Gardening by Mistake

Anyone remember that musical and that song? It’s actually before my time, but I remember hearing the song once when I think my parents watched the movie on TV. Anyway, it popped into my head yesterday evening when the remnants of Dolly rolled into our area. We’d been having a really dry time, so the rain was welcome. However, Dolly may have over-stayed her visit. We’re having flooding problems due to so much rain. Some of my pot ghetto plants were in a tub, where I could move them easily and water en mass, etc. This is probably 6 inches deep. When I looked out this morning, the plants were floating in the tub. It was full to within an inch of the top. The tub isn’t under the roof or any place where water would be pouring into it. We just got a lot of rain!

Unfortunately, we’ve had what I think is going to be a tree fatality, as well. I was startled to look out my back window today and see my apple tree lying on its side. It just seems to have slowly tipped over under the weight of the apples and rain. I’m going to try to right the tree (using the lawn tractor to pull it, I imagine), but I don’t know how well that will work since I assume the roots are messed up now. I’m fairly upset about this. We planted that tree almost 8 1/2 years ago when we moved in. It had achieved some nice size and was producing great crops of apples each year. I’m just sick that I might lose that.

Thursday (7/24/08) I called Specialty Perennials. Not surprisingly, I got an answering machine. I left a message stating that my May order hadn’t arrived and I wanted an explanation and either my seeds or a refund. Of course I had no response.

I called again this morning (7/29/08). I spoke to a man who I believe, based on the reviews of others, must be the guy’s father. When I gave him my order number his immediate response was “Oh, that’s an old order!” My reponse? “Yes, I know, and that’s why I’m calling. Where is it?”

Here’s the funny thing: he thinks it got lost in the mail. Now, I know the post office can lose things, but I find it interesting that if you read the reports on Garden Watchdog the post office seems to lose a good percentage of Specialty Plants orders. Odd, that. Must also be the post office’s fault that Specialty Perennials doesn’t respond to (and may not even read to begin with) customer e-mails reporting problems, asking questions, etc.

The man I spoke with today said I will hear from them tomorrow. We’ll see. I’ll certainly let you know.

I fed my herds this evening. I’ve been feeding them on the weekends, but this time I was out of town. That’s one of the great things about the worms. No other livestock can have such a varied feeding schedule and thrive. Want to go on a vacation for weeks at a time? No problem! You can feed the worms and not worry about them until you get back!

Saturday I was up in Waterloo, Iowa, visiting my grandmother on her small farm. There were harvest (immature green) apples on the ground under the apple trees. I conned my kids into the picking those up for me and I brought home a bag of apples for my worms. It’s not that I needed the apples, really. I have an apple tree of my own which has dropped a lot of apples. Those have been tossed— whole— into my outdoor worm bin. It’s rather that I couldn’t stand to see them go to waste. However, when at my aunt’s house later I declined to pick hers up, as well, when she heard about it. I couldn’t get the kids to do it again and I wanted to visit. The apples I brought home will get halved and quartered, bagged and frozen until future use.

Each person has to figure out what works best for herself when it comes to vermiculture. It’s only recently that I’ve really started feeding my worms in any quantity. My early attempts led to over-feeding and that’s not pretty. It can also kill off entire herds if the foods get “hot.” To avoid that, I started feeding just little dribs and drabs. I had no more problems with overfeeding, but I also didn’t have a herd grow like it should.

I began to feed my herd a layer mash that I ground up and to which I added some additional items. This is a known worm-fattening recipe and I will say that my worms devoured the meal as quickly as I could sprinkle it onto their bedding. It definitely gave the worms a more consistent supply of food, but it wasn’t delivering it in much quantity. Food items can become “hot” in the worm bin. This can happen, for instance, when too much of an item is added in one place. The food items also get hot when they come into contact with the carbon bedding (if newspapers or cardboard are used). To make sure the worms have some safe part of their bin to flee to if this happens, the food should never cover the entire surface of the bin. This limited the area of bedding I could sprinkle my chicken meal banquet over. I was having to do this daily. (Note: if you decide to feed chicken mash, be cautious. Chicken mash can contain more salts than your worms can deal with. Check before feeding it).

