The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Green Thumb Sunday-Ano Nuevo Island

Ano Nuevo Island through the yellow Lupine

Gardeners, as well as plant and nature lovers, can join Green Thumb Sunday
every Sunday. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Naked Ladies

Maybe it’s the hot weather, but I’ve noticed a lot of naked ladies—everywhere.

I saw naked ladies in front of my neighbor’s house yesterday.

I saw naked ladies on the hike I took with my dog this morning, and this afternoon I saw a huge crowd of naked ladies on my way to Santa Cruz.

August is when I usually see naked ladies. They’re so tall and slender and pink.

And they smell so good. I never smell that good when I’ve been in the garden for a long time.

Naked Ladies, Amaryllis Belladonna, are native to South Africa. They are graceful pink tubular flowers that appear at the end of 24 to 30 inch stems in late summer. They grow from huge bulbs and are called naked ladies because of the plant’s habit of blooming after the foliage has died back, leaving a thick upright stem with a cluster of gorgeous, fragrant, light-pink flowers on top.

After the flower dies in the late summer or early fall, several long green strap-like leaves spout and grow to about 30 inches long and 1-2 inches wide.

The plant without the flowers is not very attractive. But the flower is spectacular. They do well in zone 9 and are very drought tolerant.

Even though you can grow Amaryllis Belladonna from seed, it’s best to grow them from bulbs because I’m told that it can take up to nine years for them to flower from seed.

Egads.

So plant these giant bulbs in spring, so you have lots of naked ladies running around your garden this summer.

Crocosimia Lucifer Invasion

I’m pretty sure that the name Crocosimia Lucifer refers to the vibrant red/orange color of the flowers.

But sometimes I think that perhaps it’s because besides these Santa Barbara daisies (that I have to strip daily from my garden) have become extremely invasive.

Crocosimia Lucifer is also known as The Falling Stars.

The flowers, which look like small gladiolas, bloom on 18 to 24 inch stems in mid-summer. Everything that I have read about crocosimia says that they require a lot of sun. Well, guess what? They thrive in my yard everywhere, in sun, in partial shade, and in full shade.
They are also somewhat drought tolerant.

I noticed them a few years ago when there were only a few. I thought they were pretty.

Green Thumb Sunday-Bee and Thistle

Bee and thistle at Ano Nuevo

Gardeners, as well as plant and nature lovers, can join Green Thumb Sunday
every Sunday. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Squash Are Sneaky

Some vegetables can be trusted and some can’t, but squash are the worst—especially zucchini.

Oh yeah, you can’t turn your back on zucchini for a moment, because if you do, they multiply.

They’re like Tribbles.

It is that time of the year when desperate neighbors knock on your door with their arms full of the long dark green fruit, (yes, it is technically a fruit.).

Frantically, they ask if you want some zucchini. “No” you say because your zucchini plant, Big Bertha, has about a hundred zucchini on it. The zucchini hide under their ample broad leaves and secretly grow really big so just when you think you have harvested all your zucchinis, you move one of the generous leaves, and there it is—another colossal green bludgeon.

What do you do with that thing?

Visions of riding down a country road hanging out of the passenger side of a ’76 Ford F-250 pickup, swinging the gargantuan squash at farmhouse mailboxes and knocking them off their wooden posts come to mind.

But instead, you pick it.

Or should I say you cut away at the gigantic shaft that it uses to attach itself to Bertha. First you try to pawn it off on a neighbor, but they already have a lifetime supply, so you dutifully try to cook it, scraping out the middle and making a stuffed zucchini with it. Your kids protest, so you eat the lions share, showing them that, damn it, it’s good and healthy and, and we grew it and we’re going to eat it.

So there.

My friend Elise from Simply Recipes has some great recipes perfect for using up your sneaky zucchini. One of my favorites is zucchini and tomato breakfast casserole. It really is good and healthy and a great way to use up your zucchini. She also has a couple of recipes for stuffed zucchini.

Here are some suggestions for getting rid of your zucchini

1. Have a zucchini party where you only eat dishes with zucchini.

2. Have a zucchini raffle where you sell tickets for a dollar apiece and the winner gets to have all your extra zucchini.

3. Play doorbell ditch with all your neighbors where you ring their doorbell and you leave your extra zucchini in a basket on their porch.

4. Scoop out your zucchini and make boats from them and race them, giving the winner all the zucchinis that are left.

5. Set up a table in front of Safeway and have your kids sell all your zucchini cheaper than Safeway.

6. Have a zucchini dress up party, where all your friends get together, drink heavily and dress up your excess zucchini, giving the person with the best-dressed zucchini all the rest of the zucchini.

7. Make zucchini-o-lanterns where you scoop out the insides of your zucchinis and carve faces in them and then place little votive candles on the inside of the zucchini-o-lanterns, lighting them from the inside—at which point you place them on your front porch.

Stumble It!

Worms Do Not Eat Seeds

This may seem like a trivial fact, but, if not for this truth, my husband and I would not have half the veggies that we do growing in our garden.

Yes times are tough and what, with packages of seeds cost upwards of $2, and seedlings are even more, $3, $4, sometimes $5 apiece. Yes it is true, we have cut back in our family.

We don’t eat out anymore, we grow some of our own food, no new clothes, toys, shoes, no more lattes. Oh God. Do you know how hard it is not to buy shoes and lattes?

Anyway.

My husband noticed that a lot of plants sprout in our worm composter. This led him, therefore, to surmise that worms don’t eat seeds.

This also lead him to transplant some of the little sprouts into our garden (figuring that whatever was growing in the composter sprouted from something we ate anyway).

Which led to a game that we like to call “What the hell do you think that’s going to turn out to be?”

We’ll let you know, soon.

Green Thumb Sunday-Coneflower and Stargazer Lily

Stumble It!

Green Thumb Sunday-Crocosmia Lucifer

Gardeners, as well as plant and nature lovers, can join Green Thumb Sunday
every Sunday. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Stumble It!