Catch Jim Hole weekly on City Tv’s Your City at 6:30 & 11:00 p.m. as he gives novice gardeners all the tips they’ll need to enjoy gardening this season. View his past segments on City TV’s website www.citytv.com/edmonton/yourcity.aspx

first published April 19, 2007

Gardeners grow plants for a multitude of reasons: beauty, shade, privacy and culinary purposes, to name just a few. Although those are all great reasons, I firmly believe that everyone should save just a tiny bit of space in his or her yard to grow one plant for no reason other than because it’s an odd duck. Urginea maritima is one such plant.

Urginea maritima (otherwise known as ‘Red squill’) is indigenous to the coastal Mediterranean regions of Europe and can thrive in the poorest of soils. Although there’s nothing strange about that, the same can’t be said for other aspects of this plant’s personality. Its life cycle, for example, is rather unusual in that the plant’s leaves and flowers are, by and large, mutually exclusive. In other words, Urginea maritima has the interesting habit of having either leaves or flower stalks—but rarely both at the same time. It’s an odd cycle in which the leaves emerge from the bulbs and die just prior to the emergence of the flower stock, which rockets out of the centre of the basal rosette of leaves. During warm weather, the flower spike grows at an incredible speed of 3 mm an hour, before reaching a mature height of about 1 m. The alternating cycle of vegetative structures followed by reproductive structures (or is it the other way around?) repeats continually until the plant reaches the end of its life, which is only one season in our climate.

It’s what’s inside the counts
Although Urginea maritima is grown for its beautiful “aerial” display, its subterranean parts are no less fascinating. At the base of each plant is a gargantuan bulb—some of which are the size of basketballs!—that is reminiscent of what an onion bulb might look like if it were taking anabolic steroids. Urginea bulbs could easily be described as evolutionary works of art. Not only are they extremely resistant to desiccation (thanks to their layers of dry scales) and able to store large amounts of water, they are also highly unappealing as a food source for animals. Actually, to describe this plant as an unappealing food source, is to understate its inedibility—Urginea maritima is affectionately known as the rat poison plant because it produces a toxin called scilliroside that can be extracted from the bulb and used to—you guessed it—kill rats.

Apparently, rats, unlike other mammals, have an inability to vomit what they don’t find palatable and, therefore, succumb to the poison they ingest. But even though we humans have a pretty good gag reflex, Urginea is not the kind of bulb one would ever want to tempt fate with by giving it a taste! The bulb is purported to be a skin irritant, although I have handled the bulbs quite a few times without the slightest sign of irritation. Nevertheless, I would treat it like I would a Narcissus bulb (which can also irritate skin) and wear gloves—that is, assuming you can even find Urginea bulbs. Bob Stadnyk, our perennials manager, was able to track down only a dozen or so, all of which we planted into containers so that customers wouldn’t have to worry about handling them.

There’s one in every family
If you’re feeling a little uncomfortable with associating this fantastic bulb with rats and poison, you might feel better knowing that the rat poison plant shares lineage with a gentler, more famous cousin: the Easter lily. In fact, just think of a rat poison plant as the Easter lily’s alter ego: bigger, stranger, tougher and a lot less friendly to rodents. I don’t expect that Urginea maritima will become the type of plant people will clamor to buy en mass, but every garden—like every family—needs that one eccentric relative to keep things from becoming boring. In fact, I think not growing at least one strange plant in your yard every year would be a bit like not inviting your crazy cousin to the annual family get-together. Sure, without him or her, it would be a nice, predictable event, but then again, what would everyone talk about the next day?

Maggie Clayton, the author of Create an Impression; Landscaping for Curb Appeal, will be on hand this Saturday, May 5th from 1:00 to 3:00 pm. We are dubbing this book signing “5 Minutes with a Designer.” The idea is akin to the latest trend in dating where busy singles can sit down with a prospective mate and have a mini-date—only in our version curious gardeners can spend five minutes asking Maggie, who is a Professional Landscape Architectural Technologist, questions pertaining to their yards. If you can’t make it Saturday, fear not, we’re offering another session on Saturday May 19th at the same time. Alas, Maggie is happily married, so available singles won’t be able to multi-task and combine their romantic life with their gardening hobby!

