Gardening in August

Sunday, August 13

So, yesterday morning, I dug the buried treasure, eager to see if they actually looked like giant buried Peanut Fingerlings, three to four inches long. I shoved my garden fork in the ground, at a distance from the dried tops, not wanting to spear any of the fingerlings with a tine. The soil turned over easily, still a bit moist from the recent rain, and there they all were -- peanut-shaped all right. But so small they looked like midget peanuts, no more than an inch or an inch and a half long. Not to worry, I thought, just a result of being a bit shaded by the pin oak tree. So I moved to the next spot and eagerly turned over the soil, only to find another handful of midgets. And another, and another. And so few potatoes, the whole batch of eight plants yielded no more than two or three meals' worth. The six red potato plants produced a somewhat better yield. Still, I felt as if the Irish potato famine had been replayed right in my own back yard.


Carl H. Klause, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of a Growing Season

Habitat of the Month

Tallgrass Prairie
Bobolink

Look out over a tallgrass prairie on a breezy summer day. The gently waving grasses and wildflowers that make up the prairie move like ocean waves. There are very few trees, but some prairie plants grow more than eight feet high. Rich soil and the right amount of rain and sunshine give tallgrass prairies all they need to thrive. This wide-open grassland is an ideal habitat for a songbird like the bobolink.
If you spy a small bird with a white back, an all-black underbelly, and a cream-colored cap on its head, it's a male bobolink.
Bobolinks eat the seed and insects found in the open prairie spaces. They build grassy nests on the ground. The bobolink's nest and egg color blend well with its surrounding to keep the young birds hidden.
Because prairies don't have many trees to perch on, a number of prairie birds sing as they fly. Boblinks pour out lovely liquid songs as they soar above the grasses.
Tallgrass prairies once grew across a large area in the middle of North America. Now, most have been plowed under and replaced by farms and cities. Fortunately, many people are preserving the tallgrass prairies that remain, and in some places, they are planting new prairies. You can visit some of these prairies. Where there are prairies, there will be homes for bobolinks.


Claudia McGehee, Where Do Birds Live?

This Week in Iowa Nature

Summer flowers of damp woodlands include Joe Pye weed and jewelweed, which soothes the itch from stinging nettles, often encountered in the same lowland habitat.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

Gardening in August

Friday, August 4

Now, when all the plants and vines are pumping out vegetables like a mass-production line, I'm suddenly tempted to put the gardens on automatic pilot and take a few days' break from the constant vigil of tending them. And I mean break -- a complete break. No weeding, no dusting, no watering, no hindering, no cultivating, no pruning, no trying. No checking on this, no fretting about that. Not even any harvesting. No gardening activities of any kind. The yearning to be free of it all takes hold of me every year around this time, brought on no doubt by the long and continuous labor of bringing the gardens to this point of abundance.


Carl H. Klaus, My Vegetable Love: A Journal of the Growing Season

This Week in Iowa Nature

Before school starts, explore the corals, crinoids, and brachiopods preserved on the ancient sea floor at Devonian Fossil Gorge in Johnson County.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

Prairie of the Week

North Dakota:
Little Missouri National Grassland

1.2 million acres, USDA-FS, McKenzie Ranger District, (701) 842-2393; 
Medora Ranger District, (701) 225-5151

Subtleties of mixed-grass prairie compete with eye-popping badlands, creating landscape that has made a big impression on countless visitors, including the young Teddy Roosevelt. Hikers and horseback riders can strike out on the 120-mile-long Maah Daah Hey Trail, which begins at Sully Creek State Park south of Medora. A 58-mile self-guided auto tour of the grassland begins at the Medora office.
Information and maps at McKenzie office, 1 mile south of Watford City on Highway 85; Medora office, 161 21st Street West in Dickinson.


Suzanne Winckler's Prairie: A North American Guide

This Week in Iowa Nature

Sphinx moths, hovering over flowers at dusk, are sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar