The Garden Professors™

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I’ve been a gardening mythbuster for almost a quarter century. You’d think the quality of information would slowly be improving, given the increased sophistication of many gardeners regarding their information source. But every day my news feed connects me with articles that I’m sure some AI entity thinks will be enlightening. One recent story getting lots of eyeballs is entitled “The Benefits of Girdling a Tree Vs. Cutting It Down.” It makes for a good application of the CRAP analysis. While the link to the publication I’ve provided will go into more detail on CRAP analysis, all you need to know for this post is we’re going to assess Credibility, Relevance, Accuracy, and Purpose of the information.

First, let’s consider the Credibility of the source. According to HouseDigest.com, the author is “a plant mom…intrigued by nature and plant life which she exhibits by caring for and doting on her succulents.” Her college degree was in applied biochemistry, which has no substantial connection to applied plant and soil sciences. Bottom line, the author is not an expert in the science of tree care.

Let’s look at Accuracy next (we’ll get to relevance later). The author’s premise that girdling is “another great option” for tree management is grossly inaccurate. The article contains no links to any published research supporting her opinions, and demonstrates a lack of understanding woody plant physiology. The author states that girdling “would prevent erosion from occurring” in contrast to cutting the tree down which apparently removes “the tree roots acting as a protective cover for the soil.” Cutting a tree down removes its crown, but leaves the root system undisturbed. The roots stop transporting water aboveground (there’s no demand for it any longer) thought they can continue to grow as long as they have stored resources. Eventually they will die and their woody structure slowly decomposes.

Girdling the tree, on the other hand, does not prevent root uptake and transport of water through the xylem to the crown of the tree. It does prevent phloem movement of sugars and other resources from the crown to the roots. In other words, roots remain active in transporting water and nutrients but slowly starve to death without phloem-transported sugars and other resources. A good article on the topic of tree girdling goes into more physiological detail on the process that causes trees to decline “before entering an irreversible state of desiccation caused by definitive root death.”

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Another possibility is that the girdled tree might send up new shoots below the girdling, leading to the formation of a new crown. Without constant vigilance in removing these new branches, the tree will survive and presumably continue to cause whatever problems that led to the original mismanagement.

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The author also suggests that girdling is useful in preventing disease spread: “A sick tree would need to be killed in order to prevent the disease from spreading out to other trees and vegetation.” Or, if your trees “are hoarders by nature,” girdling renders them “incapable of taking in nutrients and being a burden to the environment.” Neither of these statements is accurate.

While the information in this article is somewhat Relevant to homeowners, it does wander into agricultural advice. We’re advised if we have “a danger tree or one that is resting on arable farmland with crops on it, it’s strongly advised that you chop it down and not girdle it. You don’t want an unpredictable girdled tree falling on your harvest, house, or worse — on someone — out of nowhere.”

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At this point it’s worth noting that deliberately killing a tree by girdling also opens the property owner up to legal action should the tree fall and damage property or injure someone. This alone should be enough to dissuade property owners from taking advice from this article. And given the number of years it can take for a girdled tree to die (and eventually fall), is this really a useful process if you need to have a tree removed for some reason?

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Finally, what is the Purpose of this article? It’s hard to know exactly why the author promotes girdling, and the language she uses in describing tree care is odd. Statements such as “sometimes circumstances call for trees to be put down and killed” and “trees need to be put down for all kinds of reasons” seem to equate trees with stray animals or dangerous wildlife. It creates an antagonistic situation where none exists.

Tree management, especially when it come to discussions about removal, needs to involve a certified arborist who can assess potential risks associated with leaving, as well as removing, any tree.

Like it or not, the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) has become a part of our daily lives. While you might not use AI directly (or you don’t know that you do) it is now a common part of society, especially in the online world. Many people, sites, can companies use it to create content. It is part of the “smart” gadgets that we use at home. Map software (like Google Maps), search engines, ride share apps, and even the spam filter on your email all use AI. You’re even more likely to encounter AI on social media and even standard media these days, with it being used to write articles and text, create ads, and images.

We know that there’s no getting around it these days. You’ve probably heard stories about how AI provides incorrect information, steals content, or might help the robots overthrow humanity today. While it seems to be the wild, wild west, there are a few (voluntary) safeguards in place now to prevent the overthrow of humanity (I hope).  Where the real damage is right now is the use of AI to mislead people outright. There’s also some danger from just lazy use of AI where whoever is using it to create content just copies and pastes it verbatim without checking what it actually says.

