Garden Rant

It’s generally so cold when snowdrops come out—and they’re so tiny anyway—that many pass them by. Snowdrops are peaking here in Buffalo. This is how I like to enjoy mine.

This is Buttercup

Oh for clucking out loud. Just as many of us in Western New York are rejoicing at the sputtering arrival of spring(ish) weather, two of my favorite local gardeners are being intimidated to the point where they may even leave town. Over their chickens.

Sometimes I am almost embarrassed to discuss these Buffalo problems with you all, but in this case I suspect that gardeners who keep chickens in other cities may have experienced problems similar to my friends Blair and Monique. Not every municipality—and certainly not every homeowners’ association—is chicken-friendly.

In Buffalo, chickens were legal until 2004. That year, the law was changed, perhaps because of some cock fighting problems. Monique and Blair bought their chicks last year, having researched the older statute, where chickens were allowed. They found out about the new law eventually, but it was too late; the chickens were already beloved pets and useful egg providers. They kept them. You can read the whole story here.

The 5 roosting

But to make a long story short, Blair and Monique are much more than chicken owners and gardeners. They are also urban pioneers, having bought 2 houses and 2 empty lots in a troubled neighborhood. They live in one house and have renovated/beautified the other properties, in an effort to improve their community and chase out the drug dealers. Their neighborhood is also the one where Buffalo’s co-op garden center, Urban Roots, is located, a garden center Blair and Monique helped start. As I write this, it's evening, and the neighborhood drug dealing is likely going on at a lively pace, but—never fear—the chickens have been taken away (removed to a safe place). An anonymous 911 call prompted quicker action against the chickens than most other illegalities in the neighborhood had ever received.

Their house and adjacent pen

Here’s the thing: there is every chance that the City of Buffalo will amend the chicken law, most likely in a way to allow hen-keeping with some regulations. I harbor no illusions that our city fathers have kept up with the popularity of chicken-keeping in urban areas, but I do know that they are now getting a crash course in how chickens are legally kept (under various regulations) in cities everywhere, including New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Boise, and Portland. I got my information from the wonderful City Chicken site; I’m sure many of you are familiar with it. (And apologies to Amy as I am equally sure she has previously shared this information and more.)

Can you help Blair, Monique, and other hen-loving Buffalo residents keep their chickens or buy a hen or two? Blair and Monique would appreciate your support in the form of emails to our Common Council President David Franczyk (dfranczyk@city-buffalo.com) and our mayor Byron Brown (bbrown@city-buffalo.com or MayorBrownWebMail@ch.ci.buffalo.ny.us if that doesn't work). Some of you will remember that your emails had a wonderful effect in saving fellow Buffalonian Jean Dickson’s front yard garden. This time they could help change a law. I am optimistic, as a large grassroots effort is already underway locally.

In closing, I offer a neighborhood chicken-sitter’s thoughts about Buttercup and the rest of the hens: I've "chicken sat" for Monique and the hens are absolutely beautiful animals. The colors and patterns of their feathers are lovely. They're quiet, too—about as noisy as a pigeon warbling at the loudest. Monique and Blair are about the best neighbors ANYONE could hope for, anywhere, and the chickens are well cared for. I joke that their coop is nicer than my house... except that it's kind of true. (It's not true.)

And this from Friend of Rant and chicken aficionada Robin/Bumblebee: My chickens will come running from the other side of our property when they hear me call “Where are my chickens?” My hens will jump on my lap and let me pet them. ... They all make me smile whenever I see them.

Tina K is mad - especially about the impending disappearance of Paul James, her favorite TV gardening host - and she's not going to take it anymore!  So she's organizing a protest by gardeners, who'll all be emailing HGTV's programming VP and their advertisers on the same day - April 13. 

Ooh goody, I love uppity gardeners.  Check out the campaign here, and put it on your calendar to make your voice heard.

By the way, I just noticed that the HGTV website has actually removed gardening from its navigation - it's now "landscaping."  So, HLTV?  And not even much L?

UPDATE ABOUT PAUL JAMES
This just in from his representative:

As a feature writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mackenzie Carpenter has to cover politics but for pure enjoyment she gets to also cover gardening.  And lucky readers get her highly entertaining feature about garden blogs in today's edition.  It describes blogs as livelier, perkier and more passionate than other garden writing.  Filled with gossip and even attitude-changing crusades, garden blogs aren't "staid or semi-promotional" like garden writing so often is.  Lord knows we try.

