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

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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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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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



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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.

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The Fungus Among Us

(Here's a portion of the chapter called "The Fungus Among Us" on mycorrhizal association from my most recent book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive.)

According to experts on the subject, the intriguing life-forms known as fungi comprise about 52% to 55% of a forest’s biomass. Since a whopping 80% of all green plants depend on at least one fungal relationship in order to survive, it’s appropriate here to discuss the magical relationship of beneficial fungi with the roots of trees as well as with a range of annual, herbaceous, and woody plants. This relationship is known as mycorrhiza, or fungus root, from the Greek: mykes [mushroom] and rhiza [root]. The plural is mycorrhizae.

Fungi, in general, form masses of tiny filaments known as mycelia, which frequently interact with plant roots. There are two major kinds of mycorrhizae: ectomycorrhiza and endomycorrhiza. In ectomycorrhiza (usually abbreviated as “EM”), these filaments remain outside of the plant, living on the cells of the root hairs. With endomycorrhiza, these filaments actually live between and inside of the cells of the feeding roots. There are numerous kinds of tongue-twisting endomycorrhizae: arbutoid, monotropoid, ericoid, orchidioid, and vesicular-arbuscular or arbuscular mycorrhiza, all of which interact with plants in different ways. The most important and widely distributed type of mycorrhiza is the vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza or arbuscular mycorrhiza (abbreviated as “VAM” or “AM”.) These are the new terms for endomycorrhiza. (Some plants utilize neither EM nor VAM; examples of plants with no mycorrhizal association include all the species of brassicas—cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, etc.)

All mycorrhizal associations are beneficial and are characterized by the movement of plant-produced carbon to the fungi and fungal-acquired nutrients to the plant. Rather than a parasitic relationship, it is a mutualism in which both life-forms benefit. In general, most plants are dependent upon this union, as it is estimated that about 80% of all plant species in the world are mycorrhizal symbionts.

In general, mycorrhizal plants are well-fitted to endure environmental stress. Nutrient-poor or moisture-deficient soils show improved capacity for supporting plant growth and reproduction when mycorrhizal fungi are present. As if to return the favor, the plant allows the mycorrhizal fungi to extract sugars, starches, proteins, and lipids from its lateral roots. (We’ll go into more detail a few paragraphs down.) Mycorrhizal fungi may also improve water absorption, increase drought resistance, and exude substances that reduce infections caused by some soil pathogens.

Phosphorus is the most common nutrient transferred via VAM association into the root system of a plant, especially if it is growing in soil that is low in this essential nutrient. All trees need phosphorus but are not always able to absorb soluble phosphorus efficiently; they are thus dependent upon the mycorrhizal relationship. The mycorrhizal fungi produce phosphatase enzymes that breakdown phosphorus compounds. (The absorption of micronutrients such as zinc and copper is also improved by mycorrhizal association.) The extensive mass of a fungal mycelium produces a huge surface area that allows the fungi to “mine” a much greater amount of soil and duff than the root hairs of the tree are capable of exploiting on their own.

As an example, the mycorrhizae can increase the absorbing surface area of pine seedlings by 80%. Some horticulturists maintain that the absorption surface area of a tree can be increased by 700-1000% by mycorrhizal fungi. Fortunately, there are plenty of these helpful organisms to go around. One scientist in Europe documented 101 species of mycorrhiza fungi associated with a single tree species—Norway spruce (Picea abies)—and 117 mycorrhizal species associated with Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris).

See the photo of Redwood seedlings with (right) and without (left) mycorrhizae. Photo credit: Mike Amaranthus, USDA

The B&W illustration is from Roots Demystified. It shows to two types of mycorrhizae-EM (on the right) and the VAM (on the left).



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Gopher it!

It's spring, the young gophers are out, searching and fighting over new territory. The battle begins.

The earliest “modern” settlers of our coast north of the San Francisco bay were the Russians in March of 1812. They were gone by 1842. One anecdotal saying goes “we could have made a living if it weren’t for the ground rats”.

