Chives and meadow garlic: two members of the onion family

Chives and meadow garlic together in my herb garden in 2010.

Chives: (Allium schoenoprasum) a classic herb that produces edible leaves, bulbs, and flowers. A perennial plant, chives is widespread in nature across much of Eurasia and North America. It is the only species of Allium native to both the New and the Old Worlds.

Chives are a commonly used herb and vegetable with a variety of culinary uses, but mostly for garnish, because with their hollow stems they fall apart during cooking. They are also used to repel insects, but chives are not native to Florida. 

Meadow Garlic: (Allium canadense) a rarely used perennial herb native to most of eastern North America. It also produces edible leaves, bulbs, and flowers. It's leaves are solid which means that this plant does withstand cooking. As a crop, it has a few characteristics that are a bit different. It dies back for the summer, so leaves are not available for harvesting then, but you could dig the bulbs to use if you know where they are. They sprout again from their bulbs in mid fall, bloom in the spring, and die back after blooming. They produce several bulblets in each flower head, which readily grow where they fall, so this crop spreads rapidly once it's established.

When they are available from late fall through to spring, I use the leaves for both salads and cooking in soups, omelets, stir frys and more. Because the leaves are solid they are more useful in the kitchen than the chives. The taste is similar to, but not the same as chives or garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) and it has a bit of spicyness or heat. All three have an onion overtone, and of the three, chives is the most bland. The meadow garlic flowers also have more flavor than the chives flowers. 

Two weeds: one native and one nonnative

While the sharp, hard spikes
 on the seeds hurt our feet and
embed themselves in the
lawnmower tires, this is their
method of dispersal. 

Sand spurs

Six species of sand spurs or sandburs (Cenchrus spp.) are native to Florida. They are true grasses in the grass family, Poaceae.  While native plants are highly recommended for sustainable, climate-wise landscapes, these are not desirable because of the hard and very sharp prickles that cover their seeds. 

They have volunteered in our yard only out by the road where the other plants in our freedom lawn are a bit more sparse and where the neighborhood dog walkers visit on a regular basis. So even though I have cleared out this population of annual plants before, new ones can get a start out there when dogs bring more seeds from elsewhere.

Grapes (Vitis spp.)

A muscadine grape (Vitis rotundifolia 'Alachua')
Credit: Ali Sarkhosh, UF/IFAS

Florida's grapes

There are six species of grapes that are native to Florida, while some have small ranges, grapes are found in all parts of the state. 

- Summer grape (Vitis aestivalis)
- Florida grape (Vitis cinerea var. floridana)
- Catbird grape (Vitis palmata)
- Muscadine (Vitis rotundifolia)
- Calloose grape (Vitis shuttleworthii)
- Frost grape (Vitis vulpina)

The muscadine grape is native to all of Florida and from Delaware to eastern Texas. This is grown as a sustainable crop in Florida and has been bred so that this normally dioecious plant (with separate male and female plants) is self-fertile or monoecious.

Snags, stumps, and logs provide habitat

Three birds perched on a snag. A ball moss
(Tillandsia recurvata) also lives on this snag.

Dead standing trees are snags. If a snag is located so that it will not hurt people or damage property, leave it standing for its wildlife value. Snags are highly productive sources of habitat that work well in both natural areas and designed landscapes.

Tree basics

The vast majority of organisms on our planet depend upon the life-giving process of photosynthesis. Plants and other organisms with chlorophyll combine carbon dioxide from the air and water with energy from the sun to form sugars and oxygen gas. The plant can then combine the sugars to form starches, fats, enzymes, or whatever the plant needs. 

Photosynthesis: 6CO2 + 6H2O >> C6H12O6 + 6O2

Then most living organisms (plants, animals, fungi, bacteria) take in oxygen and digest the sugars in one form or another to gain energy for life through respiration, a process the equal and opposite of photosynthesis. 

Respiration: C6H12O6 + 6O2  >> 6CO2 + 6H2O 

Since trees normally live for many years, they sequester carbon in their wood and root tissues as long as they live, while the flowers, fruits and leaves store carbon only temporarily until they are eaten or decompose. Much of this decomposing plant matter ends up in the soil. But when a tree dies, the wood begins to break down as bacteria, fungi, insects, and other organisms begin to absorb the wood tissue so they can gain energy for life. As the wood deteriorates, then birds and other larger animals can consume the decomposers and so the carbon-based sugars stored in the wood moves up the food chain. The organisms store the sugars created during photosynthesis, but as they respire and when they die, the carbon is released into the atmosphere.

One note here on carbon sequestration: The soil sequesters 3 to 4 times as much carbon as all the terrestrial plants, including rain forests. Peat is especially important since it can sequester carbon for thousands of years. This is important because the more carbon sequestered means less carbon dioxide, our most abundant greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere and that is good for our only planet. (Read my article on peat moss.)

Winged sumac, a useful understory shrub

A small winged sumac in bloom, which
attracts a wide variety of pollinators.

Winged Sumac (Rhus copallinum) is a deciduous, compact, densely growing, colonizing shrub that is native to all of Florida and the eastern half of North America. It can grow to 10 to 25 feet tall and nearly as wide, although the ones in our yard are much smaller than that. They will grow in a wide variety of situations, but they do best in full sun or partial shade and require good drainage. 

This plant could be used in a hedge row with a variety of other shrubs and is a good choice for naturalizing at the edge between wooded and open areas. Keep in mind that it will be bare for a few months in the winter. It can spread quite some distance via rhizomes or underground roots, so keep that in mind when choosing planting sites.

