Category: Stories

Five little lavenders – an update

Long-time readers of our blog might remember my August 12 column (linked here for your convenience).  You saw my giant lavender plant devolve into 5 small plants with tiny spiraled root systems that put Marge Simpson’s beehive to shame.  In any case, I promised to keep you up-to-date with their progress.

Transplanting in August is a risky proposition, especially when you prune out root defects.  Nevertheless, all but one of the five survived the summer and here they are earlier this spring:

The one that didn’t make it was in the upper left corner of this south-facing landscape, where there is a lot of reflected heat from the nearby bricks and concrete.  (You can see the empty spot where it was in this photo.)

If you haven’t tried corrective root pruning before, I’d encourage you to try it with an inexpensive shrub.  Your best bet will be older containerized plants in the “sale” section of your nursery.

John Bartram Lives!

Yep, there he is. Showed up at our state Master Gardener College, just last week. I even went to dinner with him. The snake-on-a-stick startled the bartender just a bit.



The elder Bartram (his son William was also a great botanist and explorer) was the Royal Botanist to King George III and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Stockholm. As with many of the Great Plant Explorers, his life combined botany with politics,
adventure, and lust [for plants,anyway]. Someone should make a movie…

Probably best know as the discoverer of the soon-to-be-doomed little tree, Franklinia
alatamaha, he also was responsible for the introduction of lots of
other North American native garden staples such as rhododendrons,
Kalmia, and deciduous magnolias. Bartram died in 1777, but has recently been resurrected by Kirk Brown, master thespian and all-around talented guy.

Kirk works with Joanne Kostecky Garden Design in Allentown, PA, and is a director for Garden Writers of America.  But his passion for the life and times of fellow Pennsylvanian John Bartram takes the audience far beyond the usual gardening lecture. His presentation "John Bartram: The King’s Gardener" unveils the travels, collections, and psyche of the father of the nursery industry in the original thirteen colonies. I love the review by Stephanie Cohen (The
Perennial Diva!) "Kirk Brown did not imitate John Bartram, he actually
became him…anyone who has an interest in history or horticulture will
be spellbound by this presentation."  She’s absolutely correct. For more on John/Kirk, check out www.johnbartramlives.com.

Every survivor has a story

It’s been suggested, not unfairly, that the Garden Professors are sometimes a little ‘Tree-Centric’.  As a forester and tree physiologist by training, I’m probably the guiltiest among my co-conspirators on that count.  But occasionally I do notice things less than 10’ tall and lacking a single, woody trunk.

 

When weather permits I like to take my lunch down to the MSU annual trial gardens behind my office here at the Plant and Soil Science Building.  Every summer the annual gardens are awash with the color of impatiens, geraniums, petunias, and other annuals.  This time of year, however, it’s bulbs that steal the show.  This spring there was a display of bright pink tulips that was especially striking.  Wandering by the beds recently I noticed a tag in one corner; ‘Susan Komen mix’.  For those that aren’t aware, Susan Komen lost a long, brave battle with breast cancer in 1980. The foundation founded by her sister, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is the leading advocacy and fundraising group for breast cancer awareness and research in the US.  Komen for the Cure also provides services and advocates for our country’s two and half million breast cancer survivors.

In many ways, tulips are a fitting symbol for breast cancer survivors and the brilliant pink show made me think of a cancer survivor I know, my college girlfriend, Lisa.  I remember learning about her cancer nearly two years ago.  We had followed our own paths after our undergrad days and contact was sporadic as we each set out on careers and started families.  I missed her at our 30th high school reunion but found her number in the reunion directory and rang her up. The words hit like a punch in the stomach, “I underwent breast cancer surgery and treatment this past winter.”  I was stunned but in the next instant knew her trademark grace and humor were still intact.  “Yeah, when the reunion notice came out I had just lost both my boobs and all my hair.  Ya know, I just wasn’t up for all the ‘Hi, how are ya’s?’”  Today, Lisa remains cancer-free though after-effects of radiation treatments linger.  Through the wonder of Facebook we now keep up on each other’s awesome and talented kids.  She’s looking forward to two year’s cancer-free in July and then the all-important 5-year mark beyond that.


