Farewell “Wheel” 1988-2008

It is with great sadness today that I announce the untimely passing of Wheel.

Wheel and I knew each other when he was just a toddler’s tricycle and I’m proud to say that I knew him and recognized his potential even then. He developed his lovely red shade, added a bunch of horsepower and gears - growing up into the fine lawn tractor you see in front you. I very proud to be his friend and mentor.

You see, Wheel ran our nursery for us. Hauling plants from one end to the other, towing two and three nursery carts at a time, loaded down with multiple racks of retail ready perennials fresh from the fields and nursery. He could haul more than his weight and his strength is legendary in our family.

In fact, when our children heard about the death of Wheel, their first reaction was gentle reminiscing about growing up under his protective influence. My eldest summed it up best by commenting that this was indeed “the passing of an era.”

My youngest on the other hand remembered several other facets of Wheel’s existence. He did tend to cut corners a bit towards the end of the day and she held the record for knocking down nursery benches with wagon trains of plants. We believe the number was 6 full benches of plants hitting the ground, knocked over by a big red guy and his faithful followers. I was also reminded how when we tried transforming Wheel from a puller to a common grass cutter, he responded by forcing my youngest to run over one of my very expensive, pure rubber nursery hoses making two fifty-foot hoses instead of the previous 100 foot hose. I’m told the snake that stuck it’s head up one day met a similar end when Wheel rolled on by under full steam.

My son still holds the record for wagon-surfing. After the plants were unloaded, the game was to let Wheel have his head and drive him as fast as possible (assuming the Head Gardener wasn’t looking but he often was smiling secretly to himself) while the siblings stood on the following wagons. My athletic son surely kept his footing quite well - at least well enough to keep himself out of the hospital as Wheel and company (the others safely seated on wagons) hurtled across the rough ground of the nursery.

Wheel passed away the other day in manner befitting horsepower of his age - he was getting old and simply threw a rod while trying to climb a hill under full power. A glorious ending - to go out with a bang rather than a flat whimper. The rough banging and grinding from the engine decidedly indicated a serious lack of internal integrity. It wasn’t pretty. Wheel is so old that the engine company no longer makes engines and the designated replacement, associated wiring harnesses and modifications are going to be more than the cost of a brand new tractor.

My good buddy Wheel and I ran my nursery and hauled everything from kids to peat, plants, and if you name it on a farm and nursery - we hauled it. It was a workhorse of a machine and I’ll miss it terribly. There are few stronger bonds than between a man and his tractor and I really can’t even being to tell you how much I’m going to miss old Wheel. Even when a new tractor comes into my life, there won’t be the history, the memories associated with Wheel. I know every scratch on the paint, every whim and whimsy of that engine and attachments. I’ve skinned knuckles, shared blood and oil and repaired more belts on the tractor than I have on me. I’m going to miss that tractor and the memories he brought along with him.

Wheel was predeceased by his faithful companion Eight’N and while she was a little larger than Wheel, there is no question who was the biggest worker with the biggest heart. With no children, they were the last of their generation; but will live on in our memories.

Farewell old buddy.

How to Sucker Tomatoes

Here’s a short clip on how to take the suckers off tomatoes. It’s not too late to go out and do this on any staked tomato (in fact you should). Leave the tomatoes you have growing on the ground or in cages alone.

As an added thought - you grow staked tomatoes if you’re trying to maximize the amount of fruit per square foot of garden. You let them flop if you’re trying to maximize the amount of fruit per plant.

Spreading Compost Tea

Here’s a video on spreading compost tea. I outline the need for filters and show you the 4 main systems a home gardener has for spreading compost tea around in the garden.

Tomato Pruning

Yeah, I know you think you don’t need info on tomato pruning at this time of year but if you’re like me, sometimes you let things get out of hand. Here’s the remedy - serious pruning. Would I string you along? (You gotta watch the video to “get” that)

How to Make Compost Tea

Here’s a video on how to make compost tea - not something you’d want to invite the Queen to …

But you could invite her to the garden afterwards.

Note that this video is part of a series of videos I’m producing for my seminar series and it’s only the first one in the series (more on the way). Also that some of the links mentioned in the video are not active on the seminar site yet.

Native Plants or Not

There’s a lot of talk again about the use of native plants in the home landscape. This has been a minor type of conversation in the nursery trade for as long as I’ve been in it. Seems with all the emphasis on “green” these days and the new eco-chique folks coming on board, we’re going to do it all over again.

