Gardeners are spending more time indoors than out this time of year, so this week’s podcast features an interview with Dr. Rita Hummel. Dr. Hummel teaches a course on interior plantscaping and is also an expert on plant cold hardiness. Here she combines both areas to explain chilling injury on tropical houseplants.
The greenhouse that this plant lives in lost its heating system and is now showing signs of chilling injury.
Comparison of three leaves on the same plant. In the back is a healthy leaf; in the middle is one with initial signs of damage (bronzed areas on leaf), and in front is a severely injured leaf that has already begun to turn yellow.
The podcast also has a couple of interesting news items on compost safety and treating disease with thermotherapy, and finally a discussion about the wisdom of wound sealants.
Enjoy! And keep warm!
The initial sorting process – metals like nails are pulled out, wallboard is separated into components, and wood continues…
…to the end, where it’s chipped into different sizes to create a recycled mulch product.
Discarded carpet awaits separation into components that might eventually be used to help mop up marine oil spills.
All surface water from the site ends up in this detention pond, where it’s filtered and tested before it’s released to the environment.
The front yard in 2003 from another angle. We’ve removed the second driveway and covered the area in wood chips. By the garage you can see two of the roses I dug up from the shady back yard and moved to the sunny front.
The new front yard, with fencing, more plants, a pond, and no turf.
The rhody-hydrangea corner in front of the arbor vitae hedge
The new street garden, with a new retaining wall to hold back the soil that used to wash into the street. Everything not covered in plants is covered with wood chips.
One of the nonbotanical garden residents
A selection of PlantAmnesty humor
