Gulf Coast Greenie

Hot Volcanoes in Clear Lake!

I recently came upon a devastating scene in my neighborhood: The unnatural occurrence of hot volcanoes in a suburb on our beloved coastal prairie.

I present them here in my own rendering to preserve the anonymity of the property owners.

Fresh wood chips flow inexplicably from tree to tree, piled against each trunk as high as two feet

The "tree volcano" is not a new phenomenon, and I am not the first to refer to them as such. Before seeing those depicted above, I had already heard of the unfortunate practice but had not seen them created with hot mulch.

Hot mulch is mulch that has not decomposed sufficiently, that might pose a chemical danger to desirable plants. My (most-likely unwitting) neighbors used freshly chipped wood of another tree to create pyramidal stacks of potentially toxic material around their beautiful trees. To what purpose?

Last year, The Chronicle's Kathy Huber responded to a poignant letter from a resident of a sister community who wrote, "Houstonians are enthusiastic mulchers and have a 'style' of mulching trees. The mulch [. . . is] piled against the bark at the base of the tree. Doesn't this practice rot the bark?"

Her reply aptly begins, "It's not wise [. . . ]" (Read Kathy's full response here.) Carol Brouwer, PhD, of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service - Harris County seems to agree with that summation and teaches residents to use partially decomposed mulch that is placed wide rather than deep (2"-4" deep).

Young trees should be mulched to the drip line, which is as far as the outermost leaves reach, because trees compete with other plants for moisture and nutrients.

In this time of drought and bark beetle threats, it is particularly important that we give trees what they need rather than what we may want for our turf.

Below is my depiction of what a turf lover with mature trees who waters the tree roots adequately during a drought might be able to get away with:

The mulch is only wide enough to protect from a lawnmower, but it is not too deep. The root flare is visible, and nothing clings to the trunk.

If that doesn't look good to you, and you have mature trees you care for properly otherwise, there is another option: The natural one.

Whatever you do, please keep volcanoes out of the Gulf Coast. Hurricanes are quite enough.

Let me know your thoughts.

While I Was Away . . .

I recently traveled to Colorado and came back with many tales to tell, but first I'd like to show you what surprises greeted me upon my return.

This trip was the first real test of our drip-line system. We have a sprinkler system but wanted to use less water and put parts of the garden on a different schedule than the lawn and shrubs.

Before we left we cleared the kitchen bed of all the tortured tomatoes. The pepper plants, a jalapeño and a banana pepper seemed fine, so I left them, along with strawberries, and rosemary. The strawberries and rosemary are fine, but the peppers had drastically different responses to my absence:

Here is the banana pepper:

And here is the jalapeño, which was right next to it:

When we left, the banana pepper was just a stub of a plant, and the jalapeño was blooming like crazy. I have no idea what happened.

The fern tree and two camellias are on the critical list. The sprinkling was not enough for them, and they're in areas where it will be difficult to put in a drip line. Considering how tough this summer has been, however, I feel very fortunate to have not lost more plants.

The ones that are happiest now, in addition to the banana pepper, are the hibiscuses:

and the gingers:

The hibiscuses are on drip irrigation only. The gingers get the sprinkler.

The photos below of my milkweed are in a forums post I made. You can see them a little larger below. Please let me know your thoughts on the milkweeds and what may have happened to my jalapeño.

Thank you!

P.S. After I made this post I discovered that the poems featured on The Writer's Almanac today, August 20, are particularly appropriate to link with this: "Back Yard" and "The Beautiful Lawn Sprinkler" by Elizabeth Spires and Howard Nemerov, respectively.
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More than Ants at the Picnic

Last week, when I wrote about our ripening tomatoes, I mentioned that we had a little blossom-end rot on some, but no other real problems. However, we did have a bigger problem. I just hadn't seen or touched it yet.

My husband was out of town on business when the tomatoes started to ripen and I made that post. I didn't want to deprive him of the opportunity to pick some of our first ripened jewels, so I left a cluster of three perfect ones on the vine in one of the hanging baskets for him to pick when he returned the next day.

After he got home, we took a walk around the garden, and I told him I had left three perfect tomatoes for him to pick himself. He approached the vines first.

"Oh, it's got the rot too," he said.

"That can't be! They were perfect!"

I ran to the plants. Sure enough, the precious tomato at the center of the cluster was consumed by something. I reached up through the bird netting to pluck it and see what was happening. My finger touched something that felt like a sticky rubber haunted-house prop. I screamed. What had been invisible to both of us until I felt it suddenly stood out like a gangrenous thumb:

A hornworm! (I removed the other two sticky tomatoes to get better photos.) It is without a doubt the most disgusting thing I have ever experienced in nature.

