Saturday, May 3. 2008
Why is a wheelbarrow load of soil or firewood easier to move around than a wagon load? It's not spring yet, but I recently had a discussion about this subject, which led to some minor research. Like simple devices like the nutcracker, the human arm, scales, a see-saw, the crowbar, ratchet wrench, scissors, catapults, and the fishing rod, a wheelbarrow is a lever. In fact, a Type 2 Lever. By a miracle of physics, levers magnify the force that can be applied with a given amount of effort. Archimedes was the first to attempt to describe the principles of levers. As the physics limerick goes: One morning while eating my Wheaties,
I felt the earth move 'neath my feeties.
The cause for alarm
Was a long lever-arm,
At the end of which grinned Archimedes.
So, using by using your body to apply effort, with lever action, you are magically carrying a fair amount of the load of the wheelbarrow. A wagon offers no such advantage. (I will spare you the math with the factors of friction, torque, vectors, etc. that make a seemingly simple tool like a wheelbarrow surprising challenging to define.) (As an aside, let me ask whether they let kids nowadays graduate from high school and college without taking calculus, physics and statistics? If so, wrong, wrong, wrong. This stuff is BASIC. An educated person knows Latin or Greek, calculus, basic physics, basic chemistry, and statistics. Or they are only half-educated about reality and seriously handicapped in the tools for understanding this world. Saddest thing: you forget it all, over time, but, like bike-riding, it's in there somewhere, and the brain can re-connect with it with the right "links".) I am partial to two-wheelers. The increase in friction, I feel, is compensated by the lack of wobble (torque). Photo is the Ultimate Wheelbarrow from Cariola.
Friday, May 2. 2008
 The varieties of Heuchera available these days is remarkable.
Thanks to the magic of genetic engineering, these excellent shade plants, grown best in masses as ground-cover (more for their foliage than for their delicate and modest Spring flowers) now come in every imaginable leaf color. This site has a number of new varieties. Their "Ginger Ale" is cool.
Tuesday, April 29. 2008
Our Dicentra is beginning to bloom right now, even though it's another late spring up here. The plants begin to bloom as soon as they are out of the ground. No plant shoots up as quickly, and it's almost too early to enjoy their brief period of glory. More about Bleeding Hearts here. The wild, native woodland version is white. 
Friday, April 11. 2008
 We always contend that lawns are foolish things to have. Foolish, and unnatural. We prefer meadows and gardens, but everybody needs a place to play croquet or softball, or to lie in the sun with a book, growing your basal cell carcinomas and your liver spots. We reluctantly acknowledge that, in some suburban areas, a sweeping lawn is a social if not an aesthetic requirement.
All the same, we urge folks to consider how much of that lawn they might exchange for some more interesting colorful perennial or shrub borders and ground covers. A nice English garden, whether formal or informal, uses lawn as an accent and for paths - as just one component of design and mentally, I think, as a comforting symbol of safe civilization to contrast with the blooming profusion of the other plantings. Order vs. disorder. Open vs. closed. Safe vs. mysterious. Landscape design is a psycho-spiritual enterprise. This is a garden outside of London: 
Here's a brief history of the American lawn. Yes, the lawn is more-or-less designed to imitate the smooth effect of a sheep-grazed pasture on an English country estate. And here is our world-famous bit on top-dressing and other lawn topics. Today, a bit about lawn aeration, fertilizer, irrigation, earthworms, and "de-thatching." In reverse order:  "De-thatching" is a completely useless and unnecessary activity. No healthy soil needs it, and a healthy soil is the key to a decent sod. "Thatch" - old grass - will rapidly decompose or be eaten by worms in a good lawn, recycling the nutrients and keeping your worms fat and happy.
