Gardening Hints and
Helps
Insect Eating Plants
When I
started this blog I promised that I’d touch on gardening every now and then,
because I believe that plants and trees give a house character, make it more
than a drab pile of bricks and wood. Raising plants and giving my own house
character has been a pastime of mine for nearly 40 years. Some of you may know
that I used to write a weekly column on gardening for the Prattville Progress and The
Montgomery Independent, and then
later on for the Master Gardener
Newsletter. I’ve always loved plants, but in recent years have slowed down
and cut back the time I put into them. A few years ago, for instance, I had
over 200 potted plants—ones that had to be put in my greenhouse or Florida room every
winter. The task of moving all those plants twice a year became too much for
me. Of course, when I say “twice a year,” I’m being optimistic. My usual
routine every spring was (still is) to begin taking my plants outside
early—long before the last frost—and then bringing them back to the greenhouse.
Not just one time, either. Some years I moved as many as 25 of those plants
five times before the frost quit coming in. The ones I moved were the biggest, too--my lemon, the plumerias, etc., growing fast and needing larger pots every year. Impatience and unreasonable
optimism have always been two of my failures. Recently, another failure has been
my diligence in writing these columns—a failure I intend to rectify with this
article on “Bug Eaters.”
(Above is a closeup of my Venus fly trap. At first I was worried that it might be too close to the pitcher plants, but as every Alabamian knows, there is no shortage of bugs here.)
I believe
it was because of my grandchildren that I first began raising insect-eating
plants with any seriousness. If you’ve read my 500 Opinions blog, you know that when I eat my meals, I usually eat
one item at a time. It was the same way with me when it came to growing
different types of plants. For the first fifteen years of my delayed adulthood
. . . (In other words, the fifteen years after I turned thirty, up to the age
of forty-five. I was a late bloomer. I was also an English major, so I have to
use lots of flowery similes and metaphors in my writing) . . . As I was saying,
for the first fifteen years of my delayed adulthood, the only plants I grew
were vegetables. I saw no need to grow a plant unless it was edible, and I
became quite good at raising tomatoes, peppers, greens, squash, eggplants,
potatoes, okra, onions, etc. I tried broccoli, Brussels sprouts, corn,
watermelons, and radishes, but never became good at raising them. Perhaps
that’s why I love to eat vegetables—I had a lot of time and energy invested in
them—too much to toss them in the garbage every night.
So, at about the age of 40, I came
across a dying cactus. The poor thing had been left inside a vacant house I was
remodeling, with no sun to speak of, and no water for months. I took the cactus
home, gave it some water, and put it outside, in semi-shade. She lived. I was
amazed. I was also sold on cacti. Any plants that tough, who were that
interested in staying alive, were the plants for me. It meant they needed
little care. I was sold. I began my cactus collection. I still have my first
cactus, by the way. She’s now huge—a seven-foot monster, but I can’t let her
go.
But about five years later, I felt
a primal urge—I wanted more. I decided it was time for me to branch out (My
goodness. There are a ton of symbolical words related to growing things, aren’t
there?). I decided to try a class of plants other than the vegetables and cacti.
The cacti were easy, but if you’ve ever raised vegetables, you know that they
are not self-raising. Vegetables take constant work—checking for bugs, pulling
invading weeds, checking the soil acidity, fertilizing, watering, and on and
on. Anyone who plants and grows a vegetable plot more than ten-feet square,
also knows how much work goes into raising your own food, and doesn’t mind
paying decent money to a farmer at the local Farmers’ Market every summer. I
don’t mind a bit. I realize they use pesticides, and I did not—I fought my bugs
with fingers, a nearby coop full of chickens, crop rotation and
companion-planting, and every little trick I could learn about keeping back the
tide of insects (and soon you’ll understand my love of insect-eaters). Farmers
also use tractors and herbicides to knock down weeds, while it was just me and
my trusty hoe versus my own weeds. I learned from my father-in-law how a hoe
needed to be filed down and protected with oil every week, to keep it sharp and
hold the rust at bay. So, yes, I know how much work goes into raising
vegetables, and when I purchase a large basket of gleaming, ripe tomatoes, I
never utter a word of discontent. That farmer is doing me a favor, selling his
or her vegetables to me at a small discount, not only avoiding the middleman,
but getting them to me with just-picked ripeness, at the top of the plant’s
flavor and health benefits. When summer comes and the Farmers’ Markets begin
selling local produce, I spend 40-50 dollars a week on fruit and vegetables,
alone—for just me and my wife. I buy berries, peaches, onions, potatoes, okra,
peas, beans, tomatoes, peppers—you name it—I’ll buy and eat it. I have a deal
with one farmer to purchase a box of “second” tomatoes every week, the ones not
quite pretty or ripe enough—or too ripe—to sell in a basket to picky tomato
buyers. I take the box—about twenty pounds of tomatoes—home and as soon as I
walk in the door, I start boiling them down for tomato juice, which my wife and
I, after a huge glass of almost scalding, fresh-as-it-can-be juice, drink every morning until the next batch
comes in.
I’m having so much fun telling you
how I came to grow insect-eating plants, I’ve veered off course. I think this
article has blossomed into a two-parter. I’ll add a few more sentences, then
continue next week.
(The hanging basket on the left is another group of my "insect eaters," both fly traps and pitcher plants. On the right is a basket of Stapelia, a succulent I now use to aid the bug eaters. The blossoms you see on the Stapelia haven't opened yet, but when they do, they are magnificent--and very strange. I'll tell you more next time.)
After I made up my mind to try and
grow plants other than vegetables and cacti—I had been taking care of a nice 20
by 40 vegetable garden for two years, and had about ten cacti at the time—I
decided I wanted my next class of plants to be more work than cacti, but less
work than vegetables. For that reason, I chose perennials. At this time I knew
absolutely nothing about perennials—I didn’t even know the names of any. All I
knew was that they were supposed to return every year, over and over again.
This sounded like less work to me, so I got some books on growing perennials
and jumped in with both feet. And now, all these years later, I realize that I
couldn’t have made a better choice. Most of my perennials didn’t last forever,
but some are still with me—my red-hot pokers; the baptisias; the coreopsis; my
Echinacea—coneflowers; the gaillardias; three hibiscuses (Years ago, the cold
weather here kept killing them. I’ve had these three 15-17 years. That’s when
the weather here changed to longer, hotter summers, and milder winters.);
irises; and Virginia
spiderwort. I had good luck with hollyhocks, but they’re actually biennials.
They were wonderful flowers, but I didn’t have the patience to wait two years
for blooms. Do I need to slow down? Should I kick back, relax, and get into
hollyhocks again? I do remember one thing about hollyhocks. No matter where I
planted them, or how I marked the spot, when the little plants poked up the
second year, I never had any idea what they were. I would study and study them
for several weeks, and then my brain would finally function as it’s supposed to
do. I’d run to get my plant diary, search through it, and find out, that, sure
enough—I had put them there on purpose—they were my biennial hollyhocks—ugly as
sin their first year, the crowning glory of the garden in their second. Weird
plants. But then, so am I.
I may be forgetting some of my
perennials, but the ones I mentioned stick in my mind. I did find out, of
course, that growing perennials was not less work than growing vegetables.
Their constant, year-after-year blooms have been worth the work, though. And I
promise—that in two weeks I’ll finish this article and tell you about my trials
and errors growing insect-eating plants. Until then—go grow a thing or two. Not
only will your home look prettier and have more character, you’ll be happier in
the long run. And . . . as usual . . . I need to take my own advice.
Earl
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