May 2001

by Sharon Parker

When Israeli cartoonist Ya'akov Kirschen prepared to write a metaphoric book about trees, he determined to experience what it was like to be a tree. So he sat in one spot for hours, sketching every needle on a pine tree. When the book, Trees - The Green Testament, was published in 1993, he told the Wall Street Journal that the noises, sounds and colors around him began to blur, "Suddenly, I realized that to a tree, humans look rootless, being blown from place to place."

If we take a few moments this arbor month to put ourselves in the place of trees, we would be appalled at the insults trees suffer at the hands of humans.

We often plant them too deep, in soil that starves them; we sometimes stake them too tight, so they cannot sway in the breeze to get stronger, and leave bindings around their trunks that strangle them as they grow; we wound them by stapling signs to their trunks or chaining our bikes to them, creating openings for insects and disease to enter; and we fail to take the time to teach children to respect trees as living things that can be hurt.

What Trees Do For Us

Now consider what trees do for us:

A person uses in a lifetime the wood, including paper products, produced by 300 mature trees.

Enough oxygen is produced by a single acre (about the size of a football field) of young growing trees to supply the needs of 18 human beings each year. (Young trees produce more oxygen than mature trees.)

Trees, shrubs and vines absorb up to 65 percent of unwanted noise.

An acre of trees can remove about 13 tons of dust and gasses every year from the surrounding environment.

A well-positioned shade tree can keep a house 20 percent cooler in the summer. Shade trees planted near a home can lower the indoor temperature by as much as 20 degrees.

Learning From Mother Nature

We can give trees the respect they deserve by considering how Mother Nature provides for them. The big woods have layers of trees and other vegetation, unlike the lonely specimens we plant in our lawns. Under the canopy of larger trees such as oak, maple, linden and cottonwood, grow the understory trees -- shorter trees that thrive in light shade. Some of these, such as serviceberry or pagoda dogwood, offer flowers in the spring and fruit for the birds in the summer. Leaves and other tree litter remain on the ground, forming a natural mulch.

We can plant understory trees within the canopy of shade trees, and plant shade-tolerant perennials under those. Because of their deep roots, the perennials offer less competition for water and nutrients than does mown grass. Don't plant annuals, however, since that would involve digging around the tree's roots every year.

"The big thing is that you get the grass away from the roots. It's much more competitive than daylilies or hostas; even unmown grass is less of a problem," says Gary Johnson, associate professor of urban and community forestry at the University of Minnesota. "If you see some of the savannah or prairie areas where the tall grasses are, the trees are doing fine. Taller grasses have deeper root systems."

Choosing the Right Tree for Your Yard

To select a tree to plant in your yard, figure out how much sun your site gets; check the soil to determine how sandy or heavy it is; look to see how close the planting site is to a sidewalk or driveway, and look up for any overhead power lines.

When you prepare to plant your tree, avoid the common error of planting it too deep. Johnson studies hazard trees -- trees that have come down in a storm or other conditions -- to learn what went wrong. The most common cause is that it was planted too deep. "Jeepers, I don't know what it is, there are so many myths involved ... A lot of people in Minnesota think that because it gets so cold here that they have to plant deeper to protect the roots from the winter," says Johnson.

When you do that, not enough oxygen reaches the roots, "Pretty soon the above-ground parts become so imbalanced compared to the weak root system. If you have an unusual weather pattern, like drought or flooding, it can push the plant over the edge."

The newest information even suggests planting a tree an inch or two higher than it was originally. "There have been enough people doing it in Minnesota and we have enough examples; they're doing fine, they're doing much better," he says. Planting high is an especially good technique if the soil is heavy clay and doesn't drain well. Cover the roots with mulch to protect them from drying out.

"Put two to three inches of mulch over the root system, that protects them from drying out, and the tree does much better without grass over its roots." He recommends spreading mulch in a radius of one foot for each inch of the tree's diameter, measured at four feet above the ground.

But don't pile the mulch up against the tree's trunk. Instead, shape it like a basin, pulling the mulch away from the trunk. "You're mulching the roots, not the trunk," says Johnson.

