Wet Spots & Flavor

It's summer time and the time for a refresher. (From my book Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates)

In this illustration, in-line emitter tubing moistens the soil the entire length of the line but slightly below the surface, where the bulbous-shaped wet spots come together to form one nearly continuous moist zone. The emitters come pre-installed in tubing with 12-, 18-, 24-, 36-, and 48-inch spacings [they can be custom ordered at just about any interval—for an extra fee], but the type most commonly sold to gardeners is the 12-inch interval. The emitters inside the hose are rated to dispense either one-half- or one-gph [actually 0.6 and 0.92 gph]. The cost ranges from$22 to $30 for a 100-foot roll depending on the emitter [its emitters flow rate and whether or not it’s pressure compensating.]

If you've grouped your veggies by similar water zones it's time to think about reducing the amount of water a bit to enrich the flavor. Tomatoes are a great example. Over watered 'maters have nothing over store bought. But if tapered off of water once fruiting, the reduced water in the flesh concentrates the flavor. In some climates, you can gradually reduce the water all together by August for the best flavor as the roots are well established after growing throughout the continuous zone of moisture at the beginning of the season. Experiment!


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Ramblin' Roots

Sadly, few people still realize how a tree's roots actually grow. The color illustration was to advertise a local garden tour in 2009. Notice the roots don't extend beyond the dripline of the foliage. No way. As seen in the illustrations below roots extend far beyond the foliage. (The other 2 B&W illustrations come from my book - Roots Demystified. The one on the left shows the dripline as a dotted line and the roots beyond..)

When I had a landscape maintenance company, I soon discovered that in a good soil, a tree’s roots will often grow to occupy an underground area wider than its dripline. If led by available moisture and nutrition, a tree may tunnel its roots through soil space ranging from an area one-half wider than the dripline to as much as three times further. In special cases, tree roots may ramify much more than anyone would imagine. If you add a subsoil barrier such as rock, bedrock, or caliche (hardpan), a tree’s roots will wander even further beyond the canopy area in search of food. A deep sandy soil offers little resistance to growing roots and allows for root exploration of three or more times the width of the tree. And, like a gardener struggling to dig heavy clay soil, roots don’t like clay either and don’t make much headway through it, perhaps only one-half the width of the dripline.

Some more examples include:

- Poplar (Populus generosa) can ramify 77% of its roots beyond the dripline.

- Another study found that 35% of poplar trees grew roots greater than two times the distance from the trunk to the edge of the foliage.

- Colorado blue spruce (Picea pungens ‘Glauca’) grow 60% of their feeding roots beyond the dripline.

- White green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) grew roots which were 1.68 times the radius of the dripline.

- In one study, the glorious magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora), had grown roots 3.77 times wider than the dripline.

- Sugar maples (Acer saccharum) produced roots that have been found spreading underground 30 feet beyond branch tips.

- The roots of honey locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos) can reach nearly three times beyond the dripline of the foliage.

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NATURAL & UNNATURAL WATER & WILDLIFE

It happened last night and it’s happening this morning. Due to a special combination of low clouds, high waves, and just the right amount of a light breeze and I can hear the slight rumble of the surf as I walked from my car to my house last night. Sometimes, like this morning, it's like gentle hypnotic sound of a gentle sound of the surf on the beach. Both are a very soothing and magical sound. Nobody believes me until they hear this remarkable, soothing sound. It lets me know I'm close to the edge of the continent.

For years I gave garden water features a bad rap as we live in a dry summer area. I didn’t think is was acceptable to waste water to evaporation. But I finally gave in and I’m glad I did. The sound of the water falling one foot into the small (three feet by four feet) pool makes a delightful sound. I can sit in my writer’s office and hear the soothing trickle of the water and watch the dragonflies flutter about. The waterfall makes a mellow, soothing background sound during barbecues and offers the psychological effect of making the garden seem a bit cooler during heat waves.

There are actually two waterfalls. One is one massive convex stone as the primary water fall into the pool. The other is much smaller and barely visible beneath a huckleberry shrub. In the late summer when fresh water is scarce, the birds and deer begin to arrive. It took a handful of years before they found such a tiny water spot among all the trees. Some of the birds are brave enough to sit in the open by the water’s edge to drink and bath—our Stella blue jays are an example. The Stella blue jays nestle along the edges of the pond drinking and washing. The wrens will stand on the lily pads and wallow in the water and fly up to a metal roost I placed near the pool to shake off the water as a dog does after a good swim. Other birds, like the __ and the__ are very shy and only bath and drink water from the first, secluded waterfall. They are harder to spot and I must remain very still for quite awhile before they show up. All the bustling of the birds as they bath there bellies in the cool flowing water has provided countless hours of amusement and satisfaction.

Other critters use the pond. After about five years, an orange-colored salamander found the pool as a nice home. I can’t imagine how it knew the water was there and how it arrived. My pool is too small for the herons to find it and has vertical sides they wouldn’t be able to stand in it—in larger ponds they often bring the eggs, water plants and seeds of one pond to another in their feet.

Come late August or mid-September water is scarce enough that the deer slowly, with much trepidation, come for a drink. One day while napping, I heard an enormous splash. I looked out from my second-story window to see a fawn thrashing away. It had walked into the “pond” not knowing what water pools were like. Before I could race down the stairs for a rescue, she had managed to clamber out of the water in spite of her terror. The other fawn watched this and approached the water with much caution, but did manage to take a drink.

Other critters are not so pleasing. I’ve had catfish, croppy and mosquito fish in my pond over the years. All have been eaten by the raccoons. I made the sides vertical with no ledges as a way to thwart these premier scavengers—to no avail. I think they must scare the fish by thrashing the water until they can scoop them up with their nimble paws. I’m amazed they could catch the tiny mosquito fish, but I haven’t seen them (nor mosquitoes), for several years.

In the end how does the elusive, distant sound of the pounding surf and the pale sound of the foghorn transform my garden? With a new level of peace and tranquilly. An occasional smoothing sound that preceded the building of my little pond continues to provide a respite from a busy day during the evening and night when my little water fall isn’t on. Far more subtle, but just as cherished as the water fall.


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Deer-Resistant Plants

I find it to be absurd that books written for a national market has any practical guidlines for local gardens - at least my garden. Even local recommendations have many suggestions that didn't work in my garden. The summary of the total plants eaten by deer and those not listed in other lists that did/do work in my garden is located at the very bottom gf this list.


Plants Deer Seem to Avoid ,
according to the University of California Cooperative Extension

THE EXPERIENCE IN MY GARDEN
Yes = not eaten.
No Yes = means eaten in my garden.

Acanthus mollis, Bear’s Breech– Yes
Agave, Century Plant - Yes
Allium (some), Onion/Garlic – The deer always eat the blossoms and sometimes the foliage (not garlic).

Amaryllis belladonna, Naked Lady - Yes
Artemisia, Wormwood – Exception was
A. ‘Powis Castle” until 2006, then eaten.
Asarum caudatum, Wild Ginger – Eaten each fall

Baccharis pilularis, Dwarf Coyote Bush – Yes

Brodiaea, Brodiaea -Yes
Carex, Sedge - Yes
Ceanothus gloriousus, Summer Lilac, Tick Brush –Most ceanothus eaten. Shrub varieties torn apart when used to rub the velvet off their horns.

Cerastium tomentosum, Snow-in-the-Summer

Corylus cornuta californica, Filbert - Yes
Cotoneaster buxifolius, Cotoneaster
Cyclamen, Cyclamen
Dicentra formosa, Bleeding Heart
D. spectabilis
Digitalis, Foxglove - Yes
Echium fastuosum, Pride of Madeira - Yes
Eriogonum, Wild Buckwheat, all species.
Euphorbia – Yes, all species.
Euryops pectinatus, Euryops - Not the foilage, but many of the flowers are eaten.

Ferns, except Pellaea - Yes
Festuca ovina glauca, Common Blue Fescue – Yes

Fragaria chiloensis, Sand Strawberry
Grevillea, Grevillea - Yes
Helichrysum italicum, Curry Plant
Hypericum, St. Johnswort
Ilex, Holly, except thornless - Yes
Iris, Iris - Yes
Jasminum, Jasmine
Juniperus, Juniper - Yes
Kniphofia uvaria, Red-hot Poker – After 20 years.

Lamium, Dead Nettle
Lavandula, Lavender - Yes
Leonotis leonurus, Lion’s Tail - Yes
Leptospermum, Tea Tree - Yes
Liriope, Lily Turf
Lychnis coronaria, Mullein Pink No, most years flowers are eaten.

Mentha, Mint - Yes
Myosotis, Forget-Me-Not - Yes
Narcissus, Daffodil - Yes
Nerium oleander, Oleander - Yes
Nepeta, Catnip - Yes
Papaver rhoeas, Flander’s Fild Poppy
Phlomis fruticosa, Jerusalem Sage - Yes
Phormium tenbaxi, Flax Yes
Rhododendron, Rhododendron - Yes
Ribes, Current - Yes
Romneya coulteri, Matilija Poppy
Rosmarinus officinalis, Rosemary - Yes
Salvia, Sage Some
Santolina chamaecyparissus, Lavender Cotton, S. virens, Yes, not S. angustifolia
Senecio, Dusty Miller
Teucrium fruticans, Germander - Yes
Trillium, Wake robin - Yes
Zauschneria, California Fushia
Zinnia, Zinnia





Reasonably Safe Bets,
According to the Cooperative Extension.
Achillea, Yarrow
Armeria maritima, Sea Pink
Calendula officinalis, Calendula
Ceanothus griseus horizontalis, Summer
Ceanothus ‘Blue Jean’, Summer Lilac
Chaenomeles japonica, Flowering Quince
Cheiranthus cheiri, Wallflower
Cistus, Rockrose – No (after 15 years)
Citrus Citrus
Clarkia, Godetia - Yes
Coreopsis, except C. gigantea
C. grandiflora, Coreopsis
Dietes vegeta, Fortnight Lilly a – Yes
Erigeron karvinskianus, Fleabane - Yes
Eschschoizia californica. California Poppy
Gazania, Gazania
Geranium, Geranium
Hedera helix, Ivy - Yes
Helianthemum nummyiarium, Sunrose
Helianthus, Sunflower
Lupinus, Lupine
Mimulus, Monkey Flower
Myrica californica,
Pacific Wax Myrtle – Yes

Oxalis, Wood Sorrel – Yes

Scaevola ‘Mauve Clusters’, Scaevola ‘Mauve Clusters’ After 15 years.
Tropaeolum, Nasturtium
Tulipa, Tulip – Yes (But gophers will eat the bulbs if they’re not protected.)

Vaccinium ovatum, Huckelberry - Yes
Viola odorata, Violet
Wisteria, Wisteria


Plants that have worked for me that are not on the list.

Echium pininana – Viper’s Buglos
Echium wildpretii - Tower of Jewels
Brugmansia x insinis - Angel’s Trumpet
Icortaderia selloana - ‘Sun Strip’ pampas grass. NOT the invasive species,
makes no fertile seed.
Ozothamnus rosemarinifolius, Ozothamnus
Rhue, Rhue
Salvia apianna - Silver Sage
Salvia clevanddii - California Blue Sage
Stipa gigantia - Giant Feather Grass
Symphytum officinale - Comfery (Spreads easily from roots and very difficult to eradicate or control.)
Thymus – Thyme, every species I’ve tried.

The summary?

I’ve tried 83 of the 244 plants listed on the University of California Coperative Extension deer resistance list. I found that 40 of the plants I’ve tried were not eaten and 43 were eaten in my small garden and my low budget. This list shows 11 plants which worked for me that are not on the list.

The Power of Surface Soils

I think this is the most revealing illustration in the Roots Demystified book as it shows how influential the shallow zones of soil are to the feeding roots of a young tree. The seedlings in the pot on the left are growing in soil gathered from the top two inches of forest soil in a specific growing area. The middle pot contains soil gathered from a zone two to four inches deep in the same patch of ground. The seedlings on the right are growing in subsoil gathered from beneath the topsoil. The pot on the left outperformed all other seedlings by more than 50%.


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Fire - Visible and Invisible

Fire. Essential and dreaded. Fire has historical tendrils back to primeval times when people first discovered how to make fire when needed. Fire also includes the combustion and flames of a gas stove and oven, campfires, propane-fueled lanterns, and barbecue briquettes. All welcomed, desired.

Every garden is always on “fire”—without flames. Combustion is the oxidation of carbon-based materials which usually produces a flame. Garden “fires” are usually invisible, slow, and important. A single teaspoon of soil contains over one million of the soil’s beneficial bacteria alone This does not include: nitrogen-fixing soil algae, microbes, beneficial fungi and many other useful life. Each consumes various life-forms or inert elements and releases very minute amounts of heat into the soil. Like an aerobic workout, soil heats up—only in extremely tiny amounts.

Combustion in the compost bin also is at a lower temperature than a visible fire. Microorganisms feed on the carbohydrates; the carbon. The warmth of a well-made compost pile is tangible garden low-grade combustion. When the first nips of frost arrive, a compost made of fallen leaves, green lawn clippings, manure and kitchen scraps (I send all my kitchen compostables to an earthworm bin.) sends its wisps of warm fog to rise above its mass.

Only the fanatic composter runs the risk of spontaneous combustion. The pile has to be very large. And it rarely bursts into flames, but usually smolders like a coal mine "fire." Tim Dundon aka Zeke the Sheik (the compost king), of Los Angeles County, accumulated a compost pile over 17 years which reached the gargantuan size of 40 feet tall and up to 200 feet long. Twice in one month the pile spontaneously burst into flames and smoke, and the fire department arrived to douse the flames. While Zeke defends composting as "the key of energy that will eventually set mankind free from misery and gravity," I'd say his pile shows what happens when a zealous intellect elevates a natural process to unnatural proportions. He turned a beneficial process into a hazard.

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Don't let roots circle when planting trees & shrubs

Spring is tree-planting time for many gardeners. It's also the time to make big mistakes when planting. Alas, this tree popped out of it's planting hole due to poorly-trained landscape contractors after being struck by a car. This poor tree needed to get its roots away from the planting hole. (You can see the circling roots just the way they were in the planting container.) Planting on a mound will help "drive" roots away from the tree's base as it drys out faster, making the roots seek moisture further from the trunk. So will fracturing the sides of the hole. (This tree may have been "planted" by auguring a hole in the ground and just plopping the tree into the hole.) The roots responsible for absorbing water and nutrients are the very young and tiny root hairs found near the tips of new roots. Older roots, much like older branches, have a bark-like covering that protects the root but doesn’t produce root hairs. In one study done with radioactive isotopes in England, the roots 4.5 feet away from the trunk of a 10-year-old apple tree absorbed less than 10% of the water and nutrients absorbed by the entire root system. The study showed that proportionately, many more feeding roots are found at, or beyond, the drip line of a tree’s foliage. Because of this, I prefer to place a ring of in-line emitter tubing at or beyond the tree’s drip line. This produces a “doughnut” of moisture, and far more of the root zone is adequately irrigated than with a single line of hose down a row of trees. As the tree grows, extra lengths are added to this circle of moisture to correspond with the new growth in the canopy. By setting the circle of emitters farther out every few years, you’re encouraging the tree’s roots to explore more soil volume and gather more nutrients for superior growth. Such trees would stand a better chance against wayward cars.

