May 2018 – The Garden Professors™

You, too, can be up to your pits in perennials!

(posted by Holly Scoggins)
The Perennial Plant Association (PPA) is a unique group of folks – comprised of plant breeders, educators, propagators, promoters, garden writers, growers, retailers, gardeners, and landscape designers – all under one umbrella. The PPA is probably one of the most vertically-integrated plant organizations out there. If it has anything to do with a perennial plant, there’s a good chance one of our members is involved.

The marvelous/legendary PPA Symposium has been held in all parts of the country. This year’s perennial-fest is in Raleigh NC. This goes back to my particular roots with the organization – my first PPA experience was in 1997 symposium, also in Raleigh, while I was grad student at NC State. Helped out in a few capacities, including tour bus wrangler (on the surprisingly rowdy bus, no less).

A special feature THIS year in Raleigh will be a one-day plant-geek-fest, open to the public as a separate registration item (of course any perennial freaks are absolutely welcome to attend the entire week of symposium events as well!).

Many/most of you are not located in the Mid-Atlantic/Southeastern region of the U.S. So why I am I touting this here? Because some of my biggest Ah-Ha! moments regarding growing and gardening have happened in places far from my comfort/hardiness zone. And the plants…oh the plants. In searching through my older GP posts, I’ve mentioned the PPA at least 9 times.

Recent examples: In 2016, the PPA symposium was in Minnesota… really opened my eyes, heart, and wallet to some lesser-known prairie species and design concepts. I probably have one of the larger Silphium collections in Southwest Virginia now. Whoops.

Last year’s symposium in Denver, Colorado brought with it awesome alpines and steppe plants – many of which I could grow here, with a bit of assistance from enhanced drainage. Of course there were also examples galore of rock gardening techniques to help make that “enhanced drainage” thing happen. Beyond the plants and gardens, another highlight is the opportunity to meet the area’s botanical movers and shakers that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. So much positive, fun energy – helps to remind me why I do this thing!

Joseph Tychonievich experiencing Perennial Overload Syndrome at the 2017 Perennial Plant Association Symposium last year in Denver. Triage included some deep breathing and a Sprite. Plant: *Dalea candida*. Place: Chatfield Farms, Denver Botanic Garden. Photo: H. Scoggins.

So…trust me when I say driving for 6-8-10 hours or hopping on a plane to the handy-dandy RDU airport will be WORTH IT. Especially if you stick around for core symposium including fab tours to private and public gardens, independent garden centers, behind-the-scenes at wholesale nurseries, and (wait for it) dinner and garden wandering/shopping opportunities at Plant Delights Nursery.

Back to the “Spend the Day with Perennial Plants” opportunity on Monday, July 30 – Check out this lineup for the plant talk day – and note the geographic diversity of the speakers – again, this isn’t just a “Southeast” thing!

– Patrick McMillan is an Emmy Award-winning host, co-creator, and writer of the popular nature program, Expeditions with Patrick McMillan . He’ll highlight Carolina native perennials for the garden in a morning talk. Later that afternoon, he’ll cover Southwestern plants we can use in the Southeast to cope with drought.

– George Coombs manages the horticultural research program at the Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, Delaware. This renowned botanical garden focuses on native plants, and their plant evaluations are making a big splash in the industry. Get a peek at the top-performing selections and find out what it takes to stand out in their trials.

– Christian Kress owns a specialty nursery in Austria that focuses on rare perennials from around the world. He’s traveled extensively, authored books, and introduced several beloved perennials to the market. He’ll bring the knowledge on flocks of Phlox (!) and introduce us to the amazing selections coming out of Russia.

– Judith Jones owns Fancy Frond Nursery in Gold Bar, Washington. She’ll open the world of ferns and inspire a new appreciation for their role in the landscape. [Am hopeful that frond puns will abound.]

Other presentations include iris breeder Kevin Vaughn; John Kartesz on native plant inventory software that generates customizable maps and databases; Larry Mellichamp on the world of unusual, surprising and bizarre plants; and Lauri Lawson on medicinal plants.

ALL THIS IN ONE DAY, PEOPLE.

The whole shebang takes place at the Hilton North Raleigh/Midtown. Advanced registration is required and early bird pricing ends June 1. See the program description and get registration information on the PPA Raleigh website. Be sure to check out the glorious e-Brochure just posted on the symposium home page. Hit me below with any questions – and would LOVE to see you there!

