Late Spring Wildflowers at Dun Hagan

It was a busy day on the homestead today watering everything on the place it seemed like, but not so busy that I failed to notice the wildflowers around me. I stuck the camera in my pocket to take advantage of whatever targets of opportunity might present themselves as I went about my rounds.

Regardless of what the calendar says late spring is upon us now here in Florida. Our early spring delights of red bud, wild plum, and pears are past their peaks as we make the not so slow slide into the warm season. Just the same though La Florida is still the land of flowers. They never really stop, only the composition of the arrangement changes.

Some of the following flowers I know and there are some that I have not yet taken the time to deduce their identity from my collection of books on the subject. If there are any that you know what they are please feel free to post about them. As always you can click on a photo to be shown a larger version for a better look.



This first flower is one of the most common and long-lasting on the place. It is the Common Green Eyes Berlandiera subacaulis also known as the Florida Green Eyes. With a large, fleshy carrot like tap root it is quite drought hardy and well adapted to life here on the sand ridge. My daughters pick bouquets of these flowers across the spring and summer.








This second flower is also drought hardy and well adapted to the sand ridge though I wish it were not. It is the Spurge Nettle Cnidoscolus stimulosus sometimes known as Tread Softly. As with all nettles it'll make you smart if you're foolish enough to brush against it with bare skin. Older plants produce a potato like underground tuber that is reputed to be edible though I've never tried it myself. The tuber is what makes it so drought hardy and difficult to eradicate. I've taught my kids not to touch anything with white flowers because of this one. They never listen until they actually do touch one. They remember just fine after that. {laughing}




This next one is the Pinewoods Milkweed Asclepias humistrata which I believe is specific to the Southeastern United States. This particular plant comes back in this same spot year after year. I've been trying to recall if the Monarch butterfly lays her eggs on this species but I don't know. I mow around them when I can just in case. The Giant Swallowtail butterfly is much prettier than the Monarch, but the Monarch doesn't eat my citrus trees and the Swallowtail's Orange Dog Caterpillar does. I'll leave the milkweed alone when I can. Stay off my citrus trees!

There are at least three different species of blueberries (Vaccinium) at Dun Hagan. One of which is the Rabbiteye blueberry (Vaccinium ashei) commonly grown for its fruit of which I now have five or six varieties. The other two however are native here. The first is the largest of the blueberry species known as the Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum). It can make quite a tall woody shrub or small understory tree. Some of mine approach ten feet in height and might go taller still with better soil and more water. Under good conditions they make an edible, tasty berry, but mine are usually too water stressed most years. The birds still seem to like them well enough.

The other native Vaccinium species is what I believe is the smallest in the family which is the Shiny Blueberry Vaccinium myrsinites. They are past their blossom peak in this shot, but there were still some bushes full of flowers. If you look closely you can see a few fruit already set and beginning to grow. They make an edible tasty berry too, even in my poor droughty sand. I seldom get to taste them though as they are highly prized by the local bird life who are more expert than I at judging when they have reached perfect ripeness. I find these interesting as my patch is growing out in full sun in the middle of my pasture and holding their own against the grass. I fertilize them maybe once a year and give them the occasional watering, but I suspect they'd stand their ground just fine without any attention from me. If ever I manage to fence my pasture in I'll need to move the patch as I suspect the livestock would happily graze them into extinction.

Those are the flowers that I have identified. The ones that follow are as yet still unknown to me. Maybe one of you readers will recognize some of them.



This first one is a legume, one of the vetch species I think, but I don't know which one. It's not very numerous here, I think it wants more water than my soil can usually provide, but I find it every spring. Doesn't seem to appeal to the chicken flock as I never see them eating it. They're a bit past their blossom peak now. Two or three weeks ago would have caught them at their best.








And here is another legume species as you can tell by it's pea blossom shaped flower. It's not very common here either and never makes a very big plant, but it is distinctive enough that I never fail to notice it. It seems to tolerate the heat a bit better than the one above as I'll see it further into the early summer. I suspect though it would prefer a somewhat moister, sweeter soil than what I can readily provide or I'd see more of it.













This one I find on the slight slope where my blueberries are planted. A bit of dappled shade and not quite so arid as the full-sun open pasture. I have no idea what it is, but I never fail to notice it. The wind was blowing the flower stalks a bit so the blossoms are not as sharp in detail as they might have been. With the flower stalk fully grown it stands maybe two feet tall though the rest of the plant tends to hug the ground.














