Garden Rant

My Complete Lack of a Gardening Lifestyle, and How That Means More Free Stuff For You

You may have noticed that GardenRant has been a total swagfest lately, what with all the giveaways of tools and books and other such freebies.  Well, there's a reason for that:  I'm living in Portland for two months, having temporarily joined the faculty of Portland State University as a visiting professor in their MFA in Creative Writing program.  Thanks to the nice people at the literary journal and book publisher Tin House, I have a totally swell apartment, too.

What I don't have is a garden, or really any interest in one.  I mean, Portland is in full bloom right now, and that's lovely.  Last month the air was perfumed with daphne blossoms, and this month the azaleas are doing their insane technicolor thing, and I'm sure something else very pretty is about to happen right now.   But I came here to think about writing, to talk about writing, and to do some writing.  The rest of you can go garden.  I'm doing this other thing.  (and writing about it a little on my own blog.)

What does this mean to you?  Before I left for Portland, I lined up a whole series of posts in which I do little more than give free stuff to you.  Mostly this happened in partnership with my good friend Gen at North Coast Gardening. 

So.  She and I spent a very confusing afternoon putting together the deceptively simple Triolife Plant Pyramid sent to us by the nice people at EarthEasy.  Please note that it does not take an entire afternoon to put it together--it takes about a minute and a half--but because we were too lazy to go inside and look at a photo of the thing, and because the instructions were nearly incomprehensible, it took us forever.

But you will have no trouble at all, because once you watch our video, you will totally get it! The light bulb will go off.

And you can have one!  Tell us what you will plant in it and where you will put it (on a table, on a patio, on your roof, etc) and we'll choose a winner.  Gen is giving one away too, so get over there to check out her thing.

 

 

More Free Stuff From Fiskars

And the Fiskars fun continues.  They have also offered to give you people an UpRoot Weeder, another tool that Gen and I reviewed last year.  If you have a lawn, or some other part of your garden that gets overrun with little annoying weeds, this is the most fun toy ever. (And it works.)  Really, I had such a good time playing around with this thing.  You can read my earlier post here and Gen's here.

We actually ended up doing two videos because we were having such a good time.  I'll post them both below.  What you need to know is that you can post any kind of weed-related comment to win, and you can also go over to Gen's blog and get one there, too.

 

 

and the next one is:

 

What kind of advice are Home Depot's "Certified Nursery Consultants" giving?

As an unabashed fan of independent garden centers, I enjoy scoffing at their Big Box competitors - the plants, the heavy-on-the-chemicals products, and worst of all, the gardening advice they give to unwitting customers.  But guess what!  According to this announcement, their garden department staff are now getting some training and becoming "certified".  

The Home Depot’s certification is the real deal. We asked the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to help develop the training program. After the special training, our certified associates have expertise in plant types and how to care for them, landscaping, flowers and ground covers, lawn care, and a lot more.

And we make sure there are always Certified Nursery Consultants on duty in our Lawn and Garden Centers ready to talk with you about your gardening plans or answer your questions.

Our associates (the guys and gals in the orange aprons) really know what they’re doing when it comes to just about any DIY project, and they are pleased to offer how-to instructions, buying recommendations, and even some friendly encouragement on all of your home improvement projects. 

Hmm, that doesn't claim that all their garden-department staff know something about plants, just that there are always people in the department who do.  If you can find one.  Unlike the one who helped my niece, a complete gardening newbie, select the right plants for her Nashville yard, shown here.

Her question was: what to plant along this north side of the house for "instant color".  So she was sent home with petunias - on March 8, a full five weeks before Nashville's last-frost date.  Which petunias would never be very colorful in this sunless spot, no matter the frost date.

I'd have thought pansies were the obvious choice but no, Home Depot said it was too hot for them.  

So, what kind of advice have YOU gotten from Home Depot lately?  I'm dying to know.

THE WEBSITE

Another venue for Home Depot's advice-giving is, of course, their website, which indeed has a whole slew of videos with a guy identified only as "Rick" giving advice.  One example of his advice? "Many experts recommend fertilizing your lawn in late spring, summer, early fall and again in late fall."  Terrible advice.

There's another Rick giving gardening advice for Home Depot, as their gardenblogger. Here's his bio:

I have worked in the Garden Department for past eight years and I’m a Certified Nursery Consultant who worked closely with a Master Gardener for four years. My family were farmers in Minnesota, and being from Minnesota I love the colder weather. Yah, you betcha! I have a private pilot’s license, the two amazing German Shepherds have since past on, but I have acquired a Cairn Terrier (this one must be mixed with a cat somehow!) and a mixed wired terrier (the wire terrier thinks he is German shepherd!) and I love to BBQ and be outdoors.

Wow, he "worked closely with a Master Gardener!"  Maybe you have to BE a Master Gardener, like I am, to know how little that means - someone who attended some classes, passed an open book, take-home test, and did some volunteer work.  Master my ass!  The rest of the stuff, about his dog and love of BBQ, is just insulting to shoppers looking for knowledgeable staffers to help them.

From the "Rick's Picks" blog, I noticed his recommendation that we till our flower beds:

Actual tilling of your flowerbed is an advantageous activity.  Tilling not only helps to remove unwanted weeds but it turns the soil over which helps put oxygen down into the  soil and helps to move nutrients down to the root system.

WTF?  To no one's surprise, he also recommends spray-on color for lawn.

The website also has an Ask the Expert service, but when people send in questions, the person in charge of answering runs over to the community forum to ask participants for help, then posts their answers to the questioner. 

