A gorgeous container is just the thing to make your deck or patio the place to be, but with limited soil volume they need special care when watering to make sure they look their best.

Quicktime
WMV

first published May 25, 2006

White rum and whiskey (Jack Daniel’s preferred)…peppermint schnapps and gin (has to be London Dry)… vodka and tequila (gold—nothing but the best)…wine (cabernet sauvignon, French, but not too expensive)…beer (import, of course: Heineken).

Milk, eggs, booze…
While this list could easily be a relic from my bygone university days (hastily scribbled and handed to an old buddy before a liquor run) it is, in fact, the stuff of science. For Dr. Bill Miller, professor of flower bulb and greenhouse crop physiology at Cornell University, these collegiate staples are actually lab supplies. It is not very often that reading the latest research paper makes me laugh, but I assure you Dr. Miller’s goal was a noble one.

The project started with a letter he read in the New York Times gardening section. A reader had heard that feeding gin to paperwhite narcissus, an easy-to-force bulb, “would keep them from growing tall and floppy.” Narcissus has an annoying tendency to stretch with the least little bit of provocation making it a pain for gardeners and growers alike. Was it true that a nip of booze could rein in unruliness?

Just a Social Drink or Two
Dr. Miller and his team set to work investigating the action of alcohol on the growth of paperwhites. Sure enough, the researchers proved (or is that proofed?) that narcissi were stockier if, after rooting in pure water and upon the emergence of a two to five centimetre tall shoot, they were transferred to a solution of approximately 5% ethanol. What’s more, despite these treated plants being a half to two thirds the size of their teetotaler counterparts, flower size, fragrance and longevity weren’t at all adversely affected.

It turns out, however, that paperwhites are somewhat picky about their poison. While Dr. Miller’s group concluded that while the “hard” liquors chosen for their experiment were equally effective in suppressing paperwhite growth, schnapps caused a significantly greater degree of stunting. Beer and wine proved even less palatable to the bulbs, causing dramatic phytotoxicity, not to mention encouraging a boom in the microbial population of the growing medium—both of which turned leaves brown and greatly diminished vigour.

Plant Alcoholics
So how does the alcohol keep paperwhites short and stocky? As of yet, the group isn’t entirely certain. One possibility, they say, is that ethanol is directly toxic to plant cells. Alcohol concentrations greater than 10% resulted not only in severe stunting, but also in extremely short-lived flowers and extensive root damage. The other hypothesis is that the chemical slows growth by a “simple osmotic effect,” causing cells to expel water, making the plants pretty thirsty. Any of this sound familiar? Switch “plant” with the word “brain” or “human” and the line separating the two kingdoms starts to get a little blurry.

With the mechanism of alcohol-induced growth inhibition yet to be fully determined, Dr. Miller’s claim that “additional work will be needed for confirmation” shouldn’t surprise. But given his list of experimental reagents, it’s hard to keep from snickering at this just a bit. It shouldn’t take too long to find the answers, though. I mean, with a lab as well stocked as his, research support shouldn’t be tough to find on a university campus. But something tells me he might have a bit of trouble keeping the lab stocked with supplies. In fact, I’d bet a case of beer on it. Domestic will do.

I am the least positive person at Hole’s, hands down. Sales are up from last year, the recent Mother’s Day and May-Long weekends being the busiest on record, and the crop—because of the combined efforts of the seeders, transplanters, growers, input from management, a mild and unusually cooperative spring, luck and/or the divine influence of a creator of whatever denominational derivation you like—has never been of higher quality. None of this, however, makes me very happy.

At the last Monday Morning Meeting, after we all exchanged congratulatory handshakes and mixed up a batch of mimosas, I wasted no time in tabling my suggestions for improvements for next year. With the unexpectedly brisk pace of Mother’s Day sales, there wasn’t any bacopa left for May-Long. Neither was there any mimulus or cosmos. At the same time, though, I had coldframes packed with bidens, calendula, schizanthus, and carnations, for examples, all of which, despite being of the finest quality, seem to be as unpopular with gardeners as ever. The room went a bit silent after this, the mimosas went flat, and I felt a bit like the dad that returns home unexpectedly to break up the kids’ party.

Regardless of how good a plant might look (to a grower), if we can’t sell it, we shouldn’t carry it. Or at least not as much of it. After all, it’s not the retailer that shapes and structures the market. That’s the job of the brand (which is made easier by the malleability of the consumer; in the discipline of economics, this phenomenon is known, I’m pretty sure, as “suckerism”). It’s the retailer’s job to react to that market, isn’t it? Whatever. It just makes sense that if the masses want bacopa, give them bacopa.

