George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Midwest Gardens to Put on Your Radar

November 8th, 2022

   If you’re back in the traveling game again, you’ll find several good gardening destinations on a trip into America’s Midwest.

Nashville’s Cheekwood Garden had this fall-themed archway looking good.

   I’m just back from leading a Lowee’s tour that took us through Nashville, into St. Louis, and back through Louisville and Columbus. We ogled a diverse group of visit-worthy gardens at each place.

   My favorite was St. Louis’ world-class Missouri Botanical Garden, which I’ve rated as No. 3 in my e-book “50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See.” (Spoiler: Longwood is No. 1, and New York Botanical Garden is No. 2.)

   “Mobot,” as it’s nicknamed, is 79 acres packed with themes and styles of every imaginable kind, from a garden of tree stumps to home-garden-sized idea gardens to a unique glass-and-aluminum, dome conservatory called the Climatron.

   Kentucky’s Yew Dell Gardens is an underrated gem, Columbus’ Franklin Conservatory is better than ever with its new Children’s Garden, and Nashville’s most amazing plant display isn’t in a garden at all but several tropical wonderlands inside the Gaylord Opryland’s resort.

   If you like pictures rather than words, have a look at 50 shots from the trip that I just posted in my Photo Gallery section.

   Otherwise, here’s a quick rundown of the highlights of each stop…

How the State’s New Fertilizing Rules Affect Your Lawn Care

November 1st, 2022

   Runoff from farms and factories is a key source of water pollution that ends up draining into the Chesapeake Bay, where it’s long harmed the health of aquatic life.

New state rules dictate when and how much fertilizer can be applied to lawns.

   But runoff from the fertilizers that go on our ample acreage of home lawns also is a contributor – an estimated 14 percent of the total going into the Bay.

   After nearly a dozen years of consideration, Pennsylvania’s state legislature in July passed a set of rules that dictate what kind and how much fertilizer people can apply to their lawn and when they can and can’t apply it.

   The rules are similar to ones that several nearby states already have had for years, including Maryland and Virginia.

   The rules aren’t so heavy-handed that they’re going to end the days of green-carpet aspirations. They don’t even get into the use of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides, for example.

   Rather, the rules are aimed at curbing the use of fertilizers that aren’t needed. And they apply to homeowners fertilizing their own lawns as well as lawn-care companies and professionals fertilizing park lawns, golf courses, and athletic fields.

   For starters, the new rules prohibit the application of any nitrogen- or phosphorus-containing lawn fertilizer between Dec. 15 and March 1… or any other time the ground is frozen to a depth of at least two inches or when snow-covered.

   Lawn fertilizer containing phosphorus is prohibited altogether, unless a soil test or other specific documentation shows that the lawn needs it. Most lawn fertilizers already have dropped phosphorus as an ingredient since most soils have enough of this nutrient to adequately grow grass.

My Mini-Meadow: Underwhelming So Far

October 25th, 2022

   When we last left the new “mini-meadow” experimental planting on my backyard bank in late May, the seeds were just sprouting.

The mini-meadow as it looked on Aug. 8.

   Germination of the 27 different seed varieties was good, and the bed looked promising.

   By the first week of June, most everything was up and growing at about two inches tall. And by late June, I had my first blooming wildflowers – a few annual yellow coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria, I believe).

   As the summer came and went, I got a smattering of this and that but never any more than maybe a 10 or 15 percent bloom coverage at any one time.

   Despite my anti-weed bed-prep efforts, some thistle, mugwort, and other weeds were already elbowing their way into the planting.

   In short, I’d rate the performance as just OK during year one. I’ll be curious to see which way it goes from here.

   A little background and some more details…

My Most-Favorite Gardening Jobs

October 18th, 2022

   Last week I zeroed in on my list of gardening jobs that I’m not too crazy about doing – the ones that will be the first that I farm out as age forces me to scale back.

I really don’t mind weeding that much. It’s like harvesting compost.

   This week it’s time to look at the seven jobs that I like most – in order from “least-most” to “best-most,” starting with…

   7.) Weeding. Like watering, this is another job that isn’t particularly heavy labor and can be done on autopilot. My mom actually liked weeding best of all gardening jobs.

   On the plus side, weeding removes competition from the “real” plants and makes a garden look so much better. I also like to think of weeding as “harvesting” compost. It’s a way to turn your enemy into an asset.

   On the down side (literally), weeds usually require you to go down there after them – bad news for my 100-bend back quota. And if you don’t mulch or fill all space with your own plants, the weeds keep coming and coming and coming.

   I’ve been compromising lately by spending more time with my long-handled Winged Weeder, which at least lets me slice off most weeds without bending.

Read George’s post on Winning the Weed War

   6.) Pruning trees and shrubs. I like the idea and process of cutting selected branches off of trees and shrubs. It’s art in a way, and it’s helpful to the growth and look of these long-term, high-profile garden plants.

   Things turn out so much better and so much more satisfying with well timed and well done prunings… not to mention being far less expensive than hiring a crew with chainsaws.

   The parts I don’t like are occasions when I have to get up on a ladder (a danger even for non-old-guys) and when the job generates a lot of removal with the subsequent pick-ups and lug-arounds.

My Least-Favorite Gardening Jobs

October 11th, 2022

   As I was finishing off the last few bucketfuls of my most recent 10-yard load of mulch, my back reminded me why I’m not a fan of this labor-heavy activity.

I’d rather have this spread on the ground than be king of the mulch mountain.

   Mulching might be great for discouraging weeds and keeping moisture in the soil, but it’s not much fun.

   “Brutal” better describes it when you have to carry five-gallon buckets of the stuff up steep slopes.

   The experience got me thinking about the gardening jobs that I like a lot better – ones that don’t involve ibuprofen.

   That led me to make a list of 14 gardening jobs and to rank them by how well I enjoy doing each of them.

   That was a worthwhile exercise because as I age, I realize I’m going to have to start reducing, eliminating, or hiring out some of the work. And I’d prefer to start by getting rid of the jobs I don’t like (or have a harder time doing) while hanging onto the jobs I like best for as long as possible.

   Your list might well be very different, but here’s how I rank the 14 jobs – from least favorite to most favorite. I’ll give you my seven least-favorite below and finish up with my seven most-favorite jobs next week.

   14.) Mulching. I like the look of newly mulched beds in addition to the weed-fighting, soil-feeding, and moisture-retaining benefits, but it’s just getting to be too much for an old guy.

   I seem to have a quota of about 100 bends in my back per day these days. Beyond that and it starts to hurt, as if warning me that something bad is going to happen if I don’t knock it off soon.

   Mulching puts me over the 100-bend limit before the first cubic yard is down.

   This is a no-brainer as the first job I’ll hire out.

Read why it always rains five minutes after George gets a mulch delivery

   13.) Emptying the compost bins. Composting is at the heart of good gardening. It’s an important thing to do, and I don’t mind the making part at all.