Gardening misinformation on the internet is nothing new. Gardening misinformation before the internet is nothing new either. But the risk that AI poses is the amplification and multiplication of that information. It is now easier than ever for someone to create online content at the click of a button. And the way that AI works is it scours the internet for existing information to learn how to respond. This new(ish) generation of AI is generative, meaning that it can actually put together information to form something new. Previously, if you did an internet search you would just get a list of websites to read for information. Now AI can use those sites as source material and write the information in a new way – however you prompt it to do. Search engines like Microsoft’s Bing (the much-loathed replacement for the archaic Internet “Exploder”) now have AI built in as a feature. AI is only as smart as what it can learn on the internet, and we all know that while there is good information on the web it is also full of a lot of manure.

Identifying Artificial Gardening Information

First, how can you tell if it is AI generated?  At first glance you might not be able to tell. It is just like any writing. There are tools you can use to try to figure it out, but you’ll often find that writing from AI doesn’t have personality. It is often very dry. You can tell it to add humor or any other style to its writing, but it often misses the mark. When I asked ChatGPT (one of the common AI platforms) to add humor to something it sounded like I was trying to be cutesy, like an employee at the famous park in the swamps of Orlando run by a mouse and not my usual wit, sarcasm, and cynicism. AI often fails to see context and answers are often very black and white. Which doesn’t work in dynamic systems like gardening and the environment. AI therefore sticks a lot with generalities and doesn’t often provide a lot of specific information unless you ask for it.

As an example, I prompted ChatGPT to write “three sentences about seed starting”. Here’s what it spit out:

Nothing alarming there, but it is pretty dry and isn’t very informative. It isn’t what I would write. Now, I prompted it to rewrite those sentences, but to add “humor and wit”. This is what it vomited out:

Vomit, indeed. Though still nothing too alarming. Definitely too cute and not enough snark.

Where AI generated text falls short is that it incorporates some of that incorrect manure from the web in answers. It doesn’t know that information on the web is incorrect. A few times it told me to put rocks in the bottom of pots for drainage (something we’ve fiercely disproven time and time again).

It told me to practice companion planting (another fallacy we’ve taken on) but it never gave me a lot of details about how to do it.

I did ask it directly about biodynamic gardening, which is the pinnacle of garden misinformation. It gave an amazingly nuanced and diplomatic response, which is much closer to what I’d actually say and much nicer than what GP founder Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott would say. (Don’t tell her I said that).

So, nothing too earth shattering in text, but where I think the real risk lies is in AI generated images and videos. It is easier than ever to create images of things that aren’t possible or incorrect and pass them off as real. People often do this to drive traffic – by making wild claims that people must check out or by “rage baiting” people who just have to respond to tell people how wrong something is (it still drives engagement and earns money). 

Fake images are nothing new in the gardening world. I can’t tell you how many ads I’ve seen for magical rainbow-colored rose seeds, trees that grow 10 kinds of fruits, and more all before the advent of AI. But now it is easier than ever to create those images at the click of a button.

For an example, I turned to DALL-E, which is a common AI Image generator. I tried to think of things that wouldn’t be possible. My first prompt was “monarch butterfly on a snow-covered flower”. Something that isn’t possible, but that someone might create to make a social media post about something amazing or miraculous that people have to see to believe.

The results look realistic(is) enough, though improbable. But you’d have to know that to not believe it.

The second test, not so much: “realistic looking tree that has 15 different types of fruits and veggies growing on it”. I had to add the “realistic” because the first results were cartoon-y. It didn’t help much. So, I guess my magical 15 fruit and veggie tree won’t be coming to an online scam shop any time soon.

So, I moved on and created “a grape vine covered with scary looking bugs”.

At first glance, the result can look terrifying. But if you inspect it closely, you’ll see that those bugs have all kinds of legs coming from all over their bodies. Scary, yes, but realistic – no. But could someone do something like this to scare people about an invading insect? Absolutely!

Cutting through the Artificial CRAP

GP Founder Dr. Linda C-S has written about using the CRAP test to identify if a source of information is trustworthy. She used it to talk about Jerry Baker, the self-appointed “America’s Master Gardener” who peddled misinformation and garden snake-oil for decades through books and tv shows to earn big bucks. The same principles can be applied now to digital content created by AI to help figure out if the information is reliable. Here are the steps:

C = credibility. What are the credentials of the person or organization presenting the information? Are they actual experts? Or is it a random account that doesn’t have ties to a credible source? Does the source have academic training, or even practical knowledge?

