planting bulbs (& soil additives)
FitchDonS
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, in message <pddb.90...@gw.ddb.com>,
wrote:
<snip cite to Karen Cooper>
>>>>Karen. [and just why can't you mix potting soil into your
>>>>garden beds, anyway?]
>
>>>I have no idea. Maybe because the vermiculite never ever goes
>>>away?
>
>>Maybe. Is that bad, do you think? I have a ravine conveniently
>>at hand [&] was just going to dump my old potting soil there.
>
>I have to confess I don't actually know what is *in* potting
>soil. Especially the terrifying "soilless mix." Maybe none of
>it is really biodegradable.
[Oblig. Disclaimer: I'm not sure of some of the technical
details, but OTOH... I did take care of the greenhouses at the Los
Angeles County Arboretum for about 20 years, so have more than the
average amount of practical & theoretical knowledge in this
sphere. Oh, yeah, I also tend to Pontificate -- which I guess is
ok, as long as people don't take it _too_ seriously.]
Most good garden loam/soil is too heavy to work well in containers
-- water that would, in the field, be carried away by gravity or
capillary action tends to displace all the air and roots can be
drowned before it evaporates, hence "potting soil" and "soilless
mixes" are often used. (Commercially, for handling & shipping,
these also have the advantage of weighing much less.)
These mixes often contain little or none of the usual inorganic
components of soil -- clay, silt, sand, &cet. -- and the organic &
"artificial" constituents -- compost, peat moss, ground (&
sometimes composted) tree-bark, vermiculite, Pearlite/SpongeRok
(both Trade Names, IIRC), &cet.-- are sized so that some air-
spaces remain even when it's saturated. (Roots need oxygen and a
chance to give off waste-product gasses. And yeah, that goes for
bog and aquatic plants as well, though they have specialized
techniques for doing this in water.)
Vermiculite, IIUC, is processed from the mineral mica, heated
under pressure, with the pressure suddenly reduced so that the
waters of crystallization cause it to expand and puff-up rather
like popcorn. It's usually tan in color, absorbs much water, and
(when wet) slight pressure breaks it down into a sort of sticky
clay. Pearlite is produced similarly, from granules of obsidian
(volcanic glass), and is, in effect, a form of white pumice or
glass foam. It's a bit more resistant to mechanical degradation,
and the larger pieces of it contain enough sealed air-pockets that
it floats in water. Used in garden soil, it tends to rise to the
surface and form drifts after heavy rains; some gardeners find
this unsightly, but AFAIK this does no harm (or good). For long-
term bedding-soil improvement, organic materials are probably the
best additives -- though they break down in time (and thus need to
be replaced), this process releases plant nutrients.
The common commercial nursery theory regarding container-growing
media is that this "soil" is there to hold up the plants, and
provide a reasonably steady supply of moisture to the roots.
Nutrients are added by incorporating (usually) slow-release
fertilizer pellets (often good for up to three months), &/or
adding water-soluble fertilizers to the irrigation water. (In
small amounts, I hasten to say -- plants tend to be damaged more,
and more often, by over-feeding than by under-feeding. RTFM
definitely applies here.)
There are strong differences of opinion, among both professional
growers and home gardeners, about re-using potting soils. Ills
such as root-rot & damping-off fungi, and nematodes, can certainly
be spread that way, and when I was being Really Fussy I steam-
sterilized even the new mixes used for starting seedlings.
(Maintaining the mix at approximately 212 degrees F. for about an
hour is supposed to kill most of the pathogens while allowing at
least some of the beneficial soil flora to survive.) But hey, the
spores of these things are always floating around in the air, and
they multiply rapidly whenever they find conditions to their
liking. Most of these pathogens have natural competitors that
keep them in check, and I generally add used potting soil to the
compost or to a fill-area, sending to the dump only stuff that's
obviously infected by nematodes (a microscopic worm that causes
lumps on the roots of non-legumes), root mealybug, or oak-root
fungus (all of which are rare in my experience).
