Month: January 2025

The lady in the pictures above is Madeline Hastings. Maddy started an urban farm in front of her house in Laurens, SC back in 2020. I follow her on Facebook and have enjoyed her posts and videos in which she shares what she and her farm helpers are doing on the farm.

Her most recent post – which you can see at the top of this page – asked her followers to share their favorite flower.

Well, asking a gardener what their favorite flower is can be harder for them to answer than asking a parent who their favorite child is! There are so many flowers to choose from and so many reasons why you might like them from their beauty, to their colors, to their scents, and even, sometimes, their flavors!

In my case, I have been gardening for 50 years, so I have had many favorites over the years. If you’d like to know what my favorites have been over the years, read my answer to Maddy’s post below:

My favorite flower? That’s an impossible question for me to answer. It’s changed over the years as I’ve moved from place to place and tried my hand at growing different ones in different locations.

Early on it would have been the combination of Lilly of the Valley and Lilacs that would bloom in overlapping succession along the driveway of my grandparents’ house in New York. The light purple and white clusters of sweet smelling flowers of the lilacs arched over the carpet of dark green pointed spade-like leaves with the intensely perfumed white bells drooping from their stems. The effect was a series of sweet smelling, open, airy green tunnels that ran down the entire side of the driveway along the house on the property line with the neighbor’s yard just past them.

Later when I moved to DC I enjoyed finding the Virginia Bluebells that bloomed in shaded areas along the Potomac River while fishing and had a years-long obsession with Bleeding Hearts attempting to get them established in my landlady’s back yard next to a stump in her side garden. I managed to get them to return for 2-3 years at a time, but they always died off.

DC and the Mid-Atlantic is also where I made the acquaintance of Japanese Anemones and native red and yellow columbines. To this day I’ve enjoyed admiring light pink or white Japanese Anemones whenever I come across them, but can’t really grow them successfully here in the Midlands of SC. Zone 8b is just too hot.

I do have some red and yellow columbines in our school garden now – they aren’t the natives I first saw in DC in a bed on the shady side of a house in my old neighbirhood that was 1/3 Shasta Daisies, 1/3 Anemones, and 1/3 Columbines (a great combo for continuous spring through fall blooms). My columbines were grown from seeds collected from plants with blue flowers that I planted three years ago. All I can figure is they were a hybrid cross that reverted to one of the parents’ traits.

In NC I came to love the Dogtooth Violets I’d find blooming along the creeks I’d fish near Durham. I’d read about them as a boy, but never saw any back home on Long Island where I grew up or in the Mid-Atlantic while I was there. I also managed to grow cultivated Lobelia (Cardinal Flower) for the first time successfully. The wild variety has also been a favorite of mine since first seeing it in upstate New York on a late summer trip to Lake George. I now look forward to seeing it bloom along the Lower Saluda River here in Columbia every Fall.

Since moving to the Carolinas I’ve also enjoyed the more tropical flowers like the Tea Olives – if only for their fragrance – and the White Butterfly Ginger Lilies for both their late summer showiness and scent that can be detected many feet away from the plant. I love seeing Hummingbird Moths feeding on the ginger lilies in the evenings. We have two clumps of this plant growing in our school pollinator garden, and we are looking forward to its first blooms next year.

But as I sat here on my couch writing this on this snowy, cold morning, I looked up and realized that the flower that probably fits best as my favorite is the poppy. My entire living room is poppy themed from the poppy paintings to the wall decal to the Fedco Seed catalog print with the pen and ink poppy illustration on it and the poppy coverd carpet. I guess they’re my favorite because they are the first flower I grew at my grandparents’ house in the garden space they gave me that wasn’t something anyone in my family had ever grown before. Those first poppies were California Poppies and I loved how the plants looked like little gray-green carrots to me. The bright orange satélite dish like flowers were a fun surprise popping out in the rows where I interplanted them with lettuce when I was 8 or 9 years old.

If you have read everything above, I have a question for you…. What is YOUR favorite flower and WHY? Answer this question in the comments.

