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Saturday, July 18, 2015An Advertising Feature of

The Topeka Capital-Journal

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Jaime Hancock Garden Column – 3Do you know your kitchen gadgets? – 52015 Winners in Landscape Design – 8

Must have kitchen tools – 14

2 | Saturday, July 18, 2015 | The Topeka Capital-Journal | At Home

A Note FromThe Gardener

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Jamie Hancock Grape-Nuts cereal made a commercial in 1974 with a man named Euell Gibbons. His famous line was, “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” I could only imagine wooden toothpicks and chunks of bark. Neither sounded palatable to me. I don’t know why I remember this. Maybe someday I would be in horticulture talk-ing about eating odd parts of plants. Who knew? One of those odd plant parts is tu-bers from nutsedge. Yes, I said nutsedge,

that pesky bright green grass-like weed that pokes its head above your lawn just a few hours after you’ve mowed.

Yellow nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus) can also be called Earth Almond or Chufa. Nutsedge has tuberous roots that produce nutlets that get left behind when you pull up the “weed”. These reproduce and cre-ate more “weeds”. But, they are sweet and

HANCOCK continues on 3A

What is Nutsedge?

At Home | The Topeka Capital-Journal | Saturday, July 18, 2015 | 3

their nutty flavor makes them ideal for a multitude of recipes, from soups to sweets. Chufa can be eaten raw or cooked. Ac-cording to Cornucopia II: A Sourcebook of Edible Plants, yellow nutsedge was used to add sweetness to ancient Egyptian barley juice, and in Spain, the tubers are added to horchata de chufa, a beverage made by mixing the ground tubers with water, cin-namon, sugar, vanilla, and ice. Nutsedge tubers have a distinct almond-like flavor and have been used as an almond substi-tute in cookies, confectionery, and even pounded with sugar to make a faux marzi-

pan. (And you thought nutsedge was just a plant in your lawn to drive you crazy.)

Purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus), which grows better in warmer climates, has a strong menthol flavor that Cornuco-pia II compares to Vicks VapoRub. I’ll pass on eating this one.

If you have a nutsedge invasion on your hands you may find it hard to see it as any-thing but aggravating. So, if you are not going to grow this as a cash crop let me help you with ways to control nutsedge in your lawn and garden.

Identification: Nutsedge is sometimes called nutgrass or watergrass although it is not a grass at all. It is a sedge. Some

well-known sedges are water chestnut and papyrus sedge, from which the Ancient Egyptian writing material was made.

Nutsedge stems are triangular or V-shaped in cross section, grass stems are hollow and round. Sedge leaves are thicker and stiffer than most grasses with a thick mid-vein and very waxy coating. They are arranged in groups of three at the base. Yellow nutsedge leaves are light green and can grow from 12-16 inches tall. They are extremely fast growers which explains why they show up quickly after being mowed.

Nutsedge is a perennial that dies back in the cold and reappears in the spring

by tubers and rhizomes that can grow 14 inches below the soil surface. They pre-fer to get started in overly moist soils but, once established can tolerate drought and heat. One nutsedge plant may eventually form patches 10 feet or more in diameter; definitely a nuisance.

Control: The best control is prevention. Keep your turfgrass healthy by planting seed recommended for your area (See KSU grass seed listings.), fertilize at the proper rate and time, maintain the ideal pH, and water with appropriate amounts and timing. Nutsedge likes excessively

HANCOCK continues on 13A

Continued from 2A

Hancock: Are you sure it’s nutsedge?


By Linda A. DitchSpecial to The Capital-Journal

How well do you know all those gadgets in your kitchen drawers or hanging from displays in the kitchenware store? Here’s a fun quiz to test your knowledge. Some of the pictures are items from my personal kitchen tool collection, and others are pictures taken at The Kitchen Gallery in Fairlawn Plaza. For each image, choose which

description sounds most correct.

Do you know your kitchen gadgets?

1. a. A funnel cake maker. b. A whisk.

2. a. An egg separator. b. A meatball maker.

3. a. A refrigerator magnet. b. A wine stopper.

4. a. A knife sharpener. b. An kitchen timer.

