before we start: try to look at your subject pot with unbiased eyes. what i mean is, don't look at your slightly neglected flowers and think about your gardening inadequacies, or how you really should be cleaning out the fridge, or the garage, or volunteering more. there is time for all of that, but for now, you're outside, enjoying the summer. gardening isn't just another chore. we love it. so take a second and get lost among your flowers. (after a few years working with people and their plants, i have observed that it can be an emotional thing to work in the garden. oftentimes, a rose isn't just a rose. it could be from your grandmother's mother. or maybe the icy blue delphinium reminds you of the lake you grew up on. and never underestimate the power of smell--i whole-heartedly believe i am in hawaii for 4.5 seconds when i smell a plumeria, even if i am in the botanical conservatory in columbus, ohio.) enjoy what you think and feel in the garden. save your stress for when you're organizing that garage.

first) water! when you water before you pluck, it increases the turgor pressure (think bloated plant cells) which makes the actual plucking (the snap of a petunia arm) easier for your fingers and less stressful for the plants.

second) weed any renegade sprouts out of your potted garden. this doesn't happen often, but it is funny if it does. i picture life turning into a live-action animated movie where the the tiny maple seedling grows at super speed, bursts through the faux terra cotta urn, and takes a walking tour of ann arbor on it's seven root-legs, giving shelter to kids trying to keep up with their ice cream cones at washtenaw dairy and taking a nap in west park under it's uncle oak tree. but i digress...

third) the birds & the bees: annuals (flowers that we have to plant every year) have a mission. they know that as soon as they get pulled from that black plastic cell pack and go in the ground, their time in the sun is limited. so, they are making flowers to make seeds to insure that their children are around next summer. our job is to enjoy the flowers and pluck off the spent blooms regularly. if you want to collect seeds, go for it. but don't mind my gasps if you have me over...

with most plants you can use your built-in plucker tool--the tip of your thumb and the side of your index finger (and after a few years, your thumb has a flat spot and your index finger a callus.) but some flowers need the snip of the scissors to be sure the cut is clean. your don't want the wound to be any bigger than it has to be.

fourth) fertilize! i use neptune's harvest fish & seaweed or alaska morbloom for healthy, natural, and organic plants and flowers. for houseplants and vegan clients, i go for monty's joy juice. fertilize every other week through the growing season for strong roots, green shoots, beautiful blooms, and delicious edibles.

a note on fertilizers: i realize you may have grown up watching dad spray miracle grow through his hose-end attachment--the zinnias might have been as big as dinner plates, tomatoes the size of a cantaloupes--but freakishly big does not necessarily mean healthy. a healthy garden grows with the process of building soil structure, feeding plants with balanced ferts, and encouraging good bugs and birds. you can still use the hose-end attachment, just fill it with the right stuff. don't pump your flowers full of a quick-fix! just say (miracle) NO!

now, turn your tassel.
you may go forth and pluck...

especially at this time of year, i get a lot of questions about vegetable gardens. it's funny how i can be so obsessed with flower gardening when there is a whole world of garden plants that i haven't delved into. of course, the same principles of sun, water, fertilizer, and weeding apply and i can answer questions from my dusty attic brain of horticultural trivia and factoids, but the extent of my experience with edibles has been a peppery nasturtium planted with other colorful annuals, countless herb boxes for restaurants and homeowners, an occasional hot pepper for ornamental value, and of course pansies and violas that are amazing in salads or stuck into the frosting of a delicious cupcake.

kids-don't-try-this-at-home: while we're on the subject of edibles and i will admit here and now that i have in fact eaten the following--tulip stems, snapdragon roots, rose hips, maple samaras, and far more than my share of the standard peck of dirt that old tyme lore claims every child should consume.

so, i think it's fantastic that there is so much gardening to go around. on the veggie side of things, joe and sarah over on the north side of town have a great garden plot that they grow pretty close to entirely from seed. it is the topic of many summer conversations, a bounty of many meals, as well as the backdrop for the annual rib-off BBQ that joe has hosted for three years now. (as a member of the planning committee, i will certainly keep you posted with more about as we get closer to the fierce competition. maybe your ribs could take the prize...)
also notable in the vegetables-on-display department is zingerman's roadhouse for its farm-fresh display of herbs and corn planted in lieu of snapdragons and marigolds, as well as passing up washed out shredded bark for oyster shell mulch. kudos.

i say, let's unite the worlds of flowers and edibles! if you're a flower girl or a farm boy, time to try something crazy... maybe an heirloom tomato can sprout out of your patio planter brimming with lantana? how about a mini zucchini vine trailing from your condo pots? and how fun would some lettuce be sprouting from your typical kitchen window box of salmon geraniums?

with my new raised bed that will soon overflow with culinary herbs and delicious veggies, i am ready to dig into the other side of gardening, not to be daunted by vegetable weevils, cabbageworms, and other pests that sound like they could have their own saturday morning cartoon. dear reader, i pledge to you today, i will give peas a chance...

