iGarden

Sometimes I think we gardeners typecast ourselves as eccentric, solitude-loving, back-to-nature tree huggers.  And you know what?  There’s probably a good reason for that (it’s the truth?). 

But I know that gardeners are as diverse in their other interests as their plots are diverse in plants.  I love the solitude of gardening and hugging trees is a metaphorical passion of mine.  I love how primal it feels to sink a shovel into the ground.  I love the sound it makes when you push down on the shovel and small roots give way under the pressure. 

It is an entirely different sensation than swiping to unlock my iPhone.  And yet, I love that sensation too.  I love the ease of the movement.  I love the swoosh sound.  The experience is anything but primal.

Slide to Unlock doormats - A black version can be purchased for $49.90 here.

I have tried to marry these opposite experiences by downloading gardening apps and using iTunes to play music while I worked (I have a playlist of songs chosen just for me to enjoy while gardening) but, like I imagine all arranged marriages to be, the result was clumsy and disheartening.

Yesterday was a beautiful California spring day.  It was sunny and warm and quiet.  So after I finished eating lunch I went outside to soak it up.  I was dressed for work and happened to be sporting a bright white shirt.  Not wanting to put forth the energy it would take to select a new outfit should the current one get dirty was sufficient motivation not to pull weeds, prune off rusty rose leaves, or turn the compost while I was out there. 

Instead, I sat down and looked around.  Although gardeners may be diverse in their interests and tendencies, I have a hunch that just sitting down and doing nothing much in the garden is not something most gardeners actually do on a regular basis.   It felt odd at first.  It felt lazy and that made me feel guilty.  It felt like I was missing an opportunity to get ahead of things out there.  It felt like I should be doing something, but what could I do without getting dirty and having to change clothes before going back to work? 

And then it hit me.  Actually, it gently vibrated my leg.  I pulled out my phone to see what was invading my privacy and after seeing that it was just a "Words with Friends" notice that it was my turn, I thought to check my DavesGarden.com journal so I could look up the cultivar name of the gardenia I had been admiring a minute previously.  From there I decided that I would use my phone's notes feature to update some of the things that I had noticed about the yard that I could take care of some other time when I wasn't wearing white.  I started thinking about things like taking the antenna off the roof, replacing some of the stones and wooly thyme in the pathway, and whether it was time to take out the lavender I planted so many years ago and no longer fits the look . . .

My current list could use some work
but it's a starting point for this weekend.

It wasn’t exactly a quiet meditation in the garden.  But it wasn’t exactly tuning out the natural world with an iOS device either.  When it was time to head back to work I felt like I had both rested and accomplished something.   And that is a great feeling for any gardener. 

I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet

I heard Carole King's voice singing "I feel the earth move under my feet" when I saw today that the USDA had finally released an update to their US Plant Hardiness Zone chart.

Somehow, without moving to a new house my garden has become a zone warmer.  What was once just a Zone 9A garden is now a wonderful 9B garden.  What does this mean for me personally?  It means that I now have access to 2,023 plants at Annie's Annuals that will grow in my backyard.  Yesterday there were only 1,925 plants I could grow.  So there's that. 

This change has been a long time coming (22 years since the last update).  In the meantime, most people who care about this sort of thing had already adjusted their zones in their own mind or switched over to a different system such as the Sunset Western Garden zones which looks at your location's overall climate including summer highs, length of the growing season, rainfall and humidity and not just winter lows like the USDA chart does.   

I don't really see this making a huge difference in the way I garden.  To me, it's more of an acknowledgement on the part of the USDA that their previous map was so 90's and was overdue for a makeover.  It might also say something about global climate change . . . but I'll let the USDA speak for itself on that "hot" button topic. 

I'd love to hear if anyone had a more signficant change in their official zone rating and what that means to them as a gardener, if anything.

Rant Diffused

About a year ago I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.  It's probably the most important non-fiction book I've read.  And although I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a zealot and I'm definitely not a puritan when it comes to what I put in my body, I do get passionate about what I perceive to be problems with how our food reaches us and the gradual progression of our "food" becoming little more than industrial products packaged for our convenience.  Whatever knowledge and passion I have on this subject I owe to Omnivore.  If you haven't read it, you should.  (Okay, non-paid product plug out of the way.) 

