April 2011

Planters Punchlines
Men's Garden Club of Wethersfield April 2011
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Uncover the Weston Rose Garden Saturday April 23 @ 8:00 a.m. -
Weed, spread composted manure and prune back. BYO tools & thorn-proof gloves.

Regular Saturday maintenance (deadheading ,etc) will begin at a date t/b/a.
Anyone interested in joining this elite group of gardeners and learning more about rose gardening while contributing to our town is welcome - regulars, part-timers, or drop-ins.

Monthly Meeting - Monday April 25 @ 7:00 p.m.
@ Wethersfield Community Center. Final planning for the Plant Sale. "Official" pots and labels for donated plants will be available.

Annual Plant Sale - May 7 (Rain Date May 14)

This is our major fundraiser. CRITICAL NEED - Club members are asked to contribute "home grown" perennials to the sale. If you do not have your own plants to donate - seek them out from friends, neighbors or relatives. If you need help splitting the plants contact Chairman Tom Gibson 1-860-208-5195.

Plants being donated should be split and potted as soon as possible in order to allow them time to develop in the pot and look good for the sale. Please label all plants. Contact Fred Odell (860.529.6064) for official pots, potting soil, and plant labels.

Compostable Matter By Jim Meehan

When we had a vegetable garden, my vernal equinox occurred on the morning that I manually turned the soil therein in preparation for the traditional Memorial Day planting of our crops. Since this event was determined my restless desire to resume my favorite outdoor avocation, rather than any calendar-based reason, it frequently occurred as much as two and one-half months prior to any practical need for it.

Now - except for eight or so tomato plants - we have gone perennial in that part of our horticultural kingdom. This is the direct result of my continued acceptance of "rescue plants" from friends, strangers, and about-to-be dug up public gardens. Plus the fact that year-after-year the ravenous rabbits of our neighborhood have totally ravaged our vegetable plot.

The remaining small amount of space reserved for the tomatoes doesn't provide enough exercise to count as a season-opening ritual. But the sun-warmed-yet-cool early spring air still screams for me to flex my landscaping muscles long before there is any practical work to be done by them.

So here is my solution.

In late autumn I have the exact opposite situation. The various plants in my various perennial beds have run their course for the year. They stand dry and desiccated in the declining warmth of the already ended season. They scream to put out of their misery

I have two choices. (1) I can garb myself in layers of flannel and down and cut the pitiful-looking creatures to the ground, thus letting them spend the upcoming cold part of the year buried totally under a blanket of equally cold precipitation. (2) I can do nothing and justify my lethargy with vague descriptions of mid-winter birds finding sustenance from leftover seeds and shelter in dead frozen stalks - and arty talk of "winter interest" gardens.

I opt for plan number two.

Which allows me to actually do my plant razing on that first warm day in March, combined with some winter leaf clearing - still clad in flannel and down. But only initially - until my bending, twisting, and snipping generates enough body heat to cause mild perspiration and the removal of the outermost layer.

It is not as taxing as my former tilling ceremony. But the sight of fledgling green buds in the midst of chopped-back deadwood tells me that they are as eager to get started as I am, and generates more than enough endorphins to get me pumped up for another gardening season.

Garden History Trivia www.uvm.edu

Every wonder when the first greenhouse was built? Who invented the wheelbarrow, the garden hose, the flower pot? Who had the first lawn? Try this quiz to learn some lesser known, but nonetheless important, persons and facts in the history of gardening.

1. When were the first garden hoses made?
2. When did the first European garden hose appear?
3. When was the earliest record of bonsai?
4. When did the first lawns appear?
5. Who invented the first greenhouse in 1619?
6. Who discovered the concept of "microclimates"?
7. Who was the first to popularize, if not invent, flower pots?
8. What firm produced the first garden catalog with prices?
9. When and where was the earliest western depiction of a wheelbarrow?
10. Who invented the wheelbarrow? Answer

Answers

1. around 400BC, of ox gut
2. in 1672 in Amsterdam, made of leather
3. in wall paintings from AD706, although then known as penjing in China and not brought to Japan until AD1195, and not called "bonsai" until much later
4. in the 1st century AD, promoted in Greece by Pliny the Younger
5. the mathematician Salomon de Caus, being a movable wooden framed structure to shelter orange trees at Heidelberg Castle in Germany
6. Nathaniel Ward in 1832 with his enclosed glass boxes known as Wardian cases, and used extensively on plant explorations after
7. the Egyptian pharoah Ramses III, about 1230BC
8. Telford family, Yorkshire, UK in 1775; previously, listings from firms had no prices
9. a stained glass window in Chartres Cathedral, France, dating to AD1220
10. Chuko Liang, a Chinese general, in AD231 for use by his troops in moving supplies through mucky soil. To that time carts had at least 2 wheels and were 2-person affairs. His had a large central wheel, flanked on either side by boxes to hold goods.

