Before you dig, read these
By Elizabeth Licata
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Flower Confidential, Amy Stewart, Algonquin, 2007
Like Amy Stewart, I’m a flower junkie, unable to pass displays in supermarkets or sidewalk stands without stopping to admire, sniff, and usually buy. Other than noting that cheap roses never seem to open and that altroemeria lasts forever, I have limited my study of cut flowers to making sure I’ve got plenty on display.
But all that has changed now that I’ve read Flower Confidential.
This is a great time of year to take note of Stewart’s comprehensive, exhaustive study of the cut flower business. Easter and Mother’s Day are two of America’s biggest floral holidays, and I know this because I read it in Flower Confidential, a book filled with “Wow, I didn’t know that!” moments.
Here are a few more revelations. Gerberas need only a couple inches of water at the bottom of the vase: don’t fill it up. Growers make very little more per flower than they did 100 years ago, sometimes only pennies a stem. And while it seems quite natural to display flowers near fresh produce, the proximity of flowers to fruits and vegetables actually shortens their shelf life.
But this is not a dry recitation of flower industry facts—far from it. Stewart’s love of flowers and her continual awareness of them as a gardener and consumer make this a sensitive recounting, filled with personal anecdotes. Stewart also sheds considerable light on how the business of flowers affects the socioeconomic lot of the people who toil in the fields, and she details the struggle to create fair trade and certification programs for flower growing, thus ensuring that fewer pesticides, fungicides, and unnecessary fertilizers will accompany the floral trade. Sadly—but as expected—the United States seems to be lagging behind in these efforts.
In addition to following—quite literally—the path of a cut flower from seedling to senescence, Stewart stops along the way to introduce us to some fascinating personalities in the flower business: lily hybridizer Leslie Woodriff, violet specialist Don Garibaldi, and Sun Valley flower magnate Lane DeVries, among others. It is encouraging—after we’ve met this driven efficiency freak—to learn of DeVries’s decision to become a VeriFlora certified organic grower.
Flowers touch a deep chord in us all. As a gardener, I still love to shop for cut flowers in any season, even when I can snip them close at hand. None of the information in Flower Confidential will change that, but now I can satisfy my flower jones in a much more knowledgeable fashion.
The Truth About Garden Remedies, By Jeff Gillman, Timber Press, 2006
Jeff Gillman doesn’t name names but he doesn’t have to. We all know who he’s talking about when he refers to gardening “gurus”’ recommendations that we douse our gardens with a myriad of household cleaning products, soft drinks, and toiletries. Jerry Baker, who calls himself “America’s Master Gardener” for no good reason that I can find, has based a career on convincing the gullible that spraying beer or shampoo all over your garden will promote luxuriant growth, cure all diseases, and eradicate pests.
But if you don’t want to take my word that Baker’s potions are silly and possibly harmful, check out Gillman’s book. With degrees in horticulture and entomology, Gillman is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches courses on nursery management and researches plant production. For Garden Remedies, he has researched and/or field-tested every home or folk remedy he discusses. He also discusses commercial fertilizers, pesticides, and biostimulants, according to the chemicals they contain. The home remedies are categorized by what they do (fertilize, control weeds and pests, or cure disease). Each remedy is discussed in four steps: theory, practice, the real story (in which the remedy is tested) and a final “bottom line” conclusion entitled “what it means to you.” There is a flower rating for each remedy, from one (fuggidaboudit) to five (likely benefits if used correctly).
This is what Gilman would say about a remedy like the following:
Overspray your lawn with my Lawn Freshener Tonic: 1 can of beer, 1 cup of dishwashing liquid, 1/2 cup of ammonia, and 1/2 cup of weak tea water mixed in your 20-gallon hose-end sprayer, and applied to the point of run-off.
1. I didn’t need Gillman to tell me “Beer is better consumed than applied to your garden,” but it was interesting to learn why. Gillman’s research included testing a buddleia with Michelob Light, Guinness, and Sharp’s. First, any alcohol is bad for plant growth, second, the beer increases the growth of harmful bacteria.
2. Soap is used here as a wetting agent, but, according to Gillman, household soaps are not formulated for garden use and could burn foliage. Deep watering is the better and more effective choice.
3. Household ammonias contain a type of aqueous nitrogen that isn’t formulated for gardens. Again, you could be harming your plants, which isn’t really the idea.
It should come as no surprise that Gillman speaks highly of compost, mulch, and organic fertilizers—i.e., stuff that’s actually made to be safely used in the garden. He isn’t too enthusiastic about commercial pesticides, noting that while we look back in amazement at the deadly toxins our forefather used, others may think the same about us someday.
I was very interested in the section devoted to the effect of music on plants. In addition to noting The Secret Life of Plants, Gillman cites Dorothy Retallack’s lesser-known The Sound of Music and Plants. The idea is that the sound effects the plants’ stomata (pores) causing them to close or open (depending on whose research you are reading). Open stomata might allow fertilizer to be more easily absorbed, while closed stomata could conserve water. This is the only remedy about which Gillman is unable to come to any conclusion—even after subjecting his plants to the Canadian band Rush for two weeks. (I call that cruel and unusual.)
This is a must-have book for both its information on home remedies and its survey of commercial remedies. Clearly, we need fewer gurus and more people like Gillman.
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Timber Press, 2006
Bless Timber Press for having the good taste to persist in their reprints of the works of this wonderful writer. My hunch is that very few people are aware of Nichols’s witty, passionate, and knowledgeable books on gardens and gardening. Most of them are technically chronicles of his own gardening efforts at various locations in England, but every chapter contains almost as much information and opinion on general gardening topics. There’s also plenty of observations on human—and cat—nature. Nichols was a political writer, playwright, and novelist who published from the twenties through the eighties; his work deserves to be as widely known in America as it is in Britain.
Green Grows the City (first published in 1939) is an often-hilarious account of Nichols’s efforts to create a gracious verdant retreat in an unpromising Heathstead triangular plot. From his search for appropriate plants …
Did you know there were nurseries in London? Stretching for acres and acres, unsuspected, behind the most unpromising facades? No? Well, there are. But I won’t tell you where they are, because I like to prowl about them alone. Muttering.
to his plans for his greenhouse …
… make plans to have things growing in beds or out of walls or in niches, and not only in pots. You want to feel that the whole house is living, that it is a miraculous nest of green, that the very walls are fertile. The difference between a plant in a pot and a plant in the soil is the difference between a man in an hotel and a man in his own home.
… Nichols’s prose is characteristically tart and finely tuned. True, he mentions a lot of plants (Siberian wallflowers? Aquiglia discolor? Lilium kikak?) I’ve never heard of and never expect to see, but I don’t read Nichols for gardening advice. Rather, his fervent devotion—albeit with touches of acerbic humor—to plants and the domestic landscape is inspiring and heartening. It’s also encouraging that he lived well into his eighties. Must have been all that gardening.
Elizabeth Licata i s editor of Buffalo Spree and a garden blogger at allentowngardener.com and www.gardenrant.com.
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