FOOD FOR THOUGHT, PART 2

            Meanwhile, back at the miles of shelving full of plant foods, how do you know if a product is organic? Why, it’ll say so, right on the label. How do you know if using the product constitutes a sustainable practice? That’s a little trickier. As Tim likes to point out, there’s nothing more organic than petroleum: it’s just dead plants aged under great pressure for eons.

Never assume “organic” on the label automatically means “good for you.” In addition to crude oil, poison ivy is also 100% organic. So are cyanide, and strychnine, and curare. In The Truth about Organic Gardening, author Jeff Gillman cautions that rotenone, a botanically derived insecticide (from South American derris root), is extremely toxic to beneficial insects, fish and humans. He believes that it would not be available, ironically, if it were not “organic.”

Espoma's Organic Traditions line

Tim and I espouse Espoma products. They are almost entirely sustainably derived and environmentally neutral, and readily available in our area. For mail-order, I like Gardens Alive! products. They use ’way too many exclamation points, but sell good stuff.

To reiterate, Tim and I feed our soil just before spring kicks in by mixing two cups of kelp meal into every 50-pound bag of Black Kow. The 2727 square feet of planted area on my 55-by-120-foot lot uses about 25 bags of Kow and kelp, or roughly about one 50-pound wheelbarrow load of Kow and kelp per 100 square feet. Tim occasionally topdresses the 2459 square feet of lawn (that shrinks a little every year as the resident plant-fanatic needs more space for her newest treasures) with eight to ten bags of sun-dried, unadulterated Kow.

Sandy soil needs all the nutrient help it can get. At your house, adjust amounts according to your soil-test results.



Length in feet times width in feet
equals square feet



(Don’t know how to figure square footage? Slept through that geometry class in tenth grade, eh? Just measure your beds as if they were all rectangular, and then multiply length by width. For example, the lovely uterus-shaped area in my front yard measures 1044 square feet when rectangle-ated, 36 feet times 29 feet. Ergo, this bed needs roughly ten 50-pound loads of Kow mixture.)

Let’s talk a little bit about everyone’s favorite soil additive, nitrogen. The following gets a bit technical: just read it slowly, going back over the parts that don’t sink right in, and you’ll be fine. We Americans need to get beyond our science-phobia.

The microorganisms in your dirt really matter, precisely because the amount of nitrogen available for plant use depends upon the total biomass of bacteria and fungi in the soil. This is how it works: a good chunk of the energy photosynthesis creates gets expended in the production of chemicals, which ooze out through the roots. These exudates, as they’re called, are sugars that attract and nourish beneficial bacteria and fungi. The microbes consume the exudates, thus fixing (immobilizing) nitrogen and other nutrients in their bodies, becoming in essence tiny, living bags of fertilizer. Enter the fertilizer-spreaders, the protozoa and nematodes. These guys eat the bacteria and fungi to power their own metabolisms. Whatever they don’t use is excreted (or “mineralized”—isn’t that a nice way to describe poop?) in a form plants can use. Without microscopic organisms exuding, eating and excreting, your soil becomes sterile. Most plants really struggle in sterile soil.

In fact, they die.

The nitrogen in protozoa poop comes out as ammonium (NH₄—nitrogen bonded to hydrogen), but may be converted to nitrate (NO₃—nitrogen bonded to oxygen) in the presence of bacteria.

So what? you ask grumpily.

So this. Pay attention: behavior-changing enlightenment follows. Research has demonstrated that, in general, perennials, shrubs and trees prefer their nitrogen to be hydrogenated, as ammonium. The ammonium excreted by protozoa stays in that form in a soil where fungi outnumber bacteria. If bacteria hold the upper hand, as in sandy soils, they oxygenate the nitrogen, converting it to nitrate. Annuals, grasses and vegetables (which are just annuals we eat) like their nitrogen as nitrate.

Read that paragraph again. It’s telling you something really important about your plants’ dining preferences.

Here’s the kicker: the nitrogen in most commercial fertilizers comes in the form of nitrate, favoring bacteria at the expense of the fungi. So while nitrate fertilizers are great annual-and-grasses pleasers, they’re not the first choice of your perennials, shrubs and trees.

Now it’s time for a little question-and-answer period.

Question: How do I know if my soil is full of fungus or brimming with bacteria?

Answer: Depends on the pH. Acidic soils favor fungi; bacteria prefer neutral to alkaline.

Q: I live on the coast. What kind of soil pH am I likely to have?

A: Neutral to alkaline.

Q: So that means my lawn, annual beds and vegetable patch will do okay without amending?

A: Well, I wouldn’t say without any amending. You still need composted materials to add organic material to sandy or swamp-mucky soil. And you should attend to any glaring deficiencies noted on your soil test.

Q: But I have a lot of shrubs and trees around my house, and I’ve been thinking of putting in a cutting garden. Short of moving inland, what environmentally responsible steps can I take to encourage more fungi in my soil?