Actually, Home Depot used to have a real expert write for their website, but they inexplicably refused to give her name or cite her credentials.  The expert was no less than horticulturist Erica Glasener, who told me about her curious experience with the giant retailer.   Erica's SO well known and respected, her name alone would have brought new gravitas to HD's whole gardening operation.  

BUT HOME DEPOT'S A BIG STORE
To be fair, I've noticed much improved sales help in HD's other departments lately, and totally love the kitchen designer at the store near me.  Paint department guys, the same.  So, am I being too hard on the garden department?

Fiskars Wants To Give You Stuff, and Who Are We To Stop Them?

Do you remember last year when we reviewed some Fiskars tools and gave a few away?  Remember those PowerGear Loppers?   I wrote about them here, and Gen wrote about them at North Coast Gardening.  Now that I've had a pair for a year or so, I can tell you that they are quite sturdy and very useful--they're big enough to be able to whack back anything in my garden, but they're also surprisingly light and easy to carry around.  Good stuff.

Well, Fiskars just wants you to have more tools.  So they asked us if we'd give another pair away.  Uh--yeah!  Sure, why not?

Here's the video we did last year if you want to know exactly how these things work.  To win, just post a comment with any pruning-related tale, or any sob story about why you so desperately need to upgrade your pruning tools. 

Oh--and--Gen's giving away a pair, too, so head over there if you want a little more action.

Tell "Hippie Mulch" what you think of it

 
There's a new product in the works, and the makers have asked students at the University of St. Thomas  ("one of the most highly renowned business schools in the globe," they tell me) to research "the best way to get into our consumers minds and figure out what their priorities are."  Toward that end, they're asking us to take a quick survey about the product - a spray-on mulch colerant called Hippie Mulch.  Yes, I did ask if this was a joke and was told they're "EXTREMELY SERIOUS" about this, and they really want our feedback about it, so let's give 'em some.

First, the product itself is one that many of us disapprove of on aesthetic grounds, and I'm in that camp myself.  The Hippie Mulch website describes faded mulch as a problem that must be fixed, either by adding more mulch or using a colorant, but of course I disagree.  From that mistaken assumption, they derive the whole tree-saving pitch - "One jar can save up to 8 trees" - because without their product, we'd be buying more mulch, and "New mulch involves cutting down trees, and burning diesel fuel during the grinding and transportation process. We felt that a hippie would probably choose to save a few trees, and avoid the additional exhaust from the diesel fuel."

But actual gardeners know that mulch is about much more than aesthetics - we want the stuff to break down and improve the soil.  Replacing mulch every year is the one big thing I do for my garden, besides water.  I asked the Hippie Mulch team about this and was told that "Many horticulturists are proud of their gardens and keeping them looking "fresh" (in addition to healthy) is of the utmost importance."  Right.

But wait - who said mulch has to come from trees, trees that are cut down just for the mulch?  My mulch of choice is made from dead leaves.

Next, what's in Hippie Mulch? Don't look to the website for that answer, beyond the marketing language that it's a "a unique blend of environmentally friendly additives and binders allow the color to penetrate the wood surface, lock on to the fibers, and adhere for long lasting beauty".

Wouldn't a good hippie want to see the ingredient list?  This hippie sure would.

Yes, I happen to have been a '60s hippie in good standing myself and have actual memories of using some of the language used on the Hippie Mulch website - "blow my mind,"  "chill time,"  "Peace, man."  Oh, yes, I did!  And how about the colors this stuff comes in:  beatnik brown, dig-it dark brown, bellbottom black, groovy gold, ringo red, and rush red. 

Okay, I admit it - hippie jargon is really annoying. 

Take the Survey, or Leave a Comment

Again if you're wondering if this is a late April Fool's joke, I was told that that question is "slightly offensive" and that "The company we are working with has paid St. Thomas U. and the Small Business Institute for our consulting work and this is the equivalent of a Thesis for our major. We have poured countless hours into serving our client and the only thing we get out of this (other than real world experience) is a final college credit. Thus far, every single blog that we have reached out to has taken this seriously, as I believe you should too." 

So I guess I should just chill.  Peace, man!

Williams-Sonoma Goes Agrarian

Chicks sold separately.

Williams-Sonoma got a little buzz last week when it announced a new line of DIY, homesteading, gardening, chicken-keeping stuff. The line is called Agrarian, and while it wasn't quite live when the press hit last week, it's all up there now. Let's have a look, shall we?

I went straight to the chicken coops, of course.  A base model costs $400; the optional (but necessary) run brings the price up to $850.  With shipping and taxes, you're looking at a thousand bucks.  Delivery includes "white glove service," meaning that the thing will actually be assembled and put into place by their delivery people.  (I would be very, very surprised if this applied to orders placed in Humboldt County.)

If you search around, you'll see that this is not too different from any other mail-order chicken coop in terms of style or price.  My complaint about most prefab chicken coops is that they are a bit too small for how pet chickens will actually live.  Chickens do a lot of squabbling and shuffling of the hierarchy; I find that if you're going to confine them, it's good to give them more room than absolutely necessary so they can retreat to separate corners to avoid getting pecked if they need to.  Also, I worry that these little pre-fab things might be too flimsy. A predator might flip them over or tunnel under.  And how well will they hold up in the weather, year after year?  If you're going to spend a thousand bucks on a coop, you want it to last as long as, say, a fence or a deck would.  It should be that sturdy.

So I don't know.  The coop is cute, the price is not actually that outrageous, but without actually kicking the tires I couldn't say whether I'd consider it a good long-term investment.  Might be easier to give a handyman a thousand bucks and say, "Chicken coop.  Go."

