Farewell “Wheel” 1988-2008
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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.
Echinacea 'Magnus'
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.
red daylily
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.
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