A Chinese Puzzle

In 1998, my Dad & I went to China—before the outbreak of hideous air pollution. Our on-the bus-off-the-bus tour was misleading because we toured mostly cities—not the rural, farming communities which make up 70 percent of China’s population of over 1.2 billion. Where there are no cities or towns, there are provincial farms—especially during our cruise up the Yangtze River.

What was unexpected was the corn. Rows and rows of corn planted five to eight feet apart, but always planted straight up-and-down the slopes, not on the contour. Our guide Paul remarked that the corn was used expressly for feeding hogs for market. But the steepness of these unmulched slopes with a nitrogen-hungry crop was completely boggling to my gardening experience. With no mulch present on such precipitous hills, it was plain to see why, in part, the Yangtze River was a silty, murky-brown color. I wondered if vertical rows was a time-honored tradition, or a recent plundering of the soil’s fertility before the Yangtze River dam (which is now the world’s largest) inundates the area. The answer wasn’t available from our urbane guide, another enigma in this land of contrasts.

But, in talking with: Mr. Joshua Muldavin, Professor of Geology, Co-Chair of International Development Studies, UC Los Angeles, CA.

(Fluent in Chinese, spent seven years in China, talked directly with farmers along Yangtze river.)

I found out:

“The lower areas near the river have poorer soil and are prone to flooding. So, the farmers don’t want to invest the time and effort required for terraces. The terracing is done higher, above the flood zone. Also, the vertical rows allow the water from a storm’s deluge to go directly into the river. Contour planting collects water in the furrows between the rows of mounded soil where the seed is planted, this often leads to root rot. Sometimes the collected water in the furrows breaks through, washing some of the corn away—along with the soil of the planting mound.”

Who would have guessed it? Not me!

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Garden Angel

This is another unique sculpture carved by the wonderfully-eccentric Marcia Donahue in Berekely, CA. See also the blog entitled "Rot". The arms can be moved to suit your mood. There are two sculptures, one acts as a shadow of the other one.

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Indicating Past Fires

I’m chopping firewood and remembering all the old native Pacific madron trees (Arbutus menziesii) that used to grace pockets of the forest around my house. The trees rarely occur in pure stands. Some had trunks three feet or more in diameter at breast height (DBH). (I don't know who's breast.) Over the past 22 years all but a handful have died a natural death and were resurrected as firewood.

At only 80-100 years, these are so short-lived trees compared to the mixed coastal oak (Quercus agrifolia), Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), the California coast redwood (Sequoia semperviren) – with a DBH of 8-25 feet - and California bay trees (Umbellularia californica) in “my” forest. This is because the madrone, while drought resistant, is a colonizer of fire-scorched earth. They are among some of the first trees to sprout after a fire. It is said the seeds need fire to germinate. (However, most germination in nurseries is done by freezing the seed before planting in flats or tree tubes.) These trees at first grow more rapidly than the Douglas fir trees associated with a more mature forest. They help to stabilize the soil. Eventually the Douglas fir trees grow above the madrones and shade them to death.

To maintain madrone in a mixed Douglas fir, oak, and redwood forest, the tree needs fire. Not a firestorm in the tops of mature trees, but frequent fires about every five to 50 years. Pacific madrone depends, on these periodic fires to eliminate or greatly reduce the beginning of a Douglas fir overstory.

However, the forest here hasn’t burned in over 100 years. (A 1/2-acre fire last week a mere two miles from my house was quickly extinguished. What a close call and a relief!) The amount of “kindling” (dead trees and shrubs as well as the invasion of foreigners along parts of the forest’s edge like Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius), which act like little balls of standing gasoline because they burn so easily and hot) on the ground is tremendous. When the next fire comes the burning grasses or Scotch broom will leap up the trunks of the trees to form a crown, or canopy, firestorm. Nothing, except the noble redwoods, will be left. Including my house.

This photo is of one of the few Pacific madrone trees left on the property as it snakes toward sunlight from beneath the maturing Douglas fir trees.

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Winterize Your Drip

It got down to 36F here last night. So, it's almost that time of the year when light frosts begin to glaze the flowers. Soon many parts the country will be having hard freezes.