Plants.  There are plants.  Although I think some of these prices must be typos.  Fifty bucks for a raspberry bush?  Just one?  Sure, it comes in a big pot, so I'm assuming it's a big healthy mature thing, but come on.  What do bareroot berries cost?  A few bucks apiece?

Herbs in four-inch pots are $13.  We all know that's about 3-4 times more than they'd be at the garden center.

A single lettuce plant is $16.95.  Really, I can't even bring myself to mock them for this. I feel like it has to be a mistake.  I mean, I would have mocked them for pricing it at $6.95, given that a vigorous jumbo six-pack of the same lettuce costs less at the garden center (not to mention a packet of seeds)--but $16.95?  I'm just worried about them at this point.

10 packets of heirloom vegetable seeds go for $18.  Okay, fair enough, assuming it's all stuff you want to grow. They come from Beekman 1802, and the idea is that you go to the website, log in, and chat with other people growing the same seeds.  Which--well, yeah. Maybe that could be cool.

Tools:  We're looking at a copper hand trowel for $60 and a spading fork for $300.  Isn't copper kind of a soft metal?  I know they're blending it with other metals, but still.  Copper for garden tools?  Really?  I'm not persuaded.  I've been using those tools that Clarington Forge sent me a while back and I gotta say--at a third of the price, they are all the tool you'll ever need.  Ever.

There's more--stuff for canning and preserving, beekeeping, making cheese and kombucha and whatever--and some raised beds that are actually fairly comparable in price to similar raised bed kits sold online, but pricey nonetheless ($150 for a little 3 x 3 raised bed?  To, what, grow some squash in? The squash will grow whether or not there's a little piece of wood surrounding it, that's all I'm saying.)

Oh, and they're also selling compost ($7 for a 10-lb bag)--and fertilizer, and other things that I'd much rather pick up locally than order through a catalog.

So anyway, that's my rundown, folks.  Nice stuff, but not so nice that I'm lusting after it, with prices ranging from "comparable to other similar high-end stuff" to "are you sure that's not a typo, honey?"

I guess I'm glad to see anybody selling garden stuff to the masses, at any price--but will I be ordering anything from them?  Probably not.

Garden Bloggers and Marketers: The State of the Union

Free plants! Which I love! Usually.

When, in the course of social media events, it becomes necessary for a group of bloggers to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a bunch of well-intentioned but sometimes irritating marketing people, and to assume among the powers of the blogosphere, the separate and equal station to which the laws of journalism and freedom of expression entitle them...

What I am trying to say is that, from time to time, one needs to reassess the state of one's union. I've been talking to several garden bloggers lately who feel that the marketing efforts aimed in our direction have gotten to be a bit much, and a bit weird. 

I get the impression that marketing people go off to a seminar every couple of years to find out how to deal with us. The reason I think this is that all at once, every couple of years, the kinds of pitches and press releases and other such things coming at us here at GardenRant World Headquarters change in a very noticeable way. The only logical explanation is that they all went to a class.  Sorry--a webinar.

I think this year's class was called, "Treat Bloggers Like Your Very Own Unpaid Staff."

Here's what we're seeing:

Scripted video appearances. 

I was recently asked to participate in a marketing initiative (I believe they called it a "social media flash mob") that would involve me making a video of myself reading from a script that the marketing person sent to me.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Demands that we write very specific things on our blogs when we review or give away a book or product. 

MANY marketing people have lately supplied me with the specific language they'd like me to use when I describe their product on my blog. They provide me with links and the text that should be attached to those links (for their SEO strategy), they tell me what date they'd like my review to appear, etc. etc.

No.

The answer is no.

If you want to send me a product to review, send it.  If I decide to review it, I will.  If I decide not to review it, I won't. (and usually it's because the product is garbage, but in such a bland and banal way that I can't even get worked up enough to write the bad review it deserves.)

Now, I do understand that if a company is donating a book, a plant, a product for a giveaway, they expect something in return.  GardenRant turns into Giveaway Central in the spring, and we're happy to give our readers free stuff, and we just don't give away anything we don't like.

But here's the thing, Marketing People:  If we like it, it's way better if we say that in our own words. Copying and pasting someone else's PR-speak into our blog post just makes everybody look lame.  Yes, it's a little risky to just trust us to say what we really think, but that's what makes your day exciting.

Unsolicited Shipments of Inappropriate Plants, Followed by 40-Minute Online Surveys.

Ship me plants. That is fine. There is nothing I'd love better than more free plants.  In general, what we all want is more free plants. This is a no-brainer. But lately, I've been getting plants so boring, so generic, so ubiquitous, so unsuited to my climate or my gardening style, that I don't even bother asking around to see if any of my friends would like them. Because I know they won't.  Because it would be an insult to their taste for me to even offer them.

I'm sure the marketing people don't want to just pack up plants and ship them into a black hole. They want feedback. But the ratio of interesting plants to length of time spent answering online surveys is way, way, out of whack. Something is broken about this system.

Offers to write free guest posts, and/or exchange text links. 

This is more like spam, and hardly even belongs on this list. But we do get bazillions of them, and we wish they would stop.

Lots more junket invitations. 

We here at GardenRant never used to get invited on junkets. What self-respecting company would want the likes of us poking around their corporate headquarters, anyway?  I think what's changed is that marketing people now subscribe to databases like this one that list the contact information for influential bloggers. (We didn't sign up for this, by the way--we just got added.)  So a busy PR person might just run a report and send out an email blast to everyone who fits the criteria.  As a result, offers of plane tickets come whizzing our way.  We have been invited to attend (are you ready for this?) a golf weekend with a turf company, a baseball spring training event with power tool company, and a "garden writers' seminar" at the corporate headquarters of a global agribiz company that shall remain nameless.

