29. September 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

Above: This small container tree is Calamondin, suitable for growing in a pot or as bonsai on a patio.

As all south Florida gardeners know, our area is perfect for growing citrus, a fine group of edibles among the many we have to choose from, which perform well in south Florida. There are an abundance of usual and unusual edible food producing  fruit trees, vines, shrubs, herbs, perennials and annuals which we can grow here well. And citrus is just one of the many selections south Florida gardeners should grow, and enjoy in their kitchens and at their dining room tables.

A few of my favorite citrus to grow here include:

Meyer Lemon, which has large bright yellow juicy fruit, and is great for cooking and lemonade. It is a dwarf which can be grown close to the house in a sunny area where water doesn’t pool, as all citrus needs to dry out well between waterings. They don’t like wet feet.

Calamondin, is a dwarf with small sour fruit. Perfect to make sweetened fruit juice and tea drinks or use in dishes as you would lime or lemon. It can be grown in a pot on the patio or even used for bonsai. If potting, be sure to use the best potting soil or better yet an equal parts mix of quality soil, compost and sand mix to be sure the soil is nutrient rich, and the pot drains well and the soil drys out well between waterings. Calamondin, like lemons, limes and kumquats, can flower and set fruit all year. Even if you find you don’t care for the acidic taste of this beautiful small round orange fruit which resembles a tiny tangerine, when you grow this tree you will be able to enjoy the aroma of citrus blossoms all year. If you have smelled an orange or citrus blossom, you know what I’m talking about. Its scented bloom is reason enough to grow any citrus.

Ruby Red Grapefruit is another favorite of mine with a delicate flavor, a tad sweet, only slightly tart. As with all citrus, grow this in full sun in a higher area of the terrain, if your grade is not level. Be sure not to plant citrus in a lower area where the water will pool and take longer to drain.

Honeybell, is a cultivar created from a tangerine and a grapefruit, great for fresh squeezed juice, just sweet enough, a delightful fruit juice to enjoy even at room temperature before refrigeration.

Key Lime, is often found in the Florida Keys and made famous by Key Lime Pie. This wonderful small round fruit can be used for cooking, deserts and Key Lime Pies among other luscious delights, or just make a great limeade, straight from the garden.

Many of the cultivated citrus varieties are grown on sour orange root stock and grow from 10 to 15 feet. So while they can grow fairly large, if your space is small they can be kept cut back for smaller gardens.

One of the problems I hear from people about their citrus trees is that their trees don’t get good fruit quantities.

While many citrus fruit varieties are said to be self pollinating, often growing several varieties and being sure to grow a variety of other flowering plants and trees grown in their natural habit assures one of good pollination. It is important to attract a variety of pollinators into your garden. Attracting an abundance of pollinators into your garden with your plantings, will help ensure your trees produce plenty of fruit. When I have grown these plants in my own gardens packed with plant variety over the years, I have never had a problem with trees producing too few fruit for their maturity. In my newest garden, the tangerine tree I inherited, whose variety I don’t know yet, is filled with an abundance of lovely, still green fruits growing in size by the day.

Another problem I hear about is that citrus leaves often get leaf minor insects.

For the leaf curling and mining insects, use a spray of cheap cooking oil mixed with water. Spray at the end of the day when the temperature is not too hot, to mitigate the damage these critters cause. If your tree is mature, this is likely a small problem and may not need to be addressed at all. Natural predators will likely take care of this problem for you in a well planted garden. For big problems on smaller trees, that have gone unnoticed or unchecked for a long time use a mix of one fifth cooking oil to four fifths of water. If its a real small problem first try using a mix of 3 tablespoons cooking oil and 2 teaspoons dish soap mixed with a gallon of water. Sometimes this will do the trick. Use a pump sprayer that doesn’t get used for anything else, or use a liquid fertilizer applicator and experiment with the mix amount. Stay away from horticultural oils made from petrochemicals. Unless a product is actually safe, made from non toxic products, or you’ve made it yourself and know what you are using is safe, don’t use it on your food producing plants. Stay away from manufactured pesticides which add dangerous pollutants, many of which are carcinogens, to the fruit you eat, the soil you grow in, and your body.

