THE END (OF DEER) IS NEAR

            Well, you’ve surprised me again. The page-view statistics on the deer posts—despite all the pictures—are depressingly low. So I’m going to give you the fast take on the rest of the plants deer eat only if desperate, and move on. If the clamor for more illustrated deer-resistant plants becomes unbearable, I may oblige. I'm not, however, holding my breath.

            But first, some breaking news for St. Paddy's Day.

     ·         If you’ve been on an extended trip to Outer Mongolia or the Falkland Islands, you may not have heard that the USDA published its revised cold-hardiness zone map last month. To view it, click on the highlighted text. Take heart, global-warming catastrophists: the US isn’t really all that warmer—this go-round, the boys at Agriculture just crunched twice as many years of temperature data than the mere 15 they used to develop the original map. They included readings from lots more reporting stations as well, resulting in a more accurate picture of average winter temperatures. The map is just a tool anyway, advisory in nature. No one knows better than you what winter is like in your yard.

·      Attention, citizen-astronomers! Globe at Night is running its third observation period of 2012 from March 13^th to the 22^nd. This time, Northern Hemisphere viewers can opt for either Leo or Orion: Sky-Guy recommends looking at Leo for people in dark-sky areas. Bright red star Regulus makes him easy to locate. Making the great lion even easier to spot, Mars is cruising through the constellation this month. So get out there and do your bit to help map global light pollution.

·       The vernal equinox occurs on Tuesday, March 20^th, as the sun passes over the celestial equator from south to north at 1:14 am EDT.

    ·       The World Wildlife Federation is holding its sixth annual Earth Hour, a climate-change awareness vigil, on March 31 beginning at 8:30 pm local time. Originating in Australia in 2006, the idea is shut off your lights and other electricity-sucking devices for at least an hour “…in a collective display of commitment to a better future for the planet,” says the website (linked above). Many places turn the evening into an outdoor, candle-lit social event, to spread awareness of sustainability issues. Personally, I’m dubious about the prospects of people coming together to save the planet; but what harm to savor an almost-April evening outside in the dark?

*****

               Okay, let’s wrap up Bambi.

(Click on these photos to make them larger)

            Deer don’t eat grass. Any grass. This is one characteristic that makes them not-cows. Here’s a picture of an ornamental grasses garden Tim and I designed on the edge of a swamp. It’s full of Leymus, various Miscanthus, Acorus, and Panicum: so full, in fact, that we were able to slip in a few Knock Out roses that the deer, discouraged by all that yucky grass, never ventured in to find. That’s one for our side.


               Following the same path of deception, here’s a planting that surrounds a deer-candy daylily with less-tasty perennials: (clockwise from bottom left) ‘Icicles’ veronica; ‘Blue Midnight’ penstemon, Siberian iris, seashore mallow, butterfly weed, stokes asters, and ‘Pretoria’ canna lily. It’s pretty, and the daylily blooms are shielded from depredations.

       

            Non-starving deer also give palm trees a pass. I have to say I agree with them here: most palms are notoriously difficult to site in non-tropical landscapes so that they don’t jar with everything else. I find most of them rather ugly and/or ungainly, but that’s a topic for another day.

            In fact, most trees hold little attraction as forage for Bambi. Bucks in rut, however, can damage bark or uproot young deciduous specimens as they rub the velvet off their antlers.

Veg garden temptation

      
            The bad news is that, with rare exceptions (rhubarb, for example, or grassy crops like wheat), anything we grow to eat ourselves also pleases deer. Vegetable gardens in areas under pressure from local herds require sturdy fencing and/or continual patrol by large dogs. Another option is to grow edibles in containers in places deer can be excluded from—like hanging baskets or on gated decks.

      

            As my list of deer-resistant plants kept (keeps) growing, I realized that deer-browsed landscapes result from a) a herd that’s out-populated its habitat; and/or b) a serious lack of imagination on the part of the gardener. There’s not much you can do about a), but b) is entirely within your control.

The garden in March

      By way of example, consider the evolution of the property of our friends, Gen and Ed. Gen believes wholeheartedly in co-existing peaceably with nature. Ed believes wholeheartedly in co-existing peaceably with Gen. Their park-like yard includes several deer trails, to which their gnawed original ornamental plantings bore witness. Over the years, however, we’ve worked together to gently encourage Bambi to dine elsewhere. Here is a picture of the garden at one terminus of the trail in March, full of poisonous daffodils, prickly foliaged ‘Baths Pink’ dianthus and other plants safely off deer menus.

