George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

My Aging Back (and Knees, Neck, Hands, etc.)

September 9th, 2014

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that gardening doesn’t get any easier as backs age and energy levels fade.

An aging George hard at work in the garden.

I used to get sore after a whole day of mulching. Now I can wake up sore for no apparent reason.

As I’ve been throttling back and trying to keep pace, I’ve begun to ask myself the question that all rapidly aging gardeners eventually do: “What am I going to do when I can’t get out there and dig, plant, mulch and prune as I used to?”

Lifelong gardener and ailing-hip author Sydney Eddison wrote a wonderful book about that topic several years ago after her husband died and she ended up trying to cope alone with more than an acre of gardens in her Connecticut country yard.

Her book “Gardening for a Lifetime” (Timber Press, $19.95 hardcover) offers lots of practical tips for streamlining labor and rethinking the gardens.

One point she made that really struck home with me was one uttered by violinist Itzhak Perlman after he played through a string breakage during a New York concert.

Despite the setback, Perlman said afterward that “sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

“Making the most of what you have left is also the older gardener’s task,” Eddison says. “How beautiful can you make your garden with the resources you still have at your command?”

Some of her suggestions:

Simplify. “If one genus or species monopolizes your time and dominates your garden, think about reducing its number,” Eddison suggests.

Walk the garden to identify plants that self-sow annoyingly, that regularly get diseased or that require a lot of deadheading, dividing and staking.

Lean toward types that have healthy, good-looking foliage all season and that have low work demands (sedum, amsonia, liriope, agastache, ornamental grasses, for example).

Eight Products You Probably Don’t Need

September 2nd, 2014

Gardeners use a lot of stuff.

Tree paint and similar wound gunk can be counter-productive.

Tools, fertilizers, seeds, gloves, animal repellents, potting mix and sprays are a few of the “regulars” on the gardener shopping list.

On the other hand, some products keep selling that aren’t necessary or that flat-out don’t work or are in some way counter-productive.

Here are eight that I think most of us can do without. Divert the savings into a cool new plant or two…

1.) Tree paint. This is the tar or similar gunk that’s applied to tree wounds, supposedly to aid healing. People think of it as the tree equivalent of a bandage.

Here’s what the International Society of Arboriculture has to say: “Research has shown that dressings generally do not reduce decay or speed closure and rarely prevent insect or disease infestations. Most experts recommend that wound dressings not be used.”

There’s evidence that dressings sometimes trap moisture and therefore discourage healing.

A better idea: Just trim away any ragged bark and let a tree wound air-dry.

2.) Leaf shine. These are liquids that are sprayed or wiped on houseplant leaves to clean them and make them shiny.

Cleaning leaves makes good sense to get rid of dust, grime or even bugs that can harm a plant’s growth. But making them shiny is a cosmetic matter that comes with a potential down side, namely the potential to clog the leaf stomata (their “pores”) and inhibit transpiration (the way a plant “breathes”) by coating them with glossy materials.

You’re better off saving the money and cleaning your leaves with a soft, damp cloth or with a very dilute solution of vinegar or soap.

Ourhouseplants.com has a detailed explanation on leaf-cleaning if you want to read more.

A shovelful of dirt will give you plenty of free composting microbes.

3.) Compost activator. These are granular products, usually containing nitrogen and live bacteria and enzymes, that are added to a compost pile to get it cooking.

The truth is that compost cooks just fine with the microbes that enter the pile on the vegetative material and its roots (assuming you’ve used a mix of green and brown materials). If you’re concerned, toss a few shovelfuls of soil or finished compost into the pile as you build it.

Here’s what the Harrisburg-written book “Basic Composting” (Stackpole Books, 2003) has to say about packaged activators: “Most experts agree that there is no need to use them at all because nature will provide the correct amount and types of microorganisms needed for decomposition.”

4.) Anvil pruners. This type of hand tool has a sharp blade on one side and a flat surface on the other. When branches are cut with anvil pruners, the tip is crushed as it’s being cut, leaving behind a ragged opening that’s more prone to infection, moisture loss and browning.

Bypass pruners make much cleaner cuts. These have blades on both sides and cut more like scissors as the two blades pass each other.

Other than cutting dead wood, I can’t think of any good use for anvil pruners.

Don’t Treat Your Soil Like Dirt

August 26th, 2014

We’re at one of the best points of the season now to dig a new garden bed or to renovate a lousy one – actually better than early spring when the soil can be cold and wet.

Don’t treat your soil like dirt… it’s one of the two keys to successful gardening.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to improve what you’ve likely got under there.

Especially in housing developments that have been heavily graded during construction, you’ve probably got 6 inches of clay and shale from the construction pile on top of packed subsoil.

That’s a death trap waiting to happen for all but the most abuse-tolerant species.

Healthy, nutritious and well drained soil is one of the two keys to successful gardening (the other being getting good plants in the right spots).