Of course, this year could be an anomaly. Next spring could be cold and wet, people could embrace schizanthus with mob-like fervour, or everyone could decide to skip the gardening season and head to Coney Island to see 28-year-old Takeru “The Tsunami” Kobayashi, speed-eating champ, inhale about four wieners a minute at “Nathan’s Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest.” Any of these would mean that any “improvement” I suggest this year could spell disaster next year. So, what do you do? My feeling is that you assume that no one is ever going to like schizanthus, that the spectacle of speed-eating is too revolting for most, and that every spring’s going to be sunshine and birdsong until the day you die. So, ride hubris like a rocket into a blazing future. Let complaints and criticism be the fire in the engine.

While we’re at it then, the soil has dried my hands so badly my fingertips have split open. Thanks to leaky wands, the skin of my constantly wet feet has gone dead and flaky. That weird rash on my leg refuses to clear up. My hair won’t do what I want it to do. Bring on the future. We’re through with the present here.

Jim Hole’s Notebook
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Welcome to Jim’s Notebook, a regular look at gardening, the greenhouse industry and the hottest new plants and products from the unique perspective of professional grower and bestselling gardening author Jim Hole.

Hits & Misses: Niermbergia & the perfect mix of plants for baskets
Question of the Week: Does Vinegar kill weeds?
Science & Technology: Precocious seed germination
Timelines: Father’s Day tomato plants

May is the start of the weird season. The weirdness that I am referring to
isn’t from the world of the bipeds (the two-legged species); rather it’s the
hexapods and octopods (the six-legged and eight-legged critters) that arise
from their deep winter sleep and manage to find their way to our greenhouses
in bags, boxes, jars, ice cream containers and a myriad of other vessels.
The range of creatures that customers discover in their yards is truly
amazing and provides a summer-long entomological science fair for our staff.
Not all of the strange things that I see arriving at the greenhouses are
bugs. Interesting plants, strange growths and a host of other natural
wonders end up on my desk.

Over the summer I will try to show you some of the weird and amazing things
that customers share with us and provide a little insight into their
existence. This past week I had a customer bring in a truly bizarre tomato
fruit with dozens of seedlings poking through the skin. Read about it in the
Science & Technology section of this notebook and check out it’s image at
http://www.enjoygardening.com/?p=412

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Hits & Misses
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Hits: TO QUICK TO JUGDE
The nierembergia in hanging baskets is reminiscent of Hans Christian
Anderson’s “The Ugly Duckling.” Nierembergia is rather ugly in a bedding
plant flat: thin leaved, spindly and slow to grow. But give it some time and
space and put it into a hanging basket, and it makes this remarkable
transformation into a mass of flowers that obscure the foliage. There are
actually quite a few “ugly duckling” bedding plants whose lives start in a
general sort of malaise but then finish beautifully. When I make the rounds
with the growers on our Monday morning meetings, someone (usually me!) will
say, “Geez those plants are ugly.” In the case of neirembergia, I’ve been too
quick to judge.

Misses: HARMONIOUS BASKETS
It’s always a challenge to put together plants that work well in a hanging
basket. Bedding plants in this situation have to look nice together and
behave compatible growth habits. Occasionally when we’re planting thousands
of hanging baskets, we choose plants that don’t work well together. This was
the case this season with a begonia/lobelia combination. While each of these
plants looks great on their own and together, you have to choose the right
varieties to get just the right look. An upright begonia (any of the
“Non-Stop” Series for instance) looks great with trailing lobelia (the
“Regatta” series is a good one) but substitute a floppier begonia and an
upright bush-type lobelia and you’ve got a combination that looks like the
begonias having a bad hair day.

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Question of the Week
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CAN VINEGAR KILL WEEDS?
Gardeners are always looking for alternatives to “chemical” weed killers and
one that is getting a lot of attention is acetic acid (most of us know it as
vinegar). Does vinegar kill weeds? Well, yes and no. The vinegar that you
buy in your local grocery store is about 5% acetic acid, which is strong
enough to kill some of the smaller annual weeds, however it has little
effect on the tough perennial weeds like thistle and quackgrass. Even a 25%
concentration of acetic acid will only burn off the top growth of these
tough perennial weeds leaving the roots unfazed and able to send up new
shoots to once again cause grief for gardeners.
The other major problem with a 25% concentration of acetic acid is that you
can’t find it in stores. High percentage acetic acid formulations are for
commercial users of the product for example manufacturers of pickles and the
like. Acetic acid concentrations greater than 11% can cause skin burns
including damage to eyes, if not used properly and from what I’ve seen in
the world of gardening, too few people bother to read labels prior to
applying any pesticides. Since concentrated acetic acid kills weeds it is,
without a doubt, a pesticide. If I had some problem weeds to kill I would
stick with glyphosate (Round-Up is one trade name). It’s safer, more
effective and has the proper label with all the information required to
apply the product properly.