Those supporting the use of natives point out that wildlife - from the tiniest to the largest - depend on native plants for food and shelter and often this is not provided by garden plants. Imports often don’t have the right leaves, pollen or what-have-you to keep native species alive. In the name of ecology, there is a push to have you plant native species.

Those supporting the use of natives point out the introduction of attractive species of native plants; one regularly promoted is the Echinacea or coneflower for this purpose.

What’s a Native?

So let’s look at the reality of this trying our best to avoid the politicized charge of the proponents of native plants.

So - native to what area? If I can only plant natives that are native to my island, then I’m restricted considerably in the choice of plants I have.

Native to what era? Do we go back to when my island was totally wooded - or sometime after that? Do we use only those plants that birds carry in or do we allow plants that the native populations might have introduced? And speaking of native introductions, what tribe or era of native occupation would you like to set as “native” or “original”? Where’s the line and who gets to draw it?

Or do we define native plant as any plant that a current member of the ecosphere - inseact, animal or microorganism requires to live? In which case, just about everything is OK because there’s a predator at some level that thrives on every plant.

What’s a Garden?

To me, a garden is an ephemeral work of art. It is the slowest of the art forms and one of the fastest to disappear once the artist stops working and creating. My garden is an artificial construct that Mother Nature will stomp and change as soon as she can to whatever regeneration is possible. All those grass and broadleaf invaders in my gardens are her shock troops.

I see no reason why this piece of art should be restricted to “natives” or “non-natives” but rather I use the plant and flower that fits both my mood and space. I’m not interested in the politicizing of gardens, I simply want my garden to please my senses, to give me a respite from the day and a place to sit and enjoy my surroundings. To talk to the spirit of the place in one small bit of my life.

I garden organically in that I don’t believe in using chemicals to control the flow of my garden. I do try to restrain the enthusisam of pests eating everything in sight and I do control the environment to make my works of art, my garden. I’m not trying to recreate nature here, I’m creating something called a garden - my own bit of paradise - and a garden is quite an artificial construct.

If a native plant fits the space and gives me the look and feel of what I need, then I make no distinction between native and non-native. It’s a plant. And this is a garden, not wild nature.

I want the darn thing in bloom all season. I want it fragrant. I don’t want pests eating and mangling leaves. I do want healthy, organic vegetables but I’m surely not going to restrict myself to only those vegetables native to my area.

I’ll do it all organically and in concert with nature but I’m not going to be pushed to grow something that doesn’t fit my concept of garden or great plant because it’s politically expedient or “correct”. And I won’t tell you to do it that way either - you can decide what you want to grow and why you want to grow that plant. You can be as politically correct as you like or you can grow your entire gardens to petunias if you wish.

Your garden, your call. That’s what I think of the tiresome native plant debate.

My Favorite Perennial

While I normally say that whatever plant is in bloom at any given time is my favorite, I recently went out and counted the number of different varieties I have in my garden of the backbone plants. You know, the plants that form the bulk of flowering throughout the season. I have several species for each of spring, summer and fall and normally lots of varieties of each.

So in this mid-summer period, my Hemerocallis seem to be outnumbering the rest of the group. Mind you, it was that way in my old garden as well with well over 300 varieties. I’ve only got about 20 different varieties out there right now but they’re all either award winners or rebloomers. Unfortunately, I’ve lost all the tags. Given the number of moves these plants have had in the last 4 years (4 moves) I’m fortunate I still have the plants - never mind the tags.

How to Prune Petunias

Garden Blogging and the Nofollow tag

Let’s set the stage a bit.

In the world of the Internet, links have been seen as currency. A link from a site with a higher Google PageRank than yours is a good thing. So if your site is ranked as a 2 and you get an inbound link from a 5, life is good. Your ranking and authority with Google goes up and over time, you’ll get more traffic. So incoming links have some value.

But bloggers trade links around all the time. Some bloggers put up blogrolls; most don’t keep them current and lose enthusiasm for maintaining them. Blogrolls have been trade-offs; you give me a link in yours, I’ll give you a link in mine kind of thing. Doesn’t matter if you read a blog - if that blog doesn’t give you a link, then you don’t put them in your blogroll. How many folks do you think read this blog regularly but don’t put it in their blogroll because I don’t have one? (Hint - quite a few)

Links in the body of a post are also followed by Google so when you link to another person’s blog as part of your own post or followup (I assume you give attribution when you add another post when you got the idea or are responding to a post) you give a link that Google follows.

