ASK THE EXPERT

            As a nation, we are as enamored with the opinions of experts as with the bad behavior of people celebrated mostly for behaving badly. Of the former group, economists are the most egregious example. The Labor Day op-eds pointed out that the actual number of unemployed and underemployed Americans comes closer to 17% of the population than the nine percent the statistic crunchers spewed out earlier this month. What do they care? No doubt they all have cushy jobs with super-duper benefits.



Here's the guy who started
all the nonsense

            Held in a 250-seat auditorium, the introductory economics class I took as a first-year student at UVa several hundred autumns ago cemented my disdain for “the dismal science,” a moniker that seems only half right: “dismal” hits the bulls-eye, but the “science” part is extremely iffy. In his initial lecture, rising-star professor and author of the $60 required textbook (that’s 60 1970s dollars, almost a full week’s wages for a seasonally employed teen—how economical is that?) Dr. Kenneth Elzinga made clear in a subtextual way that the foundation of economics is to assume away reality, posit the factors that best fit the outcome you want to “prove,” and go from there. Guns and butter, supply and demand, we learned as the semester wore on, are just so much smoke and mirrors. Because I’m good at on-demand regurgitation of factoids, I came out of the course with a B+, three credit hours toward a degree, and an abiding mistrust for anything any economist has to say on any subject.

            (In retrospect, the best part of ECON 101 was sitting next to Tony McReynolds, a bearded bearish guy from Boca Raton, Florida, who was scary-smart and had a wicked sense of humor embellished by a dreamy baritone speaking voice. If it hadn’t been for him, I probably would have skipped most lectures and cadged my roommate’s notes. I haven’t thought of Tony Mac in years. Wonder what he’s doing today? Whatever it is, I bet it’s not economics.)



Why economists are worthless:
all talk, no action

            Economists may be the worst at dispensing “expert" sound-bites, but they’re far from alone. The advent of 24-hour on-air yakking (thanks bunches, CNN) has given rise to a culture of expertise. Turn on any TV or radio and you can get horse’s-mouth opinions on dealing with your physical health (Dr. Oz), your mental health (Dr. Phil), your love-life and children (any afternoon talk show), your house and garden (HGTV, Martha Stewart), your pet (Animal Planet), your politics (FOX News), the weather (TWC), your cuisine (Emeril, Paula Deen, Rachael Ray, the Iron Chef, those nutcase Swedes on PBS, etc., etc., etc.), your religion (TCN), your drugs (The People’s Pharmacy), your money (CNBC), your sports fixation (ESPN), you name it. Experts also expound in print: just check out the how-to and self-help sections of any library or bookstore (Deepak Chopra, Dr. Whatshisname Dobson, Malcolm Gladwell).

            We’re adrift in a vast sea of information, completely free of ever having to think for ourselves. Doesn’t seem to make us any happier, though. Or more efficient, or proficient, or functional as human beings. “Where is the wisdom in information?” worried T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets decades ago.

            Yesterday afternoon, while pulling out failed bush beans with a view to an experimental fall planting of potatoes, it occurred to me that not much I’ve ever read about vegetable gardening has been all that helpful. Take potatoes, for example. This was my third season working in the genre (as we writer-types say): it was the best ever, harvest-wise, but that’s not saying much. I am embarrassed to report that we dug a whole 28 ounces of golf-ball-sized spuds; which, I hasten to add, is 11 ounces better than last year, and 23 ounces more than 2009’s dismal harvest. The Adirondack Blues, new to us this year, beat the odds in this distinctly non-Adirondack climate by producing the largest and the most.



The remarkable
Adirondack Blue potato

             (I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the Adirondack Blues also surprised by being the only non-regulation-colored vegetable I’ve ever seen Tim eat without coercion. Seriously. The man won’t touch orange, yellow, pink or green tomatoes. He regards sweet peppers of any hue but green as suspect. He doesn’t even like to be in the same room as a white eggplant—not that he’d allow one of those of any color to pass his lips.)



