The Passionate Gardener

Bright Lights Big Basil

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:34:00 +0000

"Grow your own wonderful fresh cooking and other herbs indoors all year long, and stop paying grocery store prices! Get started with your own indoor herb garden in minutes and have fresh herbs

within weeks!"

All Photos by Shane VanOosterhout

I lifted the above quote from wheatgrasskits.com, one of the many websites selling indoor herb kits. For their low price of $29.95 you receive 12 different herb seed packets and a growing kit that includes a plastic tray with a lid: "the perfect climate for fast herb growth."

The perfect climate...where? Hawaii? Spain? The South of France? Last time I miniaturized myself and crawled under a moisturized plastic dome I thought of Minneapolis on July 20, 2011 when the heat index hit 119 degrees and the dew point spiked 82%.

Full-spectrum light from T5 florescent bulbs.

Yes, heat and humidity are necessary for seed germination, but so is light--a lot of it, and forget about a bright windowsill because winter's sun in the northern hemisphere is far too feeble. The only way to achieve an adequate growing climate for herbs indoors is to provide an artificial light source. So, let's talk a little about foot candles, or how the strength of light is measured when it strikes a surface.

Today, January 28, more than a month past our winter Solstice, at 1:30 in the afternoon, my light meter reads about 1800 foot candles when I touch it directly on the window glass. At six inches away from the glass, the foot candles drop to 1500.

Herbs need, at the very minimum, 2,000 foot candles of light, which is still on the far end of wimpy when you consider that the bright summer sun delivers 10,000 foot candles, the same time of year when seasonal herbs are at their peak.

When I place a light meter on my growing table it reads about 4,400 foot candles, as you can see in the photo below.

My dad's old light meter from the 1950's. Vintage.

During the first week of January I sowed a handful of herb seeds in four-inch pots. By the way, I've been using the same Basil packet since 2009 and the seeds are still viable. Truth is most garden seeds have a long shelf life if they are kept perfectly dry at room temperature.

Renee's Seeds are excellent, and the packets are very well-designed.

Baby Basil's first set of true leaves rising above its cotyledon.

Indoor seeds should be started in a soil-less mix (literally contains no soil particles), not potting soil. Potting soil holds too much moisture for tender baby plants with tiny root structures. The (non) soil temperature must be warm--70 degrees, and consistently moist (but not wet) or the seeds will not germinate. As for those plastic domed mini greenhouses? Watch out, they quickly become tropical mini rain forests--great for terrariums, terrible for herb seedlings, which are vulnerable to rot.

Second set of true leaves.

Once the new plants have their second set of true leaves, transplant them into a high quality potting mix--light, fluffy, with added perlite, and allow the soil to dry between watering. Notice in the photo above that the stems are thick and strong, not spindly or bending over. Also notice that the distance between the two sets of leaves is compact, not leggy, and the foliage is a lovely, rich green color.

In a few weeks from now I'll be making pesto!

Larger pots can accommodate up to four Basil plants.

Parsley seedlings.

I love Rosemary!

This fine lady is more than a decade old. Her tiny flowers are pure white.

Severe pruning stimulates tender shoots on old wood.

My next post: what happens to honeybees during the winter? Girl power.

Reading Green

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:28:00 +0000

In January it's time to delve into plant and garden books. Reading is like organic fertilizer for the brain. You don't even have to follow the label to know how to apply it, just find a nice spot with a full-spectrum lamp, preferably near a window, but not too near that you get a bothersome chill. Also be sure to have something soft for your cat, a square pillow will do, because cats greatly appreciate the reading of a book and feel it is necessary to be part of the action.

Once you are comfortable, begin reading. (photo by Shane V.)

This time last winter I was busy researching the world of honeybees in preparation for becoming an apiarist. I was utterly preoccupied with thinking about honeybees and how to care for them. This year I have a grand stack of new plant books, all of them gifts. Aren't I lucky to have such perceptive friends and family?
I started with Richard Horan's Seeds (Harper Perennial). Horan is a lover of American lit, which he also teaches. Bewitched by a vagabond's life of bumming around the U.S. and visiting the homes and birthplaces of famous authors--Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller to name a few, a cotyledon sprouts in his brain. Wouldn't it be cool, man, to collect trees from the estates of great writers?
So far, I am a hundred pages into Seeds and enjoying it immensely. In the prologue, Horan indirectly admits he knows little about how to properly cultivate woody plants, which has me wondering what will happen to all that contraband DNA once he gets home and tries to make them sprout. My ex-coworker Mary Frein gave me this book as a going-away gift. I was deeply touched by her thoughtfulness, plus it helped us avoid a teary scene on my last day at the office.
The Book of Leaves is a new reference from The University of Chicago Press, authored by Allen J. Coombes. I drooled over it at Borders when I was there with my friend Kevin Schalkofski and guess what Santa brought me? The Book of Leaves is a treasure. Simple, elegant, exceptionally well-designed. I've already spent some quality time with this one and am thrilled to have it in my collection for future enjoyment.
My sister Stacie gave me the following two books from my Amazon list. Weeds--In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants by Richard Mabey (Harper Collins). How can I not look forward to reading a book with a title like this? Paradoxes are a blast.
Fifty Plant that Changed the Course of History by Bill Laws (Firefly Books). Since so many history books are about war, politics, or the economy, it's thrilling for me to access the past through subjects that fascinate me. This is an A-Z list. The plants chosen are mostly medicinal or edible, but of course the ornamental (tulip), the industrial (rubber) are included. Each selection is given two pages of text, inset with illustrations and interesting facts.
Seeing Trees by Nancy Ross Hugo; Photography by Robert Llewellyn (Timber Press). I found out about this book at least six months ago and it's been on my wish list ever since. Thanks, mom. Seeing Trees covers ten trees in detail, and provides additional information on tree traits. I haven't yet read the copy, but the photographs are mind-blowing. Llewellyn devised a special approach to capturing the images by taking multiple shots of the buds, leaves, flowers and shoots and combining them digitally into a single image. The result is deep focus, with crazy wow detail. Now, if only Lasik could do that for my eyeballs.
Finally, my friend Sue Stauffacher gave me the book Using Native Plants to Restore Community by Nancy Cutbirth and Tom Small. Sue and I are both idealists who fancy that the world can be saved with plants, so naturally we enjoy reading books by like-minded utopians. The authors, married, also teachers of English lit, began an important journey in 1995 to restore the native plant colonies of southwest Michigan. Using Native Plants to Restore Community combines personal observations of nature with advice on what to plant, and inspires the reader to engage in better stewardship of our precious land. Book sales go to the Kalamazoo, Michigan chapter of Wild Ones, a non-profit native plant group.

Happy reading.

Next month I will talk a bit about foot candles, little nubbins of wicked wax applied to the toes in the 1800's to keep the feet warm on a cold winter's night.
Just kidding!
(I will share with you some of the secrets of successful indoor northern hemisphere gardening).

Hornbeam Smackdown

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:56:00 +0000

The charming American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliana) is not often found in home gardens. Perhaps it grows too slowly for those who want a towering tree in sixty seconds or less. I immediately feel kinship with a gardener who has one--in my mind it implies upstanding character. This native species has survived the onslaught of lumber barons and exotic pestilence where other key species such as Elm, Chestnut and Ash have met their Waterloo. Maybe it is no coincidence that American Hornbeam is also commonly known as Musclewood.

Recently I was given one as a gift--I assumed a seedling in a small pot. Then a truck arrived at my home hauling a 2.5 caliper (ten foot) specimen with a three hundred pound root ball.
The driver offered to help me situate the tree using his hand cart but I warned him it was too risky. During the rainy season the soil on my property holds enough water to power the Hoover Dam for a week and I knew we'd end only up perishing in the mire. He wished me the best.
I pulled on my high boots and hiked into the marshy field to scout the perfect location. Successful tree planting requires a bright ability to visualize things in twenty years. For example a row of young spruce trees planted directly beneath utility lines will one day make a nice pile of wood chips.
American Hornbeam is a beautiful small tree, maturing to about twenty-five feet in height. Its satiny-sinewy bark is grey-blue and rock hard; the glossy leavens are deep green, ovate-oblong, sharply serrate. In fall the foliage becomes scarlet-orange. A tree this lovely requires a place in the landscape where it will not be ruined by crappy real estate.
As I puttered along in my John Deere, transporting the tree at the slowest possible speed, I felt like 73 year-old Alvin Straight who in 1994 drove his sit-down mower from Iowa to Wisconsin. Every waterlogged gorge and grassy hump threatened to demolish me.
Now, I've been planting trees of all sizes for a long time yet I persist in misjudging the depth of a hole. Yes I do love to dig holes the same way I like to bite my nails and brush my teeth--with far more zeal than is necessary. There I was on a cold November afternoon with bloody fingertips, self-inflicted gum recession, and a too-deep hole filled with a 300 pound tree.
My dad offered the worst possible solution: hitch a bungee cord from the back of the John Deere to the root ball and pull it out. I fumed that we did not have time to review Sir Isaac Newton's universal law of gravitation proving that heavy stuff gets heavier when it goes into a hole.