Karen's near-by ravine, where people dump their leaves, sounds, by
the way, like a possible good source of compost, with a little
digging (the good stuff would probably be towards the bottom,
where it's been breaking-down for a year or more). As a source of
nutrients, compost is a bit iffy -- the ingredient most beneficial
to plants is nitrogen, which easily evaporates into the air (as
ammonia) or is leached out by a couple of heavy rains (or probably
by a snow-melt, though as a southern Californian I have no
experience with this), though some phosphorus, potash, and humic
acid remain -- but screened (through ca. 1-inch hardware cloth)
rough compost, in which you can almost identify the ingredients,
is marvelous as an additive in the mechanical sense for either
clay or sandy soils; it promotes better drainage in the former,
and better moisture retention in the latter.
I can't help at all with advice on tulips -- they're Exotics,
here, only a few minor species naturalize and the showy ones are
more trouble to grow than I think they're worth. The usual
process at the Arboretum was to try (within the budget allowance)
to get the biggest bulbs possible, store them in refrigerators
until the soil got pretty cold (usually November), and cross our
fingers that they'd develop flower stems more than a couple of
inches long. When the blooming period was over, we dug them up
and composted them, knowing that the second year they'd produce no
more than a leaf or two.
Some (but not all) daffodil and narcissus varieties, OTOH,
naturalize happily and needed only weeding and an annual
application of superphosphate or "bulb food". [Right now, I have
several clumps of Amaryllis belladonna ("Naked Ladies" -- a 2 to 3
foot high stem topped with a cluster of large, sweetly-fragrant,
dark pink trumpet-shaped flowers) cultivars in scattered bloom
(they're all in too-shady locations, and will need to be moved in
late Spring, after the foliage (which will appear in a few weeks)
dies down). I really ought to start concentrating on Australian
and South African bulbs, but suffer from the usual gardener's
problems of not enough space (especially in full sun), and a
tendency to be enthusiastic about the yard (or working in it) only
every second or third year, which give the weeds (especially
Bermuda grass) just enough of a head start to make it a less-than-
pleasant chore.]
Don Fitch,
who has one compost pile ready to screen and use, another working
(almost too hot to touch, a few inches below the surface), and who
really ought to start collecting grass-clippings and leaves from
neighbors for a third, later this week.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, in message <pddb.90...@gw.ddb.com>,
>wrote:
>>I have to confess I don't actually know what is *in* potting
>>soil. Especially the terrifying "soilless mix." Maybe none of
>>it is really biodegradable.
>[Oblig. Disclaimer: I'm not sure of some of the technical
>details, but OTOH... I did take care of the greenhouses at the Los
>Angeles County Arboretum for about 20 years, so have more than the
>average amount of practical & theoretical knowledge in this
>sphere. Oh, yeah, I also tend to Pontificate -- which I guess is
>ok, as long as people don't take it _too_ seriously.]
It's splendid. Thank you so much. I have saved the message.
What I have been calling vermiculite all these years is actually, from
your descriptin, pearlite.
[snip lovely fussy definitions]
>Some (but not all) daffodil and narcissus varieties, OTOH,
>naturalize happily and needed only weeding and an annual
>application of superphosphate or "bulb food". [Right now, I have
>several clumps of Amaryllis belladonna ("Naked Ladies" -- a 2 to 3
>foot high stem topped with a cluster of large, sweetly-fragrant,
>dark pink trumpet-shaped flowers) cultivars in scattered bloom
>(they're all in too-shady locations, and will need to be moved in
>late Spring, after the foliage (which will appear in a few weeks)
>dies down). I really ought to start concentrating on Australian
>and South African bulbs, but suffer from the usual gardener's
>problems of not enough space (especially in full sun), and a
>tendency to be enthusiastic about the yard (or working in it) only
>every second or third year, which give the weeds (especially
>Bermuda grass) just enough of a head start to make it a less-than-
>pleasant chore.]
I've got to say it's mildly nice to see somebody in a mild climate
yearning just a little bit after stuff that needs a bit of cold to be
happy. Since you can grow Amaryllis in the ground and all it seems
only fair.