QUIZ continues on 6A


5. a. A crock for storing butter. b. A individual-sized soufflé dish.

Continued from 5A

Quiz: How well do you know your kitchen gadgets?

6. a. A chocolate grater. b. A nutmeg grater.

7. a. A pasta strainer. b. A food mill.

8. a. A cherry pitter. b. A cookie decorator.

QUIZ continues on 7A


Quiz: How well do you know your kitchen gadgets?

9. a. A pastry brush. b. A mop.

Continued from 6A

10. a. A jar opener. b. A cheese slicer.

Answers:1. a—This was my grandmother’s whisk, which she used for decades to make meringue for her pies. It now hangs on my kitchen wall.

2. b—Turn over and break the egg into the middle. The yolk will stay while the whites drain into a bowl.

3. b—This is a silicone wine stopper. (Yes, I cheated and didn’t show the stopper part under the flower.)

4. a—This is the Füri Diamond Fingers knife sharpener, and it works great.

5. a—The Le Creuset Butter Crock, which allows you to store butter on the countertop for up to five days.

6. b—It is also a finger grater if you’re not careful when you reach into the drawer for it or while using it.

7. b—A food mill is part strainer and part blender. It works by forcing the food through tiny holes in the disk, leaving behind any seeds and skin. I use it to make tomato sauce, applesauce, and mashed potatoes.

8. a—This is the easiest way to pit cherries.

9. b—I didn’t fool any barbecue masters out there. This mop is used to spread liquid (typically apple juice) onto meat as it cooks to help keep it moist.

10. a—This opener from Oxo works well when there is no one around to help with a stuck jar lid. It fits all jar sizes.



Judging recently took place for the an-nual Topeka Beautification Association’s Landscape Contest. Nominations were considered from throughout the greater Topeka area, with the winners falling into three categories:

Cottage Garden Winner: Greg Hattan at 1607 SW 29th

When Greg Hattan began constructing the stone wall to his planned garden in 2011, he had no idea it was a cottage gar-den design. His first clue came this year when he found out someone nominated his efforts in the category. “I had to look it up to see just what the definition of a cot-tage garden was,” he said.

The garden that surrounds the front of his home is the perfect example of the cottage garden style, with its informal de-sign and dense plantings, all in contained space. A variety of exotic maple trees with their unique leaf patterns anchor the gar-den, which is filled with colorful coneflow-ers, daylilies, hostas, hydrangeas, hyssop, roses, catmint, ornamental grasses and milkweed, plus much more.

Life fills the garden, with butterflies and bees flitting from flower to flower, and birds making occasional appearances. Ev-erywhere you look something new is dis-covered.

“The intent was to get a lot of color, tex-ture, and butterflies,” Hattan explained. “I plant milkweed for the Monarch but-terflies and parsley for swallowtail but-terflies. During the Monarch migration season, this place will be swarming with butterflies. Sometimes there will be 20 to 30 of them on one bush.”

Hattan is a geologist for the U. S. Army Corp of Engineers. He described his pre-garden front yard a being “very ugly” with a number of Siberian elm trees, one of which smashed his neighbor’s car. He built the stone wall himself, getting a load of stone from Higgins Stone Company each Saturday. It took about a year to com-plete.

Now Hattan is in the process of expand-ing his garden to the backyard. He cur-rently has six garden beds dug and ready to plant.

Neighbors and passers-by stop to tell Hattan how much they appreciate his ef-forts. When asked why he likes gardening, he replied, “Because it’s beautiful. It’s cool to see all of the bees and butterflies. It’s probably therapeutic, too. I come out with my coffee and deadhead the flowers on Sunday mornings.”

Runners up in Cottage Gardens: Second place: Carole Christopher,

6440 Castle Lane Third place: The Row House, 515 SW

Van Buren

Shade Garden Winner: Dolores Balda at 832 SW Anderson Terrace

For artist Ed Balda, acrylic and oil paints are his media of choice. For his wife, Dolo-res, her artistic talents can be found in the ever-changing gardens of their home.

