Glorious Monarch Butterflies

I’ve always been enchanted by Monarch butterflies. I still have the Monarch butterflies I captured and mounted in my butterfly collection when I was about ten. (Back then butterflies were everywhere and the world seemed abundant and Earth Day didn’t exist. What seems like an ecological travesty now was a simple hobby back in the early 1960s.) There’s something about the bold, rich orange of the wings with thick-black lines outlining the wings and veins of the wing and the amber-colored spots on a backdrop of black around the edges of the wings that has always intrigued me.

While young, I read about the mystery of the unknown wintering over spot for the Monarchs that flutter south into Mexico for their winter respite. In St. Louis, MO at age 12, I had the joy of seeing a shrub where hundreds of Monarchs gathered for the night—huddled together in the chill of the early fall night. I thought I had reached butterfly nirvana.

Twenty years later, I traveled away from my little mountain top down to the coast near Big Sur, California. There, in a secluded eucalyptus grove was, for me, the holy grail of Monarchs. Instead of fleeing south for a winter in warm Mexico, Sierra Mountain monarchs also flock to warm protected groves of trees near the Pacific ocean’s edge. While the native cypress was historically their natural habitat, the eucalyptus has superceded the cypress as the preferred habitat. In this special place, both the cypress and eucalyptus grow nearby and the Monarchs alight by the tens of thousands along the bark of eucalyptus trees. While only hundreds gather among the cypresses refuge.

With the introduction of the Australian eucalyptus and other exotic plants there are now many sweet treats to be found among this floral island of cultivated landscape. There is one particular eucalyptus in a nearby open lawn that doesn't spread into a dense thicket like the most common eucalyptus—the blue gum eucalyptus. Like all eucalyptus’s, it blooms in the mid- to late-winter. This particular specimen has flashy orange-red blossoms that flower with great abundance. Those Monarch’s warmed by the sun make their circuitous flight to sup on the sweet nectar of this tree. The flowers providing a dazzling backdrop in comparison to the more muted colors of the Monarchs.

Let me know what you think.

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

Special offer for blog readers: Only $20 [lists for $24.95] No tax.

Autograph included.

Includes Free Priority Mail!

Buy From the Source So Writers Can Keep on Writing®

Send a check made out to Metamorphic Press to: Metamorphic Press, PO Box 412, Occidental, CA 95465

(Say you saw it on the blog. So the readers of my web site & PayPal don't get confused.)

Information about the book:

As a celebration of its 25th anniversary, the highly respected newsletter Avant

Gardener published a list headed “The 25 Best Gardening Books of the Past

25 Years.” Up there on that list, at number seven, was the first edition of Drip

Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates. Great then, even better now.

Yes, Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates, by Robert Kourik,

is now available in an updated second edition. It will give you the knowhow

to optimize your water use, survive a protracted drought, or work with the

unpredictable intermittent rains of certain climates. Its light-hearted approach,

step-by-step instructions and clearly drawn diagrams will allow you to construct

and streamline your own drip-irrigation system without the clutter of superfluous

widgets and gizmos.

Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates also describes, in clear

and scientific terms, how drip-irrigation systems can be designed or reconfigured

to use less water while increasing yields of fruits and vegetables and improving

the growth of all plants. New in this edition are descriptions of how to use two

very important water sources—grey water and cisterns—as well as how to utilize

satellite control or a home-based weather station to irrigate your garden with

precision.

In short, this fully revised edition of the original ground-breaking book is designed to 1) help gardeners manage

precious water supplies with ease and efficiency, and 2) create sustainable water-efficient gardens and landscapes with the latest technologies of drip irrigation.

Page Count —192 (74 more pages than the 1993 edition)

Number of illustrations—89 B&W (21 new B&W illustrations)

Includes: A Bibliography, Glossary, Web sites to explore (new to this addition), and an expanded and detailed Index.

Invisible Fire

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

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

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

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

The image above is a manipulated Polaroid. See my web site (www.robertkourik.com) for more examples of "Impressionistic Photography".