I opted instead for 4x4's. Using our bodies for counterweight I managed to jack the tree high enough to make a clay mound beneath the rootball, gradually raising the tree to a proper height.
To ensure good drainage in a wet area I elevated the root flare a few inches above the soil level and mulched with six bags of organic soil and two bags of shredded cedar. The stakes will be removed in one year after reaction wood has formed and the root plate is well anchored. Lastly I protected the trunk from girdling rodents by wrapping it with chicken wire.
Before heading in from the cold I took a final moment to appreciate my new American Hornbeam, a glorious addition to the landscape. I can hardly wait for spring when I can scout for Lo moth caterpillars, one of this tree's unique guests. Lo moth caterpillars are covered in clusters of bright green spines that sting like hell. If I am lucky enough to find one I will have a strong urge to touch it. Heck, it can't be more painful than having no fingernails.

Gardeners, Travelers, Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:15:00 +0000

"Gardening is a long road, with many detours and way stations, and here we all are at one point or another. It's not a question of superior or inferior taste, merely a question of which detour we are on at the moment. Getting there (as they say) is not important -- the wandering about in the wilderness or in the olive groves or in the bayous is the whole point." Henry Mitchell

Five years ago I met a tiny woman with bobbed, ivory hair named Alice Wilkes. She struck me as once-famous 1920's flapper girl who had traded table top dancing for gardening because at the age of eighty-three it made good sense to keep nearer to the ground.

Alice showed up at my workplace brimming with questions. Apparently her raspberries had gone bad over the years as raspberries always do and she was looking for a better variety. I recommended some reliable mail order companies that sell virus-free bramble stock.

Alice and I hit it off quite well. The ladies at my office remarked that I had made a new friend and sure enough, she called me two weeks later. "I do wish you'd come for a visit and see my garden," she said.

When I arrived Alice seemed reluctant to invite me in through the front door, ordering me to meet her outside at the rear of the house. On the way I passed a detached old garage filled with everything but an automobile -- shovels, trowels, hoes, rakes, forks, towers of clay pots, bags of manure and fertilizer. It was so crammed with garden apparel that there was scarcely enough room to stand, but looking at Alice's diminutive body I believed she could crawl unscathed through loops of barbed wire to find a good spade if she needed one.

Her garden wandered along a narrow strip of side-yard, each off-kilter bed growing into the next as if the plants had burst through uneven walls and she had set forth, ant-like, to contain the green spill within a new border of smooth beach stones.

"It's really just a lot of plants I like." Alice said it so plainly that any scoundrel would take her at face value, but I knew better. She was a true connoisseur.

She pointed out her recent acquisitions and we both agreed that creeping miniature sedum 'Angelina' was a stand-out, although she remorsefully added that hers was subject to a bit too much afternoon shade and was therefore spindly.

The real jewel, however, was soon revealed: a common Mediterranean fig (Ficus carica) that had wondrously survived three consecutive Michigan winters.

"Any fruit?" I asked, greatly impressed.

Alice shook her head. "The dog-gone things never get big enough to ripen before the snow hits. Maybe this year I'll hit the jackpot."

For a while we simply sat on the cool earth, noting our shared affection for rampant clover in turfgrass, praising the weather and hinting at politics (we agreed). I learned that her husband had recently died and that her son had been killed in the Vietnam war but she said it all with a slight shrug, not indifferently but without complaint.

Before we parted, Alice shared some of her Cranesbill and loaned me her paperback edition of Henry Mitchell's book One Man's Garden. "He's marvelous," she promised, adding, "If you don't care for him I just might not be able to be your friend."

Oh, Alice, I thought, I love it when you talk like that.

The next time we met, just before August's conclusion, I gave her a dense clump of Helianthus maximiliani, which I instantly regretted. Where on earth would she put this rocketing prairie giant in her small suburban garden? I warned her that if she showed it too much affection she might be sorry.

I spent the cold months reading One Man's Garden, relieved that Alice and I would remain friends after all. That was five years ago, a blink of an eye. We visited only once this summer, regretfully too near the end of things, but her late-season raspberries were refusing to quit and we stood on the driveway, happily eating them together.

Alice said nothing that humid afternoon of the plastic tube tucked beneath her nose, nor did I ask. I gave her a new copy of Doug Tallamy's revelatory book Bringing Nature Home, promising her she'd adore it as much as I do. We observed the gently swaying curly locks of her Corkscrew Willow and then she said it was time for her to go to dinner with her daughter -- they were having burritos. Glancing at her, tinier than ever, I wondered where all those beans could possibly fit.

Alice phoned my office the next week but missed me. She had a question about figs -- would they ripen indoors if they were still green? I returned the call but received her answering machine. "I'll be here on Wednesday," I said, "I look forward to talking with you then."

I did not hear from Alice again. A co-worker broke the news as she handed me Alice's obituary. I placed it on my desk next to the yellow notepad where I had written a reminder. My handwriting seemed urgent. "Call Alice," it said.

When I thought of Alice's garden without Alice there to tend it, it was too awful to consider. The best I could do to ease my sadness was to revisit the words of Henry Mitchell, a man who wisely understood that in our deepest hearts, gardeners become the luckiest of traveling companions when we cherish our journey together, even if we only cross paths every once in a while.

Introducing Country Living and Ty Pennington Themed Christmas Decor

Heckled

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:26:00 +0000

     I was recently heckled at a ladies' gardening club.
   "What about the weeds?" An old woman narrowed her eyes in contempt, as if I had spoken unholy words.
"I'm sorry?" I asked.
"What about the weeds I said!"
"What would you like to know about them?"
"You used the word "natural." A natural garden will just fill up with weeds."
I rewound my thoughts. "Yes, good point, a weed management program is necessary to maintain any sort of garden. I am speaking today on garden design that is not formal. "Natural" does not mean you allow the weeds to take over."
     She said no more but her expression did not convey satisfaction. Perhaps she was just displeased with the lunch options.
     I concluded my lecture without further complaints, although another woman left early (not before noisily bundling some brownish cookies into a paper napkin) and there was a couple in the back row who chatted furiously throughout, their heads bobbing like a pair of tweedling sparrows.
   Public speaking is not without entanglements. Many people I know are terrified of facing a group and opening their mouth at the same time, insisting that they'd rather take a sharp stick in the eye, but giving a horticulture presentation is one of my favorite things to do. The process combines some of my best creative skills: writing, photography, verbalizing ideas, and sarcasm.
     Crafting an engaging garden lecture is no different from telling a good story, as long as the story is told by someone who is recommending horse shit, not selling it.
     Over time, gardeners naturally become good skeptics. They've heard a zillion claims and tried as many gimmicks. Say "Meadow in a Can" to a room full of knowing gardeners and you are guaranteed to get a laugh.
     I once attended a garden convention where a man was marketing a "microbial caffeinated soil enhancer."
     "Why caffeine?" I asked.
     "Because it wakes up the beneficial bacteria and gets them off to a fast start."
     There was some horseshit I wasn't buying.

Unlock Your Patio and Garden Potential at LNT.com! Shop Now and Save!

September Swarm

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Photo by Shane VanOosterhout

On September eleven my honeybees swarmed. I got the news from my father who casually mentioned something about seeing a "bee house in the trees." Vaguely worded, but I know how to decipher.

"Which trees?" I asked, a sick feeling in my gut.

"The pines."

"Which pines? We have lots of them."

"By the chicken pen."

