In Defense of Garden Cats

As a gardening veterinarian, I feel obligated to defend our feline friends against the recent onslaught of poor publicity directed towards them.  I'm referring of course, to news reports that stem from a January 29, 2013 article by Scott Loss, et al in Nature Communications, titled "The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States".

As a scientist, I'd love to tell you that I carefully examined the data collection methods and statistics presented in the paper, but Nature Communications is one of those journals who publish manuscripts, usually for a fee,  from authors (who are themselves required to publish or perish from their respective academic jobs) and then Nature Communications turns around and charges everyone else to read those articles, with no kick-back to the authors or the source of research funds for the study.  I believe the for-profit-motivated proliferation of such firms is largely responsible for most of the hastily-completed and poorly-controlled bad science being published today.  Although I am at the mercy of this Professor-prostituting racket myself, I refuse to pay good money for publishers to make profits off what should be globally-available information, so I have read only the original abstract and seen other data second-hand in news reports. 

Setting aside that minor rant, Loss's paper estimates, not from their own research but by an analysis of other published studies measuring kill rates in urban and rural environments, and by using other various extrapolations and predictions of cat, bird, and small mammal populations, that "free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals annually."  In other words, these authors take a whole bunch of assumptions, apply specific data sets to broader populations, and come up with some numbers that could be off by orders of magnitude if their assumptions are in error.  Not to mention any possibility of bias from authors who are all either employed by the Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian, or the Division of Migratory Birds of the U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service.  Personally, I'd like to see a little more research about unanticipated impacts before we see a massive Federal program created from taxpayer money to trap, neuter, and relocate cats.

 

I'm willing, however to set those concerns aside and allow for the fact that domestic cats may kill around 3 billion birds and 20 billion small mammals annually.  I don't believe it, but if I accept the premise, then my response is still, "so what?"   And for the cats, "Good on ya!"   Twenty billion dead mice means twenty billion less roses that have canes chewed away, twenty billion less rats eating seed from my bird feeders and corn from my garden, and twenty billion less snakes in my garden that would have proliferated to eat the mice if the cats didn't.   I'm sorry about the birds, but folks, that's the nature of a Darwinist environment.  There's a whole lot of killing going on out there in nature.  If the majority of those 3 billion birds are starlings and urban pigeons, then I'm not really very alarmed.  Millions of cats die annually as well, killed by cars and coyotes and domestic dogs and human psychopaths.   Yes, I am aware that cats have been responsible for the extinction of specific island bird species.  So have snakes, and both predators were introduced to those islands by Man, blundering around in our usual stupid fashion.  Man, in fact, has been responsible for the extinction of many more species than the domestic cat, so perhaps we should talk about limiting our own numbers before we throw stones at the cats.  Put a new predator in an environment where the prey don't have time to adapt before they are eliminated, and extinction happens.  Ask just about any species group, including some native human populations.

 

Regardless, my personal experiences are directly opposed to the findings of the Loss study.  I have a cat in my garden, a calico named "Patches" by my imaginative children, who is a most efficient mouser.  I find almost daily presents of prairie mice remains on my doorstep, but I never once have seen that cat catch a bird nor have I found the organic remnants of such an attack.  Even the fat little ground-dwelling quail endemic to this area seem to be able to escape the clutches of my supposedly super-lethal cat.  I'm left, therefore, in a quandary, wondering where exactly the evidence of the slaughter is?  And in the meantime, I'm searching for a couple of more cats to live in an under-construction barn.  I would, personally, rather find more mouse parts strewn around the barn floor than find the snakes that would otherwise be hunting for the mice, so if it comes to a choice between having barn pigeons and having cats, the barn pigeons are just going to have to toughen up.

Zombie Gardening

As near as I can tell, the gardening industry has overlooked a vast area of marketing that has the potential to start a new gardening revolution among young folk and thus to grow a new generation of gardeners in this country.  Following in the footsteps of a current wildly successful television series, The Walking Dead, and alongside the frantic marketing spin offs such as the Airsoft semiautomatic plinker pictured here, ProfessorRoush thinks that some creative gardener needs to spin off some zombie-related gardening programs and paraphernalia to enrich our gardening experiences.  That should be me, so that I could make a zombie-related fortune and hire other people to do my digging, but it could also be you as well.  Just cut me in for some of the profit from the idea, okay? 