My wife, on the other hand, has other things on her mind and really can't devote the sort of energy it takes to be mad at the world like I can.  I have to be okay with that because its her mind.  But every once in a while, I'll try to educate her about something without overwhelming her in the kinds of drama she doesn't want.

So when she brought home these pre-sliced apples I was prepared to turn it into a teachable moment.

You see, these apples don't turn brown.  Normally when I slice an apple it will turn brown before I can shove it into a tub of caramel and jam it into my gaping maw.  I've accepted this as a defining natural characteristic for an apple so when these apples didn't turn brown it really made me question what unnatural preservatives could be pumped into these to alter them so dramatically. 

As I've stated on this blog numerous times, I'm not scientifically-minded by nature but I am curious about science.  With that in mind, I decided it was time to conduct a non-controlled experiment.  I took this picture with the intent to see just how long it will take for these apples to turn brown.

Here we go.  Do scientists say anything at the start of
a project?  Play ball, we have lift off, or get 'er done? 
Anything? 

While waiting for them to turn brown I got online to do a little extra research.

Brief aside: I am of a generation that has straddled both sides of the information age.  When I was in school research was conducted by reading encyclopedias, source material, and microfiche.  My 8th grade paper was on the history of the atomic bomb.  So I went to our family encyclopedia to start reading up on the subject but I couldn't find anything on it at all.  Turned out, our encyclopedias were older than the atomic bomb was.  Kids have it so easy these days. 

Back to apples.  According to the package there are only two ingredients in these apples.  The apples themselves and calcium ascorbate.  "Haha, Crunch Pak people, I've got you in my sights now!" I thought.  If calcium ascorbate doesn't sound like scientific jargon meant to conceal ghastly side effects I don't know what does.  Acorbate just sounds like something that will harden your arteries, shut down your kidneys and cause priapism.

They don't look great, but they aren't getting browner.

Or maybe it's just good use of science.

According to a company called UniChem it's pretty harmless.  In fact, it sounds like it might even be good for us.

Ascorbic acid is the pure form of vitamin C; however, with the combination of calcium, the supplement calcium ascorbate is produced. Because calcium ascorbate is less acidic and thus, easier on the digestive tract, it can be consumed in high doses without the possible side effects like diarrhea, rashes and stomach aches that may occur in individuals who are sensitive to taking pure vitamin C.

This picture is blurry because I was too drunk on
apple cider to hold my phone still. 

It goes on to say that:

Calcium ascorbate offers an efficient way to supplement vitamin C and the essential mineral, calcium, at the same time. Amongst other mineral ascorbates, calcium ascorbate is a non-acidic form that can provide the same great benefits of vitamin C without upsetting the stomach and digestive system.

So, if the only thing that's been added to these apples to keep them from turning brown is this magical combination of vitamin C and calcium you could make the argument that these apples are even better for you than regular apples are!

Sober again.  No noticeable change in 4 hours!

Still, isn't it more than just a little unsettling that these don't turn brown?  I left the apples out overnight and still didn't notice any browning.  They had gotten very dry and the peels were starting to bubble a little bit but the flesh still looked like a fresh-cut apple.

So I've concluded that my thesis was all wrong and that these apples are probably fine.  They are probably better than fine, in fact.

For an in-depth article on how these apples were brought to market, check out this piece from the New York Times Magazine:  Twelve Easy Pieces.  Within the article are some interesting facts such as:

• In studies, students in Florida ate twice as many apples when they were sliced as compared to whole apples.  Students in Nevada ate three times as much when the apples were sliced.
• Americans eat half as many pounds of apples as Europeans do per capita.
• They figured out that cutting an apple in 12 slices optimizes freshness.  Apparently, when you cut an apple in normal situations the apple increases production of the hormone ethylene.  The cutting also ruptures cells that had compartmentalized substances that suddenly spill out and intermingle.  
• In 2005, McDonald's stocked 54 million pounds of pre-sliced apples.
• Before the 1960s, boxcars full of unmarketable apples were dumped into Washington's Columbia river.  Then they learned to make frozen juice concentrate out of those apples instead.
• Apple growers in Washington harvest apples in late summer and early fall and store them in oxygen-depleted containers so they can slowly distribute them throughout the year. 