Let me know what you think.

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YIKES, Don't do this at home!

NOT MY GARDEN!

I ran across this poor tree and was amazed at how it was butchered. Seems they tried to cut almost flush on a few cuts. But heaven knows who left the enormous "stub".

If your tree, like this fir, doesn't have a noticeable hump or shoulder (branch collar) at the base of the limb, you can use the drawing to figure out where to cut. Make one cut a foot or so under the limb part way out from the trunk. Cut further out from the first cut. When the branch falls, it won't rip bark past the first cut. Lastly, make a proper cut as illustrated from A to D. In all cases, don't cut flush!

Let me know what you think.

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Pruning in the Summer versus Winter Pruning

Why in the dickens am I mentioning summer pruning now? Well many people still don’t know that it’s possible to prune throughout the summer. I used to have to cover summer pruning during winter pruning lectures because nobody would sign up for just a summer pruning class in the summer. In fact summer pruning may be more helpful than winter pruning. Summer pruning [especially repeated pruning] is the best way to control a tree that is growing to tall or fast. Summer pruning slightly reduces the tree’s vigor. While winter pruning stimulates new growth in the spring as it begins to leaf out.

Grandfather never lied. When he said “pruning trees in the summer is bad, especially with fruit trees—they might bleed to death” he was just repeating an heirloom myth. I know better now. Summer pruning will not cause plants to perish. In reality, summer pruning is a very valuable addition to the gardener’s repertoire of techniques (a tool, if you will) for shaping and nurturing all garden growth.

Summer Pruning’s Virtues

There are many practical aspects to summer pruning. First, it’s comfortable; you can wear shorts and a tee shirt instead of being cumbersomely bundled up. Now, pruning is spread over a greater number of months to ease a gardener’s busy spring. Since the foliage is readily visible, it’s easier to spot dead, damaged, or diseased growth; and you can watch how pruning effects light and shadow patterns.

It offers more opportunities to control unwanted growth on a tree. Mid- to late-summer is the best time to remove unwanted suckers and so-called water sprouts—those poorly-named straight shoots which tower through a tree’s crown [a.k.a., canopy] or along the top of horizontal limb—with a single pruning.

Summer pruning can allow you to enjoy bountiful flowering and then control the size of the tree. Summer pruning allows more light into the crown to add a colorful blush to ripening fruit. Pruning cuts callus-over with the assistance of active photosynthesis, sealing the wound.

Summer Pruning’s Shortcomings

Foremost, summer pruning is a new concept to many. Pruning trees in leaf makes it harder to see a deciduous tree’s winter branching pattern. The main and secondary limbs may get sunburned. [When pruning in hot summer areas, cut with discretion, leaving enough foliage to protect the main the trunk.] If you prune too late in the summer where winters are cold, any new growth will be vulnerable to some freeze damage. With fruit trees, some fruit may be knocked off if you prune on older limbs before harvesting.

Some diseases enter open pruning cuts. The fungus Anthracnose sp. causes cankers and enters cuts during fall rains in the west—don’t prune too late in the summer, allow plenty of time for a callus to form. Check the Cooperative Extension Service and its Master Gardener Program or an arborist for other diseases specific to your area.

Let me know what you think.

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

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Soil Biota Horizons

This is my favorite illustration from Drip Irrigation For Every Landscape & All Climates and Roots Demystified. (Click on the drawing to enlarge it for easier reading.)

The upper layers of the soil are the most aerobic, with the highest population of air-loving bacteria and soil flora. As seen above, the top three inches of the soil has nearly four-and-a-half times more bacteria, almost eight-and-a-half times more actinomycetes [tiny aerobic organisms that help decompose dead plant tissue], more than twice as many fungi, and five times the algae of soil found eight to ten inches deep. These bacteria and flora are responsible for the decomposition of organic matter and the liberation of mineralized [unavailable] nutrients into a soluble form that the plant can absorb. They live near the soil’s surface because they must have plenty of oxygen to fuel their activity.