Citrus trees are also hosts to a beautiful local swallowtail butterfly. They aren’t pests, if you are growing enough quantities of citrus and especially if the fruit tree is mature. The larvae looks a bit like bird poop, so you will recognize it when you see it. Share the tree with the butterfly and be a conservationist in your own backyard garden.

When planting, top dress the top of the soil around where the root ball is planted with some quality compost or composted animal manure and then mulch. Use natural mulch, not recycled mulch or dyed mulch which often has arsenic and formaldehyde in it. I also mix some of my compost with a handful of bone meal and blood meal and the native soil before I put it back in the hole with the tree. This provides plenty of safe natural plant food, that encourages rather than killing, important microorganisms and earthworms in the soil. Be sure to plant your trees in a garden bed. If you must grow them in a lawn, provide a large 3 foot ring of mulch around the base of the trees to protect them from string trimmer damage, which can make them susceptible to disease and attack and weaken and even kill them over time.

Grow a mix of strawberries, herbs like thyme and oregano, and vegetables like spaghetti squash, with perennial peanut in the mulch under and around the trees when they are young and there is still good light under their canopies. The herbs and vegetables will absorb any extra water. The peanut plant is a legume which helps provide nitrogen in the soil. When the trees are mature and there is more shade under them, grow mint and dwarf chenille and other shade tolerant edibles and ornamentals under the tree.

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28. September 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

Above: Yellow Elder in south Florida Garden, in USDA Garden Zone 10

This is the time of year when Tecoma stans, a small brittle native tree or large shrub, begins its show. Its large clusters of bright yellow trumpet flowers are showing off now and will be throughout fall, winter and early spring in the garden. During summer it puts most of its energy into growing. And it is a fast grower.

Spring will be the time to cut it back so that it will get nice and full, and contain its size, especially if you have a small garden. As it blooms on old growth as opposed to new growth, it is best not to cut it back during summer, fall or winter.

This show off makes a great colorful flowering natural hedge which performs best cut back once a year in late spring after its last set of blooms. It also makes a fine single specimen shrub or small tree. Best to plant it in a more protected area near a house or wall or fence, as it is brittle and can be broken by strong winds.

It’s flowers are subtly scented. This remontant bloomer will put on a show with each new flush of blooms through out the next many months until spring.

A must have for color in the back yard garden room, in south Florida, for those of us who love our outdoor rooms, in the cooler months on the horizon now.

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3. September 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

Second Nature, Michael Pollan’s collection of essays about his gardening experience, was a wonderful surprise. I came across the book while shopping at Amazon. I had read one of his more recent offerings, Omnivore’s Dilemma, and knew he was a wonderful writer and reporter, as well as a talented magazine editor. But learning about his own experiences as a gardener was a special treat for me.

Pollan bought an old Connecticut dairy farm some years back and began to transform it into a garden. His observations and struggles are much the same as any gardeners, yet he goes beyond the problems of the garden, and finds there, in the garden, the struggles of humanity, our politics and morals.

Pollan’s writing is often surprising, filled with observations about the culture of gardening which so often are unquestioned, and unexamined. Gardening in America is a political act, says Pollan, and so it is. Our gardens speak volumes about who we are morally. Second Nature is, as all of Pollan’s writing is, filled with truths and social commentary of the highest order. He is a deft observer of the human condition, and he writes it as he views it.

I highly recommend the read.

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2. September 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

Just finished reading a book called Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture, published by Chelsea Green Publishing. A must read for those interested in growing and sustainability.

This was the first book I read on my new Kindle, a gift from my mother. The pictures weren’t easy to see, so downloaded Kindle for my computer so I could view the pictures easily.

Holzer is an Austrian farmer, who lives and farms at a high altitude in the mountains. Holzer’s book, his second, is a wonderful tribute to his success at contributing in a positive way to his ecosystem and farming in a way that is completely sustainable.

His farm is a model for what can be done without chemicals and dangerous pollutants, coexisting with nature and using her as a model, minimizing problems in the landscape through practices that contribute in a positive fashion to the world, rather than depleting the natural world  through his exploitation of it.