Costs and benefits of pre-plant root manipulation

Spring has sprung here in Michigan; time to get cracking on lots of projects. One of our new projects is an investigation of pre-plant techniques for dealing with root systems on container grown trees. As many of you know, Linda Chalker-Scott is advocate of bare-rooting trees before planting to correct potential root defects before planting. As some of you may know, I’m skeptical of this approach. It’s not that I think root systems are perfect – far from it. But we lack sufficient information to know whether the costs of bare-rooting (time/effort, stress on the trees) warrant the benefits. We also have little information on how species vary in responding to bare-rooting. From the experience of foresters and bare-root liner nurseries we know that some species are highly sensitive to storage and handling when they’re bare-rooted. When I worked for International Paper, we had little difficulty transplanting sycamores bare-root; whereas we often encountered severe dieback or mortality with sweetgum. Likewise, shade tree nurseries often encounter difficulty establishing oaks, baldcypress, and hackberry from bare-root liners. In fact, J. Frank Schmidt and Sons nursery, one of the largest producers of shade tree liners has discontinued production of bare-root hackberry lines and only produces them as container stock.

As I said, I’m skeptical that putting a tree through the trauma of bare-rooting is worth the potential benefit. But I’m also open-minded and willing to conduct an objective trial to see what’s what. As an aside, I was skeptical about root-shaving before we conducted our own trial and was impressed by the results. For our current study we planted 96 container-grown shade trees last week at the MSU Horticulture Teaching and Research Center. Trees includes three cultivars: ‘Bloodgood’ London planetrees, columnar tulip poplar and ‘October glory’ red maple. We assigned the trees at random to one of four treatments: Control (no root treatment), Shave (outer roots removed before planting) and two bare-root treatments – Bare root – Wash (trees were bare-rooted by washing the roots with water) and Bare root – Airspade (trees were bare-rooted using an airspade). The planting crew consisted of my technician, Dana Ellison; my new Master’s student, Riley Rouse; my undergrad assistants, Becky Pobst and Alex Love; and Linda, who was on-hand to provide quality control on the bare-rooting operations.

For her M.S. project, Riley will be tracking performance of the trees over the next two years. Her measurements will include tree survival and growth as well as measures of physiological responses such as plant water potential and photosynthetic gas exchange. Next fall, after two growing seasons, we will dig a subset of the trees with a tree spade and inspect the root systems to determine the effect of treatments on root system development. In the meantime, here are some photos from last week’s festivities.

Right tool for the job. MSU Beaumont Nursery provided a big assist by augering the planting holes.

Alex cleans up a planetree with the airspade

Riley washing up a maple – don’t worry the cicling roots come off next…

Light and easy. Becky after airspading a tulip poplar

Wait’ll purchasing sees this… A wading pool is perfect for pre-soaking roots before washing and for storing until planting.

Getting a little kinky… Root at the end of the felco’s bending back on itself – corrected after the photo-op.

Looking a little wilty. TheBare-root maples required the greatest root removal and correction

Trial plantation at the end of the planting

Can’t pull off something like this without an awesome crew!

My New Project — The Plants We Eat

By Jeff Gillman

I love stories, and my favorite stories, as you might guess, are true stories about plants. One of the things that I’m best known for here at the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens is telling random stories about some odd tidbit or another to students trapped in my classes or visitors locked into garden tours, but recently I found a new way to share my collection of those eclectic plant stories: Podcasting. Not only do I get to talk about all the things that I love to talk about, only those people who really want to hear about them have to listen. It’s a win-win!

From apples and artichokes to digitalis and peyote, our world is full of amazing plants that we interact with on a daily basis. This greenery can sustain us, intoxicate us, cure us of disease, and even kill us.

I have had the opportunity to read about and work with an incredible variety of plants, but the ones that I find most fascinating are those we ingest as food or medicine, and that’s what this podcast is about. From toxic honey made from Rhododendrons to the incredible photosynthetic efficiency of sugar cane and the natural genetic modification of sweet potatoes there are an incredible number of stories that the plants around us have to tell, but if you’re just interested in growing these plants then we have you covered there too. I am doing these podcasts with a friend of mine, Cindy Proctor, who loves to talk about how to grow these plants, so there’s plenty of that in the podcast as well.

Rhododendron from which Mad Honey is made

So to make a long story short, we would love it if you would take the time to listen to our podcast. You can find it on the podcast app on your iPhone or on Sound Cloud, or here at the Botanical Gardens website.

And since we’re new at this we would love it if you would let us know what you think. You can comment on the blog post here, or on the post on Facebook, or feel free to write to me at jgillman@uncc.edu.

It’s all about location, location, location

Whenever we (the Garden Professors and our community) answer garden questions, we almost always will ask the location of the garden. I’m sure this frustrates some people who think that plants act the same wherever they are. However, this is not the case. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all to most garden questions.