I've outlined how to get your drip system as described my book Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape & All Climates. Here's an excerpt.

A proper drip irrigation system is too valuable to leave neglected like an abandoned garden hose at each winter’s nippy return. Shut off your system’s water supply at a point inside the house where the water supply is protected from freezing. Loosen all unions at each main assembly to drain all water out of the pipes, filters, pressure regulators, and check valves. Make sure you don’t loose the O-ring which seals each union. Be sure to open the flush ball valve on the Y-filter so the filter chamber doesn’t crack. Better yet, bring the filter or the entire main assembly indoors. Also bring inside any battery-powered controllers which you have attached to faucets.

The drip irrigation hose can stay in place in the landscape, but as much water as possible should be drained out. The photo on the left shows draining a system with a figure eight closer device. Open the end-closures on all lines, let all water drain out, and close. Start at the highest elevation and work downhill. I prefer to use threaded end caps because the Figure-8 end closures (The photo on the left. Not my finger nails.) will quickly wear out the kinked end of the hose. I prefer the threaded end cap for its strength. (The photo on the right.) It’s essential that the water is drained from every low point of the system.

A deep mulch will help protect in cold winter climates. You don’t want anyone stepping on cold plastic tubing, but since many drip systems are primarily located in perennial plantings, the risk of trampling the tubing is low. Some compulsive people do lift out the entire assembly of header and lateral lines, roll up the tubing and store it in the garage for the winter. Porous pipe and in-line emitter tubing make this a lot easier than hose with emitters punched in or hose with, God forbid, spaghetti tubing with emitters.

If possible, lay out your drip irrigation lines so they can all be drained from the low ends. Otherwise, install your drip lines so they naturally drain to various low spots, install an access box at the lowest spot in each line of the system for the winter. Install a manual drain-down valve a simple ball valve. Each fall, the metal drip irrigation ball valve should be opened to fully drain the line.

Lonnie Zamora, a former rooftop-gardener and irrigation designer in New York City, used drip irrigation for over four years on most of his jobs, even in the flower boxes for a penthouse on the 27th floor of a Manhattan apartment building. To winterize his client’s drip irrigation systems each fall, he would:

l Drain the pressure regulator.

l Close the faucet at the home’s wall.

l Attach a 110VAC air compressor with the necessary fittings to the female hose thread at the beginning of the drip system.

l Set the timer to run each line or zone for five to seven minutes.

l Run the air compressor pumps at 25 psi or less to blow out all the lines.

l Manually drain all lines on multilevel, terraced gardens.

l Open the Y-filter’s ball valve to drain the filter cartridge chamber.

Finito!

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Lavender Butcher?

I’m trying another bold experiment. Radical pruning of aging lavenders. I tried this two years ago and it worked. However, this plant (Lavandula angustifolia ‘Munstead’) is much bigger.

I was consumed by finishing my drip irrigation book (Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates, revised 2009.) and traveling back-and-forth to St. Louis to help my Dad and greatly neglected my lavender plantings. They got heavy with bloom on long stems. They sort of flopped open a bit. This allowed the sun to cause tiny buds to grow far down into the plant. On stems many might call “dead” wood. (See the photo on the left after removing most of the foliage.) But far down the stems the unpruned plant sprouted many very tiny buds, as seen on the other two photos.

These tiny buds grew on a small plant I pruned this way two years ago and nobody suspects it use to look like the photo on the left.

So, the guy who wrote the lavender book (The Lavender Garden, Chronicle Books, 1998) is disobeying his own guidelines about leaving three to five healthy buds just above the mature leaves. Ha. It’s never too late to experiment.

We had a week of 90-100F days after this pruning experiment. So, I don’t know how the lavender will react. But it does look well right now. I’ll keep you posted on another blog.

(PLEASE, don’t do this in cold-weather climates. It’ll probably kill the poor plant. Just for us west-coast gardeners near the ocean to try.)

