A Hard Stop

We had a hard stop for our growing season this year.  The bitter cold that rushed down dropped us to 9ºF with a few more nights in the teens. 

The day before the front arrived I ran around covering tender plants with tarps, blankets, leaves, and leaf cages. A week later they seem to have made it through just fine, but plants I didn’t cover were not so fortunate. The landscape looks bleached. The vegetable patch is done, save for the carrots, but they now need to be dug before the delicious sugars start being redirected into regenerating top growth.  I picked what I could of the cabbage, broccoli, and kale before the cold arrived.  They are all now turning to mush. 

I suppose that the story the landscape is telling this year decided it was time for a chapter break instead of a comma. I do love to extend the season and keep it going, but it does feel refreshing to have a bare slate garden for the new year.  

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I’m reflecting back on 2022, a year that has been good to us.  We have lived here in our log cabin for five years now, and I now know this place better than I ever have. I can predict how the light will move and irradiate a certain group of plants through a gap in the trees. I see how the water runs and where currents can be an issue.  I remember where the first frost will settle and the first spring beauty will bloom. And, I have built a hefty list of plants that do well in our little valley. There is a peace that comes from knowing a spot of earth and guiding it towards a better future.

And, now looking forward to 2023, I’m planning what comes next.  I see many peers in the creative community going through their end of the year reviews.  What went well? What didn’t go well and can be made better? We in the green industry can do the same. But, where to start? There have been several moons and many more sleeps since the clock struck midnight 364 days ago.

I have tried to get better at capturing ideas this year to remember and reflect. I used to walk around with a Field Notes in my back pocket, jotting down ideas and sketches, but now I find my phone more convenient.  I can take photographs of beds, circle and scribble notes on them using the edit function, and save them in an album for later. 

I use the iPhone’s Reminders to track what needs to be done in the garden.  I will either walk around with it open and type as needed or tell Siri to create a reminder for my garden list, and then dictate whatever needs to be done.  Once inside I can filter through them and move those with more importance to the top.  And, I can set deadlines or due dates so that when I need to pull those seeds out of the fridge from stratifying in 1 month and 11 days it pops up on my phone when needed. 

For capturing ideas that I see online I have a few options.  Day One journal app is great for not only documenting what happened in the garden that day but also screenshotting ideas that I find like a surprising plant combination or adding plants to a wish list. I think it is now a monthly subscription as I subscribed early on and got grandfathered in. Other options include the free apps Evernote, Trello, Google Docs, and Notion for capture. Each can be used in endless ways from tracking seeds and cultivars to storing notes and research about plants.  Notion is my current favorite for its quick sync across multiple devices and its customizability.

Of course, it can be overwhelming to see so many items on a to do list but remember, small steps. One or two things done a day or a week can move you forward faster than you think on a gardening project or goal. There’s also the grace of the short days of winter.  We are inside more starting the new year and planning what needs to come next.

Sometimes I feel like E.B. White who listed a plethora of tasks in his 1941 essay “Memorandum” with most sentences starting with “Today I should…” or “I ought to finish.…”

I suppose he was employing the Getting Things Done methodology before it was vogue, this idea of emptying your mind of all that has to be done because how can you have ideas when your brain is too busy trying to hold them?  He jumps from task to task to task, each one leading him to another thing he has remembered needs to be completed. Just one example, he must rake the brush that was left in the field, and today would be good to burn it since it rained recently, but before he burns it he needs to research is it better or burn or let rot into compost. I chuckle and think how often my mind goes in these items in a series loops, too.

Of course, it is a bit tongue in cheek because there’s no way he can get all the things done that he needs to today.  But, listing them is a good first step. 

He closes with “I’ve been spending a lot of time here typing, and I see it is four o’clock already and almost dark, so I had better get going.” 

I should, too.

Plants Before Breakfast

I was teaching my nursery management students about marketing recently and how important it is to communicate the value and wonder of plants. I used to be of the mindset that plants are amazing and should be able to sell themselves. But, I read a fascinating article a few years ago that changed my mind that I shared with the class.

Titled "Pearls Before Breakfast" and authored by Gene Weingarten and a handful of Washington Post writers, it was about a mini-experiment that consisted of three parts.

1. Joshua Bell, one of the top violin performers of our time who gets paid over $1000 per hour.

2. A Stradivari violin that cost over $3 million. In fact, the article even kidded that Joshua took a cab a couple of blocks just because he was scared something would happen to it.

3. A large audience, over a thousand people in DC rush hour metro.

Their thesis, “in a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?” They would evaluate it by observing how many people would stop and how much would he make during this 45 minute performance. Such a performance by a famous musician with a priceless violin in front of such a large audience would likely be worth thousands and thousands of dollars.

Feel free to ponder, and scroll down for the answer.

$32.17. Thirty-two dollars and seventeen cents. In fact, $20 came from a lady who actually recognized him. In that time period he had 27 people stop and watch.