Same garden in August

    And here is the same garden in August, home to ornamental grasses, ‘Goldsturm’ black-eyed Susans, Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha), coleus, and pentas. The deer just walk on by.

Rock garden

       Here’s the periphery of the same property. The tricky footing caused by the granite rip-rap strewn throughout the garden works with a lovely and low-maintenance planting of ‘Blue Pacific’ juniper, more ‘Baths Pink’ dianthus, coleus, society garlic and yaupon holly to make browsing uncommon.

    We even found a way for Ed to have some of the roses he loves, even though the flowers act like deer magnets: planting standards in pots did the trick.

 

'New Dawn' rose, unchewed

          If you find you can’t live without deer-candy, get around Bambi by growing his favorite noshes out of his reach. I’m training a ‘Zéphrine Drouhin’ rose to swag across our front porch, and jury-rigged a fantastically ugly chicken-wire arch for ‘New Dawn’ to grow over.

'Majestic Beauty' Indian hawthorn

       Plants trained or top-grafted into tree-forms (called “standards” in the trade) are another way to have your deer-cake and Bambi not eat it too. Here is a standardized ‘Majestic Beauty’ Indian hawthorn…

'Tardiva' standard hydrangea

…and a pee-gee ‘Tardiva’ hydrangea growing above the chewing-level of our scrubby little coast deer.

Take that, Bambi!

              Also consider containers hung out of reach, or kept in deer-proof enclosures.

A group of azaleas protected 
by nearly invisible fishing line

         If your yard’s full of hawthorns, pittosporums, euonymus, daylilies, roses, hostas, tulips and Oriental lilies, you can try the standard repellent methods—stinky sprays, grated Irish Spring soap, netting, bags of human hair or garlic-oil "pens" tied to susceptible shrubs, predator-urine stakes and fencing. Tim and I know some folks who mounted motion-activated dog-whistle-like devices in strategic spots around their yard one spring to good initial effect. Alas, the deer took to wearing earplugs or something, because by midsummer the devastation had resumed. You can keep deer out by stringing fishing line from tree to tree—or stake to stake—at chest height (theirs, not yours) around susceptible vignettes. The ultimate deterrent is, of course, a large dog.

"Cool Cola" defending the yard
(thanks to Labrador Retriever Pictures)

All these things work, but each has its trade-offs. Sprays can be expensive and must be reapplied regularly; soap’s cheaper, but you still have to be out there, grating away. Plants grow up through netting, failing to protect the tender new growth deer like best. Bushes festooned with bags of hair are soooo unattractive. Garlic pens and predator-urine stakes need replacing, although you probably won’t notice until the morning after the deer return. Fences work great but are a) expensive, b) ugly, or c) both. The sound devices, powered by four C-cell batteries, need frequent battery checks and replacements, and then the deer become accustomed to the sound anyway. Nearly invisible fishing line can cause tripping, and, in our litigious society, possible lawsuits. For those not inclined toward pet ownership, deer depredations may seem less harrowing than the rigors of life with Fido. 

In the March 2008 issue of The Avant Gardener, editor Thomas Powell wrote of experiments conducted by the USDA National Wildlife Research Center using hydrolyzed milk protein, called casein, to render plants unpalatable to Bambi. Apparently, casein is a common component of baby powder. The down side of this economical deer repellant (there’s always a down side) lies in how it’s applied. You have to mix the powder with some kind of adherent to make it stick to the leaves before spraying it on your plants. The article mentions commercial agricultural latex or—I’m not kidding—Elmer’s Glue-All. The mental picture I get of what baby powder, glue and water look like when applied to foliage is not pretty.

      
          The main goal of all repellents is to induce Bambi to change restaurants. Do keep in mind that hungry deer will eat anything. They also become inured to any one deterrent technique after a while. That’s why Tim and I advocate for planting things deer don’t particularly like in the first place. In the long run, it’s easier. 

 
        Don’t let the bastards get you down. And thanks for dropping by.

                                                            Kathy

P.S.—For the seven readers who found the plants lists mildly interesting, there’s a supplemental post of the entire thing (sans pictures) following this one.

DEAR DIARY

             Ever wonder what goes on in someone else’s mind? Ever pick up somebody’s journal and start reading? Would you interested in a peek at mine?

