David Deardorff

Today, the last of November, beginning of December, snow is flying in many parts of the USA. Many die-hard gardeners in colder areas turn to houseplants to satisfy that perennial itch to commune with the green world. These days it seems you find lots of houseplants for sale wherever you go. Many grocery stores, even big box stores, now boast a tantalizing display of gorgeous exotic orchids in full bloom along with other houseplants. The flamboyant color and opulent form of orchid flowers are seductive. Like sultry temptresses they lure us into their embrace and many of us succumb to their charms.

Lady Slipper

For many people, orchids have the reputation (undeserved!) that they are demanding and difficult to grow. Poppycock! Orchids are tough customers that hang on under the most trying of circumstances so long as minimal needs are met. The only finicky aspect of orchid culture is the potting medium because they cannot grow in soil.

Many orchids make excellent flowering houseplants. Take a word from the wise and be careful though, because once you start growing orchids you may never stop! At one time in our lives Kathryn and I owned an orchid nursery and tissue culture lab in Hawaii with several thousand orchids. We were also judges with the American Orchid Society and we literally lived and breathed orchids for years.

Moth Orchid

In general, the two kinds of orchids that are the easiest to grow in the average home are Phalaenopsis (moth orchids) and Paphiopedilum, (lady slippers). Both of these types of orchids prefer bright indirect light, not full sun, and are pretty well adapted to the light levels and night time temperatures in your living room. Moth orchid and lady slipper flowers last an incredibly long time too, six months or more. They’re quite different in appearance: moth orchids are elegant and refined, and lady slippers are bizarre and fascinating.
Moth orchids in their native habitats in tropical Asia live perched on tree branches (they’re epiphytes) like many other tropical orchids. Their roots need a potting medium that drains rapidly but is able to retain some moisture, conditions satisfied by a simple fir bark medium. Never pot them in soil, it will kill them!
Lady slippers also come from tropical Asia but they live on the forest floor, not up in the trees. Because they are terrestrial, their roots need a potting medium that retains moisture well. Pot them in a mix that contains a lot of coarse peat moss or bark fines and they’ll do well. Again, never pot them in soil, it will kill them!
Some types of orchids, such as cattleyas, dendrobiums, cymbidiums, and oncidiums, have water storage structures like pseudobulbs. But neither moth orchids nor slipper orchids have any water storage capability. Since they can’t store water they need regular watering and shouldn’t dry out for too long. Water about once a week by holding the pot under the kitchen faucet, then let it drain. Increase the watering to twice a week if the weather is warm and dry. Fertilize with a weak water soluble orchid fertilizer made at one quarter strength every time you water. Never put the pot in a saucer where it stands in water, because the roots will all die if they are constantly wet.
If you meet these few basic needs for your orchids they will live for years, flowering regularly for you. Next time you are tempted to pick up a moth orchid or a lady slipper from the supermarket, do it. You won’t regret it.

