first published September 20, 2007

At this time of year, there are really only two types of patio plants growing in my yard: those I will leave outside to perish from a hard frost and those I will rescue by bringing inside before the night temperatures dip too low. This year, the number of plants on my to-rescue list is low. It’s not that my heart is as cold as the frost on the ground; it’s just that I’m running out of space in my home. As fond as I am of bringing the outdoors in, I’m not eager to spend the winter navigating my way through large foliage, like some Cro-Magnon man. Quite frankly, It’s bad enough that I drag my heals in the morning; I don’t need to feel like I’m dragging my knuckles, too. Suffice to say, I’m very selective about what deserves sanctuary.

At the top of my to-save list is my lemon tree…well, it’s not so much my list as it is my daughter’s. She thinks making lemonade from her very own lemons is pure heaven, and I’d prefer that her sour face be the result of drinking tart lemonade than have it be her reaction to seeing her pet tree blasted by a deep-freeze. So even though it isn’t the most handsome of trees and produces only a couple ripe lemons per month, you can bet I have a sunny spot set aside for its winter respite.

Bougainvillea
Another plant I can’t imagine parting with is my bougainvillea. It’s about a metre-and-a-half tall and produces a mass of magenta coloured flowers by midsummer. It’s not the best-looking ornamental during the winter, but once I return it to my sunny deck in the spring, the sunshine breathes life back into it.

A plant that I brought in early is my papyrus grass. My wife loved it so much as a feature container plant that she thought we should repot it and put it in the house for the winter. To be honest, I’m not sure how it will like its new digs. I suspect its stems might become a little soft under the low interior light levels of my home, but I think if I trim out the weak shoots on the grass, it should produce new growth and still be in good shape when I move it back to the deck next spring.

The tricks to growing patio plants indoors aren’t that complicated. First, ensure that your plants are as clean as possible. Insects and mites are expert clandestine stowaways that can wreak havoc once they are in the protected, predator-free environment of your home, so it’s a good idea to douse these unwanted hitchhikers with insecticidal soap before you carry them over the threshold. Quarantining those plants indoors for a few days is also a good idea. The old ‘ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ aphorism definitely applies here.

Secondly, ensure that you have enough well-lit space in your home. If your home is short on sunlight, then your patio plants are destined to be short on life. Good sunlight isn’t an option; it’s a necessity.

Temperature wise, plants are far better grown at the cooler end of their ideal temperature range. So for example, if a plant grows best at 18–24C, keep the room at 18C and the plant in as bright a light as possible. The cooler temperatures will help keep your plants from growing weak and spindly, and you just might save some costs on home heating. The only thing I will caution you on are your expectations: patio plants brought indoors will not perform anywhere near as well as they would outside, but if they (and you) emerge from winter ‘storage’ a bit bruised but still healthy, then you’ve accomplished your goal.

When winter throws you lemons…

I saw the movie Stardust last week. It starred Michelle Pfeiffer as an evil witch who apparently (and I say “apparently” because I dozed off briefly during the beginning of the movie) was determined to capture eternal youth by ripping out the heart of a star, played by the beautiful Clare Danes. Yes, I know, this movie sounds like it could have been a Hollywood documentary but, in fact, it was a fantasy film. What I found particularly interesting about the charming plot wasn’t so much the prospect of Clare being challenged in a cardiovascular sense, rather it was that the hero, played by Charlie Cox, was protected from the powerful witch by a tiny glass flower called snowdrops (Galanthus), an early spring bloomer that is a common fall-planted bulb. Now I’m not suggesting that if you come out and buy snowdrops from us this fall that they will protect you from evil witches at Halloween, but really, can you afford to take the risk?

Hits & Misses
Hit: Simple Pleasures
We had to pause a moment in Coldframe 8 this week to embrace and imbue the scent of the trial garden mums. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day care of greenhouse plants and forget to stop and smell the mums, so to speak…thousands of mums, some with at least 500 fragrant and richly coloured flowers that just seem to burst out of the pots…life just doesn’t get better than that.