He does what our predecessors did and then experiments, learning as he goes, finding the best ways to grow in his harsh and difficult terrain and climate. Go Sepp Holzer!

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29. August 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

While I have grown many herbs and fruit trees and shrubs in south Florida, I have not, before now, ventured into growing annual vegetables and fruits. I am starting slowly, with a few seeds I have saved from some foods I love, in order to learn about growing these foods and which ones do best in my garden culture and climate.

I have a long time friend and her spouse from my early gardening days, Donna and Dennis, who always grew wonderful salad gardens in the fall in south Florida, south of South Miami.

I remember fondly days when they came to my house, and the houses of our other gardening friends - the Garden Gang - as we called ourselves, and brought baskets filled to the brim with salad greens, fresh from their garden. In those days, we never bought salad from the market.

We have since moved and are not near our dear old friends, but their care, friendship and fabulous food remains with me and in my heart.

While Donna and Dennis are both gardeners, Dennis was the salad garden guru. He used to grow various varieties of lettuce, and wonderful asparagus, which had the most lovely ferny leaves, great for a vase with fresh cut flowers, and which, if I remember correctly, was a perennial, and produced better after the first year, among other greens and colorful vegetables.

Now that fall is approaching, I’ve begun to plant seed and begin my first foray into the growing of a salad garden. However, unlike so many who grow these foods, I have not parceled out a separate space in my garden for those foods, but am integrating them into the landscape, as I have always done with my herbs, fruit trees, butterfly nectar and host trees and bird attractors. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

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26. August 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

Malabar spinach is a distant relative of the spinach we usually eat. It’s name is Basella alba or Basell rubra, a red stem variety.

I found mine, the red stem variety, surprisingly, not at a nursery, but at a neighborhood organic market I frequent.

The plant is edible and has a thicker leaf than the spinach we know. Tasting it, I discovered that it is creamy and quite different in texture than the spinach I buy from the market.

The stems are said to be edible, but not tasty. I ate my Malabar spinach leaves uncooked. I  served it with bruschetta, placing the spinach leaves under the tomatoes as the first layer of the dish, then layering the tomato, mozzarella cheese, basil leaves and garlic, then drenching the whole thing in olive oil. Delicious appetizer salad before my meal.

Malabar spinach is a vining edible, therefore wonderful as an architectural feature, climbing a trellis in the garden. You can also grow it in a pot and prune it to weep over the edge of the pot, or let it creep like a ground cover in a garden bed.

I cut a small tip of my plant and put it in water to learn if it would easily root, and indeed it did to my delight. I am now making small starts of it, so that I will have more when the parent plant dies.

I haven’t yet learned if it is an annual or perennial, but am looking for the information. Of course, once I grow it long enough I will know. I have read it will die in cold temperatures, so it may well be a perfect plant for south Florida edible and permaculture gardens. After it flowers, I’ll learn if it produces seed here and keep you posted.

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23. August 2011 by Carol Whitaker.

It’s been a long time since I have blogged and I apologize. Business has kept me busy, but I find myself with some time now and want to discuss some plants I’m growing for the first time.

Recently I had a someone ask me about Tropical Lavendar. While there are several different plants with similar common names, the one he was interested in is Conutia grandifolia.

After seeing it growing so well in the nursery, I got myself a small specimen and have begun to grow it. It’s blooms were spent when I brought it home so I cut off the flowers and to my delight, find that it is a bloomer which will bloom when deadheaded, at least once, as it has since already bloomed again. Whether or not it will  bloom remontantly throughout the year in south Florida, I have yet to learn.

The bloom is a stalk of lovely, tiny lavender purple flowers which reach above the plant. It’s leaves are large, velvety and subtly scented.

The plant  I saw growing in the nursery grounds was about 8 ft. tall and about 4 1/2′  wide, so give this plant plenty of room for growth or be prepared when the time comes to prune it to fit your area.

I have read that it will grow to 12 ft. It is a showy plant and would make a lovely focal point in a garden. It does well in sun or partial shade.