R = relevant. Is the information relevant for home gardeners? Or does it try to use information other than home gardening, like production agriculture, to answer the questions. For AI, especially images, I could also say that R= realistic. Is it something that could actually be true, or is it a monarch butterfly covered in snow?

A = accuracy. This could lend itself to the realistic assertion, but I see this as more in accuracy of the source of information. Does it site sources, like journal articles, extension publications, USDA reports, etc.? And does the information follow along with trusted information from other sources?

P = purpose. Why is someone presenting this information? In the Jerry Baker example, he was raking in money with books, TV shows, and product promotions. But what benefit does someone get from posting incorrect info on the web? Also, money. Whether you give them a dime, most social media sites and websites generate income by the number of clicks or viewers they have. How do you think people get rich and famous from TikTok? People aren’t paying them to watch them, but they generate income from engagement and interaction. So, creating content that is fanciful to get people to check it out, or even wrong for people to interact with it to rail against it, creates income.

Is all AI bad?

Not necessarily. I mean, the technology is applied in so many ways to solve so many problems. Sure, there is a risk and people do misuse it. But AI can be a powerful and useful tool when used appropriately, when information is checked, and when it isn’t copied and pasted directly. For example. Over most of 2023 I wrote a series of GP articles about plant diseases. No, I didn’t have AI write the article. That would have been wrong. But I did ask my friend ChatGPT to create lists of common diseases for each type of disease to write about. Instead of me having to dig through social media to see what people were asking about, the platform searched to see what the most common diseases that people talked or asked about were, or which ones were most likely to show up on websites. But I took that list, added to it, subtracted from it, and then wrote the article myself. But the more unethical (and lazy) users of AI just copy what it says verbatim without even reading or editing for accuracy. Or even have automated systems that just crank out AI-generated content with no oversight.

In the end, AI isn’t going away. So as savvy gardeners we just have to know what to look for to “spot the bot”.  And always be ready with a shovel to scoop away the CRAP.

January is here with its resolutions, cold long nights and not that warm days. Winter is a season of rest and survival. The cats and horses have long furry coats, the resident song birds eagerly clean out the feeder every day and the garden beckons. For me Winter is a special season when I can do a lot of fruit tree pruning, especially enjoyed with my daughter. Father-daughter pruning bonding is not to be missed if it’s an option for you. Gardens are tuned to winter as period of rest but the promise of longer days that will initiate the changes that happen in Spring will soon be upon us. In this post I’ll reflect on how plants survive winter and what we can do to help them.

Winter is actually a very dry time of the year in many places and the winter cold that freezes soil leads to dehydration. Plants installed just before winter will not emerge in spring alive w/o moisture in their systems. Mulch is an essential and natural part of winterization for many North American temperate plants. Protecting the root ball of a newly planted perennial is a must do for winter survival. In nature this is accommodated by the deciduous habit of many trees and shrubs, falling leaves are a big part of winterization. In our gardens we can do this with mulch.

Deciduosity

I know deciduosity is not often used but I like to use unusual words so here we go. The deciduous habits of many north American temperate trees enable them and other plants to survive cold, dry, freezing winters. Environmental cues (photoperiod and cooling temperatures) signal trees to drop their leaves (Fadon et al., 2020). Cold temperatures are also required by temperate perennials to invigorate buds and make starch into soluble sugars for strong spring growth. Deciduosity also leads to abundant mulch on the forest (or garden) floor. This protects soil and surface root systems, seeds, perennial herbaceous plants and bulbs and provides an insulating layer under snow, if snow is a thing where you are. When warm temps arrive in Spring the leaves quickly break down as growth under them emerges.

Solutes

Deciduosity brings certain challenges to woody perennials that donate their canopy to the soil each year. Trees in spring have no photosynthetic organs to supply the energy of growth. That energy has to be stored in the wood and roots as carbohydrates, mostly as starch, at the end of the growing season and before leaf fall. In spring at the end of dormancy when buds grow, these stored carbohydrates convert to soluble sugars and fuel the rebirth of a a new canopy. Having all that stored sugar in cells throughout the plant also reduces the freezing point of water in the cells so that subzero temperatures do not lead to ice crystal formation (and cell death) of the dormant plant.

