The Cutting Edge

ProfessorRoush is not an innovator.  He has not, does not, nor will not ever claim to be an early adopter of technology.  Yes, in the early 1980's I took to computers like a duck to water, but as a moderately dexterous manual typist (and "Kelly Girl" for approximately 2 days before I found more manly employment), computers were simply a convenience and a logical next step to a logic-inclined mind.  And so it is that it has taken me all these years of gardening to purchase am actual Hori Hori, a so-called Japanese gardening knife.

My garden knife itch has been half-formed for years, curiosity capturing the crusty gardener's conscious thought, but took full force this spring, and I began a search for a proper Hori Hori knife.  Locally, there was little to satisfy my thirst, only plastic-handled half-creations or mass-produced garden butter-knives to be found.  On-line, of course, the possibilities became endless as I sorted through sheaths and steel alloys and sharpnesses.  I became self-educated on tangs and enraptured by rivets.  Heft and handles were considered with heavy import.

Ultimately, I chose the Truly Garden Hori Hori knife for $26.38, although this design looked similar to many others (Duluth Trading, LifeWell etc) which are all likely of Chinese manufacture.  Comprised of 420 stainless steel, it has a full tang for strength, hardwood handle, and three rivets (many have two) for strength.  It is marked both in inches and millimeters, has a curved surface for easy plunging into soil or enemy, and has both a sharp edge (very sharp, as advertised) and a saw-toothed edge.  It came with a massive leather sheath and a free diamond sharpener, bonuses that seemed worth the extra few dollars above the $19.99 nylon-sheathed offerings.

My only question now is, "What took me so long?"   In just a few weeks, it has become my constant gardening companion, constantly sheathed at my side like a sword on a Crusader.  Plunge it into the soil next to the weed, even into my rocky soil,and a simple twist of the sharp edge towards the weed stem delivers most of the root into your hands.  The curved surface has made it useful as a planting tool for transplants.  I've used it as a short machete on thistles, to saw small limbs, prune new shrubs and to cut packages and twine and cable ties at abandon.  I haven't yet needed the measurement markings, but I suppose they will save me a walk to the barn the next time I have a need to measure something in the neighborhood of 6 inches long.  Its weight and balance are perfect, solid strength symbiotically matched to exquisite sharpness.  My only complaint is that, as a lefty, I'd like the sharp side and the saw-toothed side reversed.  

I was picky about my choice of a Hori Hori because I was thinking of a provenance, a hand-me-down designed to reach future generations.  I can already tell, however, that this one won't be passed down in mint condition, but with that wonderful patina of use that proclaims its real value.  The heirloom will have to be my other garden knife, a rose pruning knife with a rosewood handle, also of full tang and three rivets.  I purchased it years ago and it has gone unused beyond occasional covetous fondling and oiling.  It never became the rose grafting knife that I intended, I suppose because my hands and gardening are more suited to dirt stabbing than fine pruning. 

Stalking Beetle Sign

Slowly and stealthly, the sly hunter stalks his prey beneath the searing sun.  He knows this foe, has studied its habits, sought out its secrets.  Bare hands and intellect his only, but most lethal weapons, sufficient for the moment.  Each perforated petal, each sullied sepal, mere arrows pellucidly pointing to the presence of another plump Popillia. The beast hides at night, beneath flowers folded for shelter.  At morning, the target is torpid, stuporous and stuffed by the night's chill and previous evening meal, difficult to find, but easily caught and easily dispatched.   But as the sun rises, so the creature is ever more foolhardy, warming to feast and fornicate, flinging frass over flower.  Brazenly breeding without heed to predator or voyeur in the daylight, it lives to eat, procreate, and preferentially die at the hands of the ancient hunter, the latter ever more determined, ever more skilled, at beetle genocide.

ProfessorRoush has spent several days now, morning and evening, examining the garden flower by flower, foliage by foliage, as intent to his purpose and unaware of its ultimate futility as Custer at the Little Big Horn.  After my initial discovery of the beetle re-invasion, I found more of the insects that very evening, lots more, and I've found a few every day since.  During the past few days, the beetle numbers are dwindling, and yet, my skill at finding them seems to improve every hour.  I subsequently feel responsible to pass on my hard-earned hunting skills.

Initially, I concentrated on the beetles lounging without care in the center of my flowers, swiping them into the palm of my bare hand even, as disgusting as it sounds, while they were paired in flagrante delicto.  As quickly as I could, I then dropped them onto the stones edging my garden beds and gleefully stomped them into beetle pulp.   I know it sounds barbaric, but I have to truthfully state that the crunch of a beetle shell brings a smile to my face every time, a brief moment of insectopathic glee.

But I have learned, as all great hunters before me, to stalk the dwindling prey less by sight and more by stealth.  I recognized quickly that beetles were often hiding beneath petals that had holes chewed in them.  Look at the perforated flower at the upper left.  A slight change in elevation and angle to the view of the same flower at the right, and voila, one finds the culprit hiding in the shade, easily collected and dispatched.  And I've given up beetle crunching, time-consuming and ultimately, probably, detrimental to my Karma, in favor of the time-tested method of knocking them into a cup of soapy water, to drown in silence.

I've also learned to read "sign," a polite hunting term that refers to the technique of following the   poop trail of a prey animal to its lair.  The droppings of an insect are more properly known as "frass," and Japanese Beetles leave more then their fair share behind, wallowing, eating and fornicating with glee right in the midst of it, like chitinous pigs at the county fair.  At the lower right of the picture of Blanc Double de Coubert on the left, you can see frass on the petal there. Where there is frass, there are beetles.  I have also decided that it is much more sanitary to sweep the frass along with the beetle into the soapy water of a cup, rather than into my hand.        

For the time-being, those are the best lessons for beetle-genocide that my vast experience can pass on.  I suppose I could erect a wall that reaches above their flight paths, perhaps even cover it in solar panels, but then I'd be making a social statement rather than a gardening one.  Good luck to everyone in your own beetle battles.