So my teachable moment that I was getting all ramped up for?  Looks like the teacher became the student.  Story of my life. 

Little Victories

One of several buckets of compost
this year!

I like to know that what I’m doing is correct.  If I think I’m doing something wrong, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll freeze in my tracks and do nothing.  This applies to most areas in my life but it was especially true in my life as an inexperienced gardener.

Not knowing when to prune the azaleas (or if you prune them at all) meant that they didn’t get pruned.  Not knowing when to plant cool season vegetable seeds meant that I bought my carrots from the grocery store.  And not knowing when my compost was done meant I just kept adding to it and made it so that it never was, in fact, finished composting.

But I’ve been learning more about these types of things over the years and gaining confidence as a reuslt.  It’s always a little surprising to me when I actually learn something that is halfway technical - a botanical name, for instance.  But what is more surprising than eventually learning a few impressive sounding names and when to perform specific chores was the realization that as far as hobbies go, gardening is pretty forgiving and it doesn’t matter if I do everything right.  The expert advice may say to plant your Japanese maple in the fall, but if you decide to plant in spring, everything should eventually work out.  I like this about gardening.  It keeps it relaxing to me and makes it more than just a scientific experiment with a strict set of rules that need to be followed.    

I like that I can buy the wrong plant for the wrong space and that my penance for the mistake might be nothing more serious than having to dig up that plant and put it somewhere else or give it away to someone who has the perfect spot for it.  How many other hobbies do you know where you can turn a mistake into a gift? 

Compost ready to be spread.

Although I’m upfront about my lack of a scientific background I have fallen in love with the very scientific act of composting.  I am pretty sure that composting is the only thing in the world that could make me interested in learning about carbon to nitrogen ratios.  It’s amazing how you can fill a bin with shredded leaves and lawn clippings and come back in a couple days to a steaming pile that has shrunk in half. 

Just how hot is your pile, anyway?

And I’ve finally gotten it down “to a science”.  I’ve finally gotten in tune with the way my garden produces debris and I’ve finally made it work for me.  This is my little victory.  I finally timed it so that I could harvest my compost bin in its entirety before the leaves of autumn began to fall. 

Spread out nice and neat - at least until the leaves fell.

That means that I have not only been able to add to my yard buckets and buckets of beautiful worm poop and whatever else makes up compost, but I’ve freed up all the space in my bin for my garden’s busiest composting months just in time. 

And if I do it right, all this should be ready for a new harvest when spring, at the opposite edge of time’s orbit, finally circles back around. 

This is a newly renovated section and that space between the Japanese maples is begging for a few
more plants.  I apologize for the over exposure.  This photo was taken with my phone at midday.

Changing Leaves: Science or Philosophy?

Entertaining TV for nerds and people who like explosions.

I don’t have a very scientific mind.  That’s not to say that I don’t occasionally watch Myth Busters or that I don’t want to know why things are the way they are – I just mean that when it comes to complex science my brain takes a little while longer to process things if I can process them at all. 

One of the primary reasons I bother with learning the science of things though is so that I might later be able to tell someone that they are wrong.  Petty, I know.

While following links today, I was led to the web site of a professor of plant physiology at Appalachian State University.  He calls himself “The Fall Color Guy.”  That sounded like a good place for scientific simpleton's like me to find a few takeaway factoids that could prove useful to me later on.  

My step father is of the age where he has a few pet shticks.  One of them is a conspiracy theory related to Daylight Savings Time.  Another one is that he has always claimed that leaves change colors in the fall because of the changing trajectory of the sun’s light waves.  That’s the kind of thing that sounds just scientific enough that it could be true but it also sounds like total bull to me because I am pretty sure it has something to do with chlorophyll and not light.  But I never challenged him on it because I didn't know the real, complete answer.  I have operated on the assumption that it had something to do with the colder temperatures causing chlorophyll to recede from leaves but I had no idea if that was totally correct and I had no explanation for why the colder weather would cause that effect.          