For the first time ever I have more sunny space than I know what to do
with -- well, that isn't true at all, I know what to do with it but I
lack strength and energy to do more than bits at a time. The sunniest
spot furthest from the other good parts is reserved for apple trees,
which will go in next spring, but that still leaves a stretch about
ninety feet long and, oh, twenty-five wide, in back, plus the middle
of the front lawn, plus the side of the sidewalk I haven't dug up yet
because I am afraid it would upset the neighbor to the north, whose
idea of yard work is to mow the grass when it gets the least bit
untidy and to trim all hedges and bushes, including volunteer weed
trees like mulberries, into geometrical shapes. He's clearly
disconcerted by the little triangular garden I put in where the public
sidewaly meets our front walk, and I don't want to upset him further
by putting a border in on his side of our front walk. He gives my
plantings a wide berth when he mows, leaving a messy fringe of long
grass I am sure bothers him deeply.
>Don Fitch,
>who has one compost pile ready to screen and use, another working
>(almost too hot to touch, a few inches below the surface), and who
>really ought to start collecting grass-clippings and leaves from
>neighbors for a third, later this week.
Mine has mice in it -- it collapsed last year sometime, being of
inferior design unless you want to put it on a perfectly level slab of
concrete -- and I have to get out there and sort its component parts
into piles and put it back together again.
I do like it when a good-cooking one steams in late-autumn cold,
though. Now there is a beautiful site.
--
"Moreover, fantasticality does a good deal better than
sham psychology." -- Virginia Woolf
-----------------------------------------------------------
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet pd...@ddb.com
Joel Rosenberg
>
> fitc...@aol.com (FitchDonS) writes:
>
> >Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, in message <pddb.90...@gw.ddb.com>,
> >wrote:
>
> >>soil. Especially the terrifying "soilless mix." Maybe none of
> >>it is really biodegradable.
>
> >[Oblig. Disclaimer: I'm not sure of some of the technical
> >details, but OTOH... I did take care of the greenhouses at the Los
> >Angeles County Arboretum for about 20 years, so have more than the
> >average amount of practical & theoretical knowledge in this
> >sphere. Oh, yeah, I also tend to Pontificate -- which I guess is
> >ok, as long as people don't take it _too_ seriously.]
>
>
> What I have been calling vermiculite all these years is actually, from
> your descriptin, pearlite.
>
Now I'm shocked. See:
http://www.ajaxgrips.com/ajaxgrip/custgrip.htm
Not only are these folks making pistol grips out of a component
of potting soil, but they're charging up to $45 for these potting
soil pistol grips.
The world has gone mad. Mad, I say.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.winternet.com/~joelr
Latest novel: The Silver Stone
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0380722089/joelrosenbergA
Next novel: The Crimson Sky (December 1998)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0380789329/joelrosenbergA
FitchDonS
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@ddb.com), in message
<pddb.90...@gw.ddb.com>, posted:
<snips>
>I've got to say it's mildly nice to see somebody in a mild
>climate yearning just a little bit after stuff that needs a bit
>of cold to be happy. Since you can grow Amaryllis in the ground
>and all it seems only fair.
To be absolutely honest, I'm not always able (and often don't even
try) to avoid the occasional supposedly-casual climatic
superiority reference (how could I resist, when Terry Garey
mentions harvesting the first little leaves of lettuce from her
cold-fame, casually mentioning that my tomatoes are ripening -- on
a plant that survived over-winter). (I didn't say anything about
the down-side -- pests also survive the winter in abundance, and
that tomato plant died in midsummer from an infestation of red-
spider mites ... and after I'd set up an authentic Lakota-style
tipi to train it up on, at that. (Well... the use of bamboo for
poles was something of a Creative Anachronism.))
But of course most avid or imaginative gardeners are always trying
to grow things that are (at best) only marginal in their climate.
Here in so.Cal., which is mostly a Mediterranean climate, this
often takes the form of trying to grow things that are a little
too tropical for us. The weather probably _is_ warming -- my
neighborhood's been frost-free for the past five winters, so
begonias, impatiens, & aechmeas are looking great, and the short,
fire-engine red, canna has had spectacularly long booming-seasons
-- but the usual pattern is to get, every seven years or so, a
week or more of actual freezing every night. That's enough to
wipe out many semi-tropical palms & flowering trees, a few
eucalypt species, and philodendrons & other aroids, just as
they're starting to reach specimen-plant size. (Bob Silverberg's
account, in FAPA a few years ago, of The Big Freeze in the BArea
which eradicated most of his enormous collection of Bromeliaceae &
many rare palms, was almost heart-breaking to read.)