 I also hereby apologize for my previous aspersions against Blanc Double de Coubert and her beetle magnetism.  I've since found beetles on 7 individual roses, and so, while Blanc remains the beetle champion, she's not the only one to blame for luring them into my garden.

Yes, Size Matters...

...for rain gauges, anyway.  I have no experimental data regarding other subjects.

ProfessorRoush has always been a purchaser of those little cheap 1 inch diameter rain gauges, both for price and for their ability to be mounted easily to a post.  I always wanted them cheap because, as often as not, I leave them open-side-up a little too long and lose one to frozen shatterage nearly every year.  For ages, I had one down at the garden and one up by the house, the nearest for convenience on cold rainy spring mornings and the farthest because the rain in Kansas is so spotty that I thought the second often might have differing readings (though it doesn't).

Then, a couple of years ago, I purchased a 2 inch rain gauge that stuck into the ground on a little metal stand (pictured at left) and I immediately noticed that it commonly registered more rain than the smaller gauges, sometimes double the amount of rain.  What the heck, an inch is an inch in regards to rain, right?

Recently, on an experimental whim, I purchased the rain gauge pictured at the right below this paragraph, which is about halfway between the two previous sizes.  And in the recent rains over several days, the tally was; Biggest gauge, 3.4 inches, medium gauge, 2.7 inches, and two small gauges, 2.1 and 2.2 inches respectively.


What I neglected to previously consider was that rain never falls straight down in Kansas.  It commonly sweeps in at a 30º angle to the ground.  Sometimes, it seems to be completely horizontal and never actually reaches the ground, or thereabouts.  I'm pretty certain that if my face didn't sometimes intercept the path of rain, those individual droplets might make it as far as Missouri before they fell.  So a simple explanation might be that some of the rain is hitting the side of the gauge instead of dropping into it.

Of course, any decent mathematician would have calculated in seconds that the area of a 1 inch circle is πr², or 0.785 square inches.  Held at a 30º angle to oncoming rain (and estimating by eyeball), the apparent opening of the now ellipse is 1 inch X 0.6875 inches.  The formula for the area of an ellipse is πab, or π(semi-major radius)(semi-minor radius).  In this case, that is π(0.5)(0.3438) = 0.54 square inches.  The same amount of rain just doesn't have the same target area, so the gauge doesn't fill as much.  Voila!

Of course, the real "angular diameter" of the gauge to rain that falls at near subtornadic velocity has a more exact formula  (δ=2 arctan(d/2D)), but then you get into arctans and deltas and other things that I don't want to spend time relearning. I'm still confident enough to put the validity of my crude explanation and estimates of rain depth up against the likely validity of a specific 20-year future climate change prediction by any scientist, "settled science" or not.  Bigger IS simply better, regarding rain gauges, and I'm sticking to it.

TIL: Hedge Shear Epiphany

TIL, for those gardeners who are not yet hip to Reddit, is shorthand for "Today I Learned" in millennial-ese.  ProfessorRoush was introduced to Reddit by his two millennial children, but I still need an internet Urban Slang Dictionary on standby every time that I venture into a new subreddit.

Anyway, TIL (actually I discovered on my own) something about the hedge shears pictured to the right.  I was using them to chop down some of my thickest Miscanthus clumps; you all know the massive monsters that I'm talking about, resistant to chopping, too slow to cut with a knife and too thick for easy trimming.  Some grasses fall easily to my battery-operated electric shears, but these demons have stems as large as 1/2" diameter, and are tougher than nails to cut with pruners.

To cut these mutants down to size, the best way I'd previously found was to insert the blades of the hedge shears around a section of grass, and then to slam the handles together once, twice, thrice, and more, over again and again with all my might.  It takes a lot of strength and energy to fell several large clumps this way, but I know of no better alternative; all my electric pruners simply clog up and stop on the thick stems.  A chain saw might do it, but I've never tried one, for the simple reason that I hate the loud, noisy, stinking things.

I've always wondered, however, about the reason for the wavy edge on one side of the blade (look closely at the left blade on the photos) of my manual hedge trimmers.  The only internet sources I could find that described it suggested that the wavy design "grips branches for solid cutting."   What I discovered today, however, is that if I pulled back sharply just as I closed the blades, the shears slice through the thick grass in MUCH easier fashion, like scissors on steroids.  Wow, what an epiphany!

This leaves me, once more, wishing I had a horticultural education so that someone would have taught me the correct way to use these shears sometime before my 57th birthday.  In fact, however,  now I wonder if the trick is taught anywhere.  I consulted Jeff Taylor's Tools of the Earth, and found nothing other than the repeated idea that the serrations hold the branches for cutting. Likewise, William Bryan Logan's The Tool Book discussed the wavy edge as an improvement for holding twigs, but left out this little technique of slicing.

So, for those of you who use this type of hedge shear to trim back your heavy grass clumps, give this technique a shot.  For the first time ever, I'm actually looking forward to cutting down Miscanthus.  I'll have to wait for next year, though, because the work went fast today.   I'm done cutting back grass in my own garden, and I'm not enthused enough to go find another garden and cut down some more right now.  I'm thrilled, not crazy.

It Begins

Two days of unseasonably warm weather last Sunday and Monday drove ProfessorRoush out of the house into the garden to begin what will assuredly be a solid spring of garden restoration, rejuvenation and redesign.  I roused this old sleeping garden gnome, covered as he was in the debris of daylilies and Echinops, from winter slumber, and put him to work alongside me puttering over and poking within the cold ground.

I began in the 55ºF heat wave of Sunday, sheltered from a brisk north wind on the sunny south side of the house, and I cleaned the bed bordering the patio free of dead iris and daylily leaves and the remnants of invasive annual grasses.  It was warm there, warm enough to shed the jacket and sweat a little while absorbing enough sun for Vitamin D synthesis and basking my reptilian brain in sunshine.  I always like to start garden cleanup here, so that the many crocuses and daffodils are not disturbed as they rise and will then flower freely and stand out in the neat clean bed.  The roses here will have to wait until closer to spring.   