(okay, it was Bayer. The guy actually called me, and I replied cheerfully that I'm pretty much opposed to everything his company stands for and that he probably doesn't really want to let me on the grounds. With equal cheer and goodwill, he apologized for bothering me and thanked me for my time. Nice guy, really.)

Then there's the P. Allen Smith Garden2Blog event, which caused a bit of a dust-up last year as bloggers either did or did not reveal that they were on an expense-paid trip as they blogged, tweeted, and Facebooked their way across the P. Allen empire. (Here's a nice post that gives you a sense of what that event is like.)

So, look.  I'm not opposed to junkets.  People in food, travel, beauty, high-tech, and booze journalism go on all kinds of junkets.  Sure, these things do need to be properly disclosed, and some publications ban them entirely, and it probably is hard to stay objective once somebody's flown you to their chateau in France.

But I am not anti-junket, I'm just saying that there are definitey more of them, so many more that even we churlish, argumentative GardenRanters are getting invited along.

This is not to say that every encounter we have with a marketing person is an irritating one--far from it.  These are just the things that have been happening lately that got us talking. 

Your thoughts? Go right ahead.

It's come to this? Partisan Plants?

From Ball Publishing's Acres Online we received the following press release.

Fox, MSNBC Launch Political Plant Brands
Late-breaking news from Spring Trials … Two new plant brands are coming onto the market, and both are aimed at capitalizing on the coming political season.

In its first-ever foray into floriculture, Fox News is launching a series of angel wing-type begonias called Right Wing Begonias, aimed, as the name implies, at red-state Republican gardeners.

Not to be outdone, television network MSNBC has countered with its own flower series, Leftunias, a line of petunias they say they’ll market to “progressive gardeners seeking new trends in neighborhood beautification.”

Both were last-day additions to the MasterTag display at Sakata during the California Spring Trials.

Why get involved in something as far-afield from news as gardening? Fox News Channel’s VP of Corporate Communications Sidney Finch told GrowerTalks that gardening has come heavily onto the radar of News Corporation executives (Fox’s parent company) in the wake of Michelle Obama’s White House gardening efforts (she’s launching a gardening book this spring) and also lucrative L&G advertising by major fertilizer companies and DIY retailers.

“We were looking for a way to reach mainstream America—our conservative viewers,” Sidney says. “And when we look at the red states, which are predominantly Southern and Midwestern, we thought that what they all have in common is gardening. [Gardening is] a wholesome American pastime.”

But apparently word of Fox’s plan leaked out to an MSNBC executive via a garden-enthusiast waiter at the famous Off the Record bar in Washington, D.C., who overheard a table of Fox employees discussing the idea. Humorously, at first, the waiter didn’t know it was gardening Fox was getting involved in. He thought it was something more sinister.

“When he heard the word ‘plant,’ he thought it meant plant as in spy or agent, and that ‘begonia’ was his code name,” an MSNBC spokesman told me from their Washington bureau. “When we found out it was garden plants, we decided to counterattack, and with something aimed at progressive gardeners in the blue states. Why should Fox have all the fun?”

Both news agencies told me they’d use retail sell-through data to gauge political leanings—a flower poll, if you will. (No word yet on what retail outlets will be carrying them.) Also, they hint that their could be widespread boosting of the programs by celebrity pundits such as Fox’s Bill O’Reilly and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

MasterTag’s Gerry Giorgio, who gave GrowerTalks the sneak peek at the new program, said they were approached by both news agencies within a week of one another back in January.

“We had begun work designing the Right Wing Begonia brand, but were a bit uncomfortable about being involved in something that could be so polarizing, politically,” Gerry says. “Then when MSNBC called and we came up with Leftunias, we were off the hook because now we had both sides of the political spectrum covered.” He admitted with a laugh that he’s considered calling the Ron Paul campaign about an independent-oriented brand, but doesn’t feel there’s enough retail potential expect in Arkansas and North Dakota, where Mr. Paul did well in the primaries.

No word on who the breeders of either series is; Gerry says they want to remain behind the scenes to avoid offending existing customers who may lean politically in the opposing direction.

As for the container for the new series? Gerry says that was a no-brainer. “Super Packs, of course,” he said with a smile. “We’ve already got a special mold being made.”

Got a comment on mixing politics and gardening? Let me know your thoughts HERE.

So, readers, what do you think of this development? 

My first reaction was to start composing a rant, decidedly opposed to partisan politics mucking up our plant-buying decisions - especially this year!  But then when I Googled the new plant names, the web came up with a big nothing for them.  Then I noticed the date of the press release - April 1.   Not just a day for pranks, but a Sunday, a day of rest for most PR folks. 

So I wrote to the supposed author of the press release, Chris Beytes, editor and publisher of Grower Talks, and this was all news to him, so I'm considering it a hoax.  But hey, they almost got me!  Whoever "they" may be.

Do You Houzz?

I have a serious case of "exciting new website launch" fatigue right now. Every day a thrilling new announcement lands in my inbox about some groundbreaking new digital initiative that I absolutely must get in on--now, right now.

And I just cannot bring myself to care about any of them.

Some of these amazing new digital initiatives have turned out to be actual Big Deals (Tumblr, Google Plus, Pinterest), but I can't bring myself to do much more than glance at them from time to time. And many, many more of them are just dumb ideas that will go nowhere (Tumblr, Google Plus, Pinterest.  Kidding!  I'm thinking more of the My Garden Friends -type sites where somebody we've never heard of wants us to set up an account and start sharing pictures of our garden or clicking on images of Proven Winners and Monrovia plants we might add to our fake digital garden. Please, people.  Make it stop.)

