Change is GOOD!

Deep sigh. There goes another summer, and half the fall, too, without my having updated this blog once.

That's what happens when the weather warms up and I get busy! My time gets tangled up in planning gardens, planting gardens, and taking care of what I planted. I barely have time to photograph what I've done. And frankly, I don't work that many hours anymore, because the drive from where I live to where I work takes up a fair amount of time. By the time I get home my mind has had time to process what I did that day, what I need to do the next time I'm at that job, what I need to do for tomorrow's client, and then it's racing on to what's for dinner, what needs to be done when I get home... you get the picture. By the time I get home and cleaned up, writing a garden blog is far from my mind.

That isn't my only excuse, either. This year's economic scene has not been conducive to work in general! Some of my best customers have cut back on my hours, and new jobs don't come in as steadily as they have in the past. Inspiration has flagged a bit as a result. The mantra keeps running through my head: time for a change, time for a change, time for a change...

And change is coming. BW and I have decided to head for the hills, so to speak, and relocate to a place where at least the enviromental climate will be easier, if not the economic climate. (Though we secretly know that will be a lot better, as well!) It is time for me to return to a place where there are less weeds, more natural beauty. Where I can focus my talent as a designer and supervisor, cultivating and restoring the native plant communities that are so often lost to a builder's bulldozer and a landscaper's lack of vision. There are a few really good landscapers there already, and I intend to join forces with them, instead of competing against them. Coming in as a landscape gardener allows me to focus on the small, intimate jobs that don't threaten the big guys, but provides the 'finish' to their work. The details, that's my forte! Here's to the picture perfect garden, the quintessential setting for a cocktail party, the sure and certain knowledge that every landscape can be improved upon! Here's to easier work, better pay, and a perfect climate! Here's to a short easy drive, no traffic, and bountiful nurseries! Here's to continuing education! Here's to having work that matches my potential! Hip hip, hooray!!

So What's the Big Idea?

I'm not telling. Not today, anyway. But take a good look at these photos, and them imagine the planters overflowing with tomatoes, squash, greens, AND flowers. Imagine that nice big green space against the building with fruit trees and blueberries. Imagine a public place where the public feels free to graze, content that no pesticides need to be washed off before popping a ripe cherry tomato in their mouth.
Thanks again to GardenRant for confirming this direction. I'm already off and running to make it happen, but their blog today on organic gardens at the White House and USDA buildings, and the 'greening' of the grounds of the General Services Administration on the National Mall, are proving to me that there is a major shift going on in how people look at the food they eat, and this idea can be BIG! VERY BIG! I can do this! I will do this! Get on with it!

GOOD FRIDAY!

This was Good Friday from the moment I woke up til - now, at 11:40 pm, thinking back over the day.
I love going to the farm. Lovely, giving, kind-spirited people live there, and so on holy days, or thereabout, I seek their space.
We've steadily been adding compost from the horses to the beds before mulching, and the flowers we've planted are really beginning to show their appreciation. I'm especially happy about a couple of asters I transplanted, though one is full of buds and the other is not showing any sign of wanting to bloom. At least they both look happy.
The cleyara hedge Brooks has been working on is bright with new growth, and I'm encouraging him to let it grow a little taller this year. The Indian hawthorne 'Elizabeth' that has given Homeowners such fits with its skimpy branches and spotted leaves is in full, and pretty glorious, bloom, though the blooms look to me much more white than pink. I'll be cutting those back hard after they finish blooming, but with the rich compost I have to offer, I think they will recover better than ever.
Even the weeds are beautiful today. I'm taking a break from the incessant weeding in honor of their right to show off for a few days.
The air is clean and not too hot, the sky is bright blue, and there is promise and hope everywhere.

