The Garden Professors™ – Page 105 – Advancing the science of gardening and other stuff since 2009

Water is the answer!

Wildlife week continues! My humble experience with my own gardens past and present, as well as our campus garden, is that the presence of water virtually guarantees the presence of wildlife. One of the National Wildlife Federation’s top requirements for becoming a Certified Wildlife Habitat is “supply water” (another requirement: "$20 fee"). Water is, of course, the beverage of choice for most animals (though I did hear of a squirrel that preferred beer). And some creatures require it as a substrate in which to reproduce (that sounded a bit clinical). Unfortunately, the popularity of water gardening, according to garden trend surveys and such, peaked in the late 1990’s and has decreased since. I’d imagine this goes hand in hand with the desire for “no maintenance” landscapes. Whatever. I will not have a garden without moving water in it.

Our first pond-building experience. Dig 11′ x 16 hole with concentric steps. Place excess soil behind pond to create stream/falls/unintended volcano. Line, add river stone and gravel. Add water and LOTS of plants to disguise said volcano.

Voila.

True story that has nothing to do with wildlife*: We put this house up for sale one spring when the garden was kickin’. Within 10 minutes of the Realtor putting the sign out front, a truck drove up. The couple walked straight to the pond (at this point outfitted with a spiffy patio) and said "We’ll take it." I said "don’t you want to see the inside of the house?" and the young woman responded "Sure, I guess we need to." Sold it at 99% of asking price. Never underestimate the value of landscaping!!!

Back on topic…The sound of moving water is an essential part of the experience for me. Makes pulling weeds in the vicinity almost pleasant. Fish, tadpoles, snails, and salamanders populate our wee pond.

"Burrdurrrrp."

Watching the birds bath on the shallow gravel beach is delightful. The pump runs all winter, keeping the water moving and mostly open. I’m pretty sure that in the dead of winter, it’s the only unfrozen water source for quite a distance, judging from the multitude of critter tracks in the snow.

Water makes a garden more pleasant, adds value to our home, and increases the odds of survival for the wildlife during the toughest times of drought and cold. Now get digging.

*Actually, there was a wildlife-related incident…when the buyer’s Realtor took them down the exterior steps to inspect the cellar, he reached inside the door and put his hand on a 5′ long black snake wrapped around the light switch. That was almost a deal-breaker. Point being…if you create a wildlife-friendly yard, they will come. All of them.

The Garden Professors Go Wild!

It’s ‘Wildlife week’ on the Garden Professors. One of the most common questions that we get when speaking to garden groups is, “What can I do around my home to promote wildlife?” My stock answer used to be, “Throw a party!”, but only a handful of people ever got it so I’ve backed off of that one. Anyway, since the subject of gardening and wildlife comes up so often we’ve decided to dedicate a week to the topic.

Questions about wildlife (the animal kind) always take me back to my undergraduate forestry days at Washington State University and Dr. Zamora’s Wildlife Management course. Even though I’ve always been more of a plant person than and an animal person, I found this to be a fascinating course. In fact, assembling the winter browse twig ID collection was one of my proudest undergraduate achievements. Doesn’t seem like much; but try wandering the Palouse hills in the dead of winter and see if you can indentify 50 browse species without the benefit of leaves, you’d be proud too! In addtion to a notebook full of mounted twigs and a mild case of frostbite, I took away from the course several key principles of wildlife management that have stayed with me over the years.

What do wildlife need? In general, all wildlife need four basic elements: food, cover, water, and space. The specific types and amounts of these elements, of course, will depend on the type of wildlife you wish at attract. Homeowners can provide or enhance these elements through plants or through other, non-living means. Important non-living components include feeders, bird-baths or other water features, piles of rocks or sticks (provide cover for small animals), salt, and standing or fallen dead trees (provide habitat for cavity-nesting birds and mammals). Plants can provide both food and cover. Important plant components in designing for wildlife include evergreen conifers for cover, summer fruits and berries, fall fruits and seeds, winter fruits and seeds, flowers that provide nectar, and trees that provide nuts and acorns.

At this point the questions often turn to the importance natives versus exotics. In light of Doug Tallamy’s book, Bringing Nature Home, many people assume that only native plants can serve these functions. But there are several factors to consider here. First, Tallamy’s discussion is largely focused on co-evolutionary relationships between native plants and native insects, and even here some of the reasoning is stretched thin (see Linda’s Feb. 12 post). There is more to supporting wildlife on a broad scale than insect/herbivore interactions. Non-invasive exotic conifers, for example, can certainly contribute winter cover, vertical structure, and edge effects. And, while some animals have evolved very specific diets (think koalas and eucalyptus), many herbivores are generalists and in some cases even prefer to feed on exotics. So, in thinking about wildlife it’s important to consider function and providing the elements animals need than to simply fixate on whether plants are native or exotic. This is especially true on tough, disturbed sites where natives may be poorly adapted and unable to survive. Habitat provided by an exotic will be preferable to no habitat at all.