This is what passes for fall "color" in my neighborhood.

So, having stumbled upon a site written by the Fall Color Guy, I decided it was high time I got an actual, reliable scientific explanation for what causes the color of leaves to change in the fall even if it meant I would have to turn on, warm up, and then actually use the left side of my brain to decipher the explanation.

I clicked around the web site trying to find a one-sentence answer along the lines of “because it gets cold and trees stop making chlorophyll in the cold” when I stumbled upon the following paragraph:

“Why do leaves appear Green?  [emphasis added]  The green color in leaves results from the production of a compound called chlorophyll (chl). We see the leaf as green because this compound is most efficient in absorbing red and blue wavelengths of light, and relatively inefficient in absorbing the green wavelengths. This means that the light reflected from the leaf back to our eyes is enriched in the green spectrum, making it appear green to us.”

I’ve been thinking about this for a couple hours now.  It is, quite frankly, blowing my mind.  This isn’t just science we're talking about, its philosophy.  Its metaphysics! 

Aristotle - the "father of metaphysics".  I wish I could ask him about how we know what colors we are really seeing.
Given that he has apparently lost all his color, I think he'd have something important to say about the subject.

If the leaf just appears to be green then that statement implies that the leaf isn't really green.  And if it isn't really green then couldn't it be said that green leaves don’t really change colors in the fall since they weren't green in the first place?  Do leaves merely appear to change colors in the fall?  Or, more accurately, do we just start seeing leaves as they really are when fall comes?  If that’s the case, then what sounded like an absurd supposition made by my step father could actually have some truth to it.  After all, if the chlorophyll does a bad job at absorbing green wavelengths, could the different trajectory of light waves in the autumn reduce the amount of green wavelengths reflecting off leaves? 

Clearly, I still had too many questions to let it rest at this so more reading was required. 

A Japanese maple photographed in November of 2010 with what "appears" to be fall colors.

A few clicked links later and I was on the USDA Forest Service's web site which had a page titled "Why Leaves Change Color."  It still didn't provide me with a sound byte answer, but this was close:

"During the growing season, chlorophyll is continually being produced and broken down and leaves appear green. [There's that word "appear" again!]  As night length increases in the autumn, chlorophyll production slows down and then stops and eventually all the chlorophyll is destroyed.  The carotenoids and anthocyanins that are present in the leaf are then unmasked and show their colors."

Okay, I accept that it's a scientific process that causes leaves to appear to change colors in the autumn.  But I prefer my philosophical interpretation of the annual occurrence: leaves only reveal their true identities in the fall.  In my half-working mind, the changing colors of leaves encourages me to remember that what I see on the surface isn't always a true reflection of the essence of a thing.  I suppose that's true for people too. 

******

The USDA's web site had some other good explanations for what triggers the changes in color, what leaf fall does to the tree, and what role weather plays in it all, but frankly, I OD'd on science for today and I'll just have to bookmark the site for future reference.  Hopefully I'll get back around to it before my mom and her husband come to visit again. 

Fears

I have been thinking about fear lately.  Like most things, fear belongs on a continuum.  On one end there is the polite “fear” we experience when we say “I fear he isn’t home.  Can I take a message?”  Or the uneasy fear of self-loathing we get when we are forced to listen to John Mayer's album "Continuum".  And on the other end there is the fear of public speaking which many say is worse than their fear of death. (Raising my hand.)

In my last post I explored my fear of spiders.  On the continuum, I’d place my arachnophobia above my fear of dropping my keys into a storm water grate, but well below my lingering fear that someday I’ll show up for class with no clothes on.  Never mind the fact that I haven’t been in school for years. 

