This ‘n That

Grading finals, looking at roots, and planting seeds is consuming my time this spring, but I have just a few things to share today which might be interesting.

So, as those of you who follow this blog know, I love peanuts.  This year we’re planting out a bunch of new varieties, a few of which are extremely interesting.  Believe it or not there are not only red and pink peanuts but also black, white, and mottled peanuts.  We have these on order — when they come in I’ll post a picture.  When we introduce Minnesota Boiled Peanuts at the State Fair in a few years (that’s the goal anyway) the plan is to introduce a wide variety of really unique looking peanuts.  Fingers crossed they can live here!

Here, at the University of Minnesota, we do a really great job of telling people that, when they fertilize their grass, they should keep the fertilizer on the grass and not on the sidewalk — SO WHY CAN’T THE UNIVERSITY TEACH THE KIDS WHO APPLY THE FERTILIZER TO THE UNIVERSITY’S LAWNS TO KEEP THE DARN FERTILIZER OFF OF THE PAVEMENT?!?  Last week as I walked in I heard a crunching sound coming from my feet.  When I looked down there was a little pile of fertilizer on the sidewalk.

Believe it or not, judiciously fertilizing your grass actually helps prevent fertilizer run-off.  That’s because grass with a weak root system (as occurs in the typical lawn when you don’t fertilize at all) won’t be able to hold the soil as well — so you get more erosion.  So do fertilize your lawn, just don’t go nuts.

About that whole tree in the lung thing which I posted last week?  Yeah — It’s BS.  How do we know it’s BS?  No obvious roots on the tree and the tree’s needles were green (you don’t get green plants without sunlight). Personally I think this is some kind of odd cry for attention, but I guess it’s possible that the guy swallowed a cutting while he was shearing/pruning trees.  HOWEVER, there are documented cases where seeds will germinate in a persons lung — Usually the person has a compromised immune system.

A word about GMOs from our visiting GP

I gave a talk to a group of gardeners last year about vegetable and community gardening.  There was a wide variety of gardening experience represented, but one statement from a seasoned gardener bothered me a bit.  And I think my response bothered him a bit too.  I haven’t thought much about it until recently, when a high school English teacher I know told me a student expressed similar ideas in her class.  The erroneous idea from my audience member was this: our tomatoes are being poisoned with ‘germetically modinified’…something something.  The arguments have lost me beyond that (because there aren’t any).  And really, there hasn’t been much talk about sex on this blog recently, so that should be remedied too.  Therefore, I would like to take the platform offered by the Garden Professors to talk about plant breeding.

 

 

Fig. 1: Jaune flammee, which has at least one gene from at least one of its parents that causes the fruit to have very little lycopene.

Conventional” breeding is when a plant breeder selects parents and offspring and tests them for desirable characteristics (traits).  It works the same way as breeding works in nature, except that we humans have a goal we’re working toward.  Firm, 5-oz, disease-resistant, crack-resistant tomatoes, for example.  In nature, the offspring that survive and reproduce the best in a given environment are ‘blindly’ selected and tend to stick around (Darwin, 1859).  Male (sperm) cells are transferred to female (egg) cells by a plant breeder, or a bee, or the wind, or a beetle, or a fly or bird or bat or moth (etc.).  The sperm and egg fuse to form an embryo, which grows to become what we’d call a plant.  In both natural and artificial selection of tomatoes, no non-tomato DNA has been added, and no tomato DNA has been removed.  By the classical definition of ‘genetic modification’, there has been none.  I suppose this paragraph was only incidentally about sex, and probably a disappointment to some.  Sorry.

Fig. 2.  Tainan, a tiny heirloom

The confusion of the issue may lie with the Flavr Savr tomato.  This was developed (yes, genetically modified) in the mid-90’s to resist softening during ripening.  It has a couple bits of manufactured DNA in it to make this possible.  The Flavr Savr is no longer grown or sold in the marketplace (that was SO 1990’s), and to my knowledge, no other transgenic tomatoes are either.

 

Fig. 3.  Rutgers, historically much-cultivated and like all other tomatoes we can buy, bred conventionally.