A Work In Progress

Who am I kidding? I'd like to be a Really Great Something but instead am a humble servant of the land.
Being called a landscaper, well, irks me. In my narrow view, landscapers come in, plant plants, and move on to the next job. So often homeowners buy a house where the landscaping was 'installed' the day before closing. Like newborns, these newly transplanted plants need attention, but who has time to think about that when you've just moved in to a new house, which often means a new mortgage/job/location/babysitter/ ...you get the picture. When a builder's funds are tied to having 'something' in the ground in time for closing, no one's needs are really met but the bank's.
Or Homeowner wants to change the look of his landscape, hires the experts, and doesn't ever call them back because they charged enough to make more than one trip out there.
Or, Homeowner hires one of the landscaper's employees (who runs a side business doing tree work/lawn mowing/pressure washing) 'on the side', only they don't really know what they are doing and Homeowner ends up with more problems than he started with.
Call me a gardener, 'cause I come back. I deeply believe gardening to be an ongoing experience, developed, replaced, and maintained over the ages, and one thing I can say for myself is that I have at least started or added to many, many gardens. Even though I left some of them behind I remember them all, and hope someone like me has followed up to weed, water, and add compost.

Some people think plants are disposable, to be ripped out within a space of time and replaced with something currently faddish. I believe a plant, carefully selected and properly placed, should be allowed to live out in its entirety, like a puppy brought home from the pound. I design a space with eventual grandchildren in mind, a garden of continuity, one that improves with age. That doesn't mean everything has to stay where I plant it. Move things until they're happy, but please do be mindful about it.

A New Toilet in Our Future

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27george.html?ref=opinion

This morning Brooks brought his laptop in and threw it in bed with me. "Look," he said, "this is going to save us a lot of money".
And what had he linked to?
A RV-sized toilet that separates pee from poop, that's what.
His brainstorm involves replacing our fairly new toilet with this $800 model so we don't have to deal with removing the bottom of our Airstream to replace the black water tank, which is perfectly fine except for the fact that it does not hold water. You'd have to be an RV person to understand that is not a problem if you're connected by a big fat flexible hose to a septic outlet, and you'd have to be an Airstream person to understand that the challenges of unriveting half your home to replace that tank just isn't on the short list.
What follows proves why he thinks I won't flip out at the idea of spending $800 for a toilet.
This first appeared in the column 'Gardening on the Coastal Plain' in FL panhandle publication called The Forgotten Coastline. I stole it from myself, hope nobody minds! Kudos to Rose George for picking up on this. I agree with Roosevelt... it looks like we'd be intelligent enough not to pee where we drink.

