Garden Rant

Welcome to my

No, you’ll find no dreadful scenes like this lurking about my property. There is no need for manufactured horror here. If I want to be filled with fright and despair, all I have to do is take a short walk around the yard. Do you dare to accompany me? All right, but just remember … I warned you!

The black lagoon of misery

This was once a cheerful water feature, with bright orange fish darting through the clear water. Now, the once-pristine pond is more like a swamp, choked with leaves and inexplicably-dead water plants. The fish lurk in the bottom, their only hope possible adoption by a kindly neighbor.

Dark shadows of doom overhead

By the thousands, they rustle in the breeze, still bright green for the most part, taunting us as they flutter down, one or two at a time. They’ll save the big drop until 3 hours before the first major snowstorm. And there they’ll lay, ready to be scooped up in heavy, sodden piles after the thaw.

Will the bulbs never end?

Who ordered all these? What could he or she have been thinking? Who’s going to plant all these? How much did all these cost? This is madness, I tell you, madness!

The forgotten bucket of … ew, what is that smell?!
Run away!

The killing fields

Here is where young, vibrant, healthy, expensive plants are taken to die … slowly. The torture is simple but exquisite. Over there is a really pricy maroon heuchera, purchased in July. Isn’t that the rare ginger hybrid, brought back from the trip to Plant Delights? I think there might be one leaf still alive.

OK, that’s all for today. Thank you for visiting my little garden. I’m sorry if it has been unpleasant. Once I had beautiful flower beds, lush ferns, colorful container annuals, and much more. Not any more.

The horror! The horror!

Garden Centers and their Barriers to Sustainability

This post on Open Register, the blog of the retail garden center, announces that Garden Center Magazine will focus for the next 12 issues on "barriers to sustainable practices," and that's garden center practices, y'all.  "Each month, experts will tackle a challenge and offer real-world solutions."  The listed challenges are:

• Recycling
• “Green” plants (part I)
• “Green” plants (part II)
• In-house energy sources
• Pest control and fertilizers
• Waterwise (part I)
• Waterwise (part II)
• Expansion and building issues
• Operational tweaks
• Labeling
• Education
• Marketing your sustainable program

Speaking as just one garden center customer, I'm dying to read this behind-the-scenes stuff.  The magazine isn't on line, so what's a curious gardenblogger to do? 

Gardening Know-how as Currency -Barter, Anyone?

by Susan
On a budget?  (A nice way of saying "cheap" or "underemployed" or, in my case, both.)  Then try bartering your gardening advice or labor for services you need.  My adventures in bartering started with my friend Dan, who's a professional computer-guy.  In exchange for fixing my many tech problems he got not just my off-the-cuff suggestions for landscaping his new building but the collective advice of blog commenters, so he thinks he got a really good deal.  Then, following Elizabeth's suggestion, I went to CraigsList to offer "gardening consultation for website consultation" and found a winner.  I ultimately hired him to set up my website and turn it back over to me, the technophobe, using a Dummies-friendly program to upload the content.

Then recently after I'd spent a morning helping my wonderful neighbor create a wildlife garden, she asked what she could barter in return and suggested cooking for me.  (It's true I don't cook, but I didn't realize it it was so obvious.)  Her idea was that occasionally she'd cook up some extra for me when cooking for her family.  Sounds good, I said.  Then I got really ballsy.  "Um, some of my high school girlfriends are coming for lunch and I WAS going to do carry-out...." I hint.  "Great!" she exclaims, "I'll cater!" 

And cater she did.  A full Tex-Mex meal to die for.  Recipes were demanded!  Imagine avocado soup, green pepper strada, apple crisp with vanilla ice cream, and a cool salad I can't even describe.  Here are Margaret, Rick and Lucas delivering the feast just hours before my guests arrived.

For me, barter doesn't just save money.  It takes me back to small-town life in the spirit of barn-raising and all that good stuff that real communities are so famous for.  (I grew up in a central Virginia town called Bon Air and yes, the air was good and so were the neighbors.)  And for self-styled but long-subdued subversives like myself, barter has the added appeal of screwing the taxman, so what's not to love?

So, is bartering your gardening know-how working for anybody else?  Let's hear it!  In my brazenness I once offered to barter for physical therapy treatments (and what middle-aged gardener doesn't need a PT on retainer?) but she didn't bite.  I'll keep trying, though.