But -- perhaps nostalgic for wherever we came from, or maybe just
adventurous in the opposite direction -- we also sometimes try for
cold-winter plants. In some cases, adequate dormancy can be
induced by witholding water in the Autumn, but it's not unknown
for people to use walk-in refrigerators to over-winter 15-gallon
tubs in which Peonies are planted. One big problem I sometimes
see is with plain ordinary Chrysanthemums. Some cultivars do fine
here (except that they might be just short of their peak when the
first winter rains arrive, causing the flowers to rot), but many
that are popular in colder climates start growing so early that
the night-length triggers bud formation just when they ought to be
producing leaf growth to store food for flower production. They
become terribly confused (Chrysanthemums aren't especially smart)
and generally then don't bloom well in the Autumn either. They're
a good argument for getting plants from local sources, preferably
begging /o/r/ /s/t/e/a/l/i/n/g/ cuttings or divisions from one's
neighbors.
Ultimately, however, I suspect that quite a few of us greatly envy
those of you who have real seasons, and even Winter (in some ways,
though I can't say I'd like to cope again with snow and ice).
Being able to forget about the yard/garden entirely for several
months, and not feel Guilty about this, certainly does have its
attractive aspects.
<snip re compost>
>Mine has mice in it -- it collapsed last year sometime, being of
>inferior design unless you want to put it on a perfectly level
>slab of concrete -- and I have to get out there and sort its
>component parts into piles and put it back together again.
Oh, you use a "composter"? I generally just pile the stuff up in
something approximating a hemisphere, or sometimes against the
concrete-block back wall, and maybe turn it once or twice, usually
after the first heat has subsided. With about seven (currently)
semi-feral cats in residence (oops, make that eight, maybe; one
kitten seems to have survived to the eyes-open stage from the most
recent litter), I haven't seen mice in years. Or many birds,
either. *sigh*
Don Fitch,
who just got another Notice (it happens about once a year) from
the Water Company suggesting the removal of the weeds/Bermuda
grass that prohibit access to the buried meter, so they won't have
to estimate the water usage for the third month in a row.
--
FitchDonS
Joel Rosenberg (<jo...@winternet.com>), in message
<360FEC88...@winternet.com>, posted:
<snip much>
>Now I'm shocked. See:
>http://www.ajaxgrips.com/ajaxgrip/custgrip.htm
>
>Not only are these folks making pistol grips out of a component
>of potting soil, but they're charging up to $45 for these potting
>soil pistol grips.
>
>The world has gone mad. Mad, I say.
Nah, it's just become filled with people who make typos or
memoros.
Thanks for the (implied) correction; the soil amendment made from
obsidian probably has a trade-name more correctly spelled
"Perlite" -- or maybe "something like that"; I'm no Gary Farber,
and am not about to Research the True Name. Offhand, I'd guess
that the (probably artificial) "mother-of-pearl" pistol grips
aren't likely to have a significant relationship to obsidian in
any of its forms.
Don Fitch
--
joel__r...@my-dejanews.com
Besides, only an artificial pimp would carry a gun with artificial pearl
grips...
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Rich McAllister K6RFM
> Besides, only an artificial pimp would carry a gun with artificial pearl
> grips...
>
Dragging science fiction into this, the phrase "artificial pimp"
called to mind a picture of a flashily dressed, gleaming chrome
robot...
Ed Dravecky III
The PimpBot 5000? Conan O'Brien got there first, I'm afraid. :->
--
Ed Dravecky III <*>
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/2727/
Doug Wickstrom
modulated the bit stream to say:
>
>Besides, only an artificial pimp would carry a gun with artificial pearl
>grips...
In an ersatz New Orleans bordello, even?