I walked outside to discover a few thousand bees settling on a pine bough eight feet off the ground. I felt dishonored -- they could have at least waited until next spring to pioneer. After all, I had given them a deluxe home, hand built from cedar, covered by a pitched copper roof.
People say honeybees swarm when their hive is crowded. My hive was half full. As I lamented the hubris of my bees I recited from memory an old nursery rhyme:

A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.

*A swarm of bees in September

Will be dead by December.

*Last two lines author's addition

I photographed the swarm, then consulted my library of beekeeping materials. Could I intervene and save these feckless bees from their suicide mission?
Fortunately, swarms typically linger in one spot for several days while scout bees check out the real estate. The next morning the swarm remained intact, swaying gently like an enormous flower bud on the end of its stem.
I severed the pine branch and dumped the cluster of bees into a tall plastic container. After knocking off the last bees I laid the branch across the top of the container and closed the lid, leaving a half inch space for the bees to come and go while collecting pollen and nectar. They buzzed in baritone. Some of the guard bees flew in defensive loops around my head and chest as if to say, "I have my eyes on you, fella."
For seventy-five dollars I purchased a nucleus box made from pine, and two pounds of fresh pollen cake. (If you are wondering, yes I sampled the sticky amber-colored pollen cake -- it tastes subtly of flowers). The bars in the nucleus were treated with pure lemongrass oil, an odor honeybees find irresistible, as do I.

Photo by Shane VanOosterhout

    When I transferred the bees from the plastic container into the nuc I was amazed to discover a yellow crescent of honeycomb hanging from the branch. Nearly a foot in length and four inches at its peak it had been fabricated in only five days. In the warmth of my hand, liquid honey made almost entirely of fresh pine sap and emergency sugar pooled on my fingers, which ended up in my mouth. Pine flavored honey is an unexpected delight.
Happily, the original colony seemed to recover nicely from its sudden population decline. A new queen successfully established -- although I have not yet seen her -- thus keeping the hive from falling into chaos. Guard bees are actively kicking out the lazy male drones and ruthlessly fighting off mercenary fall yellow jackets that occasionally invade the hive to steal precious honey.
   The nuc is also doing well. Even after several frosts there is an ample supply of pollen on my property due to my expert gardening and cultivation practices. A wealth of golden rod, asters and native perennial sunflowers provide the foraging bees enough pollen to take to the nuc, their hind legs stuffed with bright yellow balls of powder, the magical stuff of life.

The Wonders of Beekeeping

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:06:00 +0000

Photograph by Shane VanOosterhout 2011

     I was jittery when I began keeping honey bees this spring. Although I had done my research on the subject over the winter, there is only so much a book can reveal before I have questions that are best answered through hands-on experience, or by more experienced bee keepers who are available on line.
     You Tube is useful for visual demonstrations of just about anything. The trick is surfing through the crappy videos (most of them) to find a handful of jewels. It's advisable to find excellent websites and then follow their suggested links as opposed to sifting through another appalling example of what not to do as a beekeeper.
     On the other hand, perhaps it's not all bad to watch strangers screw up so that you don't have to. Personally I find it hard to watch a guy inhale from a tobacco pipe and then exhale smoke directly on the swarm. Nicotine is toxic to bees. How many dimwits will watch that video and think it's a genius idea?
      When my package of bees was sent from Texas, it was delivered to a tiny town in Marine, Minnesota. I live in Marne, Michigan. Totally different zip codes.   After some anxious confusion and haggling, the bees were returned to sender. The following week I received a new package of bees. Fully suited, hooded and gloved with kid leather gauntlets, I nervously pried open the screened box and dumped the confused swarm into their new home -- a handsome cedar top-bar hive with a peaked copper roof. The bees were agitated but immediately settled down just inside the entrance. I left them alone for a couple of days, checking regularly from a few yards distance.
     It dawned on me that I had forgotten to note the placing of the queen's cage. Ideally her cage should be placed at the top of the hive where the swarm will keep her warm while the workers free her. Queen cages arrive with an impregnated queen trapped inside a tiny wooden container that is sealed with a hard candy plug. It takes at least two days for the workers to eat through the candy and free their new queen.
     After one week I opened the hive for the first time. The swarm reacted defensively and many bees landed on my suit and hood. I was breaking and entering. Already they had begun construction on a tiny piece of wax comb about the size of a quarter.   I found the queen's cage lying on the floor of the hive, covered with a protective cluster of workers.
     After gently shooing away the worker bees I was able to pick up the cage and look inside. There was the frustrated queen, still trapped. I placed her at the top of the hive where the workers could more easily attend to freeing her. Still an awkward novice, I crushed about a half dozen bees in the process.
   I returned to the hive five days later to find the queen still in her cage. I took a small twig, poked out the remaining twenty-five percent of the candy plug, and set the queen free. For a minute she lumbered slowly across the floor of the hive, unattended to. Then, beautifully, some of her workers began to emerge from the swarm at the top of the hive as if they were fashioning themselves into a living rope, an amazing lifeline to sweep the queen from the floor and pull her up into the heart of the suspended cluster, where she has been happily laying brood ever since.

The Vagary of my Winter's Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 18:11:00 +0000

I imagine it as shimmering, frozen dream scape. Visitors enter through a valley of columned temples built from glossy blue ice, the capitals burnished with silver Acanthus leaves. At the entrance: curving colonnades, enswathed in long curtains of pure white snow. The roads are paved with clear Pentelic marble, winter sun flashes across its polished surface like diamond dust.

To find my garden you will need a map written in botanical ink, on fine linen, and a well-fitted horse and carriage, fleeced with Prussian blue cashmere cloaks. The route is challenging, but treacherous only if embarked upon by day, for it is the richly colored bands of twilight that will reveal my garden's secret location.
Those who seek this place at the wrong hour will be imperiled by hoary winds that blind and kill. An incautious traveler will stumble upon frozen corpses tossed like marionettes from shattered, upturned carriages. Let this be your warning.

Look heavenward to see the clustering stars of Orion's astral belt. The indigo sky, immersed in celestial light, assures you that you are fortunate. The rose-smeared horizon guides you westward, toward the long, crystalline shadow of a high, slender obelisk. As you pass the hallowed monument, pause to read the inscription carved into its four sides: "memores acti prudentes futuri." Mindful of what has been done, aware of what will be.

An icy forest of stalactites sprouts like dangerous trees as your carriage approaches the garden's gates. Make haste! Your horses have grown weary; the frigid cold has begun to settle upon your skin. Ultramarine lichens bloom upon your boots as winter's dangerous blood commingles with your own.
The gates, adorned with tendrils of frost, sing on their heavy hinges. Only the invited can pass--guardian spirits, wisps of chill and fog that flit like ghostly birds above an icebound landscape, refuse all others.

   Walk the length of the wide courtyard until you come to a stone archway at the end of the farthest wall. Enter the tunnel. Hear the the snap of ice above. Your footsteps echo softly in the inky darkness. You see a wooden door in silhouette, draped in a curtain of icicles.
     Pallid moonlight ushers you through the door to Winter's Meadow, a roaming space where ice and snow glitter atop gentle hills and gossamer blue creatures nestle in the crooks of snow blasted spires.
     Continue north to the grotto. Ice-clotted water spurts from the mouths of lions, spilling into dark basins that reflect sapphire clouds.
   The footpath divides near the misty gray mouth of the Woods of Thorns. On the left you see a mysterious, naked statue of Ereshkigal, the Crone Goddess. She gazes fiercely downward, her Lapis Lazuli eyes cold and severe. On the right you see a slender evergreen, its boughs heavy with snow. A high-roosting owl studies your presence.
   Beneath the trees the air is hushed. Suddenly your cloak is snatched away. You twist back but the cloak is out of reach, savagely pierced by thorns. Warmth envelopes, comforts you in genial arms.
     The path tumbles downward, curves and takes you to the river's icy edge. Across the slippery white banks, surrounded by a grove of fat pines, the Temple of Ice rises from its alabaster foundation.