Earthworms. We said everything we know about the wonderful earthworm in this post. They aerate and enrich the sod. If your sod doesn't contain plenty of them, something is wrong with it. Irrigation. No natural lawn requires irrigation. If you try to grow lawn grasses in places they don't want to grow, like the Arizona desert, they will need irrigation of course. Around here, people with money to burn irrigate their lawns to trick the grass into staying green all summer, and not enter their natural summer dormancy when they are apt to turn brown. Lawn grasses grow the way they do because our mowing cuts their tops off while they keep trying to grow to their natural height and to bear their seeds. It must be frustrating to the poor things. In natural conditions, grasses grow to their full height, bear their seeds (say, in early July) and then go dormant until cool damp weather brings them back to life. If you keep them strugging at their Sisyphisian effort through the mid-summer with irrigation, they will naturally need more fertilizer to look photogenic. Fertilizer and top-dressing. Our lawns do need fertilizer because they are deprived of natural sources of nutrients (fallen leaves, animal droppings, clover and other wild legumes with their nitrogen-fixing bacteria, silting from flooding, etc). When you bag or blow the clippings, then even more so - and you starve the worms, too. My top-dressing program not only fertilizes organically, but also improves the soil texture. I also fertilize lawns in June and September/October. I don't use water-soluble nitrogen, because most that will end up in the stream. I use mowing machines that mulch the clippings and fallen leaves. I don't need to use herbicides, because the grass is happy. And I don't use pesticides because there is no good reason to waste the money and to poison Creation. Aeration. In nature, earthworms, moles, woodchucks, and other digging critters keep the topsoil loose and in motion. Loose soil is need for root growth, water and nutrient penetration, and to provide air for aerobic soil microbes. Our lawns tend to get compacted, and people try to kill their happy moles because they interfere with the "perfect lawn" (which, of course, is meant to be a reflection of our perfect selves, right?). Aeration of lawns and sports fields is essential, and should be done depending on how heavily the grass is tromped on. Some lawns, every two years. Sports fields need twice per year. There are two kinds of aerators. The spike aerators (like this) do nothing useful. What is needed is the plugger type (like this one, in photo above), which pulls out forty-fifty per square yard 2-4"-deep plugs out of the sod and deposits them on the surface. (it makes a temporary mess, but one good heavy rain removes most evidence of the plugs.) Plug aeration is commonly done in the Fall, but I like to do it in the Spring, after the grass gets growing thick and vigorously (May), and combine it with my biennial top-dressing project and with any overseeding that seems needed.
Tuesday, April 8. 2008
Just grow them, dry them out, punch a 1" hole in them, and hang 'em in a tree. Instant House Wren house. A house is not a home unless you have these members of the chattering class around. (Ours haven't arrived yet this Spring. Global cooling is to blame.)
Monday, April 7. 2008
 I was going to post a comment about Obama's brand of "patriotism," and about how I have decided to never vote for a national candidate who has not served us in our military...but I am sick and tired of teeny-bopper politics.
Instead, something valuable for your garden: a dwarf Buddleia called "Blue Chip." This brand new Buddleia (Butterfly Bush) is only 2' high, max, and thus can function like a perennial flower in a border while drawing butterflies from miles around. Plus they claim it blooms all summer, unlike my full-sized Buddleias. I have a spot for a few of these guys. Wayside is the only place that has them. Loony Greenies should avoid them: they are genetically-engineered. Like Labrador Retrievers. Hummingbirds like them too.
Sunday, April 6. 2008
 I take a good hammer and pound a 1" dowel into the ground about 12-18" deep, 2-3 holes per shrub (including roses), and fill the dowel hole with a cheap all-purpose fertilizer. I make the holes within the drip-line of the plant. It seems to work well. Fertilizer thrown on the surface just washes away and never gets to the roots.
I do it now, before the leaves emerge in Yankeeland. Roots wake up and start getting active and growing at least 4 weeks before you see any greening - and the roots are the root of the matter. I repeat in June, if I remember and if I feel like it. Definitely twice for the roses, though. They are hogs. If I don't want a plant to grow more vigorously, I don't fertilize it. Incentives, you know. Speaking of outdoor chores, I am working on an update of my Maggie's Farm Exclusive Lawn Care post. I did lime my lawns today, too, despite the icebox weather. The "poor man's fertilizer" adjusts the soil pH around here. It's good that it comes in pelletized form now.
Saturday, April 5. 2008
 It's a good time of year to re-link our past piece on Removing Pachysandra, that durable shade ground cover which is ubiquitous in these parts and which can be pleasant in the right place, but vulgar, I think, in others.
Getting it established takes some doing, but once it's happy it sure is tough to get rid of. I have a patch to remove, maybe this weekend but my wheelbarrow has a flat so I need to fix that first.