Miss: Unreasonable Request
African Violets are an odd mix of tough and temperamental. They can dry down to a point where you wouldn’t think they could possibly recover, and then they just seem to pop back to life once the watering resumes (but don’t try this at home!). On the other hand, African violets are also one of the few plants that suffer irreparable damage to their foliage if droplets of chilled water (5C) sit on their foliage for any length of time—a problem that one of our growers is having to deal with. It seems one particularly finicky variety of African violets has taken a liking to having its water gently warmed for it…shaken, not stirred. It’s a request that’s proven to be a bit grating.

Question of the Week
Dad, are these bugs rare?
My daughter managed to find some really cool bugs in the garden the other night and was asking me if they were rare. Unfortunately, the cool gray-and-black coloured “bugs” she found were far from that—they were female inchworm moths. These wingless moths emerge from cocoons in the ground and then climb up trees to deposit bands of eggs. The following spring, loads of “icky green worms” emerge from the trees, chew the heck out of the leaves and dangle menacingly from threads when disturbed…can’t wait for spring now, can you?

The Business
Official Launch
On September 28th, my family and I have the pleasure of attending the launch of the Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library. It’s an initiative that supports Mom’s vision of providing greater learning opportunities for all Albertans. We are very honoured by the dedication.

Trend Spotting

Gardeners are demanding great colour and interest from their gardens all year long, which is why Bailey Compact maples are more popular than ever. Brilliant-red fall colour; terrific for small yards; Height: 2–3 m.

Did You Know?
Sinistral gardeners are also known as left-handed gardeners.

“When the world wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden.”
–Author Unknown

12 oz. tomato concasse
(coarsely chopped or ground tomatoes)
1 oz. basil, chopped
1 oz. Italian parsley, chopped
2 oz. garlic, chopped, cooked
4 oz. Parmesan cheese
4 large slices basil bread (available at many bakeries)
1/4 cup olive oil
salt & pepper

Saute off the garlic in olive oil. Add tomato, basil and parsley; warm. Remove from heat. Place in bowl. Toss in the Parmesan. Taste for seasoning. Serve on toasted basil bread. Serves 4.

Recipe Courtesy of: Brian Green, c.c.c., Executive Chef de Cuisine, Westin Hotels & Resorts
and Lois Hole’s Tomato Favorites

First published September 13, 2007

I was browsing through the ornamental section of a book called the Encyclopedia of Ornamental Plants and Flowers, and smack-dab in the middle of page 307 was an attractive grass called Hordeum jubatum, a plant described as having arching, feathery, plume-like flower spikes with silky beards. Um…is that so? On the prairies, we call those “feathery, plume-like flower spikes” foxtail barley, and farmers spend a lot of time and money trying to eradicate them from their grain fields. One deep breath later, when the urge to run for my herbicide book subsided, it occurred to me that foxtail barley does indeed possess all those wonderful attributes, and at the top of that interesting list is a split personality that begs the question: what makes a weed a weed?

Kochia

In my own yard, the definition changes depending on the time of year and how ambitious I feel. I have standard weeds like everyone else (dandelions, thistle and quackgrass), but I also grow annuals like kochia, morning glory and bells of Ireland, which are great ornamentals but are also very weed-like in the way they propagate and take over. So depending on how much time I have (or make), I either call the kochia an ornamental and leave it to self-seed a few beds or call it a weed and rip it out to make room for something new. Potato; potahto. Even the national CBC radio program Sounds Like Canada got caught up in the weed debate last week and asked Canadians what they thought were our worst weeds. To my surprise, Kentucky bluegrass—the same grass we cherish for lawns and spend a ton of money growing to perfection—made the Top Seven List. I guess the grass isn’t always just greener on the other side.

If you boil it down to traits, you might be surprised to discover that weeds possess many of the same qualities we prize in people: resilience, toughness, stoicism. But with plants as with people, there is a fine line between resilient and irrepressible, tough and aggressive, stoic and domineering. When an ornamental crosses that line and threatens to dominate the landscape, it becomes classified as a weed. Case in point when purple loosestrife revealed a hidden desire to push native plants out of our wetlands.