     Be patient. Soon the ferry will arrive to take you across the dark, swirling waters where you will climb the tall stone steps to the temple's honeycombed doors. Before you enter, take a moment to study the frieze above your head: mighty oak's winter buds, enclosed by a twisting chain of thorns.
   Through the ice etched doors is the Chamber of Light, blinding at first. Behold a solitary, colossal tree adorned by garlands of emerald moss, rising from the room's meridian. Rivulets of glassy water trickle down its fluted bark, pooling in valleys between stained, knotted roots.
   High limbs broadly reach, buttressing the walls. A densely plaited canopy of twigs weaves the roof impenetrable to wind and snow.
      Seduced by the desire to sleep and dream you lie upon the spongy ground.
     Awake to the baritone breathing of horses and a sharp chill. Gather your cloaks now; shield yourself from the frozen atmosphere. Look around. See that you have been spirited back to your carriage. The sky is decorated with dawn's violet ribbons. A winter moon rises in the east, a crescent of pure white.
   It is time to make the journey home.

Six Naughty Garden Plants

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:06:00 +0000

     In my last post I discussed the familiar topic of trouble-makers in the garden, plants that spread aggressively, crowd and displace more favorable plants. Mostly we describe these types of plants as invasive, but just because a particular plant is good at reproducing or colonizing on your property does not automatically make it invasive. More than once I have overheard a gardener calling a plant invasive simply because it established well and prospered while other beloved plants nearby diminished. This is not the correct definition of invasive. Sometimes a plant is simply a space hog and will out compete its meeker neighbors. In the wild, these plants would not be growing next to each other in the first place.
   A truly invasive plant eventually becomes so prolific that it dominates. It may seem to stop at the boundaries of your yard--the fence, for example, but without effective physical barriers it will find its way off of your property and escape. Invasive plants often "naturally" form a monoculture--a single species crop--that requires diligent control management.
     To the casual observer, many invasive plants do not appear to be problematic but to the skilled eye it is often quite easy to notice invasive characteristics in a plant simply from personal experience and a little reading.
   Let's take a look at six common ornamental plants that can cause regrets. All of these selections are popular and easily found at almost every nursery and big box store across the United States. The plants I discuss here are not native to the North America (with one exception) and it should be mentioned that although not every non-native plant is considered invasive, the worst offenders are non-native.

Chameleon plant

1. Chameleon plant - Houttuynia cordata. Native to Southeast Asia. Planted here as a ground cover due to its rapid growth over large areas, especially where there is ample moisture. The abundant amount of water and fertilizer that we apply to our gardens and yards gives it an extra shot in the arm. Like many ground covers, Chameleon plant at first seems the perfect thing for a spot we wish to see "filled in" without a lot of hassle. Unfortunately, Chameleon plant's stolons plow through soil with tenacious speed, forming a colony so dense that it successfully engulfs a garden in a few years, taking no prisoners. Anything not rugged enough to stand up to it will soon be smothered. Digging helps it to reproduce by chopping its roots, and its tough, waxy leaves provide resistance to herbicides. Categorized as "difficult to control" by the Global Invasive Species List.

Verbena b.

2. Verbena bonariensis. A very pretty, slender-stemmed purple flowered plant that is native to South America. Extremely popular as a summer annual or tender perennial all over the world (now considered a weed in the islands of the South Pacific). Verbena b. spreads by seed (volunteers) anywhere it can. The home landscape is ideal for its domination: many cultivated areas where the soil is often worked, including all flower and vegetable beds. It also loves gravel paths and walkways, or wherever there is a bit of grit between rocks and pavers. Nectar-loving insects adore Verbena b., which makes it appealing in the garden especially because the flowers can rise four to six feet--no bending down to observe the butterflies. The seeds will move great distances and volunteers are soon found in huge numbers all over your property, year after year. Fortunately it is not too difficult to pull by hand and it responds well to herbicide control, but once established it truly becomes a nuisance. Presently on the invasive species list in Washington State.

Bishop's Weed

3. Bishop's Weed - Aegopodium podagraria (aka gout weed, snow-in-the-mountain, ground elder, and herb gerard). Native to Asia and Europe, Bishop's Weed is a favorite landscape plant because it thrives in shade--an extremely common complaint of homeowners who are flummoxed by lack of sunlight on their property. Like Chameleon plant it spreads underground, in this case by stolons, and just as aggressively. The Invasive Plants Atlas lists Bishop's Weed as invasive in six states including Michigan.

Common Periwinkle

4. Common Periwinkle - Vinca minor. Native to Europe and Western Asia. Another ground cover, Periwinkle will thrive in partial shade and moderate moisture but is surprisingly resilient. Again, the American tendency to heavily water and fertilize enhances its already aggressive nature in the garden. Planting Periwinkle beneath large shade trees is a common practice, as mistaking it for a good solution to erosion control (even the nursery retailers advertise it for this purpose). Because of this it ends up in woods and dunes where it forms a dense mat that excludes native vegetation. Very difficult to pull and tends to readily bounce back from herbicide damage. Invasives.org lists Periwinkle as a severe threat in South Carolina.

English Ivy

5. English ivy - Hedera helix. Native to Europe, Western Asia and Africa. Known for covering old neoclassical buildings on college campuses, English ivy is diabolical in its ability to grow horizontally and vertically. It invades garden beds, hedgerows, fields, woodlands and swarms tree trunks, eventually pulling them down. On the forest floor it prevents other plants from germinating by casting dense shade. English ivy can cause serious poisoning in humans and animals if ingested. Control English ivy aggressively with herbicide sprays. Cut the trunks near the ground and cover the fresh wound with herbicide. An area that has been invaded will require more than one year of intervention. The Plant Conservation Alliance's Alien Plant Working Group lists English ivy as an ecological threat.


Obedient Plant

6. Obedient Plant - Physotegia virginiana. Aka False Dragonhead. OK, to be fair, I am including this attractive flowering perennial to the list. It is native to North America and widely distributed across the U.S. In mid-late summer it is erect, tall--four feet--and bursting with medium pink flowers. Obedient plant, unlike the previous five I have mentioned, is not an ecological threat but it is a threat to the gardener with limited space, which is most. Obedient plant forms large colonies, swiftly. After all, it's in the mint family, need I say more? In short, it's a space hog. If you like your perennial beds neat and contained, I recommend that you do not plant it. Pulling Obedient plant is moderately effective but root sections easily break off and regrow. Stay of top of it by both pulling and selective herbicide use.

So Cute When They are Little

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:21:00 +0000

Chameleon plant (Houttuynia cordata)

In the beginning we are innocent, like small children who don't know better. Leave it alone, we tell them, it's dangerous.

Every gardener begins anew, full of big thoughts and plenty of hubris. A plain patch of yard will be transformed. There will be a shining garden, perhaps several, bringing beauty to the suburban kingdom, right along the back fence. It will be a new Eden, without snakes.

Some will dive in, unaided by design, while others will toil over the physical details--how tall, what hue, when does it bloom? Either way the soil is mercilessly torn into ruts and then smoothed as if preparing to build a new section of highway. Flat and uniform, we think, proud as can be.

Next, green things are planted in the soil, placed in threes (we heard somewhere that's a good rule) and are quickly attended to with gluttonous amounts of water and fertilizer.

     The first year we are hopeful, the second year brings anxiety: will they come back? Then we have a few pleasant years of watching the garden fill in. Around now, a new word has entered the gardener's lexicon: invasive. Suddenly we despise a plant we thought we loved. We watch in horror as it begins to appear everywhere and evade our every attempt to hold it in place.
     Remember the "ground cover" that came in a four inch pot and was so innocent then? To call anything a ground cover is almost intoxicating to hear, it sounds like an anti-dote for every tough landscape problem. Can't get shrubs to grow there? You just need a ground cover, problem solved.
     Or, problem created.
     Sometimes invasive plants come from well-meaning friends. Gardeners love to share and too often they share the worst of the worst: here, I have a lot of this, why don't you have some, too? Or you saw it at a nursery under a sign that advertised, "Grows in shade!" All too soon you learn that it grows literally everywhere.
     Guess what? Garden centers are mostly not concerned with what happens to a plant after you buy it. Just because a plant has a fiendish desire to conquer the universe does not mean that the grower or the retailer gives a fig. Only if gardeners stop planting it will they stop selling it in the first place.
Once a garden is established (a slippery word, for all gardeners are Thomas Jefferson at heart), there are plants we wish we'd never put in the soil. But the deed is done, and the gardener is now faced with what to do next.
     In my next post I will talk more about how a plant acquires its reputation as an invasive, and I will name some of the worst offenders out there. I will also give you some tips on how you can fight the enemy, and I will provide suggestions for making better choices when adding new plants to your gardens.

