Thoughts off the top of my head: November 2014
I love to go to the North Carolina Farmer’s Market in Raleigh. In fact I like it so much that we are making it our Friday lunch stop at the AHS Convention that we are hosting next June 18-20th. All the produce is grown in North Carolina and August is watermelon season; their diversity is tremendous.
While farmers still compete every year to grow the “World’s Largest Watermelon”, few large melons make it to the vendor’s booths anymore. Like hostas, minis are now the rage. Individual size watermelons, ones that will feed a family of four nicely at one sitting, and dark green bowling balls that fit nicely in the fridge. Also like hostas, mini watermelons are about the same price as the big ole ‘Charleston Grey’, making them more profitable to grow and transport. Things have changed so much that I can’t even find really big watermelons at the local grocery store for Fourth of July weekend.
Mini watermelons, like hostas, have “cute” names, with “baby” or “doll” in them. They are not just green with red flesh either anymore. ‘Yellow Doll’ has golden yellow flesh and weighs less than 8 pounds. ‘Golden Midget’ is 3 pounds and becomes yellow on the outside when ripe. There are watermelons with orange flesh and cream colored flesh also, as well as all shades of red and pink. The internet would have you believe there are mythological purple fleshed melons, too but they appear just to be a Photoshop creation. Check it out for yourself.
Watermelons have something else in common with hostas, they are attacked by foliar nematodes. I got a call from the maker of a new nematicide, NEMAKILL™, telling me that it had proven very effective in controlling foliar nematodes in watermelons in Florida and did I want to try it on hostas. It is a combination of cinnamon oil, clove oil and thyme oil and works when the fumes of these oils are absorbed by the nematodes. Vapor pressures created by this mixture permeate the soil and very possibly leaves. The vapors may be able to reach deep inside plant leaves where other pesticides do not reach.
This seemed so promising that the AHS has added NEMAKILL™ to its current foliar nematode study at the University of Tennessee. In early tests it has proven to be very affective at killing worms. The nice thing about this nematicide is that it can be used on food crops and thus is considered very safe.
Before you go online and order a case or two of this promising “silver bullet”, remember that hostas and watermelons have a few major differences besides the size of their fruits. Watermelons are annuals, hostas perennials. Any treatment in hostas must pass the test of time, not just protect foliage to get the crop to market. There is a difference between control, even 95% control, and elimination. If NEMAKILL™ or other products based on the same principles are effective in controlling foliar nematodes in the soil and foliage of hostas, then at worst those nasty brown streaks may disappear from hostas gardens and at best areas can be cleaned up and become foliar nematode free. We can only hope.
As I look out at my garden, the leaves are finally almost all down. The hosta leaves, well that is another story. Even with our several killing freezes the leaves of many of my hostas are still showing some green while they droop over the edge of their pots or sprawl on the ground. They have turned to mush but have not dried to a crispy brown yet; they look parboiled.
I probably should not try to write about gardening this time of year, it is a little depressing with everything going to sleep. December is the month I try to clean things up. I like to blow all the leaves out of the garden once they all come down to discourage the voles from moving in for the winter. I also need to keep my moss lawn open all winter so that it can grow fuller in the now full sun shade garden. The hosta leaves usually are all removed with the beech and oak leaves, gone with the wind. The new mulch can wait until later, just before the daffodils start to push up.
This year I put an inch or so of “certified compost” on my garden. It is a rich dark black color and has been tested for nutrients and trace elements. My source, Novozymes North America, Inc., uses a bark base and then waste material from the enzyme factory here in Franklinton. It is a recycled waste product processed into compost. It proved to be weed free and very attractive as a thin mulch. It was easy to apply and lasted all season long.
This compost, while looking all the part, is not mulch as we know it. A few weeks after applying it, I needed to plant a few new perennials to fill in some holes here and there and went to pull back the new “mulch” (compost) and found that there was nothing to pull back. While the garden looked neatly mulched, in fact the compost had worked its way into the soil. This certainly was great for loosening the top inch or so of soil but I had no mulch to cover my newly planted babies.
