Garden Rant

Trashing Eden

Four years ago, I had the incredible experience of visiting Detroit to report on a gardening movement there for O, The Oprah Magazine.  If you haven't been to Detroit, you might not understand your own country very well.

I met a lot of amazing people, but the most amazing might have been Asenath Andrews, the mordant, funny, and incredibly kind principal of Catherine Ferguson Academy, a unique public school for teenaged mothers and their kids. This is a serious place for students who are seriously committed to their education despite enormous obstacles. Some of the girls have to wake up before dawn and travel for hours on buses with their babies every day just to get there, but they do it.  And college acceptance is a condition of graduation.

What made the place especially wonderful to me was the farm outside the school doors--an orchard, an enormous vegetable garden, goats, chickens, a horse--a place where both teenagers and their babies can experience a little beauty in the midst of a devastated city and learn about life.

Catherine Ferguson is now slated for closure, a decision made by an emergency manager appointed by the governor of Michigan.  The students are protesting and being arrested for it.

But the issues here are bigger than just a wonderful school closing. Here is Rachael Maddow's rather amazing report on it all:

Gardens can be artful, but are they art?

Here's my newest review for the Kirkus Blogger Network, of a book I could hardly resist - as a long-time fan of James van Sweden's gardens and Tom Christopher's writing.   Also Kirkus-related, see Amy's new piece about "Tropical Plant Lust."

If there’s one landscape architect on the radar screens of American gardeners, it’s probably James van Sweden. His firm famously pioneered the New American Garden style in the '80s, and it’s still winning new fans for its low-maintenance, naturalistic sweeps of color and little or no use of lawn. Helping to spread his influence both here and abroad are his seven widely admired books, including the just-released Artful Garden, with horticulturalist Tom Christopher.

Van Sweden is a natural to tackle the subject of the juncture of gardening and art, having first approached landscapes by painting them as a high schooler in Michigan. By the time he studied architecture in college he was already collecting art. That was followed by three years of total immersion in the Dutch art scene while working as a city planner in Delft. Later, in his 40s, he studied ballet at the Washington School of Ballet, and he’s long been a major opera buff. 

OK we get it—he’s ridiculously qualified to write this book.

Plus, he seems to know everybody, so he can show us some of the world’s most artful gardens and interview some of the world’s best artists.  (“So Yo-Yo, tell us how your cello-playing is expressed in your garden,” I imagine the conversation going.)  He can take us along on a visit to Brazilian design superstar Roberto Burle Marx, whose gardens use tropical plants in huge, bold and abstract ways that most of us marvel at but could never, ever replicate.

More super-artful gardens in the book are those of painter Robert Dash on Long Island and the California garden of the late landscape architect Lawrence Halperin and his dancer wife, Anna.  Halperin is famous for many designs, but the one I’m most familiar with is the FDR Memorial in D.C., a favorite with locals and a radical departure from the grand but plant-free monuments we’re used to.  Van Sweden told me that Halperin’s own garden on the edge of the Pacific is very natural yet very dramatic. I just bet.

Then there’s Van Sweden’s personal garden on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, which he supposedly wanted to be an “ugly garden” of native plants that wouldn’t compete with views of the water.  But I’ve seen the garden, and it’s stunning, so does he think he succeeded in his plan?  “I think it’s beautiful,” he admits. And so, I imagine, does any lover of beauty or nature.

But ARE gardens art?

Clearly there are artful gardens, but do we really think of gardening as an art form? Not in this country, with our crazy obsession over lawns, but most of us can cite some pretty artsy examples in Europe—like Monet’s Giverny or Gertrude Jekyll’s White Garden, with its impressionistic use of color (no surprise, since Jekyll started out as a painter). But van Sweden makes the case that the principles of art—like composition, rhythm and pattern—are used in designing outdoor spaces, which is no doubt true of the best ones.  Most amateurs, like myself, create gardens using exactly none of those principles, and I’m not sure that this book will change that one iota. But The Artful Garden, jam-packed with artful ideas and inspiring photographs, encourages us to give more expression to our creativity in the garden, and that’s music to this gardener’s ears.  

Photos of the van Sweden garden at Ferry Cove on the Chesapeake Bay by Susan Harris.