Seeds

Another way plants survive Winter is by forming seeds. The strategy of annual plants is to “go to sleep” as seeds and “wake up” by germinating. To ensure that seeds don’t germinate too early, they often have inhibitors that need to be washed away by water (Spring thaw), burned by fire (usually summer time), or by scarification (tumbling in the creek etc). Many seeds germinate better after a cold winter than if they were sown without cold chilling. Not all seeds will germinate at the same time as inhibitors delay germination. This ensures that conditions will be right for some of the seeds and thus the species will survive, even thrive in the right place.

Roots

While the above ground part of gardens can be in a dormant state in January, the situation underground is different. Roots respire (break down sugars to get energy for growth) during winter and may grow continuously depending on climate, depth and soil coverage conditions. Roots, just like buds, utilize stored carbohydrates to fuel their growth. If temperatures remain more moderate under the soil they can continue to respire well into winter months. Soils freeze when they lack snow cover or mulch, Reinmann and Templer (2016) propose that roots in frozen soils are less active. Leaf mulches help protect soils from hard freezes.

Am I crazy or What?

I know that a leaf dump on the garden every year is not what many gardeners want to deal with. That is what leaf blowers are for right? Some municipalities even have line items in their budget for disposing of fallen leaves which are some of the most disposed of green waste. Leaves that accumulate on hardscape can be a pollution source accounting for up to 80% of phosphorus pollution in one study (Bratt et al., 2017). It’s best to utilize leaves around perennials and keep them away from streets, gutters and sidewalks.
Trees evolved to drop their leaves on the ground and for them to stay there. Finding ways to accommodate this in gardens will lead to a healthier garden and less waste in landfills. Leaves can be mown on turf areas and the biomass will be incorporated into the turf sward (Nektarios et al., 1999) without loss of turfgrass quality. In gardens they can become part of the surface mulch. If you are really crazy, you can grind them in a shredder to make really high quality micro mulch to be used around certain plants or vegetables (we do this with coast live oak leaves of which we have an abundance in California). Stavi, (2020) encourages us to think of fallen leaves as a resource not a waste product. Your garden will benefit.

For more information on leaves please see the other blogs at this site:

• https://gardenprofessors.com/noraking/
  
• https://gardenprofessors.com/leaves-for-lawn-fertilizer/
  
• https://gardenprofessors.com/one-trees-leaves-over-400-kinds-of-bacteria/

References

A. R. Bratt, J.C. Finlay, S. E. Hobbie, B. D. Janke, A. C. Worm, and K.L. Kemmitt 2017. Contribution of Leaf Litter to Nutrient Export during Winter Months in an Urban Residential Watershed. Environ. Sci. & Technol. 6: 3138-3147
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28215078/

Fadon, E. E. Fernandez, H. Behn, and E. Luedeling. 2020. A conceptual Framework for Winter Dormancy in Deciduous trees. Agronomy 10(2), 241; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy10020241

P. Nektarios, A.M. Petrovic and D. Sender 1999. Tree Leaf Deposition Effects on Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratenses L.), J. of Turfgrass Man., 3:(1) 69-74. DOI: 10.1300/J099v03n01_06

Reinmann AB, Templer PH. 2016. Reduced winter snowpack and greater soil frost reduce live root biomass and stimulate radial growth and stem respiration of red maple (Acer rubrum) trees in a mixed-hardwood forest. Ecosystems. 19:129- 141.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48719251

Stavi, I. 2020. On-Site Use of Plant Litter and Yard Waste as Mulch in Gardening and Landscaping Systems. Sustainability 12(18), 7521; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187521

This year is almost certain to be the warmest on record for the earth as a whole, although there are still a few days in December that could slightly affect the final numbers. As we close out 2023 I want to spend a few minutes reviewing the weather and climate of the past year, both the average conditions and some of the extremes we saw. While this is skewed towards the United States, I did include some events happening in other parts of the world for our non-US readers. I will also take a peek at what is likely to happen in 2024.

What were the average climate conditions in 2023?

Since the year is not quite over I can’t provide a final average for temperature or precipitation for the complete 365 days, but there are some websites that allow me to look at all but the last few days. The images below are from the High Plains Regional Climate Center for January 1 through December 27. They show the temperature departure from normal and the percent of normal precipitation for the continental United States. (You can see the global temperature statistics for January through November 2023 at the National Centers for Environmental Information.) In most parts of the U.S. the temperature was warmer than the 1991-2020 normal; the exception was the western mountains, where temperatures were colder than normal. Keep in mind that the normal period being used for comparison (1991-2020) was a period that was quite a bit warmer than the long-term temperature average in the United States, so this map underestimates how warm this year was compared to most of the 20^th century.

