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Archive for the seeds tag

How long to vegetable seeds remain viable?

March 16, 2021   •   Leave a Comment

How long can vegetable seeds be kept? A year ago I purchased many vegetable seeds in hopes of starting a garden last spring. My plans were interrupted and now the garden is scheduled for this spring. The seeds are all dated 2011 and have been kept in their original packaging and stored in my basement. Will these seeds still be viable this spring?

Properly stored seed remains viable for different lengths of time depending on the type of seed. Be aware that seed companies may store seeds up to the number of years of their viability prior to selling them. If you purchased your seed from a reputable catalog or nursery, you can call them to find out what their company protocol is.

Since all your seed was purchased in 2011 and dated as such, you have a fair chance that the unopened packages will be viable. Most vegetable seeds are good for two years with some, like lettuce, viable up to six years. If they have been kept dry and cool in your basement, those conditions simulate dormancy.

To test for germination, sprout seeds between moist paper towels; if germination is low, either discard the seed or plant enough extra to give the desired number of plants. You will know quickly which seeds need to be repurchased.

Related: What are good vegetables to grow in a small space?

Related: Saving plant seeds for next season

Filed Under: Ask MG Tagged With: seeds, storage, vegetable, viable

Ask MG: How do I grow Cleome from seeds?

December 22, 2018   •   Leave a Comment

I saved the seed from my cleome plants last year. When I put the seed out this year, it grew a lot of giant weeds. What happened?

Cleome vary in height from 2 to 5 feet; some are bushy, others are stalky. The cleome you see most is spider flower (Cleome spinosa or hassleriana), or hybrids or cultivars that have the Cleome spinosa in their parentage. This plant can look beautiful in the back of the border, especially in a cottage style garden. In a more formal garden it can look out of place or weedy. Some people find the scent offensive, which is skunk-like. It produces many seeds and can spread like wildfire. To prevent this, remove flowers as soon as they have formed seed pods. The plant will make new flowers and usually keeps blooming all summer.

If your cleome from last year was not a true species but a hybrid—which are labeled with a “cross” symbol (X) in the name—the seeds will either be sterile or the plants that grow from them won’t “come true.” Instead the plants will resemble one or more of its ancestors. The only way to make sure your cleome will be the color and size that you want is to buy seed from a specific species, hybrid, or cultivar.

Filed Under: Ask MG Tagged With: cleome, Cleome spinosa, hassleriana, hybrid, seeds

Drawing wildlife into your garden

August 30, 2012   •   Leave a Comment

Here are some approaches and plants to think about
if you’d like to inject more life into your garden.

by Janet Macunovich / photos by Steven Nikkila

bird-sipping-water
For most wildlife, no meal is complete without a sip of water. Water may be the biggest draw to wildlife you can add to a landscape.

Bluebirds prefer insects and fruit to seed. They’re choosy about bugs, too. Their preferred insect prey are beetles, weevils, grasshoppers, crickets and caterpillars. (From the excellent, but out-of-print book American Wildlife & Plants: A guide to wildlife food habits by Alexander C. Martin, Herbert S. Zim and Arnold L. Nelson.)

“Whose garden is it?” asks the children’s book by that name. Everyone and everything, from the gardener to the rain and the resident rabbit, replies, “It’s mine!”

How true, that so many have claims on a garden. In the case of my own garden and some I tend, the gardener doesn’t even list his or her own claim first, but would answer that question, “It’s theirs and I’m glad. I wished for and worked to attract the birds, the rabbits, the groundhog, the fox, the butterflies and all the rest. With every change, I think about them and how to keep them.”

Basic recipe: Food, water, shelter

Life requires all three. If you spring for one—food, for instance—you might nab some visitors if the creatures you’re luring are already nearby because your yard or another property in your vicinity is providing them water and shelter. On the other hand, hang out a hummingbird feeder in a large new development devoid of big trees and though that lure sparkles red in the sun and you change it religiously to keep the syrup from spoiling, you may never see a hummer. The habitat a ruby-throated hummingbird looks for is wooded and though it may fly a mile to feed it wants to nest where it’s woodsy.