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Falling for Fall...well, sort of

The heat waves of the past month have produced a semi-deciduous forest. The leaves pictured here belong to the native bay tree (Umbellularia californica) - also known as 'pepperwood', 'California laurel' and, in Oregon, 'Oregon myrtle', or simply myrtle. This is NOT the leaf found in the store that is sold as a bay leaf (Laurus nobilis). This is yet another late summer drought strategy to reduce the surface area transpiring ever-dimensioning moisture supplies. The lane that leads to my house is littered after a strong wind with needles of the redwoods and the leaves of bay trees. But many needles and leaves remain in this evergreen forest.

We do have leaf fall in my neck of the woods. It’s just a few: the native horse chestnut (Aesculus californica), thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus), wild currants (Ribes spp.), spice bush (Calycanthus occidentalis), and maple (Acer macrophyllum). The colors appear washed out or muddy if there is too much heat. A cool, late summer will make the maples glow yellow against a dark-green evergreen forest. The horse chestnut loses all its shriveled-up brown leaves a month or two before the chance of rain as a drought-protective “strategy”. The only bright and clear colors come from the poison oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) snaking up a Douglas fir or Coast oak, with the most vibrant reds and oranges of any other native plant around my house.

Back in the ‘70s I was experimenting with friends on wild, native, and lesser-known edibles. We skinned the bay fruit, slit the seed’s skin, extracted the nut and proceeded to cook it in a pan until almost a coffee substitute. Tasted “interesting”. It seemed to be only a last-ditch survival food. Little did we know that some lists and books consider the California bay tree to be a toxic plant. This includes the leaves that we so naively used as a free substitute in a sauce for spaghetti – long before it was called “pasta”.

Except for this uncontrollable twitch, I seem fine. So it probably didn’t effect me.

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A Carnival of Trees

Some horticulturists exhibit superior technical skill. Others possess monumental drive. A very few manifest pure art. Axel Erlandson, a 20th-century visionary who sculpted trees into never-before-seen shapes, combined all of these traits. This retired surveyor and nurseryman literally bent nature to his will, creating a body of work unrivaled in the history of horticulture. Over a 20-year period, Erlandson grafted, shaped and pruned 70 trees on a quarter-acre lot in Scott's Valley, California, into the most amazing shapes. In time, this fantastic collection came to be known simply as "The Tree Circus." Legacy or lunacy? Serious horticulture or pure theater? It's all in the eye of the beholder.

It's hard to describe what Erlandson actually did with trees. Although he used grafting on occasion, his Fellinisque forms also required careful bending, shaping and tying to armatures. He used pleaching (plaiting or interlacing limbs, usually to form arbors) to join together many parts of each living sculpture into a single fabulously-patterned tree. The word topiary applies to clipped and shaped foliage, but here the foliage grows mostly above the main "composition" of limb and trunk. His techniques defy neat classification.

In his early 40s, he began a hobby sculpting living trees. In 1946, due to the promise of developing a roadside attraction and a more hospitable climate along the coast, he and his wife Leona moved 75 miles west. Erlandson barerooted and transplanted nine "living sculptures", the fruits of 20 years' work in Turlock, to new land in Scotts Valley.

The collection was dubbed the "Tree Circus" by Erlandson's daughter Wilma after listening to the comments of guests. Her father devoted himself full-time to his trees, and never put off a visitor He draped sheets to isolate each tree for photographs.

How Erlandson trained the trees is mostly based upon the recollections of a few contemporaries and horticultural deduction, as he jealously guarded his "trade secrets." In Scotts Valley he started many specimens behind a privacy fence, and each grafted or pleached union was wrapped in cloth bandages, not only to protect the healing wound from the sun but to conceal his technique.

Erlandson died virtually broke. From 1947 through 1963 only about 1500 visitors came through in a good year." Though he tried to sell the place in the last few years, he never trained anyone in his methods. A year later, he put up a sign inviting visitors to "See the World's Strangest Trees Here."

Hearing that a developer planned to clear the trees, nurseryman Michael Bonfante purchased them in 1985, and 30 of the healthiest specimens were boxed up and transported to Bonfante's Tree Haven Nursery. Now a horticultural “Amusement Park” near Gilroy, CA. (Some of the 28 which survived the move are pictured here.) Bonfante has replanted these rarest of trees in an amusement park slated for a neighboring parcel, hopefully the final home for the last living "performers" in Axel Erlandson's Tree Circus.