At this time of year David and I put the garden to bed. He writes about keeping it healthy for next season, and concentrates on sanitizing – cleaning out unhealthy plant tissue where disease may lurk until spring. For me the garden season is over. In our cold climate, I find myself more and more reluctant to go outdoors, much less garden. It’s time to concentrate on indoor activities.
The other day David and I watched the local news that carried a story about the dangers of falling leaves in the coming storm. Trees had just begun to turn colors, and had not yet had an opportunity to drop their autumn leaves. The newscaster warned that these leaves posed a terrible threat. OMG – the wind could bring them down all at once! They could cause flooding!! We could almost hear the sound track to Hitchcock’s Psycho in the background, as the menacing leaves crawled toward us. What fierce creatures deciduous trees are. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Although this is part of the fear mongering so common on television today, it is also a clear illustration of a significant loss we modern, urban dwellers have suffered. The loss of connection to and intimacy with the natural world.
Right now, as David and I launch into writing our second book for Timber Press (Troubleshooting the Vegetable Garden), I am reading lots and lots of books about vegetables, about organic gardening practices, and about plants in general. I find myself  exploring many different topics, including ecology and natural history. The more I understand the natural processes going on outside, the more fun I have in the garden.  I glean some books for information, and some for inspiration.
In these explorations I uncovered a book that articulates a major theme of my life and of David’s and my work. In The Lost Language of Plants (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2002) Stephen Harrod Buhner describes an encounter with a puppy, an encounter that many of us have experienced. “… [a] moment [when] something passes between you and the puppy. It is as if something leaves your body and enters the puppy, as if something leaves the puppy and enters you.” At this moment you want to pet the puppy, and he wants you to pet him. Bruhner continues: “This is an experience that nearly all people know, yet we have no word for it in our language.”
He goes on: “Once, people experienced this exchange with everything on earth. The experience was understood, expected, a natural part of human life – this deep interaction with the non-human world . . .”
I am interested in understanding how we lost this ability, this perception, this desire, even.  And I want to know how to regain it. While I agree with Edward O. Wilson that we humans experience “Biophilia” — the love of life itself — I still see lots of evidence of this fundamental disconnect with other life forms.  Much of the work David and I do is an attempt to understand the loss and to regain the ability.
Early in our marriage David and I walked through the Foster Botanical Gardens on the Island of Oahu. We came upon a gigantic Kapok (Ceiba pentandra) whose great buttress roots stabilized its enormous trunk and made caverns in which to hide. I slipped into one and felt embraced and safe. I invited David in and made a comment about this magnificent tree. David agreed, but told me that his favorite tree was the mighty oak. I was surprised, because I knew how much he loved tropical flora. He stepped out of the tree’s embrace and stood in the middle of the grass. He held his arms out to the side, like a kid pretending to be an airplane. He swayed and dipped, as if wind buffeted the mighty oak he mimicked. “Imagine,” he said, “holding your arms out like this for an eternity. Oak trees are essentially immortal, you know. They stand forever with their arms outstretched. Imagine the strength that takes.”

I was stupefied. So much information wrapped up in those simple words. Trees are immortal. They are powerful. Could we not benefit from this power if we only understood it better? Can we not learn important lessons from an immortal being if only we know how to listen?  I hope so.

David Deardorff

It’s late November and garden ghosts from last summer’s bounty may still linger in standing dead stalks of flowers long gone. Unfortunately, some of this left-over plant material may be infected with fungal or bacterial diseases. Roses may keep their foliage until well into winter, even if it’s infected with black spot or powdery mildew. Pear leaves infested with blister mites will come back to haunt you if you don’t rake them up. And all those tomato vines that succumbed to late blight last summer will cause you problems next year unless you get rid of them.
Getting infected plant material out of your garden is called sanitizing and it’s one of the basic tools for managing plant disease or infestations by insects or mites. Sanitizing disrupts the life cycle of these organisms. The bacteria and fungi inside dead infected plant material are still alive and waiting for the opportunity to reproduce. Insects, mites, and eggs are also not dead but merely dormant, waiting for winter to be over. The bacteria, fungi, insects, and mites will all begin to reproduce and create a new generation to infect your garden again next spring as soon as the weather permits. When you seek and destroy these critters while they are dormant you have drastically decreased the numbers that will survive to give you headaches next year. If you can gather all the infected and/or infested material up and get it out of your garden you have reduced the inoculum load significantly. The result is less disease and fewer pests. Sanitizing won’t eradicate these problems but it will give you a fighting chance to manage your garden more effectively.

Remove tomato leaves infected with late blight

One important technique of sanitizing is simply plucking infected leaves or pruning infected stems off your plants. Pull or prune them away and put them in a bag, then dispose of them in the trash. NOT THE COMPOST.
For leaves, look for ones with abnormal spots or blotches on them. The discolored areas may be virtually any color from yellow, brown, black, orange, red, or purple to gray or white. Leaves with discolored spots or blotches are almost certainly infected with fungal or bacterial diseases. Also look for leaves that are rolled into a tube or that have strange growths on them because they usually harbor insects or mites. Leaves that have fallen to the ground should be raked up and hauled away if they were diseased or infested.