One Worm, Free to a Good Home

This comes to us from David Perry, an amazing photographer of gardens and other assorted stuff (see his photographs and a project he's working on with Debra Prinzing on sustainable cut flowers here)

and--well--this is what David does in his spare time.  We pass it on to you.

 

 

Honey Badger--Ewwww, That's Nasty!

Best. Nature. Video. Ever.  (Warning:  NSFW due to use of run-of-the-mill four-letter words.)

 

How to inspire nongardeners of a certain age

 

Over on my Boomer blog I'm experimenting with the occasional post about "Why I garden," in hopes of inspiring others to join us in our dirty endeavors.  The plan is to post a few favorite photos from my garden for each season, but if they don't appeal to someone then I don't know what else to say.

But maybe there IS another approach, and maybe you all have some ideas? 

This photo is the view of the back garden from the basement door, with the garage on the left.  Flowering in the distance are dogwoods and doublefile viburnums and in the foreground, Celandine poppies.

What's New in the Master Gardener World?

Seems like most news about Extension Services and their Master Gardener programs is about budgets being slashed and programs being shut down altogether.  But in other news, Master Gardener programs are going online, going digital, and maybe doing more with less.  Please weigh in with more examples that you know of, and discuss the implications (like you always do).

Online training

From Fresh Dirt, we learn that online training is the new big thing, and Oregon's is "hugely popular".  No surprise - it seems like a great answer to the problem of daytime training limiting Master Gardener programs to retirees only. Washington alternates traditional local training in each county with online study, with the online sessions being taught by "the best faculty in the business," according to Fresh Dirt.  That implies that online training may solve another often-reported problem with Master Gardener - low-quality teaching.  More examples of online training are in Illinois, Texas and one county in Virginia.

Digital textbooks

Again, Washington State has stepped up to offer trainees the chance to save money by purchasing a CD of the textbook for $25, a big savings over the print version - $125!  (Ridiculous, but aren't all textbooks priced ridiculously?)

The No-Volunteer Option

Oregon now offers trainees the option to pay $100 more for the training (for a total of $490) and become a certified Master Gardener without ever having to do time as a volunteer.  In my casual review of state programs this option appeared surprisingly often. 

Blogs and websites

There's a national Master Gardener blog - anybody reading it?  Its blogroll of state Master Gardener blogs reveals just six but there may be many more because Maryland's wonderful blog isn't there.  It's called Grow It Eat It because it's all about growing food.

Master Gardeners and the National Arboretum

More news may be in the works, if gossip about the National Arboretum's new director proves to be correct.  Director Colien Hefferan formerly administered Cooperative Extension Services nationally at the USDA, and I'm hearing that she may create a national center or resource at the Arb for Master Gardeners everywhere. 

Meanwhile, in the Nation's Capital

Long-time readers may remember that back in 2007 I supposedly blew the whistle on the DC Master Gardener program, so it's time for an update.  Community service credits are still being given for volunteering in private gardens, but now only half the required credits can be gotten that way - and that's the single improvement I've heard about in this sorry excuse for a Master Gardener program.  DC's Master Gardeners still aren't allowed to organize and create projects, and it's the only website-free program in the U.S. (Here's the full list by state.) The same people are in the same jobs.  And there's so much need for their services!  It's really sad.

Amy on Fresh Air

In Buffalo she is on the NPR talk show right now! talking about Wicked Bugs, of course. Hear her talk to reporter Dave Davies about bat bugs, the world's largest hornet, and more. Check your local NPR station's programming lineup, or you can wait for the audio to be available later today or tomorrow.

Thanks to Dan Hinkley, Tony Avent, …

… and an extensive  roster of hellebore breeders, including Ernie and Marietta O'Byrne, Joseph Heuger, Glenn Withey and Charles Price, and many others, I now have something truly distinctive to admire when hardly anything else is growing in the slowly thawing Buffalo spring. Not to mention that even the most exotic hellebores don’t seem to mind my maple-root-choked soil.

I first saw these on the back of the Wayside catalog about ten years back; I think they were offering the hybridus ‘Party Dress” strain, a Heronswood introduction, but I could be wrong, and no longer have the catalog. I do have several old Heronswood catalogs with dizzying arrays of not just hybridus but also foetidus, niger, and multifidus strains. Ten years ago I bought the plants featured on the back of the Wayside catalog and they have matured into large clumps, one with white single flowers, the other with pinkish greenish single flowers.  (I think one gets more shade than the other.)

