Diversions – Page 24 – The Garden Professors™

What Do Pork Products and Fruit Trees Have in Common?

This is one of those “random thoughts” posts…no professorial musings, plant geek gushings, or interpretations of useful research. And absolutely, positively, in no way, expressed or implied, intended to provoke a veg/carnivore controversy nor promote any particular product.

Just a simple question that occurred to me in the grocery store.

“WHERE is all this apple wood coming from?”

Google “apple wood smoked bacon” and get 689,000 results. Apple wood also frequently appears as “applewood”, orthographical conventions aside. We’ll just refer to it as AWSB for the duration of this post. Wendy’s is promoting their burger with AWSB all over the place. Kraft’s Oscar Mayer division recently released a new AWSB product nation-wide (according to the blog www.mrbaconpants.com) What used to be available only through specialty meat companies and at high-end grocery stores is now available everywhere.

Back to my question. That’s a lot of bacon to smoke.

Apples used to be an important part of the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern commodity mix. Arkansas had its own “Apple Belt”. These markets have experienced a fairly dramatic decline; much of U.S. production has shifted to Washington state. So are some of these out-of-production orchards the source of all this wood?

I may ask this question of some apple experts I know. Linda, I bet you’re up to your pits in pomologists at Washington State – see what they say (and I apologize in advance for the looks you’re going to get). Also – how much apple wood has to be used in the process to officially, legally, be considered AWSB? May have to pester a food scientist.

Friday quiz time – and happy Valentine’s Day

I thought it would be fun again to do a “what is it” photo:

Answer and a larger photo on Monday…if I can. I’ll be on a dial-up modem and who knows if I can actually get anything posted. If I can’t, it’ll be up Tuesday.

And from all of us Garden Professors, have a happy Valentine’s Day!

The Government In Your Yard

This year Pinellas county in Florida banned the use and sale of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers for lawns between June 1 and September 30. Is that a good idea? On the surface it seems like a great idea because it should reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus which reach streams, lakes, ponds and rivers and cause algal bloom and destruction of water habitats. On the other hand a PROPERLY fertilized lawn is less likely to have nutrient rich runoff (because of a more expansive root system.) If this ban inadvertently stops people from properly fertilizing there is the possibility that the problem could be made worse.

I’m no fan of heavy fertilizer use by homeowners — I loath the practices of many lawn care companies which includes pesticide and fertilizer applications as many as 5 times a year — but the truth of the matter is that grass actually does a good job of grabbing nutrients that are applied to it because it has such a dense root system. Crops like corn and wheat, on the other hand, don’t have such a dense root system. I recently read a paper stating that, worldwide, only about 33% of the nitrogen applied to crops is actually used by those crops (this is referred to as NUE or Nutrient Use Efficiency). A recent graduate student of mine found that the NUE for Hazelnuts is actually well below that.

My personal preference for lawns is that we start to do what was once common back in the ’50s and before — plant clover with your grass. Believe it or not you can get an amazingly dense lawn that way. The clover will provide much of the nutrition that the grass needs — and it’s not, as of yet, considered a noxious weed. I also like the idea of planting leguminous trees, like black locust (I know some of you see this as a weed — it can be a nice tree too) in turf plots, reason being abscized black locust leaves have high concentrations of nitrogen — over two percent — unlike the leaves of things like maples and oaks. Of course it’s also possible for the nutrients from clover or the leaves from black locust to end up where they shouldn’t, but because of their slow decomposition we hope that nutrients running off from these sources would be less of a problem.

Anyway, my final thought — Why couldn’t we legislate that all grass seed include some clover or that a certain number of leguminous trees be planted near turf plots rather than trying to control the use of fertilizers?

The Glories of The Winter Greenhouse

I’m a Southerner. With a capital “S”. Which is why I am Suffering, with another capital “S”. Here in the Blue Ridge mountains of western Virginia, we have officially surpassed Anchorage and Denver in total snowfall for the season. Today’s batch adds up to 24″ on the ground at our farm.

Blueberries in the snow. If one more person says “Probably good for all the insect problems,” I’m going to get violent.