Then, on Monday, as the temperatures rose past 60ºF, I jumped ship at work and rushed home to start on the beds surrounding the front (north) side of the house.  The cleanup bug had bitten me deeply by now, and after collecting the remains of Orientpet lilies, daylilies and other perennials, I became convinced that my first major act of the summer had to be the destruction of the two overgrown Thuja orientalis 'Sunkist' that border the windows of the garage.  Fifteen years young, the original plant tag had listed their ultimate size as 2' X 2', but obviously, despite an annual haircut and a more drastic trimming once or twice through the years, these 6 foot giants had overstayed their welcome.  Off with their heads!

There, that's so much better, isn't it?  Now the Orientpet's won't have to lean away from the towering encroachment of the Thuja and the whole area looks brighter and more in ordnung to satisfy my Germanic soul.  I'm not sure what I'll plant in their place, probably another mislabeled 2' X 2' evergreen, but I feel I've made a good start on the garden year.




I didn't stop at the evergreens, however, and made a clean sweep over the entire front bed, removing peony and Knautia debris, trimming euonymus, and freeing the forsythia to shine alone.  The wind is a little more brisk across the front now, but my soul is lifted and refreshed.  That is, after all, the goal of our gardens, isn't it?

Beware of Boxwoods

ProfessorRoush would like to call down a pox on all those garden authorities who have advocated various winter hardy boxwoods to be excellent landscaping plants.  A further pox on the "Big Box" stores who sell the cheapest boxwoods available and thus limit the selection of available cultivars to us.  Boxwoods are everywhere these days.  Southern Living, for instance, has an 18 page internet extravaganza on boxwoods as "the backbone of Southern gardens for centuries".   Boxwoods for landscaping.  Boxwoods as the perfect container plants. Trim and tidy boxwoods. Lavender and boxwood gardens.   Boxwood...BS, I say!

 

I jumped onto the boxwood welcome wagon a number of years ago when I grew tired of mustache landscaping with junipers and arborvitaes.  In Kansas, those two conifer stalwarts are plagued annually by bagworms, leaving the gardener only a choice between marathon hand-picking sessions or toxic wastelands.  During the landscaping of a new home, I went with less traditional choices for my front entry; large-leaved evergreens such as hollies and boxwoods.

 

I was so enamored by the survival of my first boxwoods that when it came time to screen the wind near my front door and outline the circular driveway (or, if you prefer, to slow and divert the feng shui flow of qi in the area), I chose to buy 12 inexpensive Buxus microphylla koreana 'Wintergreen' plants to create a hedge.  I will admit openly that the effort has created a really functional low-maintenance hedge over the years, at times a bit winter-damaged as I've noted previously, but a very nice screen as pictured above.

 

Functional, yes , but undesirable.  You see, the one thing that most boxwood advocates fail to disclose is that boxwoods, at certain times of the year, smell like....well, they smell like cat urine.  Unneutered male cat piss to be exact.  If you realize the source of that stench around your house comes from the boxwoods, then search terms such as "boxwood" and "cat piss" will turn up any number of entrys about the problem, ranging from how it will diminish the sale value of your home, to sources where the authors claim to like the odor, claiming "it reminds me of happy hours spent in wonderful European gardens, surrounded by brilliant flowers, the hum of bees and the redolence of boxwood."   I'm sad to confirm that if you park your car in my circular driveway right now, the odor as you step outside the car will not remind you of happy hours in European gardens.  Until I read that the stench should have been expected, I thought my cats were using the area as a toilet.

       

Adding insult to injury, however is not beyond the reach of the most diabolical garden authorities.  One D. C. Winston, author of an EHow article I found titled "How to find a boxwood that doesn't smell like cat urine," is a prime example. The advice given in the article?  Avoid the Buxus sempervirens cultivars because they are have the strongest "acrid" odor.  Seek out the species Buxus microphylla.  Mr. Winston specifically recommended 'Wintergreen'.  Ain't that a hoot?

 

Take it from me,  don't plant boxwoods by your front door. Ever.

 



Bench 2.0

ProfessorRoush places a high value on permanence when selecting garden ornaments or furniture.  I like concrete or iron rather than plastic or wooden.  I want unpainted statuary versus stained or painted figures that need to be refinished every few years.  Heavy pieces are chosen so that I don't need to travel to Missouri to find them after every thunderstorm. Tasteful pieces appear when I can find them, although my tastes are subject to debate and questionable in many instances.

Consequently, when my old iron and wooden garden bench to the right of the front walkway started to deteriorate beyond the point where staining the wood was curative, and to the degree where sitting on it was a chancy proposition, I knew it was time to find a new one, but I couldn't part easily with the ironwork.  This old bench had stuck with me through wind and rain, snow and heat. Who wouldn't have a little interior rot when you spend each of 10 winters outside under a blanket of ice or snow? This bench deserved a second chance and I was just sentimental enough to give it one.

Enter Bench 2.0, my amateur remake using the original iron sides and back.  I used composite/permanent redwood-colored deck material for the seat and back.  The decking material didn't come in the right widths, but I overcame and adapted with selective use of the pre-drilled iron holes and bolts with lock washers.  I tend, when building something, to build crudely but to over engineer everything, so I assure you that six weight-challenged individuals and a dog could sit safely on the new bench.  The curved back iron piece would have required too much work to make it fit, but I reversed it and screwed it back onto the back to increase the weight of this piece and keep the floral print visible.  At this point, nothing short of a tornado is going to move this bench, which I've relocated to my growing "redbud grove" near the shade of a Cottonwood.  Not as formal, but still classy, eh?  It won't need to be redone again for like the next 6 million years and only then to repaint the iron.  And the cost to redo?  Less than a new bench (in fact less than the metal bench that replaced it out front).

You're wondering about the light blue sides aren't you?  That happens to be my "color" for the garden.  I paint almost all the iron in my garden that hue of rust-inhibiting paint, known variously as "wildflower blue," "brilliant blue," or "periwinkle blue" depending on the brand.  I think it looks nice when placed among almost anything in a garden, and it stands out just enough to call attention to itself without screaming at visitors.  Please don't tell Mrs. ProfessorRoush that my garden has a "color" though.  She'll laugh at me and call me strange. There is no accounting for taste is there?

