Garden Rant

Gardener? Watch Your Mouth!

Saxon Holt reports on Gardening Gone Wild about his visit  to the California Pack Trials, a strangely-named event that is all about seeing the new plants that the trade is rolling out to the market.  Don't miss his photos, and check out his second post on the subject, too. And yes, Saxon, we are definitely interested in seeing "the nearly soft porn photo of two young women embracing with geranium necklaces."  If you're not gonna post it on your site, send it over here. 

This is the line that really got my attention:

The industry is not catering to the gardener who wants a few sixpacks of a carefully chosen annuals. The industry is selling color to homeowners who want to accessorize their living space. One marketing person was heard to tell a retail nurseryman that they risk insulting their customer by calling them a gardener.

Yeah, don't you dare.  They're not gardeners; they're consumers.  Of...uh...lifestyle accessories.

Breaking News: EPA Orders Scotts to Stop Selling Certain Products

Thanks to Tamara at Can-U-Dig-It for the tip.

The EPA has pulled a couple Scotts products off the shelf ("Garden Weed Preventer + Plant Food" and "SLS Fertilizer With .28 Halts") because, according to the EPA,the products have not been registered with the EPA and have invalid registration numbers.

EPA has urged Scotts to voluntarily recall the product, and they've posted information about how to find out if you have one of these products on your shelf.

More later.  Stay tuned.

This is what we learned

Everyone agrees that almost all—if not all—commercially-produced sprayers and wands meant to be used with garden hoses SUCK.

Nat West says a no-name from Fred Meyer (whatever that is) has lasted a long time.

Stuart says his from POPE (an Australian company) is great.

Chris C., Grey, and Annie all use their thumbs.

Dirtchick thinks we should start a movement. I’m fine with that as long as the name of the movement does not contain the words “hose” or “spray.”

SJ says the Wisconsin-based company DRAMM makes a great wand.

My husband came home last night with two new sprayers from Home Depot.

Have you been twittering?

Ever since the return from Austin, I’ve been twittering with many of the garden bloggers I met there and some I didn’t. Twitter.com offers another social networking opportunity—kind of an easy one, in my opinion. You sign up and then you can write little mini-posts: under 140 characters. Your friends who also twitter find you and they click on you to follow your “tweats.” You find and follow theirs as well and you end up with a page of updates from online pals.

It’s blogging when you don’t have time to blog and it’s kind of fun. I have a weird mix of Buffalo bloggers and garden bloggers whom I follow and who see my Twitter posts, which is interesting, because of course the Buffalo twittering is completely different, and rarely about gardening.

You know, sometimes you’re just not up to sitting down with your reader and reading 20-30 posts. Twitter offers an alternative for such occasions, and it's possible to twitter from a variety of portable devices. Does it serve a useful purpose? Sure, if you like to maintain a group of online buddies, especially when you're on the go. Is it kind of a minimal, maybe even shallow way of doing that? I suppose it could be viewed that way, so, for now, I use twitter strictly as an accessory to—not substitute for—blogging.

Taking it out on the wisteria

I like plants that I can hack at and mangle without fear of consequences, and it is this quality that may be wisteria’s saving grace as a garden feature. Otherwise, why would we put up with it? It’s alien, it’s aggressive, its roots have been known to heave up paving, and its branches can easily lift off a roof. Though the blooms are lovely and fragrant, it blooms in profusion once in the early spring and only sporadically after that. For many, many wisteria-owners, the vine never blooms at all, going for a decade without a single flower. And regardless of bloom, from early summer to late frost, we can count on having to trim it back almost every other day.

Bad plant! Bad plant!

Sometimes I wonder if I have one of the baddest wisterias of all. Mine has become a weird triangular mass bridging the corner of our garage and the pond area. It kind of looks like a huge, leafy baseball cap hovering above the garden. The fronds grow continuously, reaching over to the neighbor’s and down to the pond. It does bloom, but maybe better if it didn’t, because the flowers become trapped between the upper and lower branches, unable to hang free in the graceful way a properly trained (ha) wisteria should. You have to go and stand under it and look up to see them.

