Life in the soil

I've been thinking a lot lately about beneficial soil life. It is kind of a hot topic these days, from compost tea to various commercial products, and I'd like to share a few basic concepts that inform how I think about the subject.

If there is food, they will come

I am an enthusiastic bread baker, and have been for years. Every now and then, I make my own sour dough starter. It is really ridiculously easy. Mix water and flour, leave it sitting out, and after only a few days wild yeasts and bacteria arrive, and start munching away on it. The yeasts eat some of the flour, producing carbon dioxide, which causes the bread to rise, and alcohol as a by product. The bacteria eat the alcohol from the yeast, converting it into the acids that give sour dough its tart flavor. Adding a sour dough starter speeds up the process by inoculating the dough with those organism, but you don't need it. The air is full of tons of tiny fungi and bacteria floating around, and once they land on something good to eat, they start growing and rapidly take over all the dough. The same thing is true of soil. Even if you completely sterilize your entire garden, if there is food (organic matter) microorganisms are going to arrive to eat it.

Adding more of what you've already got doesn't change anything

To bake bread, you take a little sour dough starter or commercial yeast and add it to a new pile of food (flour). Once that yeast has colonized the dough and started rising, adding more of the same yeast isn't going to do anything at all. It would be like a friend who, when our campfire started dying out, asked if we needed to add more matches to keep it going. This is why I'm skeptical of aerated compost tea. Sure, you can take your compost, and put it in special conditions to help the bacteria in it to reproduce wildly, but they're going to be the exact same bacteria that are already in your soil and compost. Pouring them by the billions over your soil isn't going to increase their numbers long term unless you give them more food – organic matter.

Not all microorganisms are created equal

Each batch of sour dough is a little different, because different yeasts and bacteria arrive and happen to get established first. Some will rise faster, others will taste better. Commercial baking yeasts has been specially selected to dry and store well, and to rise quickly. Just as plant breeders have selected bigger fruits and flowers for our gardens, bakers and brewers have selected superior yeasts for making various breads, beers, and wines. However...

All gardening is local

Travel as a gardener at all and you quickly realize that half the plants you lust after and can't grow are actually a weed somewhere else. Microorganisms are no different. Some sour dough cultures perform best in whole wheat flour, others in white. Wine makers measure the acidity and sugar content of their grapes, and choose the best yeasts for each situation. Soils are vastly more complex and variable than flours and grapes, and I'm sure that most of the organisms in my acidic, clay soil can't even survive in the alkaline, sandy soil in a friend's garden. This reality makes me very skeptical of most commercial soil biota products. Even if what is in that package is an exceptional combination of organisms, what are the chances that they are going to be able to out complete the thousands of locally adapted species already living in my soil? This is also why I'm not surprised that in scientific research on these types of treatments they've only seen beneficial results when adding organisms to sterile potting media. That is a much more uniform, simple setting than the wild diversity of soil, and starting with something sterile, the added organisms don't have to complete against an already established soil community.

But maybe...

This is the completely speculative part of this post. As a plant breeder, I know that you can create significantly better varieties for you garden if you simply grow a diverse variety of plants, pick the ones that perform the best for you, and save seeds from those to grow again next year. Would it be possible to somehow select for superior populations of soil life as well? The idea intrigues me, but I don't quite know how to do it. Carol Deppe, in her brilliant book Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, says that she is attempting to do this by each year taking soil from around the best performing, disease-free individual plants in her garden and spreading it around the garden to hopefully promote the spread of better soil biota. Does this work? I don't know. Sometimes when I have a spare moment, I dream up wildly complex, completely impractical schemes to “breed” soil biota involving acres and acres of land, soil samples from around the world, and annual soil sterilization for all but my selected plots of soil, but I don't know if I'll ever attempt it. Is anyone else a soil nerd thinking this way? Any ideas, comments?

Sedums were (apparently) hot in 1810

I know I said I was taking this week off blogging, but this is just too fun not to share.
I've been playing with Google Ngram viewer. Basically, google has scanned a huge number of books, and you can search the entire database to see how often a word has been written in the past 200+ years. It is fascinating, and kind of addictive, giving a little window on how much we write and think about different topics.

Here is a chart of the use of "garden" (blue) and "television" (red) from 1800 to 2008

I love where the garden trend is going! Higher than it has been since the 1950s, and eclipsing television for the first time since the '70s. My generation is coming of age, and we're gardening it up!

It is also fun to look at individual plants. Here's hosta:

Maybe the hosta craze is (finally) over?

Heuchera is still going strong:

Turning to tender bulbs, here are dahlia (blue) and gladiolus (red)

I think it is high time for a come back...

