August: Too Many Signs of Early Fall!

Season 4, Episode 39, August 3, 2022

(Tropicanna® Black Canna photo courtesy of Monrovia)

The title for this week’s episode comes from a comment I made early in the episode that August is Latin for “too many signs of early fall.” Then we confessed how far in advance we recorded this week’s episode… a full eight days before it was officially launched out into the world.

We promised a couple of things in this episode. First that we’d share updates on what’s going in our gardens.

Honestly, they are pretty much as described. If you haven’t read Dee’s recent blog post about how hot and dry it has been in her garden (and many places), click over there and take a look. You’ll see her tarps, a great bug photo, plus some pictures of delicious food. I also wrote about some food on a recent blog post, but my food pics aren’t as good as Dee’s pics.

In my garden, I’m picking veggies, pulling weeds, pretending not to see late summer flowers like surprise lilies and the first bits of color on some mums. (Mums!!! Hold back a few weeks! I’ll give the signal on when to start blooming and it won’t be until after Labor Day!!). I picked the first ears of sweet corn. They are a little smaller than those I buy at the farmers market but are delicious and oh-so-sweet.

Our actual show notes, with more commentary:

Our second promise was a picture of the canna Dee wants to grow next year. See above.

We talked about cannas because Dee saw a picture of Tropicanna® Black Canna and has decided she is going to get it next year. I found an article on growing cannas from the University of Arkansas, circa 1999. Cannas, like many flowers, go in and out of fashion. And yes, Marianne Willburn did write about them in her book, Tropical Plants and How to Love Them (Amazon link). (And ignore that I said “canna corm” once early on in the episode when I meant to say “canna rhizome.”)

(FYI, on our book links… the first link is to Bookshop, an Amazon alternative that supports local independent bookstores. Give it a try if you haven’t. You can pick your favorite local bookstore to get the proceeds from the sale. But we know many of you still prefer Amazon, so we provide an affiliate link for it too.)

In our vegetable segment, we talked about the wisdom of doing nothing, or very little, for pests. Dee does use Nolobait when she can get it because the grasshoppers are particularly voracious in her neck of the woods. Dee also mentioned Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home (Amazon link) and several other books.

On the bookshelf, we talked about Vegetable Literacy: Exploring the Affinities and History of the Vegetable Families, With 300 Recipes by Deborah Madison  (Amazon link)   Dee has this on her shelf, and I think I want it. While she was talking about the book, I thought, “This author sounds familiar to me.” But I didn’t say it out loud.

She was familiar to me! Earlier this year, I read her autobiography, An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables. (Amazon Link).

Dee notes that Vegetable Literacy is similar to The  Chef's Garden by Farmer Lee Jones (Amazon link) and suggested following Farmer Lee on Instagram if you use Instagram. His posts give us both joy!

On our dirt segment, Dee talked about the Ring of Forests around the top of the world. Check out this link for more info: Boreal Forests of the Circumpolar World | SpringerLink.

What else?

Oh, I want some good book recommendations! I finished all the “Aunt Dimity” cozy mysteries and am ready for another reading adventure. And though we talked about Gladys Taber as a garden writer, turns out she isn’t a garden writer, per se, though she wrote a lot about living out in the country.

And that’s a wrap for the first week of August! Here are the other links we always provide.

Affiliate link to Botanical Interest Seeds. (If you buy something from them after using this link, we earn a small commission at no cost to you. This helps us continue to bring this podcast to you ad-free!)  Book links are also affiliate links.

Email us any time at TheGardenangelists@gmail.com 

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For more info on Carol and her books, visit her website.  Visit her blog May Dreams Gardens.
For more info on Dee and her book, visit her website.  Visit her blog Red Dirt Ramblings.

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