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Drip irrigation does increase yields

I'm working hard to finish my 2nd edition of Drip Irrigation, For Every Landscape & All Climates. (Thus the lack of entries on this blog. Spring is springing, yet water supplies are down 40-50%. Thus the need for drip irrigation.) I stumbled across some very exciting data that shows the reduced application of water via drip irrigation can actually lead to higher yields compared to furrow irrigation.

A study in Sri Lanka in 2002, found that with chilies, water use was down 34–50%, while production was up 33–48%. The researchers attributed this to irrigation that kept the soil moist, not too dry.

A study in New Mexico found amazing differences in yields compared to [respectively] furrow and drip irrigation: 18 pounds versus 30 pounds with cucumbers, 69 to 156 pounds growing Swiss chard, and 64 versus 166 pounds with green beans—to quote a bit of the study. [It is interesting to note that broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and carrots didn’t have any greater yields in the drip irrigation plots. Yet, a study at Oregon State University found a 20% increase in carrots compared to plots with sprinklers.]

From drips to bounty.

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"Free" Rain Water, Cisterns

Jean de Florette, a film by French director Claude Berri, is set in the scrubby, olive tree-covered hills of southern France. As the film begins, a severe drought has dried up a family's cistern—the underground stone storage tank for rain from a roof covered by a terracotta tiles. A farmer, played by Gerard de Pardieu (of Green Card and Cyrano fame), watches helplessly as his family's crops begin to wither and their cash crop of meat rabbits begins to die of thirst. Two peasant farmers plot to force the neighboring family into bankruptcy. Finally, the two conniving farmers manage to cause the early death of the Pardieu's character, to destroy his family and to acquire the farm for much less than the pre-drought price. All because the cistern was too small to store enough water for the driest years.

For better or worse, cisterns are used throughout the world to catch rainwater from the roof for drinking, washing, and irrigation. Cisterns come in all shapes and sizes—rain barrels, stone wells, ugly black plastic drums, and nondescript gray concrete tanks. In the 1800’s and early 1900s in America, cisterns were common, even in cities.

But the uses of cisterns and the reasons for building your own have changed. Cisterns are experiencing a welcome and well-deserved revival, due to dwindling sources of clean water, erratic supplies during droughts, and a renewed interest in water independence.

Cistern systems are remarkably simple compared to many modern technologies such as wells, and a complicated infrastructure. Basically, the rain must be gathered, stored in a cistern [now loosely defined as any tank in- or above the ground] and drained or pumped to the landscape. In most cases, rainfall is collected from the roof of the home, barn, or garage. A typical gutter funnels the rain into a downspout, hose, or pipe which leads to the cistern itself. A diverter valve is built in the downspout or pipe so the first rains after a dry spell, to flush all kinds of accumulated filth off the roof, can be turned away from the cistern until the roof is clean. Usually, a simple device or grate screens out any twig and leaf debris which may have gathered on the roof. Commonly, modern cisterns are concrete or plastic tanks.

Drought-Proof Your Garden—yes and no
Droughts are often the single source of inspiration for the installation of cisterns throughout the South West, if not everywhere. The recent changes in the climate see to be making much of the South West more parched than years past. As early as the drought of the 1990s, gave rise to the interest and need for water storage.

Ironically, cisterns in regions with no summer rain whatsoever are expensive propositions. In such an area, you must store up enough water for as much as six months of landscape irrigation. Consider, for example, an anonymous two-acre estate in a wealthy neighborhood in Santa Barbara, California, planted with water-loving ornamentals, some drought-resistant plants, a large 1/2-acre lawn, and a vegetable garden. During the drought, such a landscape, based upon the conservative figure of outdoor use equaling 60% of all water use, had a historical year-round usage of a staggering 500,000 gallons! A cistern big enough to hold this much water would have to be a whopping 50 feet on each side and 27 feet tall! Try and hide that in your average backyard. Such a cistern would cause a severe drought in your cash flow.

Note: I somehow lost the usual section "Post a comment". To leave a comment, simply click on the area/button that says "___ Comments" below. Or,clicking on the title of a Post under "Blog Archive" also gets you to a view that gives the option of leaving a comment. Robert

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Frequent Irrigation Can Use Less Water

Most drip systems are up and running by now. Yet, do you know where to start to get the proper amount of water on your flowers and/or vegetables? I'm working on a revised edition of my 1995 classic (so I'm told) Drip Irrigation, For Every Landscape and All climates. Here's an excerpt:

Daily irrigation doesn’t mean using countless gallons of extra water. In fact, with infrequent irrigation, it takes a certain amount of water just to rehydrate the soil before the plant can even make use of the moisture. Oddly enough, infrequent waterings can use more water than the same planting would receive with frequent, even daily, irrigation.

Years ago, for example, I planted a drought-resistant landscape, with plants such as lavender, santolina, rockroses, and rosemary, for a neighbor. The day after planting, the timer was set to irrigate each zone for 15 minutes. After the risk of transplant shock was over, the irrigation lines were turned on each day for only eight minutes. The plants flourished, even though each one-half-gph emitter was distributing the paltry amount of seven tablespoons of water-per-emitter each day. Contrast this with a nearby garden with a similar soil and lavender plants arbitrarily watered only twice a month for four hours. This amounts to two gallons per emitter for the two-week period, or just more than 18 tablespoons of water per day—more than twice the water used in the flourishing landscape.

No matter how you use drip irrigation, frequently or every once in a while, it will always be more efficient than any sprinkler you’re currently using. All sprinklers, except the most modern of micro- or mini-sprinklers, apply water faster than many silty and clayey soils can absorb it. This leads to anaerobic puddling and runoff, especially on steep slopes. Every sprinkler is vulnerable to wind- and sun-induced losses, with as much as 25% of the water wasted. In general, sprinklers are rated at an overall efficiency of 75% to 80%, compared with drip irrigation’s 90%. [Furrow irrigation can have an efficiency rating as low as 50%.]

How Long to Water

There are two general approaches to watering, the empirical and the more analytical, which uses the evapotranspiration rate as a guideline. Each works, but the ET-rate-based approach can be far more accurate and water conserving.

The most immediate, or empirical, way to understand your soil’s response to drip irrigation, and to determine how long to leave the system on, involves digging. Even after doing your experiment with the milk jug, you should test for the drip system’s underground pattern of moisture. Turn on the drip system for an hour, then turn off the hose and dig a number of small holes in the flower bed to see how deep and to what width the water has soaked in. Then turn the system on for another hour, to equal a test total of two hours, and check to see how much farther the water moves. Do this for several more intervals of time and observe vague changes in the wet spot. This test will reveal the shortest length of irrigation time to produce the widest wet spot, based on which test hole revealed the widest spread of the wet spot during the elapsed time. Without doing this test, you’ll just be guessing in the dark.


ET-Based Irrigation

Another approach involves using the ET figures for your local climate. Your local Cooperative Extension office should be able to tell you either the current week’s ET rate or the month’s average rate; both are expressed in inches per day or month. If they don’t know, fire them. (Click on the chart to get a bigger version.)

WARNING: Math Ahead.

The chart above shows the daily water use for ten different ET rates. Remember, the amount of water needed to replace the ET losses depends upon the amount of soil covered [like a shadow] by the planting’s foliage. If the plants are young, the ET rate is less, corresponding to the smaller area of coverage. With a mature flower border, the coverage is complete and all you need to determine is the total square footage of the border. For example, a five- by 20-foot border [100 square feet] uses 18.7 gallons of water per day during a hot day when the ET rate is equivalent to nine inches of water per month. If you still prefer to water once a week, multiply the daily ET rate by seven to determine the total amount for the weekly watering.

To determine the length of each day’s watering, take the total amount of water the flower border requires and divide by the total flow of the drip irrigation system. Consider a theoratical five- by 20-foot border with a daily ET rate of 18.7 gallons. Since the total length of in-line emitter tubing in the bed is 84 feet [this figure is reached by adding together one header four feet long and four 20-foot laterals], the sum flow of the system is 52 gph [84 one-half-gph emitters times their actual flow of 0.62 gph]. Thus, dividing the daily water need of 18.7 gallons by 52 gph yields 0.36 hour, or 22 minutes per day 0.36 of an hour times 60 minutes. If you want to water once per week, then multiply 22 minutes per day times seven days to get a weekly watering time of 154 minutes, or nearly three hours.

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Summer Drought of Color

These photos show my garden in transition to its summer "fallow". Soon I will harvest the foxglove seeds to be scatter at the forest's edge. The Euphorbia spp. dry a golden color before they set seed and "walk around" my garden. Most of the lavenders were really knocked out to a grayish blue due to 90F to 100F dry heat. I have about six still in bloom-the Lavandula angustifolia 'Alba Compacta', L. angustifolia 'Alba' , L. x intermedia 'Dilly Dally', L. angustifolia 'Frost', and several species of Spanish lavender- L. stoechas. Once these are pruned back the garden goes fairly "dormant" except for a Grevillia sp., Lychnis corneriaa, some mulliens, and a glorious radiant-blue Salvia coboreinsis behind a deer fence. I would love to grow cultivars of the California fuschia (Epilodium spp.) but deer love them. Alas, one of the great late-summer native and colorful species is missing from my garden. My garden will be patiently waiting for the fall rains.

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All rights reserved. Copyright 2008

Note: I somehow lost the usual section "Post a comment". To leave a comment, simply click on the area/button that says "___ Comments" below. Or,clicking on the title of a Post under "Blog Archive" also gets you to a view that gives the option of leaving a comment. Robert

Summer & Mulch

The following are several excerpts from my book - Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive.

It’s time to tend to mulching. If you haven’t already – shame on you. But mulching now is still a blessing for the plants. First a bit about where the nutrients are absorbed.

Most soils will contain more humus near the ground surface, since the highest population of the soil organisms that decompose raw fiber into humus tend to hang out in the most aerobic zone of the soil, that is, in the duff or just under it. [See the enlarged illustration by clicking on the image. From: Roots Demystified.] The upper horizon of the soil is also the place where the most nutrients are liberated. Soil flora and fauna act as nature’s little fertilizing machines, using the creation of humus, among other processes, to liberate unavailable nutrients into a soluble form that can be absorbed by tiny root hairs—a process known as “mineralization.”

One study estimates the number of the bacteria in a gram of soil taken from upper layers of soil surfaces as ranging from 58 million to as many as 3–4 billion. Dig and test just three feet lower, and the bacteria numbers drop to as few as 37,000 per gram.

However, it’s not just the soil’s humus-clay-moisture complex that liberates nutrients. As mentioned earlier, plant roots, stimulated by the action of organisms in the humus, aid in the nutrient-release process by exuding sugars, organic acids, and other compounds to stimulate the microbial action in the rhizosphere.

Plants primarily absorb most of their nutrients in a chemical process called “ion exchange.”

This is a process in which ions (an atom or a group of atoms that has acquired a net electric charge by gaining or losing one or more electrons) are exchanged between a solution and an ion exchanger, i.e., an insoluble solid. Two notable ion exchangers are clay and humus, which are found suspended in the thin, moist chemical and biological activity in this thin layer of moisture converts nutrients into a soluble form that roots can absorb via ion exchange. Humus binds the clay particles so that the clay forms the aggregates that help maintain a more continuous pore space. The perplexing nature of a healthy humus-clay structure is that it both holds onto and releases many of the nutrients plants utilize.

What to do?
Mulch with compost. Be sure the compost you apply to your garden is thoroughly decomposed. A “finished,” properly-aged compost is no longer hot and makes no “steam” when turned or off-loaded from a commercial supplier. The finished material should have almost no recognizable pieces of the original compostable matter. It should also have the sweet smell of a forest loam. To achieve the goal of finished compost, you need to turn the pile two or three times (maybe even more) to incorporate oxygen into all the raw, composting materials. Then let the pile age, so that it develops a large cross section of microbes and other beneficial soil flora and fauna. The process may take up to one year, so plan in advance and always have a pile going for the following garden season. (Using worms to compost kitchen scraps is like a fast compost bin. The raw materials are quickly converted to castings—manure—that both stabilizes and inoculates organic matter better than unfinished compost.)

Commercial compost is often turned, but because of the surface area required by the large quantities made to meet high commercial demand, it is usually not cost-effective to both properly turn and age the compost. Thus, commercial compost is often sold in an unfinished state; beware if you have a load delivered, and it is still hot and steamy. Such compost should be allow to “mellow” until it has a dark, loamy feel, and it may require more turning.

Be forewarned
If too much unfinished compost or fresh manure is added in great quantities, you risk the scourge of symphylans—nasty little critters that thrive in sandy loam soil, soils with a high level of organic matter and friable (crumbly) soil. Symphylans are 1/4-inch long and look like white centipedes. They eat the roots of many vegetable plants and are nearly impossible to banish by any organic method(s). However, a fallow period may be one option. Compulsive “Captains of Compost” are seeing more and more of this horrible pest. It can now be found in the northeastern, north central, and western United States. Beware of applying too much unsifted compost to your garden, especially in sandy loams. The addition of a layer of more than one to two inches may be too much. Keep the organic matter between three and five percent. Check with a lab report.

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Note: I somehow lost the usual section "Post a comment". To leave a comment, simply click on the area/button that says "___ Comments" below. Or,clicking on the title of a Post under "Blog Archive" also gets you to a view that gives the option of leaving a comment. Robert

Summer Interlude

We’re slipping into summer. A series of hot spells above 100F has really forced flowers to fade quickly and seed heads to form.

My garden is more like the umber rolling hills of California. That means less growth (especially since I don’t irrigate) and less bloom for color. This is due to the deer that favor most of the plants that blossom in the late summer and fall like: California fuchsia (Zauscneria californica; also classified as Eilobium canum canum); roses (the thorns are not a safeguard); and many other summer-blooming exotics that become breakfast, lunch, and dinner for these beautiful; yet pesky animals.

The exotic grasses that have choked out the native bunch grasses and turn a golden-straw color. Seed heads begin to form to release next years regeneration. It’s only natural that some of my garden reflect this pattern. However, I don’t let the exotic grasses to grow in my garden. And I’m reluctant to dig up the few native grasses that cluster near my mailbox. I might have to; so as to fill in among other plants, but they are not that showy and usually prefer steep slopes where the deer can’t get to them.

However, I allow common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea); euphorbia, (Euphorbia characias - pictured here); some lavenders, such as the prolific spreader English lavender, (Lavandula angustifolia), mullein; (Verbascum thapsus); native ginger (Asarum caudatum); and rose campion (Lychnis corneria) to wander about the garden by letting them go to seed. No deadheading here.

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Note: I somehow lost the usual section "Post a comment". To leave a comment, simply click on the area/button that says "___ Comments" below. Or,clicking on the title of a Post under "Blog Archive" also gets you to a view that gives the option of leaving a comment. Robert

Even the pros mess up sometimes.

