Priscilla’s Garden… Weekly tips and insights from Master Gardener Priscilla Hayes, St. Gregory

the Great’s Green Team Ministry Lead.

What’s going on in YOUR garden? Priscilla would love to hear from you! Drop her

a line at priscilla.ellen.hayes@gmail.com and include a picture of something in

your garden, with a bit of explanation or inspiration!

4/20/20 GARDEN TIPS, EARTH WEEK!

It’s Earth Week, 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, this Wednesday. I

remember being in high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where the whole

school (we had a small school) gathered in the big common space to listen to a

folksinger.

I didn’t have a garden then. A garden teaches us the best lessons—mostly by

example—about caring for the Earth which cares for us.

So I will bore you with new pictures of my tomato seedlings, all thinned down to

one per individual cell of my four packs now. But I have a reason—I just

happened to pull down my book A to Z of Companion Planting, by Pamela

Allardice, and found out that growing tomato plants in the same bed as cabbage-

family plants can protect the cabbage-family plants from some of their worst

insect pests. That inspired me to start seeds for brussels sprouts this weekend,

so I can plant them in between my tomato plants this year. Gardening is always

an experiment, and I will be sure to learn something, no matter how it turns out.

Let me know if you want me to look up a possible companion for something in my

book.

WEED OF THE WEEK

Here are two pictures of garlic mustard, growing in the little windrow of trees at

the edge of my neighborhood. Garlic mustard is a biennial, which means it grows

for exactly two years, coming up from seed the first year to be a little rosette

shaped plant, then growing a flower stem and seeds the second year. The

seeds—of which there are generally at least 600 per plant—are carried on wind

and water to everywhere, to start new plants.

Garlic mustard has roots that send out chemicals into the soil, keeping other

plants from getting established as neighbors.

One of the most interesting things about garlic mustard is its origin here—it was

intentionally brought here as a medicinal and food plant, with its earliest known

occurrence being 1868, according to the New York Invasive Species website at

http://nyis.info/invasive_species/garlic-mustard/. You can actually make a pesto

of its leaves—probably the best thing to do with it, so it won’t grow back in your

yard.

It’s pretty easy to pull, so get it now, before it sets seed! And let me know if you

make a pesto, priscilla.ellen.hayes@gmail.com.

4/19/20

STARTING SEEDLINGS INDOORS

These are my tomato seedlings, growing indoors, getting their first pairs of “true

leaves” (since the first two leaves that appear on a tomato plant are seed leaves

just to get the plant started). I am fortunate that my husband set up grow lights in

a shelf by the window, so I can add some additional light during the day. But that

is definitely not necessary—you can grow seedlings along any window, and I

have done it that way many times. You will want to rotate them each day, as they

turn their little sightless but light-sensitive selves towards the light.

Over the years I have collected lots of resources on starting seeds—how, when

for each kind of seed, etc. Here are just a couple to get you started, if you are

new to this.

Mercer County Master Gardeners Seed Starting Intro:

https://mgofmc.org/jumpstarting-spring-starting-seeds-indoors/. This also has

links to articles on planning a garden and lots of other basics.

In case that isn’t enough: Rutgers Seed Starting Intro:

https://njaes.rutgers.edu/fs787/

According to the Mercer County Master Gardener site, the average last frost date

in our area is May 10—this is the date you count back from when planning when

to start your seedlings of any specific plant indoors.

Many seeds last for more than one year, which means you can try things you may

have bought before the current year, or, of course, order seeds.

4/12/20 GARDEN PLANT OF THE WEEK: PULMONARIA

This is one of my lungwort or pulmonaria plants, just getting started in one of the

few shady parts of my flower gardens. These plants are perennial, and each

year, there seem to be a few more of them popping up.

You may notice there are a couple different flower colors. The flowers start out

pink, then change to a purple and then blue after they get pollinated. This

actually signals bees or any other pollinators that it isn’t worth their time to visit

that flower anymore—no nectar or pollen here! The main pollinators are hairy-

footed bees (which are solitary bees) and bumblebees (which have colonies).

Because the plants flower so early, they provide food for these bees when there

are not so many flowers around.

It turns out the seeds, which develop around May or June, are really special, too.

Each seed will have a fatty pod attached to the actual seed. This pod attracts

ants, who drag off the seeds and pods, leaving the seed somewhere on the way

to taking the fatty pod back to the nest as food. The plant gets its seeds moved

around. This must be why I keep seeing more!

WEED OF THE WEEK…

HERE’S ONE YOU MIGHT WANT TO LEARN TO LOVE, AT LEAST A LITTLE!

As you can see from the photo, dandelions can live in the smallest spaces. I, for

one, love their smell, and the fuzzy feeling of their flowers. But they are a weed

that every lawn purist (including my husband) loves to hate.

Dandelions provide a lot of food and even some shelter for wildlife:

• 93 species of insects collect nectar from dandelion flowers, including bees,

and butterflies such as sulphers, cabbage whites and admirals.

• Ruby throated hummingbirds weave dandelion fluff into their nests.

• The seeds and foliage are eaten by at least 33 species of wildlife including

4 different kinds of sparrows: chipping, field, house and song, the American

Goldfinch, the indigo bunting, the quail, turkeys, chipmunks, rabbits and

white tailed deer.

• Leaves are eaten by caterpillar larvae of 13 species of butterflies and

moths. If we don’t feed the caterpillars, we won’t see any butterflies or

moths!

However, dandelions were not originally found in New Jersey, being brought here

by colonists who valued their leaves, flowers and roots for culinary uses and teas.

Are they harmful to the environment, since they are non-native? Turns out that

they are one of a minority of non-natives that are not an ecological problem,

according to the Columbia University Introduced Species Summary Project.

Maybe it’s time to learn to love dandelions!

See http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoff-

burg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/invbio_plan_report_home.html.

4/5/20

WEEDS & SEEDLINGS

I am constantly glad that my garden hasn’t heard about COVID-19 nearly bringing

the world to a stop. In fact, having to slow down has make me think about spring

in my garden a bit more than in recent years. That may sound crazy to those

who think of me as the crazy garden lady, but I always had so many places I

needed to be before—not this spring.

Here are my radish seedlings, the first two leaves just peeking up out of the

ground.

Here are the onion seedlings I purchased, just starting to regrow the tops of their

leaves that were cut off for shipping to me.

And here is the weed I challenge you to get out and pull right now—bittercress! I

don’t really know if it is hairy bittercress or some other kind, but I know that if I

don’t get it out right now, it will set its seeds, and the seeds will shoot themselves

all over my yard. Yes, this is the weed that shoots seeds when you pull it—if you

wait too long to pull it. So get it now, while the seedpods are still green and you

might have a chance of them not ripening all the way.