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Via EnjoyGardening)
Posted by admin to Jim's Notebook on 2007-10-18, 08:55:30
Hits & Misses: Mighty mites & too much of a good thing
Question of the Week: Are these insect eggs?
The Business: Greenhouse trade show in Amsterdam
Spoiler Warning: Do not read this intro if you intend on seeing the movie Into The Wild.
OK, obviously if you’re reading this intro, you either don’t intend on seeing the movie, or you’re the kind of person who flips to the last page of a novel before you begin page one. Either way, here’s my story. On the weekend, I hit the Garneau theatre to watch the “true” story of Christopher McCandless, an intelligent but disenfranchised 23 year old who sheds his worldly possessions and heads to wild Alaska to live off the land. Along the way, he endures many a hardship, including the loss of his car in a biblical flood. But as skilled as he was at water survival, he wasn’t so great at plant identification. Case in point when he ate a plant that turned out to be Hedysarum alpinum. Well, you can imagine his horror upon reading the passage in his plant identification book that states that he will likely die from eating the plant unless he seeks medical attention immediately. Since medical attention is tough to come by in the middle of nowhere, our protagonist meets his demise.
Sorry, Hollywood. I’m not buying the ‘poisonous plant equals insidious death’ story. I will, however, fall for the ‘City kid with no outdoor survival skills moves to harsh wilderness of Alaska and starves to death’ scenario as the cause of his unfortunate demise. I guess poisoning just makes for a better Hollywood script.
Hedysarum alpinum captures a staring role in the movie Into The Wild.
Hits & Misses
Hit: Mighty Mites
We have been receiving regular shipments of a predatory mite called Phytoseiulus persimilis. No, this wasn’t an impulse buy gone terribly wrong. The mites serve the very important purpose of bullying (and by bullying, I mean eating) some plant-destroying, two-spotted spider mites that have been problematic on the annual grasses. P. persimilis has a pretty voracious appetite and loves nothing better than to zip across plant leaves, grasp onto spider mites and suck out their bodily juices. Hey, no one said the greenhouse is always pretty.
Miss: Too Much of a Good Thing
Sometimes, misses are in the eye of the beholder. I had a customer who was upset because his vegetables were just too darn big this year. His corn, tomatoes and potatoes were all gargantuan, and both he and his wife were worried that their aging bodies couldn’t endure a bumper crop of large vegetables. In fact, the husband went as far as to send us a soil sample to see if we could recommend something to stunt them! Now, 99% of the gardeners I know would not complain about vegetable vigour, but for those who do, try ‘mini’ vegetables (vegetables that are bred to remain dwarf even at maturity). Sometimes big problems require small solutions.
Try vegetable varieties like ‘Goldrush’ zucchini if you’re not interested in growing large vegetables.
Question of the Week
Are these insect eggs?
Last week, a customer brought in a sample of her lawn grass, a photo of her lawn and a small cup with some “insect eggs.” She felt quite certain that these eggs were giving rise to some horrible caterpillar that chews grass. Well…not exactly. The “eggs” turned out to be nothing more than empty shells of slow-release fertilizer. The way that many slow release fertilizers enrich soil is by ‘oozing’ nutrients out of semi-permeable resin-coated pellets or prills at a rate that is dictated by the type of prill coating, moisture and temperature. The last part of the prill to biodegrade is the resin coating. Now, it’s an easy enough error to make—insect eggs and fertilizer prills do look very similar—but the good news is that with a bit of extra water, the lawn will recover quite nicely.
Slow release fertilizer is a great way to supply nutrients to plants over a long period of time. Just don’t mistake the pellets (or prills) for insect eggs!
The Business
My brother Bill and his wife, Valerie, have just returned from a greenhouse trade show in Amsterdam. Robotics and computerization, not surprisingly, are playing a greater role each year. For example, they saw a robot that could pick up ivy plants, examine them and if needed, give them a bit of a haircut before sending them back into the greenhouse. Sounds very cool, but I think these robots are getting a little too bold. I’ll think that I’ll keep my baseball cap on the old cranium when I head over to the next Dutch greenhouse trade show.
Did You Know?
Plants, like people, toss about in their sleep. Time lapse photography shows a striking amount of leaf and stem movement with many species of plants. When we flail about, it’s called insomnia. With plants, it’s called nyctinasty.
“Grass is the cheapest plant to install and the most expensive to maintain.”
–Pat Howell
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image and
Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or that good which is only fine: "’Quae magis gustata, quam potata delectant’: everything that pleases, does not nourish’."
If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image and
Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or that good which is only fine: "’Quae magis gustata, quam potata delectant’: everything that pleases, does not nourish’."