WBL Seed Library: Summer Gardening, Fireflies and Garden Tours

Hello Gardeners

My gardens are doing great! All this rain has really helped after the last two years of drought.

After the rush of spring planting, it is time to enjoy your gardens. Take some time to just look and watch your flowers and vegetables. It’s amazing to see the activity that goes on from big fuzzy bumblebees to graceful butterflies. Maybe you have some toads and dragonflies.

I’m lucky in that I have fireflies putting on a show every night! Fireflies are having a hard time finding places to live and mate. One way you can help is to turn off your outdoor lights. The artificial light (including solar lights) confuses the fireflies and they can’t find a mate to produce offspring. It’s not just outdoor lights which are a problem, but even lighting from indoors that shines outside is also confusing to fireflies. Please consider blinds or curtains on your windows where lights or TVs are on during dusk to dawn.

Thank you to all who helped package seeds this spring! Later this summer and fall I’ll start packaging native plant seeds. Look for an email in a couple months asking for volunteers to help.

Summer is a time of garden tours. Washington County Master Gardeners have a summer tour July 20^th.

Tour seven gardens designed and maintained by Washington County Master Gardener volunteers in Oakdale, White Bear Lake, and Stillwater areas.

Master Gardener volunteers will be on hand to answer questions and share resources on many topics including, watering wisely, landscape design, composting, vegetable growing, crop rotation and companion planting, pollinator-friendly and native plants, tree and shrub pruning, and prairie restoration. Master Gardener-recommended gardening books will be available for purchase.

See Washington Garden Tour or Garden Tour for more information.

Locally Harvested Seeds

Many of the seeds, especially native plant seeds, are labelled ‘locally harvested’ or ‘locally grown’. These are great seeds as these seeds are more acclimated to our environment. Commercial seeds could have come from anywhere in the United States. For example; plants grown in Texas have significantly different growing conditions than plants grown in Minnesota. So you can understand why I encourage you to save seeds from the plants you grow. There is a caveat though. I only want seeds that are ‘easy to save’. What does that mean?

It doesn’t mean the seeds are easy to remove from the fruit or seed head of the plant. It dose means seeds from the plant are less likely to have been cross-pollinated and therefore the seeds from the plant will likely have the same traits (color of flower, hardiness, height, etc.) as the original plant. Easy to save seeds are those that are either self-pollinating or do not cross-pollinate easily. This includes; tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce and native plants. As long as the original plant of these types was not a hybrid variety, the seeds from them will be great to save.

Bring any seeds (open-pollinated) you harvested to donate to the seed library! I’d love to get some tomatoes, lettuce, beans and peas you grew in your garden!

Local Greenhouses and Nurseries

As a request from our volunteers I am adding a list of various local greenhouses or garden centers that sell plants. Many of these establishments do not use neonicotinoids on their plants that they grow. But the buyer should beware: they may sell plants that were grown previously at a different wholesaler which did use systemic pesticides. You should ask the growers at these establishments whether neonics were used on the plants you wish to purchase.

Neonicotinoids or ‘neonics’ are a systemic pesticides used on plants to kill insects. Unfortunately, these insecticides also harm pollinators as the insecticide gets into all parts of the plant including the pollen and nectar.

The only way to be sure a plant has not been treated with neonics is to buy certified organic seed and grow it yourself, or buy a certified organically grown plant.

More information here.

Goldman’s Greenhouse – East Bethel, MN

Website: Goldman's

Outback Nursery – Hastings, MN

Seller of Minnesota native trees, shrubs and perennials.

Website: Outback

Prairie Moon Nursery – Winona, MN and order online

They have hundreds of varieties of native plant seeds, plants and bare root stock.

Website: Prairiemoon

Prairie Restorations – Scandia, MN

Seller of Minnesota native plants.

Website: Prairieresto