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I am very fortunate to live quite close to a wonderful place called Lavender Creek Farm, where I can get all sorts of lavender products, as well as lavender plants.
They usually have U-Pick seasons, too, which would be ideal for this project, but this year the wet spring and bee problems combined have really messed with their lavender plants. Would you mind if I sent the owner the link to your article? Wouldn't it be fun to set up a table with all sorts of different ribbons, and allow people to pick their own lavender to make into wands? I wanted to ask your permission first, though!
I have two lavender plants in my butterfly garden, so guess what my little Harry Potter fans and I will be doing tomorrow? :o)
Wonderful! I visited a lavender farm in Washington State over the weekend, and that was fabulous. A lavender wand craft table would be nifty.
Other sites are welcome to include links to DG articles... If the owner wants to print out a bunch of copies as hand-outs, I think it might be a good idea to ask Dave for permission. (I can't give permission -- the article belongs to DG, not to me. :-)
Well, we got so busy battling Japanese beetles that we never got to the wand-making (though the boys like the idea!). The darn critters are just demolishing the roses. Poor Justin. . .he has a pretty rose (Mardi Gras) that he got while we were at the Iowa RU, and when we went out this afternoon, each bloom was coated in about 50 Japanese beetles. You couldn't even see the blossoms--looked like shiny green disco balls on stems. I hate spraying or using chemicals, but we've picked beetles constantly, tried soap sprays, tried knocking them into cups of soapy water, tried everything organic I've heard about, and they just keep breeding!!! I finally resorted to Sevin, and felt guilty the entire time. We had a lovely crop of baby praying mantis in that front bed a month ago, and I kept looking for them, hoping they were far, far away when I sprayed. I even carefully removed the ladybugs before spraying. Sigh. Does everyone feel this guilty when they resort to pesticides? I just hate to think of harming the bees especially, and also butterflies, ladybugs, praying mantis. . .
I've used Sevin on occasion when the JBs get really bad. I figure if I use it only on the most badly swarmed plants, they become "trap crops," killing lots of beetles that would otherwise be harming other plants in my garden, too. The plants that are that covered in beetles don't even seem to have many other insects on them (no room, LOL), so I don't think there's all that much collateral damage... certainly, spraying a few targeted plants as you did isn't the same sort of thing as blanketing your yard and garden in a pesticide fog. I try to reduce pesticide use as much as possible, reserving the "big guns" like Sevin for truly big problems, but I haven't sworn off them altogether. You'll still see your "friendly" bugs in the yard after your careful, targeted spraying.
For more information on limiting pesticide use, google "integrated pest management." Tamara wrote a couple of good DG articles on this topic, also. :-) See http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/1041/