*****

February 2, 2012

Dear Diary,

The International Food and Agriculture Organisation  

classifies clear-cut monocrop plantation sites,  

like this one, as “forests.”

What is wrong with this picture? Literally?

            After a long spell of silence, the Irish-by-way-of-New-Zealand Cathy Fitzgerald churned out two An Art and Ecology Notebook posts in four days. As blogger, filmmaker and Green Party activist, her focus is the plight of global forests. She worries about the contributions human short-sightedness and greed make to the health of “our finite biosphere.” By continuing to buy (cheap) wood products from countries whose logging practices—including clearing old-growth areas—are unsustainable, Western economies are essentially financing what is becoming known as the sixth great extinction of species, habitat and cultures, the Anthropocene Age. (See “In Other News,” Nov. 7, 2011.) Immediate implementation of sane, long-term forest management policies could slow our pell-mell rush toward rendering Earth uninhabitable, Cathy says.

            She quotes Derrick Jensen, author of A Language Older than Words:         

I thought… of our fundamental inversion of all relatedness, of how we nearly always ask the wrong question—What can I get from this?—and so rarely the right one—What can I give back? Even when we try to learn from others, it is from the same spirit of acquisition: What can I learn from this forest ecosystem that will teach me how to manage it for maximum resource extraction? Rarely: What can I learn from this forest community that will teach me better how to serve it?

I don’t know. It’s rare in human history that doing what’s right trumps making a profit. I find solace in that the planet will heal itself once the last money-grubbing, self-involved poophead is gone… hard as it is to believe that could actually happen, especially in an election year. 

February 3, 2012

Dear Diary,

            Note to self: be sure to thank Joseph Cooper-Silvis, who signed up to follow the blog yesterday. Stupid Google won’t allow me to log in to send a personal email through friendconnect, and won’t say why. Yeah, I’ll sign up to put my life in the hands of cloud computing. Just not in this lifetime.

            Anyway, Joseph, I do thank you for signing up. Comments, questions and constructive criticisms are always welcome. And that is one yummy-looking cake in your picture. Is that a frozen chocolate-covered banana on top? Do you bake? Do you sometimes mail goodies to friends?

February 6, 2012

Dear Diary,

            The Grow-Bags have arrived from Gardeners Supply! I broke the news to Tim that they’ll be adorning our front yard in all their cylindrical blue, orange and tan splendors, filled with potato, tomato and pepper plants. Whether or not they produce potatoes, tomatoes and peppers, however, remains to be seen.

            Peas are up in the back yard, but somebody keeps nibbling away the leaves as they open. Too dainty a bite to be deer: bunnies maybe? Covered most of the sprouts with leftover Remay scraps. Perhaps it’s time to set up the bird-netting fences, so the poor darling peas have half a chance.

Fall-planted potato harvest

            In anticipation of a package from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, I dug up the experimental fall-planted crop of potatoes. Not a bad harvest, considering I broke all the rules. What rules? Why, The Potato Rules:

1.  Never use grocery-store potatoes for seed. They’re not certified virus-free!

2.  There’s no point in planting in September: seed eyes go dormant in the fall.

3.      Plant in full sun, not in the shadow of a hedge.

4.      Plant six inches deep initially, then hill, hill, hill.

Okay, so I only pulled in enough spuds for half a loaf-pan of Tim’s famous au gratins: but the experience of digging potatoes in February—priceless. Besides, I’ve never been good at rules anyway.

February 7, 2012

Dear Diary,

            The moon goes full this afternoon at 4:54 EST. In folklore, February’s full moon is called the Hunger Moon, with good reason back in the day before the advent of 24-hour supermarkets. We are so freakin’ spoiled.

            Another little marker on the way to global warming occurred today. The new 30-year “normal” (average!) temperatures for Wilmington, NC, showed that both the “normal” (average!) high and low for this date are one degree warmer than the previous decade’s readings. You may recall I said (in “Scientific Citizen,” Jan. 8, 2012) December “normals” (AVERAGE!) had grown incrementally chillier: well, that’s true, too. What does it all mean? No one really knows.

Sweet box (Sarcococca hookeri var. humilis)

February 8, 2012

Dear Diary,

            In response to yesterday’s post, “Do You Smell Something?” my dear friend Judy out in Bothell, WA, wrote to tell me her sweet box is blooming. Only she—show-off—used its botanical name, Sarcococca. That’s Sarcococca hookeri var. humilis, to be preciser (if not grammatically correct). She rekindled the flame of my Sarcococca envy. I’ve never lived anywhere where this shiny-foliaged, vanilla-scented, evergreen beauty was common. I may have to order one or two from some Oregonian nursery to plant here, just to prove to myself they really don’t care for our 16 consecutive weeks of miserably hot nights.

