March 5, 2013 - Kim’s Weekly
Garden Newsletter
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| Redbud blooming in spring. |
These weekly garden notes are
written by Kim Willis, unless another author is noted, and the opinions
expressed in these notes are her opinions and do not represent any other
individual, group or organizations opinions.
Hi Gardeners
March is here, the season of hope, early spring, when we start
to see the promise of renewal. Someone once said that the winds of March is
nature yawning as she awakes from sleep. Charles Dickens describes March as “when
the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and
winter in the shade”. Native Americans
called the March full moon, the Worm moon, when the earth softens and worms
make their way to the surface again.
Early settlers often referred to the March full moon as the “sap”
moon. Often the weather around the March
full moon is excellent for collecting Maple sap and boiling it into sugar. The early settlers were taught how to do that
by Native Americans. They would collect
the sap on sunny days and then spend much of the night boiling it down into
sugar.
It’s time to stretch and get busy. The gardeners favorite
season is coming quickly now. When we have one of those rare sunny days above
40 degrees, when it’s not windy, it’s time to apply dormant oil to the fruit
trees and those other woody ornamentals you want to protect from insects before
their buds swell too much. Finish up
that pruning too. Pruning should also be
done before you can see a green tip on tree buds.
St Patrick’s day is a traditional day to plant peas. If you can reach the soil, even if it’s half
frozen, you can plant peas in the garden.
Why not start some leaf lettuce in a cold frame or sunny windowsill in
an unheated room?
It’s time to get serious about ordering seeds and plants if
you have delayed. If you wait much
longer some things you want will be gone and most of the early bird deals will
shortly be over. Mail order nurseries
usually ship plants to you when weather reports indicate the time is right in
your area and orders go out from south to north and not always in the order
that people placed orders. Sometimes by
the time shipping is right in some of these northern areas (like ours) they
have run out of an item or only the smaller, less perfect specimens are left. If you have the ability to pot up a bare root
plant and/or hold a potted plant in a sunny, not too warm but frost free place
you can often ask the nursery to ship at an earlier date than normal for your
area.
Any hardy, dormant woody plant that arrives can be planted
as soon as you are able to dig a hole.
Dormant, hardy perennials can be planted as soon as the soil is
thawed. However anything that arrives
that is breaking dormancy or is leaved out requires more care. These should not be planted out until hard
freezes are unlikely and the soil has warmed a bit. A good test to know if the time is right is
to look for similar plants outside and see what stage they are at. For example if hostas are just starting to
poke above the ground you can plant any new hostas which are just starting to
sprout but hold off on planting those new plants that are fully leafed out until
the hostas in the garden are pretty well leafed out.
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| Marsh marigolds, an early spring flower. |
March almanac
Daylight savings time begins next Sunday, March 10th . On March 19th 1918 congress
approved daylight savings time and it began on March 31. Remember to set your clocks ahead an
hour. There will be less sun in the
morning and more in the evening. Spring begins March 20, when the days and nights
are equal in length, 12 hours. By the
end of March our days are 12 hours and 27 minutes long.
The dark of moon is March 11, 1st quarter March,
19th, full moon is the 27th . Best days to plant above ground crops are the
20,21, and below ground crops on the 29,30.
Best days for fishing are the 11-27 and the best days to set eggs for
hatching are the 26-27.
The 11th is Johnny Appleseed day, the 12th is plant a flower day and girl scouts day, the 15th is the Ides of March, the 14th is learn about butterflies and potato chip day, the 17th is St Patrick’s day, the 18th
is goddess of fertility day, the 20th
is international earth day and proposal
day, on the 29th of 1886 coca cola was introduced and this year
Easter is on the 31st.
On March 27, 1513, Ponce De Leon sighted Florida. On March 30th 1867, the US bought Alaska
from the Russians. It’s National Women’s
History month, Irish American month, National Craft month, Frozen food month,
National Red Cross month and National Peanut month. The bloodstone and
aquamarine are the birthstones for March. The violet is the flower for the
month of March.
Choose purple
At the 42nd National Meeting & Exposition of the
American Chemical Society (ACS), held in Denver August 29, 2011, scientists reported on research done with
purple potatoes on a group of overweight people with high blood pressure. The group of volunteers were fed 6-8 small
purple potatoes that were cooked without oil in a microwave twice a day for a
month. The researchers found that the
study participants all had a decrease in blood pressure and that none of them
gained weight. Purple potatoes were
chosen because the purple-blue pigments in plants are known to be high in
phytochemicals that promote cardiovascular health in humans. (Researchers are now doing studies using red
and white potatoes to see if there are equal benefits there).
There is a lot of interest in the anthocyanin compounds in
plants that have blue-purple- red-purple coloration. Several studies have shown that the deepest
colored plants provide the most health benefits. Snapdragon genes were inserted in tomatoes to
produce a deep purple tomato. When these
tomatoes were fed to mice their lives were much longer than mice fed other
colors of tomatoes. A Kansas researcher
is using a specially bred purple sweet potato in cancer studies. Scientists at the Agricultural Research
Station in Beltsville MD found 36 beneficial anthocyanin compounds in red, (purple)
cabbage.
