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GARDEN NOTES ON TOADS, TOMATOES, MULCH & SLUGS
This week's column includes a collection of recent discoveries and summertime musings about gardening.
Several years ago I wrote about "dirt that moved" in a flower pot sitting along a garden path. Turns out a toad had burrowed into the pot of peat moss and when I walked by, he hunkered down in the pot. Whenever I passed by, all I saw was moving dirt.
Well, the toads are playing tricks on me again. When I picked up a half-full sprinkling can last week to water a window box of zinnias, there was no sprinkle! When I unscrewed the green plastic sprinkler spout, I discovered a toad wedged in the neck of the can. It had lived there long enough that its normal brown coloring had turned to light gray.
Do you have any idea how much water container plants require in hot weather? I didn't until recently. I purchased a plastic tub device over the internet called an Earth Box. It's a rectangular-shaped plastic tub that's filled with a soil mix and covered with a plastic cover. Water is added daily through a tube that replenishes a reservoir below the soil. When the water level reaches two inches at the bottom of the tub, water drains out an escape hole.
I planted two tomato plants in my Earth Box and the plants are now 3 ft. tall and equally wide. On recent hot days, I've had to add more than two gallons of water a day! If a single tomato plant drinks more than a gallon of water a day, how much water does an entire garden require? A forest of trees? I don't know the answer, but it certainly points to the importance of regular rainfall.
On a fine spring day not long ago, I showed the driver of a very large truck where I wanted the load of hardwood mulch dumped on my driveway. I even drew with chalk where I'd like the pile to start as he lifted the tailgate. He hit the line perfectly and, after he drove away in a cloud of dust, I stood for a while and marveled at what 20 yards of mulch looks like.
Then, I reached for my trusty red wheelbarrow and shovel and began the task of mulch distribution. Twenty yards is a lot of mulch. There are 27 cubic feet in a yard. My wheelbarrow holds about five cubic feet so I probably made 100 trips before the pile was distributed.
Hardwood mulch is my ground cover of choice for the three shady sides of my house. Other people choose wood chips, cocoa hulls, rock, shade-mixture grass turf, shrubs over bare soil, or other materials.
For anyone interested in mulch, you might want to check out a useful new publication from Iowa State University titled "Using Mulches in Managed Landscapes." It can be viewed online at www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/SUL12.pdf
As Minnesota Master Gardeners, we agree to offer research-based information from the University of Minnesota. To my knowledge, the University has not researched the following story but I thought many of you hosta growers would find this news of interest.
According to the U.S. Pacific Basin Agriculture Research Center in Hilo, Hawaii, garden slugs hate caffeine. The stimulant becomes a deadly neurotoxin when it is sprayed on the slimy creatures.
Even very small concentrations can be deadly for the menacing mollusks, states the report. "It has potential as an environmentally acceptable alternative toxicant for the control of slugs and snails on food crops," Richard Hollingsworth said in a report in the science journal Nature.
The scientists at the USDA research center were testing the effects of caffeine on other pests in Hawaii when they discovered that slugs and snails could not tolerate it. "We found that large slugs placed on loose soil and sprayed with a one or two percent solution of caffeine responded with uncoordinated writhing; the only survivors were the few that were able to burrow into the soil soon after treatment," Hollingsworth added.
The weak solution of caffeine didn't damage the foliage of palms or orchids and any yellowing of leaves could be avoided by mixing caffeine with an appropriate agricultural polymer, he added.
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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