GARDENING ON THE COASTAL PLAIN

The Great Pee Debate is officially over, and everybody wins. You know what I’m talking about. She says, “You’re going to kill that plant if you keep peeing on it,” and he says “No I’m not,” and she says “yes you are,” and the plant doesn’t die but eventually he starts peeing on a different plant anyway, just in case.
Since Adam, men have answered the call of nature outside, and today’s modern flush plumbing hasn’t entirely changed that fact. Never, ever, have I met a man I believe to be one hundred percent housebroken. So when I was searching for some information about composting, and stumbled on a conversation about peeing on compost at one of my favorite online gardening forums, I was intrigued. Four or five people wrote that they, or their spouses, did this to provide the nitrogen kick the compost pile sometimes needs to begin heating up.
Huh? My mind raced to come up with all the reasons this was a Very Bad Idea. Disease. Odor. Indiscretion. And good gosh, just don’t encourage this, I thought. Males are hard enough to contain as it is.
So I did a little research. As it turns out, the scientific world agrees that human urine is a clean, sterile product rich in nitrogen in the form of urea that is readily accessible to plants. Multiple experiments have proven that human urine can be used on crops, including food crops, with remarkably favorable results. The more nitrogen-loving a plant is, the better the urine makes it grow. Because it is so high in nitrogen, and because our diets are generally so high in salt, dilution is recommended at the rate of one part urine, to between one and ten parts water. For use as a kicker on the compost pile, however, urine can be applied straight.
In much of the rest of the world, this is common knowledge. The human nutrient cycle is eat, excrete, compost, grow, and eat, so the very thought of wasting a vital link, and not returning our nutrients to the soil, would be as repugnant to some cultures as the thought of eating food watered with urine might be to us. In the mid 1990s, in an effort to combat the extreme poverty in Mexico City, an organization called Journey to Forever experimented with ways to help the people grow fresh organic food in whatever space they had available. Large, fifteen to twenty liter containers without drainage holes were packed almost full of deciduous tree leaves and grass clippings. A hole was drilled a few inches from the bottom to provide drainage while maintaining a reservoir of water. On top of this was added a couple of inches of soil, and onto this soil, seeds were sown. The weight of the materials made these containers considerably lighter than filling them with dirt, therefore more suitable for balconies and rooftops. Men were encouraged to… you guessed it… and by the end of a year the contents of the containers had composted down into a rich, fertile humus. The contents of one container provided enough soil to start ten more. The crops produced ranged from outstanding to so-so, with leafy crops and fruits doing best, and tomatoes, cucumbers, squash growing beautifully, but producing little fruit. All the plants did especially well in the early stages, and all, intriguingly, proved very resistant to common insect pests and diseases.
In case you are wondering (as I was) about the odor, there isn’t any as long as the urine is used on mulch. compost or well-aerated soil. When it hits impervious surfaces such as concrete or asphalt, that’s where the odor is created.
The experiment in Mexico City especially interested me, but I read about many such examples of using this liquid gold for fertilizer. It all makes me wonder who, really, has the more civilized society: the ones who ‘close the loop’ by recycling what their own bodies produce, or the ones who flush away a cup of urine with a gallon and a half of clean water. Incidentally, since we on the coastal plain are such big users of septic tanks, you might want to know that the word septic comes from the Greek word ‘septikos’, which means ‘to make putrid’, and that septic tanks are the biggest polluters of groundwater in the United States. What goes through your system every day, other than personal waste: chlorine? toilet bowl cleaners? drain cleaners? Municipal sewer systems add to this mix medical and industrial wastes. No wonder we have to spend so much money cleaning water to be able to drink it.
Out of all the research I did (and I spent days reading about this subject) there were only a couple of cautionary notes about using urine as fertilizer. One was that people with urinary tract infections should let their urine go through the compost pile instead of directly on food crops, and the other was that today’s highly processed foods contain large amounts of salt that could eventually build up to toxic levels in container crops. Maybe we should all have a potted plant to be our canaries: if the plant dies from excess salt, we might want to cut down our own consumption!
All this really, really makes me wish I were still coming up with science fair projects for the kids. Just imagine the display… “In this container of corn, I peed.” “In this container I diluted my pee.” “In this container, I didn’t pee at all.” Talk about giving new meaning to the term ‘whiz kid’.
So, in the Great Pee Debate, the women win, because pee contains a high level of nitrogen, which, applied to the same plant over and over, might be too much of a good thing. This is also the reason we perceive dog urine as being bad: dogs tend to use the same spot over and over, and other dogs come along and add their offerings to the same spot. That causes a buildup of salts and urea, and that, too, is too much of a good thing. The men win, because, well, now they have a great reason to answer the call outdoors.
In case you are interested, June 21st was Pee On Earth Day in the northern hemisphere. If you are bummed about missing the opportunity to celebrate such a worthy event, head on down to the southern hemisphere, and catch it again on December 21st.
And ladies, don’t think you can’t participate. Marine suppliers can get potty lids for five gallon buckets. Mine’s been ordered.

Last year, even before the economic meltdown, Brooks and I had decided to promote growing food in with the landscape plants. We have long been sneaking some things into ornamental plantings -- kale, cabbages, blueberries, fruit trees, and the like. Now, we feel like people might be ready for taking the next step. We got to work on garden designs. Ultimately, we felt the old square foot gardening principles best addressed what we want to do: attractive, low maintenance, organic, highly productive, and, did we mention attractive?

Our first endeavor has, of course, been for our personal use. Unable to till a proper garden spot where we live, we plopped our sf beds directly on the concrete pad. We have limited sun throughout the day, especially during the winter, and weren't sure we would get all that much out of it. We began the project in October, a little late by local planting standards, and got an early cold snap in November.