To Trap or Not To Trap

I hope that Shakespeare will forgive me for my corruption of his prose, but that is the million roses question, isn't it?  Conventional wisdom holds that the use of Japanese Beetle-specific traps will increase beetle damage on plants adjacent to the trap sites.  You can find that "wisdom" repeated everywhere, Extension articles, Internet blogs, over and over, accepted and final.

Well friends, ProfessorRoush had a mentor who once said to me "If I wrote that the sky is green in a book chapter of an authoritative text, in 10 years the entire world would be repeating that the sky is green."  Phrases like "conventional wisdom" just raise my hackles, because if we've learned anything from the past millennium, it's that "conventional wisdom" often isn't worth a darn.  If we followed "conventional wisdom," all maps would still be Flat Earth-oriented, we would still believe the Sun revolved around the Earth, the New World would never have been discovered and I wouldn't be trying to garden in the hell-hole of Kansas.

In the throes of anguish that Japanese Beetles have finally reached Manhattan, Kansas, I set out to look at some of the actual research behind the no-trap recommendation, and I can already tell you that the question is far from settled.  Most of the statements that Japanese Beetle-specific traps increase plant damage and don't affect beetle numbers are referenced back to two papers in the Journal of Economic Entomology, 1985 and 1986, authored by F. Carter Gorden and Daniel A. Potter from the University of Kentucky.  The papers indeed reach the referenced conclusions, but if you examine the materials and methods of their research you'll discover the interesting fact that they placed their traps at 1.2 meters above the ground in both studies.  I already knew that a more recent study, by Alm in 1996,  found that a height of 13 cm above the ground was the most efficient trap height, which just happens to also be the average height that Japanese Beatles fly around a garden.  The 1985 and 1986 papers, for those metrically-disadvantaged, had their traps at 120 cm, so, in essence, they were expecting these lumbering insectoid rocks to find the traps approximately 10 times farther off the ground than they normally fly.  Thus science advances gardening.

 I also reviewed a 1998 Journal of Arboriculture paper by Wawrzynski and Ascerno that found that mass trapping over 15 acre area caused a 97% reduction in Japanese Beetles within 4 years.  Consequently, I really question if "conventional wisdom" hasn't been keeping gardeners from using the best tools for this particular job.   Commercial traps that use both floral attractants and pheromone lures are demonstrably effective, and the one pictured here is readily available and performed pretty well in a 2003 report by Alm and Dawson. 

What does that mean for ProfessorRoush's garden?  It means that I'm going to buck the conventional wisdom and trap the bodacious beetles out of my garden for a couple of years to see if I can slow down the Beetle Invasion (For baby boomers, I'm referencing the current Japanese Beetle Invasion as opposed to the 1960's Beatles invasion of the U.S.A).  Based on the research available, I will place my traps as close as possible to the recommended 13 cm height and I will place them at least 30 feet away from the nearest important plant so as not to attract beetles right onto my roses.  I will empty the traps regularly so the dead beetle stench doesn't drive others away and I will make sure the lures stay attached.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I've already caught three hard-shelled fiends that won't be breeding little beetles for next year.  I hope that it is simple logic.  Less breeding, less beetles, more roses.

An Enabling Y-Piece

As Readers of this blog know, I'm not in the habit of endorsing commercial products. I'm not affiliated with any company nor do I receive compensation other than personal satisfaction for this blog, but I felt I should pass on some information about a new tool that might benefit many arthritic or disabled gardeners out there.  The pictured item is named a "Push Button Tap Adaptor" and it is available from Gardener's Supply Company  in a "single tap" or "Y tap" configuration and both at a reasonable price (I thought).  This is the link for the adaptors.

I normally place Y-pieces on most of the outside faucets so that I can fill a bucket at the faucet and keep a longer hose attached at the same time, and so that I don't have to turn and turn the handles each time I want the water on or off.  I purchased these "Push Button Adaptors" for the novelty as I am not yet arthritic (as a surgeon, I don't want to jinx things up here), but I also thought this innovation might be somewhat easier on the delicate hands of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, and that it might thus miraculously even lead to a more willing garden helper. You all know how it is, there are a million quick-on tap adapters on the market (five pages of them at Amazon.com), but all involve turning some type of plastic or steel knob which is often very tight and requires some hand strength to turn.  I once, in fact, had an all-metal Y-piece that required a pair of pliers to turn the knobs.  It was a visit from a mildly arthritic friend, however, that alerted me that this simple push-button faucet might be very valuable to gardeners with disabilities or those who are aging less gracefully than others.

This tap adaptor is metal, but my initial impression was that it might not be too sturdy.  The body seemed to be made of that light zinc-like alloy and I was worried about its durability.  I also found out very quickly that I needed to throw away the plastic tap washer it came with and substitute a more supple rubber washer so to be able to tighten it to the point that it didn't leak. Then I learned the simple joy of it.  Push.On. Push. Off. On. Off. OnOffOnOffOnOff...  I've had it two weeks now, with pressure on it the whole time, and it hasn't leaked at all and the buttons push easily with a loud snap.  The water from the hose shuts on and off very fast,  just like I close an electrical switch rather than a water valve.

If you are in need of an easy access faucet, you might want to give this one a try.  Be careful where you buy it because some sites sell the identical unit for up to $20.00 as I discovered during a Web search.  Talk about gouging the unsuspecting!  At the more common price of $7.95 or $11.95 for a one or two tap adaptor respectively, you can hardly go wrong.   In fact, if mine lasts out at least the length of the summer, I'm happy enough with it to pay the $11.95 to replace it on a yearly basis.  It's that handy!

