The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Canker is an ugly word

Fallen apples on the ground, rotting and mocking me

At first it’s really exciting and fun making all those apple pies from your very own apple tree, then, pumpkins come along and bump apples out of the way in the pie department and oops, some of those little apples fall to the ground. 

I run by them on my way back and forth dropping my kids at school, picking up and dropping off dogs, shopping, running, gardening, biking, blah, blah, blah. 

I finally get a moment to myself. I make a delicious cup of coffee and walk to my front porch, take a deep breath of the clean autumn air and look around, awwhhh, it would be perfect if it wasn’t for those damn apples sitting there on the ground in front of me. 

They would still be sitting there too if I hadn’t read about Brown Rot and the evil “canker.” 

A word that anyone in his or her right mind would want to avoid. A canker means necrosis, ulcerous thrush, and inflammatory parasitic infection, open lesion an oozing sore. 

How do you avoid the word canker?

Please, for the love of malignant infection, clean up your rotting apples.

 

Men In Make-Up, Mountain Lions And Marijuana

A few days ago I received two phone calls from my neighbors then ran into a third neighbor who mentioned the same thing: A mile up the road from my house were two Game Warden vehicles and out of the vehicles came 8 or more men dressed in camo from head to toe.

These men were even wearing camouflage face paint and were carrying very large assault rifles. 

They unloaded from the trucks and disappeared into the bushes and down a steep trail where I have never seen a human go before. 

I’d seen a coyote and two rattlesnakes go down that trail, but never a human. 

All three neighbors asked the same thing: What do you think these camouflaged, gun-toting guys are doing running down a trail where people usually don’t go? 

Well, I thought to myself, you have come to the right person because I have my figure on the pulse of this mountain. I am “in the know.” 

To each and everyone my reply was the same. I told them that I heard there had been a pot farm bust the week before at a different location on the mountain and that this was probably a continuation of the same operation.

All three of my neighbors reply was the same. “Are you sure they’re not going to shoot the lions? They were in Game Warden trucks?” 

“Nay-nay” said I.

They wouldn’t go to all the trouble to shoot a couple of lions that hadn’t hurt anyone.

My neighbors breathed sighs of relief and went about their day. Except one. I’m not going to mention her name because she is a friend and I wouldn’t want to make her look bad.

She called a few minutes later and said that she’d been told that the game warden and his posse were there to shoot the lions. 

What! 

My mind was spinning. I was angry. How could they? 

The lions hadn’t hurt anyone.

I needed to do something and I needed to do it fast. I had to stop eight burly guys with semi-automatic weapons from shooting my beloved lions.

So I looked down at the fluffy white poodle I was dog sitting and sprang into action. I threw little Chloe along with Moondoggie in my car and drove up the mountain.

Chloe on my lap

The Game warden trucks were parked along the road at the hairpin turn, a turn I call The Bay Tunnel. I was shaking with anger when I parked my Volvo station wagon behind one of the extended cab, Eddie Bauer green 4wd trucks and jumped out of my car in to the dirt shoulder.

I started around the trucks to the narrow path. The path I had never seen any human go down. But I was going down it wearing my Cole Hahn strappy sandals and my yoga pants.

“Excuse me, Excuse me, Hey, is there is anyone one there? Don’t shoot me.”

“Is anyone around, hello?” I yelled to the camo game warden and his crew. 

I had relocated two rattlesnakes to this very path and the last time was hiking in yoga pants near rattlesnakes well, all I can say is—Sixty-Six Vials Of Antivenin.

I started to get stickers in the bottom of my yoga pants and I looked down to see a fine layer of dust over my Boca Raton Pedicure and my Cole Hahns. 

I had visions in my head or stripping down to my undies and swinging through the trees holding a spear, a la Avatar.

I could hear the Door’s song, “The End,” playing in my head as I saw myself slowly ascending from the bottom of a pond in front of the Game Warden and his team of killers dressed in my own, more fashionable camo make-up, with a knife between my teeth.

Then… 

A wild berry vine looped over my foot and scratched my ankle so I turned back.