The other problem I had if I wanted to feed in greater quantity was that I didn’t have enough food scraps at my house to reliably feed all my worms on a consistent basis. If I was going to feed in greater quantity, I needed a reliable food source.

After a year and a half, I finally decided to go for it and feed the worms much closer to their capacity. I contacted the produce manager at a local grocery store and asked him if I could have their old produce that they had pulled from the shelves. I fully expected him to say “no” but I was delighted when he said yes. Many, if not most, grocery stores refuse to allow this, preferring to put the food waste in a landfill rather than risk a law suit. They worry that the person getting their old produce will eat it, get sick, and sue. It makes me sick just thinking about the waste.

So now I’m on a new learning curve, figuring out how often and how much of my grocery produce haul to feed my worm bins each time. So far, I haven’t fried the worms in any of my bins, thank goodness. Because I had an experience with that about 2 months ago, I’ve been very cautious about over feeding, particularly in my small 3-gallon tubs. I believe I’m still under-feeding those bins at this point. It’s much better to under feed than to over feed. I think I’m doing well overall. The food I place in each bin is gone within 7-10 days. I haven’t had any blooms in mite populations and no odor problems. All in all, it’s going well. One thing that surprises me is how much newspaper bedding I’m going through these days. It decomposes and is consumed right along with the food scraps.

In the coming 3 or 4 months, I should find that the amount of food I’m feeding now each one to two weeks will need to increase to last that same time period. This will be because the herd is growing.

As I said above, each person needs to decide what works best for himself. (Yes, I said “herself” above. I’m trying to be equal opportunity on gender here). Some people puree their food scraps and pour it onto the worm bedding. Others only exert themselves so far as to chop the big pieces into halves or quarters. Some people microwave the food scraps. Other people freeze them and still others let them sit in a slop jar until feeding time. Each of these approaches is valid although usually a person finds one particular way that works the best for them.

I started off with the puree method. That got me into trouble for two reasons: 1) that introduces a LOT of liquid at one time. Chunks decomposing slowly release their water more slowly, not drenching the bedding all at once. Soggy bedding is prone to anaerobic conditions, mite blooms, and other problems. 2) It is easy to over-feed. Chunks of food are bulky. Puree is not. You can add a whole lot of pureed food before it begins to look like as much as some chunks of food. I now do the chunks of food method. I also freeze all my fruit before putting it into the bins. Freezing first does three things: 1) it kills any fruitfly eggs that might hatch and start an infestation in your bin which, from the fruit flies’ point of view, is paradise and 2) the freezing water explodes many cells in the plant materials and speeds decomposition up. 3) After the materials have thawed, a good deal of the moisture has pooled and can be drained from the food, thereby helping to insure the bedding doesn’t get soggy from too much added moisture.

Here’s a picture that shows this. This bag contained several bananas, sliced. I popped that bag into the freezer. Yesterday, I pulled that bag out of the freezer and let it sit for a day. This is how it appeared tonight, after sitting for a day. (It’s not pretty, but then decomposing food really isn’t!). Look at all the liquid that has accumulated in the bag. This all came from the bananas themselves.

So what delicacies did my worms get tonight? They got a delightful mix of squashed grapes (green), some cherries and the slices of bananas shown above. This is my first time with the grapes. I’m curious to see if they take longer to disappear. For that reason, my feedings tonight were on the small side. I did take a potato masher to the grapes first, thinking that if I could split the skins on some of them they’d be food for the microorganisms (and hence the worms) more quickly.

I took pictures of my feeding process this evening, but I’m going to hold off on showing those. For one thing, I wasn’t very happy with them. And, more importantly, I wasn’t doing a full feeding since I’m testing how the grapes go over. Some time soon, though, I’ll take lots of pictures and show the before, during, and after.