Warm Weather and Giant Roses in February

Sound interesting?  I've posted some info here about an unusual tour of Ecuador's flower growing industry.  Please do check it out--this would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Web 2.o in the Garden

OK, first, go read this post on BlogHer about gardening and social networking, then come back.  Or, if you're too lazy for that, just read this bit, which actually comes from our good friend Stuart:

The most interesting area yet to become useful for gardeners is the area of social bookmarking sites. This is where gardeners will be able to collaboratively build content, interact and add value to gardeners needing help (which is most of us).

Social networking.  Wiki.  Digg. Etc.  I love it, but--I think that there is something about gardening that resists technology.  Look at garden blogging.  A few of us got into it, and we're still into it, but it never exploded.  A Google search for "gardening blogs" turns up 338,000 results, while a search for "knitting blogs" returns 828,000. Cocktail blogs? Dude.  2.59 mil.  Dog blogs? I can't even bring myself to give you the number.  Go look it up yourself.

First, This.

The New York Times, in case you missed it, offered five ways to go organic.  It's a kind of prioritization of guilt and anxiety, if you will.  The list is:  milk, potatoes, peanut butter, ketchup, apples. If you can't do organic all the time, do it for those five products.  (I'd add meat right off the bat.  Hormones?  Pass.)

381 people have weighed in with their comments, and a surprising number of them centered around the belief--and I do mean "belief"--that organic peanut butter, particularly the grind-your-own kind, may be contaminated with an allegedly harmful fungus called aflatoxin.  The poor NYT writer finally jumped into the comments and promised to do some research and weigh in at a future date.

Other commenters protested the kid-centric nature of the list.  Peanut butter? Ketchup?  What's next, juice boxes and nuggets? But nonetheless, there may be some rationale for prioritizing.  If you can't always buy organic, where do you draw the line?  For me, it's strawberries, and it's completely irrational.  Those little fruits are so soft and so un-peelable that I just imagine them soaking up methyl bromide like a sponge.  (Strawberry growers are researching alternatives, but they still demand exemption from the methyl bromide ban).

I also think about those crops that are so close to organic it hardly matters.  Wine, for one.  I've talked to many winemakers who are organic except for the use of sulfites as a preservative. Many winemakers don't want to use chemicals on their crop because it will affect the delicate bouquet of the wine.  So do I care about the label?  Not much.

What about you?  Is it all or nothing?  Do you prioritize?  Operate on whim?  Grow your own?

All we are saying … is give mums a chance!

Judging from what I see around here (stiff little balls of one variety, either in pots or stuck randomly into the ground, all turning brown), I don’t regret one negative word or thought I’ve had about mums—as they are commonly used.

But, and it’s a big but, I spent some time at the Botanical Gardens today and I did see some lovely mums. This was one of the first shows the Gardens put together after opening in 1901, and they’ve had it ever since. They’re still mums—most still have the stiff habit that make florist and gift mums so difficult to display at home—but these are more exotic varieties. The shaggy heads have a lot of personality, as you can see above.

I thought they were most successful when placed with tropicals or as part of other displays (above); by themselves (below), the tall ones don’t fare so well.

I think most of what they had were curved, incurved, spider, quill, and intermediate types, combined with shorter, anemone-flowering ones. One attractive, relaxed variety was sprawling over a rock in the fern area.

The classifications aren’t nearly as interesting or wide-ranging as tulips, for example, but they’re a lot more confusing. (Even Botanica lists some plants in the chrysanthemum area, but in quotes. If they’re uncertain, then I don’t have a clue.) The gardeners here start these from cuttings in March, pinching back twice and occasionally using extra light to encourage foliage growth.

Fun fact: The red circle on the Japanese flag is meant to be a stylized mum image, NOT the sun. I did not know that.

Got bulb?

Ok, the bulbs are gone—I have a little bit of leeway that I will use for some personal gifting. Thanks for responding! Everyone who has asked will receive bulbs, and I should be able to honor your preferences. I will email you all tomorrow for your addresses, except where I already have them (at least one case).

Have you planted tulips? In a similar vein as Michele has just posted, there is nothing that gets me through the dreary WNY pre-winter and winter like the promise of big, fat colorful tulips bursting out of the ground in the spring. As you may remember, my bulb obsession is beyond control. I have 300-plus (tulips, lilies, and minor bulbs) in the ground or ready-to-go as we speak.

SO, imagine my surprise when I heard from Colorblends that they had 200, yes two hundred, bulbs coming my way for “trial purposes.” Great, but there’s no, absolutely no, room in my tiny urban space to try these.