So, here you have one of the world’s most famous musicians playing a solo concert with a $3.5 million dollar violin to 1097 people. How was this lost on all those people? Joshua even commented, “I’m surprised at the number of people who don’t pay attention at all, as if I’m invisible. Because, you know what? I’m makin’ a lot of noise!”

Now, as a scientist I realize this case is an n = 1 situation. Perhaps they should have repeated it multiple days. But, I still think we can learn from this scenario.

Why didn’t people stop to appreciate this art?

• Maybe people were in a rush to get to work and don’t have time.

• Maybe people ignored the performer, conditioned from hearing other performers over the years.

• Maybe the context was wrong for the place and the music.

• Maybe people lacked the knowledge of how valuable this performance was.

• Maybe people didn’t know the whole story.

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So, what does this all have to do with plants? There’s this phenomenon called plant blindness where people are not immediately aware of plants in their environment. They pass them by without noticing, even though plants maybe benefiting them even though the people don’t realize it. Why don’t people see plants?

• Maybe people are in a rush and don’t have time.

• Maybe people are conditioned from seeing plants over the years.

• Maybe the context is wrong for the place and the plants.

• Maybe people lack the knowledge of how valuable these plants are.

• Maybe people don’t know the whole story.

Now, perhaps there are evolutionary benefits to that blindness such as we learn to filter out things are are not friend or foe or food. But, we horticulturists have realized that plant blindness may explain why so many people don’t appreciate our work or the value of plants.

The take away from this article for me is that we can’t just stick plants out there and expect people to stop and appreciate them. It takes more.

While the article states there were two groups of people, those who stopped and those who didn’t, I’d argue that there is a third—a group of people who if they knew what was going on they would have paused at the marvel of it all.

We don’t need to try to get everyone to stop and appreciate plants. Just a few more. Perhaps through us being plant evangelists, by sharing how wonderful these photosynthetic creatures are in terms people can understand, and by sharing the incredible story of plants, we can remove the blinders and help people see.

Keep Calm and Garden On

It was a simple graphic I found.  The message “Keep Calm and Garden On” was printed in the vintage British-style World War II poster with a watering can on it.  I thought it would be a nice image to share on Facebook with the first dominos of COVID-19 beginning to fall with the closing of universities and churches. I pushed post and sent it off into cyberspace.  

Within a week, this image had over a thousand shares.  I was blown away.  I realized there is something about that message.  Keeping calm.  And, gardening on.

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I remember my first semester as a graduate student sitting in a statistics night class on September 29, 2008.  Earlier that day, the stock market had crashed, and the class was a flurry with conversations about the dismal news.  There was uncertainty about what would happen. 

But, being a fledgling horticulture master’s student, I heard discussions about people gardening—accounts of first time planters who had never grown anything in their life suddenly had a plot out back or a few containers on their patio.  And, from my attending trade shows, people were talking about the rise of edible gardening.

I remember that like yesterday. That in this time of trouble, people turned to gardening. When people loose so much, they go back to the basics of life.  It is hard to visualize an investment portfolio, but one can see plants and food that’s tangible, real, and in reach growing in the backyard.  

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Here we are yet again with another crisis on our hands. It is very different from the last one, and yet we hear stories of germinating gardening interest and seed companies overwhelmed with orders. A rule of mother nature is that she cannot tolerate bare soil after a disturbance.  Perhaps it is a rule of humanity that human nature can’t either in a crisis?  We seem to have this pattern as humans.  Just like when hardship befalls us and we want to call Mom and Dad or fall into a friend’s arms, in crises we return to the earth.

But, why?  I had often heard people speak of this gardening roller coaster, but it was anecdotal. I hadn’t seen good literature on the subject until I sat on a graduate student’s dissertation committee a few years back.  In her writing Jheri-Lynn McSwain cited a thesis by Joshua Birky where he made the case that gardening and crises are connected.   And, while the below quote focuses on community gardens, I believe that it also holds true of backyards or balconies.

“It can be seen that throughout the history of the U.S. movements, many forms of community gardens have often been looked at as undesirable landforms necessary only in times of great disturbance or social need; they are seen as the refuge of only the poor, homeless and unemployed. These gardens have many times been a common reaction to a societal feeling of panic or desperation when it is believed that life within the city, or the nation as a whole, is being threatened. Yet once the war is over or the unemployment rate decreases, the “normal” faces of urban design take over and the gardens are once again lost until the next disaster arises.  

This pattern can be recognized by realizing that each spike of public or governmental interest in community or allotment gardens within the U.S. (and to a large extent with in the U.K.) generally follows a crisis period. Although easily comparable quantitative data for each one of these spikes is not available, studies do suggest that as public and governmental interest in community and allotment gardening increases, so does the number of gardens. Given this information, the histories of both the U.S. and the U.K. and further anecdotal evidence, we can conclude that there have been approximately eight major crises and seven major spikes (within the U.K. and the U.S). These crises and spikes include – two reactions to poor wages and living conditions in 1790s (U.K.); reaction to the swing riots of 1830 (U.K.); reaction to poor conditions and unemployment in the 1890s (U.S.); reaction to World War I (U.S. and U.K.); reaction to the great depression (U.S. and U.K.); reaction to World War II (U.S. and U.K.); and reaction to marginalization, oil shortages and environmental hazards in the 1970s (U.S.). The current movement has been steadily growing since the 1970s with slight reductions during the 1980s due to pulled government funding and support.”

