Can plants hear? At first glance, this seems like a silly question. Plants don’t have ears, so of course they can’t hear. But wait—do organisms need ears to hear? What is hearing, anyway?
Given that sound consists of a series of vibrations that are propagated through air, water, or another substance, then hearing must be the ability to sense those vibrations. And while our ears are very good at sensing vibrations, there are other options.
Color. It’s probably the primary reason we grow flowers. Yellow daffodils and red roses, irises in every color of the rainbow. Without flowers, our yards would be much more subdued. Gardeners rejoice in the options available, but why do flowers come in so many colors in the first place? What do they get out of it?
For one thing, not all flower colors arise in nature. Plant breeders have spent centuries coaxing new combinations from the available genes—even inducing mutations to increase the possibilities. The wild roses that grow in our foothills range in color from pale to deep pink, but at the garden center I can buy rose bushes that produce blooms of yellow, peach, salmon, orange, lavender, burgundy, pure red, and white—or even combinations of these. Petunias were originally a pinkish lavender. Now they come in every hue except green.
It’s a common question. You’ve just planted a new tree. In the process, the plant has lost a significant portion of its roots—sometimes up to 95 per cent! Should you prune back the crown to compensate?
The intuitive answer would be yes. We assume that with fewer roots, there’s no way the plant will be able to sustain all that foliage on top—and that’s the advice I see on website after website. But if you do decide to prune, you’ll be doing the tree a disservice. You might even kill it! How can this be?
New gardening books seem to pop up as regularly as springtime dandelions. Most simply rehash what has been said before—perhaps with a new twist or better photos. But How Plants Work: The Science Behind the Amazing Things Plants Do (Science for Gardeners) isn’t your typical treatise on how to grow what. Instead, the author, Linda Chalker-Scott, explains the “why” behind the “how.”
An extension urban horticulturist and associate professor at Puyallup Research and Extension Center, Washington State University, Chalker-Scott knows what she’s talking about. This is her third book on horticulture, but there is a lot more. She’s written a series of articles on “Horticultural Myths” that I strongly urge you to read. Then, learn more at “The Informed Gardener,” a series of podcasts, or the informative Garden Professors website. She’s also a driving force behind the Gardening Professors Facebook blog (an extremely helpful research-based Q&A site).
Moss. To those of us in Colorado, moss conjures images of soft green blankets cushioning the forest floor, or carpeting the north side of a tree in a verdant forest. To my daughter in western Washington, moss is that soggy green mat choking out the turf in her shady backyard, or keeping the shake roof too wet, allowing rot to set in. But love it or disparage it, moss is one fascinating plant.
I first saw this poem published on the Garden Professors blog. It made me smile, so I’m sharing it with you. I hope you enjoy it too.
There should be no monotony
In studying your botany;
It helps to train
And spur the brain—
Unless you haven’t gotany.
For many of us gardeners, poinsettia plants are an essential element of our Christmas decorating. I love the huge displays at church and in the stores, even if I don’t have room for that many in my home. I’ve written about how to keep the plants alive (see my 2012 post on “Pretty Poinsettias”). But this year I learned something new.
When I was small (I had my sixth birthday on the trip), my parents and I spent four weeks traveling around Mexico, from early December to early January. It was a wonderful time to visit, with all the Christmas and New Year celebrations. One common sight we couldn’t miss were the gardens full of bright red poinsettias in full bloom.
The tree had clearly expired. What leaves remained had turned a sickly yellow-brown, and hung limply on the branches—in mid-August! Yet, when our neighbors planted it last year it had been perfectly healthy. Something was obviously wrong, and I had a hunch I knew what. (I’ve often said that master gardeners kill just as many plants, we just know why they died.)
Surreptitiously moving the cobblestone mulch aside (and wondering if the homeowner was watching through the closed curtains), I looked at the drip irrigation set-up. There was only one emitter, and it was directing water right to the base of the trunk. No wonder the tree was dead! (That and the fact that it was planted too deeply; there’s no sign of the root flare.)
You’ve read the instructions; I’ve used them frequently here in my posts. “Drought resistant once established.” Sounds good—we’re always trying to save water—but how should you water these plants to start with? And what does “established” mean?
There are a lot of misconceptions about xeric plants. Our landscaper (who was much better at dealing with hardscapes than with living plants) thought that our xeric shrubs and trees needed to be sopping wet for the first few years, until they were “established.” Dead, more likely. (I’m already having to replace some fernbushes that were growing in muck, and we lost the top half of our oak tree in the first few months.)
Spring has finally arrived here at 7,100 feet, and I’ve been feverishly planting—move the mulch, dig a hole, dump the perennial out of its pot and stick it into the ground. Fill in any gaps with leftover dirt, replace the mulch. Rinse, repeat.
As I work around the lawn, adding flowers everywhere I can, I’ve noticed how abysmal my dirt is. Since we added compost, I assume that eventually it will qualify as soil, but right now I’m dealing with lumps of bentonite clay embedded in a deep layer of gritty, coarse sand. The clay was supposed to be seven feet down, but in the process of digging a basement, it got mixed with the surface layers.
Mountain Plover 