You might also think that there’s a link every time you make a comment in somebody’s blog. Well, yes and no. The link is an active link but there’s a code within the blogging software that inserts a “nofollow” tag in the comments section of blogs. It’s automatic with most blogging software. You’ll see them if you open up your blog, go to your browser command line and click on View>Page Source. Scroll down to where you start seeing comments and you’ll see the rel=”nofollow” code.

A nofollow tag tells Google to NOT count this link as a real link. So the link works, but Google doesn’t count it - it doesn’t follow it (nofollow) and you can make all the comments you like and you won’t be increasing your PageRank. You may find folks click on your comment and come to visit your site (a good reason to make comments) but Google won’t give you any credit for the link.

Some bloggers are taking steps to eliminate this nofollow tag and I’ve decided to do the same thing. I don’t maintain a blogroll but I do think that folks who make intelligent comments and help me with my blogging deserve to be seen and rewarded by Google. The last time I checked, this URL had a PageRank of 5 but the rankings change regularly and I don’t keep up with them.

I’ve installed the DoFollow tag for Wordpress. If you make a comment, you’re going to get a live link. All your comments will be followed back to your home site by Google.

This is just one way I have of thanking you for helping with my blog - being part of my garden world.

Policy on Comments

So my official policy on comments now is that if you add something to the conversation, I’ll approve it without a second thought. If you simply say “me too” because you’re looking for a link - then it’s not going to get approved. I also do not link through to non-blogs for commercial purposes so link-spammers need not apply.

Blogging Comments Section

I did a few other things yesterday to the comments section in order to make it a more interesting place.

The first is a plugin called CommentLuv and this little feature will act as a promotional tool for *your* blog. What it does is go to your blog and pulls up the last headline you wrote. So if somebody sees your comment and likes your post, they’re going to click through to your blog to read it.

The other thing I added was a plugin called Comment Remix. This plugin allows you to directly quote other writers or comments and creates a threaded comment discussion. This should help those of us with limited concentration follow what’s been said by whom. It’s not a full forum feature but it can act as a limited one.

So - we now have nofollow tags so I can give you direct links, automatic promotion blocks for your own blog if you have one (no websites remember) and a threaded conversation function so we senior-gardeners can figure out what the heck is going on and act like we’re functioning properly without coffee in the mornings.

I think that just about does it for now. I’m always open to suggestions for making this a better experience so don’t hesitate to comment and tell me other things that I can do in the comment section to make them better for you.

First Tomato

Well, it isn’t much but it is an early tomato. What can I say? The Princess and I split it so we’d each get some. I cut and she picked.

Contaminated Composted Manure

Thanks to GardenRant for the lead on contaminated manure in the U.K. This story actually got me thinking because my daughter - raising lettuce and tomatoes in containers in Toronto - claimed this past weekend that she and her partner got sick when they ate their lettuce. Now this was containers with potting soil and she used some purchased composted manure and claimed she washed the lettuce really well.

Here’s the EPA link to the datasheet.

The concern seems that it survives the gut action of ruminants and stays active in the manure pile. Studies submitted to the EPA show that “Under aerobic conditions, degradation of aminopyralid in five different soils resulted in the production of CO2 and non-extractable residues. Half-lives ranged from 31.5 to 533.2 days in 5 soils. For risk assessment purposes, EPA used a half-life of 103.5
days. ” So it can stay active and kill crops in soil for up to a year and a half. And it seems it stays alive after passing through the guts of cows.

Now, the toxicity on humans would seem that the major problem (according to the this factsheet) is dermal irritation although you may read it a little more carefully than I did and find something else of concern. So this isn’t likely what created the problem for my daughter.

She did say she washed the lettuce very thoroughly so that she’s hoping there wasn’t e-coli on it and this was at the height of the tomato concern so we thought it wasn’t necessarily the lettuce. She wiped it off the face of the earth anyway and now it’s composting somewhere.

The bottom line as always though is that you will be further ahead to use your own compost. And if you don’t produce enough, use compost tea. And if you don’t produce compost because you live in an apartment of town house, then get a worm bin. And if you don’t do compost or worm-compost to use as a compost tea starter - then you really can’t call yourself an organic gardener, cause you just don’t get it.

photo credit: foxypar4

Island Sunset

I really have a hard time leaving my island. And here’s one reason why. I get to sit out watching this kind of light show almost every night. What’s not to like about it?

Useful Tools for Writers

OK - let’s admit it, if you’re not a full time writer - you want to be.

So here’s a website with 100 tools for writers. Writers of all kinds (you don’t have to be a garden writer to play here).