Perhaps you have room? I bet you do. Please respond in comments if you can take 25 or more (NO less than 25) of these lovely tulips from Colorblends (a great company who unfortunately does not always identify cultivars). I will send them to you. No charge. First come, first served. Let me know.

There are two sets: the Mamma Mia, which (I think) are two doubles: Lilac Perfection and May Wonder; and the Miss Confection, which (I think) are two Triumph varieties: Couleur Cardinale and Calgary. These are mixes: you must choose from either mix.

What I can say for sure is that their bulbs have always worked well for me. I would love to hear from you next spring about whether these were successful for you. Or perhaps some of the Southern gardeners could try forcing some of the Triumph varieties? Consider it a challenge. Anyway, respond in comments. You’ll probably get some bulbs out of it, and I’ll be happy. I love getting fellow gardeners into bulbs.

It's Tip Time Again

by Susan
COOL GARDEN VIDEO FROM TWIN CITIES TV  
This just in from Peter Hoh - a local TV station does a great job showing off Wally's Amazing Garden.  Click right here: http://kstp.com/article/stories/S213035.shtml?cat=1&v=1

I love the video because it includes footage from various times of the year and - essential in showcasing this 26-acre world-class garden - aerial views!  The human story is interesting, too.  In only 7 years a retired businessman created the garden (obviously with help), discovering the type of garden he wanted through trips to England and researching books and catalogues.  Wally's garden is featured in the book 1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die.  Most of the gardens listed there are public but this one's not, so we have local TV to thank for being able seeing it.

COLLECTING NUTS FOR THE BAY          
From Pamela Fields in Maryland I learned that people in my town are collecting native hardwood seeds (acorns, walnuts, etc.) and delivering them to the town library. She writes: "Growing Native.org, a program of the Potomac Conservancy, then donates the seeds to state-run nurseries, which grow them into seedlings and plant them along the rivers and streams that make up the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay watersheds. The trees filter pollution, making the water cleaner, keeping the stream and river banks from eroding, and helping the environment in many other ways."

I'm just surprised those state-run nurseries don't have enough of their own acorns but hey, if mine can be put to good use, I'm cool with that.

FAVORITE SOURCES OF PLANTS
A question arose on my local listserv:  Anybody have any experience ordering from Springhill Nursery?  Turns out that yes, several people do and the results weren't happy.  Then listserv member Alex Bardsley tipped us off to what the Davesters among you already know: the Watchdog 30.  From Dave's Garden:

These 30 companies are currently the most highly rated within our entire database. Each of them is listed here because of feedback from their customers.

Antique Rose Emporium, Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co., Bluestone Perennials, Brushwood Nursery, Buried Treasures, Chamblee's Rose Nursery, Classy Groundcovers, Direct Source Hostas, ECOLAGE, Forestfarm, Garden Crossings LLC, Garden Store-N-More, Gardener's Supply Company, Hallson Gardens, High Country Gardens, Katz Kuntry Kuttins, Lazy S'S Farm & Nursery, Lee Valley Tools, Ltd., Logee's Greenhouses, Ltd., Made in the Shade Gardens, Oakes Daylilies, Old House Gardens - Heirloom Bulbs, Onalee's Home-Grown Seeds & Plants, Paradise Garden, Plant Delights Nursery, Select Seeds Antique Flowers, Sooner Plant Farm (home of Imagine Backyard Trees®), Territorial Seed Company, The Tasteful Garden, Touch of Nature, Inc.

GREEN MARKETING
While we're talking about the gardening biz, here's a revealing look at how the advertising world is glomming onto environmentalism.   I must admit, when I read that there are "vertical platforms supporting green ad networks" I'm lost.  And are they calling us a "green sub-segment"?  Is this all just greenwashing or can something good come from this, like sponsors and money actually going to some entertaining and enlightening writers on the Web?

Let me know if you sent me this story; otherwise I'm claiming credit for running across it.

 

Organic lawn care on trial in D.C.

by Susan
The nonprofit SafeLawns.org has planted a patch of lawn using organic growing techniques in that most public of spots - the National Mall.  So if you're planning a visit in 2008 or '09, be sure to include the 4rd to 7th Street section of the Mall on your must-see list.  Take lots of photos and spread the word back home because if organic lawn care can survive in this challenging spot, it's a good bet for yards across America, where it can replace the tons of synthetic fertilizers and herbicides we're instructed by certain corporations to dump on our property throughout the season.  Imagine: No more little flags warning neighbors that our lawns are toxic to them.  (Animals, not versed in flag-reading, are just out of luck.)