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Science & Technology
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IT CAME FROM WITHIN
I had a customer show me a really strange tomato fruit. It could be
described as resembling a pincushion or something out of the movie Alien.
The fruit looked like your average garden-variety tomato except that it had
a half a dozen or so tomato seedlings poking through the skin with a bunch
more pressing against the skin, doing their best to break through. I have
never witnessed this rare phenomena but I have read about it in my plant
physiology book, so I was excited to see it in person for the first time
(it’s surprising what excites you when you get older!). This condition is
called precocious seed germination and the seeds are referred to as
“viviparous mutants.” These mutants can lack a germination inhibiting plant
hormone called abscisic acid (ABA) and sprout as soon as the seed is mature
enough: weird looking, yes, appetizing, no.

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Timelines
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TOMATOES
Father’s Day is fast approaching and believe it or not one of our best
selling gifts is a large tomato plant potted up in a big pot, tomato ring
included. These monsters have already developed blossoms and in some cases
fruit. Many are beefsteak varieties or those that might take a bit longer to
mature. I think guys like them so much because it gives them a chance to
show off big, juicy tomatoes to their friends and crow about their gardening
skills. Besides, it’s hard to go wrong with a nice juicy tomato sandwich.

>From Lois Hole’s Tomato Favourites
When we first started growing tomatoes in our greenhouses to sell at our
farm market, we planted them in old, 5-gallon (23-litre) plastic buckets
collected from various fast-food outlets in the city. One year we even grew
tomatoes inside large, black plastic garbage bags, doubled up, punctured at
the bottom to allow for drainage and filled with soil mix. Most home
gardeners likely prefer a more decorative choice, but this does prove that
almost any kind of container will do the job!

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Online
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You can now read current and past Jim Hole’s Note book online at http://www.enjoygardening.com/?cat=20

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This week at Hole’s
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RECENT ARTICLES:
http://www.enjoygardening.com
WHAT”S NEW:
http://www.holesonline.com/infonew.asp?date=current&year=2006
SPECIALS & DEALS:
http://www.holesonline.com/shoponsale.asp

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In today’s Jim’s Notebook I mentioned a bizarre tomato and I thought I’d post a picture.

Read more about it here…

There are a number of perennials that should be included somewhere in your landscape because, guaranteed, you will have a spot that lends itself to the conditions they prefer. These are the types of perennials that thrive in the leanest and driest of locations—but, beware, as they are not of the touchy-feely kind, either.

Ever touch a Prickly Thrift (Acantholimon sp)? You quickly find this is not the blue-grey dianthus that you may have mistaken it for. Nonetheless, these plants reward graciously with their papery, pink flowers mid to late summer.

Acantholimon ulicinum ssp. purpurescens

Ever backed into a cactus when you were a kid? Get any pointers? The Prickly Pear (Opuntia polyacantha) prefers a bone dry sunny location, where it can display the elegant yellow blossoms during the summer. Native to Alberta and the Peace Country, I have observed white, orange, pink and red clones in the wild. Seek and obtain from your local garden centres. How do you weed these things you ask? Hire someone through the work experience program at your local college, or, some say that Roundup works wonders.

Ever run your hands through ornamental grasses? They add so much to the landscape, but care must be taken when handled, as some cut like paper.

Ever wondered whether Yuccas (native to Arizona), which we use as houseplants here, survive our winters? The answer is no, but there are excellent alternatives. Try the dwarf alpine type, Yucca harrimanae, and its kissin’ cousin, Yucca glauca (native for Montana).

Ever wanted a classy thistle for a dried flower arrangement? Probably many times. Try the ‘Sapphire Blue’ Sea Holly (Eryngium). Large 5 to 8 cm metallic blue flowers fit the bill. These plants have often been sworn at, but I swear they rock!

Confucius says, “Handle with Care, or a blood test is inevitable.”

First published May 18, 2006

One of the reasons that the plant world is so fascinating is that it is filled with flamboyant characters. And when it comes to flamboyancy few plants can top the passion flower vine. Unlike many plants that conceal their reproductive structures, passion flower proudly display them. There aren’t any mixed messages here.

