Garden Rant

Manchester, UK to Turn its Parks into Produce

I LOVE this - Manchester's plan to plant fruit trees, herbs, and veg patches in the city's 135 public parks, plus bringing in beehives to pollinate all that action.  And all the produce will be free for the picking. They're hoping to be known as "Britain's greenest city."  You know, along with the home of the United.

Great quote:  "These are public areas and there is no reason why people shouldn't be able to help themselves to the produce grown."

Now I notice they're counting on volunteers to make the veg and herb part work, and I've seen hopes like that dashed a time or two in my part of the world, but I hope those volunteers materialize because if this 3-year pilot succeeds, it could be an awesome example for urban public lands everywhere.

Here's the story, thanks to Tai-Haku. Photo by Marko_K.

Weigh in on the "National Flower" Debate

It started with Burpee owner George Ball declaring that "The Rose Blows", and campaigning to have the sunflower declared our national flower instead.  Then Judy Lowe took issue with Ball's description of the U.S. as "botanically barren." (Yeah, I wondered about that myself.)  And Tom Alexander added to the story this tidbit: seed-growers lobbied for marigolds but narrowly last to the rose back in the '80s when the flower-naming took place.  Veddy interesting.

So here's my contribution to the debate:  Yes, lots of roses DO blow and I can't imagine growing the sickly ones.  So if we want a plant that's always easy to grow, I nominate  a flower just as cheerful as the sunflower but far more garden-sized - the rudbeckia species, especially the medium-sized Black-eyed Susan.  Not coincidentally, Maryland's state flower.  And not usually grown from seed - sorry, George!

Things I've Learned in the Last Month

Ah, the crazy stories of wicked plants you people have told me in the last month as I've been traveling from town to town.  Here's just some of the useful information I feel compelled to share:

Euphorbias can blind you. This should be an obvious one. Anybody who grows euphorbias in the garden knows that they produce an irritating milky-white sap and should be handled with care. What I did not know about, however, was the dreaded Euphorbia Splatter. Not one person, but two told me that they had been out pruning their euphorbias when some of that nasty sap flew into their eye (or, in one case, seemed to simply vaporize in the heat and send its stinging vapor death rays straight up), causing horrible pain and long-term eye damage.

Seriously. Long-term damage. One woman told me that her eyesight has still not recovered, a year later.

Both of them told me that they waited too long to even go inside and wash their eyes; that doing the stand-under-the-shower-for-a-long-time routine helped a little but not much; and that they now wished they had dropped everything and run off to a doctor or clinic where they could have gotten a professional eye-washing.

So. Remember that. Maybe garden with sunglasses, I don’t know.

Rose thorns can give you a disgusting disease. Three people told me their tales of woe regarding ‘rose thorn disease,’ otherwise known as sporotrichosis. It’s caused by a fungus found on rose bushes, and a deep puncture wound with a rose thorn can introduce it into your bloodstream, where you will enjoy such symptoms as disgusting lesions, infections of the joints and nervous system, and other such horrors. Treatment is difficult. One guy I met spent a week in the hospital and still wasn’t totally recovered.

And once again: their regrets? Failure to seek immediate medical attention. They did what I do in the garden: they toughed it out. They yanked the thorn out, wiped the blood off with their muddy sleeve, and kept gardening. If only they had given themselves a little simple first aid, these people told me. Just gone inside for a minute, really cleaned up that little cut, maybe used a little ointment, put a good bandage on it—maybe that would have made a difference.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Don’t take my word for it. I didn’t even know about this disease until about two weeks ago. But I did learn that it’s also found in sphagnum moss and hay, and it can be inhaled as well, although that’s rare.

Protective gear is advised. The CDC even says to avoid skin contact with sphagnum moss entirely.

I know—now they tell us! Well, that’s why I’m passing all this on.

Children really do eat deadly berries. People always act like I’m overreacting when I suggest yanking out plants that might be tempting to pets or children too small to listen to reason. So I submit this to you: A nurseryman in the Northwest told me that he came home one day and his wife calmly told him that their toddler had eaten every berry off their daphne bush. Did he think that was all right?

All right? Hell, no, it was not all right! Daphne is very poisonous. Only a few berries could kill a child. The little girl was made to throw up, a great deal of unpleasantness ensued, hospitalization was involved, and she lived. A happy ending, but still. What a nightmare.