The Un-Green Truth of the American Lawn

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 19:25:00 +0000

Nearly 5,000 square miles of the United States is sheathed in ornamental turf grass. What a tragic waste. To care for it we use billions of tons of natural resources. 10,000 gallons of water are used per summer on the average 1,000 square foot lawn. That comes to 7.9 billion gallons of water used per day on landscapes. 5.2 billion dollars is spent on fossil-fuel derived fertilizers for lawn.

For decades the lawn care industry has marketed the idea that lawns are "good" for the environment. I still hear the argument that vast acres of turf provide carbon sinks and produce oxygen. While this is relatively true, the comparison is apples to oranges. The woodland that once prevailed in that spot--rich in biodiversity, home to countless ecosystems--is profoundly better for the environment than a monoculture of non-native, input intensive lawn.

Americans at the local level appear to making some sane decisions regarding the regulation of phosphorous fertilizer--a known pollutant of surface waters--in home lawns. While this is progress, banning phosphorous in lawn fertilizer should have come decades ago, and does not begin to seriously address the many major ecological problems caused by stripping out forests to put in housing and then surrounding them with sterile lawns.

There are still widely held attitudes that a home with anything less than a water and fertilizer-drenched, weed-free lawn is a sign of irresponsibility. But when a homeowner is not legally permitted to plant a native meadow in his front yard and does not care to spend precious income on mowing, watering and fertilizing, what then? Those who attempt to plant alternatives to ornamental turf grass are regularly fined and punished by misguided ordinances and neighbors who insist that a well-kept lawn is the only correct way to property management.

We need to begin to radically change how we view and define "landscaping." Somehow we've come to equate, without question, environmentally unsound practices as defacto homesteading. Questioning and challenging these unsustainable practices sometimes unleashes suspicion, mockery and even outright hostility toward those who oppose the standard lawn. Therefore, it is our job to lead through education and the re-writing of needlessly restrictive ordinances.

It is also officially time to re-evaluate the fantasy of the lawn, and to begin to see it as an indulgent vanity of past ignorance. In its place we will bring back the native plants that offer real value by contributing to the local food web and do not require fertilizers, pesticides and underground irrigation systems.

Once we see with our own eyes the return of now rare butterflies, moths and once-common songbird that eat them, when algae blooms in ponds and lakes are no longer annual events, we might actually have the opportunity to see our beautiful country the way the pioneers did--with utter awe at the natural beauty that now, 250 years later, is a pale shadow of its glorious past.

The Lessons of Raspberries, Japanese Beetles & Winston Churchill.

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:07:00 +0000

Early this spring I tore out all of the raspberry canes at the roots and promptly burned them, following the recommended guidelines for old brambles (seven years). It was not too painful a chore. Raspberry plants are not at their best in clay soil, and despite my best efforts - proper pruning and fertilization - they have been only a moderate success in my garden.

What my raspberry plants did provide me with more reliably than fruit were Japanese beetles, the miniature WMDs of the insect world, gifted to us from Japan in 1916 via a shipment of iris bulbs received by way of port in Riverton, New Jersey.

Until I planted those blasted raspberries I could readily boast of having Japanese beetle-free gardens. Perhaps it was only a coincidence, but either way, two years after the raspberries were planted, the Japanese beetles located me by way of their internal GPS. At first the ravenous barbarians seemed to prefer the raspberries to anything else in the garden. Fine! I convinced myself they could have the damn things. "Devour them all!" I cried.

But this was only an early stage of denial: bargaining with the insect gods to sacrifice my middling raspberries for the sake of everything else they love to eat. Then, as they swarmed and mated and buzzed and oozed their slatternly perfume to the wind like degenerate gluttons at Caligula's penultimate orgy, hatred seeped into my arteries.

I was cornered, indentured to confession: I have Japanese beetles. Oh, how these four words chilled my marrow. I vowed to fight, to be brave, to not let them beat me at my game. Every evening after work I stalked the little demons with reprisal, plunging hundreds of wriggling beetles into a bucket of soapy water where, like hoards of flying Rasputins, they clung to life with shocking tenacity. To witness this phenomenon, I immediately discovered, is as equally horrific as it is beautiful.

The war declared, I began to doubt my natural approach to I.P.M. Each time I entered a hardware store I found myself drifting, trance-like, toward the shelves of brightly colored pesticide containers, every label a declaration of annihilation of loathsome garden pests.

Then one day I purchased a bottle of Sevin (carbaryl).

I applied the Sevin to my raspberries. The Japanese beetles seemed mildly irritated but only a handful died. Some flew away before I sprayed them. Many departed unscathed even after I sprayed them.

The day following the first application, the beetles returned to dine, yesterday now forgotten.

As I approached the raspberry patch I stopped to listen to the hum of pollinators collecting nectar up and down the flowering canes. My eyes followed a spider as it danced across a billowing web like an eight-legged ballerina, her private stage hidden within a jungle of glowing green leaves and flickering shadows. Brown ants, fearless, busily streamed atop the shaded leaf litter as they carried the food that would sustain their colony.

When I thought of the lethal rain of insecticide falling down upon all this life, all this important activity, silencing it for the sake of a few raspberries, I reminded myself why I garden in the first place: to woo nature closer and learn from what I see.

In battle a man is tested.

Winston Churchill once said, "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesmen who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforseeable and uncontrollable events."

I did not ever again apply Sevin to my raspberries but instead returned to hand murdering each Japanese beetle, hurling them into a sudsy bucket. The rows neatly gleaned, I dug a hole and buried the dead.

The Gardener as Ecologist

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:52:00 +0000

Whenever I give a garden lecture I look for opportunities to emphasize ecology. I view gardeners as environmental stewards. These two things must always go hand in hand in my opinion.

But many people take up the practice of gardening with only a local retailer as their ultimate source of knowledge, which is unwise, and possibly dangerous. Certainly, gardeners need things - hoses, fertilizer, bags of compost, a half dozen strong wooden stakes and so on - what we don't need is another spray for a problem that is not really a problem in the first place.

When you ask the clerk who is busy flooding the potted perennials with a fire hose, "Will this product kill the grubs in my lawn?" he will predictably blink a few times, glance at the bag in your cart and say "yep" and you will happily go to the register satisfied that you have made a wise choice in parting with 40 bucks.

The notion that there is a product for every perceived garden woe is one that I blame on both the corporations and the consumers.

First, the corporations are at fault for treating pest control like bad breath; something everyone should do something about. Second, the consumers are to blame for assuming that the college kid with the summer job at the nursery is studying entomology or has even bothered to read directions on the bag, which will clearly tell the consumer that the window of opportunity for treating grubs in the lawn has expired. Applying it now is simply a waste.

Over 12,000 pesticide products are currently registered for use in and around our homes. American households use an estimated 80 million pounds of pesticides and spend over nearly $2 billion annually for them. The largest portion of total U.S. home and garden pesticides used each year is with herbicides at approximately 70%, followed by insecticides and miticides, fungicides, and other pesticides.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey 1999 report on the quality of our nation’s waters, least one pesticide was found in almost every water and fish sample collected from streams and in more than one-half of shallow wells sampled in agricultural and urban areas.

Unknown quantities of pesticides are liberally applied by gardeners without regard to both potential short term and long term environmental consequences. Without sufficient data from scientific research it is impossible to know exactly how carefully and responsibly these products are being used.

It is my opinion that Americans need to better understand the environmental impacts of the pesticide products they purchase and apply to their lawns and gardens. Consumers have the rights and the power to do so, and therefore they should.

I do not advocate that all chemicals are bad, nor do I expect all gardeners to go exclusively organic. What I expect from gardeners is responsible practices, and good portion of this requires education.

A responsible gardener has taken the time to understand precisely when a pesticide may be helpful.

A responsible gardener knows that pests come and go and most will only do mild to moderate damage, resulting in little, if any, loss.

A responsible gardener understands that soil health and plant vigor play a large role in pest management.

A responsible gardener has at least a general understanding of pesticides - which pesticides are more, or less, persistent in soil and water; which are harmful to bees, pollinators and other beneficial insects; which are the most toxic to humans, animals, birds and aquatic organisms.

Most of all, a responsible gardener is one who considers everything he or she does in the garden as having an impact somewhere else in the biosphere.