Here at GardenRant headquarters we thank Mackenzie for her awesome piece and kind words about this blog, and urge her to comment when she gets the itch because she definitely has things to say.

Two young American women helping the poorest of the poor in Haiti turn human waste into fertilizer?  Very cool, even inspiring.  Their project is called SOIL (for Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods - a mouthful).  And here's a video about it (apparently not embeddable).

With veg gardening now all over the news, a new project has emerged to channel all that attention into actual gardens.  It's the Urban Garden Project, the brainchild of two guys in Idaho.  Their goal of 100,000 registered gardens within city limits by 2010 seems pretty doable to me.

I asked Ben, one of the Idaho organizers, if living in my town of 16,000 qualifies me as an urban gardener and he said yes, so I'm in.  How about you?

Remember the big news about the USDA rejecting the revised zone map it commissioned the American Hort Society to do for it?  And then it was tweaked a bit and released by the Arbor Day Foundation.  And of course the USDA denied that the new map was rejected for political reasons. 

Well, the USDA's just about ready to release a revision they DO approve of, as reported in the Daily Climate.

In that article Tony Avent is quoted criticizing the rejected map because it moved the zones too far southward - apparently moving Chicago from Zone 5b to Zone 6.  Says Avent: “In 2004 Chicago had a  -21º winter.  If Chicago gardeners had planted zone 6 plants, they would all have failed.  When plants die customers give up gardening, and that’s the nursery business’s worst nightmare.”

And another expert backs up that opinion:

Michael Dosmann, curator of living collections at Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum in Boston and an advisor on the USDA revision, expects that the new map will be much more credible than either the AHS version or the current 1990 map.  “I think we can have a lot of faith in it. 

Let's hope so.

Maybe Jake Gyllenhaal came to have some farmers among his best friends by using the new website Find the Farmer to connect with them, and heck, so could regular folks.  I bet we could find their websites, arrange a tour, friend them on Facebook - the works.  Great idea, inspired by Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, according to this article.

My irrigation system

Some things I just cannot be reasonable about.  And one of them is writers who claim that vegetable gardens are ridiculous money and time sinks.

A backyard garden is only a ridiculous money and time sink if you, yourself, happen to be ridiculously inexpert.

As is apparently one Jennifer Reese over at Slate, who is trying to disabuse America of the notion that you can save money by growing your own food.  (Alice Waters apparently brought up the "free food" idea in connection with the Obamas' new garden.)

Reese's evidence that vegetable gardens are expensive?  She thinks she needs to spend between $1000 and $3000 on an irrigation system to water her pumpkins while she is away on vacation.

My dear, go down to the hardware store and buy a $68 battery-powered hose timer for your sprinkler.  This set-up has worked perfectly for me for many, many years. 

Similar claims to Reese's are made by other professional writers but beginning growers who spend thousands of dollars on stonework or backyard grading and then try to amortize such profligacy over a poor tomato.

Even with the wretched excess in my own garden--in a flush moment, I spent $5000 on a garden shed and $3000 on a cedar fence, neither of which was remotely necessary in such pricey form--I've still made my investment back and more.

My vegetable garden saves me at least $3000 a year on my grocery bill.  Year after year.  Add that up.

Unless you go out of your way to skew them, out of ignorance or some granite-countertoppy notion of what's necessary, the economics of a vegetable garden are absurdly favorable.  They are so favorable that Ashley Atkinson of the Greening of Detroit has told me that some of her urban growers are not only feeding their families, but earning $1000 a month selling the excess at farmers' markets.  And these are people spending a few hours a week at most in the garden.

Of course the economics are favorable:  Seeds are cheap.  Vegetable gardens are generally made on land the gardener already owns and would otherwise waste.  The best soil enrichments can be had for free--ground-up fall leaves, grass clippings, kitchen compost, manure from a nearby farmer.  No tools are necessary other than a shovel and fork.  Once the garden is made, even the time and labor required are minimal, if you mulch heavily rather than dig.