This one here is as tiny as other other is tall. I really should have gotten down close to the ground to shoot the photo so that you could see how diminutive the plant is. The blossoms are smaller than a thimble. It grows in the full sun and heat where the soil is quite dry and lasts into the summer though I can't recall now if I see it at mid-summer or not.












Last for this post is one of my more common early spring garden weeds. It seems to favor areas of disturbed soil as I don't see it much in the lawn or pasture, but I have a lot of it in the garden. I pull it for green feed for the hens when there is nothing else available. They seem to like it well enough.



There are other wildflowers out there that I was not able to get a good photo of. Just this year I started noticing a few thinly scattered Blue Eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium atlanticum) around the yard. I wasn't able to make a good photo of mine, but you can see a good one over to the Central Florida Gardening Blog. It is one of the few Florida gardening related blogs that I've been able to find and I'm sure they'd love to see a comment or two if you are so inclined to encourage them to keep it up.

In another month or so I'll cruise the property again to see what new flowers I can find.

.....Alan.

Ready To Launch

Spring is busting out all over at Dun Hagan these last couple of weeks. Everything on the place that can is growing. I'm going to have a busy weekend getting the fertilizing, watering, and last minute pruning done. The daylillies aren't waiting for me, they're already getting down to work. Two of the three bare root pecan trees I planted several weeks ago have broken bud and are beginning to leaf out. I'm hoping the third will soon as well.

I spent much of this week getting ready for the arrival of our newest batch of chicks. Rebuilding the brooder hover, cleaning up the brooder box, filling it with bedding, cleaning the waterers and the feeders. The hover still is not really the way I want it. The parts that I bought to do the improvements with turned out to be the wrong size and by the time I discovered the error I didn't have time to go get the correct ones so I settled for replacing some of the wood and the one bulb socket that had gone bad. Maybe I'll get the rest finished after the current batch of chicks are outside.

The birds in the established flock originated from Ideal out of Texas. The new chicks are from Privett Hatchery located in New Mexico. They have a good reputation for the type of utility breeds I favor. Between the two flocks I should now have a good genetic base to work with. Not all of the birds in this batch are for me though, eight of the thirty six chicks are for the father of a friend of mine who wants to start keeping hens himself. Between the two of us we ordered Americaunas, Rhode Island Reds, Production Reds, Plymouth Barred Rocks, White Leghorns, Black Sex Links, and New Hampshire Reds so we have quite a variety as you can see from the two photos. I was only able to catch a few of them with the camera though, most of them wouldn't come out from under the hover.

There's a really nice website by the name of Feather Site where you can see photos of what each breed looks like both as chicks and as grown birds. Very handy when you're trying to tell one chick from another.

The established flock has gotten that good Spring energy as well with every hen and her sister laying for all they're worth. The refrigerator is full of eggs and I've taken to giving free samples in an effort to drum up new customers which I'll need come August when the new birds begin to lay.

Now that the chicks are in the brooder I can give some attention to other matters, notably fertilizing everything that needs it and maybe playing chicken with the late frosts by planting the garden a week early.

The bedding plants are ready and waiting. Mostly peppers with a few tomatos and eggplants and the marigolds as you can see. Florida Cracker relates that he plants cosmos in his garden as well as marigolds and I think I may give them a try myself. I've done nasturtiums several times before which did OK until about late July or so if I kept them well mulched and watered. I'll be visiting family the weekend of April first which is when I'd ordinarily be planting the frost tender stuff in the garden so I'm debating with myself about whether to take the chance of planting this weekend and gaining two weeks growth or playing it safe by waiting until the seventh. Come Sunday I'll study the long-range forecast and come to a decision.

The container plants in the greenhouse don't care about late frosts. The weather is warm, the days are growing longer and they are getting down to business. The lemon trees are full of blossoms, green fruit, and the last few ripe fruit that we haven't used yet.

I have two of these Eureka lemons (the common grocery store lemon), the other is blossoming too, but I haven't repotted it yet. That's on my to-do-soon list along with the Buddha's Hand citron that I bought the other day. It's dangerous to walk through a nice selection of plants on a nice spring day. Very dangerous.

I'm sorry about the photos being a bit fuzzy. For some reason the camera and I could not get it together no matter what I did.