Brugmansias can make you fall in love with your wife all over again.Speaking of happy endings, here’s a story that’s terrifying to no one but me, who had to hear it live on public radio and try to muster a response. A guy called in and told the listening audience that, while on a road trip, he and his wife bought a brugmansia (angel’s trumpet) and had it in the back seat of their car for a few days as they went from state to state. One day in bloomed, filling the car with its lemony-sweet fragrance.

“And that night,” the man said, with obvious astonishment in his voice, “My wife and I made love! Which is not that unusual, but you know, it had been a long day, we’re just in some motel, but we thought, OK, that was nice.”

(Try to imagine me in the radio studio, trying not to make eye contact with the host.)

Then he says, “And in the morning we woke up and—again! A second time! OK, that’s a little unusual, but—you know—great!”

So they continue their drive. The brugmansia continues to perfume the car. I continue to cringe and avoid eye contact with the host. Where is this going?

You guessed it. “And that night,” he said, “We get to our next motel, check in, and you know what? Again! The next morning? Again!”

He could hardly believe his good fortune. Eventually we reached the end of the story, or maybe he and his wife reached the end of the trip. Regardless, his question, after all that, was, “Is brugmansia an aphrodisiac?”

Don’t ask me. I now officially know more about brugmansia than I ever wanted to know. I ducked the question and was relieved to see that we were finally out of time.

When I left the radio station, the host said, “I’d love to have you on again sometime.”

“Again!” I said, and we both cracked up.

“Again!” he shouted, as I got on the elevator.

And then I went in search of a bar that would be willing to write up my receipt as bridge tolls or parking fees so I could run it through the expense account. Just another day on the book tour.

Smith & Hawken is Dead. Long Live Smith & Hawken.

Guest Rant by Maureen Decombe, a/k/a Plantanista, following Scotts' announcement that it's closing all 56 Smith & Hawken stores by the end of 2009.

A loving homage to the beauty of functional, well made garden tools, the Smith & Hawken catalog came into my hands some time in the mid 80s. Soon after that, the long-shanked English Garden Spade made its way to my front porch. Unpacking the tool was a ritual during which I began to feel like a real gardener, one who cared enough to invest in a great quality tool that would last my lifetime. Over twenty years later, and I still use it at least once a week.

Though I’ve not cared for the extra-long wooden shaft as I should have, it feels as if a permanent groove has formed between my fingers and the warm, solid D-handle. The hand-forged blade has sliced soil from the east to the west coast, and in a full-circle irony, eventually returned to Palo Alto, the town in which Smith & Hawken grew from an order-fulfillment garage to become a garden lifestyle empire.

The BBG veg garden

Kids harvesting lunch in Brooklyn. Love it.

The Nuffield Report

In which the lovely and charming Heather Gorringe of Wiggly Wigglers wins an impressive-sounding Nuffield Award and travels all the way to America to interview gardeners and farmers who are using social media to--well--do whatever it is we all do here on the interwebs.

Her report is here. It's entertaining and bursting with personality, just like Heather.  Lots of helpful tips,ideas, and insights, not to mention observations of American life (visiting Starbucks without getting out of your car!)  Check it out.

Sugar Casters

By far the cheeriest thing happening in my soggy vegetable garden are these tall, gorgeous, and super-double self-seeded papaver somniferum.

Poppies are much easier to start in the open field of a vegetable garden than among the shadows of a perennial garden. The lore in my part of the world says to throw the seed out onto the snow in early spring. I find that when I order poppy seed, I get such a stingy few in the package, that it makes sense to sow it out in the open, where I can babysit the seedlings.

Once you do get poppies, however, you will have them forever, because each flower produces a ton of seed and disperses it with one of nature's more ingenious pieces of engineering. The big pods are like a salt shaker or sugar caster, with a ring of neat little openings below the flat top, out of which seed flies every time the pod blows in the wind or is brushed against by a gardener.

Despite the density with which poppies will produce seedlings, the seedlings have to be ruthlessly thinned if you want them to look like anything. Otherwise, you will get pathetic, tiny flowers at ankle height. Given enough room, on the other hand, each plant can grow waist high, with wonderful blue foliage and incredibly seductive fat buds.

