As High as an Elephant's Eye

Folks who have vegetable gardens have my greatest respect. These folks have row upon row of beans and carrots, and spend the early spring mornings behind a rototiller, and the late fall evenings over the stove blanching for the freezer and canning for the winter.

If you have one of these in your family you know the type I mean. They sniff the air and fret that its too dry. They wonder if there will be enough sunlight for the tomatoes to ripen before the frost, they wonder if the corn could grow as high as an elephant's eye.

I can remember my father, his hands caked in northern Ontario dirt shouting out with joy as he pulled one potato after the next from the ground, inspected it and put it in one of two piles. Quick eating, or cellar storage. And I can remember my mother shouting at a flashlight taped to a hoe that it was dark, and time to come in already. Dad was a zealot.

Today's target posts on the Sproutoff forum are by folks heading down the vegetable path. The first is about tomatoes. If you grow the seeds from the grocery store tomatoes, just what do you think you will get? Find out in the tomato discussion: Store bought Tomatoes

The second gardening post is about growing corn for the first time. There are rules to getting a harvest from a wind pollinated crop, and you can read how they work here: Rookie Corn Patch

May your harvest be plentiful, and may its promise ease whatever toil you endure in reaching it.

Who is Carl Linnaeus??

Who the devil is Carl Linnaeus? Its a question that has haunted me for some time, having heard his name tossed about in botanical conversation from time to time. Sparked by a discussion in Sproutoff I did a little research.

Apparently we have Carl to thanks for the modern taxonomy of almost every living thing in the world, but most importantly (to me anyways) he was foremost a botanist, sending out disciples to glean information, plant samples, and sketches from every corner of the globe. If you look at a plant tag and see words like "Athyrium niponicum var. pictum" you have Mr. Linnaeus to thank for making it perfectly clear exactly what plant you are looking at.

The taxonomy Carl established not only lets us know what plant we are looking at, but it often gives clues to the place of the plant's discovery (Cornus Florida, for example), the plant's discoverer (Kolkwitzia Amabilis) or perhaps growing conditions, plant form, or other important things relative to the plant itself.

When you hear a gardener speaking Latin, don't shy away, instead, raise a toast Carl, and ask if you might know the plant's common name. No one is offended by this, and even the most adept of gardeners won't know every plant's Latin name. The reason so many gardeners use these names is because some plants have multiple common names, and it can get confusing trying to figure out which plant someone is referring to.

And once you get to know the Latin names, you can impress your non gardening friends with your exotic plants, I mean really, don't "viola tricolour", "viola cornuta", "viola pendunculata", and "viola bicolour" all sound better than Johnny Jump-up? I hope so, because the same common name is used for all of them.

Join us in raising a toast to Carl Linnaeus today!

Container Plants and Watering

Seems a lot of folks have trouble keeping their container plants from drying out, and a few have solutions that really work. Today's keynote discussion centres on this topic, as posted by roxanna:

any really smart suggestions on how to keep planted decorative pots watered so my plants don't gasp for relief in the heat of summer? i don't mind watering as a rule, but once it gets truly hot and humid, i tend to retreat indoors and leave the poor plants to Mother Nature.

especially would like ideas for plants that would be good in large urns which are in the baking atmosphere of a west-facing patio behind the house, so the house wall acts as a heat reflector in addition to the ambient temps.

And the answers have come from all corners, with suggestions ranging from re-purposing levis to using commercial products. See all the ideas here: Preventing Container Gardens from Drying Out