— Joshua Birky

So, there you have it. In hard times we cultivate creation, only to drop our plowshares once life stabilizes. And, then the pattern repeats.

While gardening has become more hip in recent times and I believe less viewed as “undesirable landforms” that is just “refuge of only the poor, homeless, and unemployed” as in times past, there is still something that causes the post-crisis gardening spike to drop once the good times return. Perhaps priorities shift back. Perhaps these people see that gardening has its own issues—deer, rabbits, weeds, fungi, viruses, boar, gophers, flooding, and ultimately plant death—and it’s just as easy to go to the store and buy that head of lettuce. Perhaps people just don’t want to work that hard. Yes, I’m not afraid to say that gardening is work. It is incredibly fun, life fulfilling, and passionate work, but it’s work. There are days that I collapse from having done so much only to get up the next day and go again. And, I’m gardening for fun, not necessarily just for survival!

Or, perhaps we all have a bit of prodigal son in us. Garden does come from the old English geard, meaning fence or enclosure. Back centuries ago, walled gardens were viewed as safe havens from the wild beyond. And, maybe it is just part of our nature to venture out from growing plants for survival when things are well in the world to engage with the lavish trinkets of life only to return home of cultivating the earth when things go bad again.

Whatever the reason, I want to unlink the crisis and the garden. To tear down those fences and make gardening an integral part of life. I believe that is our role as plantspeople. To help those that are just starting. To rear the seedling gardeners and help them stretch towards the light. To encourage and promote and educate and cheer them on. To share plants and to share knowledge, even if it is difficult with social distancing.

This pandemic is a crisis, and I pray, hope, and truly believe that we will make it out of this winter to find a rich and rewarding spring on the other side. But, I don’t want us to forget plants and the life that they gave to all of us while we were struggling, this time or the many times before this crisis.

So, let’s keep calm and garden on. We’ll be here again one day. We might as well keep the practice up.

No, you shouldn’t plant trees in square holes, AND it is 26% more work for you.

Planting a tree is a great way to celebrate the new year and the new decade.  Heaven knows, I’ve got a few that I need to get in the ground or move from one spot to another.  

But, recently, I’ve seen the article on the interwebs about planting trees in square holes.  It appears that most of them originated from this article in The Guardian by James Wong on 8 December 2019.    

A quick google search reveals that Intelligent Living also featured the idea. Also, Sunset picked up the theory and ran with it. They even made a meme about Sir Joseph Hooker stating he planted in square holes even though the source The Gardener’s Assistant they shared was written by Robert Thompson in 1859 (page 405 in case it doesn’t hyperlink). Le sigh…

Poor Sir Joseph Hooker, never gets any respect.

But, the problem is there is no scientific literature that supports this information.  I applaud Sunset for at least finding The Gardener’s Assistant where Thompson stated that he plants in square holes. But, again, there is no research to back this statement up. Also, to show how dated it is, Thompson calls roots spongioles. Ew.

Back to the original article. Wong states,

“...in recent decades scientific research has overhauled much of the traditional wisdom about planting saplings, including some ideas that sound a little strange. ”

I agree with this statement.  As a scientist, I love data and results from replicated trials, and new work is constantly shedding light on the wonderful world of plants.  But, here’s where the article get murky.  

“So, let me explain why science proves that it’s better to plant trees in square holes. ... here’s what happens to the tree’s roots when you plant them in a round hole, especially one filled with lots of rich compost and fertiliser, as the old guide books suggest. The little sapling will rapidly start growing new roots that will spread out into the rich, fluffy growing media, giving you excellent early success. However, once they hit the comparatively poorer and compacted soil at the perimeter of the hole, the roots will react by snaking along the edge of the hole’s edge in search of more ideal growing conditions.

Eventually, this spiralling action around the limits of the hole will create a circular root system, with the plants essentially acting much as they do when grown in a container. Once the roots mature they will thicken and harden into a tight ring, creating an underground girdle that will choke the plant, eventually resulting in the severe stunting and even death of your treasured tree.

The very simple and counterintuitive act of digging a square planting hole will dramatically reduce the chances of this happening. This is because systematic planting trials have shown that roots are not that good at growing round corners. When they hit the tight, 90-degree angle of your square hole, instead of sneaking around to create a spiral, they flare out of the planting hole to colonise the native soil.”