These days I rely on Plant Delights for interesting hellebores via mail order, but increasingly I am seeing beautiful doubles and singles offered at area nurseries. The double purple/maroon varieties here are from Plant Delights. One of them is ‘Kingston Cardinal,’ a Hinkley introduction. Neither of these appears in the PDN offerings now.

I made the mistake of picking up and paging through a couple old Heronswood books just now. Never again. Not only did I see all the hellebores I never ordered, there were also 4 types of podophyllum and 6 types of hepatica. What was I thinking?! What a woodland garden I’d have if I had stocked up on all these when I could.

Oh well. The hellebores make up for it. Unlike other fleeting spring beauties, the flowers last well into June, and after that you have magnificent clumps of foliage. These plants are an amazing boon for the cold climate gardener. I couldn’t care less about orange, yellow, and lime green echinacea; just give me more hellebore strains, and I’ll plant them, as long as I have room.

Praise for HGTV - really!

On NPR's "Morning Edition", correspondent Neda Ulaby singled out Home and Garden Television (often criticized by gardeners for its vanishing G) to praise its diversity in hosts and guests.  Old, young, gay, straight, all races, mixed couples - it's true that HGTV is super-inclusive, and that's a good thing.

You can listen here, or read the transcript. 

Oh, Man, Another Reason to Feed the Kids from the Yard!

In the Well blog at the New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope reports on three studies that find that exposure in the womb to pesticides commonly used on food crops reduces babies' IQ. 

 

April is the Cruelest Month

Mache going to seed in summer 2010, getting ready for spring 2011

Early crops are really, really important.  It's been a long winter, and everybody is desperate for local greens. So desperate, as the New York Times reported this week, that ramps are being over-foraged in the Northeast, because everybody wants a taste of spring.

Early cultivated crops are important, too. I'm always relieved when in late May, I finally have big, inexhaustible patches of arugula in the garden. To me, arugula is the kick-off vegetable that promises I will be eating well for the next half a year at least.

But what am I going to do until then?  I was out the other day planting my spinach and peas--the first crops to go in, a little later than normal, but it's been cold and wet here--and I noticed how many seed packages have instructions to plant "as soon as the soil can be worked."

If you really insist on "working" the soil--as in tilling it, adding amendments, turning it over--you cannot reasonably do that in my part of the world until May, or you risk turning beautiful loam into cement by messing with it when it's wet. I know very disciplined vegetable gardeners who don't even bother going out into the garden until May, and by then, it's too late for spinach and peas.

I don't till any more, I do a sheet mulch. So to plant my peas and spinach, I try to do the minimum with a metal rake and a shovel to create a congenial planting bed.  But I do know that I'm damaging the soil even with that bit of interference.

That's why spring crops that appear on their own seem increasingly important to me.  I've been eating parsnips that wintered over for the last month. Delicious.  I've also been eating mache, which germinates in fall and then is there ready in spring as soon as the snow retreats.  My girls have discovered mache, which tastes like perfume, and have been consuming big salads of it with a nice sweet mustard and shallot dressing.

Perennials like chives are also important.  They are already standing tall and are prepared to flavor mayonnaise for trucked-in asparagus and artichokes.  The rhubarb is poking its head up and will be ready for a pie or a crisp in a week or two.  Alas, no sign yet of my own asparagus, which is so tender and delicious that I've decided to boot the rhubarb to some spot outside the garden in order to make room for 25 more plants.

I've also decided to experiment with some of the annual "plant as soon as the soil can be worked" crops like spinach and chard by tossing the seed out in fall and seeing if this gives them a jump on spring.  So far, no luck, but it's early yet. 

 

Those evil vines

Here's last week's Kirkus post. And be sure to read Susan's post today about the art of gardening.

I had been meaning to write about Allan Armitage's vines and climbers book for some time. In my small garden, sometimes the only way to go is up, so I've been a big vine fan for some time. But some of the vines I depend on are anathema to other gardeners.