For example, I work on the east side of Nebraska in Omaha, along the Missouri river. The environment (weather, soil, etc) here is vastly different than where I’ve spent most of my life in West Virginia. I had to re-learn how to answer questions when I moved. The soil pH is different (I’m still lamenting the fact that I can’t grow blueberries in Nebraska), the precipitation is much lower. Even now when I appear on the statewide gardening show Backyard Farmer, I have to keep in mind the location of the incoming question. The western side of the state is even drier than the eastern side, the growing season much shorter, and recommendations are vastly different.

The difference of where plants can grow and can’t is even more apparent when you travel to vastly different climates. I recently came back from a trip to the tropical paradise of Costa Rica. Many of my traveling partners and friends back home were blown away with the abundance of plants growing in yards, farms, and even in the wild that cannot grow “back home.”

The most common bedding plant in lawns were a popular holiday favorite here in the states – amaryllis. They were planted in abundance along sidewalks and driveways.

Amaryllis prolific in a Costa Rican yard

I visited a diversified coffee farm that was using Dracena (a common houseplant) as living fence posts in their vegetable garden. (And did I say coffee farm – nothing like drinking a farm fresh cup of coffee right on the farm).

Living Dracena fence posts at a Costa Rican coffee and vegetable farm

Tillandsia air plants were growing like weeds (which is basically what they are) on the trunks of trees.

These are all tropical plants that won’t survive in colder or drier climates of the US. (The southern US states can grow more tropical stuff, but is is a small portion of the country.)

Many of the plants we grow both indoors and out here in the states come from different areas and grow differently in those areas than they do here. Our vegetables come from all over the world. So do our flowers and houseplants.

Plants from warmer areas either have to be grown indoors or as annuals even if they are perennial or evergreen in their native environments.

This is why the location of your garden, environment, and even the microclimate in your yard is important to know when selecting plants. Aside from the difference of what can grow, plants grow much differently in Florida than they do in Minnesota or Virginia. And why it is important information when you’re asking questions about how to grow plants or control insects and diseases – because its all about location, location, location.

Master Gardeners at a crossroads

{Warning. Today’s post is a rant. So I’ve illustrated it with pretty flowers in soothing colors to make it more palatable.)

Anyone who gardens in the United States will be familiar with Master Gardeners. The Master Gardener program was started by Washington State University in 1971, when Extension agents in the largest urban counties found themselves overwhelmed with questions from the gardening public. These agents proposed training volunteers to help with educational outreach efforts, and with support from the university the first Master Gardener program was born. The history and function of Master Gardeners is further detailed in a couple of articles I co-authored (Chalker-Scott and Collman 2006 and Chalker-Scott and Tinnemore 2009): the more recent article also raises concerns about the decline of programmatic support in Washington state and elsewhere. If you’re a Master Gardener, the repercussions of this should alarm you.

What makes a successful Master Gardener? According to Sharon Collman, the last surviving founding agent of the WSU program, it begins with this:

A commitment to basic and advanced training program;
An open-minded approach to continuing education of themselves as well as others;
A willingness to provide science-based, unbiased information regardless of personal beliefs. (From Chalker-Scott and Collman, 2006)
Pink fawn lily

To be successful, volunteers need high-quality education consistently provided by university discipline experts. And that’s where the model is starting to fail in Washington state. Extension specialists who used to provide training to Master Gardeners in plant pathology, entomology, lawn and turf management, soil sciences, and other important fields have not been replaced by the university when they resign or retire. More and more training is left to the devices of individual counties, whose Extension funding from WSU has been gutted over the decades. The previous university-centric approach to Master Gardener training has devolved into volunteer-driven county programs with little educational oversight.

While counties should be commended for keeping programming alive in the face of crippling budget cuts, the lack of meaningful curricular oversight by the university means that volunteers often don’t get the most current and relevant information pertaining to the science of gardening. Worse, they may be taken in by popular products and practices with no basis in science. Other volunteers may let their personal beliefs interfere with their pledge to provide objective, science-based information on topics including pesticides, GMOs, and other controversial topics. This undermines the credibility of the county program and ultimately the university who claims these volunteers.

If you are a Master Gardener in Washington state or anywhere else in the U.S., it’s really incumbent upon YOU to insist that your land-grant university live up to its public outreach mission. You DESERVE access to Extension faculty specialists whose primary focus is to educate the gardening public. The university takes credit for your volunteer hours when they make reports to the state legislature. Make them earn it.

Don’t waste your time contacting the university – you’ll get nothing but platitudes there. The place for change to start is with your elected state representatives.