Why I Love Early Girls

O.K., I get it.

Heirloom tomatoes are da bomb. 

Some of this season's heirlooms

Every time I go into grocery stores—or to parties—I’m bombarded with these beautifully colored, interestingly shaped fruit.

The colors of the fruit can be pink, yellow, purple, or black. The fruit comes in so many different colors they look like fruity Easter eggs.

I try to be cool and hip, so I plant hip groovy heirlooms but they are hard to grow, so I end up being the dorky loser gardener. The plants get diseases, and pest infestations. And they don’t seem to produce much fruit. 

Heiloom tomato plant suffering from late season wilt.

Along with the difficult heirloom varieties I also grow the usual suspects like Better Boys, regular cherry tomatoes and my favorite: Early Girls. 

Early girls

Here are the reasons why I love Early Girls:

They are prolific.

They produce early and often.

They are resistant to diseases and pests.

You can’t beat their taste. 

While all my heirloom plants are dead, my Early Girls keep growing and producing.

This tomato is also well suited to dry land farming  or gardening techniques. This means that the tomatoes are not watered after they are planted, so they develop deep roots to seek out moisture. Because the plant receives little water the fruit becomes super flavorful.

Early Girls also do well in coastal gardens where the weather is cool and overcast during the growing season.

I love them. 

Think I’ll go pick some right now.

Heartbreak: Confessions of a gardener with ADD

I feel like the protagonist in one of those sad self-sacrifice movies where the main character must give up her baby, or shoot her dog, or fly her plane into the enemy’s camp, or fly her spacecraft into the bad guy’s warship, or stay on the meteor to set the explosives.

It is time, sniff, to, sniff, tear out my garden. My tomatoes have late blight, my squashes have powdery mildew, it’s all so, sniff, messed up—wwwaaaaah!

My tomatoes are loaded with fruit. It is just not fair. 

I have read that it’s my duty to pull out plants infested with powdery mildew because if I don’t, the spores from the infected plants will spread not just to my other plants—but also to my neighbor’s garden. 

The guilt was eating at me. 

I couldn’t infect my neighbor’s plants. Then I peeked over the fence at my neighbor’s garden and realized that there were no spores on this earth that would make his plants look any worse. A lighted match was the best thing I could do for that “garden.”

An Appropriate Ending.

I have been asked by several people, “what happened to the lions?” 

Well, quite simply, they moved on. 

Mountain lions will stick around usually for 2-3 days after they have made a kill and will feed periodically until the kill starts to get icky. That is my scientific term for it—icky. Then other creatures have their turn, like bobcats, skunks, vultures, and insects.

Before the lions left Alicia’s house, they moved the buck to another location. One that seemed more appropriate.Nature is so interesting and mysterious. I couldn’t help but come up with my own scientific theory as to why they dragged their kill to Alicia and Bernie’s picnic table. 

I would like to believe they were trying to share. Perhaps to say “Hey, thanks for letting us stay in your front yard and scare the bejesus out of you these past few days.”

“Thanks for letting us slay a large deer in the middle of your driveway and pick at the carcass at our leisure.” “Thanks for not calling the sheriff so that we would become carcasses ourselves.” Above all Alicia and Bernie, thanks for being understanding—and not hysterical—humans.”

David from the Open Space Authority said it best: "The way Alicia and Bernie handled a couple of pumas in their front yard gives me hope that we have a chance to protect these animals."

 

Double the Fun In Alicia’s Wild Kingdom

The mountain lion left the carcass of the big buck at the base of Alicia’s backyard hill. 

The buck seemed too big for the lioness to drag any further. Alicia woke up before dawn and looked to see if the buck was still there 

She noticed that the carcass had been eaten further. She watched it and waited patiently to see if the lion would return. 

She didn’t have to wait long.  The lioness approached the carcass a few minutes later and Alicia almost snorted coffee out her nose when a second, smaller lion joined it.

Mama and teenager.

Holy Venison, Batman! 

The day before, when Alicia first reported to me from her Wild Kingdom, she said the mountain lion looked so big she thought for sure it was a male. I said, ”Well at least it’s not a mama with cubs, that might be a real dangerous situation.” 