So, what does all this have to with landscape horticulture?   My friend and colleague Art Cameron concluded a talk at our Master Gardener College last Saturday with a quote: “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”  So much of what we in do horticulture is an expression of our faith in the future.  When we plant tulips in the fall we know they must endure dark, cold days each winter in order to bloom the next spring.  Breast cancer survivors and their families have to endure more than their share of darkness to see brighter days. We’ve become a society obsessed with instant gratification and the old cliché ‘stop and smell the roses’ seems trite and shopworn to a lot of folks.  But gardens connect us to the earth and to each other and provide the perfect place to take time and reflect on things that really matter.


According to the American Cancer Society nearly one in eight women in the US will develop invasive breast cancer in their lifetime.  To learn more, read breast cancer survivor stories, and to support breast cancer research go to www.komen.org

Going for the Gold

What do you get when you combine 900 wildly enthusiastic undergraduate students from 70 colleges and universities with 29 horticultural competitive events in a landscaping Olympics?  The marvelous mayhem of the PLANET (Professional Landcare Network) Student Career Days.  Last week, three of my colleagues; Brad Rowe, Tom Fernandez, Marcus Duck, and I traveled to Atlanta with 15 Michigan State University Horticulture students to compete at the 34th annual PLANET student Career Days hosted by Chattahoochee Technical College.  The Student Career Days incorporates an array of activities including tours, workshops, speaker presentations and a career fair.  But the unquestioned highlight of the event is the student competition. Students compete in 29 landscape horticulture events ranging from arboriculture to computer aided landscape design.  Some events require physical skills such as paver construction and landscape installation; while other such as plant identification and sale presentation test the student’s plant knowledge or interpersonal communication skills.  The logistics for the host school and event sponsors is truly staggering.  For example, in the Landscape Installation event, 50 three-person teams are given a 12’ x 20’ plot of ground, identical landscape plans, and identical sets of plant materials (a 15 gallon tree, shrubs, annuals, sod) and given 2 hours to complete the installation.  Likewise, in paver construction and wood construction, 50 two-person teams are given identical supplies, tools and a design and must complete the project in less than two hours.  Awards are presented to the top three students in each event and the top ten teams overall.  Beyond the awards, however, the program offers tremendous opportunities for student to network with industry leaders, meet and compete with students across the country, and challenge themselves and build confidence. We Garden Professors are sometimes given to being a bit curmudgeonly but spending a few days at this event will definitely restore ones faith and enthusiasm in the next generation.
For the record; Chattahoochee Technical College was this year’s SCD Champion followed by perennial powers BYU-Provo and BYU-Idaho.  Michigan State was 10th.


Mitch Zost tackles tree climbing in the Arboriculture event

The Lanscape Installation event is the final and culminating event of the Student Career days.  Think of the 4 x 400 relay with shrubs and annuals…

Zeke Kadish negotiates the treacherous Truck and Trailer course.

MSU Horticulture faculty members Brad Rowe, Tom Fernandez, and Marcus Duck capture the action for posterity.

Joel Franken found out that accidents can happen during irrigation assembly.

Pardon If You’ve Seen This Before…

But it still makes me smile.

First published in December 2005, it’s still up at Red Shirt Knitting.  Seattle yarn artist Erika’s story is posted, as is a chronological progression of photos and events since the original “fitting”. 

She actually got some pretty funny tree questions/comments about potential girdling, the possibility of damage from moisture buildup (I like her response “What are YOUR sweaters made from…neoprene?”), etc.

Tortured urban tree examples abound: poorly planted, pitifully pruned, and other horrors.  I think Miss Erika should get some kind of award for this public display of [tree] affection.

Disney and Japanese Beetles

This past weekend I had the opportunity to speak at Epcot Center in Florida.  It was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of my career so far.  I spoke 6 times over the course of 3 days.  The focus of my talk was garden remedies.  I started by talking about Paris Green (a good story for next week), then made fun of some of Jerry Baker’s, Myles Bader’s and Joey Green’s recommendations, and then proceeded to talk about which homemade cures do and don’t work and why.  And then I asked the audience for questions.  I always ask the audience for questions at the end of my talks, but I’ve never had such a diverse audience before (both gardeners and non-gardeners from all across the country), so it was interesting to see which problems came up the most.  The winner was…. Japanese beetle with fire ants and deer coming in a close second and third.  With that in mind I thought I’d devote this column to Japanese beetle control.


