Various resources I am reading, watching or listening to related to my garden. Some I may own, some borrowed, some freely available on the web.
“For nearly as long as they’ve been popular, lawns have served as a totem of middle-class vulgarity, conformity, and excess. In her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the wanton use of lawn pesticides. Carson’s contemporary, activist Lorrie Otto, condemned yards as ‘sterile’ and ‘flagrantly wasteful.’ Polemics as cutting as a mower’s blade have proliferated in the decades since, but lawns abide. Spivak and her team come not to bury them, but to adapt them to the insects vital to the entire ecosystem—and our food supply.”
I’m a bit excited that both some of the rewilding efforts we’ve put in, as well as the lack of time to make things a bit tidier than usual seems to be attracting a broader variety of birds that don’t just simply buzz through our yard heading east to our neighbor that keeps feeders out year round. Continue reading “Observing more birds hanging out this year”→
“You can only learn so much from a book and from a video. You have to get your hands dirty.”
“And many times during that first year, I was discouraged and impatient. Yet each surviving plant, tree and shrub—every new blossom—was the gift of motivation.”
“In 1753, Linnaeus placed the tomato in the genus Solanum (alongside the potato) as Solanum lycopersicum. In 1768, Philip Miller moved it to its own genus, naming it Lycopersicon esculentum. This name came into wide use, but was technically in breach of the plant naming rules because Linnaeus’s species name lycopersicum still had priority. Although the name Lycopersicum lycopersicum was suggested by Karsten (1888), this is not used because it violates the International Code of Nomenclature barring the use of tautonyms in botanical nomenclature. The corrected name Lycopersicon lycopersicum (Nicolson 1974) was technically valid, since Miller’s genus name and Linnaeus’s species name differ in exact spelling, but since Lycopersicon esculentum has become so well known, it was officially listed as a nomen conservandum in 1983, and would be the correct name for the tomato in classifications which do not place the tomato in the genus Solanum.
Genetic evidence has now shown that Linnaeus was correct to put the tomato in the genus Solanum, making Solanum lycopersicum the correct name. Both names, however, will probably be found in the literature for some time. Two of the major reasons for considering the genera separate are the leaf structure (tomato leaves are markedly different from any other Solanum), and the biochemistry (many of the alkaloids common to other Solanum species are conspicuously absent in the tomato). On the other hand, hybrids of tomato and diploid potato can be created in the lab by somatic fusion, and are partially fertile, providing evidence of the close relationship between these species.”
Today was the first day we’d hoped to start tackling the blackberry corner. Although it was predicted that there would be showers today, we had no idea how consistent they would be on this cooler March day. So I did my level best to work on other garden related things that needed tending. Continue reading “Rainy day research, bookmark sorting and other progress bits.”→
Welcome to the first installment of Wild Wednesdays! This week I’ll be sharing info I’ve learned about the Northern highbush blueberry Vaccinium corymbosum. It’s the first berry plant we bought for our garden back in 2017. Continue reading “Wild Wednesdays: Northern highbush blueberry”→
One of the ideas I’ve been mulling over this winter is how to help promote the use of native plants in folks’ gardens. The hardest part of that for me is knowing more about the native plants here in Gardner, MA. That is what the hold up was when I first thought up the notion a few years ago. How could I ever find the time to research them weekly? Continue reading “Wild Wednesdays: a new series on plants native to my area”→