Ah yes, the hated gopher. These herbivores tunnel at both shallow and deep depths to eat on the roots of plants. An average of 22 gophers per acre translates into four pounds of fresh vegetation eaten every day—a rather healthy diet. It is thought that there are 1,000,000,000 rodents in California of which the most abundant is the pocket gopher. Large fur-lined external cheek pouches are used for temporally storing food. Thus the name pocket gopher, referring to these pouches, or pockets. Sometimes they collect pieces of roots, such a carrots, and stash them in a food reserve burrow for perhaps a truly “rainy day”. Many gardeners have watched a wiggling garlic top or freshly-planted lettuce and all of the sudden it is pulled beneath the soil. Fodder for the ravenous western pocket gopher.
(Those of you who live in the northeastern part of the country are blessed—no gophers. Skip the rest with delight.)

Gophers are very nocturnal creatures walking or skirmishing across the surface looking for new places to burrow. This is especially frantic in the spring, usually March and April, as young gophers go for their own territory. Once a gopher has a territory it maintains if for life. But for unexplained reasons, male gophers are polygamous which means their territories overlap or they wander at night to court their next “babe”.

The common gopher snake is thought of by gardeners as a hopeful controller of this pest. Alas, studies have shown that only 6.4% of the snake’s diet comes from gophers—better than nothing I guess. (Gopher snakes are territorial. So don’t try to move one form someplace to your garden. They’ll just wander off in pursuit of their previous home.) Rattlesnakes get only 2.5% of their diet from eating pocket gophers as the tunnel system makes it unlikely for them to coil and strike. The most significant predator, at 71.4% of it’s diet, is the barn owl which eats at night as the rodents scurry along the surface of the soil. The average barn owl will eat 155 gophers per year. Alas, if a great-horned owl lives within one square mile, the barn owls are scared away or eaten—something overlooked by the local vineyards that are trying to appear to be environmentally responsive by putting up barn owl nesting boxes near where great-horned owls reside.

In spite of the barn owls, most gardeners have resorted to wooden raised beds with wire bottoms—galvanized one-half inch aviary wire or hardware cloth. This doesn’t always stop them. A friend has vegetable boxes 12 inches high with wire bottoms. There was a gopher mound or “throw”, such as they are inclined to make when surfacing, up against the wood. He watched as the gopher merely climbed on top of the throw and hopped over the top of the board.

Wire baskets are becoming required planting additions for perennials, shrubs and trees. I once had a wire basket protecting an apple tree. 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. However, wire baskets often work.

Lining the garden with a fence is trickier and riskier. Studies show that the fence would have to be at least two feet deep and up to seven feet deep in deep soils. One research study found gophers getting over a 10-inch high barrier! One recommendation would be that the fence would have to extend to 12 inches above the soil. Nothing is simple or safe!

I recently helped maintain an estate garden riddled with gophers. Even though all the dahlias were wrapped in 1/2” aviary wire, up to one quarter were destroyed by these troublesome varmits. I taught another guy on the crew how to use a Macabee trap—with its piercing tongs. After a month or so he had killed 100 gophers. So I presented him with a Macabee trap sprayed gold as a trophy. Sad truth was the owner stopped the trapping program. Gopher mounds showed up in her lawn and more dahlias bit the dust.

There is no silver bullet.

I must admit I find gophers fascinating, when I’m not cursing them, knowing that they must tunnel to keep their teeth in order. If unable to tunnel, their teeth would grow up to 14 inches a year in a curl that would eventually pierce their skull. Not a pretty sight. Although many gardeners would be delighted.

I’m always curious about their tunnel systems. The feeding tunnels, which terminate in a mound, are usually four too eight inches beneath the surface. The maintain “highways” used for routine travel are 12 or more inches deep. And gopher tunnels have been found at a depth of six feet. So I tried pouring plaster of Paris down a tunnel. I did get some of the plaster down to the second run. This mold of a gopher run hung from my ceiling for months.

After St. Helens, in Washington, erupted in 1980 it was the activity of gophers, their defecation, that brought mutually-symbiotic mycorrhizae to inoculate other plants for a better and healthier life and the restoration of the disturbed soil. (Mycorrhizae are beneficial fungi that extend to the root system of many plants to make it easier to gather nutrients such as phosphorous. Trees are especially dependent on phosphorous for good growth. Without the mutual symbiosis of the mychorrhizal association most trees would not prosper. The tree gives the mycorrhizae carbohydrates in exchange—this is not a parasitic association but is a two-way street for the benefit of both.)

