I couldn't find many decent pictures of stinkbugs but when I searched for the Latin name of the brown marmorated stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys) his excellent work came right up. I'm going to use some more of his work when I get a chance to refine the Squidoo lens.

Love that Easter Grass!

Examiner.com is getting better with the ads and pop-ups so hopefully I can get back into promoting it a bit more. Though, April is going to be a busy month for me and I just put up "Growing natural grass in an Easter basket" as a placeholder. After that there are probably going to be a lot of events posts as so many local garden festivals happen in May.

Ah, as for Easter grass. I never grew winter rye specifically for an Easter basket but I do use it for my outdoor pots. I just scatter seeds over the tops of the soil in the pot and let it go. In spring I turn it out into the compost pile and let the grass rot. It doesn’t look very Eastery at that point but the grass did its job (soil conservation and enrichment so I can reuse the soil). I never had real grass in my basket when I was growing up but then I never felt deprived for not having it. I mean, if I had kids I’d grow a basket of live grass for a centerpiece or something but I’d just give them baskets full of the fun fake stuff. I can’t imagine any kid would enjoy loosing jellybeans down in the dirt.

While I’m busy, enjoy this seasonal photo from Maja of stock.xchng. (I promise I’ll get back to my own photos sometime soon!)

I Love Zinnias

Yes, I do and I try to grow them every summer. I usually have a mini variety in pots and semi-doubles in the main flowerbed. This year I tried some new types but they didn’t quite make it. I find that mysterious, as zinnias are the one flower that will grow for me anywhere. In fact, they were the first flower I grew in the all cement yard next to the outhouse.

Well, as you can see some of them are recovering from the drought and heat of early summer and beginning to bloom. I believe this is a Candy Cane mix. I also have them in white with pink streaks, and pink with white streaks. They add a lot of splash and I will certainly grow them again next year. Last year one of my neighbors had a great bed of cactus type zinnias in their front yard. I want them next year but I’m afraid they’d look too crazy in with the candy canes.

And yes, I wrote an article about zinnias. Actually, I wrote this last winter but deleted it a few months ago and re-wrote it for summer. I had planned to introduce a “flower of the month” thing to my column but it seemed hokey so I dropped it. I wanted a winter series but I’ve since come up with better ideas. I also liked the photos in that article, but since Examiner is migrating to a new style we don’t have control over our layout and things look wonky unless they are super simple.

Wordless Wednesday - the Baltimore City Hall Garden

Another Visit to City Hall

I usually don’t repeat here the same photos as I do on Examiner, but I just like this picture and I have a bit of a time crunch today. I used it at the end of the slideshow for my recent report about the Baltimore City Hall Garden. I was happy to find it thriving and productive. Though it is less showy I like it because it seems like they are utilizing the space well and the crops selected are good for a continuous harvest. I also like the addition of sunflowers here. They bring a bit of cheer to an otherwise utilitarian garden. I plan to do a Wordless Wednesday with more photos tomorrow.

I just noticed that Examiner now has spammy little ads on the bottoms of my photos in the slideshow. Ugh! I shouldn’t have done one.

A Nice Set of Cabbages

Last week I went down to check on the City Hall garden. Someone emailed me about a harvest date, but I couldn’t make it on that day. But, I still wanted to write about the garden each month because my focus is Baltimore gardening and you can’t get closer to the topic than the City Hall garden. It looked a lot better this time around. The black mesh was gone and things were getting big.

Actually, there is an interesting variety of cabbages down there, plus lots of kale and mustard greens. (I apologize for the red signature on this photo. I couldn't get it readable any other way.) The beds nearest the War Memorial building were empty but the lettuce was once there and I’m sure that was what they harvested. Since I didn’t make the harvest day I instead wrote "What we can learn from the Baltimore City Hall garden" to promote the usefulness of it.

The photographs I take there look great but it amuses me to see Baltimore life in the garden. Here and there are beer cans and random items of clothing. Street people were washing up in the nearby fountain. I’ll be back down there in a couple of weeks to do another “progress” article, hopefully with a slide show.