Oh crap.

The cub seemed older, more of an adolescent than a baby. It was nearly the same size as its mother, probably about a year old.

The female lion is wearing a radio collar.

The pair of lions started to feed on the carcass. According to Alicia the meal was cooperative and carried out in a very orderly manner, unlike dinners at my house.

  Mountain lion doing the dishes

After the two mountain lions had finished their meal, they took turns burying the carcass, which, I guess, is the mountain lion’s version of the doing the dishes. My kids don’t do the dishes without a fight.

  Maybe tomorrow night I’ll give them a choice between washing plates and burying a dead deer. 

The Mid-Peninsula Open Space researchers came up in the afternoon and placed an infrared field camera near the carcass. 

In the next couple of days it should record some great insight into the everyday life of a mother lion and her offspring. 

Heaven knows I could use some tips.

Life and Death In The Garden of Alicia

In the late afternoon yesterday my neighbor Alicia was happily watering her deer-resistant garden. 

Unlike me, she allows deer to roam free on her property. She’s even given them names like “Rat With Hooves,” “Garden Destroyer,” and “Bambi-Pig,” 

Wait. Those are my names for deer. 

So there she was, sprinkling her lavender, happily surrounded by  her cloven-footed friends.

Cue the sounds of bucolic birdies chirping and flute music. Think “Bambi meets Godzilla.” 

According to Alicia, her deer friends suddenly scattered in a big cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, one of the largest bucks was being straddled by a mountain lion. 

The mountain lion had its jaws around the buck’s neck—and for the next eight minutes the buck fought for its life, dragging the lion around Alicia’s driveway kicking and struggling until it finally succumbed.

Abutilon with Mountain Lion and Fresh Kill. Photo by Alicia

Alicia’s first reaction was to try and save the buck by running at the lion and making loud noises. 

Wha? Alicia! 

She soon realized that with all those sharp teeth, she was outnumbered. So she turned tail (or not) and ran into her house. 

She called me while all this was going on.

I was jealous that I wasn’t watching this wildlife drama unfold live. She said it was like being in an episode of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

Abutilon Framing Wild Kingdom. Photo by Alicia.

From her living room window she watched as the exhausted lion stood next to the downed deer and panted for about forty minutes, catching it’s breath and preparing for dinner. 

Next, the mountain lion dragged the deer—which weighed at least as much as she did, thirty feet to the base of a small hill. Then she began to eat, stripping fur from its belly and tossing it aside.

The mountain lion ate for about 20 minutes, and then left the deer carcass at the base of the hill. 

Alicia decided to finish her watering some other day.

Curse You, Powdery Mildew

Why, oh why, do my squash plants have powdery mildew?

And what, oh what, do I do about it? 

This is the first crop in my new, improved spiral garden. So needless to say I was very disappointed when I saw my pumpkin, zucchini, and cucumber vines develop powdery white spots. 

What is powdery mildew? The bane of my existence, that’s what it is. (Sorry for the outburst.) Powdery mildew is a fungal disease that starts as a few spores on the leaves, and quickly spreads.

Spores overwinter on bits of a diseased plant, and then begin asexual production. New spores are carried via wind to other parts of the plant or, gulp, to other plants close by. 

Powdery mildew spores never stop producing more spores. If the infected leaves aren’t destroyed, the situation will only become worse.

Why is it so important to get rid of powdery mildew?

Besides being ugly, the mildew eventually causes leaf drop, and stunted growth, as well as distortion and dropping of blooms, buds, fruit, and overall weakness of the plant. 

The weirdest thing I learned about powdery mildew is that it hates water. It thrives in dry conditions with temp between 60 and 80 degrees. It prefers dry, shady conditions with poor air circulation.

How to guard against powdery mildew?

You could just plant powdery mildew resistant plants or you could plant in full sun away from the shade and make sure there is plenty of air circulation in between plants. Make sure to inspect plants daily and remove leaves at the first sign of mildew.

What to do if you get the dreaded powdery mildew?