Gophers turn over the soil more effectively than earthworms. And the mounds are good for the soil. One report (Effects of Pocket Gopher Mounds on Plant Production in Shortgrass Prairie Ecosystems, W. E. Grant, N. R. French and L. J. Folse, Jr.) states “…total above-ground plant production would be increased by roughly 5.5% by the presence of the mounds.” So they aren’t completely malicious critters with no worth what-so-ever.

I still hunt these “ground rats”.


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Random Chaos (As opposed to formal chaos?)

I like to let my annual and biennial plants wander around in the garden. (The photo shows lime-green Euphorbias -E. characias - and foxgloves - Digitalis purperea. All from seed cast asunder by leaving the flower stalks to mature.)

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 to give birth to the one glorious specimen we appreciate. Such a pattern is within the natural flow of the random sprouting and growth of all natural things. Rejoice in the spontaneity.

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The Pill "Bug" Debate

I’ve only—bless my lucky stars—found one garden snail in three years. I plucked it yesterday off the base of a sculpture in my garden that was awash with eight-inch tall, moist miner’s lettuce. Where was he hiding all the past years? Where are the rest of them? I bet he can’t be a bachelor. (This is the snail that escaped from an “escargot farm” after being introduced to California in the 1800s—not the rarely-seen native snail.)

But the sow bugs and pill bugs are now out in full force this spring.

Consider the lowly sow bug (they don’t curl up and have two tiny tails) or the cute pill bug pictured above, also called rollie-pollies—actually Isopods, the only land crustacean related to the lofty crab and lobster. These innocent little critters are beginning, once again with the advent of spring, to be falsely accused in the gardeners’ court-of-law. All kinds of people ask me how to kill, with safe methods, these "nasty bugs who are devouring everything in my garden”. I have to gently tell them that these particular critters may have been falsely incriminated by circumstantial evidence. If Perry Mason were still alive to represent these small, helpless creature in a gardener's court of law, they may be exonerated.

Although one gardener friend saw a pill bug eat a flower bud of a pansy. And a friend says, in greenhouses and young seedlings in flats where it can be very moist, pill bugs may be so abundant that they damage young plants. I asked Richard Merrill (my organic gardening “guru” with over 25 years of teaching organic gardening) about this and he responded “isopods prefer decaying organic matter... or rather more accurately they prefer the microbes of decay on the organic material. If they are without water and exposed to new seedlings, isopods will eat them also, but this is rather rare.”

So maybe it’s not beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Some commercial chemical compounds used by the uninformed to “eradicate” pill and sow bugs contain diazinon, a very toxic poison that is rated as equally toxic as the infamous DDT, And, according to the Rachael Carson Trust, is a suspected teratogen (causing birth defects in the next generation).

Pill bugs are part of nature's important decomposing cycle. That is, these “bugs” are usually eating mostly on moist rotten, decayed, dead, and decomposing plant tissues. Some other creatures, such as the nasty Mr. Slug, Mr. Snail, or Mr. Earwig, do the initial damage to the plant and the unsuspecting and opportunistic pill bug comes in to take advantage of the very first bits of rot, is falsely accused—and thus, is innocently killed.

Take strawberries as a wonderful example. As gardeners, we might awaken in the morning to find a pill bug neatly rolled up within a cavity so neatly carved within the largest, most gorgeous strawberry in the garden. If we were to actually reconstruct the "crime", what probably occurred was that herd of tiny slugs mounted a midnight raid of the berry patch, chewing tiny caverns in each berry. The very first tiny bits of oxidized-rot and decay sent (actually, scent) out a signal to the pill bugs that a new taste-treat of succulent decay was available. The pill bugs climb into these "condominiums" of repast and proceed to feast away. The sun slowly rises as the slimy villains, the slinky slugs, slither back into dark, dank hiding places, places that are not where they just got done feasting. The pill bugs, with carefree abandon, colonize the holes formally carved by other pests. The gardener finds the pill bug at the scene of the crime and inflicts a form of instant, shameless justice. Again Richard Merrill, “I have tried in vain to see isopods eat strawberries. I have seen slugs eat them (nocturnally) and then when the isopods become active, they seek out the holes in the berries for water.”