The Key Limes are not about to be shown up by a mere lemon. They're all full of blossoms and new growth coming on too. There's a bunch of green fruit in there as well as some remaining ripening fruit that we'll soon pick and use.

You can't see them very clearly for being the same color as the leaves but behind the Key Lime is a Tahiti Lime (the big grocery store lime) that has green fruit and blossoms of its own. The geranium is one that my grandmother gave to the Kinder Major year before last. She has a nice flower collection given to her by my grandmother and aunts all kept that way by her daddy.












Last for this post is mystery for the reader. What is it?

I'll give you a clue. It's a common container plant that is often grown in the ground in frost-free areas.












If I can get something done this weekend maybe I'll get another post up come Sunday or Monday night.

For you folks up there in the Frozen North, we're sending our winter birds back. We've painstakingly tied a bit of spring to each of their legs. Y'all look sharp for them.

.....Alan.

Prep work.

Well, in spite of having to work around the Girl Scout cookie booth schedule of my wife and daughter I was able to get some work down outside today. The hen house has finally been cleaned out and spread on the part of the garden I'm going to do the spring planting in. Spread, tilled in, and given a good watering so it can start working. I'll plant it come the first weekend in April after our average last frost date has passed. Having been tilled well already the rototiller was easier to handle today than last weekend though my right knee is complaining. I'll probably have to go to using a knee brace in the future when I'm doing anything really physical.

The garden squared away for the moment I repotted the peppers and marigolds so they would have more rootspace to grow into while we're waiting out the next three weeks or so. Two kinds of bell peppers, some regular jalapenos and some spicy, but mild anaheims. The marigolds are for color but if they should happen to repel some unwanted insect life that'll be good too. Yesterday I bought a couple of Ichiban eggplants and two Patio tomatoes. The last time I planted the Ichiban they were so productive we ended up giving away most of them so this time around I'm planting only two. I'm not planning on canning tomatoes this year so the Patios will cover the few that we eat fresh. I like them for being stout plants that don't need a lot of support though I'll put them in a basket anyway. Some of our thunderstorm winds can get rather sporty.

While I was buying the eggplant and tomatoes I noticed they had rhubarb plants too. Fortunately in all the years I've gardened in Florida I've never heard of anyone successfully growing rhubarb here otherwise Diana would have me planting it for sure.

No pictures today. I had the camera but got so busy that I forgot to take any photos.

.....Alan.

Tilling the earth

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of those rare, glorious days when it all comes together. The high for the day was in the mid-sixties, it was sunny, breezy, and I didn't have to do anything for anyone so I got down to work.

On Saturday I went to Alachua Feed & Seed in Gainesville to pick up some bedding plants and was snagged by their pecan trees. I've had miserable luck in keeping planted pecans alive so last fall I decided I wasn't going to fool with them at all this winter. Until I came across the three varieties I've been looking for, freshly dug, and with plenty of root system still attached so once more I'm going to try my hand at growing them. I planted them out yesterday, one in the yard, the other two in the pasture with plenty of organic matter amending their sand and some old alfalfa cubes for slow-release nitrogen when they need it.

That done I finally had a chance to do something with the garden. The brush pile has been burned, reluctantly, but I did finally get it going. The pepper cages have been cleaned up and the dead, dry plants burned. Also cleaned up the new ground on the far side of the garden which has never been tilled before. There was a rather large standing dead oak there originally which I felled a couple of years ago. A few thick pieces were still solid enough to pick up to cart to the brush pile, the rest was falling apart rotten. I ran the mower over it and the low brush interspersed among it all after first removing the resident cacti. Once everything had been cut as low as I could I ran the rototiller over it. Five times in fact before I could get it the way I wanted it. Lots of roots in there. I also tilled up some of the previously planted areas to get them ready, but ran out of time before I could get to all of what I wanted to turn up. Hopefully this coming weekend I'll get the rest. Also need to clean out the hen house to spread on the garden and turned under so it can mellow for a few weeks before I put in the first of the spring garden some time after April first. I've learned over the years no matter how sweet the weather in March it's not worth the trouble to plant before April Fools day or I'll end up out there freezing my behind off some frosty night spreading bedsheets over my tender plants when the inevitable late freeze hits.

This morning I'm stiff and sore from wrestling the tiller much of the afternoon, but by the time next weekend comes along I'll be ready to go at it again.

.....Alan.

Later edited to correct numerous spelling errors. Sigh...