Master Gardener Monday – week 7: Cut to the chase, prune to the collar

I have a dear friend, colleague, and Red Bird co-conspirator, Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works.  She regularly employs metaphors to help people (and she’s a Canna, according to This Garden is Illegal’s quiz).  I take inspiration from her. 

I was out in the garden immediately following this week’s Master Gardener certification class. It was a “big” weekend. I pruned trees and shrubs with a heart filled with zest (new knowledge), compassion (for my plants and my previous mistakes) and motherly concern (did I prune correctly this time?). I looked over each plant, (yes, talking out loud because it helps) channelling the voice, silly jokes, and crazy hand motions of this week’s MG instructor, horticulture teacher, pruner extradionaire, Bob Nelson. I felt part artist and part surgeon pouring care over these pups of mine. The wonders of nature’s effects set in along with the application of the “pruning metaphor” in life.  

It has been confirmed, after this week’s teachings, that the various owners of this property, including my Beloved and me, have screwed up the pruning of the flowering cherry out front. (For the purposes of this post, pruning is defined as selective removal of plant parts; maintenance and appropriate care for the life and health of the plant.) The tree stays because Beloved’s mom planted it 30+ years ago, so no “one cut prune” here for sentimental reasons. It looks like heck; it has since I met my Beloved 7 years ago.  

hope for her yet

I have rallied – I have info (and hope) as to what’s going on with the tree and why/how we need to “work with” her.  Happy with the education I received: teachings of the what and then the why/how = big picture appreciation and then the motivation (and empowerment) to act responsibly – sustainably.  

For the record, we (the collective) have made the rookie pruning mistakes:  

whoops 1:  habitually pruned hard in the dormant period which got us (and the tree) a heck of a lot of vigorous upright growth with little spring bloom (picture your hair on end with static electricity), 

whoops 2: we cut the “water sprouts” rather than waiting to “pop” them out once they reached for 2 – 4″ growth (so we now have double the emergence of water sprouts x 7 years because we stimulated the buds with our cuts each year, each cut),

whoops 3:  left nubs where we (and others) didn’t cut to the collar nor follow the mirror image of the bark protection ridge,

nubs, stubs, shoots

whoops 4:  topping (my stomach turns as I type this word) done by previous owners, 

and, drum roll please,

whoops 5: wound treatment to “make the tree feel better and heal”. Those before us didn’t know that more and more research shows that wound treatment actually traps moisture in which leads to disease problems and stymies the tree’s natural branch protection boundary (chemicals to deal with a cut).  A Bob Nelson-ism for you:  

Plants are generating systems – they don’t heal. Animals are re-generating systems, so when we have a wound and treat it, we heal. Plants don’t heal, they respond. 

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And now for the metaphor:  

This activity & education has me thinking about how pruning parallels life – if we understood what was going on with our bodies, then we would know why/how to take care of (prune out) that which we needed to in order to sustain ourselves, our growth – so that we might act responsibly for and about our lives and our health. 

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I love gardening in the parallels -  between plant health and my health and lessons contained therein:  I left a couple of trees and shrubs because after the class I was reassured to wait for the right season. I trained some plants instead of pruning them – for life and strength. I cut to the collar on a few so that the right growth might happen. I dealt with codominant stems – competing vertical upright growth – and determined which was most appropriate for life and cut the other away.  Train, care, maintain — good rules to prune (live) by. 

As a “healing garden” advocate I’m down with the research that informs landscape design. Yet as a fellow gardener, your neighbor, a person, a spirit, I really “know” what gardening does for me — how it helps me, how it supports me, how I “heal” and grow from mistakes, how I restore.

Sometimes we make mistakes – in life &  in the garden – I don’t let this “possibility” stop me or keep me from trying new things in either realm. My garden is the best place to practice life, care, maintenance.  Spring and summer plant responses will provide me “feedback” of my pruning treatment and I patiently wait to learn more. 

Wanna learn more about pruning too?  Find Bob and other great garden allies at Clackamas Community College (the only PLANET accredited program in Oregon)- they have a great spring line up of short courses.  

Master Gardener Monday – week 5: Berry, berry good

How attached are you to food that grows well in your “native” landscape? (I use “native” as in your “native” land – where you say you are really from.) Here in the wondrous Willamette (rhymes with dammit) Valley, we are blessed with pretty much the “stick in the ground, keep it wet, it’ll sprout” soil (all relative to organic care, of course).  

I am deeply attached to local produce that my “native” land produces. In 1993, close friends threw me a “moving to west Texas (why?) party”.  Lisa, mixed berry pie master, made a pie I will never forget; so good (read: magical) that it was all too clear during a very short stint in a “foreign” land (with no berries), that I knew to return home asap… if only to have direct growing and picking access to Oregon berries.   