Yes, many old sources say to enrich holes.  I agree with Wong; that is wrong.  It is better to back fill with the original soil with few to no amendments and apply amendments to the topsoil so that the entire area around benefits, not just the hole.  But, we can’t make a jump from it is wrong to enrich the soil to it is wrong to plant trees in circular holes. The article states,

“This [planting is square holes] has been shown consistently to speed up tree establishment and make the specimens more resistant to environmental challenges, such as drought.”

Who is showing this?  Show me the data!  SHOW ME THE DATA!!! The only thing I can even find from a quick search is an RHS article where planting in a square hole is briefly mentioned as a sidenote along with photos in an article where they are planting trees in… you guessed it. Circular holes.

***NOTE: After this post was written, a discussion on Facebook began, and Dr. Marc van Iersel shared this article, which showed there was no benefit from planting trees in cube, cylinder (scarified and non-scarified), star, or sloped cylinder holes. There is a note that sloped cylinder could be better in dry planting locations.

What kills me is the article does not focus on the core problem of circling, girdling roots!!!  It’s just a side note. 

“While you are at it, prune any twisted or matted roots from the edge of the root ball before you plant the sapling.”

YESSSS!!! Preach, brother. When plants grow in nursery containers, their roots hit the wall and begin to grow in a circle.  (Sidenote: Some pots have different designs like slits or sharp corners to reduce this growth, but the majority don’t.)  

Roots on woody species are different from many annuals and perennials in that they are permanent.  Once a tree has grown a root into the soil, unless the root dies, it will continue to get larger and larger.  So, now we have a circular root increasing in girth near the base of the tree.  The tree base and trunk are also growing wider, eventually the roots and trunk touch, and the roots can girdle the tree.  

Classic example of a girdling root. This tree has survived, but many don’t. This tree will likely become stressed over time due to the roots so close to the trunk.

I ran into this when I planted three persimmon trees at my house last winter.  The roots were circling and malformed right out of the pots; therefore, I disturbed them to make sure they would be able to grow out and live long instead of round for the rest their short life.  

Here’s some more great info on girdling roots and correct RESEARCH-BASED tree planting methods.

Fraedrich, B.R. No date. Research laboratory technical report: Girdling roots.

Johnson, G.R. and R.J. Hauer. A practitioner’s guide to stem girdling roots of trees: Impacts on trees, symptomology, and prevention. University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN.

Urban, J. 2013. The root of the problem. Landscape Architecture Magazine, April:54–58.

MATH IS OUR FRIEND

The other thing that bothers me about this article is planting a square hole is HARDER than planting a circular hole.   I’m not opposed to investing effort in planting trees or performing tasks that research shows to be beneficial.  Like breaking up a rootball before planting or mulching a wide area around the tree after planting.  Those are techniques that research has shown can drastically improve the tree’s success.

The article states,

“Considering that spade blades are flat, digging a square hole, to me at least, seems far easier than cutting a perfectly circular one. It’s an easy win-win.”

First, who can dig a perfectly shaped square better than a circle?  Second, math says square holes will be more back breaking.

Let’s say I have to dig a three-foot-diameter hole for a tree like I did when I recently moved a very small Magnolia at our house.  From a simple area calculation I did, you will now be excavating 26% more soil digging a square hole.  That means you dig out 26% more, you fill back in 26% more, and it is taking you longer.   (Note:  If you do a volume-based calculation using cylinder and prism formulas, you’ll get the same ~26% since they both extend at the same increase.)

Math doesn’t lie.

Some may argue that the 26% extra increase in disturbance is going to help roots grow out.  And, in some compacted soils that may be true. But, y’all, roots have been growing through soil a lot longer than we’ve been planting them.  I trust that once you get a tree in decent soil, as long as it doesn’t have girdling roots it will be just fine.  

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

Do I think James Wong or Sunset maliciously posted this article?  No, I really think that they were trying to give wise advice on how to make trees live longer to beautify our world.  With maybe a dash of click-bait.

The problem is we live in a world where someone can say something, and people believe it to be true.  Take the following examples.  

• Vaccines are harmful.  

• Buy more things to be happy.

• The media is bad.  

• Epsom salts will solve any plant problem.  

• Jared Barnes is the worst horticulturist in the world.  

Just because someone says something doesn’t mean it’s true, and many of the above points have been disproven or the result of lies spread round.  Especially point number 5 there.  

I applaud the people who have asked me and the people who have asked others on social media is this myth accurate?  Hooray!  You get a gold star.  This article is yet another symptom of our culture where we don’t think and we go along with what information is put in front of us.  

I’ve read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and in that book he makes the case that we have two mental systems for processing information.  System 1 is quick, fast, and intuitive.  System 2 is more analytical but slower and lazier. 

An example from the book.  If I say, “what’s 2 × 2?” you can’t stop thinking the number 4.  It is automatic and effortless.

But, if I ask you what’s 37 × 48, it takes you a while to realize that it’s 1,646.  You don’t instinctively know that because you need to activate your system 2 to do the calculation or expend effort plugging it into a calculator.  