The "solution" I try to take, is not to try to eradicate sow and pill bugs. But I’m fortunate that I can mulch my perennials with turkey manure mixed with rice hulls and still allude these troublesome critters.

To reduce the populations of pill and sow bugs around her raised boxes of vegetables (as well a slugs, earwigs, and “escargot”) a friend maintains bare soil with no mulch and very little organic matter or fiber on its surface for four feet or more in all directions.

Plant only the most healthy and vigorous transplants (the pill bugs eat on the very first tiny bits of rotten tissue when a seedling has minute amounts of damage from mildew, rust, and damping-off) into warm, dry, and bare garden soil. Then flood flats and pots in a bucket of water to flush out pill bugs.

I think because my ornamental garden is never irrigated in the summer; I don’t have many slugs, snails (except the "Lone Ranger"), or earwigs. Lucky me!

But there are the pill bugs eating mulch and the decaying weeds I’ve pulled up.


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Shaping, Not Just Pruning, Fruit Trees

I love Asian pears. They are flavorful yet crispy. And they ripen on the tree instead picking European pears early and letting them ripen in a dark, cool place.

I just got done pruning an Asian pear tree for a friend last week. It’s not easy pruning, or rather, shaping these trees.

Asian pear trees are inclined to sprout new growth that is even more vertical than European pear trees. This tendency to form vertical shoots with a narrow angle of attachment, which makes for a weaker crotch, must be dealt with in the first few months of each season's growth.

Shaping rather than pruning is the way to treat an Asian pear tree. I prefer to spread the young shoots in the early summer to a healthier, and more productive, 45- to 60-degree angle. I use toothpicks to spread the very young shoots once they are ten- to 16-inches long. When the shoots are this young, they are flexible enough to bend to any angle without snapping. I insert one point of a round, wooden toothpick into the new shoot a few inches above its point of origin. Next I bend the shoot out to the desired angle, and insert the other end into the bark of the tree's trunk. By the end of August, I can remove the toothpicks, and the new branch will stay mostly in the position it was trained to by the toothpick.

The tree I was working on last week hadn’t had its stems forced into a 45^o angle when it was young. The owners had missed several seasons. However, there are several ways to spread the older, more-stubborn limbs.

Spreaders can be made out of various lengths of one-by stakes with a nail point at both ends. In the photos you'll see that I used some used 1" X 4" pieces of wood. (You can make these by nailing an eight- or ten-penny box nail halfway into the each end and clipping off the nail's head with a wire-clipper.) Insert one nail point into the newer shoot or limb, bend it down to the correct angle, or a bit further, and insert the other nail point into the trunk.(See the left photo.)

A non-intrusive option is to find a nice heavy rock. Tie a sturdy string to the rock, bend the limb down, and tie the string to the limb. You can adjust the angle of the limb by moving the rock toward or away from the tree. With both methods, you'll need to keep the limb bound into the new position for several or more years to allow the branch to stiffen-up enough to hold its own position.

A neighbor filled Styrofoam cups with cement an inserted a wire before the cement hardened. Then the weights were added to the new growth to weight down the limbs to a proper angle.

Once the limbs come into bearing, the weight of each year's fruit is usually heavy enough to spread the limbs without assistance. In fact, the trees are usually prolific enough that too much spreading should be the gardener's concern—the branches break off. Thin the young fruits to a single fruit every five- to eight-inches apart along the limb. Keep an eye on the fruit-laden limbs, as they still may require propping to prevent torn limbs.

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Rant - Is it Compost or A Dump Heap?

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Remember composting? Remember those innocent days when Arlo was trying to take some stuff to the dump, not the "sanitary landfill"—and before we found out the dump's seepage was poisoning the town's water supply? Remember thinking that compost would transform the world? Perhaps not. Compost didn't even rate a background mention in that "thirtysomethng" nostalgia flick "The Big Chill".

Seen many cookin' compost piles lately? While some plain-ole' heaps of garden refuse are hidden away in the dark corners of many gardens; well-formed, hot, or active, compost piles (the ones that achieved temperatures of 140^o F, and decomposed even the starchiest corn stalk within four to six weeks) are an increasingly rare garden fixture. Active composting has slipped rapidly into obscurity. It has been replaced by dump heaps.