Speaking of slide shows Examiner wants us to focus on National Rose Month this weekend. This means that everybody else will be writing about roses. Every time some kind of editorial focus comes up with a garden focus I am busy with other more newsy topics so I never really do it. Rather, I think I’ll plan a slide show or garden history article for the following week.

You're not from around here

We’ve had an unusually warm week and I had to mow my lawn again already. I use an old fashioned reel mower and a man walking down the alley said, “I haven’t seen one of those in a long time!” Clearly, he is not from Hampden where human powered mowers are the grass cutting tools of preference. Like me, many people have small yards and no sheds and keeping a reel mower in the basement is a lot safer and easier.

As you can see by my picture, it was so warm that most of my Red Russian kale bolted. (The flat leafed parsley in the background is fine.) I’m a little annoyed, but, oh, well.

I sowed a few zinnia seeds in a pot for early outdoor seedlings. In checking the weather I might get away with this. Night temperatures are expected to be just below or just above 55 degrees in the coming nights. I can move the pot indoors as needed.

In other news, my article about the DC cherry blossoms peaking has had astonishing traffic this week. I guess all the photos helped.

Tulips, Open Doors, and Cement

Yesterday when I was walking to work I spotted tulips in someone’s yard. Technically, it was still March so this seems rather early to me. I then spotted a snapdragon on the way home. Despite the wild winter we had, things around town seem to be doing well even though it is so early in the spring.

I was busy with many things yesterday, including posting an article about Open Doors, a program for people struggling with addiction. They do many things, but they are currently working on a new community garden. When Paul, a program director there, contacted me I was happy to write about them. This is the kind of thing I want to do more in my column of because it unites gardening with city living. Their current project is only a short drive from where I work so when they finish I would like to go out there and photograph it as a follow-up for my readers.

I like things like this and the City Hall garden as I hope that it encourages people to see the potential of their yards. Now, even though I live in a rowhouse I’m lucky enough to have grass and dirt in the back yard. I’ve struggled, though; with the all-cement yard at other places I’ve lived. When Paul talked about needing sledgehammers to remove old building foundations I remembered one garden I had. There was a rosebush surrounded by a broken cement wall, but it was mostly buried in garbage. It was next to a small, odd building (also full of garbage) that my neighbors told me was once an outhouse. It took me a long time, but I cleaned it up, tamed the rosebush, and planted some fabulous zinnias and celosia. Whatever was out there for years must have improved the soil because one year the celosia was almost as tall as I was! You never know what kind of good stuff is under all of that garbage.

Waiting for the garbage men

I am anxiously anticipating the trash pick up. I put out 4 of those big paper landscaping waste bags full of ivy and now the rain seems to be picking up. The garbage men usually come at mid-morning so I hope it all will last. I also believe that you can put out yard waste just in clearly marked bags, not in the tightly sealed cans, as the city requires for other garbage. They do say on the Baltimore City web site that there are no volume limits for yard waste, which is good because I have a lot out there.

I was particularly anxious to do a number on the yard because the neighborhood rat has been spotted again and I wanted to remove anything that might attract it (or them). This winter in particular has left a mess behind in my yard. The ivy fell over, branches broke off, and everything just looked terrible.

As shown in the photo, the wind and rain are pushing over my daffodils. Oh, well, I assume they’ll be all right after the rain leaves and the sun comes out. Yesterday I wrote an article about how to care for spring bulbs and I mentioned staking them. I did think of doing that to my own daffodils but the weather is supposed to improve soon.

While I was waiting for Blogger to settle out so I could post this, they came and took all of my bags of ivy. Hampden garbage men are the best!

Emerging Flowers

At least once a month I like to wander around Baltimore city, particularly downtown, and keep tabs on all of the local greenery. At this time of the year things are beginning to emerge with the promise of a bloom. Here, it looks like tulips are going to grow among these pansies, though I can’t be sure. The leaf shape sure looks like it, though. This is up near the top of that big concrete fountain that is at one end of McKeldin Square. You can see part of the fountain structure in the upper right and the Gallery on the upper left.