Lastly, another factor to consider is whether attracting wildlife around your home is always a good idea. Along with the wildlife we’d like to see, improving habitat may increase the likelihood of running into critters (skunks, raccoons, possums) that we’d rather not encounter on the way to take the trash out late at night. Also, in many parts of the country, people and their pets are encountering large predators such as cougars and bears with increasing frequency. Obviously a lot of this is due to human encroachment into the predators’ habitat, but it may be prudent to consider a ‘defensible space’ strategy as we do for wildfires. Keep the elements that are likely to attract larger animals a safe distance from the house. Stay tuned for more as ‘Wildlife week continues’.

NOTE: Thanks to my high school choir-mate and college soccer team-mate, Tim Schlender for the timely wildlife habitat cartoon.

Mysterious glowing object identified!

Ed, Wes and Paul all correctly identified Friday’s flower as a morning glory, probably an Ipomoea spp. (They also made me feel rather soiled for pedaling flower porn. Sheesh.)

What I find fascinating about these flowers is the unearthly glow at the center. They’re pollinated by bumblebees among other species, and bees see best in the blue-violet-ultraviolet range. If we were able to see this flower under UV light, you’d see those white areas become completely dark, creating a bullseye for bee approach.

Here’s why the white areas turn dark. The pigments in a white flower are flavonoids, which absorb UV radiation and reflect visible light. We don’t see into the UV range, so to us they look white (all that visible light bouncing back). But bees and some other insects do see UV light, and these flavonoid pigments create patterns to help them find nectar and pollen.

Glowing mystery

Here’s a snippet of a photo I shot this summer:

What is this mysterious glowing object? (I did not manipulate this photo in any way other than to crop it) Answer Monday!

By the way, Lynn asked if we could do a posting on how to make our landscapes more wildlife friendly. We’re doing even better than a posting – we’re doing a whole week’s worth of blogs on the topic! Thanks for the suggestion – and the rest of you feel free to suggest topics as well.

Big Trees for Crime Reduction

Like Linda, I believe that we don’t plant enough bare-root trees. Trees that are harvested and sold bare root tend to establish better and recover faster from transplant shock than trees sold in containers or as B&B (balled and burlapped) stock. But, in general, trees that are purchased in as bare-root stock are smaller than the other two styles, with B&B generally being the production method which yields the largest trees.

I disagree with Linda that, as a general rule, B&B stock should have its roots washed off prior to transplanting — I’ve done it and I’ve lost trees. Most of the B&B trees that I know of where root washing has been successful have been small, relatively easily transplanted stock. Once we have a few nice, big, long term studies that shows that B&B trees with their roots washed perform comparably to, or better than, normal B&B trees I’ll start to believe. (I will note that, as a rule, it looks like B&B stock is dug and cared for much better here in Minnesota than Washington!)

I’m not going to go into the nuances of the arguments here — we’ve done it before if you want to check the archives. But what I am going to point out is that a new study in Oregon has shown that bigger trees might help to deter crime. Yet another reason for the people of this country to demand larger stock.

Despite what all of the research shows (that it’s better to plant smaller trees — preferably bare-root) people want big trees — they want an instant landscape. They want it because to them it looks nice — and now its a way to protect your family too.

Historically this big stock comes B&B and is very expensive, cumbersome, and not the easiest things to successfully plant. We need a new, cheaper way to grow large stock. A number of researchers are working on different methods to produce large stock (special containers, bare root from a gravel bed) but nothing has worked out perfectly yet. It’s going to be interesting to see how all of this shakes out in the future — especially with the loss of ash trees in the Midwest.

Newsflash: trees will die if their roots can’t establish

I’ve blogged before about the importance of getting tree roots in contact with the landscape soil during transplanting (you can find those posts here, here, here, here, and here). My advice to bareroot woody species upon installation is often ignored in favor of the quick-n-easy methods so often showcased on HGTV (“A complete landscape makeover in a weekend!”). And of course everything looks great…for a while. Let’s see what happens after a few years.

Below are photos of a pine tree, several of which were installed in 2007 at my children’s school (The Bush School in Seattle):

Not only is this pine tree planted too deeply (you can’t see the root flare, so it’s too deep), but the twine and burlap were not removed, leaving the roots encased in clay. Furthermore, we’re not sure how great a root system this tree has since we can’t see it. Even more horrific, the orange nylon twine is beginning to girdle the trunk. What’s been planted is a big ball o’ trouble.

