YOU are Invited to the Garden Photo Show Reception

You are invited to view the winning images of the 8th annual Washington Gardener Photo Contest at an art show at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna, VA. All 17 stunning photos were taken in DC-area gardens. Both inspirational and educational, this show represents the best of garden photography in the greater DC metropolitan region.

The photo show reception is Sunday, August 31 from 2:00-4:00pm at the Meadowlark Visitor Center's lobby. The opening reception is open to the public and is free to attend. You may also come by and view the photos any time during the normal Visitor Center hours (10am-7pm daily). The photo show runs through October 1.

Washington Gardener Magazine is already announcing a 9th Annual Washington Gardener Photo Contest. Start gathering your images now and throughout this year. Most all of the entry rules will remain the same as this year’s contest. We will again accept the entries during the first three weeks of January.

Washington Gardener magazine (http://www.washingtongardener.com/) is the gardening publication specifically for the local metro area — zones 6-7 — Washington DC and its suburbs. Washington Gardener Magazine’s basic mission is to help DC area gardens grow better. The magazine is written entirely by local area gardeners.

Meadowlark Botanical Gardens (www.nvrpa.org/park/meadowlark_botanical_gardens) is a park of beauty, conservation, education and discovery. Throughout the year at this 95-acre complex are large ornamental display gardens and unique native plant collections. Walking trails, lakes, more than 20 varieties of cherry trees, irises, peonies, an extensive shade garden, native wildflowers, gazebos, birds, butterflies, seasonal blooms and foliage create a sanctuary of beauty and nature. Meadowlark is part of Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority.

Video Wednesday: Garden Writers Get Happy!

I'm just back for the annual Garden Writers Symposium -- held this year in Pittsbugh, PA
I am exhausted from the 18+ hour ideas, but also inspired and most of all HAPPY to have such a wonderful week with my garden communication colleagues.
Take a look at this flashmob video we filmed there at Schenley Plaza.

Don't forget to PLANT SOMETHING!

Discuss the Signature of All Things with our Garden Book Club

For our final 2014 selection of the Washington Gardener Magazine Book Club, we will be reading:   
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.

We will meet at the La Madeleine at 8435 Georgia Avenue  in downtown Silver Spring, MD, on Thursday, October 16 from 6:30-8:00pm. (Please plan to purchase some food and drinks while there, since we will not be paying them for this meeting space.)

 

The book club meetings are FREE and open to anyone who would like to attend.

 

Please RSVP to "WG Book Club" at WashingtonGardener@rcn.com. I will be limiting attendance to 20. If you need to cancel, let me know ASAP so we can give your spot to someone else, should we have a wait-list. 

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This Petunia is No Pig

Guest Blog post by Rachel Shaw

Wild Petunia (Ruellia humilis) is a charming and tough native blooming now in my yard. The delicate pale purple flowers last only about a day, but are constantly replenished. Wild Petunia, like many common names, is a bit misleading; they are no relative of cultivated petunias, though the flowers do have some similarity in appearance.

Like half the plants in my front yard, my Ruellia were dug up on short notice this spring to be transplanted back following replacement of a broken sewer line. The Ruellia took this disruption in stride. They weren’t fussy about the poor quality clay soil brought up by the dig, and didn’t seem to need much in the way of supplemental water following transplant.

Previously they had coexisted happily in amongst the Closed Gentian, and with a somewhat more upright appearance in the moister, richer soil. Now in the more sparsely planted and drier yard, they have stretched themselves out, with a look that is more that of a ground cover. Note to the horticulture trade: promote Wild Petunia instead of Periwinkle!

What native plants are blooming in your yard or nearby?

About the Author

Rachel Shaw focuses on vegetable gardening and growing native plants in her small yard in Rockville, Maryland. She blogs at http://hummingbirdway.blogspot.com/.

Check back here on the 10th of each month for the next installment in this guest blog series on Mid-Atlantic native plants.

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Video Wednesday: Franciscan Monastery Gardens

Here is a terrific video of one of my favorite gardens in the Mid-Atlantic region, the Franciscan Monastery in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC. I visit it several times a year as each season brings more to see and explore there. I recently took my garden club along for a formal tour of the grounds and they raved about the bulb displays. The garden grounds are open to the public every day of the year. Best of all, it is FREE and accessible by public transit!

Find out about how you can schedule your own garden tour at http://www.myfranciscan.org/monastery...

Register for a Fun Flower Arranging Workshop

Join me on Sunday afternoon, 8/24, and get your flower arrangement on at On The Purple Couch in Kensington, MD. The class will go over Flower Arranging basics and then jump into playing with flowers. In class, we will discuss the basics such as container selection, how to get flowers to last longer, design techniques, stretching your flower budget, and much more.

Each attendee will leave with at least one arrangement of her own to take back to their home/apartment. You will learn how to make a country casual, hand-tied arrangement that you can take home and proudly display or give as a gift. Aside from learning the Hand-Tied method, we will cover: Sourcing Cut Flowers. Prepping Flowers, Flower Arranging Tools, Making Arrangements  Last Longer, and the Basic Rules of Arranging (and the ones you can ignore). No prior florist skills or experience required! 