Precipitation was more variable than temperature, as it usually is. The driest areas this year were in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico states, particularly Louisiana and Texas, and in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s not surprising that these were also areas with significant droughts, including a lot of the Corn Belt which also saw very dry conditions during the growing season. By comparison, California and New England experienced multiple storms bringing significant rain to those areas, including Tropical Storm Hilary (the first tropical storm to hit California in 84 years) in mid-August. In the Southeast, Hurricane Idalia did almost $5 billion in damage in late August from heavy wind and rain, half of that in Georgia alone. But that did not stop a flash drought from developing there in fall with the almost complete cessation of rainfall for up to 60 days.

What extremes did we see in 2023?

The averages show the overall conditions that occurred this year but don’t begin to capture the extremes in temperature and precipitation that occurred. In the United States alone there have been 25 billion-dollar weather disasters so far this year, including the tropical systems mentioned before along with numerous rounds of severe weather across the country and the devastating firestorm in Maui in August. In other parts of the world, many regions experienced their warmest September-November period since records began in 1880. Significant heat waves occurred in Texas and Mexico as well as Europe, Chile, and Canada, where widespread forest fires that flared up blanketed Canada and many parts of the eastern United States with poor air quality and low visibility in the summer.

Floods and droughts occurred around the world this year. The Mississippi River dropped to record-low water levels for the second year in a row due to the drought in the Midwest. On the other extreme, notable flood events occurred around the world, include floods in Ghana, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Chile. Storm Daniel brought unprecedented rain to Libya, breaking dams and causing tremendous damage in September. Nine separate atmospheric river events caused tremendous flooding in California early in the year, significantly reducing drought conditions there and contributing to the reduction in drought area in the United States in the first half of 2023.

While El Niño usually means that the Atlantic tropical season is quiet, this year was unusually active with 20 tropical storms and hurricanes. This is in spite of the presence of a jet stream aloft due to El Niño that usually keeps storms from developing. Most of those storms stayed out to sea, so impacts on the United States were limited (except for Idalia and Hilary out west). In other countries, Hurricane Otis hit western Mexico near Acapulco in October, bringing catastrophic damage to an area that almost never gets hits by tropical storms. Cyclone Lola devastated the northern part of Vanuatu in late October as well.

The global temperature will set a new record for warmth in 2023

The New York Times provided a sobering look at monthly temperatures for each month going back to 1850 (above). It shows that 2023 had several months that were the warmest on record for those months, due to the expansive area of warm ocean water associated with El Niño in the Eastern Pacific Ocean along with record-setting sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic that contributed to a very active tropical season in spite of being an El Niño year. The impacts of this warmth are being seen in dropping sea ice coverage, more and stronger heat waves, and increases in wildfires in forested areas. Some people argue that the warming trend appears to be accelerating in recent years, a concern that urges us to consider how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down the increasing temperature trend.

What do we know about 2024 so far?

The current El Niño is expected to continue through the next few months before it weakens and turns back to neutral conditions around the April-June period. A La Niña could occur later in 2024, which means that next year’s winter could be warm and dry in southern parts of the Northern Hemisphere and colder and wetter along the northern border of the US and up into Canada. Pending on how long the El Niño lasts, the warm ocean temperatures could contribute to another record-setting warm year in 2024 although it’s too early to be sure. It also depends on shorter-term weather events like more frequent occurrence of cold weather due to a shift in the weather pattern in January to more variable conditions later this winter, as many forecasting models think is likely. Meanwhile, neutral conditions or La Niña conditions later in the year could mean that Atlantic tropical activity increases to an even more active level than last year.

Thank you, gardeners, for another great year!

Most of the United States as well as the rest of the world experienced a warmer climate again in 2023, so gardeners will continue to need to choose plants that are appropriate for their warming climate zones. Extreme conditions, including devastation by individual storms as well as natural climate variability, will continue to affect home gardens through water stress caused by drought and extreme heat as well as damage caused by floods, high winds, and freezing temperatures. Building a resilient garden that can withstand these extremes will allow your garden to thrive through whatever conditions the atmosphere throws at it.

I want to end this year by thanking you all again for your loyal readership and your thoughtful questions and comments on many topics. I encourage you to share your 2023 garden challenges (weather or otherwise) in the comments along with your plans for how you plan to address them in 2024 and beyond. I look forward to reading them! We will see you again in the New Year.

