DC Urban Gardeners

DC Gardens Have their own Flickr Group - Join!

by Jessica Hanff, Editor, Capital Sierran, DC Chapter of Sierra Club

You are invited to join the new DC Gardens Flickr group. Flickr users can share images and explore each others gardens. It's a great way to build community and see with our own eyes the tremendous gardens growing in DC. We encourage you to share your best shots of your garden or any of the gardens (known and unknown) in the District. As best you can, please tell us where the photo was from and what plant (or animal) is pictured. To join, just visit: http://www.flickr.com/groups/dcgardens/. Please feel free to contact me with any questions: sophiagrrl@earthlink.net.

54 Plants You Can Count On

by Candy Kessel, D.C. Master Gardener and Professional Gardener

Time to share some terrific plant suggestions from the lips of Karen Rexrode, aka The Plant Lady of Windy Hill Plant Farm, in a recent talk. She started the business as a small perennial grower, selling only wholesale to a few local nurseries.  Perennials were the primary crop until 1991 when unusual annuals were added. Sadly, Windy Hill was closed about two years ago.  Now Karen is sharing her knowledge as a writer and speaker; she’s been featured regularly at  Green Springs Gardens in Alexandria, VA.   You can find some of her archived articles here.  Karen also has responsibility for the perennials at Oak Hill Farm in Aldie, VA, President James Monroe’s 1,200 acre ancestral estate which is now privately owned.

A number of wonderful and reliable plants are being overlooked, Karen says, because they have been around a while, have been forgotten or don’t seem exciting because nobody is promoting them. The drive to have different plantings from one’s neighbors, particularly if they look unusual, is compelling homeowners to abandon some stalwarts of the garden that have stood the test of time. Catchy marketing and branding of new plants and cultivars is also having an impact. Karen encouraged the audience of landscape designers to use this supporting cast of plants that she feels have amply demonstrated they hold the garden together. Plants marked with an asterisk Karen has found to be deer resistant, a requirement more gardeners are facing more frequently.

Although I can’t share the lovely slides she offered of these winners, I have included some links  to the Internet so you can see pictures of some of the plants you may not be familiar with.  Click "Continue Reading."

Photos by Susan Harris.  Top, Amsonia hubrichtii; bottom, Baptisia australis.

Got Dangerous Tomatoes? Cage Them...

Before we can eat the tomatoes we must grow the tomatoes.

I am following the methods advocated by Charles H. Wilber, who holds the Guinness record for tomato production. Wilber has achieved tomato plants that tower nearly 30 feet high and produce more than 300 pounds of tomatoes per plant.

And, no, I don't plan on growing any 30-foot-high tomato plants in my front yard. But please follow along.

The main point is to build sturdy cages the tomatoes can grow in. That means getting a 100-pound roll of concrete reinforcing mesh into the trunk of my car at the lumber yard and borrowing a pair of bolt cutters to cut it with.

Wilber makes cages three feet in diameter by cutting lengths of mesh 18 squares across. He then fastens the ends together with hog rings. Most importantly, he then trains 18 suckers from the tomato plant to climb the cage, one sucker for each of the vertical wires in the cage. To anchor the cages to the ground, he uses lengths of concrete reinforcing bar, or re-bar, to which he welds a small piece at the top to make a hook that grabs the cage. When the plant reaches the top of the cage, he fastens a second cage on top of the first one and so.

I didn't have any hog rings handy, so I just cut a bit of extra mesh and used the loose ends of wire as fasteners, bending them back with my thumb.

My plans are not nearly as ambitious as Wilber, who just enjoys growing huge vegetables. I will be happy if I can figure out how to identify the vines and train them up the cage. If they continue growing over the top of the cage, I'll just let them grow back down to the ground.

Wilber mulches around the tomatoes with a thick layer of straw. That's another challenge for me here in the District of Columbia. I've identified a source for the straw (usually I just liberate it from local construction projects) but none has actually made the trip to the garden.

I also believe adequate distance between plants is critical. Tomatoes should get plenty of ventilation and room for the roots to spread. According to Wilbur, tomato roots will extend 10 feet. He advocates at least five feet between plants.

This year I have three varieties of tomatoes, two heirlooms, Brandywine and Cherokee Purple, and a yellow cherry tomato. I am betting on a tomato salad by August, and tomatoes well into October. With any luck, we'll have a bushel of green tomatoes for pickling as well.

To tell the truth, I was a bit terrified of getting involved with these heavy-duty cages, but they've turned out to be fairly easy once you get past the heavy lifting. And they are almost invisible in the garden.

Could Moscow Teach Us a Thing or Two?