Be a Friend to a Tree

Even if you don't plant a tree this month, you can still be a friend to a tree. When you see someone stapling a sign to a tree's trunk, or chaining their bike to it, stop and let them know it hurts the tree, and could lead to it getting a disease or insect that kills it.

Talk to some of the children in your neighborhood about trees, encourage them to "adopt" a tree, to water it and care for it and remind others to not abuse it.

Considering what trees do for us, it hardly seems like much to ask, does it?


Resources

Tree, videorecording in the Eyewitness series from Doring Kindersley, 1996; available from the Minneapolis Public Library
This educational video uses animation and live footage to tell all about the natural history of trees in a colorful and fascinating narrative, suitable for all ages.

The Right Tree Handbook, by Harold Pellett, Nancy Rose and Mervin Eisel (joint project of the University of Minnesota and NSP, 1991; $24). This is a looseleaf-style notebook with color photographs and descriptions, available from the University of Minnesota Arboretum gift shop. An abbreviated form, the Right Tree Brochure (four pages), is available at the gift shop or from the Minnesota Extension Service (374-8400) for $1.50.

Gardening in the Upper Midwest, by Leon Snyder (University of Minnesota Press, 1985). The late Leon Snyder was the founding director of the University of Minnesota's Landscape Arboretum. He devotes an excellent chapter to Minnesota-hardy trees. An earlier work by Snyder, Trees and Shrubs for Northern Gardens (University of Minnesota Press), is currently out of print but worth hunting down at the library or used book store. (The U of M press is working on a revised edition, they expect to complete it in 1999.)

How to Prune Trees (U.S. Forest Service, 1995; call letters NA-FR-01-95); free, limited number available from the metro forestry department of the DNR, 772-7925.

Energy Saving Landscapes: The Minnesota Homeowner's Guide, by Peggy Sand (1993, State of Minnesota). A guide to correct placement of trees for optimum energy conservation, whether for shade or wind breaks, with a list of recommended trees. Available free from the Department of Public Resources, Energy Information Center, 296-5175 (TDD 296-5484). _

April 2001

by Sharon Parker

I wasn't going to write about lawns again this April. I really wasn't. Then, even before the snow began to melt, the spring calls came, as sure as the cardinal's, "what-cheer, what-cheer," but not nearly so mellifluous (you've probably heard a few of these calls, yourself):
"Hello, Ma'am, this is John from Truegreen/Chemlawn, we'll be in your neighborhood later this spring, can we drop off a free lawn analysis for you?"
"Yes, hello, Mrs. Cox [my husband's last name is Cox, and after 20 years I've learned to not look around for my mother-in-law when people call me this]. Joe from Fertile-lawn here, we'd like to offer you a discount on lawn service . . ."
So now I have to write about lawns.
I considered offering a specific critique of the chemical lawn business, but as Chemlawn is a large, national business based in Memphis, Tennessee, with probably more than a few lawyers on staff, and Southside Pride is, well . . . not, I have decided to forego that idea. (And when I went to their Web site, www.chemlawn.com, I couldn't find any information on what chemicals they use - not even an FAQ page. I can just imagine what sort of questions they are frequently asked that they wouldn't want to publicize.)
Instead, I offer you a little historical perspective, followed by some helpful resources for those who still want to have lawns when they're done reading this (or you could just skip this part and go straight to the resources).