Hits & Misses: Mandevilla & condensation
Question of the Week: When should I unwrap my cedars?
Science & Technology: Redemption!

According to a research report in the latest issue of Hortscience, the vote for World’s Hottest Pepper goes to ‘Bhut Jolokia,’ a variety from Assam, India. As you might know, the heat in hot peppers is due to a family of chemicals called capsaicins, and the percentage of capsaicins in peppers is measured in Scoville heat units. To give you an idea of just how hot this pepper is, an orange habanero (one of the hottest pepper varieties) has a Scoville value of 357,729; Bhut Jolokia tops out at an astounding 1,001,304 Scoville heat units!— almost triple the heat. I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to eat a pepper that hot—or worse, inadvertently eating one. Not that I’m particularly proud of this now (although I was at the time), I once tricked a school friend into eating a hot pepper by taking a bite of a sweet one, raving about it and then handing a hot variety to my buddy. One bite later, the poor guy started gasping and coughing, tears running down his cheeks. Mine were wet, too. Ah…youth.

Hits & Misses
Hits: Mandevilla
Two new varieties of mandevilla, ‘Sun Parasol Crimson’ and ‘Sun Parasol White,’ look like surefire winners this year. I love mandevilla and always grow the variety ‘Alice Dupont’ on my back deck because it thrives in the heat and produces a mass of pink flowers all summer long. As great a variety as it is, Alice Dupont needs to vine up half a metre or so before it initiates flowers. The new Parasol series, on the other hand, initiates beautiful flowers very early, providing a quick burst of colour for those of us who are a tad impatient. Yes, that would be me.

Mandevilla Sun Parasol series flowers earlier than other popular varities.

Misses: Condensation
A dripping faucet in the house can be very annoying; a drip in the greenhouse can be devastating. The cloudy, cool weather we’ve been experiencing this past week has caused condensation of water on our greenhouse plastic and wreaked a bit of havoc with a few of our more sensitive plants like rudbeckia. It seems like regardless of how tightly we stretch the plastic across the greenhouse arches, there are always a few ribs or folds where the condensate accumulates and then drips to the floor. Any plants that are unlucky enough to be in the line of fire get continually dripped upon. This isn’t a huge deal, except for those plants that are prone to powdery mildew. Fortunately, only a few plants a year suffer this fate but, still, it’s an annoying problem. The solution?—well, venting as much moisture out of the greenhouse as possible is one option, but better yet is a return to sunny, warm weather.

Question of the Week
When should I unwrap my cedars?
First of all, I’m not a fan of wrapping cedars. The real key to keeping cedars in good shape throughout the winter is to plant them in deep, rich loam, to water them late into the fall and again in the spring, as early as possible. So, if you do have your cedars wrapped, set them free…and get the hose ready if you haven’t already.

Science & Technology
Redemption!
I was watching a nature program the other day about a rare Madagascar orchid called Angraecium sesquipedale that resides high up in the forest canopy. Way back in the late 1800’s, Charles Darwin received a specimen of this orchid and was astounded by the fact that it had a 30-cm-long spur (a tube containing nectar at its base). Darwin postulated that an orchid with a 30-cm-long spur requires a moth with a 30-cm-long proboscis (tongue-like structure) to pollinate the orchid. As reasonable as that may seem, Darwin was ridiculed by his fellow biologists, who thought that a moth with a proboscis a foot long could not possibly exist. Well, over a century later, the moth with the impossibly large tongue was found feeding on the orchid! Its name is Xanthopan morganii praedicta, and its long tongue remains coiled up beneath its head, uncoiling only when it finds its rare orchid treat. Gene Simmons would be so jealous.

Upcoming…
The greenhouse is in full gear this weekend as we host a tour of the Calgary Rose Club. Calgary certainly qualifies as a challenging climate in which to grow roses, but fortunately, the Explorer and Parkland series roses (and many others) are just tough enough to survive Calgary’s erratic freeze/thaw cycles.

