July 2006

Everybody loves these homemade hypertufa pots, even after they’ve seen the sudden pot death that can result if they’re made too thin (or maybe if the winter’s too severe - who knows?)  Here the bowl-shaped pot second from the left, my favorite of the bunch, suddenly split open last month.  Whatever.  For something that costs about 2 bucks and looks great, I’ll deal with an uncertain lifespan.  As for the other, thicker ones, they’re holding on after 4 years.

And before somebody writes to ask what the hell hypertufa is, it’s a mix of Portland cement, perlite and peatmoss, a formula that produces a reasonable facsimile of the stone troughs traditionally used in rural England for feeding animals - hence they’re often called hypertufa troughs. The real things are scarce, heavy and expensive, thus the appeal of homemade substitutes.  The mixture is pounded inside the walls of a container, like the bucket, cooler and kitty littler container used for most of these, or on the outside of an overturned container, such as the wok top that formed the broken one here. (Click to enlarge.)  I’ve given workshops in making hypertufa and I gotta say it’s one unholy mess.  Somehow, like making mudpies, it’s also a helluva lot of fun.

For plants, I’ve used only succulents like sedums and hens and chicks.  These drainage-demanding plants love the natural porousness of hypertufa and I love the very low watering needs of the succulents, so everybody’s happy as can be.

If there are any hypertufa-makers out there, tell us what plants have worked, how long the pots have survived, and hey, just anything on your mind that’s remotely on point.

{ 9 comments }

This is exactly what my mophead hydrangeas look like right now - minus the flowers.  Knowing that it blooms on the previous year’s buds, I still waited too long last summer to prune these guys because I wanted them on the plant as long as possible, thank you.  They look great for months, you know, so who in their right mind would follow instructions and remove these blooms soon after they emerge?  If you’re looking for a gardener capable of that kind of discipline and self-sacrifice, keep on looking.

So what’s the answer?  Do what I did and risk losing all of next year’s blossoms or prune at the correct time and basically lose this year’s blossoms?  I don’t like those choices so I’m looking for better ones.  And the only one that comes to mind is to plant them where they can grow to their full size in the first place.  Then to keep them vigorous and shapely, remove a third of the stems to the ground each year, either early or late in the season.  It means sacrificing blossoms but only a few, and it’s to maintain good vigor and form, not to force a plant to conform to a too-small space.  Then maybe next year they’ll be perfect.

{ 9 comments }

My Canon Powershot 550 was just 6 months old when I gave it a test run at the beach this week.  Yeah, let’s see how this baby holds up to some sand and salt water.  Just pack it in the beach bag and throw it on the sand. Then it’ll be handy when I want to snap some of the awesome beachscapes and professionally landscaped beach homes.

One big wave later the Canon, this wonder of modern technology, had water dripping out of it, a sight that believe me, you never want to see.  And after I’d given it overnight to dry out, its LED screen displayed a bizarre, crackling sound and light show.  Time to cough up another $375.

THE BIRTH OF A BLOG
So Readers, I can’t show you the masses of daylilies, the sculptural Hollywood junipers, the monstrous grasses and more, all arranged ever-so professionally.  Arrrrgh!  I also can’t show you the sight I first saw exactly a year ago when I visited the same friends in the same ramshackle beach house.  It was the lovely Miz S sitting on the porch hunched over her laptop blogging.   It was a first for me - a real person with a blog - and as soon as I got back home I read the whole thing and enjoyed it so much I said to myself - GARDENING BLOG, HERE I COME.  The very next day Takoma Gardener launched on Blogger and a month later I moved it to Typepad and - well, you know how the story turns out.

Or do you, or does anybody?  This amazing platform - so easy, so visual, so accessible, dynamic and fun - is creating unimaginable opportunities for its users, me included.  Like the chance to write for DC Master Gardeners - for $$.  Like the chance to team up with Amy and Michele, my talented co-conspirators at GardenRant.  There’s no telling what’ll happen next but first and foremost and to steal from our Manifesto, we’re having a hell of a lot of fun.

Epilogue: After a night back in its own home, the Canon decided to forgive and forget and act like its old self again.  Thank you!!  I promise to treat you better from now on. 

{ 6 comments }

Ever seen the "Hippie Gourmet Show" on public TV?  Well, it’s a hoot, with a bandana’d 50-year-old frying rice and describing things as groovy and psychedelic.  He was so on script he used the word hippie once in each segment.  You know, just like we really talked when we were hippies.  And I know whereof I speak becaise I paid my dues, folks.  I wore the bell bottoms, went braless, marched - the whole sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll thing. 