Look at it under a microscope and you’d see a living underworld of activity… strands of fungi swirling around plant roots, bacteria and nematodes breaking down bits of organic matter, tiny mites feeding on other microbes and so on.

It’s essentially a factory of life, and all the moving parts fuel one another. When people do things to disrupt that process – say, by stripping and regrading soil to build a house or by routinely dumping fungicides and insecticides.

If you’ve been dealing with struggling plants despite this year’s good growing summer or if you’re starting from scratch, now’s a good time to assess your soil.

One aspect is its nutrition makeup and acidity level, which you can assess by doing a Penn State soil test. Do-it-yourself kits are available for $9 to $10 from most garden centers, through county Extension offices or online from Penn State’s soil testing lab.

The results tell you what you’ve got, exactly what kind of fertilizer you need (if any), and whether you ought to acidify (sulfur) or make the soil more alkaline (lime). Otherwise, you’re just guessing.

The second aspect is soil quality.

Soil is a blend of minerals, air, water, organic matter and microbes that keep the “life factory” ticking.

The mineral particles come in three types – sand (the biggest particles), clay (the smallest) and silt (mid-sized). An ideal soil has a nearly equal mix of the three with the spaces between the particles ideally filled about half with water and half with air.

Why should you care about that? Because if your soil is too clayish, the small particles pack closely together and have limited pore space. Some homeowners have such compacted soil that it tests out near the denseness of brick – not an ideal medium for azalea-growing.

Oh, the Troubles I’ve Seen

August 19th, 2014

First, let me say I’m not complaining. This has been a cheerfully choice growing season, one I’ll take any year.

Septoria leaf spot has worked its way the whole way to the top of these tomato plants.

It’s been pleasant temperature-wise, the rain has spread itself out nicely, and we really haven’t hit any oven-grade, parched, grass-browning, oppressive spells.

That said, I have seen a smattering of setbacks worth sharing in case you’re wondering about them, too.

* Rotting tomatoes. Lots of gardeners have been complaining about their tomatoes rotting on the bottom as they ripen (the tomatoes, not the gardeners). This is called blossom-end rot, and it happens because of inconsistent soil moisture. The previous explanation of a lack of calcium now has been discounted.

The solution is to keep the soil moist, which means insulating the ground with straw or leaf mulch and watering when rain doesn’t do the deed for you.

* Dying tomatoes. More troublesome are the leaf diseases (primarily Septoria leaf spot and early blight) that infect tomato plants from the ground up, eventually killing the whole plant and detracting from fruit flavor in the meantime.

At this point, all you can do is pick off infected leaves and spray the plants with a fungicide every 7 to 10 days to slow the progression. Liquid copper is an organic approach; chlorothalonil is the primary chemical option.

* Impatiens still doomed. That downy mildew water-mold disease that suddenly swooped in and killed everyone’s impatiens 2 years ago is alive and kicking.

Although most gardeners stopped planting impatiens after realizing this is a deadly disease that’s likely here to stay, I’ve seen a few patches that had been doing OK up until late July. That’s when downy mildew usually progresses enough to kill.

Sure enough, patches I saw last week had that tell-tale grayish coating on the leaf undersides and were in the process of melting away.

If you want to grow impatiens, stick with the New Guinea types (Divine™ and Florific™ are two less-expensive seed-grown types) or mildew-resistant hybrids such as SunPatiens®.

“Feds” shut down Mechanicsburg’s Seed Library?

August 12th, 2014

Have you read last week’s “viral” Internet reports about how the “feds” stepped in to shut down the Mechanicsburg Simpson Library’s new seed library?

The Simpson Library’s seed catalog.
Credit: Joseph T. Simpson Public Library

Outraged seed-starters, Tweeters, Facebookers, email-forwarders and government fear-mongers have been sharing such posts as “Department of Agriculture Shuts Down Cell of Potential Agri-Terrorists” and “Agri-Terrorism? Feds Shut Down Seed Library.”

The problem is, it’s simply not true. I’m familiar with what really happened and am flabbergasted at the twisted, distorted, inflammatory and outright wrong information flying around.

For one thing, the “feds” are not involved. The real issue that triggered the flap is whether a seed library falls under Pennsylvania’s Seed Act of 2004, which the state Department of Agriculture (not the U.S. Department of Agriculture) believes does.

Second, the state did not and says it has no intention of shutting down the Mechanicsburg seed library. In fact, the library plans to continue a seed-sharing program under a protocol it worked out jointly with state Agriculture Department officials.

What it definitely is not is “another example of the federal government’s war on self-sufficiency,” as one website “news” article stated.

Third, no agri-terrorists have infiltrated the Simpson Library, and that concern is not the impetus behind this whole thing. Anything with “terrorism” in the headline draws a lot of website hits and stirs up people, but making up claims about it is irresponsible, in my opinion.

As a journalist, I have to bow out of writing my own news account because I personally know a state official involved in the case and have talked with him about it.

However, the Carlisle Sentinel did a thorough and accurate article on what’s really taking place. If you want to get a true picture of the case, read that one.