Some seed catalogs
I consult

            Back to the point. As is my wont, I conducted extensive research into raising potatoes before planting the first batch—Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening, Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte (see Good Reads at right), seed catalogs and gardening websites galore. I also quizzed the guy at Farmers Supply in Wilmington where we bought our seed stock. (He told me I was a bit behind the curve for planting time.) I prepared the soil and the eyes, placed them at the prescribed depth and distance apart, and hilled the damn things repeatedly that first season. Turned out most of the advice must have been geared to places like Maine and Idaho, not the nutrient-poor sand and steamy nights of southeastern North Carolina. A week before time to dig, bacterial soft rot set in. Who knew potatoes could dissolve into sacks of noxious goo while still in the ground?

            This year, I decided the experts could go pound sand and followed the dictates of intuition and sad experience instead. I planted in mid-February rather than late March, didn’t bother hilling at all, didn’t wait anxiously for flowers that never came. The results, as mentioned above, showed improvement. I learned respectable harvests depend in part on the amount of acreage sown. I learned that you don’t have to space plants with mathematical precision: cramming works as well as not. I learned cool soil temperatures are critical to successful potato farming, which is why Idaho and Maine get such spectacular results when I don’t. Tim pointed out that the only type of spud widely grown in our neck of the woods is the sweet potato, which is botanically closer to morning-glories than Solanums. All these vital clues to growing potatoes in coastal southeastern North Carolina came from on-the-job training and personal observation, not from what somebody else told me or from something I read. These are the lessons I will remember, and apply.

Books such as these
have their limitations

            So, disregarding the experts’ warnings against non-certified-virus-free stock, I’m sowing a small fall crop of eyes from sustainably raised potatoes I bought at farmers markets and let sprout under the kitchen sink. Maybe they’ll have time to produce before killing frost sets in, maybe not. But either way, it’ll be a lesson I learned on my own about works for me, in the place I live.

            Not all expert advice is worthless. I’m forever grateful to the trophoblastic disease unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston for giving me the opportunity to be alive these past 30 years. I’m really glad I never bought that Yugo. Momma was right about the Sims boy. Tim is very seldom mistaken when he expresses an opinion about anything. But the best lessons—in gardening as in life—are those we stumble into on our own.

            My expert advice? Turn off the outside noise and go figure out something for yourself. I guarantee you’ll feel better for the exercise.

            Thanks for dropping by.

                                                                                        Kathy

DECEMBER WRAP-UP

            Well, the weather outside is less frightful, the weekend’s supposed to be delightful. Nonetheless, with Wilmington clocking 26 consecutive days of below-average temperatures, this December ranks as the coldest in 135 years. (The government only started keeping systematic records in 1875, so we don’t know about the countless millennia before then.) Oak Island shivered through 19 sub-freezing nights, compared to the average four-and-a-half, according to my own eight years of recording observations.

            A seemingly endless round of low-pressure systems rolls in from the west, sucking in frigid air from Canada. My son Sam returns to McGill University in Montreal next week: I hope there’s some cold left for him up there. My son Sean is in Brooklyn, digging out from the 24 to 30 inches of snow dumped by the Christmas Blizzard of 2010. Makes me think I should stop whining about local weather. Here, as in every other facet of life on Earth, someone somewhere has it worse than I do. Probably much worse, because I’ve led one astoundingly lucky life.

            So far.

                    December 10^th’s post, “Stuffing Stockings,” got the most hits this month. Hope it was helpful. Not that I’d know for sure, because comments are few and far between, although pageview stats climb steadily. I thank you all very much—especially my fan in Slovenia—but I’d really, really like some feedback. Nothing bad happens if you post a comment. You won’t go to hell. Plus, it’s easy. At the bottom of every post is a box entitled “Post a Comment.” You move your cursor inside the box and type something, perhaps a flattering remark about what joy this well-written blog brings you, enquiries about my astrological sign or hair color, a story about your community garden or gardening community, your pickleworm phobia, your astrological sign or hair color, whatever. I’m into dialogue, y’all. As long as I don’t have to use the telephone, which I despise more than pickleworms.

 

            I’ll lay into you about signing on as followers next month, if this comments tirade helps.

