About 3 months after I started my job in Minnesota I hired a technician to help me run the nursery and to manage research plots. His name is Chad and he stands about 6 foot 4, has shoulders that threaten to pop the sides of the skid steer loader whenever he enters it, and he knows his stuff because he needs to (and even if he didn’t know his stuff you’d be scared to tell him that because he looks dangerous with his frightening Fu-Manchu moustache). … Continue reading this article “Chad and Jeff’s Excellent Nursery Adventure”
Tag: soil
Eat your veggies! (But not the arsenic, or the chromium, or the lead…)
The last few years have been a perfect storm for the resurgence of home vegetable (and fruit) gardens. Grapevines are trellised along sidewalks, herbs replace the grass in parking strips, and tiny gardens of carrots and lettuce are shoehorned into any available spot. It’s all good – but we need to be particularly careful about what those plant roots might be taking up along with nutrients and water.
1) Contaminated soil. Many urban (and suburban, and even rural) soils are contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides, and/or industrial wastes. … Continue reading this article “Eat your veggies! (But not the arsenic, or the chromium, or the lead…)”
What’s in YOUR soil? (with apologies to Capitol One)
Urban environments are always challenging for landscape plants just because they are anything but “natural.” Temperatures are higher, water is often less available, and compacted soils have all the nourishing qualities of concrete. The single most important thing you can do to ensure long-term success of landscape trees and shrubs is to get their roots well established in the soil.
I’m going to leave the topic of soil amendments to another day (but you can find my myth columns about them at http://www.theinformedgardener.com… Continue reading this article “What’s in YOUR soil? (with apologies to Capitol One)”