Above is my newest prize possession — A statue of Mickey thanking me for speaking at Epcot

The first rule of Japanese beetle control is that you can’t control Japanese beetles.  Nobody has found a sure-fire cure yet and, if you try too hard, you’re going to poison yourself and everyone in your neighborhood.

The second rule of Japanese beetle control is like unto the first.  Don’t trust garden center employees to know a damn thing about Japanese beetle control.

The third rule of Japanese beetle control is not to make the problem worse that it already is.  Using a trap to lure Japanese beetles to their demise will kill a few — and may make you feel like you’re doing something — but you will be attracting more beetles to your yard than you kill.

The fourth rule of Japanese beetle control is that killing grubs doesn’t stop the adults.  In other words, while killing Japanese beetle grubs is possible (usually using imidacloprid), killing those grubs won’t prevent adults from flying into your yard after they’ve hatched from someone else’s yard.

The fifth rule of Japanese beetle control is that Japanese beetle control is dirty work. Most of the “organic” and biological controls just don’t work that well.  If you want to spray a concentrated dish soap spray on the beetles that will kill them, but it won’t last long and it will burn your plants.  Same thing with a spray of one of those citrus insecticides.  The organic insecticide pyrethrum will kill Japanese beetles, but it won’t last long and spinosad (another organic insecticide) which works for some beetles (it’s better on other insects)  just isn’t considered that great.  A biological control called Milky Spore Disease is supposed to kill Japanese beetles while they’re grubs, but the truth is that it usually kills less than 50% even in good conditions.

The sixth rule of Japanese beetle control is that, if you’re willing to go to a little bit of trouble, lose a few leaves, and use a little bit of a synthetic insecticide there is a way to protect your plants to some degree.  If you’ve ever been around these beetles then you’ll know that they prefer some plants over other — for example, they love roses, and so they’ll attack roses first.  If you spray roses with permethrin (a synthetic insecticide) you can get 7-14 days of clean roses, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll kill many of the Japanese beetles before they move on to other plants — this is called trap cropping.

The seventh rule of Japanese beetle control is that these beetles will seek revenge for their dead relatives.

A Public Service Announcement (of sorts)

File this under “short-sighted acts of government”. What, that cabinet is full to overflowing? 

In the wild world of U.S. Land Grant Universities, faculty appointments can consist of varying ratios of “the three missions”:  Teaching, Research, and Outreach.  The Cooperative Extension Service is the formalized version of outreach.  Three of us Garden Professors (Linda, Jeff, and Bert) have Extension appointments. I personally do so much outreach with both gardeners and industry that everyone thinks I’m in Extension, so I’ll consider it an honorary appointment.  

Extension does so many fabulous things for so many people, space does not allow me to even get started.  It’s not “plows and cows” anymore – urban areas receive amazing benefits in terms of environmental education, programs for K-12 (e.g. 4-H), family and consumer services, and big push over the last decade in urban horticulture.

Among all the programs Extension administers (and there are loads), the program I’m most partial to is Master Gardeners (MGs for short). I instruct training sessions, and give gardening talks across the state.  Once trained, MGs provide gazillion volunteer hours at no charge to the state, in areas as diverse as consumer horticulture to school gardening. Our campus garden utilizes volunteer hours from MGs on nearly a weekly basis

Hang in there, I’m getting to the point.

Cooperative Extension has been prone to budget cuts for quite a while now – for most states, the fat was long ago cut away, and further cuts are going straight to the bone. Imagine the alarm when out of the blue yesterday came an email update on the state’s legislative issues and actions, most of which are actions on our huge budget shortfall:

Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) & Agriculture Research Stations
Introduced Budget: Reduction of $1.1 million in FY1; reduction of $4.5 million in FY2
House Budget: Mandates a restructuring of VCE: Closes offices in Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Norfolk, Petersburg, Portsmouth, Prince William, City of Richmond; Consolidates [an additional] 13 offices [moving to a nearby county]; Eliminates Family & Consumer Services, Community Vitality, and lawn/garden programs statewide leaving an emphasis on agriculture programs outside the urban corridor. Savings of $2.5 million in FY2.  Senate Budget: No change from introduced budget.

