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CONTRASTING GARDENING STYLES: PATIENCE VS. INSTANT GRATIFICATION
I bought a whole-grain breakfast cereal recently that requires 15 minutes to cook. It tastes great but I suspect it's not a hot seller. Many folks these days claim they don't have time in the morning to boil a cup of water for instant coffee, let alone stand over a pot of boiling porridge. They'd rather pull into a Starbucks on the way to work for a more exotic (and expensive) cup of coffee.
We've been called the instant-gratification society. We demand enjoyment, satisfaction and reward RIGHT NOW. We lack the patience, say the critics, to start small or modestly and wait for the long-term payback.
In gardening, instant gratification can be observed in countless ways this time of year. All you have to do is park outside the main door of a garden center on any Saturday in May and observe customers leaving the store. Their purchases will reveal whether they're seeking instant gratification or will be content with a longer-term payback.
Take hanging baskets for example. For $49.95 or $69.95, you can buy fancy hanging baskets packed full of blooming flowers and trailing vines. All you do is hang and water. It's instant beauty without the fuss of filling an empty basket with soil mix, researching which flower varieties go together, planting, and waiting for the plants to mature.
Tomato plants offer the same choice: so long as you're willing to pay the price, you can buy tomato plants loaded with green fruit just weeks away from maturity.
Sod vs. seeding grass is another example. Sod is instant lawn while seed requires seedbed preparation, precision seeding, consistent watering and waiting to see how good the seed germinated.
I began thinking about this topic one day as I filled a tray with young perennial plants in small containers. They were priced at $2.99 each. I could have spent three times as much for 6-inch pots of the same perennials and achieved a much more mature-looking perennial garden this growing season. My choice was to spend less and enjoy watching the younger plants grow and mature even if they won't produce abundant flowers this summer.
With trees, the instant-gratification principle does not work as well as with perennials. People who buy new homes that haven't been landscaped often head for the garden center and select the biggest potted or bagged-and-burlapped trees on the lot or they pay four- or five-figure fees to have towering trees spaded into their yards.
The problem with moving large trees is that the trees experience considerable stress in the transplanting process and, as a result, go through a prolonged growth hiatus while their undersized root mass has a chance to generate new growth in the new environment. In many cases, the homeowners would be money and time ahead by planting smaller trees (potted or b&b) because the smaller trees will have a much more balanced root/crown ratio than 20- to 30-ft. trees.
Smaller trees typically begin growing much faster in their new environment than large transplanted trees.
The reason, according to Dr. Gary Watson of the Morton Arboretum, is that as much as 98% of a tree's root system can be left behind when it is dug out of the ground. When transplanted, often less than 5% of the absorbing roots are moved with the tree, Watson says.
While the percentages hold for both large and small trees, larger trees lose a much greater mass and lateral spread of roots than smaller trees. Because roots of large and small trees grow at the same rate (roughly 18 inches a year), it takes the large tree several years longer to regain the size of its original root system. Thus, Watson explains, large trees often experience a long period of slow top growth after replanting.
A tree with a 4-inch diameter trunk will require, according to Watson, five years to re-gain the size of its original root system, which was 18 feet in diameter. A tree with a 10-inch diameter trunk and a 45-foot diameter root system will need 13 years to recover.
Watson says the root system of the smaller tree will have become nearly as large as that of the 10-inch tree after this 13-year period. Therefore, he concludes, because the smaller tree will have had several years of vigorous growth while the larger tree was under stress, the smaller tree actually may overtake the large tree in growth by the time the larger tree restores its root/shoot balance.
I am by nature more of a patient gardener than an instant-gratification gardener. One type is not necessarily better or worse than the other; they're just different types.
In families with children, an instant-gratification approach to plant buying deprives kids of the learning experience of planting seeds and then watching as seeds germinate and grow from tiny, vulnerable seedlings into majestic, mature plants. Discussing with kids how plants grow can teach valuable life lessons.
In January I planted a seed from a pinecone and the seedling is now about two inches tall. I am growing it under a florescent light in my basement. I intend to grow the pine tree in a pot for a couple of years, and then give it to my granddaughter. In my mind, I can see her pointing to that tree on a spring day in 2053 and saying to her grand kids, "I remember when your great, great granddaddy planted the seed that became that 90-ft. pine tree!"
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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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