Black spot is a fungus disease of roses.

Black spot of roses, for example, is a fungus that lives inside dead rose leaves and in the soil under rose bushes. The fungus will produce spores that will re-infect your rose bushes next spring. If you rake up all the dead rose leaves and pluck off all the infected ones from your roses you will eliminate a huge source of spores and reduce the incidence of infection next year. It also helps to mulch your roses to avoid splash-up of spores from the soil to the bottom leaves of your roses.
For stems, look for those that are spotted and discolored. Like leaves, these should be pruned away and discarded. Check for sunken, discolored patches (cankers) on stems and prune them away. Stems that have holes in them are infested with borers, insects that live inside the stem. Prune these away before the insects inside have a chance to mature, mate, and lay eggs.
Do not compost any infected or infested material. Some disease organisms, such as late blight of tomatoes and potatoes, can live in the soil so plant material infected with late blight should never be composted. If your compost becomes infected you will spread disease throughout your garden as you use your compost. (Yikes!)
Gather up all the infected plant material and dispose of it in the trash. If you live in an area where you are allowed to burn it, burning is also a very effective way to kill these organisms. In any event, get them out of your garden and out of your life. You’ll be glad you did.

On Saturday morning, Nov. 21, Ciscoe Morris invited us into the radio studio for a live interview on his show. It was great! Ciscoe is such a knowledgable and consummate professional that he made the whole interview a lot of fun. Here’s a link to Ciscoe’s podcast of our interview. Check it out, you’ll enjoy it a great deal.

Our first radio interview was posted today at Ken Druse/Real Dirt Click on the link to go to Ken’s Podcast of the show.  He has also posted pages from inside our book on his website and has written a great review. Thank you Ken!

Kathryn Wadsworth

David’s blog told us about composting – such a useful pastime in the winter months. It keeps us active in the garden, provides us with a valuable asset come spring, and allows us to participate in the earth’s life cycles even while the garden lies dormant.
I don’t know about you, but I thought I’d like to read about soil. I loved playing in the dirt as a child, making mud pies, and planting seeds to see what they did. But I never thought about what soil actually is. David and I have lived in many places and, since we garden avidly, I have learned most emphatically that soil is different all over the world. Sandy, with an underlying layer of dense clay (aka caliche) in New Mexico; rich and loamy in a very thin layer over glacial till in Western Washington; and non-existent in Hawaii (Big Island lava has not had enough time to erode into soil).
And yet it is also the same everywhere you go. It’s made of rock; rock that wears away and becomes smaller and smaller particles of sand or silt or clay. Dead plants decompose and provide organic material that feeds billions of tiny animals, fungi, and bacteria. David’s definition is this: Soil is a living ecosystem of organisms in a medium composed of organic debris, mineral fragments, water, and air. Works for me.
I set out to learn more. I have to admit that soil scientists tend to get so enthusiastic, and have such a depth of knowledge of their subject, that my eyes glaze over. But, the notion that an entire complex civilization lies beneath my feet intrigues me.
I love miniature worlds. Maybe because I never had a doll-house as a kid. Maybe because I was a tom-boy and spent many happy hours constructing an entire village in the empty lot next door. I made tiny houses from sticks and mud, and carved roads around rocks on the banks of a steep slope that angled down to an alley. In my world, the alley was the mighty Mississippi and the town was Hannibal, MO (I was greatly enamored with Mark Twain at the time).  My town was inhabited by farmers, grocers, bakers, and bankers, and it prospered over many years.
Miniature worlds make sense to me. And the vast ecosystem that prospers in healthy soil fascinates. Soil is very much alive. And who lives in this habitat? To list them all would take the rest of my life, for there are literally billions of individuals belonging to countless species. Bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, nematodes, protozoa, mites, sow bugs, millipedes, and earthworms, all thrive there. See what I mean – I have barely scratched the surface with that list.
All are important members of a decomposer community that helps keep plants healthy by outcompeting destructive, pathogenic members of their tribe. This community also helps gather water and nutrients from the mineral elements of the soil. In just one example of this complex ecosystem, fungi form what is called “myco’ (which means fungus) “rhizal” (which means roots) partnerships with plants. In this “mycorhizal” association, fungi absorb sugar and other nutrients from the plants, and water and mineral nutrients from the soil and give them to the plant. A win-win situation.
This all seems like magic to me. Mysterious and elegant. The kind of world – evolving over billions of years – where I would want to live and work. Oh, I do live in this magical, beautiful world. How lucky am I?

