Natures astonding fecundity

I started out writing this months edition of my gardening blog by taking a camera down to the vegetable gardens here at Rose Villa, thinking to brag a bit on the produce being produced by the gardeners. Instead I found myself noticing the weeds growing along the edges of the gardens, in empty plots and in the gardens themselves. Everything from a common dandelion to weeds that, much to my shame, I have no idea their names.

In many cases it's only when you start looking up close that the real beauty of these plants starts to present itself.

Sometimes it seems that we gardeners make a huge mistake when we classify plants into useful, profitable and 'good' plants and those that have no useful or profitable quality's, the 'bad' plants. The weeds.

I'm sure that most of us have heard what the definition of a weed is; a plant in the wrong place. But what appears to us as the wrong place is only a human definition. To a plant any place it can find to live, put down roots and reproduce is the right place.

What

beautiful picture a single dandelion makes when it's growing in a rock wall on the edge of a garden. As a gardener I could spend my entire life trying to get a 'flower' to grow in a rock wall and look as beautiful as this totally randomly placed 'weed'.

What is not apparent as I look at the photos I've included here are the number and variety of honey bees, wasps and bumble bees that were working the garden area. I was walking through knee high weeds with hundreds of flying insects buzzing around my legs. It was a minor miracle that I didn't get one or two of them up my shorts. But they all seemed to be more interested in collecting nectar from the flowers of any plant that happened to be in front of them.

In the picture of the corn tassels its' a bit hard to see, but there were dozens of bees in this little corn patch, all of them busily working over the tassels. I could get really close to all the flying insects before they took any notice at all that I was around.

In fact, if you look closely at the photo of the green leaves you will see that it was much more dangerous for the bees then for me. That's a common garden spider wrapping up a freshly caught bee that wondered into his web.

This seems to be turning into a photo op kind of blog today so I will end with a last few photos of beautiful plants that just happened to be in the wrong place so are considered weeds.

Water that plant

How much water do plants need?

Everyone knows that plants need to be watered, and indeed one of the most asked questions of a gardener is how much should my plants be watered? To answer this question you have to know why plants need water and how do they use the water. That’s what I’d like to talk about today.

Photosynthesis is the answer. Simply put; photosynthesis is the process that goes on within the leaves of plants that uses water plus carbon dioxide plus sunlight to create plant sugars that plants then use to produce growth. It was people like Jan van Helmont in the mid 1600’s and Nicolas-Theodore de Sussare in 1796 and many others who, through scientific experimentation proved that without water, sunlight and carbon dioxide plants would not grow. The exact chemical and physical processes are still being discovered as plant scientists today work down through the cellular and molecular levels into the atomic levels of plants.

How the water gets from your hose into and throughout the plant is another interesting question. The answer is xylem and phloem. Just under the bark or outer layer of the stem or trunk of a plant is the cambium layer of cells that is made up of phloem cells on the outside and xylem cells on the inside. This is where water from your hose, packed with nutrients from the soil, and after being absorbed by the roots flows up the xylem cells to the photosynthesis ‘factories’ in the leaves and then down through the phloem cells as sugar packed ‘sap’ to all the rest of the plant.

Carbon dioxide comes from the air, sunlight of course from the sun and water comes from either your hose or the clouds. We can’t really control how much carbon dioxide the plant gets and we can control sunlight only by providing shade for our plants, but we can control how much water our plants get, particularly in the summer time.

Here's two photos of tomatoes, they all were planted at the same time, but the ones on the right haven't been watered nearly as much as the ones on the left. Wilted and even burned leaves, lack of growth and vigor, much lighter green coloring are all signs of the plant not getting enough water. The drought affected plants are sacrificing leaves, branches and color to produce tomatoes in a desperate effort to reproduce themselves. And when the season is over the healthy well hydrated tomatoes on the right will have produced a much larger crop of fruit.

Think of it this way, plants that produce a lot of growth during the summer, like tomatoes, corn, other vegetables, annual flowers, and plants that have just been planted and haven’t had time to grow lots of roots will need lots of water, at least an inch or even more of water a week. But trees and well established shrubs which have huge root systems that can get to large amounts of water deep underground will not need nearly as much additional water from your hose. And the hotter and drier it is the more water those shallow rooted, newly planted shrubs, veggies, and flowers will need.

Here's a trick you can use to tell when your flowers and veggies need water; poke a hole in the ground near the plant with your finger, down past the first knuckel, if the ground is dry all the way down it's time to water. For shrubs that have been in the ground more then a year; if the lawn around the shrub is dry, water the shrub as you water the lawn. For major trees; dont worry about it, you couldn't get the water down deep enough to do any good anyway.