Planted deep as a coffin. Not really, but very deep. I just got back from a trip to St. Louis. The Missouri Botanic Garden is one of the of the top five public gardens in the country. Yet, the pros don’t always get it right all the time. It appears this poor tree was planted two feet lower than it should have been. (To be fair, it probably was the work of a well-meaning volunteer.) That’s my Dad showing how the tree desperately tried to develop roots closer to the surface. (Clicking on the image presents a lager image.) Too much energy to get feeding roots out near the surface and the death of the deeper roots led to the demise of this tree. Lesson for the gardener? Never plant a plant any deeper than it was grown in a pot or at the of color on the trunk of a bare root tree.

Thinking About Tropical Diversity (in the redwood forest!)

On my daily walk, the forest of redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) the S. gigantea is pictured here), oaks, Douglas firs, and many understory plants seems rather diverse. I wondered if this diversity had any implications to gardens. Maybe yes, maybe no. But today, for some reason I'm thinking about the tropics as well as the temperate climates.

In my opinion, using tropical diversity as a model in the USA is childlike. While the tropics often have lots of vertically-integrated plants, the temperate American landscape, with its hardwood forests, meadows, and prairies, is less vertically complex.


The nutrient mass is primarily above the ground in the tropics, the soil is rather “thin”. By comparison, the deeper soil is the reservoir of nutrients in a temperate ecosystem. Some plants in the tropics actually fix nitrogen on their leaves – “Experiments in a Costa Rican rainforest revealed that fixed nitrogen [by blue-green algae] is directly transferred into the leaf “ (Many tropical plants and trees do fix nitrogen in the soil, but it is “recycled” much more quickly.) From MONGABAY.COM: “The colonial settlers did not realize that they were dealing with an entirely different ecosystem from their temperate forests where most of the nutrients exist in the soil. In the rainforest, most of the carbon and essential nutrients are locked up in the living vegetation, dead wood, and decaying leaves. As organic material decays, it is recycled so quickly that few nutrients ever reach the soil, leaving it nearly sterile”. While in the temperate climates, nitrogen-fixing bacteria grow only the roots beneath the soil’s surface—primarily Rhizobium spp. bacteria found on the roots of the bean family (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) gather the nutrients, especailly nitrogen.

The difference is considerable when applied to the practical. Gardeners in temperate climate work to enhance the fixation and storage of nitrogen the soil mass. While tropical gardeners can rely on foliar feeding of nitrogen and the rapid recycling of nitrogen in a thin soil. (Sugarcane production requires no additional nitrogen due to the independent fixation of this element.)


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Note: I somehow lost the usual section "Post a comment". To leave a comment, simply click on the area/button that says "___ Comments" below. Or,clicking on the title of a Post under "Blog Archive" also gets you to a view that gives the option of leaving a comment. Robert

Silly Nuts

While this has little to do with roots, except that the peanut comes from the soil. Peanuts are not harvested above ground.

On my way to-and-from St. Louis, MO; via Southwest airlines, I got this packet of dry-roasted nuts with the silly warning. (Click on the image to read the text on the packet.)

Duh. Some people can't seem to understand the obvious.

(I guess they're also not Kosher.)

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The Myth of the Range of Tree Roots

The following is text from my book: Roots Demystified, Change Your Garden Habits to Help Roots Thrive.

The best book on the topic of fruit tree roots is The Root System of Fruit Plants compiled by a Russian named V. A. Kolesnikov. (As with most scientific papers, only initials are used for all but the surname.) Kolesnikov’s scientific papers appeared from 1924 until 1968, indicating that the USSR regime certainly valued his distinctive research.

Kolesnikov’s primary modus operandi for studying roots was the one he called “The Skeleton Method.” As with Professor Weaver’s studies, this method entailed precise excavation of the roots. In imitation of archaeological techniques, shovels were used first, followed by scoops and, eventually, brushes. This approach preserved more fine root hairs during excavation than the most common practice of using water forced from a hose, or even more than simple washing of the roots.

Kolesnikov’s conclusion is that fruit tree roots grow one-and-one-half to two and even three times the width of the foliage above them. More amazingly, he states that this ratio is maintained throughout the life of the tree, regardless of the rootstock, species, and soil (my emphasis added). This is clearly seen in the apple tree illustration depicted in the left side above. (Click on the image to get a better view.) Each type of fruit tree maintains a slightly different ratio of root mass to canopy. The best place for water, fertilizer, compost, and mulch is beyond the foliar dripline (canopy). This applies to most trees, not just fruit trees. The roots of fruit trees are studied more than ornamental or native trees because they are economic crops.

The illustration on the right is the misguided imagination of a graphic artist. Pretty to look at, but dead wrong. The roots in no way mirror the above-ground foliage.

The relationship of the width of a tree’s root-mass to the amount of moisture it should receive is critical. Applying water near the trunk is wasteful in any climate. In a climate that routinely experiences short droughts of a month or so up to six months (as in parts of the Southwest), drip irrigation is the most efficient way to distribute water to an entire root system.

The climate, however, need not be arid for trees to benefit from drip irrigation. In a study of established pecan trees in humid Georgia, trees with added drip irrigation showed a 51% increase in yields.

It's nuts to irrigate any other way.

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Pop goes the weasel (tree)

As written in my book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive, amendments are materials such as sand, peat moss, compost, and rice hulls have been added to the planting holes to supposedly improve drainage and keep the soil loose and friable. Fertilizers, such as blood meal, cottonseed meal, greensand, and wood ashes, are those ingredients added to provide mostly nutrients. Some amendments, such as compost, are thought to do both improve drainage and act as mild fertilizers.

One of the best studies of the effect of amendments for fertility was done at Oklahoma State University at Stillwater by Joseph Schulte and Carl Whitcomb. They planted 108 silver maple trees with 11 different soil treatments and a control (untreated planting hole). One conclusion was: "no benefit was derived from the use of soil amendments either with a good clay loam soil or a very poor silt loam subsoil." They found that the control plantings with no additional amendments generally outperformed the plantings with amendments for drainage and fertility.

The loose soil of the amendments in a traditional planting hole makes something like an underground swimming pool full of water when it rains hard, drowning important root hairs. Adding a lot of amendments only leaves the roots unprepared for the shock of what lies beyond the amended area. (And nobody can amend the area of the mature root system seeing as how much wider it is than the foliage.) Often the roots fail to make it out of the well-amended hole and merely circle around in the loose planting medium, rendering the trees likely to blow over during a storm. The trees most tolerant to wind are those with the widest root systems. Or, as the photo shows, not spreading the roots when planting can allow the tree to simply pop out of the ground when hit by a car or pulled out by hand.

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Doughnuts of Death, Mounds of Mulch

I just got back from the land of “toxic” mulch – the donuts (as spelled by Dunkin’ Donuts) of death in St. Louis, MO. Every landscape contractor (and maybe home gardeners mimicking the landscape companies) seems to be having a contest as to how high they can pile mulch around tree trunks. Some have mounded mulch 16 inches high or higher. These donuts of death are disasters in the making. Root rots (Phytophtora spp.) like a warm and moist/wet soil. Mulching tree trunks so high has all the ingredients needed for the rot of trunks to kill trees. I saw one tree that had mulch apparently piled over the graft of the now dead tree. (Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me at the time.) As the photo says, we must put a stop to this uninformed practice. Landscapers must abandon these donuts of death.

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Grass - for mowin', not smokin'

I can’t have an “official” lawn because the well at my house is so limited. I just mow the “meadows” till they are brown and less than four-inches tall as if that’ll do anything to stop a forest fire—NOT.

Anyway, I watch with envy as some neighbors with good-producing wells go about planting and watering their lawns. Still it’s water that was meant to trickle through crooks and crannies of the deep underground as it meanders ever so slowly, at my house, to the ocean.

Conserving water should be everyone’s approach to a garden as water is more like a finite resource these days.

There is one fascinating plant to consider as a lawn substitute in dry areas— Buffalo grass (Buchloe dactyloides). This grass naturally grows where the yearly rainfall is 17 inches or less.

A bit of background information:
The man responsible for the amazing “etching” of a Buffalo grass’ root system is John Weaver, a Professor of Plant Ecology at the University of Nebraska for 47 years. Weaver literally went into the trenches to excavate the root zones of plants. Working and recording as carefully as the most compulsive and attentive archeologist uncovering a buried civilization, he spent countless hours following and mapping roots and the patterns they made beneath his feet.

The illustration (From Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive, published by me.) was done in west-central Kansas and shows Buffalo grass roots in proportion to their foliage. It must be the extensive depth of the roots that allows buffalo grass to withstand long periods of drought, although 70% of the root mass is in the first six inches of the soil. The plant can be kept mowed to 5-6 inches for a continuous cover. While not as sturdy to foot wear-and-tear as our more common lawn grasses, it does fit the visual desire of a mown meadow. As with many turf grasses, irrigation in the top six inches is ideal for good-looking growth.

To maintain a green turf, Buffalo grass needs only .3 inches of water per week compared to .5 for Bermuda grass, .8 for tall fescue, 1.2 for Kentucky bluegrass and 1.5 for perennial ryegrass. Another way to look at it is that Buffalo grass can last 21-45 days without irrigation, compared with St. Augustine grass, which can need watering every five days.

This native grass has been “domesticated” as a substitute for lawns in dry areas or any place a gardener wants to conserve water. Buffalo grass is well suited to the transition zones of the country, where it’s often too hot for cool-season grasses such as Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and tall fescue and too cold for warm-season species like St. Augustine, Bermuda and zoysia. Use one of the more recent selections that are available, and check with your local Cooperative Extension as to its appropriateness for your area. Some examples are: 'Legacy®' and 'Prestige™.

Let me know if you’ve tried this grass and what the results were.

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Lavenders - Prune with care-free abandon

Well, not with a weed-whacker or inattentive eyes. But with educated eyes and some trusty clippers.

Most people prune their lavenders wrong. They often cut the flower stem back to where the foliage begins. This works for awhile. However, I found out in the distant past that I ended up with a leggier plant that flopped open from the weight of the blossoms, as is the case with the Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas var. 'Otto Quast'). For other lavender species and cultivars, they just had shorter lives as they became more gangly. Eventually I learned that this sub-shrub needs “severe” pruning. NOT back to so-called “dead wood” as nothing will sprout where there are no leaves.

Yesterday I pruned a large Spanish lavender plant. (The “English” varieties are budding, but not yet blooming.) The photograph of my 15-year-old Spanish lavender shows how dramatically I prune. I prune back to where there is only one- to two-inches of foliage. In the photograph, it shows that I cut the flower stems and the foliage by eight or more inches. I filled a 15-gallon container with the clippings of a single five-foot-wide plant. This more radical pruning keeps the plant more compact and less likely to flop open. And such care means a long, healthy life for each lavender.

Try this style of intensive pruning – but not with totally-free abandonment.

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Dripping My Way Through the Forest

For anyone interested in water, a rain-gauge is not only an essential tool and toy, but a great topic for cocktail party chit-chat. Did you know, for example, that one can actually overlook 30 to 60 inches of "rain"?

I live on a high ridge dividing a hotter, dryer inland plain from the more temperate, wetter Pacific Ocean climate some five miles to the west. The non-drought average rainfall on top of my cloud-scraping ridge is about 60 inches per year.

Shortly after moving here, I noticed that a foggy summer evening produced the sound of steady rain beneath the tallest trees—even though a meadow 20 feet away remained bone-dry. I soon learned that in my Mediterranean coastal zone, summer "rain," consisting of droplets of condensed fog, is a frequent occurrence

In this climate, with its summer fogs and winter rains, moist air condenses on the leaves of plants and forms droplets like the hot-weather "sweat" on a bottle of cold soda. The collective needles of the Douglas fir trees near my house offer an immense surface area for this condensation.

I set up a rain-gauge beneath the tallest (125 -foot) Douglas fir tree, and over six years I've discovered that this single tree gathers one or more inches of "rain" each summer night during heavy fogs, and half-again to twice the year-round "rain" of the adjacent open meadow. The month of August usually produces six inches of summer fog drip, or an amazing 163,000 gallons per acre of tree foliage!

To utilize nature's original "drip irrigation" and take direct advantage of this free rain, I plant beneath the dripline of the Douglas firs near my patio The difficulty is finding plants that are somewhat drought-tolerant, shade-loving and deer-resistant. So far my list includes most of the varieties of Daphne (Daphne spp.); wild ginger (Asarum caudatum); native Western ferns; foxgloves (Digitalis spp.); huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum); Forget-me-nots (Myosotis scorpioides); salal from Northern CA, OR and WA (Gaultheria shallon); the native thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus); Euryops pectinatus (gets leggy, must have late evening light); and various ornamental grasses. Soon to be infiltrated by Rhododendrons spp., Azaleas spp., and bear berries (Mahonia spp.)

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Mulch 'Mators

The perfect tomato is the Holy Grail of many gardeners. Especially in the coastal, marine-influenced climate where I live. I’ve watched neighbors plant tomatoes where the summer fogs are frequent and nurture, worry, persist and try every way they read in the books and magazine articles to eke out a handful of tomatoes. Probably at a real cost of $10 per tomato, or more. Whereas just 2 miles east, over the high hump of the land that captures so much summer fog, tomatoes thrive. So, I buy them at the farmer’s markets and save lots of money and elbow grease.

Back in the ‘30s a man named John Weaver had the patience to excavate entire root systems. He dug a trench along side of the base of each plant and proceeded to excavate, scrape, and dust his way through soil – much like an archeologist at work - to reveal in exquisite detail the full extent of a plants root system. He (or someone else – the book makes no comment as to who did the drawings that resemble etchings) mapped mostly economic vegetable crops. Weaver must have been the Saint of Patience. I often wondered if he had a wife (no search found any clue) who could understand his work and have the same patience he must have had.

In Weaver’s experience, a tomato seed planted in ideal outdoor soil, with no transplanting involved, can grow a taproot to the depth of 22 inches at a rate of one inch per day. The tomato is yet another vegetable that prefers to grow a taproot, which is often damaged during transplanting. Young seedlings transplanted several times into increasingly large pots before their final move into the garden will probably end up with a root system more fibrous than that of tomato plants planted by seed in the garden which are allowed to grow a conventional taproot. However, transplanting tomato-plant stems deep into the soil will produce many adventitious roots along the length of its stem (See Weaver’s illustration.), creating a great root system early in the life of the plant, more advantageous than seed grown in the garden.

The illustration is drawn on a one-square foot grid (Taken from my book Roots Demystified, change your gardening habits to help roots thrive.) and shows how massive the root system is for one plant. At seven feet wide it changes one’s perspective of how much mulch is required to keep all the roots happy. In cool climates you might experiment with paper from an office or home shedder to help reflect light into the canopy of the plant. Turn all those shredded unsolicited checks from your credit company into wonderful tomatoes!

I don’t know of anyone planting tomatoes by direct seeding in the ground. Do you?

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A Gardener's Repast - sometimes

I've often observed that many garden fanatics don't have place to sit and relax and enjoy the view and soak up the fragrances and sunlight. I gardened for seven years as a fanatic vegetable and fruit gardener before I put in some places to sit.