Some lists of top weather and climate events for 2023 (mostly videos):

Weather Nation: Looking Back at the Top 10 Weather Events of 2023

Pattrn: 2023: Year of Extremes

NBC News: The biggest climate stories of 2023

Climate.gov: Climate Highlights of 2023

Atmos Earth: Your 2023 Climate Wins, Wrapped

In this late fall edition of People and Plants we’ll take a look at an early American female botanist, Martha Daniell Logan.

She was born in 1704 in St. Thomas Parish, South Carolina, the second child of Robert Daniell and his second wife Martha Wainwright. After her father died in 1718 she inherited his land along the Wando River. In 1719, Martha married George Logan, Jr. and they lived on the Wando River, ten miles from Charleston, where both the Daniell and the Logan families owned extensive property.  Over the next sixteen years, she gave birth to eight children, six surviving to adulthood.  In 1750 the family moved to a plantation near Charleston. Needing to enhance the family income she advertised her services as a teacher but her attention gradually shifted to horticulture. She began her botanical career collecting in the woods near her home.

Martha soon gained the reputation of a skilled gardener and maintained a well-known garden “on the Green, near Trott’s Point in Charles Town.” Gardening became her focus and occupation and she embarked on a career as a “purveyor of botanical goods,” selling seeds and plants from her home. 
In addition to native plants, she dealt in imported specimens. Gardening, especially landscaping with rare plants, had become a favored pastime among wealthy locals and Martha was quick to capitalize on this. An advertisement published in the Gazette on November 12, 1753, announced the availability of “a parcel of very good seeds, flower roots, and fruit stones of several kinds” that were “just imported from London.”

She exchanged seeds, roots, and plants, like gardeners do, with other botanical enthusiasts including the naturalist John Bartram. His visit in 1760 initiated a three year correspondence and trade of specimens. They swapped lists of available plants and used silk bags to send seeds to each other. They also exchanged lists of plants that each desired from the other’s geographical area. Logan enthusiastically sent Bartram plants from Carolina which “may be New to you” and “be an adision [addition] to yr Collection.” In return, she asked him to send bulbs and double-flowering plants that her London contacts had failed to procure or took too long to send. She shipped and received tubs of cuttings and roots on ships traveling between Charleston and Philadelphia, where Bartram lived. Bartram praised her in a letter to a London friend and wrote, “Mrs. Logan’s garden is her delight and she has a fine one.”

With the popularity of urban gardening on the rise Martha realized that many people needed help and guidance with their horticultural endeavors. In 1752 her first advice column titled “Gardners Kalander [sic], done by a Lady of this Province, and esteemed a very good one.” appeared in the South Carolina Almanack. Her first publication was so successful she continued to publish her calendar, updating and enlarging it each year.

Martha continued her business, what we nowadays would call a garden center, for the rest of her life. She even wrote a treatise on gardening at the age of seventy. In 1809 the early Charleston historian David Ramsay described her as “a great florist, and uncommonly fond of a garden,” and claimed she “reduced the knowledge she had acquired by long experience, and observation, to a regular system which . . . to this day regulates the practice of gardens in and around Charleston.”

Martha died in Charleston on June 28, 1779, and was buried in St. Philip’s Churchyard. She is considered one of the founding gardeners of South Carolina.

Read back through the pages of her 1757 Gardener’s Kalendar shared above. In your opinion, how much of it is still applicable? One bit of her advice that is always appreciated: “What was neglected last month may be successfully done in this.”

This month has been an exciting one for climatologists around the United States with the November 14 release of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), a massive project that is undertaken every four years to capture our current understanding of climate change based on recent research. I was a chapter author for the Southeast and spent the last two years working with over 700 authors around the United States to gather and document how the climate is changing and how it is affecting all of us. This week I will explain how NCA5 was put together, what it says about climate, and what gardeners can do to help reduce the future impacts of global warming and other climate changes. But this month was also exciting because USDA just released an updated Plant Hardiness Zone map, just a few weeks after my post in October about how the 2012 map was outdated. I guess they were listening (just kidding!). I will discuss that briefly at the end of this post, too.

What is the National Climate Assessment?

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a report mandated by Congress to compile the latest scientific findings on how climate is changing so that we can respond to reduce its future impacts. It is published every four years, and the last one (the 4^th NCA) was released on the day after Thanksgiving in 2017. While the underlying message has not changed, each assessment focuses on the newest scientific research that has been published since the last assessment was done. The document is divided into chapters so that the authors of each chapter could concentrate on that topic.