That’s all well and good if you’re interested in a rose-by-any-other-name theory, but what if all you want to call anything this year is quits? What kind of price will you pay next spring if you say to heck with it and leave the weeds to battle it out in the garden? Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about it turning into a scenario comparable to the one Alan Weisman depicts in his novel The World Without Us, but you can be sure that the weeds and aggressive ornamentals would waste no time entering a Darwinian battle of survival of the fittest. As interesting as that might be, I’d stick to just reading about a planet that’s allowed to return to its “natural” state, and opt to pull a few weeds this fall instead. Besides, September is one of the best times to deal with dandelions and thistles because they are withdrawing nutrients from their foliage to store in their roots systems. It’s a vulnerable state that makes an application of herbicide highly effective in destroying perennial root systems. As for dealing with aggressive ornamentals like kochia, snipping off the seed heads now will save you the tedious task of pulling out hundreds of seedlings in the spring.

Dictionary definitions aside, a weed seems to be something different to everyone. For me, it comes down to simple math: any plant that requires 10 times more bending effort to remove than it does to plant is a weed in my books. As for the Encyclopedia of Ornamental Plants and Flowers, it gets its say, too. I will admit that one good thing did come to mind when I came across the foxtail barley in that book: perhaps prairie farmers should place ads in the American Horticultural Society’s magazine. I can see it now: “Fresh, Field-Grown Foxtail for Sale. Pick Your Own. Volume Discounts Available!” Just a thought…

Impudence; audacity—gall! My intellectual self tells me that the gall I’ve been dealing with this week is of a different nature, but there are certain times of the year when I’m painfully sure that homonyms are no accident.

I guess I should start by saying that September is the month when the top of my desk takes on a decidedly camouflage look—woodsy, if you prefer…diseased and dying, if you’re into accuracy. Diagnosing customers’ plant problems is nothing new for me, but this week’s batch of samples has left my desk somewhat buried in a sea of gall-covered branches. Still, it’s a nice change from the rotting apples that competed for my workspace last week.

Galls, or bullets, as they are also referred to, can range from small bumps to bizarre-looking, marble-sized growths and are usually found on the leaves and small branches of willows, roses and oaks. And just what is responsible for causing these growths to suddenly show up on trees and shrubs? Gall wasps—600 species of them, to be exact.

Oak rough bulletgall

Home sweet home
If you’ve never noticed gall wasps around your plants, it might be because you didn’t realize what you were looking at. Gall wasps look nothing like the steak-and-burger-eating wasps that buzz our decks during the summer; they look more like tiny, inconspicuous houseflies. But unlike houseflies, gall wasps prefer to build their homes in leaf tissue. And that’s exactly what a gall is—a tiny, one-bedroom home for developing gall wasp larvae. How does a wasp build a home in a leaf? Well, it secretes chemicals that mimic plant growth hormones, of course. These chemical mimics cause the plant tissue to enlarge, thereby creating a protective enclosure in which the immature wasps can grow and mature.

One gall wasp that seems to be a particular problem this year is the oak rough bulletgall wasp. In fact, I’ve seen more samples of it at our garden centre than ever before. It attacks a range of oak trees but is particularly bad on bur oak, which is by far the most prominent species of oak on the prairies. The life cycle of this wasp is fairly simple and representative of most gall wasps. Adult wasps lay eggs in leaf-buds, and by early summer of the following year, the developing larvae cause galls to grow and envelope them. By late summer, the galls grow to a marble size and exude a clear, sticky secretion called honeydew. At this stage of the cycle, you’ll often notice that the gall wasps’ burger-eating cousins often swarm the honeydew-covered galls. Although these intimidating onlookers are of no harm to your trees, the words swarming and wasps don’t provide much comfort when used in the same sentence. The bulletgall wasp’s life cycle is finally completed when a single adult wasp emerges from each gall, mates, and the females once again lay eggs in the leaf-buds.