Allan Armitage has a sensible attitude about aggressive climbers. It’s much like mine. If a given vine is a thug on your property, rampaging over other plants, clambering up trees, and smothering any trellis that you’ve put up to contain it, then don’t grow it. But don’t try to make it impossible for anyone else in this big and diverse country to grow it.

Like many hyper-local endeavors, gardening does not readily adapt itself to one-size-fits-all advisories, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the area of vigorous plants. Ficus, a rowdy tree that uproots California sidewalks, has to get along as a houseplant in Vermont.  Colocasia (elephant ear) is invading wetlands in Texas and Florida, but in the Northeast its bulbs are carefully overwintered so the huge exotic leaves can adorn summer patios.

This is why I love Armitage’s Vines and Climbers (Timber, 2010). As a Georgia-based plant breeder, lecturer, and garden writer, Armitage could easily have left out such cultivars as wisteria, hedera (ivy), and ampelopsis (porcelain vine), plants that gardeners throughout the U.S. consider—at the very least—overly enthusiastic.

Indeed, many Southern gardeners I know would never allow a wisteria vine on their property, regardless of its graceful and beautifully scented lavender flowers. Things are different in Buffalo, N.Y. Summer visitors to my garden gaze up at my wisteria and ask wistfully “Has it bloomed yet?” The plants are notorious for their refusal to bloom until as many as ten seasons have passed, but they are cherished when they do flower. Even in Buffalo, the vine needs to be cut back regularly, and often works best when trained to a tree-shaped form, placed well away from any structures it might overwhelm.

While wisteria has its flowers to recommend it, hedera (ivy) has no such pleasing camouflage, and has to depend on its elegant foliage. You don’t see many defenders of ivy. Yet, where I live, I can point to situations—deep shade, a tree-root-choked soil—where hedera is the only groundcover that can survive. This year I plan to experiment with some unusual variegated ivies to see if they can get through a Buffalo winter; their ruffles, white, light green or silver markings, and other unusual features would make a welcome change from faltering grass, boring pachysandra, or bare dirt. Hedera is banned in the Pacific Northwest, and loathed in most of the warmer states, but in the colder zones, it still serves a welcome purpose. Allan Armitage readily admits hedera’s powerfully aggressive properties, but when discussing his experience with planting ivy, he takes a philosophic view far removed from the hysteria I usually see whenever ivy is discussed: “I can moan about how I had to rip the plants from the trees. I can complain about the need to keep the edges of the path trimmed every year and mutter about keeping it off the azaleas and rhodies. However, that is part of gardening and for me the net positive aspects of the planting were far greater than the negative.”

Even the tolerant Armitage finds it necessary to warn his readers about ampelopsis brevipedunculata (porcelain vine)—“I recommend talking to other gardeners or extension people in your area before growing it. We don’t need another kudzu.” —even as he praises it—“walking under these rampant leafy growers in the summer is a thrill.” It’s a big mystery to me. I have grown the green and white “Elegans” cultivar of this plant for a few years and have yet to get it to the stage where anyone taller than a small dog would be able to walk under it.

Whether you prefer to say it in Latin (de gustibus non est disputandum) or in the contemporary vernacular (your mileage may vary), assume that every gardener’s experience with a certain plant will be different. This recognition is what I most appreciate about Armitage’s survey, which includes over 115 plants, many with utterly unsullied reputations. The world of vertical plants is full of beauty—and some danger.  But it would have been a boring book had he left the danger out.

More Cool Stuff from the San Francisco Show

Okay, so I'm a bit late posting this, but--here are a few more cool things from the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show:

These raised bed brackets are cool-looking, but at $140 for a set of four, they're definitely a luxury and you'd want to be pretty durn sure they were going to last. Would they hold up for season after season, as the wood expands and contracts in the weather?  That would be my question.  But they did have some nifty designs.

I thought this was a neat way to make a wall interesting.

And I LOVED the giant mosquito.  Did not get the name of this artist, but the booth was full of fabulous bug art.

 

Big letters!  I love typography in the garden.  And orange.  

Pointlessly attacking dandelions

 

Join me in analyzing a new marketing campaign that's been targeting us bloggers heavily, repeatedly,  and whose attention-getting name is Coalition to Stop Dandelions (the URL is literally Stop Dandelions.com.)

