Is That a Zebra in Your Garden?
Season 4, Episode 40, August 10, 2022
Hello, listeners! This week’s episode is another one we recorded early… two weeks before publishing it.
We promised updates on our gardens, so here goes...
In my garden, I’ve been picking tomatoes, corn, squash, peppers, and finally, some green beans. I picked a little over three pounds of green beans Monday, and the row I planted later hasn’t even started forming pods yet. I’m suddenly overrun with green beans.
It happens.
My little sweet corn patch has given me almost 20 ears of corn this year. If you’ve grown sweet corn in a small patch, you know you don’t get a lot of corn from it. So 20 ears is a big deal! This year’s chosen variety, ‘Wild Violet’—wonder why I picked that one?—produced smaller ears, but they are delicious. The kernels are a creamy white with flecks of purple on them.
Fortunately, the raccoons never found the sweet corn, which is great. I think I’ve picked it all. Maybe they won’t find my pawpaw fruit either.
Did I mention that I also got almost an inch of rain this past week and a half inch of rain last night, with more coming today?
All good.
Now in Dee’s garden… follow her on Instagram for the latest and greatest, and don’t forget to check out her daily stories. She’s posting some great stuff about… I’m not telling; just go look-see for yourself!
We promise that next week, Dee will have lots to tell us, and our updates will be more timely.
On to the podcast notes…
Our flower for this week is hidden lilies, Curcuma alismatifolia. New to me! They are in the plant family Zingiberaceae. Never heard of it. Turmeric is also in this plant family.
Dee had a chance to try hidden lilies last summer as an influencer for Costa Farms. You can see her Instagram pics of these lilies - here and here. One of those pics is above. The hidden lilies in that pic are hidden in plain sight. They are the dark pink flowers in the turquoise pot.
For vegetables, we talked about two newly announced All-America Selections winners for 2023: Pepper cayenne Wildcat F1 and Watermelon Rubyfirm F1.
We also gave a shout-out for the 2022 All-America Selections tomato, Tomato Purple Zebra F1 (National Winner), and Begonia Viking Explorer Rose on Green F1 (Gold Medal Winner). I grew both from seeds they sent me this year. To see the begonia, check out this picture on Instagram.
The Purple Zebra tomatoes are delicious and slightly bigger than bite-sized. I like to cut them into wedges to eat them.
Now you know where we got the title for this podcast episode! Purple Zebra. Zebra in your garden. There’s one in my garden and one in Dee’s garden, too.
On the bookshelf, Dee talked about a new cookbook, Green Kitchen: Quick & Slow: Joyful Vegetarian Recipes for Quick Weeknight Fixes and Slow Weekend Meals by David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl (Amazon Link). The authors' blog, Green Kitchen Stories, is also worth checking out.
For our dirt, we gave an update on monarch butterflies. Check it out here: Daily briefing: Monarch butterflies are an endangered species. Of course, this gave us another reason to mention a book we both enjoyed earlier this summer: The Language of Butterflies by Wendy Williams (Amazon Link)
I went down a tiny rabbit hole to find out more about the author Gladys Taber. If you want to know more about her, check out the website Friends of Gladys Taber. It’s one of several websites devoted to her. I’m currently reading her book, The Book of Stillmeadow. Fortunately, my library had a copy because there appear to be only used copies available for sale at pretty steep prices.
Our garden commissions were just a guess this week. See above about recording two weeks before publishing.
In my garden, I’m pulling out all the squash plants this week. They look bad. Real bad. And buggy too. I’ll put them in the trash to lessen the possibility of squash bugs and squash vine borers overwintering out there.
And I’ll be weeding, of course. So will Dee.
And that’s this week’s episode.
The usual links follow.
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 anytime at TheGardenangelists@gmail.com.
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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