Control issues
How you control your gall wasps will have a lot to do with the species of tree or shrub you’re dealing with. Roses can be treated fairly easily by simply snipping off the effected branches, but when dealing with trees, a thorough spraying of horticultural oil is required to kill the over-wintering gall wasp eggs. But how does one thoroughly spray a 20-metre oak? It takes some specialized equipment to reach and completely coat the upper branches with oil—a task that often requires a professional arborist. The good news, however, is that the galls don’t seem to cause any long-term damage to most trees and shrubs, so living with the problem is often the simplest solution. It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing option, but you have to admit that gall wasps do create fairly interesting blemishes. Hmm…perhaps if you’re lucky, some pesky squirrels will mistake the galls for acorns and solve the wasp problem for you. Wishful thinking never hurts.

Hits & Misses: Plum luck & second thoughts
Question of the Week: What’s the best way to store my carrots?
The Business: Millennium Seed Bank Project

I was out in Vancouver for a few days last week and took a hike up to the top of Grouse Mountain with a couple of friends of mine. If you have never hiked ‘The Grouse Grind,’ as it is called, I would recommend that you give it a try. It is very popular, and the trail can get quite busy, but the view of the city from atop the tram is well worth it.
Once I reached the summit, I couldn’t help but notice the ‘ornamental’ flowerbed that welcomed hikers to the tram. The mass of plants featured in the bed was Tanacetum vulgare, commonly called tansy, which is weed here in Alberta. Tansy produces many tightly packed, yellow, disk-like flowers on fern-like leaves. It’s quite an attractive flower and is tough as nails, but I found it rather amusing that in Vancouver, which really is the gardening mecca of Canada, tansy would be a featured ornamental plant…but then again, what makes a weed a weed?

Hits & Misses
Hit: Plum Luck
Every last one of the ‘Tecumseh’ plums have mysteriously disappeared from my sister-in-law’s orchard. The orchard just happens to be close to the route I take to my car after work, and for some strange reason, I was under suspicion for absconding with the entire Tecumseh harvest. After I assured her that I hadn’t taken any plums (well…no plums from that particular tree), we concluded that birds must be the culprits. The Tecumseh yields nice, sweet, small fruit—fruit small enough to fit nicely into the beaks of medium sized birds….honestly, it does.

‘Tecumseh’ plums

Miss: Second Thoughts
I love to grow ‘Black Pearl’ ornamental peppers in a pot. This year at my house, we put 3 peppers into a large container and surrounded them with white ageratum, but in retrospect, we need not have bothered. The peppers look better entirely on their own. With their rich, purple foliage and black fruit that turns burgundy by late summer, they don’t require any other plants for supporting roles. But one bit of advice: don’t eat the fruit. I tried one and it was horrible. Gee…I guess that is why the label says ORNAMENTAL pepper.

The Business
Millennium Seed Bank Project
Bob Stadnyk, our perennials manager, just finished his annual trek through the Alberta Rockies, looking to collect seed from rare plants for the Millennium Seed Bank Project (MSBP). The MSBP has a worldwide network for the conservation of seed from wild plant species, and it works together with other seed banks to provide a repository for effective, low-cost insurance against the loss of species from their natural environments. Bob said that, near Banff, he found three spectacular species of cotton grass (Eriophorum spp.) and an iris species, which is very rare in the Rockies. It just goes to show that one doesn’t necessarily need to travel to exotic locations to find the unexpected.

Question of the Week
What’s the best way to store my carrots?
The key to storing carrots is to keep them clean, cold and moist. Carrots with soil still on them often harbour disease organisms that get a free ride to the storage area, so give your carrots a thorough washing. As for where to store them, the crisper in the refrigerator is an obvious choice. For best results, keep the temperature close to 0°C degree and humidity close to 95 percent.

To shorten the amount of time you have store your carrots, leave them in the garden for as long as possible.

Did You Know?
The hairs on stinging nettle weeds are hollow and act like hypodermic needles that deliver enough formic acid to causes blisters on bare and unsuspecting shins.

“The rose speaks of love silently, in a language known only to the heart.”
-Author Unknown

Upcoming
Jim’s Notebook is on hiatus next week as our publishing staff attends the Book Publishers Association of Alberta annual conference. The Notebook will resume September 27th, 2007.

Jim Hole’s gardening segments on CBC Radio Edmonton AM have come to a close for the 2007 growing season. Thanks to all the listeners who tuned in.