Many common vegetable varieties now have purple or blue
varieties. You may want to consider
these when you are choosing vegetables to grow this spring. There are purple carrots, potatoes, red cabbages,
red-purple kale varieties, chard, red-purple lettuces, basil, beans, peppers,
sweet corn, onions, eggplant, broccoli, and kohl rabi, and probably more. And when choosing fruit you may want to buy
purple grapes, black or purple raspberries, purple plums rather than other
colors of those fruit.
Organic plants
contain health benefits for you – but they are not the happiest plants
New research has given some credence to the often heard line
that organic food is healthier for you. Researchers
at the University of Barcelona, Spain, showed that organic tomatoes contained
higher levels of phenolic compounds than conventional tomatoes. Phenolic
compounds have proven human health benefits for the prevention of
cardiovascular and degenerative diseases. Tomatoes also contain lycopene and
other carotenoids, and vitamin C. While
organic tomatoes are higher in phenols, research still needs to be done to see
if that makes them more beneficial to humans than conventionally grown
tomatoes, although it would seem logical to assume that.
However, even if the high phenol plants are healthier for
humans, it doesn’t mean that high phenol levels make for happy, healthy
plants. This same research found that
the more stress tomato plants were under, the more phenols they produced. In
other words, what’s good for us may not be best for the plants. And in these studies, organically grown
plants showed more stress than conventionally grown plants.
A research study published
February 20 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Maria
Raquel Alcantara Miranda and colleagues from the Federal University of Ceara,
Brazil also found that organic tomatoes had higher sugar content, Vitamin C,
and phenols. However they also found
that the organic tomatoes were 40% smaller and plants were less productive. This was caused by the plants having to
expend more resources defending themselves from insect and disease, the stress which
also cause the high phenol levels.
Plants also have to work harder to extract maximum benefits from organic
fertilizer compared to conventionally fertilized plants.
Researchers are now trying to figure out how to best balance
stress in plants to produce maximum benefits for humans while preserving good
production and healthy plants.
How plants are like
us
One of the first things you are taught in Master Gardener
Class or any botany course is how plants differ from animals. But as science progresses, we are discovering
amazing things about plants. While
plants may have developed different ways of doing things than animals, they are
much more complicated and more like animals than previously thought. This year for the first time there will
actually be a plant neurobiology conference, where researchers will discuss
such topics as how plants communicate, how plants adapt to change, animal like
behaviors of plants and consequences of plant misbehavior. The conference takes place in July in
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. You
can see the research based plant behavior website at http://www.plantbehavior.org
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| Violas in spring |
I am reading a new book on plant
senses ( What a Plant Knows by Daniel
Chamovitz) and it explains that while plants don’t have eyes they do have
photoreceptors similar to those in animal eyes.
One type of receptor is located in the tips of shoots and tells the
plant to grow toward light. The part of
the plant that grows is actually the middle part of the stem and it will curve
toward light. The plant processes
information the shoot “eyes” send it to make the plant grow. There are different types of light receptors in
leaves that measure the length of light- how long the day is. The day length determines many plant
processes, such as flower initiation. Only
one leaf exposed to light can relay that information to the plant. For parts of the plant to send information to
other parts of the plant implies a “nervous system” and some sort of conscious “control”.
I used to joke that vegetarians were worse
than meat eaters because they ate defenseless creatures alive. ( A carrot is
alive until you cook it.) What will it
mean to vegetarians if we find out that plants actually feel fear and pain, if
even in a primitive sense? Even seeds are tiny plant embryos and they are
alive. There are some intriguing hints
that this may be so.
Other
books
Another book I have come across is Master Gardener by Rolf Margenau. It’s a kind of cute mystery story ( fiction) about
MG’s who try to smuggle in and release a milkweed that resists roundup – to save
the monarchs and it’s written by a MG. It’s
only 2.99 on Amazon, a quick read although not the most professional writing,
and supports a MG. And for those of you
who are poultry – animal lovers you’ll love this book from a Michigan writer- Enslaved by Ducks by Bob Tarte. It is professionally written and quite
funny, a memoir of the authors move to
the country and his wife’s love of animals.
My husband says he and Bob should talk.
You can find it on Amazon.
A reader sent me this and I thought I
would include it.
National Wildlife
Refuge Survey – Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge
The Center for Food Safety is currently investigating the
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s decision to allow the growing of genetically
engineered soybeans and corn at the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge in
Saginaw, Michigan. The Service has not
considered the various risks to the environment or wildlife posed by cultivating
genetically engineered crops at Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. National Wildlife Refuges are important
places for wildlife and serve as wintering and breeding habitat for migratory
waterfowl, among other restorative purposes.
