Garden Consultant

04/19/2023

04/15/2023

03/28/2023

This will be a lemon soon!! 🍋

03/18/2023

Warrior in my garden- Laby Bug at work!

03/08/2023

On this day in 1901, the Texas legislature proclaimed the bluebonnet the state flower. In the 1930s the state began a highway-beautification program that included scattering bluebonnet seed beside roadways, thus extending the flower's range. The flower--called in some Indian lore a gift from the Great Spirit--is the subject of countless photographs and paintings. It usually blooms in March and April.

03/08/2023

There’s no such thing as enough plants 😝

📸courtesy

02/19/2023

Thinning the seedlings.

02/16/2023

02/06/2023

To truly regenerate landscapes we need to understand The Three Layers of Succession

02/01/2023

Turn the calendar page to February and get ready to get busy! The cold weather activity continues (pruning, planting trees, treating some pests with dormant or horticultural oil, get the gardening equipment ready), and it's time to start planting a lot of cool season flowers and vegetables, and divide the plants from last year that you want to thin and transplant (daisies, hibiscus, asters, mums, salvia, etc.)

https://www.dirtdoctor.com/garden/February-Organic-Maintenance_vq2273.htm

01/22/2023

One day, evolutionary biologist Lilach Hadany wondered if plants could hear.

If they could it’d probably have something to do with flowers, she guessed, as pollination is key to plant reproduction.

She was right.

She and a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University decided to experiment with evening primrose which grows wild around Tel Aviv and whose long bloom time provides substantial quantities of nectar.

In the lab, they exposed the flowers to five different sound treatments: silence, the sound of bees buzzing, and computer-generated sounds in low, medium and high frequencies.

The flowers had no response to the silence or the computer-generated frequencies, they had an almost immediate response to the sound of bees, boosting the sugar content in their nectar by as much as 20% within 3 minutes.

In field trials, while the flowers seemed to tune out other noises, like the wind, they were particularly attuned to the low frequencies emitted by bees and other pollinators.

The temporary boost in sugar content apparently lasted for up to 6 minutes, as pollinators were 9 times more likely to visit a plant that had been previously visited by a pollinator within that time frame.