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Via EnjoyGardening)
Posted by admin to Jim's Notebook on 2008-02-07, 07:47:56
Hits & Misses: Umbrella pines & things that go bump in the night
Question of the Week: Will adding sand to my soil increase the drainage?
Science & Technology: Night Watch
I am spoiled. There—I said it. It really struck me this week that I take for granted that every day, regardless of how cold and miserable it is outside, I get to walk about greenhouses filled with tropicals and spring bedding plants. Of course, I know that once I leave the greenhouses, the reality of the prairie winter will hit me square in the face, but even so, the hours I spend in a tropical oasis way outnumber the minutes I spend in the cold outdoors. I know! Spoiled! Hmm…as I get older, the thought of adding some sand and a heated pool to the greenhouses doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it once did.
Hits & Misses
Hit: Umbrella Pines
The umbrella pines (Pinus pinea) are receiving a lot of accolades from customers and staff. I think it’s the pine’s wonderful texture and the attractive pots that they’re grown in that are really striking peoples’ fancies. They are Zone 4–5 plants, which means they’re not reliable outdoor plants for our climate, but they really can’t be treated as standard houseplants, either. The reason they don’t fall perfectly into the latter category is that umbrella pines require a 10-week dormancy period (in 3–10°C conditions) around the end of January/beginning of March. After the dormancy period, they can be moved to a sunny window and treated as houseplants—and fabulous ones at that!
The foliage is so dense on this tree that some people mistake it for a plastic plant.
Miss: Things That Go Bump in the Night
One situation that I find both annoying and disappointing is when I receive a shipment of clay or metal patio pots, open the crate and find nothing but damaged goods. It just seems so senseless. Carefully crafted pots should never be destroyed in shipment. Of course, we can claim for the damage, but everyone in the chain—from manufactures to shippers to retailers—suffers. The damage can’t always be blamed on the shipping company, either. If the packaging is poorly done, it is nearly impossible to receive a shipment of pots and not find at least a few clay pots cracked or some metal containers looking like they have been in a traffic accident. Part of the equation simply escapes me: if thousands of eggs can get shipped to supermarkets unscathed, can we not figure out a better way to package and ship pots?
Question of the Week
Will adding sand to my soil increase the drainage?
Reaching for a bag of sand is the natural inclination for a lot of gardeners, but it can be a very serious mistake. Most sands are quite fine and often transform hard clay into even harder concrete! Sand fills in the pore spaces in clay soils, creating a solid, nearly impenetrable block. Unless a huge amount of sharp, coarse sand can be added to the clay soil—enough to create about a 50/50 ratio of coarse sand to clay—adding a bit of sand only makes matters worse.
Science & Technology
Night Watch
Plants are not often thought of as restless sleepers, but many of them are. Plants actually have biological clocks, and several species undergo ‘nyctinastic’ or sleep movements. The leaves on some plants, like the wood sorrel, will drop their leaves from a horizontal position to a nearly vertical position at night. One hypothesis for this nyctinastic movement is that it prevents absorption of moonlight, thus protecting the plants photoperiodic clock so that it can grow and reproduce at the optimum time of the year.
Did You Know?
Last year, the NFL planted 3.5 acres of trees to offset the estimated 260 tons of CO2 that were generated by the Super Bowl in Miami.
“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”
–William Dement