Catch Jim Hole weekly on City TV’s Your City on Fridays, starting April 27 at 6:30 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Jim can be heard on CBC Radio’s Wildrose Country every second Friday, beginning April 27th at 1 p.m.

Did You Know?
Ever wondered why vanilla is expensive? It’s because the part that we know as the bean is actually the fruit of an orchid (Vanilla planifolia).

Quote
“Thank God they cannot cut down the clouds!”
–Henry David Thoreau

“Mark reminds us that gardening is a personal experience that teaches us as much about ourselves as it does about the natural world.”

–Jim Hole

Mark Cullen has a new book out based on his personal experiences and features a chapter full of humour and insight for each week of the year. A portion of the proceeds from each book go to the SHARE Agricultural Foundation.

Container gardens don’t have to be small. Jim takes a look at some of the really big containers available this year.
Quicktime
WMV

Growing roses in Canada often means they need to be both beautiful and tough. Jim Hole takes a look at some of the roses being developed in Morden, Manitoba.
Quicktime
WMV

First published April 12, 2007

Sometimes environmental activism is best when sprinkled with a little inactivism—which seems to be the best stance when it comes grasscycling: the practice of leaving grass clippings on the lawn rather than shipping them off to the landfill. On the farm where I grew up, no one ever entertained the idea of bagging grass clippings; we just cut the grass and let nature do the rest. It wasn’t until I visited friends and relatives in the city that I discovered that most push mowers had strange outrigger-like bags that collected clippings that could be sent to the local landfill. At the time, I remember wondering why anyone would waste time collecting this stuff only to throw it out. Why not let the mower just scatter it back on the lawn?

Of course, the answer to those questions spoke as much to insecurities as it did to proper horticultural practices. Clippings look messy, and the last thing any self-respecting homeowners wanted was any of their neighbours thinking of them as slovenly. Besides, even if one wasn’t concerned about being ostracized by the neighborhood grass-clipping police, at the very least, one should be concerned about lawn health, which means bagging up the clippings before they became grass-choking thatch. But are these mess and thatch arguments valid, or are they just attitudes and misinformation that have taken on lives of their own?

Let’s start with the thatch issue. Technically speaking, thatch is the “O horizon” of your soil. O stands for organic, referring to the fact that thatch is dry organic material, and horizon is just another name for layer. I don’t think that O horizon will become part of any homeowner’s lexicon, but it does help us remember that thatch is just partially decomposed plant material and not something foreign. Unfortunately, the myth persists that clippings equals thatch and that all thatch is bad. In reality, a 1 to 2-cm layer of thatch is good for lawns because it helps conserve moisture without interfering with lawn growth. It’s only when thatch becomes excessively thick that it becomes a nuisance, preventing water penetration and slowly choking the grass. Clippings that are comprised entirely of new, soft growth on lawns don’t contribute to thatch build up because they contain very little lignin, the stem tissue that microorganisms have a tough time digesting. Only when the grass grows too tall does lignin become a problem. By mowing reasonably frequently, the lignin-rich stems never rise above mower blade level where they can get cut and become problematic.

Also forgotten in the equation is that soil microorganisms are ultimately responsible for digesting thatch and that they can’t do their job unless the soil environment is conducive to their health. This means they need a deep, rich layer of slightly acidic topsoil to thrive and provide a good home base from which to launch an assault on thatch.

Fertilizers are never a replacement for good quality topsoil but they can help maintain lawn vigor over the years. Never use highly acidic fertilizers like 16-20-0 that can drive the soil pH too low. Sparing use of high quality, slow-release fertilizers are always your best choice.

The mess factor
Although my wife would wholeheartedly disagree, messy clippings are really only a short-term problem. Once the grass dries and works its way into the O horizon, it degrades fairly quickly. However, if the aesthetics really bother you, gather up the clippings and scatter them in your vegetable or perennial garden. They make a great mulch, provided they weren’t treated with weed killer.

If all this information still hasn’t convinced you not to bag your clippings, consider the economics: 1000 kilograms of fresh clippings contains about 7 kilograms of nitrogen, 1 kilogram of phosphate and 5 kilograms of potash. That’s a savings of about 25% on your annual fertilizer costs. Although many would argue that the environmental benefit of leaving grass clippings on your lawn is the most compelling reason of all, I wouldn’t short sell one really important fact: not bagging the lawn appeals to the couch potato inside many of us. At the end of a long, tiring, stinking-hot summer day, that’s as compelling a reason as any.