The chickens are not happy. They’ve been cooped up (ha! I didn’t really mean to do that!) for 10 days straight. I myself suffer from cabin fever, limp hair, seasonal depression, and a persistent cough.

Hell no, we won’t go!

What keeps me from going totally nuts? Only the best $12,000 ever spent – no,no, not granite counter tops…it’s our very own greenhouse. This modest 24′ x 48′ polycarbonate sheet hoop house may not resemble a Victorian conservatory (you can get one of those beauties here), but it works like a champ. Yes, we have greenhouses on campus for research and teaching, but that’s work; and pet plants are frowned upon.

Nothing beats your own private winter hideaway. My plant-diva-friend Elissa uses her crowded greenhouse for not only her immense plant collection, but also a festive (if cramped) happy hour.

As sleet pelts the roof, I’m surrounded by green: tropical plants dug up from the garden before frost and those “pets in pots” accumulated from hither and yon. The humidity is wonderful – I can hear my skin go “aaahhhh” after a couple of hours.

Herd o’ Agaves and succulents. They’re perfectly happy with the cool temperatures – several are blooming.

I’ve dreamed of one for years; then finally took the jump 16 months ago. Again, it’s nothing a homeowner’s association would ever approve of; just a commercial-grade, heavy duty, Quonset-type production house. Stylistic concerns were sacrificed for square footage. The most common complaint from home greenhouse owners is “I wish I had built a bigger one.”

The other concern is heating costs. It has a propane heater, and propane’s not cheap, nor environmentally friendly. But we run it pretty darn cold – around 48 F night temperatures, which certainly helps. Are the tropicals thrilled? Not really, but they’re alive and hanging in there (however, the begonias are really grumpy right now).

Some PVC pipe + overhead misting + heating mat = broccoli spinach, and basil seedlings, happily germinating at a 75 F soil temperature, despite an air temperature below 50 F. Basil?! Yes, I realize I’m totally jumping the gun timing-wise here, made worse by the fact that I teach both greenhouse management and ornamental plant production (do as I say, not as I do!).

Yep, more fun than you can shake a shovel at!
I’ll take your questions, comments, and snowballs now…

Friday puzzle untangled

Well, either the puzzle was too easy or you guys are too smart! Deb, Christopher, Lori, Foy, Jim, and Hap go to the head of the class – it was, indeed, staking material left on way too long. Here’s a photo from over 10 years ago. I’m not sure this is the very same tree, but it’s from the same parking lot/torture chamber:

I “liberated” these trees with my handy wire-cutters (never leave home without them) shortly after taking the pictures. Several take-home lessons from this example:

1) Plastic tubing does not protect bark from girdling wire injury

2) Parking lot trees, even in very upscale shopping malls, are abysmally managed

3) Trees are amazingly resilient

Have a good week!

Friday quiz…better late than never!

As you know, I wanted to get something intriguing for this week’s puzzler from the NW Flower and Garden Show. Alas, there was nothing that jumped out at me, so I’m digging into my photo archives.

Here is a recent photo from a parking lot tree. About four feet up the trunk, I found this interesting growth. No, I don’t know what the tree species is because (a) it wasn’t in leaf and (b) I’m a taxonomy klutz. But I can assure you that the odd bark morphology has nothing to do with genetic identity.

I can also assure you that there is no foreign material under the bark that’s causing this phenomenon. The question: what DID cause it?

The answer – and a revealing photo – on Monday!

Plant Patents

I love patents. In fact, I once wrote a novel based on a patent — It was called Patent 22 — If you look this patent up you’ll just find a piece of paper from 1915 which says, essentially, that a search was made for the patent but that it couldn’t be found. No one wanted to publish it — and reading it now I do realize that it does need some serious work. Still, I think this little tidbit gives you a little bit of an idea about my interest in patents. (The paper on file at the patent office is below):