HOW IT'S DONE
According to SafeLawns' partnership agreement with the Park Service, the two lawn panels comprising the 4.3-acre test area have been either aerated or tilled to 8", had compost applied, then were seeded and watered in.  Next, a "liquid compost mulch" is applied.  I'm assuming that mean compost tea because the plan is to apply compost tea throughout the duration of the test, which ends in September of '09.  SafeLawns is doing all this at no cost to the government.

FINDINGS TO BE FULLY REPORTED
Oh, and this is research, not a quick PR gimmick.  The EPA will be compiling and reporting findings on "soil compaction, moisture, organisms, fertility, as well as hours worked and type and amount of all machinery and products used."  Excellent!

The compaction findings will be particularly revealing because you can't imagine how much heavy traffic this strip of land gets.  All those demonstrations for or against every known cause really add up.  Then there's the huge 4th of July event, the yearly Folklife Festival, amateur sports, and even large, rowdy commercial events (a very controversial new policy of the National Park Service, you'd better believe).  So the folks at SafeLawns are really putting their talk to the test here.

DO WE REALLY HAVE TO BE BROWN TO BE GREEN?
After completing this turf-redo, the folks from Safe Lawns didn't just hung up their gardening clothes and go home; they stayed in town to teach us locals all about safe lawn care and the training they offered is described here.  According to that, public officials (including the governor of North Carolina) are pleading with residents to let their lawns turn brown, trying to convince the public that brown lawns are a badge of honor, but Paul Tukey claims that brown isn't necessary:

The founder of SafeLawns.org, however, said that in most cases lawns and gardens could remain green and lush if homeowners and landscape professionals utilize organic methods. He’ll offer specifics when his organization participates in the DC Environmental Conference at the University of District of Columbia on Saturday, Oct. 20.

“If you avoid synthetic chemical fertilizers and switch to compost and organic fertilizers, you’ll reduce the need for watering by up to 75 percent,” said Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual. “These natural soil amendments help the soil store water and, therefore, help the grass stay green.”

Now truth to tell, I didn't attend the training but then I'm already a convert.  I did pay a quick visit to the Mall this week and took this photo of the new lawn, which is looking darn good.  Kudos to Paul, Shep, and the whole gang at Safe Lawns!

Top photo credit. Middle photo by SafeLawns.org.

Life, Tulips, and Everything

Generally, by 9 pm, I am so mentally spent here in middle age that I can hardly open a book.  But I seem to be making an exception these days for Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series, which has me sitting in bed and laughing my ass off.

I know, I know.  Almost 30 years after the rest of the galaxy discovered that Adams is one of the sprightliest manipulators of the English language since Jane Austen, I finally happen upon this revelation. 

Let's just blame my late arrival on eddies in the space-time continuum.

So I was really delighted last night when, in the middle of a landslide, Adams' dim earthman hero Arthur Dent discovers that he can fly--as long as he doesn't think about it.  And the first thing he thinks of, naturally, to keep him from thinking is... tulips.

It was difficult, but he did.  He thought about the pleasing firm roundness of the bottom of tulips, he thought about the interesting variety of colors they came in, and wondered what proportion of the total number of tulips that grew, or had grown, on the Earth would be found within a radius of one mile from a windmill.  After a while he got dangerously bored with this train of thought....so he thought about the Athens airport for a bit and that kept him usefully annoyed for about five minutes--at the end of which he was startled to discover that he was now floating about six hundred feet above the ground.

Tulips do precisely the same thing for me, particularly at this time of year when November--ugliest, greyest, most dismal harbinger of five sunless months--threatens.  They keep me from thinking about it. 

Instead, I think about how fabulous 'Purple Prince' is going to look with the tomato red double late 'Double Dutch' and the golden yellow lily-flowered 'West Point' in my hell strip...while across the sidewalk in my front beds, there will be more 'Purple Prince'--he's gorgeous and since he's a single early, he reigns for weeks and weeks and weeks--as well as an outrageous tomato red tulip with yellow fringes called 'Davenport.'

And I don't go mad. 

Roast Your Compost And Save The World?

Just as the wildfires in California were raging most ferociously this week, I picked up New Scientist magazine and learned something that probably offers no consolation whatsoever for the scorched earth many Southern Californians are now confronting: It's possible to burn a landscape in a way that yields something extremely valuable.  It's called biochar, the end product of slowly combusting organic matter in an oxygen-poor environment. 