Let me know what you think.

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

Special offer for blog readers: Only $20 [lists for $24.95] No tax.

Autograph included.

Includes Free Priority Mail!

Buy From the Source So Writers Can Keep on Writing®

Send a check made out to Metamorphic Press to: Metamorphic Press, PO Box 412, Occidental, CA 95465

(Say you saw it on the blog. So the readers of my web site & PayPal don't get confused.)

Information about the book:

As a celebration of its 25th anniversary, the highly respected newsletter Avant

Gardener published a list headed “The 25 Best Gardening Books of the Past

25 Years.” Up there on that list, at number seven, was the first edition of Drip

Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates. Great then, even better now.

Yes, Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates, by Robert Kourik,

is now available in an updated second edition. It will give you the knowhow

to optimize your water use, survive a protracted drought, or work with the

unpredictable intermittent rains of certain climates. Its light-hearted approach,

step-by-step instructions and clearly drawn diagrams will allow you to construct

and streamline your own drip-irrigation system without the clutter of superfluous

widgets and gizmos.

Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates also describes, in clear

and scientific terms, how drip-irrigation systems can be designed or reconfigured

to use less water while increasing yields of fruits and vegetables and improving

the growth of all plants. New in this edition are descriptions of how to use two

very important water sources—grey water and cisterns—as well as how to utilize

satellite control or a home-based weather station to irrigate your garden with

precision.

In short, this fully revised edition of the original ground-breaking book is designed to 1) help gardeners manage

precious water supplies with ease and efficiency, and 2) create sustainable water-efficient gardens and landscapes with the latest technologies of drip irrigation.

Page Count —192 (74 more pages than the 1993 edition)

Number of illustrations—89 B&W (21 new B&W illustrations)

Includes: A Bibliography, Glossary, Web sites to explore (new to this addition), and an expanded and detailed Index.

Battle of the Heirlooms Versus the Hybrids

Hybrid seed is often selected for providing resistance to specific diseases and pests. With tomatoes, you'll notice all, or some, of the letters V, F, and N. These letters tell the buyer that the tomato is resistant to, respectively, verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt, and nematodes. Some heirlooms have resistance to these same factors, but often not all three in one plant. The difficulty with heirlooms is with their lack of genetic similarity. If your plants are attacked by a disease which the hybrid isn't "programmed" (or, selected) for, then the plants may be sitting ducks. Perhaps the whole field, or a great portion of it, will succumb to the disease. The dogmatic opponents of hybrids often mention this lack of genetic diversity as the Achilles' heel of hybrid seed. But, in all their testaments to the evils of hybrid seed, the heirloom proponents can only dredge up a handful of scary agricultural examples. More notable to the home gardener, the Achilles' heel argument only works well with the agricultural scale. Five hundred acres of one type of wheat is a far cry from the dozen or two types of vegetables, and the several or more varieties of many of the types, found in the average home garden. If all the tomato plants die, you'll be depressed—but, you won't be lacking in things to eat.

While the following story doesn't represent hard science, it will illustrate the difficulties generated when dogma on either side becomes fixed like a case of mental lockjaw.

The setting is the rural acreage a nonprofit organization we'll call the Institute. Located in the coastal belt of Northern California, these well-tended organic gardens—with an incredible organic matter content of 12%—lay at the western edge of a reasonable tomato climate. Still, every three- to four-years, a late summer blight stimulated by intruding all day fogs will wipe out 80% of the plants or a late spring frost will damage or kill a number of plants. (Flavor is another problem altogether. If the warmth of an unfoggy summer graces the garden and Indian summer lingers into October, then you'll have good chance at something approaching the archetypical Midwestern smile-on-your-lips tomato flavor.)

The Institute attracts the young, the enthusiastic and the righteous to a variety of gardening and landscaping programs. All who arrive come already indoctrinated in the Church of the Organic Way. A few have gardened before. Many already have it in for anything corporate, industrial, or chemical. This is a fertile breeding ground for the dogma of heirlooms.

