February 15, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 58 – Centaurea

“Centaurea triumfettii – ???” – Spring 2013 – Whitney Avenue/Hamnett Way/Jeanette Street – Wilkinsburg, PA

“A Plant a Day till Spring” will highlight one plant a day, starting on the winter solstice (December 21, 2013)… And ending on the vernal equinox (March 20, 2014)… If all goes to plan I will be starting with old Snowdrop photos from 2013… And ending with new photos of Snowdrops in 2014…

Mountain Bluet… Cornflower… Loggerhead… That’s just a tiny sampling of some of the common names associated with this genus… Centaurea is only found north of the equator… It is considered an invasive weed in many locations…

Centaurea is a popular trap-crop… It secretes a sticky-sweet goo that attracts all sorts of pests… Planting a “beetle-bank” alongside crops will not only help reduce the amount of insect damage to your other plants… The rather large size of the plant creates habitat for all sorts of other insects and animals that when combined create a pretty intense effect… The photograph above is under one of my apple trees…

Centaurea tends to get a little floppy come mid-season… This is one of its only downsides… I have found around the end of June/early July the entire plant can be cut to the ground with minimal long-term effect… It will take a few days for growth to resume… But once it does the plant will flower at a much smaller size than before the pruning… And it will prevent you from having to deal with a bare-centered plant…

I highly recommend the Wikipedia link below… It is one of the best plant-related Wiki’s I have read in a long time…

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In other news… It is snowing… Again… I was actually planning to have put shovels to the earth over at the Urban Farm I am starting this year… I need to hand-cut 8 6’x40′ rows… And I need to plant a dozen trees… Just waiting on the winter to give up already…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea

Link specific to plant photographed – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaurea_triumfettii

These “Plant a Day Till Spring” posts are simply intended to kill time until spring when I start writing more… My source (where applicable) is Wikipedia.org… The photography is all my own… And I am adding my own information…

This website and all of the information presented within is provided free by the author… Me… It is my sole opinion and is not representative of anyone other than myself… You can contact me directly with questions at – c.condello@hotmail.com

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

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February 14, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 57 – Shasta Daisy

“Blue Morning” – Summer 2013 – Mill Street – Wilkinsburg, PA

Today I am guest hosting an online Q&A on #groundchat… This is happening at 2PM EST… Joining is simple… Simply search #groundchat on the Twitter… If you want to ask a question just make sure you include #groundchat in your tweet…

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Happy Valentines Day… My girlfriends favorite flower is the Daisy… I know right… Have you seen the flowers in my photographs… And she picks Daisy… We can be in the middle of a field surrounded in colorful wildflowers… And there she is… Picking Daisy’s… I can’t really complain though… At least she likes flowers…

Writing this series has taught me a few things… One of the big lessons I have learned is when writing about flowers… The more common the flower is the harder it is to write about… As is the case with the Shasta Daisy… I mean… Botanists have been all up in the daisy’s business for hundreds of years… My ability to improve on that information is limited… As is the case with all of my posts… They are intended to be the spark that ultimately starts a fire… Get your info from a variety of sources… Then consolidate it…

“Composition on Black Locust” – Summer 2013 – Whitney Avenue/Hamnett Way – Wilkinsburg, PA

Shasta Daisy has a particular odor that many people find unpleasant… Myself included… This is a rarity in the flower world… This odor also makes it a good candidate for use as a repellant…

Shasta Daisy is a perennial that can develop into sizeable colonies… This can be controlled through regular division… A little secret… This plant can get cut to the ground… By say… A lawnmower… And it will keep coming back… In fact… It will bloom again after two weeks…

Well… I have a busy day… I am going to have to skimp on this post a little to get it all done… So…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucanthemum_%C3%97_superbum

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

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February 13, 2014 by C.Condello

A Plant A Day Till Spring – Day 56 – Queen Anne’s Lace

“Trail Side – Setting Sun” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – I love this photo… It just came out right… Take note of the tiny black flower in the middle of the cluster… I talk about it below…

My last few posts have been of wildflowers… I’m sorry… My head has been in the woods… I wasn’t expecting a snow pack this winter… Our last few Winters were mild and although I was predicting a nasty winter… I was not expecting this… I was photographing Skunk Cabbage blossoms at this time last year… This year we have had snow on the ground for what seems like weeks… And snow is predicted every day for the next week…

I want to hike… I want to go fly fishing… But I need to work in my garden… I am starting to consider busting out the Torpedo Heater and thaw out the backyard manually… I wonder if that would work?..

Trail Side – Trail Fade” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA

Queen Anne’s Lace is what I consider a “borderline” plant… Meaning… Although this plant is considered a beneficial to many people because of its beneficial attracting/pest repelling qualities… It is also considered an invasive/noxious weed to others… QAL is in fact banned in many states… Not only does it create hundreds… If not thousands of viable seeds… These seeds often persist for years sprouting long after you thing you have eliminated the last one…

On the other end of the spectrum… This member of the carrot family is a highly beneficial plant worthy of any plant guild… QAL has long been considered an essential companion to tomatoes… I have sat and observed wasps first visit QAL… Then zip over to the tomatoes to feast on some white flies…

Last summer I had a bit of an issue with an alley cat… I noticed it would walk all through my garden beds… Well… It did more than just walk through them… Anyway… It avoided the QAL… Often going out of its way to avoid coming anywhere close to the plant… These are just preliminary findings… And believe me I intend to experiment further this summer… But I will go as far as saying QAL is a candidate to be considered one of my cat repellant plants…

“Trail Side – Sun by my Side” – Summer 2013 – Frick Park – Pittsburgh, PA – All of the photographs from this post were shot on a single walk in the park… It was one of those days… Every shot I took was a keeper…

So I am in the process of writing my spring resolution… Given the fact that I am not really big on the actual New Years holiday… I decided it would be more appropriate to do my resolution on the first day of spring… After all… I am a gardener… And I think it will be a great way for me to start the spring off right…

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daucus_carota

Remember to tip… My Bitcoin digital wallet address is… 1JsKwa3vYgy4LZjNk4YmPEHFJNjPt2wDJj

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.