Biochar seems to be a key ingredient of terra preta, the super-fertile soil of the Amazon created by some very smart pre-Colombian gardeners.  Now biochar could conceivably help us to stop cooking the earth, because the charring process can be used to generate biofuels or electricity.  Meanwhile, the leftover char locks up carbon underground almost indefinitely--carbon that might otherwise make its way into the atmosphere.  At the same time, it encourages the robust growth of plants, which, in turn, take CO2 out of the air and turn into oxygen.

In fact, an article in Nature says that a number of scientists are extremely interested in biochar as a means to combat global warming:

Johannes Lehmann of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York...estimates that by the end of this century terra preta schemes, in combination with biofuel programmes, could store up to 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon a year — more than is emitted by all today's fossil-fuel use.

Organic matter that's smoldered rather than burned is much better at locking in carbon and creating a long-term positive change in the quality of the soil.  Still, I've long scattered the detritus of my fireplace--a mix of ash and charcoal--underneath my lilacs and clematis to make the soil more alkaline for them, and noticed how cheerful they look about it.

The Nature piece also mentions the work of Danny Day, the entrepreneur who founded a company called Eprida, which makes equipment for generating biofuels and biochar.

Originally, Day was mostly interested in making biofuel; the char was just something he threw out, or used to make carbon filters. Then he discovered that his employees were reaping the culinary benefits of the enormous turnips that had sprung up on the piles of char lying around at the plant.

Now Day is making a biochar-heavy fertilizer, too.  I always love a story in which food-obsessed vegetable gardeners drive technological progress across the globe.

Garden Centers: Can You Provide This Level of Service?

This just in:

Thu Anh "Diana" Tran, 32, and her husband, James Nguyen, 47, admitted to owning 10 houses that they leased to indoor marijuana-growing operations. Raids on six of the homes yielded nearly 4,000 marijuana plants, according to federal task force agents. In a good year, that many plants could reap profits of several million dollars.

But wait, that's not all!

Tran's family operated Kent Garden Supplies, which the Drug Enforcement Agency alleges was the hub of a sophisticated pot-growing model commonly used in British Columbia. The store sold or leased grow lights and all the other equipment needed to cultivate marijuana, including seedlings.

Store employees allegedly helped grow operations set up, provided advice on issues ranging from fertilizer to how to avoid law-enforcement detection, and then helped distribute the drugs. In some cases, the store allegedly provided the growing materials on credit paid from the crop's profits.

Now, this is the kind of customer service you want from a garden center!  Selling you the right fertilizer is one thing, but advice on avoiding law enforcement?  What gardener couldn't benefit from information like this?

I live in Humboldt County, CA, where garden centers might sell indoor air filtration systems and high-tech security fencing in addition to all that quote-unquote tomato fertilizer.  Sometimes when I look around my neighborhood and wonder why I don't see more people out gardening, I have to remind myself:  Oh yeah.  They're gardening.  They're just doing it inside.

Front Lawns and the Law

(How Not to Plant an Attractive Pollinator Garden in Your Front Yard:  OK, so my own front yard garden is pretty scraggly this time of year, but at least it's free of interference from law enforcement)

Cheers to Ron Sullivan and Joe Eaton for their San Francisco Chronicle story on the recent dust-up over lawns in Buffalo, Sacramento, and elsewhere.

I particularly liked this part about Sacramento:

Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo is a garden advocate herself. But the City Council and its Law and Legislation Committee were tougher sells. Baumann's district councilman, Steve Cohen, was supportive; others were hostile. Law and Legislation rebuffed the group twice.

"Meanwhile, Code Enforcement offered a compromise that we thought was ludicrous," Roberts said. It decreed that no more than 20 percent of a yard could be nonlawn, and no plants could exceed 4 four feet in height.

"We argued that we weren't trying to violate the health and safety code," Roberts continued, noting that city officials appeared to have no problem with ivy-covered yards that harbor rats.

I can just see gardeners outside with a yardstick, lopping off their sunflowers and bean vines when they exceed 4 feet in height.  Because you know what happens when plants get over four feet tall. Revolution.  Mayhem.  Anarchy!

But they worked it out, and Sacramento gardeners are now free to plant whatever they like on their own land.  Imagine that.  To find out more, check out Sustainable Urban Gardens, and while you're checking out the Sacramento scene, don't miss Angela Pratt's terrific Garden Bliss blog.

