Sometimes it’s easy to go a little too hard at the first pollen buffet of the season and you need to #twerk it off. Clean yourself up, little one!
#gardening #pollinators #bees #Invertebrates #MakeAMess #LeaveTheLeaves #NoSpray 🌱
Two stickers with creamy backgrounds, one showing a fig with a David Bowie vibe labeled ‘Figgy Stardust’ and the other showing a white goose in a silly hat holding a basket of berries in its beak and a bigger illustration of gooseberries on the left labeled ‘Silly Gooseberry’. Both from One Green World nursery in Oregon.
Speaking of Gooseberries, I collect plant and bug/other nature stickers to decorate the silver steel boxes I organize my seed packets in so I just got these two winners.
#gardening #GrowFood #KitchenGarden #NoSpray 🌱
What a difference a week makes! Gooseberry leafing out with a mission to thrive now!
#gardening #GrowFood #KitchenGarden #NoSpray 🌱
Beautiful weather means #bee benders. We have all the early #NativePlants ephemerals you can think of but none are flowering quite yet so that is why we keep our Crocuses as emergency food for unusually warm early days. Pollen-covered bee butts is max #SmallJoys.
#gardening #pollinators #NoSpray 🌱
I def get enjoying all species for unique beauty, but more I’ve leaned in to #NoSpray #gardening with #NativePlants, more I’ve come to respect food chain & balance it provides. Just like caterpillars turn into #butterflies & #moths but they’re also key #birds food so have to let #nature do nature.
Tiny clusters of groundcover sedum, some already showing signs of bud clusters for early blooms and a second cluster of thick short foliage that I don’t have notes for in my planting list right now.
Shapely foliage of Hydrophyllum virginianum (Virginia Waterleaf) with a hint of red tracing the center peeking out from twigs and leaf litter.
More #NativePlants showing out early. Tons of Sedum ternatum including a few buds already on left next to something I don’t remember right now. Right is emerging Hydrophyllum virginianum (Virginia Waterleaf). So many happy plants!
#gardening #FantasticFoliage #NoSpray #bloomscrolling 🌱
Fresh green shoots with long vertical veining poking through last seasons young brown growth.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#7 Carex muskingumensis (Palm Sedge), a late season sale planting last year to help add unusual textured matrix & #birds food to my dappled shade front beds.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
A rose-like cluster of ridged green leaves with smaller leaves with burgundy undersides reaching towards the sky.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#6 Pycnanthemum muticum peeking through. Absolute ironclad grower #pollinators love.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Very small green stacks of leaves emerging all over in a wide spreading fashion.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#5 Phlox divaricata (Woodland Phlox) which has beautiful early blue flowers & spread nicely.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Loose fans of shapely foliage with purple stems.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#4 Thalictrum dioicum (Early Meadowrue) I believe based on location plus looser form & purplish stems, though it can look similar to young Aquilegia foliage.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Ladder-like pointy deep green leaves with a hint of red.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#3 Polemonium reptans (Jacob’s Ladder) perfectly tough to soften the shady sidewalk edges.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Curvy palmate thickly textured mid green clusters.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#2 Stylophorum diphyllum (Celadine Poppy) with its shapely #FantasticFoliage.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Small clusters of unfurling soft green leaves.
#NativePlants new foliage popping up in my garden just before this week’s snow.
#1 All the Aquilegia everywhere.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Wiggle your nose, poop under your toes, unfazed when it snows… Charlie the Yard Bunny reporting for doody duty! 🐰
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #UrbsInHorto #Chicago #WinterReturns 🌱
Clockwise from top left: A Black Swallowtail Butterfly visits a yellow-flowering Asclepias tuberosa; the large pointy pink and white star blooms of Asclepias speciosa; tiny clusters of white blooms from Asclepias perennis; deep pink and white clusters of flowers from Asclepias incarnata; dangling chandeliers of white blooms from shade-tolerant Asclepias exaltata; rosy purple flowers of Asclepias purpurescens.
Which #NativePlants #MilkweedForMonarchs will you grow in your garden this year to feed their caterpillars, other nectaring #pollinators & #invertebrates who depend on this genus? Here are 6 that bloomed in my #Chicago #UrbsInHorto garden last year.
#gardening #NoSpray #ecosystem #butterflies 🌱
A green and yellow striped Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar feeding on dill.
A green Katydid blending in with similarly colored and shaped foliage between taking the occasional chomp of leaves or flowers.
A hole in the underside of a wooly Asclepias speciosa (Showy Milkweed leaf) made by the tiny yellow and black striped Monarch butterfly caterpillar eating it.
A group of leaves half chewed and holey being visited by a white Crab Spider and another deep ebony bug showing that leaf damage often leads to new types of wildlife that eat the thing that eat the leaves.
Eat my garden, please! Holes in your leaves means a rich mix of #invertebrates & other #wildlife, from caterpillars that will turn into #pollinators like #butterflies & #moths to #birds, #ants, #beetles, & #bees who use plant pieces for nest-building or sustenance. #NoSpray #gardening #ecosystems 🌱
Colorful seed packets for Chrysanthemum, Green Climbing & Early Hackensack Melons; Piccolo Carina, Green Rosedale, Green Berkeley Tie-Dye & Ruffled Yellow Tomatoes; Succotash, Hungarian Rice & Amish Nuttle Beans.
