The inaugural Plant Festival on Saturday, April 1 will feature over 20 exhibitors and Master GardenerSM Volunteer plant experts to answer questions about native plants, non-native plants, trees, and shrubs, vegetables, herbs, annuals, and houseplants. You can also tour our on-site demonstration garden. To learn more about the festival, check out https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/plant-festival.
For the annual Plant Sale on Saturday, April 8, please note that the line forms early and plants go quick! Please be green and bring your own box to the plant sale to carry your plants home. Find a list of plants available at the sale along with photos, descriptions, and a searchable database at https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/perennials.
By Pana Jones, Extension Master Gardener Coordinator, Durham County
Image credit: Mary Knierim Image credit: Mary Knierim
March 20 through March 26 is National Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Week! Has a Master Gardener helped you solve garden issues, inspired you to grow a garden or a particular plant, or shared some helpful information? If so, let us know! Contact Pana Jones, Durham County Extension Master Gardener Coordinator at prjones2@ncsu.edu.
For more information about how to become an Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteer, check out NC Cooperative Extension’s informative site https://emgv.ces.ncsu.edu/become-a-volunteer/ or contact the local extension office in your area.
By Mark Anthony Powers, Master GardenerSM Volunteer and NCSBA Certified Master Beekeeper
A swarm hanging from a branch and later captured by Karen Lauterbach, Master GardenerSM Volunteer and me. (Image credit: Mark Anthony Powers)
Spring is for dogwood blossoms, fresh-picked strawberries, and…honey bee swarms. If you’re lucky you may have the opportunity to witness one of these amazing sights. Thousands of these fascinating creatures may hang from a tree branch or a garden sculpture in your own backyard.
Please don’t call pest control or spray insecticide on these hard-working homeless insects. There are beekeepers just waiting to hear about valuable free bees for their hives. Your county beekeeping association should have someone available on a swarm patrol who will happily scoop them up or shake them into a box and give them a home (Click here for local resources in Durham County and Orange County).
A large swarm captured in a box at a business in Durham. Once the queen is inside, the workers follow. (Image credit: M.A. Powers)
Honey bees in a swarm have bellies full of honey and are in their gentlest of states. The hanging mass of bees has bivouacked and may stay for an hour or a couple of days while specialized scout bees search for a suitable site to settle and create a new home. If you look closely, you can see these scouts dancing in straight lines while rapidly shaking their abdomens. This is called a waggle dance and tells other scouts how far away and in what direction a potential home exists. After more scouts visit these sites, a consensus is reached, and they all do the same dance. In 2019, I filmed a swarm at the Briggs Avenue apiary and you can watch it on YouTubeTM. Soon after consensus is reached, this vagabond colony will lift off in an impressive honey bee tornado and make a beeline for their new home which could be a hollow tree, a baited swarm trap strategically located by a clever beekeeper, or your neighbor’s attic.
Preventing a swarm colony from setting up housekeeping in someone’s home is just one reason to have a beekeeper expeditiously relocate them. The other is that, left on their own as a feral colony, they will likely succumb to parasitic varroa mites, an imported scourge that needs to be vigilantly managed with interval testing and treatments. Honey bees are actually livestock and need to be taken care of to survive.
Why do honey bees swarm? Spring is when they have ample food sources, and the colony (as a superorganism) is rapidly expanding. There is one queen, and she secretes a pheromone, “queen substance,” from tarsal glands on her feet. Her worker bee retinue spreads it around the hive where it suppresses the ‘urge’ (please excuse my being anthropomorphic) to initiate the cascade of events that leads to swarming. If there is crowding and the bottoms of frames don’t get enough of this pheromone, workers will create several wax queen cells that look like peanuts.
Swarm cells at Briggs Avenue Apiary. The center one has a larva and royal jelly. (Image credit: M.A. Powers)
After the queen drops an egg in each of them, and the egg becomes a larva, nurse bees feed the larva a steady diet of a high-protein substance called royal jelly until they seal the cell. The larva becomes a pupa, then an adult queen. The transformation from fresh egg to adult queen takes about 16 days. The first virgin queen out makes a piping sound and the other virgins, still in their cells, quack in response. The first queen then locates them and kills them, trying to ensure her place as hive monarch. Sometimes, if the colony is quite large to start with, workers will protect a few of these virgin queens, and they can accompany one or more subsequent smaller swarms, called afterswarms.