At risk

As I write this (Tuesday night), I am watching the coverage from Southern California. We have close relatives in Valencia, and although they say they are safe from the blazes (the Buckweed, Magic, and Ranch fires all nearby), the fact that they are there brings the situation closer. Sometimes, it takes just that amount of personal connection to make the leap from “Oh how awful (change the channel),” to hours of concerned monitoring.

In a general sense, these are not things one can protect oneself against. If an Alberta clipper comes sweeping down and Lake Erie is still relatively warm, Western New York (and part of Ohio and PA too) will get clobbered, with possible fatalities and plenty of damage and inconvenience. Fires, blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes can show an equal lack of mercy in the parts of the world where they are most common. It seems like nature has a trick up her sleeve for all of us, no matter what paradise we think we inhabit.

I must say turning the corner to see the house burned down or in flames is one of my nightmares; I can barely imagine what the more than 500,000 evacuees are going through. At least fatalities are minimal, so far. There are things one can do to prepare—sort of— for such catastrophes (storm shelters, emergency supplies, generators, or just listening and getting the hell out). And in terms of fire, it seems there are small ways to adapt for survival. As one of the LA Times blogs Pardon Our Dust related yesterday, a family whose entire property was a charred ruin after the 2003 wildfires decided against leaving and starting fresh elsewhere. Instead, they built a fire-resistant home with a stucco exterior, tile roof, dual-pane windows, no soffits, solar panels, and an open plan that allows breezes to sweep through the house, making air-conditioning unnecessary. This process is helped by the thick walls, insulated with recycled materials. (All very costly, though I suppose I’d be horrified by any pricetag for building or buying in this area of Southern California.) But then I visited another website and read the story of another Californian who’d already taken every precaution advised and still lost a beautiful mountain home he and his family had worked on for twelve years.

On a Santa Clarita website, I found an advisory (written last year) for fire-retardant plantings, which, I must say, seemed kind of meager and sad when read in the light of what is happening. I doubt very much that growing lavender or coffee berry (rhamnus California) would have had much effect. There was also advice to clear brush, prune trees of low-hanging branches and keep wide spacing between plantings. Ironically, many native plants in CA are designed to include fire as part of their natural life cycle. A gardener whose house miraculously survived the 2003 cedar fire found that her native plants in pots had also survived, so she replanted one quarter of her scorched property with natives to give its regeneration a jumpstart and carefully nurtured the rest, successfully bringing back a seemingly dead landscape in time to join a garden tour the next season.

Some SoCal opinion shapers have taken a stop-the-madness approach. They endorse a combination of accepting the wildfire cycle as inevitable and spending money on enforcing reasonable landscape regulations rather than hiring more and more firefighters and equipment. Whatever initiatives come out of this, it seems unlikely that future fires could be averted, given the solidly-ensconced prerequisites. Everyone interviewed seems determined to rebuild, to stay where the dry tinder and hot winds would threaten them each year.

Do I know the answer to all this? I most certainly do not. All I can say is: ask not for whom the bell of natural catastrophe tolls—any one of us could be next. And I like the Washington Post title for their coverage: "Mother Nature vs. Human Nature." Oh, and CA firefighters? Unspeakably awesome.

The image above is just a nice fall picture I had of a lightly-forested area near Buffalo.

MonkeySee Videos are Up!

by Susan
Last spring a new how-to video website asked me to write and appear in a gardening video and suggested the topic "how to create and take care of a garden."  Sure, coming right up, I said.  Then it sank in that this would be no simple show-and-tell, that I'd have to figure out what to say on this huge subject in 10 short clips.  So readers and critics, forgive me for simplifying.  In other words, be kind, y'all. 

I call the video Sustainable Gardening because the type of garden I talk about is the eco-friendly, low-maintenance kind that I'm always going on about.  All 10 clips are here on my page. 

Other initial offerings in gardening include:

• Ed Bruske on composting (the clip on kitchen scraps is my favorite)
  
• Mitch Baker on planting a tree and planting up a container.
• Amy Stuart (not Stewart) on herbs

Don't miss the companion article below about the line-up of experts on board and the topics they'll cover.