The young interns got swept away with the growing tide of interest in preserving genetic vegetable diversity and started growing rare and unusual heirloom varieties. (They often turned a superior nose to heirloom flowers—as they only grew food, for sustenance.) They grew 25 to 40 varieties of heirloom tomatoes a season to sample the flavor and save seed. Somehow, they decided to have a contest for disease hardiness between hybrid and heirloom, open-pollinated varieties. They may have been shamed into it by the pestering of the remnants of the pro-hybrid gardeners. Or, the Church of Heirlooms may have decided to prove its superiority to the rest of the heretics. Whatever. The proselytizers of open-pollination made a big stink about the showdown. Many an evening meal ended up with various predictions of the triumphant heirlooms. They reveled in how the final report would show that their study had proven heirlooms victorious. I was living there at the time and found the horticultural piety amusing one day, and tedious on other days.

Summer passed. Evening conversation turned to other events or topics. And the first frosts blackened what remained of the tomato plants. Finally, I pulled aside one of the clergy from the Church of Heirlooms. "Where's the report," I asked. "What were the results?" In a hushed tone, he said "the hybrids were more disease resistant, so we didn't do a report." So much for the integrity of this flock of the Church of Heirlooms. The results failed to confirm their expectations, so nobody will find out. (These are the same people who degraded Nixon for the shabby and criminal way in which he suppressed information and kept secrets.!)

Let me know what you think.

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

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A Sheety Garden

From my book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive.

Nature builds soil from the top down with all the decomposition of carbonaceous materials such as fallen leaves and decaying grasses, as well as various forms of feces. In addition, there’s a lot going on, root-wise, beneath the surface of the soil that helps it improve without cultivation. The activities of roots loosen the soil; the roots of nitrogen-fixing plants add nitrogen; “compost” is created as roots rot at all levels to create decomposed organic matter for the use of other plants and microbes; nutrients cycle from root systems to the foliage of plants (and back to the earth again as leaf, stem, branch and trunk litter); roots develop tunnels for the movement of earthworms, root canals help rainwater soak into deeper areas and root exudates create a microbial “soup” which helps to liberate all manner of nutrients.

Sheet Composting

Sheet composting offers an easy way to improve the garden's soil without strenuous digging. The technique is akin to Ruth Stout's deep mulching practices. Sheet composting has nothing to do with woven percale or thread counts, but refers to the use of thin layers of compostable material laid out over the soil like a thick mulch. By layering high-carbon wastes with nitrogenous plant refuse, you essentially construct a thin, wide, two-dimensional compost pile. Use a blend of dry brown leaves or woody stems (chipped, chopped, or not); fresh grass clippings; green-manure crops such as buckwheat, vetch, bell beans, and clover; wet kitchen garbage or scraps (no meat scraps, as they’ll tend to attract hungry animals and/or smell bad); and green weeds from the garden before their seeds ripen.

Experiment with a ratio of one part green matter to three or four parts dry dead matter. Water the dry materials as you’re layering. At each planting location, make a large planting pocket in the native soil to receive the roots. NOTE: sheet composting doesn't generate enough heat to kill weed seeds, diseases, or pathogens, so after planting, water everything again, then cover the area with five to ten sheets of newspaper, and the newspaper with a weed-free mulch; this should take care of the nasties. The sheet composting slowly helps improve soils from the top down while allowing the gardener to quickly dispose of large quantities of compostable materials and avoid unnatural tillage. The sheet-composted area will require more irrigation the first year or two as the roots grow into the uncultivated soil.

Let me know what you think.

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Gophers Rule (?)

The attempts to annihilate gophers in agricultural fields and gardens reveal how resilient life can be. Gophers are industrious and fertile. These pesky subterranean rodents love to eat the roots of wild and domesticated plants alike. They must tunnel no matter what they eat in order to survive. A typical gopher's teeth grow 15 inches per year. If the they didn't burrow around, a gopher's teeth would grow into a long curve which would impale the base of their own skull.