It was about four inches long and had devoured all the leaves of one plant before moving on to the fruit on another. As you can see in the first photo, it pooped out tomato paste while eating my produce. The poop from when it was eating the leaves looked like regular black poop like other caterpillars make.

Instead of having the pleasure of picking the perfect cluster, my husband gallantly dispatched this beast while I was safely inside the house (I'm a wimp.)

This confirmed my decision not to repeat the upside-down tomatoes. The tomatoes in the hanging baskets were far too much trouble to take care of, and the moth that laid this awful egg seems not to have been discouraged by the height of the planting nor all the bird netting. (I do wonder, however, if the worm actually crawled up the pole from a pot next to it. I noticed some droppings on the leaves of the tomato plants in a ground-level planter days earlier but never found their source. The damage to those plants was minimal.)

Different Worms, Different Endings

I found another caterpillar munching leaves on our deck two days later. This one was devouring a potted brugmansia:

I don't know what it is, but it was only a half inch long and far less frightening. I picked it up with an oak leaf and moved it to a flower bed that has extra leaves -- overgrown pineapple sage and some pentas. Do you know what it is?

The bagworm I made a Forums post about a short while ago was hopefully consumed by a bird. After many of you helpfully identified it for me, I put it in a dry birdbath, from which it disappeared, cocoon and all.

The hornworm seemed far too mobile to try to feed to the birds.

Please tell me your experiences with any of the above.

Invaders on the Coast

Saturday morning, longtime kayaker, master naturalist, and one of our own Vietnam Vets, Victor "Vic" Madamba gave a presentation at Seabrook City Hall on invasive species that are in Texas or are threatening to enter Texas. Vic uses his kayak to monitor species on our barrier islands, among other places. He says that barrier islands are often the first site of contact with new species.

Victor Madamba, TMN-GBAC

One creature we should be on lookout for that hasn't yet been observed here is the South American cactus moth Cactoblastis cactorum Berg. Vic writes that traps are "used to detect presence of the moth so steps can be taken to eradicating the invading moth. . . . Currently the best method for eradication is the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). The male moth is sterilized and released into the wild to mate, producing sterile offspring." If the moth were to successfully reproduce healthy offspring and spread through Texas and Mexico, it could wreak economic devastation and endanger our state plant.

Vic tells us that we have a native cactus moth that is similar to the Cactoblastis cactorum Berg., but the larvae of the South American invader is bright orange and will kill its host plant, whereas the native Texas species is less colorful and damages but does not destroy the cacti. Mississippi State University is managing the monitoring and control of this issue.

Vic also discussed a number of invasive plants currently found in the Galveston Bay Area. These include the Chinese tallow tree (Triadica sebifera),  Ligustrums, and Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica).

Following Vic's presentation, he took us on a walk through the Hester Park Area, near Todville Road, where we saw (in addition to tallows, privets, and honeysuckle) examples of other invasives, including:

alligatorweed, pigweed (Alternanthera philoxeroides):

Johnsongrass (Sorghum halepense):

Giant reed, giant cane (Arundo donax):

Chinaberry (Melia azedarach):

Golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea):

 saltcedar (Tamarix ramosissima):

(One naturalist on the tour told me people in Galveston have tried to use saltcedar to prevent beach erosion. However, it is a noxious plant in Texas -- it robs other plants of vital moisture and, when it dies, leaves behind salt in the ground that prohibits other growth.)

We also saw a young McCartney Rose (Rosa bracteata):

So many invasives in one area! I learned a lot this morning.

Little by little I've been coming around to accept how important it is to know the Latin names of plants. And it seems it can be particularly helpful in distinguishing invasive plants from others. For example, common names can be used for multiple plants, such as Jerusalem thorn. The Jerusalem thorn Parkinsonia aculeata appears to be a beneficial native and is different from the Jerusalem thorn listed as invasive by TexasInvasives.org:  Paliurus spina-christi P. Mill., synonym: Rhamnus paliurus. Mimosas of the genus Mimosa appear to generally be fine. At the same time, an invasive of concern is the silktree mimosa Albizia julibrissin.

I am still learning about all of these and would love to hear others' insights and comments.

In the meantime, we can all learn more about invasive plants in our area and what to do about them at these sites recommended by Vic:

http://www.texasinvasives.org/

http://www.harc.edu/

http://www.gbep.state.tx.us/

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/

Thank you, Vic!