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>To be absolutely honest, I'm not always able (and often don't even
>try) to avoid the occasional supposedly-casual climatic
>superiority reference (how could I resist, when Terry Garey
>mentions harvesting the first little leaves of lettuce from her
>cold-fame, casually mentioning that my tomatoes are ripening -- on
>a plant that survived over-winter).
I don't see how you could help it, really. And I'm just as bad, when
a comparable situation presents itself.
Do you grow peppers, sweet or hot? I'm always bemused, when I'm
cleaning them up after the first killing frost, to see that if they've
been happy they will have developed quite strong woody stems, and I
always wondered how they'd behave in a climate where they lived all
winter. It might be frightening.
>(I didn't say anything about
>the down-side -- pests also survive the winter in abundance, and
>that tomato plant died in midsummer from an infestation of red-
>spider mites ... and after I'd set up an authentic Lakota-style
>tipi to train it up on, at that. (Well... the use of bamboo for
>poles was something of a Creative Anachronism.))
I'm sure they'd have liked bamboo if they could have got it.
I understand there are predatory mites that eat red-spider mites.
The pest problem is one that is largely solved by normal Minnesota
winters. We had a mild winter last year, and pests from slugs to
yellow-jackets seem far more prevalent now.
>But of course most avid or imaginative gardeners are always trying
>to grow things that are (at best) only marginal in their climate.
>Here in so.Cal., which is mostly a Mediterranean climate, this
>often takes the form of trying to grow things that are a little
>too tropical for us. The weather probably _is_ warming -- my
>neighborhood's been frost-free for the past five winters, so
>begonias, impatiens, & aechmeas are looking great, and the short,
>fire-engine red, canna has had spectacularly long booming-seasons
>-- but the usual pattern is to get, every seven years or so, a
>week or more of actual freezing every night. That's enough to
>wipe out many semi-tropical palms & flowering trees, a few
>eucalypt species, and philodendrons & other aroids, just as
>they're starting to reach specimen-plant size. (Bob Silverberg's
>account, in FAPA a few years ago, of The Big Freeze in the BArea
>which eradicated most of his enormous collection of Bromeliaceae &
>many rare palms, was almost heart-breaking to read.)
As I read the beginning of this paragraph I was formulating various
remarks about Wall-o'-Waters and old sheets and so on, if the freeze
is really only for one night, but then I hit the phrase "many rare
palms" and realized that a Wall-o'-Water feet high would be difficult
to arrange, and there is probably no bed big enough to provide the
requisite old sheets. Almost any unseasonable freeze is indeed
heartbreaking, even for native plants. And of course you're right,
we're always trying to push the envelope in several directions.
>But -- perhaps nostalgic for wherever we came from, or maybe just
>adventurous in the opposite direction -- we also sometimes try for
>cold-winter plants. In some cases, adequate dormancy can be
>induced by witholding water in the Autumn, but it's not unknown
>for people to use walk-in refrigerators to over-winter 15-gallon
>tubs in which Peonies are planted.
Yes, I can see going to at least that much trouble for peonies.
Mine seem to have botrytis, poor babies -- mild cool wet winters
again, I expect -- and I have to deal with that soon.
>One big problem I sometimes
>see is with plain ordinary Chrysanthemums. Some cultivars do fine
>here (except that they might be just short of their peak when the
>first winter rains arrive, causing the flowers to rot), but many
>that are popular in colder climates start growing so early that
>the night-length triggers bud formation just when they ought to be
>producing leaf growth to store food for flower production. They
>become terribly confused (Chrysanthemums aren't especially smart)
>and generally then don't bloom well in the Autumn either. They're
>a good argument for getting plants from local sources, preferably
>begging /o/r/ /s/t/e/a/l/i/n/g/ cuttings or divisions from one's
>neighbors.
On a similar note I've found that my most successful chrysanthemums
are those I bought as little unimposing plants in two-inch pots in the
spring. They potter along unnoticed all summer, make three flowers
that fall, and then come back next spring as huge clumps that start
blooming in July. (I recently read a book by a gardener who said he
did not want to look at at chrysanthemum in July; I think he's mad.)
