Is there an eco-friendly way to repel woodchucks?

Family Dinner by anoldent

In June, TheGardenLady filled two huge planters with flowers to decorate the deck for an upcoming party. I planted the thriller and filler plants in the urns and my spiller plant was the ornamental sweet potato vine. The planters looked pretty and the spiller plants happily spilled down the sides of the urns and started vining up the side of the deck. I was so pleased with the look.

I was pleased, that is, until the other day when I noticed that the leaves of one of the vines were completely missing. I wondered what could have eaten the leaves so completely from one urn but not on the vine in the other urn. I didn’t think slugs or snails could have eaten the entire leaves- I had never seen slugs or snails on the vines but had seen some of the leaves riddled with holes. This was different. Now there was not a leaf on one of the vines. Since it is fall, I wasn’t worried about losing the annual plants. But I was mighty curious to find out what animal was dining on my sweet potato vines.

Continue reading “Is there an eco-friendly way to repel woodchucks?”

More vegetable suggestions for the flower garden

Edible Front Foundation Planting by Chiot’s Run

When plant breeders want to discover new plants to breed for the flower garden, they will go all over the world searching. They will even look at vegetable plants they think they can breed into pretty flowers or show pieces. Then they will work to develop some aspect of the plant that will be most interesting for the flower garden often at the expense of something else the plant might have had. So, for instance, if they see a pretty leaf that will lend garden interest, the breeders will work to create larger or more interesting leaves; sometimes this will change some other aspect of the plant.

Garden vegetables like kale, when developed for their pretty colors that make them more ornamental, make their leaves tougher when eaten -unless you eat the leaf when it is young and tender. That was why TheGardenLady suggested planting the vegetable form of kale in the flower bed instead of the ornamental variety if you want to truly landscape with vegetables and eat them, too.

Continue reading “More vegetable suggestions for the flower garden”