I know I said I was done buying #seeds this season but sometimes we all need a dose of #SmallJoys.
#gardening #NoSpray #KitchenGarden #GrowFood 🌱
You know you found the right partner when he sees a nice long branch fall in the wind onto the parkway from the office window & sends me a pic immediately so I can grab it & add it to my deadwood fencing while it is still green & bendy. 💚💚💚
#gardening #NoSpray #nature #ecosystem #sustainability 🌱
A photo I took in the warmth of late summer of a swarm of Large Milkweed Bugs going to town on a pale brown split open Asclepias tuberosa seedpod spilling out its silky fluff surrounded by green foliage. White text overlay says “I LOVE YOU LIKE MILKWEED BUGS LOVE ASCLEPIAS”.
Kicking off Valentine’s Day early with a little tribute I made to my truest plant love, Asclepias!
#MilkweedsForMonarchs #NativePlants #butterflies #Pollinators #gardening #NoSpray #nature #wildife #invertebrates 🌱
There are so many cool ones! We have steady population now— they’re great food for birds/parasitoids & also control other insect populations—plus some are just so art deco fab in their patterns. As our #NoSpray garden matures, we have had other colors (pink even!) so excited to learn more.
Yep, it’s super satisfying! #NoSpray of course plus we leave all the leaves (no lawn) & use dead branch fences to maximize our insect ecosystem. Plus cut grasses and other plants in the spring and let anything undiseased drop so Robins come to pick up worms & nest-building materials all season.
Giant packet of huge Asclepias perennis seeds plus smaller packets of Asclepias hirtella and fascicularis.
Is there such a thing as too much #MilkweedForMonarchs? Impossible! 🦋🐛
#gardening #butterflies #ecosystem #NoSpray #MonarchButterflies 🌱
Frilly pink and burgundy Kale with new growth in the center dotted with raindrops.
Pale blue-green Collard leaf covered in raindrops.
We got some rain yesterday which made for beautiful #FantasticFoliage on our brassicas which are still growing with no covering.
#gardening #KitchenGarden #GrowFood #NoSpray 🌱
A city parkway between sidewalk and street parking with small blue aster flowers, smaller white aster flower, stem-lining yellow Solidago, daisy-like Heliopsis flowers and white clusters, all surrounded by heavy golden brown fallen leaves.
#UrbsInHorto Chicago Parkway update: #NativePlants still showing out with Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, Symphyotrichum urophyllum, Solidago caesia, Heliopsis helianthoides & Ageratina altissima blooming just in this section.
#gardening #bloomscrolling #FlowerReport #NoSpray 🌱
I made signs... #NOSPRAY and my neighbors are pretty respectful. One has a pool and zero veg - cut down all trees, mows too short (burn). But it's his barren fugly lot to crisp. The other us a renter who doesn't use the yard w/mature trees. The church school behind us, no longer spray = signs 1/
A riot of leaf colors and textures, plus purple and white asters, white snakeroot, yellow Solidagos, and papery hydrangea blooms.
A riot of leaf colors and textures, plus purple and white asters, white snakeroot, yellow Solidagos, and papery hydrangea blooms.
Our #UrbsInHorto #Chicago Parkway is still looking gorgeous as November nearly creeps in, with tons of #NativePlants & carefully chosen other friends. We still have daily #birds plus #bees, #moths & other #inverts visiting & making winter plans under the leaves. #gardening #bloomscrolling #NoSpray 🌱
A bright green Katydid frozen in time on the cold concrete. I moved him to a cozy mulched pot to contribute to the future garden.
Poor little guy seems to have been taken by the cold night. Transition season is here but the eggs and nests of the new #ecosystem generation are already being tucked in as the leaves fall and the plants stand tall overwinter.
#gardening #inverts #NoSpray #LeaveTheLeaves #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Piles of plump green/white and white-streak purple eggplants, long skinny apple green and deep purple-black eggplants, impressively sized rosy shallots, and a few clusters of random tomatoes. A basket of peppers that went on the pile after dumping the first overflowing basket and a few small onions sits in the foreground.
Other things (besides hot peppers) that I harvested yesterday as I worked through end-of-season veggie garden breakdown: four kinds of eggplants, a smattering of tomatoes, and some gorgeous shallots I forgot I grew. 👏
#gardening #KitchenGarden #GrowFood #NoSpray #UrbsInHorto #Chicago 🌱
Deep wide mountain of all the colors and shapes of the spicy rainbow piled on the kitchen island.
Fruits of my labor, literally! At least 12+ different hot pepper varieties in a rainbow of colors piled all over the kitchen island. I’ve already frozen at least 6 gallon bags previously this year so I’m going to have to think of something else. (2/2)
#gardening #KitchenGarden #GrowFood #NoSpray 🌱
Before picture of an absolute overflowing chaos pile of various hot peppers densely planted and dripping with a rainbow of different fruits in our biggest raised bed.
After picture of the chopped bed with the rear trellising once again visible.
Cold nights coming later this week so I spent today tackling spicy rainbow pepper mountain (which I have already harvested pounds & pounds from this season). Final harvest, cutting down plants, & storing supports done. (1/2)
#gardening #KitchenGarden #GrowFood #NoSpray 🌱