Tired of Mowing and Maintaining Your Lawn? What Can You Do? Clover, Flowers, Even Moss Offer Low-Maintenance Alternatives to Grass Lawns From Earth Talk

Dear EarthTalk: I'm sick of having to maintain my lawn, and I'm sure that all the chemicals I'm using are no good for the environment. What alternatives can I explore that will save time and money while keeping the property looking nice?
-- Sarah, Bethesda, MD

Grass lawns first appeared in Europe in medieval times, status symbols for the rich that had to be kept trimmed by fairly labor-intensive methods, often by grazing livestock and certainly not by polluting lawn mowers and poisonous weed killers. Lawns actually did not become popular in North America until the middle of the 20th century, but are now as common as the middle-class suburban homes they surround.

It Takes Water and Money to Keep Grass Lawns Green. Besides hogging public water supplies-over 50 percent of U.S. residential water usage goes to irrigate lawns-a 2002 Harris Survey found that American households spend $1,200 per year on residential lawn care. Indeed, the booming lawn care industry is more than eager to convince us that our grass can be greener-and then sell us all the synthetic fertilizers, toxic pesticides and leaky lawnmowers to make it so.

Groundcover Plants and Clover Require Less Maintenance than Grass Lawns

According to Eartheasy.com, which offers online insights on a host of environmental issues alongside books and green products for sale, there are many alternatives to a carpet of monochromatic grass for one's property. They recommend groundcover plants and clover, which spread out and grow horizontally and require no cutting.

Some varieties of groundcover are Alyssum, Bishops Weed and Juniper. Common clovers include Yellow Blossom, Red Clover and Dutch White, the best suited of the three for lawn use. Groundcover plants and clovers naturally fight weeds, act as mulch and add beneficial nitrogen to the soil.

Flowers, Shrubs and Ornamental Grasses: Eartheasy also recommends flower and shrub beds, which can be "strategically located to add color and interest while expanding the low maintenance areas of your yard," and planting ornamental grasses. Ornamental grasses, many which flower, have numerous benefits over conventional grasses, including low maintenance, little need for fertilizer, minimal pest and disease problems and resistance to drought.

Moss Plants are Another Alternative to Grass Lawns. According to David Beaulieu, About.com's Guide to Landscaping, moss plants should also be considered, especially if your yard is shady: "Because they are low-growing and can form dense mats, moss plants can be considered an alternative ground cover for landscaping and planted as 'shade gardens' in lieu of traditional lawns." Moss plants do not possess true roots, he points out, instead deriving their nutrients and moisture from the air. As such they like wet surroundings and also soil with a pH that is acidic.

The Benefits of Grass Lawns: In all fairness, lawns do have a few plusses. They make great recreational spaces, prevent soil erosion, filter contaminants from rainwater and absorb many kinds of airborne pollutants. So you might still keep a short section of lawn, one that can be mowed with a few easy strokes. If you do, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends avoiding traditional synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.

The Best Ways to Care for Grass Lawns: A number of all-natural alternatives are now widely available at nurseries. Natural lawn care advocates also advise mowing high and often so that grass can out-compete any nascent weeds. Leaving clippings where they land, so they can serve as natural mulch, helps prevent weeds from getting a foothold.

With some other pollinators in decline, mason bees are garden helpers By Kym Pokorny, The Oregonian

Immediately outside her front door, Beth Rose communes with bees. She's not rewarded with honey for her hospitality, but her fruit bowl is piled high, and she's never felt the pain of a sting.
Rose, a master gardener who lives on six acres in Aloha, began her relationship with the friendly mason bees about 12 years ago when she noticed what she thought were flies in her barn. Not so unusual, except it was late winter, not summer. Curiosity edged her to look closer.

"I saw they were bees," she says. Once they caught her attention, she realized they were wriggling in and out of holes around the hinges that hold up the barn door. It wasn't much of an effort to figure out they were a species (Osmia lignaria) of native bees that have become more important -- or at least more appreciated -- since the serious decline of honeybees, and more recently, bumblebees.

"In the '70s, we started having a problem with the honeybee population," says Pat Smith, also a master gardener. "Mason bees became the buzzwords."

In the intervening years, these earnest pollinators -- which have a particular, but by no means exclusive, affinity for fruit trees -- have been welcomed by both serious and casual gardeners.
"Most people want them because they're friendly or because they want their fruit trees pollinated," says Rose, who likes them for both reasons.

In the 30 to 60 days of its life, a female orchard mason bee will pollinate thousands upon thousands of flowers. According to Rose, one or two of the insects can pollinate an entire mature fruit tree. Since you can't have fruit without fertilization and you can't have fertilization without pollination, the importance is clear.