Demonizing dandelions gets our attention 

How about that dandelion-slashing graphic! And the "gulp!" at the very thought of doing anything to encourage such a dasdardly plant!  And here's another good one:  "We’re sick of dandelions and their weed masquerading as a flower."  Yeah, those treacherous plants are producing flowers just to trick us into - what, liking them?

Well indeed lots of people do, increasingly, as any gardenblogger who follows the subject of eco-gardening knows.  Cooks are concocting recipes for them, Paul Tukey at SafeLawns is one of their  biggest fans, and there's even a Facebook group Stop Killing the Dandelions. They're Pretty, which I just Liked for the hell of it.

What the campaign is selling

But this just gets weirder because the campaign isn't aimed at selling herbicides at all; its goal is to sell soil tests. And the connection (supposedly) is that only with a soil test will we choose fertilizers that feed our lawn but not the dandelions.  But how they do that I still haven't figured out.

However, the most popular fertilizers are super high in nitrogen, and while they’re formulated to green-up your lawn right away when the soil is still cool, they also yellow up lawns weeks later when the soil warms up. And they fertilize EVERYTHING, which includes weed seeds that exist in every yard.

If this doesn't make sense yet, here's more from their fertilizer facts page:

Dandelions thrive off of soils high in, you guessed it, Nitrogen, and have the ability to attack areas of your lawn that are weak or bare (e.g. insufficient root systems).

If proper nutrients are applied every six to eight weeks (which can only be understood properly through a thorough soil test analysis) then turf grass will become very healthy.

About that soil test

So, what does their $20 soil test test for?  Again the answer isn't easy to find but their "sample results" show amounts for organic matter, phosphate, potassium, % K: % Mg (whatever), calcium, pH, and sodium.

Which raises a couple of big questions.  First, the result shows a phosphate reading of 62, with the "acceptable level" shown as 16-35, which you'd think would alert the customer to stop adding phosphates, that dasdardly nutrient that's ruining our waterways.  But instead, here's what the results advise: "Phosphate level is High: Phosphate levels indicated will not hamper the effects of good turf growth."  No problem!

And the recommended product (which is the whole point of the soil test, right, that it directs users to the right fertilizers?) is "CIL Golfgreen Fall", either synthetic or organic (take your pick; they sure don't care) and after some searching I finally found out that its nutrient content is 28-3-6 - high Nitrogen! 

So here's my suggestion about soil tests:  use a university lab, like the one at U.Mass. that I used.  It costs $15 and gives more information than the Stop Dandelions test.

A coalition of the selling

As a fan of coalitions, I was curious about this new one and here's what the website tells us about it:  "The Coalition to Stop Dandelions is dedicated to educating people caring for lawns and gardens about how to make a healthy lawn grow, and how to get the right soil test information that golf courses and farms have counted on for decades." And about WHO they might be we're told: "The Coalition to Stop Dandelions is a project of A Growing Necessity," whose About Us page doesn't actually tell us.

Too bad, coz it looks like an improvement

I finally got tired of following links that don't work or when they do, don't answer the questions they're supposed to answer, but my tentative conclusion is that this product MAY lead to an improvement over what some golf courses use - fertilizers that encourage top growth and weeds, plus lots of pesticides.  "This personalized nutritional management process reduced the need for reactive based products (such as pesticides) to less than 6%....amazing reduction!"  See, that much sounds good.

More bad marketing to gardenbloggers

The Stop Dandelions campaign is a nonsensical mess that's off-putting to the very people it's targeting, but it didn't need to be.  I'll bet that a random GardenRant reader could come up with a better approach than this one, created by - no surprise here - a marketing firm with no particular expertise in this area.

Photo credit.

I’ll never admire a city dogwood again

These trees are near a former homestead that has been preserved.

Not after last week’s trip to the Great Smokies National Park and nearby Tennessee towns. Here, they are thriving at the edges of the forest, set off by Eastern hemlocks, tulip poplars, and other, much taller trees. Sure, dogwoods are not rare trees—we have plenty in WNY, including a lot of Kouzas in the city—but they have never taken my breath away as they did last week. The dogwoods around here don’t burst forth as they do farther south.

