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The Color of April and The Meaning of Flowers

Once the calendar turns to April here in New England, thee is always one color that comes to my mind… and no, it isn’t green… rather, the color yellow.

Between yellow crocus flowers, dandelions, daffodils and forsythia, everywhere I look I see these bursts of yellow among the leftover fallen leaves and twigs that accumulated over the winter.

As if to celebrate the anticipated arrival of all the spring flowers, I recently finished reading a book called “The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. This book renewed my interest in looking into the secret message of flowers and what they mean. The book provides a little dictionary in the back that gives you the meaning of different plants and flowers. I decided to start a little blog project that will include posts of pictures of flowers that I find around my neighborhood and their meaning.

The first flower that I looked up was Forsythia since my son, lemon drop and I had just picked some forsythia branches from our back yard… Ironically, the meaning of forsythia is “anticipation”…Why the irony you ask? It is because I am due any day to give birth to our second son – the reason I have been a little MIA from posting about all my spring garden preparations

Forsythia (forsythia) – Anticipation

So here are a few flowers I found in bloom around our home this morning… It is interesting to see what kind of secret message we have been sending out to the world with our flower choices

Hope you enjoy this little side project of mine!…and, of course, I will be sure to add a little post about the arrival of our second little guy!

Dandelion (taraxacum) – Rustic Oracle

Daffodil (narcissus) – New Beginnings

Ivy (hedera helix) – Fidelity

Phlox (phlox) – Our souls are united

And finally, I will close the blog post with this one in my “anticipation” of our new arrival…

Moss (bryopsida) – Maternal Love

Happy Gardening!

Tags: april, baby, daffodil, dandelion, flowers, forsythia, garden, ivy, meaning, moss, motherhood, phlox, spring

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Categories Meaning of Flowers

More On Rooting Sweet Potatoes

4 Apr

“How to Root a Sweet Potato” has, by far, been my most popular post. I have also received a lot of comments and emails with questions about the whole process. As a result, I decided to conduct a couple of experiments to hopefully help those who are having a little trouble getting their sweet potatoes to root…

First – Just to review, the most important step is to get good, healthy, fresh, organic sweet potatoes… If they are too old, they may rot before they root. If they are not organic, they may not root at all because of growth retardants.

For my first experiment, I went out and bought some organic sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s. My first impression was some of the potatoes in the bag were not as fresh as I would have prefered but I would give them a try. I took two of the freshest looking ones and cut them in half placing a total of 4 halves in a cup of water… I wanted to see if there was any benefit to cutting the potatoes in half as opposed to just placing the whole potato in the water.

After a few weeks, I was a bit disappointed to see that only one out of the 4 halves actually rooted… and it took longer to root than what I was used to.

Trader Joe’s Sweet Potato – Cut and Rooting

Just to compare to be sure I did not lose my sweet potato rooting touch, I went to a local winter farmer’s market and bought a fresh, local, organic sweet potato. I placed the whole sweet potato in a some water and only after a week or two, it already started to root.

Farmer’s Market Organic Sweet Potato – Uncut and Rooting

My conclusion: Cutting the potato in half or leaving it whole can both result in a well-rooted sweet potato.
My other conclusion: Not all organic sweet potatoes are created equal.

Maybe the Trader Joe’s Sweet Potatoes were not fresh enough? Maybe the “organic” label still allows for some growth retardants to be applied? I am really not sure. BUT if you are having trouble rooting your potatoes, maybe give another brand a try or, as I have suggested before, try to track down a local farm that sells their produce and try one of their potatoes. So far, that has always been what works the best for me!

Trader Joe’s Sweet Potato with a Sprouting Slip

Good luck sprouting those tubers!

Tags: garden, organic, potato, rooting, sweet, sweet potato, trader joes

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Categories Food Hacks

Meet the Red Lily Leaf Beetle

23 Jun

Alright ornamental plant lovers, this is one nasty BAD bug! At least it is bad when it comes to your lily flowers…

I saw this little guy hanging out on my kale and collard greens so I was immediately suspicious at first as to what he was doing there. It didn’t seem like he was eating anything however. He was more-so scoping the place out, looking for lilies probably.

The bright-red lily leaf beetle, Lilioceris lilii, is a pretty easy one to spot. They are native to Europe and turned up in eastern Mass. in 1992. They LOVE to eat the leaves of lilies and fritillaria. If they are not controlled, they can kill your plants.

(An important thing to note is they only eat true lilies, those of the Lilium genus, including Asiatic, Easter, & Oriental lilies. Don’t worry about your daylilies, you know, the one that you see growing EVERYWHERE. Those are in the genus Hemerocallis and are not true lilies.)

Lily leaf beetles lay reddish-orange eggs on the underside of lily and fritillaria leaves. It is the just hatched larva that causes the most devastation so be on the look out! Because these bugs are imports, they have no native predators here. The University of Rhode Island researchers have traveled to Europe and collected some larva of the parasitic wasps, a natural predator of the lily leaf beetles. They are currently introducing the wasp to the region in hopes that this will help curb the population of the red lily leaf beetle. So far, it seems to be working out.

In the meantime, stay on the look out for these red little bugs on your lily plants and PLEASE! do not mistake lady bugs for the red lily leaf beetle. Lady bugs are very beneficial to have around in your garden! take a good look at the pictures and make sure you know your bugs! Pick the red lily leaf beetle adults, eggs, and larva off your lilies, making sure you get rid of them. You can drop them in a can of vegetable oil or water with a lid.

Tags: bad bug, garden, good bug, invasive, lily, red beetle, red lily leaf beetle

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Categories Good Bug, Bad Bug, In the Garden

Growing Celery Plants From Your Store-Bought Celery

30 May

This was one of those food-growing tricks that I was a little skeptical about in the beginning because it just seemed too easy but I was pleasantly surprised in the end at how simple AND effective it is!

First, buy celery (preferably organic)

Cut the bottom end off the celery (you know, the part you always throw out) and place it in a shallow dish of water (refridgerate the rest and use as you normally would):

Give it some sun light and let it begin to grow. You will see the celery stalks emerge from the center:

When I tried this I was concerned about how the celery appeared to continue growing but it never sprung out any roots while in the water.After two weeks of sitting in the water, just to give it a try, I planted it in the garden. To my surprise, it immediately sprouted roots and continued to grow.

We are looking forward to some fresh celery this year!

Here’s to another successful food hack!

Until next time!

Tags: celery, celery grow garden food hack, food, garden, grow, hack

Comments 5 Comments
Categories Food Hacks

Be Kind To Your Neighbor

6 May

Have I mentioned that we have one of the kindest neighbor in the entire world? We found this on our doorstep yesterday:

…A little something to welcome in the gardening season…

Basil, parsley, lavender and celery in this beautiful, wooden, antique planters complete with the matching, wooden tray.

Seriously, this person is the icon of friendly neighbor.

When we first moved in, we were given a “welcome to the neighborhood” basket filled with little treats. When our house was completely gutted and we had no heat or electricity, dinners were brought over for us. When our son was born, he got clothes, books and toys. Every Christmas and Easter we get fresh, homemade cookies…

Seriously, we have the nicest neighbor in the world!

So why am I posting about this?

Because it reminds me about something that I want to remind everyone who reads this… these small, little random acts of kindness really do go a long way (look at me, I am blogging about it!) :p

As gardening season begins to kick into full swing, think about a small little thing that you can do for someone. It doesn’t have to be major, just a small little gesture to show that there are still good, kind people out there.

I, for one, know who is going to be getting a lot of fresh garden produce this summer…

So go, get out there, and be kind to your neighbor!

Tags: garden, neighbor, random acts of kindness