My Plant Giveaway

2013-04-30 UPDATE: Full house! Sorry, but the response was enthusiastic. I already have all my availability booked for this weekend. If I have any time on subsequent weekends, I will post another update here.

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I'm reorganizing some of my planting areas this Spring. I have many overgrown perennials taking up too much space in my garden. I would love to share them with you.

I'll be working in the garden this weekend, weather permitting, from Saturday May 4 about 12 noon on, and Sunday May 5. I'm on Stratford Road in Beverley Square West (between Cortelyou and
Beverly Roads). Email me at xr...@gmail.com to set a time to stop by and we'll dig the plants fresh out of the ground for you.

If you don't know what will grow, tell me what you have to garden in and I'll give you something that will grow well for you. I have plants for sun, shade, or anything in between:

• Corydalis cheilanthifolia (ferny foliage, yellow flowers, blooming now)
• Hemerocallis, Daylilies (mostly the common orange H. fulva, but also some fragrant yellow ones)
• Iris siberica, Siberian Iris
• Bearded Iris, Purple-flowering, smell like grape jelly
• Hosta (plain green leaves, purple flowers)

I also have some native plants - my specialty - that have thrived enough for me to be able to give some away.

• Asarum canadense, Wild Ginger
• Helianthus, tall perennial sunflowers, including H. tuberosa, Jerusalem Artichoke
• Onoclea sensibilis, Sensitive Fern
• Phlox stolonifera, Creeping Phlox
• Pycnanthemum, Mountain-Mint, a great pollinator plant
• Viola, violets, both purple- and white-flowering

... and maybe others if we hunt around the grounds.

All of these are "outdoor" plants. They need the cold of Winter to rest each year. Some of them can be grown in containers; you don't need to have ground to garden!

Happy Gardening!

A Busy Flatbush Gardener's Weekend

I'll be out and about in the community at two events this weekend. Stop by and say hello! And maybe pick up some tips and plants while you're at it.

Saturday, April 21, 9:30-1:30
Sustainable Flatbush Church Garden - Earth Day Open House
Flatbush Reformed Church
2121 Kenmore Terrace, off East 21st Street, one block south of Church Avenue

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Sunday, April 20, 12-3pm
Great Flatbush Plant Swap 2013
Flatbush Food Coop
1415 Cortelyou Road, corner of Marlborough Road

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Related Content

Great Flatbush Plant Swap 2013, Sunday, 4/21, Noon-3pm

Links

Sustainable Flatbush: Save the date for our Earth Day Open House!

Great Flatbush Plant Swap 2013, Sunday, 4/21, Noon-3pm

This Sunday, April 21, from noon to 3pm, join your fellow green-thumbs, and brown-thumbs, for the 2013 Great Flatbush Plant Swap.

Got some extra seed-starts you don't need? Leftovers from dividing perennials? No place for that shrub you just dug out? Looking to start a new garden, and want some free plants? Looking to meet your gardening neighbors and pick up some tips?

Each year we've done this, we've re-distributed hundreds of plants. No plants? No problem: everyone can bring home a plant, even if you have none of your own to swap. You don't need to bring something to be able to take something away.

Co-sponsored by the Flatbush Food Co-op and Sustainable Flatbush, this is an opportunity to share or swap plants, meet your gardening neighbors, and get some free plants.

When: Sunday, April 21, 12noon-3pm, Rain or Shine
Where: Flatbush Food Co-op, 1415 Cortelyou Road, corner of Marlborough Road


Credit: Baly Cooley

Related Content

2011: Second Annual Great Flatbush Plant Swap
2010: The First Annual Great Flatbush Plant Swap, Saturday, April 24

Links

Off-topic: 20 Years

Today is the 20th anniversary of my sobriety. Sobriety, abstinence, and recovery are often conflated. They're not the same things.



I got sober because drinking was interfering with my recovery. I say "I got sober," not just "I stopped drinking." Abstinence was as necessary for my sobriety as sobriety was for my recovery, but I don't equate sobriety with abstinence. Today, I have the occasional glass of beer or wine with dinner. I am still sober.

I mark the beginning of my recovery in 1990, when I began individual counseling with a trauma specialist. Though I've lost track of the specific date, it's sometime in May, so I'm coming up on 23 years of recovery.

A few years in, I came to describe my recovery in three stages:

• I can't do it alone.
• I don't have to do it alone.
• I don't want to do it alone.

Simple as it seems, those who know me know that "doing it alone" is kind of my default mode. Getting to any willingness to let others in was a big deal. I can't even know all the people who supported me through all of this.



Recovery is not an event. It's a path. It took me a long time to find my way. I'm still in transit.

Related Content

Spot, 2008-02-23
On Activism, 2008-01-18
Gardeners for Recovery, 2007-09-11

Sekijoju, Acer buergerianum, by Stanley Chinn

Acer buergerianum, Bonsai, Root over rock style (Sekijoju), Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a photo by Flatbush Gardener on Flickr.

Atteva aurea, Ailanthus Webworm Moth

Atteva aurea, Ailanthus Webworm Moth, on Pycnanthemum, Mountain-Mint, in my garden last weekend. The intense colors are believed to be aposematic, a warning coloration to deter predators, probably because they would be distasteful.