The annual convention of the American Public Garden Association was held in D.C. this year for the first time ever - for some reason I can't imagine - and I dropped in to see what was happening.  Passing on the sessions about fund-raising, recruiting volunteers, and innovations in signage, I popped in on the talk about "An International Perspective" to see what's up with that. Turns out it was about the state of botanical gardens in the former Soviet Union, the very existence of which had never crossed my mind. (Well, they hadn't exactly graced the glossy pages of Garden Design Magazine, now had they?)  I was intrigued.

Speakers showed us gardens from all over the former USSR but from our perspective here in D.C., let's look at Russia's capital city and its Apothecary Garden. (It has no webite, but I found that reference to it on the web.) It was founded in 1706 by Peter the Great for the purpose of teaching doctors and growing medicinal plants, and some of the trees planted by Peter the Great are still standing.  Despite its location at the center of a large, polluted city, the director will have you know it's the most biodiverse spot in Russia.

In 1805 it became the Moscow State University Botanic Garden and since the fall of the Soviet Union, change is everywhere.  They're hell bent on modernizing, becoming sustainable and more relevant.  They "still do lawns and intensive horticultural things," but now have "areas of indecision", which are managed differently.  Differently, but their management actually requires more hort knowledge than the traditional gardens did.  They're using more drought-tolerant plants, paying more attention to soils.  Boardwalks have been constructed to prevent disruption and compaction of soils.  Trees that have fallen victim to Dutch elm disease have been recycled as pavers, very good-looking ones.  These natural-looking areas were described as having "alternative beauty," rather than "exciting plants".  The lake is kept "wild-looking" and cityfolk seem to appreciate it.  Labels and instructional signs are everywhere, and new programs are in the works to make the garden-visiting experience more active. We saw a slide of moms pushing baby carriages in the snow through the gardens and were informed that Russians consider it healthy for children to be outdoors, even in the dead of winter.  Funny, Americans are just now noticing how far away from that basic truth we've strayed and thinking about the consequences of having no connection with nature.

Tradition hasn't been sacked altogether, however.  They still have their spring flower festivals and ornamental displays, and mixed borders of perennials are still grown.  But the people now in charge of this historic garden see their mission as making the public environmentally literate and giving city-dwellers an opportunity to go back to nature.  They urge Russians to use alternatives to gas-powered garden equipment. They sponsor a competition for apartment-dwellers who've landscaped around their buildings.  They partner with the Young Environmentalist Club to create "ecological trails."  And get this: there's actually a "Department for Sustainable Use of Nature and Environmental Protection" in Moscow City.  All of which brings on this min-rant:  Why aren't these things going on in our own capital city?  Just asking.

Here's a PDF about environmental programs at Moscow's Apothecary Garden and  here's a short piece about the Importance of Botanical Gardens.

Posted by Susan Harris

Yo, Dude! What's in the Backpack?

Collecting space dust? Sniffing for dirty bombs? Busting ghosts?

Just what, exactly, is that funny looking man with the baseball cap and the science pack on his back doing out there?

I spotted our ghost buster wandering around our neighborhood here in Columbia Heights over the weekend. He was pacing the sidewalk in what appeared to be a very specific pattern.

Every few feet, he would stop, look into some sort of instrument he was holding in his hands and start pressing his fingers into a key pad, as if he were typing a message.

After watching him repeat this process several times, sometimes crossing the street to do so, I finally could contain my curiosity no longer and asked him what he was doing.

He was a pleasant enough fellow. Turns out the "ghost busting" apparatus on his back was actually a global position system transponder. That's a communications device that allows you to pinpoint your location on the planet by communicating with some satellites that were put into orbit by the military some years ago. The keypad the man was holding in his hands is used to record the positioning data for later use.

The object of all this, he explained, is to create a record of the location for each street lamp in the city. That's right--every street lamp in the District of Columbia, all umpteen million of them.

Last year a contractor went around town strapping numbers to all the street lamps. The numbers begin with the number of the ward where the lamp is situated, followed by four more digits to complete the identification.

The GPS information matches the ID number with the precise latitude and longitude of the lamp's location. Thus, if anything ever goes wrong with a street lamp, the person reporting the problem will be able to phone in the number of the lamp and city workers will know exactly where it is located. No more wandering around searching for burned-out light bulbs.

Ain't technology grand?

--By Ed Bruske--

Urban Orchard With Style

You may have been bombing through Columbia Heights recently and thought, What's with the shrub with the hairnet?

Well, that wasn't a stylin' crape myrtle you passed. That was our neighborhood peach tree. This year, to keep squirrels (and the occasional pedestrian) from snagging our peaches, we coiffed the whole tree with row cover.