So make a list of the wildlife you’d like to see, learn the particulars of their basic recipe, check what’s on hand and what’s missing in your neighborhood that they need, and add what it takes. Go wild!

Natural foodstuffs and supplements

Food is probably the easiest prescription to fill. Scatter some seed on the ground and you’re likely to get a few sparrows, whose presence may cue birds of other types to come see “what’s up.”

That offering is supplemental food. Make sure your yard also offers natural food if you want the most diversity, all year, without having to break the bank to keep all those hungry beaks and bellies filled. What Nature provides often can’t be duplicated at a feeder: A well-rounded, nutritionally balanced diet.

When you look around your neighborhood to see what it has to offer the wildlife on your invitation list, look for plants that produce seeds and berries. Notice or look up what time of year each crop becomes available.

If you find that every berry bush and seed plant around ripens in late spring or early fall, you might be able to fill the summer and winter gaps with dogwoods for late summer berries, members of the sunflower family that offer up seed at the end of July, or viburnum and hawthorn that carry fruit into winter. You might boost your whole neighborhood’s rating to that of a five-star wildlife resort and at the same time become the best seat in the house because the table will be loaded only in your yard at certain times.

One critical menu item you might overlook is bugs. On the wing, in the ground, as eggs and larvae, they’re lunch to almost everything bigger. Insects are probably even more important to birds than berries and seeds, because they’re a better source of protein. Even birds that eat more fruit than anything else at most times of year will switch to bug collection when they’re raising young. It’s just plain better fuel for getting a nestling up to speed and out on is own.

As you assess your surroundings for wildlife potential, keep an eye open for pesticide use that you might be able to influence, and think hard about your own use of insecticides. This isn’t to say that some bug-killing isn’t warranted, only that the see-bug-kill-bug approach is one that has to be moderated if you’d like to enjoy the company of organisms that are higher on the food chain.

As well as protecting bugs so they’ll be there on the menu for other animals, many people cater to certain insects on a par with songbirds. They do, and you can, provide the plants that caterpillars eat, introduce and nurture fascinating predators such as preying mantises and lightning bugs, and design the landscape so it offers one after another of the flowers that serve nectar-sipping bees and butterflies.

toads-in-backyard-pond
So many toads come to the pond in my backyard (these are Bufo americanus americanus, the eastern American toad) that the springtime chorus is loud enough to have caused comment from neighbors who were, thankfully, amused to learn the source.

We may not all have the waterside property that would appeal to an osprey, but we can provide nesting materials for the birds that do take up residence. So don’t pick up all those twigs that fall. They may end up in a hawk’s nest. Birds are great improvisers—note the yellow tape incorporated in this osprey’s nest—so do consider scattering atop an evergreen shrub the fur you brush from your dog, leftover yarn and bits of fabric for the birds.

Water: Clean and safe

Bees and butterflies may be able to live for days on nectar alone but for most wildlife no meal is complete without a sip of water. Wild animals know where to find it in natural bodies of water, puddles, and tree cavities and crotches that collect rainwater. To tiny critters such as butterflies and hummingbirds, even a dewy leaf is a beverage bar.

Yet drought happens. Then, the water we spill into a birdbath, the sprinkler we leave running and a garden pond or fountain can be lifesavers. Looking for entertainment on a dry summer day? Set up a sprinkler so that it hits shrubbery as well as a lawn or garden, and watch the birds check in to perches high and low for a drink and a wash. Position your chair so you can see both the spot being watered and any place downhill where runoff accumulates, since some species prefer to shower, others to bathe.

Running and dripping water is such a lure that even a simple leaky bucket can call birds from a quarter mile. Try it. Put a very small hole in an expendable bucket and perch it on a bench or table so it drips onto a flat stone. Or leave a hose barely dripping over that same rock. Some member of your wild community will find it, others will notice, and soon a line will form!

You may not realize how important your garden pond is until you make a point of watching it all day or through the night. Toads gather there to mate, frogs take up residence, dragonflies drop their eggs in, and squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, and even deer stop in to sip.