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The Spread of Lavender

These are photographs of the Cloisters in New City and the outside the present-day Abbey of Senanque, Near Gordes, Provence. Tucked away in the background of the Cloister’s gardens is a lavender plant. This authentic reconstruction of an Abbey, including the food and medicinal gardens. This lavender is often referred to as “English” lavender. It is associated with England with the large industry that once carpeted England’s agricultural lands.

This species of lavender (more accurately Lavandula angustifolia.) never originated in England. It’s true “modern” –see below- origins are from far away in the upper altitudes of the southern Alps in France. In the “regionale” of Provance.

As mentioned in my book The Lavender Garden, on a special sale on my web site, “In spite of over 2500 years of recorded use, the origins of lavender are shrouded in mystery. Some varieties of the plant are thought to have first been domesticated in Arabia. It may then have traveled with Greek traders of around 600 BC to what are now the Hyères Islands on the southern coast of France, from whence it spread to the areas now known as France, Italy, and Spain.” (All a matter of great discussion. Let me know what you think is the early history, origins of lavender.)

The botanical name comes from the Latin word for "to wash". The Romans used it to disinfect their baths. Some think it is most likely the Romans brought it with them when they conquered England. The medicinal gardens of various Monasteries and Abbies incorporated “English” lavender into their plantings. The common names of various species named after countries, especially English and French, are at least ambiguous – if not flat wrong. Knowing the Latin name is the only way to be 100% sure you have the correct variety. The medicinal lavender is only Lavandula angustifolia, not the inferior lavandines such as “Grosso”pictured on the left. It is really Lavandula X intermedia “Grosso”.

Some of the medicinal uses of Lavandula angustifolia by the monks include: anti-spasmolytic, antiseptic, carminative powers, restlessness, insomnia, nervous stomach irritations, Roehmheld's syndrome, meteorism, nervous intestinal discomfort, and lack of appetite

The Cloisters in NYC are a testament to empire-building and religious-herbal gardens for the spread of this favored herb.

(NOTE: If you go to the Cloisters, be prepared for a huge surprise. The buildings are surrounded by many busy streets on two sides. The photos never prepare one for the intense din surrounding this former holy place.)

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Splitting in the Wind

The Douglas Fir tree in the left photo didn’t commit suicide. It was just “squeezed" off by the other poorly attached branches. This phenomena is called included bark – and occurs on defective V-shaped crotches in which the bark grows inward and on itself, causing a physical weakness when the co-dominant leaders meet. [Two vertical trunks about the same height.]

Notice the fallen branch was sharing the same area of the trunk with three other branches. This tree was topped during a wind storm some 40 to 60 years ago. The loss of the single leader [tallest, vertical shoot] caused four side limbs to compete to become the new leader. In the process, the interior tissue had to share increasingly smaller amounts of tissue. This lead to a structural weakness that allowed a slight wind to cause one of the limbs to jetison. The close up shows the darkened wood where the attachment was very weak.

The photo on the right is a Liquidambar tree [also known as a Sweet Gum tree in the Midwest] that exhibits the same problem – included bark. As mentioned above this happens when two shoots share the same location of growth. The trick to preventing this, as cabling is not an option, is to buy trees without two trunks attached at the same point. Or, prune off one of the leaders when the tree is young.

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Gettin' Gophers

Even though it's summer, the little ground rats are taking down some of my plants. So, a different look than previous posts on killin' gophers.

I’ve had good results with the “California box trap”. I think the box trap is easier to use if you’ve never set gopher traps before. The box trap in the photo here shows the installation, but the trigger has been activated – see the wire in the up position. [The gopher from the same trap pictured above would fill the entire box!]

To set the box traps, locate the main tunnel with a probe. I use a 24” piece of rebar. The permanent or main burrow [as opposed to the feeding runs] can be found by probing about eight to 12 inches from the plug side of the visible mound and is usually located six to 12 inches deep. When the probe penetrates the gopher’s burrow, there will be a sudden, noticeable drop of about two inches. You may have to probe repeatedly to locate the gopher’s main burrow, but your skill will improve with experience.