Although there are things that seem to be universally feared (toy clowns, being alone forever, and dentists), I believe that our fear is uniquely personal.  There’s always a reason for our fears.  My wife fears birds because of an incident that happened years ago.  From what I’ve pieced together, it sounds like some poor bird had the misfortune of entering her house through the chimney and flying around while my wife, a young girl at the time, and her mother ran about frantically screaming and waving tennis rackets at it.  At least that’s how I imagine the scene.  The point is, that's her personal reason for fearing birds.  I knew that about her but I totally miscalculated where on the continuum she ranked her ornithophobia.

You see, for years I’ve done everything I could to encourage birds to come into my yard.  I faithfully restock my bird feeder, I keep my fountain full and clean for them to use if they are brave enough, and I have refrained from using any chemicals that would harm them.  And they’ve thanked me by swarming my yard and dining on my seeds and hopefully my unwanted bugs.  At times, I can look out into my postage-stamp sized yard and count dozens of tweety birds, blue jays, and doves.  And I never once noticed my wife cowering in the corner when this happened.  Because she continued to bring home bags of bird seed for me I just figured her fear of birds only related to invasions of Hitchcockian proportions.

Early this spring I noticed that a sparrow kept flying up to the eaves in the front of our house.  I went to investigate one day and discovered that a screen beneath the eave had been pushed back allowing entrance into our attic.  The sparrow had decided it was a good place to make a nest and I didn’t mind.  After all, it’s not the kind of attic that is used to store old mementos.  It’s just for insulation, spider webs, and ghosts.

Broken attic screen and cobwebs.  Lovely, no?

Weeks or months passed (I wasn’t paying attention to how long) until one day I started noticing constant chirping.  It seemed that a couple eggs had hatched.  Again, a couple weeks went by (or maybe a month?) and I assume it was time for the birds to grow up and start taking care of themselves like every other responsible bird does.  But these birds were total slackers.  They were either too lazy to leave or were too dim-witted to figure out how.  Instead of leaving the nest via the convenient exit their mother had created for them, they decided to go through the attic to the other side of the house where the vents were securely fastened and not budging no matter how incessantly they chirped.  This went on for two days – I paid attention this time.  Midway through the second day I got a text from my wife in all capital letters which is like the modern day version of a parent using their child’s first, middle, and last name to get their attention.  “THERE ARE BIRDS LIVING IN OUR ATTIC.  YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF THIS.”  Well, yeah, there are birds living in our attic.  They’ve been up there for weeks (or months)!  I thought she knew this already.  I thought it didn’t bother her because she hadn’t said anything yet.  Apparently, when I told her “we have birds living in our attic” she just tuned me out because I was talking about the garden again and tuning me out is how she puts up with my barrage of useless-to-her information.        

When I arrived home from work a little while later, dinner was almost ready and it smelled so good that I just sort of forgot about the birds, the text message, and the fear continuum.  It was chow time! 

And then all hell broke loose.  As we ate, the chirping that we had been ignoring over the last few days changed.  Suddenly it sounded as if the birds had found their way inside and they had brought a megaphone with them.  They were that loud.  But not as loud as my wife’s silent glare.  Uh-oh.  I knew that glare was screaming “I TOLD YOU TO TAKE CARE OF THIS.”  So I went to investigate. 

In our hallway we have a whole-house fan.  I’m not sure how common these are in other parts of the world but the basic concept is that you have a big, loud fan that draws cool air through open windows in your house and cycles it through your attic.

Our lazy little birds were sitting on the attic-side of the fan chirping for help while their voices echoed off the metal of the vent. 

Not worried about anyone’s fear continuum (because they were just baby sparrows) I got a broom out and used it to push open the vents.  Too my surprise, one of the birds dropped right through and landed with a flurry of wings and screeches.  The flurry belonged to the birds.  The screeches were my wife’s. 

I decided that the best way to handle this would be to get a bucket and something flat to cover it with for a scoop and release.  But when I came back with them I couldn’t find the bird anywhere.  And then I heard the chirping in the attic again.  I concluded that the bird had somehow figured out how to fly and had pushed its way back into the safety of the attic.  A few minutes later I was in the attic, armed with a bucket, a piece of cardboard, and an iPhone flashlight app.  Sure enough, there was the bird sitting on top of the fan.  I was able to scoop him up pretty easily and take him outside to dump him in a place where my dog wouldn’t just eat him.    