“Gardening is my creative outlet, along with decorating and cooking,” Dolores said. “You have to do the layering, color, texture, and height in a garden very much the way you approach a painting.”

Ed added, “Her palette is outside.” Inspired by the courtyard gardens of

Savannah, Georgia, Dolores designed her backyard space as a series of outdoor rooms with a meandering path as the hall-way connecting them. Each unique “room” is a surprise since it isn’t visible until ap-proached on the path.

Dolores started in the area off the screen

LANDSCAPE continues on 9A

2015 Winners in Landscape Design

LiNDA A. DitCh

Clockwise: A few of the many coneflowers spill over the edge of the stone wall which outlines the garden. Right: A Monarch butterfly enjoys the flowers in the garden. Bottom: Hattan enjoys coffee and dead-heading flowers on a Sunday morning.

Cottage Garden Winner

porch, with a brick patio built in 1996 and 1997 with 4,000 locally sourced bricks. (Look closely for the ones marked “Tope-ka”.) A dining table sits in the center, with two comfortable chairs positioned next to a water feature.

A brick path leads past a large baker’s rack of potted plants and on to the kitchen patio, which was installed after the kitch-en was remodeled in 1999. Here is where the barbecue grill and potted herbs stand ready for the next meal. Off in the far cor-ner of the garden is a white pergola with comfortable seating and numerous bird-feeders nearby.

While the garden design came from Do-lores’s imagination, Ed was the one who designed the brick patio layout, the path-way curves, and the water feature. Do-lores said, “He isn’t good with the plants part, but he’s really the one who designed the hardscape. I could picture the curve in my head, but he would be the one to get the curve to look right.”

Now that the back gardens are estab-lished, Dolores has begun work on the ones in the front yard. Because of large, established trees, these spaces are filled with shade-loving hostas, hydrangeas, hollies, boxwoods and Japanese maples. Annuals provide pops of color.

Dolores also adds to her gardens with container plantings. Planters are placed along the front porch’s edge. Window boxes and a variety of containers placed in the gardens allow for beautiful scenes throughout the year. She even does win-ter gardening by placing spruce tips, dried flowers, pinecones, magnolia leaves and red dogwood tree branches in the contain-

ers for a beautiful garden scene even in the coldest months.

“I look at the outside the way I look at the inside,” Dolores said. “It needs to be comfortable, with the right coloration, the right textures, like you find in the fabrics in your home. Every window I look out, I want to see something beautiful. Some-thing that makes me smile.”

Runners up in Shade Gardens: Second place: Terry Clark, 1410 Pem-

broke Lane Third place: Barby Nordgren, 3419

SE 35Sun Garden Winner: Nan Nelson at 748

SW Prairie CourtNan Nelson’s garden began as one filled

with shade. Eleven Scotch pine trees and three silver maples created so much shade she actually won in that garden category years ago. However, disease and weather took away the trees, and now most of her garden is open to the sun.LANDSCAPE continues on 10A


LiNDA A. DitCh

Clockwise: After the kitchen was remodeled, a kitchen garden was added for grilling, relaxing and growing herbs. Bottom Right: Ed and Dolores Balda in one of there many garden rooms. Bottom Left: Walking down the path, you pass an old baker’s rack filled with plants.

Shade Garden WinnerContinued from 8A

Landscape: Shade Garden offers many retreats

“You deal with micro environments in the garden,” said Nelson, who is a neona-tal nurse at Stormont-Vail. “As trees grow, you get shade in the garden. When they die off, you get full sun. Some areas get sun for just part of the day.”

The centerpiece of her garden is a beau-tiful water feature, complete with water-falls and a pond full of water lilies and fish. A path leads from the pond up the hill to her quaint garden shed, a birthday gift from her family. Along the path are gar-den beds filled with numerous lily variet-ies, including the beautiful and fragrant Stargazer lily. There are also masses of coneflowers and other perennials, all nat-urally arranged to give the feel of walking through a meadow. Under the trees and in a wooded area in the back of the yard is where the shade-loving plants can be found.

Nelson’s love of gardening came from her mother. This year, she planted coral and purple colored annuals in her honor. Her mother is also remembered with a beautiful Tropicana rose bush.

