Candytuft plant characteristics

I have noticed Candytuft spreading to different places in my yard. Is it considered an invasive or is it okay?

Candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) is not normally considered invasive. It may be especially happy with the conditions in your garden, and it should be fine to continue growing it, unless you dislike its proliferation.

Here is an information page about this plant from the Missouri Botanical Garden website. Note that it says: “Stems may root where they touch the ground creating new plants which can be left as is or transplanted to other areas.”

cedars and squirrel-related bark damage

I have a medium size cedar in my yard. Squirrels have been stripping the bark off – it is reddish and seems to come off fairly easily in flexible strips a few to several inches long. I wonder if I should be concerned about this affecting the health of the tree and if so what I should do to protect it.

It is possible that the bark-stripping may cause lasting damage to your cedar tree. Here is a document on managing squirrel damage from the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. Here is an excerpt:
“The location of bark damage on a tree varies among tree species and is probably related to the ease of bark removal and bark thickness, and hence to the growth characteristics
of different species. Basal damage (within 1 m of the ground)is the most common type of damage in beech (Fagus sylvatica). Crown damage frequently occurs in the main canopy of
oaks and many conifers, while stem damage usually occurs between the base and canopy in, for example, sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), beech, birch (Betula spp.), larch (Larix spp.), and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta). […] Crown damage affects the growth and appearance of the tree; severe crown damage kills it. Damage to the base and stem is cumulative occurring over a number of years. Wounds tend to callous over, hiding the damage until the tree is felled. Trees girdled by excessive stem or basal damage
will die.”

There are various methods of discouraging squirrels, but nothing is a fail-safe approach. The book, Outwitting Critters, by Bill Adler, Jr. (HarperPerennial, 1992) suggests dried blood fertilizer, ultrasonic devices, or live-trapping with peanut butter and small fruit as bait.

Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website has a page which includes suggestions on how to protect trees from squirrels.

indoor jasmine plant care

How can I find out about the best way to care for a jasmine plant indoors. The plant is without a species name and I know there are many types of jasmine. Mine has rather robust leaves, and is an active “entwiner”. The flowers are white and about the size of a nickel.

The Houseplant Encyclopedia by Ingrid Jantra (Firefly Books, 1997) says that Jasminum likes a full sun, airy location, and should be taken outdoors in summer. During the winter it prefers temperatures of 46-50 degrees Fahrenheit. In summer, keep the root ball moist, and feed every two weeks. In winter, water just enough to keep the plant from drying out. If it is kept in too warm a spot in winter, it may be susceptible to aphids.

Here is some information from British gardener Alan Titchmarsh:

Flower time up to 6 weeks
Which room? east or west window, south in winter
Temperature max 15C (60F), min 4C (40F), humid

The house plant jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum) bears loose sprays of delightfully fragrant flowers. It is an ideal plant for a cool conservatory or porch which is kept frost free during the winter months. Otherwise, keep it on a well-lit windowsill. Jasmines like a moist atmosphere so mist the leaves regularly and stand the pot on a tray of moist gravel. They are vigorous climbers, so you will need to prune them to keep them small or provide a larger support in subsequent years.

Here is a link to some general information on caring for jasmine plants, from the Chicago Botanic Garden.

growing potatoes

I would like to know how to grow potatoes; how/where best to plant, type of soil, sun/shade requirements, how to tend them, how much fertilizer, when to harvest. I would really like a step-by-step process.

I recommend the book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon (Sasquatch Books, 2007, 6th edition).

The author says it is important to maintain loose soil around the forming tubers so they can expand well. He recommends planting when all danger of frost is past. Your main crop should go in between May 15 and June 1. Plant the seeds in rows 4 feet apart, dropping seeds one foot apart in the row. Your soil should be open, fertile, and moist below the growing row, and very loose, airy and dryish above and around the forming tubers. Cover seed just barely with well-tilled fertile soil, and then gradually hill up a mixture of soil, compost, and decaying vegetation over the growing vines. This cover should remain loose until harvest time. The ideal planting spot is where fava beans have overwintered and been tilled in shallowly. At planting time, sprinkle complete organic fertilizer in a foot-wide band down each future row. Broadcast a half-inch layer of compost over the row.

Seed potatoes should be free of viruses, which means you should purchase certified seeds. The best are “single drops,” small potatoes of about 2 ounces each.

When vines appear, they begin rapid growth. When they are 4 inches high, hill them up by using a hoe and scraping a little soil up around the vines. Repeat this process weekly for the first 2 months, and by midsummer you will have continuous mounds about one foot high and 18 inches wide. Vines will begin to fall across the mounds. Now just handpull any weeds, and avoid disturbing the soil.