Confusion may also lie with the plant hormone ethylene.  Ethylene is made from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, but it’s also made by plants.  Keep your bananas away from your carnations, right?  Bananas make ethylene gas, which causes carnations and snapdragons to senesce (die).  Tomatoes make ethylene as they ripen.  If you harvest tomatoes a bit early, but not too early, they are hard enough to ship but will still turn red later.  If you expose these pre-ripened tomatoes to ethylene gas, they will ripen more quickly and uniformly.  That’s what happens to a lot of the tomatoes in our stores.  They are not genetically modified, they are treated with a plant hormone.  That’s not unusual at all.  Ethylene is used to ripen bananas, and to help make cucumber seeds (by eliminating male flowers from female parents).  It’s used in growing ornamental plants quite a bit too (but not as much as many other hormones, and especially hormone inhibitors).

So please, if you are someone who tells anybody who will listen that the tomatoes in the store are GMOs, stop it.  They’re not.

I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have…

Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
– Ambrose Bierce

We just completed our annual student/hort garden spring plant sale.  I spent the better part of three days encouraging, suggesting, wheeling, dealing, and dispersing information, most of it sound, and all for a good cause. Generally enjoyed my legitimate excuse to sell some plants and also stay away from my ridiculous desk/computer.  My “Ornamental Plant Production and Marketing” seniors have a unique interest, as they not only grow plants for the sale, the last bit of the semester has been spent discussing cost accounting and (much more fun) marketing, including garden center management.  Through the hort club sale, they get to deal with real people with real questions.

One of these real people accosted one of my students late in the day Friday. Off in the distance, I saw an animated exchange as he nervously pointed her in my direction (ask Dr. Holly!)

“Is this a cultivar?” the rather intense lady barked (yipped, actually) as she marched over and shoved a quart pot of Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens) up to my face.  Close enough that I could read the big ol’ label quite clearly – which did not list a cultivar name.

“Doesn’t seem to be,” I deduced, rather brilliantly.  Did I mention it’s perilously close to beer:30.

I processed for another moment, and then noted “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a named selection of this.”

“Are you sure?! Because I don’t want any cultivars, you know, things that have been MESSED WITH!”

Here we go. 

“Ma’am, many of our perennial and woody plant cultivars are simply selections identified by some eagle-eyed and knowledgeable plantsperson as perhaps more compact, or more floriferous, more vigorous, maybe a different color, etc.  Nature, in many cases, has already done the work.”  Working under a suspicious glare, I go on that plenty of named cultivars are virtually indistinguishable from the straight species or botanical variety; for better or worse; it’s mostly just a marketing thing. Echinacea purpurea var. alba just doesn’t sing like Echinacea ‘White Swan’.  Though there are (obviously) plant breeders out there working to create new/superior/weird stuff (usually patented), but really, the historical bulk of what we have in our gardens is the stuff of perspicacious serendipity.


Said species, courtesy of NPIN.

She pursed her lips, stared hard at the tag, and repeated “But how do I know this hasn’t been MESSED WITH? And when it says native – that means to here, right?” 

*Pop* goes yet another can of worms.

I guess I could have said “Yep.”  Pachysandra procumbens appears on everyone’s “native groundcovers” list east of the Mississippi.  However, it is not native to Southwest Virginia, despite our location on the eastern edge of the Alleghany Mountains. It’s fairly rare, mostly found in the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee and assorted limestone-y bits of Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky. I take a deep breath and commence with the disclaimers.

I thought I was doing pretty well; then behind me I hear a familiar voice – Dr. Stephen Sheckler, lauded botany professor emeritus, poobah in the Linnaean society, and loyal plant sale shopper. He stepped in with an “I couldn’t help but overhear” and proceeded to explain the effects of glacial episodes on native flora distribution a mere twenty thousand years ago and Pachysandra may have indeed been native here if you look at the broader picture etc. etc. etc. Five minutes later, he was explaining why we have similar ecotypes to the Yunnan Provence, and I excused myself and wandered off to sell a Japanese maple. We’d both tried to answer her questions to the best of our ability. My utmost respect and admiration goes out to those of you in retail who do this on a daily basis.

My student was pleased to reported that she went back and bought the entire tray.