As environmentalist Rachel Carson once said, "Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world. "

Sources: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PI177

http://www.audubon.org/bird/at_home/reduce_pesticides.html

Kill Ants While Preventing Pneumonia!

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:43:00 +0000

Bayer Corporation recently introduced a new product called Bayer Advanced Home Pest with Germ Killer. Now you can kill ants, roaches, ticks and other common home pests while at the same time reduce "99.9% of the Germs Bugs May Leave Behind."

Do the marketing geniuses at Bayer honestly believe that the world needs a new home insect killer that also kills common germs that are not even spread by insects in the first place?

Bayer seems to be banking on the assumption that consumers don't know the difference between insects and germs, praying on people's irrational fears of icky things that spread sickness. It's not by accident that product label uses the word "bugs" instead of insects. The word "bugs" multiple meanings, two of which are "insects pests" and "contagious illness."

The word "pest" derives from Middle English; pestilence, meaning “‘infected, unwholesome, noxious.’” Plagues, of course, are some of the more famous forms of pestilence. The Bubonic plague was spread by rats that carried fleas that were infected with the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

Approximately 10-15 people in the U.S. per year contract the plague, according to the CDC. The majority of these infections stem from rats that are kept in the home, as pets.

Bayer Advanced Home Pest with Germ Killer does in fact kill fleas. However, it's worth mentioning that statistically the chances of you contracting the plague are
30,405,927.4 : 1

Bayer Advanced Home Pest with Germ Killer also "reduces" the germs Staphylococcus aureus and Enterobacter aerogenes.

Diseases caused by Staphylococcus aureas range from pimples to meningitis. Enterobacter aerogenes can cause opportunistic infections in open wounds and secondary gastro infections.

But neither Staphylococcus aureus or Enterobacter aerogenes are spread by insects!

In fact, both of these infection-causing germs are spread by humans, and as much as 20% of the human population are long term carriers, which means they host these germs indefinitely.

Americans do have an ill-informed ideology about germs, this much is true. It's become fashionable to mock the fastidious as "clean freaks" as if following the guidelines of science to avoid communicable illness is obsessive.

So it may not be so outrageous, after all, that the Bayer Corporation stumbled upon the idea of combining bug spray and germ killer in one. Consumers may not have been asking for it outright but obviously those crafty market researchers on Madison Ave. have been able to confirm a "demand" for such a product as stupid as this one.

How much longer before insecticides start showing up in my shower gel?

Desperate Houseplants

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:19:00 +0000

ABC's Desperate Housewives is a show about a group of neighbors on a permanently sunny suburban street called Wisteria Lane. It's a wry, soapy spoof of American culture narrated by a dead woman.

Rule number one in soap operas is that domesticated ladies must cook, clean and garden in very nice clothes and yet never get dirty. Now and again an artfully placed smudge will show up on a cheek or maybe an argument will involve the spray hose. Otherwise, these girls are flawless, along with their gardens.

Wisteria Lane is heavy on white picket fencing, arbors, porch railings and posts, all handsomely entwined with blooming Wisteria vines. Many scenes are filmed with purple or white Wisteria gently waving in the fake breeze (blown by big electric fans) figured somewhere in the composition. Wisteria blooms literally every day of every year in this neighborhood, without fail, and every flower is always at its loveliest peak.

Gardening is not a plot device on Desperate Housewives but it plays a pivotal role in defining the lifestyles of the central female characters. While some of them are shown actually working in their gardens - especially the Martha Stewart clone Bree Hodge (played by Marcia Cross) - others merely ignore their landscaping with equally fabulous results.

Gabby Solice (Eva Longoria-Parker) once kept a gardener in her employment but even after he was history (she broke off their affair to save her marriage) her landscape remained as beautiful as ever.

Every home in this make-believe neighborhood has virtuous green lawns, clear of dandelions and crabgrass. Nodding Agapanthus bloom in every border and never require dead heading. Roses flower ceaselessly without the application of fungicides. It never rains. (Or, if it does, the sun manages to keep shining in that Hollywood way.) Their lawns are not plagued by Japanese beetles or chinchbugs, and nothing gets mildew.

The only thing that requires a spray in their perfect enclave is sexy hair.

Desperate Housewives needs an additional story arc that more directly involves gardening. Perhaps Susan Meyers (Teri Hatcher) could find a new hobby, one that does not involve looking for a man. Something much more interesting. Vegetable Gardening, let's say.

Susan starts with a few tomato plants that wilt suddenly and drop their fruit, which sends her in a panic to the garden supply store, where she spends a hundred dollars on products that guarantee "firm, ripe, juicy tomatoes just like your grandma used to grow!"

Susan's tomatoes wither and die despite her best efforts, but instead of discouraging her, her experience with crop failure deepens her determination to grow a decent vegetable. So she rents a tiller, trucks in compost, hires a cute carpenter (they have a fling but she dumps him for her new passion - the garden) to build cedar trellises, installs drip irrigation and starts a compost pile.

A couple of years pass. Susan has expanded her vegetable beds considerably after removing three large trees, installed a cold frame, improved soil tilth and mulched heavily. She rotates annually, plants green crops and picks off each potato beetle by hand.

One lovely afternoon when the Wisteria is in full bloom her old friends invite Susan to lunch. It's been so very long, they plead, since they have had a chance to catch up. Oh, no, Susan declines, I cannot go out today. You see, I have to apply the fish emulsion before noon, when the sun is very hot.

Another day? Her friends suggest. Unfortunately not, Susan replies. There is too much to accomplish in the garden: so many weeds! Check for squash bugs! If I don't get the egg clusters there will be hell to pay in a few weeks! And I have all that compost to spread!

Over a glass of wine her old friends shake their befuddled heads. What happened to her, they ask? We barely know her these days. She used to be so much fun and now all she wants to do is garden.

Poor Susan, they all agree, she really needs to get a life!

Good Yews

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:02:00 +0000

By Shane VanOosterhout

The mighty yew (Family: Taxacaea; Genus Taxus) is a woody plant I used to disdain. How ridiculous of me. What I understand now is that I was judging the yew not on its own merits but instead because it is often used poorly in the home landscape.

I should clarify. The yew is used extensively in the home landscape because it possesses remarkable characteristics, mainly that it is nearly indestructible (tolerates abusive pruning) and is evergreen even in part sun to part shade.

Professional nursery growers love the yew because it propagates easily from cuttings. Landscapers love the yew because it is a budget-friendly shrub and provides instant green on the new, barren home site. In effect, it is probably the utilitarian nature of the yew that has contributed to unintended ugliness in our country.

Yews can grow 30-60 feet and spread 15-25 feet. There is a famous 300-year-old hedge on Bathurst Estate in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England that is 40 feet tall that requires the aid of cherry pickers and two days' work to keep its shapely figure.

As an ornamental the yew has quite literally defined the gardens of the upper classes for centuries. Descriptions of lovelorn women scampering breathlessly through tall shrubbery is a veritable staple of British Empire narrative.

In the United Kingdom the yew is highly romanticized, its history full of lore, long-associated with mysticism, Druid culture and fertility rituals. The heartwood was used for crafting the longbow, a formidably powerful weapon used for defense and hunting.

In most American landscapes yews are planted on small lots where homeowners eventually begin to fear them or hate them as is evidently plain in their need to attack them with saws or throw bicycles at them.

Pruned or not, the yew is at its most stately and beguiling when allowed to develop some stature. Larger yews have elegance; they are regal and bespeak their ancient story. The needles are superior in the garden, their glossy foliage dark and powerful, providing essential texture, form and color.

The best looking yews I spot in neighborhoods are those that were planted with the intent of "disguising" the air condition units or the electric box. They are generally ignored which means they are given permission to grow. After 10-15 years these yews become handsome specimens even if they do tend to look a bit goofy stuck out on the corner of the lot with no companions to keep them company.

Nervous types get antsy when it comes to the toxicity of the yew, *banning them from playgrounds or anywhere children might play. Sources are known to erroneously report that the fruit (aril) is poisonous. The author(s) of an article on Botanical.com state of the yew: "Poisonous Parts---Leaves, seed and fruit" but in fact the poison taxane resides in the seed not the flesh of the fruit. (A reminder to carefully check your sources when researching online).