As to the legality of this display, from which opium could in theory be produced, I've never attempted to stay current with it. Twelve years ago Michael Pollan wrote a brilliant essay on the subject, available at the link. This is the highest form of garden writing--the kind that happens to be talking about the culture while it talks about plants.

Ten Things to Hate About This Rainy Summer In the Northeast

10. It's turning near-farmers into frou-frou ornamentalists. My perennials, in previous years referred to as "those stupid weeds," are all as big as buses with this steady moisture and as elegant as anything in a Penelope Hobhouse book. A peculiar and dangerous fascination is ensuing.
9. It's ruining all survivalist fantasies. My feeling about the post-peak-oil/global warming apocalypse has generally been, bring it on. Here on Quarry Road in Salem, NY, me and the doughty neighbors are prepared to be extremely gastronomical about the collapse of civilization. But that was before I realized that climate change might mean increased precipitation in the Northeast--and NO MEDITERRANEAN VEGETABLES! Now, I can see that in a future with no roasted tomatoes, the cowardly way out chosen by the wife in Cormac McCarthy's The Road might be the only option for me.
8. While potatoes like the water, they rot in the ground if you leave them too long in the fall. So I discovered in last year's super-wet summer.
7. Poor germination is the rule.
6. The strawberries taste like crap.
5. On the cucurbit front, everything is sulking except for the Dill's Atlantic Giant pumpkin. Another ridiculous ornamental the gardener plants only under pressure from the short people in her life.
4. The okra appears to be completely inert.  It has not grown an inch in a month.
3. Yet the pea plants are burning up in their accustomed July way nonetheless.  Whatever are we going to eat if it doesn't stop?
2. The weeds are ceaseless. In a normal July, they are panting and saying "Uncle" by now.
1. No pesto in sight. Now, we are talking a real survival issue! The only truly great 10-minute meal!  Here's how I do it: Rummage up a handful of nuts. Pine nuts are traditional, but walnuts are fine and I've even used pecans in a pinch.  Roast in a hot oven until they are slightly brown and the bitterness is gone. Throw into a blender with raw garlic, two cloves if you are cooking for a six-year-old, five if you are cooking for my husband. Add a colander's worth of basil leaves, a teaspoon of sea salt or maybe more, and enough good olive oil to blend this easily.  Pour over a pound of pasta. Grate a nice pecorino romano over it. Be happy. I would be if only there were enough sun for the basil to grow.

Weird scenes at the garden center

 

Jackie wins! Thanks for playing, everybody, but most of all, thanks for your often hilarious and provocative comments.

Just for fun, here are some of the strange or not-so-strange things people mentioned having seen at garden centers and nurseries.

Air plants (tillandsias) glued (ouch) to plastic fairies. I can’t even imagine what that looks like. Coincidentally, our randomly chosen winner Jackie mentioned those.

Booze. A lot of places have little wine bars and cafés. I can kind of get behind that. A glass of wine while shopping for plants? Sure.

Llama fibers (from Deborah). I still don’t understand that one.

Reading Dirt mentioned life-size elk and lion sculptures (made of iron!).

Common Weeder talks about miniature John Deere equipment for kids. That may not be strange to many of you, but I’ve never heard of it.  I looked for it on the web, though, and found a JOHN DEERE BARBIE. Check out her boots! I loved all the little mini-tractors and stuff, too.

Kat talks about perfume (they have that at my favorite nursery actually, but it also has great plants), while LauraBee has seen 25k oriental rugs. Marie found a rug made out of stones. 

Many commenters mentioned horribly tacky holiday décor, from fake trees with fake spiders hanging from them to Easter eggs the size of bowling balls.

Katxena found textured wallpaper, Elizabeth could do without the hand-painted silk scarves and PlantingOaks wonders why, why, why the decorative table lamps.

I think the saddest things, even sadder than the dead plants (which we’ve all seen) are the plastic ones.

Oh, and on moving merchandise. Yes, we understand seasonal changes and moving stuff to pique the interest. What we don’t get is hiding or discontinuing basic garden supplies—which is what started this whole rant.

Again, thanks, and may your next trip to the garden center be enjoyable, whether you find what you are looking for or not.

I can’t imagine …

... how I would feel if someone came by in the middle of the night and cut down my garden. That’s what happened to a gardener in Shreveport, Louisiana, who was growing vegetables on the strip between sidewalk and road in front of his house.

