Plants Don't Bleed to Death

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Lavender, Part 2

It’s lavender time in my garden.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Simple Drip Emitter Tubing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deer Fencing With a View, building one.

The old way to keep deer at bay was ugly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Greyt Detergents for Grey Water Systems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Living With the Roots of an Oak Tree

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Plants Really Drink and Eat Near Our Toes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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Anti Deadhead

Martha Stewart would never like my garden.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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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.

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

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Cultivating an Eccentric Garden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Floppy Trees & Tomatoes (and a small rant)

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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Family Nutritionist: Greens -- an introduction

Family Nutritionist: Greens -- an introduction

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

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


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Grazing in the Garden

I’m weeding food.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Lettuce Consider Garden Diversity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Radio Ramblings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Tattletale Lichens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There many books on the subject. Here are two:

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

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

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



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Lavender, Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chicken "Pressada" with Lavender

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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