Sunday, March 30. 2008
 Like all thistles, Sea Holly likes sun and poor or sandy soil.
Like campanula, it's a blue late-summer bloomer for a perennial border. I found this one here. I like it.
Thursday, March 27. 2008
 It's the time of year when we re-link our world-famous Boots and Wellies opus. All you need to know for mud-season.
It's also a good time of year for another free advt for Sierra Trading Post. Good discount outdoor gear, plus sneakers, etc. Often, good deals on dress shoes and work shoes, too. Some folks collect knives, or guns, or knick-knacks. I collect boots because happy feet make for a happy man.
Sunday, March 23. 2008
 Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the Lauraceae family. Bay Laurel and Avocado are true laurels.
Our eastern Mountain Laurel, the state plant of CT which grows in dense, impenetrable 20' high thickets on our hills, is not a true laurel. Neither are the Cherry Laurels, which are (strangely) in the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus - same genus as roses, apples, and cherries. (Seems anything can get called "laurel" if it has glossy oval evergreen leaves.) The Cherry Laurels (Prunus laurocerasus) appear in several forms, subspecies, or cultivars in the US, and few are native to the US. Here are a few of them. I like them for the lush, tropical evergreen appearance, and the birds like them for winter cover and for spring nesting. Like hybrid Rhodadendrons, Zone 6 is pushing their limit unless they are sheltered, next to a warm building, or near salt water. The southern US is really a better place for them, but I like experimenting. Although they are considered semi-shade or filtered light plants, up here they seem to enjoy plenty of sun. I have three varieties: the big, upright, fast-growing "Skip" Laurels ('Schipkaensis') which make a great tall (10-15' hedge), a few small hedges of Otto Luyken English Laurel, and a couple of handsome Portuguese Laurels, a compact, slow-growing rounded type with nice red stems. The latter two were produced by Monrovia. 
Wonderful plants, all things considered, and a much better bet than trying to make the very picky Mountain Laurel and hybrid Rhodys happy in this neck of the woods. Mountain Laurel, like Blueberry, only grows well where it feels like growing. If they don't like the conditions, they just die, slowly.
Photos: Above: small row of Otto Luykens in from the of the wall, and some tall Skips behind. Left: A Portuguese Laurel, about 5' high.
Tuesday, March 18. 2008
 One of my many planned gardening projects this spring is to put in a row of three tree hydrangeas behind a low fence on which my climbing roses grow (they are New Dawn. Note to rose fans: those New Dawn roses need monthly fertilizer during the summer. In fact, all roses want regular feeding or they will not do well).
I like the old-fashioned look of the tree form, and they can be pruned to keep them small for a garden. The one in the photo is too droopy for my taste, I think, but it makes for a living bouquet.
A reader sent us two good arborist sites. I would never go up a tree with a chain saw, but I realize that I might not be all that safe with one even with my feet on the ground. ArboristSite ArborMaster
Sunday, March 16. 2008
 Reposted from 2005: Burning carbon to kill trees! Good work and good fun. The gasoline-powered chainsaw is one of the finest inventions since the wheel and the plow. It's really just a mechanized stone axe like my Indian sncestors used, and I am eagerly awaiting the laser saw to bring wood cutting into the 21st Century. While the engineering principles of the chainsaw may go back to surgical instruments of the 1800s, the modern concept dates to the 1920's with bulky and impractical designs until the German engineer Andreas Stihl developed his "tree-cutting machine" around 1929. The one-man saw dates to around 1950 and was perfected by Stihl and their main competitor, the weapons manufacturer Husqvarna. The Stihl family still owns their company. Check out their saws here. (No, this is not an advt.) I have always enjoyed power saws: my godfather's father started the Wright Saw Company in CT, which produces a reciprocating power saw - an anomaly in the development of power saws which never really caught on except for special uses. Our dumb-ass chain saw saga is here (fixed).
Saturday, March 8. 2008
 I am told by those who know such things that Platycodon grandiflorus, a member of the Campanula family, belongs in every perennial flower border.
It is a tough plant, has interesting buds, good delicate blue flowers, and it blooms in late summer. What else can you ask for from a plant? You can read all about this plant here.
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