And here’s more easeway news, though in Minnesota they call it the boulevard. HT Peter Hoh for drawing my attention to this cute dino/hosta landscape (detail above) in the boulevard spot. It’s a neighborhood destination.

 Who knew that such a small patch of land could generate such rage and creativity?

If I wanted stuffed animals I would go to Toys ‘R’ Us

 

Or I would visit a small, locally-owned toy boutique. Regardless, I can assure you, I would not be looking for them at my local nursery.

Nonetheless, that’s what I found the other day, right where they always used to have the bamboo stakes. Little furry birds that make authentic noises. I asked a staffer where the stakes were and he looked at me in puzzlement. I asked another, and she looked at me in puzzlement. Finally, we unearthed an old-timer who knew where the bamboo and wire stakes were kept, way back in the corner behind the cocoa matting, sort of near where the pond supplies used to be.

It’s not just nurseries and garden centers.  Stock is moved, sent back, and replaced on a daily basis in almost every retail establishment I frequent. Entire departments are torn apart and relocated regularly. They even do it at the liquor store—what’s the point of that? The assumption is that all consumers have ADHD, unable to bear seeing the same merchandise in the same place longer than 36 hours.  I’m afraid to tell friends about a great shopping find, because I’m almost positive it won’t be there a day later.

 

 

So be it. But will there come a time when I have to mail order such boring garden necessities as stakes, ties, and cheap terra cotta, while resin fairies, wind chimes, and stones inscribed with profound messages can still be had at my local garden center? Look, I know that stores need to carry what sells. But when the basics are relegated to obscure corners, it’s only a matter of time before they disappear altogether. People may need them, but sometimes it takes good customer service to explain to customers exactly what they need and why.  Maybe a new generation of gardeners will assume that oriental lilies were just destined to lie on the ground.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen for sale in your garden center?  I will draw from the responses and the winner will receive the eminently practical Eleanor Perenyi’s Green Thoughts—a brand new edition from Modern Library. Contest ends tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern.

Eat Tomatoes When Ripe

Spotted on the label for a tomato plant at Safeway. Good to know.

Vegetables are Amazing~! Update from a Newbie

First and foremost, growing vegetables is really, really interesting, and FUN.  (Who knew?  Oh, yeah, almost all of you.)  Once it warmed up these babies grew like crazy, like this humongous cucumber that appeared out of nowhere and was especially surprising because the label said "squash".

And my experiment in growing them in containers on my deck has raised the question of how to support these big boys.  It would be great if the containers came with suggestions about what types of plants to grow in them and what size tomato cages (or other supports) to use. 

Take these tomatoes, for instance.  There are two plants here, both labeled as "patio" size, so I thought they'd stay compact, but noooo.  So the 4-foot-tall cages are practically useless. If the privacy screen hadn't been there to tie the plants to, the whole shebang would be flopping in the wind.

Next, what's wrong with this eggplant?  Squirrel or insect damage?  

And how about these variegated eggplants - cool, huh?  But are they full-size and ready for harvesting?

And for any of these, are you supposed to prune away any of the extra foliage, especially when it's shading the produce? (Bear with me, experienced veg-growers.)  I read up a bit on pruning tomatoes and honestly, it didn't make any sense to me.

Finally, here's another edible that seemed to appear overnight.  So despite my ignorance and some logistical challenges, I'm starting to think Michele's Owens is right - that this stuff is damn easy to grow.

Catch Amy and the Professors in Parade

Here's Amy's how-to turn in America's Sunday magazine, called "Get a Beautiful Garden Now".  It's full of tips and myth-busters from two of our favorite hort profs - Jeff Gillman and Linda Chalker-Scott.  Now let's discuss among ourselves.

- A gardening friend actually cornered me at the July 4th Parade to express her shock that the article recommends up to 6 inches of coarse mulch around vegetables, so I promised to ask about the research behind that one.

- Protecting young fruit from pests by stapling plastic bags or hosiery around each one is easy?

- And Amy, serious kudos to whoever's handling publicity for your book!

Why all the attacks on the White House Garden?

If you missed the big gardening news this week, here's the summary version:

After the not-surprising attacks on the organic nature of the garden from the lobby group for Big Chem, this latest attack came curiously from the left.  It started with a story in Mother Jones claiming that the garden, with its 93 parts per million of lead, is "contaminated", supposedly due to the composted sewage applied to the land during the Clinton years.   