Varieties recommended are Yellow Finns, Nooksack Cascadian, Red Gold, Caribe, and Kennebec.

Here is some additional growing information from University of California at Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.

on the grape variety “Sweet Seduction”

Do you have any information on a new grape variety called Sweet Seduction? I am interested in vigor, fruit set, and ripening time.

Depending on the source, this is either a beautiful and productive grape or a straggly one with poorly filled clusters. It received praise from Lon Rombough, a grape expert from Oregon. The Home Orchard Society has a brief discussion about Sweet Seduction. These first two sources do not think much of this seedless grape. It is also mentioned in a list of American grapes and hybrids in the book McGee and Stuckey’s Bountiful Container (Workman, 2002):
“Introduced by Oregon grape grower Bill Schulz, Sweet Seduction is an unusual variety with exceptional flavor. It produces beautiful golden yellow seedless grapes with a muscat-like taste that we usually associate with European grapes (…) Vigorous and productive, [it] bears large and attractive clusters of its seductively flavored fruit.”

Anecdotal comments on the web suggest that this variety begins to bear fruit at between 2 to 3 years after planting, and may produce 10 to 15 pounds of grapes. It is hardy in Sunset zones 5 – 9 and can grow 15 to 20 feet.

winter fern care

I have ostrich [deciduous] ferns [on the grounds I keep] and I was wondering if there is anything special that I should do for them for the winter. What I have been doing is putting ground up leaves in the bed, but beyond that, I’m not sure if there is anything else I should do!

Andrew MacHugh’s book, The Cultivation of Ferns (1992) says the following (from p. 47):

“In autumn, a mulch of well-rotted leafmould, peat or bark chippings should be given to ferns planted in open sites. […] In winter the fronds of deciduous ferns can be cut back to an inch above the crown. In areas subject to frost, the decayed fronds will provide some protection to the plant and should not be removed until the spring growth of new fronds shows signs of emerging.”

resources for garden crafts

Our grandchildren want to make a fairy garden in our front yard. They saw the one down the street which is full of tiny plastic geegaws on astroturf. I’d like to help them do this, but without introducing more plastic into the environment. Can you recommend any resources?

My first suggestion is to invite them on a collecting adventure—in the garden itself, or further afield. They can collect fallen twigs and bark, loose moss, acorns or horsechestnuts (I have fond memories of furnishing a doll’s house with chairs made out of these, with pins for legs and ladderbacks woven with multicolored yarn), interesting seed pods (how about oculus/bull’s eye windows made from translucent Lunaria seed pods?), stones and beachglass—whatever captures their imagination.

There are quite a few books in our Parent/Teacher Resource Collection that have garden craft projects for children, including making dwellings for woodland fairies and trolls (Woodland Adventure Handbook by Adam Dove, 2015), making fairies from flowers and creating houses for them out of twigs, moss, stones and other natural materials (The Book of Gardening Projects for Kids by Whitney Cohen and John Fisher, 2012), making elves, hedgehogs, and tree spirits from clay (Forest School Adventure by Naomi Walmsley and Dan Westall, 2018), and more.

Pacific Northwest author Janit Calvo’s two books (Gardening in Miniature, and The Gardening in Miniature Prop Shop) are aimed at adult readers and include some (but not exclusively) natural materials. Both are worth looking at for ideas that incorporate big-garden design principles scaled down to tiny size. Depending on how much you want to invest in the fairy garden, Calvo also has an extensive plant list. You could even learn bonsai techniques—but that is not really a child-focused approach. It might be best to allow the fairy garden to be as ephemeral and gossamer as its mysterious inhabitants. There are always fascinating materials in nature that may be used to rebuild and remodel the fairy garden as it changes over time.

An aside: if your grandchildren would enjoy a foul-weather indoor fairy garden, they might want to help you design a terrarium. There are quite a few good books on this topic, including Terrarium Craft by Amy Bryant Aiello and Katie Bryant (2011), Plant Craft by Caitlin Atkinson (2016), and The New Terrarium by Tovah Martin (2009).

all about English ivy

I am trying to write a letter about English ivy in order to get it removed from a public library. Is it a noxious weed?

Washington State and King County noxious weed information is updated annually. Currently, three cultivars of Hedera helix and one cultivar of Hedera hibernica are Class C Noxious Weeds in the State of Washington.

Here is the link to descriptions of these four types of English ivy.

Class C Noxious Weeds are weeds that are already widespread; removal is NOT required by law. However, individual counties can adopt removal programs as they see fit. Here is the complete list of Class C noxious weeds in Washington. Here is the page specifically about ivy.

King County also has more information on a website about noxious weeds.