They are as reticent at being killed as they are reluctant to tunnel. A farmer might put poison bait in the soil, in fake gopher tunnels made by a tractor-draw implement, over a 20-acre area. Yet this will only protect the center of the field for approximately two years. By then, the offspring of the gophers around the edge will have migrated into the "free" area. Gardeners face a more difficult problem. Gophers are territorial. They make plenty of babies (up to seven in each “brood”) who must stake out their own turf. Even extensive trapping, the Macabee trap is my favorite, is often compromised.

Only religious, consistent trapping (especially in the Spring when the young are trying to establish their new territory), is a possible solution. Trapping in your neighbors’ yards can help the invasion from the edges. Kill more gophers!

Let me know what you think.

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Real Apple Roots

The line drawing on the left is from a book in 1978 that got me confused, curious, and started my research on how roots really grow. The drawing on the right shows how far roots travel from their trunk & beyond the dripline (canopy). The red circles are the driplines. (Based on my book: Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive.) The roots pictured here are of an apple tree. Look how the roots avoid the compacted soil and even the roots of another apple tree.

Let me know what you think.

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Time Makes Changes, Oh Deer

In 1982 I was asked to design a landscape for a site on the very southern, wind-swept edge of a housing community. This point of land routinely gets 50-90 mile-per-hour winds. So no tall trees, just low-growing shrubs and perennials. The clients wanted color. So, like the left photo shows, they got color. These colors vibrate in resonance with the foggy days. They are almost more intriguing than during the harsh light of full sun. What some thought would be a gaudy color scheme worked well during the many fogged-in days. The clients were pleased.

The bright orange and yellow are two types of Siberian wallflower [Erysimum x alliionii]. The small santolinas in the background grew enormous and spread to be the same plant on the right. [See the base of one featured in the October the 13^th blog.] The wallflowers weren’t so fortunate. They became breakfast, lunch, and diner for the herds of deer that migrate through the property every day. The santolinas, gray and green, lavenders, sea pinks [Armeria maritima , also know as “Thrift”], California poppies, and daffodils slowly replaced or were planted to replace those plants that de-evolved. Life is change. And gardens should be influx with the environment. No static landscape here. The need to adapt and replace plants got the homeowners out to take an active role in the garden. This is more important than the “grand design”, but doesn’t show up in photos.

The garden has evolved since 1981. The owners’ have kept a close eye on what was doing well and what was struggling to live. Not to mention what the deer ate or avoided. The outcome is on the right. Taken from nearly the same angle as the 1982. [Not the same season, the lavenders and satolinas were not in bloom during the late summer.] The scheme morphed into an almost new design, but more in tune with the special micro-ecosystem of the place. And the elements will continue to shape this garden and its gardeners for decades to come. This not a static, photo shoot for one of Martha’s magazine, it’s nature playing with its self.

Let me know what you think.

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Plant Trees, Not Power Power Plants

Everybody is fixated on solar standing for just photovoltaic panels. There's so much more to solar energy than blue squares on your trendy home.

It's the near future in Anytown, USA on a dreadfully hot, windless summer day. You're tooling around on a politically-correct bicycle in search of some relief from the oppressive heat. You live in the new suburbs on the outskirts of town, where houses have recently replaced a lush forest. As you reach the old section of town—where all the streets are named for shade trees such as Maple and Oak—something amazing happens. A cooler, refreshing air baths your sweat-fatigued body. While the arching canopy of the shade trees reduces the heat by just three to nine degrees Fahrenheit, there's a noticeable respite from the summer's smoldering temperature. More remarkably, homeowners tucked safely inside their air-conditioned houses and mobile homes in this same neighborhood are saving 40 to 75%, respectively, on their cooling bills. When it comes to saving money on your utility bills, properly located trees and shrubs are hard to beat. In fact, a well-positioned shade tree is more effective at cooling a house than Venetian blinds, plastic window films or reflective coatings on glass.

