There Were No Fences

Leopard frogs have found my artificial pond Soon after I moved into this new house, I wrote about the wetlands I created. The larger one uses a pond liner and is designed to have saturated soil, but no standing water. The smaller one consists of a large clay pot set inside a black-plastic pool. This artificial wetland stays wet by wicking up water from the swimming pool and the swimming pool holds water when the rains are regular and dries up when they are not. A wetland like this can be a nuisance if water stands in the swimming pool for more than 3 days in a row because it will allow mosquitoes to breed. There is no reason in the world to encourage mosquitoes even though a few other living creatures might feed on them. No living thing, to my knowledge at least, requires mosquitoes to survive and mosquitoes harbor some of the most deadly diseases known to humankind. I use a "mosquito dunk" to eliminate the mosquito breeding when the pot holds water for more than 3 days ...

Asian  Tramp Snails -  Bradybaena spp. One can believe in the tenet of letting nature take its course, but the harsh reality is that no matter how much we try to landscape naturally, our landscapes are not fully natural. In nature, the presence of these garden snails would be part of a bigger picture and part of a natural balance. In my emerging landscape, these snails are multiplying like crazy and mowing down the seedlings I'm attempting to grow in my hobby nursery - Hawthorn Hill.  For several weeks after I first spotted a few, I left them alone, but I began noticing that many of my new seedlings were disappearing or being mowed down to the dirt line. Leaving the snails alone was starting to cost me dozens of seedling wildflowers. If one were to watch these snails, you'd notice that they were primarily feeding on the dead/decaying leaves in each pot, but they didn't confine themselves to this diet. Removing the dead vegetation more judiciously didn't help. It si...

New growth on one of my 2 serviceberries ( Amelanchier arborea ) All of us that garden await the day that our new plantings start showing new growth. It doesn't mean much when our newly planted specimens stay green or simply don't decline. It's the new growth that shows us that our plants are establishing themselves in their new environment. I've heard it said that many plants "sleep" during the first year and "creep" the second before springing into action, but I've rarely found that to be accurate. In my landscapes, I have found that most plants initiate new growth rather soon after they are planted. Those that "sleep" often are the ones that eventually decline, so I wait with baited breath each time I add something for the new growth to appear. Some plants don't seem as important as others because I know that I can replace them if they die. It's the others - the ones with special meaning because someone has given them to...

Those of us that work/play in our gardens recognize the value of a good rain. Unlike what the Beatles once wrote, we don't run and hide our heads....... we head outside to soak it up with our plants. It would seem that here, in central Florida, the summer rains have finally arrived and rectified the parched conditions we have faced these past 4-5 weeks.  In the last 2 days, I've recorded nearly 4 1/2 inches here at my home in Holiday and it has been most welcome. My collection of orchids are ecstatic and the hundreds of seedling wildflowers I've been moving into pots from flats are responding well. Rain is a good thing. My created wetland after 4 1/2 inches of rain A close-up. Water has pooled ever so slightly in the lower area away from the house My landscape also is happy with the return of rain. The small wetland I created several months ago using a pond liner is doing exceptionally well so far and it is working as I planned. Even after 4 1/2 inches of rain in ...

When I first moved into this new home in mid-October, there were no bees present. Since I spend a lot of time in my landscape, I am certain that none were here. As I wrote previously, a southern blueberry bee rectified that about a month later and it visited a wall of non-native morning glory that was climbing the privacy fence that borders my neighbor to my north, but it was alone. I could count on seeing it daily during those first two months, but there were no other species present, though I had a few flowering plants that should have interested others. A dear friend had given me a key lime tree as a house-warming present and when it bloomed in early winter, I despaired that I would get any fruit. At my previous home that I had landscaped heavily with native plants, honeybees would have been all over it, but here none showed up to do the task of pollinating it for me. I eventually hand pollinated most of the open flowers hoping for a positive outcome. The honeybees eventually sho...