We have been eating out of our little garden almost daily since Christmas. We planted broccoli plants instead of seeds, so they were the first to harvest, and, of course, that meant we ate broccoli almost every day for a while. (Better to plant seeds, so as to stagger the harvest. Happily, we have been harvesting the side shoots and a friend turned us on to the fact that the leaves, too, are quite tasty, so they have been turning up in our stir fry meals.) Oriental greens, which seem to be a blend of different plants, are also quite good in salads and stir fry. The bok choy was unbelievably good. We eat salad from the lettuces almost every night. Trying to hold off on the carrots and let them get a little bigger, but ooooo they look so good. The sugar snap peas are almost ready to eat... maybe another warm day or two. Seriously doubt they'll make it into the house, though. Some things are just meant to be eaten off the vine.

We don't know if the cabbages will ever form a proper head, but are they ever beautiful. Just for the record, planting the five leftover cabbages in one fifteen gallon nursery pot is probably not a great idea, but again, they are so beautiful I don't care. What a perfect ornamental to carry us through til summer.

'Tis a sad, sad thing to witness the melting down of our landscape plants in a transition zone such is Tallahassee. Down go the philodendron selloum, the alocasias and colocasias (elephant ears), ground orchids, tender palms, and a host of perennials which I was trying to coax through the winter with minimal damage.
Yes, we do try to push zones here, planting zone 9 or 10 plants with impunity. I guess we're trying to benefit from global warming.
However, cool season veggie garden looks great. Will post pics next time!

Cold comes to N FL

We haven't had a lot of really cold weather this winter, but we are in the middle of a cold snap which has us shivering, and the rest of the country downright frozen. I've had plants (all containerized) for the past three nights, and things for the most part look like they've survived the 20F degree low.
Pedilanthus is going to lose all its leaves but last year I left it uncovered one night when it barely hit freezing and it turned black almost all the way to the soil. I have a lot of succulents. The kalanchoes have suffered the most, and the sweet little 'flapjack' will be relying on the babies next spring... I don't know whether it is common for the parent plant to die back, but ours has.
We'll be working today at the G'boro farm. When I was there a couple of weeks ago the rudbeckia we planted in Oct. were loaded with tight little buds down in the crown. Wonder if they'll bloom now?

Nobody ever told me that being a gardener was easy work, and certainly nobody told me it would be lucrative, but... geez. Sometimes I stop in the middle of what I'm doing and take a good look at myself, and wonder where my brain is.

Wednesday. Woof. I was so looking forward to that job, too, working at a new place with its charming little (I thought) native and shady garden. I was psyched because there were some neat little areas, some plants I wasn't totally familiar with, and the lady sounded so sweet on the phone. Turns out she had much more in mind that I bargained for, so I was only able to complete the smallest, most visible portion of the garden within the time frame I gave her. The ground was hard as a rock from lack of rain. If only I'd asked her to turn on some irrigation for that area the night before I came, I could have gotten twice as much accomplished. And, if I hadn't assumed that someone with a native garden would want to save all their matchstick weed, instead of having me pull it all out, I could have done a much better job of estimating.

Yes, pictures beforehand are a very good idea, but they don't always let you in to the customer's mind. Nobody to blame but myself, of course. Live and learn, and learn, and learn.

Hey! You out there! Do you know what you're doing??

When people ask me for a low maintenance landscape, they can't have crape myrtles in mind. 'K, can't move on to other subjects 'til I get the crape myrtles off my mind.

If you plant one of these pretty babies where it will grow over your driveway or walkway, and you mind the mess, or, if you let someone design it that way for you, well, dang. What're you going to do?

For a lot of people, the solution is pull out the garden saw. Problem is, the more a plant is pruned, the more it grows.

Crape myrtle is one of the coolest small Southern trees. A lot of trouble, though, with the messy blooms, seed pods and all. Concrete and crape myrtles are not a good combination if you're looking for that low-maintenance yard, unless you don't mind a little mess.

Neat parallel stacks of crape myrtle trimmings have been sitting out for pick-up for a few weeks now, and everywhere I look to see how my neighbors are trimming their trees.

Uhm, why?

You people are killing me with the butchering of these trees.

Please, you don't do this to other trees. Why crapes?