I am not sure what to do next year. Adding compost every year will certainly improve my garden soil to a great degree over time. Its color is a little too black for me, however, too much contrast. It is the difference between black nursery pots and brown, and maybe green, decorative pots. I like the edges of my garden to be softer, with no sharp contrasts, less black and white.
I could add mulch over the compost but that is twice the work and twice the price. In addition, the mulch usually lasts 2-3 years and putting compost over it the next year seems out of the question. We’ll see what I think in the spring. Right now all I see are inches of brown tree leaves anyway.
But that is not the issue I really wanted to talk about. You may not have a compost dilemma but I am sure most of you can relate to this. After the excitement of spring and all those crazy hostas jumping out of the ground, my garden settles down in a lazy slumber and passes each summer day one at a time. I can’t say that I am bored with my garden, there is almost always something to catch my eye or teach me a little nugget of wisdom but sometimes, well it is not very interesting. Yes, I do see it every day and it just could be familiarity but I think it is something more than that. I know you probably feel it, too.
Maybe the garden just feels finished. I know that gardening is a constant work in progress but sometimes most of that work is maintenance, (hence the compost/mulch discussion.) My garden has reached its maximum size, the size I can maintain. There is no room for new trees, although we are still tempted to buy them. There are just little nooks and crannies to fill in here and there. No big changes are on the horizon.
I believe that as humans we are made to create not maintain. That is why I felt it so important to design and build my own house. If you believe, man was placed in a garden to be the care taker and make it into his own image. The world, as we see it today, is certainly reflective of the personality and culture of the human race. When we stop creating, planning improvements for the future, we get distracted, disinterested and maybe a little self-absorbed.
So how do we fire up those creative juices again? How do we get interested in the way our garden will look, not only for this weekend’s garden visits but also two summers down the road? The usual answer, and as a hosta grower I will not discourage it, is to buy some new “interesting” hostas. Watching them mature over the next few years to see what they will do in the garden, certainly can help but I think we all need something more.
Most of our houses are in the same state of “familiarity” as our gardens. We could add an addition to the house but like our garden it is probably big enough for our current life style. So we do not build but remodel. Kitchens, baths, new paint and carpet, big projects or small, they all make our homes more interesting and reflective of our current phase of life. So why not remodel the garden, too?
Now I do not mean gut the whole thing down to the bare soil and change the floor plan. Let’s just do it a room at a time, as our energies and budgets allow. Maybe change the garden entrance that visitors commonly use. Make a few hardscape changes, maybe a new gate or trellis, add a statue of a Chinese lion as a guard dog, and a few interesting large rocks. Change the plantings, also, maybe leaving a bed empty of hostas, (I know this is sacrilege), to plant several times a year with plants for seasonal interest.
Maybe you just need new carpet. Cornelia Holland changed the whole feel of her garden when she covered her paths with a nice earth tone colored pea gravel. It brightened the entire garden, defined the beds, and made it more formal without changing its woodland ambience.
This winter, just start thinking of a small project that will not require digging. Maybe just adding a bench or one of those cool fountains where the water just barely overflows a ceramic jar into a pool of gravel. How about a fence, not a eight footer but something that you can see over and the deer will have to jump. The paint it purple, or not.
My solution is hostas in pots. We have at least 100 hostas in pots of all sizes and styles. Our garden has many ceramic pots, the heavy, expensive type, but I do not plant the hostas directly into them. We pot the hostas in a nursery pot and then slides it into the ceramic pot. This makes overwintering, repotting, and even carrying the pots around easier. Most importantly, it allows us to move the large clumps of hostas around the garden without the need of a shovel. Every year we push them all together for the winter and then in spring shuffle the deck and deal them out again. It’s pretty interesting.
So give it a try. Find a colorful ceramic pot and then this spring start the quest for just the perfect hosta to reside in it. Maybe put a bright yellow hosta like ‘Mango Salsa’ or ‘Peach Salsa’ in a tall, variegated cobalt blue pot to excite the eye. Maybe fill a huge, solid muted green container with ‘Blueberry Waffles’. Maybe your imagination is better than mine. Into what color pot would you plant a red leafed hosta? Let those creative juices start to flow, winter is for dreaming, spring will be here before you know it.