But the temptation, of course, is to buy the huge blooming bushes in
September and put them in the ground. They generally don't like it.
The ones that survive sometimes get their revenge by changing color.
I had a deep red one that is now pale yellow with pink edges -- very
nice indeed but not what I planned on. It can stay, though, because
it has successfully beaten back the daisies, catmint, and sage to make
its clump.
>Ultimately, however, I suspect that quite a few of us greatly envy
>those of you who have real seasons, and even Winter (in some ways,
>though I can't say I'd like to cope again with snow and ice).
>Being able to forget about the yard/garden entirely for several
>months, and not feel Guilty about this, certainly does have its
>attractive aspects.
Now that is something I had not even considered. That is, I'm glad
when I haven't got to mow the lawn any more, but in other ways I just
hate to see the end of gardening season and am always covering stuff
up and hoping this frost won't be the Big One.
I can certainly see your point. Gardeners may need to go dormant too,
or else they get soft and hard to light.
><snip re compost>
>>Mine has mice in it -- it collapsed last year sometime, being of
>>inferior design unless you want to put it on a perfectly level
>>slab of concrete -- and I have to get out there and sort its
>>component parts into piles and put it back together again.
>Oh, you use a "composter"? I generally just pile the stuff up in
>something approximating a hemisphere, or sometimes against the
>concrete-block back wall, and maybe turn it once or twice, usually
>after the first heat has subsided.
I appear constitutionally unable to do this right, in much the same
way as I can't organize much of anything else without a great deal of
physical support in the form of shelves, boxes, rooms, containers,
whatever.
>With about seven (currently)
>semi-feral cats in residence (oops, make that eight, maybe; one
>kitten seems to have survived to the eyes-open stage from the most
>recent litter), I haven't seen mice in years. Or many birds,
>either. *sigh*
Our neighborhood cats for some reason are good at catching mice but
bad at catching birds. I did once take a sparrow away from the
Mightiest Huntress on the Block, but I don't think she had actually
caught it yet, she was just terrorizing it. But I'm always seeing her
trotting off with a mouse in her mouth.
We've got two little stray guys this year and I am trying to figure
out what to do about them, since they almost certainly cannot survive
the winter. One is friendly and could be caught; the other is very
shy and very fast. At the moment I'm feeding and watering them.
>Don Fitch,
>who just got another Notice (it happens about once a year) from
>the Water Company suggesting the removal of the weeds/Bermuda
>grass that prohibit access to the buried meter, so they won't have
>to estimate the water usage for the third month in a row.
Pikers. Have they no shears?
Or is Bermuda grass one of the sharp ones?
Laura Burchard
FitchDonS <fitc...@aol.com> wrote:
>With about seven (currently)
>semi-feral cats in residence (oops, make that eight, maybe; one
>kitten seems to have survived to the eyes-open stage from the most
>recent litter), I haven't seen mice in years. Or many birds,
>either. *sigh*
Putting on my catlover hat, can I recommend seeing if there is a feral cat
organization in your area? www.feralcat.com might be able to give you a
lead. They often will provide traps and very cheap spay/neuter. The feral
colony will stabilize, and a great deal of suffering (as you have
witnessed) in the form of doomed kittens and starved mothers can be
prevented.
Otherwise, feeding them just enables an ever-larger colony.
Laura
Laura Burchard -- l...@radix.net -- http://www.radix.net/~lhb
X-Review: http://traveller.simplenet.com/xfiles/episode.htm
FitchDonS
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@ddb.com), in message
<pddb.90...@gw.ddb.com>, posted:
<snips passim>
>Do you grow peppers, sweet or hot? I'm always bemused, when
>I'm cleaning them up after the first killing frost, to see that
>if they've been happy they will have developed quite strong
>woody stems, and I always wondered how they'd behave in a
>climate where they lived all winter. It might be frightening.
Especially frightening for those of us who don't much like
peppers, either sweet or hot. That hasn't stopped me from
growing them a few times, mind you, back when I had a couple of
Community Garden plots, but they never did really well (until
the past few years, our summer night temperatures were usually
in the "you'll want a long-sleeved shirt or maybe a light
jacket/windbreaker after dark" range), which is a bit chilly for
peppers, and I've not heard of them surviving over-winter --
probably because we get rains then, and the combination of cold
and wet roots is too much for them even if there isn't a frost.
