Thrips

February 12, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I can’t help but think about thrips at this time of year. They seem to love my office. They crawl everywhere. I’m constantly swiping them off my face and arms, and they end up in drifts on my desk when they die.

Thrips are tiny cigar-shaped insects with hairy wings (the order name, Thysanoptera, means fringe-winged). Most suck plant juices, and they leave characteristic little puncture wounds in leaves. Some transmit plant diseases.

Thrips are fascinating insects for a number of reasons.

Their development from egg to adult is not quite incomplete metamorphosis (in which the young look like the adults, but lack wings), and is not quite complete metamorphosis (in which the young look very different, and go through a pupal stage before adulthood). It’s a mix of both, and differs among species within the order.

Thrips are also left handed. As a south paw myself, I appreciate this. Instead of having a symmetrical mouth, like most other insects, with mandibles on both sides, thrips only have a left mandible. No one knows why this is the case. I like to think it’s because left handedness is just better.

Another thing I find intriguing about thrips is that some species will bite people, though they feed on plant juices. Our thrips, which I believe are Limothrips cerealum, the grain thrips, have this annoying tendency. They don’t bite often, but now and again you’ll feel a little stab and wonder what the insect is playing at.

Even linguistically, thrips are interesting. “Thrips” is both singular and plural—one thrips, many thrips. Thus, in the following poem, I couldn’t rhyme thrip with trip, it had to be thrips with sips…;)

Thysanopteran

Little thrips,

What does it think

As it delicately sips

The juices of plants?

Does it prefer

My prizewinning rose?

Or does the pollen

Tickle its nose?

Does it find

The broccoli sweeter?

And how can it be

Such a big eater?

Attack of the Killer Squash

February 11, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

One of the new varieties in my garden this year is the Jumbo Pink Banana Squash.

It is neither pink, nor banana-like, but it IS jumbo—both plant and fruit.

Really jumbo.

Like, scary jumbo.

Like, “how are we going to eat even one of those?” sort of jumbo.

And earlier this week, they grew to, “OMG they’re going to take over” jumbo.

45 cm (18 inches) long and still growing…

I walked down the centre path in the garden, past the sweet corn, and something grabbed my face.

It was a pink banana squash tendril, a good five metres from the closest plant and hovering at eye level. As I recoiled and realised what it was, I couldn’t help exclaiming out loud, “It’s a pink banana squash!”

I was sure I heard a deep, “Mwahahaha!” in response.

Sunflowers

February 9, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

I am of the opinion that you can never have too many sunflowers.

I have Golden Toasted sunflowers in the vegetable garden, with big fat seeds for eating, and I have half a dozen other varieties of sunflower in other places around the property.

Sunflowers don’t like the wind here, and they tend to grow short and stocky or to fall over unless they’re staked or well protected from the wind. Still, I plant them wherever I can.

Sunflowers serve many purposes in my garden, beyond the seeds for eating. The blooms look great in the garden—pale yellow through orange to deep russet—and make stunning cut flowers, too. They also attract lots of insects. Though there are many pollenless varieties, I steer toward the varieties that produce copious pollen, because they are more attractive to insects. Pollen provides important protein for—bees flies, parasitic wasps, beetles, ants, and many other insects.
The pollen attracts some insects, and they, in turn attract others. Preying mantises regularly visit my sunflowers.

When autumn comes and the blooms are spent, the sunflowers (the entire plant), make a nutritious snack for the goats.

Beauty, food for me, food for my livestock, and food for the wildlife—what more can you ask of a plant?

Onion Excess

February 8, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

What does one do with 270 onions? That’s in addition to the 50 shallots and 50 purple onions ready to harvest.

Onions can be hit and miss for me. They’re so susceptible to birds, dry weather, excess heat, and weed competition when they’re young, that some years I get lucky and some years I don’t.

This year I got lucky.

We won’t be able to eat all these onions before they start sprouting. Long about October, they’ll know it’s spring and want to grow.

