1) Become a serious garden expert.

2) Share everything you know about gardening.

3) Make money by selling something – be it space, premium services, repackaging of material you’ve already written, books, speeches etc etc. You pick.

There – now what’s holding you back?

For example, aminopyralid is registered for a wide variety of crops and has created enough problems in the UK to have its registration pulled (technically Dow asked to have it pulled) Having said that, the residue does persist in manure and composts so if you purchase products with residues, you might see stunting and leaf curl on susceptible plants such as tomatoes.

This would be early in the season and not later. So as soon as the plant roots start to grow out of the starter media and expand into the soil, they’re going to do poorly. If you’re seeing later problems, it is something else. As a note, tomato seedlings are great starter plants for testing of almost any kind of herbicide residue – darn near anything will kill them and they’re a marker plant for that kind of testing. So if you’re not sure – try some tomato seedlings in new soils.

I was reminded of this problem this year because I brought a load of topsoil into the garden to build raised beds in our “cottage garden” area. The plants were moved in as mature plantings this spring. Simply dug and moved from the holding beds and not divided. They established quickly but quite frankly, haven’t grown as fast nor bloomed as much as I would have anticipated. There are, of course, a great many possibilities here but given the bulk of the plants were daylilies (as backbone plants) I would have expected more.

This is one more reason to produce your own compost and use it for compost tea to encourage micro-organism spread. Organic matter can be obtained from other things – from peat to leaves (it’s about time to go hunting for all the leaves nobody else wants) to purchasing straw.

In any case, it was a lesson remembered for me and I thought I’d pass it along.

This is one of the garden tips I pass along to subscribers. You can get a test subscription here to see if you like it.

This one is just starting with this link going to the main course-development page where readers ask questions and I organize and get ready to provide answers.

I get up early in the morning most days – early dawn and it’s still dark in the bedroom. Too dark to see well and in the winter, too dark to see at all. (What I’m doing up at that ungawdly hour of the day is well beyond me – my system simply started waking me up then and going back to sleep seems to be a waste of time so I just roll with whatever the auld bod is delivering)

It’s dark.

In the good old days, underwear manufacturers for men would put a label on the inside at the back. In the dark, you can slide your hands around the waistband, identify the label and get things in order. Getting things out of order is fairly uncomfortable as any guy will tell you.

Now. Underwear manufacturers put labels all over the damn things – front, back, inside, outside and in no consistent order. I reach into the drawer, quiety as to not wake the Princess, (I know where the shorts are) pull out a pair and start the process of identifying whether this label is the big advertising label (I note if I’m advertising something by showing my underwear it surely isn’t the damn company) Whether the label is the smaller inside the back or front label. Whether the label is larger than the other one and which goes where on which company underwear I’ve grabbed. I’ve got a plethora of labels and arrangements to pick from.

I’ve come up with several solutions. For example, only buy from one company. That works except they change label positions every few months as they bring out a new model (new models of men’s underwear – who knew!). Go out and put them on in the light (are you kidding, this is Canada – you get dressed as fast as you possible can to avoid frostbite except on July, 23 the day we have summer) And frostbite is something the important parts of my anatomy would truly appreciate avoiding.

I’m open to other solutions here but I’m afraid it’s not going to help matters. We have a sleeping princess who I refuse to wake up (for my good health), manufacturers who believe their label should be moved around and a dark bedroom.

Truly a problem for the modern male.

Virtual landscaping and free garden design software. This isn’t for everyone but if you’re a bit of a designer or graphics person (or don’t mind a learning curve) then the free software over here is for you. I have it and am learning to use it but the curve is steep for my way of thinking. Sigh…

Organic Gardening Pest Control - this is a starter linking article to some of the resources on the websites you may be able to use.

Garden Tool Reviews. There are a few new reader comments over here that are interesting and I’m still building this out now I’m back writing again.

A new reader-review of Echinacea has been posted here. Again, I have a ton of pics and plants from my trial gardens to upload to this review area and you’ll see those start to roll out in the next few weeks so do keep some notes on what’s going on with your new plants.

I don’t think I’ve told you about this landscaping page before. It’s a general page about landscaping with some interesting factoids and links to things like “contracts for landscaping, pricing on landscaping etc etc. Some of the things you may never have thought about or knew where to find. I’m always open to your questions about this kind of thing and can put them in the queue for writing.

A reader shares her City Paradise garden - with pics and a great description.

The technique now – as it has always been – is to talk to them in a way they understand. And with apologies to Marshall McLuhan, once again butchering his elegant concept, the medium is indeed part of this message.