Want to know how to kick up the colour in your garden this fall? Take a look at Jim Hole’s Dig It segment on City TV’s Your City.

Prepare 14 (2-cup/500 ml) jars. Place whole tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds or until skins split. Remove tomatoes with a slotted spoon and place in ice-cold water. Slip off skins. Core and dice tomatoes and place in a very large kettle. Using gloves, dice jalapeno peppers. Save seeds from 2 peppers and add to the pot with the peppers. Add all remaining ingredients except water and cornstarch. Bring to a boil and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 10-15 minutes. Dissolve cornstarch in cold water and stir into hot salsa. Simmer for 5 more minutes. Ladle into hot sterilized jars. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Serve with nachos or your favourite Mexican dishes. This is also great over scrambled eggs or on hot dogs.
Yield: 14 pints (2-cup/500 ml) jars

Recipe courtesy of Lois Hole’s Tomato Favorites

first published August 30, 2007

OK, I have to admit there was a time when I thought the term ornamental grass was an oxymoron. A direct result, I’m guessing, of too many summers spent trying to eradicate quack grass from our vegetable fields. But quite a few years have passed since those vegetable-farming days, and I’m happy to report that I’ve undergone a renaissance in my thinking. In fact, this past season, I’ve gone as far as to squeeze out enough space in my yard to plant 12 different varieties of grasses, and I dedicated about half of a coldframe to trialing some others that received good press reports. I know!—you’d almost swear it’s personal growth or something.

Cyperus papyrus ‘King Tut’

So why have I gone from indifferent to enthusiastic? Well, I suspect not having to drive up and down a dusty field on a hot day in an open tractor has a little to do with it, but I credit most of my new-found enthusiasm to two other things: outstanding breeding work and the fact that grasses are so darn resilient. As for which grasses I think are best, I can honestly say there are too many to list in this column. However, at the very least, here are a few that you might want to put on your to-plant list for next year.

Starting with the annual all-stars (yes, annual grasses can be treated just like bedding plants), I would have to place Cyperus papyrus ‘King Tut’ on the winner’s podium. It grows about 6 feet tall and produces a mass of large seed heads that can measure a foot across, making it an excellent centrepiece in a pot. I planted some in my yard and can’t come up with a single complaint—well, except for the fact that I couldn’t get comedian Steve Martin’s “King Tut” song out of my head while I was transplanting it.

‘Prince’ Pennisetum x purpureum is another great annual that I wouldn’t be without. I transplanted a large prince into a flowerbed in early May, and by mid July, it was about 5 feet tall and 6 feet wide. It has gorgeous raspberry-red foliage and has required nothing more than a bit of water now and again. It makes a great feature plant for a large pot but looks equally good in a flowerbed.

If you like annual grasses that are a bit unusual, you might want to try Taiwan grass (Arundo formosana). It has thick bluish-gray stalks and grows about 6 feet tall. The final height depends entirely on how much heat we get during the summer and the length of the growing season. Simply put, the hotter and longer the season, the bigger it gets. There’s a lot to love about this plant, but I’d say its most interesting feature is probably the way the large leaf sheaths envelope the stems.

Arundo formosana

When it comes to perennials, feather reed grasses (Calamagrostis acutiflolia) are tough to beat. The two varieties that I’ve found to be both easy to grow and winter tough are ‘Overdam’ and ‘Karl Foerester.’ Both are clump-forming grasses, meaning they don’t have a weed-like, creeping habit, which is important in any garden. Overdam has variegated foliage with bright-yellow margins that fade to white with a pink blush. The seed heads are sandy brown and persist into the winter, providing year-round beauty. Karl Foerester has solid-green leaves and beautiful tawny seed heads. When I was down in the Okanogan, it seemed that Karl Foerester was being planted everywhere. That alone says a lot about its beauty and drought tolerance.

So there you have it, a very brief but very inspired review of some great ornamental grasses. There’s not much more to say. If you are already an ornamental-grass aficionado, keep experimenting. If you’re not, I strongly encourage you to try at least one variety next year. Who knows…it just might make you want to put ornamental and grass together in the same sentence.