The Garden Professors™ – Page 55 – Advancing the science of gardening and other stuff since 2009

You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps

Recently I spent a week in Oregon working on a Christmas tree genetics project along with my colleagues Chal Landgren( Oregon State University), Gary Chastagner ( Washington State University), and John Frampton (North Carolina State University). The objective of the project is to identify superior seed sources of Turkish fir and Trojan fir for use as Christmas trees around the United States. We refer to the project as the Cooperative Fir Genetic Evaluation or CoFirGE – remember, the most critical step in any experiment is coming up with a catchy acronym. CoFirGE began with a trip by my colleagues to Turkey where they collected seed from 100 fir trees across a range of sites in Turkey

Turkish fir growing in western Oregon

Why are we interested in these species? Both Turkish and Trojan fir are closely related Nordmann fir, which is widely used as a Christmas tree in Europe. These species make wonderful Christmas trees due to their symmetry and needle color. In addition they may be resistant to diseases, particularly Phytophthora root rot, that plague Christmas tree growers from Washington State to North Carolina.

So, what was going on in Oregon? After the seed were collected in Turkey they were sent to Kintigh’s nursery near Eugene, Oregon, where the seed were sown to produce seedling plugs. The next step of the project will be to send the seedlings out to cooperators in five locations (Pacific Northwest, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut). This is tree improvement on a grand scale. In each region there will be two test plantings and each planting will include 30 reps of 100 seed sources or 3,000 trees. Multiplied by 5 regions and 2 plantations that’s 30,000 trees total that we will collect data on for the next 8-9 years.

30,000 seedlings ready to be sorted and shipped

Each seedling is individually labeled with a bar code for identification

Sorting into to boxes to send to cooperators around the country

But step one is getting the seedlings from the nursery to the out-planting sites. That means lots of tagging, sorting, and bagging. With help from technicians and students from WSU, OSU and NCSU and staff from Kintigh’s we were able to get all the seedlings sorted and bagged by mid-day on Thursday and start them on their journey to their new homes. Next step: Planting…

The Strawberry, And What Do You Do For An Encore?

Once upon a time, a long time ago (around 1714), a spy, posing as a merchant, was dispatched from France to Chile to investigate the defenses which the Spanish had installed there. While there, he also had the opportunity to see some truly amazing plants, but he was most impressed by the strawberries. Strawberries of one sort or another are native throughout most of the world, but most are just little bitty things. They may taste good, but you’ve got to get quite a few of them together to make a decent snack. These were mega-bruisers. Five or six could fill a small plate. The name of this spy was Amedee Frezier (which is a variation of the word for strawberry).

Anyway, being a top-notch spy, he managed to get his hands on six strawberry plants and make away with them back to France. Sacrificing fresh water needed by both himself and his shipmates to ensure that the plants made it safely across the ocean, he finally arrived in France with his precious cargo, no doubt very proud of himself.

There was only one problem. These strawberries never produced much fruit. Still, the plants were pretty enough, so they were kept at various botanical gardens across Europe and propagated using the runners which they naturally produce. But the scientific community never could figure out how to make them produce fruit on a regular basis.

Enter Antoine Duchesne, a great scientist of the 18^th century. Duchesne figured out that the problem that the Chilean strawberries were having was that they were female. Sure, they had fruit when Frezier saw them, but when he brought them to Europe they were never placed near male strawberry plants to provide pollen. So Frezier mated the Chilean strawberries with male strawberries native to Europe and Bang! There were the big beautiful strawberries that Frezier had seen in Chile. And in 1764 he presented a bowl of them to King Louis XV. Duchesne was seventeen at the time. I wonder, was the rest of his life a letdown?

Living with lichens

We often hear that the US needs to boost its investment in science education to keep up with rest of the world. While we often think in terms of physics and chemistry when we think of science, we need to remember biology and ecology fit in the mix, too.

I bring this up because of a call a received a while back from a homeowner. The gentleman was concerned /borderline distraught that he would have to remove a prized maple tree from his front yard because it had “peculiar growths all over the trunk”. I told him it was difficult to diagnose a tree problem sight unseen but if he could send me some images, it might help me out.

The photo did indeed make ‘the problem’ obvious.