Except, it’s not the correct answer.  The true answer is 1,776.  I just exploited your system 1.  I told you something, and you took it at face value without even questioning it.  

It makes sense that we have a system 1 evolutionarily.  So much is thrown at us we can’t be expending energy at every neuron firing to process our environment.  

But, I believe that we need to start employing our system 2 more.  We need to train ourselves to pause, digest the information put in front of us, and dig a little—circle or square, hehe—to understand it.  I teach all of my students these system 1 and system 2 learning concepts so they will be more prepared to engage with the world.  As Ms. Frizzle said, “Ask questions.  Make mistakes.  Get messy.” 

I ask you to challenge even my blog post.  Do my sources make sense?  Is my math right?  Is my argument valid? 

Use your system two.  And, go plant a tree.  In a circular hole.  

Students Showcase an Interest in Horticulture

This weekend, it was my turn to help out with Showcase Saturday, an opportunity for high school students considering SFA to come check out our school’s diversity of majors. When I’ve assisted in the past, we have at most two or three students come up to our agriculture department booth and ask questions about our horticulture program. I expected the same turnout.

But, by the time I left, we had TEN students who had came by and expressed interest in horticulture. I was amazed. From the time the event started at 1:30, I felt like I was talking to students for 45 minutes straight. One student had even come six hours from Oklahoma with her parents because she heard that our program was really good, and she was looking at it over other programs near her home! (In full disclosure, they were headed to her grandparents who lived about an hour away, but still! I was impressed!)

They came with questions about our program, what we offered and how we were different from other universities, and what career opportunities were available after graduation. Not all of them knew the word horticulture. Some came saying they were interested in growing plants or hydroponics.

After my amazement wore off from the constant stream of students interested in growing plants, my analytic scientist brain switched on, and I started asking questions such as how did you even hear about horticulture, a word that normally has low recognition amongst youngsters. The common thread was high school opportunities—classes for horticulture and/or participating in floral design or nursery competitions in FFA. These comments helped to support a trend I’ve seen of more and more high schools offering horticulture classes and doing greenhouse projects. (Even mine back in Tennessee built a greenhouse right after I left!) I would like to see some hard data, but I think there’s something there.

Time will tell if they actually decide on horticulture as a major, but the students’ comments reminded me of what I’ve been preaching. For people to engage with horticulture and plants, they have to come into contact and imbibe the wonder of plants or else this potential passion in many students may lie dormant.

Yes, we have to accept not every seed is viable. Even Aldo Leopold realized, “There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot.” I believe the same dichotomy applies to encouraging an interest in plants and even pursuing a career in horticulture. But, visiting with the students this weekend reminded me we must be present and keep reaching out to those that love the wild green things in anyway that we can, even if their love hasn’t germinated yet. It did in me, it did in you, and it will in them.

Anyone can grow plants

While we were visiting North Carolina, Karen met up with one of her friends at a local coffee shop.  I joined them, and her friend asked me an interesting question. Here’s a paraphrased version of the exchange.

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Friend:  So, here’s a question about gardening.  Are there some people who just automatically fail at gardening?  You know, like how some people are tone-deaf and can’t sing?  

Jared:  Absolutely not.   To me, gardening is a lot like the movie Ratatouille (yes, I really went there…).  I believe gardening is like the running quote in the movie, “Anyone can cook." Anyone CAN grow plants.  The problem is they don’t fail enough.  Have you ever cooked a recipe that failed?

Friend:  Sure.

Jared:  Yea, we all have.  But, when people fail, they don’t stop cooking or say I’ll never eat again, right?

Friend:  Right, no.

Jared:  The big problem that people have with plants is that instead of viewing them as a craft, they view them as pets.  (She really engaged with this point).  When a plant is purchased, there’s an emotional connection with it because you are now somewhat responsible for this organism’s life.  You water it, light it, feed it, etc.  Then, if or when the plant dies, they view it as failure instead of a learning opportunity.  People tense up and instead of going through the pain of killing something, they say never again.  

Jared:  And, I get the affection.  I’ll never forget when my last sprig of my late great-grandfather’s sage plant died.  I was crushed, and talk about love for a plant!  But, I’m not going to stop gardening because of that failure.  

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How many times have we gardeners had a form of this conversation with self-proclaimed brown thumbs, cactus killers, and funeral plant murders? 

But, can these agents of plant death really not grow plants?  I mean, I’ve had succulent leaves fall on my carpet and root with zero help on my part.  (I promise I clean!  It’s just when you overwinter 50 pots inside you miss a leaf or two on the floor...) 

I don’t think killing plants indicates a lack of potential ability.  Growing plants is something that one must learn.  There must be a willingness to push through failure and see failure differently. 

In so many other activities, time spent engaging with it is seen as practice.  Working with the craft and learning from failure will make you better.  But, the stumbling block for the amateur’s psyche is that plants are alive.  They aren’t a smeared painting, a grounded model airplane, a foul ball, a flat home brew, a wobbly bench, or a sloppy batch of baklava, which is still delicious by the way.  