You Go, Saxon Holt

Garden photographer Saxon Holt (along with his partner-in-crime, writer Nancy Ondra) is entirely responsible for getting me into ornamental grasses about a decade after everyone else had already gone crazy over them. I just couldn't see the appeal in a non-blooming, non-fruit-produing plant, but then I found Grasses: Versatile Partners for Uncommon Garden Design and was nearly sold by the cover alone.  I spoke to Nancy recently and admitted that although I have found her writing to be very clear and quite useful, I owned the book for some time before I got around to reading it. The pictures weren't just good, they were an utter distraction.  Pure garden porn.  It is still one of my most-looked-at books, and it's about grass.

Saxon Holt is to blame for these gorgeous photographs, and he's now blogging (dare I say ranting?) about garden photography at the new group blog Gardening Gone Wild.  He's done what I've always wanted a garden photographer to do:  show us what really goes on at those garden photo shoots. He gives us before-and-after photos of a meadow and asks some interesting questions about the creation of plant porn.  Should he have shown the meadow in its inglorious, covered-with-leaves-and-not-particularly-well-lit state to give us a sense of what it really looks like, or should he have raked up the leaves and found the perfect angle, and waited for the perfect light, to create a truly beautiful photograph that will inspire us?

He also shows a snapshot of a Santa Fe garden and compares it to his final, perfectly composed, tighter image that perhaps makes the garden seem more lush and full.

Are these images misleading?    Do they set gardeners up for unrealistic expectations and, ultimately, disappointment and feelings of inadequacy?

Yes and no.  On one hand, I think gardeners would be well-served by photos of "real" gardens, in and out of season, just as we're better off seeing images of "real" women of all sizes and shapes as opposed to stick-thin models.

On the other hand, our own vision is selective.  We don't see everything all the time.  We zoom in, we focus, our eyes come to rest on one spot.  So perhaps Saxon's camera is doing the same thing.

And I confess that as much as I like the idea of showing "real" gardens in their true inglorious state, those lush images of ornamental grasses inspire me.  If Saxon came to my house and photographed the garden that Grasses inspired, I doubt he'd  be  able to get a single decent photograph.  It's very much a work in progress still.  But when I look at it,  I don't see the weeds and the  mistakes.  I see the images that inspired it,  and I keep going.

Hey Saxon:  Do people really stick cut flowers into their borders for photo shoots to make them look like there's more in bloom?  Come on, you can tell us.

Putting away the garden

Gordon's October garden

No, the weather is still balmy; I haven’t had a coat on more than twice this fall. And outside all the containers and many of the perennials still look pretty good. But Wednesday the dreaded roofers arrive. In addition to tearing off and replacing the roof (part of which may retain shingles put there over 140 years ago—who knows), their sworn duty is, as best they can, to destroy whatever unprotected plant life lies in their cheerful path. They have to. It’s their job.

So over the next few days we have to take in whatever we can and prepare for the worst. (Not to mention get all the bulbs planted, which should be safe enough underground.) This year, for the first time ever, I am attempting to overwinter tubers I normally replace every year, as well as some hot climate standards: gardenias, banana, citrus, jasmine. In order to do so successfully, I got some advice from a friend whose garden has become well known throughout Buffalo. Much as Christopher Lloyd did in his “Exotic Garden,” Gordon Ballard relies on canna, brugmansia, dahlia, and colocasia to provide bright color and dramatic foliage throughout the summer. This has been a great summer for those plants—hot and dry (lots of watering through). So, for those of us in the cooler climes, here’s Gordon’s advice for overwintering some popular summer “exotics.” I’m providing it here because I bought a copy of Horticulture which promised similar info, and threw it away in disgust—there was hardly any specific information.

Gordon's canna
Canna

First, cut off all of the foliage above ground leaving about 6-8”of stalk. Carefully loosen and remove as much soil as possible from the tubers , then dry them by putting them on large cardboard sheets (simply boxes opened up) or on lids with a fan on them for several days until any remaining soil is dry. Once dry, stack them up in large plastic storage containers and in trays and put them in a fruit cellar or similar cool dry and dark place. In the spring, you can split and divide them and re-plant outside as soon as the danger of frost has passed.

Another successful method is to just keep them in plastic nursery pots—soil and all—still dry them thoroughly then stack the pots in a fruit cellar or equivalent.

Elephant Ear (Colocasia)

Place the plants in a small, light nursery pots, cut off the foliage and let them dry out in a dry dark cool location. Alternative: Gordon has lights in his basement and has found that by letting them grow slowly under lights during the winter he has much larger and fuller plants for the summer.