After swearing, remove infected leaves and stems and destroy. Make sure to destroy the diseased parts and do not compost them (you want to get rid of those prolific spores) 

Remedies?

I have heard that you can make a baking soda spray and use it weekly at the first signs of infection. Supposedly this protects plants against further damage. Of course plants that are badly infected should be pulled out and destroyed to keep powdery mildew from spreading.

I have also heard that, believe it or not, plain hose water can be an effective treatment in preventing and treating powdery mildew. Just spray the foliage of your plants daily with plain hose water. This method works best if your plants are sprayed in the morning so the foliage has a chance to dry out.

I will get back to you with my progress in the fight against this Evil Fungus.

Spiraling Into Control

It was a good idea at the time, my spiral garden. 

I just didn’t want to do the same old boring raised planter boxes. I like the idea of raised beds, and yes, it’s pathetic that I had to hire someone to build this raised spiral bed. 

I did it myself the first time, and it didn’t quite work out. Mostly because of the evil gophers that turned my beautiful curved plot into Swiss cheese—the plants were disappearing fast right before my eyes—I felt like I was playing a game of whack-a-mole with none of the rewards. 

This time I made the spiral bed higher, lined it with gopher wire, and hired people to make it look way better than I ever could.

For some unexplainable reason I have developed tennis elbow, so lifting, pulling, or digging is very agonizing to say the least. BTW the last time I played tennis was 1988. 

So, why plant in raised beds? 

Because walking through your veggie garden compacts your soil, which is bad for your veggie roots. And planting in raised beds is easier on your back, because you don’t have to bend down so far. Raised beds also supposedly yield more produce and extend the planting season.

For me one of the most important reasons for raised beds, is the height of the beds can be a deterrent in keeping my dogs out of the veggie garden.

All good, right? 

The stones that top my veggie beds are flat, so I can sit on their edges. This gives me the opportunity to sit while I work in the garden, and it makes a nice garden bench. 

The stones are dry stacked, so they are not held together by mortar. They other night I sat down in my garden with an iced tea to relax, something I rarely do. I sat down on my new raised bed wall. 

I ended up splayed out on the ground, lying in a puddle of iced-tea-induced mud. 

I opened my eyes to see the two wet noses of Moondoggie and Willie looking down at me from atop my raised beds...Doh! 

Suckers: A lot like teenagers.

 

 
There are at least three suckers on this plant. They are taller than the other stems. They have no flowers buds at the ends and they are a lighter shade of green.

I am not referring to the kind that play roulette, buy lottery tickets —or buy pieces of the Brooklyn Bridge. I’m talking about the suckers that develop on rose plants. 

What are suckers?

Suckers are stems that form on the vigorous rootstock that your roses are budded (or grafted) onto. Since the rootstock is often so much more vigorous than the cultivated rose that piggybacks it, the sucker will soon rob the cultivated rose of it’s food supply.

If that’s not clear enough, look at it this way: Suckers are like teenagers, they grow really tall really fast, they suck all your energy, exhaust your food supply and they don’t produce—My teenage son gave me permission to write that description.

  The leaves on this sucker have six leaflets but they usually have seven.

With the exception of miniature roses, moss roses, and some modern roses, most of the roses in your garden can get suckers. When your rose is planted, the rootstock should be below the dirt level, but if the rose is planted too high or there is some erosion then your rose can sprout suckers. Suckers can also be caused by damage to the rootstock. They usually start out unnoticed and grow so fast that it will seem like they just suddenly appeared.

The suckers are easy to distinguish from the cultivated stems. They have seven leaflets and the stems are usually very thorny. The foliage of the suckers are ribbed and lighter green than the regular foliage. They rarely produce flowers.

Some gardeners say you should twist them off, instead of cutting them. I cut them because I have had so many thorns go through my gloves, and I don’t want owies on my fingers.

I cut as close as I can to the plant.

If you don’t want to twist them off, or cut them off, but you want them gone, simply drive them to the mall and give them a credit card that is almost to it’s limit and a cell phone that’s low on batteries and tell them you’ll be back in a few hours.

I didn’t ask my son’s permission for that one.