These are a few of my (least) favorite things…

Spring clean-up came in earnest this weekend at Daisy Hill farm.  Everything will be downhill from here as my least favorite yard chore; cutting back our ornamental grasses, is done for the year.  I know, I know, there are all kinds of shortcuts and tricks for this job including lassoing grasses for the last round-up (see Holly’s March 8 post), duct-taping them, and cutting them down with hedge-trimmers or a chainsaw.  Unfortunately, between our winter snow beating them down and our dogs using them as their own personal jungle playground, standing the grasses up neatly to await a trim just isn’t an option.  So I dive in and do it the old-fashion way; armed with a set of hand-loppers, every piece of  personal protective equipment I can find, and the entire repertoire of swear words my Army sergeant Old Man taught me.  Between hacking, cussing, and hauling it’s a two afternoon job.  On the plus side, it did give me time to ponder my top five list of least favorite yard jobs.  See how it compares with your list…

 

  1. Cutting back ornamental grasses
  2. Picking up black walnuts (this is to Fall what no. 1 is to spring)
  3. Weeding (the only redeeming factor is instant gratification)
  4. Deadheading (yeah, it’s not the hard but you know you’ll have to turn right around and do it again (and again and again…)
  5. Leaf raking (Actually, this wouldn’t be so bad but I went out and bought a chipper-shredder a couple years ago and feel compelled to use it.  Works like a champ – shreds leaves as fast as I can feed them in.  Too bad the bag needs to be emptied approximately every 43 seconds…)

Mystery sparkler exposed

I really liked the answers you brave few came up with for Friday’s photo.  I could absolutely see how each one made sense – but unfortunately none of them were correct.  It’s actually a raindrop sitting on top of an expanding larch bud:

This turned out to be much trickier than I anticipated.  I promise the next one won’t be.

(And no, the raindrops do not magnify sunlight and cause the expanding needles to burn!)

It’s That Time of Year

This time of year is tough for folks who do work with plants.  It’s the happiest time of year because the world is turning green again, but it’s also the busiest time of year because we need to be inside teaching, outside planting, and also on the road since spring talks are finishing up.  Honestly I’m having trouble finding an hour to myself to work on writing up papers and articles.

That said, let me leave you with something that’s been bugging me the last few days (based on an article I read a few years ago).  If a person were in inhale a small seed, would it grow into their lungs?

What do you think?  Real or BS?

What to do when it’s still raining?

It’s almost May…and it’s still raining. Even for our normally wet spring climate, this has been an unusually soggy year. I’m also blaming the weather on my 3rd or 4th cold so far this year, which has knocked me flat for the last 6 days (which was why I had no Friday puzzle posted). So in between blowing my nose, hacking my lungs out, and generally feeling sorry for myself, I started looking over 10 years’ worth of photos of our home landscape.

You’ve seen bits and pieces of this before in some of my postings. But one of the spots I’m most proud of is the tiny east-facing side yard that originally contained lawn, a lilac, and a border of arborvitae. Within the first few years the lawn came out and plants started going in. In 2004 I’d installed some small rhododendron, a redbud (left foreground), and a whole lot of woodchips:

Since then we removed the lilac (it had been planted too close to the garage and was a powdery mildew magnet), put in an arbor and wisteria (on the right), and added a few more plants (ferns, bleeding hearts, various bulbs and tubers, etc.).  Here it is two (2006) and five (2009) years later:

This year we’ll finish off the area with some flagstone pavers.

One of the main reasons I’m so pleased with this area is that it was inexpensive to redo and it established quickly. We bought the redbud, the wisteria, and the bulbs, but the rest were donations from friends’ gardens, or volunteers that popped up elsewhere in the yard, or plants that someone else wanted removed (like the larger rhody in the far left corner and the dogwood in the right foreground, 2006 photo). The chips were free; the flagstones were a major score from craigslist (free to whomever would pry them up and lug them out).  All the purchased trees and shrubs were barerooted; and root-pruned if needed before planting. Upkeep is minimal except for a bit of pruning and spot watering during the hottest summer months; we’ve lost no plants other than the occasional bulb poaching by squirrels.

It’s just a little bitty sideyard…but I enjoy walking through it every time I’m outside, even in the rain.

Who you gonna call?