Of all the berries, which is your favorite?  Blue, Rasp, Straw, or Grape?  (Okay, I know that grape may not be considered a “berry”, but go with it.)  I love ‘em all, and am, admittedly, a little over the top crazy about Oregon berries.  (The only food I cared about for my wedding reception. Thank you cousin Mary Ann Z.)

Oregon Berry Admiration - go on & have some!

How lucky for me that Bernadine Strik, leading researcher who conducts extension educational programs for the Oregon commercial berry crop industries (training for small nursery growers), presented in MG incubator this week.  

The biggest-ever berry pie of information was served. Yum.  Ms. Bernadine is the author of a bounty of berry pubs for the home gardener. Yeah!  Thankfully a resource so that we might do better, live better, eat better via our home gardens — these pubs will help you know, select, prep, care and harvest. Berry, berry goodness for all to devour as we look forward to spring and summer and gardens that sustain us:

Blueberries – Growing Blueberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Raspberries – Growing Raspberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Strawberries – Growing Strawberries in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, March 2008]

Grapes – Growing Grapes in Your Home Garden [B.C. Strik, June 2006]

Need help sorting through? Berry confused? Desire the ability to forage in your backyard? Contact me, tweet me on twitter and we’ll find the right plant / right place for your garden, ’cause ya know I want you to thrive (& have loads of berry pie).

Master Gardener Monday – week 3: What’s in your house?

“Eco” = house

“logy” = study of

Ecology is the study of environment and relations of organisms to each other and their surroundings.

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As a restorative / healing garden designer, I receive deep  joy as I help homeowners and residents restore, maintain, enhance their emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being — their house, I suppose you might say. The MG course allows me to provide information that fortifies the physical house of clients’ gardens. I care deeply for my clients’ well-being as well as the cause and effect of my design service on my clients’ respective communities.  So this week’s MG class was right on time. 

Organic Management Techniques:  ”restore, maintain, enhance ecological harmony”. 

For what we do and how we “care” for our gardens does not end at the property lines nor the edge of garden beds. Potions and lotions leach, blow, move, carry, spread. Wrong plant, wrong place invites trouble.  No soul to your soil means no life to your landscape. Now, may seem obvious to you - ’cause we all want harmony, right? - but check this out.

Despite the news of the National Gardening Association conducted the Environmental Lawn & Garden Survey which found that 

• 5% of America’s 90 million households gardened using exclusively organic management techniques;
• an additional 31% reported to be hybrid gardeners (practicing some sort of organic management approach);
• and numbers of both were expected to double in coming years,

we have this:

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 100 million pounds of active ingredient from herbicides, insecticides, miticides, and fungicides were applied in homes and gardens in the United States in 2001. Of that, homeowners used 13 percent of total herbicides, 16 percent of total insecticides and miticides, and 16 percent of total fungicides…  Applications of pesticides by professional applicators (e.g. commercial lawn services) are not included in the numbers outlined above and if included would, no doubt, raise these numbers significantly.

How is this stuff stored, applied, used, disposed of in your house?  

No, not rant on never using chemicals in the landscape. Rather learn to manage your house’s health, with an eye (body, brain, respiratory system,… you get it) to our collective well-being through the principles of Integrative Pest Management, baby.  Simply, a wake up call to express compassion for the collective house.

 

Master Gardener Monday – week 2: What’s buzzin’ in your garden?

Okay, I think there is something suspicious going on here… Week 1 of Master Gardener (MG) training, we met Chip Bubl.  Week 2, we are ed-u-ma-cated  in “garden pests and not-so garden pests” (basic entomology) with insect expert/inspec-tor Jean Natter.  Then we roll around in Soils, Compost and Fertilizers with “Dr. Dirt” Claudia Groth.

Come on… In my MG initiation, will I experience a metamorphosis into some sort of plant-landscape-gardening name?  Nah, but a nickname might be nice.  

Mrs. Natter insects: What's buzzin' in your garden?

Our time spent buzzing around entomology-land with Ms. Natter provided this:  in our Portland Metro area, less than 1% of insects are considered serious pests. So hold your fire with those various chemical potions & lotions.  Let’s talk management techniques people.  

First: right plant, right place, right care (that’s why the service of landscape designers is so valuable – we help you with the “nature puzzle”.)

Second: not all bugs are bad (some are needed and quite necessary); not all bees are bees (some are flies that look like bees); and a “grub”, well that’s a teenager beetle. 

Third: Insects are important to life and thrive-ability of your garden; they are critical to your enjoyment, satisfaction and health. Yep. 

Lastly:  Insects are kinda interesting, once you get over the gag reflex and all. 

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Flummoxed by a perceived intruder? Don’t know what has taken up residence in your garden nor what type of neighbor that six- or eight-legged creature may be? Ms. Natter says, ” a lot of plant/pest problems lie in the root systems,” and really, spiders don’t hurt plants, though the rolling of leaves does annoy at times, I know.  