Use a shovel or garden trowel to open the tunnel wide enough to set traps in pairs facing opposite directions. By placing traps with their openings facing in opposite directions, a gopher coming from either end of the burrow can be intercepted.

Box traps are especially useful when the diameter of the gopher’s main burrow is small (less than three inches.)

Some claim it is a good idea to use lettuce, carrots, apples, alfalfa greens, or a drop of anise oil as bait. I rub all surfaces I’ve touched with grass or weeds and be sure to rub the trap trigger. [Or, use hospital disposable gloves.] Then I leave a piece of grass or whatever then it has been eating behind the trap’s wire.

After setting the traps, exclude light from the burrow by covering the opening with dirt clods, sod, cardboard, or some other material. Fine soil can be sifted around the edges to ensure a light-tight seal. If too much light enters, the gopher may plug the burrow with soil, filling the traps and making them ineffective. I place a large piece of plywood or cardboard over the entire “excavation” to make sure no light gets through.

The theory is that the gopher feels the flow of air and wants to plug the breach of the tunnel system. The gopher runs through the tunnel and is in the box before it knows it because the flashing on top of the box excludes light but allows air to escape.

Check traps often and reset them when necessary. If a gopher is not caught within 24 hours, reset the traps in a different location.

This is adapted, in part, from: Publication 7433, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. Revised January 2002.

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Fallin' for Garlic

September is the time to plant garlic. For advice, I turn to my friend Chester Aaron who has gathered 90 varieties over 20 years. Here he is shown planting in a raised bed. The wooden sides have ½-inch hardware cloth below to keep out the ravenous gophers.

After soil prep, he lays down 3-5 sheets of black & white newspapers. He water the papers so the wind doesn’t blow them around. Each clove is inserted three to four inches into the soil via a hole in the newspaper. Next rice straw, which has no weed seeds, is applied six to eight-inches deep. It is watered to hold it in place against winds before the straw naturally settles.

Come July, it’s time to harvest the bane of vampires.

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Nervous in the Forest

It’s going to be 100F or higher with very low humidity for at least two days this week. While other parts of the country don’t find this so unusual. It is not common to this California Coastal guy.

My ears perk up. My nose goes into sensitive mode. My paranoia level rises. And old memories arise.

I when through the 1991 fire in Santa Barbara, California fire; helping a friend evacuate due to impending flames. The sky was filed a strange, beautiful yet evil-colored smoke, as seen in the photo to the left above. The fire raged for days and dozens of homes burned down. People died. The flames raced through dry brush of the chaparral almost faster than a motorcycle cop trying to get away from the roaring flames.

The same year there was a murderous fire in the urban setting of Oakland, California. [The photo on the right.] I photographed the scene after the coals were no longer warm. The amazing lesson to learn was how fickle a firestorm can be. Some houses were burnt to the ground except for the brick chimney, while the house next door was untouched—much like Santa Barbara.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up as the hot winds roll from the inland area towrd the sea, the reverse of the normal movement of air. Where I live, the forest around my wooden house hasn’t burned in over 60 years. I get very edgy and scan the sky for the smoke and fumes I experienced in Santa Barbara. And I lock all my fire safes.

There really are no plants that can withstand a firestorm; except, perhaps, for a well-watered lawn. Some of the houses in Santa Barbara were saved by a short stone fire wall just at the top of the slope surrounding the home and before the flat lawn. The flames raced up the hill like being in a chimney. The wall deflected the flames and what flame or cinders fell on the lawn found things too moist to ignite. The other best defense is to scrap the land to bare soil around the house like the house in the middle photograph. This home is only protected from a grass fire. However, the trees within the bare soil can easily ignite from embers during a firestorm. A friend in Santa Barbara is on the volunteer fire department. He encouraged Joe Cocker to strip all foliage to the ground 60 feet down the hill below the house. The fire burned to the edge of the chaparral and stopped at the bare soil. The house was saved.

I’m surrounded by trees. No hope during a canopy firestorm except to jump the fence and wade into the reservoir lake developed for the vineyard next door. Sit it out and watch everything go up in smoke.