So it should come as no surprise that I have been sharpening all my pruners, preparing for a large-scale, aggressive, and utterly punitive attack on the beast. The idea is that if I thin out the lower branches, the blooms hanging from the sunny upper branches will become visible. It’s not the proper time to prune wisteria, but this is the only time I can clearly see the branch configuration, which later will be hidden under a mass of leaves and other vines (some campsis and clematis that use the wisteria as support, as you can see above).

Anyway, I can’t wait for a chance to start chopping this thing. I know it can take anything I dish out; there is virtually no way—short of bulldozing and dynamite—I can kill it. And that’s why I love it. It wants me to attack it; I can take out the aggressions of a year of Mondays on it and it will still be there. Ready for more.

Starbucks, Austin-style

To a bunch of gardenbloggers visiting Austin, this Starbucks is a prime tourist stop, and hostess/tireless chauffeur Pam Penick made sure we didn't miss it.  Made sure we climbed the stairs to see the awesome green roof in the photo below.  Then obligingly posed with Carol of May Dreams Gardens and Mary Ann of Idaho Gardener and those mighty rain barrels.

So we left Austin feeling somewhat more inclined toward the ubiquitous coffee company, and thoroughly smitten by Austin-style hospitality.

Growing food in Cuba, post-peak-oil

by Susan
The 2006 movie "Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" is one of those underground things here in DC - with screenings in private homes of would-be revolutionaries, like enclaves of the American Communist Party in the '30s.  So I jumped at the invitation and joined 20 other would-be rabble-rowsers to watch and then discuss a movie that goes waay beyond easy tips for "going green".

"Peak oil" refers to the moment at which the world  oil resources max out permanently, after which they decline forever.  And Cuba went through an abrupt version of it in 1991 with the demise of the Soviet Union and the loss of its oil subsidies. The Cuban economy and the entire society were radically transformed - a drastic reduction in the use of cars, a switch to sustainable agriculture (from farming methods that were even more industrialized than in the U.S.), and a change in diet and health for all Cubans. Nothing like a crisis to get things done, huh? 

Too bad it took famine conditions and an average weight loss of 20 pounds per adult between '91 and '94 for Cubans to change the way they grow food and eat.  Food was actually rationed for the first five years.  And it's hard to imagine the disruptions caused by their 14-16-hour power black-outs.

So a group called The Community Solution has put together their plan for food in the post-peak-oil world and made this documentary about the amazing changes in Cuba - a possible model for the rest of the world.

POST-INDUSTRIAL AGRICULTURE
So how DID Cuban agriculture become even more industrialized than ours?  The movie didn't tell us and I'd love to know that back story.  But the movie does describe their decidedly unsustainable practices, like the use of massive amounts of pesticides, complete reliance on synthetic fertilizers, and the use of imported inputs.  Today oil-based fertilizers and pesticides are a thing of the past.  Lands formerly used for large conventional agriculture have been distributed - free if you grow food on it.  Over a period of 3 to 5 years the soils have become fertile and productive again through the use of compost, green manure, and crop rotation.  Eighty percent of Cuba's food is now grown organically, and permaculture practices are commonplace.  Oxen save fuel and cause less compaction than large equipment, so they've made a comeback.   And of course there are backyard and urban community gardens everywhere, with all vacant space used for growing food.

I wonder if Americans are open-minded enough to learn anything from our Commie heathen neighbors to the south.

Does DIY Rock?

Normally I would delete an email with the words "New Gardening Shows on DIY Network" in the subject line. And even if I did open the email, I would be highly suspicious of an opening line like:  "Being a Northern Californian, I'm not sure you're as excited as I am for the warm weather and sunshine -- but here in NY, this week definitely marks the beginning of Spring and we've got our sights all set on Summer. And of course, that means getting our yards ready. As a gardening afficionado yourself, I thought you'd be interested to hear about..."