Even those investments that may be utterly necessary can be made inexpensively.  Given the diabolical  groundhogs in my part of the world, I can't garden without a fence.  But my neighbor managed to stymie his groundhogs with nothing more than those cheap metal posts you push into the ground, some chicken wire hung from them, and some railroad ties he had lying around.  I think he spent $40 total on the set-up.

Only young gardeners are cynical about the costs of the garden.  By the time you've hauled in as many harvests as I have--or as many as I suspect Alice Waters has--you have become slick and efficient and profoundly grateful for nature's bounty.  Year after year, even in the worst years, in the garden, my arms are filled with unearned gifts. 

So I open my paper this morning and what do I see?  This sad photo of the delightful Obama family attempting to break up the White House lawn with rakes.

Rakes?  Really?

Didn't anyone have a shovel or a spading fork?  Hadn't anyone told them about the 'lasagna gardening' approach to smothering the grass with layers of cardboard or newspaper, then piling it high with manure and compost?

I mean, I know it's a largely symbolic move, but that's just it.  This is a symbol of some damn hard work.  Fruitless, pointless, discouraging labor.

Well, I hope they had fun doing it, and I hope somebody came along a few minutes later with some real tools and finished the job.

This just in from the Onion:

WASHINGTON—In his first major gaffe since taking office, President Obama accidentally stepped too close to the ferocious, man-eating plants of the White House Rose Garden Monday and was nearly devoured whole. According to witnesses, Obama was giving a tour to a group of foreign dignitaries when he leaned against a fence and was pulled headfirst into the pack of thorny stems and meat-eating flora that edge the lawn. "I should have known it was almost feeding time," said a surprisingly high-spirited Obama, whose neck and legs were still covered with bandages.

Read the whole story here.  I wonder if The Onion is in need of a full-time garden editor?  Hmmmmm...

 More proof that gardening is now hip, folks!  My favorite part is Jake declaring "Some of my best friends are farmers and it's something that's given my life more meaning than almost anything else that I do [gardening]."  He may actually be one of us. Via Huffington Post.

 Photo by Roger Foley

Sure, it's the Federal Reserve building in D.C. but I promise no alarming news about the economy, just visions of the stunning landscape by the world-famous firm of Oehme van Sweden Landscape Architects. (Here's their page about the project.) This two-acre garden on top of the Reserve's parking lot is not just gorgeous but a great example of the "New American Garden" style created by this team. And as Oehme mentions in this short interview, the garden uses American plants that were popular in Europe but not here, until they brought them here and popularized them.  Like what?  Most famously, Rudbeckia. 

Don't miss the residential landscape by Oehme van Sweden in this month's Garden Design Magazine.  And if you're in the DC area, Wolfgang Oehme is speaking about "Bringing the American Garden Home" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art next Monday evening, March 30.

Photos by Roger Foley

And our friend Joe Lamp'l, too.  Great reading.

Favorite quotes? 

• Felder to a "visitor" (presumably the NYT reporter):  “You don’t have a garden?” he said. “Come on! Grow a pot of lettuce, man.”
• Felder comparing himself to a "fat old lizard".
• “I’m not a snob, but I’m outside in my bathrobe a lot, and in the mornings I look like Jesus’ drunk brother.”

Here's a great story about the mover and shaker in the food world who ISN'T Alice Waters or Michael Pollan.  He's the Iowan behind Food Democracy Now, and it looks like he's making his voice heard in D.C.

Look, I love my part of the world--upstate New York--for about seven months of the year.  I'm grateful that I get to live in a sophisticated college town with good restaurants and a thoroughbred track, within a stone's throw of heartbreaking natural beauty in the form of--take your pick--pines and lakes in the Adirondacks or red barns and cows and purple hills in Washington County.

The other five months of the year, however, you'd either better love your husband, kids, job and house--or be an avid skier--because nature is not sending out any signals whatsoever that life is worth living.  It's Samuel Beckett country here in Saratoga Springs, as in, "I can't go on. I'll go on."  It is unremittingly gray and cold and snowy from November 1 until the day the dirty glaciers retreat, whenever that happens to be.  In a freakish greenhouse-gas-inspired winter a few years ago, that was January.  Last year, it was mid-April. This year, it's a more reasonable mid-March.