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Norfolk Lavender

A number of years ago I traveled to England, in part to see the renowned Norfolk Lavender fields - the oldest and largest fields of "English" Lavender of what was a substantial industry. English lavender [Lavandula angustifolia] really a type of lavender originally found in the wild in the mountains of northern France and traveled its way to England - perhaps via monks and their apothecary gardens.

I had a hidden agenda. I wanted them to carry my book The Lavender Garden in their gift shop. Mr. Head, carrying on the family tradition for at least four generations, perused the text. With a bit of anger he said "You say that lavender plants only last 8-10 years. We've got 25-year-old plants!" My response was that to say in the book that lavenders live to be 25 would greatly disappointed the gardener that doesn't reach that lofty goal. I said if I say 8-10 years and the gardener gets more than 10 years of healthy growth they'll be proud. He didn't buy my defense and they never carried the book.

The photo on the right is my current early fall pruning of a 18 year-old Spanish lavender [Lavandula stoechas]. It won't last much longer as the trees have grown so high the plant isn't getting enough light to keep it from being leggy. Alas "only" 18 years. Still a good run in our wet climate with 50+ inches of Mediterranean rain each winter.

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Garden Rot [not roots]

Every eccentric garden I’ve been in pays some homage to death. Here the face offers a slightly oblique reference to death. Rot. All gardens have compost, mulch, and rotting fibers and critters. Rot [as well as death] is just a natural part of every garden.

[This unique comical sculpture was carved by the wonderfully-eccentric Marcia Donahue in Berekely, CA.]

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Root Bondage

Here’ a view from above of what’s left of an apple tree’s roots growing in a wire basket.

Wire baskets around here are becoming required planting additions for perennials, shrubs, and trees. I once had a wire basket protecting the apple tree in the photo. The wire was four inches above the mulch. That didn’t stop a gopher from climbing over the wire to be encaged with all those succulent roots. The tree leaned over and simply died.

As the photo shows [I’m the only person I know of that has excavated the roots as they grow when using wire baskets] very few of the roots got out of the basket to explore a bigger volume of soil. For practical purposes, this tree should have been treated like a container plant—keeping all the moisture, fertility, and mulch within the basket’s diameter. BUT, the wire must extend 6-12 inches above the mulch to have a shot at excluding these pesty critters. Such a wire basket is very hard to make and isn’t to be found commercially. Your up to your own to make a Rube Goldberg machine-made, anti-gopher basket .

However, wire baskets can work with smaller plants.

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Elvin Bishop Stays Tuned to the Seasons

Elvin Bishop loves to garden. And though perhaps best known for his gold-record Rhythm-and-Blues classics like "I Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” he's been cultivating a medley of flowers, vegetables, herbs, berries and fruits around his Marin County, California home.

Besides the art of the Blues, Bishop has mastered something few San Francisco Bay Area gardeners even attempt—the art of year-round food production. His floral kitchen garden even continues to produce through winters which, though moderate in temperature, can reach a low of 15° F and drop over 40 inches of rain. Working this flourishing half-acre has become a grounding note in Bishop's life, a steady rhythm anchoring life’s more unpredictable melodies.

A plain passive-solar greenhouse furnishes ornamental and edible transplants year-round; in summer, it shelters crops of trellised Japanese cucumber, melons and ‘Naga Imo’ (Diascorea sp., a Japanese root-crop in the yam family). In winter, it protects bok choy, various Chinese mustard greens, lettuces, diakon and mizuna from frost and battering rains.

Bishop's interest in Asian vegetables was initiated by his marriage 14 years ago to Cara Wada, whose Japanese-American heritage and traditional cooking style brought more far-eastern vegetables into her husband's diet, then into his garden. “Cara's family made me aware of different tasty Asian vegetables. I figure if it tastes good, then it’s worth growing. Besides, it’s nice to have vegetables to give away to the family.”

Many Asian vegetables are members of the cabbage or crucifer family (Brassica sp.) and thrive in moderate weather. In the Marin-County "Mediterranean" climate, winter gardening makes good sense; plenty of winter rain keeps things moist and, after temperatures drop, the cold keeps most pests (including the aphids and root maggots which can thwart summer plantings, but not, unfortunately, slugs and snails) at bay.