Because of course, the intern at the Search Engine Optimization firm that DIY hired to send this email is probably not actually getting his/her yard ready for anything.

And here at GardenRant, we go all year long, baby.  Even if that means pounding our fists on the block of ice that is our front yard in the middle of January. Get ready? We're always ready.

And besides, I just hate the idea of someone's viral marketing campaign actually working.

But I gotta say, Ahmed Hassan's kind of hot. And he hangs around garden centers and asks if he can go home with you. 

Yeah.

Check out this guy who questions his gardening cred:

one more for your Monday morning:

Gardening in the NY Times Mag's Green Issue

The New York Times Magazine's green Issue includes these garden-related goodies:

• In the article "Act" there's information about a "Compost Feast".

• Under "Live" you'll find the imperative to "Plant More Trees", a piece about "Urban Farming", and a nice mention of Project Laundry List (not actually about gardening but the nonprofit is a friend of GardenRant).

• Michael Pollan's "Why Bother?" is long but at the very bottom of page 3 he starts to make the case for gardening, beginning with this: "Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind."  Keep reading on page 4.

• In "Greener Pastures," TV host Bill Nye reports having cut his water usage in HALF by switching from lawn to vegetables.  Really?  Now you know I'm pro-vegetable but I bet he could have achieved the same savings by just letting the damn lawn go dormant in the summer.

• In "Bugged Out," we learn that Isabella Rossellini crawls around her garden observing bug sex.

WEIRD weather

We've broken all the records in Buffalo (it got up to 90 in some areas of WNY yesterday) and I wonder if others are experiencing some of the dryest, hottest days in April they've ever known.

It's difficult to rant about such a thing—aside from the pleasure of being outside, I'm a month ahead on most gardening tasks—but it is disturbing.

The scene above depicts one of the few times I have ever seen daffodils standing upright in my front yard. Normally, these would be bending low with broken stalks or just laying face down in the mud, having succumbed to freezing rain or whatever. So this is the way they're supposed to look—interesting.

And another one bites the dust

Why does every sprayer and wand ever made, including the 50 or so I've gone through, suck to the ultimate degree of suckdom?

The greenhouse vs. the conservatory

I’ve always longed for a conservatory—maybe like this one (above). The one (recently rebuilt) Frank Lloyd Wright made for the Darwin Martin estate in Buffalo. You very rarely hear talk about conservatories these days, but the middle and upper middle classes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were very fond of them. All trailing skirts, palm fronds, and clandestine flirtations.

Of course, often the idea of greenhouse and conservatory were combined; there were such things as “succession houses” where out-of-season fruits and flowers were raised. These would be the province of the staff gardener, where the actual conservatory (containing mainly such house plants as forced bulbs, orchids, and other tropicals) might receive the personal attention of the lady of the house.

In the world of twenty-first century gardening, one doesn’t hear much of conservatories. It’s all about lawns, perennials, annuals, and maintenance (high or low). Hardly anyone has this sort of middle area—not inside or outside—where you can just hang out, surrounded by greenery. I would, if I could, because this is exactly why I got into gardening. I like to hang out, surrounded by plants. One has to garden in order to achieve that, so I garden. But wouldn’t it be lovely to have a year-round area where one could hang out, surrounded by plants? The greenhouse is the closest most get to this these days, but a greenhouse is more about work, not recreation, and the products of a greenhouse generally end up in the garden, where a conservatory is a goal in of itself.

Traditional conservatory plants don’t get a lot of respect on this blog, so I won’t spend too much time discussing them, but you can see from the Martin House images which ones they are—the usual ferny, leafy tropicals, with orchids providing most of the floral display. This summer, after I’ve moved most of my “plant room” plants (jasmine, gardenia, banana, orange) outside, that’s what I’ll be left with. I’m thinking of buying a really comfortable chair so I can lounge/read in the plant room, maybe on a rainy day. It’s not a conservatory—too tiny for one thing—but it seems to call for something like that, where one can take advantage of the moist, plant-enhanced, air. Unlike the garden, what tasks there are in a conservatory are quickly finished, so you can enjoy it as a place more often. (In my garden, there’s generally something needing attention, even during a party, which is how my other blog got its name.)