A: Offer them food they like. Use organic mulches like shredded hardwoods, shredded leaves, or newspaper. The browner, the better. (What’s “brown”? See the “Compost Happens” posts.) Apply supplemental nitrogen only as ammonium—no sense making it easier for those nitrate-loving bacteria. Always study the label on any fertilizer you spread, even the organic ones.

Q: So what you’re really saying is that I want to feed my microbes, not my plants?

A: Bingo.



Thunderstorms bring atmospheric
nitrogen down to earth



If your dirt’s in pretty good shape, with healthy populations of microbes, protozoans and arthropods, it already has sufficient nitrogen in it. Earth’s most plentiful element, nitrogen accounts for 78%-by-volume of our atmosphere. Another significant bit of terrestrial nitrogen comes from lightning and rain-water. (That’s why grass looks so much greener after a thunderstorm.) Certain bacteria, either living free in the soil or colonizing the roots of leguminous plants, convert nitrogen in the atmosphere to a plant-friendly form. The damn stuff is everywhere.

And, yes, Virginia, you can have too much nitrogen. Besides root burning, overdoses cause lanky growth and favor foliage development at the expense of flowers. Wisteria, for instance, will bloom sparsely or not at all if you dose it with nitrogen. You’ll get leaves and shoot growth galore, but no flowers. And frankly, there’s no point in putting up with wisteria if you don’t get those gorgeous, fragrant, spring blooms.



Bulb-Tone has 2.4%
Water Insoluble Nitrogen



If you still feel compelled to apply nitrogen, spread it just before a rain or an irrigation cycle. Nitrogen moves easily into the root zone as long as enough water is present. When buying formulations with high N numbers, check the label for the WIN (water-insoluble nitrogen) percentage. In order to increase nitrogen uptake and decrease loss through volatilization, WIN should be at least half of total nitrogen. In the unlikely event your soil test comes back declaring a lack of nitrogen, use cottonseed meal (6-2-1) to remedy the situation. (Lowenfels and Lewis advise avoiding formulations that have more than ten percent of any of the primary nutrients, eliminating most commercial inorganic formulations with the ironic exception of the yucky 10-10-10.)

There! Now you’ve made your well-thought-out, sustainable decision about what to buy, paid for it and had the nice man load it in the trunk. Now are we done? Not quite yet. The little matter of where you ought to place your plant food needs some discussion, requiring a tiny bit of botanical knowledge.

But that’s for next time. Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                             Kathy

P.S.—For my new Winding River readers, here are some pictures of Lespedeza thunbergii ‘Pink Cascade.’ Nice plant, huh?

SPRING PREP

            February means speaking gigs for me and Tim. This time of year, local Garden and Service and Women’s Clubs want us to tell their members how to get their gardens ready for spring, or how to fix problem areas. Up until this year, that meant many days of designing and creating posters to prop on Tim’s portable easel as visual aids to our presentations. We’ve never forgotten the stern injunction issued by one program chairman: “You have to have a handout,” she told us. “If you don’t have a handout, they get bored.”

           

            “!” we replied. “Okaaaay.”

            That was ’way before the days of Power Point. Which, neo-Luddite that I am, I resisted in my usual passive-aggressive manner… until now. Tim pulled up an online video how-to: we watched it. Twice. The perky female voice made slide production sound easy. She was, in fact, right about that. I spent four happy hours playing with pictures and polishing text-bites instead of working on the three pieces due to publishers in the near future. (No worries—except for today, it’s supposed to rain the rest of the week.)

            Tomorrow we take the show on the road. I’m anticipating disaster.

                  Be that as it may, I’m steeped in garden preparedness, and you shall benefit therefrom.



Fitzes' winter garden

            The winter garden presents opportunities unavailable the rest of the year. It is neutral, a study in dull greens, greys and browns, empty of distracting blooms and foliage. It makes the underlying structure of the space—what garden-design types dub “the bones”—apparent. In winter, we can see the garden. Now’s the time to think about what we really want from the space. Now’s the time to assess what’s working and, more importantly, what’s not.

            Drawing a map, more or less to scale, helps with visualization. First sketch in the features you’re absolutely stuck with—buildings, patios, other people’s walls and fences, massive boulders, mature trees. Add or delete (it’s only on paper at this point) slightly more negotiable aspects: lawn areas, hedges, your own fences, walkways, recently transplanted trees and shrubs. Embellish with other, readily moved, hardscapes—small boulders, decorative elements—keeping in mind too much extraneous stuff makes a space feel chaotic. Figure out where you most often see the space from inside the house, and arrange elements to optimize that view. Or perhaps you want to lure the viewer outside, to be in the garden, by enhancing a sense of mystery, of something hidden.