Front yard gets Yul Brynner treatment

by Susan

Here's an update on my front-yard edible-landscape-to-be.  For well under a hundred bucks I got all the turf removed and sent to the compost pile, and 15 smelly bags of manure spread and dug in.  My job was applying a layer of leafmold mulch and scheming about what to do next.  Thanks to the mix of bold ideas you all offered about what to grow here and how, this make-over is happening.  Now I have all winter to research all your plant suggestions.

Designwise, I'm thinking brick pavers bisecting the area into 4 equal-size sections.  And a tuteur could be gorgeous in the center, or just in the way.  Imagine the color possibilities, though, and a friend of mine wants to build and paint one for me, and she's an artiste.

Another friend, a GardenRant reader, brought me the delectable book she suggested in a comment: The Art of French Vegetable Gardening.   I'm just thankful I didn't get this notion in the spring or I'd be whipping into action without doing any research, and making megamistakes in the process.  Research!  With the Internet, there's no excuse not to do it.

Garden Writers Gone Wild -A Report from OK City, OK

Guest Post by Kathy Jentz, who blogs here and produces the Washington Gardener magazine.

Ever read a garden magazine or book and think to yourself, "Who is this joker?" Well, that joker would be me -- your lowly regional garden writer and editor. Trolling the test vegetable growing fields and back offices of garden centers for story ideas to bring you the latest and greatest gardening trends. In that noble mission, I attended my second annual meeting of the Garden Writers Association. This year the GWA chose Oklahoma City, OK, for their international symposium. Like me, you are probably questioning why OK? Well, it turns out this jealous sibling of Texas has much to boast about on the gardening front. From tree farms to farmer's markets, we saw it all.

Oklahoma exceeded my expectations and gave me lots of story leads to pursue. In addition, I was able to observe almost 500 of my fellow garden writers, photographers, editors, public relations flacks, and garden supply sales reps in up-close and personal quarters. I'm obviously still wet behind the ears in GWA, as I made several classic newbie errors when dealing with other garden media types. Here are a few:

1. Never relax on a hayride with a bunch of competing garden writers while sipping on glasses of complementary wine. If you do, you might have the urge to blurt out an intriguing garden-related story idea you've been hard at work researching for the past few months. I clearly cannot hold my liquor, cause after just one glass I was telling my most colorful sources all about it. It wasn't until I saw the mad scribbling in notebooks and typing in Blackberries that I realized the huge blunder I'd made. Here I thought I was being oh so entertaining and sociable. Lesson learned. When it comes to the loading and unloading of GWA bus tours, it's every garden writer for themselves.

2. If you want to be first to view a garden and photograph it without 100 or so other bodies milling about the same tiny, perfect wildflower in bloom, you need to act quickly. Get on the first bus and grab the seat closest to the front. If you have to body-check someone to do so, them's the breaks. One famous garden photographer, I'll call him Heinrich Smell for purposes of this rant, is apparently a notorious bus bully. No matter where he ends up sitting on the bus, he manages to shoot up to the front and be first one off every time. I quickly learned to get out of his way lest I lose an eye to those pointy elbows.

3. Whatever directions you're given by the GWA organizers and volunteers, go ahead and ignore them. They are just suggestions, after all, and you know better. One experienced pro took me under her wing. She told me of her theory of the evolution of the garden writer. According to her well-thought-out analysis and years of field observation, garden writers are a breed apart - literally. One does not become a garden writer because one is a conformist. Writers in general have earned a hard-scrabble, ornery reputation. You certainly don't go into it for the job security or money. Pair that with the often solitary pursuit and love of gardening in one individual and you get someone with little respect for authority and a whole lot of time spent living inside their own heads. When you get a bunch of us together is it any wonder chaos ensues? My theorizing mentor told the tale of a group of GWA attendees at an event a few years earlier who took over one of the buses and did not allow others to enter so that they could use it exclusively for the touring day. They had so cowed their volunteer bus captain that he turned Patty Hearst and by the end was defending their ill-behaved actions.

Suffice it to say that I had a great time at this meet - no joke. I love meeting the people in person whose books, articles, and blogs I've so enjoyed reading over the years. And yes, we can all be a little cantankerous at times, but isn't that why you keeping buying and reading our creative output?

If you were at GWA '07 in OKC, please share your thoughts and observations in a comment. I'm truly looking forward to GWA '08 in Portland and another encounter with the tribe of wild garden writers.

Photos by Kathy Jentz.  Top, an unnamed participant.  Bottom, touring.