This is my personal experience with this vendor, so I can’t tell you what kind of service you might receive. I wouldn’t want to chance it, though, if I were you after reading this. Ordering from Specialty Perennials (hardyplants.com) was, in my case, a big mistake. Unfortunately for me, I ordered before checking the Garden Watchdog section of Dave’s Garden. (Click here to read what the Garden Watchdog has to say about Specialty Perennials). Had I done so, I would have placed a different (smaller) order— if I ordered at all.

On May 12th, I placed an order. The website said to allow two weeks. I did that. No seeds arrived. On May 30th, I sent an e-mail asking about the status of my order. I got no response.

On June 11th, still having never gotten any kind of response ever from Paul at Specialty Perennials, I sent a second e-mail titled “CANCEL MY ORDER” (in all caps, hoping it would catch his attention). Included in the e-mail was the invoice and order information and a note explaining why I wanted my order canceled. For one thing, I had just lost a month of growing time. Anything I started at that point would be struggling to grow during our most brutal hot weather.

Again, no response… until July 3rd. Out of the blue, I received an e-mail telling me that my order had shipped. Notice that this is weeks after I cancelled my order. (Does this mean I wouldn’t have to pay for it?) Oh, really? As of July 13th my phantom shipment still had not arrived. I sent another inquiry. No response. Now I know the post office isn’t always held in high regard, but I’m quite certain a package mailed to me from Minnesota does not require three weeks to reach Missouri.

On July 15th I sent my final message titled, “Garden Watchdog: Should I File a Negative Report About You?” I bet you can guess what happened: Nothing! So, here I am today warning the rest of you.

I did call the guy this morning. (Garden Watchdog is the only place I found his phone number. That should make the customer hesitate). Not surprisingly, I didn’t get to talk to anyone but had to leave a message. What do you think are the chances that I’ll get a response, much less my seeds?

The unfortunate appeal to this company is that it purports to carry seed varieties that are unavailable elsewhere or at least very rare and hard to come by. I stumbled upon this company in my search for callirhoe seeds. (I’ve since given up on ever getting those, so I pilfered three seed heads from some callirhoe I encountered at two different locations recently).

I will post an update if there is ever anything to tell you all. Otherwise, once again, learn from my mistake!

Update:

I did find the following report which may be of interest, as well, at RipOffReport.com.

Also from my Monday visit to Powell Gardens are these pictures of the meadow garden and of what they call the rock and waterfall garden. I refer to it here as the woodland garden.

I would have called the meadow garden a prairie instead, but perhaps I’m showing my ignorance there. It’s possible there is some reason that it is more accurate to call it a meadow rather than a prairie. Regardless, it is a wide-open area with tall grasses and native prairie plants.

This picture includes the Marjorie Powell Allen Chapel in the distance.

As we walked through the meadow garden headed toward the woodland garden, we passed two more sculptures and the pond.

I didn’t take many pictures in the woodland garden. I like the garden a good deal but it is fairly dark and, being a woodland garden, lacking many brightly colored flowers. That is, with one notable exception: this is where the 700 azaleas bloom in the spring.

Entering the woodland garden.

One of the streams in the woodland garden.

Following are some pictures of the garden from May, 2005.

Chances are you haven’t heard of or visited Powell Gardens. I’m going to show you some of what you’ve been missing!

Powell Gardens sits upon a 915-acre tract of land just east of the Kansas City metro. There are many small gardens making up Powell Gardens. The three acre perennial garden contains more than 1,200 perennial cultivars. There is a children’s garden which highlights edible plants. A new, much larger children’s garden is currently being built. There is a two acre Island Garden, a Rock and Waterfall garden which contains woodlands and two streams, and a 3.5 mile nature trail. The newest garden is the Fountain Garden, a 1.5 acre garden featuring a beautiful fountain kids are invited to play in as well as another water feature. A butterfly garden surrounds this.

Powell Gardens is a bargain, too. For just $60, my husband and 2 kids and I can visit as often as we want for a year. Even better, this membership allows us to visit many other botanical gardens either free or at reduced rates. (Last summer DH and I visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens and the free admission made out visit all the more enjoyable). We’ll be headed back very soon to enjoy their annual butterfly festival.