And YES, men and children over age 10 are most welcome to register too!

Register at:
http://www.onthepurplecouch.com/shop/flower-arrangement-with-editor-of-washington-gardener-august-24th-230-400-pm/

Naked Ladies: You Can Grow That!

Lycoris

Naked Ladies in my garden:  How scandalous!

Lycoris squamigera aka Naked Lady, Surprise Lily, Magic Lily, Resurrection Lily. Truth is, they are not lilies at all and are in the Amaryllis family.





They are gorgeous and are a great cut flower as well, lasting well over a week in a vase. AND they smell lovely to boot! THIS is why I don't leave Washington, DC in the summer swelter, would hate to miss these gorgeous blooms.

Lycoris grow from a large bulb and can take a year or two to recover and bloom after you plant them. They are an old-fashioned favorite and you will often see them coming up around old, abandoned home sites. If you are not lucky enough to inherit some pass-along bulbs, you can order them from heirloom bulb companies.
 
They are hardy to zones 5-9 and prefer a sunny to part-sun location. Naturalizes by bulb-offsets. Provide medium moisture in well-drained soils. Cover with mulch in winter.

In the spring, you will see the foliage come up and then quickly die back and disappear. In mid-summer, after a good soaking rain, the tall stalks will suddenly shoot up and the flowers will appear without any foliage, hence their colorful nicknames. These are the ultimate "set-it and forget-it" plant.

Garden Bloggers You Can Grow That! Day on the 4th of each month was started by C. L. Fornari of Whole Life Gardening because she believes “Gardening is one of the most life-affirming things we can do.…We need to thoroughly saturate people with the belief that plants and gardening are worth doing because of the benefits gained.” Garden bloggers who agree post about something worth growing on the fourth day of every month. Read this month’s You Can Grow That! posts.

Fenton Friday: Basil Bonanza

It is Pesto time! Faced with a garden club summer potluck gathering tomorrow, I have to whip up a main dish. (Annoyingly, appetizers and desserts are not allowed and those are really the only categories of food in my repertoire!) So I looked to my community garden plot for inspiration and found that it is the perfect time to pinch-back and harvest handfuls of fragrant basil to make pasta with pesto sauce.

I'm a bit of a pesto snob, it has to be fresh, made with toasted pine nuts, and a loads of Romano cheese. Truth be told, the green component is really just a vehicle for delivering those delicious bites of nuts and melted cheese into my mouth.

What is your favorite pesto recipe?

Video Wednesday: How to Prune a Hardy Kiwi

If you have a Hardy Kiwi vine, now is the time to give it a hard pruning. In this video, Michael McConkey of Edible Landscaping in Afton, VA, demonstrates the best pruning techniques for a Hardy Kiwi.

Win a Trapstik for Wasps in July 2014 Washington Gardener Magazine Reader Contest

For our July 2014 Washington Gardener Magazine Reader Contest, Washington Gardener is giving away a Trapstik for Wasps (Retail value: $20.) “TrapStik® works by luring wasps to a sticky surface using the three dimensional pattern and color combination they find most attractive,” explains Rod Schneidmiller, president and founder of Sterling International, the manufacturer of RESCUE!® products. The TrapStik® for Wasps uses this new 3D technology to catch queen wasps in spring before they have time to build nests. It keeps working from summer through fall to catch aggressive worker wasps. The trap works to catch paper wasps, carpenter bees, and mud daubers.
   To enter to win the Trapstik for Wasps, send an email to: WashingtonGardener@rcn.com by 5:00pm on July 31 with “Trapstik” in the subject line and in the body of the email, please also include your full name and mailing address. Tell us: “What bugs you in the garden.” The trap’s winner will be announced and notified on August 1.

UPDATE

We have our winner! Congratulations to Linette Lander of Takoma Park, MD, whose entry was chosen at random from among the submitted responses to our July reader contest.   Look out for our monthly reader contest on the front page of our Enewsletter and enter for your chance to win great garden prizes!

Fenton Friday: Fall Already?!

kale seedlings

It is only one month into summer, but this week at my plot in the Fenton Community Garden autumn has already started to makes its presence felt. First, the weather has continued to be unseasonably cool with low humidity (no complaints here!) and second, several seedlings popped up from the Kale I let go to seed earlier in the season. That means, it is probably about time for me to start thinking about what fall crops I want to grow and to begin them soon.

Thanks to the cool summer, I still have lots of gorgeous carrots in the ground. I pick one or two per day to add to my dinner salad. That will be one of the fall crops I re-seed soon. I also want to try direct-sowing broccoli this year, rather than to buy started seedlings. I will see if the weather cooperates for doing that.

Tomorrow I'm visiting the Montgomery County Master Gardeners Grow It Eat It open house and I hope to pick up a few tips for my tomatoes which always seem to suffer some kind of foliar disease or another. I am bewildered as to how some of my fellow plot owners are able to grow full, lush tomato plants with clean foliage given our all-organic mandate.

carrots

While on the tomato topic, I realized why my large tomato is not "ripening" at all, I forgot that I planted the 'Evergreen' variety - LOL! Guess, I'll just have to pick that one when it looks heavy and full enough and not by color.

What is growing in your edible garden this week?