So here it is deep summer and those veggies and flowers and newly planted shrubs will need all the water you can give them, and the well established shrubs should be all right as long as the lawn around them is alright and those big established trees,with their huge and deep root systems can fend for themselves.

See you next time.

Sedgewick

I've heard it said that if the corn is knee high by the 4th of July it will be a good year, well, my corn is taller then I am so I guess it's going to be a great year. That's a second planting of corn in the beds on the left and some peas in the middle. The tall corn will be for our annual Luau in about 3 weeks. I'm hoping that I can get some ears of corn off the stalks before we have to use them around the pig when we put it in the ground to cook. It's already tasseling out now so we might just get some ears of fresh corn to put with the pig.

The tomato plants that were given to us by a local gardening club are not quite a forest. I may have planted them too close together! It will be tough to get in a harvest all the tomatoes, there are already zillions of small green tomatoes throughout the tomato forest. The only problem so far is that I suspect the "Supice" variety on this end of the bed may be slightly susceptible to leaf wilt diseases. That's verticilium and fusiarium blight to be exact. But so far "Supice" is only showing slight wilting, not bad so I will try to leave it till time to start harvesting tomatoes.

Some of the onions the kids planted back in April have become really big, and some have stayed small. All from the same bag so it must be something in the soil that is keeping the small ones from getting really huge. Just this week half a dozen of the smaller ones bolted and started to form flower heads so I pulled them. They are really flavorful and strong. The kids will be back next week for a summer gardening program and I cant wait to show them what happened to the onions they planted.

In moments that I wasn't planting and harvesting and watering and weeding the the veggie garden I was part of the Dragon Boat crew for the big Rose Festival Dragon Boat Races.

The photo on the left is one of our practices when it was pouring down rain, if it's not raining we aren't training I always say. I'm not sure if the rest of the team is sharing that sentiment. The reason I'm not on the boat is because I buggered my shoulder up a while back and had to stay on shore for a while.

We didn't win but we did have a great time, plus we are the only dragon boat team with their own cheerleaders. One of the most exciting times was when right at the start of the final race we got broadsided by the boat next to us, no serious injuries but it did take us out of the running for that race. That's racing.

I will stop now and leave you with a photo of a rose from our rose garden. This one is "Raven", a shrub rose. One of my favorites.

Problems, problems, problems!

Well, not really problems so much as learning experiences. And I will tell you, it has taken quite a bit of courage to admit that after more then 35 years in the landscape maintenance business, and after believing I was really quite an impressive gardener and horticultural expert that I just don't know all that much about how to grow food.

Just because I know what an Acer palmatum dissectum Atropurpureum is, how to plant and care for it doesn't mean I know what is the best tomato to plant on this particular hillside just south of Milwaukie. Let me tell you, when I went to Fred Meyers garden center to pick up 14 tomato plants, one for each one of my kids gardening group, which seemed like such a simple thing to do, I ran head on into the cruel reality's of the tomato fanciers world. There must have been several dozen different varieties of tomatoes! How was a poor fumble fingered lamebrain like me to know the difference between 'Big Boy' and 'Willamette" tomatoes?

Well, I did manage to get 4 or 5 different varieties for my 14 kids. But then came time to plant the little things. Does anyone else know about the unofficial 'rule' about not planting tomatoes before Mothers Day? One of the kinder and sweeter of the other gardeners down in the gardens told me about this planting 'rule'; but for her I would have put the tender little tomato starts in a good two weeks early, and who knows what would have happened then? But I did get them in, even scrounged some tomato cages to put around them, but I am beginning to wonder if the patio variety tomato really needs that huge cage? Time will tell I suppose.

Oh, and need I say it? My tomatoes are some of the smallest in the entire garden area!

And then there are the potato plants. I managed to find some seed potatoes at one of the garden centers about a month ago, they were in a big bag and all of them were already sprouting out and looking really strange. But I handed them to several of the kids to plant one fine Wednesday, and away they went, digging holes sticking seed potatoes in. And yes I did insist that they plant them with the sprouting parts pointed up, although I'm pretty sure at least one of the kids didn't listen to that little piece of advice. And now I'm finding strange vacancies in several places in the potato rows and several suspiciously potato-y looking plants in rows where they aren't supposed to be any potatoes.

And of course one of the other gardeners here in the garden area planted his potatoes at least one or two weeks after we planted ours, and his are at least twice the size of ours! I have some serious potato envy.

But it hasn't been all troubles and tribulations. We harvested the radishes and arugula that the kids planted when then first started coming over and that was a big success. Each of the kids took home a handful of radishes and a handful of arugula. That was a really good day, we even got to take a huge amount of radish and arugula up to the main RV kitchen. What the kitchen boss, Brian was going to do with at least several hundred radishes is not my problem. Did anyone have any of that puff pastry thing stuffed with cheese and our home grown arugula? I tried several and they were wonderful. Thanks Brian.