It is not enough for the industry to promote the use of the Internet by retailers. Those days of trying to understand this are long gone. This is an era of constant tech change but there are several things that remain constant. Exchanging information is a constant and doing it “over the back fence” or among friends is a constant. It was ever thus – you got the bulk of your information from family and friends – added to it from experience and some books/magazines or advice from garden centers but that gardener-friend network was the primary source.

So how do we tap into that now? Before I launch that one powerful option among many, allow me to digress a bit to set the stage. There are several factors coming together right now that are creating a sea-change in retailing and information exchange.

The rise of mobile devices. Smartphones are outselling single purpose cell phones in North America. In the last six months, mobile traffic on my network has gone from 0 to 2% and it is rising monthly as a percentage of visitors.

Rise of online community and maturation of systems. Facebook is now the de facto standard in sharing among friends. With the addition of their “like” button and location-sharing in the armament, this software is poised to become “the” single must-have application. And it runs on mobile devices very well.

Penetration of smartphones to a younger generation who grew up with computers and the Net (who are all on Facebook) has to be over 90%.

Movement to more and more graphical interfaces. From older users adopting technology because it’s simple to professionals “bumping” phones to exchange data (bring phones with the right software combinations together and selected data can be exchanged or “bumped”). Bar code scanners for shopping, gps locators for all manner of data based on where you are (I love my coffee-shop finder software when I’m travlling). High-rez cameras with video (24 hours of video is uploaded to YoTtube every minute of every day, 365 days a year). These are only a few of the ways that multimedia is controlling data.

Tie all these things together. You have a mobile phone generation using this device to gather and share information in ways not seen before. Multimedia Information from voice to text to image and video in specific times and places flows seamless through friend networks to other friend networks pulling all the information into a single device.

Let’s tie all this together

A modern shopper goes to a bookstore. Looks at a book she might like to read. Scans the barcode with her cell phone. The phone browser then kicks in and takes her to review pages and to Facebook friend comments on the book. The consumer now has a wealth of friend-data and other information to make a purchasing decision. Information exchange has made a smarter consumer. Having read the book, she writes a review for her Facebook friends and publishes a review of the bookstore service on Yelp as well as Facebook. Information sharing continues to spread this way from friend to friend and user experience.

Retail groups are going gang-busters, registering the basic bar codes with GS1 and launching code-information. Scanning any book or product in any retail outlet brings up the same data because the basic id in the bar code (up to 7000 bits of information on modern ones) is similar across the entire industry.

And in the nursery industry.

Well, you already know the answer. There isn’t a single way for any consumer to access information on plants other than that 1×6 inch tag stuck in the pot. (and maybe if they’re lucky, the same info on some kind of sign other than a pricing sign) Bar codes and plant information are not uniform from nursery to nursery and indeed in many cases, have absolutely no relationship to the plant at all.

Want a solution?

Bar codes. Standardized for Genus, Species, Variety.

The rest of the space on the code can be left for producers, retailers and information exchange content-producers.

Production and retail nurseries can tie all manner of information to a bar code for their own purposes given a common name. But if that name and plant info are on a bar code online publishers such as myself can do the same kind of thing. And modern readers will also find a way to share information about plants just as they now do about books, music and a thousand different products.

Scan a bar-code off a nursery tag, import the plant data, insects, diseases, pictures, design information and suggestions.

Scan a bar code on a container and download a shopping list for the plants along with how to plant and grow.

See a plant in a friend’s garden – bump cell phones – data exchange.

Plant data and information them moves in a manner that particular generation uses.

Maintain plants lists in your garden automatically, solve problems as they occur.

The only limit to this use is by your imagination.

Bottom line

I have several thoughts.

My readers want that technology. In a recent poll of smart phone users, the uses this group wanted to use involved the use of two technologies, one of which was the bar code as a unique identifier for every plant.

The industry has a unique opportunity to get its act together – to agree on a common goal in educating modern consumers and making shopping for plants and products easier.

Bar codes benefit every level of the hort industry but getting all the major decision makers – retailers, producers, and associations, to agree on the technology faces an uphill battle for standardization. I’ll be surprised if it happens unless some very strong champions finally “get” the Net and the how it now works and pull the industry together.

My guess is the US will not lead into the field but the Dutch or even Canadians might come up with a system that will be adopted as a de facto standard for tag manufacturers/printer systems for plants. Specialty producers of non-green material could do it now as independents.

I’m not holding my breath. Multi-dimensional coding is an ideal solution (they’re already in use) For example,go online to scan a computer screen for further info to your phone to take shopping. And I have several uses I could make using this technology as a publisher.

But if you want to make shopping easier for the modern consumer, want to spread gardening information – this is one way to do it.