In light of the current mania for succulents, I typed in "sedum"

The recent rise, I expected. But a huge spike in 1810? Who knew?

I could keep going on and on... I'm not sure how meaningful this data actually is, but it sure is fun to play with. Play with it yourself here and be sure to let me know in the comments what your favorite results are! (BTW, if you want to recreate my results, you'll have to change to search from 1800 to 2008 -- the default is 1800-2000)

Interesting, itchy, art

I was riding home on the bike trail along the river the other day, when I saw this bit of ephemeral botanical art by the side of the path:

I like it, but unless I am very much mistaken, the two inner circles are made from twisted bits of... poison ivy.

Somewhere in town, there is a very, very itchy artist. They'd better invest in some plant ID books if they are planning on becoming the next Andy Goldsworthy

The United States of Amsonia: A manifesto

Last week I read The United States of Arugula by David Kamp. It is a fun little history of the rise of the food movement in the US -- starting with the early ground breakers like Julia Child and James Beard all the way to today's world of foodies and celebrity chefs.
While reading it, I kept thinking: When is this going to happen to the plant world? When will we be talking about celebrity gardeners?
In the early pages of the book, it was almost the same story over and over: the future food world star grows up never really having thought about food, only to discover (usually on a trip to France) this whole other universe: food not just as a source of calories, but rather Food as Art. Food as something important to be thought about, talked about, and lived for. As the movement matures, people have the same epiphany all over this country as they discover for the first time that there is something beyond canned vegetables and processed cheese food product -- food that is worth being passionate about.
What I realized is this: people in the pre-Julia Child James Beard US didn't ignore food because they weren't interested -- they had simply never thought of it, had never had it presented to them quite that way. The same is true for gardening. This country is full of people who are not passionate gardeners simply because they've never thought of gardening as something to be passionate about. All over this country, people are living with the gardening equivalent kraft macaroni and cheese -- chemical soaked, unnaturally green lawns and a few pots of uninteresting, scentless petunias -- when they could be reveling in the joyous wonders found in the pages of catalogs of companies like Plant Delights, Arrowhead Alpines, and Annie's Annuals.
It is time we gardeners stood and up and showed the rest of the country what they are missing. Time we declared that a horticultural masterpiece like the Lurie Garden in Chicago is every bit as significant a piece of art as the paintings housed in the more traditional art museum next door. Time we spoke of gardening as a passion for a life time, as the way to live connected with and supporting nature rather than destroying and abusing it. Time we said the word "gardener" with every bit of smug self-satisfaction heard in the voices of people calling themselves "foodies."
I think the time is right. The food movement itself, combined with the economic troubles, are funneling more and more people into vegetable gardening -- a gateway drug to the other wonders of the gardening life. We have wonderful crop of gardening spokes people -- nursery men like Tony Avent whose politically incorrect catalog covers and plant descriptions state loud and clear that gardening is hip, writers and communicators like Ken Druse and Dan Hinkley who speak loud and clear about gardening and plants in all their complex, marvelous, endlessly entrancing glory. Here on the blogosphere, gardening is ranting, dangerous, punk, strange, quirky, funny, and just feakin' cool.
The revolution is coming.

On the radio

I am on NPR's food show, The Splendid Table this week! Check out this week's episode, I'm at the very end, after the call-in section, talking about my plan to breed a tomato named after the host, Lynne Rossetto Kasper.
 Who-hoo! I feel famous.

To greenhouse or not to greenhouse?

So, my partner (who is able to build anything) drew a design on our chalkboard counter top for a 400 square foot greenhouse for the back yard that he thinks we could build for about $1000.

(It is a little smudged because the cats like to get up there and beg for treats)

How amazingly tempting... I want one. But it really doesn't make sense: we'll be moving in a year and a half when I graduate, so if we built the greenhouse, I'd only have one winter to use it. Much more logical to wait until the next house (After which I SWEAR I shall never move again -- I'm staying put and planting TREES!) and build an even bigger, more marvelous greenhouse there.

But still... wouldn't it be nice? Even if it was for just one winter...

Are specialty nurseries dying?

I got my copy of Asiatica's spring catalog the other day, which opens with a chatty letter from the owner. This year, a fairly depressing one, starting with "For most merchants in the specialty nursery business, [2009] was a difficult year." and going on to say: "If it wasn't clear before, it is clear now that there is no sound economic basis for introducing and selling new and rare plants."

Arrowhead Alpines' catalog doesn't start out much more cheerfully: The headline on their first page is "Still Alive" and includes this: "All the better specialty nurseries are struggling and we hope that out customers and friends will continue to support our efforts to provide cool new plant material. For that matter support our competition as well. It is depressing how many great nurseries have gone in the last couple of years."