A variety of waterfowl depend on the aquatic and wetland habitats at
Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. Such species include Canada goose,
mallard, green-winged teal, and ring-necked duck. These waterfowl currently use
these pesticide-intensive, genetically engineered crops as a food source.
Genetically engineered crops have no place on the Shiawassee
National Wildlife Refuge, and we need your help to stop it.
We are looking for information from members who live near or
visit Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge, located in Saginaw, Michigan. If you reside near or have visited this
National Wildlife Refuge we could use your help. In your email, please tell us: 1) Where you
live, 2) The last time visited Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. office@centerforfoodsafety.org
Go play in the dirt
Kim Willis
In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell
like dirt.” ― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg
More
information
I am
putting something a little different in this week’s information segment. Many of you who took the Master Gardener
class are struggling to decide how to proceed with certification, remaining in
a Master Gardener club etc. I found this
article on Master Gardeners- whether they should have another name, and about
the animosity many people in the gardening world feel about MG’S. I am going to re-print the original article
and give you a link to the site. There
are a lot of comments posted there now and those comments are as interesting as
the article. I suggest you go there and
read them http://gardenrant.com/ministry_of_controversy
This is not my article, I just found it interesting. It’s on the Garden Rant Blog page written by
Susan Harris- if it doesn’t come up on the home page type in Master gardener in the search box on the home page.
Recently there was a lively garden-writer discussion on
Facebook that began with this question:
“I’m a member of several professional garden groups and a recurring
theme that comes up is anti-master gardeners. Why?”
Boy-oh-boy, did people have answers. One opined that Master Gardeners represent a
“stale and stagnant status quo,” another had seen them selling known invasives
in their area, but the main complaint against Master Gardeners was about their
very name.
Bad Name
I totally agree with the commenters that “Master Gardener”
is a misnomer and I weighed in to say that attending classes (where attendance
wasn’t even required), completing a take-home test and then performing 40
volunteer hours does not make anyone a “master” at anything. There were people in my class (in DC) who’d
never put a plant in the ground in their lives, and after MG “training” and
certification, still hadn’t.
That “master” in the name leads to problems like:
- People thinking it’s on the same level as “Master
Carpenter,” a tittle that represents actual mastery.
- Apparently, it can go to people’s heads. “Some MG’s take that title too seriously and
are extremely pompous.” “Extremely
pompous about the mostly abstract info they have.”
- It makes people boring:
“They use the title of ‘Master Gardener’ as a badge of all-inclusive
expertise. Plus they tend to be really really boring.”
- The name is often mistakenly assumed to indicate a higher
level of knowledge and training than actual horticulturists!
- From yours truly, a complaint that America’s Master
Gardener Jerry Baker is a known quack who’s made beaucoup bucks off that
self-proclaimed title. (Which I ranted
about back in ’06.)
Better Name?
Garden writers seem to agree it’s time for renaming. “If
they’d rename the program to something more honest, that made it clear that the
level of education is meant for homeowners and not as a professional
certification, I’d have fewer sore feelings about the program.”
“Horticultural Research Volunteer” was suggested as
“something that allows the public to know that they are not BETTER THAN US.”
Taking Work from
Garden Writers
Some complain of MG writing columns competing with paid
(hopefully) garden writers.
And a related pocketbook complaint is that you can’t use
your Master Gardener credential for commercial purposes. “A pure interpretation of this means that you
can’t put MG on your resume, on the cover of your book, on a byline or author
bio for a magazine or newspaper article (for which you get paid), on your
business card, and so on.”
Coming to their
Defense
“We are not volunteer gardeners nor do we compete in any way
with professional horticulturists or designers; we provide RESEARCH-BASED
gardening information to the public. We are taught during our training that it
isn’t necessary to have all the answers; it’s only necessary to know how to
find them. ”
And several writers sang the praises for MG programs in
their area. (And I’m always happy to
hear about MG programs that are nothing like the one in DC I’ve ranted about.)
No Surprise: It Starts in Washington
Responding to a suggestion that the garden writer group
rename the MG program, one writer answered that the name can only be changed at
the national level (by the Department of Agriculture, presumably) and
continued: “I think the lack of
consistency form place to place is one of the problems w/the program as a
national institution.” Others echoed
this complaint about the lack of consistency across the country.
And we heard from Canadians about what the program can
be: “In Ontario, we’re required to take
a horticulture certificate from one of two universities (three courses, usually
taking two years of distance ed) and write a qualifying exam before being
accepted into the program. Each year, we have a compulsory technical update,
and monthly meetings, of which we must attend at least four, include one hour
of education. Thirty hours of volunteer time annually (most do more; I did
nearly double that last year) is essential to remain in the program. It’s a
shame there’s so much anti-MG feeling.”
What do YOU think of Master Gardeners? And can you suggest a better name?
Weigh in, and I’ll try to get a response from the USDA folks
who have jurisdiction over the program, from the Extension Master Gardener
bloggers and from the Garden Professors.
( Please, readers of this
newsletter- if you want to comment go to the website.)
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