Understanding insect life cycles, anatomy, classification and the common orders of insects helps MGs diagnosis your problems so that we can help you know when and what is the best intervention for management. If you’ve got a bug that’s bugging you, capture it (alive, please), contain it (and any associated plant material it may have been eating or living on) and bring it into your local MG extension office. Resources likely consulted in the MG insect CSI work:  Insects (a Peterson Field Guide) & Pacific Northwest Insect Management Handbook, among others. If you want to get all buggy with Ms Natter, you can have a live listen at a MG talk or seminar. She brings her bugs with.

Master Gardener Monday #1: Plant-based solutions for social problems

Sustainable Gardening: Oregon-Washington Master Gardener Handbook

Was a pleasure to be greeted by similarly-minded, pink-vested, recycling devoted, deliriously happy Clackamas County chapter Master Gardeners – all buzzing around like happy, little bees, welcoming the “new-bees”.   

Given the (over) abundance of info shared (note the girth of the Sustainable Gardening binder received on week 1), five factoids that may tickle your fancy:

1. There are 3000+ Master Gardeners (MG) in Oregon.  This best kept, grassroots (oh, pardon the pun) secret provides over 31,000 volunteer hours on behalf of the Oregon State University Extension Service.  The result is enough volunteer man/woman power to equal what 15 full time employees would do for OSU. This is a well-oiled, massive, complex, outrageously helpful outreach machine. 

2.  More than one-third of all Oregonians seek advice/help from the OSU Extension Service. 

3.  The MG course is not some “grow better tomatoes” info-session (though I do anticipate learning about tomatoes). And more on the tie between tomatoes, civility, social relationships and our food shed in a later post.

4. MG program’s mission: help us greenies (again, can help but pun) fulfill a critical role on the education delivery train: understand, digest, apply, teach, find & share the current research coming out of OSU (accredited land-grant university) related to gardens, plant/people relations, ecology and health.

5. The origin of “green thumb”, shared by Chip Bubl: pinching off plants (at right place, right time) to spark growth. Consider me pinched. 

How lovely to plunge into a huge pool of information, surrounded by passionate people, chanting the same mantra: promote plant-based solutions for social problems.  Gardens (when designed sensitively) are practical and purposeful in affecting change.  Gardens grow hope, offer social support, positive distractions. When times (or food sources) are uncertain, change comes fast, and stress is high, gardens offer a sense of control – curtsey to the great minds in therapeutic garden design research and supportive design theory.  

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Promoting wellness and enhancing life through gardens, large and small, is an exciting job. 

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Week 2 – what they didn’t teach you in landscape architecture school: basic botany, entomology, soils and compost – yah, all that and a bag of chips in one eight hour day.

Master Gardener Monday, a prelude

 

my garden feeds me

Like many, long have I wished to spread my wings where gardening acumen was concerned. To move from designing space to being informed about the spaces I design (Ode to Thomas Church’s Gardens Are For People). What landscape architect / designer / artist wouldn’t, right? And who doesn’t love school? So, continuing with the Red Bird Design (RBD) 2009 theme (Hope Springs Eternal = HSE), I made a deliberate attempt to figure out  how, where, and most importantly, when. Thus OSU Home Horticulture Extension program:  Metro Master Gardener Program. Hip, hip hooray – I was accepted!  Jazzed about receiving that Sustainable Gardening Handbook too!  Imagine what this will do for my own “restorative landscape”, for the micro-climate of my immediate community, and for my Red Bird Design clients? Imagine what this will do in my conversations with landscape contractors! Move over bacon.   

Desperately seeking master gardening enlightenment? You are in luck, OSU offers a variety of choices to grow in gardening know-how. And yep, they hold true to research evidenced from therapeutic gardens - we need choices; we crave choice in our natural and built environments – for empowerment and a sense of control. For me, I selected the Metro program given most RBD clients take me to the tri-country areas (not all – shout out to Yamhill and Marion County folks). However, other options are abundant. Interested enthusiasts might check out the Salem area (Marion County) resource. Or perhaps you’ve got a day job and need this fancy pants option of “virtual learning” (new online program, talk with Terron.  He’s nice.). 

Best of all, I dig the “give back” component:  service back to the community in the form of a 66-hour internship.  Helping the peoples – yah, always the social servant. 

Class begins on Friday, so look for Master Gardener Mondays on the RBD blog – I’ll share the nitty gritty, down-in-the-dirt tidbits with you.  (Subscribe to this blog through the little RSS feed at the top of the window. If you are a blog newbie, similar to moi, I promise it doesn’t hurt.)

Here comes a lean, green, compassionate, gardening machine.  Reap what you sow, you dig?