If these inanimate objects fail, no big deal.  Deconstruct and remake.  Live and learn.  But, plants... the compost heap means you’re a failure as a human being.  

People know plants are living creatures, and they see them as pets.  When they see this living thing die, they feel responsible, and they view it as a reflection on their character.  And, to never relive failure again, they swear off growing plants.  

As an educator, I asked how do we change this?  I’ve had students day one indicate they can’t grow anything, and by the end of the semester their flora is thriving.  Are there a few nuggets of knowledge and hope we can sow in people's minds to help them on their growing adventure?

FAIL MORE AND LEARN FROM FAILURE

If people are turned off to gardening because they “can’t keep anything alive," the problem I see is they don’t fail enough.  Seth Godin talks about this concept with generating ideas, but it also extends into the world of crafts and hobbies. Often in crafts, we humans start looking for patterns to figure out what we are doing well.  Growing plants is like taking up any hobby or activity.  It’s unlikely you know how to do it the minute you jump on a bike or are thrown in the water, but you have to learn the motions.  I would encourage those amateurs who feel they are plant-deaf to look for patterns. 

You only grow plants in a dark room?  Ok, that might be a problem because most plants need light.

You don’t have holes in your decorative containers?  Ok, well that might be a problem because roots need oxygen.

You keep killing cacti that you think should be easy to grow?  Ok, maybe you should try something else.  Like basil.  That actually is easy to grow. 

Plants die, and that’s ok

Those of us who have leveled up in our horticulture powers have done so on the heaps of humus we've created.  I say that because we’ve killed hundreds of thousands of plants in our lives.  It’s ok!  (I chuckled writing that because maybe we’ve just become numb to their suffering?) 

Some species like sunflowers and poppies are programmed to die after they set seed.  No matter what you do, they are already courting death right out of the womb.  It's ok!  They’ve evolved to do that.  And, as you’re slaying plants left and right learning how to be a better gardener, their corpses don't clog the trash piles of the world like so many other hobbies and spending sprees.  They compost and return to the circle of life (cue The Lion King intro music).  It's ok!  

ASK FOR HELP

We need to be there for people.  Instead of being critical when someone thinks fertilizer really is plant food or when someone buys a painted succulent expecting it to stay that color, we need to help them out.    

One reason I think we might be gardeners is because early on we had the serendipity of success that helped to propel our green thumbs forward.  Maybe it was because we had a great-grandfather helping us plant tomatoes, or maybe a book on houseplants accelerated our knowledge.  

But, what would have happened if everything you grew right out of the gate had failed?  You might be quilting instead.  

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You have to fail to learn, and see failure as just that.  A learning experience, not a measure of how good of a gardening guru you are.

What I say is true.  Anyone can grow plants, but only those who fail time and time again can be great.

The Avoidance Zone

Don’t you love learning?  Wrestling with a concept, and finally putting the puzzle pieces together to see the bigger picture.  That’s been me lately with this amorphous concept called the avoidance zone.  

Well, longer than lately.  It's been something I've wondered about since childhood, but I didn't know it was called that. 

Growing up in west Tennessee I loved to go romping o'er hill and dale searching for wildflowers.  But, finding any was rare.  I can count on my hands and toes the number of really unique native wildflowers I found within a mile of my house (Erythronium albidum, Trillium recurvatum, and Phlox divaricata near the old creek; Arisaema triphyllum in the woods by the river; and on roadsides and in fencerows Tipularia discolor, Yucca flaccida, Vernonia gigantea, Podophyllum peltatum, Sedum pulchellum, Pycnanthemum tenuifolium, and Rudbeckia sp. along with a few other yellow Composite species I never keyed out.  That’s pretty much it. 

I felt so gypped. These books I read showed forest floors and prairies covered with a plethora of plants and blooms as far as the eye could see. Even traveling east towards Nashville you could see Trillium and Geranium going 70 mph on I-40.  I lived in the country.  Rural America.  There should be ample flora for a budding young botanist.  

Why weren’t there more wildflowers in west Tennessee?  It wasn't that we couldn't grow plants.  What flora was there grew very well.  We had fertile soil, and we received abundant rainfall.  I felt I should be finding more.  Go east or west, and the number of different kinds increased.  I assumed the reason why was because the region had been farmed to death.  Fields and pastures now occupied my would-be floral dreamland.  

But, had the species diversity been richer before conventional agriculture arrived on the scene?  I wasn’t certain.  Richer, of course, in a technical sense.  Species richness is an evaluation of how many DIFFERENT types of species are present in an area.

Once in a conversation with one of my undergrad professors Dr. Nancy Baushaus, it arose that the same phenomenon is observed with mammals. The further you go east toward middle Tennessee or the Ozarks westward, the richness of mammals increases.  This observation followed the same trend as what I saw with flora and made sense if we assume that the upper levels of the food pyramid are limited in their richness by the layers of species beneath them.  The pyramids in Egypt don’t get wider as you climb.  