Besides her mother’s knowledge, Nelson as learned about gardening through a lot of trial and error. She will buy a plant she likes and then see how it works in the gar-den for the year. She also learns from oth-er gardeners, most often in a local nursery. She explained, “I’ll be at a nursery and say, ‘I can’t grow this,’ and someone will say, ‘Have you tried this?’

Nelson looked over the garden and add-ed, “There’s an understanding that I’m not the maker here. I can arrange the garden, but it’s God who makes it grow.”

Runners up in Sun Gardens:

Second place: Judy Briggs, 1615 SW Sieben Third place: Bonnie and Jerry Cor-

dill, 4304 SW Laurens Way


Continued from 9A

Landscape: Sun garden honors mother

Sun Garden Winner

LindA A. ditch

Top: The garden shed was a gift to Nelson from her family. Middle: Stargazer lilies fill a large part of the garden with both color and aroma. Bottom: Nan Nelson cuts a few Stargazer lilies to enjoy inside.


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moist soil but, can grow in dry locations as well. Monitor and manage insect and dis-ease infestations to avoid thin, bare areas where nutsedge can move in.

Mechanical control can be achieved by digging at least 10 inches deep and at least 8-10 inches wide around a single plant. This is best done in spring when the plants are smaller. Hand-pulling can be effec-tive if done very regularly. Theoretically, constant removal can wear out the under-ground storage organs and cause them to

eventually die but, this could take 4 to 12 attacks to be effective. Aerate turf and add compost for better drainage.

Chemical control with postemergence herbicides can work with correct iden-tification of the plant. Many herbicides that work on grasses will not work on sedges. SedgeHammer (halosulfuron or sulfentrazone) has proven to be effective in our area. It is safe for most turfgrasses and should be applied by June 21. “If the initial spray is after June 21,” according to Ward Upham, K-State Horticulture Spe-cialist, “mature daughter tubers may be

stimulated to grow.” SedgeHammer is a little pricey but, you may only need one application with a small infestation and it is sold in small quantities. Consider shar-ing cost with a neighbor if you both have only a small problem. Combining Sedge-Hammer with a non-ionic surfactant (a wetting agent) will give better control. Avoid mowing 2 days before application and at least 2 days after to allow for better translocation of the chemical to the root system.

Organic control can happen with core aeration and addition of corn gluten meal.

Or, ducks, geese, and guinea hens will un-earth and eat the tubers for you.

Don’t hesitate to turn a somber situation into a delicious one.

NOTE If you are not sure you are deal-ing with a nutsedge plant, don’t eat it. You wouldn’t want to eat something that might be poisonous.

Jamie Hancock is a horticulturist with Kansas State University Research and Extension in Shawnee County.

Continued from 3A

Hancock: Controlling nutsedge?

6. Tongs—one of the kitchen’s most ver-satile tools.

7. Aprons—yes, they may seem a bit old fashioned, but aprons will help save your clothes from splatters and stains.

8. Spatulas—choose a variety of sizes to handle any task.

9. A good peeler—this one from Zyliss is very sharp and fits well in my hand.

10. Knives—good ones. This is the place to spend money, since some of the best ones are expensive. You need at least three to start: A chef’s knife for chopping and slicing, a paring knife for peeling and trimming, and a serrated bread knife to cut soft items without tearing or squashing.

1. Whisks—in multiple sizes to handle any job.

2. Bamboo spoons—like wooden spoons, these will not scratch non-stick surfaces. Unlike wooden utensils, these can go into the dishwasher without them drying out,

splitting and breaking. (I’ve had mine for years!)

3. A microplane—this tool makes quick work of zesting citrus fruit, grating par-mesan cheese, and mincing garlic cloves.

4. A rolling pin—choose the style that feels right for you. I use a maple wood roll-ing dowel.

5. A silicone brush—great for basting or saucing meats, brushing flour off pas-try, or coating pans with soft butter. The bristles withstand hot temperatures and do not shed onto foods like bristle pastry brushes.


These are the tools no kitchen—or cook—should be without:


Must Have Kitchen Tools

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