Hello Gardeners!

Summer solstice is here, and it’s early summer in the garden...hooray!!

Continue planting gladiolus at weekly intervals through mid-July to have a succession of blooms into September. You can enter your best bloom at the Spencer Fair on Labor Day and bring home a ribbon. Zinnias, marigolds, petunias, dahlias, sunflowers, and wildflowers are among the categories for flower exhibits. There are children’s and adult classes. In the vegetable exhibits, you can enter your best tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, squash, carrots and so on. If you have a young gardener, he or she can create a "veggie varmint." Produce can be purchased or grown at home for use in creating your varmint.

The "varmints" are judged for creativity and are a lot of fun to make. The guidelines for showing at the Spencer Fair are contained in the exhibit catalogue, which can be obtained from Betty Wuelfing. She can be contacted at 508-867-7424.

Now that your gardens are in full flower and you're enjoying some great salads, take some time to enjoy wildflowers. A “walk on the wild side" can be a jog down the road or street or through the woods and meadows. I define wildflowers as "flowers gone wild." Roadsides, vacant lots, woodland areas and meadows are their "new" habitat. I do cultivate many because of their tenacity, beauty, and ability to attract butterflies (milkweed and Queen-Anne's-Lace attract the butterfly caterpillars). On a wildflower walk, keep in mind one rule: where there are over 100 blooms of the same flower, it will be no harm to pick one. Do not pick or remove any plant or flower that is listed as rare or endangered. Those are never to be picked. The state issues a list of rare flowers in the area and the laws governing them. Those lists can be obtained by contacting the local extension service.

Plants, like living organisms, fall into families. There are over 300 identified plant families. A family is the large overall related group that is further broken down into genus and species, both of which are given Latin names.

Genus is a more closely related group, and species is a particular kind of plant with no other like it. Plants like other organisms are given two Latin names, the genus and species, but plants may have many common names (just as people are given nicknames). Wildflowers are sometimes considered weeds because they grow where you don't want them and can be invasive. What is a weed to one gardener is a beautiful, coveted flower to another! Most of the wildflowers you'll meet on your walk are native to Europe or Asia but have become established in this country. Most were brought to our country for a particular purpose such as medicinal, culinary or as a dye plant.

Here are some wildflowers you may meet:.Taraxacum officinale, Verbascum thapsus, Achilles millefolium, Tanacetum vulgare, Brassica nigra, Cichorium intybus, Arctium minus, Lynis alba, Asclepsia syriaca, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, Cirsium vulgare, Melilotus alba, Daucus carota, Linaria vulgaris, Chelidonium majus, Oenothera biennis, Cypripedium calceolus and Lilium philadelphicum.

"A rose by any other name is still a rose," said William Shakespeare, and in the same order you may meet: dandelion, common mullen, yarrow, tansy, mustard, chicory, burdock, white campion or evening lychnis, milkweed, ragweed, bull thistle, white sweet clover, Queen-Anne's-lace, butter-and-eggs, celandine, evening primrose, yellow lady's slipper (endangered), and the wood lily.

As you can see, every homo sapiens has much to observe and learn on a walk on the wild side!

Happy Gardening!

Read previous columns by Edna Schron