WHAT GOES AROUND...

Just a warning to readers this is a fairly long entry.  But if you love container plants, especially succulents as much as I do you'll want to read on and maybe learn from my pitiful karmic lesson:

At the end of the summer I went on a spider eradication campaign with my beloved succulent containers.  Everything that had been displayed proudly on the back deck had to be de-spidered…

Now before go accusing me of being some sort of prissy irrational novice gardener, please take a moment to think about where I’m coming from.  I am all for using natural repellents for harmful pests.  And I understand that spiders are more helpful than harmful to the tiny habitat known as my back deck. 

But this summer I was an avid watcher of the Showtime program Nurse Jackie and in one of the last episodes of the season a patient came into the ER with what he thought was a cockroach in his ear.
A nurse shined a light in the ear to draw the roach out.  I knew this was why he used the light because I actually know someone who once got a beetle stuck in his ear and the thing was drawn out by light. But on Nurse Jackie the little critter didn’t come out.  That’s because it wasn’t a roach, it was a spider, so they had to flush it out with a syringe of water.  And of course the damn spider bit the guy a couple of times as they tried to get it out. That night I slept with wads of toilet paper jammed in my ears.


Thoughts of that episode resurfaced later in the summer when I realized that I’d have to bring all the succulents from outside inside for the winter and the best place to keep them would be in the upstairs loft, right outside my bedroom.


I’ll admit my plans were a bit frantic but I thought they were well thought out considering the scale of my task.  Spider webs were woven over almost every fleshy leaf (and they actually looked kind of pretty when shining in the sun outside.)

I talked to my co-workers at Mainline Gardens about my dilemma.  I told them I didn’t want to let the plants die outside in the cold, I didn’t want to kill the spiders if I didn’t have to, and if I had to I wanted to use something that would be harmless to the plants. My best bet turned out to involve making the spiders supremely uncomfortable so they’d eventually leave. But some spiders would have to die in the process.  This option involved using Diatomaceous Earth and letting the containers sit in the garage for about a week before bringing them inside. 


Right away some spiders came out when I swept out the webs.  Others emerged as I sprinkled the powdery Diat. Earth around.  Apparently the flour-like substance is made of minute diatoms, eggshells and ground up crustaceans that are jagged and cut the legs of insects as well as their poor insides when they breathe it in.  I felt like a horrible kid throwing salt on slugs, but the Diat. Earth is supposed to be good for plants by serving as a kind of fertilizer. Well the Diat. Earth did the trick, along with the transition week inside the garage.  By the time I moved the pots up to the loft I’d seen about six spiders crawl away from their ruined homes. My process worked very very well.  Too well.


I realize now that I was so clouded by my arachnophobia that I didn’t look at all the angles.  I failed to consider the other critters that lurk in and around plants, especially the tiny harmful ones.  The ones spiders help keep at bay.  Critters like aphids.

About 3 weeks after bringing the plants inside I noticed the little white casings and black dots collecting in the beautiful florets of my desert rose.  There were too many to scrape off so I instinctively reached for the stuff I use for aphids on regular houseplants, horticultural oil.

It worked on the aphids but no one ever told me that the skins of most succulents take differently to certain substances than other leafy plants.  So I actually made the situation worse by trying to fix it.  The oil essentially burned the leaves, so they slowly turned brown and started to fall away.

Now I have to replant, move things around and pray that most of the damage is salvageable. 

This is where irrational fear and naiveté will get you in life, stripped bare and burned.  If only I had just toughened up and invested in some earplugs for bedtime…

Succulent Love

Succulents are my obsession these days.  Especially since the weather has gotten cooler and the outdoor flower beds are as full as can be.  I love succulents because they have not always loved me in return.  For over a year I had about four cactuses and one jade on a windowsill in my Brooklyn apartment.  I bought the cacti because they looked like they would grow tall (they were kind of phallic shaped) and I didn't want my adopted cat to jump on the windowsill.  She somehow managed to snake her way around them and jump up there anyway but I kept the cacti regardless.  Miss kitty has since gone on to new foster parents (too much reckless urination.)

I quickly found that the jade and cacti were easy to keep alive but it was not easy to get them to grow.  No matter how often or how little I watered them they stayed the same size.

Eventually I moved back home to Pennsylvania and put them on the windowsill in my bedroom.  The change of atmospere and sun must have been too jarring and most of them died off accept the jade and a smaller cactus.  But since I started paying more attention to gardening I think the succulents picked up on my new found respect for plants.  The jade has taken on a deeper green and begun growing in a spiral according to the direction of the sun and the small cactus is growing new limbs. 

New succulents like the ones in the picture have come into my life as well.  Over the summer I became inspired by "found" objects like an old yellow watering can, strawberry pots and old bonsai pots. The possibilities seem endless now.  Some of my succulents grow so fast I can't keep up with new plantings.  The red strawberry pot above has become overrun with those pearl shaped succulents since I took the picture and I've had to do new plantings with them.  I think I may even start selling the pots I make.  I'd just have to work out a strategy for getting new pots and making sure the plants have time to take root.  Maybe I'll post samples someday soon!

Slug Shots: Cell phone pics and gardening tricks

In late May I planted salvia, marigolds and a red flower that's supposed to attract butterflies.  Red is supposed to be a color of abundance and it turned out that I got an abundance of slugs.