If you do a simple Google search on the words "zombie" and "gardening", you get some nice links to a zombiefied garden gnome named "Gnombie" ($224.99), and a resin zombie garden sculpture that resembles a corpse crawling out of the ground from thinkgeek.com ($69.99).  You also are referred to several links that will enlighten you on kitchen scraps that will regrow in your vegetable garden (celery, avocados and pineapples. among others).  All-in-all, I suppose those are all nice products and suggestions, but they're just scratching the surface of what I'm proposing.

I'm thinking of a line of Zombie Pesticides, with nice green fluorescent labels, that will paralyze Japanese Beetles so they don't squirm when you pick them up and squish them, or a Zombie Insect Spray that will cause your hornworms to blunder blindly about your tomato plants without damaging them.  I'm thinking about a group of specialized gardening implements, for instance a Zombie Repelling Hoe with a spike opposite the hoe blade so that it can be used for defense if you're attacked in the garden by zombies (or by city administrators, often difficult to distinguish from zombies, who demand that you rip up your front vegetable garden).   I envision a Zombie Compost  Fork with an ergonomic handle designed to decrease arm fatigue whether you are tossing compost or zombies.  I myself would surely purchase a Zombie Water Cannon with a sensor primed to shoot when large moving bodies such as zombie deer cross the path (I think this product may already exist, but it is missing the added zombie marketing power).

We need a garden prophet creating videos and pamphlets about plants that will fortify your grounds against zombie invasions (a nice hedge of Rosa eglanteria might suffice), or plants that will recover quickly from trampling damage caused by hordes of aimlessly rambling zombies (they would also be useful for gardens frequented by neighborhood children).  We need a writer proposing designs for garden "rooms" where we could escape and hide from zombies (or nongardening spouses).  We need Scott's to quit poisoning the environment and fund the breeding of a Zombie Grass that would stay neat and green without mowing or watering.

I suppose the latter suggestion is a little too fantastic to hope for, but any or all of the others should take the gardening world by storm and bring a few of the television-addled zombies out there back into the garden.  If some editor out there wants to put together a Zombie Garden Manual, count me in for a chapter on roses.  Is anyone out there interested in a very dark red, extremely thorny rose called 'Zombie Lover?'   Even better, it could be alternately marketed as 'Zombie Knockout'.  That will, based on my previous experience, really draw in the zombie gardening multitudes.

Garden Literature Goes To Pot

Dear friends, just as there is no hiding the fact that ProfessorRoush is a rose nut, there is also no suspense to the revelation that I am an entrenched bibliophile.  My love of printed and bound material stretches far back into my childhood, to that happy time when I was still an "only" child and had to find ways to occupy myself.  While burdened now with middle-age, a sister, a wife, and children, I continue to feel comforted with the feel of paper and printed letters, the smell of new ink and glue.  I aspire to become the last person on the planet to purchase a Kindle or Nook.

My long worship of books and growing interest in gardening has, for the past twenty years or so, connected in that genre we know as garden literature, in the words of Penelope Hobhouse and Christopher Lloyd and Lauren Springer-Ogden.  I have discovered natural gardening with Sara Stein, delighted in the philosophical ramblings of Michael Pollan, grown old with Sydney Eddison and grumbled with Henry Mitchell.  I've plotted spousal demise with Amy Stewart and searched for old roses with Thomas Christopher. 

All that, I fear, is disappearing.  Literally, it seems to be going to pot.  Marijuana.  Mary Jane, reefer, and cannabis.  Call it what you want, I was shocked, visiting a large national book chain, to realize that what was previously eight shelves of fascinating garden literature is now four shelves, two of them composed entirely of books about growing, marketing, or self-medicating with marijuana.  I counted 87 different books on pot cultivation, with such imaginative titles as Marijuana 101, Organic Marijuana, Everything Marijuana, and the Marijuana Garden Saver.  The Big Book of Buds is not about roses, much to my chagrin.  Only one even looked mildly interesting to me, Super Charged; How Outlaws, Hippies and Scientists Reinvented Marijuana, probably because it was more science and history-oriented rather than a how-to-grow-to-get-high-at-home manual.  I didn't buy it for fear someone might see it laying around our home.