And if you didn’t guess Maddy’s favorite flower yet, here are some more pictures of her and her son on the farm with those flowers.

And here is more information about Maddy’s farm, Hasting’s Corner up in Laurens, SC.

By Sofia L

The scientific name for the Poinsettia is Euphorbia Pulcherrima.

The common name is Poinsettia. The Aztecs called it Cuetlaxochitl. It’s also
known as Mexican Flameleaf, Christmas Star, and Flower of the Holy
Night.

The Poinsettia is native to Mexico and Central America.

If you have your Poinsettia from Christmas, it will need 6 to 8 hours of
indirect sunlight. Direct sunlight can burn it.

It is a perennial shrub, and can grow over 13 feet in height. When pruning,
be careful of the sap, it can irritate the skin.

The flowers are the ones in the center. They’re called Cyathia.

Butterflies are attracted to Poinsettia flowers.

Poinsettia isn’t food. It’s not a fruit or vegetable.

Well draining loamy soil is needed for Poinsettia so its roots don’t rot.

Fertilizer is needed every 2 weeks in the Spring and Summer (when
planted outside).

Pests that go after Poinsettia are aphids, whiteflies, mealybugs, spider
mites, and scale insects. Pesticides are helpful with these bugs.

I don’t know if we could grow Poinsettias since they need lots of shade.

A fun fact about Poinsettia is the Aztecs used Poinsettias for red dye, and
to control fevers.

Another fun fact is that the red leaves are called Bracts. They are leaves
and not the actual flower.

There are over 100 different varieties of poinsettia!

Sources :

https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/flowers-fruits-and-frass/2024-12-13-story
-behind-poinsettia-history-symbolism-and-holiday

https://www.thespruce.com/poinsettia-care-guide-1403587

https://platthillnursery.com/poinsettia-care-guide-keep-your-blooms-beautifu
l/

https://www.epicgardening.com/poinsettia/

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/a12840359/poinsettia-flower-plant-care

*I included the link above to help if you would like plant care for your potted
Poinsettia.

I just came across this video showing some of what we did to set up the school garden at Carolina Springs Elementary School back in 2012.

It’s easy to tell that starting this school garden was not a solo project. As I say in the video, Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia came through with free compost from the City of Columbia Compost Facility when I asked for it. This despite the fact that our garden wasn’t IN the City of Columbia or even in Richland County! Parent volunteers helped in raking out weeds and screwing together the walls of the beds, but I failed to mention that all of the lumber used to make those beds was donated to the school by Lacey Sutton of RH Smith Lumber Company in West Columbia. I approached a number of small (and large) lumber yards asking for donations, and when Mr. Sutton heard about our plans to grow fresh veggies with our students, he responded immediately. While the boards were a little warped – not good for most construction projects – and he did have to charge us a nominal $20 fee, we ended up with enough 2×10 lumber to create 8 garden beds that measured 3’ wide by 8’ long. He also threw in the deck screws and a driver bit for our drill for free! Lacey even cut the boards to length for us himself and told me that he wanted to support our efforts since gardening was something that he enjoyed doing with his granddaughter and he wanted other kids to have the opportunity to learn to grow their own food!

Even before anything you see in this video happened, our neighbor Sam showed up with his rear tine rototiller and tilled up the area where our garden was going to be as well as two other areas where we created a garden bed and a native wildflower meadow. I had asked to borrow the tiller so we could do the work ourselves, but Sam, who was probably close to 70 years old at the time, insisted on showing up on the Friday afternoon before our parent work day and tilled everything up himself spending hours tilling on a sunny nearly 90-degree day.

And as you can see, many other community members, leaders, farmers, and business owners helped along the way. In the video you can see that Mayor Halfacre of the City of Lexington donated the mulch we used to chip the pathways and Mr. Miller, our PE teacher, came out to help us spread the mulch.

But there were so many other community helpers and people who donated plants, seeds, and soil amendments over the years.