And then one fine day I noticed that there was some rhubarb in the plot where my grapes are planted; will wonders never cease. I checked around and found out it was time to harvest the succulent stalks, so I did and left them with the kitchen boss Brian. I ran out the back door of the kitchen before he had time to do anything more then mumble something about rhubarb sauce. I'll have to check back with him later to see what he did with the rhubarb.

I picked and ate a strawberry from one of the plants down in the gardens this week, I'm not that fond of strawberries but somehow this one was extra good. More are coming up ripe every day, I can see now that one of my mistakes was not planting enough strawberry plants.They are coming ripe just about as fast as I can eat them, so there may not be many that make it up to the kitchen.

Speaking of strawberries; there are some strawberries in the Health Center patio area that are almost ready to be picked as well as the blueberries. The fig tree and the apricot tree are doing great as well as the herbs. If you happen to go out in the patio area however, stay away from the blue flowered ceanothus, it's really attracting bees right now.

IMPORTANT UPDATE;
We just recieved a donation of 108 tomato plants and various other pepper plants. We now have a grand total of 94 tomato plants planted down in the garden, I'll be putting 6 tomato plants into the health center patio area and I have 22 tomato plants left over. I've done the math on this and it's a bit scary; if each tomato plant produces 100 tomatos we could have aroung 9,400 tomatos this summer! We may be sneaking bags of tomatos onto neighbors front poarches at night just to get rid of them.

But that's enough of my problems

Happy gardening to you

Sedgewick

Has it really only been 3 weeks since my last posting? Just seems like a lot has been going on around here and I haven't had time to think about this blog. So where shall I start?

How about with the worm bins? I finally decided to move them down into the gardens. There is a space on the north side of one of the tool sheds that is just right for them, not sunny and hot, out of the way of the other gardeners and yet easy to get too when it's feeding time. I kinda miss having them in my office, but it's best that they go outdoors.

Next, have I mentioned anything about the espliered fruit trees that got planted in the English Meadow? Well they did get planted. Up against a cedar post and rail fence, which is where I espliered the trees. Three apples, three pears, a Plumcot and an Apricot. That was in March. I just went and looked at them and they all are blooming and starting to grow! Hurray, in just a couple of years we will be able to enjoy all kinds of fruit from these trees, I even labeled them so we will know what kind of fruit it is.

On to the Health Center patio area. Back when I planted strawberries into the market garden I also planted strawberries into two of the patio area beds. Along with 4 blue berry shrubs I took out of one of my market garden plots. And this last month I added a Necterine tree and a fig tree to the patio beds.

So the folks in the Health Center will have lots of fruit to eat right off the plant. While I was planting in the patio beds I happened to have 9 herbs left over from a talk I gave this month on container gardening, so I planted them into the patio area beds as well. There will be lots of things to eat and flavor food with this summer, and all of it right where the people who live in the health center can get at it.

Opps almost forgot about the 6 wine grape vines I just brought in and am about to plant in the South Patio area of the health center. So now in 4 or 5 years we can have homemade Pinot Noir wine in the Health Center from our very own grapes.

The big news I guess is down in the market garden where the planting of veggies just goes on and on. Onions, radishes, arugula, corn, lettuce, carrots have all been planted in the last several weeks and now the radishes, arugula and the onions are already up! but the most exciting thing is how all this got planted.

I’m working with some kids from the Oak Grove Grade School just down the street creating a gardening group. And I can tell you that at first the idea of being in the same room with 15 4th graders was a bit, well, terrifying. But they soon made me feel welcome and a part of the group; it’s amazing how many of the kids have ties to Rose Villa in some way. Parents work here or have worked here, grandparents lived here, and a few of the kids are already looking to get a job working here in a few years.

I've been over there 4 times now and the kids have been over here twice planting veggies. And a more serious bunch of planters I’ve never seen, some of those seeds are well and truly planted I can tell you.

Needless to say the worm bin was a big hit.

I kinda felt sorry for all those worms, the kids really got up close and personal with them. I suspect that several of them went home that day with worms in their pockets. I wonder what their parents thought of that?

On to the front circle where those three diseased and dying fir trees were taken out in January. Much has been going on there as well, The grounds crew has been very busy clearing the old plants out of the way, planting new pear trees around the enterance and getting ready to landscape the front circle.

The excavator took 100yds of old dirt out, plus several of the stumps of the old trees. Then we had several truck loads of good topsoil brought in, along with a load of boulders. Right now the sprnkler system has been installed, the water feature is being built and the pathways are just starting to get built.

All this work is being done by our very own grounds crew. Who will I am sure be very glad when such a huge project is done and over with. This will have completely changed the way the front enterance looked. When it's done you will have to come by and take a look.