Here’s 100 Tools for Writers via a link at Performancing.

Blog Awards

So what do you guys do about blog-type awards or listings on prestigious directories?

Do you go after them? Do you thank the directories? Do you post the little gizmo graphic that they suggest?

Let me lead off with how I look at this…

I’ve only gone for one award in my writing life. I entered a GWA Golden Globe awards with a book I wrote (Gardening Wisdom) and it won the best writing award that year out of the all the various writing categories. I also received a Canada Council Award for it. I was pretty pleased but the reason I entered it was that I was hoping for at least an honorable mention so I could then write “award-winning garden writer” after my name. And I hoped my publisher would do something with it and flog my book even more (they didn’t) I haven’t entered since (some would say my writing has gone downhill anyway)

I’ve never entered or promoted my blog for the garden blogging awards but I think they’re a heck of a lot of fun to watch and see who gets awarded those coveted badges. I do visit each of the nominees and winners to check ‘em out. But I’m not overly interested in entering or winning (good thing too I suspect) because I’m not looking for awards anymore. I have my own standards for success and I’m pretty much hitting them (but then I go and increase the darn targets).

I got put up by Alltop lately and seem to have joined a goodly group of garden bloggers. So it looks like I’m in good company there and I’m really pleased to have been included.

They gave me the option of putting their badge on my site but I can’t decide whether to do it or not - even though Guy Kawasaki is one of the leading folks over there and I enjoy his blog “How To Save the World” immensely.

Reminds me of the old lines “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve” etc.

But what do you guys think about getting awards and putting badges up on your pages? Good thing - bad thing? Do it? Don’t do it?

Should I put one of these badges up on my site? Would you?

Blog Developments and What’s Coming Here

If you see a few bumps in this blog in the next week or so it’s because I’ve upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress and have de-installed and am re-installing all the plug-ins and software that makes this amazing bit of software work.

So far it has been seamless (insert sound of Doug reaching for something wooden and saying “touch wood”) and the little bit of software (plug-ins) have even been automatically upgraded. Let’s here it for that little touch of easy installation! But as I’ve been taught in the old school of upgrading, you upgrade and then install each plug-in separately and test-test-test so that you know which one messes things up. So far so good.

The fun thing is that I’ve just finished doing a bit of research into “comments” and the plug-ins that will make this blog even more functional for readers.

What you can look forward to - removing the “nofollow” tag. If you don’t know what this is, stay tuned as I give you all a bit of link-love.

A plug-in that will automatically give the last title of *your* blog so that when you make a comment here and somebody reads your comment, you get an ad in the comment section for folks to go and read your blog. Make a comment here in my blog and I’m going to try to help you drive traffic to your blog. This means of course that I’m going to be ever-vigilant in deleting spammers and folks who are just trying to collect links.

And more!

I think the entire “comment” section of garden blogs has been really ignored and under-used so far. My research says we can do better. So I’m going to try. And I’m sure you’ll let me know how it’s working out for you.

How I Doubled My Adsense Ad Income

Now this is a very simple technique and I have it set up on my sites already but this is the very first time I did it to a real garden advertiser.

If you have an Google Adsense account, you’ll see control tabs Adsense Setup>Allowed Sites and a box that allows you to ban URLs from advertising on your site. Normally, this is used to ban competitors. So if you’re Coke - you don’t want Pepsi targeting your Coke site with their ads so you ban their website.

But many of us use it to ban low-paying websites from targeting our pages and drive the CPM down. One example is to ban e-bay.com ads. This auction site trolls the ad system targting low paying keywords and then driving traffic to their site by using your pages as low paying traffic-generators. So in the box, you’d put www.ebay.com.

You can find the sites to ban for your blog by visiting this site. (Links opens in a new window).

Over the last week, I noticed that one of my sites - normally a decent income generator was slipping badly. I wasn’t concerned for a day or two because these things happen but this weekend, while waiting for the visitors to get up - I wandered over to the site to see who was driving down my income.

I had been targeted by a garden product and they had essentially taken over my site with their ads. And all those ad keywords were very low paying ones. I added their URL to the banned list.

24 hours later, the income from this site has gone back up to normal levels - doubling the Adsense income from the previous week.

Try it yourself. Check out your income levels for the last week or so. Use the website resource above and add those urls to your site. Then wait another week or so (a similar length of time) and then compare CPM’s and CTR’s.

Let us know if it worked for you.

Compost Tumbler Review Update

This isn’t going well.