The larvae - caterpillars - feed in communal aggregations, like tent caterpillars. Around the globe, caterpillars in the genus Atteva are known to feed on plants from at least a half-dozen plant families. But they favor plants in the Simaroubaceae, the Quassia Family.

The Quassia Family includes the infamous invasive tree, Ailanthus altissima, Tree-of-heaven, probably best known as "that tree what grew in Brooklyn." So, as Ailanthus has invaded here, Atteva aurea discovered a new suitable host. It's likely this has supported an increase in its numbers, and possibly its range, from its original native populations.

Taxonomic notes

Atteva is the sole genus in the subfamiuly Attevinae, the Tropical Ermine Moths, of the lovely-named family Yponomeutidae, the Ermine Moths. "Ermine" because the moths' coloration resembles that of the spotted forms of the coat of the Ermine, Mustela erminea. This is a photo of another Ermine Moth, Yponomeuta evonymella, showing the classic "ermine" pattern of that species. Image ©entomart, via Wikipedia/Wikimedia.


Per BugGuide, the family name, and the genus from which it arises, is likely a typographic error:

Family is named for genus Yponomeuta Latreille, 1796. That name was apparently a typographic error (!) for Hyponomeuta. That would be a combination of Greek prefix hypo under, plus nomeuta (unknown, perhaps from Greek pno air; breathing, plus meuta?)

The many ecotypes across the wide range of this species give rise to variations of color patterns. These variants have identified under many different specific epithets, and even other genera. (BugGuide notes: "This moth belongs to a species complex that was recently split"). Because of this, searching taxonomic-based resources, such as the Caterpillar Host Plants Database,  for this species may not identify all relevant records.

Related Content

Flickr photo set

Links

BugGuide
BAMONA
Wikipedia
HOSTS Database: Genus Atteva
The Plant List: Simaroubaceae
USDA Plants: Ailanthus altissima

Papilio polyxenes, Eastern Black Swallowtail

Update 2012-09-10: Only one caterpillar remains.

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The morning of the day we left on our last road trip - which led us to the Adirondack Hudson, among other places - I saw this in one of our vegetable beds:


This is a female Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly, Papilio polyxenes. I caught her at the moment she discovered our group of parsley plants (Petroselinum hortense, or P. crispum). She was laying eggs, carefully placing just one under separate leaves of two of the plants.

A Hudson River Riparian Plant Community

Part of the eastern bank of the Hudson River, just south of the Route 8 bridge at Riparius/Riverside in the Adirondacks of New York. A year ago, this was all underwater, inundated by flood waters from Hurricane Irene.

Trichopoda pennipes, Feather-legged Fly

Trichopoda pennipes, Feather-legged Fly, on Pycnanthemum, Mountain-Mint, in my garden yesterday. Although it's widespread and common, occurring throughout North America, this was the first time I've noticed this species in my garden.

This photo shows several of the keys to identifying this species:

• "Feathered" fringes on the hindlegs, true of Trichopoda.
  
• Orange abdomen. Females have a black-tipped abdomen. Males, such as this one, have a completely orange abdomen. 
• Wings are completely black. This species has a transparent margin to the wing.

Trichopoda is a parasitoid of Hempitera, true bugs, including many agricultural and garden pests, such as squash bugs and stinkbugs. For this reason, it's considered a "beneficial" insect:

Each female fly lays on average 100 eggs, which are placed singly on the body of a large nymph or adult bug. Most of the small, white or gray, oval eggs are placed on the underside of the thorax or abdomen, but they can occur on almost any part of the bug. Many eggs may be laid on the same host, but only one larva will survive in each bug. The young larva that hatches from the egg bores directly into the host body. The maggot feeds on the body fluids of the host for about two weeks, during which time it increases to a size almost equal to that of the body cavity of its host. When it has completed its development, the cream-colored third instar maggot emerges from the bug between the posterior abdominal segments. The bug dies after emergence of the fly, not from the parasitoid feeding, but from the mechanical injury to its body. The maggot pupates about an inch down in the soil in a dark reddish-brown puparium formed from the last larval skin, and an adult fly emerges about two weeks later. There can be three generations per year depending on location.

The fly overwinters as a second instar larva within the body of the overwintering host bug. Adult flies emerge in late spring or early summer. The only bugs large enough to parasitize at this time are overwintered adults. Subsequent generations develop on both nymphs and adults of the next generation.
- Trichopodes pennipes, Parasitoid of True Bugs

Related Content

Flickr photo set: Trichopoda pennipes, Feather-Legged Fly

Links

BugGuide: Trichopoda pennipes
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Entomology, Midwest Biological Control News, Trichopodes pennipes, Parasitoid of True Bugs
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, Dept. of Entomology, Biological Control Information Center, Trichopoda pennipes

Scolia dubia, Blue-Winged Digger Wasp

Scolia dubia, Blue-winged Digger Wasp, on Pycnanthemum, Mountain-Mint, in my garden.


Another little jewel of a wasp that is new to me this year. I've been seeing it on the Pycnanthemum, but was unable to get decent photos of it until yesterday. I've also seen it on the Clethra alnifolia, Summersweet in my garden, which just started blooming in the past week.