A Naked Lady in the Garden
I was just as surprised as you when my grandma said, “Oh look at the Naked Ladies in the garden”. She was referring to Lycoris squamigera of course, also known as the Resurrection Lilly, Miracle Lilly, Surprise Lilly, Magic Lilly and of course my favorite, the Naked Lady!
The wonderful thing about these lilies is that they bloom so late in the year. They send up their foliage in spring along with a lot of the other spring bulbs, but they don’t bloom until a few months later after all of the foliage dies back. Then all of a sudden, long after you’ve forgotten they were there, in the garden appear these wonderful pink flowers atop these long slender green stems.
My mom gave me these earlier this year. I was wondering if they would bloom since I planted them just this year. Much to my surprise the popped last week, giving me the perfect title for a blog post!
Have you ever heard of the Naked Lady Lilly? Any other great plant names you know of?
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Quote of the Day: Robert Louis Stevenson
“Judge every day not by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds you sow.”
-Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s that time of year to put aside thoughts of harvesting and canning and plan out your fall garden. I started seeds for mine last week (which is a tad late, but oh well). A lady at the farmer’s market had good luck growing a fall crop of green beans last fall, so I’m trying it this year.
I’m planning on covering them with plastic on those hoops we built. If this fall is colder than usual, as our summer has been, I’m only out $1.50 for the seeds. If it works out, I’ll be eating fresh green beans in October. I also started: red cabbage, brussels sprouts, radicchio, broccoli, cauliflower, and zucchini for my fall garden.
Are you planning & planting a fall garden this year?
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Gardening Holidays: Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor’s Porch Day
Today is Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbors’ Porch Day – HOW FUN. I happened up on these great beauties for free at our local bee supply shop. We’ve been keeping up with ours, so this gave me the perfect fodder to celebrate this holiday!
Mr Chiots ran in to town yesterday afternoon (since I needed photos for today, we celebrated a day early). He put them on our friend’s porch, right on the porch swing.
Unfortunately he was caught in the act. Ollie, their crazy little dog wanted to keep the zucchini (I’m sure he thought it was a dog toy).
In the end the zucchini is back at our house (our friend’s don’t appreciate zucchini as much as we do). I sauteed it last night and it’s marinading in a balsamic vinaigrette in the fridge. We’ll enjoy it as a side dish, on pizza, or on a sandwich.
Are you going to celebrate this fantastic holiday (if so, snap a photo, put it on your blog, and link to it in the comments)?
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My Mom’s Garden
This year we planted some popcorn at my mom’s house in her garden. She gets a lot more sun than we do, so she offered to expand her garden so we could have some space over there. We planted popcorn quite a while ago. While over for a visit on Wednesday, I took a photo of our lovely corn.
We’re keeping our eye on it, as soon as ears start to form we’re going to put an electric fence around it. My parents have always had trouble with coons in the corn. If you notice the pumpkin vines growing through the corn, this is a ‘Rouge Vif d’Etampes’ Cinderella pumpkin from my saved seeds. There are a few pumpkins set on the vines, I can’t wait to see them this fall (unless the deer get them like they did last year).
My mom’s garden is looking quite nice this time of year. This is what it looked like 2 months ago? As you can tell by the brownish color of everything, it’s been a little dry for the past couple weeks.
It’s always nice to have photos so you can see how well the garden is doing.
How do you monitor your gardens growth?
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Another Reason to Grow Your Own!
My friend Shaun mentioned that while out running one day he spotted a truck spraying something on a local field.
He assumed it was liquid manure at first, which is common to see farmers spraying on their fields. A closer look revealed something interesting.
That truck reads, “Brown Township Malvern Sewer District”. A couple days later he noticed a new sign had been placed kind of behind a tree, down on one corner of the field.
Sewer Sludge is defined as: an unpleasant material whose the quantities increase each year. According to the Center for Food Safety, this is what’s going on:
Every time you flush your toilet or clean a paintbrush in your sink, you may be unwittingly contributing fertilizer used to grow the food in your pantry. Beginning in the early 1990s, millions of tons of potentially-toxic sewage sludge have been applied to millions of acres of America’s farmland as food crop fertilizer. Selling sewage sludge to farmers for use on cropland has been a favored government program for disposing of the unwanted byproducts from municipal waste water treatment plants. But sewage sludge is anything but the benign fertilizer the Environmental Protection Agency says it is.
Sewage sludge includes anything that is flushed, poured, or dumped into our nation’s waste water system–a vast, toxic mix of wastes collected from countless sources, from homes to chemical industries to hospitals. The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material. In fact, hundreds of people have fallen ill after being exposed to sewage sludge fertilizer–suffering such symptoms as respiratory distress, headaches, nausea, rashes, reproductive complications, cysts, and tumors.
So I googled Class B sewer sludge to see what we were dealing with and I found this sickening bit of information:
Sludge is classified as either Class A or Class B, depending on the type of treatment it has received. Class A sludge has benefited from both pretreatment and treatment at the wastewater facility. The pathogens in Class A biosolids cannot exceed certain levels set by the EPA. Standards for Class B sludge are less stringent, and their use is therefore more regulated. A landowner who wishes to use Class B sludge as an alternative to conventional fertilizers must apply to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to register his site. Among other items, the application requires information on the type of land, the amount of buffer zones, and the type of soil. The applicant must also provide information from the wastewater treatment facility on the type of pollutants and pathogens in the sludge, and calculations of nutrient needs for the crops. The use of Class B sludge on land has been criticized by the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A landowner using Class A sludge does not have to register his land.
After searching a while for information I came across a few articles I though you might find interesting if you want to read more about the use of sewer sludge in agriculture.
* Here is a great article about sewer sludge.
* Another story about sewer sludge usage on hay that was fed to cows that resulted in their death, over at the Organic Consumers Association.
* Even the White House garden has been contaminated with sewer sludge.
* Bio-solids: by any other name, Sludge
* Sludge News: a website dedicated to information about and activism against the use of sewer sludge. Including a list of fertilizers sold at Hardware stores that contain sludge.
This is why I want to GROW MY OWN and keep as closed a system as possible in my gardens. I’ll put homegrown compost on my gardens thanks!
Did you know that sewer sludge was used in agriculture, particularly on the food we eat?