They are large rounds of a tree with half of the back chained sawed off. After 25 years they still allow visitor to sit and enjoy two views of the garden. Now I’ve added two proper seats - Adirondack chairs - for visitors as I still don't sit in my garden that much. But when I have guests over we all relax in various chairs and benches. I like to let plants wander around my garden. If two people sit in these chairs, they must be careful to avoid the foxglove for one season - as it will soon go to seed.

Then there’s chairs as art. The overgrown-white chairs pictured here are from the eccentric garden of Maxine and Jeff. Mostly found objects fill their whimsical garden and the white chairs are for look only. The bench, however, is one of several that allow them to rest and enjoy the garden with friends. (Notice the seats to the right-for "show" only.)

As with all my posts, click on an image to get a larger view.

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Roots Grow Up!

Surprisingly, many of a tree’s feeding (not “structural” roots) roots grow up, not down. In a paper published in The Landscape Below Ground (International Society of Arboriculture, 1994. pg. 3), Professor Thomas O. Perry states “Most tree roots range in diameter [from that of] of a lead pencil to the size of a hair. These smaller roots…grow upward into the surface inches of soil and the litter layer.”

The significance of the importance of the most aerobic layers of the soil and duff can be seen in a simple study using potted tree seedlings. You can see the dramatic difference in the illustration of growth between the three soil depths. The seedlings in the pot on the left are growing in soil collected from the top two inches. The middle pot has soil only from the 2-4 inch depth of a forest floor. The pot on the right is trying to grow in subsoil.

The top two inches is so vital to a tree’s health, whether it’s native or ornamental. This is also the favorite two inches for all the plants in a humid climate with periodic rains. Take away that top two inches by planting it to lawn, raking the duff up for “a cleaner look” or allowing so much foot traffic that the roots are exposed, and you have a disaster in the making. This is perhaps the most important illustration in Roots Demystified because it so graphically reveals where tree and shrub roots prefer to grow and feed.

The photo is of a cross-section of three feet of soil beneath a vineyard. Most of the roots are in the top foot or so of the soil. Below that level it gets increasingly more like clay subsoil. (If you click on the image to enlarge it, you will see a few roots below the first foot and even a few that found the lens of gravel.)

The aerobic-loving soil life – where you find the most soluble nutrients - needs to breathe. The deeper you go, the less aerobic you get, and the number of “good guys” (beneficial soil flora) will rapidly diminish. Studies done with agricultural plants provide a lot of useful information. One example is alfalfa, it can grow roots much deeper than peach trees can, yet both get most of their moisture (along with nutrients) in the top one to two feet of the soil.

But trees still need “dirt”. Perry puts it quite succinctly when he says that trees on soils as little as five inches thick produce only poor tree and shrub growth. (one can then imagine how far the roots must grow laterally in the shallow soils to gather sufficient moisture and nutrients.) You can get fair growth with a ten-inch depth, good growth at 16 inches and excellent growth with 20-30 inches of topsoil. Most remarkably, according to Perry, the tree vigor is likely to gradually decrease with soil deeper than 30 inches. (The Landscape Below Ground, International Society of Arboriculture, 1994. pg. 9)

A PRACTICAL TIP FOR GARDENERS
As I’ve often said: mulch, mulch, mulch. Replicate the duff that forms in a natural forest. Establish as many permanent pathways as possible. Try to let the pathways “breathe”—allowing the air to flow into the roots and the carbon monoxide to be expelled. You can use chipped bark, chipped tree trimmings, gravel or whatever local material suits you.


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Bee Kind to My Foxglove

I love foxgloves even though they are not native plants. Each deep-throated foxglove flower stimulates my spirit. The color cascading from each blossom engages my eyes. This photo of a special creamy-white foxglove is the first one with this color to show up in the 25 years I’ve lived here.

While considered an exotic “invader” I like to have it in my garden as a form of controlled chaos. Each year I let the tall flower stalks go to seed and spread their fine, brown seeds where ever they may. This means leaving the flower stalks to mature to an earthy brown. No dead-heading here. No place in my garden for Martha Stewart. These sentinels of future generations remain for weeks until the tiny up-turned cups of the remaining flower parts fill with mature seed and begin to spill with each gust of wind. Sometime I scatter a few seeds myself. (The tallest flower stalks seem to be those growing from seed they have cast asunder, not the seed I plant.)

All this makes for a very kinetic garden as the years go by. One year I had a glorious stand of foxgloves at the end of the main path into my garden. More than two dozen plants reaching four- to six-feet in the air. Each a different shade from hot rose to pale pink to creamy white. The next year they popped up in the soil surrounding the small swale that drains water away from water-sensitive plants on the adjacent berm. This year they have appeared in the soil and mulch left behind after grinding a dead tree stump into oblivion. How they got there, some 20 feet from last years stand, I’ll never know.

The seed needs to fall where there isn’t too much competition. Yet it will grow above some of the grasses. But in the end, it really prefers open soil, my mulched areas or I’ll find clusters of plants will thrive at the edge where mowing meets the more rangy parts of the garden. For the first year the dark-green leaves flourish as they gather the photosynthetic momentum for the flower stalk to thrust skyward. The handful of leaves at the tip of the plant are a pleasure to look at, with a subtle display of the Fibonacci pattern. (The Fibonacci series is the mathematical form portrayed in the cross section of a nautilus shell or the pattern of seeds on a sunflower head.)

Our eyes see delightful beauty in our gardens. Yet, some of the splendor in garden flower remains unseen. Each foxglove blossom has a different set of splotches all the way into its throat, like little runway guides leading to the sweet nectar. These are intriguing enough. But there’s more. Pollinating bumble bees (as seen in the above photo) see something beyond our vision. Bumble bees have a pair of six-sided, compound eyes and three simple eyes. Even with such complex eyes, their sight is accurate for only about three feet. A special light guides bumble bees on their lusty journeys for pure nectar. Bumble bees see ultraviolet light. A pattern of ultraviolet coloration lures a bumble bee into the foxglove flower’s throat. These patterns unseen by our eyes act like the signals of an airport’s landing strip. And the ultraviolet splotches of color don’t match the random splotches we see in the sunshine.

The earth’s protective atmosphere shields us from much of the sun’s ultraviolet light (radiation). Enough ultraviolet radiation filters through to aid bumble bees in their daily journeys. Even on a cloudy day, the bumble bees see the ultraviolet spectrum by cloud-penetrating ultraviolet light. What assists bumble bees on their quest for pollen and nectar can cause us to sunburn—part of the two-sided tapestry of life.

In each blossom the pollen is in the roof of the flower so the upper body of the bumble bee is brushed with the pollen as the bumble bee goes deeper into the blossom to seek out the sweet nectar. After flying to another flower, the pollens are mixed and seed formation begins. The pollination process leads to a plant with a mixture of colors. Yet an isolated stand with creamy flowers will remain shades of cream until a seedling of a rose-colored blossom pops up nearby. Then things get interesting as different blends of color appear.

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) is the source of digitalis—a heart medication. According to the American Heart Association: “Digitalis is a drug that strengthens the contraction of the heart muscle, slows the heart rate and helps eliminate fluid from body tissues. It's often used to treat congestive heart failure and is also used to treat certain arrhythmias. Digitalis has been described in medical literature for over 200 years.” The extract is taken from the leaves. (Two synthetic mimics of digitalis are Digitoxin and Digoxin.) India supplies most of the cultivated digitalis. Others sources are wild crafted (gathered from wild, un-cultivated areas) in Europe, from Germany, Switzerland, Hungary and Italy. Digitalis is toxic at very low levels.

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Taproot Myths Revealed

This is a photograph of a young tan-oak seedling, sometimes called tanbark trees as their bark was stripped off and used to tan animal hides. These trees used to be classified as a species of Quercus (oak), now reclassified by botanists with time on their hands as Lithocarpus densiflorus. Don’t ask me why. This seedling has a stem with a few leaves five inches above ground and seven inches of a taproot, all I could dig out. (Click on the photo to see a much larger image.)

In my book, Roots Demystified, change your gardening habits to help roots thrive, I talk about how few trees actually grow with taproots. Oaks are an exception, for awhile.

Some Californian and western oak trees (including the tanbark oak), begin growing with a taproot, which then naturally atrophies. The loss of the taproot can begin as early as the first or second season. When the young seedling of a blue oak is a mere three inches high the taproot can already extend 40 inches into the soil. After a number of years, the taproot withers, to be replaced by heart roots (which angle down from the base of the tree) and many laterals, with vertical sinker roots. In Spruce (Picea spp.), Hemlock (Tsuga spp.) and Cedar (Cedrus spp.) trees, at less than eight years, the lateral and oblique roots take over the role of support and the taproot declines. (From: “Natural Root Forms of Western Conifers”, S. Eis; From: Proceedings of the Root Form of Planted Trees Symposium, page 24, 1978.) After the taproot atrophies, the new root system grows more horizontal and oblique roots and resembles a fibrous root system.

In my photograph the roots are about as long as the stem and leaves. However, much of the tiny taproot was left in the ground judging by the thickness of the bottom of this seedling as it was dug with a spading fork. The seedling sprouted in deep shade which probably accounts for the extended length of the stem.

Any oak planted from any container or balled-and-burlapped stock has effectively had its taproot destroyed and forms a fibrous (heart roots) root system.

I think the sturdiest oaks are grown like nature, from seed placed where you want a specimen for your grandchildren to climb on.


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Scatological Blossoms

Scat on my gravel driveway makes me happy.

Scat (the politically-correct way to refer to animal feces – which also masks the street language version) usually means the bobcat or mountain lion (cougar) is back. These animals seem to like pooping on my driveway to mark their territory.

The wonderful result is the deer vanish. They smell the marked territory.

I have not seen any deer for the past week. Today I found a fresh pile of scat on the edge of the driveway.

The beauty of it is that I get more splendor in my garden.

When I first moved here 23 years ago I planted the rockrose ‘Sunset’(Cistus ‘Sunset’) and enjoyed its hot-pink blossoms. The shrub had to be taken out when the stump next to it was ground up into a pile of wood chips. Then three years ago I planted another one. The deer proceeded to eat every flower bud and kept the plant as a half-sphere of foliage. The foliage is nice, but the flowers are spectacular. This week the plant is covered with its crape paper hot-pink petals. Other plants are blooming unlike years before when the deer ate the blossoms and foliage

When I first moved here I put some of those road reflectors that mark highway lanes down the middle of our gravel driveway. (To prove we weren’t entirely country hicks. Of course the two “lanes” would apply only to motorcycles.) The next morning there was a fresh pile of bobcat scat on top of one of the reflectors. A message saying “Hey I was here first. What right do you have to invade my territory?” Just marking its territory, and scaring off the deer.

This winter I found a perfectly intact, fresh deer skeleton with three points. No bobcat could take down such a large buck. It meant the mountain lion was back.

I walk past the scat on my road each day as I take my speedy, aerobic walk. I wear a red shirt and a purple hat so I don’t look like lunch to a mountain lion. Hope it continues to work.

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Gophers & Robins - who would have guessed?

Gophers love roots and moles love worms.

Robins also love worms. They all came together one year just about this time.

I was watching from my second-story window as a gopher bumped up against the concrete slab that is part of my patio. The gopher was pushing its mound of soil (a throw) against the concrete. A robin landed on top of the throw and ate worms as they appeared from below.

It was the vibration that sent the worms topside to an ugly death. This is not just a single weird occurrence. There are worm “hunters” in Florida that gather worms for fishing bait by “thumping”. They have a wide, long board which they insert into the soil. With a wooden mallet they strike the top of the board that’s sticking above the soil. A gradual, rhythmic “thumping” causes a vibration that in turn causes worms to come crawling out of the ground. This time to lure unsuspecting fish.

That gopher was the thumper for the robin.

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This Tree Needs Caterpillars

Caterpillars are pests aren't they? Not always.

It turns out the native coast live oak (Quercas agrifolia) that grows around my house co-evolved with a tiny caterpillar, appropriately named the oak-leaf caterpillar. Without the caterpillar, the oak tree might die during years of stress.

A nursery in Los Altos, CA has a gorgeous coastal live oak about 75 feet in diameter. During the drought of the early ‘70s a lot of trees were very stressed. A neighbor near the nursery sprayed their oak, “to get rid of the messy droppings and fallen leaves”. The nursery carefully watched their tree lose many leaves and be riddled with leaves partially eaten by the oak-leaf caterpillar.

Guess which tree died?

The neighbor’s. Because it had 100% of it’s green leaves to transpire moisture. Even an organic spray, such as Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki, would have lead the tree to an early death. At the nursery, the tree survived as much of it’s leaf area was consumed by the caterpillar, offering less area for transpiration.

Judging by the moths at my screened windows and the partially-eaten leaves, the first round of oak-leaf caterpillars is here. There are two to three groups of moths each season depending on how dry the year is.

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Grevilleas & Hummers

This is a photo of my Grevillea spp. in bloom. Alas, I lost the species name. However, that hasn’t stopped the humming birds from frequenting these remarkable flowers all year round. This plant along with most Grevilleas blooms throughout the year. During Spring the amount of bloom dramatically increases. They are all deer-resistant and drought resistant (hardy). I have never watered this plant when I planted it in the fall some 12 years ago. These plants are from the Mediterranean climate zone in Australia. They come in every shade of red, orange, yellow, pink, and nearly white. I don’t know of any with blue flowers. I find the unusual form of the flower to be quite fascinating.

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Floating Butterflies

A common summer visitor to my garden drifts into my garden meadow. It is the tiger swallow tail butterfly. The swallow tail darts about with bursts of flight. Sups from the sweet nectar of the South African red-hot poker. Flies off to careen by the wild huckleberry shrubs north of my house, they’re not in bloom. Swirls around the other sides of my home where there is no nectar. Returns to lick within the trumpet-shaped flowers of this colorful exotic plant. Another swallow tail butterfly joins in the flirtation with plants, the breeze, and the first butterfly. Up, fluttering. Dips. Floats. Surveys the huckleberries again. Around the house. Past the red-poker to sail past the leaves of an apple tree past bloom. Coasts back for a treat from the glorious torch. They circle the house. Flirt with each other and an apple tree, and the drifts into my garden meadow with its pale-green leaves. Flutters around my house. Drinks from the trumpet-throated poker blossoms. Darts off to another pasture of floral nectar.

Where is the pattern? The repetition of the nectar-driven flight around my house? Broken by erratic flight. There’s really no design to be found. I amuse myself by looking for a pattern within the fanciful chaos of nature’s gossamer treats—a butterfly on the wing on a warm spring afternoon.

The tiger swallow tail butterfly is the most common butterfly around my home, expect, perhaps, the white cabbage butterfly. The photo above shows the butterfly as collected in my youth—over 40 years ago. I was a regular ecological disaster looking back from 2008. But collecting butterflies was just one of the myriad exploits of a young “naturalist” in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Besides, we had no idea what the future would bring (or not bring as the case may be). Now catching a butterfly for mounting as a specimen would be a heinous crime.

