The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

They’re Back.

Two years ago I was passing our outdoor porch stairway when I noticed that the storage area underneath’s doors were open.

No, the doors weren’t just slightly ajar; they had been flung wide open from the inside by a bunch of intruders, mushroom intruders!

The fungus invaders disappeared a few weeks later but a couple weeks ago it was deja vu all over again. 

There I was again, minding my own business and walking past our stairs—and there they were again, just sitting there…mocking me.

This time there are more of them.

At first it was interesting and entertaining, but this time they are freaking me out a little. I have thoughts that they are trying to get into my house and that their presence under the outside stairs is just meant to distract me. 

I’m afraid that late at night some time soon I’ll wake up, go into the bathroom, lift the toilet seat and…there they’ll be…

...Ahhhh!

Green Fountain

My friend Jennifer planted her fountain and made this beautiful succulent sculpture.

It is magnificent. Think about it. Here’s a way to save on electricity and water. It’s a green fountain in more ways than one.

I saw something like this a couple of years ago at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. It was my favorite thing there.

Since then I was lucky enough to find my own fountain (for a small sum) to turn into living art.

My fountain scavanged off Craigslist next to my urn

I have tried to use it as a fountain but it leaks and splashes and the pumped get plugged up. Really the only ones that benefit from that fountain are the mosquitoes.

And we all know that they suck. Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself. 

So, this spring, guess what? 

Yep, I’ll be following in Jennifer’s footsteps and filling in the mosquito village with dirt and plants and maybe even an alligator head or two.

 

It all started with the flu.

What used to be my lawn

The day my husband left town, I came down with the flu that I thought I had dodged weeks earlier when my kids had it. But oh no, it lurked in my system until when I needed to be healthy the most.

While the sickness was ravaging my body and my mind, my gardener stopped by to ask me if I wanted him to fertilize my lawn.

I thought at the time that it was kind of a silly question. Of course I want you to fertilize my lawn. It looks bad. It looks like hundreds of dogs have been cavorting on it.

Because they have. 

Now, when my gardener told me he was going to fertilize my lawn I was thinking he would mow it and walk back and forth on my lawn with one of those plastic seed spreader things with the windy handle on the side and some of that plant food pellet stuff in it.

Well then he said he also wanted to reseed my lawn and of course you know what I thought: That ol’ seed-spreader contraption was going to be pulling double-duty with the seeds and the plant food. 

Sure, I’m down with that Antonio, sprinkle away, but right now I need a couple swigs of Nyquil, a Benadryl, and I need to wash it all down with a shot of brandy.

Then he stopped me and told me he really wanted to do it right this year. He wanted to cut my lawn really short, then aerate it, then seed and fertilize it. 

Wow, I thought, that sounds good. “Yeah Antonio, you go and give my lawn the works” and I’ll go feed my head.

“Ma’am, did you want me to sprinkle some dirt on the seeds so the birds don’t eat them?” This was the pivotal moment. All my addled brain could muster was an image of Antonio sprinkling handfuls of dirt from a bag over the seeds he had sprinkled earlier on my lawn. 

So I said “Sure, that sounds fine.” I turned and headed to my house and the long set of stairs to my Nyquil, my Benadryl, and my brandy. 

And fell asleep.

I awoke with a start and noticed the long shadows across the yard. I went to the window to look at my lawn…WTF…My lawn had been replaced with what looked like the LaBrea Tar Pits. 

The view from my window of what used to be my lawn.

I stumbled down my stairs and out my door to my landscaper’s truck, which was backed up onto my lawn dumping its last load of STEER MANURE.

Last I checked, steer manure does not equal dirt. 

Luckily I was there in enough time to stop Antonio from putting Steer manure on the lower lawn. 

My neighbors are now not speaking to us because the odor of steer poop is holding them hostage inside their homes. 

Happy Thanksgiving. 

It will be interesting to see what happens when my house fills up with dogs and it rains.

Poppy Fair Farm

Nurseries are like crack to me.  Throw in some bluegrass music,

cute goats, 

wonderful vending booths with native plants,

great art,

hand made soaps,

specialty plants, home made beauty products and jewelry, beautiful original paintings, and cool crafts then you have Poppy Fair Farm.

 

And Happiness.

My friend Erin, who owns Native Revival Nursery in Aptos, put on her first annual Poppy Fair Farm last Saturday. I went over to be a part of the festivities, and they did not disappoint. There was something for everyone—and their five senses.

The bluegrass music—banjo, mandolin, guitar, and bass fiddle—was particularly good. 

When Erin was asking for information from the lead in the bluegrass band, Jimmy Chickenpants, for the poster, this is what he said: 

"Some people make the mistake of spelling Chickenpants as 2 words. That's just plain wrong"

 

Perfect.

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.

 

Tim the Tomato Salad Recipe: Faster to make than to eat

A friend once said “If it takes longer to make it than it does to eat, it, than I don’t bother to make it.” 

I was talking to my tomato friend Tim, (that’s him with the big nose in the photo) about tomatoes and recipes.

Tim the tomato.

He suggested this very simple salad—one I’ve been making daily, and will probably continue to eat every day until I run out of fresh garden tomatoes:

Ingredients:

Fresh peeled tomatoes, between 2-4 depending on the size (Use whatever you have. They’re all good fresh.)

A quarter cup of goat cheese

1 tablespoon strawberry balsamic vinegar

Coarse salt to taste, (I use about ½ teaspoon)

Directions:

Peel tomatoes and cut into bite-size pieces.

Crumble goat cheese.

Combine all ingredients in bowl.

Eat.

Shortly after I wrote down this recipe, I stabbed Tim, cut him up, skinned him, and ate him with the rest of the above ingredients. That is his nose on the top of the salad.

Tim's nose in the salad.

He was very tasty.

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.”

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.