May Dreams Gardens has announced the winners of their book giveaway contest for What’s Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?). Three lucky gardeners will receive a free copy of our book. That’s a good thing!

David Deardorff

It’s late autumn and Halloween jack-o-lanterns sag and melt away in forgotten corners of the yard along with left-over dead cornstalks. The ghosts of last summer’s bounty linger in flower beds and vegetable gardens. The bright leaves of maple and oak that covered the ground earlier in the season are brown and soggy.
As every gardener knows, a garden generates waste. The outer leaves of cabbage, corn husks, pea vines, fruit tree prunings, and so forth are produced in abundance every growing season. Many people have a lawn to deal with also, and a lawn results in grass clippings. And of course there are always weeds!

You can transform all this material from valueless waste to precious black gold by composting it. And it’s relatively easy to do because most of the work is done for you (for free!) by beneficial micro-organisms like fungi and bacteria. There are a couple of secrets that you should know before you start, however.

Gardens generate waste which is useful for making compost.

First, remember this little ditty: two thirds brown and one third green makes my compost neat and clean.
The ditty is important because it reminds you of the proper proportions of materials to put in your compost. Brown refers to all plant waste that is dry: autumn leaves, straw, corn stalks, brown paper bags, brown cardboard boxes, even newspaper or sawdust. Green refers to all plant waste that is soft and moist: apple peels, potato peels, carrot tops, cabbage or lettuce leaves, and other kitchen waste along with old bouquets, fresh grass clippings, or garden trimmings. Run a lawnmower over the autumn leaves to shred them into smaller particles. Shred newspaper or cardboard. Chip prunings from fruit trees or rose bushes. Reduce the size of all the material to small chunks for more rapid decomposition.

The outer leaves of cabbage are perfect "green" material for composting.

Measure by the handful or the bucket. However you measure, use two parts brown to one part green to keep your compost from becoming too wet and dense for the bacteria and fungi to do a proper job. And avoid putting any animal waste like bones or fat into your compost. It might produce unpleasant smells and it will definitely attract rats and raccoons or neighborhood dogs and cats.
You can pile up these materials in a corner of the garden or you can put it into a container of some sort. Wherever you put it, toss it in randomly so that it’s all mixed up as you build it.
The second secret to success is that you need to add one shovelful of dark, biologically active garden soil for every three shovels-full of your brown/green mix. The soil is important because it’s the primary source of the inoculum of bacteria and fungi that are going to transform the pile into compost. In addition to the soil, I like to add a shovel-full of chicken manure to the mix using the same proportions of one shovel of chicken manure to three shovels-full of the brown/green mix. Chicken manure is higher in nitrogen than steer or horse manure and is also an excellent source of bacteria and fungi to get your compost working. Moisten the mix with a hose as you build it but don’t make it soggy wet.

Chickens provide an excellent source of high nitrogen manure to add to your compost.

Follow these tips and your compost pile will heat up as the population of micro-organisms booms into billions and billions of tiny decomposers munching away on all the dead plant material. It can generate quite a lot of heat as it works. If it gets up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit it will be hot enough to kill weed seeds or pathogenic fungi and bacteria in infected plant material. You can get a really long thermometer to measure the temperature of your compost while it’s working. But, if you don’t trust it to get that hot then do not put weeds or diseased material into the compost mix.
When the mix starts to cool down again you need to stir it with a pitch fork to redistribute the hot center and the cooler sides. Once you’ve stirred it, it will heat up again and then it will cool down. Repeat this process until the compost is finished working and you have dark, friable, good-smelling compost.
If you live in a cool, wet climate your compost will benefit from being covered to keep it from becoming soggy in the rain. It won’t work properly if it’s a soggy, cold, airless pile of garbage. If you live in a warm, dry climate your compost will benefit from some shade to keep it from baking dry in the relentless sun, and you will also need to moisten it with the hose occasionally.
What you get when you’re finished is an inexpensive soil amendment that will benefit every plant in your garden, from vegetables to landscape shrubs and trees. Compost is the best soil amendment to improve the texture of problem soils. It helps with moisture retention in sandy soils that are too well drained. It also helps heavy clay soils through a chemical reaction which creates peds (blocks or chunks) that allow better drainage. In addition, it’s a rich source of nutrients and beneficial micro-organisms that will help your garden grow.