Even the perpetually upbeat Tony Avent of Plant Delights writes in his nursery's current newsletter:
"The economy continues to devastate the nursery industry, and the latest casualty is Green Valley Growers of Willis Texas. Green Valley Growers was the 59th largest nursery in the country with 300 acres and one million square feet of greenhouse production. There are many other large growers who are still hanging on while operating in Chapter 11 or Chapter 12 bankruptcy ... we wish them the best in trying to save their businesses."

I wonder -- and worry -- if these nursery struggles are just one more side effect of the hard economic times, or a sign of a longer term trend. I hope not. I can't imagine a world without catalogs packed with amazing plants I've never heard of and long to grow... I hope all my beloved suppliers make it through the hard times, and thrive for years to come. I'll even add a little bit to my orders, just to do my part.

But I think -- and hope -- that brighter times are ahead. Gardening is becoming trendy! I know right now it is just vegetable gardening -- but surely those people lured into the garden by vegetables will be drawn ever deeper into plant addiction, and soon finding themselves ordering rare Japanese Asarum. The rise of the internet, which is not only the ultimate gardening reference book, but also a source for plant-lust inducing blogs, and virtual gardening communities, will surely help fuel the rise and passion of gardeners across the country and the world. I think gardening is poised to follow the path of the "foodie" scene, and explode into mainstream America.

What do you think? Is gardening on the rise? Are specialty nurseries doomed?

Timber Press photo contest

Timber Press is having a contest: Submit your best macro garden photograph, and you could win a copy of a book about taking macro photos.(which seems back-to-front to me... clearly the winner is in no need of a book in order to take amazing pictures. Maybe they should give the book to the worst submission? I like that idea -- I might have a chance then!)
I'm not much of a macro person -- I tend to try (try, usually fail) to take pictures which give an idea of what a whole garden looks like. But: Sometimes the extreme close up is irresistable, as in the case of my submission to the contest: A fringed tulip I saw in the Netherlands a couple years ago:

And so another season of obsession begins...

Just SOME of the seeds I've ordered so far this year. I'm carefully NOT thinking about how on earth I'm going to have room for them all.

You gotta go check it out

One of my favorite bloggers, The Germinatrix, has stumbled on a revolting lair of (in her words) "unnecessarily pornographic" of stinkhorn mushrooms! It is insane. Seriously, you've got to go look at her post. You won't believe it.

Sign of the times: Vegetable seeds EVERYWHERE!

I was startled to see tomatoes for sale in Select Seeds, then White Flower Farm's catalog came, and it has vegetables on the cover AND devotes the first 5 pages to veg -- now High Country Gardens arrives and even THEY are offering "Chef selected vegetable seeds"! Good grief! Am I going to find vegetable seeds in the Plant Delights and Arrowhead Alpines catalogs too? Not that I've anything against vegetables -- I love growing vegetables -- but I get those from Johnny, Pinetree, Seed Savers etc... Select Seeds is for great fragrant plants, White Flower Farm is for gorgeous plant porn photography (though I've never ordered from them -- too expensive, and nothing that unique), and High Country Gardens is for making me wish I lived in a desert (but only ever so briefly) -- not cabages and tomatoes! I wonder, will the veg rage last?

(Addendum: Looked at this post shortly after pubishing it and -- my goodness! I corrected a LOT of typoes. I mean, my posts are always pretty liberally typo infested, but I think this set a new record.)

Movie review for gardeners: Avatar

I'm not a big movie person. I don't even have a functioning television, and my trips to movie theaters are few and far between. But I went to see Avatar. Not only saw it, but went back to the theater and saw it AGAIN – something I've never done before in my life.

You've heard about Avatar – super big-budget film by James Cameron of Titanic fame (this is how much of a not-a-movie person I am: I've never seen Titanic) about blue cat people. You may have heard that the visuals are a technological breakthrough, or that it is a heavy-handed commentary on race -- but what you probably haven't heard is that this is a perfect movie for gardeners.

Don't believe me? Well, let's just say that the first time you meet one of the main characters, you are told that “she likes plants more than people.” Sound familiar? And once the movie arrives on the planet Pandora, you are immersed in an incredibly lovely, lush, digitally generated jungle packed with plants you will wish you could grow. Sadly, the chances of finding anything biolumenescent in your local garden center are pretty slim, but still: some of the scenes are startlingly beautiful, and have got my brain churning with garden design ideas.
Sure, the movie is a sci-fi action thriller with lots of big explosions and exciting fight scenes – but even those are built around things a gardener can understand: They are battles to save beautiful trees. Lovely trees around which the religions and emotional lives of the alien Na'vi are built.