Shrubs in the landscape

A newly renovated house in our neighborhood with its
newly-installed curb-appeal shrubs where there were none.

Shrubs as the default foundation plantings

Shrubs are easy for the builders to install and they give the landscape a "finished" and the expected look for a house.

Here's a house in our neighborhood that recently went on the market after extensive interior renovations according to its online listing. But what bothered me was that they removed two mature trees on the west side of the house, which cooled the area especially in the afternoon, removed the awnings on the windows, and then installed a row of useless, sprawling shrubs along the foundation. One of the trees may have been too close to the house, but the other one was fine. 

This was in 2022 when their azaleas were blooming. I was not
focused on the house, but the thickets.

I had taken a photo of this house in 2022 when their Japanese azaleas (Rhododendron japonicum), which are planted around some trees, were in bloom to include in my article, Habitat Gardening. The tree in the foreground is an old redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) next to the road, which is still there.

So the real problem with foundation shrubs is that they usually outgrow their spaces, some sooner than others. Sometimes it's just that they grow too tall, but other shrubs with aggressive spreading roots could also damage the building's foundation. 

Composting in place: Part 2

I scored a huge load of wood chips the
other day--mostly pines (with needles)
& oaks. This close to our 30th
load since 2004.

I wrote "Enrich soil for crops by composting in-place" back in 2019 about how I build soil and our raised beds for growing our vegetables, which includes the whole process from building the beds (without hard sides) to trench composting to add additional organic materials to the soil. While no gardener can claim 100% success rate in growing veggies, over all I've been quite successful over the years with these wide-row beds. Plus, this article has been one of the most visited.

This article is a follow-up to that piece and it's also centered around our vegetable beds, but this time I cover what's between the beds and how beautifully rich soil is also created there.

A new arborist chip dump

On our morning walk, I saw a tree company getting ready to work a couple of streets over from ours. I walked back over there and asked for their load of chips, they were happy to do so. They were just getting ready to drive their truck to the dump, as I walked the 1/2 mile back home, the truck passed me and I explained where to dump them, but the driver already knew where to go because he'd dumped loads there before. 

White Wild Indigo

It planted itself in a location that's too close to
 the sidewalk, but I'll leave it there since they
don't transplant well.

White Wild Indigo: A beautiful perennial pollinator plant

White wild indigo (Baptisia alba) is a plant worth including in your pollinator garden. It is pollinated by large bees including bumblebees and carpenter bees. It's also a host plant for Wild indigo duskywing and Zarucco duskywing butterflies. The fruits are eaten by birds. While it's an important plant in the local ecosystem, it's toxic to humans and livestock.

It is best propagated from scarified seed. Once established, plants should not be moved, since they have a long tap root. They take several years to reach maturity but are long-lived, and often grows 2-3 feet tall, frequently wider than it is tall. It produces showy white flowers March-May, but is dormant in winter. Use it as a small shrub or background plant in a border located in full sun to partial shade. 

It is a tri-foliate legume and can thrive in a variety of poor soils including acidic to neutral clay, loam, or sand. It naturally occurs in a sandhill environment, so established plants can tolerate some drought, but never flooding. 

Carrots: a most satisfying cool-weather crop

Carrots are native to Europe and parts of Asia and
Africa, but now have escaped around the world and
those wild carrots are known as Queen Anne's lace.

Carrots (Daucus carota) are in the carrot family Apiaceae. While this plant family includes quite a few well-known and economically important crop plants as anise, caraway, carrot, celery, chervil, coriander, cumin, dill, fennel, parsley, and parsnip, there are also a few highly poisonous species, such as poison hemlock, water hemlock, spotted cowbane, and fool's parsley. 

The defining characteristic of this family is the inflorescence, the flowers nearly always aggregated in terminal umbels, that may be simple or more commonly compound. The other name for this family is Umbelliferae. 

Lyreleaf sage

Lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata) is in the mint family.

Lyreleaf sage (Salvia lyrata) makes quite a show in several areas of our front yard in the spring. We delay the first mowing of our lawn in the spring for this wildflower show. 

Over the years, we have replaced more than half of the lawn that came with the house and what is left is a freedom lawn that is:
- free from landscape-wide pesticide applications,
- free from synthetic fertilizer applications,
- free from over irrigation, and
- free from over mowing. It's allowed to go dormant during the winter months. 

I have moved some of these lovely wildflower volunteers from the lawn into wildflower gardens. Where this wonderful sage grows quite a bit larger and more robust. 

I saw that someone described this plant as weedy, but I don't see it that way at all, even though it is prolific. In the lawn, it's easy to mow, in the wildflower beds, it makes quite a show, and in the vegetable beds, it's easy to pull if necessary and if not, it attracts pollinators.

Ohio Spiderwort: a pollinator-friendly native wildflower

A small fly-like bee was pollinating this flower.

Bluejacket or Ohio spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) is native to most of Eastern North America and to most of Florida. It attracts pollinators, especially bees. Each day, one or two flowers bloom in each flower head. They open early in the morning and then wilt in the afternoon. Each flower head contains twenty or more flowers and new flower heads are formed throughout the long season from early spring to late fall. There is a long blooming season.

There are three other species of spiderworts native to Florida: hairy spiderwort (T. hirsutiflora), longleaf spiderwort (T. roseolens), and zigzag spiderwort (T. subaspera). But the bluejacket has the largest native range and is the one that's most readily available from the native trade.

Spiderworts are monocots and are in the Commelina family (Commelinaceae), which includes 36 genera world wide, but only five occur in Florida. "Spiderwort" refers to the sap which dries into web-like threads when a stem is cut.