Maybe it's their smooth, hard trunks you envy.

Seriously, I've had people asking me to prune their crapes ever since I've been in business. Different places, different decades, same request. I'll do it, and believe me, I take my time. The older a tree the more you have to look at it, every limb, every branch, all the twigs.

There is a right way to do it. The sooner you look over the tree and prune off limbs that are going to cross and rub against each other, the better. If you want the tree to grow thicker, cut the branches back a little to where the buds grow in a good direction. Cut the seed heads back after the flowers have fallen off in the summer if you want the tree to bloom again, or if the mess from the seeds bums you out. If some(idiot, excuse me)body has planted a beautiful specimen four feet from the corner of the house, branches growing towards the house will need to be pruned.

Why do you do it? I'll often ask a client this to help establish a line of dialog, to understand what they are trying to do with a landscape.
Many answers, but the bottom line is this: know the variety before you plant it. Choose for full-grown size and growth habit (ie upright or spreading) even before you choose the flower color. If you don't want to clean up behind them, don't plant them where this becomes a problem. (Like overhanging walks or drives.)

Geez. Get me off this subject, already.

If They're Going To Hide The View Don't Plant Them There

Sometimes there is a bit of disconnect between what I think I'll be doing at a client's house, and what I actually find when I show up. Yesterday is a good example.

My Job of the Day was trimming a 'few' crape myrtles, which turning out to be ten trees.

I had a seven foot stepladder to work with.

The lady of the house wanted me to commit 'crape murder', cutting the trees halfway back to a height of ten to twelve feet.

Crape myrtle is a medium sized, spreading tree which drops leaves, blossoms and seed heads through most of the year. In the right location it is a gracious Southern belle. Ideally it has an open structure, with no crossing branches, and a nice, broad U shape in the crotch where the limb meets the trunk. The smoothy, sinewy limbs of a mature tree are sensual, and a thing of beauty if allowed to develop naturally. A tree in the right location should need no more pruning than to remove limbs that cross or grow inward, damaged limbs, and, to encourage fullness or encourage re-flowering, stems no larger than a pencil. Unfortunately, they are often planted so close to houses or driveways or sidewalks that the homeowner feels compelled to keep them tightly contained.


The photo on the left (if it doesn't show up sideways) shows a fairly upright growing tree, 20' tall, at least, with a multitude of branches. Whoever cut them back before didn't understand what they were trying to accomplish, and thick limbs cross other thick limbs, growing together in some places and rubbing badly in others. Limbs grow straight up at a sharp angle around the stubs of earlier cuts, creating a weak structure than could break easily under the weight of heavy, wet blooms. Many limbs grow inward toward the interior of the trees. One tree had inexplicably died half way back on most of the major trunks, and sprouts struggled to catch back up.

Clearly, they needed attention. But agreeing to murder them was going against everything I believe in and preach about as a gardener. Why, why why? Just because I need the work? The day before another client and I had decided to let her crapes go uncut. I had my orders, though, and didn't argue for the trees. Such is my crime.

Stupid, stupid me. Not only did I go against my principles, I did a poor job on the trees. The ladder was too short to be safe, and the extension chain saw I had in the truck was too heavy, I thought, to heft into those 20' trees. I struggled through the job with a set of loppers, and the resulting cuts had a sharp angle, not unlike spears, as a result of reaching up so high. The client started to fidget about how long it was taking, so I did not even do a proper job of thinning out the crossing limbs. The end result was okay, but nothing to be proud of.

If I had dropped by this house the day before to check out the trees first, or if I had taken photos of them when I was there the month before, I would have seen what I was in for and prepared accordingly. I would have had a bigger ladder.

I Should've Known By The Smell Of The Chemical Aisle

As a gardener-who-gets-paid for it, I have more of an insider's view of the green industry. Yeah, I know, these days everybody's industry is green, or wants to be, but those of us who mow the grass and plant the trees and sell the chemicals and equipment coined the phrase a long time ago. When I chose this profession over others, my own creed was 'first, do no harm'. I figured gardening was as close to doing no harm as a girl could get. Ever since I've done my best to follow that line, learning as much as I can about what I do, and practicing the least harmful methods to get it done.