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A few years after I left home for grad school I became aware of the Biota of North America Program (BONAP), a great website for finding county-level distributions of plants species. With that data they help visualize what species occur where, and they can run analysis to see the richness of species diversity in different regions. Browsing the website I discovered this map...

All credit to Biota of North America Program for generating this informative map.  While a legend doesn't exist for the map, green has the highest number of plant species followed by lighter greens and yellow, followed by tans and browns for lowest diversity of native vascular plants.  There is more information on the website about the terminology in the map.  

...and that I had been living my childhood in a region called the… dun dun DUN... AVOIDANCE ZONE.  It's like a little yellow desert island in a green sea of vegetation in the south.  Maybe the dearth of wildflowers wasn't my imagination.  Maybe there was something else going on here.  

But, what?  And, what is this thing called an avoidance zone?  The BONAP website states it is where "flora [is] limited by [a] lack of suitable habitat for a diverse flora, whereby widespread species may have a range gap in this area rather than having its own flora.  

The inner first grader in me came out yet again as I asked another why.  Why a gap?!?  There's plenty of resources in west Tennessee, especially with decent soils and ample rainfall.  Years passed as this question sat on the back-burner in my mind, occasionally being stirred from a conversation here and there with a colleague.   

Enter Thomas Rainer.  He turned my mental stove up to high when he presented at Speaking of Gardening in Asheville this past August.  Rainer said during his talk that stresses in a landscape actually increase plant diversity.  

Wait, what?!  Why would stress increase diversity?  It seemed to go contrary to everything that I knew about organisms in their environment.   If environments are too stressful, then hardly anything can grow well.  (*Cough* Antarctica *Cough*)

Several Google searches later with keywords including species and stress and diversity yielded nothing.  But, here is where things got interesting in my thinking.  I flipped the increasing-stress-then-increasing-diversity hypothesis on its head and asked, "If stress increases diversity, could an absence of stress or low stress decrease diversity?"  I.e. better conditions resulting in less types of plants growing in a region.  Perhaps, but again I wanted to find hard evidence why.

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A few weeks ago, I started reading Sowing Beauty by James Hitchmough.  (Side note:  I’m only a few pages into the book.  It’s a great, great read if you want to learn more about how ecology can influence gardening.)

I found the answer!!! 

James wrote that resource-rich environments have low species diversity because the competitor plants present outcompete other species (see my prior post to learn more about the three survival strategies of plants). That’s what they’ve evolved to do, to use resources more efficiently.  And, with their resource-harnessing prowess, they tower over others and crowd them out.   

Mind. Blown.  I think competitor species created the avoidance zone.  West Tennessee habitat is suitable, perhaps too suitable.  I was amazed that it could be not directly due to resource availability or habitat suitability but an indirect effect from some species being resource hogs.  

On a whim, I started looking at factors for plant growth across the country like soil fertility.  The map below was created by Bradley Miller, Randall Schaetzl, and Frank Krist, Jr. (researchers at Michigan State University and United States Forest Service) to illustrate how productive soils are.  Orange soils are less fertile, pink is in between, and purple/blue soils have the highest fertility.

All credit to Bradley Miller, Randall Schaetzl, and Frank Krist, Jr. for their incredible work creating this soil fertility index map.  The link in the caption provides a more detailed legend, but again yellow/orange soils are least fertile, pink is in between, and purple/blue soils have the highest fertility.

To compare with the original BONAP map, I overlaid the two and created the nifty gif below. 

Psychedelic, huh?  While I haven’t done any statistical analysis, it appears that patterns exist between the two maps.  As soil fertility increases (map gradients go from yellow/orange to pink to purple/blue), the species diversity decreases (map gradients go from green to yellow to brown).  A few that popped out to me are listed below.  

• Orange on the soil fertility map corresponds with green/dark green in the Ozark Endemism Zone, Southern Appalachian Endemism Zone, Apalachicola Endemism Zone, and Coastal Appalachian Tension Zone.

• Lower Mississippi Alluvial Avoidance Zone (aka home) is pinker in soil fertility than surrounding orange regions and has yellow/tan species diversity compared with the surrounding green/yellow green areas.

• Great Plains Low Diversity Zone has a blue/purple color for soil fertility and tans and browns for species diversity (notice the orange spot in Nebraska where species diversity actually goes up a little)

Of course, soil fertility won't explain the entire interaction as there are other factors that influence plant growth, and not every part of the map follows the colors exactly.  But, I can see patterns, and this observation helped me answer why we had low species diversity in west Tennessee.   

* * *

The concept that at some point decreasing resource availability and increasing stress species has to result in a drop in diversity still bothered me.  It is just logical, so how do we fit this thinking into a plant community model?

I was looking up some information recently on John Philip Grime who conceptualized the competitor, ruderal, and stress-tolerant model, and I came across his hump-back model of species diversity that really neatly wraps up much of what I've been mulling over since my childhood. 