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3. December 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

Native Simpson Stopper (Myrcianthes fragrans) is a great slow growing, small tree to use in small gardens. It also makes a perfect hedge, and is a suitable plant to use in place of ficus hedges.

Simpson Stopper  has small lovely white subtly scented flowers when in bloom. The  berries are a showy orange to red and its small leaves have a spicy nutmeg scent. The bark of this tree is especially ornamental, which is why I love using it in tree form.

This is a perfect tree for planting closer to the house. It can tolerate some shade as well, so using it for planting other bigger trees is also an option for this tree in a naturescape landscape, as it occurs as an understory tree in nature.

Butterflies  are attracted to this native, so it’s a great addition to a butterfly garden. Bird watchers will also appreciate this lovely tree, as birds go for the edible berries.

It requires little maintenance, as it is drought tolerant and relatively pest free. I have never seen this tree in distress or with discolored leaves.

This tree is on the threatened species list and should be used more in the landscape.

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16. November 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

This glorious beauty, Capparis cynophallophora, is an easy care, joy to grow.

Its lovely scented small showy white flowers bloom in spring and early summer. Its leaves are two toned, dark shiny green on top with a bronze tint to the bottom of the leaves. Its growth habit is vase like and so it rarely needs pruning or trimming.

It is a wonderful plant to grow as a hedge or to screen an eyesore. It can be limbed up and grown as a small tree and will grow to approximately 18 ft.

It should be used more often.

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11. November 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

When changing your landscape to a Green (read sustainable) landscape, removing high water needs, highly chemically engineered turf grass, is one of the best things you can do for the living landscape. You free yourself from regular lawn mowing, saving money and decreasing your carbon footprint. You also cut down on your landscape’s water needs and chemical dependency.

When you remove the grass you will need to plant something to replace it. Some of my favorite choices include Florida native, Mimosa strigillosa, and a nonpest exotic, Arachis glabrata.

The Mimosa plant is sometimes called Sunshine Mimosa or Powderpuff. Mimosa will grow in full sun and shade. It is drought tolerant and with just a few plants will cover a broad expanse and grow in quickly in a growing season, especially during south Florida’s wet summers. In central and north Florida they may die back or turn yellow during winter, and grow back with spring. Mimosa is adaptable and is recommended by University of Florida for ecological restoration.

Powderpuff Mimosa has purple to pink colored blooms and blooms heavily in spring.

The Arachis plant is also called Perennial Peanut. It is also drought tolerant and requires full sun for best performance, though can tolerate some shade. In shade it will bloom less and not be as thick. Peanut grows in quickly and will cover a large expanse quickly with just a few plants.

Peanut has a lovely deep yellow bloom and can tolerate salt spray, so is a good choice for coastal gardens, as well.

Both plants are able to fix nitrogen in the soil and do not usually require extra fertilizers to perform well. Both plants are long lived and don’t require replanting, once established. And once established, neither plant requires supplemental irrigation or chemical fertilizers. Of course most plants require some supplemental water during drought conditions.

Both plants are pest and disease resistant.

The Powderpuff is a host to Little Sulpher butterflies, so it’s caterpillars will feed on the leaves, which makes it a great addition to a butterfly friendly habitat. The eaten foliage is rarely noticed once the plants are established.

When you plant you can use as few as 10 to 15 one gallon containers to cover a 500 square foot area, if you are patient. The more plants you use the faster they will grow in, and the less problem you will have with weeding until the plants do grow in to cover the soil.

Though both plants can be walked on, when removing grass and replacing with low growing ground covers, you may also want to create paths to give character to your garden, and break up the plantings, using mulch, brick or rock.

Below is a yard on Key Biscayne, Florida, where we removed the grass and planted Perennial Peanuts. We used hundreds of plants in order to get fast coverage of the area. As you can see from this picture taken several months after planting, the many individual one gallon container Peanuts we planted are doing their job, and have grown together to form a mat like a lawn. The plants soften the edge of the driveway, but may be hedged to create a more formal look like a lawn. The Peanuts in this garden look fabulous.