Can the drive for all these new books about marijuana really be sales-based?  I don't see these on the bookshelves of friends, sitting on tables of garage sales, or promoted in bestseller lists.  Perhaps the gray-haired members of my daylily club are only pretending to grow hemerocallis in my presence, but pass the potato bong when I'm not around.  Somehow, somewhere, are the same clueless editors and booksellers just surmising that these are what the public wants?  The same editors that contract good writers to produce lame and repetitious books of landscaping dumbed down for the homeowner, or to write the 200th tome cautioning against over-watering houseplants (which currently comprise the other two gardening shelves in the store)?  Would Scotts, Bayer, and other companies grow richer if they forgot about lawn care and rose chemicals and concentrated their marketing on hydroponic fertilizer and gro-lamps aimed to entice that little extra buzz out of hemp?

Don't answer that last question. It was rhetorical, not a suggestion for improvement.

I'm asking instead that all gardeners, from the lowliest bean planters to topiary artists extraordinaire, all of us vote with our pocketbooks.  Buy works authored by Mirabel Osler and Beverley Nichols and Helen Dillon and Henry Mitchell.  Read about the gardens of others, old and new, green and growing, famous or banal.  Become a fan of organic gardening, water gardening or prairie gardening.  Shun the Siren call of cannabis and read to garden for flowers and food! 

Three-Season Alliums?

Are you kidding me? 

This morning's edition of our local paper reprinted an article that caught my attention big time. Caught my attention and made my eyes bug out.  From the Daily Press as written by a Ms. Kathy Van Mulleskom, it was titled Alliums Provide Color For Three Seasons.

Really? Are you kidding me?  I don't know what planetary eden Ms. Mulleskom comes from, but the first two lines of the article stated that (I'm paraphrasing here), "Planting alliums is one way to realize the dream of a garden that's colorful spring through fall."

Now, truth be told, I like alliums in a spring-bulb sort of way.  They're colorful, they're healthy with little care, some varieties are very large and very tall, and they draw butterflies to them like they were made of pure sugar.  My 'Globemaster' alliums, pictured here, draw all the attention in my garden at their peak and Mrs. ProfessorRoush never fails to comment when they're blooming. 

But alliums are, without doubt, a one season plant for Kansas.  Ms. Mulleskom does correctly note that by selecting among the varieties, the bloom season can be extended to six to eight weeks.  She also cheerfully points out that the height of some varieties can be an architectural feature.  But we differ on the value of the second and third season for these marvelous bulbs.  In the article, she says "after bloom, the dried golden brown allium seed heads stand tall amidst lush late season flowers."  They also last "sometimes into winter." 

Let me tell you, whether they are "brown," or "golden brown" by July, neither is a real color for the garden.  Brown is okay on a desert landscape painting or on the Mona Lisa, but in the garden "brown" is the color of death, the Final Color, and it doesn't add anything to the garden palette.  And winter?  I just went out to take a picture of the brown-headed remnants of my alliums and here, in early September, I could find a few remaining allium stems laying on the ground, marking the resting spot of the subterranean bulbs, but there is nothing left of the globes to be picturesque or even present when the snow falls.  Perhaps the Kansas wind has swept them away already.

Mrs. Mulleskom, who is evidently an accomplished gardener and who blogs here, quotes Hans Langeveld of Longfield Gardens as saying "the seed heads (of alliums) are every bit as cool as the flower."   Maybe, just maybe, I'll agree that they are "cool" to myself and to my fellow gardening nerds, but if they're a three-season garden stalwart, then I'm a garden toad.

My Choice, My Climate!

The ample rain two weeks ago was enough to green up the buffalograss and provide some much needed relief to the perennials here in Kansas.  It also brought some relief to gardeners here, not from the sweltering heat which continues to stress my garden and its gardener daily, but the rain at least provided a respite from daily watering chores.  And it was enough to entice ProfessorRoush to order some rose bands for Fall planting.  I like to plant own-root roses, even young bands, in the Fall in Kansas as the cooler weather and higher rainfall gives them a better start next year before the heat hits.