Our first tomato plants were donated by one Mrs. Alpine Zalewski (AKA: Pine) of Chapin, SC. Pine was 84 when I met her and running her own small greenhouse and store, Birds and Blooms Nursery. I stopped to chat with her every weekend on my way home from my wife’s house back when we were dating. I would let her know how things were progressing in the school garden and ask her advise about different issues as they arose with our plants. She ended up donating a full flat of what turned out to be Ildi yellow cherry tomatoes that she had forgotten to label and couldn’t sell as a result in April of 2013. Those were some of the tastiest and highest-yeilding cherry tomatoes I’ve ever grown! I’ve actually ordered seeds for this tomato variety so we can grow them again this year!

Randal Isherwood of Gardener’s Outpost, a small garden and exotic plant shop in Columbia, supplied us with fall brassica plants like broccoli and kale and amendments like Happy Frog potting soil and Fox Farms organic fertilizers.

Dot Derrick gave us a flat of 48 Red Russian Kale plants one year that she said her son was not going to plant on his farm in Newberry. Growing and roasting that kale made me a kale enthusiast who now encourages kids and adults alike to grow and eat this easy, delicious, healthy vegetable. Dot also taught me how to mulch with paper and wheat straw, a tip that I’ve used to good effect for years now to cut down on water use in the summer and ELIMINATE weeding in the summer garden.

One year WP Rawl Farm donated 150 bare-root kale plants.

Greg Brown of Green Leaf Farms donated seeds and plants from his farm that added to the beauty of our pollinator gardens providing years and years of flowers as we collected those amaranth seeds every fall.

Jason Roland of Organically Roland Farm donated kale plants right out of his field one year and many, many plants and seeds over the years as well as invaluable advice, suggestions, and encouragement.

And Sallie Sharpe of Sal’s Ol’ Timey Feed and Seed sent us monthly seed boxes containing seeds, bulbs, information sheets for planting, and fun “extras” – little toys and stickers that went with the monthly theme that the kids loved!

There were so many other contributors – more than I can remember or name here. People who donated plants at plant swaps – always offering their advice to help us get our newly adopted plants off to a good start. Members of online gardening groups who shared seeds through the mail sending instructions for how to grow what they sent as well as cultural notes about where each plant came from and how it was used or cooked. Many times they also sent personal stories of their family’s history and how the plants came to be part of their gardens and diets. An example of this would be when Amanda and Joe Jones donated a jar of collard seeds they had found in Joe’s grandfather’s shed that were 30 years old! The seeds were some of the last ones of a locally famous variety and the Jones’ hoped we could get some of them to grow so we could collect more seeds from the plants and possibly bring back a collard variety that was a family heirloom!

The point is, if you haven’t figured it out already, a school garden is a collaborative effort. If you are a teacher who wants to start a successful educational garden at your school, I encourage you to reach out to local community members who might be interested in helping you. You will be surprised at the amount of support you get from many different sources. Don’t be shy. Get started getting to know your local small farmers. Get involved in gardening communities either in person by joining gardening clubs, or online through social media gardening groups. Talk to the people who own or run local nurseries or landscaping outfits. Before you know it, you will have community around you that supports your program and your goals of teaching children where their food comes from and the skills and knowledge needed to grow that food!

Being a gardening educator can be a lot of fun. Much of what happens in the garden is so engaging for the kids that it can seem magical to them.

Of course, a big part of our job as gardening educators is to explain the science behind the magic they see among the plants every day.

But having a garden also gives us opportunities to play and work with the imagination of our students.

One of my favorite seasonal projects in the school garden is making my plants “talk“ by planting a “secret word“ in the fall or the spring.

To do this, I first ask my students if they knew that plants could talk… In fact, as the Spanish teacher, I let my students know that MY plants are bilingual! They speak both English and Spanish!

Then I get to work planning out a spot I can use to spell out a garden-related word in a garden bed. I try to choose words that are not too long. I trace the letters in a prepared bed with my finger, then sprinkle seeds thickly into the lines I’ve made. When I’m done, I gently brush soil over the seeds and water them well. I always use seeds that I either bought in bulk or that I’ve collected in years past that I have extra of. I find that small seeds that sprout quickly and are easy to grow are best. Lettuce, kale, mustard greens, or even amaranth are good choices.