Come Hither
A member of the genus Passiflora (which includes some 300 or so species of tropical to semi-tropical plants), passion flower vine has rich green leaves and coiling tendrils that enable it to climb to several meters in the wild. Although it’s a lovely, attractive vine in its own right, it is the flowers this plant so boldly displays that leave no doubt to its intent. The blooms are best described as outright exhibitionists. In fact, this vine could be the poster plant for botanists attempting to explain plant reproduction. The pollen-bearing anthers, the pollen-receiving stigma and a whole host of other reproductive structures are large and showy and out there for all to see.

The blooms are self-incompatible, meaning that for a passion flower to produce seed it first needs bees or other insects to transfer pollen from the flower of one passion plant to the flower of another passion plant. The very structure of the flower is wide open with easy access to nectar, but the pollen bearing anthers ensure that both the insect and the flower get what they want from this coupling. The anthers point downward to rub the backs of bees as the bees seek out nectar, coating the unsuspecting insects with pollen, which is carried on to the next flower partner that the bee engages and deposited on the pollen-receiving stigma.

“Lavender Lady”

Knowing, in the Biblical Sense
One might conclude that the name passion flower was inspired by someone observing its shameless floral display, which is true, but it’s not the kind of passion you might think. It was a biblical rather than a romantic interpretation of its flowers that lead to its naming.

The origin of the name is derived from the word passus meaning “suffering.” The reason for the strange connection between this ostentatious flower and pain is courtesy of some early Spanish missionaries who saw the various structures of the flower symbolic of the suffering of Christ. For example, the 72 filaments of the flower represented the number of thorns in Christ’s tortuous crown and the three knobbed stigmas were thought to represent nails.

Passion on the Prairies
If passion flower vine has tickled your fancy, look for the one species that performs well in our prairie summer climate: Passiflora caerulea. I grew the varieties “Lavender Lady” and “Blue” last year and both withstood October temperatures as low as -10˚C without damage to the foliage, although the blooms were long gone by this time. They don’t require a lot of fertilizer and only a moderate amount of water, and I had success growing mine in a spot with sun from morning until about two o’clock in the afternoon.

The word that usually pops out of novice gardener’s mouths when they see the passion flower for the first time is ‘wow,’ but once you understand the anatomy behind the flamboyancy of this flower, you just might just look at it in a whole new light.

Watering is the most important job in the garden, but it doesn’t need to be complicated. Here are a few hints on watering more efficiently to help you enjoy gardening!

Quicktime
WMV

Hits & Misses: Mother’s Day and determined vines
Question of the Week: Eliminating aluminum
Science & Technology: Reflective mulches
Tomato Tales & Tidbits: Virus protection

REEFER MADNESS
There is a particularly cruel brand of irony at work when trees and shrubs shipped to us by tractor trailers that have climate controls to protect the plants arrive frost damaged by the rig’s refrigeration units. The good news is that the long-term impact on the plant’s health is zero. The down side is that frozen flowers don’t really appeal to any customers that I know. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen often, and when it does, it’s only the plants close to the reefer that are damaged.

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Hits and Misses
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HITS
The hit this past Mother’s day weekend has to be the proud expressions on customer’s faces as they haul out thoughtful purchases of beautiful hanging baskets, pots and colourful bouquets.

MISSES
Vining plants like mandevilla, thunbergia, passion flower and morning glory are some of the most spectacular plants that we grow but damn if they aren’t also the biggest pain in the rear end. It is not their lack of performance that is the problem; it’s their great performance that causes us grief. They wrap around greenhouse posts, wires, irrigation tubes and, worst of all, one another. So when you lift one pot of these avaricious pains in the neck, it drags a bunch of its buddies with it, forcing you to try to unravel them without causing a lot of damage. The temptation by growers is to circumvent this problem by choosing less aggressive vines, but this just shifts the problem to the customers who end up buying vines that lack the very vigor that they wanted. So, what’s the answer for any good grower? Just grin and bear it!

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Question of the Week
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ELIMINATING ALUMINUM
We had one customer concerned about using a product that contained aluminum sulphate for adjusting the pH of her garden soil. She had already eliminated aluminum utensils and deodorants that contained aluminum, I’m guessing because of the link between aluminum and human health. However, what she likely didn’t want to hear was that, world wide, the most common metal in soils is… aluminum and that aluminum is toxic to a wide range of plants. In fact, the only reason that we don’t see more lunar-like landscapes on earth is because the aluminum is unavailable to plants at slightly acidic to higher pH values. It is only when the soils are very acidic that the aluminum becomes soluble and potentially damaging to plants.