Landscaping can be so much more than just something pretty to look at. An energy conserving landscape utilizes hedges, screening, shrubs, vines, and trees to provide cool summer shade, insulation against heat. Get double duty out of your landscaping by blending beauty and function.

Save Energy – the truly green way

The savings from an energy conserving landscape can vary, but are rather impressive. According to the U. S. Department of Energy, or what's left of it after the Reagan/Bush debacle, "strategically placed landscaping materials (plants and structures such as walls, berms and fences) can save the homeowner 30 percent on all their utility bills." In hot, dry Sacramento, CA, shade trees can, according to Sacramento Municipal Utility District, reduce the attic temperature by 20-40 degrees F, equal to the effect of several room-size air conditioners. In a study in southern Florida, the proper placement of shrubs and trees had, after just one year of growth, reduced overall energy use for air conditioning in a double-wide mobile home by an astounding 60-65%.

When moderating summer's heat, don't forget the east and west sides of the house. The Mesa, AZ study mentioned above in the discussion of how much money can be saved indicates the importance of the east and west walls. In this study, when it comes to reducing heat gain, the western wall was six times more important than the south side and the eastern wall was 14.5 times more significant than the southern wall and almost 2.5 times more critical than the west-facing wall. While the figures or effect may vary considerably in other climates, eastern and western windows can really help overheat a house in the summer. (That's me & Dad under the large canopy sheltering the east side of the house from morning sun.)

To get the details, see my first book—Designing & Maintaining Your Edible Landscape – Naturally. (See my web site - www.robertkourik.com) There’s a whole chapter on the topic.

Be cool!

Let me know what you think.

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Pesky Interlopers

When ornamental weeds run amok, watch out.

Sea Ranch, CA is an tranquil and groundbreaking planned community about 70 miles north of San Francisco. It’s been developing over the past 30-plus years. It’s noted for small clusters of houses with various views of the Pacific ocean and idyllic meadows between each cluster of houses. Of the 1200 homes built, the fulltime number of residents is 280 people - according to the sign on Highway #1. (I spent Thanksgiving week there in a rental house.)

The intent of the design is to have nothing but meadows (and perhaps a few low-growing native shrubs) outside the small fenced enclosures. Some homeowners have a handful of exotic plantings next to their homes.

Yet, I found two places where the ornamental, exotic Cape Weed (Arctotheca calendula) was planted outside the home’s walls. (See one planting above.) The word “weed” is the operative word. These plants may bloom a bright yellow most of the year near the coast, but spreading like a weed is their forte. They don’t spread much via seed, but by creeping across the landscape with self-rooting tips – like stolons. I know of a neighbor who started with a small patch of Cape Weed and soon found it covering more than an acre! Now he’s hopeless with regards to eradicating this ornery plant.

It seems to be a hopeless situation. However, if caught very early, it’s possible to eradicate this weed. I’ve seen a neighbor stop this pest in its tracks by layering large sheets of cardboard with a decorative, weed-free mulch. They must remain vigilant as the weed will continue totry and escape the next-door neighbor’s perimeter.

It is one of the most-wanted native habitat destroyers by Native Plant Societies around the state as it slowly chokes out most grasses (not established CA bunch grasses). It has been used as a highway landscaping groundcover. But the two or more lanes of traffic usually stops it in its tracks.

Banish this worrisome weed!

Let me know what you think.

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

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Special Drip Irrigation Book Sale - the 2nd Edition

This Holiday Season, Give the Gift that Keeps On Giving

...one drop at a time.

Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates

“Fun book, great info. Buy it and save the world’s water supply.”

— Jim McCausland, at Sunset Magazine’s blogsite “Dirt”

Special offer: Only $20 [lists for $24.95] No tax. Autograph included.

Includes Free Priority Mail!

Buy From the Source So Writers Can Keep on Writing®

Go to www.robertkourik.com to order via PayPal.

