Solving Gardening Mysteries One Podcast Episode at a Time

Season 4, Episode 37, July 20, 2022

Here’s a link to this episode.

My podcast host, Dee, is going to take one look at the picture above and ask me why I didn’t ask her to take a better picture of her bachelor’s buttons? She’ll be appalled that it shows her shadow and was taken in the bright sunlight at high noon. “Really, Carol, if I had known you were going to use a picture of the bachelor’s buttons, I could have sent a better one.”

No doubt! Dee takes some great pictures in her garden and in gardens everywhere. This isn’t one of them!

But the picture is just to illustrate that as soon as Dee texted it to me to show me that bachelor’s buttons had silver foliage, which I doubted on the podcast episode (and can never un-doubt because that would take a lot of extra audio editing), I realized that what she calls bachelor’s buttons I call blue cornflower. What’s in a common name? Confusion. But this particular plant is correctly known by both common names, as illustrated by American Meadows in their listing for it. The botanical name is Centaurea cyanus.

Here’s what they wrote about it:

World-famous “cornflower blue” is the bluest blue in the flower kingdom, and that makes this many people’s favorite flower. Easy to grow, quick to bloom, great for cutting. Strong seedlings have a “silvery” look in a seeded meadow. In fact, cornflower grows so well, it has become somewhat of a pest in some areas, most notably the Southeast. Birds love seed. American goldfinches (wild canaries), particularly, put on quite a show as they dive into fields of this flower when it is going to seed. This is the famous flower of many romantic legends, thus the name “Bachelor’s Button”. Young single girls wore the bloom as a signal of availability in Old England. It also always figures prominently in the Victorian "Language of Flowers"--of which there are several versions.

Now, on to more about the podcast!

Our first topic was silver plants and we mentioned many besides “bachelor’s buttons” including a couple of dusty miller plants, Senecio cineraria ' Silverdust' and Senecio ‘Angel Wings’. A long time ago, Dee wrote the sweetest blog post about dusty miller, a plant she doesn’t like. Read the post to find out why she still planted it in her garden.

If you want more information about any of the other silver plants we mentioned, leave a comment and we’ll tell you what we know.

After silver plants, we moved on to discuss cucumbers vs. melons vs. squash and then threw in gourds for a rousing discussion about the differences between all these fruits in the Curcurbitaceae family. If you want to grow some squash, check out my Family Handyman article about growing squash.

And if you are into gourds, check out the American Gourd Society - headquarters in Indiana!  

On the bookshelf was  Farming on the wild side : the evolution of a regenerative organic farm and nursery by Nancy J and John P. Hayden (Amazon link). Dee and I both checked it out of the library but only Dee had a chance to read it. She particularly enjoyed the chapter on unusual berries to grow. This is not light-hearted reading but if you want to know more about regenerative farming, you may want to find a copy at your library too.

We are delighted that our dirt this week was about the discovery earlier this spring of a rare oak tree in Texas that was thought to be extinct. One of many articles is Researchers Discover Oak Tree Thought to Be Extinct | Quercus tardifolia | The Morton Arboretum.  (A h/t to Dr. Jared Barnes who posted about this in his newsletter.)

And now, in rapid succession, because this is getting to be a long post…

We had a little unscripted discussion about the Addams Family TV show from the 1960s which you can watch on Prime Video.

Dee wrote a blog post a few years ago called 'Tour Gardens are Pageant Girls' which she said was sassy and it is.

Because Dee is in triage mode in her garden-of-little-rain, she’s figuring out what needs water and needs it now, which gives me a good excuse to link to my recent Family Handyman article on how to water plants. It’s pretty basic but you might pick up a tip or two.

And I did it again. I bought another Lego kit. This time it’s the new Lego Orchid. It will look great with my Lego Bonsai and Lego cut flower bouquet.

Dee reported that she did pot up all those new daylily’s she brought back from the National Daylily Convention. Check out her blog post about the daylily convention for more details.

We did use a bunch of garden-y quotes from the great mystery writer, Agatha Christie this week, which gives me an excuse to link to a blog post with more Agatha Christie garden-y quotes. (Yes, that’s where the title of this episode came from.)

Oh, and that shepherd guy that Dee mentioned is James Rebanks, author of Pastoral Song (Amazon Link). Happy to clear up that mystery for you!

Okay, we are closing in on the end of this newsletter, really. Here’s a link to my latest jigsaw puzzle, Country Diary: Spring plus a link to the YouTube video of the jigsaw puzzle competition!

All the usual stuff follows….

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 and other links may also be affiliate links.

Email us any time at TheGardenangelists@gmail.com or leave a comment below!

 

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.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletters, via our websites!