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Science & Technology
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REFLECTIVE MULCHES
I was reading some research on the use of shiny synthetic fabrics that are laid on the ground in apple orchards to reflect more light into a tree’s canopy. The more light the trees receive the greater the fruit production. It takes about 50 healthy tree leaves to produce one medium-sized apple, and during cloudy days, leaves are working far below their potential. Reflective “mulches” provide that extra bit of light energy that keep the apple fruit chugging along particularly when the days are overcast. When you think about it, grasses that surround apple trees rob apples of sunlight that could be used for fruit production. It makes you think of grass clippings as stored sunlight…sunlight that would be far better stored in an apple pie.

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Timelines
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VIRUS ISSUES
This week, I noticed that one plant of the trial tomatoes appears to have a seed-borne virus. There isn’t a practical control for viruses so the tomato will be composted. Viruses are tricky diseases; they have the ability to commandeer a plant’s genes, forcing it to produce copies of the viral disease. There is no cure, but fortunately, we always have three or four other plants of the same variety to cover situations like this.

Tomato Favorite tidbit…from Lois Hole’s Tomato Favorites
“Topping indeterminate tomatoes in late summer promotes ripening of fruit but removing leaves from plants can inhibit ripening. Tomatoes ripen faster with foliage left intact and are also protected from sun-scald.”

INSECT IMMIGRATION POLICIES
We tend to get a lot of questions about ant control in yards. With our climate becoming increasingly drier, ant problems seem to be getting increasingly worse. In the southern U.S., they seem to have a good but macabre solution to a problem relating to fire ants. They introduced a pinhead-sized fly from South America that is referred to as a ‘parasitoid’ of fire ants. The fly’s name is the ‘decapitating phorid fly.’ Apparently, this particular species of fly lays an egg in a fire ant. As the hatching maggot tunnels through the ant’s head, it consumes the ant’s brain, which results in the ant’s head unceremoniously falling off. I know that a lot of gardeners would love to have the phorid fly up here to control the local ant population, but that is a highly unlikely scenario considering the adaptability of the fly to our climate and our exotic-species importation regulations. However, if it does manage to negotiate all these obstacles, I’ll be sure to give you the heads up.

What would happen if you turned work into an enormous game of musical chairs? What if Bill Hole started broadcasting, say, Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries over the paging system and we all dropped what we were doing and started moving from one department to the next. Once the music stops, where you are is where you work, whether you’re a florist at the cash till, a nursery salesperson who has stumbled into accounting, or an unlikely gardener that’s arrived at CBC Radio to cover Jim Hole’s call-in show. What would result? All the peace, love and understanding that supposedly comes of lacing on another’s shoes, or the end of Hole’s Greenhouses as we know it?

Recently, I did end up out of my element. Rather than a bout of Bill’s symphonic whimsy, though, it was Production Manager Dot that dispatched me, on a cold and rainy Friday morning, to the transplant line. You can run flats, she said, while Bobbi, who usually runs, can get caught up on paperwork. Bored to death by entering numbers of flats into a plant ledger confusingly devised by “someone in the office,” Bobbi reluctantly accepted my help.

So, for the next six hours I transported flats of brand new plants to coldframes and greenhouses. Here’s how it worked. While I waited at the end of the line, the transplant girls, amidst happy chatter, would stick infant plants into trays of six-packs brimming with fresh soil. After each flat had passed under the watering system I’d put them on a cart, which, once full, I then ferried off to wherever I was told. In between flats, I’d bug Bobbi, sitting nearby with her ledger, with inane comments like “Am I doing this right?” or “I’m hungry!” or, my favourite, “I don’t think I can stand this much longer.”

Actually, the job wasn’t that bad, apart from being numbingly repetitive and incredibly laborious. Over the course of any given day, Bobbi and her partners (one of whom I was filling in for) move as many as a couple thousand flats. While this job swap reminded me of how good I have it as a grower, it also taught me how bad our runners have it. My question is, what about everybody else who doesn’t get to be a grower? What must life be like punching numbers at the till? Or preparing soil in the cold dark recesses of the warehouse? Or in publishing where editors struggle to make sense of my ramblings? Such hardship. Such pain. Perhaps one day, Wagner will allow them a glimpse of a life at Hole’s filled with privilege and pleasure they never thought possible.

Or, capricious as he is, he will deliver them to transplant to run flats.