Xylem & Phloem

   Any avid gardener will confess their obsession with gardening books. Give me a million dollars and a good quarter of it would be spent filling out my gardening library. So, the discovery of a new book with fresh ideas is like fine Swiss chocolate to a choco-holic.

   From Storey Publishing comes Fallscaping, a feast of gorgeous photography and user-friendly techniques for creating a late-season show in your garden. Written by Nancy Ondra and Stephanie Cohen and photographed by Rob Cardillo, Fallscaping is sure to become an indispensible handbook for experts and novices alike. Though the title of the book might suggest design-centric content, I was surprised to find so much useful advice on entire landscaping process, from plant purchase to propagation to yearly maintenance. The book is also well-organized and easy to navigate for quick reference. Ondra and Cohen are clearly gardeners themselves, writing for their enthusiastic gardening peers as opposed to estate-owners looking for pictures to cut out and give to their landscape designers and architects.

   Though fall in North Texas is as fleeting as spring, it is one of the best times to be in the garden. Hopefully, Fallscaping will inspire you to shift your focus from spring and summer towards creating a year-round haven for wildlife and your wild life alike.

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Notice anything different? Welcome to the completely redesigned Xylem & Phloem! I hope that you will enjoy the new streamlined design... I was inspired by the clean blog designs of bloggers like ColdClimateGardening.com and IdahoGardener.com, two amazing ladies that I met at the Garden Writers Association symposium in Oklahoma City. Let me know what you think!

Best,

Callie 

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I am intensely passionate about gardening, cooking, and entertaining. Nothing is more satisfying than preparing a meal for my closest friends. Last night I gathered some of my favorite people at my home for a dinner celebrating summer's end. Three of us traveled China together in May, so the meal was a nod to those shared memories with recipes found in a great little cookbook called The $50 Dinner Party: glazed shortribs, Asian cabbage slaw, and cashew noodle salad. But the dessert did the real dazzling. With the help of my boyfriend's knife skills, we cracked open a Moon and Stars heirloom watermelon grown in my own backyard. I held my breath as the knife slid into the melon's rind; last year, I harvested my one melon before it was ripe. But disappointment was only a faint memory this year as the two melon halves fell apart to reveal fragrant, juicy, bright pink flesh. Though my friend Claudia, accustomed to my more elaborate dessert creations, playfully balked, "Watermelon for dessert? That's it?!", my guests and I gleefully devoured half of the 14-pound marvel with juice running down our chins and hands.

This morning I toted the remaining half to my parents house and shared a piece with my childhood caretaker Rosie, a fellow watermelon lover. An avid gardener herself, Rosie and I sat at the kitchen table swapping gardening advice and commiserating over our battles with cantaloupe-eating squirrels.

These are the reasons that I grow food. One watermelon spins a web of memories: coddling it to maturity, the anticipation of cutting it open, savoring it with friends, and making plans for next year's crop. Hopefully by next summer I will have figured out why my yard-covering sprawl of vines only produced one melon! Thankfully, it was a damn good one.

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Check out THIS article on harvesting and preserving your bounty of garden herbs.

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Oooh, I love it when people call a Garden God's bluff. (Garden Gods is my affectionate term for the two older Texas gentleman that have their own garden radio shows - i think you know who I'm talking about - and treat everyone else like idiots when they ask a simple gardening question).

Check out this website. The site owner goes to great lengths to debunk Howard Garrett's claims that adding lava sand to your garden is beneficial. Whether or not this guy's correct is beside the point. Believing everything that "the experts" tell you about gardening is like failing to get a second opinion when the doctor tells you the softball-sized lump on your noggin is nothing to worry about. Furthermore, why are all the garden gurus men? P. Allen, Howard, Neil...

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    For several years, I eschewed compost bins in favor of a big pile in the corner of the garden. This method of composting is a bit disorderly, but it works just as well. In an attempt to tidy things up a bit, however, I have decided to purchase a few composting bins and my online research uncovered a good deal I thought I should pass along.

    As part of Smith and Hawken's "Fall Cleaning" sale,  the company is offering the Biostack Composter for $103.00, down from $129.00. (The Biostack Composter is rated a Consumer Reports Best Buy.) Seeds of Change advertises similar composter made of recycled synthetic materials for $99.00, but the Seeds of Change version holds only 11 cubic feet of material compared to Biostack's 13 cubic feet of capacity. The same 11 cubic foot composter at CleanAirGardening.com sells for $89.99.

 *UPDATE: Found an 11 cubic foot composter at Growers Supply for $79.99.

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It was a dark and stormy night... Wait. No. It was a bright and sunny day, but I like writing that opener because it reminds me of the hilarious creative writing competition... Alas, I digress... AHEM! Despite the humidity this morning, I worked in the garden for a few hours tilling humus and manure into my front border in preparation for planting a new hydrangea. I struggled with some fibrous roots from neighboring shrubs (probably one of the reasons this summer's annuals faired poorly in that spot) and then retired inside to wipe the sweat off and get started on a paper. (If you're interested - highly unlikely that you are, but here it is anyway - the paper was on Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy and her legacy as a transformational leader. Can you understand why I'm ready to quit school and open my own garden shop?) Today happens to be a good writing day, so the paper flowed effortlessly. But just as I e-mailed the paper to my project teammates for review, something wriggled into my peripheral view. And there, hanging from a hair, was a big, fat WEBWORM. "Eeeeeeeeek!" I quickly swatted if off my head and stepped on it with a satisfying SMUSH. I then realized that it had been in my hair for nearly two hours, no doubt spinning a web and infesting me with eggs. I am officially disgusted and ready to declare war. Messing with my Bald Cypress trees is one thing, but an an attack from the air is another!

Are you having problems with webworms again? Here in North Texas, the record summer rainfall brought us webworm infestations a few months ago. I controlled mine with blasts from the waterhose, but some areas of town suffered badly.

Do you have a webworm dilemma? What methods have you tried for controlling them? Leave me some comments...

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