In my early years there were dozens of butterflies and moths. A friend here in Sonoma county had a collection of over 70 varieties. Now, I spot only 10-15 or so varieties each summer. The swallow tail eats the leaves of the prolific wild anise (Pimpinella anisum). But there not much habitat left for the delights of other butterflies. Other losses of butterflies could be the increasing vineyards and their use of pesticides and fungicides. Other reasons remain a mystery.

Plants Don't Bleed to Death

Most trees don’t commit suicide by bleeding to death.

The same is true for shrubs, vines, and other perennials.

If you’ve ever had maple syrup on pancakes, you’ve eaten a bleeding sugar maple tree (Acer saccharum). Not only do the trees not die, they are tapped again the next season and for as long as 100 years. Same goes for true rubber. Slices in the bark of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis ) allowed the latex sap to dribble into containers. Same tree every year for many years..

The photo on the lower left is a droplet of sap coming from a pruned Kiwi vine. I pruned the second-story vines late this year. (Rain, book to finish, coordinating an assistant, blah, blah, blah…) The end to the remaining vines dribbled like a leaky hose. For days. Now, some four weeks later, the leaves are beginning to show at the bud just behind the cut.

Why, you might ask, Kiwi’s on the second floor of my house that requires two people to lift and position the ladder? I transplanted two vines from a friend’s fence only to find out they were both females. (I have gotten as much as 25 fruits with no male Kiwi around. Figure that one out!) My foremost reason was to provide an arching canopy along the length of the south-facing wall. (I have friends with a multitude of fruit I can share.) The idea was to have a well-shaded house for our hot Indian summer days. I certainly wasn’t planning on a crop two floors off the ground. So, I prune them for shade by cutting most of the vine back to main vine and some laterals. By the end of the summer some of the vines have arched gracefully ten feet, or more, over the patio below. The cloak of the leaves is both beautiful and functional.

You can see my house in early fall in the third photo with a bit of the wall in the sun.

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Lavender, Part 2

It’s lavender time in my garden.

The first parade of the season of royal-blue lavender blossoms has begun. Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas) leads the way with a burst of sapphire-blue flowers.

(Actually there is a species of lavender that has blossoms in a prayer-like fashion during most of the year. It’s the French lavender (L. dentata). In the Spring it begins to bloom more abundantly, but with a more subtle smokey-purple. Far from the drama of Spanish lavender during the warm-hot weather of spring.)

The amazing color of Spanish lavender comes not from the flowers them self, but rather from the bracts on top of the flower’s head that look like bunny ears. Or, flames of a royal-blue color. The true blossoms that hold the nectar so eagerly sought after by honey bees and bumble bees are found in four lines of deep blue, ever so tiny, on each of the four sides of the head. The later are the most frequent pollenizers in my garden.

Spanish lavenders cross pollinate in my garden to produce some amazing new plants

The photo on the left is a typical display of Spanish lavender as it is commonly expected. The photo on the right is a chance seedling that appeared along my pathway. The nearest Spanish plants were 12 feet way on the other side of the driveway. I don’t know of any crossing between Spanish lavender and other Lavandula species. (The true flowers are the little white spots below the bracts.)

This plant has a moon-like, pale-yellow bracts and is not found anywhere in the trade. What a joy it was when it first appeared 12 years ago. A special variety just for me. (And anyone who wants to take cuttings.)

L. stoechas “Viridis” has also begun to bloom prolifically and is my favorite species for grilling. This plant has none of the characteristics of what people think of a lavender. The foliage is decidedly yellow-green, rather than the darker green foliage English lavender (L. angustifolia). The bracts are yellow to the point of being somewhat chartreuse. This is my favorite foliage to grill with. The bracts and flower heads have no scent. Ah, but the foliage has is a rustic, resinous herbal, and seemingly wild flavor that is transformed in the process of grilling to a delightful seasoning with a hint of rosemary. (See my recipe on the blog for March 28th.)

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Simple Drip Emitter Tubing

It’s irrigation season on my friend Chester’s garlic farm. The garlic has been growing all winter but now needs irrigation until July or so. That's him to the left, 85 and still growing and eatin' garlic.

About 18-years ago, I helped put in a simple drip irrigation system for each of his 4-foot by 10-foot planter boxes. I insisted on in-line emitter tubing.

In-line emitters are still probably the least well-known drip irrigation technology, but afford the best mix of efficiency, ease of installation, and resistance to clogging. The tubing is 1/2-inch in diameter with an emitter pre-installed inside the tubing at regular intervals.

These internal emitters seldom clog because they utilize what is known as a "tortuous path,” which forms a continuous vortex, a kind of horizontal tornado that keeps any sediment, sand or silt in suspension until it passes out of the emitter. (See the illustration above or in my books Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All  Climates or in Roots Demystified - Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive. Click on the illustration for a bigger image) In-line emitters even work with well water high in soluble iron-oxide or other minerals. In-line emitter tubing moistens the soil the entire length of the line, but slightly below the surface where the bulbous-shaped wet spots come together to form one nearly continuous moist zone.

The emitters come pre-installed in the tubing, which is most commonly sold in pre-spaced, 12-inch intervals—but also comes in intervals of 24- and 36-inches. The emitters inside the hose are rated to dispense either ½ or 1 gallon-per-hour (gph) and the hose is available in both non-compensating and pressure-compensating versions.

We used ½ gph pressure-compensating emitters on 12-inch spaces along the tubing. We placed three equally-spaced lines running down the length of every box. (See upper-left photo. Taken before the straw is added.) Each box has the three lines connected to the water supply and the other ends connected to a drain-down manifold to flush the system at the beginning of each irrigation season. That’s what Chester is doing in the right-hand photo above. The garlic has grown considerably during the rainy winter months.

The benefits of pressure-compensated in-line emitters are: it's easy to install, simple to snake around your existing plantings, it is easy to put together a simple array of tubing which can be readily removed from the vegetable beds for seasonal cultivation, suffers less clogging than porous tubing and most punched-in emitters Chester stopped using the filter several years back and still only a handful of plugged emitters. Even with iron-based irrigation water only a few emitters in the thousands of feet of tubing have clogged over the past 18 years, and not cracked or leaking. Warranty says 10 years, but this tubing is always under six inches of mulch, works at the greatest range of pressures (9-25 psi), provides consistent rates of irrigation without regard to slope or length, has no external parts to snap off (a premier advantage over all punched-in emitters), and the compression fittings don't leak and seal better than the hose clamps used with porous hose.

The regular interval of the emitter makes it easy to irrigate the entire root system of all vegetables—in this case, garlic—and ornamentals by simply running parallel line of tubing throughout these raised beds or any garden. This will insure the greatest yields when compared to any other irrigation method—even sprinklers.

The drawbacks are few: it requires extra planning for plants placed very far apart and at very odd intervals, it can't turn a sharp radius, and it’s not carried by very many retail outlets.

You can get by mail from Harmony Farm Supply & Nursery, Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply, and DripWorks (one word). Google them for what’s sold on their web site. You may have to order from one of their printed catalogs.

Let me know if you’ve tried in-line emitter tubing. How did it work for your garden?

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Labels: Chester Aaron, drip irrigation, emitters, gardening, garlic, in-line emitter tubing, irrigation, raised beds

Deer Fencing With a View, building one.

The old way to keep deer at bay was ugly.

Deer fence barriers have usually been made with woven wire mesh up to six feet and several horizontal strands of wire above that, creating a prison-perimeter that looks like Stalag 13 and that's not acceptable for most suburban or rural yards.

It's spring and the fawns will soon be looking to stake out new territory. Testing every fence.

I learned of a special fence that had a 20-year track record of keeping deer out. Because no part of the fence is taller than four feet, the home owner's view remains mostly unobstructed; the double placement avoids the looming ugliness of the tall eight-foot agricultural version while being, in my area, just as effective. There have been at least five replications of this type of fence after I built this model. They all work.

The fence are both only four-feet high. The two four-foot high fences are built five feet apart. (See the photo in the upper right above.) Since deer can’t talk, I’m left to guess why this seemingly uncomplicated design is so effective. The most common theory is that the deer can’t see enough room between the two fences to land and then rebound over the inner fence. For whatever reason, this configuration seems to work on both flat and sloped sites. The fences must be in the open"meadow" as a neighbor built one in the forest and it didn't work. (I was the first to take the bold leap to build one on a gradual slope.)

Both four-foot fences can be made with 2"X4" inch wire-mesh fencing attached to six-foot metal stakes pounded two feet into the ground. Or, for a more aesthetic look, the most visible areas of fencing can be made of wooden boards, pickets, or grape stakes. Because it requires additional posts and hardware, the cost of the double fence will be somewhat higher than that of an eight-foot barrier, but the unencumbered view is often worth the expense And working at four feet or less is much easier for the weekend fence builder.

I staggered the top of these grape stakes by six inches and left a gap as wide as a grape stake to give the fence a lighter feel. The inner wire fence was planted with honeysuckle, that rapidly obscured the wire and continued to be effective.

With two fences, two gates must be built at each opening. One attractive solution is to incorporate two four-foot gates into a five-foot-square eight-foot-tall arbor, which can also serve as support for climbing roses planted inside the inner fence. (I learned from the client that five feet was bit to tight to easily pass through with a wheelbarrow —it worked but is a tight, knuckle-scrapping width. So, all future designs will have a six-foot wide arbor.)

I decided to have the grape stakes on the gates reflect the curve of the arbor. I used cardboard to sketch the curve, flip it, and use it as a template for the stake. (See the illustration on the lower left.) The finished arbor, as seen above is attractive. However I felt I was taking a chance as the deer might use the hole to jump through. Luckily, after over 20 years no grazing ungulates have traversed the gate.

The client planted deer-resistant English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) grown from seed on the outside of the fence. Because the plants were grown from seed, there is a wonderful array of blossom colors—from typical lavender blue to royal blue to pastel blue and even almost pure white.

The combination of the lavender on the outside (the fourth photo) combined with the inner fence covered with honeysuckle and the fence nearly invisible. A pleasant, and fragrant, way to deter these beautiful, yet destructive-eating machines.

For the plantings outside the fence, it's important to realize that deer, their habits, and their appetites are always changing. However, in my garden, lavender has been untouched for 25 years. What deer eat and what will fence them out, varies throughout the country. Try each new strategy in moderation until you find out if it works. The answers to deer browsing will always remain as diverse as our local environments.

I built this fence nearly 20 years ago and no deer have crossed it. Once a mighty buck got trapped between the two fences. Luckily, he jumped out the way he came, away from the prized roses, strawberry plants, fruit trees and countless other delectables. If you don’t move to fast you can often slowly walk an animal back to where it breached the perimeter to see how it got in.

I rent my home and the layout of the house to the road and the garden would make it very difficult to construct a double four-foot fence. And the cost would be prohibitive. So I’ve settled upon planting deer-resistant exotics.

I wonder if this double fence will work in cold-weather areas where winters are snowy and harsh and deer become desperate. For one thing, snow drifts might make it easy for the deer to simply walk up to and over the four foot height. If you know of such a fence in your area, please let me know. For much of the west, it’s a solution worth experimenting with.

Electrical fencing, which provides a safe but deterring shock, is a common solution the snow parts of the country. A popular electric fence for parts of New England is a low-profile, five-foot-tall electric fence made of high-tensile wire.

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Greyt Detergents for Grey Water Systems

It’s time to turn the illegal valve to use my grey water.

Soap is soap, and most laundry detergents appear to be just the same old detergent. This is fine, unless you have a grey water system designed to irrigate your favorite petunias or roses with the used water from your washing machine. Plain soap, which is made from stuff like animal fat and lye (wood ash), doesn't stop minerals in the wash water from depositing a dirty "smog" on your favorite pure-white undies. So, over forty years ago, Procter & Gamble invented Tide as the first heavy-duty synthetic laundry detergent.

Detergents, fabricated from a variety of chemicals in addition to soap, are engineered to enhance the soap's cleaning capability and avoid graying those undies. But, alas for grey water users, chemicals in detergents are selected with only their clothes-washing capabilities in mind, and with no thought for a thirsty root's sensitivities.

To choose the best detergent for a grey water system, you'll have to read product labels. First, look for the most important element to avoid: sodium. Unfortunately, the amount of sodium in most detergents is impossible to ascertain, and they won't tell you on the 800-consumer phone line because "It's proprietary." As a rule, popular liquid concentrates have much less sodium than powdered detergents, which use cheap sodium-based compounds to bulk up the product.

Next, look for the words boron, borate or Boroteam. Boron rarely kills plants, but it will cause an ugly leaf-margin burn, and can be a real problem with alkaline soils in desert areas. Worse still, once boron is added to soil, it is not easily leached out. So skip all detergents with boron.

Phosphates chemically inactivate calcium, magnesium, iron and manganese without making a precipitate (depositing a grimy "smog" on cloth). These are the chemicals blamed in the 1970s for "ruining" lakes and rivers (it's since been learned that laundry phosphates weren't always the significant culprit). Actually, phosphates are a great ingredient for a grey water system because roots utilize them like a fertilizer. Since a grey water system is managed for the improved growth of the plants, buy a high-phosphate detergent—if you can find one (many states have banned in as an ingredient). Because you'll be monitoring your grey water system, you can make sure phosphates aren't leaching off your property to turn rivers or lakes green.

Finally, watch out for chlorine, which in its concentrated form is a very caustic, toxic and deadly chemical. The amounts of chlorine in detergents are actually quite low, but the prudent gardener will avoid this chemical altogether. (However, I have used chlorine bleach on occasion in the laundry and to remove stains in the bathtub, and have yet to see any visible consequences in my landscape.)

A quick survey of any supermarket will soon reveal a plethora of detergents either useless for grey water or, at best, ambiguously labeled. What's a lawless grey-water user to do? (It's still illegal in most places to use grey water.) I shop for a more “Earth-friendly” detergent but get the full scoop on boron, sodium, and chlorine.

For the latest on grey water developments, see the web site of the Guru of Grey Water, Art Ludwig: http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think. Are you an illegal grey water user?

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Living With the Roots of an Oak Tree

I laugh (and cry) at the little orange fences they put around oaks during construction. They are nearly worthless. While it keeps vehicles for hitting and scaring the bark, it in no way protects the feeding roots.




As a maintenance gardener I’ve had to dig up a few oaks. And just below the ground the roots have a covering much like bark. Bark absorbs very few nutrients. In a study of 25-year-old apple tree in the UK found that the first four feet from the trunk accounted for less than 10% of all the water and nutrients absorbed.

The wobbly-orange fences are, at best placed at the edge of the foliage. A good start as it may help to keep water off the trunk’s base. But this is a far cry from protecting the majority of the root system’s feeding roots.

In the photograph to the left, the construction company dutifully surrounded the oak’s dripline. But all the machinery and the house itself cover what used to be the leaf litter, duff, and organic mater (humus) that once both fed and protected the young feeding roots.

The tiny root hairs, that live for just a day or so, tend to grow up into the fertile strata of the humus and duff zone. They, like all plants, want to be the first to capture liberated nutrients as they become avaiable. As one researcher put it—“roots grow up not down”. While a bit overstated, they fact is the youngest rootlets and their root hairs reside well beyond the canopy of the tree, where all the construction is taking place. (Learn more in my book Roots Demystified,)

(See my Blog of March 31st to see diagrams of the extent of a roots wanderings.)