The secret to a garden which can be harvested from mid-winter through the following spring is timing, and Bishop’s sense of the rhythm of the seasons is finely tuned. His brief recipe for cultivating Brassicas : choose seed for early-, mid- and late-season crops to spread the harvest. Seed everything on June 1st in six-pacs, using sterile potting mix. In two to three weeks, transplant deeply into four-inch pots. Set out into the garden at the beginning of July. Shade for several days if the weather is hot. Water till the rains begin. Weed as needed and harvest when ready.

In addition to its other rewards, Bishop's garden offers an abundance of produce; each year he personally puts up about 300 jars of beans, corn, pickled beets, dill pickles, applesauce, apple juice, peaches, plums, pears, tomatoes and various jams, including kiwi.

Elvin Bishop may sing the blues for a living, but in his garden, life is sweet.

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Bracken Ferns for Potassium

It's late summer and I'm pulling out what feels like a "grove" of bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum). They seem to have spread faster than in any prior year. Then I remember how I once turned this "pest" onto fertility.

bracken fern hovers protects my tiny pond as with a graceful open palm. Sheep ranchers hate this plant because if eaten by sheep they get sick and can die. The fern also spreads to replace good forage. Bracken ferns are at least last 55 million years old and is found everywhere outside of Antarctica. Bracken fern is also one of the most common plants around the world in part due to human disruption of farms, the edges of the forest and meadows.

Use of brackens in a garden is very uncommon. Some harvest the young “fiddle heads” in the early spring before the leaves become poisonous. But the green, lacy fronds of the spring are good for vegetable gardens. The fresh foliage is very high in potassium so high that during World War II the plant was used to help make soap.

As is traditional in some gardens in England, I once gathered the fronds in the spring until early-summer, when they’re full of vigor and potash. A wide and deep trench was spread open in the earth. The fronds fill the trench nearly half full. The soil is mounded over the freshly-cut foliage. I place dried-sliced potato “eyes” on top of the warming-spring soil, and a mulch of crisp rice straw like thin blanket. The searching roots of the potatoes wandered through the upper soil and soon find the extra phosphorus and thrive. These potatoes are more likely to be free of disease. A time-honored style of gardening has slipped “over the pond” from the former ruler of our colony. This uncomplicated act of gardening joins two countries, two continents with a simple act of nurturing.

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Random, Natural Plantings

Nature conceals the pattern of the placement of plants. Each hopeful seedling, each successful mature tree; grows in a haphazard pattern. If we want a truly natural look garden and feel to our constructed garden, we must avoid human constructs. Even attempts at gentle chaos often reveal a noticeable intent. True randomness means letting go.

Here’s a test for planting in a truly random fashion: Take five or more golf balls and throw them up onto the air over the area you want to plant. Where each ball falls is where you plant. The real task is not to move any balls—”oh that one looks so close to that ball”. Untouched balls can mean some very odd combinations—just like the forest or meadow.

We usually buy a plant, look in a book to see how far apart it should be planted, and plant with loving care. The difficulty with the random-balls approach is some patterns require buying more plants than you anticipated. Because several balls are clustered together, the gardener may feel the cost of extra plants is a burden. A forest of meadow has no expense account. Plants sprout, die, and thrive—all at the same time. Thousands of seedlings or plants have died where we see a glorious specimen in nature. Such a pattern is within the natural flow of the random sprouting and growth of all natural things. Rejoice in the spontaneity.

(The manipulated Polaroid print can be found, with others, on my web site www.robertkourik.com)

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Beneficial insects slide down to chow

Each white cocoon looks like a droplet of water at the end of a thin, gossamer strand. In the above photo it’s hard to see the threads that hold each green lacewing egg, Chrysoperla rufilabris, above the colony of orange aphids. The green lacewing has deposited her eggs right above breakfast. The larvae of lacewings look ugly and evil. So, as with many beneficial insect larvae, they are mistaken for a bad bug and squashed or sprayed with an insecticide – chemical or organic. It’s thought that by having each strand holding the cocoon slightly different the hatches larvae will climb down the strand at different rates. This prevents too many reaching the plant at the same time as they will eat each other as well as the aphids. Sad day when the good bugs eat each other!

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Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books.

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