Purple Leaves Me Crabby

Please listen to ProfessorRoush:  you MUST plan your garden carefully rather than submit to the whims of spontaneous plant purchases and spectacular momentary blooms!  Science suggests that in an infinite number of parallel universes, almost anything can happen.  I'm almost sure, therefore, that somewhere out in the gardening universe, there exists a gardener who plans everything on paper, circles and borders and hardscapes each perfectly sized, and that mythical gardener later proceeds to shop for that clump of 'Stella de Oro' or that purple barberry planned to provide just the right size and color blob for each spot on the plan.  It's even conceivable that in one of those infinite parallel universes, there is a ProfessorRoush who plans his gardens before he plants.  In the rest of those infinite gardens, however, there is a crabby ProfessorRoush who planted too many purple-leaved crabapples.

Like many great artists and gardeners, I have evolved through a number of creative periods; my bedding plants phase, my daylily extravagance, the iris collection mania, the weeping evergreen saga, and my ornamental grasses affair.  My most notorious fleeting passion, however, was a "purple-leafed tree" period, which resulted in an entire front landscaping dominated by dreary dark-burgundy blobs, all individually beautiful, but collectively presenting a distressing and depressing display.  You all know how it happens.  In early Spring, you are seduced at a local nursery to purchase a 'Royalty' crabapple by the perfectly beautiful pinkish-purple blooms as seen above right.  Those claret, delicately-veined blooms are gorgeous, aren't they?  The fact that the plant will have burgundy leaves throughout the summer only adds to its theoretical interest and garden usefulness.  Price doesn't matter, we must have it!

Unfortunately, those burgundy leaves serve as an uncontrasting backdrop for the burgundy flowers and from over a few feet away, the flowers disappear into the foliage. Witness the tree in full bloom pictured at the left.  Now you've just got a dark, dirgeful blob in the lawn, and you're never sure when the plant is in bloom from a distance.  Deep in your addiction phase, now add in a similar 'Red Baron' crabapple purchased before you've learned your lesson, and a 'Canada Red' Prunus candedensis tree with purple leaves, and a Fraxinus americana 'Rosehill' Ash whose leaves turn burgundy in the Fall, and you've accidentally created a doleful landscape in purples.  Thankfully, a copper-red 'Profusion' crabapple died under my care as an infant tree and the 'Canada Red' has since enlisted the Kansas wind in an assisted-suicide pact, both proof that God exists and is attentive to foolish gardeners. 

A little variety, friends, goes a long way in a garden, and so does a little hard-won wisdom.  We've all done it, and those who missed their purple phase likely just substituted a white phase centered around Bradford Pears or suffered some other colorful catastrophe of their own making.  Although I later succumbed to a minor "shaggy-bark" tree infatuation that caused a smaller area of my landscape to appear as if massive dandruff had afflicted all the trees, I learned a substantial lesson during my burgundy fiasco and have since added maples and oaks, magnolias and sycamores, and cottonwoods and elms to the garden.  Given age and actuarial tables, I may never see the mature outcome of these efforts, but perhaps, someday, my landscape may look more like a planned garden and less like a watercolor scene created by a two-year-old with a penchant for purple.  I still don't have a garden plan, and I'm still subject to spontaneous purchases, but I persevere with the knowledge that time and nature will help correct my mistakes.

Warning for the UnWary

NewsFlash!  Read All About It!  This is a Special Edition of the Garden Musings blog written to you from breezy Kansas.  ProfessorRoush, your renowned gardening investigator, has caught a big box store in the act of practicing horticultural fraud!

Actually, Folks, ProfessorRoush just wants to remind you that sometimes things aren't always what they seem at the big-box gardening centers.  I was at a local vendor today, looking for shelves, not garden plants, but I couldn't resist wandering through the newly arrived shrubs and perennials to see what was available.  'Sky Pencil' hollies are on a wish-list for me, so I was drawn to these 3 foot tall specimens from across the parking lot.  Unfortunately, as you can clearly see in the front container, these specimens were recently transplanted from a one-gallon container into these three gallon containers, presumably so that they could be sold at the $25.00 price, instead of the $6.95 or $12 price that a one-gallon plant would command.  Unaware consumers that buy the other plants lined up behind this corner specimen are paying at least $12 for the 2 extra gallons of mulch.  Quite a steep price for mulch, isn't it?

Please remember, my gardening friends, that it is a good practice to shop only reputable nurseries and even then to occasionally slip plants an inch or two out of their containers to see if the roots have reached the edges of the pot, or, in the other extreme, if the roots are pot-bound and tangled.  Plants like the one above are the worst of both worlds; a pot-bound plant that was recently "planted up" without any effort to free the roots into the new soil. 

I have a feeling these 'Sky Pencil' hollies are never going to grow tall and reach the sky.  They haven't been given the chance.

Where've You Been, Baby?

In preparation for Christmas, as per my usual pattern, ProfessorRoush planted an Amaryllis bulb, 'Red Lion', about 2 weeks prior to Thanksgiving.  This year's selection was purchased as a dormant bulb at a local nursery, so one could say that I splurged compared to my usual purchase of the bulbs at Sam's Club or another big box store.  All according to my new resolution to support small nurseries.

In most years, that 6-weeks-prior-to-Christmas-potting results in some welcome bloom and bright colors just at Christmas, so imagine my surprise this year when the bulb just sat there.  And sat there.  It had a greenish skin color at the top, obviously still viable, but it sat there.  I kept it watered and in full sunlight and still it stubbornly stared at me, reluctantly unwilling to reciprocate with regal red flowers or, for that matter, even stems.  Christmas came and passed without a hint of growth from the bulb. 

Finally, sometime after the New Year, my prima donna bulb decided it was time to come out of dormancy and it teased me over for weeks with the slow development of a sturdy stem.  I added rotating the pot every other day to my chores since the stem kept slanting towards the light.  At three feet tall it decided to put out three buds, just in time to lull me into anticipation of bloom by Valentine's day.  Valentine's day came and went.   And then, on February 15th, it decided that since St Valentine's day was over it could finally come out of hiding to bless us with its presence.  Three large beautiful bright velvety blooms in three days.  On the 17th, as the third bloom opened, we left for Las Vegas.  When we returned on the 21st, all the blooms were sagging, their energy spent, their beauty gone.