A time for everything

‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…to be born, to die, to plant, to uproot, to kill, to heal, to tear down, to build, to weep, to laugh, to mourn, to dance, to scatter, to gather,, to embrace or not, to search, to give up, to keep, to throw away, to tear, to mend, to be silent, to speak, to love, to hate, to have war and a time for peace’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

I don't often quote the bible, but as a gardener I have learned to let the seasons of the year dictate my activities in the landscapes where I live and work. I have learned this through many years of watching nature go through her cycles of the seasons. Paying attention to what happened each season and how what I did during one season affected the landscape in later seasons.

This first photo is of a forsythia that was trimmed down in winter. It was a slow time of year, a dry day perhaps and it would save some time later in the year when things got busier.

The second photo is of a forsythia that had been trimmed in the late spring of last year. These photos were taken the same day.

To trim a forsythia a month or two before it blooms, cutting off and throwing away the glorious show of flowers the plant took all year to grow is something that I do not understand. It just goes against everything that Ecclesiastes was saying in the bible quote I opened with, and while I am not a religious man in the formal sense I do believe Ecclesiastes spoke the truth.

Here's another couple of photos of two sward ferns that happen to be planted 30 feet apart. Again, the photos were taken the same day. The one that did not get trimmed has looked pretty good all winter while the one that got trimmed in December has looked like a brown hedge hog the last 4 months. While I have to admit that trimming the fern in early winter has saved some time, I have to ask; Was it really worth 4 months of looking like a hedge hog was squatting in front of the welcome mat?

"There is a time for everything....." The incident of the forsythia and the fern are small, and perhaps insignificant and I am sure some would say the convenience of saving time far outweighed the waste of the flowers of the forsythia and the long winters ugliness of the fern. I'm just an old fashioned hopeless starry eyed dreamer; I believe as a gardener it is my job to bring the beauty, wonder and grandeur of nature to others.

The person who trimmed the forsthia and the fern above may have done their job as a landscape mantenance person but as a gardener they have failed.

I will stop now with just a couple of photos of some of the trees here at Rose Villa. And during this spring time of year so filled with renewal and rebirth, please dont just maintain, be a gardener.

Wiggily worms

I have started down the wiggily, crawly gooey path of worm composting. Which means that in my office I have 3 worm bins sitting where I can keep an eye on them and check out every day just what is going on with my wiggily friends. The first couple of days they seemed to want to get out of the bins and wonder around the office, unfortunatly if I didn't see them in time that kind of activity meant a slow death as they dryed out. But I am pleased to say that they have settled down and accepted their new home. And I am learning just what worms like to eat and what they dont like. These guys are just not all that fond of potato peelings or carrot peelings, but toss some green stuff in to them like lettuce or bits of celery and they really get excited and proceed to make slimy goop out it.

And it seems they are really coffee hounds, sprinkle some used coffee grounds in to them and it dissappears in just two or three days. Which reminds me, I will have to get some sort of tray to set these bins on as they are starting to leak 'worm tea' out the bottom. Which is a really good thing as worm tea is an excellent fertilizer for a wide varitiey of plants. It is a living fertilizer that can not only provide the nutrients plants need directly, but also help make the soil itself into a living thing that is much more willing to give up its nutrients to plants.

And then of course there's the castings from the worms, which, to put it rather directly is the worm poop. This is really good stuff. As with worm tea it is a living compost full of all the good bacteria and microbes soil needs to grow plants.

One final word on worms, the bins in my office have been here over a month now and they are really starting to 'work'. I'm seeing worm castings start to accumulate and worm tea starting to seep out of the bottom and these bins have never smelled. I expected they would smell like the garbage can under the sink when it's been left too long on a summers day. But, nope, not a wiff of garbage, the only thing I can ever smell is a composty, dirt smell, which, being a gardener I dont mind at all.

I have been told that worm bins can go outside in all weathers, that in the winter when it gets really cold, like below freezing you just have to make sure the little beastys are kept from actually freezing. So then the bins should be up against the south side of a building, or, if it gets really cold the bins can be covered like you would a plant to keep it from suffering freeze damage. But I have to admit I have kept these 3 bins in my office because it was cold outside and I felt bad about shoving the worms outside so soon after I got them, but, now that the weather is warming up a bit I'm thinking I should find a spot outside for them to live.

Or, maybe I can find an empty apt to put them, nobody would mind them in an empty apt and there the tempurature would be even throughout the seasons. Or, maybe I'll just keep them in my office and fix up a leak proof tray under them. They aren't really doing any harm on the other side of the room, and it's not like they play loud music or have wild parties over there.

Stay tuned to see where the worms wind up.