As I noted last week, this has been a long winter in Michigan – OK, Jeff, no chortling from the frozen tundra of Minnesota…  Most gardeners in this area have only been able to do their spring yard and garden clean-ups in fits and starts as the weather allows.  We’re finally warming up a bit this week but now strong storms are in the forecast.  One of the things gardeners will want to do is to size up any winter damage that has occurred since they put things to bed last fall.  Although our winter was long, it was otherwise unremarkable with few temperature extremes – low or high – that would likely cause problems.  In fact, aside from some heavy snow in February, the winter of 2010-11 was probably the closest thing we’ve had to a ‘normal’ winter in the 11 years I’ve lived in Michigan.  Nevertheless, we will still be taking numerous extension calls on what we would consider ‘typical’ winter damage to trees and shrubs.

In this neighborhood not too far from my house, deer have declared open season on arborvitae.

One of the biggest issues we face is wildlife damage.  The two biggest sources of problems are small mammals and deer. Small mammals such as mice, rabbits, squirrels and voles cause damage mainly by gnawing on trunks and branches.  Despite their small size, these animals can kill trees by removing bark and underlying tissue around the circumference of a tree trunk, a process referred to as ‘girdling’.  If a large portion of trunk circumference has been girdled, trees are unable to move energy reserves between roots and shoots, and will eventually die.  Deer can cause extensive damage to trees and shrubs due to feeding and also through rubbing their antlers.  Deer feeding is often indicated by a ‘browse line’ based on how high deer can reach.   Rub damage from deer antlers can cause major deformation to trunks and can even kill trees by girdling.  I was in a new subdivision in the East Lansing area this weekend and well over half of the trees on the tree lawns will need to be replaced due to extensive deer rub damage.

At least half of the trees in this entire subdivision will need to be replaced due to deer-rub damage.

Dealing with wildlife damage is a complex issue and varies with local conditions and wildlife pressure.  Fortunately, wildlife experts from several universities (Cornell, Clemson, Nebraska, Utah State) have organized the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management. http://icwdm.org/  This site is one of the best resources I have run across for assessing and dealing with wildlife damage issues.  If you’re in a position where you have to deal with wildlife damage or advise clients about damage, this is a useful site to add to your bookmarks.

Harvesting an Experiment

This has been an exciting week for me.  On Monday we started cleaning off 72 rootballs of various tree species that had been planted 5 years ago for a study.  These trees had been planted in containers and become potbound at the nursery from which we received them.  We treated them in one of three ways.  Either we did nothing (in other words we just dropped the pot bound tree in a hole), we used the standard methods that Universities recommend for slicing potbound roots (Four deep slits down the sides and a deeply cut X across the bottom), or we cut off all of the circling roots by cutting the pot bound root system into a box shape.

A root ball cut into a box shape

The plan was to harvest after 4 years to see what happened – we decided to wait 5 – and boy did we see some interesting stuff.  At this point our results are preliminary – we need to run statistics before we can say anything conclusively – but this is what my eyes tell me.

  1. Trees that had their roots cut into boxes suffered reduced growth the first few years, BUT, their root systems look as good as any root systems that I’ve seen – almost no circling.
  2. We planted our trees with the surface of the soil at the same level as the surface of the media in the containers – which is too deep in most cases.  For trees with circling roots this created a severe problem as the circling roots often surrounded the stem – potentially causing suffocation of the tree later in life.
  3. Root systems that were cut using the 4 slit method didn’t look much different from those that weren’t cut at all.
  4. The number of large roots emanating from all of the treatments appeared to be about the same (we’ll need to run the stats before I commit to this one).  This is particularly interesting because many people expect large roots that are circling to continue circling — but that isn’t what usually happens (unless the hole where the tree is planted has hard sides which can force the roots to circle just like the container did).


This root system was from a control — no root pruning at all, but still plenty of large roots.

No matter what the results/statistics end up saying there will be more questions.  For example, all else being equal, how damaging are circling roots to the health of a tree if the tree is planted properly (no stem tissue under the surface of the soil) and the circling roots are under the surface of the soil?  If the answer is that circling roots under the surface of the soil aren’t very damaging (after all, there’s no stem tissue for them to crush) then why are we bothering to try to root-prune pot bound plants at all – what we should really be concentrating on is planting at the proper depth.

All the above is hypothetical though – I just enjoy thinking about this stuff as the data starts to roll in.  As we get more definitive answers and start to run the statistics I’ll let you know more.