I had a great afternoon in the air-conditioned indoors, choosing rose varieties online and planning the layout of a new bed.  Imagine my surprise, however, two days after placing an online order with "Rose Paradise" (not its real name, but I don't want to single out the real nursery), when I received a return email thanking me for my order and informing me that it would be held until next Spring because "Rose Paradise" had ceased shipping to my area for the  Fall.   When I contacted the nursery directly, they explained that it was getting too cold to ship to my area and the roses wouldn't have time to become established before winter.

AHS Heat Zone Map

I suppose it is a positive development that mail-order nurseries have fully taken notice of the USDA Hardiness Zones and are trying to keep horticultural idiots from planting tropical palms in USDA Zone 2 in September, but it is past time for these nurseries to also begin taking note of the AHS Heat-Zone map.  On it, one would find that my portion of Kansas is currently listed as AHS Zone 7, meaning that it has 61-90 days annually where the temperature is above 86^oF.   And the current AHS Zone Map was based on data from 1974 through 1995 and has not been updated.  Given the changes of the 2012 revision of the USDA zones, I'm probably now in AHS Zone 8 or 9, with somewhere (I'm guessing) around 120-150 annual days of >86^oF highs.  Believe me, please, when I tell you that I've got plenty of time left before Christmas to get new roses established.

Recently, at Walmart, I tried to purchase a fan and had a store employee tell me (on a 102^oF day) that they were no longer selling fans because it was getting too cold.  I gave the customer service representative at "Rose Paradise" the same response I gave that misguided Walmart employee, which is to say that after a moment of silence during which I labored mightily to calm myself, I pointed out that it was still plenty warm here and would likely remain so for some time.  Fortunately, in terms of my future purchases from it, the "Rose Paradise" employee cheerfully informed me that they would be glad to go ahead and ship my order, however the roses would not carry their normal guarantee.  Jumping ahead to the end of this story, in my garden on this day there are 9 new roses trying to survive the predicted 99^oF high.

My point here is a plea to all mail-order nurseries to give consumers the benefit of the doubt, as long as we don't giggle fiendishly or otherwise exhibit latent plant-icidal tendencies, and let us decide when we want plants delivered.  It would also be nice if the AHS would update their Heat Zone map, and if all nurseries would take a closer look at it, but that is probably too much to expect.  Gardeners know our climates best and, in fact, I have similar issues trying to get nurseries to send me plants in the Spring before my climate gets too hot for planting.  I don't need any extensive guarantee because as long as I receive the plant in good condition, I'm never going to claim a death was the nursery's fault three months later after I've forgotten to water the little seeding.  I know full well who deserves the blame for dead plants in my garden.

I HAVE GROWN CORN!

A miracle has occurred on the Kansas prairie.  I have, at long last, grown sweet corn in the Flint Hills.  Praise God and pass the butter and salt!

This may not be an earth-shattering accomplishment to many of you from other climes, and perhaps not to many farmers in this area, but I have been completely stymied for years trying to grow edible sweet corn in my own garden.  I have experienced years where I had poor germination (soil too cold?), years where the wind blew the knee-high corn flat before it could tossel, years where the ears didn't fill out (too hot for pollination?), and years where I had decent ear growth, but opened up the shucks to find that I'd raised only a superb crop of earworms.  I've had decent corn stolen at the last minute by raccoons, I've had seedlings mowed down by deer and rabbits, and I've even caught quail scratching and eating the seed as soon as I planted it.  Those are all minor pests compared to earworms in this area.

To borrow and modify for gardening a term currently popular among teenagers and young adults,  have, in summary, I been "corn-blocked" for a decade by wind, drought, earworms, raccoons, rabbits, deer, and birds.  The worst of all are the earworms;  not only do they leave me believing I've had a good crop until I try to harvest it, but earworms as a species are completely disgusting.  I refuse to just cut off the end of an ear full of worms and worm feces and then cook and eat the remainder.

My inability to grow edible corn is all extremely embarassing for me, a descendent of several generations of Indiana farmers.  My long-lost Indiana, where the soil drains better, where the wind is gentler, the rains more frequent, and the mid-summer heat less searing, is tailor-made for corn. You can toss corn down in Southern Indiana on the surface and it will grow and produce.  Heck, it grows as a volunteer annual from year to year if you leave too many kernels in the field.