So go see Avatar. Ignore the sci-fi action, explosions, and racial subtexts: Go see it for the plants!

Plants vs. Zombies

Just in time for the holidays...

A video game for gardeners and zombie lovers alike. Who knew gardening could protect your house from zombie attack?

I'm not kidding! This is an actual game you can actually buy and actually play on your actual computer.

Read an actual review here:

http://www.fearnet.com/news/holiday_shopping/b17407_plants_vs_zombies_pc.html

November 19th and still no seed catalogs

The garden is cleaned up. My last minute clearance sale perennials are all planted. Leaves are off the trees. It is the perfect time to curl up on the couch with hot cocoa and a good seed catalog.
Only:
I haven't gotten ANY catalogs yet.
Everyone else seems to have them.
But not me.
:(

Warning: Science nerd geek-out ahead!

If you visit my blog for the as-advertized "thoughts on plants and gardening" you may want to skip this post. But, in real life, I do plant genetics research. So when a friend told me that Bio-Rad (a labratory chemical supply company) had a new GTCA song (GTCA being the 4 "letters"of the genetic code) I had rush off to youtube to see it.






Perhaps not QUITE as good as their previous smash hit, the PCR song but still undoubtedly awesome.

"Bathe" in forest air

My last post got me thinking... every garden knows that plants make them feel better, but I wondered if there was an scientific research on the subject?

Turns out there is lots, and being around green spaces and plants is decidedly good for you:
It reduces stress related illness , reduce depression -- and the positive effects of living around parks it not just due to the increased exercise as this study found that even controlling for increased exercise, people living around lots of green spaces still have better mental health.

Usually reading scientific studies is fairly dry, but in the study I link to above on reducing depression (by a Japanese group of researchers) includes a perfectly wonderful Japanese phrase: Shinrin-yoku,  which they translate as "forest air bathing" -- it is an awkward translation, but much people sun bath at the beach, you can also "bath" in the rich, restorative atmosphere of a forest. I've always loved the peace and beauty of woods, but I never thought of it was bathing before... What a lovely image! I'm going to have to go forest bathing this weekend.

Does this flower NEVER die?

When frost was first threatened, I ran out and cut a flower and three leaves from my calla 'Edge of Night' (A lovely plant... black flowers, dark green leaves flecked with silver and edged with red). The flower had opened several weeks back, so I didn't expect it to last too long in the vase.
In a week it looked like this:

Since when do flowers last longer than leaves? The frost had spared the front garden, so I went out and got replacement leaves -- which also yellowed in a week, with the flower still going strong!

At this point, a freeze had eliminated all calla foliage (along with most everything else), so last weekend I searched for a replacement to set off the lovely flower.

They are the (incredibly spiney!) leaves of my scotch thistle. Looks pretty fantastic, doesn't it? Three weeks in the vase, and still, this flower shows no signs of fading. Maybe someone slipped me a plastic one?

Fall

Fall speaks of death

With promises of rebirth

Beautiful bulbs...

I got home yesterday from a long day at work to find a satisfyingly heafty box from McClure and Zimmerman. I rushed inside, pulled it open and started pulling out bag after bag of allium (schubertii, christophii), daffodils ('Minnow', 'Rinjveld's early sensation', my all-time favorite, 'Thalia'), not to mention iris, eranthus, and more allium. I was giddy. There is nothing like bulbs -- so healthy and hearty looking, so easy to slip into the ground, such compact little promises of spring. When I got to the 8 dozen Scilla siberica bulbs (I know... I should have ordered more) I was so happy I couldn't resist any more -- I lifted the bags to my lips and started kissing the little beauties.

At which point my partner walked in.

Oh well. He already knew I was a deranged gardener.

Michelle Obama: Garden "one of the greatest things I've done"

Just saw this from the Chicago Sun Times -- Michelle Obama (Love her!) talking at the opening of the new DC farmers market described starting the vegetable garden at the White House as "one of the greatest things that I've done in my life so far."

I read that, and thought, "Really?" I mean, Michelle Obama has done a lot of great things, is the garden actually near the top of the list?

I thought back to when gardening exploded into my life as a high school student -- More than just a great thing, it changed me in innumerable ways. Gardening has become the passion that has driven my education, life and career -- and changed how I live, how I face the world.

What do I mean by that? I could list a thousand examples, but one comes to mind:

 A few years ago, a friend of mine took her own life. It was the worst possible news. I cried, of course, talked to friends, of course. But what I really did was sit by a clump of blooming daffodils with my hands on the good earth around them.

A garden teaches me how to live. One of the greatest things I've done? Absolutely.