What we saw in our own ponds over the years prompted us to design the one we have now with creature comfort in mind. We made it deep enough that at least some fish would always escape a heron’s fishing spree. We put a layer of sand at its bottom so frogs could dig in and remain at the bottom through winter. At one edge we created a beach—a sloping exit point where birds, snakes or shrews that fall in might be able to climb back out. Within the lined excavation we included a bog, where a depression in the sand can be a butterfly puddling point. We do minimal cleanup in spring to preserve the dragonflies that spend winter there as mosquito-eating larvae.

Whether you set out a simple water bowl for the ducks who forage at the foot of your feeder, fill an old dishpan with sand plus just enough water to form a shallow puddle on top for the butterflies, or go whole hog on a birdbath with fountain, keep two words in mind: clean and safe. Change the water often so mosquitoes can’t breed there, and keep it shallow so the smallest of your visitors can wade without drowning.

Shelter is for travel and storm as well as raising a family

Birdhouses and nesting boxes are the first things most people list when asked what “shelter” means in relation to wildlife. Others include the dog hair, yarn and other building materials they set out to be taken by nest builders. Some recognize that they’re providing shelter when they ignore standard pruning practice to leave cluttered crotches and decayed “snags” on trees to serve as nest bases and natural nesting cavities. All of these places and things associated with raising young are shelter but still only one part of a bigger picture.

heron-on-a-log
We’ve enjoyed every bit of wildlife drama that’s taken place in our garden but we did intervene after seeing what effective fishers the herons are. We don’t exclude the heron—after all, our fish do multiply and could become overcrowded—but we did make the pond deeper in spots than a wading bird can navigate and added rocks that form underwater caves where fish can hide.

Safe passage is part of shelter. It encompasses hedge rows that are travel lanes for critters which might otherwise draw the attention of a hawk or owl. Brush piles fall into this category since they can admit wee beasties while keeping out the larger animals that hunt them. Clumps of herbaceous perennial stems left standing over winter count, too, as they may harbor developing caterpillars and ladybugs, or screen the entrance to anything from a chipmunk hole to a fox’s den.

Warming stations are shelter, too. The southeast face of a hedge is the warm spot many creatures seek after a cold night. Even better are shrubs along the east or south side of a building, where the sun warms one side of the plants while the other holds heat that escapes from windows and chinks in the wall. Likewise, the sunny side of a rock pile is a magnet for cold-blooded reptiles. Before you shudder and dismantle your rock wall, consider that it’s also the place where cold-blooded butterflies and dragonflies can warm themselves.

Shelter is also the proverbial port in a storm. When the weather turns ugly, thickets, evergreen trees and dense shrubs can quickly become as crowded as a park pavilion when thunder and lightning interrupt a 4th of July celebration. Trees on the lee side of a slope might serve as a roost for hundreds of birds when strong winds blow during migration time. Even the sheltered side of an ornamental grass becomes a busy spot when winter winds blow.

Can we invite one wild species and bar others? We can try. But take away warming stations such as south-facing rock ledges because they attract reptiles, and that might discourage dragonflies that also like to sun themselves there. Personally, I’m pleased to support at least four dragonfly species in my yard, including this common whitetail. They are non-stop eaters of insects on the wing, and as larvae they’re just as deadly to water-dwelling bugs such as mosquito larvae. I don’t want to lose a single dragonfly. Besides, it can be a good thing to have garter snakes around, as they prey on insects and voles too large to be eaten by dragonflies.

So set your stage to both invite wildlife and allow you to watch from a prime seat. Pick plants to feed and house those birds, bats, bufos, bugs or bunnies. Cluster them to block the wind and slow a predator. Place the densest groups to the north and west of where you sit so you’ll have a clear view of the troupe that assembles there.

Then, make yourself comfortable and keep binoculars close by. A constantly changing cast of characters will pass though that space, improvising as they do. They may put wear and tear on the set you built, but rein in your urge to tidy it too much. Add more of what you see most used. Intervene if you must but allow some rowdiness because sometimes that’s what brings out the most impressive performances. While other people are filling their photo albums with beautiful still lifes, you’ll be weaving the wild into your life.