Then a Huffington Post writer took that ball and ran with it: The Obama Organic Family Garden: Swimming in Sludge? Here's a quote [bold added]: "Recently the National Park Service discovered that the White House lawn, where the garden was planted, contains highly elevated levels of lead -- 93 parts per million. It's enough lead for anyone planning to have children pick vegetables in that garden or eat produce from it to reconsider their plans: lead is highly toxic to children's developing organs and brain functions -- however, it's below the 400 ppm the EPA suggests is a threat to human health."

First, the 93 ppm finding was known by the Park Service months ago and made public back in March when the garden was announced.  And who says 93 ppm is enough to stop people with children from growing food in it?

But to the rescue of good science and journalism is my favorite DC food blogger, Eddie Gehman Kohan, author of Obama Foodoramama.  She got the old-fashioned notion of contacting soil scientists - 3 of them - and their responses are detailed in her post:  The Only Thing Toxic about the White House Kitchen Garden is the Rumors: Scientists Correct the Record on Contamination".  There she calls the attack "the latest from the pooposphere of poor fact checking on Huffington Post".  And she finds it interesting that "some of the people who are most likely to take media stabs at the White House Kitchen Garden are those who profess themselves to be champions of environmental stewardship and of a food system that's local, sustainable, and organic," citing the author of the MoJo story in particular.

And she goes on to indict lots of bloggers:  "Many other food and gardening blogs posted about the Mother Jones sludge/lead contamination, too, without fact checking. Even very reputable ones."  Okay, who was it?

Then Eddie responded on HuffPost itself with this takedown.

And here's a point that bears repeating:

The other bizarre element to the whole bashing thing is that anyone who thinks the White House left a single stone unturned in planning the garden is...what's the most delicate, diplomatic, term? Oh yeah, silly. The White House was well aware that the first food garden planted on the campus since WWII was going to be big news. Of course all details were accounted for. Of course appropriate testing was conducted. The White House has the finest minds in America, experts in every field, available for consultation. It's beyond silly to imagine that the garden wasn't thoroughly "vetted."

That's exactly my impression of the garden gang at the White House (see earlier post about how smart the whole project is).

Oh, and here's the link to the Mother Jones story.  When I tried it, an error message came up saying due to a fire, the server was down, but check back for news of Sarah Palin and "MoJo's scoop that the White House garden has been poisoned by sewage sludge".  Still, after all the debunking!

SHOUT-OUT TO A SUPERBLOGGER
This is yet another example of bloggers getting it right after mainstream or print media get it wrong.  In this case, Eddie's a career food policy writer and consultant, so it's no wonder she knows a thing or two.  [Photo of Eddie on the "Today Show".]  And get this - she got herself invited to the White House Easter Egg Roll - by continuously bugging the Press Office - AND the White House Correspondent's Dinner. I'm so jealous.

MORE ATTACKS
In a close reading of "ObFo", I see that Politico and the Drudge Report have also "bashed" the "WHKG".  It's just more proof that gardening's (finally) a hot topic, so let's enjoy it! 

Not Much Lead in White House Garden

But still somehow newsworthy. Little bit of lead never hurt anybody, right?  Whatever's in the soil, that garden is looking pretty durn good.

Speaking of Lists

I just found out about WeFollow, a service that lets you find other Twitter users who share your interests.  Here's their list of gardening Twitter users; anyone can add themselves to the list. I don't know any of these top gardening Twitterers--I'm off to check it out.

The Indie Gardening & Nature Bestsellers

I missed this list when it came out, but a copy arrived from my publisher the other day.  Of course, I've got a vested interest in the contents of such a list right now, but it's also interesting in a broader sense.  So what does the Indie Gardening list say about gardeners who shop at independent bookstores?

• Narrative.  We've got your Kingsolver, your Pollan, your Wild Trees by Richard Preston (about redwood trees and the people who study them), a cool new book of botanical history called The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf, and Our Life in Gardens by Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd.
• Local.  It's all local, isn't it?  Here's the Sunset Western Garden Book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, and Audubon's guide to eastern trees, all of which have to be doing well in their own regions to make a national list.
• Veggies.  Almost half of the books on the list concern themselves with growing food.

I went through the list and realized that I own or have read 17 books on the list.  Has anyone got me beat?

A Tale of Missoula Chickens