I may never know what was so obviously amiss this year.  Perhaps the bulb was weak?  Perhaps the pot too small?  The water or light too slight?  At any rate, at least the birds got to enjoy it through the window; a red beacon of Spring, shining from the sunroom of an empty house for a few scant days.

Hog Heaven

During my scavenging trip to the home farm, one of the garden items that I was going to bring back by hook or crook was the large ball pictured at the right.  And now you're wondering, "what the heck is that thing?"  And some of you are wondering, "how do I find one of those for my own garden?"

This, my friends, is a hog oiler.  As you can see in the picture below, it even says it's a hog oiler.  Long ago, when people bought their bacon "on the hoof" rather than in vacuum-packed sanitary packages at the grocery, a local farmer was raising those pigs and most of those local farms had a hog oiler.  You poured oil into the base of the oiler (plain old motor oil as I remember, in those halcyon days when we didn't realize that oil was toxic) and then the pigs rubbed against it to coat their skin with oil.  Evidently pigs liked that.  Oiling the hogs was supposed to keep the lice and other critters down on those free-range hogs, although its efficacy was questionable.  Mostly, we got only oily hogs and oily hog pens from hog oilers.

Our hog oiler was used on our farm until the late 1960's, after which it was retired along with the last pig and set to rust in a barn for 30 years.  It's a very heavy cast iron model, evidently rare today because many of the cast iron ones were gathered up in WWII for scrap metal.  If you want one, I understand they're quite pricey these days.  My father resurrected it for his garden about 10 years ago, painting it black, but after a few years it went back to the barn to partially rust.  When I got it 10 days ago, it merely looked like a neglected black ball.

I'd had my eye on this oiler for ages, sometimes lusting at the thought of putting it into my garden.  I've avoided the glazing/reflecting ball cliche in my garden all these years because I can't stand the things, but this hog oiler is going to grace the center of my daylily bed as soon as I find a large enough pedestal to elevate it a bit.  I've painted the ball silver, as you can see, hoping that it may reflect a little color and light in the Kansas sun, but if I tire of the shininess, I can always spray it back to matte black.  Or let it rust.  Rust would be perfect.  I'd be as happy as a pig in, well, oil, if my hog oiler would rust all at once.   I've got a shiver running right up my spine as I think of a big rusty ball as a centerpiece to my garden.  God knows why, but you feel it too, don't you?

Spring at Christmas

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful....Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Merry Christmas, everyone.  The temperature here in Manhattan Kansas is a balmy 18°F and the wind is blowing at 12 mph straight from the north (and gusting to 21 mph), feeding the rain and snow storms down in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.  We've got a few snow splotches left on the ground from the storm last Thursday, but I could stand a little more if the 35% chance for flurries actually arrives.  Say what you will about the cliche, there's always something special about a White Christmas.

Inside, ProfessorRoush is all warm and toasty from my morning walk and Mrs. ProfessorRoush, her diminutive clone, and the HellDog are all snug in their beds.  I'm fully in Christmas cheer here because, before my walk, I checked on several rose cuttings that I started inside about 10 days ago and low and behold, they are starting to leaf out, all secure in their winter greenhouses in a sunny window.  The picture you see is of 'Charlotte Brownell', secure in her infant crib, one of four roses that I started using the method recommended by Connie of Hartwood Roses in a post on her blog.  I tried it once last summer and it worked great.  It looks like it will be four for four this time, in the middle of winter, spring come early to this barren Kansas prairie.  Follow me, have yourself a merry little Christmas and let your heart be Light.

I chose to propagate both 'Griff's Red' and 'Wild Ginger' because my plants of those varieties aren't very robust, placed with their southern backs against a row of viburnums who are overshadowing and just plain outcompeting them.  I thought I should give them a trial out in the sun, where they can find more water and light to grow.  I also started 'Freckles' again simply because I love her and I'd like to make some gifts of her to the KSU rose garden and among other friends (with a second goal of spreading her around to protect her survival from the coming Japanese Beetle horde).

And 'Charlotte Brownell'?  I chose her simply because she is so beautiful.  My sole plant is a $3.00 bagged rose, grafted to an unknown rootstock and full of mosaic virus, but she still finds the strength to put out blossom after blossom.  Virus or no virus, I'm wanting to see how tough this old girl is on her own feet.  I'm taking a dangerous chance, though.  If those creamy blossoms get any larger, I might faint dead away and Charlotte will be fighting off suitors and in danger of being carried off in the night by gardening thieves.  And then 'David Thompson', 'William Baffin', and 'Cardinal de Richelieu' will want to rescue her and that will might set off a war that could annihilate my garden.  Oh, the chances one takes for love.

Hoe Hoe Hoe

ProfessorRoush just returned home with a vast number of new gardening implements and ornaments purloined from the home farm in Indiana, which, as I've noted before, my parents are selling.  Among other items from my father's vast tool collection, I present to you the half-dozen hoes I brought home.  I could use some help identifying some of them, if you know about them.  Maybe my hoe-collecting friend Carol, of May Dreams Garden, can help out.
 
Pictured from left to right, they are: a common garden hoe, a Razor collinear hoe, a Dutch-type or push hoe, a Ho-Mi (Korean) hoe, an unknown monstrosity, and my grandfather's "tomato-planting hoe". 

I haven't a clue what type of hoe #5 is.  It has no markings to aid identification.  It could be even be something other than a hoe (a gravel-spreading instrument?), and it is fairly heavy, but the curved edge opposite the triangular tines is beveled and quite sharp.  I've spent several hours searching the Internet for it, including pages and pages of Amazon.com garden hoes, but I can't match it.  And please, be careful searching the Internet for "garden hoe".   The term brings back a much broader set of images than you would expect.  You might be surprised by the items and pictures you find, the most benign of which was the Dirty Garden Hoe coffee mug I ran across and the Gale Borger mystery "Death of a Garden Hoe" (about the murder of a prostitute and a missing garden hoe, of course).  Researching various garden hoes, however, is always rewarding.  I had forgotten, for instance, that collinear hoes are "thumbs-up" hoes, to be used in a pull-scrape motion rather than hacking at the ground.