Plant early-, mid-season and late-ripening species. Put them where they’ll prosper. Don’t deadhead. Add more of whatever appeals most to “your” birds.

Seeds for the birds

goldfinch-on-a-sunflower
One sunflower plant can keep this goldfinch coming back day after day from early August into November. What’s tough for gardeners is to let the plant go to seed—the urge is to clip off spent flowers to keep it neat. But birds like things messy!

Seed that ripens in early summer:
• Pot marigold (Calendula)
• Tickseed (Coreopsis)

Seed that ripens mid- to late summer:
• Bachelor button
• Bellflower (Campanula)
• Bull thistle
• Chicory
• Cosmos
• Love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus)
• Marigold
• Portulaca

Seed that ripens in fall and remains available into winter:
• Aster
• Coneflower
• Fountain grass
• Phlox
• Sunflower (annual and perennial species)
• Switchgrass

 

When seed has no draw for a songbird

butterfly-on-butterfly-bush
We watched this monarch butterfly successfully defend its butterfly bush against a hummingbird. The butterfly flew at the hummingbird each time it approached, fending it off until the hummingbird simply perched and stared as the butterfly sipped nectar.

When it’s hungry, almost any bird will eat an oil-rich seed such as thistle or sunflower. However, some, such as mourning doves, cardinals, sparrows, house finches and goldfinches, prefer seed and eat more of it than anything else.

Other birds, including orioles, cedar waxwings, robins, thrashers and woodpeckers, are not seen so often at feeders because their diets consist primarily of fruit or insects. To attract fruit and insect eaters, put out fruit and suet cakes.

Both hummingbirds and butterflies sip nectar and may vie for any of the flowers on this list, but most butterflies must perch to feed while hummingbirds can hover.

Nectar drinkers need masses of flowers. A hummingbird may visit 1,000 blooms per day to obtain enough nectar—typically, 1/2 its own body weight in nectar, plus insects and water. So to do the best for hummingbirds and butterflies, stick with what grows well in your garden, and grow a lot of it.

Hummingbirds
Ajuga
Azalea/rhododendron
Bleeding heart
Canna
Catmint
Columbine
Coral bells
Dahlia
Daylily
Delphinium
Four o’clock
Foxglove
Fuchsia
Geranium
Gladiola
Hibiscus
Honeysuckle
Impatiens
Iris
Larkspur
Cleome
Lobelia
Morning glory
Nicotiana
Petunia
Quince
Rose of Sharon
Salvia
Snapdragon
Trumpet vine
Virginia bluebells
Weigela
Wisteria
Zinnia

Butterflies
Rock cress/Arabis
Aster
Bull thistle
Candytuft
Celosia
Coneflowers
Gaillardia
Joe pye weed
Lavender
Milkweeds/Asclepias
Pincushion flower
Plumbago
Sedum
Verbena

Both
Beauty bush
Bee balm/Monarda
Butterfly bush
Dianthus
Elderberry
Lantana
Lilac
Phlox

Bug patrol!

black-capped-chickadee-creeping
This bird we think of as a cheery, friendly creature is death on bugs. When you see a black-capped chickadee creeping along a tree trunk or limb of a shrub, you can be sure it’s plucking out insects that hoped to spend winter in the bark crevices.

The black-capped chickadee we love as a cheery presence at the thistle seed feeder actually prefers to eat insects. Even when provided with plentiful seed, it forages in the garden where it eats large numbers of bugs and their eggs. It eats eggs of moths, aphids, katydids and spiders in winter. During the growing season it’s a very good hunter of moths, caterpillars, spiders, weevils, beetles, flies, wasps, bugs, aphids, leafhoppers and treehoppers.

About those buzzy little wrens who scold at you when you garden too close to their home: Give way! On average, a pair of wrens delivers 500 insects per day to their brood.

Janet Macunovich is a professional gardener and author of the books “Designing Your Gardens and Landscape” and “Caring for Perennials.” Read more from Janet on her website www.gardenatoz.com.


Filed Under: Janet’s Journal Tagged With: birds, butterflies, garden, seeds, shelter, water, wildlife

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