]]> http://potandbox.wordpress.com/?p=104 Thu, 22 May 2008 11:00:55 +0000 potandbox http://potandbox.wordpress.com/?p=104 for this dreary, misty, cool thursday--an excerpt from ellen sandbeck's hip and handy book, eat more dirt:

perhaps the last bastion of true american individuality, mostly unconnected to commercialism, is the american garden. the garden is a wonderful place to experiment, as long as you keep the precept 'do no harm' in mind. use your garden as a laboratory in which to set up experiments to produce joy. if a particular plant fails to please, move on; give perennials to someone who will enjoy them, and don't replant annuals that disappointed you. remember, young plants are easily moved. nothing is permanent, except death, and if nothing died, what would we put in our compost piles?

there's something all encompassing about this passage--it's heavy and light at the same time--but it is at the conclusion of the chapter titled 'raising a well-adjusted garden.' throughout the book, you delve from quips of garden philosophy to practical tips for everyday occurrences--from sunburns and stretching to abundant slugs and amending soil. one of my favorite statements: garden maintenance is what separates the gardeners from the landscapers. touche, ellen. touche.

yesterday, i read a bit of michael pollan's third book, second nature. subtitled a gardener's education, it's an observations/meditations collection with chapter titles like 'nature abhors a garden' and 'weeds are us.' the chapter i happened to read last night was 'green thumb,' and there was a passage i was delighted with:

observe the green thumb at work for a little while and you'll notice how, in keeping with his preference for experience over abstraction, he approaches nature more like an artist than a scientist or engineer. he welcomes in his garden, not only the laws of nature, but the play of contingency, too. he's open to happy accidents, more comfortable with cases than axioms, less inclined to analysis than to trial and error. confronted with a problem--what shall he plant under the clematis jackmanii?--he tries this or that, sees what happens, then tries something else.

without revealing the man behind the curtain, i will say this...there is a lot of trying things to see if they work, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of happy accidents. but such is life, as well.
say you have always wanted to move to hawaii. you read the book, 'so, you think you want to live in hawaii,' and still want to live in hawaii. you move to hawaii. and then you realize you might not want to live in hawaii...
similar, though certainly not as dramatic is planting lobelia in your shade bed on the north side of the house for a bit of color in the border. it looks beautiful the day you plant, then ceases to flower, and just doesn't make it. maybe next, you try it in the east-facing bed that gets sun until noon. it's happy. you're happy. and now, you know a little more about lobelia on your particular property, in your town, in your state.

every year, you learn a little about what works and what doesn't and you take it all with you in your brain's garden file (which scientists have proved is actually shaped like a wheelbarrow, located somewhere between your cerebellum and thalumus.) then one beautiful summer's evening, you're hosting an east-facing dinner, when someone says, "i have never seen lobelia do so well! but, you do have that green thumb..." you can smile, and say, "i always wanted to live in hawaii..."

Springtime always reminds our friend Ben of Conan's leitmotif, Friedrich Nietsche's "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," because, while I have some doubts about its application to people, there's not even a shred of doubt in my mind that it applies to weeds. Dandelions, garlic mustard, Norway maple seedlings, celandine poppies, poison ivy, oriental bittersweet, pigweed, dock, lamb's-quarters, solanum, bindweed, multiflora rose, sumac, some horrific polygonum from Japan that floated down the stream one day and set up shop on our banks: Hawk's Haven certainly has its share of invasives. And of course there are also those plants that have simply overstepped their bounds, fine in their place but a nightmare in our gardens: English ivy, pachysandra, lawn grass, lilies, jewelweed, trumpetvine, monarda, goldenrods, tansy, teasel, bamboo, rose-of-Sharon.

Ack!!! One hardly knows where to begin. And no sooner have you managed to weed out one invader and moved on to the next when, horror of horrors, the first one is making a comeback! We're organic gardeners here, so herbicides are out of the question. We go out in the gardens and pull. And then we typically give the results of our efforts to our chickens or our compost piles, unless they spread by creeping stems, in which case they're tossed onto the lawn to dry and die. But a lot of weeds seem to enjoy pulling back. (Thank God we don't have thistles here, the absolute worst in this respect.) And in a tug of war with nature, nature usually wins. So we've settled for staying one step ahead and girding ourselves for next year's battles, because we know that, like spring itself, those weeds are going to come back.

Mercifully, spring offers the gardener some consolation in the form of self-sown seedlings from desirable plants as well. Just yesterday, our friend Ben was delighted to see that new clumps of European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum) and pulmonaria had appeared in the shaded side garden. Hellebore, hosta, and white-flowered bleeding heart seedlings had sprung up all over a small circle of highly unsatisfactory shaded lawn. (I've already posted about the old-fashioned bleeding heart seedlings, now handsome plants in their own right, that colonized the foundation borders in front of the house.) Even our peonies exhibit this tendency to volunteer and add to the Hawk's Haven floral display.

So the cycle continues, the annual battle against the invaders, the annual rejoicing at the appearance of unexpected pleasures. Now that our friend Ben thinks about it, I guess that which does not kill us gardeners makes us stronger, after all.