I sent these photos and my concerns to the administration and advised them to have the installers (low bid, of course) redo the planting before the one year warranty expired. My advice was ignored, and here we are three years later:

This particular tree has declined to the point that the foliage is chlorotic and the uppermost needles are dead. It’s symptomatic of a root system that has failed to establish, which is what I predicted would happen. But it’s long past the warranty period, so if this tree is replaced the school will have to pay for it…again. (Though it’s hard to see in this compressed photo, the pine next to this one also has top dieback, and I’ll continue to follow its decline.)

Many professionals, including some of my fellow GPs, disagree with the bare-root approach. But based on this evidence, how could one argue that bare-rooting would not have been preferable to decline and death?

No point here, really…

Just go back and watch the video that Bert the Incensed posted Monday. I can’t top that.

Hope he’s had a beer and calmed down since. Now I need one.

My first reaction was more like slack-jawed disbelief over the nonsense contained within. A second viewing brought my blood pressure up a notch. For instance, I swear he says “Calcium nitrate” softly and then quickly rephrases it to “vitamins and minerals.” There’s more crap in this video than a dairy retention pond. Kudos to whomever put the “Garden Professors” comment on the site.

If the content is reasonable, I can overlook questionable video production values, such as the host also serving as the director (“Over here…there ya go!”) and the bug crawling across the lens. But for this train-wreck of misinformation, it was doubly irritating.

Deep breath. Let’s part on a positive note, shall we?

Here’s the little-known, summer and fall-blooming Salvia involucrata (Rosebud Sage). Alas, it is not hardy for me, but is for Zone 7 and up. Took this last week before the hard frost (I really do think of y’all when I’m running around with my cocktail and camera at sunset…)

Fresh, light green foliage to about 4′, nice branching habit, pinkish petioles and stems, topped with a fabulous, fuzzy, flower explosion. In HOT PINK no less.

Glorious. And perfect for getting your Garden Tart TM on!
Thank you so much, Linda – I believe you’ve coined the perfect description of my gardening style. Hee, hee.

Tricky tricolor leaf

Well, this was a tricky puzzle! Here’s a more complete picture of this interesting plant:

This, believe it or not, is a weigela – specifically, a patented cultivar named Kolmagira. You can see part of a tag in the lower left part of this photo:

As the patent description reads, this shrub possesses “…yellow green and dark green variegated leaves with purple-colored margins…”

Some of you guessed that the leaves might be variegated due to fall senescence, or disease, or drought stress – all very good guesses. And now I’m going to reveal one of my biases (yes, I am opinionated! I know you’re surprised!)

I dislike these types of cultivars because they look environmentally stressed and/or diseased. I’m a plant stress physiologist by training, and that’s just the way I look at abnormal leaf coloration. And on a more aesthetic note, do our gardens really need these tarted-up plants? Let’s discuss it!

Why do we have a Garden Professor’s blog?

As (relatively) young professors at major universities, Linda, Jeff, Holly and I are busier than the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger. Every week is filled with the endless pandemonium of grant deadlines, students at our door, requests to review papers, committee meetings, speaking engagements that we agreed to 6 months ago and forgot about, calls from media, calls from growers, calls from homeowners, and on and on and on. Then, in the middle of all this tumult and chaos, we decide, like we got nothing better to do, to start posting on a blog every week. Pardon my French, but what the f*&@ were we thinking?!

Then I run across a web-link like this:

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Care-for-your-Trees-Naturally-Part-12-177531642

and it all comes rushing back to me like a wave: Exposing charlatans. The fight against landscaping ignorance. The battle of science against quackery and snake oil.

I’m actually having a hard time settling down long enough to write about this. You know how you get that warm, flushed feeling you get right before you ask guy to step outside? I’m getting there. While I calm down, maybe we’ll let the readers take over. We’ll make it our Monday contest – how many stupid things wrong can our blog readers find in this video? Painful as it may be; watch the whole thing, it keeps getting better (or worse, depending on your point of view). To keep things fair, only one item per customer. In the meantime, I’ll just keep breathing into this paper bag…

Autumn leaf? Or is it?

It’s that time of year – leaves are turning all shades of yellow, orange, and red – so I thought I’d use this leaf for today’s puzzle:

I had to photoshop this extensively so it’s a little rough looking. But it does have a toothed margin.

So – is this an example of autumnal coloration? Or something else? Extra bonus points if you can identify the genus of this plant.

Answers and another photo on Monday!