The growths were lichens. Lichens do not harm trees but I’m sure an unscrupulous tree service could have easily convinced the homeowner his tree needed come out had he not contacted me first. Lichens are actually two organisms; a fungus and an algae that form a symbiotic relationship and function very much like one organism The algae part of the lichen is photosynthetic, and therefore they are able to produce their own energy and do not take any resources away from the tree. In fact, lichens often grow on non-living substrates such as wood, concrete, tombstones, benches and so on. If a homeowner observes a dead tree or dead branch covered with lichens on it, this is a coincidence; the lichens did not cause the branch or the tree to fail. The tree trunk or branch simply provides a porous surface for the lichen to attach. Lichens are often fairly inconspicuous, but in some moist areas, such as the Pacific Northwest, they may form a mat that completely coats branches.

Fast facts about lichens

Lichens grow in some of the most inhospitable places on earth from deserts to tundras.

Lichens are commonly grayish-green, but may also be yellow or red, depending of the type of algae associated with the fungus.

Lichens are sensitive to air pollution, and researchers are investigating their use as a bio-indicator of air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and ozone.

Lichens are fascinating organisms, if you are taking a liking to lichens try these websites:
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/botany/projects/lichens/
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fungi/lichens/lichens.html

Answer to the Thursday Non-strenuous Puzzler

Correctomundo, Paul W. Right off the bat, darn it. Retractable (woven) roof; designed to accommodate a bit of snow, but you don’t want to leave it in place for any more than that. This was at the Merrifield Garden Center in Alexandria. Winter of 2011. I was there speaking to the fabulous Fairfax Master Gardeners and trainees (SandyG, I swear you were there).

The snow cover just seemed kind of odd/neat, because the roof was closed back up by the time I walked in.

Now THAT might kill the aphids!

Here’s a very lightweight, non-strenuous puzzler for your Thursday.

This scene is from inside a [very nice] retail garden center greenhouse.
Open for business.

What’s with the snow?!

Hidden from view is the commemorative plaque in honor of one of our regular commenters:
"SandyG Shopped Here."

Molasses malarkey

Yesterday I received this link from a Facebook friend who said “when I read this I thought of you.” More likely she was thinking of (enjoying?) the mental agony I suffered as I waded through this morass of misinformation. (By the way – those of you who are educators of some sort – this would make a great “how many things are wrong?” question for your students.)

There’s SO much to discuss in this post that I think I’ll split it up into separate posts. Here’s the first paragraph:

“Cheap, easy and does it all!

“Not your kitchen molasses! That has had the sulfur removed and you need it in there. Horticulture Molasses does things for your plants like nothing else can and it’s the cheapest gardening product per square foot…a gallon can cover a half-acre! Put it in a sprayer, turn some music on and start spraying every inch of your yard, no need to be careful. You simply can’t over do it. Molasses raises the sugar content of plants and kills insects,causes a massive bloom of microbes in the soil and drives out Fire Ants, what more do you need?”

I’d not heard of “horticulture molasses” before, but there are so many new products sneaking into garden centers that I’m not too surprised. Let’s look at some specifics here.

“Kitchen molasses has had the sulfur removed.” This isn’t quite accurate. Molasses doesn’t contain sulfur naturally; sulfur dioxide is sometimes added as a preservative during the processing of sugar beets or sugar cane and ends up in molasses.
“Put it in a sprayer…and start spraying every inch of your yard, no need to be careful. You simply can’t overdo it.” This is some of the most irresponsible advice I’ve ever seen. If this is such a powerful insecticide (as you’ll see later in the post), then OF COURSE you can overdo it.
“Molasses raises the sugar content of plants.” This bold statement has no basis in reality. Exactly how it is supposed to get inside the plants? Not through the protective cuticle. Through the stomata? Possibly. But how much sugar could be taken up this way? There are 256 tablespoons in a gallon. Three tablespoons means that molasses is about 1% of the total volume in a gallon of this mixture (you’ll have to look at the bottom of the linked post to see the recipe). And since molasses is only about 50% sugar, then a gallon of mixture is about 0.5% sugar. We’re talking about homeopathic levels of sugar here.
“Molasses…kills insects, causes a massive bloom of microbes in the soil and drives out Fire Ants.” The microbe information is more or less correct (maybe not “massive” given the concentration of molasses used). Microbes love carbohydrates. The insecticidal claims are nonsense. And since the next paragraph of the original post addresses this in more detail, I’ll hold off my dissection until my next post.