Lawns were first "invented" by the Romans in about the first century to provide a pleasant, aromatic surface on which to walk and play. They usually consisted of low-growing herbs that released their fragrance when walked on. John Feltwell, in The Naturalist's Garden (Salem House, 1987), wrote that Roman lawns were places to "think, walk about and do exercises on." And this continued to be the case right up through the Renaissance, when wealthy estates had lawns whose primary function was to provide a place for people to walk and play.
The English landscape movement that emerged in the 17th century began to see the lawn as an aesthetic device - to extend the view from a park-like country estate. It is this movement that informs the design of our parks today. The notion that the lawn should be a monoculture of only grasses, let alone only certain types of grasses, did not occur to anyone at that time, and it would have been impossible anyway. Those early English lawns consisted of meadow sod complete with wildflowers and weeds. They were kept short by browsing sheep, who also contributed to the picturesque scenery.
Early “American” lawns (as in European American - as far as I know, Native Americans never engaged in any such foolishness) generally followed this tradition and were only found on grand estates. The idea of lawns for the masses didn't get rolling until the mid-19th century and then for a very sensible reason: to prevent soil erosion. Historian Virginia Scott Jenkins has said that one of the grasses that was considered to be very useful for this purpose was crab grass.
Then a gradual change began to occur from the late 19th century to the mid-20th when lawns transformed from a pleasant and useful aesthetic device, then a practical solution to a very real problem, to this weird unnatural hazard we have today. As the chemical lawn companies know only too well, the modern lawn aesthetic is so entirely in opposition to nature that it cannot be maintained without the input of hazardous man-made chemicals. A modern lawn is a drug addict, and who are the pushers? Well, I'm not going to name any names . . . .
Jenkins documents this transformation exquisitely in her 240-page book (see below), so I won't try to recap that all here, but the gist of her analysis is this: that this preoccupation with lawns as man-made environments at enmity with nature was a particularly male thing. She says that men were inclined to see their lawn as representing their ability to impose their will upon nature. Now, the feminist movement has wrought many changes, among them men who don't care about lawns and women who spray the heck out of them, so we won't take that one too far.
But here's the really salient question when it comes to modern lawn care: When did crab grass and quack grass and foxtail and all those other grasses, along with the nitrogen-fixing clover and alfalfa and the useful medicinal herb known as the dandelion, become weeds?
In the 1950s, public faith in science was at an all-time high, and a myriad of new chemicals, many originally developed for chemical warfare during World War II, were dumped on the market and sold to gullible homeowners. Now that the means to eradicate crabgrass was available, this humble erosion-preventer became a terrible menace.
But ever since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, we know better. So why are we still poisoning our lawns? I can't answer that question, but I can provide you with some resources to help you have a pleasing and enjoyable lawn without harming the environment or giving up your summer weekends to drudgery.

Books
On the history of lawns:
The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins (Smithsonian Institution, 1994)
A Man's Turf: The Perfect Lawn, Warren Schultz (Potter, 1999)
On sustainable lawn care:
The Chemical-Free Lawn, Warren Schultz (Rodale, 1996)
Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony, F. Herbert Bormann et al. (Yale University Press, 1993)

OTHER RESOURCES

University of Minnesota Extension Service/Hennepin County Extension 1525 Glenwood Ave., Minneapolis, MN 55405. 612/372-8400 www.extension.umn.edu/hort        
The extension service provides bags and instructions for soil tests ($7) and free brochures and advice on lawns and gardens. They also maintain the Yard and Garden Line, 612-624-4771, with free advice and recorded messages.
Minnesota Native Plant Society 220 Biological Science Center, 1445 Gortner Ave. (U of M St. Paul campus), St. Paul, MN 55108 www.stolaf.edu/depts/biology.mnps. For those who want to eschew lawns altogether and go native - or seek a balance that includes native Minnesota plants, anyway. Membership is $12/year for individuals, $15 for families and includes field trips, monthly meetings, symposia and a newsletter.

March 2001

Planning Gets Gardeners Through March
Starting Seeds Indoors a Practical and Mystical Tradition