>I understand there are predatory mites that eat red-spider
>mites.
We tried them in the greenhouses about 20 years ago, with barely
noticeable results (*sigh*), but yes, I really should check
again in case newer and better species have been discovered and
introduced. (Grumpf. A bit over 2 years ago Marvin Minsky
asked me about controlling these & other insects on a dwarf
lemon tree he was growing in a solarium in the Cambridge/Boston
area; he apparently didn't want to use poisonous insecticides
and was growing tired of rubbing them off each leaf by hand, but
I didn't even _think_ to suggest control by means of
biological/predatory insects, and he'd probably have access to
the latest discoveries via others at MIT & Harvard.)
>On a similar note I've found that my most successful
>chrysanthemums are those I bought as little unimposing plants
>in two-inch pots in the spring. They potter along unnoticed
>all summer, make three flowers that fall, and then come back
>next spring as huge clumps that start blooming in July. (I
>recently read a book by a gardener who said he did not want to
>look at chrysanthemum in July; I think he's mad.) But the
>temptation, of course, is to buy the huge blooming bushes in
>September and put them in the ground. They generally don't
>like it.
Madness lies in the observer, I guess -- I don't at all _object_
to 'mums in July (though I'm surprised that yours bloom then ...
maybe it has to do with cultivars developed for greenhouse
forcing), but there seems a greater Rightness about masses of
them blooming when there's a feel of Autumn crispness in the air
(I think of them as _the_ flowers for Thanksgiving Day). But
then, I have mixed feelings about some out-of-seasons fruits &
vegetables, such as strawberries, sweet corn, and asparagus.
(Elephant-heart plums are about the only thing, around here,
that still has a short and intense-pleasure season.)
Most of my plant-buying is by impulse (not a trait of the
devoted & expert gardener), and most of the nurseries around
here carry things only when they're in full bloom -- which, as
you say, is not the best time to plant 'mums (or much of
anything else, annuals or perennials). Every year I think I'll
go over to Sunnyslope Gardens in the Autumn, take notes on the
varieties I especially like (and that don't seem to require
special attention, though the cascades and giant exhibition ones
are always extremely tempting, & I _do_ know how to pinch,
train, and disbud them) -- and most years I actually do this.
But it's been decades (and all the plants have died out through
neglect) since I've gotten around to finding the notes and going
back in the Spring and getting rooted cuttings. Maybe this year
(the Fall Garden Show is coming to the Arboretum this next
weekend) I'll spring for some pricey medium-size plants in
gallon cans, stick them in somewhere, and hope they'll produce
cutting material in the Spring.
>>who just got another Notice (it happens about once a year)
>>from the Water Company suggesting the removal of the
>>weeds/Bermuda grass that prohibit access to the buried meter,
>>so they won't have to estimate the water usage for the third
>>month in a row.
>
>Pikers. Have they no shears?
>
>Or is Bermuda grass one of the sharp ones?
Actually, it's a mixture of Bermuda and St. Augustine; neither
is sharp, but both send out many vigorous runners in hot weather
(if watered, and that's a chore I usually attend to because of
the near-by cannas and Mr. Lincoln rose); they can form a
dauntingly-thick mat in a month or two, and the meter-readers
around here seem to carry only a rod-like instrument for lifting
the grating, a can of spray for black-widow spiders, and a
computer for recording the address & current reading. It seems
to be considered (and not unreasonably) the responsibility of
the resident to ensure reasonably-easy access to the dials.
Ideally, of course, seedlings for winter annuals such as
Calendulas and Iceland poppies should be started by now, and
Ranuculus tubers sprouting, so they can start getting
established while the soil's still warm, but I'll probably end
up buying a few pony-packs of standard stuff at Home Depot.
(*sigh*).
Don Fitch,
who might, on the other hand, go gardeningly dormant this
winter, except for trying to catch up with weeding, pruning, and
weed-tree removal.
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