            Let’s see, what else? I did, in fact, manage to catch a part of the lunar eclipse. Being of a certain age, I generally have to get up once during the night to visit the bathroom. On December 21^st, the bladder call happened at 4 a.m. “What the heck?” I thought, so I bundled up and tiptoed out to our back deck. The eclipse had started to recede, so there was a crescent of white light topping the otherwise dusky red globe. I must have stood there, agog, in that strange light for almost ten minutes. Then Petey the Possum lumbered up under the potting table to check for scraps of catfood Rocky and Rowena Raccoon may have missed, breaking my reverie. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not afraid of Petey, but maintain a healthy respect for his status as a wild creature.

            The pallet of 50 25-pound bags of Black Kow I asked Santa for failed to materialize, alas. I was hoping to use them to counteract the pound of dark-chocolate-covered macaroons and the dozen coconut igloos that were waiting for me under the tree. Guess I’ll have to keep schlepping 50-pounders of Kow around one or two at a time.



            Houseplant status report: the Solanum pseudocapsicum is totally defoliated. Turned out it had an infestation of little green caterpillars. Two soakings with Safer Insecticidal Soap at ten-day intervals took care of them, but it was too late for the leaves. The plant sits in its corner of the Fitzgerald Kitchen of Death, looking rather minimalistically sculptural with its orange fruits and bare green stems. I find I prefer it this way: beats the daily dustpan-full of crunchy leaves and caterpillar poop. Some tiny new leaves are starting to unfurl, stoking hopes of ultimate survival. 

The defoliated yet sculptural
Solanum pseudocapsicum



            A few caterpillars tried a change of address to the verbena/pentas pot, but a single shot of Safer quashed that tactic. Both plants continue hanging in.

            The dahlia drowned. The mango sprout damped off.

            Incredibly, the poinsettia still has most of its foliage and to date hasn’t lost a single red bract. This is little short of a Christmas miracle. All other specimens of the uber-hybridized Mexican beauty sentenced to a holiday term chez Fitz give up within three weeks. The current season’s mutant is a month old and going strong. It's true—wonders never cease.

 

Aha! It's a
Physalis heterophylla,
a clammy ground cherry



            The tapeworm fern is holding its own, even sporting some new shoots. Our cat Three (it’s a long story) keeps trying to ingest it, but every time she does, she has to throw it up within minutes. I know this because the vomit spots are all in the immediate environs of the piano upon which the plant sits. This behavior raises doubts as to exactly how smart this wily old feline survivor really is



            The papayas are both doing very well indeed, recovering nicely from their initial shock defoliation. I attribute this amazing turn of events to the fact that both were spared any time at all in the Kitchen of Death, and weekly doses of Super-Thrive.

            The biggest houseplant story of December, however, involves that mystery plant I asked you for help in identifying. Well, never mind. I found it in on page 47 of the February 2011 issue of Garden Gate, in the “Weed Watch” section. It’s a clammy ground cherry, Physalis heterophylla. Leave it to me to attempt to overwinter a weed. The plant itself succumbed last weekend, but I’ve kept some seeds. Hey, a weed’s only a weed if you don’t like it, right?



 

Gulf fritillary caterpillar
munching on passionflower foliage



            This out-of-the-clear-blue-sky plant identification happens to me quite a bit, mainly because I read a lot of gardening magazines. The other instance I remember with crystal clarity is when I learned the name of the ugly orange-with-black-spines caterpillars eating the life out of the passionflower adorning our outdoor shower. I keep back issues of various magazines in the bathroom, so that no minute goes by without its opportunity for expanding horizons. On this occasion, I picked up a three-year-old copy of The American Gardener, and opened it at random. Well, slap my ass and call me pinky, there was a picture of the wriggly creatures devastating my vine. They were the larvae of Gulf fritillary butterflies!

            I don’t really believe in coincidence. Tim and I had been batting the idea of killing the little things back and forth when I felt the need to use the convenience. And voilà! It would be spooky if it didn’t happen so often.

            The seed catalogs are rolling in. Comstock Seeds, Burpee’s, and Cooks Garden have arrived, along with a new Gardens Alive! offering 25% off KaBluey blueberry plants. I’m already salivating, having spent four dollars for six ounces of the antioxidant powerhouses from Argentina just yesterday. (It was for a party—I don't normally buy non-U.S. produce, and try to keep purchases to what’s in season. Which, at this time of year, is practically nothing.)

            Thanks for dropping by. Take the plunge and leave a brief comment, okay? See you in the New Year.

                                                                                                  Kathy