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2. November 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

So many people in south Florida grow palms in their gardens. Yet many of the palms are exotic and often prone to disease and death from maladies such as fungus, pests, and even the mysterious lethal yellowing.

Many palms, like the popular Pygmy Date palms, are prone to nutrient deficiencies and require exceptionally well amended soil or regular doses of multiple plant nutrients, often provided in the form of chemical fertilizers.

Not only is this costly from an economic standpoint, but can also be detrimental to the environment, depending on the fertilizer, the application rate, the gardener and the garden and garden soil.

There are so many factors which can affect whether or not the fertilizer actually helps the plant without harming the environment, or helps the plant and harms the environment. Short of  learning and understanding all of these factors, which is a good thing to do, consider planting native palms instead of exotics, or at a minimum consider planting more natives.

Native palms, meaning indigenous palms, are already accustomed to native soils and have lived without our intervention or fertilizers and soil amendments. They make the perfect choice for ease, low maintenance, and success in the palm section of a landscape. They are less likely to fall prey to many of the diseases and pests that can be the demise of exotics, at considerable treatment and replacement cost.

Some of my favorites are: Florida Thatch Palm (Thrinax radiata) - a lovely slow growing fan palm with no prickly or dangerous thorns; Keys Thatch Palm, (Thrinax morrissi) - similar to the Florida Thatch, but with a wonderful silvery colored hue to the underside of the leaves;  Everglades Palm, also called Paurotis Palm (Acoelorrhaphe wrightii) a fan palm with slender, spreading multiple trunks. It makes a wonderful focal point in a garden.

Or consider Silver palm (Coccothrinax argentata). Not considered salt tolerant but does well inland.

Why not plant an endangered Florida Keys native, Buccaneer palm (Pseudophoenix sargentii). A great palm to add to any collection of landscape palms, and a great palm to plant in coastal gardens.

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31. October 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

These fabulous photos were sent to me by a teacher friend who is traveling. If you have a fabulous garden and would like your garden featured, drop me a line and I’ll let you know where to email your photos.

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30. October 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

If you have shady areas where you just don’t know what to plant because everything you plant there dies, then Fishtail fern can solve your problems.

I have used it around the roots of old trees that are coming up into lawns. These shady areas of root filled terrain in the garden often prove to be difficult areas to plant. Many plants can’t survive the root competition and shade, and won’t serve to camouflage the roots either.

Shade loving ferns can resolve the problem and bring that beautiful old tree into the garden.Fishtail ferns are rarely used and should be used more. The more common Macho fern is often used.The Fishtail color is a lighter green than many ferns, such as the Macho, and it is more beautiful, more delicate looking and still hardy. Fishtails also grow more slowly, needing less thinning out once they are established.

Like all plants when they are first planted, they require regular long, deep watering for the first month. After that, twice a week is plenty. Ultimately they are drought tolerant once they’ve become established in the landscape, and make a wonderful Green solution to a tough garden problem.

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29. October 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

Bay Laurel is a large evergreen shrub or tree with aromatic leaves and a gray bark. It is native to the southern Mediterranean and is grown world wide for its leaves. It grows in partial shade to full sun and thrives in rich well-drained soil.

Bay Laurel is a wonderful center piece in an herb garden or in a woodland garden. I’m surprised I don’t see it used more often.

Laurus nobilis is the latin name of the Bay tree. It’s leaves are often used by chefs to season foods. I use the spice in many of my homemade soups and sauces. Bay Laurel is also called Sweet Bay or Bay Leaf.

Sweet Bay is the laurel tree often referred to in ancient mythology, and has been credited with magical properties. The leaves and berries contain the oils, which are often used as popular liniments for arthritis and sore muscles, and in perfumes and soaps.

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29. October 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

It’s time for the cooler weather and the seasonal garden visitors who arrive with it each year, here in south Florida. The painted buntings have arrived to share the feeders with the year round garden birds, the blue jays, gray cat birds, mocking birds, orioles, sparrows and cardinals to name a few.

The hummingbirds have arrived as well.