Figures from Michalet, R. and B. Touzard.  2010.  Biotic interactions, biodiversity, and community productivity, p. 59–78. In: Francisco Pugnaire (ed.). Positive Plant Interactions and Community Dynamics.  CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

Grime used data he collected from British plant communities to generate the above models.  Curve B is of interest to this post.   Again, species richness is an evaluation of how many DIFFERENT types of species are present in an area.  As environmental stress increases, competitors can't grow as well; therefore, other species that can handle stress can survive.  However, eventually the stress becomes so great that even the stress-tolerant species begin to decrease in number. 

If you'd like to know about Curve A, it represents increasing management/disturbance.  The more frequently plants are killed due to fire, flooding, etc. decreases the competitors so that other plants can grow; this stress increases diversity until the disturbance becomes so great that even the ruderal species decrease in number. 

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So, what’s the application of this?  If I’m a common gardener, what do I care?  

One is a repeat of what many have been writing—stress can be and is an asset in our gardens.  We have a "more" mentality for the resources our plants need like water and fertilizer, but perhaps stressing things a bit would help us be successful with more species. 

I also think understanding this hump-back model can make us better gardeners and designers in combining different species together.  If we have a sense of what survival strategy a species uses, we can make sure that we aren't creating mini-avoidance zones in our gardens.  

Finally, I don't think that the area I grew up in should be called the avoidance zone.  I mean if you were a plant would you want to grow in an area called that?  Kidding aside, yes, the region is a gap between higher species diversity areas, but I don’t think it accurately explains why.  Plants were not avoiding west Tennessee.  They were just being outcompeted.  

The Waiting Period

It’s hard.  It's hard to wait for plants to grow.

We want seeds to germinate now.  We want cuttings to root now.  We want fruit trees planted yesterday to bear fruit now.

Our industry spends countless hours and investment trying to short this propagation and growth process.  But, no matter how much research occurs, there will always be a waiting period.

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It’s hard.  It's hard to wait for people to catch the gardening bug. 

We want millennials to garden now.  We want the number of young people that come into our garden centers or horticulture programs to drastically increase now.  We want advertisements and sponsored social media posts from yesterday to bear fruit now.

Our industry spends countless hours and investment trying to shorten this propagation process.  But, no matter how much research occurs, there will always be a waiting period.

* * *

The waiting period.  That's where the magic happens.  You can't always see what's happening beneath the surface, but that doesn't mean that nothing is happening.  It's where dormancy blossoms into life and roots take purchase in the soil, where wonder is imbibed and brown thumbs become green. 

The key is that we keep propagating and cultivating.  Every day do something that will help horticulture grow, plant-wise and people-wise.  Yes, it will take time for results to come from the pipeline, but that's ok. 

We are willing to wait.  

Cut flowers are not sustainable?

Maybe my students at SFA shouldn't create any more flower bouquets, you know, since they're not sustainable and will be thrown away. Or, NOT.

I read an interesting article about the absence of flowers at the Olympics.  Via Thrillist, "A Rio 2016 spokesperson said handing out tropical flowers to the athletes -- which would later be thrown away -- would be wasteful and not sustainable."

Wow, isn't that weird!?  Flowers, a renewable resource.  Not sustainable.  Hmm...

I'll admit at first I was angry, miffed that the Rio Olympics had degraded part of my hortiCULTURE into trash.  "Now we have to do yet ANOTHER marketing program...," I thought.

But, the quote’s peculiarity continued to eat at me.  What was it?  

I asked myself, "What if they are right?"  What if cut flowers are not sustainable?  I know there are qualms about the ways flowers are grown—fertilizers, pesticides, fair work practices, and transport to name a few.  Therefore, I would understand that kind of comment, and horticulture is working hard to remedy those growing challenges.

But, their perspective doesn’t seem to be centered on the production practices; it's on the flowers being thrown away.  Just like a bottle or old tire, it'll be tossed once it's used.  

The focus on flowers shouldn’t be the landfill.  They are part of the magic moments in our lives that feed our souls.  And, being so, they aren't sustainable because they will fade. 

So will a sunset.  A laugh.  A tree.  A life.  A shooting star.  An ice cream sundae.  A song.  A kiss.  A painting.  

These things each have a beginning and an end.  As Ben Rector says, "It's the walking in between" that make these treasures count.  The middle ground is where memories and the quality of life grow, and intangibles are sustainable. 

In this case I see common sense and sustainability as disjointed.  Ty Montague has taught me that every action an organization takes is part of its story, and the Rio Olympics committee's actions don't match their story.  

Are the flowers any less sustainable that the amount of resources that were used to make the trinkets that are now being given to the athletes with a sustainability sticker slapped onto the present?  I would love to see some of that data.  They could have done SO MUCH MORE with flowers and sustainability like wrap them in biodegradable sleeves, or start a flower composting program at the Rio Olympics.  

The essence of sustainability is to preserve the earth so that life is worth living.  A flowerless life is not.