taking a closer look, with john dunstan

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

In some years different plants do better than others. In my garden this year is the spring for primulas and today’s crop shows off some of the strong colours that I have been enjoying.

Lemon posset is nothing new, but a fresh interpretation on how to serve the classic British dessert is putting it back on the map. Made of lemon zest and juice, heavy cream, sugar, salt, and sometimes limoncello or vanilla, lemon posset uses almost every part of the lemon—and TikTokers have taken it to the next level. In the cutest possible presentation of posset, creators everywhere are serving the dish right where it came from: the lemon peel.

My name is John Rohde. My garden is located 15 miles north of Baltimore in Towson, Maryland, in Zone 7b. This is the second full year for this pandemic garden. I enjoy mixing annuals and perennials with trees and tropicals in containers. There is a water feature, tubs of lotus, a patio, and a vegetable garden at the rear of my house.

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.

A rescue mission a few years back landed it in the sun again, and that’s what the bush clover wanted.Lespedeza thunbergii, a legume or pea relative as the shape of its flowers and foliage quickly gives away, is hardy in Zones 4-9. Give it sun, and not much else—well, except a very large space to grow into, as the arching stems of a mature bush clover will reach 6 feet across or wider, and stands nearly 6 feet high. My resurrected, relocated ‘Gibraltar’ is closing in on 8 feet across today.Various white forms, like ‘Albiflora’ or ‘White Fountain,’ are another possibility (I like the gaudier purple) and because he must always outdo us, plantsman Tony Avent offers the 4-by-6-foot ‘Spilt Milk,’ with purple flowers but wildly variegated foliage as its name implie

NOT CONTENT WITH ITS FIRST CLOSEUP, the yellow Clivia offered this by week’s end last week, a full-on flowerhead of massive proportion. A great plant, as I have already mentioned.Categorieshouseplants

Michael Wojtech of Know Your Trees dot com and author of “Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast” (Amazon affiliate link) can answer those questions, plus this one: Can you actually learn to identify trees by their bark (an especially useful skill now through spring, when many are leafless)? Hint: The answer is yes.Michael left a 15-year business career to pursue his love of natural history and writing, and earned his Master’s in Conservation Biology from Antioch University New England. His thesis, on tree bark, became the basis for the field guide. Though the book’s plant ID section covers trees of the Northeast, much of the ma

I HAVE LITTLE (NOTHING?) GOOD TO SAY about woodchucks, Marmota monax, even on their namesake Groundhog Day today. The only American animal with a holiday named for it simply makes me crazy by using my garden as a banquet table in any year he manages to get a foothold. My favorite nature writer, John Burroughs (1837-1921), didn’t have much use for the beasts, either—though he did name one of his Catskill Mountain houses Woodchuck Lodge.

John, whose dramatic and delicious purple ‘Dragon’ carrot is bright orange inside, was reassuring as ever. First, don’t feel bad, he said. “Carrots are one of the harder vegetables to grow,” confirms John (with flowering carrots in an OSA photo, above), and for a few reasons:They’re such small plants when they first sprout (the seed isn’t too big, either; I like to use pelleted, shown below, and there are now pelleted ones that meet organic certification requirements).To get really good quality you need “unchecked growth”—no obstacles either literal (like rocky or otherwise tough soil) or meteorological (extremes of heat, cold or especially dryness). “Succulence and flavor wi

This history of beelining, the other way to connect to honey bees besides keeping hives, is the subject of the book called “Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting,” by Cornell University biologist Thomas Seeley, just released in paperback edition. Tom, Horace White Professor in Biology in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell, has been passionately interested in honey bees since high school, eventually doing his doctoral thesis on them, and his ongoing scientific work has primarily focused on understanding the phenomenon of swarm intelligence with the help of these incredible animals.Learn about how a hive works, with its female-dominated order, about how and why Tom beelines to locate wild hives. And maybe most astonishingly listen about what he calls our “shared uniqueness” with the honey bees–what characteristic we share with

But who’s doing that critical, demanding work? To kick off what has become my annual Seed Series on the radio show and website, I interviewed geneticist and longtime plant breeder Dr. John Navazio—former senior scientist with the Organic Seed Alliance and now manager of plant breeding at Johnny’s Selected Seeds—to answer those seedy questions and more. Over the years, I have learned so much from John–including how to grow carrots (one of his breeding specialties). Read along as you listen to the Nov. 18, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my q&a with dr. john navazioQ. First, John: What does the Organic Seed Alliance, which was founded in 2003, do? A.