A few weeks ago, I posted a video of me putting the simple compost tumbler together. It was an adventure and you got to see the process (shortened drastically) along with some tips to make your process easier.

I have to report that there are some problems with this kind of system.

1) The composter is half full of material from the kitchen and garden trimmings. It is so heavy that Mayo can’t spin it. This isn’t a problem if you have a strong person around but I have to tell you that this baby is heavy and doesn’t want to move too much. (Maybe we have heavy vegetables?)

2) There is a screen in the bottom to allow excess moisture to leak out so your compost stays at the right moisture level. It works much like your sink drain I’m afraid. You know the one that plugs up when too much wet vegetable matter is compressed on the bottom of the sink and you have to take the guck out by hand to let the water drain?

Right - well, I have a bunch of sopping wet compost on top of this drain and I’m darned if I’ll insert half my body to clean out a screen that’s sure to clog up again with a few seconds of cleanout.

I know it’s clogged because when I spun it last night, a foul stench water poured out the “top” (which was now the bottom). Opening up the lid (after turning it I note) I was greeted with a full, foul smell that surely isn’t cooking compost by any stretch of the imagination.

Luckily, I had cut some tall grass in the orchard so I loaded up the other half of the composter with half-browned grass that I figure will absorb all this moisture. Locked her up and turned it over so the moisture would leak down and soak up the grass. If I hadn’t thought of the grass at the last minute, I was going to use newspaper to do the same job.

But it surely isn’t making compost at the moment.

We’ll see how it works in the next week or two as the grass becomes part of the equation and we continue to load in the veggie trimmings.

So I’ve either missed totally on getting the right combination of green to brown or the compost tumbler doesn’t work well.

So for the moment, I’m not a big fan of compost tumblers and the garden plans call for old-fashioned compost bins behind the shed.

I might have a compost tumbler to give away this fall to somebody local. Doesn’t come with any guarantees however.

Hands of Hope - Gardeners Doing Something Important

This is a great story about one group of women and how they’ve made a difference in the world. Read it. Go the website. Make a donation - this is important stuff.

Hands of Hope is a community of women helping women in crisis - particularly women in Africa. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that Africa is one of the hardest hit areas for women. You can name just about any country you like - from South Africa with the aids epidemic wiping out families so that only the children and grandmothers are left - to war-ravaged places such as the Sudan where women and children’s lives are cheap and carelessly discarded.

My daughter has been to Sudan as part of her work and told gut-wrenching stories that still bring tears to my eyes when I remember them. I simply can’t imagine living them. And I don’t mind telling you that it took me a long time to write this because every time I think about those stories, I simply tear up (like I’m doing right now).

This Chicago area group of women decided that a great way to raise money - to pass it along to those women who weren’t as fortunate as they were - was to have garden tours.

We’re not talking about your basic let’s take a look at a garden type of tour. We’re talking about the “The Barrington Country Garden & Antique Faire”

We’re talking million dollar landscaping jobs - the kind you can only dream about and see in the magazines. These women open their properties and charge folks for the privilege of seeing their gardens. And the folks in Chicago eat it up and attend - heck, when Mayo and I went this summer (Mayo was speaking) there were at least 3-4 school buses running between the gardens all day ferrying visitors (you can’t drive because the parking would be impossible) between gardens. Heck, they had me drooling and I’d kill for a few of the “guest cottages” on my own place.

We’re talking seminars, shopping like your life depended on it (somebody’s does) and enough food and music through the garden to sate any appetite.

We’re talking hundreds of volunteers taking care of thousands of tourists.

Bottom line. This is a million dollar operation and all the proceeds go the Hands for Hope.

These garden tours count for something beyond mere voyeurism.

The money goes to NGO organizations that work directly with the women and children in several African countries - this is no admin-bloated organization. And the organizers here work directly with local politicans smoothing the way for the work to get done and enlisting those who want to help their people.

So.

What are you doing with your garden tour? Something as good - something that will make a difference to people’s lives the way these women are making a difference?

And if not. Why not.

Want to check it out? Go to the Hands of Hope website and make a donation. Or volunteer to work next year. Or write about it - spread the word that there are gardeners making a difference.

Writer’s are not revolutionaries

“To think your self into somewhere strange and someone new, and then to live it, takes the nerve of a revolutionary or bride.

If writers had that kind of nerve, they wouldn’t be writers. They would be starting revolutions and getting married, like everyone else.

As it is, we tend to cultivate our gardens and mull a lot.”

Alexei Panshin

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