Or, send a check made out to Metamorphic Press to: Metamorphic Press, PO Box 412, Occidental, CA 95465

Information about the book:

As a celebration of its 25th anniversary, the highly respected newsletter Avant

Gardener published a list headed “The 25 Best Gardening Books of the Past

25 Years.” Up there on that list, at number seven, was the first edition of Drip

Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates. Great then, even better now.

Yes, Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates, by Robert Kourik,

is now available in an updated second edition. It will give you the knowhow

to optimize your water use, survive a protracted drought, or work with the

unpredictable intermittent rains of certain climates. Its light-hearted approach,

step-by-step instructions and clearly drawn diagrams will allow you to construct

and streamline your own drip-irrigation system without the clutter of superfluous

widgets and gizmos.

Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates also describes, in clear

and scientific terms, how drip-irrigation systems can be designed or reconfigured

to use less water while increasing yields of fruits and vegetables and improving

the growth of all plants. New in this edition are descriptions of how to use two

very important water sources—grey water and cisterns—as well as how to utilize

satellite control or a home-based weather station to irrigate your garden with

precision.

In short, this fully revised edition of the original ground-breaking book is designed to 1) help gardeners manage

precious water supplies with ease and efficiency, and 2) create sustainable water-efficient gardens and landscapes with the latest technologies of drip irrigation.

Page Count —192 (74 more pages than the 1993 edition)

Number of illustrations—89 B&W (21 new B&W illustrations)

Includes: A Bibliography, Glossary, Web sites to explore (new to this addition), and an expanded and detailed Index.

Wild & Windy Protection

In winter many gardens are ravaged by cold winds. Now's the time to plan for next year's planting of a windbreak or shelterbelt. In mild winter areas, it's still not to late to plant before the rains get too heavy. (We can only hope for rains that "get too heavy" in the 3rd year of drought in California.)

The shelterbelt's height should be 1/5th to 1/20th the distance to be protected. While a windbreak can reduce the wind's speed by 50% for a distance of up to 20 times its height, the best area of protection usually extends distance of about five to ten times the height of the windbreak. Plan your windbreak so that the mature size of the trees is sized to the area you wish to protect.

All windbreaks work best when their length is perpendicular to the prevailing winds. Shelterbelts needn't have a angled slope of short to taller trees to be effective. In fact, vertical, narrow windbreaks are usually the most effective in keeping the stronger winds lofted over the largest sheltered area. One row of the right tree is much more effective than wide, multi-row planting.

A completely solid windbreak causes some of the wind to whip up over the top and down to create a blustery vortex, like a sideways tornado, on the very side you're trying to protect. Allowing some of the air to pass through a windbreak makes the best diversion. A partially permeable windbreak allows some of the wind to slip through and form a gentle buffer of laminated air. This blanket of layered air helps to keep the blistery wind aloft after it passes over the top of the windbreak for a much longer distance than if there were no permeability. The most effective windbreaks are 50 percent permeable. (Not like the picture above. Taken at an uninformed suburban landscape.)

Other important considerations with windbreak designs include:

- Use evergreen trees for winter protection and deciduous trees when only summer buffering is required.

- The wind's speed is also reduced in front of the windbreak, the windward side, for a distance of two to five times the height of the trees. (This is a good place to plant young tree seedlings which can grow to be sturdy, well-rooted trees without the need of staking.)

- Don't leave any gaps in the windbreak as the wind will be funnelled through the opening at a speed up to 20 percent greater than its normal velocity.

- Make sure the windbreak is far enough away from the house to not cast a shadow on south-facing windows in the winter.

- Most edible trees make poor windbreaks, exceptions include: wild plums, Russian olive, Siberian peashrub and hackberry.

- Remember, the roots of the wind break are .5 to three times wider than the foliage and will compete for water and nutrients with other landscaping, water and feed accordingly.

- All the research and diagrams for windbreaks are based upon flat land. Those with hilly property will have to carefully observe the wind's patterns and plan carefully, predicting the wind's flow on complex topography can't be done without a $10 million dollar Cray computer.

Let me know what you think.

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