An American Pillar

For this Labor Day of the year of our Lord 2010, I'd like to highlight a now infrequently seen but delightful rambler, the rose 'American Pillar'.  'American Pillar' has been variously described as being a cross between  R. wichuraiana and the native prairie rose, or R. wichuraiana and an unknown hybrid perpetual, but regardless of its parentage, the result was a once-blooming cold-hardy and disease resistant rambler.  In bloom, it's covered with hundreds of small (1 inch) five-petaled carmine pink flowers with white center eyes and golden stamens. Although it's once-blooming and lacks discernible fragrance, it blooms for a long (3 week) period towards the end of blooming of the other roses, and then leaves behind a number of small orange-red hips for winter interest.  It was introduced by famous rose-breeder Dr. Walter Van Fleet in 1902, so this rose has its centennial well behind it. 

Here in the Flint Hills, 'American Pillar' is unfailingly healthy and makes a monster of a rose.  I've read stories of it rambling around to 30 feet and smothering everything in its path, but here in Kansas new canes reach about 12-16 feet by the end of a season and I seldom grow a cane into year two. In my garden, I train the rose by spiraling it on a ten-foot tall four-by-four post and it regularly threatens to pull the post over under its bulk.  Many new canes arise annually from the base, and since those canes are said to provide the best bloom, I trim out the two-year old canes in favor of the new canes in late winter.  This annual cleaning improves air flow to the otherwise clogged center and gives me an occasion to collect and tie up the new canes which have sprawled over several 'Rugelda' roses, a "White Profusion" buddleia, two rustled cemetery roses and a number of daylilies in the near vicinity.  It makes, as you can see at the right, a stunning display in my garden to highlight the end of the first summer bloom cycle of the roses.  

'American Pillar' is a long-lived rose as well.  Plants set in the ground almost a century ago at the Pierre du Pont estate (now Longwood Gardens) are still climbing over metal arches in a courtyard.  I've grown 'American Pillar' for 9 years now in its present position and it shows no signs of weakness and never needs spraying for fungal disease. 

In the interests of full disclosure, I might not mind it if the rose would weaken, at least a little.  Those vigorous 1/2 inch thick canes are armed with exceedingly vicious thorns and I try to do the annual pruning and lashing up of 'American Pillar' on a particularly cold day so my skin doesn't feel the pricks so much and so that all the blood stops flowing and freezes quickly.  I've had bouts with this rose that leave me looking like I'm one of the victims in a slasher movie, but I wouldn't have it any other way.  Those incredibly thick blooms are simply too gorgeous to turn away from.

Organic Agnosticism

I'm going to take this opportunity to confess that while I do try to practice some organic gardening techniques, I also spend some time looking at the whole organic gardening tidal-wave with a bit of a hairy eyeball. 

I try to follow most organic techniques recommended to improve soil fertility and conditions, right up to the point where it becomes manual labor. I'm happy with deep mulching of organic sustainable materials and letting the worms move the carbon into the soil, but I don't double-dig.  If you'll observe carefully, most of the gardening "authorities" who propose that double-digging and deep soil amendment are the solutions to all evil are either a) standing next to and employing the young guy who actually does the digging work, or b) gardening in a soil that has the tilth and mass of sifted flour and where a shovel actually penetrates the soil without jumping on it repeatedly with both feet. Neither of those conditions exist in my garden. The laborer here is me and the Flint Hills soil resembles the consistency of pound-cake with imbedded boulders. I'm a big proponent of mulches to prevent weeds instead of herbicide use, whether the herbicides be synthetic or corn gluten meal. And I'm good with the important idea of selecting plants adapted for your climate and conditions, rather than trying to grow an orange grove here in Zone 5.

I believe we should decrease our use of pesticides and herbicides, but I'd push further for decreasing the use of all garden chemicals, whether natural or synthetic. We've learned over the past few decades that while DDT was perhaps not the best choice to release into the environment by the millions of tons, it's also true that so-called natural substitutes aren't always safe either, as seen with the recent EPA banning of a number of the pyrethrin derivatives. Nature, at its heart, is really nasty, folks, and there are some really nasty chemicals being produced outside your window by the most benign-looking of plants. Still, even while proclaiming that I support the decreased use of chemicals in my garden, I will use them in limited quantities and where necessary for efficiency. I don't mind spots on my apple skins (I peel them), but I don't like finding worms inside. I don't like using pesticides, but on the other hand, I don't know anyone in Kansas who can grow squash consistently without them. I'm not the guy who prefers to spend hours hand-picking bagworms off my Mugo Pine instead of 20 seconds of spraying with an approved pesticide. In truth, I'm the guy who got rid of his Mugo Pine because I didn't want to do either.