But what about Houzz?  I think this is pretty cool.  I read this article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a landscape designer who has some out-of-town and even out-of-the-country clients thanks to Houzz. So I decided to give it a closer look.

Houzz is a sort of Angie's List-meets-Yelp-meets-Pinterest for home and garden contractors. You can go to Houzz and browse photos to get an idea of what sort of thing you might like to do at your place--then you can find a contractor who will do that for you. You can buy products that turn up in the photos (stepping stones, a bench, light fixtures) .  You can browse or create your own idea books -- such as this one, about hiding trash cans, which I actually found quite useful.

And there are discussions where you can ask questions or get more specifics about an idea you see or whatever.

So here's my question--are there any landscape designers out there using Houzz, and if so, houzz it going? (sorry, couldn't resist.)  I see Michelle Derviss, and it looks like Gen Schmidt just joined--anybody else?

And what about people selling stuff on Houzz?  Or--anybody using it to figure out how to redo your deck or build a new patio or a chicken coop or some such thing?

Finally, to all you writers of garden designer-ish books--are you using Houzz to promote your books?  Here, for instance, is an Idea Book about edible garden design that features Rosalind Creasy's book on the subject. That is a very cool idea.

What do you think?  How's Houzz?

(okay, sorry. I'll stop.)

What I was tempted to buy at the Philly Flower Show

When I attend the Philadelphia Flower Show I always arrive just as it opens and head straight for the displays and competitions (hopefully before the place gets insanely crowded).  Then it's time to do some shopping!  Here are the products that caught my eye this year.  So what do y'all think of them?

Mounted on the wall these kinda look like backpacks but on the floor I saw that these carts that can haul all sorts of things.

Above, these outdoor-indoor rugs made from recycled plastic happen to have been recommended to me recently by a landscape designer - for my new screened-in porch.  (Have I mention I'm having one built at my new house?  Photos coming soon!)

Above, I had a nice chat with the folks from Nature's Footprint about their UrBin Grower self-watering containers and Worm Factory vermiculture bins.  The owner (right, whose name I neglected to get) doesn't read blogs but knows Amy and was giving her book away during his talk at the show.  (Love the new cover.)

This cute guy standing in a tub of water does very well selling the expensive but totally waterproof Irish boots he's wearing.  My traveling companion bought some last year and swears by them - for gardening or with designer jeans for more formal affairs.  She says his cuteness wasn't the deciding factor but it sure didn't hurt.

The expandable rake on the right is a product I WANT.  Beats bending over to pick them or using one of those horrible blowers.

These hanging vases hold water, so work with fresh flowers but me, I'm a sucker for dried arrangements.  Maybe on that screened-in porch I'm hoping to have built any day now (permit pending).

Finally, another indoor-outdoor decoration that caught my eye are these metal trees.  I neglected to check the prices, though, and they may be too rich for my blood.

Speaking of which, I planted my tuches in a fancy hammock-swing with attached umbrella and loved it, but the $1,195 pricetag makes it a nonstarter.   Fortunately, more affordable hammocks abound; I just have to find room for one on that new porch I can't shut up about.

Dear Seed Companies: Please Stop Making It So Damn Hard To Love You.

Just look at this amazing, astonishing, beautiful, very unusual new purple tomato.  Does it not fill your heart with lust?  Do you not want to order one of these RIGHT NOW?

What?  You don't see it?  Why is that?

Because the seed companies make it so damn hard to get a picture, that's why!  I have spent way too much time this morning looking for a photo I can use of 'Indigo Rose,' this glorious new tomato I read about in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning.

I took the time to search around and find seed companies selling the plant, and even emailed a few of them asking for permission to use their photo, all to no avail.  I also hunted around on their website for some sort of Terms of Use section that would tell me whether or not I could grab a picture, or a Media section with downloads I could use.

Nothing.

So.  Here's a hint, seed (and plant) companies:  Make this easy.  Put a link in your footer that says,
"Use of Photos" or something very obvious.  On that page, just say whether or not we can grab a photo for use online or in print.

Or!  If you want a little more control?  Have an online form that people fill out.  Have them link to their publication, and link to the photo they want to use.  Send an auto-responder message back that either says "yes" or "no" depending on the photo.  If the answer is "yes," be sure your response says, "You can use this photo as long as you link back to us (or whatever).  Remember that you have to use this form every time you want to use one of our photos, because copyrights vary and we want to keep track of who's using our stuff."

Or something.  Figure it out.  But please, make it a little easier to love you.

I'm talking to you, Johnny's, High Mowing, Nichols, Territorial, and even you nice people at OSU who developed the thing.

OK.  Follow the links.  Look at the pictures.  Commence lust.

The GardenRant Handmade Gift Extravaganza

It's time for our annual round-up of handmade garden-related gift ideas, many of them made by our readers.  I offer you this in the spirit of opposing the mass-produced, the deeply-discounted, the imported-and-exported, the plastic, the impersonal, the disposable, and the soon-to-be-obsolete.  This is a good time of year to reject all of that.  If you want to send someone a nice gift, why not put a few bucks in the pocket of an artist/craftsperson?  Why not give something small and meaningful and handmade?

So.  A couple weeks ago, we invited you to post links to the stuff you make.  Here's a round-up of what you suggested, along with a few other things I just happen to like.  Our one exception to the "handmade" rule was for photographers and other artists selling calendars or notecards of their work.  Sure, it's mass-produced, or printed on demand, in much the way a book would be, but we give lots of love to books throughout the year and not nearly enough to photographers and painters.  So here goes:

First of all, Dirt Couture sells a lovely selection of exactly the kind of thing we're talking about--handmade garden-ish gifty things.  Like this wine bottle torch for thirty bucks.  Yes, please!