The amazing thing is that the minute the snow starts crawling backwards into the shadows, whatever month it happens to be, the earliest green things instantly start popping out of the ground, sending depressed moods and libidos and stocks soaring.  These may be the most valuable plants in all of plantdom.

Last weekend in my vegetable garden, there was already some mache there completely salad-ready. This is an irritatingly small green with an annoyingly French name that I never pay any attention to--it just flings itself around the garden with no help from me--but it's certainly nice to shove a leaf or two in your mouth at this time of year.  The chives are a few inches tall already and I dug out some over-wintered parsnips.  The big ones are woody now, though they were wonderful in the fall, but the little ones are sweet and perfect. And there were even some Brussels sprouts intact under the snow, just as good as they were in early December.

On the ornamental front, I love snowdrops for the early spring rally, though I planted mine in the wrong spot, on the north side of my house, where the snow barely disappears in June.  Plus, snowdrops are not really a city bulb.  Some friends of mine used to own an old house in the country on the Battenkill, and in a patch of woods that stretched from the road to the river, there were a million snowdrops in giant clumps. They looked perfect there.

But there are urban alternatives! Just look at this....

Meet iris histrioides 'George'.  I bought him last fall on Brent & Becky's recommendation. I only wish I were a better photographer, so I could convey how sophisticated his shape and colors are.

A random guy walked past on the street today and said, "Are those real?"

I don't know.  Am I dreaming? Or is spring here?

For example, this Olmsted park in South Buffalo could always use more care than it gets.

One British paper called it an “army of Titchmarshes” to be unleashed in the UK's parks systems. I do like this moderately-scaled apprenticeship program where unemployed Brits can work and learn gardening skills in their public parks and gardens. The program is costing £1 million.

Former Ground Force/Gardeners' World star Alan Titchmarsh claims that "the practical skills provided by apprenticeships are every bit as important as university degrees, especially those involved with the landscape and environment,” in his endorsement of the government-sponsored project. I would love to see some money spent to employ and train gardeners in America's public green spaces-maybe just a bit could be spared from the billions we're pumping into the financial industry.

… when the catalog that covers the “spectrum of plant snobbery” and would never “deign to carry mere annuals and vegetables” would have tomatoes in plastic pots on the cover. Those are Michael Pollan's words about White Flower Farms; I am sure that many of you also loved the chapter in Second Nature where he deconstructs the world of garden catalogs. I thought too that Pollan's book was the first to call catalogs “garden porn” but I couldn't find the exact reference this morning.

WFF has carried annuals for years; in fact, it was the first place I bought strobilanthes (Persian Shield), but I've never seen anything but a lush array of daylilies, dahlias, oriental lilies, ferns, or other perennials on its cover. Until this year, as you see on its summer 2009 catalog. The vegetable offerings are mainly tomatoes aimed at the patio veggie grower, including some heirlooms like Green Zebra, Black Prince, and Riesentraube. The bulk of the catalog is still perennials, shrubs, and bulbs.

There's no question that a gorgeous ripe tomato—especially a green, yellow, or purple heirloom—is as seductive as any flower, but can a couple pages of tomatoes justify a cover? I guess. In the magazine world you put on the cover what you think will sell the book, and in this gardening season, clearly, veggies rule.

"Be Like Michele" was the title of a recent veg-growing story on the popular blog Huffington Post.  And for more evidence of the power of the presidency as bully pulpit, especially when he has a hip young family, there's this segment on the Today Show, which is pretty funny.  My favorite line is Kathy Lee Gifford declaring that growing herbs is really impressive. 

Cool stuff.

by Jeff Gillman, associate professor of horticulture at the University of Minnesota.  This is the second of his quarterly reports; the First Edition is right here. 

Do you remember taking tests in school?  Remember how anxious you were to confer with your friends after the test to see if they got the same answers you did.  This may shake your view of scientists a little, but that’s kind of what it’s like with scientists when new papers come out on topics that they’ve already written about or researched.  We’re always taught that scientists are cool, cautious individuals who value objectivity above all things.  We certainly try, but speaking for myself I can tell you that we’re also human and so are prone to human reactions.  When a new paper is published on something that I’ve worked on I get anxious before I read it because I hope these new results agree with my own.  And, while I go out of my way to present articles which reach conclusions different than my own, there’s something gratifying about reading a paper where other researchers have independently reached the same conclusions that I have.  It’s kinda like being able to say “I told you so”.  The reason I mention this is that the first two articles I’ve decided to present here both gave me that little “I told you so” feeling.