February 9, 2012

Dear Diary,

Oh, goody! New books!

            Despite the overloaded night-table and jam-packed bookshelf beside the bed, Amazon sent me two new books today: Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants by Brit Richard Mabey; and Marlene Zuk’s Sex on Six Legs: Lessons in Life, Love and Language from the Insect World. Bugs and weeds—as fodder for the blog gristmill, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

Fungus gnat, we hardly knew ye

February 11, 2012

Dear Diary,

            Didn’t water the houseplants this week. Didn’t water the houseplants last week either. The tapeworm fern looks a bit end-crunchy, off-color and out of sorts, but everyone else seems fine. I mention this for two reasons. One, no unintentional drownings have taken place in the three months since overwintering began. Two, the fungus gnat population is ’way, ’way down. When I cleaned house, not a single fungus-gnat carcass was found peppering any light bulb element. I brush my teeth and wash the dishes mostly unobserved these days. No one “bugs” me (haha) when I read in bed at night. The few stray gnats still around cling to windows, looking out at… what? Perhaps Marlene Zuk (see yesterday’s entry) will enlighten me. Just as soon as I finish reading Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing.

            Our neighbors across the street moved out a few weeks ago—he got a job offer he couldn’t refuse in Harrisburg, PA—and they bequeathed us a bunch of potted plants. Two figs (!), a blueberry, an Alberta spruce (?), a Korean boxwood in a bulb pan surrounded by Asian jasmine, an Endless Summer hydrangea, various other bits and bobs, and a tropical collection: a five-foot-tall ti tree (Dracaena something-or-other), a good-sized double-stemmed ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata), and a sago palm (Cycas revoluta).

My newest best plant-friend, the ponytail palm

These last three are now crowded into the kitchen with the leafless Tibouchinas and the self-resurrecting Solanum pseudocapsicum. Isn’t it wonderful how things you never would have chosen if left to your own devices get thrust upon you; you grudgingly accommodate them; and come to love them to the point you can no longer imagine life without them and the things they have to teach you? How do people divorced from the plant world manage this?

February 12, 2012

Dear Diary,

            Tonight is the opener for Globe at Night's February 12-21 Worldwide Star Count, featuring Orion the Hunter. During four annual winter-to-spring observation periods over the past six years, more than 66,000 citizen-scientist reports of night-sky brightness have been submitted from 115 countries.   Why bother to document light pollution? Because too much light at night not only impacts energy consumption levels, but affects the health of humans and wildlife.

 

            Who’d have thought it? Apparently not being able to see the stars drives us bonkers. That certainly explains a lot.

*****

             

            So there it is, 10 days inside the rambling thoughts of yours truly. Now, feel free to share some of yours. And Joseph, you feel more than free to share a slice or two of that cake.

Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                        Kathy

WHAT'S GROWING ON

            “Midwinter” doesn’t exactly conjure cheery mental images. Usual adjectival accompaniers run to “gloomy,” “bleak,” “bitter,” “dark,” “frozen,” “hopeless,” “dead.” This is the time of year when not getting an audition invitation after taking the “Jeopardy!” online test can precipitate a downward spiral. It’s a time of snow-smothered landscapes, short grey days, long black nights, seasonal affective disorder, hypothermia, hibernation.

New Bed arbor, stripped of vines

            Except not everywhere, and not all the time. Here in SENC, for instance, January presented its mild side. Sure, I don long-sleeved shirts and shoes to work outside, but my ancient, ratty work-jacket doesn’t usually last more than ten minutes. Humming tunelessly, I cut back brown and crunchy top-growth of plants that one of our three frosts finally got to. The beds tidied, I meander over to the south side of the house, looking for likely candidates to stick in the ground.

            For all my frozen-precipitation-blitzed friends in the Chicago and Seattle areas, here’s a horticultural report from chez Fitz.

            Bulbs: Great swaths of my small yard look quite warlike, with clumps of dagger-like daffodil, bearded iris and Leucojum aestivum (summer snowflake) foliage protruding from leafy mulch. Floppy tangles of Lycoris radiata (spider lily) and Ipheion uniflorum (starflower) soften the bellicose look, while strappy, bright green leaves of Scilla peruviana grab the eye. Scrabbling around on my hands and knees in the back garden last Saturday, I found evidence of Tulipa turkestanica to come under the Southern crabapple (Malus angustifolia). Yee-haw!