On my way to the release point, I passed my wife who had retreated to the safety of the yard throughout this event.  I remember thinking how I must have looked like her knight in shining armor as I carried away her great fear in a bucket.  Men reading this are probably nodding their heads while the women are shaking their heads with a knowing look of pity on their faces. 

For the male readers I should probably spell it out.  See, it turns out that when I came home I was expected to take care of the birds right away.  I had chosen to tend to my fear of being hungry over tending to my wife’s fear of birds in the house.  I apologized.  Although I felt I had taken care of it, her point that I had done it on my time and in response to how I measured the situation was well taken. 

But at least it was all done and we could move on.  Now that I had cleared the attic I could go fix the screens and that would be the end of it. 

Days passed with no more chirping.  The birds had moved on.

The ensuing silence was filled, however, with the unmistakable smell of rot.  “Oh no,” I thought, “I missed one and that poor bird finally died in the attic.”  I almost wish that had been the case.  As my wife discovered a day or two after we both discovered the smell, neither me nor my dog are very good trackers.  That bird that initially fell through the fan that I couldn’t find that I just assumed had learned to fly?  Yeah, I’m pretty sure it didn’t find its way back into the attic.  It died on the floor of our guest room. 

You know what else is scary?  Maggots . . . 

The Salesman, Spiders, and the Heebie-Jeebies

I hate it when strangers come to the front door.  I don't personally despise the people that do it.  I know they've got products to sell or beliefs to share and I support that.  I just don't enjoy telling people no thanks, not interested, or not today.

Once upon a time I was the person that would show up at people's front doors.  But I wasn't selling anything or bringing Good News.  I wasn't even bringing lower case good news.  I worked as a process server throughout my college years.  If you don't know, process servers are the people that show up with eviction notices, divorce papers, or subpoenas to appear in court.  Like I said, not good news.  So I've got some level of sympathy for these guys.

But this last week I saw a uniformed guy going door-to-door while we were eating dinner so I did what every sympathetic person would do.  I closed the blinds and pulled the curtains closed so we could pretend like we weren't home.  I told my wife and child not to make a peep and then I spied on him.  I saw him go up the steps at the next-door neighbor's house and ring the door bell.  He glanced toward my house while he waited and I darted back from my hiding spot between the curtains.  Twenty minutes went by and there had been no knock on the door so I assumed my non-verbal message was received clearly.  I opened the curtains and the blinds and went about my normal post-dinner routine.





And then it came.  Knock, knock.  Who's there?  Interrupting cow.  Interrupting cow [Moooooo].  (That's my daughter's favorite joke right now except when she tells it, she politely waits for you to finish asking "Interrupting cow, who?" before she says "moooooo" and breaks into hysterics.)

This guy had caught me with my blinds open so I had to at least give him the courtesy of listening to his pitch.  He was selling a discounted neighborhood rate for organic poison that they would guarantee would kill all our ants and spiders from the foundation of the house all the way to the curb.  If all the neighbors did it, we could rid the entire block of pests!  But wait, there was more!  As part of their expert service they also look for spider egg sacks so they not only kill the existing spiders but future generations as well.  It sounded like a great deal if you hate living things.

Spider webs are all over this geranium.

I don't want to get too preachy because I know people have different views on this (including one friend of mine who may or may not read this blog).  But since this is my blog I'll tell you where I stand.  I don't like spiders.  They creep me out.  I'm pretty sure there is dead tissue in my arm from a black widow's bite.  But the worst thing about spiders are their webs.  They are everywhere this time of year and they not only collect dead bugs but every bit of yard debris small enough to get kicked up in the wind.  It's a giant, ugly, ghastly mess. 


Blades of cut grass caught up in spider webs along my fence.