But you've got to have them to feel the benefit. Since the bees are native, they'll sometimes be buzzing around and you won't know it if you're not familiar with their flylike appearance. They aren't too particular about where they nest, as long as holes are not too large. Cavities made by woodpeckers and insects or in wood piles or siding will do just fine.

To hedge the odds, some people buy or make nesting boxes, which are simply wood blocks drilled with 5/16-inch-diameter holes, or containers such as PVC pipe, soup cans or cottage cheese containers filled with straws.

Both Smith and Rose teach classes on mason bees and agree raising them can be as complicated or simple as you want to make it. The cheapest way, of course, is to do nothing or hang a nest box (under an eave on the east or south side of your house) and hope they'll find their way to your garden. Alternately, you can buy straws or tubes already filled with cocoons. But they've got to be outside in time for the waiting adult bees to come out and meet and greet your fruit trees, berries and whatever ornamentals are blooming.

"The first flower they'll encounter," Smith says, "is Pieris japonica. Forsythia is next, and pretty soon the apples start popping out. There's a continuous food supply for them from the first part of March toward the middle or end of May when it gets too hot for them."

As they're busily pollinating flowers, the females don't care that they're doing us such a great favor. Their only concern is gathering the pollen and nectar necessary to feed the larvae that hatch from eggs laid between walls made of mud -- another material the single-minded moms must haul back and forth, like going to the grocery store for a teenage boy.

But without realizing it, the mother bees are carrying predatory mites as well as food into the nest. After two or three years, the mites get numerous enough to eat the packets of pollen and nectar deposited by the females, and there's no food left for the babies. That's where the complicated part comes in. Real enthusiasts will remove each cocoon and wash it.

"Last winter, I sat at my kitchen table unwrapping each paper straw (each straw holds about half a dozen cocoons) -- hundreds of them," Rose says. "It took 10 or 12 hours. My husband thought I was crazy."

Smith cleans his cocoons, too, but says you don't have to if you're willing to replace nesting boxes every three years.

"It can be expensive and time-consuming," he says, "but it's fun."

Guarding the Garden Toad from Harm By Lois Tilton at davesgarden.com

Every spring, as the ground begins to warm up, I wait for the toads to begin singing down at the pond. Sometimes, when they are late emerging from hibernation, I worry. Existence is perilous for a toad. Environmental degradation has caused amphibian populations worldwide to decline. Closer at hand, the toads must face the effects of drought in the dwindling pond, and predators, including a burgeoning population of voracious bullfrogs. The children's book notwithstanding, Bullfrog and Toad are not really friends!

The toads that sing in the pond at the edge of my property are the American toad, Bufo americanus. The details in this article refer to this species, but they may apply to any member of the genus Bufo. The American toad's skin is mottled, usually brown with darker spots, and quite warty. A large female may grow to as much as 4 inches in length. Like many other members of this genus, it exudes a bufotoxin that coats its skin and makes it unpalatable to many predators [although not bullfrogs]. It is by any measure a common toad, the most widespread species in North America. While B americanus is not threatened or endangered in its range, individual populations can be put at risk by many local factors.

Most threatening are the effects of human activity. The gardener, who stands to benefit so much from the industry of the toad, can inadvertently do it more harm than any other agency. The toad's usefulness in the garden is measured by its diet. It exists primarily on common garden pests, such as slugs, grubs, snails, sowbugs, earwigs, cutworms, and destructive caterpillars. With its long, sticky tongue, B americanus is a successful predator that can eliminate as many as ten thousand of these undesirables in a growing season.

To safeguard the toad, it is important to understand its life cycle. Many people mistakenly believe the toad is an aquatic or semi-aquatic animal, like the frog, but for most of its life the toad is terrestrial. Only in spring, emerging from hibernation, does it make its way to the shallow edge of the pond to spawn. Toads prefer to return to the same body of water where they themselves were spawned, and may travel up to a mile to reach it. There, at night and sometimes during warm rainy days, the males begin their chorus of song to attract females. The male tightly grasps the female, who then releases her long strings of gelatinous black eggs into the water to be fertilized by the male. Each female can lay several thousand eggs that hatch into tadpoles within ten days or less, depending on the temperature of the water. It can take one to two months for the tadpoles to develop into toads; during this phase, they are entirely aquatic and highly vulnerable to contamination of the water, as well as predation by such creatures as bullfrogs. It is a profligate survival strategy; out of the thousands of eggs laid, less than a dozen will survive to maturity.