Afterswarm on a garden statue in our backyard. (Image credit: M.A. Powers)
Each swarm event takes about half of the workers from the original hive. It takes a week or longer for a virgin queen to mature and complete her mating flights, then another 21 days before her eggs become adult worker bees. This combination of loss of bees and delay making new workers weakens the hive and drastically reduces its productivity, especially its honey production.
So, what can beekeepers do to prevent swarming? The first action is to try to stay ahead of crowding and to add space when brood, pollen, and nectar/honey fill more than three quarters of the hive frames. If beekeepers find swarm cells, then the bees are already committed to swarm. If a beekeeper can get to it before the colony swarms, the best strategy is to trick this superorganism into ‘thinking’ that it’s already swarmed. To do this, one has to find the original queen among the 60,000 or so bees (think Where’s Waldo on steroids) and to place her along with brood, food, and enough bees to keep house in a new hive, called a split. This epic step usually works, and beekeepers get to keep all their bees in the two colonies. Two colonies was the bees’ goal to start with. And that’s why a superorganism of honey bees are programmed to swarm.
A queen among workers. Can you spot her? (Image credit: M.A. Powers)
North Carolina State University’s Department of Entomology and Insect Biology and Management’s site offers a wealth of resources about honeybees and beekeeping. To find links to The Wolfpack’s Waggle, a newsletter about apiculture, plus extensive articles on honey bee biology and management, visit their website.
For gardeners interested in doing their part to support bee habitats, NC Cooperative Extension agent Debbie Roos’s site on pollinator conservation offers advice on the best pollinator-friendly plants and much more.
English ivy like the ‘Gold Heart’ cultivar pictured here can revert to green, more aggressive forms and pose real problems in the landscape. (Image credit: Joey Williamson, HGIC Clemson Extension)
I am still regretting some of my plant choices from 30 years ago, especially English ivy (Hedera helix ‘Gold Heart’). At some point, it reverted to the wild type and began spreading across our wooded lot and climbing trees. It has been a years-long battle to bring it under control, and I’m still not sure who will win in the end. It is a tenacious foe.
I wish I had heard the recent Durham Garden Forum talk years ago. Charlotte Glen reviewed common invasive plants in the North Carolina Piedmont and recommended alternatives: plants native to our area and non-natives that are not invasive. Glen is the state coordinator for the NC State Extension Master Gardener program. Glen said that woody invasives – trees, shrubs and vines – pose the most severe harm to our ecosystems. She noted that only a very small percent of introduced species become invasive. But when they do, they can replace native plants, create a monoculture, and change the whole function of an ecosystem. Glen said that by planting natives, gardeners can increase biodiversity and benefit the environment.
So, what are the invasive plants that gardeners in the NC Piedmont should avoid? Two of the top offenders are Bradford pears (Pyrus calleryana) and privet (Ligustrum sinesis and Ligustrum japonicum). What appeared to be the perfect landscape tree – the Bradford pear – has now become the number one tree to avoid. Instead, plant okame cherry (Prunus ‘Okame’), Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas ‘Spring Glow’) or trident maple (Acer buergerianum). Native options include redbud (Cercis canadensis), serviceberry (Amelanchierarborea or Amelanchier grandidfora), sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana) and two-winged silverbell (Halesia diptera). Still available in the nursery trade, privet (Ligustrum spp.) should be avoided. Instead plant cleyera (Ternstroemia gymnanthera), Distylium ‘Linebacker’, holly osmanthus (Osmanthus heteroplyllis), or dwarf burford holly (Ilex cornuta ‘Dwarf Burford’).
Bradford pears are common in our area. This time of year, the extent of their invasiveness is evident as you can easily spot their blooms in landscapes along wooded edges and highways. (Image credit: Jim Janke CC BY 4.0)Closeup of leaves and flowers of the invasive privet which can either be a shrub or small tree. (Image credit: Megan Hansen CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Emerging invasive shrubs include nandina (Nandina domestica), leatherleaf mahonia (Berberis bealei), and barberry (Berberis thunbergii). For more about these shrubs and what to plant instead, view the PowerPoint slides from Glen’s presentation. 1
Some of the worst invasive vines–in addition to my foe, Hedera helix–are Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), Japanese wisteria (Wisteria floribunda), Chinese wisteria (Wisteria senensis), and sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora). Glen said that good alternatives for Piedmont NC gardeners are the following natives: coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens), and climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea barbara).
