Summer in this issue

Transcription

1 Summer 2017 in this issue Little Garden, Big Ideas p. 2 What to do this Summer? p. 3 Bug Hunt p.4-5 Gifts & Events p. 6-7 Recipes p. 8 Ask Professor Pansy p. 9 Riddles & Jokes p. 10 Leopard Lacewing Butterfly - from Southern Asia

2 Little Garden, Big Ideas Making Harvest Connections by Emily Apple Urban and suburban gardeners have less space than their parents and grandparents may have had to grow food and flowers at home, but where there is a will or a pot of soil, there is a way. In this first installment of Little Garden, Big Ideas, we want to offer suggestions on creating a harvest connection. Making a harvest connection with a friend or neighbor who also gardens is a great way to increase the variety of your own harvest. If you love to grow tomatoes and also love zucchini but have no room or no luck growing squash vines, do not give up. You can try to make a deal with someone who has baskets of zucchinis but no tomato vines. You may make a friend for life. Home gardeners and P-Patch holders, in the Seattle area are able to donate part of their harvest through the Lettuce Link, which connects local food banks with the fresh foods that taste best when grown close to home. Sharing your bumper crop of lettuce with a friend who makes great homemade salad dressing is okay also. You can create your own network of close friends and people you see regularly who also have an interest in sharing their garden goodness or home crafted delicacies. I hope this has whet your appetite for sharing and connecting with the gardeners just over the fence or around the corner. Kale is one of the easiest plants to grow in our area

3 What to do this Summer? - Go on a bug hunt For every animal, including people, on this earth, there are around 300 bugs. The best way to learn about insects is to explore areas where they live. Go out in the garden, sit quietly, and see who shows up. Take a magnifying glass for a closer look. Look on the underside of leaves and under rocks and boards. Try drawing what you see. Butterflies Butterflies begin as eggs and hatch into caterpillars. They eat a lot! If you ate as much as a caterpillar when you were a baby, you would be as big as a large truck when you turned 3 months old. When the caterpillar is grown it forms a chrysalis. A chrysalis is a covering like a leather sleeping bag. The caterpillar dissolves inside the chrysalis and re-forms into a butterfly in a few weeks. You can attract butterflies to your garden by planting flowers that they like: achillea agastache aster coreopsis delphinium echinacea hyssop mint phlox salvia scabiosa veronica Achillea millefolium (Yarrow) member of the Aster family Western Blue Butterfly 3

4 Wolf Spider Soldier Beetle Soldier beetles help keep your garden free of insects that eat your plants. You will see lots of them if you let plants in the carrot family, like parsley, carrots or fennel, go to flower. Wolf spiders eat garden pests. They don t build webs like other spiders. They hunt insects like wolves do, by chasing them down. They carry their egg sac and then their babies on their backs. Ladybug Larvae Ladybug larvae look sort of like tiny alligators. They eat aphids and other garden pests. Ladybugs lay their eggs next to aphid colonies so the larvae will have lots to eat when they hatch out. 4 Ants If a second grader was as strong as an ant, he could pick up a car. Ants don t have ears, they feel vibrations in the ground. Try turning over flat rocks to see if you can find an ant colony.

5 Green Lacewing Lacewings are great insects to help you get rid of garden pests. The larvae look something like the ladybug larvae, but only comes out hunting at night. See the picture of the eggs hanging under a leaf. Bumblebees Bumblebees pollinate flowers so they can produce fruit. They live in colonies under piles of wood, dead leaves or compost, or in holes in the ground. There are over 100 different types and sizes of bumble bees. One type of bumblebee that scientists thought was extinct was discovered by a gardener in our area. Honey Bees Honey bees help pollinate our food crops. They are the only insect that produces food for humans. In the wild, honey bees nest in hollows in trees, or empty cavities like unused chimneys. Honey bees have been on earth longer than people. The ancient Egyptians were bee keepers. 5

6 GIFTS Show your Junior Gardeners Club Membership card to get your free gift. JUNE June Your choice of 4 annual $ 219 value For your June gift choose an annual flower. Marigolds, zinnias, petunias and cosmos are some of the choices. July 4 inch herb $ 499 value JULY Choose an herb to take home and enjoy in your kitchen for July s Junior Gardener gift. AUGUST August 12 oz. Italian Soda Come to our coffee stand and show your Junior Gardener membership card to a barista for your free Italian soda. There are lots of flavors to choose from. 6