As the leaves were slowly eaten up the brilliant red drained away and everything slowly fell apart.

This is how they looked within two weeks.  I wanted to stop the slugs but I couldn't bring myself to kill them the old fashioned way i.e. salt.  Sure I was the cruel kid who was fascinated by the physical reaction of spiders drenched in Windex and salty shriveled slugs on the hot driveway.  But I'm an adult now.  If I'm going to kill a living creature I want it to look as unagonizing as possible.  So I stood out in the driveway next to my shriveled plants, tin foil in one hand and full-bodied beer in the other.  I popped the cap, took a drink then folded the foil into a bowl shape and poured a third of the bottle inside.  I set my make-shift slug trap in the mulch by the flowers and actually watched one slug make a slow U-turn toward the beer once it got a whiff.    

Apparently slugs like the yeast in beer. So they slowly slink into the trap and drown.  As you can see below, the flowers bounced back wonderfully after the culprits were eliminated.  Through the Summer I shared a few more bottles with the garden slugs and every time I did, the plants came back to life. I'm sure their deaths were more painful than I want to admit, but I like to think they went out feeling high as a kite.  And I like having a good excuse for drinking while gardening.

Nobel Rant

As I've previously "Tweeted," I was surprised to hear Obama won the Nobel Peace prize.  It seemed premature, as many people are saying.  But I'm starting to see it more as an "Ata' boy!" statement of encouragement from the world.  A way of saying, "keep doing what you're doing.  Even though your actions aren't completely accepted in your own country, we think you're doing something good and healthy for the world in the long run."  When Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 he was not the most popular man in America. 

While the glowing support from the Nobel Committee may seem premature I think it's also important to note how shockingly vindictive his opponents have been.  From Rush Limbaugh declaring very early on that he wants Obama to fail, to the proud conservatives that actually celebrated when an American city lost the Olympic bid, just because it was a personal blow to Obama.  It doesn't seem that he's been in office long enough for the effects of his policies to really be felt, yet conservatives are getting so ralled up you would think they were all thrown into poverty the moment Obama was elected.  All the hatred seems to be based on theory, on ramifications they think his policies could have.  When people protested President Bush it was because soldiers have been coming home in caskets from a misguided war.  Or because he didn't pay enough attention to warnings about Bin Laden.  Or because he hired an incompetent person to run FEMA. Or for the myriad of other reasons his adminstration became the most unpopular administration in a generation.

In Obama's acceptance speech on election night he said he needs everyone's help. I thought that was such an important statement and hoped people would heed the call.   With all the bailouts Obama's administration has given this year I'm glad the Nobel committee is willing to give him a little bailout, even if it is a measly $1.5 million. But the statement of solidarity is more important than anything.  Maybe he'll see that people really do think he's on the right track, even if it's not the most popular one at the moment.

growing where planted...

Since adolescence I’ve found temporary fulfillment through consumption. Every season has held a new flavor. In the Autumn there’s candy corn and leaf shaped candies made of maple syrup. Winter brings the crisp flavor of peppermint and cinnamon candy canes, hot cocoa (also flavored with mint), and Valentine’s Day conversation hearts. Easter bunny marshmallow Peeps and jelly beans offer a segue into sweet tea, water ice and all the sweetness of Summer.

I can’t begin to imagine the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on momentary gastric bliss. But in the last few years I’ve found a new form of fulfillment that broadens and intensifies with each season. That’s because I’ve been slowly making myself at home in nature. First I overcame my disdain for jogging by trekking down the historic stony trails of Valley Forge. Then my love of trail jogging followed me to Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and evolved into floral and landscape photography as I found myself passing the Brooklyn Botanical Garden on the way from the park to the subway. There, I began to wonder about the way gardens develop in different parts of the world. The Shakespearean garden juxtaposed with the Japanese garden brought up questions of what a native plant really is. Now that I'm back home in Southeastern PA, working for a plant nursery, I have more opportunities to get to know the plants and landscapes I've always been curious about. 

I started with lavender and yellow pansies back in April.  (Isn't it ironic that the flower that stands up to harsh weather at the beginning and end of the growing season bears the name we give to wimps?) I quickly learned why some of the landscapers that come into the nursery have knee problems.  After flipping over a blue recycling bin I had a sturdy seat at the perfect height for gardening.  The hardest part of doing that first planting (and even now it's hard for me) was sticking my trowel into the ground and realizing that I sliced into a poor little earthworm. Gardening has so many moral conundrums.  When is it okay to kill a creepy crawly? Can I drive pests away without killing them?

I used to look at gardening as another way for us to act like mini-Gods.  We decide what lives or dies in our little Edens, we think we know all and see all. A weed is whatever is tough to control, and boy do they have to go! But now that I've given gardening a serious try I'm finding that like most things in life the situation is not so black and white.  Sure I'm playing God by setting up certain plants in certain places.  But there's no way to plan for everything that happens during and after the planting.  My little lantana plant could have a sudden growth spurt and become more like a weed.  Or the pansies I expected to crap out by early June could stay strong and drop seeds that flower out of nowhere in October.  Aphids could creep up on my spinach leaves before I have the chance to smother them out. There's no complete control.  I'm learning that life's disappointments can't be fixed by downing a bag of candy corn. I have to roll with whatever the universe hands me, and so far the outcome has almost always been pleasant.