As a maturing gardener I've come to love the yew in a way I never thought I would. Plants have little say in where they end up in the landscape and I suppose it is not always fair to blame them for looking ruinous. I've always said that if plants could talk we would not have to dig them up and relocate them 20-30 times before finding them a proper home.

If you have a spot in your landscape to plant just one single yew where it can gain some real size I highly recommend doing so. Resist shaping it. Let it be. In time you will discover why our cousins across the pond hold the beautiful, practical yew in such high esteem.

*41 percent of all poisonings reported occur in the home kitchen, 21 percent in the bathroom and 12 percent in the bedroom, leaving 26 percent for other places, according to Cincinnati Children's Hospital. Statistically. the garden is not such a dangerous place for children.

In The Land of Wind

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:32:00 +0000

Sunshine today after a shock of bad weather.

Driving to work this morning I marveled at the flooded nurseries and farms. Ice ponds covered the landscape, sealing crops of blueberries and rows of evergreens in several feet of dark blue ice.

The paradoxical thing about an early thaw is how emotionally tumultuous it is. One minute it's the picture-perfect Christmas/Holiday winter wonderland, tickling our senses, fulfilling our need for a dose of seasonal sentiment, and the next minute we are hoping the roof holds through the night.

In the last three days we have gone from snow globe perfection to flooding, freezing rain and 50 mph winds. In the country where I live there is open land, quite a lot of it, and little to mitigate those very strong gales. On my property we have been planting trees for 11 years. Not a single growing season has passed without adding trees to the landscape, and I intend to keep this up indefinitely.

Trees make the best sort of wind-breaks imaginable. Frequently you see rows of trees planted in farmer's fields in a straight line. In fact this is quite the opposite of how it should be laid out for the technique to be of value. Planted this way in single file, side by side, trees actually increase wind severity (picture an arrow hitting a brick wall and then moving up, over, and then slamming down directly on the other side of the wall, ouch).

When trees are planted in an alternate zig-zag fashion the gust of wind will shatter, thus weakening the force (picture the same arrow splitting apart into multiple, smaller arrows when it hits the wind break).

On a farmer's field, incorrect planting of windrows is detrimental to the soil, exacerbating soil erosion. On the home front it is darned irritating, not to mention destructive to anything in the garden that is fussy, tender, delicate, weak stemmed or top heavy.

Despite the inconveniences of strong winds we'd be lost without this force of nature. Plants depend on wind for seed dispersal and insects take advantage of gentle breezes to increase their distance, allowing them to visit more flowers, thus increasing genetic diversity. In the big scheme of things on planet earth, wind has a big hand in shaping all creation.

Hindu mythology describes a triad of gods - creation (Brahma), destruction (Shiva) and preservation (Vishnu). In order for the universe to work, all three of these deities must remain mutually inclusive.

In short - and the myriad Hindu gods are not easy to summarize - the eternal cycle of creation/destruction is kept in check by a very good governor who flies through the clouds on a giant eagle named Garuda. Incidentally, Garuda is thought to have taken nectar from the gods and given it humans!

Gardeners, are you paying attention?

Wind is a magnificent thing.

Gifts for Gardeners - No Fake Moss, Please!

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:05:00 +0000

Christmas admittedly is not the most exciting time for the gardener in the family. We're difficult to shop for. If we could have a day or two to get outside and do some digging, that would be a perfect gift, but pleasant weather conditions are not currently available from Amazon.com, alas.

Gardening became big business in the 80's, purportedly due to Baby Boomers' sudden need to carve out their own private pleasure gardens with their new-found wealth. By the 1990's Smith & Hawken was a bona fide retail giant - their marketing plan was simple genius: sell Old English gardening mythology to a sentimentally starved but financially bloated demographic. What garden is finished without faux stone orbs covered in faux moss? Perfect for the new gardener who hasn't the patience to wait for moss to actually, well, grow.

About ten years ago I did receive authentic green Wellington boots for Christmas. I was ecstatic, believing that my new footwear would be the best, most durable mud boots I'd ever own. Who could possibly make a better garden boot than the English!

My Wellies lasted about a season and half, only because I refused to admit that they were leaky by the end of season one. So much for the English and their famous Wellies. Perhaps they were only meant to look handsome on a Lady pretending to garden while on holiday at her country estate. One can picture her smartly dressed in hounds tooth, strolling briskly along the gravel paths while delivering orders to her head gardener, "Jimmy, be a good fellow and fix that yew, won't you? It's drooping."

When my friends find out I am a passionate gardener they give me nick-knacks. So-called "garden art" is plentiful at summer-time craft shows, and that is unfortunate for gardeners with well-intentioned friends who frequent them.

As gardeners age we prefer a decent cookbook or an excellent bottle of port, but less and less do we desire garden goods on Christmas morning. Unless the giver is a true gardener himself or herself, he or she will not fully appreciate the depth at which the receiver will cherish a fine plank of rot-resistant cedar wood or a big, handsome stone. Neither of these gifts are conveniently wrap-able but never mind, just lead the gardener into the garage and rejoice in their enthusiasm.

Early (Early) Winter

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:37:00 +0000

Snow and ice has been piling since late November. The forecast has been for below average temperatures and above average precipitation. Both have panned out. I've noticed that meteorologists are remarkably accurate in the high-tech age, although they have a tendency to sensationalize every drop of rain and snowflake as if it's the end of all creation. Weather forecasters have become shameless drama queens for the sake of scoring a few rating points.

Winter, for the record, does not officially begin until the end of this week.

The first really big dump was surprise if only for its intensity. Wet and heavy, virtually everything left standing in the garden was crushed, including the tallest and toughest of the ornamental grasses. Flattened like wet paper, the long shoots and blades now lie limply in ruins upon the earth. Most years I am able to enjoy the shuddering dry canes and seedy plumes lingering into well into March.

Winter interest, that's what we gardeners call it, or leaving a few things to look at for when the gloom seems eternal. Some gardeners subscribe to the scorched earth approach - picking out every remaining stalk and seed head still remaining by late autumn- No Plant Left Behind, if you will - for the sake of efficiency.

Others, myself included, like to see powdery caps of snow atop the Echinacea on a winter's morning, or flitting goldfinches devouring the remnants of Rudbeckia seeds. We find the blank winter garden sterile and sad, nothing to contemplate except frozen, lonely soil.

The mantra for some is to "clean" the garden of pests and diseases by not allowing them to overwinter on decaying plant matter. In the home vegetable garden this makes some sense (crop rotation and soil amendments should always be primary) but in the flower garden, bah.

I've never on my property detected an overabundance of plant disease. I don't trouble myself with a few spots of powdery mildew, anyway, so perhaps I am simply more tolerant than some. One gardener's "problem" is another gardener's shrug of the shoulders.

This morning I took another look around. Some of the miscanthus looks as if it's been hit by a meteorite but in other places things are not so bad after all. Sunflower stalks are indestructible as always, and there are plenty of milkweed hanging around, their silvery-gray pods still stuffed with gossamer. The new waterfalls in my ponds make spectacular ice formations. It's not so bad after all.

With nature one must learn to put things in perspective or find a different past-time.

Do Plants Communicate?

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:44:00 +0000

During harvest time I was interviewed by a local writer on the subject of garden vegetable oddities. He shared with me that a citizen gardener whom had grown a Mickey Mouse-eared tomato had gotten him on the phone, and how terribly excited the caller was, believing in miracles. A tomato that looks exactly like Mickey Mouse!

The journalist emailed me the pictures taken by the breathless gardener of his curiosity. I replied that I thought the tomato resembled the shape of a simple molecule more than Disney's famed cartoon character: the fruit was composed of three, smooth, conjoined orbs; lacking eyes, a pointed nose, and whiskers, which I do believe are essential features on Mickey's head. Call me picky.

In my opinion I was being prompted to exclaim this tomato phenomenon as, well, phenomenal, but my pulse remained steady. I explained to the journalist that plants do all kinds of crazy stuff, especially in their tendency to mimic the sexual organs of humans (don't tell me you've never seen a phallic gourd). A three-pronged tomato was, to me, not as amusing or unusual as the yams I had judged at the county fair this summer, resembling bug-eyed chihuahuas or angry old men.