Scilla peruviana, daffodil and Leucojum

    foliage emerging (front to back)

Floppy Lycoris foliage

           

 

            Edibles: On the advice of Pender County Extension agent Charlotte Glen, the first batch of peas went in the ground last week, more than a month earlier than last year. Miss Charlotte suggested soaking the pea seeds for six to eight hours to aid germination, so I did. Fingers crossed! 

Packets of 'Wando' & 'Alaska' pea seeds

I heard back from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds farmer Greg Lutovsky, who patiently and in words of one syllable initiated me to the mysteries of growing potatoes. Did you know, for instance, that potato tubers grow up from the seed piece, not down (making the necessity of hilling crystal clear)? Or that crowding the seed eyes at planting may result in more tubers, but they’ll be small? Or that not all potato plants flower, because pollination isn’t necessary to tuber formation? (In response to this question, Mr. Greg somewhat tersely responded, “You don’t eat flowers.”) All this was news to me, despite all the books and articles on the subject I’d read. 

Puny collards 

& flourishing parsley

The strawberries—especially the ‘Fragola d’Bos’—look great. My lettuces and flat-leaved parsley are going strong. The front-garden blueberries show some signs of life, and the potting-bench trio never even lost their leaves.  The best I can say for collards, however, is they’re still alive. There’s probably an arcane secret to getting them to grow larger, too, that I have yet to run across in print.

Eleagnus berries, almost ripe

Ugly Agnes (Eleagnus x ebbingii), whose tiny flowers perfumed the whole yard October through December, has set fruit. The sandpaper-textured berries are tartly delightful when fully ripe and red, but will pucker your kisser if you pluck ’em too early or too orange. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(Somebody oughta write a book, to put all this pertinent information together in one place, don’t you think? Oh, wait! Somebody has! If only some other somebody would publish it.)

            Other: The ornamental apricot (Prunus mume ‘Peggy Clarke’) continues to produce its button-shaped, intensely pink blooms, punctuating the pervasive green and brown. Under the clothesline-turned-wisteria-support, Edgeworthia chysantha’s tight white buds continue to avoid squirrel depredations. They don’t look like much, not even open (the buds, not the squirrels), but their fragrance puts them in the same class of winter sweeteners as Daphne odora, tea olive (Osmanthus fragrans) and winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragratissima).

Edgeworthia chrysantha buds

Prunus mume 'Peggy Clarke'

 Hollyhock foliage,

January 21, 2012

  

            It’s the hollyhocks that surprised me most. Despite three frosts, they’re perky as young Goldie Hawn. These same hollyhocks were the leaffooted bugs’ nursery last spring, so I have mixed feelings about their survival. Still, that sturdy green anchoring the mostly brown-hued New Bed is optimistic… and now I know enough to spritz any wiener-bugs I spy with insecticidal soap. Early and often.

           As always, playing in the yard generates cheerfulness, something in rather short supply on my part inside the house these short, nippy—one might say “snippy”—days. Paying attention to the natural world invariably raises spirits, even for depressives like me, whose “Jeopardy!”-dependent retirement plans just got put off for another few years.

*****

My-my-my-my my Orion (1-21-12)

            In celestial news, Globe at Night wrapped up its first citizen-scientist project of 2012 on the 23rd. Sorry I didn’t alert you sooner, but Sky-Guy kinda fell down on the job: he didn’t mention it until his post of the 18^th, and I didn’t read it until the 19^th. Fortunately, we had an achingly clear sky that night, and all of our neighbors’ outside lights were off, so my view of Orion and his companions was superb. For the first time ever, I could make out the arc of his bow, pointing directly at poor ol’ Taurus’ triangular head. I stood outside in the middle of the street in my pajamas and aforementioned ratty work-jacket until my neck insisted I look somewhere else, preferably down. It was glorious.

            Not to worry—Globe at Night has three more projects on tap for February 12-21 (Orion again), March 13-22 (Orion and Leo), and April 11-20 (Leo). This time I won’t wait for Sky-Guy to provide details, so if you’d like to exercise your scientist chops and chip in your two-cents worth about world-wide light pollution, watch this space. Or go to the website linked above.

            And thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                    Kathy