Month: July 2010

Questions on sustainability

Linda’s recent post on the sustainability of topiaries got me to thinking, is any horticultural practice sustainable?  And, does it matter?

 

Picking up on the topiary theme I thought of the ultimate form of tree manipulation, bonsai.  I few years ago I visited the National Arboretum in Washington DC, which includes an incredible bonsai display.  Some of the bonsai specimens in the collection originated in Japan and are over 300 years old.  Is 300 years long enough to consider this a sustainable practice? … Continue reading this article “Questions on sustainability”

Clematis mystery solved

Friday’s quiz was a tough one. Bernadette and Lisa B. gave it a good shot, guessing that this might be a phosphorus deficiency. While they’re on the right track (it is a nutritional disorder), the mineral of interest is iron, and it’s a toxicity problem, not a deficiency.

Under wet conditions (the affected Clematis is in the part of our landscape with a perched water table – see the March 15 posting), iron is predominantly in the Fe+2 form (ferrous) rather than the Fe+3 form (ferric).… Continue reading this article “Clematis mystery solved”

Friday quiz – a tale of two clematis

These two Clematis are the same cultivar growing in my landscape about 15 feet apart. Both are growing on a fence facing north. Compare the leaves of the two:


Normal, happy Clematis


Not-so-happy or -normal Clematis

What do you think is causing the leaf discoloration? Very large hint: this is not a biotic stressor. Another hint: you’ve seen this part of our landscape before…back in March. For full credit, identify both direct and indirect environmental stress (in other words, [1] what is directly causing the discoloration in the leaves, and what is allowing [1] to occur, thereby causing stress indirectly)?… Continue reading this article “Friday quiz – a tale of two clematis”

An interesting blog for science-loving oenophiles

There’s a new blog already generating a lot of discussion among wine aficionados.  The not-so-subtly named “Biodynamics is a hoax” discusses all things related to Rudolph Steiner and his philosophies, including the pseudoscience of biodynamics.

Organic farming study at – gasp! – a research university

There is a common misperception among some that university researchers are in the pocket of Big Ag (see June 11 and 13 posts). So here’s a link to an article in today’s Seattle Times about the benefits of organic farming from a study at Washington State University.  The research was published in Nature (one of the most revered of the scientific journals).