Happy Earth Day!
On a cool breezy Saturday morning, San Antonio Parks and Rec. offered a group of eager San Antonians a chance to give back to their city. They brought tools, mulch, arborists, and about 300 trees to the Salado Creek Trailhead on F Street. Starbucks brought hot coffee and pastries to keep us fueled.
I represented ProRangers and Bexar County Master Gardeners at the trailhead tree planting project. The 40-odd volunteers represented about as many backgrounds. I had the incredible fortune to be able to teach folks (the very little I know) about planting trees and learn about their motivations for getting up so early in the morning to play in the dirt!
I met representatives from the Navy (Hi Miguel and Monique!), arborists (Mr. Booker it was a pleasure meeting your lovely family, Hi Brooke, Mike, and Angelique!) SAWS (Mike, thanks for all your help! I’ve been groping sycamore trees all around the area trying to tell if which variety they are!) and folks who just wanted to spend a day with their family and teach a lesson about the value of volunteerism (Jayvon, thank you very much for helping me carry that bag mulch, it was very heavy!). I met Al and his father of Al’s Lawn Service who is a strong supporter of The Alamo and other Mission parks and acted in their First Friday Reenactments. I got to spend more time with one of my favorite ProRanger cadets Angela; I learn something from her everyday, it so great!
How did you celebrate Earth Day? Do you get the chance to volunteer often? What has been or is your favorite volunteer activity?
I love Xeriscaping! It tastes so much more creativity!
Desert plants on Flickr.
Drought tolerant/native desert plants aren’t ugly and scraggly. No need to get water wasters in your yard when you can have this beauty.
Texas’ State Flower is the bluebonnet. What is your state’s flower? Post a picture of it!
SAWS Spring Bloom
The San Antonio Water System is sick and tired of taking your hard earned money!
So they go out into the community and teach citizens about water conservation, landscape maintenance, and how to protect the Edwards Aquifer. During one of the several FREE education events they hold each year, The SAWS Spring bloom, SAWS gave away plants, trees, held workshops, and did anything they could do to convince you to stop paying them so much!
This year’s Spring Bloom, the rain tried to scare off some folks but failed miserably. When I tell you this is one of four events around town to get great plants on the cheap, man, I mean it! I was with the Garden Volunteers of South Texas this year selling plants to raise money for the organization. GVST is where I got my start and met all sorts of amazing teachers! September of 2010, I saw an event listed in the paper and went to one of their Essentials Classes. Life has been amazing ever since! If you discover a particular field you want to learn more about, don’t be afraid to just show up at an event or trade show or anything. But remember, and this is key, you have to talk to someone! Make your presence known and offer to become an integral part of their organization!
Per usual I had a great time and spent money but all the herbs I bought are doing great!
I planted two flowering trees in my yard! What is your favorite kind of flowering tree or shrub?
Hey DaGardener, blog much?
I know, I know. I’m so sorry but I have a great excuse, I was accepted in to the ProRanger cadet program and have been busy with that. If you would like to follow up about my progress in the program, check out my blog at npsbound.tumblr.com
Back in February the rodeo came to San Antonio and the Bexar County Master Gardeners were situated in HEB’s Buckaroo barn. Despite us being so far in the back, we managed to raise a good bit of money for the post secondary education scholarships.
The table featured the Rodeo tomato BHN 602 (I nicknamed it Bartholomew) and the Red Bluebonnet. I had a great time working and teaching Texans about gardening. If I met you at the event, leave me a comment and let me know what you thought about our set up! Remind me of any question you had!
Oh, Old Man Winter…
Clearly you had some hot young thing keeping you company this season and forgot you had a job to do!
Whether we like it or not (and I hate it), Winter serves a very important purpose in a plant’s life cycle. “Chilling hours” are the required amount of hours spent in temperatures below 45F that a plant needs in order bloom once conditions become optimal.
Think about it like this, you wake up in the morning and get ready for your day and you spend the next 8-12 hours working hard, when you come home at night you are ready to sleep and rest up so you can produce as much (if not more) tomorrow. Pants wake up in Spring and spend the next 2 to 9 months trying to make as many babies as they can. The first frost is a signal that they can finally rest! Imagine if your alarm clock kept ringing while you were trying to sleep, when it was finally time to wake up, you wouldn’t feel like doing anything. Same thing with a tree, when it’s time to produce, flowers and fruits may be stunted, or you may have a low yield.
So what can you do to protect your garden during an abnormally warm Winter?
I have no idea….how have you been able to cope? Have you been making more trips to the grocery store? Have you seen a spike in prices? Have your eating habits changed? Did your Spring garden plans change?
I can’t wait to hear your tips and tricks!
Hon Tsai Tai
The flowers are what got me. Beautiful delicate pops of yellow dancing softly next to the ornamental cabbage and red kale in the nursery’s greenhouse. I reached for the plastic 4 inch pot and put my nose to the flower. Nothing special but it was still pretty. I put the plant in my basket. “Why not?” I thought and moved on to the geraniums.
Hon Tsai Tai is another Oriental vegetable in the same choy family as Komatsuna. It has purple stalks, green leaves, and sporty yellow flowers. This plant requires full sun and a lot of water. It is a little thing, though, only getting up to 10 inches tall and 4 inches wide at maturity. Put down your transplants in early fall. It can tolerate a couple of frosts but nothing too intense. If you are trying to propagate seeds, sow them in the late summer. Hon Tsai Tai takes over 100 days to reach maturity so you’ll want to get an early start.
Of course there’s what the plant likes on one hand and what I’m willing to do on the other. The Hon Tsai Tai is treated much like Komatsuna. It gets about two hours of direct sunlight and an inch of water weekly. I think it likes San Antonio’s alkaline water. There’s none of that weird discoloration that I usually notice with new transplants. This is what it looks like as of January 11:
The above plant is kept in a pot just in case I have to pull it inside one night. It gets more sunlight and more water as a result. #I’mLazyAndIKnowIt
I sauted the leaves in olive oil and sea salt and they reminded me of mustard greens. I expected something sweeter. At first, I worried that not pinching back the flowers (i.e. allowing it to bolt) effected its flavor. Come to find out that the whole thing is edible anyway and that’s just what it tastes like. I’m not the biggest fan of this plant but I really like the flowers!
Have you ever tried Hon Tsai Tai? What did you think of it? Would you consider adding it to your own garden?
Komatsuna
Red Komatuna is a leaf vegetable commonly grown in Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan. Known also as the Japanese Mustard Spinach, Komatsuna is rich in Vitamin C and tastes like spinach (other palettes taste mustard greens and/or cabbage but I taste spinach. Try it and let me know what you think). I wonder if it is in the same family as pakchoi… anywho, you can eat it raw or in stir fry recipes. This fast growing annual is winter hardy and heat-loving (my front yard bakes in the Texan summer sun so we shall see). Depending on how you plant it, the vegetable can grow up to 15 inches tall. Sow it thickly for baby leaves but if you want bigger leaves, give it more space. Either way you can eat the thinnings and if you are really hungry don’t worry you’ll have a nice snack in a month! It needs fertile moist soil and full sun.
This plant gets two hours of morning sun and an inch of water a week. The picture above it was it looked like the day after I transplanted it (Dec 15) and the pic below it was it currently looks like.
If the plant looks smaller that’s because it’s delicious!
Tell me about your experience with growing or eating Asian vegetables. Which do you love? Which do you hate? How hard is it to find recipes? (If you check out my #spinsters blog www.seriouslyimgood.tumblr.com you’ll see the saga I went through with a single head of Napa cabbage!)
Happy planting!
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