I didn’t even bother looking at the bulbs that were up when I got back home—it was daylight, but it was also snowing. (Just an ephemeral dusting, but still.) Never mind that. Check out these trilliums—grandiflorum and luteum—found along the Roaring Forks nature trail. There were also showy orchis (galearis spectabilis), cardamine, and other flowers I can’t ID from the resources I have.

Though it’s impossible to reproduce the subtle beauties one finds in a place like this in a home garden, I was struck by how we were followed by water wherever we went. Done well, water can make a garden work. The sound provides a (to me) necessary background.

In my region we generally think of trillium as the first indigenous flower of spring. Which is yours?

(Here's the showy orchis--living up to its name.)

We Heart RadioGarden, and You Should, Too

We've sung the praises of Andrew Keys' RadioGarden podcast before, but it's time to do it again.  Really, it's the coolest thing out there, and we should be shouting from the rooftops every time a new episode goes live, but somehow they slip past us.

So.  Right now.  Go here to check out the podcast and to subscribe through iTunes.  My favorite recent episode is an interview with the botanical artists who illustrate the Botanical Interests seed packets.  I mean, where else are you going to get something like that?  It's smart, thoughtful, lively, and wonderful. Although I try to avoid these kind of facile comparisons, it really is This American Life for plants.

Get over there and give Andrew a little love.  Really, he's amazing.

More Trouble in Urban Farming-Land

My parents have befriended another retired couple in France.  They've done one home exchange and are planning another; meanwhile, my father and the other guy chat via Skype a few times a week, sometimes in French and sometimes in English, to improve their language skills.  It's a lovely friendship and, as it turns out, a fascinating cultural exchange.

The wife in this French couple, Marie, said to my dad last week, "Next time we come to visit, find a farm nearby that raises ducks.  Just get me two, and I'll kill them in your backyard and make you a nice pâté."

Uh.  You'll do WHAT in my backyard?  My parents are carnivores, and they love her homemade pâté, but they had to break the news to her that one simply does not go out and buy live animals, drive them home in the back seat, and slaughter them in the yard.  Dad said that he wasn't even sure that was legal.

Marie thought they must have run into some sort of language barrier.  What do you mean, you can't kill a duck in your own backyard? It's for dinner!

Well.  A situation has arisen in Oakland with regard to the question of what one does in one's backyard, and several of you have written to me and asked why I haven't ranted on the subject yet.  We do take requests here at GardenRant, so here goes:

Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, grows vegetables on a vacant lot in Oakland, and raises rabbits, goats, ducks for milk/eggs/meat. She puts up a farm stand now and then and sells surplus produce. 

The comments on her blog suggest that some in the neighborhood object to the slaughtering of animals, and some of them question whether the eggs/milk/meat are only for her own use or are for sale.  The objections to what she's doing seem to be more about the animals than the selling of Swiss chard, as near as we can figure out, but it's the selling of stuff that causes her to run afoul of city zoning rules.

This article in the Chronicle sums up the trouble:  by selling the produce at a little farm stand, she's gotten herself in trouble with city officials, and now she's got to pay some fines and stuff.

So at first I thought, well, there are rules involved in running any sort of business, and like it or not, if you're going to sell people food, there are even more rules.  We've decided, as a society, that farmers can't just run farms and sell produce without some sort of oversight to ensure that some basic health and safety standards are followed.  It's a bummer when you're a one-person operation trying to become a business, but hey, rules are rules.

But here's the deal:  When she bought the vacant lot (which is next door to her apartment), she ASKED the city what she'd have to do to be in compliance.  She was told that new urban agriculture rules were going into effect soon, and just to sit tight. Then she got hit with notices to abate, fines, enforcement, etc. for being out of compliance with existing laws, with no mention of the new laws about to go into effect.

It's a big mess.  The bottom line:  Oakland could have helped her come into complaince and avoided a PR nightmare.  The new rules go into effect April 14, but apparently they don't cover animals, only vegetables, so she's still got some issues to work out. 

On her blog, you can read a blow-by-blow of the whole thing and donate to her legal bills via PayPal.  You can also read the comments, where it seems like there is still some uneasiness about the animals, the butchering of the animals, the free-ranginess of the animals, etc.