by Sharon Parker

Although our ursine December would seem to entitle us to an ovine March, the forecasts, both scientific and mammalian (that is, the prognosticating groundhog of February 2), all point to a continuation of this polar climate well into March. (Ann Bancroft, on her return to Minnesota must wonder whether she ever really left Antarctica!) Even if we have started seeds indoors, or are about to, March isn't too late to appease our itchy gardening thumbs. Still, we must wait for the snow to melt and the ground to thaw out before we can dig in. What's a gardener to do?
    Why, plan, of course. Both on paper and in the snow. Yes, in the snow. Put those March snow falls to good use and get your gardening muscles in shape by outlining future garden beds and paths with your snow shovel.
    For example, at our house we have more driveway than we need or want and, although we have had plans to bash out much of it ever since we moved in two and a half years ago, we have been busy with other matters (such as painting the house trim, at the behest of our local housing inspector) and are still blessed with enough concrete to house a construction company. (Which, in fact, was the case here in the 1950s and '60s, hence all the concrete!)
    But in winter, most of the concrete is covered with snow (we certainly don't shovel it all), and when I am feeling somewhat ambitious (or simply in need of exercise) I have cleared the "patio" part of the driveway and piled the snow in the area surrounding the Linden tree (which is currently surrounded by concrete, poor thing) in the shape of the shade garden I hope to install there some day. Likewise the second driveway (yes! there are two! we live on a corner!) is completely immersed in snow except for the path I shoveled for the mailman and the more winding trail sculpted by children. The pile of mulch that we didn't use up yet makes an interesting berm, and it looked especially beguiling when we stuck our Christmas tree in the snow, though it has since toppled over.
    This isn't just a way to sneak a little pretend gardening into winter, though. It really does give us a feel for not only how a garden in each of these spaces would look, but also the practical effect of removing the concrete where the snow is piled. (We realized, for example, that we need a place for backing up and turning the car around so we don't have to back directly out onto 42nd Street.) By selectively shoveling and arranging, we can try out landscaping changes to get a feel for how they will work.
    But the snow sculpting style of planning only goes so far. For one thing, it melts away long before you can begin digging in earnest. For another, no matter how hardy I may pretend to be, I still prefer being on the warm side of the window looking out, holding a steaming mug of tea, with an array of colorful garden catalogs spread out on the kitchen table.
    If you haven't already measured your yard and made an outline, pick a mild day and get on out there with a helper and a tape measure. Make a rough sketch and note your measurements on it. Plot the locations of trees, shrubs, and other immoveable objects (including house and garage - and neigboring buildings that will effect your sunlight). Don't worry too much about precision measuring, just do the best you can.
    Did you take a sun survey last summer? If not, estimate the amount of sun and shade based on your recollections and direct observations. Don't let the sunniness of late winter fool you - when those trees leaf out they create a pretty dense canopy. Also remember that in mid June the sun rises in the northeast, travels straight overhead, and sets in the northwest. Note the parts of your yard that you think will get six hours or more of sunlight this summer, as well as your best guess for the rest. The north side of a building, if unobstructed to the east and west, will get about three to four hours of sunlight split between early morning and evening. That's enough to qualify as half sun.
    You also need to recall as well as you can whether parts of your yard tend toward soggy, dry or mesic (just right) conditions. What was it like a few hours after rainfall? Did you avoid walking there because it was too mucky? Did you find the ground pleasantly soft but not squishy? Or did you wonder whether it really rained at all? (The latter is rare in South Minneapolis.)
    Now draw up your master plan on graph paper, noting what you can about amounts of sunlight, low or wet areas, and so forth. Don't forget to indicate north, too. I like to go over this with a black felt tip and then either make several photocopies or place another piece of paper over it and trace. That way I can go back to my original as often as I need to. Your first plan will almost certainly not be your last one! In the case of my vegetable garden, I study the previous years' plans each spring so that I don't plant the same plants in the same places year after year, which helps to keep the diseases and bugs at    bay.
    If you want to plant a traditional flower or vegetable garden, select the sunniest well-drained spot. Although you can mound up the soil or constuct framed raised beds to improve drainage, you can't do anything to increase sunlight short of cutting down trees or at least removing major branches. But there are plants for every soil and sun type, so if you want a garden in a particular spot that's not well suited by conventional standards (sunny and well drained), don't let that discourage you. Just be prepared to do a little research to find the types of plants that will thrive where you want to plant them.
    Garden catalogs will tell you whether a plant needs full or partial sun or if it prefers shade. They should also tell you whether a plant tolerates damp or dry conditions. These characteristics are every bit as important as color, height and bloom time in determining what to plant where. There are also literally hundreds of gardening books at the library, and many local libraries carry garden catalogs and magazines as well.
    With so much to consider, isn't it lucky we in Minnesota get an extra month or so to plan our gardens before the spring alarm clock goes off?