At one-half to thee times, or more of the width of the dripline roots gather nutrients and moisture far from the trunk or even the canopy.

The photo (on the above right) of the chairs face south along the Big Sur coastline are a good attempt to protect to crown of the young California live oak from moisture in the summer. The gravel does allow rain in the winter to percolate down along with oxygen and harmful gases escape. The compacted gravel is a bit hard on the feeding roots, but the tree seemed health. Perhaps this is one solution to living among oak woodlands.

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Plants Really Drink and Eat Near Our Toes.

I consider those ever-popular metal tree root deep-feeders as virtually useless and mostly harmful.

Spring has been warmer than past years up here “on the mountain”. Friends are thinking about watering. I hope they think carefully. (My plants and trees receive no summer irrigation. But that’s another blog altogether.)

The roots of many plants, it turns out, don't really get most of their water and nutrients from the deep regions of the soil. Rather, most plants, tree and shrubs gather all the moisture and nutrients they require from the top 12- to 36-inches, depending on the plant. The first foot is the most critical. Here is where the soils are most aerobic and this facilitates the exchange of nutrients from the minerals into soluble form that plants can absorb. Feeding root hairs actually grow up toward those first moisture-laden nutrients. (The lettuces pictured here can send roots as deep as four feet--if you don't have gophers! This is why boxes with wire bottoms should be 24-inches high instead of 12 inches. To give the roots "room to move". Yet the lettuces still get much of their "food" from the top 12 inches. So careful irrigation is a must.)

The roots of many plants, it turns out, don't really get most of their water and nutrients from the deep regions of the soil. Rather, most tree and shrubs gather all the moisture and nutrients they require from the top 12- to 36-inches, depending on the plant. The first foot is the most critical. Here is where the soils are most aerobic and this facilitates the exchange of nutrients from the minerals into soluble form that plants can absorb. Feeding root hairs actually grow up toward those first moisture-laden nutrients. (I describe this in more detail in my newest book - Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help  Roots Thrive.)

An old adage advises gardeners to water trees deeply; this often means infrequent, but lengthy irrigation. Increasingly, drip irrigation has been used as a tool for deep, occasional irrigation. Infrequent, deep irrigation tend to produce two points in the total irrigation cycle where the soil life and root hairs are damaged enough to reduce plant growth—during both the drying stage and when the soil is too wet. Dry soil kills off the tender root hairs as they can’t survive too much air. When the ground is flooded, root hairs die and noxious gases can’t escape nor pure air enter—or as pure as it may or may not be.

The metal probe of a typical deep root feeder is 18- to 24-inches long. This means that the application of the water begins below almost the entire zone of maximum water and nutrient uptake.

Good pore space makes for healthier plants. An ideal mineral/humus/pore structure balance results in a crumbly soil that allows water to percolate down, harmful gases to vent out, and refreshing air to permeate the soil. Soil breathes 24/7 at a lumbering, beneficial rate we cannot see. A soil with a healthy structure allows for easy and deep root growth and will produce the best-looking lawn, garden and tree growth.

Root feeders flood the pore space of the deeper soils, which quickly becomes flooded and anaerobic. Sometimes the deep soil saturates and the irrigation water backs up toward the surface so that more shallow soils actually get waterlogged. It's a bit backwards to send the water through a 24-inch deep probe just to apply the water 6- to 12-inches deep!

I recommend you just toss your root feeder—actually, recycle the scrap metal parts. (China could use them.) A good sprinkler can do a better job. And a drip irrigation system will promote the best growth possible—better than any other method of watering.

One garden’s “deep” soil is another garden’s “shallow” soil. Another hidden assumption about tree roots concerns the depth of your garden's soil. There are places where glacially-deposited topsoil extends for dozens of feet, but these are more the exception than the rule. If you have such a deep, loamy soil, then rejoice, but remember that the majority of moisture and nutrient absorption by trees still happens in the top two feet of the soil. Typically, most suburban yards have a very shallow layer of topsoil, if there's any left at all after construction. If, for example, there is a continuous layer of rich-orange clay some 12 inches under the ground, then the 12-inch layer of topsoil is, for all practical purposes, the only place your plant’s roots will be feeding.


Most heavy clays, whatever the color—and dark blue or pale white-gray are the worst—are relatively worthless to feeding tree roots. While clayey soil has plenty of nutrients, their availability is locked up in its tight, anaerobic structure and strong chemical bonds. Tree roots can, over many years and decades, grow somewhat into clay soils, but the number and extent of roots in the looser topsoil in far greater and more important to tree nutrition.

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Anti Deadhead

Martha Stewart would never like my garden.

Any act of gardening which is different than what nature would do has a negative impact, however slight. Most gardening acts are de-evolutionary—they set things back. As an example, destructive cultivation using the wrong technique can set soil back considerably. This doesn't mean we can't compensate, such as using more compost to compensate for compacted clay.

I grow a non-native lavender cultivar called 'Provence' (my garden must have deer-resistant plants) which has tall-stemmed blossoms. After their fragrant bloom is spent, the flower parts fairly quickly fall from the stalks. Most gardeners would cut back the blossom stems, called dead-heading, as soon as the color begins to wither.

As an example of trying to be more “natural”, I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if the plants weren't pruned. So, years ago I left the slender woody stems through the winter as an experiment in low-maintenance gardening via avoidance. To my pleasant surprise, one of the first places to be garlanded with spider webs on a dewy spring morning were on the remaining naked, dead 'Provence' stalks.

Now, I leave a few of the spent 'Provence' blooms so as to insure plenty of spider web roosts. Sure, the spiders have mostly found other places from which to sling their orbs. But the more opportunities there are for these hungry predators, the better. Amigo Bob, a locally-famous organic farming consultant, calls spiders the “wolves of the landscape”.

I'm still waiting for the spiders to return in all their glory like that one special day.

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Mounded Plantings, Irrigation-Free

I’ve started the annual ritual of mulching the perimeter of my irrigation-free planted mound. I lay down 5 or so sheets of newspaper and then several inches of compost made of rice hulls and manure.


I've always wondered why the former Xeriscape Council only advocated a savings of up to 75% on the water used for outdoor irrigation. Why only 75%? Why not shoot for 100%? After seven years of trial and error, I came up with a mound-and-plant system some eight years ago which has required no additional irrigation beyond the day of planting, even during the most protracted California drought in over 100 years.

To begin such a planting scheme, I stockpiled chunky wood chips (not sawdust, which settles down too much and doesn't drain well) from local tree-trimming services. This is critical that the wood chips are mixed with the fresh green, fresh leaves, and small branches. The leafy green parts are critical to compensate for the carbon in the woodier chips.

Next, I used a spading to just crack open the soil beneath the planned area of the mound, not heaving it. Then, I built an active compost pile and plant directly on top of trimmings. Because tree chips are so high in carbon, I layered or mixed them with some manure if required—if there were not enough leaves. I'd guesstimate that a good starting ratio for your own experiments would be one part manure to three or four parts chips. I would use other types of high-nitrogen materials if needed—wet kitchen scraps, fresh grass clippings, green-manure crops like buckwheat, vetch, bell beans, and clover—to help decompose the woody chips. The more nitrogen added, the faster the mound will decompose and the greater the nitrogen supply for the growing plants. I piled this mixture of high-carbon and high-nitrogen materials at least 50% higher than I wanted the final mound to be, and sometimes up to double the height. I watered each layer as I went and made sure all material was moist.

Next, I covered the mound with a soil cap at least eight inches thick—the thicker, the better. I used a mixture of 50% rotted turkey bedding and 50% native soil for the top layer. The soil cap insures good drainage, a neutral soil temperature, balanced nutrition, and good initial growth for the transplants. The plants are placed into the soil cap and watered in thoroughly. I used five sheets of overlapping newspapers covered by turkey-bedding mulch cover the soil cap and, like a "biodegradable herbicide," suppress all weed seedlings. It’s best for me to plant in the fall so the winter rains continue to keep the composting heap moist and to allow the roots to grow. Drought-resistant plants are essential. I used white, pink, and blue rosemary, grey and green santolinas, rhue, many types of lavender, native sages, euphorbia, daffodils, and society garlic (which the deer started eating a few years later).

Once the mound started rotting, the root-hairs of the plants followed the decomposition to take advantage of the newly available nutrients. Plants are "smarter" than we often acknowledge; their roots won't grow into areas that are too warm due to thermophilic (hot) decomposition over 110 F.

Eventually, my "research" mounds settled down, the shrubs rooted fully into the native soil—the new mound is a wonderful, curvilinear feature in my landscape. Mounded plantings, which seemed to me to be a heap of contradiction at first, have become one of my preferred techniques for quick no-till soil drainage, and they don't require any drip-irrigation hardware or precious water. In hotter climates a bit of drip irrigation will probably be needed. If you experiment with this, please let me know.

There's more about planting on mounds in my book Roots Demystified.

NOTE: I live in a moderate-summer climate with a moderating marine influence. If you attempt this mound-and-plant strategy in your own area, I suspect you'll have to make some changes in plant selection and the time of year you’ll be planting. For example, I once installed a test plot at Kit Anderson’s house near Burlington, VT, when she was editor of National Gardening Association magazine. I spent hours in the muggy August heat, along with members of the NGA staff, hauling in manure-rich straw, distributing Kit's garden clippings and leaves and planting a range of perennials which normally thrive in this northern latitude (within one-half mile of Lake Champlain). Many of the crew were skeptical that such a bizarre method would work, and it didn’t—growth in the late summer was not sufficient to allow many of the perennials to weather the winter in good form. I suspect that timing was the main problem, and that mounds in hot-summer areas need to be planted in early spring so the roots can be deep enough by fall to tolerate the frozen months. You'll have to experiment in your soil and climate. I suspect the mound should be started in the Spring were there is summer rain.

Please post a comment - I want to know how the mound system worked for you.

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Cultivating an Eccentric Garden

I collect more than just plants. I gather lots of discards, a.ka. junk for my garden. I assemble various art pieces from the found objects. I especially like broken pottery.

I’m fascinated with tornados even though we don’t get them here. I’ve use cylinders of wire to both keep deer away from the newly-planted tree and as an armature for my own little eccentricities. (See the photo to the left of a cylinder around a newly-planted Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo).

Everyone has the seed of an eccentric garden deep inside waiting to bloom. Here are ten ways to cultivate your own:

10. Think differently. Disregard all gardening magazines, books, catalogs, and newspaper columns, and create a unique, personal style. Think about what moves you.

9. Get to know your yard. Take time to sit and walk in the space where the garden will grow; even wait through a year to gather seasonal inspiration.

8. Embellish personal eccentricities. Take pride in what makes you a bit odd. So-called peculiar traits or thoughts can be the springboard for creative thinking. If you hate pruning, for example, consider growing a “wilderness,” with hidden pathways and artistically tangled mixtures of foliage and blossom.

7. Go all out. If you enjoy a certain kind of plant or object, then go whole hog. Plant every possible variety of rose or grow hundreds of varieties of flowering plants with just shades of yellow. Collect not dozens of colorful bottles, but thousands. Display your entire collection of lobster traps among the perennials.

6. Combine unrelated thoughts to form a new idea. One eclectic gardener mixed an old toilet, potting soil, and sweet peas to create his own private horticultural joke.

5. Get inspired by “unrelated” things to synthesize new garden ideas. A childhood love of glassy-black Indian bird points (tiny arrowheads) led me to incorporate visible and hidden chunks of raw obsidian (each waiting to reveal the arrowhead inside) into my own garden.

4. Put aside normal social guidelines. Vegetables and perennials planted in the soil between a curb and a sidewalk violates the norm in many neighborhoods, but makes for a festive, unique patch you—and the neighbors—will enjoy.

3. Follow your passion. Inspired by Axel Erlandson, Richard Reames, of Aborsmith Studios in Williams, Oregon, has begun to grow a living house. About two years old, the walls are being formed by 77 Red Alder trees planted 11 inches apart in a 22 foot diameter circle—the trunks are expected to fuse together into one tree. Reames is planning to install windows and a door. Such commitment over time is best driven by resolute devotion.

2. Collect what you love, the garden will follow. Sculptor Marcia Donahue of Berkeley, California loves to collect old bowling balls. She’s massed dozens of them in her garden, tucking curious plants in and around them for a unique and striking effect.

1. Ignore all rules (even the previous nine).

Eccentric gardens open the eyes to unique vistas, free the spirit to soar to new places, and “grow” original thoughts. Nurture the soul as well as the soil with your own eccentric garden.

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Floppy Trees & Tomatoes (and a small rant)

Don’t let your tomatoes flop around and be fodder for a frost.

I wrote in an early draft for my book Roots Demystified:

“There are all kinds of ways to start plants well ahead of the time when it’s safe to transplant them into the garden. These include cloches (bell-like glass coverings), plastic-tubing walls filled with water to catch and hold the sun’s heat, and sunny windowsills or greenhouses. It’s been my observation, however, that large plants started well ahead of transplant time may not produce tomatoes any sooner than small seedlings planted after any threat of frost and in warm soil.”

I gave a talk today about roots. The conversation turned to tree trunks and how to best stake them. I talked about how the nurseries often tie the whole tree, from its base to nearly the tip of the growth, to a 1”x1” stake. When the poor trees are released from this bondage, they simple flop over. Trees need to blow in the wind to develop a sturdy trunk with a healthy girth. (See the illustration to see how to determine where to stake a flopping tree so it can move in the wind to be healthier tree.)

A woman came up to me after the talk to say last year she had started some tomatoes early in a Wall-of-Watertm—plastic-tubing walls filled with water to catch and hold the sun’s heat. When released from this frost protection, the plants immediately fell over—like the staked trees. She had to tie each new shoot to the hog-wire trellis she uses to grow tomatoes. The tomatoes set out after the average date of our last frost thrived. The wind buffeted them and they rambled up-and-through the hog wire with carefree abandon.



Begin Rant
I had to go to the plant nursery for a friend after the talk (on April 5th). The weather was an ideal 70 F plus and throngs of people were at the nursery. There were also throngs of tomato seedlings. I wanted to yell “All the ’ole timers say never set tomatoes out into the garden until after May 1st as there is still a chance for a hard frost in April.” But the nursery was happy to sell these tender seedlings to gardeners’ dreaming of early tomatoes. Most nurseries prey on those who try to jump-start tomatoes. Shame on them, but money at any cost is money I guess.

I suspect some will find brown-green plants laying flat on their faces before May 1st. (Some of the low-lying vineyards had to spray water last week on the vines to help prevent damage to the new buds as the temperature hovered around 32 F.)

Patience furthers. A gardener needs to calmly wait until the soil warms up before planting the treasured tomato seedlings. (Besides, there’s probably lots of weeding or composting to keep you busy!)
End Rant

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Family Nutritionist: Greens -- an introduction

Family Nutritionist: Greens -- an introduction

I like how this site covers vegetables in detail - even edible "weeds" like Miner's lettuce. And she covers a wide number of cultural diets/recipes. Strange that I can't find her name. But she does provide the caveat - The Family Nutritionist has no formal training in diet or nutrition. She does extensive research. Same as me. And seems to test the recipes on her friends. None have died as far as I can tell. Check it out. Let me know what you think of the site.