This is probably why, of all the Ranters, I am the most favorably disposed toward indoor gardening. I like how the Victorians and Edwardians did it—there was always a place to hang out with plants.

Photos by Chastity Taber.

Addendum: There is a ton of information about the Darwin Martin complex on the web, so I didn’t reiterate it, but the conservatory and some other buildings belonging to the estate were demolished in the fifties (not a decade known for respect of great architecture). The reconstruction of these buildings was completed in 2007. Wright’s client was initially disappointed by the size of the conservatory, so he installed a 60-foot greenhouse (not designed by Wright, so it won't be rebuilt) between the conservatory and the gardener’s cottage (which was not demolished), in order to supply plants and flowers for the complex. The first statue of Nike was a plaster cast of the original—the one in the Louvre. That statue fell apart during the long period of general neglect of the complex. This one was created through computer imaging of other plaster casts and is made of resin. It is the same size as the original—9’6”. (Michele, is this an acceptable resin object?)

Radical Front Yard Farmer Needs a Little Coaching

by Susan
Showing you this photo feels oddly like unveiling a drastic new haircut, or taking off my robe at the beach. It must be all that bare ground showing, something we beauty-seekers of the gardening world avoid like slug tracks! It's not even mulched, for crissakes!

But moving on to the task at hand, I have some questions that need answering - because I don't know what I'm doing.  (Veggie-growing virgin here.)

WHAT I PLANTED
Here's what I planted on about March 10 (see, I'm already a bad gardener for not being able to find where I wrote the date):  Sparkler radishes, Mesclun Spicy Salad Mix, Simpson Elite Lettuce, Olympia Spinach, Tyee Spinach, Detroit Dark Red Beets, Chinese Mustard, and some Plant-a Row-for-the-Hungry brand carrots.

And yet to be planted are: Purple Top White Globe Turnips, Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi.  And/or anything I find at the market.

WHAT NOW?

1. I assume they need thinning, but can the little plants I remove be moved to  the empty spots?

2. When should I mulch?  And preferably using the leafmold I have too much of.

3. I've been watering every other day when it's not raining.  Sound about right?

4. I aIso bought packages of Canary Creeper Nasturtium and a mix of sweet peas.  Is there any way to use them here?

5. And most importantly, can anyone answer the question in the lower right of my diagram?  Plant ID, please - carrot or radish?

One More Reason To Grow A Few Vegetables

The New York Times has been running an amazing series about a food crisis in the developing world.  The price of commodity foods has been going through the roof, thanks to a number of factors, including the rising cost of fuel, the conversion of food-growing land to biofuel production, and the increasing use of agricultural land for animal feed as the demand for meat rises worldwide. 

Today's story, "Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger," by Marc Lacey is just heartbreaking.  Read it. It will ruin your day.

It occurs to me that the metaphorical sin we Americans commit in huge numbers by wasting our yards has just become a literal sin. I'm not saying that any one backyard vegetable garden is going to lower the price of cooking oil in India or feed Haiti--but enough of them might ease the pressure on the world's agricultural land a little bit. 

The Once And Future Project

The year will come when I won't spend all of April arduously redoing the fence in my vegetable garden in order to keep those crucifer-thieving rabbits and groundhogs out. I like to think that year will come because I will have found the Ultimate Answer. But maybe it will arrive because I'll just be too old and worn out to care any more. 

Take Back Your Resin Fairies, I Do Not Like Them If You Please

Would you allow your lilies to rub shoulders with this riffraff? 

I'm from New Jersey, so I like ornament. Thank goodness, this doesn't take the form of long painted fingernails or too, too much gold leaf in my house. But I do happen to think every garden needs a few intensely artificial accents.

Unfortunately--or as my husband would say, fortunately--my quest for just the right piece of weirdness for my garden generally comes up empty for three reasons:

1.  The few chances I've had in the last fifteen years to buy something really great, a moment of cheapness has taken hold.