Is she being screwed by The Man?  Or is it reasonable to ask your neighbors to follow some rules and pay some fees when it comes to the raising and butchering of meat for personal use, the selling of produce, or (although we're not sure if this actually happened) the selling of meat/eggs/milk from your backyard livestock?  Discuss amongst yourselves, or head over to her blog and let her know what you think.

Wicked Bugs--Get Your Signed Copy Here!

Our bookstore is now taking orders for signed copies of Wicked Bugs.  If you'd like one inscribed to that special someone, be sure to let us know that, too.  They just came in, so we're shipping now!  Details here.

Is This The Worst Poem Ever Written In English?

I like daffodils, a great country flower that is now just starting to appear in my part of the world, but fear that I may eventually grow to hate them. TWICE today in the car--on the way to and from Albany to be on Joe Donahue's Roundtable Show on WAMC--I was forced to listen to Garrison Keillor reading this:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

Etc., etc.  God, who can stand any more?  Are you kidding me: "Ten thousand saw I at a glance/tossing their heads in sprightly dance."  Has there ever been a more nauseating couplet?  I'm sorry, if you have no ear, you are not a great poet.

As a college student, I was force-fed Wordsworth and am still not over the choking sensation.  OK, two of the Lucy poems are bearable.  Other than that, I heartily aspire never to hear another word again.

Photo credit Mark Robinson

Do Expensive Grow Lights Matter?

Okay, it's one thing if you are growing a cash crop like marijuana in the guest room and need super high-intensity light to bring the crop in before the cops arrive. Or if you live in Alaska and morale depends on growing peppers in the house.

But what if you just want to start a few seedlings?

I'm don't enjoy starting seeds for the same reason I don't enjoy houseplants.  To me, the entire interest in gardening revolves around the mysterious interaction between plant and soil and the million distinct species of bacteria in a gram of it.

Still, I start seeds in the house just to have the varieties I want and things like lemongrass that the nurseries around me don't carry.  I use $10 shop fixtures from Lowe's with two $3 40-watt cool spectrum 48-inch T-12 fluorescent tubes plugged into each one.  They are hung from chains that I raise and lower on an S-hook, and they are plugged into a cheap timer.  For the ten weeks that the peppers and eggplants take, works fine.

When I was about to do my single TV appearance thus far for my book, which argues that everybody with a bit of soil ought of grow a little food, the producers were worried that I was leaving Manhattan out of the equation.  I said, "Oh community gardens are fantastic!  You can grow an amazing amount of food in a small space!"

"But what if you don't have a community garden plot?"

"Well, there are really nice containers for balconies and terraces!"

"What if you don't have a balcony or terrace?"

"Well, if you have the right south-facing window, you'll be able to grow lettuce and herbs."

"What if you don't have the right window?"

Sheesh! So I decided to press a little further into the question of what could be grown in an apartment without a ridiculous investment or completely uglifying the joint.

I called a gardening catalog business, which offered an array of grow light fixtures for between $100 and $350.  The $130-dollar one was labeled "amazing" and had a photo of a fruiting pepper underneath it.  I asked, "Can you really grow peppers or tomatoes under this?"

The answer was, "Not really."  As in, without wind or bees, you have to hand-pollinate the plants and you tend not to get much fruit for the space anyway.

So I decided to be simple and just grow some salad in my basement for the TV demonstration.  To show what was available in the marketplace, I ordered a slightly downscale grow light that was still considerably more expensive than my set-up, but also looked more attractive in photos.  It was back-ordered and wouldn't arrive in time.  Instead, I started my arugula under my cheap shop lights.

Grew fast, looked great,...and in the organic potting soil I used, even tasted just right, spicy! 

Yes, my T-12 set-up is not as efficient as T-8 or T-5 bulbs.  But the Big Box stores carry those, too.

Unfortunately, they carry them in a confusing array of unattractive choices that may leave the gardener wandering around in a daze. (Just to cut through the confusion, cool spectrum light is reportedly best for leaf growth and therefore lettuce and seedlings. Wikipedia tells me cool spectrum is a color temperature of 5000K or more.  That number is marked on the boxes.)

I think grow-light sellers are profiting from this confusion. But are their products really superior?  I put it to the crowd: Unless you are trying to get fruit indoors without a window, is there any reason not to just buy what the Big Box stores have got?