There is a very common myth that says, “nothing grows under walnut trees”, but that is far from being true. If you have walnut trees in your yard or the neighbors yard, you can still have a very lush garden and grow most things.
Bokashi is a fermentation method used for processing kitchen scraps at home with minimal mess and no foul odors. Some claim that bokashi is a method of composting, but that is incorrect, as discussed in Bokashi Composting Myths.
What exactly is bokashi? We call it a fermentation process, but what does that mean? How does fermentation compare to composting on a molecular level? Does one method have advantages over the other?
Yucca glauca, an agave, is the hardiest yucca growing from Alberta, Canada all the way to Texas. You will either love or hate this plant depending on your appetite for desert-like plants. I love them for their spiky leaves and fantastic flowers. They are extremely drought tolerant and easy to grow.
If you garden in areas that get a cold winter you will be familiar with a number of winter protection schemes that are used in the garden. Humans get cold, so we think that plants also get cold and need a warm blanket, but a lot of winter protection practices are a waste of time. Many are poorly understood, so people keep doing them.
In this blog I will review what should and should not be done to protect plants in winter.
Someone on a social site asked if anyone knew of a light meter that would measure the amount of light in their garden. I burst out in laughter thinking this was a great joke. Then someone posted a link to just such a product; the Sunlight Calculator. I cried. Are people really buying such a product?
The tighty whity soil test is a great way to measure soil health and demonstrate the value of no-till gardening.
In this post, I will have a brief look at the science behind the test.
What happens when you add sand to clay soil? Many people claim that this will make concrete and others say that it results in soil that is easier to dig. How can there be such large discrepancies about something that is so easy to test?
Why is this a problem? Gardeners with heavy clay find it difficult to dig, so they want to loosen it up. Sand is very easy to dig and it makes a lot of common sense to add it, to create a looser soil.
Paeonia rockii is a lovely tree peony that should be grown more. It can be difficult to find in a nursery, but those specializing in peonies will have it. The ones pictured here were grown from seed obtained from the Ontario Rock Garden Society Seedex program. The flowers are mostly white or light pink with dark maroon basal flares on the petals. There is some variation in flower form and coloration. One seedling from this group has red leaves in early summer.
The common name, tree peony, describes the woody stems that are produced, but it is probably more correct to call these shrubs, not trees. They do not need staking.
Compost tea is all the rage but does it really work? Research studies so far have produced mixed results. The science to support the use of aerated tea on crop plants, lawns, shrubs, or trees is very weak, at best.
There seems to be a lot of work done in this area but much of it is not published in peer reviewed journals and most of it has been done in labs and greenhouses, not in the field. Until the work is repeated in the field we can’t conclude it works in gardens.
The other problem is that controls have been poorly selected. For example, in one study (ref 3) they compared ACT compost tea to water, using lettuce that had been under-fertilized. Guess what, compost tea improved growth. This only proves that adding nutrients, when they are deficient, will improve growth. The study never compared compost tea to adding nutrients in other ways.
In this post I will review one study that compared the use of compost to compost tea, in field conditions.
Water lilies (Nymphaea species) are extremely valuable to the pond. They not only look great and flower well, but the floating leaves provide shade, eliminating the light needed by algae. They also provide a hiding place for fish and other water creatures. Water lilies should cover half of the open water space to help maintain a balanced ecosystem. They do best in quiet water, so keep them away from fountains and waterfalls.
Mulching the garden is a very common recommendation. Mulch will reduce the number of weeds and it will hold moisture in the soil but how does mulch affect the quality of soil?
There are lots of claims that mulch improves soil but have you ever seen numbers to validate them? I haven’t either. How exactly does mulch improve soil? It should add organic matter, but how much? It should increase the number of microbes, but is this really true? Unfortunately, almost nobody studies landscapes and gardens because no one will fund the work.
Luckily I was able to find one very good research paper that looked at this exact problem.
Mention lamium to most gardeners and they run for the hills. Some lamium spread so fast they are thugs in the garden. Others, like L. maculatum, spread but can be controlled. A few are excellent, well behaved, garden plants and this includes Lamium orvala, which forms a nice non-spreading clump. It might seed around a bit, but it is easily pulled out if you get too many.