¹Compost Tea?  Not so much

Those of you who have read my books or my posts here know I’m not the biggest fan of compost tea, and the first article helps to justify my skepticism.  This article examined the effects of two compost teas (a homemade aerobically produced manure tea and the commercially available Efficient Microbes) on collard and spinach growth and the result was that, in general, these teas did not increase the yield of these plants. (There was one treatment where non-organic methods were used in combination with the commercial tea and showed a slight increase in yield, but this was only true in one of two years and was considered statistically insignificant).

Furthermore, this research looked at whether compost tea increased microbial activity in the soil and found that it didn’t.  I’m always a little surprised when people think that adding microbes to the soil will increase microbe activity.  It really shouldn’t.  Think of a thousand people taken from Boston and suddenly dropped into the middle of the Mojave Desert.  How many would remain after two weeks?  Living beings, whether human or microbial, will only proliferate where conditions are good for them to live.

²Mycorrhizal products?  Save your money

A commenter to my last research update asked about mycorrhizae and whether it’s a good idea to add them to your plants or soil.  I was concerned that I’d need to look up some old articles and post those until last week when this shiny new article about mycorrhizae found its way into my mailbox.  In this article researchers applied commercial mycorrhizal products (9 of them!) to various plants and discovered that, in most cases, these products do not increase the mycorrhizal colonization of plants they’re applied to.  (An insignificant 5% increase was about as good as it got).  Mycorrhizae are everywhere and so I’m not sure there’s a good reason to purchase them from a commercial source.

³Butterflies are choosy! 

If you’re planning on planting Zinnias, here’s a neat little article you’ll appreciate.  Butterflies preferred the cultivar ‘Lilliput’ better than 2:1 over any other cultivar of Zinnia tested.  (Other cultivars tested included ‘Oklahoma’, ‘State Fair’, and Pinwheel’.)

⁴What landscaping is worth

Readers probably realize that nice landscaping can help sell your home, but exactly how much extra is this nice landscaping worth to buyers?  Well, 75 homes in Lubbock, Texas were examined to determine how much and it turns out that a high quality landscape increases the sales price by 5.7 percent, compared to average landscapes.  Then comparing average landscapes with excellent ones, the difference in sale price is a whopping 10.8 %.  Furthermore, the authors calculate that every $1.00 spent on the landscape returns $1.35.  I’m obviously investing in the wrong place.

⁵Balled, burlapped and busted?

If you plant balled-and-burlapped (B&B) trees, a new study shows that handling and transporting them in that form is detrimental to their growth.  It also seems to contradict recent statements from some quarters that it isn’t important to keep the ball of soil around those B&B trees intact.  As a side note,  last spring I tried planting B&B trees after very carefully washing off the root ball and of the five trees I treated this way, all died.  The five trees I planted using more standard practices all lived.

⁶Plants are powerful things

If you’re visiting this blog then you know the power of plants to heal.  Nonetheless, here is a little article that I hope will brighten your day.  Patients that underwent surgical procedures and were placed into rooms with plants and flowers had shorter hospital stays, less pain, fatigue and anxiety, and liked their rooms better than those who didn’t have plants in their room. File this under “who would’ve guessed.”

Sources below the jump. Top photo from Blossom Creek Farm.  Lower by SSTUDIO.

"The lawn is a symbol of everything that's wrong with our relationship to the land," Pollan declares in today's NY Times.  Per acre, our lawns receive FOUR times as much chemical pesticide as any American farmland. 

Pollan goes on to call for the total removal of the White House lawn and its replacement with a meadow, more veg gardens, or - his preferred alternative - an orchard underplanted with meadow.

So readers, what do you think?  Is America ready for something that radical?  Or how about another alternative - getting that lawn off drugs?  The National Arboretum folks simply stopped putting anything on their lawn and it still looks good enough - and has reduced their lawn care expenses by 90 percent. 

By the way, if you haven't read Second Nature, Pollan's eye-opening book about gardening, DO.  Its chapter about lawns is unforgettable.  Ted Steinberg's whole book on the subject, American Green, is also terrific.