NCA5 starts with a review of the general scientific principles of how the climate is changing. That is followed by seventeen chapters focused on national topics such as agriculture, water, energy, and transportation as well as specific groups that are being especially affected by climate change such as indigenous peoples. Following the national topics, chapters address changes that are happening in ten different regions of the country . These address how we need to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions that are driving the warming of the earth as well as how we can adapt to the changes that are already happening now and may get worse in the future.

How was NCA5 produced?

There is a long process involved in producing a national climate assessment. Teams of scientists from an array of disciplines were chosen as authors for each chapter to write the initial text of the document. To keep the authors on task and within tight word limits, there were lead chapter authors and technical advisors who moderated group meetings where the key messages for our chapter were identified. Initial figures to include in each chapter were drafted by a graphics team or requested from scientific journals. After the first draft was complete it was first reviewed by federal agencies to make sure that their concerns were addressed and then by the public, who provided many additional comments. All of these comments were provided to the chapter authors so they could refine their text and figures for the next draft. In all, the document when through six different reviews and all comments were addressed.

Where can I read NCA5 and learn more about what it says?

The NCA contains a vast amount of information in its 32 chapters, five appendices, and special topics, so it is hard to summarize. I encourage you to explore the document online to see what it says about your region and special topics of interest like agriculture, land, and ecosystems. A good starting place is the introductory website https://www.globalchange.gov/our-work/fifth-national-climate-assessment, which explains how the report was written and provides links to read the report, attend a webinar on an individual chapter, and see where the figures came from. I also encourage you to explore the excellent interactive atlas developed in conjunction with the report. Many other resources such as podcasts are available, too.

What are some steps that gardeners can take to respond to climate change?

There are two approaches that gardeners (and all of us) need to take to respond to the challenges of a changing climate. We are already dealing with the consequences of trends towards warmer temperatures and more extreme swings in the water cycle such as increases in floods and droughts. Gardeners are adapting to these changes in climate by planting different plants that are better suited to the warmer climate and changing how they manage their gardens using rain gardens, drip irrigation, and other techniques. Adaptation is a key approach that gardeners will continue to need to follow as the climate continues to get warmer and more variable.

In addition all of us, including gardeners, have a responsibility to cut the emissions of additional fossil fuels which are driving most of the warming (mitigation is reducing the inputs to prevent future harm). This will reduce the impacts that our world will have to navigate in the future. Even a small decrease in the emission of greenhouse gases now can prevent the worst outcomes. A prime target for gardeners is the elimination of gasoline-powered equipment like blowers, mowers, and trimmers. These small tools have highly inefficient engines that emit a lot of greenhouse gases as well as air pollutants (and a lot of noise, too). Switching to electric tools and vehicles, composting, adding solar power to houses and businesses, and conserving energy and water (which often uses energy to purify it) through carefully chosen plantings as well as through other methods can also help reduce future warming.

What about the new USDA Plant Hardiness Zone map?

I was surprised last week that the USDA had just produced an update to the 2012 map that I discussed last month. In that post, I noted that the 2012 map was already outdated due to the increasing temperatures we have seen in the 21^st century. The new 2023 map uses data from 1991-2020, the current 30-year normal period, to identify the current plant hardiness zones for the United States. You can see the new map and zoom to your city at https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/. By comparing it to the 2012 map, you will see that more than half the country has increased by half a zone, which correlates to about a 5-degree F increase in the average lowest minimum temperature a location experiences each year. I asked USDA for a map that showed the changes of zone and was provided one by Chris Daly of the PRISM group that put together the 2023 map (below). Areas in tan experienced a half-zone change since the 2012 map. (There are a few areas in the Mountain West where the zones got colder, as shown in green, but these are mostly linked to new datasets that were available for the analysis rather than any changes to the local climate there.)

Science has made it clear that the earth’s climate is changing and that most of the warming we are experiencing is due to burning of fossil fuels. We must learn to adapt to these changes and make sure that all groups can be protected from the worst impacts of the more extreme weather we are likely to experience. But we can also make changes now to reduce those future impacts, and I know gardeners will be part of that solution.

Facebook and other social media attempt to help us solve problems.  This group and others seek to inform gardeners and solve problems they are having growing plants.  Looking at queries and posted responses there is so much information missing, leading to wrong and misleading comments in many of these discussions.  I think it is a good idea to reexamine the diagnostic process and how gardeners can solve their own diagnostic questions.