Having said all that. Take deep breath here…

I’ll be writing an update about my smartphone app development process in the near future for my own readers. Stay tuned for ongoing notes about this and think about how (if you’re in the trade) we might work together on this one to help spread great gardening information.

We climb easily onto the first landing where we pause and marvel at the landscape. For the first time in our lives, we see flowers and vegetables – we now know we want some but we have absolutely no idea how to do it.

We climb further.

After climbing another flight of stairs we begin to understand some basics. Plants have roots, they need water and food if they are to grow. And interestingly enough if you don’t feed them properly, they won’t grow.

Some, easily satisfied, stay on this landing but others climb further.

Learning new skills and growing different plants.

We climb further.

Along the way, the landings fill up with those who are happy with their lives and gardens – they visit and rest from their labors. Chatting away, enjoying the company of others and exchanging bits and pieces of experience but no longer moving upwards.

And further.

At some point, the climbing gardener notices others on the staircase. Fellow spirits with ever more knowledge, moving at variable speeds but always moving – upwards, ever upwards. Learning new gardening skills, new gardening techniques, a deeper understanding of the garden.

Further still.

At some point, the garden stops being a thing but a living breathing organism with a living world of its own. The gardener starts to get a glimmer and then an increasing awareness of this life, this simplicity of this space in this time. The gardener interacts. Discards the bulk of learning from the staircase and simply gives the garden what they both know it needs. Techniques forgotten, the garden and gardener are one.

Further again.

There is no end to this staircase. There is only a journey. Ever upward. Ever upward and outward searching for a deeper understanding.

And further.

Further yet.

One of the delights in my life is my morning ritual of sitting outside – barefoot – with pen and notebook – drinking my morning coffee – in the garden.

I can watch the sun change shadows from deep purple to gold to bright sunlight. I can hear the loons and gulls out in the channel. The cidada are humming away and the hummingbirds attack each other in territorial wars.

Life unfolds out there. Day by day, season by season and by paying attention, I get to know my world better. I connect in some way; my inner world meets that outer space and it’s in those moments all the craft and technique of creating a garden fade into the joy of being in one.

There’s no way I can begin to tell you of the changing tones of the light as it slashes and unravels the night’s work. Those small hints of light pushing through trees to streak the long grass. To lengthen, to change shape and color. To dance in the wind of a moving branch.

It’s a joy that goes deeply into my soul that can indeed call tears on a good day and a calm, weary smile on a bad.

Oh, I don’t see the magic every morning because sometimes my head is full of other things. Electronic words and deadlines intrude along with problems to be solved. It is those days I regret as I grow older. It is the giving away of those precious moments to others.

This sense of soul is easily disturbed by inrushing thoughts or ideas, a sideways thought or note-taking only to look up and see a cloud has gone over the light and the magic is gone. In reconnecting with the outer world, the moment and magic disappears.

That’s mostly OK. I know the magic is there, we’ve connected and life is good. That brief moment in the morning is why I garden. It lets me know I’m still inside, still able to get out to see – to breathe – in my world.

And I celebrate. That all too brief moment is when I’m my most human, my most open, my most vulnerable self. I’m also my most creative and alive. Connected to my soul. Connected to my garden.

******

It was noticed quite easy this morning there was a crisis in the back garden of garden writer Doug Green. Outraged birds from near and nearer clicked and twittered, buzzing with indignation at Doug while he was making his morning notes.

Green tried to explain to these very unhappy birds that this simply wasn’t his department but the hovering hordes weren’t having any of it.

In a statement to this reporter, Green said the birds were clearly irate and on the edge of losing control of their tail feathers. The outraged chirping in the background backed this up and Green could obviously be concerned for his very safety out there.

Green went on to explain he made a mad dash from his back porch to the feeder, grabbed it in front of the multitudes and ran for his life back to the house one step ahead of those sharp beaked reminders being aimed at more tender southerly parts of his anatomy.

Giving the feeder to the appropriate person in the house Green was heard to muter about being yelled at by a thimble-sized, pea-brain (a comment surely out of character and one that will indeed return to haunt him in future backyard dealings).

Follow up calls to Green have gone unanswered and unreturned but this intrepid reporter will keep you up to date on developments in this story.

You can get a more complete list of plants here.

I’ll look forward to hearing whether you like them or can use them.

Japanese Iris

I want to tell you that I’ve just uploaded a series of garden design posts from a few really good garden-writer friends.

Let me suggest you check out the articles (links below) and make comments there using the links below the articles. You may be surprised when the author responds.

Yvonne Cunnington has a marvellous display garden that’s on a bunch of garden tours every year. She’s written about a garden design technique she uses and you can do this as well.