(The photo is of an tulip's edibles petals. Good for stuffing with crab salad, cream-cheese combinations, egg salad, tuna fish salad - just about any typical cold stuffing.)


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Grazing in the Garden

I’m weeding food.

My garden is filled with Miner’s lettuce. Both the deer and I nibble the large plump outer leaves. I mostly graze while weeding. All this seed germinated on top of last years newspaper covered with mulch. It’s wall-to-wall of Miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) in vast parts of my garden. Where the seed comes from is a mystery to me.

I’ve liberated the lavenders from the web of Miner’s lettuce so they get more sunshine to begin bringing forth their smoky-green foliage. I nibble what the deer have left behind. This year, I'm trying to just weed most of the garden and save the newspaper with mulch for the wilder perimeters. I'm enjoying, for the first time in years, hand weeding.

(Miner's lettuce does have a minor amount of oxalic acid. Oxalic acid is of some concern in high amounts as it can form kidney stones. While Miner's lettuce is high in calcium, all but about 5% is tied up by the oxalic acid. Spinach has a much higher amount of oxalic acid. The rule is the Grecian guideline: "all things in moderation".)

I haven’t seen the deer on their usual morning walk from the forest through my garden. Last week a single doe went from my garden back into the deep shadows of the huckleberries and Douglas fir trees. There used to be three does that came through like clockwork every morning about eight AM. Then there were two. Now only an occasional daytime visit. But the nibbling of the Miner’s lettuce seems to indicate they’re here somewhere. When they disappear it’s usually because the mountain lion is back. But no scat on the driveway to confirm this.

I’ll just look down from the second-storey window next to my computer and see how soon they return.

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.


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Lettuce Consider Garden Diversity

As spring's passionate climax approaches, I'm thinking about how much diversity does a garden need?

My mind drifts back to 1982. As I wrote my rough proposal for a book on edible landscaping while at Oyster Bay, NY. (Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape – Naturally; 1986, Metamorphic Press.) I gazed across a well-clipped estate lawn to an recently-abandoned tennis court.

After just a few seasons of neglect, every fissure in the asphalt had been filled with grasses and a wealth of herbaceous weeds. More remarkably, well-anchored saplings of the mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissan) were already several feet high and beginning to heave the tarmac. In less than a decade, those mimosas' will have completely cloaked the court's rubble with a prosperous, verdant forest. How quickly nature can reclaim what we pretend to husband or nurture. All the human effort we put into cultivated gardens is dwarfed by even the casual momentum of nature. Once untended, even the most environmentally-kosher garden soon returns to nature's bosom. Buried within this steady, powerful momentum are the seeds of nature's renewal—which are more powerful than any human garden.

I visited the site of Allan Chadwick’s Covelo, CA garden just a few years after it was abandoned. Allan Chadwick was the guru of French-intensive, biodynamic gardening. Apprentices flocked from around the world to learn from this strident and demanding teacher. Yet, the garden was a riot of weeds. The most prevalent were lemon balm and comfrey. Proof that their composting was not hot enough to kill all garden seeds. The comfrey was (and probably still is) a biological nightmare. Just a tiny piece of root can sprout become a huge plant in matter of a few years. Probably the apprentices had skimmed bed of comfrey for compost, but skimmed deep enough to gather the crowns of the plants. I used to plant comfrey, some 38 years ago during the early days of my infatuation with intercropping, companion planting, and the silica-enhanced comfrey At the time I assumed that planting it in with vegetables would allow its deep roots to bring up special minerals from deeper places than the vegetables could reach. I regret to this day that the tillage of those gardens spread unwanted comfrey throughout the beds. Now my comfrey is five feet from any tillage, is never watered, and the leaves are cut well above the crown for compost. Yet I have to struggle to remove the roots that have found the moisture of the raised bed with it’s lemon bush. Slow learner I guess. Now, in any design I do for a client there is no comfrey to be found.

A common theme in the sustainable/organic/permaculture world is the premise "diversity equals stability." I wish the continual references to "Diversity", “Climax”, and “Stability” would end. While diversity within an ecosystem allows for a complex interaction between all the elements, plants, animals, and people; it is not a panacea. A “mature, climax” forest is often the model of “stability”. Yet winds knock down trees to open up little meadows to start the whole process again. The edges often have to repeat what lead the forest to have a mixture of trees and other plants. Trees die to be replaced by some of the same progression leading up to a climax.

A climax forest is not always the natural climax. Vernal pools, sand dunes, chaparral, bogs, and other ecosystems thrive without forming a continuous canopy of trees. Too often in gardening books, what appears to be a great way to garden is based on the experience of tropical ecosystems. Using tropical diversity as a model is childlike. While the tropics often have lots of vertically-integrated plants, the temperate American landscape, with its hardwood forests, meadows, and prairies, is less vertically complex and is more adapted to the growth of annual plants than the tropics. More importantly, in the tropics the nutrients are stored above ground in the biomass. Whereas in temperate ecosystem, the nutrients are stored in the soil. Randomly-chosen diversity or complexity doesn't necessarily provide any special benefits.

A good example is the wish that beans climbing corn will feed the corn with nitrogen. However, beans don’t “share” much of their nitrogen nodules with other plants while they're growing. unless they go into severe drought, die, are mowed, grazed, and after tilled under just as blossoming begins. (See page 49 of Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive. 2008, Metamorphic Press.) The legume is selfish, it is building up a supply of nitrogen in its rots to move it into the formation of seed. Only then, will the nitrogen become available to other plants. But most of the nitrogen will, by that time, be in the seed, not the foliage or roots. That’s the temperate dynamics. In the tropics, nutrients cycle so fast that even some leaves falling off the older stems of the bean plants rot and release some nitrogen on the surface of the thin layer of soil.

However, in both climates it is well proven that a green manure crop of any number of legumes greatly increases the total amount of nitrogen. Crop rotations where a field or planting bed is left to fallow for a year with legumes also increases nitrogen for the next crop.

But our garden's diversity must be, to our current knowledge, composed of the proper plants. For example, the kudzu vine is theoretically a multipurpose plant with many edible parts and useful fibers. Adding kudzu would be another unit of diversity in your garden. But you better leave town before your neighbors come after you as the kudzu vines entangle everything that's moving slower than 25 miles-per-hour! Kudsu is an extreme example of exotic plant from Japan and China gone wild. Kudzu plants grow rapidly, and may extend to100’ in length at a rate of about one foot per day.

More subtly, you may think twice about nurturing edible lamb's-quarters (often treated as a weed) if you're growing lots of heirloom tomato plants because this "weed" also harbors verticillium wilt—the Achilles Heel of many non-hybrid tomato plants. Too much diversity, or the wrong kind, only promotes that universal dynamic called entropy via chaos.

Too much diversity, or the wrong kind, only promotes the universal dynamics called chaos and entropy. Nonetheless, the organic movement will only continue to grow both literally and figuratively.

In my opinion, gardeners are not as important to nature as we think, nature eventually takes back everything and we should endeavor to stay humble and in our place—relative to the grander scheme of things. As George Carlin so eloquently observed in his 1992 (a man ahead of his time) HBO special: "Save the planet!? Are these fucking people kidding me? There's nothing wrong with the planet that it can't fix. We still haven't learned how to care for one another—and we're gonna save the fucking planet? So, take care of yourself. And take care of somebody else."

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The image is of a kudsu vine covering two tractors and a forest. Photo by Jack Anthony, from
http://www.yahoolavista.com/kudzu/

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Radio Ramblings

Radio shows can discombobulate me. (Notice bob in the word.)

I was on the radio last night. The other guest was very fascinating as she described wining a gold medal twice at world’s most prestigious flower and garden show—the Chelsea Garden Show in the UK. This was a display put together by an American, trouncing dozens of garden displays by British gardeners. Like the California bread maker that had best of “show” in a French competition. Americans are giving some of Europe a run for their money.

When the conversation drifted into what the Queen was wearing when she stopped by the display garden, I got a bit frustrated as roots—I was there to promote my book Roots Demystified— and the Queen of England don’t seem to have much in common.

Finally the conversation turned toward my book. I got flustered which is rare for me on a radio show. There were so many things I realized later I wished I said, but had slipped my mind. Such as:

Where should I feed my shrubs and trees? This question came before I explained that trees and shrubs have roots that extend well beyond the canopy—sometimes as far as three to four times the radius of the trunk-to-dripline (the edge of the foliage). The illustrations on his blog are taken from my book and shows how dramatic the root spread can be with a walnut tree and two apple tree as examples. (Click on the illustration to get a bigger version that shows how far the roots travel from fruit trees.)

What other plants beside mint have long running roots? I said bamboo and Bermuda grass, failing to mention the illustration in my book showing Bermuda grass with roots nearly six feet deep. I forgot all about kikuyu grass that is so aggressive it makes Bermuda grass look tame. I first saw it at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA. To stop its on slot into the vegetable garden they had to keep a two-foot trench open between the grass lawn of kikuyu grass and the vegetable garden. Roots can travel sight unseen great distances, even if they are not as diminutive as a grass. I failed to remember the popular tree near town that has crossed under two lanes of asphalt to pop up on the other side.

I explained how Steve Solomon was able to dry farm carrots one foot apart along the row with five feet between the rows. I neglected to say his estimate was planting eight times further apart than that recommended by followers of the French Intensive-Biodynamic method only reduced yields by one-half. And all without irrigation.

There is much more detail and suggestions in my book Roots Demystified.

Would I go back on the airwaves again? You bet. But not with the Queen of England!


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Tattletale Lichens

Lichens are both beautiful and good. They indicate healthy air.

Last month when I was helping some friend assess their trees they were worried about the lichens “eating away” at their fruit trees’ wood. Assuming they were parasitic, he had used a wire brush to remove all the lichens from one tree. It jogged my memory.

Such trees are covered with a wonderful patina of various colors and shapes of lichens. The lichens take so many fascinating forms: circles of warm orange, furry gray-brown wavy circular fans, wavy greenish-brown circles, and the many other curious forms.

My friends were worried that a horrible fungus has invaded the trees’ living tissues. Fortunately, lichens are not parasitic. They live on the outer bark without effecting the living cells. (A lichen is an odd combination of both fungal filaments algae cells, usually a green algae.)

In 1866, William Nylander, a Finnish naturalist, was the first to link the disappearance of lichens and air pollution. He noticed that some lichen species present within Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, were missing in other parts of the city. He attributed these differences to air quality. Over the next thirty years, fumes from coal-burning industrial furnaces gradually led to the eradication of the lichen population within the park.

Sulfur dioxide (SO2), the result of industrial and urban emissions, does the most widespread damage to lower plants, even though it is only one of several air pollution components in the atmosphere.

Why are lichens sensitive to air pollution? Since lichens lack roots, surface absorption of rainfall is the only means of obtaining vital nutrients which are dissolved in rainwater. Lichens act like sponges, taking in everything that is dissolved in the rainwater, and retaining it. Since there is no means of purging the SO2, the sulfur content accumulates within the lichen and reaches a level where it breaks down the chlorophyll molecules which are responsible for photosynthesis in the algae. When the photosynthetic process stops in the algae, the algae die and this leads to the death of the fungus.

Since it is known that different species of lichens vary in sensitivity to air pollution, scientists can use these organisms as monitors of air pollution and as indicators of air quality. This is very useful because modern air quality instruments cannot measure the effects air pollution has on living cells and they are limited to measuring present conditions.

Most importantly, the lack of lichens on fruit trees would be a sure indicator that their orchard is not free from the harsh chemical sprays that harm and kill lichens.

I could readily tell that the air quality was fine in their backyard just by looking at what is growing on the bark of older trees. Take some time and look at the bark of some of your older trees. Hopefully, a few scattered patches of gray or orange lichens can be seen growing on the bark. Near a city, there is an obvious change in what is growing on tree trunks. Here there are areas where lichens don’t exist, such areas are termed "lichen deserts". As the air quality in these lichens deserts improve, lichens will begin to reappear in a slow process of recovery.

Lichens are sensitive to air pollution and have disappeared from many metropolitan and industrial areas over the last century. Lichens’ sensitivity to pollutants are actually used as biomonitors—like a green version of a canary in the coal mine.. Lichens are valuable research tools and through the information they provide, we can have a better understanding of the impact air pollution has on the environment.

There many books on the subject. Here are two:

T.H. Nash (Ed.). Lichen biology. Cambridge University, Press, 1996. Pp. 303
ISBN 0 521 45368 2

"This book is in the tradition of the work of ME Hale 'The biology of lichens', the third edition of which appeared in 1983 (first published in 1967). It provides a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the fascinating world of lichens. The last chapter explains the role of lichens as indicators of air pollution and the pollutant effects on lichen biology is discussed."

Another book with less jargon is: By D. H. S. Richardson, Paperback; Naturalist's Handbook Series: 19. Pollution monitoring with lichens. Published by Richmond Publishing Company, 1992, ISBN 978- 0855462895



To see more detail of the illustration(s) put you cursor over the image and double click.


All rights reserved. Copyright 2008

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

Note: I seem to have lost the usual way to leave comments. To do so, either click on the "___ comments" button or click on the title of the blog under "Blog Archive". Thanks, Robert

Lavender, Part 1

A Lavender for All Reasons
My renewed love affair (see my first post) with lavender (Lavandula spp.) began during the California drought of 1977 as a matter of necessity. As the planting portion of my business shriveled from lack of water, I began looking for drought-hardy plants to work with. The drought, by taking its toll on established landscapes, slowly revealed, like a grim version of time-lapse photography, which plants could best take the neglect and still look reasonably attractive— and lavenders were one of the champions. Lavandula spp., has become a love of mine and one of the three most important plants in my landscape design "palette". (The other two are rosemary and santolina.)

Planted correctly in my garden, lavenders can easily be sustained with irrigation during an entire rainless California summer. I plant as the fall rains begin and the roots thrive all winter long. Not only does this produce lush growth the following spring, but I have needed no irrigation there after. (I live in the cool coastal climate with a 30-year average rainfall of 58’—USDA Zone 10a) If you have the right plant in the correct place, you may be able to achieve an irrigation-free garden. But you will have to experiment, even in places where there is summer rain. And especially in the arid Southwest.)

I use larger, shrubby lavenders act as effective weed suppressants since their two- to four-foot-tall canopy shades out most germinating seeds. Equally important, lavenders require very limited shearing to maintain a pleasant and attractive form. All of this saves on my garden’s maintenance.

With lavenders, I constantly remind myself of the "three D"s——drainage, drainage, drainage. The chaparral (a xerophytic—dry—plant community common to Mediterranean climates) of Greece and California can share a common characteristic——rocky soil. In Greece, the best-looking plants were those that seemed to flourish miraculously out of the rocky, nutrient-poor crevices of sheer mountain cliffs. (Also, the only place the goats and sheep couldn't get to the plants!) The beautiful form of cliff-dwelling chaparral plants is a testament to the plant's tolerance, if not preference, for rocky soil with extreme drainage. While a typical rocky Greek "soil" (a flattering word for the decomposed and crumbled remnants of rocky cliffs and outcroppings) is low in many nutrients, especially the often-overrated nitrogen, it is high in two important factors: minerals and drainage, both absolutely essential to lavenders.