Hits & Misses: Classic black & word of mouse
Question of the Week: What is the 100-mile diet?
Science & Technology: Lavender lather

I was sitting in our coffee room the other day, and one of our staff members mentioned how much she liked last week’s Notebook. She said (and I quote!), “You have a way with words, Jim.” But, just as I was about to get a swelled head, I realized all too quickly that it wasn’t so much my words that she liked as it was the to-do list that she could turn those words into and give to her husband. For example, because I mentioned last week that it was a good time to water the cedars, there was no wiggle room for her husband to get out of giving their trees a good drink. Apparently, if Jim says it’s time to do something in the garden, it’s time to do it.

So, with no further ado, I would like to formally apologize to all of those spouses and partners out there, who would like nothing more than to relax on the couch for the weekend but can’t because “Jim Hole says” something needs to be done…the jerk. Perhaps you’ll feel better taking solace in the fact that my words often come back to haunt me, too—imagine how hard it is for me to tell my wife that our cedars don’t need watering right now when I was the one who wrote just the opposite in my notes.

Hits & Misses
Hits: Classic Black
I don’t know what it is about black plants, but they sure seem to be a hit this year with our staff. One that has really captured everyone’s attention is the succulent Aeonium zwarzkof. It has a whorl of shinny, black leaves on a short, woody stem; and being that it is a succulent, it is ideally suited to those hot, dry areas of our yards where fussier plants seem to fail.

Aeonium zwarzkof

The black stems on the elephant ears (Olocasia fontanensii) have also caught the eye of the staff, as has the ornamental pepper ‘Black Pearl,’ which not only has purple-black leaves but glossy, black fruit as well. To create a stunning colour combination, combine black plants with yellow-foliage plants like sweet potato vine.

Misses: Word of Mouse
It always amazes me just how quickly information gets around these days, and this last week, I got to feel the full (and somewhat amusing) effects of what happens when information turns out to be misinformation. You see, in last week’s Notebook, I confused the name of one variety of petunia with another. Anyone employed in this industry knows the importance of keeping these varietal names straight, but they also know how easy it is to confuse them. Well, that’s exactly what happened last week—I mistakenly told you about a wonderful variety of petunia called Suncatcher ‘Deep Plum’ that was in fact Suncatcher ‘Plum Vein.’ This mistake might not seem serious, except that Deep Plum isn’t available from the supplier this season. Complicating matters, the news spread by word of mouse that we had unavailable plants, which in turn led another grower to suspect us of being favoured by a supplier…sigh…so, to set the record straight, as much as I would like to tell my ego that I am deservedly fantastic and favoured rather than fallible and forgetful, it’s just not the case—this time.

Question of the Week
What is the 100-mile diet?
It seems like the impact that our lifestyles are having on the environment has come under as increasing amount of scrutiny lately. I suppose then, it should come as no surprise that our diets have found their way into the environmental audit. One small but emerging trend that’s garnering a lot of press is the 100-mile diet. The diet’s premise is that we should try to consume food that is produced within a 100-mile radius of where we live so that we can reduce the environmental costs associated with transporting food long distances.

It sounds like an idea that has a lot of merit—although I must admit I would be a little loathe to give up my bananas and oranges! Fortunately, like all diets, there’s room for cheating, so who knows?—the 100-mile diet could be the next craze! If this trend does gather speed, you might find your neighbours bragging about their front yard of ‘Russet Burbank’ spuds rather than about their manicured lawn of Kentucky bluegrass.

Science & Technology
Lavender Lather
I was reading an article in Scientific American about how some oils in lavender are similar chemically to the primary female hormone, estrogen. Pediatric endocrinologist Clifford Bloch of the University of Colorado diagnosed three boys, aged 4, 7 and 10, with prepubertal gynecomastia (breast growth), which was apparently due to using soaps, skin lotions, shampoos and styling products that contained lavender oil and tea tree oil. Once the boys stopped using the products for several months, the gynecomastia subsided. The condition is rare and it is unknown whether or not the oils have similar effects on prepubescent girls, adolescents or adults. If you want to know about the study, it’s in the February 1 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Did You Know?
Forget the birds and the bees—dandelions can produce viable seed without any pollination at all. Wouldn’t you just know it!