Resources to help with garden planning

Visit the Sustainable Urban Landscape Information Series (SULIS) Web site (www.sustland.umn.edu) for a primer on design, plant selection, planting and maintenance, courtesy of the University of Minnesota's horticulturists.

Ambergate Gardens
8730 County Road 43, Chaska, MN 55318 Perennials and ornamental grasses; send $2 for catalog


Landscape Alternatives
1705 St. Albans St., Roseville, MN 55113
Minnesota native plants, plus selected cultivated perennials; send $2 for catalog.

Sevald Nursery
4937 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55409 Loads of peonies, all quite stunning; send $1 for catalog (this is their mailing address, not where the nursery is located).

Shady Acres Herb Farm
7815 Highway 212, Chaska, MN 55318 herbs@shadyacres.com. Perennial and annual herbs and compatible flowers for culinary, medicinal, and ornamental use; send $3 for catalog.

Shady Oaks Nursery
1101 South State St., Box 708, Waseca, MN 56093
www.shadyoaks.com
Perennials for shade; free catalog

February 2001
Adonis and the rite of spring: starting seeds indoors a practical and mystical tradition

by Sharon Parker

About this time of year women in old Greece would start small dish gardens of fennel, lettuce, wheat or barley, which would grow quickly and then become potbound and die, to symbolize and commemorate the short life of Adonis. They then tossed the remains of these romantic little gardens into their outdoor gardens to ensure its fertility.
Adonis, as you may recall from mythology, was the handsome youth loved by the goddess Aphrodite but seen by the god Ares as a rival (because Ares had a thing for Aphrodite). Ares plotted the "accidental" death of Adonis by transforming himself into a wild boar and goaring the poor kid to death. This happened in the spring, so Aphrodite turned her love's body into a flower. Thus lies the romantic origins of the compost pile - from death and decay comes new life!
The flower, the genus Adonis, has blossoms that are usually 1-1/2 to 2 inches across with rounded petals in a buttercup-like arrangement (in fact, Adonis belongs to the buttercup family, as do anemone and pulsatilla, both similar-looking flowers). The are either yellow or red, depending on the species. The common name is pheasant’s eye. It comes in both perennial and annual forms, but in either case it's ephemeral, that is the whole plant, foliage and all, dies down in summer.
You can make your own Adonis garden by picking up seeds in the bulk department at the co-op. I don't know about the viability of the fennel, but I have sprouted buckwheat groats and wheat berries and they grow very nicely. (And the cats appreciate them very much!) Try the barley and throw in a few seeds from a packet of lettuce if you want to be authentic.
Press a small handful of the seeds close together in the top of a pot filled with potting mix, then spread a thin layer of potting mix on top (or not, the seeds need light to germinate anyway and will sprout with nothing over them). Give them a good soaking (taking care not to wash the seeds away!) and set the pot under artificial light. I use an old 2-gallon aquarium that was once my daughter's (she didn't want it any more after the goldfish died) as a mini greenhouse, leaving the little 4-watt incandenscent light burning constantly for a few days until the grass is about two inches high, then move the pot to a spot near a window where the cats can easily reach it.
I recently suggested to the kids that we use this same technique to grow our own grass for Easter baskets this spring. Since the Adonis garden is not meant to be long-lasting, you can use a container with no drainage hole, just put a little gravel and charcoal (available at garden centers or aquarium supply stores) in the bottom and be careful not to overwater it. You might find a plastic container that fits nicely into a basket.
In fact, in recent years when I have picked up home decorating magazines, I have sometimes noticed large rectangular pots of grass - like a flat - on a coffee table or elsewhere purely for ornamental purposes. So this is a fashionable thing, it seems.
Now if you want to start seeds indoors for later transplanting outdoors (flowers and vegetables and the like), you would be wise to heed the lesson of the Adonis garden: if you start them too early and don't transplant them as they outgrow their pots, they will become potbound and die. Potting up about once a month is necessary to keep seedlings healthy. If you don't want all that bother (or the expense if you don't already have an ample supply of pots of various sizes), wait until mid or even late March to start your seeds.
But some annual flowers will be too far behind if you wait until March to start them, so read the packages to see how much of a head start is recommended. Figure that you can start transplanting outdoors in mid May and do the math from there. Ornamental grasses and popular annuals (like petunias, for one, and many of the everlastings) need 10 or more weeks to really be a decent size by May. Otherwise they won't look like much, and won't bloom, until late summer.
Seed starting may seem like a mysterious and difficult undertaking, but all it really requires are a few basic (inexpensive) components and presence of mind. The elements are:

Ample lighting
No matter how much sunlight is streaming through your southern windows right now, it isn't enough. Invest a few bucks in some inexpensive shop lights, install one cool flourescent bulb and one warm one and hang them on chains so that you can lower them to almost touch the soil at the outset and raise them as the seedlings grow.
When the kids and I tried an experiment with starting seeds in no light and some with light, the no-light seeds didn't even germinate. Although some seeds will germinate in the dark, they will get so spindly and pale reaching for the light they will be very weak. Adequate light is needed for strong, healthy, stout plants.

Soil mixes and containers
Don't use regular potting soil for seed starting; it's too heavy, making the roots work harder to penetrate, and it runs the risk of harboring organisms that will infect your seeds. A soilless seed-starting mix is not expensive, and you can use any leftover to mix with soil for the first potting-up, when the nutritional needs of the seedlings increase (and you do need to use soil then.) You can sow the seeds in flats if you like, or in small containers (individual-serving-size yoghurt containers work well if you poke a drainage hole in them). The advantage of the small containers is that you can wait a little longer to transplant them the first time.
Once the seedlings are two inches high or so, transplant them from the flats into individual containers. If they are already in containers, look for signs of the roots coming out through the drainage holes - that's when they need to be moved to a container that is an inch or so larger in diameter. Don't jump up too much in size all at once, or the plant will spend too much energy trying to fill its new pot with roots and won't make more leaves, which it needs to gather nourishment from the light.
Start adding fertilizer with the first potting up, either a weak solution of a water-soluable one, such as "manure tea" or fish emulsion, or mix some compost with the soil when you transplant them. Many garden centers carry bags of worm compost, which is light and easy to work with. I usually mix about 1/3 compost with 1/3 soil and 1/3 soilless mix.

Air circulation
Once the seedlings emerge, set up an oscillating fan on low and let it run most of the day. This dries out the soil surface, thus discouraging mold and other problem organisms, and it helps keep the leaves from developing fungal problems too. The movement of the stems caused by the breeze also helps to strengthen them (like getting exercise).
Paying attention
If none of this sounds like it will be particularly attractive in your living room, don't worry, you can set this operation up in your basement. That's where presence of mind becomes important. The first time I started seeds in my basement I would forget about them for days or even a week at a time. They can dry out and dye in that time. So make it a part of your routine to check on them regularly. You don't want to over water, of course (that can rot the roots), but don't neglect them either.

Hardening off
Once May comes you can start bringing your charges outdoors in a sheltered area that gets dappled sunlight, like under a tree whose leaves are just emerging. Keep them out during the day and bring them in at night for several days, then on a warm night (lows at least in the 40s), leave them out all night. At the end of a week you can leave them outside all the time until you are ready to plant them in your garden.
You will discover, as I have, that as your seedlings grow and move into larger pots, you will need more space for them and probably another shop light. Keep this in mind when you start. If this is your first year starting seeds, you may want to keep the numbers small.
Starting seeds really is a rewarding experience, and it helps keep a gardener’s spirits up when those March blizzards hit. It may be winter outdoors, but you've got spring in your basement and you're not afraid to use it!

Resource note: A quick look for a source of seeds of Adonis led me to R.H. Shumways in Randolph, Wisconsin. Call them to request a catalog at 803/663-9771, or use their toll-free fax number, 888/437-2733, or visit their Web site, www.rhshumway.com.

GARDEN CUTTINGS