Scientists have known for years that our human brains require recognizable data in order to cognate, and so what we at first do not recognize as "normal" we match with what we already know, the same way we see whales and horses in cloud formations. Or, for some, the Virgin Mary on a french fry.

It's unquestionably fun to look for patterns in nature. The more patterns we learn to recognize the deeper our scientific appreciation and understanding of the natural world. Teaching children how to identify trees by their leaf shapes, for example, is something most of us can relate to. And what a pleasure it is when the child sees the face of a fox in a blob of mildew on the freshly picked leaf!

A grown-up gardener should pause to remind herself that in the age of industrial macro-farms we rarely have an opportunity to glimpse nature's creative whimsy because we no longer get our hands dirty. When all of our edible plants come from a grocery store; hybridized, cultivated and preselected for absolute uniformity, it should not be surprising that when a gardener really sees nature unfiltered, she will be taken aback. It is when a gardener expects to pull a few bizarre-looking carrots from the soil that she has re-established an honest dialogue with nature.

There is much exploration to be done on exactly how plants do communicate, - with one another, even with us if at all possible. But it is the quiet mysteries of plants I hold in the highest regard. Knowing that my tomatoes are not scheming to intentionally look like a billion-dollar trademark by way of Mickey Mouse, or trying to bring forth religious miracles, or even attempting to appeal to my narcissism in any way whatsoever is profoundly satisfying.

Writer Mark Germer stated it well:

"Recent work on information processing (even kin recognition) in plants suggests that there may be more going on there than we now understand; as for birds and mammals, it has long been appreciated that they are perfectly capable of deception and subversion. For my part, I don't find these things odd or disturbing, as it's the continuity of all life that intrigues me most. Humans are not alone in their baseness -- though a few may be alone in their desire to rise above it."

Despicable Daylilies

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:53:00 +0000

For anyone who is overly fond of daylilies (Hemerocallis), I am taking this opportunity to express my dislike. I know this may be downright immoral with many gardeners. Feel free to look away.

It's not that I am entirely blind to the the limited niceties of daylilies, a few varieties have the momentary worth to catch my eye, but even when I do rarely admire them my interest quickly wanes and I find myself seeking superior garden plants.

Trouble is, too many gardeners fail to surround their daylilies with more interesting companions, instead massing them by the dozens, hundreds, thousands. The result of this is anything but beguiling. A few well-selected daylilies tucked amongst fairer neighbors I may approve of but over and above, well, it becomes just another crop, like onions or potatoes.

When daylilies are finished, they are finished - yellowing, spotted foliage that hogs otherwise valuable garden space, their yucky brown flower stalks hanging around forever, offering nothing. The messy clumps seem to wither and decay endlessly. What for five minutes of garden glory was a bit of splashy color is now for the remaining 55 minutes of the garden hour an eyesore, a regretful decision, a dreary post-orgasm.

In the country, where I live, the daylily is frequently bedded at the end of a long private drive, visible to the homeowner with only a pair of high-powered binoculars.
The curiousness of this unfortunate habit is one I can scarcely fathom. Provincial daylilies are also also crowded around barns and outbuildings, almost always facing the road, where they cannot be seen by anyone but speeding passers-by. I have yet to understand why such a popular flower is planted where the gardener never visits. Perhaps it is to irritate people like me.

In the city, where I work, daylilies are planted in strict rows outside bank drive-throughs, around street lamp-posts and in medians. No-one pays much attention to them when they are blooming because it is inevitably ninety degrees outside. Don't try to convince me that a row of Stella d'Oro makes an urban heat island more attractive. I will be in my air-conditioned car thinking of my own garden, mostly unscathed by daylilies.

I, too, once succumbed to a momentary lapse of daylily planting (though not with any degree of fervor). I even installed an enormous bed of them...alongside my driveway! But I came to my senses - I observed them, I thought about them, and I formed an opinion from which I have not since strayed: daylilies are vastly overrated. Learning from my mistake, I dug up each clump and hauled them to the compost pile. Along the way, however, my wagon struck a small boulder and tipped, spilling them in a heap. I suppose I felt a twinge of guilt over tossing out "good" perennials, and so I salvaged a dozen, mixing them into other flower beds, wondering if I might appreciate them more if I could disguise all anatomy but the blooms.

The next year I resented them even more. When they showed up in their new locations I could only only hang my head in shame. What was I thinking? Before, when they were appropriately segregated, I could easily imagine eradicating them, efficiently, all at once. Now they were everywhere, spreading like a virus, and I had the same feverish, sinking that one has at the doctor's office when he authoritatively states that antibiotics do not cure a cold. Cover your mouth, wash your hands. You should know better than to spread this thing around.

What is your time worth?

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:02:00 +0000

"What is your time worth? Though it is often asked, I do not think this question answerable. It is the same as asking what your life is worth. And I can give it only the same nonanswer: it is worth whatever it means. the ideas that you cannot afford to raise a garden is based on the assumption that it means money, that if you are not receiving the top dollar for every minute of your life, you are suffering a "loss" - a doctrine that would not only put an end to gardens, but soon drive us all to theft or suicide."

Wendell Berry, from his essays The Gift of Good Land.

What's In a Hole?

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:48:00 +0000

Gardeners spend a great deal of time digging holes. So much so that we might consider ourselves experts in small-scale excavation. Ask any gardener how to dig a hole and he will exuberantly share his knowledge, for you have inquired into a subject matter most people would find droll at best; perhaps unsavory at worst, as though hole-digging best be left for the uneducated or the amusement of children.

Setting about making a hole requires a proper shovel, an implement that many people, sadly enough, do not possess. It is not uncommon for gardeners to have an abysmal collection of tools, and if there is one tool that reveals a gardener to be a sham it is his shovel. I admit to snobbery - I do judge a gardener by the quality and the care of his tools.

To be fair, a lousy shovel can sometimes be used to dig a half-way decent hole, although the amount of energy expended is criminal when compared to digging a hole with a well-constructed shovel. Gardeners who insist on digging their holes with a lousy shovel and then boasting of their accomplishments are awfully boorish. I find myself declining offers to visit their gardens.

When a hole is dug discoveries are made. First, and perhaps most surprisingly, a hole is never is big as it seems, and should never be judged from a bird's eye perspective. At the first inkling of having succeeded a gardener must plunge his head into the earth and have a good look around. Only then will he have an appropriate sense of the hole's size and he can ably adjust his mind to the amount of digging that lies ahead. I once met a gardener who could calculate to the exact shovelful how much excavation was required, which he would call out, his head still underground.

A freshly dug hole possesses the satisfying odor of minerals; iron, copper, zinc, calcium, carbon, volatile sulfur if you're lucky; a hint of decay, a whiff of the beginning and the end of life on earth. By tilting the head sideways one can hear grains of soil tumbling to the bottom. Cool air tickles the skin.

Sculptors think not of holes but instead of depressions and voids; a painter will name a hole as negative space; a builder excavates but a gardener does not refer to his digging efforts in euphemisms, because gardeners are not so much in the process of "creating" something as they are hoping to locate a nice home for a handsome tree to live out its life in comfort.

A hole in the ground may be an unkind expression for the dwellings of the unfortunate, but any good gardener will assure you that a well-dug hole is, in fact, excellent real estate.

Green Thumbs Don't Grow on Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Shane VanOosterhout) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:20:00 +0000

People often tell me they aren't good gardeners, as if possessing a green thumb is a genetic trait, bestowed only to a lucky few. To this I reply, "If any of us were born with green thumbs we'd no doubt be spending a fortune on trying to correct the problem."

The metaphor of the green thumb is best suited to describe a hard-earned honor, a skill gained from routine practice, from many years of experience.

If there is a "secret" to becoming a good gardener, to turning one's thumb green as it were, it is not an inborn trait; it is passion, and everyone has passion.

The surprising thing about becoming a gardener is discovering your passion; rousing ancient senses within your mind and body that will lead you on a lifelong journey. Little did you know that new seedlings just up from the warm soil have their own unique odor, just as the sweet smell of babies can only be found on babies.

When hands touch a leaf or stem or petal one's nerves tingle. The brain, I am convinced, was long-ago wired to communicate intuitively with the botanical. This is not a magical phenomenon, it is evolutionary, for without a trait for the desire to care for plants the human race would undoubtedly perish; our earliest ancestors secured a place for homo sapien through the very act of gardening, through forming emotional connections with plants.