What’s a view without trees?

A while back I wrote about a Seattle-area neighbor dispute over a tree partially blocking their view. Sadly, the tree lost out in this case, which was decided a few weeks ago.

Now a second tree vs. view dispute was reported this week. You’ll have to read the story to see how many things are inaccurate/indefensible/infuriating about the “trimming” of this 90 foot western red cedar (a native species). My personal favorite: “the tree violated neighborhood bylaws ensuring no house’s view would be blocked.”

I wonder how they got the tree to agree to the bylaws in the first place?

A western red cedar (Thuja plicata), maybe 60 feet tall. People in my neighborhood like their big trees.

Thomas Knight and the Water Wheel

Classes have begun, and this semester (and every spring semester) I have the opportunity to teach our introduction to horticulture class, otherwise known as Plant Propagation (Hort 1001). We usually have about 120 students, and I don’t want to brag or anything, but it is just about the best class out there. Watching the students learn about seeds, cuttings, and grafting in the labs is one of the most motivating things about my job (and it doesn’t hurt that the greenhouses are about 70 degrees while it’s 0 outside). But, as you might expect, there is a lecture too. Believe it or not, the lecture isn’t half bad. In fact, students actually ask questions in class. This past Tuesday during a lecture on seeds one of the students asked how the roots know how to grow down when they exit the seed. The answer is geotropism. Geotropism is a response by a plant to gravity. Some parts of a plant grow towards a gravitational pull (roots), and some grow away from it (shoots). One of the coolest experiments ever was a study done by a gentleman named Thomas Knight in the very early 1800s where he set up a water wheel which had seeds planted along the edges. As the wheel spun and the plants grew they responded both to the Earth’s gravity and to the force created by the spinning wheel. You can see the results below.

Knight also did some very interesting work showing that buds from older plants retained their physiological age when grafted onto younger plants. Basically that means that if you graft a bud from a mature ‘Honeycrisp’ apple onto a young seedling, that bud will produce a new shoot which produces ‘Honeycrisp’ apples before the rest of the tree produces apples.

Usually when we think of horticulture we think of L. H. Bailey – and we should – but let’s never forget Thomas Knight either.

Pussy Riot: How far should we go to eliminate destructive alien species?

A short article in our Sunday paper caught my eye this weekend. New Zealand economist Gareth Morris has launched a campaign to eliminate domestic cats from the country in order to preserve native bird populations. According to Morris and his supporters, cats represent a serious threat to many rare and endangered bird species in New Zealand, which has the highest rate of cat ownership in the world. Ironically, one of the reasons the article our paper caught my eye is I have been considering adopting a feral cat from a local program to control mice in our barn.

So, what do you think? Are cats useful companions and mousers or do you agree with Morris that they are ‘natural born killers’ that need to be eliminated?

Gardeners plus QR Codes equals Really Happening?

Proven Winners is putting QR codes on plant tags. So is Walters Gardens, a major wholesaler of perennial liners. Growers often purchase tags from the propagator to go along with the liners. In the case of patented plants, that’s a common method of collecting royalties – the finishing grower has to purchase the tag.

Quick response (QR) codes are everywhere. For those that are vague on the concept, it’s a two-dimensional barcode. Install a code-reader app on your smartphone, snap a photo of the code, and your web browser takes you to a specific site for more information. The marketing experts associated with our industry say they’re a “must” if we want to connect with the ” iEverything” customer. Even botanical gardens are slapping them on plant identification labels, interpretive signage, and more (that’s on my to-do list).

My question: are YOU, dear readers, taking advantage of this technology (as it applies to purchasing plants)? Or is it enough to pull the tag out of the pot and note that this petunia, though oddly-named, needs full sun and gets 8″ to 12″ tall?

Image snagged from Kristy O’Hara’s article “Doing More With the QR Code” in Greenhouse Grower magazine

I realize we have a wide variety of interests and occupations represented – which makes things even more interesting. So whether you’re a grower, a horticulture professional, or a semi-dangerous gardener, please leave a comment as to whether you’ve ever used one. If so, did you find it useful? Any other thoughts?

Almost forgot…Why am I pestering you for this information? I teach the senior level Ornamental Plants Production and Marketing course here at Virginia Tech. If I think it’ll give our future growers and garden center managers/owners an economic edge, I’ll certainly recommend it.