Dee Nash wrote about how to use bright bold colors in her Oklahoma garden. So if your summer has been hot – pay attention to the plant lists she gives you.

Lois DeVries has written about the process of garden design and how it all starts with some dreams.

I also write a bit of an article here because I was asked how I started to design my own gardens.

And bacteria more than a mouse.

I’ll let you put everything else into this chain and figure out which is more important in your garden. 

I’ll simply ask if you are putting your garden energy in the right direction to create success?  Are you encouraging the important things?

My 8 paper books live in the library of the National Library of Canada. As long as they are in this institution, the holder and historian of all things Canadian literate, my books will live. My voice will live and that means I, in some small way, will live as well.

In contrast, my blog, my websites, my massive online presence is only so much electronic chaff shortly after I don’t pay my broadband bill. Over a million readers a month will disappear in a short-circuit nanosecond.

Gone.

A temporary electronic world indeed.

And what a wasteland we’ll leave behind us.

******

(And yes, for the record I know about the way-back machine and the Internet archives. I’m guessing this isn’t going to be complete nor permanent. Electrons degrade faster than paper – how many 5.25 floppies are you still using?) and scope and scale of the Net content is staggering. Without google-sized funding, this isn’t sustainable.

I have several mulberry trees that are over 75 feet from the front door of the house. The birds eat the mulberries and then fly to the front steps to purple-poop.

Why?

It’s one of the existential questions writers ask themselves in the morning before the blood has settled into their caffeine stream.

Don’t.

If you can see the mulch on a mature garden, the garden design is a failure.

Sitting on the back porch, watching a furtive squirrel slowly advance out of the tree line towards my apple orchard, I was reminded that this was only the second squirrel I’d seen on the island in five years. They do live in the small well-treed village but open fields and year round attention from hawks and owls kept them there.

But this small black one was intent on the old orchard and managed to cover the 100 feet from the small bushes at the property’s edge to the old dead spruce halfway to its goal. It was then it met the crow.

The crow family had been attracted to the property this spring when the neighbor’s cats were killing snakes in our front fields. The garter snakes were killed, partially eaten and then left as offerings in our farm laneway. Because this had to be mowed (it is two tracks separated by grass) the snake bodies were invariably cut up into crow-sized morsels in the process. The head of the family perched on our roof, used the pond as his drinking fountain and established a nest a few hundred yards away at the edge of our property. We had been adopted it would seem.

The crow had other ideas about the invading squirrel and attacked it; diving out of the immense mulberry tree and whacking the squirrel with beak and wing as it dove by. The squirrel went into panic mode, whipping down the dead spruce, across a few short yards to the nearby maple and back into the maple. All the time pursued by the crow who was obviously not impressed by this new creature in his yard.

The chase went on from tree to tree around the perimeter on the way to the orchard, up and back down again, finally into the orchard, in and out of two apple trees, and then returning back from tree to tree until the squirrel reached the last maple tree before the old dead spruce. The crow, after making a dive, perched in the dead spruce, the last tree before the open field, as if daring the squirrel to try and use it for safety. The squirrel, chattering as only a frightened and angry squirrel can – as if declaring bravery in the face of certain defeat – was gearing up for a mad dash back across the 100 feet to the safety of the small property-line bushes.

The dash was started, increased in speed as the crow started to scream victory and was accomplished in a few short seconds. The crow had not moved a wing feather but watched every frenzied bound and leap with what, I must imagine, was great satisfaction.

A few seconds later, the crow swung off its perch, harrying the squirrel back out of the shrubs towards town. The last I saw of the squirrel it was making a desperate leap from the top of one small shrub to another and trying to tightrope across impossibly narrow branches (even narrow by squirrel standards) towards safety. All the time with a wheeling and diving black fiend screaming at his tail.

Declaring success, the crow and mate were joined a few minutes later by a third crow at the top of their nesting tree and together they let the countryside know of their territorial victory with raucous victory singing. I couldn’t have sung it better myself.

Facing the freedom, of a blank space and the terror of having to make a decision to fill that space with activity. Of having to decide which of the many projects I want to do. And then of starting and doing something.

The black void of having the ability to make the choice and the responsibility and freedom to do it.

And what if I fail? And what if I succeed?

Then I get to do it all over again I guess. (insert sound of muse laughing)

Now – extremism, of right and left political philosophies, harsh intolerance of Christianity, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu believers, all outshout the voices of moderation, reason and tolerance. And I confess to having a sense of confusion at the values of politics or religions that profess love but encourage war and the rape of the planet.

The lights of reason and moderation are going out and we are entering a new form of dark ages, the likes of which we have never seen before.

May we live in interesting times indeed.