Sex in the Garden With Tex

Here’s my weekly (natch) Saturday roundup of garden articles of interest:

1. You can’t take the ’70s college student out of the middle-aged boomer.

Before the words recycle and repurpose came into use, when macramé was prominent, it was commonplace to furnish first apartments with discards and inexpensive foliage plants.

Carl Youngberg and David McNair haven’t been able to shake their youthful habits. They head out for their morning walk and are likely to return lugging a discarded door or a declining plant picked up curbside. Their shared prowess at salvaging has transformed a respectably landscaped back yard into lush but quirky outdoor rooms where, from spring through fall, they linger over morning coffee, entertain friends and wind down evenings relaxing in the pool.

Read more here:

2. A national poll conducted in January for Scotts Miracle-Gro suggests there will be a 20 percent increase in vegetable gardening over last year.

Retailers scrambled to keep up with demand in 2008, but this year they’re prepared. Local retailers have expanded their inventory of vegetable transplants, and North Haven Gardens, for example, has built several new display gardens to show customers how to plant and what to grow in their own personal versions of a Victory Garden — both in large containers and in raised beds.

In North Texas, early spring is prime time to get nutritious vegetables going before the heat and humidity can take their toll on tender young plants. You can plant onions, potatoes, lettuces, spinach, peas and root crops like carrots, beets and radishes this month.

Get your veggie fix here:

3. Gardeners demand a lot from plants: good looks, low maintenance, and flowers and fruit to attract wildlife. Natives can live up to those expectations.

When we asked Linda Knowles her 10 favorite natives, she quickly shared the list below. A Texas Master Naturalist and president of the Houston Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas, she’s especially drawn to this group.

In fact, she says, “This list of 10 great natives could easily be expanded to a list of hundreds; there are so many other great native plants that could be grown. Texas has more than 5,000 native plants, second only to California in the number of native plants.”

What are those great natives (at least for Houston)? Check it out here:

The Houston Chronicle’s ‘Lazy Gardener’ columnist has a list of reader suggestions for best plants of 2008. Many native Texas plants on the list, including one of my faves: Salvia macrophylla ‘Hot Lips’, or ‘Hot Lips’ Sage. Beautiful little sagey flowers, long-lasting, trouble-free plant, perennial, of course. Here’s the complete list: 

Interesting look at Dallas native plant enthusiast Peter Schaar, who likes to cook what he grows. Those of us in the native Texas plant movement have known about Peter’s cooking expertise for a long time.

It amazes me quite often what fear has led to.

McALLEN, Texas — The Department of Homeland Security has sued The Nature Conservancy to condemn land in a South Texas nature preserve for the border fence.

The conservancy’s Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve, which includes more than 1,000 acres along the Rio Grande near Brownsville, is home to a rare grove of native sabal palms, a South Texas native plant nursery for reforestation projects and habitat for the endangered ocelot and jaguarundi.

The government offered the conservancy $114,000 for a strip of land that would leave three-quarters of the preserve, including the property manager’s home, in the no-man’s land between the fence and Mexico, according to court records filed earlier this month.

And this case follows others, such as this, based on this:

We have a president (or vice-president) who thinks anything he does is OK, because we’re fighting a Global War on Terror ™, and a Congress that is cowardly enough to let him get away with it.

On a semi-related note, I hope Obama changes the name of Homeland Security. ‘Homeland” is a term straight out of Nazi Germany.

– Tex, feeling fenced in