If you aren’t enjoying the hummingbirds in your garden this time of year, consider planting some of the following which are favorites of the hummers in my garden.The hummingbirds are taking nectar from coral Honeysuckle, red Firespike, Cape Honeysuckle, red and pink Powderpuffs and various Shrimp plants and Salvias in the garden. Soon the purple Firespike, which the hummers always frequent in the garden, will come into bloom as well.

Planting a good quantity of these strong remontant bloomers provides enough nectar to keep the hummers nearby throughout fall, winter and early spring.

Early mornings around dawn and early evenings around dusk are great times to view the hummers as they move deftly around the plants that bloom this time of year in the garden.

I also hang feeders at various locations for easy viewing of the other birds, as they congregate nearby and wait their turns at the feeders. Some feeders are hung in trees that provide cover. These are favorites of the smaller birds and the cardinals. Others hang in the open. These are frequented less often.

All the birds congregate throughout the season, at one time or another, around the bird bath. I freshen it up frequently by providing new water every morning to every other morning, depending on my schedule. The rock which sits in the middle of the bath provides a place for smaller birds and butterflies to perch atop the bath.

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25. October 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

By Carol “Pink Shovel” Whitaker.

The Green Gardener

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.  

Wendell Berry

Is there an irony in your own front yard? One that you don’t even realize you live with daily?  The irony is common and it’s so subtly imbedded in our culture that often many don’t recognize it as they walk through it daily on their way to their automobiles to head to work.

The irony is the pollution of our own lawns.

They are watered three and four times a week when drought restrictions aren’t in effect. They are pumped full of chemical fertilizers, weed killers, pesticides and fungicides. They are mowed, and edged continuously.

According to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, American lawns receive the heaviest pesticide applications of any other land area.  These chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, sterility and a myriad of other health problems.

Keeping up with the Jones comes at a high cost.

Highly engineered lawns, which many folks really hope are sterile, as many have done their best to kill every living creature in them, are not only major polluters with large carbon footprints, they are also often highly toxic.  

American lawns, are a perfect example of the wrong plant in the wrong place. They just don’t perform well without all the chemicals.  And though they look green, they are not Green landscapes. This type of lawn and lawn maintenance is not sustainable.

Think about the quantity of pollutants in the yards that children and pets play in daily. Not only do chemical fertilizers contain any number of carcinogens. Remember there are no labeling laws requiring that consumers are apprised of what else is in the bag besides plant food.

It’s been over ten years since Duff Wilson, a reporter at the time for Seattle Times, exposed that hazardous waste was being sold to consumers and farmers as plant food. The quantity of non-plant food toxins in plant food is not regulated by the EPA. It’s not just the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, other plant foods, and the pesticides and fungicides we put into the living landscape, but any number of additional unlabled, unknown and undocumented toxins that accompany the known poison products being dumped into the living landscape via our lawns.

People seem to have forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. When I speak to garden clubs, I ask if they know what’s in their fertilizer. And they respond, nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous, and other micronutrients. No-one has ever responded cadmium or lead or various undeclared hazardous wastes. Many folks seem to have missed the news ten years ago completely. No one talks about it anymore. The contamination of our living landscape continues through seemingly innocuous, but actually dangerous lawn maintenance without the mindfulness of people doing it.

It’s time we took our own contribution to unsustainable practices seriously.

What can we do to change our ways?

One thing we can begin with is decreasing the size of our lawns to cut down on our turf grass habit and our addiction to chemical poisons.

Or better yet, remove your exotic, poor performing turf grass completely and grow the right plant in the right place.

If you must have a lawn, change your grass out to a native North American high performing prairie grass.

Consider Buffalo Grass (Buchloe dactyloides), a perennial which is gray green or blue green in color and grows from three to 12 inches when unmowed. It’s a warm season, long living, sod forming grass.

Other drought tolerant choices which are suitable for lawns are Blue Grama (B. gracilis) and Curly Mesquite Grass (Hilaria belangeri).

Rangeland Ecologist, Mark Simmons is researching drought tolerant native grasses suitable for lawns at The Lady Bird Johnson Wildlife Center at the University of Texas at Austin. He recommends mixing the grasses, in areas with less than one and a half inches of rainfall per month, as a way to ensure solid color throughout dry seasons.