Dirt Couture also sells hand-forged tools by actual blacksmiths, these super-warm and very practical liners for your muck  boots--- plus handmade soap, botanical jewelry--all that stuff.  Oh, and succulents!  Check them out.

And before we get too deep into our list, I also want to point out this particularly nice feature on Etsy--in addtion to searching by medium, subject, etc, you can search by zip code.  So you're buying on the Internet, but hey!  You're still supporting some local artist.  Just for fun, I did a search for Elizabeth's hometown of Buffalo, NY and came across this artist who makes lovely botanical greeting cards.  See?

Okay, on with our suggestions from readers:

I love these limited edition pillows from Garden Therapy, using flowers they grew themselves, photographs they took themselves, etc. etc.  These are actually printed with the same glicee printing process used for fine art prints, and do require some care, such as hand-washing.  Really lovely!

 

Here's a guy who makes silly birds out of old garden tools and then paints them with auto paint.  He's a retired tool and machine repairman; our commenter is a friend who helps him sell them. How great is that?  I just really want there to be retired guys welding stuff together in the garage and friends who help get them out into the world.

Friend of Rant Benjamin Vogt is one hell of a photographer, as demonstrated by the fine prints available in his Etsy store.  (You can also buy his books there, btw).

And speaking of Friends of Rant and the beautiful art they make, garden writer and Queen of Succulents Debra Lee Baldwin has a beautiful calendar for sale on Zazzle of her watercolors. Wow, is she ever an amazing painter!  Who knew?  (Oh, and she has other stuff--mugs, postage stamps, notecards, etc.)

 

Oh-- calendars--yes, there are more!   Our friend Carol of May Dreams Gardens has her Garden Hoe Calendar for sale on CafePress.  A hoe a month!  Ho ho ho!  And Craig at Ellis Hollow--you know those breathaking and mysterious scanned flower images, right?  Here's your 2012 version.

Here's another Etsy offering, and may I just say:  OH MY GOD THESE THINGS ARE AMAZING.  Concrete "vessels"--you decide what you're going to use them for--made with hand-rolled bits of different colored concrete.  Not painted.  And beautiful.   This one, for instance, could be a birdbath.  Or imagine them as very outdoorsy platters for your patio table.  Or who knows, maybe you can grow succulents on them.  I don't know, I just know that they are super-cool and unusual and clearly made by someone with a lot of skill and talent.  In Norman, OK. Go, Deborah Brackenbury!

Here's one I think a certain Saratoga Springs gardener would enjoy--the Organic Seed of the Month Club!  For a mere forty bucks, you are promised a monthly seed packet of some rare, heirloom, seasonally appropriate vegetable or herb.  How cool is that?

Joe Papendick makes incredibly cool metal bird feeder sculptures. Love these.

Small paintings of bees done on salvaged plywood!  In Sonoma County, CA!  Some are already sold, some have a Buy Now button--go check that out here.

And here's a handmade tool called a hoedag, which sells on the Dirt Couture site for only thirty bucks and is handmade by a guy whose dad came up with the design.  Our friend Kathy Purdy says it's her favorite tool.

Well, folks, these are just the highlights.  You can read all the responses to our original post here. Mostly, though, we hope you'll be inspired to put a little money in the pocket of an artist this year, and to give something real to someone real. Get to it.

 

Garden products from the bad old days

I'm packing up to move, so it's time to decide which of these gardening products I'll be taking with me and which deserve to be sealed tightly at the bottom of a landfill somewhere.  In my defense, I bought most of these 15-25 years ago, before I knew enough to question the safety of all this stuff, or even the need for them.  Before I'd gotten religion in the garden.

 

Here's the Dirty Two Dozen or so.  Readers, would you take any of these with you to your next garden?  (I'll venture a keep-worthy list below)

Insecticides

• Liquid Sevin
• Sevin Dust
• Ortho Systemic Insect Killer
• Spectracide Insect Control
• Ortho Orthene Systemic insect Control
• Quick-Kill Mosquito pellets
• Dragon Cygon 2-E Systemic Insecticide
• Safer Caterpillar Killer
• Bon-Neem Insecticidal Soap
• Bonide All-Seasons Spray Oil

Herbicides

• Ortho Weed-B-Gon - 3 of them
• Ortho Poison Ivy and Oak Killer - 2 cans
• Ortho Grass-B-Gone
• Ortho Triox Vegetation Killer
• Bonide stump and Vine Killer
• Various formulations of Round-up - 4 of them.  (Why all the duplicates?  One messy toolshed.)

 

Fungicides

• Ortho Funginex Rose Disease control
• Dragon Copper Fungicide
• Infuse Systemic Disease Control
• Dragon Benomyl Disease Control
• Ortho Multi-Purpose Fungicide

Fertilizers

• Ortho Rose Pride
• Miracle Gro Rose Food
• Dynamite Fertilizer

Plus 2 bottles of the unclassifiable FreezePruf and not pictured, three different deer repellent products.  And sitting in my garage is a bag of Hollytone.

Proposed Keepers

• Neem insecticidal soap - it's fairly harmless, right?  And who knows what critters await me in my next garden?
• Bonide All-Seasons Spray Oil - ditto.
• Hollytone

Pretty short list.  I'll happily donate my deer sprays to neighbors, since there aren't any where I'm going.  Ditto the Round-up, since I'm leaving behind the scourge of poison ivy - the one plant I used it on. 