For example, I once went into an antiques store in New Jersey, where the antiques run to a lot of obnoxious marquetry and ormolu on faux-French furniture of recent vintage. But in this junky store, they had a giant cast iron hen at least three feet tall and really impressive in 3-D.  Probably a relic from some long-defunct egg business, where it sat at the end of the driveway and caused passing cars to screech to a halt. It was incredible. It was $350. I quailed and have been sorry ever since.

Then there was that woman who thought she could run a business importing container-loads of fabulous composite stone urns from England and selling them in the obscure countryside of Washington County, NY. Those urns were enormous, some of them six feet high on their pedestals, some in an amazing red color, some with fabulous relief on a diagonal climb around them. Needless to say, she was soon running a half-off, going-out-of-business sale. The $800 one I wanted was reduced to mere madness. I was too cheap and have cried myself to sleep ever since.

I'm also not Elizabeth Licata and not hanging out with a lot of sculptors, a serious oversight, I know--because I would gladly put a piece of strange art in my yard, if any could be had for $200 or less. 

2.  The garden ornament offered commercially makes me think that a lot of businesspeople assume that if you want to garden, you must be simple-minded and possibly well into your second childhood.

In Lowe's recently, the ornament on offer seemed oddly religious.  Dinky foam crosses, dinky foam saints, dinky foam angels, because after all, who gardens except for fundamentalists--and people who hear voices when no one's there except the yard art?

Community Gardeners in the Washington Post - all season long

Adrian Higgins' article in today's Washington Post brings some really exciting news.  In it he introduces us to the Glover Park Community Garden and to a few of its gardeners.  But the best part is that Higgins will be checking in with them via video every month throughout the season, so we'll be "Following a Growing Drama, with Many Plots".  The main characters are the wiseguy chairman of the garden, some young but experienced gardeners, and a total newbie.  Man, this is our kind of reality show - and how cool is that?

Higgins and the Post deserve a big rave from the Rant for this terrific idea.  Watch the first installment. 

Wiggly Wigglers Does It Again

A couple years ago, I visited my friend Heather Gorringe at Wiggly Wigglers in England.  Wiggly Wigglers is so very unique and wonderful that it's almost hard to explain exactly what it is.  It's primarily a mail-order company selling any sort of supply you might want for eco-friendly country living.  What does that mean?  From one catalog you can order seeds and plants, worm composters, bird feeders and feed, tools, eco-friendly cleaning products, chicken-keeping supplies, beekeeping supplies, bat boxes, and more. 

Heather also produces my favorite gardening podcast, which you can listen to here, and she recently got a grant that allowed her to travel around the world and find out how other small farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs are using social media (blogging, podcasts, etc) to connect with each other and grow their businesses. (check out Podcast 0113 for her visit to my backyard while she was on that trip)

I just got the latest Wiggly Wigglers catalog--if you can even call it that.  It's 224 pages, bound like a paperback book, and full of articles, interviews, stories, clippings, ideas, and beautiful photographs, along with merchandise. It's the kind of thing you could keep on your nightstand and read all year long.  Yes, there's something very old-school about printing a catalog on paper and mailing it out into the world, but there's a social networking element to this catalog, with its contributions and ideas from fellow gardeners all over the world.

I'm not sure if they'll ship a catalog to the US for free, but in spite of the dreadful exchange rate it would be well worth it to find something interesting to buy from the Wigglers just to get their catalog along with it.  Good luck resisting the tile lantern, the string garden dibbler with concealed blade, or their incredibly cool chicken runs.  You're supporting a good cause--this company is helping to support local farmers by buying their products, employs quite a few clever and interesting people, and is really spreading the word about all things green.  Mostly, I just suffer from serious Wiggler envy--how I adore their bucolic English countryside lifestyle.  Sigh.

You can also find Wiggly Wigglers on YouTube--here's the sort of silliness you can expect:

Camouflage is cool

I love this recent shot of a screech owl by my friend Glenda Kapsalis.