7 Talk to a cashier to get your free Junior Gardeners Club Membership card. EVENTS Salad Bowls (baskets) Sunday, June 11th at 2pm Come plant up your own salad bowl garden. You can harvest lettuce and other salad greens right out of the little wicker basket that you fill with soil. Seeds planted in the basket will grow quickly and easily for harvesting when you need a few leaves for a sandwich or wrap. Class size is limited. Reserve your spot in person or over the phone. Class cost $8.79 plus tax Fireworks Pots Sunday, July 9th at 2pm Make a porch pot with a lot of pazazz! We will be planting colorful annual flowers in a terracotta pot that you can take home, water and fertilize and watch bloom all summer. We will have a great selection of bright and fun colored flowers to choose from, the rest is up to you. Class size is limited. Reserve your spot in person or over the phone. Class cost $16.99 plus tax Mini Wildlife Garden Sunday, August 13th at 2pm The little wild creatures around the garden need shelter just like we do. Come create a mini wildlife garden - similar to a fairy garden but for bugs and insects rather than fairies. We will have rocks, twigs, moss, and lots of natural materials to work with and some plants. Class size is limited. Reserve your spot in person or over the phone. Class cost $17.99 plus tax 7

8 Enjoy Your Garden s Bounty Harvest cucumbers when they are about 4-5 inches long. Cucumbers need lots of water to keep them from getting bitter. Recipes Sweet Cucumber Salad INGREDIENTS DIRECTIONS 6 large cucumbers 2 tsp. salt 2 Tbsp. lemon juice 3 Tbsp. sugar 1 small onion, sliced Wash cucumbers. Do not peel. Slice thinly. Sprinkle with salt and let sit for 20 minutes. Drain liquid from cucumbers. Add lemon juice, sugar and onion. Refrigerate for a few hours. Spicy Summer Salsa INGREDIENTS DIRECTIONS 5-6 tomatoes 1-2 tsp. cumin 1/2 tsp salt 1-2 cloves garlic 1-2 tsp. oregano 1/2 onion 1 chili pepper wash and chop tomatoes, garlic, onion and chili pepper add cumin, salt and oregano mix together and taste to see if it needs more seasoning Harvest beans when they are 3-4 inches long, before they get old and tough. Keep picking them to encourage more beans to grow. 8 Tomatoes are ready to pick when they swell and turn color. You should be able to pull them easily off the vine. If they are hard to pull, let them ripen a little longer. Joe s Roasted Green Beans INGREDIENTS DIRECTIONS 6 c. green beans (raw) 4 Tbsp. olive oil 2 Tbsp. salt 2 cloves garlic (minced) Remove stems and tip ends of green beans Toss beans in a bowl with olive oil, garlic and salt Space beans evenly on a cookie sheet Bake in oven at 375 F for 7-10 minutes

9 Ask Professor Pansy Dear Junior Garden Club Professor Pansy would like to share the resource materials that we used to answer your excellent question. Your friend Prof. Pansy many be wise in the ways of gardening but sometimes I have to look up the answers and I thought you might like to know how and where I found my information. Keep the questions coming! Published in 1947, How To Know The Insects was one of several books on nature written by Jaques and part of a How to Know series. A very useful book, Professor Pansy will keep this one handy for all your bug related questions. What do bugs eat? Bugs and other insects eat plants and sometimes other insects. In most cases when you find an insect on a plant, that plant is the creature s food source. As a pansy I am sought after by slugs and snails, breakfast, lunch. And dinner! Lady bugs are a good example of an insect, a beetle, that eats other insects. The lady bugs know which plants will be hosting the aphid colonies and the little red beetles head for those plants to find their food and to lay their eggs. From How To Know The Insects by H.E. Jaques comes this description of the locust long-horned wood-borer....the flowers of goldenrod form the favorite food for these beautiful yellow and black creatures...female beetles hunt out the common locust trees and tuck their white eggs in crevices of the bark. These eggs hatch and the grub bores its way through the bark into both sap wood and heart wood. The wood is its food...and later emerges, the grotesquely marked yellow and black fellow, in time to attend the fall social function of his species in some goldenrod patch. Solidago (Goldenrod) member of the Aster family It is interesting to note how insects also know their plants. The locust borer goes to neither the petunias nor the oaks. On the former it would not meet its friends: the young grub would not thrive on oak wood. Insects show an extraordinary sense in placing their eggs on the proper food materials for their young. locust long-horned wood-borer 9

10 Riddles & Jokes 1 What do you call a cow eating grass in a meadow? 2 What gets wetter as it dries? 3 What is a reptile s favorite movie? 4 How many gorillas does it take to change a light bulb? 4. One gorilla, lots of light bulbs. 3. The Lizard of Oz! 2. A towel! 1. A lawn moower. Make sure to check our website and the newsletter to find out what s coming up! 10