George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

The One Piece of Gardening Advice I Don’t Agree With

October 3rd, 2023

   I’m generally a believer in following what research reveals, especially if it’s solid research and backed up by multiple sources.

Research notwithstanding, I’m still a believer in working compost into my soil before planting.

   But the one bit of gardening advice that I still just can’t buy is the one about not improving the soil before planting.

   This fairly widespread guidance comes from findings that plant roots can rot from a so-called “bathtub effect” when the soil is improved.

   The premise goes that when you give a new plant a generous helping of compost or similar organic amendment in the backfill mix, water will drain well through it. But when the water hits the wall of undug, compacted soil under and around it, it can’t drain as fast.

   That’s when water can back up in the planting hole, where it fills the small air pockets in the soil, suffocating and rotting the plant to death.

   The experts arrived at a rule of thumb that planters should never mix more than a 10-percent improvement into existing soil (i.e. add no more than one bucket of compost to nine buckets of dug-up, loosened native soil).

   I don’t question that logic and believe that’s definitely one of the many ways to kill a plant.

   The disagreement I have is that I’ve seen way, way more plants struggle and die because roots can’t penetrate the soil that gardeners haven’t improved.

   The basic problem is that most of us here are trying to garden in heavy clay, packed shale, and worst of all, subsoil – that farther-down, compacted medium that was on its way to becoming rock before earth-moving equipment dug it up in the home-construction process.

   I’ve seen first-hand how gardeners are set up for failure as a result of how building sites are prepared.

Gardeners Are Not Normal

September 19th, 2023

   It occurred to me one day while inspecting the butt hairs of a lawn grub that gardeners are not normal people.

Who but an obsessed gardener can be found outside mulching in the rain?

   We gardeners tend to pay attention to things that “regular” people don’t, we don’t notice odors that regular people do, and we often engage in activities that would curl the skin of Miss Manners.

   The results might be pretty, but getting there usually isn’t.

   A gardener on a mission is apt to soil any clothing, strain any muscle, and endure any squeamishness to get the job done.

   Take those grub hairs, for instance.

   I’m as grossed out as anyone by grubs – those fat, white, C-shaped, wormy-looking critters that feast on our lawn roots. But the only sure-fire way to tell whether they’re Japanese beetle grubs or masked chafer beetle grubs is to inspect the arrangement of tiny hairs on their “rasters” (the polite word for butt).

   This is important because the organic treatment that works for one doesn’t work for the other.

   So you see it’s perfectly sensible to look at grub butts under a hand lens.

   OK, maybe not.

   But we didn’t start out this way, you know. Gardening has a way of gradually distorting sensibilities to the point where one day you realize that you consider a bag of dried cow manure to be a really thoughtful birthday present.

   I remember Erica Shaffer, the former chief plant geek at Highland Gardens in Lower Allen Twp., telling me how she, too, once was revolted by adult Japanese beetles.

   As she got braver, she’d pick the beetles off her plants with a gloved hand.

   Then she graduated into bare-handed squish-as-you-go. Who needs gloves?

   Distorted sensibilities are the logical result of being obsessed.

   How do you know when you’re heading down that road?

   Here’s a 12-point test to see where you stand on the obsessed-gardener scale:

Winners and Losers in a Garden of Change

September 5th, 2023

   The only thing certain about gardening is that things change.

Everything changes in the garden when these come along.

   Don’t ever think you’ve got gardening figured out because this is a moving target if ever there was one.

   The environment around us changes.

   New bugs show up.

   New plants come and others go.

   The weather changes – sometimes minute by minute.

   And about the time you devise some kind of airtight strategy or timing, something changes (four-legged or otherwise) to make you rethink it.

   We’ve had a lot of rethinking to do lately. Change seems to be happening faster than ever. (Of course, this also could be a sign that I’m getting old.)

   Just in the few decades I’ve been gardening, lots of really significant garden-altering changes have happened.

   I remember when gypsy moths (now known as “spongy moths”) came along to decimate oaks and cause a disgusting “rain” to fall on hikers.

   Then we saw our state tree, the hemlock, attacked by cottony bugs called woolly adelgids, followed by marmorated stink bugs that invaded our houses in winter, emerald ash borers that killed off virtually all of our ash trees, and most recently the spotted lanternfly that’s swarmed into our yards in Biblical proportions.

   New diseases keep coming just as fast.

The Case for Weeds

August 29th, 2023

   Had enough of yanking weeds this season?

Is this always necessary?

   No matter how good or bad a growing season turns out, weeds always seem to thrive.

   But that’s one of the traits that makes weeds such survivors – they’re pretty good at rolling with whatever punches nature (and gardeners) throw at them.

   Rather than curse weeds in our never-ending attempt to eradicate them, maybe a better idea is to tolerate them – and maybe even (horror!) welcome some of them into the landscape.

   That’s the view of Harvard urban biologist Dr. Peter Del Tredici, whose message has been roundly drowned out lately in a time when weeds – and most any non-native plant, for that matter – are considered to be an evil green blight.

   Del Tredici, on the other hand, argues that most of these maligned plants offer more redeeming traits than not.

   He’s not even a fan of the word “weed.” He prefers the more non-judgmental term “spontaneous vegetation.”

   I first heard Del Tredici at a conference in 2012, two years after he wrote a book called “Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast,” which laid out a controversial counterpoint to what was then a brewing native-plant movement.

   He made some very sensible points about weeds (sorry, “spontaneous vegetation”) that caused me to rethink my view.

   Now before all of you weed-haters and native-plant supporters stop reading, note that Del Tredici doesn’t advocate purposely planting invasives.

   What he does advocate is that we ought to stop separating plants by “good” or “bad” and instead look at each based on its pros and cons in a particular setting.

   It boils down to this. We can either: 1.) label certain plants as undesirables and spend a lot of time and effort trying to eradicate them, or 2.) accept that some “spontaneous vegetation” might actually be best in some spots (or at least not worth killing).

   In other words, does it sometimes make more sense to go with the hand we’re dealt?

Black Thumb? I Don’t Think So

August 15th, 2023

   Two reasons explain why non-gardeners are non-gardeners (or ex-gardeners).

   One is lack of time, the reason behind most every non-something.

Do some gardeners have naturally green thumbs (or brown gloves, as the case may be)?

   The other is lack of confidence. Soil rookies either tried and failed, or they didn’t bother in the first place because they were pretty sure they’d fail if they did try. (Homer Simpson: “Trying is the first step toward failure.”)

   Their conclusion: “I have a black thumb.”

   Take heart, black-thumbers. This is one “malady” that’s curable.

   In fact, I don’t even buy the notion that people either have a black thumb, or the sunnier reverse, a green thumb.

   We’re not born with some innate talent to sidestep downy mildew on impatiens or grow two-pound tomatoes. We learn gardening by reading, by watching, and especially by doing.

   A case in point is my own family.

   My sister claims to have the world’s worst black thumb – someone who can kill a houseplant just by looking at it.

   My brother barely knows the difference between a coneflower and a conehead.

   Me? I’ve been fascinated by anything with chlorophyll ever since discovering the miracle of how a lifeless little seed can turn into a six-foot tomato plant that delivers delicious two-pound fruits.

   I can spend hours comparing the foliage of different cultivars at Longwood Gardens and am as thrilled by new perennials at the garden center as kids getting Christmas gifts.

   No wonder then that I have a bit more going on in the garden than my sister or brother. It’s not a case where two of us got short-changed on the gardening gene.