Anyway, here’s the thing that people don’t know. There are three ways to protect a plant from someone else “stealing” it: Plant Patents, The Plant Variety Protection Act, or a Utility Patent (which is what you or I usually think of when we think of a patent). The Plant Patent Act passed in 1931 and it is the way that most plants are protected today. Plants like the Honeycrisp apple which are propagated vegetatively (using cuttings or grafting) are usually protected with this type of patent. The second type of protection is the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970. This Act lets you protect seed propagated plants. With these two types of protection you wouldn’t think that any other type would be needed — but the Supreme Court has twice ruled that plants can be protected using Utility patents (once in the 1980s and once in the early 2000s). So, what is the problem with that? Well, basically, the problem with that is that, while the other ways to protect plants allow for the use of those plants in research or for breeding and farming, using a utility patent prevents anyone from using the patented plant from doing anything with that plant without permission from the patent holder. And, basically, an entire species of plant can be patented — it has been done before with a bean that someone brought from Mexico into the US — he cornered the market on the bean and noone could sell or breed the bean without his OK. Sounds insane doesn’t it? Just my first thought on a cold Thursday morning.

Friday puzzle answer(s)

Wow! What a lot of great brainstorming over the weekend! I would venture to say that The Garden Professors have the smartest students in the world.

On to the answer…or answers. First, the phenomenon. It’s called paraheliotropism – literally, a movement to protect (the leaves) from the sun (yes, Trena, it is a tropism!). This is the opposite of another phenomenon called heliotropism, or solar tracking. Sunflowers famously do this, as do a number of arctic species that collect solar warmth for the benefit of their pollinators. (An aside: if you have never watched David Attenborough’s The Private Life of Plants you must add it to your Netflix queue. Right now.)

But our saxifrage (thanks, Holly! I’m such a taxonomy imbecile) is reducing solar exposure by positioning its leaves in parallel to the sun’s rays. This is a reversible movement and helps reduce photooxidative stress, leaf temperature, and water loss. It’s an important strategy as the newly emerging leaves are actively expanding. If turgor is reduced by high temperature or water loss, so is the final size of the leaf.

Finally, these rapidly expanding leaves have relatively thin cuticles (if they were thicker the leaves wouldn’t be able to expand as well). The cuticle gives further protection to the leaf from water loss due to heat, drought, wind, or even late season freezing events (thanks for that addition, John!). The cuticle will mature after the leaf has reached its full size.

So, as Foy suggested, this is a way for leaves to "harden off" and reach full size before exposing themselves to the sun. Aren’t plants cool?

And you are all such great participants! Group hug! Now, back to work.

Friday Physiology Fun Followup

Astute readers pointed out several morphological adaptations found in drought-tolerant turf weeds: fleshy taproots, reflective leaf surfaces, etc. What we can’t see is what many of these plants do physiologically – and that’s photosynthesize using a biochemical pathway that temperate turfgrasses don’t possess.

This pathway, called C4 photosynthesis, contains some extra preliminary steps not found in plants using traditional (C3) photosynthesis. The downside: it takes more solar energy for the plant to photosynthesize. The upside: these extra steps allow the plant to "fix" carbon (transforming it from gas to solid) faster, especially when it’s sunny, warm, and droughty. Practically speaking, this means that C4 plants do not have to keep their stomata open as long and they conserve water more efficiently than C3 plants.

So in the summer – when it’s hot, sunny and dry – the C4 plants in your lawn are operating under optimal conditions, while the C3 grasses go dormant. The tables turn when the seasons do: cool, moist conditions favor traditional photosynthesis, and the C4 plants are overtaken by the turfgrasses.

Cool, huh?

Friday physiology fun

It’s still cold and wintery, so let’s imagine ourselves in a happy place…warm, sunny, dry…with dead lawns.

As the photo shows, the turfgrass is dead; this happens every summer during the Pacific Northwest’s droughty summers. Yet many of the weedy species are obviously thriving. Why?

Remember, this is a physiology quiz. You can discount herbicides, fertilizers, etc. This is a cool (no pun intended) adaptation that many species native to dry, subtropical to temperate environments possess. And there are serious implications for water use related directly to this adaptation, or lack thereof.

Let’s see lots of brainstorming on this – no points deducted for trying! (And if you are a true ecophysiology geek, let other people try first before posting the answer.)