Kathryn Wadsworth

David has been talking about Storing Summer Bulbs. It got me thinking about all the things we who live in cold climates do to prepare for winter. As gardeners we store bulbs, corms, tubers, and tuberous roots. These plant structures store the net photosynthate that the plant produced during the growing season. Which means: plants store food to survive the winter and grow again in spring.
Somewhere in our pre-history we learned a lesson from plants and started storing these same plant parts for our own food. We “lift” tubers like potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) from the ground, shake dirt free and, in former times, placed them in root cellars. Today we might store them in cardboard boxes or burlap sacks in our garages. We also gather tuberous roots like sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and bulbs like onions and garlic, and store them through the long months of cold when we cannot grow food outside.
As November proceeds in the northern hemisphere, we prepare for festivals at which we gather and share our stored bounty from the garden. Storing food is all about coziness, feelings of safety, belonging, and abundance. Despite the hardships of the season – driving rain, cold, and snow – we enjoy our winter feasts.
David’s family cherishes traditional winter feasts. Mashed potatoes are a must. Close relatives of tomatoes, eggplants, chili, and bell peppers, potatoes come from high in the Andes of Peru, and have been grown for over 6,000 years. Breeders have mixed the gene pool to create the multitude of varieties we have now.
We all have favorite potatoes, but I particularly love the ones with tender skins and flavorful flesh, such as Yukon golds. I also like to mix it up with the newest – or oldest, depending on how you look at it – Peruvian blue and purple potatoes. But tradition often dictates the good old russet. No matter which potato we choose, I use a recipe I learned long ago:
Simple Mashed Potatoes
Potatoes: 2 lbs
Milk: enough to barely cover potatoes
Salt, pepper, butter to taste
Scrub the potatoes and leave skins on. Cut them in half-inch cubes.  Boil them in milk until tender. Leave them in the pan with the milk, and start mashing, or pour the potatoes and milk into a bowl and mash. As you mash, add butter, salt and pepper to taste.
Sweet Potatoes come from lowlands throughout the Caribbean and South America, and people have been mixing genes from these gems of the earth for a long time to create many tasty cultivars. Some of these cultivars are also called yams by grocers in many areas of the U.S.
Still, our favorite bounty from the root cellar through the winter is:
Root Cellar Bounty
Bulbs: Onions, Garlic
Tubers:  Potatoes
Roots: Sweet potatoes, Beets, Carrots, Parsnips
Olive oil: enough to drizzle the vegetables in a thin coating
Favorite herbs:  such as thyme, rosemary, and sage.
Cut all the vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Lay them in a single layer in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Drizzle them with the olive oil until thinly coated. Roast them in a 350 degree (F) oven until fork tender.
Yum. Oh, you should probably let them cool for a bit before you bite them.

David Deardorff

Be one of three lucky people to win a free copy of “What’s Wrong With My Plant (And How Do I Fix It)?” Carol, on her blog May Dreams Gardens, initiated the contest and will select the winners. Just click on the link to go to her blog site. To enter the contest all you have to do is describe a plant problem you have encountered. As she says, “Be it a disease, an insect, a rabbit or a mystery, don’t hold back the gory details when you describe your plant problem in your comment. We want to know all about it so we can commiserate with you!” Good luck! Lots of folks are letting us know that Amazon has already shipped their copy of our book to them and they are delighted with it.