The organic gardening movement has many thoughtful and useful aspects, including the concepts of decreased use of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers, decreased overall water usage, increased and deep mulching, and local food production and consumption.  I'm with the WEE* people on all of those and I try my best to be a good locavore.  But, you see, where I fall out from the Kool-Ade drinkers (look it up) is when reason, knowledge and logic give way to zealotry and fighting over issues of faith. Show me that increased mulching moderates soil temperatures and decreases watering needs and I'm your huckleberry.  Go off on a rant about how the wearing of sack cloth and the double-digging of beds halfway to China will decrease Global Warming and you're going to lose me within minutes.

In most instances, it's because I don't agree that "natural" necessarily means "good", any more than "modern" necessarily means "bad."  I don't really want to go back to "natural" if it means forsaking steel tools, automobiles, and computers in favor of stone tools, caves, and starvation. There's a reason that life-expectancy and personal productivity increases go hand-in-hand in developed countries and there's a reason that modern pharmaceutical's are more effective than bat-wing and newt's eye stews in treating disease.

In short, the true road to gardening Shangri-La is by applying organic methods in moderation. Zealotry without Reason is the Devil's tool.

*WEE = wild-eyed environmentalists, the natural constituency of idiot ex-Vice-Presidents who fly around in private planes, live in energy-burning mansions, and doesn't have the slightest idea of what constitutes scientific inquiry.

Burn the Prairie!

A recent post on the Flint Hills of Kansas Blog refocused my attention on the geology and ecology of the Flint Hills and reminded me again just how unique the environment really is in which I put forth my sad attempts at a garden. The post linked to a National Park Service pamphlet located at   (http://www.nps.gov/tapr/upload/Geology%20brochureFinal.pdf%20) that focuses on the Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve and describes in simple terms how my thin prairie soils evolved and why any plant that I place into the soil has to find a way to grow roots around and through the layer of loose flint that underlays the black soil between the one and three foot deep levels.  The topography and barely-covered sedimentary limestones and shales of the hillsides make the whole region practically impossible to crop farm and it barely allows an attempt to garden as my occasional despondent weeping will testify.  Often, my only consolation at the end of a long, hot day is the sunset, when the blue sky turns to glorious color and far-off clouds on the horizon look like the buildings of a city beyond this world.

We grow only grasses well here on the prairie, both the crop farmers and I, and we grow them because our plough eventually breaks on this unforgiving ground.  Trees fight to gain a hold and to obtain enough water on the exposed terraces and then they grow short and thick under assaults from the constant prairie winds.  Shrubs hasten to put on growth with the abundant spring moisture but the colors of Fall are often blunted with the loss of summer's leaves and energy during the July and August droughts.  Herbaceous perennials suffer in the hot summer sun and pull reserves back into their roots for another try next year.  Deep roots are needed to preserve and protect life from the sub-zero January days. 

The native prairie is dependent on all these things; sun, heat, moisture, drought, cold, wind and crappy soil.  Yet, it's also dependent on one other unique feature under attack from the greater world; Fire.  Sweeping Fire is the creator  and the destroyer of the prairie ecosystem, clearing the land of the ubiquitious junipers and foreign invaders that seek to transform the prairie into ecogarbage, and preserving the unobstructed beauty for the deeply-rooted survivors that have adapted here.  Fire is cleansing for the prairie and also sometimes cleansing for the time-worn souls of the people who live here, particularly as the lines of controlled fires sweep across the prairie nightscape. 

All this, though, is under threat from the bureaucratic slugs who work for the Eastern cities beyond our horizon.  There are recent suggestions and discussions seeking to place bans on the annual spring prairie burns because they temporarily raise the ozone levels of the populated scars on the earth downwind of us.  Burning the prairie is bad, they say, because you push our already polluted cities over the brink; it's your fault, prairie-dwellers, that we're in such bad shape!  These same thoughtless dweebs that push us towards an economy based on carbon credits and whale preservation forget that cessation of burning on the prairie would cause a final loss of the sweeping vistas, the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid, the Prairie Chicken, and an ancient way of life.  How deficient, the vision of Man!

Let the wind turbines populate the prairies, if you must, to help decrease the impact of the human blight on the planet, but leave the prairie burning alone, I say.  The prairie will survive beneath the artifical towers, but it won't survive our ignorance of the natural processes of fire and season.