Britain is known for introducing us the best of the best — think Princess Diana, Harry Potter and fish and chips. Now we can thank the UK for bringing us a fantastic sun safety idea: the 3-hour-gardening rule.
21.07.2023 - 22:40 / awaytogarden.com
I THOUGHT IT WAS A FOOT-LONG STRAND of twine, except that it was moving, arching upward from the doormat again and again. What in the world? On that damp December day, I met my first nematomorph (above)—an ancient sister group to the nematodes capable of turning crickets into zombies that probably has some role in the bigger picture of insect control. I learned all that after a Google search for “thin worm” led me to the work of Ben Hanelt of the University of New Mexico, and the parasitic “horsehair worms” he’s wondered about since high school, and devotes his distinguished career to the study of. Ready for a stranger-than-truth tale of science fact and fiction? (And don’t panic—they have no interest in you or your pets.)Hanelt’s the guy who gets calls not just from curious types like me, but like clockwork from Oklahoma at the time of the first spring rain every year, when people find him to ask why their driveways are suddenly covered in the creatures, which can be a meters long (in some species) but are skinny like angel-hair pasta.“Something odd has to happen for hairworms to be on soil or vegetation, instead of in water, so at first when I got those calls I thought: It must be earthworms,” says Hanelt, a Research Assistant Professor with the Center for Evolutionary and Theoretical Immunology in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “But I asked one caller to send me some—and lo and behold, they were hairworms.”
It took years between the time Hanelt saw his first nematomorph, while on a survival-training hike in high school, until he actually knew what it was.
“There they were out in the middle of the forest in winter, in a bucket of water,” he recalls. He saved the strange animal,
Britain is known for introducing us the best of the best — think Princess Diana, Harry Potter and fish and chips. Now we can thank the UK for bringing us a fantastic sun safety idea: the 3-hour-gardening rule.
The Asian longhorned beetle (ALB; Anoplophora glabripennis) is not easy to miss – adults of this large, black beetle with white spots, black and white striped antennae, and blueish feet are between 1 and 1 ½” long (Fig. 1). ALB larvae are equally striking as the large, white segmented larvae can be nearly 2” in length (Fig. 2). Established populations in the U.S. are found in Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio, and a new infestation was recently found in Charleston County, South Carolina.
The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) (SLF) is the latest non-native species to take hold in the U.S. This planthopper is large (about a half-inch long) and originally from several countries in the Far East. It was first found in Pennsylvania in 2014, and active infestations are now established in Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and as of just last week, North Carolina. SLF has not been detected in South Carolina, but it is an insect for which we need to be on the lookout.
WHEN I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT SOMETHING, it’s hard to shut me up. I love plants, and frogs, so I blog about gardening; I love being a sister (well, most days I do), so I blog about that, too.
I’ll be roaming the Northeast in the early going, in places as close to home as the Berkshires of Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley of New York, but also across Massachusetts and as far as New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey and coastal Connecticut. Events here in the garden will begin again in April; stay tuned for a fuller schedule of those, with just the first couple mentioned below.What’s planned already:Saturday, February 19, 2 PM: Lecture to benefit Berkshire Botanical Garden, Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA.Thursday, March 3, 7 PM: R.J. Ju
Since 2011, Timothy has worked at Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, New York, which is becoming a horticultural destination for keen gardeners wanting inspiration–and a getaway for anyone just wanting to be surrounded by bold, contemporary plantings in a dramatic, historic setting. The Untermyer Gardens Conservancy is a non-profit organization collaborating with the City of Yonkers to facilitate the garden’s restoration (details on tours and how to visit otherwise are at the bottom of this page).In case you’re wondering: that garden has many vivid miles to go before it sleeps for winter. I even saw the phrase “floral fireworks” (such as the crape myrtles and hydrangeas in the right-hand photo below) used to describe it at the end of August, and there are plenty of foliage fireworks, too.Timothy and I worked together for years at “Martha Stewart Living” magazine, and he has been a gardener at the famed Wave Hill in New York City, and at the Garden Conservancy project called Rocky Hills
I PROMISED I WOULDN’T ADD EVEN AN EXTRA TRIP TO THE CURB WITH THE TRASH to my schedule, with all the mowing I have to do, but (big surprise) I layered on a couple of events, and I want to make sure you know about them, in case you are in the Hudson Valley/Berkshires vicinity this summer. Another container-gardening class, a 365-day garden lecture with an extra focus on water gardening and the frogboys, and a tour here in August (that last one you already might know about). Details, details:Sunday July 12, Containing Exuberance, container-gardening workshop, with Bob Hyland at Loomis Creek Nursery, near Hudson, New York, 11 AM to 1 PM, $5.
So I can invite guest experts to join me as well as share the program with other public-radio stations, we’re pre-taping “A Way to Garden With Margaret Roach” to stand alone, instead of airing live as part of my local station’s morning show, which it has been since March 2010.You can listen in to the first such standalone show here, right now. This week’s topic: When to sow what seeds, with guest Dave Whitinger of All Things Plants in Texas. Next time (February 4), the topic is why I’m going to grow calendul
These non-native “ladybugs,” introduced by the Department of Agriculture to help combat certain agricultural pests, have made themselves right at home in America—and in my house, too. In fall, the south-facing side of the exterior can be teeming with patches of them, as they look for places to tuck into and overwinter. The USDA imported lady beetles from Japan as early as 1916 as a beneficial insect, to gobble up unwanted pests on forest and orchard trees, but it was probably later releases, in the late 1970s and early 80s in the Southeast, that took hold. Today, multicolored Asian lady beetles have made themselves completely at home around the United States, easily adapting to regions as diverse as Louisiana, Oregon, and mine in New York State.
You may recall my previous conversations with Thomas, the co-author with Claudia West of the provocative 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.” Even though we both have worked around plants for many years, it’s as if Thomas sees them differently from the way I do, in a sort of super-savvy botanical 3-D. He doesn’t see them as mere decorative objects, but astutely reads their body language for clues to who they want to grow with (or not) and how to put them all together successfully.I love how he sees, and thinks, as you can glean from our lively Q&A, where he says things like this:And this:Though not intentionally so, the Times article turns out to be especially timely—and not just because it’s early spring, and we gardeners need to make smarter choices
Balick has spent more than 30 years learning how indigenous and ancient cultures have used herbs in health and healing, and the book’s subtitle, “A Practical Guide for Healthy Living Using Nature’s Most Powerful Plants,” speaks to that, as does the foreword by Dr. Andrew Weil. But it is also a book on how to identify, grow and even cook with them.Balick is an ethnobotanist (“a person who studies the relationship between plants, people and culture”). He is also Vice President for Botanical Science at The New York Botanical Garden, and has undertaken more than 75 expeditions as diverse as Micronesia, Belize and the Bronx, where he also directs a research program, studying traditional healing practices in ethnic urban communities.“I trade in my passport for a subway token, and go into the markets of New Yor