Every time I want to relax in my Adirondack chair I have to bring my "spider stick" so I can knock down the webs that I know will be all over the chair and threaded through the slats of it.  It's a pain in the butt but it beats the feeling that you are sitting on top of a spider's nest.  And really, is there a worse feeling in the world than running your face through a spider web?  No, there isn't.  Plus, once you run your face through a spider web, you are bound to get the heebie-jeebies all day long and every time you feel something you have to assume it's the hairy legs of the spider who built that web and it is about to crawl into your ear and exact gruesome revenge on you for having destroyed its hard work.  (In my mind, "gruesome revenge" could mean any of the following: biting your ear drum, laying eggs in your ear canal, or simply taking up camp in your ear and refusing to leave.)

In spite of my loveless relationship with spiders, I have so far avoided the temptation to spray my yard to destroy them because I have read enough about beneficial bugs (spiders aren't insects, apparently) to be concerned about preserving the predator-prey balance in my yard.  I know that if I destroyed generations of spiders in my yard I would only be trading one pest for several others and right now I'm not dealing with aphids or mites or scale and I don't want to.  I just have to put up with the inconvenience of spider webs and, from time to time, I have to smash one in a Kleenex and flush it down the toilet if it decides to take up residence inside.

Like the weeds in my lawn, the spider webs that adorn my fences, eaves and corners are visual representations of my reluctant acceptance of the idea that in order to maintain my garden in a way that I feel good about, I have to accept that there will sometimes be aspects of it that I don't necessarily like.

So, I've been researching non-toxic deterrents for spiders for those areas where I would prefer them to stay away.  The one suggestion that seems to come up most often is to use lavender.  Um, that picture right above this with the spider web attached to the flower . . . that's lavender.  Any other recommendations?

Know Thine Enemies or Something Like That

Weeds!  Curses, curses, curses!

While I was at work today I kept thinking about how much of my limited time out in the yard has been spent pulling weeds recently. As a chemical-free gardener, weed control is a laborious process for me. I liken it to jogging. It’s no fun, but when you are finished you feel like you have accomplished something and you feel better.  Well, that is you feel better unless you pull a muscle, develop shin splints, sprain an ankle, pop a blister on your foot, ruin your knees, get bit by a poodle, step in a puddle, fall on your face, or suffer from heat stroke. And then, if you somehow manage to survive the ordeal, you know you will just have to do it again and again before you even start to see any long term benefits from your efforts.

Look, I’ve got a full-time job, a toddler to help raise, a couple softball teams to coach, book clubs to participate in, social obligations, neighborhood watch meetings to attend, and Boston Red Sox games that need to be watched. In other words, I really don’t want to spend my free time pulling stupid weeds.  [Heavy sigh] But I know I need to.  And yes, my waistline could probably benefit from some jogging as well. [Heavier sigh - pun intended.] 

While bitterly mulling over this topic, it occurred to me that I was feeling more than a little bit of animosity towards my weeds.  In fact, my thoughts on weeds were downright unkind!  After all, they compete with my plants, they monopolize my time, and they steal my garden tools when I’m not looking. Okay, I admit that last part isn’t entirely true. I probably just misplaced that trowel.  But still, it'll be a cold July day in Sacramento before I'll trust them with my stuff! (For the out-of-towners, there's no such thing as a cold July day in Sacramento.  Just look at weather.com for proof that I do not jest.)

Side note: I don’t know what I’d do without the internet. Aside from providing me with historical weather data and the gazillion other ways it enriches my life, I am so thankful for the knowledge the internet provides me in my gardening endeavors.  Seriously, what did people do when they had a question none of their friends could answer before there were search engines?  (I can practically hear my mom shouting "Encyclopedias, Dummy!" at me.) 

Still mulling over the role weeds play in my life I asked myself this morning, “What’s that quote about knowing your enemy's weaknesses?”  Sounds like a question for Google.  Go ahead, click on the link before reading on.  It's worth a giggle or two.  According to the always correct Internet, the quote is a lot less quotable than I had remembered. I was thinking something like “Know thine enemies” but turned up with the much longer-winded quote:

“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” -Sun Tzu,  "Art of War"

Bear with me. There is a point to all this. You see, I know I have weeds and I have established that they are my enemies, but unlike the Japanese maples cultivars, ornamental grasses, and bell peppers in my garden, I don’t know the names of my enemies.  I suppose I just never liked weeds enough to find out what they were called.  A gruff and generic "that's a weed" would suffice if someone asked me what I was cultivating in my driveway.  You see, unlike blooming poppies on the roadside or fragrant roses growing by a picket fence, you don't often hear people say stuff like "Oh my!  Check out that courageous little nutsedge growing in the crack on the sidewalk."  Call it a gap in my education as a gardener, but the study of weeds doesn't seem to lend itself to learning by osmosis.   