Diagnosis is always the precursor to solving a plant problem. In the world of plant pathology, palliative care (treating symptoms) is often ineffective if the cause of the disorder is unknown. It is amazing how on social media so many cures, fixes, MacGyvers, or treatments are suggested even before a diagnosis is made. The diagnostic process has many components so its good to be familiar with some of the steps in this process.

Identify the plant

Host identification comes as the first step in diagnosis. It sounds simple or silly, but knowing the host name is the first step in diagnosis. Find the scientific name of the plant and then specific disorders of that taxa can be sought out in a web search. Common names are misleading and it is critical to associate disorders with the exact plant you have a problem with. If you are diagnosing remotely (as I am often forced to do), knowing the location is the next question as many disorders are regional. For instance we don’t have black knot of plum in southern California while in southern Ontario, Canada and New York state that is a big problem.

Look at the whole organism

So many gardeners only focus on where they see symptoms. A leaf, shoot, or branch with something that does not look right is a good place to start looking, but always consider the entire plant. It is important to see the entire plant and what the distribution of above ground symptoms is. Don’t forget the “whole organism” includes its root system which is often neglected in diagnosis.

Look at all the components of the plant

Symptoms which are plant responses to a disease or disorder often occur on leaves. The problem, however, may be in the roots. Root rots may go undetected until almost the entire root system is decayed; only then do symptoms start to appear on the distal or far portion of the plant. These rapidly or slowly spread until the entire plant is affected. Whenever there is uniform symptomology of the foliage, always check the root system. Symptoms on only a single branch of a perennial may be localized to that branch, so follow the symptomatic branch back to its attachment point to locate any damage or disease along its stem.

Look closely

It often helps to use a hand lends to closely observe insects, insect products like webbing, eggs, pupal cases, or frass, or just to validate that there are no insects or their products present. Many many fungi form fungal fruiting bodies in dead stem portions and these look like tiny grains of pepper under a hand lens. A closer view is often helpful in deciding if a problem is localized or system in the plant.

Look for symptoms and signs

Symptoms are plant responses to attack from pathogens, insects or abiotic causes such as herbicides, toxic salts, high and low temperatures etc. Symptoms alert the gardener that there is something wrong but may or may not point the way to the cause of the problem. It is also important to look for signs which are parts of the biology causing the problem. Fungal growths, spores, fruiting bodies insects adults and immatures stages of insects and the products they produce and leave behind are all signs. Signs give more direct evidence of the cause of a problem.

Look around

You may not be the only gardener with a plant problem. Look to see if other plants in your garden are similarly affected. If only a single taxa is affected it could possibly be a disease or insect problem. If many different kinds of plants are affected it may be from a non-biological cause–an abiotic disease or environmental disorder. Solving these diagnoses often requires lab work and specific soil or plant sampling

Seek confirmation

Once you have collected all the the information (symptoms and signs) over the entire plant (including if necessary root symptoms), it is time to put the information to work. Searching on your own, on the internet, is daunting because there is so much misleading information. If you have the scientific name, you can put that in a search engine along with the symptoms and tentative ID of insects or pathogens and then look at all the images that match what you have. Click on the image and check the source of the file. If from an .edu or educational source, it is likely a higher quality of information. Read these first.

Taking samples to a lab or University Extension office is of limited value because they can’t see the entire plant. It’s best to take samples to an expert when you have a good hunch what is going on and you want to confirm it (you should include images of the whole plant if you can). So much money is spent sending random leaf or twig samples to labs and they end up sending information that is misleading or just wrong as far as the diagnosis goes. Thousands of fungi grow on plant surfaces and labs will isolate these, some are pathogens but may not be on your specific plant as pathogens can be quite specific to plants they have a disease relationship with. The lab report comes back with a finding Alternaria spp. This is indeed a pathogen of tomato and many other plants but it is also a very common saprophyte often found growing on dead plant tissues. So lab findings are helpful when they confirm your own suspicions, but often unhelpful when random plant tissues are sent by a gardener that has no idea what is happening. This is true of any lab, university or private. The more information the lab has, the more helpful they can be. And all labs everywhere would prefer to have the entire organism for diagnosis.

Diagnosis is hard. The best diagnosticians are correct (solve the diagnostic problem) about 2/3 of the time. Sometimes diagnosis of a problem can take years. Some diagnoses are never solved. But for most common plant problems you can find answers by intelligently searching the internet and with some help from the “ologists” of University and private diagnostic firms.