In summer, the toadlets complete their metamorphosis and hop out of the pond to begin their lives on land. In this phase, it can be hard to tell them from crickets, and they are now vulnerable to predation from birds instead of bullfrogs. Fortunately, even at this stage they secrete sufficient bufotoxin to repel many predators.

Except in the breeding season, toads are mainly concerned with finding food and shelter. They do not like the drying heat of the sun, which is why they are nocturnal and why they look for a damp, cool place to make their home. Since gardens tend to be watered or irrigated, they naturally attract toads, who usually find a plentiful supply of slugs and other toad-appropriate prey. If a toad settles into a spot and is undisturbed, it will not only remain but return, year after year, to the same location.

Toads are excellent diggers and often excavate dens in soft soil or mulch - toads love mulch. They dig out a cavity with their rear feet, appearing to sink backwards into the hole. There they will rest during the day and emerge at night to hunt for food. When the weather turns colder, the toads prepare to hibernate, either by digging out their den to a deeper level or by finding a more protected location. There they remain until the warm weather of spring brings them out again to spawn. It takes two or three years for a toad to reach breeding maturity, and if fortunate it may have another three seasons to live and reproduce.

So the toad lived in harmony and mutual benefit with the gardener for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, changes in gardening technology have been at the expense of the toads. While tilling and cultivating were carried on by hand, with spade and hoe or horse-drawn plow, these activities did not greatly endanger the toad. However, a riding mower at full throttle with a speed-crazed teenager at the helm is another matter. Lawnmowers, rototillers and weed-wackers all wreak carnage on the toad population. In the garden, a toad's natural camouflage can work against it, making it all too hard to distinguish from a clod of dirt.

What to do? Besides hiring a horse and plow? First of all, simply taking care will save a great number of toads.. These creatures are alert to danger, with acute hearing. They can tell when a weed-wacker is approaching the border where they are concealed in the overgrown grass or weeds. So when you are using machinery, be aware where toads are likely to be hiding, be alert to spot them, and give them a chance to hop out of danger. Don't be in such a hurry to get the job done that you run over the toads in your way.

Another effective way to protect your toads is to provide them a shelter. The classic method of making a toad house is to cut a toad-sized opening in the rim of a terra-cotta pot and set it upside down in the soil, preferably in a shady spot. The unglazed terra-cotta absorbs water and keeps the toad house nice and moist and cool in the heat of the day. It can be difficult to cut the opening without cracking the pot, however; some people claim to have success with drilling pilot holes or using a tile saw. I take the easy way out and simply prop up one edge of the pot with a couple of flat stones. The toads haven't complained.

Some people enjoy providing more elaborate houses for their toads. But many kinds of garden decorations and building materials can serve just as well as toad sanctuaries - flagstones, retaining walls, statuary. Toads are not demanding. A compost heap, a couple of rocks, a woodpile - any of these are likely to harbor a happy toad. Last year, I found a small colony of them living contentedly in the deep, damp straw covering my potato patch. They were not so pleased, however, when I raked away the straw and started to dig up the tubers.

The other great danger to toads is through the use of pesticides and other garden chemicals. Look on the label of these products, and you are likely to see an environmental warning that they are toxic to aquatic organisms such as tadpoles. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, even nitrogen-based fertilizers - any of these may be poisonous or harmful to amphibians if they contaminate the water in which they breed. This includes chemicals applied anywhere that runoff can carry them into the pond.

But adults are almost as vulnerable as the tadpoles, even after they have left the water. The skin of a toad is permeable; rather than drinking, it absorbs water by osmosis through the skin of its belly. In doing so, it also absorbs any chemicals it comes into contact with. While a toad shelter may provide some protection against direct application, these chemicals can still be deadly when the spray drifts onto the ground. There is simply no doubt: the more organic your garden practices, the safer it will be for toads.

There is one more thing you can do for toads: make them a pond. Without a body of water in which to spawn, toads can not breed. The pond need not be overly large or even permanent, as long as it does not dry out during the spring and early summer, while the tadpoles are growing.

The ideal pond should have shallow sloping sides where the toads can enter the water. Besides the toad pond here, I have a smaller ornamental pond elsewhere on my property, where for years I tried to attract toads until I realized that they did not care for its steep, straight sides. [Small bullfrogs, unfortunately, had no such problem with it, leaping to and from the lily pads.] There should be vegetation growing both in the water and along the margins of the pond to provide cover for the tadpoles and shelter for the mating toads, as well as attracting insects for them to eat.

If you build it for them, the toads will come. And if you keep the water safe from contamination, they will reward you in the spring with delightful song.

Horti-Culture Corner
Two Haiku Poems by Jim Meehan

April Showers

Swirling pink petals -
March winds in late April bring
apple blossom snow.


Zen Gardening

There is comfort in
the simple act of weeding -
if you're not the weed.