Crafty People: Call for Submissions

 

As we have done in years past, we are once again putting out a call for any and all gifty handmade garden-related items that our readers make.   Such as this sweet little hand-carved snail made by California artist Sandra Healy and sold on the wonderful Dirt Couture site, which features all manner of handmade garden-ish gifts from talented artists.

So.  Tell us about your stuff!  Engage in some shameless self-promotion! We will compile them all into a future post on handmade holiday shopping opportunities.

Just post a comment here with a link to your Etsy store or website or wherever people need to go to make a purchase.  And please remember that if you post a link to your products, we are going to take that as permission to grab a photo of the product from your site to run in our upcoming post on the subject.

And handmade means handmade!  No books, please--we give plenty of love to books throughout the year.  (Well, unless they are handmade books, artist books, letterpress, that sort of thing.) And no mass-produced tools or trinkets.  The more handmade, the more one-of-a-kind, the more garden-ish, the better.

If you're an artist and you're selling calendars or notecards featuring your garden/nature art (including, of course, photography), we would like to hear about that too. 

Spread the word!  During this season of giving, let's give a little financial love to the artists and craftspeople, yes?

Bulbs—either you get them or you don’t

If $5, $10, even $25 bulbs have a future, we must be OK.

The people who came up with the Dig.Drop.Done. promotional campaign (I posted on this a  couple weeks back) are explaining on the Woodbine agency blog that they avoided showing a lot of flowers. Of course not. How obvious. Why would you want to talk about flowers in an effort to get more people to buy bulbs? See, this is why they make the big bucks, and I don’t.

Bah. It was therefore with great pleasure and relief that I recently spoke to somebody who loves bulbs even more than I do. I asked him what he thought the problem was.

Here’s what Scott Kunst, owner of Old House Gardens, my favorite heirloom bulb company, had to say about the faltering market for bulbs: “One of the things I like about gardening is that it teaches you patience and reminds you of the joys of anticipation. When I was a beginning gardener I didn’t want to wait, but now the waiting is really a pleasure. For me, in my life, there is enormous pleasure and sustenance in thinking about bulbs all winter long and anticipating them. The industry is worried that the culture is evolving to be more and more impatient. The big sellers say everybody wants something you bring home and plop in the ground and it’s already big and blooming.”

OHG is the only place that carries Erlicheer, my favorite forcing daff. Unlike ordinary paperwhites, it needs a real chilling period, though brief. OK, I am reminded via comment and tweet that Brent & Becky's also carries this. They list it under doubles,which is why I hadn't noticed; I always look at their tazetta and forcing categories. For me, this is a forcer.

It’s funny, because the fact that they came as little brown balls was what I really loved about bulbs when I first started planting them. It seemed crazy. Maybe they would come up and maybe they wouldn’t; that seemed cool, somehow.

Kunst agrees with all the stuff we’ve been hearing in surveys for years now: “Most gardeners are not like you and me. They don’t read about it, and they don’t know the names. This promotion is saying bulbs aren’t a lot of work and that this is easy.”

Well. I hope the campaign helps bulbs. It is not speaking to the market reached by Old House Gardens—more-or-less dedicated gardeners who want the bulbs you’ll never see in a Lowes or Home Depot display. This year, Kunst is excited about the “broken” tulip Insulinde (at top), which he was able to get in enough quantity that the average gardener can buy them for $4.50 apiece. Still pricey, but OHG had already sold more than half of them when we spoke and they fully expect to sell out. Authentic broken tulips are caused by a virus—Insulinde belongs to the Bijbloemens color group. It changes from ivory feathered with rose to what you see here (according to the OHG website).

“I really do think gardening is a very inexpensive luxury,” Kunst remarked toward the end of our talk. It is. A $700 pair of designer shoes would set me back financially for some time, and I might wear them twice. That much spent on bulbs will keep me busy planning, digging, potting—i.e., involved—for months, with a big pay-off at the end.  That’s why marketing bulbs like fashion makes no sense to me. It leaves out the process—the best part.

Whatever happens with the DDD project, I am comforted by the fact that companies like OHG can still flourish. It means there will always be great bulbs available for my demo, the one the marketers take for granted.

Surveys and their strange results

No wonder everyone loves this plant. Purple is #1.

In Greenhouse Management, a gardening trade bulletin I get via email, the September cover story is about who gardening consumers are and what we want. I use the terms “we” advisedly, because with most surveys of this nature I always end thinking “Who are these people?”

Not that all the results were that unexpected. Conducted by Ball Horticultural Co. and Proven Winners, the surveys were aimed at average garden consumers. 

How old is the average gardener? Most range between 35-55 (67%), with the largest percentage (26%) in the 45-55 range. No surprise there. There was a tiny uptick in ages 25-34, who went from 14 to 17%. Maybe food growing accounts for that.

Women make up 93% of PW’s customer base. No surprise, but kind of disappointingly predictable.

Most people (41%) said they were weekend gardeners, with 13% claiming “avid,” and 12% “new.”

There were two results that did surprise me. According to the Ball survey, 73% of vegetable and herb gardeners purchase them as plants. Really? A lot of edibles aren’t even available as plants, so this did seem strange. And the top plant color is purple. See, I would have thought pink. (Though personally, I like white and yellow.)

Finally—as was reported before all this—a new National Gardening Association survey shows that considerably fewer households participate in gardening now than they did in 2005, 11% fewer (with the decrease including the couple years before the recession hit). You have to figure that if even the NGA has to report a decrease, things must be bad.

Oh well. Who are these people anyway?

Please tell me this is a joke

If it isn’t, the ad agency behind this bulb promotion must think women gardeners are gullible to the point of drooling idiocy.