So how about I get myself a gardening show called the"Hippie Gardener", since I’m so clearly qualified for the position? Just imagine the fun I’d have wearing long hippie dresses and putting flowers in my hair.  Yeah, take me back to that look! 

As for programming ideas, everything will be organic, and of course I’ll grow veggies, herbs and marijuana, but what else?  I know you have ideas, either because you lived it yourself or your parents wouldn’t shut up about it - pro or con.

[The photo shows my boyfriend and me in Tangiers in 1969.  Seeing it now, it seems way too adventurous and exotic for me - since gardening turned me into a homebody.]

{ 13 comments }

Greetings from the Herb Garden of the National Arboretum where volunteers John Wheeler (DC Master Gardener of ‘05), Jim Connolly and Jim Thurston (from left) work up a good sweat every Tuesday morning.  (No, they’re not holding hands, but they are very friendly guys.)

The ubiquitous John Wheeler (you last saw him at the National Cathedral) likes to prune and gets plenty of it at the Herb Garden.  Jim Connolly came to volunteer here at the suggestion of his wife, a Virginia Master Gardener, and the skills he picked up over the years working as her Undergardener are put to good use here in the Herb Garden.  Besides, after the couple moved into a townhouse he needed somewhere to garden!  And the first thing he did was to recruit his golfing buddy Jim Thurston to volunteer, too.  And that Jim told me he doesn’t know a weed from a keeper, but is very happy just following instructions.

So I wrote over on the DC Master Gardener News site, where the story goes on to list the considerable benefits of volunteering at the National Arboretum.  But I’m so enamored of these guys I decided to give them a little more exposure, and why not nominate them for the Sexist Men in Gardening Contest going on over at GardenRant?  I’ll be writing later this week about cute young Matt James, the new "fresh face" in gardening, but honestly, I’ll take these sweaty seniors any day.  I’m sure they clean up real nice.

{ 0 comments }

Over on GardenRant I offered my succinct 39 Words on how to garden in the summer and thought I was done with the subject.  But then I remembered HACKING BACK, one of my favorite activities in the garden.  If you’re not familiar with the notion then I bet you haven’t read Tracy DiSabato-Aust’s best-selling Well-Tended Perennial Garden.  No problem; I’m sure they’ll just keep printing the thing until we all have one - and learn to grow healthier and better-looking perennials.

Here’s how it works.  The asters in the foreground of this photo, if left to their own devices, would grow tall enough to be flopping failures as plants; let’s face it.  So I do just what Tracy tells me to do - I hack ‘em back to half their height twice, once in May and once in mid-June.  So they’ll bloom a tad later but they’ll never flop on me.

Just behind the asters you see the Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower just starting to bloom, which I’d hacked back once in May. Tracy says you can either do what I did, hacking back early, or cut off about a foot of the plant while in bud in early July, noting they’ll "recover and flower nicely from mid-August until early October."  Well, in my copy of her book I wrote the decisive marginalia "NO" next to that point, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.  Just goes to show once again that even the smartest of experts can’t predict exactly how plants will behave  in our own gardens.

{ 7 comments }

Okay, so flying this particular flag isn’t exactly a show of independence here in Takoma. Sporting a Bush ‘04 bumper sticker would be more like it, or driving a Hummer.  But the point being that today we can celebrate what’s best about this country in whatever way we want - almost.

{ 1 comment }

That used to be me sitting at the table in the upper right of this photo.  The woman being jostled by photographers is the official Senate court reporter assigned to this hearing, and that’s what I did 3 days a week for most of my adult life.  When Congress wasn’t working - which is a lot of the time, ya know - I’d work in the federal courts or really anywhere a transcript was needed, but the halls of the Senate and House  were where I spent waaay too much time, and I’m happy to report that that chapter of my life is over, finished, kaput.

Kaput?  Yes, unfortunately the company I worked for went belly-up last month, which was a very sad thing for its other employees and I hate to seem callous but personally I just feel FREE AT LAST.  Yeah, instead of taking jobs with other court reporting agencies I’m making the break to get my second career off the ground - in gardening.  Isn’t that the dream, to turn your passion into a career?  Well, I’d never dreamed I could do it but it’s looking awfully promising, thanks to this blog.

This humble blog, you see, resulted in my being offered the 4-month contract I now have to write for and organize the DC Master Gardeners. (I’d written several posts about the program and it turns out the powers that be saw them and liked what they saw.)  And the first thing I did for DC Master Gardeners was to create a website, which also serves as a newsletter, and because I’m being paid to write the site and it uses a blog program, I guess that makes me a professional blogger! Take that, you ignorant blog-bashers.

[click to continue…]

{ 8 comments }