Once my word is planted, I remind my students that the plants are working to spell out a word every chance I get! We take walks to the spot where the word is planted to see how the plants are doing and if anything resembling letters is starting to appear in the soil.

When it becomes clear that letters are forming in the soil, the kids always ask how I did it. I tell them that I had nothing to do with it! I simply “taught” the seeds a word by whispering it to them as I held them in my hand and then threw them into the garden where I wanted the word to appear and, of course, the seedlings arranged themselves into the letters to spell out the word!

I find that most of the older kids see through my ruse quickly, but the younger ones are wiling to believe – sometimes all the way up to 3rd grade! And the older kids who are in on the joke usually appreciate it and avoid spoiling it for the little ones.

In fact, I sometimes have my garden club kids help me plant the word so they are in on the joke and swear them to secrecy! The garden club kids love having this little secret and being able to spread the word that their plants are super smart bilingual plants that can spell out words in two languages! They will share this information with parents, teachers, administrators, and support staff at your school besides telling all their friends about it. It’s a great way to build interest in your school garden!

So far I have had my plants spell out words like “flor” (flower), “verde” (green), and “primavera” (spring). In fact, since I’m teaching at a school with a Mandarin immersion program now, I taught the plants to write the Mandarin character for “spring” too!

But my favorite word has to be “lechuga” (lettuce), which I planted back in April of 2013 at Carolina Springs. The following video shows the progression of the word as the seedlings came up over the course of weeks followed by a video one of my garden club students took after she asked to use the digital camera…

Having kept a school garden for over a decade, I can tell you that kids love growing vegetables. The act of planting a tiny seed and watching it grow into a large plant that you can pull out of the ground and eat like a carrot or radish, or that produces edible leaves like lettuce, cabbage, or kale, or that produces a fruit like a tomato or ground cherry is like magic to them.

And while average generic vegetables are fun to grow, kids really love growing the vegetables that go to extremes like tiny sour cucamelons or strange, spicy rat tail radishes, or odd colored tomatoes like Brad’s Atomic Grape.

But when it comes to the extreme vegetables, it’s hard to beat the giants! What kid doesn’t love to see a giant pumpkin that weighs more than they do and that they can sit on? Who will ever forget their first giant sunflower – even if it only grew at tall as the adults in their families? And while that zucchini might be tough after it stays on the vine too long, a child will take pride in growing a squash that approaches the size and texture of a baseball bat! (I once grew a “big top” carrot that was so thick and squat that the kids asked if it was a sweet potato when we pulled it up!)

A few years ago (2021) Sallie Sharpe of Sal’s Ol’ Timey Feed and Seed sent us giant beet seeds in our monthly seed box. In the box was a note explaining how to plant the seeds and that there would be a contest among the seed box recipients to see who could grow the biggest beet! I was at a different school then, but we planted and grew out those giant beets along with a few giant radishes.

The kids really got a kick out of growing and pulling up these giant root vegetables, and they had a surprise guest when harvest day arrived – Sallie Sharpe came to visit our garden and watch us pull them up!

Tue kids were so proud of their beets and radishes, and they enjoyed meeting Sal and showing her the garden and what they had grown with her seeds!

And Sal is holding another giant beet contest again this year! She is offering giant beet seeds to any school garden that would like to participate for free! If you’re a teacher with a school garden, I encourage you to give her a call at the shop at (803) 786-6546 and ask for some. The kids at your school will enjoy the activity and they’re sure to be impressed and surprised by the size of the beet root they grow no matter how big it gets!

Last night I went to the hardware store and as I walked past this printing shop I noticed they had a lot of houseplants growing in their window. When I realized what this plant was, I had to take a pictures. This is probably the biggest one of these I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen them growing outside planted in the ground in Florida!

So who knows what plant this is???

And who wants one to grow at home???