King County does not require control or eradication of any of the four English ivy cultivars. Although control is strongly recommended, it is not required.

on the Mucuna species

I saw an interesting flowering vine growing in Japan, and I am wondering what it is and if I can grow it here in Seattle. It has very dark purple (almost black) claw-like flowers and fuzzy stems. Is it purely ornamental, or does it have other uses?

The plant you saw is a species of Mucuna, probably Mucuna pruriens or Mucuna nigricans. M. pruriens has various common names: velvet bean, and cowhage or cowitch (from the Hindi name, kiwach, which means “bad rubbing,” and refers to the extreme itching—pruritus–that contact with the stinging hairs on the pods causes). You might be able to obtain seeds and grow it here as an annual, but it prefers tropical regions and is native to southern China and eastern India.

The plant has uses in Ayurvedic medicine and is also considered an analog of the hallucinogenic ayahuasca. According to the scientific article “The Magic Velvet Bean of Mucuna pruriens“ (Lampariello et al. Journal of Traditional Complementary Medicine, 2012 Oct-Dec), the pods are used as a vegetable for human consumption, and its young leaves are used as animal fodder in parts of Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands, and America.

Strangely, the beans are sometimes used with malice, to cause discomfort, as this information from the Centers for Disease Control explains:
“On October 6, 1985, a Paterson, New Jersey, Fire Department ambulance responded to a call reporting two people with severe pruritus. On arrival, the two emergency medical technicians (EMTs) found a Spanish-speaking couple living above a beauty salon who described severe itching, which they attributed to ‘voodoo beans’ found in their beds. They displayed several fuzzy bean pods. Soon after their arrival, the EMTs developed pruritus. All four individuals went to an emergency room complaining of itching and skin discomfort. On examination, both members of the couple had erythematous macular rashes on their extremities and bodies; the EMTs had rashes on their arms. There were no respiratory problems. Because of the unknown etiology of the symptoms, two were given epinephrine injections; the others received antihistamines and topical steroid cream. Symptoms resolved within 1-2 hours of treatment. The admitting nurse, who put an arm around one patient, developed a pruritic erythematous area on her inner forearm approximately 20 minutes later. This resolved an hour after washing her skin with soap and water. A policeman who went to the apartment and a worker who collected trash outside the following day also developed itching and received similar emergency-room treatment. Patrons and employees of the shop below and neighbors of the couple had no similar symptoms over the 2-day period.”

If you do decide to grow this interesting plant, only handle it while wearing substantial gloves.

The seeds of some species of Mucuna (those called “sea beans”) are used in making jewelry. Here is an excerpt from Wayne’s Word (a natural history website):
“[the flowers] are pollinated by night-flying bats that sip the sweet nectar and transfer pollen from one plant to another. After pollination, the ovary of each flower develops into a legume pod containing several large seeds resembling miniature hamburgers. They have a hard, thick, woody seed coat which makes them impervious to water. Internal air cavities also make them buoyant in water. The conspicuous, dark, central attachment scar (hilum) produces the layered appearance, and their superficial resemblance to a miniature hamburger. Sea beans are washed down gullies and creeks where they are carried into rivers that eventually flow into the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. The buoyant seeds drift for months (or years) at sea, eventually washing ashore on the sandy beaches of a distant continent or tropical island. They are often collected and polished by natives and made into lovely necklaces and bracelets.”

Ladybugs: benefits and drawbacks

Ladybugs: are they beneficial? Invasive? I know that nurseries sell them for release into the garden. Is that a good idea?

The type of ladybug most often for sale is an introduced species. This factsheet from Linda Chalker-Scott of Washington State University provides a thorough explanation of why it is problematic.

Multicolored Asian lady beetles are generalist predators and they can be beneficial in the garden, but they also displace the North American native species of lady beetle. Purchasing them is not recommended and is probably a waste of money because, well, they have wings, and they will fly away. Former University of Washington Botanic Gardens director Sarah Reichard’s book, The Conscientious Gardener, advises that you instead avoid using insecticides so that your landscape will naturally attract beneficial insects, particularly native ones.

Another drawback of releasing ladybug larvae in your garden is that they sometimes find their way indoors, where you don’t want them to be. The multicolored Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis) look for crevices to spend the winter hibernating and they seem particularly fond of light colored south walls. If you don’t want to find thousands of these beneficial insects flying around your house on the first sunny day in spring, fill the cracks in your house siding with caulk. For a description, management ideas, and detailed vacuum cleaner bagging instructions, Ohio State University Extension has a fact sheet on these insects. Inside a home, the insect droppings are a human health hazard, and can trigger asthma and other allergic reactions.