In my business you are plied with the easy way to the picture perfect landscape. Throw pre-emergent chemicals in a bed so you don't have to weed as much. Spray shrubs with growth hormones so you don't have to trim as often. Coat roses with powder so the insects and fungi don't leave holes and spots on them. Spray, drench, and dust your way to perfect tomatoes. Keep the lawn emerald green and critter free with weed and feed formulas. Study the picture perfect gardens in the popular magazines, and on the facing page a colorful, cheery ad from the appropriate chemical company will tell us that we, too, can control our mole crickets.

Industry trade magazines, PRO, for instance, or Lawn and Landscape, eventually make their way to even small business owners. They are chock full of really captivating ads, the kind I read from top to bottom. Slick, professional ads, some of the best I've ever seen. Well they should be, as much as the chemical companies they promote spend on them.

Eventually, though, you're forced to make a connection with the stuff they sell and the hazards they represent. Farm workers, exposed. Ground water, polluted. Entire populations of birds, gone. Eventually, the pictures ain't so pretty.

It isn't that I think chemicals are Inherently Bad. It's just that they are foisted upon a follow-the-leader public who is in a pissing contest with itself over Who Has The Greenest Lawn. Do you, by chance, use up the entire bag of weed-n-feed every time you apply it? Just for fun, raise your hand if you have either a half empty bottle of malathion or a half empty bag of Sevin dust on a shelf. If it's been there for more than two years, raise the other hand. Phew! That stinks! Wouldn't it be a nice start if products like that were packaged in single use amounts? That's one place I would opt for more packaging, instead of less.

Rare is the garden center employee who doesn't recommend a chemical solution for a perceived problem. My own clients have shelves that groan under the weight of garden chemicals which they have used once or twice, perhaps, and not always with a clear understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.

Cheery, aren't I? The chemical companies are a particular sore spot for me. On one hand what they are able to produce is technologically marvelous, and useful. On the other hand they have duped US homeowners into believing their products are necessary for life on earth.

Read the damn label, if you are hell bent on using that stuff, and do what the label says. Better yet, enjoy your garden as it is, bug-eaten leaves and all.

Another Play Day

This blogmania won't let me go.

I have GardenRant to thank for this. They've got it going on, and I learn alot by keeping up with their rants.

Thing is, though, I feel like they were my rants first! I mean, I covered a lot of the same ground when I was writing a column for a couple of local small town newspapers, things like plant blindness and the effects of garden chemicals on amphibians and bad mulch and the politics of small engines, and anything else that makes gardening less than the clean blissful euphoric chore it should be. I was supposed to be writing a gardening column, at least that's how I sold it to the editor, but let's face it, some gardening subjects are done to death. I mean, I dutifully covered crape murder, and the seven principles of xeriscape kept me going through the winter. But there is so much else to discuss!

For the record, I am a professional gardener, which means I get paid to do it, which is because mama and daddy wanted a professional something in the family, and gardening is a profession even if it's not medicine or law or teaching. If I were independently wealthy I would garden for free, but since I am a gardener I am not wealthy, so-o...

Hence the name of this blog. Since I spend a good part of my time on my hands and knees, I am not without attitude. Usually, it's good. Digging and pulling and pruning is peaceful work, no one bothers me much, and I can get lost in a micro world of leaves and insects. Towards the end of summer, though, when the heat index is in the hundred 'teens every day, I do get my surly streaks. And having to stop for groceries after I've been soaked from sweat or rain is humbling. A sense of humor is most important when you're in a public place with dirty knees and fingernails. I keep wanting to design the perfect-for-me tee shirt that would say something like "pardon my dirt, i'm a gardener" or "stand back - gardeners stink" (not that I do, usually) on the back, so the person standing behind me in line will understand.

I've been wanting to write again, and don't always want to jump in to GardenRant's conversations, so maybe this is the best way to get it out of my system. Today is a clear, cold and windy winter day here in North Florida, and I have some free time on my hands. Here goes!