Native coral honeysuckle is a pollinator magnet, a favorite for hummingbirds, and a larval host for the spring azure butterfly and the snowberry clearwing moth. (Image credit: Melinda Heigel)
Glen also demonstrated a new resource for North Carolinians: The NC Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox. The Plant Toolbox contains over 4,600 plants that grow in and around North Carolina. The toolbox is designed select plants that will thrive where they are planted. The link to the Plant Toolbox home page is https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/find_a_plant/.
To join the Durham Garden Forum and have access to a video library of all presentations since 2021, fill out the membership form and mail it with a check for $25 to the address shown. You can find the membership form at https://durhammastergardeners.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/pdf-of-membership-form.pdf. Membership includes discounts at area garden centers (For Garden’s Sake and The Durham Garden Center). Upcoming presentations are listed below.
• March 21: “Propagation” with Sara Smith, Durham County Extension Master Gardener. • April 18: “Landscape Design,” with Anne Spafford, Ph.D., Professor of Horticultural Science at NC State University. • May 16: “Plant-to-Plant Interaction,” with Anita Simha, community ecologist and PhD candidate in Duke University’s Program in Ecology. • June 20: “Bamboo: Uses in the Landscape and Effective Removal,” with David Benfield, founder of Brightside Bamboo. • July 18: “NC Native Herbal Plant Remedies,” with Arvis Boughman, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and the author of Herbal Remedies of the Lumbee Indians, and Robert RedHawk Eldridge, who is of Sappony decent and a storyteller. He travels across the country sharing stories about his ancestors and Native American culture.
The NC Botanical Garden has a great list of native trees, shrubs and vines for your landscape as well as an illustrated online booklet about how to control invasive plants.
This presentation will cover native plants, rich in nectar and/or pollen, which will bloom sequentially throughout the life cycle of our Piedmont pollinators. Plants selected for the presentation will include many that tolerate deer, heat, and drought and will include plants for sun and shade gardens. Handouts will be provided that summarize information about the plants presented in the PowerPoint and include resource links for native plant gardeners.
Tuesday, March 2110:00 – 11:00am or Sunday, March 26⋅2:00 – 3:00pm
Location: Cocoa Cinnamon
420 W Geer St, Durham, NC 27701, USA
For city dwellers, growing plants outdoors often means gardening in containers. Whether you live in an apartment, condo, townhome or house, our Urban Container Gardening series will get you prepared to grow ornamental plants or edibles in containers at your city home. For this two-part miniseries, you can attend either one or both seminars, as they’ll cover complementary information.
For the first part, Extension Master Gardeners Cathy Halloran and Jackie MacLeod will lead you through the steps of determining how much sun you have, choosing containers and potting medium, checking drainage and irrigation, the tools you’ll need, and choosing plants for success for your sun exposure.
This class is made possible by an Inspire-Connect-Empower Grant from the Master Gardener Association of North Carolina.
Durham Garden Forum – Plant Propagation
Tuesday, March 21 7:00 – 8:30pm
Sara Smith, Durham County Master Gardener In the beginning, there were plants – EVERYWHERE! Plants spread across the Earth from the depths of the oceans to rocky mountain peaks. That didn’t happen with just one method of propagation. Join us for a look at the various propagation techniques that plants employ. Learn how to facilitate their natural tendencies to produce an abundance of your favorites. Disclaimer: Plant propagation may be habit-forming
Registration Required
The Durham Garden Forum is an informal group that meets once a month to enrich our gardening knowledge and skill. 3rd Tuesdays, 7:00- 8:30 pm via Zoom link sent to registrants.
Memberships: $25 per year. Members have access to video library of presentations. CONTACT US/REGISTER: durhamgardenforum@gmail.com
Inaugural Plant Festival
Saturday, April 1⋅10:00am – 12:00pm
721 Foster St., Durham
Come and join us for our first ever Plant Festival, to be held on Saturday April 1 in the Foster St parking lot, the week before the Master Gardeners’ plant sale. Preview plants, ask questions, and learn from Master Gardeners and community partners! More information HERE.
Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Durham County 