The high mineral content of rocky soil may also be a preference, if not a necessity, for lavenders and other Mediterranean herbs. Cy Hyde, of Well Sweep Herbs, suggests "the sand we use to plant a lavender and mound up around the base of the plant to encourage drainage may actually be good for it in other ways. Art Tucker (of the Horticulture Department of Delaware College) has some research to show that the sand in the soil increases the volatile-oil content of the herb's foliage." Thus, rocky, mineral, sandy, or gravelly soil amendments seem to provide more than one benefit.

The clay so often present in many home landscapes I’ve worked in is deadly to lavender; while the clay may be high in total nutrients, its moisture-holding capacity works against the needs of lavender roots. These roots, especially the upper four to ten inches—the crown of the root system, are very prone to crown rot (Phytophthora spp.) and various root rots, fungal diseases, stem mildews, and blights.

Contrary to regular garden practice, I always amend my small planting mounds for lavenders with the addition of plenty of gravel. Drainage is so critical to lavenders that, in any form of a clay loam, the addition of gravel, sand, or a similar non-nitrogen amendment for drainage is absolutely essential. When in doubt about the drainage of a particular garden soil, amend raised planting mounds or plant in a container filled with a well-drained potting mix. The single most important lesson when gardening in my Mediterranean ecosystem is that providing the essential drainage is not only critical, but, makes for better plant growth and, at the same time, the watering needs are not increased , they may actually be reduced.

Lavandiferous Canopies for Weed Control
With a landscape plan, I usually choose a lavender by its size and form first, then for color of leaf and flower. I usually place larger lavenders at the back of the design, further from prominent pathways, so as to have a mounding, spherical form that also shades out weeds trying to sneak in from the garden perimeter. For this application, my three favorites are L. dentata (sold in the west as French lavender), Sweet lavender (which I've mostly purchased as L. heterophylla ), and Spike lavender (this one is usually sold as L. latifolia, sometimes as L. spica ). All have a wonderfully rounded, half-spherical form and grow, not including blossom stems, from 2.5 to 4 feet high, depending upon the soil.

Of the three, L. dentata has the longest and most frequent periods of bloom—all months of the year, except for a few weeks during late summer/early winter and, occasionally, in the early spring or mid summer. The L. dentata blossom is a delightful pastel tone of lavender; too subtle for some tastes, but I prefer pastels more than hot colors. The foliage is a soft, fuzzy grey-green color and the leaves are, in the words of Hortus Third, "linear-oblong, crenately toothed to pectinate-pinnatifid, obtuse, revolute, sessile". I think of the leaves as soft gray with rounded, large saw-toothed edges.

Spike lavender, L. latifolia, has a very narrow flower on a long, somewhat-branched stem. The blossom color is also subtle and, because of the smallness of the bloom, the flowers aren't very noticeable. A bonus, however, is the long, fine stem of the dead flower heads which lasts for a long time as a vertical line in the landscape, and doesn't look too tacky. If I never get around to shearing the spike lavender, the deadheads are a nice addition to a natural-looking garden—since nature doesn't bother to shear her Grecian lavenders (except by means of browsing goats!).

When it comes to the sweetest, most delicate lavender debate, I throw my Greek fisherman's hat into the L. angustifolia and its many cultivars. My special L. angustifolias’s include: The pure white ‘Alba compacta’, ‘Richard Gray’, the extraordinary long color of ‘Baby’s Blue’, ‘Hidcote’, ‘Munstead’, the wonderful pink-flowering ‘Miss Katherine’.

For sheer drama and rich color of blossom, my vote goes to L. stoechas, sold as Spanish lavender around here. In the linguistic gymnastics of Hortus Third , the flowers are "oblong-obovate, to 2 in. long, verticilasters 6-10 -fld., calyx to .25 in. long, 13-nerved, corolla dark purple." What excites me is the spectacularly-rich, royal purple "flags" that stand straight up from the top of the flower. The beauty of Spanish lavender has inspired me to spend considerable time reviving my long-lost love of super-close-up floral photography in an attempt to capture the naked, abstract "essence" of the blossom. My favorite named-variety for these floral "nude studies" is L. stoechas 'Atlas'. This one has by far the tallest, most regal "flags". A close contender for bud size is L. stoechas 'Otto Quest', which is much more prevalent in the average wholesale and retail nurseries around here. The species (unnamed selections or seed-grown plants) form of the Spanish lavender has dramatically smaller blossoms, only up to 5/8ths of an inch compared to the 3/4-to-one-inch-long buds of 'Otto Quest' and the nearly 1.5 inch buds of 'Atlas'. The advantage to the species form is its well-behaved plant-shape and reduced shearing demands. And again, remember that those plants selected for huge blossoms flop over easier and can't take overhead irrigation or rain.

There is a strikingly odd form of lavender in my garden—-a lime-green/yellow-flowered form of Spanish lavender (L. stoechas ‘Viridis’)-see the photo above. This plant's foliage is also noticeably more yellow than some green-leaved lavenders, making it hard to work with when designing a landscape, because of the difficulty of blending its color in with most other colors. (The lime-yellow blossoms do make an excellent foil or counter-balance to the royal purple of the 'Atlas' blossoms when I do micro-photography.) This plant with a robust, resinous, and “primitive” foliage is the L. stoechas 'Viridis' I favor for grilling. See the following recipe. (More about lavenders later as my Lavandins begin to bloom. These are crosses between L. latifolia (L. spica) and L. angustifolia.)

Chicken "Pressada" with Lavender

"Pressada" is my Americanized, corrupted Italian way of saying the chicken is pressed between two layers of herbs. This is based on a dish I had while traveling south of Naples, Italy—except the Italians used thyme. This recipe cooks chicken very quickly and makes for an intense lavender flavor throughout the meat because the oils of the lavender “steam” the chicken. I like this recipe because it’s more theatrical than any other barbecue I know and it’s a conversation piece. This is a true gardener’s recipe because one could never afford to buy the amount of herbs this recipe calls for at a culinarily-enriched supermarket or fancy farmer’s market. This is a recipe for edible landscapers.

Utensils
One barbecue pit or grill.
A medium-sized bag of briquettes.
Fire starter paper, wooden kindling and matches.
A 10- by 20-inch cast iron pancake griddle.
A cookie sheet as big or bigger than the griddle.
Five to 10 bricks.
Two pair of long barbecue tongs.
Cooking oil (olive oil works fine) and a natural-hair pastry brush.
A serving platter with garnish.

Ingredients
6 to 8 boneless chicken breasts, or other boneless cuts.
A five-gallon bucket loosely filled with lavender foliage and flower stalks.


Start the charcoal:
Start enough charcoal briquettes to form a layer one or two briquettes thick beneath the entire surface of your griddle. Start the briquettes in a can with an open top and bottom and some holes punched around the bottom. Use newspaper and kindling to start the fire so the petrol taste of lighter fluid is eliminated.

Harvest the lavender while the coals are heating the griddle. Trim more foliage than flowers, as the leaf adds more flavor. Use this as a chance to trim back the plant to a more compact form. Woody stems are not a problem, but younger, more succulent growth will release more fragrance.

Once the flames are out and the briquettes are glowing white at the edges, rearrange in a layer beneath the griddle. When the coals get the griddle nearly orange hot, where a splattering of oil dances and sizzles on the grill, you're ready to begin.

Cooking the Chicken
Quickly coat the griddle with the olive oil. This is to keep the herbs from sticking and to make it easier to clean the griddle. Don't use a brush with plastic bristles as the intensely-heated griddle will melt the bristles.

Quickly layer up to two-inches of lavender prunings on the griddle with the stems running the length of the griddle. Be sure to cover the griddle thoroughly with the lavender, leave no holes.

In a rapid fashion, lay the boneless chicken breasts across the top of the lavender—perpendicular to the lengths of lavender.

Now, quickly cover the chicken with another two-inches of continuous lavender foliage. Put the cookie sheet on top of the chicken-and-lavender. Then stack the bricks to press the lavender and chicken into a compressed "sandwich" —the “pressada” part.

Because the heat supercharges the volatile oils in the lavender, the steam and oil mixture quickly cooks the chicken like a pressurized sauna. The chicken may only need five- to 10-minutes per side, if the griddle was nearly orange hot. Or, it may take 15- to 20-minutes per side if the charcoal wasn’t hot enough.

After the proper time (which you’ll learn in short order by practicing), quickly: remove the bricks and the cookie sheet and use the tongs to quickly turn the "sandwich" over. The lavender and chicken usually holds together enough to make a unified whole. You'll either amaze your friends or have to quietly reassemble the lavender-and-chicken sandwich while eating humble pie. Practice make perfect.

After the proper length of time on the second side, remove the bricks and cookie sheet. Remove the top layer of the lavender, lift the chicken off the bottom layer of foliage and place on a platter.

Remove the lavender and the griddle from the grill. Quickly restoke the coals to a good-and-hot temperature and place the chicken breasts on the grill diagonal to the metal's line. Brown briefly. Turn the chicken to create a brown cross-hatching. Grill a cross-hatching on the other side.

Serve the browned chicken on a rice pilaf or on top of bed of colorful mesclun (Spring mix) salad greens.

While eating, you can add leftover lavender foliage to the coals throughout the evening to produce a hazy romantic atmosphere infused with a heady smoky-lavender fragrance. Or, use the leftover lavender to smoke on the grill other fish and meats for the coming week’s lunches. Grill pork chops, turkey drumsticks, turkey breasts, salmon, hot dogs (don’t waste these on the kids), tuna, or sausages.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2008

To see more detail of the illustration(s) put you cursor over the image and double click.

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

Note: I seem to have lost the usual way to leave comments. To do so, either click on the "___ comments" button or click on the title of the blog under "Blog Archive". Thanks, Robert

Raised Beds-It's Spring!

Raised beds in the garden, not the bedroom.

The simplest and most inexpensive way to make raised vegetable beds is to cultivate and rake soil up into a mounded shape. This type of “bed” should in no way be considered a raised bed made by the cultivation method often referred to as the French intensive-biodynamic raised bed. See John Jeavons classic—How to Grow More Vegetables: Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. The methods outlined by Jeavons produces a proper mound of slightly-raised soil and offers the best way to improve the tilth and fertility of your soil.

Many gardeners, however, prefer to construct formal raised beds framed within masonry, plastic, or wooden sides. These sides retain the soil while imparting order and efficiency to the kitchen garden and helping to define it. Formal raised beds also provide a number of other advantages:

 Enhanced drainage for better growth.
 Soil which warms slightly sooner in the spring.
 Sides which help keep soil or mulch from spilling into paths.
 A structure which allows wire mesh to be added to the bottom of a bed to exclude tunneling pests such as moles, gophers, and hedgehogs. However, It’s obvious that carrots prefer a deep soil (as shown to the left) with good tilth and drainage, free of rocks and obstructions that can produce deformities. In less than ideal soils, cultivate as deeply as possible before seeding. Carrots are best grown in double-dug beds with vigilant trapping of gophers, or in boxes raised 24 inches above the soil line and constructed with wire bottoms to deter gophers or other underground gnawing pests. (The root system of a carrot is taken from my new book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive. The grid is one-foot square.) This shows that in a deep soil carrots are able to grow nearly eight feet deep and five feet wide!. This means that even a 24-inch raised be leaves plenty of roots for vegetarian gophers to feast on. This illustrates why extra water and nutrients are needed to satisfy a normally vast root system. (Click on the image to get a clear, detailed view of the illustration as it appears in the book.)

When building garden boxes, line the bottoms with one-half-inch aviary wire, which comes in four-foot-wide rolls. One-inch chicken wire, while less expensive, may allow baby gophers to sneak inside the box. The aviary wire also has more galvanized metal and lasts longer in the ground. Even with this protective barrier in place, the taproot and many other roots will be eaten at the bottom edge of the wire.

 The Cadillac version is to use one-quarter-inch hardware cloth because it doesn’t rust through as quickly.
 When preparing beds for planting, be sure to work the soil with a spading fork to crack open the soil before building the box. After the soil is in, use a flat-bottomed spade so you don’t damage the wire.
 A way that pathways between beds can be cleaned and tended without disturbing plantings.

Raised beds also have certain limitations or drawbacks:

 A formal raised bed with solid sides will cost more and require more time and effort to construct than a simple mounded bed.
 Some gardeners find the angular geometry of the raised-bed structures unaesthetic. (Beds can, however, be masked by perennial plantings or low evergreen hedges.)
 When watering a raised bed with drip irrigation, extra effort must be made to bring the water supply into the bed unobtrusively.

There are many materials which can be used to construct a raised bed. Each has its own unique mixture of attributes and imperfections:

Used Bricks (Recycled)
Pluses:
 Very good looking; construction has character when first built.
 Since bricks are fairly narrow, the finished wall doesn’t take up excess garden space.
 Wire mesh is easily added to the bottom.
 Uses recycled materials.

Minuses:
 Expensive if new.
 Requires some masonry skill or practice to construct.
 In areas where the ground freezes, requires a poured concrete base.

Cinder Blocks

Pluses:
 Wide enough to sit on while gardening.
 If unmortared, easier to work with than brick.
 Can be built on a base of packed gravel
 Easy to add wire-mesh bottom .

Minuses:

 Not easily found as recycled material.
 Best used only for square and rectangular beds.
 Thick blocks take up garden space
 Looks gray and “industrial,” like concrete.
 The large holes in the blocks, usually placed facing up, tend to fill with mulch and soil from the bed.
 Unless mortar and a concrete base are used, the blocks will often settle in a slightly skewed position.

Plastic “Wood”
Pluses:
 Easy to work with, like lumber. No splinters.
 Made from recycled consumer plastic waste.
 Has a long life and won’t rot.
 Easy to add a wire-mesh bottom.
 Easier construction of odd-angled shapes such as octagons or pentagons.

Minuses:
 Up close, looks very fake.
 Expensive compared to lumber.
 Requires screws instead of nails for sturdy attachment.

Recycled, Untreated Rot-Resistant Lumber

The use of the two main rot-resistant lumbers available, redwood and cedar, is controversial due to environmental issues. They are, however, still the easiest material for building raised beds. (Use of recycled wood lessens environmental impact.)

Pluses:
 Good-looking natural surface.
 Available as recycled material.
 Easy to work with; no mask, gloves, or goggles required when using hand tools.
 Easy to add wire-mesh bottom.
 Can be used to construct odd-angled shapes.

Minuses:

 If in contact with the soil, may have to be replaced within 4-20 years. (Note: redwood heartwood can last this long, but white redwood sapwood usually rots within four years and should be avoided.)

So, the choice is yours. Happy gardening.

Please leave a comment- I'd like to hear from you.


To see more detail of the illustration(s) put you cursor over the image and double click.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2008

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Visit my web site to learn more about my gardening books.