Herself’s Houston Garden

Last year, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Oxford, Miss., isolated compounds from a plant

called American beautyberry that enable its crushed leaves to repel mosquitoes.

This work, led by chemist Charles Cantrell at the ARS Natural Products Utilization Research Unit in Oxford, was inspired by a tip another ARS scientist—botanist Charles Bryson in Stoneville, Miss.—got long ago from his grandfather: that beautyberry was used in northeastern Mississippi to protect people and farm-work animals from biting bugs.

Now ARS scientists in Beltsville, Md., have shown that two beautyberry compounds”callicarpenal and intermedeol”may effectively repel blacklegged ticks as well. [ read more USDA Research, Beautyberry ]

See also
American Beautyberry

If you are growing tomatoes from seed they need to get going.

You want to spend about 6 weeks growing them indoors before placing them outside. Find a very sunny window to get them going and remember tomatoes love heat so be sure your location is very warm as well.

It is unlikely you’ll need to add heat down here in Houston, but up north heating pads on their lowest setting are sometimes put under the trays of tomato seeds or the seeds can be placed on a radiator in the evenings.

Mid-March is when tomato plants go in the ground outside here.

Tomatoes have two very short growing seasons in Houston, one in the spring, one in the fall.  You need to be sure to get in early on both if you want tomatoes.  If it is too chilly, cover them with plastic.

Growing tomatoes in Houston

The sun came out again today, but it was much colder. You could hear the cold front moving in by the ringing of the wind chimes all night.

There is a mocking bird who has decided our feeder is just for him and no other birds. Which is odd since I couldn’t find any mealy worms (their preferred food ) so I’m not sure what he is finding of interest there. He sits on the feeder and and pitches seed on to the ground looking for good loot. Perhaps he likes the dried fruit I put in there for the woodpecker?

Not rain, not sleet, not cold, not hot pepper sprinkled in your garden, not chicken wire over your bulbs shall keep the squirrels from your bulbs. Even being stalked all day long by a large black cat shall not keep squirrels from your yard.

Ever the bane of gardeners, I’ve tried all the remedies found online with little success. Down here bulbs are not very successful it doesn’t get cold enough to start them. So I no longer have the pleasure of watching several hundred bulbs disappear each fall.

I have found a way to keep them out of the bird feeders. It took several tries. First I tried stringing one between two trees on thin wire. But the trees were close enough to each other (~20′) for the squirrel to jump to the feeder from the tree. It did take a few hours but that was all I gained on that attempt. So next I tried putting a squirrel baffle over the feeder and coating it with vasoline. I did wind up with a very unhappy, slimy squirrel, but persistence won and he was not only back in the feeder but ate a hole through the plastic.

I purchased this feeder at a hardware store, you also can find it at Amazon.com. It’s been a year an a half and not once has a single squirrel gotten at the seed inside. Not only does the metal keep them from eating their way through but the feeding area is spring loaded so if something larger than a bird lands on it, the access to the seed is cut off.

Homestead 3201S Super Stop A Squirrel Wild Bird Feeder

What has worked for me with feeders on poles is to put vasoline along the pole for about 2′ about half way up the pole. I have to redo it every couple of months but it does keep the squirrels off the feeders.