I’ll dehydrate some to use in backpacking food. I’ll be generous in my onion use all year. Perhaps I’ll introduce my kids to fried onion rings…oh, that’s dangerous!

And, like all good gardeners, I’ll give some away. My greatest pleasure as a gardener is having excess to give to friends, neighbours and strangers. I never plan on it, but it almost always happens with a few crops each year. Nothing beats sharing food.

Mullein

February 7, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Today we discovered a new weed in our yard—that brings the total tally of weed species on the property to 57. The new plant is mullein (Verbascum thapsus), a native to Europe, and a common weed all over the world. Our specimen was young–just a tiny floret, but during its second year, mullein can send up a flower stalk almost 2 metres tall.

Like many garden weeds, mullein was almost certainly brought to New Zealand on purpose in the early 1800s. It seems to have been used for nearly everything by various peoples at various times in history.

The Romans used the flower stalk dipped in tallow as a torch.

It has been used since ancient times as a remedy for coughs and asthma (in people and livestock), either by drinking a tea made of leaves or flowers, or by smoking the leaves.

It either ensured conception or prevented it, depending upon what place and time you lived.

It’s fuzzy leaves, rubbed on the cheeks, impart a rosy hue, like rouge. Preparations made from the leaves can also soften the skin.

A yellow hair dye can be made from the flowers.

A green dye can be made from the leaves (probably best not to use this on your hair—it’s apparently permanent).

It was supposedly used by witches and warlocks, and was considered a charm against demons.

Its fuzzy leaves can be used as a thermal lining in your shoes.

And, of course, as any Boy Scout knows, it makes fine toilet paper!

Just remember to keep track of which leaves you’ve used as toilet paper, so you don’t use them for tea…;)

Garden Companion

February 6, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I was tying up tomatoes this morning.

I plant most of my tomatoes along one long edge of the vegetable garden. That edge is made of 1.8 metre deer fencing (a remnant from a previous owner who ran greyhounds and divided the property into six long narrow runs for the dogs). On the fence, I’ve run black wind block cloth to give the tomatoes a little sheltered heat island. I train the plants right up the fence.

So, anyway, I was tying up tomatoes when I heard a rustling on the other side of the fence. I assumed a chicken had gotten out, as one of them has developed an annoying habit of getting out of the chicken paddock to eat raspberries.

But then a furry white paw shot through a hole in the wind block cloth to snatch at my fingers.

It was the cat, intrigued by the rustling on the other side of the fence.

When he got bored of attacking me across the fence, he lay against it for a while. When I finished the tomatoes, he followed me to another part of the garden, and lay down in the path to watch me while I worked.

I don’t know why the cat sometimes does this—acts more like a dog than a cat. Most of the time he ignores me in the garden, but now and again, he follows me around as though he doesn’t want to be out of sight.

Must be my annual staff performance review…

Hedgehogs

January 26, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 7 Comments

They’re adorable and unafraid of humans. They eat snails, slugs and grass grubs. What’s not to like about hedgehogs?

Unfortunately, a fair bit, here in New Zealand. In addition to eating pests, they also feast on ground nesting bird eggs and chicks, skinks, and many native and endangered invertebrates.

And they’re more common in New Zealand than they are anywhere in their native habitat.

And I think they’re more common in our yard than anywhere else in New Zealand.

Now that the days are getting shorter, I regularly step on them in the dark when I’m out milking and feeding the animals. I certainly wouldn’t walk barefoot through the yard at night here.

They snuffle around the flower beds, snorting and grunting, oblivious to anything non-edible. They spread compost all over the yard.

They also apparently love cucumbers—last year I had to trap one out of the garden after it managed to squeeze in through a hole in the rabbit fencing. It took a bite out of each cucumber—obviously trying to find the perfect one.