But before anyone scolds me for going off-topic, that's a tree, right?

Here’s to all the working dads who garden—and blog (or at least write)

Susan received this comment after her post yesterday on working moms (like Michele Owens and Kathy Purdy) who garden and blog. After compliments, “Brent” added:

However, I do have to let you know that I'm feeling a little left out. What about the working dads who garden and blog about it? Are we in short supply?

Hard to say. There are, of course, men garden bloggers, though I suspect fewer men than women. We had only about 5-6 in our group of 38 during the Austin meet-up. While not a scientific standard, it does seem to be at least an indication. But not that less men garden, far from it.

Mainstream garden media seems to want to stereotype the man who gardens (and I count ALL so-called yardwork as gardening because that’s what it is). Here’s an egregious example of that stereotyping, from a media "lead" site.

From USA Weekend: If you are a guy or know a very 'guy'-like guy who has found one or more great ways to cut down on lawn/yard/flowerbed work so you can have more time for poker, fantasy leagues and beer-league softball on weekends, send me your tips. No attachments, please. E-mail responses only, and send only one e-mail with no follow-ups.

The above description does not fit any male gardener I know and most of the gardeners I know are men. A few of them are dads. Granted, I really do not know that many “guy”-like guys, if that’s what a “guy”-like guy does. But I do know some great working dad gardeners who garden and write about it. One blogs; the other has written about gardening for the magazine I edit. So—fair is fair—let’s salute them and their efforts.

Above (photo by Michele), you see Bruce Adams, husband of Renée and father of Aiden and Garret. Ok, Adams doesn’t blog, but he is a fulltime teacher, an active and constantly-exhibiting painter, a magician, an art critic, and, of course, a gardener whose garden is featured in the Garden Walk Buffalo book and one of the highlights of the annual walk. It’s also an inspiration, because in spite of the fact that this garden is about as big as my office at work, it contains bulbs, perennials, shrubs, a marvelously engineered pond and waterfall, a spa, and a seating area. Though Renée fully participates, Bruce is the master designer and pondsman. He’s also written about the evolution of the garden and the value of gardening as exercise, and those articles are collected on his website.

One of my favorite passages from his “Urban Oasis” details the type of planning only a meticulous artist would do (all this changes, of course): On paper I carved the expanded lot into Mondrian-like flowerbeds, walkways, and patio space, opting for orderly geometric structure over fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants organic uncertainty. Gazing from our attic windows I contemplated such critical matters as projected traffic flow and barbecue dynamics. If I had known how to use a slide rule, no doubt I would have.

Jim and his garden (photo by Don Zinteck).

Then we have a working dad gardener whom many of you already know: Jim Charlier/Art of Gardening. Jim, husband of Leslie and father of Margaux, is self-employed (full-time) as a one-man ad/pr/marketing agency (with many prominent clients). He also sits on several community boards, is the board president/PR chair of Garden Walk, designed the Garden Walk book, and, of course, gardens. He’s transformed a front lawn into a grassless perennial/annual garden and created a kitchen garden, arbor, play area, and Harry Potter garden in the side/back. Here’s an excerpt from a description of the Potter garden from his blog. It was also published in People, Places and Plants.

A redbud becomes the wand-making hornbeam, an over-wintering cactus becomes stinksap-spewing mimbulus mimbletonia. Morning glories become devil’s snare - which seems a more appropriate name for them anyway. Add in some fluxweed, scurvy grass, venomous tentacula, gurdyroot and a puffapod and we have well-labeled and documented plantings.
The best part is to see people (muggles) reading the tags and taking notes and photos during Garden Walk; one person even asked where they could buy them. That's when I have to break it to them that this is a fictional garden.

So there you have it: two of my very favorite working dad/gardeners/writers/bloggers. Never let it be said that we’re sexist here at the Rant.

Though I would like to see more of my male gardener friends blogging. I’d like to see more WNY gardeners blogging, period. Jim and I are getting lonely.