I'm most intrigued to test the Ho-Mi Korean hoe, although I have no idea where my father came by it. The name translates to "little ground spear" in Korean and the tool was first made in Korea during the Bronze Age.  Jeff Taylor recommended it's use in his book, Tools of the Earth.  It is light and seems similar to a Warren hoe, my favorite planting tool, but also seems to combine the best features of a Warren and a Collinear hoe.  I'm already planning to try it out as soon as the ground thaws here. Five thousand years of use is about as time-tested as anyone could want, but I'll put in my two cents as well.

The award for sentimental value, of course, goes to the heirloom tomato-planting hoe.  If you look at the picture of it closely, you'll see a narrowed, darkened area near the midsection, the result of years of hard use and calloused hands.  Modern ergonomic designers could take a lesson from this hoe.  When I grasp the hoe at that spot, it balances perfectly and seems to snuggle into my hand, transmitting in an instant the infinite toil and sweat this hoe has shared with my ancestors.  I'll also use it this Spring, planting my tomatoes with it and carrying on a tradition embedded deep in my genes.

I already had a number of hoes, so this collection adds to my own swan-neck hoe, half-moon hoe, Warren hoe, and Nejiri gama hoe.  The new hoes will take a little work over the next week; they all need sharpening and rust protection, and their handles need a good coat of linseed oil.  My father and I share the gardening gene, but only I hold my maternal grandfather's respect for care of my tools.  At the home farm, I left behind the scuffle hoe (which I used as a young boy and have an intense hatred of) and our venerable two-pronged hoe that my father plans to keep in use at his new home.  And stay tuned for blogs about other items I brought back.  My trip to Indiana was primarily to retrieve a grandfather clock, but I think my garden benefited the most from the trip.  In the meantime, ProfessorRoush wishes everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Garden Hoeing.

 

Sudden Spruces

Federal law should require a warning sign on the dashboard of every gardener's car to alert  unsuspecting passengers of the dangers of unexpected stops and swerves.  As a passenger in my Jeep, Mrs. ProfessorRoush is often being thrown into the dashboard or side door as I slow down suddenly to view a Garden Center storefront or swerve to admire a floriferous rose near the road.  I feel such adventures enrich her life by providing relief of her boredom on trips across town.  She has returned my thoughtful acts by considerably enriching my vocabulary during these jaunts. 

Mrs. ProfessorRoush was accompanying me recently on a Sunday morning coffee run when I passed the Blue Spruce pictured here and came to a sudden stop in the middle of a Manhattan street.  As a long-suffering gardener's wife, she was not surprised at all by the action, but merely briefly commented on the hot coffee spilled from the cup in her hands onto her lap and onto the dashboard.  Thankfully, she was mollified as I explained that it was important to the World that I capture and share the photographs here as prime examples of a "what not to do" garden technique.  

There are a plethora of gardening books and articles centered around the idea of "Right Plant, Right Place." Some clever writers put a twist on that philosophy and take a "Wrong Plant, Wrong Place" approach.  I'm using these photos on this blog to illustrate an "Abominable Plant, Atrocious Place" example. 

Properly sited in a landscape, Colorado Blue Spruce can be magnificent specimen trees; indestructible, colorful, and drought and deer resistant.  Many suburban and rural homes built from the 1940's through the 1970's had a Blue Spruce planted nearby so that the homeowner's good landscaping taste could be clearly displayed.  We grew smarter in the 1980's, however, and realized that these trees are not meant for small yards or even for most yards.  They are particularly abhorrent when planted in the 8 foot wide space between the driveway of a house and the sidewalk/street, as pictured here.  Do you think this homeowner has any clue that in the next decade, he'll be constantly trimming these limbs away from his garage and from the sidewalk?  That it will smother the euonymous and grass planted around it?  That it will become a complete nuisance as its constantly shed needles clog the downspouts of the house and litter the driveway? 

As an Extension Master Gardener, sworn by oath to spread gardening knowledge to the uninitiated masses, I was sorely tempted to knock on the door of this home and educate the occupants about the horticultural evil that they have unleashed in their landscape, but Mrs. ProfessorRoush persuaded me that the homeowner might not be thankful for nor receptive to such enlightment at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  Acceding to the wisdom of her superior intuition in such matters, I can but hope that this homeowner, aware of their shortcomings, is a frequent and dedicated reader of my blog, and that the next time I pass through this area, I'll be treated to the view of a far better choice of plants for the space.  With my luck, of course, it'll be a grouping of 'Knock Out' roses, but I suppose small positive steps are better than no steps at all. 

Wrong side!

Listen closely, friends.  I'm about to let you in on a little known secret that the gardening "how-to" books never tell you.  We probably all know that some plants bloom more abundantly on their "sunny" side, right?  Well, how many garden experts actually take that thought to the next level and mention that, if we want to see bloom from our windows, we should select plants that bloom "towards us?"  Or, said another way, how often are we told to orient our garden beds so the best blooms will face the house, if it is your purpose to enjoy your garden from the inside?

I was struck by this thought recently as I walked around my garden admiring a Rose of Sharon, specifically, Hibicus syriacus 'Rubis'.  I have a number of different Hibicus, placed hither and yon in my garden beds, and it occurred to me that these bushes all bloom much better on the side facing the sun.  Which, in this case, is unfortunately NOT the side that faces the house.  As an example, compare the picture at the right of the paragraph above to the picture at the left of this one.  The two pictures were taken within the time it took me to walk around the bed and snap the shutter twice.  Lots more bloom on the top picture, correct?  Well, this is the side away from my house, facing almost due South (the direction the back of my house faces).  The opposite, or North side, faces the house and has much less bloom, depriving me of the best view of this shrub in the Autumn garden.  A white Hibicus with a similar issue is at the opposite end of this bed (the whole bed parallels the back side of my house).