This proposed budget would effectively close down Extension in (by far) the most heavily populated areas of Virginia – Northern Virginia, the Richmond area, and the Virginia Beach area.  

From Dave Close, our Virginia MG Director, comes these figures:

“Statewide in 2009, our more than 5,000 VCE MG volunteers reported in excess of 334,000 volunteer hours (at a value of $6.76 million) and more than 577,000 contacts. We have right at 60 individual MG units that provide coverage of 85% or so of our counties and cities statewide.”

Dave goes on to note more good things that MGs are involved in:

1)      Environmental quality (air, water, and soil; rural-urban interface concerns such as wildland fire and how it can impact personal property and what to do to mitigate against the potential threat of wildland fire, etc.)

2)      Working with youth (school and community gardening programs for instance)

3)      Value of the landscape (economic returns from sustainably maintained landscapes – tax revenue from personal property, ecotourism, local economic development, personal savings realized from strategically planted trees in your landscape to reduce energy bills, etc.)

4)      Food safety and security (growing your own food, local food initiatives, farmer’s markets, knowing how to safely store and preserve the food you grow, biosecurity and dealing with invasive plants and pathogens, etc.)

5)      Quality of life improvement (working with populations with limited skills or abilities, working in detention centers for youth or adults giving them usable trade skills in the green industry, public health and safety issues such as mitigating against public health concerns such as west nile virus, etc.)


Now take a look at that House budget again – eliminating VCE in the most populated counties results in a one-time savings of $2.5 million.  2009 Statewide value of MG hours: $6.76 million.

 I know many, many other sectors of public service and higher education are also in critical condition.  But cash strapped state or not, I’d call this cutting your nose off to spite your face.   

Mistaken Identity, or The Truth?

In the wake of The Garden Professors’ sudden notoriety (see Linda’s Jan. 26 post), my department head sent out a very kind e-mail announcement to our faculty, staff, and grad students. 

However, he referred to us as the "Hort Professors" blog, sans hyperlink. 

A curious staff member (the lovely and talented Pris Sears) searched that title, resulting in the following:

Hort Professors, Hot Professors…kind of the same thing. Thanks, Google! 

Learning to Grow

The best part of my job is teaching, especially the plant production course (kind of Floriculture and Nursery management rolled into one). Today all the students are back on campus, and it’s an energy infusion for me, after weeks of quiet and mountains of paperwork.  I made copies of the syllabus, and walked in to a class full of unsuspecting and slightly stand-offish students. They stared at the list of plants I handed them for the "crop lottery", where they draw for what they will be growing for the semester – from classic red geraniums to cutting-edge Colocasia (bartering is allowed for 5 minutes). They’re faced with the daunting responsibility of bringing a crop from propagation stage to market in a mere 14 weeks, on top of all the other work their class schedules throw at them. I must say, the indifference exuded by 19- and 20-year-olds can be palpable.

What I already know is that by the end of the semester, they will have…bonded over stacks of pots and wheelbarrows full of growing media; made 34 extra trips to the greenhouse to water and fertilize; critiqued each other’s growing skills and resultant products; quibbled over pricing their plants for the Hort Club Plant Sale; fretted over bud removal and pinching timing; freaked out over fungus gnats; and pleaded for another gorgeous hanging basket to take home to their family.  The joy of growing plants; of having a tangible, living, breathing (transpiring) thing to show for your academic efforts, is indisputably gratifying, as well as a hell of a lot of fun – especially when compared to chemistry lab. But I’ll let them figure that out.


Alicain Carlson of the 2008 class shows off her tropicals grown from tissue culture starts, all ready for the Big Plant Sale. She’s now a graduate student in Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University and hopes to pass all this on to her future students.

If I’ve seemed distracted for the last few months, this is why

I just got this today – it releases in February!
Isn’t it a great cover?

And this one came out the week before Christmas – my holiday gift to myself!  (You try riding herd on 21 different authors and see if you like it!)

Getting these books done was a major milestone, and I hope that this year I might have time for some new projects.

Happy New Year!