It was past time to change this deficiency of mine so, once again, I turned to Google even though I knew where it would take me this time. I’m lucky enough to live pretty close to the University of California at Davis which has a great horticultural department and they have an entire web site devoted to scientifically-supported advice on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for both agricultural purposes and home landscaping. Through their web site I was able to look at a key with the most common weeds in our area and then identify the three officers leading the forces against me.  Here they are:

Sergeant Spotted Spurge

This is where the sidewalk and my driveway meet.  "Welcome home" it screams at me every single day.

Colonel Creeping Woodsorrel

The horticultural version of tailgating: "Dude, get off my grass already!"

Growing amongst wooly thyme, this can be hard to spot until it flowers.

Commandant Common Purslane.

Today's Two-for-One special: Common Purslane with a splat of Spurge. 

The good news is that all three of these can be picked off - and I literally mean that literally.  As long as I stay vigilant and pull these out by hand before they set seed I will win the battle and, eventually, the war will be easier to fight.  In the meantime, I'm a better garden warrior for knowing their names. 

Potting Up Japanese Maples

Acer Palmatum 'Butterfly' Spring Color

I love the Garden Professors’ web site.  Their blog does a great job at dispelling gardening myths which seem to be more prevalent than in any other endeavor that I have encountered.  They use science to tell us when we are wrong and more often than not, this science has relieved me of the burden of doing something I didn’t really want to do in the first place (like making compost tea).

A recent post there has me all atwitter though.  They looked at the age old question: does size really matter?  Um, that’s container size, in this case.  As described in the post, “potting up” is the practice of growing plants in a small container and then moving it to larger containers as the plant grows.  This is a basic and widely-accepted gardening practice that I secretly believe gardeners love to pretend to hate. 

The professor’s thorough review of the vast amounts of published research conducted over the last few decades reveals that almost universally plants do better when grown immediately in the larger container.  The science says that the larger container allows for improved root development over the smaller containers.  That seems obvious enough even for those of us who aren’t scientifically inclined.  The author also pointed out that although it may appear that plants in the larger container grow slower than plants in the smaller container, the better root development in the larger container will allow the plant to catch up to and eventually surpass the growth of the plant in the smaller container.  Fair enough.  I can buy into that.  

But based on the “evidence” that I have personally collected as well as the evidence I unabashedly accepted as gospel from the proprietor of Davidsans’ Maples, I believe that Japanese maples are the exception to the rule.  We can’t explain the science of it, of course, but the theory we share is that Japanese maples grown in containers like to have their roots touching something.  I think it probably also more to do with the fact that most people find it easier to provide the right amount of water when a small tree is in a small pot, and when a medium tree is in a medium pot, and a large tree is in a gigantic, manly-sized pot.    

To illustrate my point, let me share my empirical experience with you.  In the spring of 2009 I purchased an Acer palmatum ‘Butterfly’ off of eBay.  I paid about $10 for it and what I got was a 10” twig.  Two years later I still have a twig.  I blame myself for two things: first for buying a tree off of eBay and secondly for putting it in a 12” pot where it did nothing but languish.  I “potted it down” last fall and when I did I wasn’t impressed with the root development at all.  In that regard, my experience differs with the evidence that says root development is encouraged by a bigger pot. 

Acer Palmatum 'Butterfly'

So far this spring my ‘Butterfly’ seems to be doing better than ever and, I dare say, I have seen actual growth already.  [Tongue-in Cheek] If that’s not irrefutable proof that Japanese maples are the exception to the rule, I don’t know what is. [End Tongue-in-Cheek]