             Here are some sample sketches (remember you can click on the pictures to make them larger). Please note that the drawings don’t have to be pretty. You most likely won’t be publishing yours for all the world to see. I certainly would have taken more care if I’d known mine were going to be beamed across cyber-space.

Front-yard island

Fitzes' back garden

            Bare-bones maps provide an erasable foundation upon which to design the plantings. But that’s a topic for another day. We’re focusing on preparation here.

            In mild-winter climes, February is a great time to get the garden ready for whatever’s going to happen to it as spring plays out. The cool weather makes doing the work more pleasurable than if you put it off until later.

Here’s the plan:

1.   Tidy up the site: prune back ornamental grasses and out-of-control or unsightly woody elements, and take down dead herbaceous vegetation; remove disease-ridden foliage, stems and mulch to the curb, and trim the rest to readily compostable sizes and put it in your bin to cook. (Don’t have a bin? See “Compost Happens I & II” posts of January 16 and 20.)

2.  Feed the soil with a generous topdressing of composted organic material (home-grown or commercially obtained) and kelp meal or seaweed emulsion (for trace elements); and

3.      Refresh the mulch.

Collecting prep tools

            Assemble your tools in a convenient staging area. At my house, that would be the back deck for backyard campaigns and the head of the driveway for forays out front. You’ll need the following:

·    a leaf rake;

·  a hard rake (sometimes called a clam rake or landscape rake);

·    pruners and/or your Joyce Chens,  lops and a pruning saw;

·    a large receptacle for collecting debris;

·    large quantities of composted material;

·   sufficient kelp meal or seaweed emulsion for your square footage, per package directions;

·    a wheelbarrow for mixing and moving the topdressing stuff;

·    a trowel for stirring the kelp meal into the topdressing stuff;

·    a shovel to distribute the topdressing stuff; and

·  a garden claw to ruffle the topdressing stuff down through the mulch and to de-compact packed-down shredded mulches.

Composting cuttings



I also require an eight-foot-high ladder to reach some pruning spots. You may want to think about that, depending on your situation. It is just such a total drag to get into the swing of clean-up and have to stop to cadge a never-conveniently-located ladder.

            The worst part is buying and transporting bags of Black Kow (or wheelbarrow-loads of your own compost) around the site. My little yard requires about 25 50-pounders each spring. Much spousal grumbling traditionally accompanies this endeavor.



Soil-feeding materials

          Once pruning and trimming and disposal are done, it’s time to feed the soil. In the wheelbarrow, stir four cups of kelp meal into each 50 pounds of composted whatever. (February is too early to add fertilizer to the mix; but if you put this chore off until mid-March or later, it's okay to add 12 cups of Holly-Tone or other mostly non-synthetic formulation to each 50-pound batch.) Toss the mixture around by the shovelful, right on top of the mulch, aiming for 100% coverage.

           After attending to all beds, whip out your garden claw for another round. Ruffle the topdressing in to get it closer to the soil. The (horrible) alternative is to move the mulch to a tarp before spreading the compost mixture and then replace it. Another possibility is to work in sections, raking back the mulch from one area, tossing on the Kow mix, and putting the mulch back.

Personally, I’ll take ruffling over raking any day.

The evocatively named vomit fungus
 on shredded hardwood mulch

If your mulch of choice is shredded hardwood, you may have noticed that it tends to compact over time. Take advantage of already being on your knees with a claw to break up the surface, allowing air and water to flow through it more easily. An added bonus is the reduction of the likelihood of certain evil-looking and –smelling fungi erupting. And that, as Martha Stewart used to say before she was shipped off to prison for insider trading, is a really good thing.

            Once the ruffling and fluffing are done, move on to
refreshing the mulch. Here are renewal guidelines for the four types of mulches most prevalent in my neighborhood.

1.  Pine straw: a standard bale covers 40 square feet to three or four inches, which quickly mats down. Pine straw decomposes faster than other mulch choices, and should be refreshed at least twice a year.

2.  Pine bark nuggets: one two-cubic-foot bag will refresh a 15-square-foot area. Nuggets look good far longer than pine straw, weathering from a rich brown to silvery grey. And no, in case you were wondering, they do NOT attract termites.

3.  Shredded hardwoods: a two-cubic-foot bag refreshes 15 to 20 square feet. Although longer-lasting than pine straw, there is the little matter of compaction mentioned above. Please avoid using shredded cypress, as the trees are being over-harvested.

4.   Shredded leaves: the biggest advantage to mulching with leaves is that they are renewed on site constantly—for free! And there’s absolutely no packaging waste.

Don’t try to accomplish all this in one day, or even in a weekend, unless you’ve got a crew. Working alone, I usually take four or five two- to three-hour sessions to finish. Spring prep is just another example of why gardening doesn’t make a good avocation for people addicted to instant gratification.

Thanks for dropping by. Will let you know how the first two speaking engagements pan out next time.

                                                                                      Kathy