Quotation
“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”
–James Oppenheim

Hits & Misses: Perfect petunias & pestilent peppers
Question of the Week: Why is my ash tree developing long, vertical cracks on its trunk?
Science & Technology: Rain gardens

My sister-in-law and my brother relayed a rather funny story to me about their daughter, Kate, who is attending Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Apparently, she was on her way to a year-end party and, at the last minute, decided that a nice bouquet of flowers would be an appropriate gift to take along. She had time for one quick stop, so she whipped into the local grocery store to check out the flower counter. The clerk said she had some pretty Phaeleonopsis orchids at the back and that they looked great. Kate was a little surprised that the store had cut orchids but said she’d take them. The clerk walked to the back counter, pulled the orchids out of a vase of water and carefully placed them into water picks before securely wrapping them in tissue paper.

Once Kate arrived at her destination and opened the arrangement, she discovered much to her chagrin that the orchids were not Phaeleonopsis—they were polyethylene! The clerk, who obviously had little training, was unaware she was “preserving” the plastic orchids. I won’t say that it’s an easy mistake to make, but I don’t doubt that the clerk was just doing the best she could with what little training she had. On the bright side, one can assume she must have felt pretty good about her efforts—not many people can claim a 100% success rate.

Hits & Misses
Hits: Picture-perfect Petunias
A new staff member who came on board this past week was thrilled to see a new petunia variety (Suncatcher ‘Deep Plum’) that was in full bloom in our greenhouses. Her words were something like, “Wow, you see them in the magazines but you just never think they will look that good in real life!” I guess whether we like it or not, we’re living in the digitally enhanced photography age and have become somewhat used to being disappointed when the real deal doesn’t match its image. It’s nice to see that sometimes the reverse is true.

Misses: Pestilent Peppers
Peter Piper planted a peck of pestilent peppers. How many pestilent peppers did Peter Piper pitch? Well, not quite all of them.
We received a shipment of pepper plugs (seedlings) a few weeks ago, and now they are displaying a beautiful—but deadly—mosaic pattern on their foliage. The mosaic display is not due to some miraculous breeding work but rather to a viral disease that will ultimately destroy the pepper plants. Fortunately, the virus is not contagious, but that seems like only a small condolence when you’re throwing flats of peppers (and hard work) into the garbage.

Question of the Week
Why is my ash tree developing long, vertical cracks on its trunk?
The cracks could be the result of wind damage or even lightning, but most are caused by the freeze-thaw cycle. In late winter, temperatures can rise well above freezing and then plunge well below zero at night, which can damage tree bark and the cambium layer beneath it. From what I have seen over the years, the cracks don’t seem to cause any undue harm. I guess you can think of them as being like the “cracks” that the changing seasons leave on us—they’re just something we have to live with.

Science & Technology
Rain Garden
Recently, I read an issue of the magazine Garden Design that included an article on creating a rain garden. A rain garden is an area of the yard designed to catch rainfall and runoff and to filter the water through the soil—as opposed to letting it fill the sewer systems. Allowing pooled water to drain slowly through the soil helps replenish the water table and prevents silt and crud from entering our waterways. It’s a great, ecologically sound reaction to overly paved and covered landscapes. If you want to try a version in your own yard, be sure to locate the depression away from your home and to plant it attractively with moisture-loving plants, commonly called marginals. Marginal plants are marginal in the sense that they enjoy growing on the margins of ponds, lakes and rivers. Some good ones to try are Ligularia (commonly known as rayflower) and Petasites (commonly known as butterbur).

Ligularia dentata ‘Othello’

Did You Know?
The gorgeous, streaked flower patterns that we love on Rembrandt tulips are actually the result of an infection by a virus that is passed from bulb to bulb during propagation.

Quote
“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.”
–Gertrude Jekyll