Cultivars such as 609 and Praire are good choices for lawns. Stampede doesn’t get taller than four inches. For taller grasses originally bred for forage, grow Texoka or Comanche.

As the grasses don’t like sand, if you live near the beach, amend the soil by adding a good thick layer of dark top soil, compost or composted animal manure before you seed.

While some Buffalo Grasses grow from zones 3 or 4 to zone 9, the University of California has developed a Buffalo grass called UC Verde that grows from zones 2 to 11. A good choice for those of us who live at the tip of the peninsula here in Florida. It grows four to eight inches and is a strong enough grower to inhibit weed growth.

Turfallo is being touted for its shade tolerance. According to horticulturist, Julie Krosley at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildlife center, it looks good and is short and dense but the jury is still out on this new cultivar, which has only been on trial for about a year.

With Buffalo Grass mowing can be done once a month, or best of all, once or twice a year, if you like the natural look. Buffalo grass doesn’t require fertilization, though an annual topdressing of compost or composted animal manure is beneficial.

Give up pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, conserve water and cut your carbon footprint by mowing only a couple times a year. Go native. Grow Buffalo grass.

For more information about Buffalo Grass visit, www.wildflower.org. or

http://www.american-lawns.com/grasses/buffalo.html.

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17. September 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

Citharexylum fruticosum, also known as Fiddlewood is a native forest tree, which can also be grown as a large shrub. It is evergreen and makes an excellent hedge tree, but to enjoy it at its best grow this beautiful tree with its shiny leaves and lusciously scented white flowers as a tree.Butterflies flock to take nectar from the clusters of tiny white flowers of this beauty when it is in bloom.

Fiddlewood’s reddish brown to purplish black berries provide an excellent food source for birds. It is a remontant bloomer throughout the year, and can reach between 15 and 30′ in the landscape.

Fiddlewood should be planted more. It is underutilized and not commonly available at retail nurseries. Ask for it. Native wholesalers are growing it. It may cost more than the faster growing Gumbo Limbo and other more common natives, but it is well worth the extra dollars you will spend.

In nature Fiddlewood is found growing near coastal areas of central and south Florida, the Keys and West Indies. Fiddlewood can withstand the winds of coastal gardens and is salt tolerant.

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9. September 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

One of the biggest mistakes I have noticed home gardeners make is planting their trees and plants too deeply. Remember to plant no deeper than the plant is in the container. The top of the soil of the plant in the container should be even with the top of the soil in the garden. Sprinkle only a shallow light cover of soil over the top of the existing soil when you plant.

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7. August 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

Use natural mulches made from trees, leaves and ground up garden waste. I like eucalyptus for its wonderful scent. Another benefit is that some garden pests are repelled by eucalyptus. Still other natural mulches like pine, have similar benefits.

Natural mulches break down over time and help improve the quality of the soil. They also help hold moisture in the soil and keep weeds at bay.

Stay away from so-called recycled mulches as many of these dyed construction debris mulches have been found to have unsafe levels of arsenic and formaldehyde in the them. Researchers at the University of Miami and the University of Florida have documented the levels of these toxins found in recycled mulches bought from the shelves of local garden centers.

So while recycling can be a good thing. This form of recycling can cause a build up of these toxins in your garden which could do harm if inhaled, or could enter the body through handling or walking barefoot through it. Kids and pets are most at risk with products like these.

Calling products with dangerous chemicals and heavy metals in them good because they are recycled is a blatant form of green washing, a technique used by many to give a good spin to a bad idea.

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3. August 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

Use composted animal manure to enhance the quality of your soil. Simply spread the compost over the top layer of mulch around your plants roots and then redress the area with fresh mulch.

This process simply mimics natures way, as leaves, flowers, seeds and other garden debris drop to the soil and decays, the soil is nurtured and nutrients are made available to your plants.

In nature this process may take hundreds of years, but in your own garden, you can begin the process instantly with a small expenditure or time, mulch and composted animal manure.

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