Stretching the Limits?
December 23rd, 2014
Other than the grocery store and plant places, I don’t do a lot of shopping.
A purple improvement or plant sacrilege?
So when it comes to unnecessary-product knowledge, I’m probably way out of touch. I have no idea how many things I need because I don’t know they exist.
But in my travels this month to scope out the latest in gifts for gardeners, it occurred to me that the gardening marketplace is not immune from over-stretching in the never-ending effort to sell something new, something different or something just a little more convenient.
The best known example is the poinsettia, which I’d argue has been more abused in the name of consumerism than any other plant.
For decades, growers have crowded cuttings in too-small pots, sprayed them with growth regulator to keep them compact, and shipped them off to stores as cheap throw-aways. And that’s before we get our hands on them.
The cross-the-line part, though, was a dozen or so years ago when someone came up with the idea of spray-dying the bracts. That meant you could instantly change a poinsettia’s color to, say, Penn State blue or Ravens’ purple.
Dyed poinsettias became all the rage for awhile. Some people loved them. Others thought it amounted to plant sacrilege. Dyed ones are still around, although more of a niche now.
Me? I really like most of the new varieties that have come along in the last 20 years and especially the new hot-pink ‘Luv U Pink’ type that popped up everywhere this December. But spray-dying poinsettias just seems unnatural to me.
You might guess, then, that I’m not a fan of the Color Fuze orchids that soon followed painted poinsettias. These are white orchids that have been infused with colored dye to make the flowers look like they’re deep blue or royal purple.
This isn’t quite as blatant as getting out an aerosol can, but it’s also kind of “cheating.”
I’m not sure everyone who buys blue or dark-purple orchids realizes those aren’t the real colors. Some blue-orchid consumers are going to be surprised when their blue orchid next year becomes a white one – if they don’t kill it and manage to get it to bloom at all again.
This orchid isn’t really blue. It’s been infused with dye.
The next attempt to manufacture a better nature involved grass.
Starting with the premise that grass is a lot of trouble and hard work to mow all of the time, plastics manufacturers came up with more real-looking artificial grass that they hoped consumers would buy for their yards.
One company made some headway in reaching beyond just the back-yard putting-green customer and set up a whole artificial lawn at the Philadelphia Flower Show 2 years ago.
If you got a chance to walk on it, you might see why everyone isn’t rushing to get rid of their Kentucky bluegrass. The fake blades don’t need water, fertilizing or a mower, but they’re so stiff that they redirect your foot as you land. It was an odd feeling.
Which leads us to the latest new idea this year – a convenient real Christmas tree.
People who tired of lugging around and watering real evergreens switched to artificial Christmas trees years ago. That led growers to start thinking about ways to make a real tree more convenient and less work.
The solution they came up with was cutting small trees, sharpening the trunks like a pencil, and fastening them into their own plastic stands. The idea is that it’s already set up and ready to decorate.
The problem is how the shaved trunks are going to take up water. I don’t see how these trees are going to stay hydrated from the little bit of reservoir and the exposed trunk-bottom.
Maybe they’ll stay fresh enough through the holidays without drying and dropping needles. Maybe not.
I’d be curious to see how you make out if any of you have bought this new option.
Who knows what awaits us in 2015?