I’m blessed to live where I can visit not only Powell Gardens but also the Missouri Botanical Gardens across the state, in St. Louis. The Missouri Botanical Gardens are rated as one of the top 10 in the world, and it’s easy to see why when you visit. For my money, though, I prefer Powell Gardens.

At Powell Gardens I can photograph to my heart’s content. And today that was 350 pictures! I am not going to inflict all of those on you, don’t worry! But because I have so many, even pared down, I’m going to break today’s visit into several posts.

The pictures in today’s post are from the newest garden: the Fountain Garden, which is to the north of the Visitor’s Center.

Leaving the Visitor’s Center, we approached the Fountain Garden.

This was my first time seeing the finished garden and I was blown away by. Last summer it was still under construction. The kids could play in the fountain, but the plants hadn’t been planted yet and much hardscaping was still going on. These are some pictures from May 2007:

These are some of the things we saw today on our way to the Fountain Garden:

In the Fountain Garden there is a second water feature, a stream of sorts. From the bottom, looking up:

The beginning of the water feature (below left). To the left of the terra cotta pot in the picture (right), is a water plant about to bloom. It’s a large bloom. This picture doesn’t convey that size very well.

Butterfly gardens surround the fountain itself.

This fountain is beautiful. My kids love to run through it and play in it, as the picture from last year shows.

A color combination I really liked in the planting bordering the fountain.

Also in the butterfly garden surrounding the fountain…

Callirhoe

DH’s sharp eyes saw this monarch butterfly chrysalis. In my recent post about the monarch caterpillar/butterfly, I was lamenting that I didn’t have a nice close-up of the chrysalis. Well, I still don’t have a macro lens, but I did get this. You can see the gold band that is always on the top and the gold “sparkles” around the bottom. There’s even a tiny droplet of water on this one.

Powell Gardens always has some interesting artwork or other exhibit as part of the different gardens. In the past there have been exhibits with giant bugs (bigger than adult men), dinosaurs (really big), and tree houses. Currently, the exhibit is “The Great African Sculpture Exhibit Chapungu: Nature, Man, and Myth.”

This was one of the sculptures near the Fountain Garden.

Did you hear them? Earlier this evening I grabbed my pruning shears and a tub with about 2 inches of water (to keep them hydrated until I got inside) and headed out to the garden. Cue dramatic music. This could be my last attempt to root cuttings.

Overall, my record is abysmal. Years and years of failed cuttings. Early in the summer I set up a propagation chamber thinking I’d have a good chance with that. Reading about it, the idea seemed almost idiot-proof. I guess the key word is “almost” because it sure didn’t work real well for me! (In fact, I only recently realized that about 3 years ago I’d tried this very same thing, making prop chambers from plastic tubs, with the same 100% death rate. I’d managed to wipe it from my mind, I guess).

So I set up a new propagation chamber this evening. It’s bigger and deeper and has a fresh load of perlite. In the garden I gathered a couple of small shoots of veronica spicata, a stem of verbena, a stem or two of salvia ‘Rose Queen,’ two small shoots of coreopsis ‘Early Sunrise,’ two or three cuttings of my ‘City of York’ rose, a cutting of my gaura, one of my origanum ‘Hopley’s', and 2 or 3 cuttings of an agastache that I have and really like but haven’t been able to identify. Of all of these, the only plant I have any confidence with is agastache. It’s a member of the mint family and would probably root in water or if I just popped a cutting straight into the ground. In other words, it will probably root despite my best efforts to have it do so.

The plants have been through this before. They know my record, that being chosen is a sentence to almost certain death. I feel bad for them, really. I don’t know why I do so poorly. I’ve read and read about it and I’ve got my rooting hormone powder (fresh this summer). It’s demoralizing. And just to rub salt in the wound, a few days ago my friend Deanna said, “Oh, rooting is so easy!” when I complimented her many vigorous new plants from cuttings. “Yeah,” I said, “if you can do it!” My husband has a degree in physics. He thinks calculus is easy, but that doesn’t mean I can do it!