This year, inexplicably, the Maize God decided to take pity on my efforts and allowed me a decent crop.  Not without some effort on my part, however, effort honed by years of hard-won lessons.  I selected my corn variety carefully, choosing Burpee's 'Honey and Cream' because the package noted that it had "tight silks".  I laid down some soaker hose along the rows and I have religiously watered deep twice a week after germination. I provided plenty of nitrogen fertilizer as the corn stalks rose.  As soon as the silks appeared, I sprayed weekly with cyfluthrin, stopping when the silks were brown, for a total of three applications over late June and early July.  I made sure the electric fence stayed in working order as the ears grew and the signs of deer in the yard became more frequent.

These six ears of merely slightly poisonous corn are just the first of what I hope will be a few nice meals for myself, Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone.   I don't have any innate desire to upset all the diehard organic gardeners out there, but I firmly believe that any residual insecticide that penetrated the husks and survived the printed withdrawal period must surely be less harmful to my health than the earworm poop.  Probably tastes better too.  Anyway, I'm not worried about the insecticide;  I'll just feed the first couple of ears to Mrs. ProfessorRoush and if she doesn't develop tremors, than I can safely dig in.

Remember that scene in "Cast Away" where Tom Hanks starts his first fire on the island and dances around shouting to the sky, "I have made fire"? Well, that's me today. I HAVE GROWN CORN!

The Reader's Sting

I seem to have an inadvertent theme going this week on bumblebees, if indeed three postings that happen to use the word constitutes a theme.  I feel an obligation to post this third one, however, if only to do my part in preventing the dissemination of the particular flavor of Kool-Aid involved.  

For background, my post "Trophy Weeding" was cross-posted on GardenRant a couple of days ago, which I appreciate and enjoy because such cross-postings always bring more comments and help me to improve my writing.  Even if they do edit out some of the bawdier, and I dare say, funnier, comments before posting there.  A reader named "Marie", however, took issue with one of my ill-considered statements and commented as follows:

"For perpetuating the myth that bumblebees are agressive and sting,the writer loses 25 points from from a perfect humor score. BUMBLEBEES DO NOT STING! Yes, I'm shouting. They are docile pollinators and you can probably outrun them. Hornets, some which have ground nests, are reactive and aggressive. They will chase you across the yard and into your house, then sting you if they haven't already.  If you read this and still run away from bumbles, you lose 10 points for cowardice. Since not everyone reads the responses, I kindly ask you to consider writing a correction. Your amateur beekeeper, Marie"

Well, now, I must say that I was deeply stung by that comment, Marie, and especially by the deduction from my humor score.  And you haven't seen me in person, so you don't know that outrunning them is an iffy risk on my part.

I fully admit that I'm just a rambling blogger, not an expert on anything, except perhaps that I have a minor claim to expertise in small animal veterinary orthopedic surgery, a subject that I choose not to blog about however.  So it is entirely probable that I make a multitude of mistakes during my rambles and no one should take the credential "Master Gardener" as a real indicator of anything except the ability to spend a few hours in community service.  But since Marie prompted me to provide a retraction after due diligence, I've researched the question to the best of my ability and, in fact, find that BUMBLEBEES CAN SURELY STING!  Yes, I'm shouting now too.  Quoting such impeccable references as Wikipedia and http://www.bumblebee.org/, I agree that they are normally docile creatures and don't often sting, but according to everything I can find, the queens and workers can sting and will sting in defence of their nest or if harmed, and in fact they can sting repeatedly because their stinger lacks the barbs that cause a honeybee to surrender its weapon with each sting.  In fact, website pictures of the bumblebee's barb are quite fearsome.

So we're both partially right, and I'd like a refund please of 15 points back to my humor score and permission to keep running if bumblebees happen to make a beeline for my backside.  I'm willing to live and let live and I certainly don't propose that bumblebee nests should be eradicated with Navy SEAL squads ala Bin Laden.  And I am tempted to challenge Marie to post a video sitting bare-naked for a period of time on a bumblebee nest, but I'm afraid of the lengths to which a true-believer might take such a challenge and my conscience can't absorb the potential consequences to garden-gnomes and children.  So I'll just ask that if everyone can keep an open mind and limit the Kool-Aid to those WEE (wild-eyed environmentalists) wearing Birkenstocks and worshiping their AlGore dolls, we can hopefully just move on to another topic.