They like the apples and peanut butter I bait the possum traps with, and though I don’t aim to kill them, I will admit that I’m not upset when I catch a hedgehog instead of a possum (my trapping seems to have no effect whatsoever on the population of either pest, anyway…). They snatch the eggs of the spur-winged plovers that nest unsuccessfully every year in our paddock, and I’d much prefer plover chicks to hedgehogs in the yard.

It still doesn’t stop me from smiling when I see one trundling along through the grass.

They are adorable after all…

Respite

January 20, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

Before the rain…

A week ago, I was looking at a garden struggling to stay alive, even with my regular watering and mulching. Relentless days of hot sun and no rain to speak of since early spring—things were grim.

Then, last Friday night it rained. Saturday was cloudy and rainy. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were cloudy and misty. Four days of relief.

After the rain.

The garden responded. Many plants doubled in size in the past week. Zucchinis matured, pumpkin runners snaked into neighbouring beds, peas began a second flowering.

It will dry out again. The rain wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the drought. Already this afternoon, the temperature is back in the low 30s (nearly 90˚F).

But I’m thankful for the respite. It made all the difference to this week’s garden, and it will continue making a difference for weeks.

Sometimes that’s all we need—a vacation, a respite, a little time for recuperation, time to grow and fortify ourselves before we are plunged back into a struggle.

And now that it’s rained, my respite from weeding is over. The weeds responded as much as the crops did, and it’s back to the grindstone for me.

But I will do so with more cheer, knowing that the plants have had a break, too.

Solanaceae

January 18, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Tomatillo

Solanaceae—one of my favourite families of plants.

There are more than a few members of this family in the vegetable garden:

Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, cape gooseberries, capsicum (peppers), and tomatillos are all solanaceous plants.

Nicotiana

But they don’t end there. In the flower garden there are petunias and nicotiana, among the perennial fruits are gogi berries, and in the native garden there is poro poro.

And, of course, growing as weeds everywhere are black and hairy nightshade (these don’t get my favourite plant vote).

This diverse and sometimes tasty group of plants also includes many containing medicinal, poisonous or psychoactive chemicals (tobacco, mandrake, and deadly nightshade among them). Indeed, it’s best to be careful with the Solanaceae—even the edible ones contain poisons in the non-edible portions of the plants, or, as in the case of green potatoes, even in the edible parts. Solanine is the culprit in green potatoes—it causes diarrhoea, vomiting and hallucinations, and its bitter taste prevents herbivores from eating the potatoes. Other chemicals in the Solanaceae can have the opposite effect—reducing nausea in chemotherapy patients, and reversing the effects of poisoning by certain pesticides and chemical warfare agents.

And we’re still discovering more uses for these pharmacologically rich plants.

What’s not to like?

Gardener Overboard!

January 17, 2016January 17, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

It’s that time of year, I can’t seem to get out of the garden. The recent, much needed rain has made everything grow—I swear the plants are twice the size they were last week.

Which, of course, means that the tiny zucchini (courgettes) we were scrounging for three days ago have turned into monsters. We’ve gone from not quite having enough to overwhelmed overnight.

That’s usually the case, (see last year’s zucchini post) and you would think I’d learn…

But, of course, when you’re a Problem Gardener like I am, you just can’t resist. You can’t have just one variety of summer squash. Once you have one, you need to have another, and another…

I have five this year—Gold Rush, Costata Romanesco, Black Coral, Ambassador, Pink Banana Jumbo, Flying Saucers, and Sunbeam…Okay, that’s seven, but Black Coral and Ambassador are for all practical purposes the same, and I didn’t plant any more plants just because I planted two yellow patty pan type squash (who could resist a vegetable named Flying Saucers?).

And once again we will eat zucchini until we’re sick of it, and I’ll swear that I will only plant one (or maybe two?) varieties next year.

And once again, I’m sure I’ll come up with half a dozen excellent reasons why I need to plant five (er…seven) varieties.

Robinne Weiss

Fantasy / Sci-fi / Non-fiction

gardening