Some ardent proponents of composting have survived in the gardening backwaters of the times—but many former "Captains-of-Compost" have let their active piles go dry.

In the  ‘70s I was, alas, an outspoken proponent of the virtues of, the magic surrounding, the healing properties of, and the essential need for Compost—capital "C". I began my career as an organic gardener convinced that compost was the Queen-of-Panaceas for my garden—and all gardens. I loved to make compost. Watching the four foot high piles begin to steam in the brisk early-morning air was fascinating and very gratifying. Turning hot, steaming, "fragrant" compost piles (to the compost purist, the pungent odors of decomposition--tinted with ammonia, sulphur, musk, and wet dirt—is a sweet, delicious aroma) was a mystical, if not religious, experience. I made compost almost every month of the year during this reign-of-fiber period of my gardening history.

Not only did I make literally tons of compost for my garden, but I persuaded, through sheer enthusiasm, nearly every ornamental and edible landscape client I had in the ‘70s to have me build a neat, tidy set of compost bins for their own "cookin' compost

I had expected my clients to gather up their daily kitchen waste, layer it with sawdust in a 30 gallon garbage can, and construct a hot compost pile in one bin with alternate layers of garden clippings, manure, straw, and the stored kitchen scraps. Furthermore, in my heady idealism, I expected the client to turn the first bin's actively decomposing compost into the adjacent bin within a week or two and to continue to stir or turn the pile very week or two until the temperature of the pile began to drop—some four to six weeks later. I gave them copies of articles on the importance of compost and recipes for the well-layered pile. I even, in my deepest enthusiasm, expected them to enjoy, if not revel, in this onerous, odiferous task. Ha!

Alas, in a few short years, all but one of the four or five bin systems I made had been turned into short, little tool sheds. The only bin system still used for “composting” was merely a place to heap piles of landscape clippings and let nature take two to four years to slowly rot the refuse to a fibrous, yet nutritionally insipid, pile of mulch—a dump heap.

I had made two fundamental errors. First, I misjudged the entire sociology  of the "system". The biology of composting is relatively simple, elegant, and easily implemented by the right, enthusiastic person. But, what's important about hot composting is whether-or-not it fits into one's lifestyle. The most important elements in an ecosystem, from a practical, ethnocentric point of view, are the people, the homeowners, and gardeners.

Secondly, defining a "system"; no matter how clever, thoughtful, elegant, or practical, is to set one's self up for potential failure. So often, the circumstances of each household are different from the theoretical "norm". By having a predetermined "system", I ignored special situations that made composting impractical or ineffective. Thus, the ecology of composting must embrace and mesh with each gardener's unique social ecology—with respect for the practical reality of their personality, lifestyle, and the local resources.

There are three levels of compost thermodynamics: cryophlic (cold-tolerant bacteria), mesophilic (bacteria growing only at mild-temperatures) and thermophilic (bacteria for hot compost). Any pile of garden refuse will eventually rot, but I prefer to call these piles heaps—not true, thermophilic compost. With the passing of time, the busy gardener's heap will have a high-fiber material for use a mulch or soil amendment. But I don't treat such material as having any significant  nutrition for the soil since subsequent rainfall leaches valuable nutrients while the heap sits around. I think of a dump heap as merely a soil amendment to improve the texture. This is a form of decomposition that easily fits into the active lifestyle of many of todays gardeners. One significant drawback of heaps is their inclination to provide habitat for critters of the rodent persuasion—rats and mice. So, I usually place a cylinder of chicken-wire on stakes far away from the house, behind a screen of shrubbery, and cover the top of the cylinder with a wire "lid".

There are a number of products on the market that I consider either totally bogus are certainly not worth the money to an accomplished composter. If you are using any fresh material at all, especially fairly fresh manures, there are plenty of bacteria and many types of bacteria and fungi available for free. Buying supposedly complex blends of beneficial bacteria and fungi is like throwing fiber into the wind. My favorite book in the subject, Composting, A Study of the Process and its Principles by Clarence Golueke, puts it very clearly: "In University of California studies, [using horse manure, "rich" soils, composting material, and two commercial preperations] the composting process was neither accelerated nor the final product improved in those runs in which inoculums were tested, even though the inoculums were rich in bacteria."

In other words: The raw material comes with the seeds of its own destruction.

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