Of course, this whole problem is moot if we plan to spend lots of time walking around our gardens and viewing them from all angles, as we know that we should.  ProfessorRoush, however, gardens in the Flint Hills of Kansas.  When this shrub holds center stage in my garden, it is always during the hottest days of summer, the dog days, and I generally interact with my garden only between the hours of 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. during that period.  I prefer to stay indoors and stare at my crispy garden during the remainder of the day.  I would be most appreciative if breeders would select for shrubs that  would bloom most heavily towards the house rather than away from it, whatever that direction might be.   Is that too much to ask?

The Other Front

Well, at least the other side of my front bed.  In contrast to the yellow border that comprises the right side of my front landscaping, the left side (as you view it) is mostly a succession of reds.  The view recently, in late June is certainly red and green as shown below, the red provided by the second blooms of roses 'Champlain' and 'Hunter' in the background, and Monarda 'Jacob Cline' in the mid-picture, self-seeding madly.  If the picture was large enough, you could see a burgundy Knautia macedonica sticking out behind 'Hunter'.  The picture is clear enough, however, to probably discern the light blue native Salvia in front, Salvia azurea, that I also allow to self-seed anywhere it wants.

When the season first began however, in March, it was only the Red Peach tree showing color, with a few minor daffodils sticking their yellow heads out as shown below.  It is always stunning to me how sparse is the March look of this bed, and how bountiful it is in June.

It then moves on to "first bloom" in April, the red of the roses and the burgundy of 'Wine and Roses' Weigela mixing in a monochromatic theme. Okay, maybe there are a few blue and purple irises and yellow rose Morden Sunrise mixing up the foreground.

Then later, in May, the line of peonies in front pops out even while the roses are still blooming (below).  The peonies add pink and light pink and red (the latter from peony 'Kansas') into the mixture.  And oh, how those deep purple irises show up!  'Wine and Roses' has faded to a burgundy blog in the center.

As the peonies fade, by early June, this garden again (below) goes back to just roses as shown in the first picture above.  The view from the opposite side, in late June, looking out from the front door, is still mostly red and green, but here you can see the stepping stones that are hidden by the lush front display.  There is no hint yet of the white 'David' phlox in the foreground, blooming now only a week after this last picture was taken.  I'll show the phlox and the fall look at the sedums in this bed in a later picture.  All have their season to shine, each and every plant.  Another season, passing away into next year's promises.

Forsythia UnCut

As a general rule, I prefer to allow my shrubs to grow according to their own natural manner.  Stated in another way, ProfessorRoush is quite derelict in his efforts to force unruly shrubs to grow in unnatural and restrained fashions.  Or, even more simply put, I detest topiary in any form and I really hate to prune shrubs. 

The result from these efforts, of course, is an informal, devil-may-care feeling for much of my garden, but occasionally even the best-behaved child needs a haircut lest the grandmother (or in the case of shrubs, Mrs. ProfessorRoush), think we are bad parents. 



Take the 'New Hampshire Gold' forsythia pictured above both pre- and post-bloom.  It had a very nice, prolific bloom this spring, but, as forsythia are prone to, once the flowers are gone, I've got an airy, messy green blob squatting on my landscape.  This year, one of my planned spring garden chores was to prune the forsythia, and along the way remove the many suckers threatening to spread the bush on into Nebraska.

So, I'll ask you to make the call.  Pre-pruning is on the right,  post-pruning from the same angle on the left below.  Did I do a good thing this spring, or did I capitulate to group-think and ruin the natural lines of the plant?  Should I have gone further and made a box turtle or an elephant out of the unshaped mass?  Mrs. ProfessorRoush has already weighed in and is definitely on the "haircut" side, but then, she always wants my garden to be neater than I'm prone to keep it.

Most important to ProfessorRoush, of course, will be the effect my pruning has for the next bloom of this shrub.  I'm hoping that the experts are right and the shrub fills in and has more bloom and is more compact.  Time, as always in a garden, will tell.

Aphids Abounding

I don't often intend for the Garden Musings blog to be a basic garden instructional blog, but my finding of aphids among the roses in the K-State Rose garden, and my subsequent Iphone picture capture of said aphids, shown at left, was too good to leave untold.

For those who have never visited, the K-State Rose Garden is healthier this year than I've ever seen it, and I'm all a-quiver for the blooming days to come.  I stopped by a couple of days back to check on the results of the EMG's recent pruning efforts at the garden and to assess if any current work was needed.  In among the healthy bountiful budding roses, were a few buds or leaves with apparent growths of seething green hair, aphids (also known, appropriately, as "plant lice") which did not then, nor should they ever, send this gardener into a panic.

If you see them, and have not run across such creatures before, DO NOT reach for your bottles of synthetic or organic poisons.  Aphids seldom cause extensive damage on roses in an outdoor garden, and they can be easily controlled by squishing them off the buds (which I accomplished here by rolling the buds gently between my fingers), or by blasting them off with a brisk spray of water.  Both methods of control are satisfying and enjoyable, at least if you don't mind a little bit of green insect stain on your fingertips.  Cackle in an evil manner while squishing, if it suits your fancy.  I knew, even while brushing off a few aphids here and there, that in a few days these bushes will be swarming with aphid-eating lady beetles who will be most happy to rid the garden of the problem all summer long.

Imagine, for a moment, how a lady beetle must look to the poor soft-bellied aphids.  I'll bet that aphid mothers (who are parthenogenetic, thankfully unlike the vast majority of human females in history), have a hard time convincing aphid larvae to sleep at night, fearful as they must be of the red and black-spotted monsters in their closets.  Aphid mothers also probably make their children behave in supermarkets by telling them, "if you don't be good, the lady beetle will eat you."

Great picture, huh?  So good, in fact, that I added the source onto the picture, knowing that this one will probably spread out over the Internet and be used elsewhere.  I don't usually "watermark" my pictures, not really caring if anyone uses my pictures from this blog, as long as they're not making money off of them, and I'm not the world's greatest photographer anyway.  Please feel free to use this picture to educate others, just as you can any of my pictures.  I would appreciate it, however, if you acknowledge the source for pictures because in the long run, it'll bring people back to this blog.  I don't make any money from blogging, but I do get paid in readers, the only currency I care about.