I exercised admirable— no, incredible— restraint today at Heartland Nursery. This is an enormous, wonderful store, the candy store equivalent of plants and they are having a 35% off sale. I checked the website and found that they stock callirhoe, a plant I’ve been wanting for a long time now. What better than to get it on sale?

Once I found the callirhoe I was underwhelmed. For one thing, the website listed 1 gallon containers. This was a puny 3″ pot. (Of course, the prices would also reflect size). I was happy enough to get the small ones but they looked a little worse for the wear. I picked the best two. At $3.24 apiece, it’s worth giving them a try. Besides, if I can just get some flowers that go to seed, I can grow more of my own. I am hopeful that they will thrive as they need full sun in very well drained soil. I have a near-desert in one bed, the bed where the herbs are all thriving. It’s full sun and dry, dry, dry. I’ll be happy to have these growing there. Once they get some size they are supposed to be excellent ground cover, and I always need more of that.

Unfortunately (or, depending on how you look at it, fortunately), as I turned to leave, I ran into two looong tables of hardy geraniums, most of which I’d never seen in person. I walked out with two of those, as well. I grabbed a “Black Beauty” and a “Summer Skies.” I’m enchanted by the maroon “Black Beauty” and was excited to read a report at Dave’s Garden that the seeds come true. Perhaps next year I can collect some seeds and add to my geraniums. I think they are one of the perfect plants around my roses.

It was so hard to leave the nursery with just four plants when I was surrounded by hundreds of other wonderful plants and cultivars, knowing how much space my garden beds still have open.

I thought it would be fun to get a picture of my largest borage plant (the one that swallowed a rose bush) along with my kids and a yard stick for reference. Unfortunately, I did this in mid-afternoon on a hot day with the kids facing west. So the kids are squinting into the sun and the borage is wilted from the heat. But aside from that, it was a great idea! <grin>

It’s hard to tell here, but the borage actually tops the yard stick by about two inches. This is just one plant.

Here it is, in all it’s wilted “glory.” Maybe I’ll think to take a picture some time when it isn’t looking so pitiful.

Behind that borage and off to the left a bit is a pumpkin vine. I like to grow a couple of pumpkins for the kids to carve up at Halloween. Then when Halloween is past, the worms get to eat them. Pumpkins are worm candy. At this point, my vine has two pumpkins forming on it. If I don’t end up with at least 2 pumpkins I’ll be in trouble with the kids. The pumpkins just started and clearly have a ways to go yet. (That plant in the lower left corner is verbena, btw).

And a lone gladiolus. I don’t know where the others disappeared to. I suppose winter got to them. I just looked it up and technically I’m outside their perennial zone here. This one is so pretty that I may have to plant more. I seem to remember it blooming earlier in the season in past years.

Several days ago I posted Roses, Lace, and Aliens and included two pictures of some odd looking echinacea flowers. A reader (Barbee) saw that and told me I might have a problem. She referred me to Mr. McGregor’s Daughter‘s blog where this had been discussed recently. The pictures I saw there didn’t look the same as what I found on my plants, so I asked MMD and readers to please look at mine and tell me what they thought. MMD graciously looked and took the time to break the news to me: my echinacea has a problem.

I followed MMD’s suggestion and found a post in the Perennials forum at GardenWeb. That gave me the word phytoplasm to follow and that led me to the MoBot website. It so often seems that a stop along my research trail is at the MoBot website. In this case, MoBot has provided great information on my problem: Aster Yellow. I had never even heard of this before. Clearly, I haven’t grown asters (although I did plant some this year). It turns out that a whole lot more than just asters are vulnerable to this condition and the condition is irreversible.

My thanks to Barbee for alerting me to my likely problem and to MMD for confirming that it was, indeed, a problem.

I’m going to cut all the normal looking flowers and have one heck of a bouquet to enjoy inside before I remove that infected plant.