Welcome to Dig. Drop. Done. Where women come in 3 sizes: cocktail-swilling sex kitten, cupcake-baking mom, and attention-starved, curler-wearing golf widow. Each of the characters has her own wardrobe, props, and videos. I hope the actresses who played them were paid well. They’re quite bad, but even so, hard to see how anyone could say this crap convincingly. Here are some of their lines:

I’m realizing it’s an opportunity for me to explore who I am and try new things ... bulb-wise and life-wise.

I  garden when I have time and know a little about bulbs, but I'm hardly an expert. Honestly, between the kids, the house, the dog and a part-time job, my life is pretty crazy.

I'm just getting started gardening and bulbs are a great way to dig in without chipping a nail.

This promotion is part of a $6 million-plus campaign put together by the Dutch bulb industry; I reported on it in February, when it was announced. It was supposed to be a “Got Milk”-level rebranding. Bulb sales must be way, way worse than I ever imagined, because this reeks of desperation. “Got Milk” was simple, evocative, and fun. Dig.Drop.Done. takes an easily understood product, and—in an awkward and confusing welter—both inflates and trivializes it. Bulbs are neither as big nor as small as this campaign makes them. The audience for this is supposed to relate to bulbs on “a deeper level,” but how? Choosing the same color tulips as your lapdog’s outfit is one suggestion.

A representative from Woodbine, the agency behind D.D.D. (not a bad slogan, really) is quoted in Garden Center magazine as saying,“We know that you cannot talk to consumers as if they are one-dimensional.”  Right.  If there is such a thing as zero-dimensional, they have surely succeeded in creating it with the “Ladies.”

Once you’ve gotten past the amazingly vapid “Ladies” and their silly videos, there is actually plenty of decent information on this website, much of it aimed at how to protect bulb plantings from marauding animals, which is correctly identified as a major reason gardeners give up on bulbs. There are also good tips on container plantings—I agree that bulbs are often overlooked as excellent in big pots. But I only looked because I thought I should; the overall conceit of the website is so insultingly ridiculous that I’ll never visit it again. Anyway, there are plenty of great books—like Anna Pavord’s Bulb—that have all this and much, much more.

Many of you will say I’m swatting a fly with a sledgehammer here—or that it's not even worth a rant. PR and marketing is what it is, and all that. But once having looked at this, it was impossible not to comment.

And one does wonder what else these companies could have done with the six million. I would have been happy with a few new tulips.

Speaking of Tomatoes...

I am not a fan of plastic tomato supports, and this proves the point.  I was sent this to try out a few years ago, and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the company that makes it.  Anyway, I think I did give it a try the year it arrives, but given how tomatoes tend to fail in my climate, it didn't get much of a workout.  So I got it out in hopes of using it to support this year's tomatoes--and look what happened.  One firm shove into the soil (not into rock, just into firm soil) and it broke.

So much for that.  What are you people using for tomato supports?

The garden center industry lost a giant

I'm saddened beyond words to report that Don Riddle, founder of Homestead Gardens and a revered leader of the garden center industry, died this week at the too-young age of 63.  Here's my collection of remembrances about Don on the Homestead blog. (There you'll see references to winning both Retailer of the Year designation and the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award in the industry.)

Homestead was, I believe, the first garden center to hire a gardenblogger - almost two years ago now - thanks to its smart director of marketing, and Don's support for the idea.  Every single time I saw Don he thanked me for my help, so I know first-hand that the many reports of his kindness and generosity appearing throughout the industry and in the Maryland media are sincere.

Cheerleading for lilium

These L. Robina (oriental/trumpet) were bred by Arie Peterse for their buds as well as their flowers.

For years I have been wondering why more gardeners I knew did not grow lilium. Apparently, I’m not alone. A couple weeks ago, an electronic press packet representing a big lilium promotion by Netherland Bulb arrived in the Rant mailbox (and some of yours as well, I am sure).  

It is true that many gardeners have still not gotten past Stargazers—in fact, a local florist I know who generally has a nice selection of Oriental lilies tends to call them all Stargazers no matter what they are. It’s also true that some of my Garden Walk visitors still look at my lilies in amazement and ask if they need to be overwintered inside. So maybe a new round of lilium education is called for.

And there’s news! Those of us who have learned to embrace orienpets will now need to figure out a whole new alphabet soup of hybrids which culminate in a new LAOT hybrid—a four way cross between Longiflorum, Asiatic, Oriental and Trumpet. Lilies are being bred to have different colors, subtler fragrances, more up-facing blooms, and—as you see above—brightly colored buds.

Which is all very well. I ordered and planted some of the new OTs myself this year. But I wonder if it is the lack of new hybrids that stops many gardeners from adding more lilies. There are other issues with lilies—like their general need for staking (Asiatics need it less), thanks to their height and heavy flowers. The blooms and scent have to be worth it for the gardener—placing them against or among equally tall camouflaging plants helps.

It also seems a shame that promoters are not reminding gardeners about the really foolproof lilies, the ones that will put up with partial shade, bad drainage, and general incompetence to persevere, bloom, and return year after year. These are the lilies I depend on, and I’m guessing none of them will be the subject of special promotions:

L. martagon. My June lily. This never needs staking, and has interesting foliage, unusual in a lilium.

L. henryi. Wild, tall, and with goofy orange bumps.

L. Scheherazade. Tree-trunk –like stalks and stately long-lasting flowers.

 

L. auratum. Also known as Gold Band. I sometimes have problems finding this, but there are some hybrids that must be related to it (like Amazing, above).

L. Casa Blanca. Always fabulous.

I can easily envision limiting myself to just those five. Ha.