After a couple of weeks under wraps, today was the unveiling. Our neighbor who looks after the tree adjudged the fruit ready for picking. We gathered our buckets, assembled our ladders and rolled the drums.

Kids, are you ready for some peaches?

Off came the row cover and in we reached.

The first peach I bit into took me back to my youth. Warm juices running down my chin. Bursts of summer flavor. And right here on our block in the middle of the city. Imagine: growing food on 13th Street! This is even better than the farmer's market...

Here you see our neighbor, John Paul Lewis, filling his bucket with fresh peaches. By my estimation, less than half the fruit was ripe. Still we harvested several buckets worth, enough to make a number of peach pies and spread them around to friends. We'll come back later in the week for more.

Now I'm having a Forest Gump moment. I'm thinking peach ice cream, peach cobbler, peaches and cream...

--By Ed Bruske--

Have Vegetables, Will Travel

You've heard of garden coaches. Our own webmaster, Susan Harris, is on the cutting edge of that trend, wherein an experienced gardener will pay you a visit and give you badly needed garden tips and advice.

Well here's a crew in Seattle, WA, that covers the vegetable end of things. In fact, they will not only design a vegetable garden for your urban plot, they will plant it, install a watering system and, for an extra fee, come back on a regular basis to weed and maintain it.

For anywhere from $300 to $1,500, Seattle Urban Farm will look at your space,  design a custom garden with your favorite veggies, haul away what's in the way, till the earth, lay irrigation tubes, plant the seeds and set a watering timer on your faucet. For $600 more, they'll come back each week of the growing season to weed, hoe, fertilize and tend. And if you're too busy to pick your own tomatoes, they'll even harvest for you, reports the Seattle Times.

The company reports so much demand, they would not be surprised to see more such businesses springing up soon. Read the complete story here.

--Posted by Ed Bruske--

God on Lawns

I'm not usually one for re-cycling those humorous e-mails that come in over the transom. But this one was so on-point I had to share: A conversation between God and St. Francis about America's lawns.  Just click "Continue Reading." 

--Posted by Ed Bruske--

Organic Lawn Care? Neighbors Duke it Out

I started a regular Donnybrook on my personal blog recently by musing over whether to talk to a neighbor about his landscape service's use of gas-powered mowers and leaf blowers.

Do we need some new sort of new language--an etiquette update--for those occasions when we see global warming being committed our own block? I wondered.

I hardly had time to address all the hate mail when the Wall Street Journal published this story about neighbors across the country battling over traditional lawn care (meaning pesticides and artificial fertilizers) versus the new wave of organic methods.

Having recently completed the first ever "Organic Landscaping" course to be offered at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Graduate Program, my antennae are especially fine-tuned to any developments on this theme. Personally, with the melting of the polar ice caps only picking up steam (so to speak) I think it is high time we as a culture take a good hard look at the rampant use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers and gas-powered lawn and garden equipment.

All are based on fossil fuels and all play a role in degrading the environment. And to what end? To get that perfect-looking lawn. Well, I'm a vegetable gardener, so don't get me started. I'd be just as happy to see all those lawns replaced with tomato plants and bush beans and rhubarb.

In some towns, homeowners concerned about pesticide use are posting organic signs in their yards, trying to shame neighbors into kicking the pesticide-chemical fertilizer habit.

Canada has promoted the idea of local action, allowing communities to prohibit the use of pesticides on lawns. It's a different story in the U.S. Thanks to lobbying by the fertilizer, pesticide and lawn care industries, all but nine states have passed laws prohibiting communities from enforcing pesticide laws that would supersede state laws.

Still, organic lawn care is catching on. Sales of organic products have been growing at double-digit rates for the last several years. Scotts Miracle-Gro has launched its first organic lawn fertilizer. And TruGreen-ChemLawn has ditched the "Chem" and shortened its name to just TruGreen.

The Wall Street Journal correspondent, Wendy Bounds, was inspired by her neighbor's immaculate, organics-only lawn to try it herself. She ended up rototilling her old yard, reseeding it, applying a layer of compost, using corn gluten in early spring to kill pre-emergent weeds, laid down organic fertilizers and found a new generation of nifty hand tools to pull weeds.

Her new organic lawn is immaculate as well. The article is accompanied by a humorous video showing all the high points.

Now, why can't we do that here in the District of Columbia?

--By Ed Bruske--

Small Engines, Big Polluters

Time to mow the grass. But do you know how much pollution is generated by conventional, gas-powered lawn mowers and the two-stroke engine on your leaf blower?

Consider these factoids:

__A gasoline-powered lawn mower in one hour spews as much pollution as 40 late-model cars driven the same one hour.

__The emissions from a modern automobile are about 1,000 times lower than those from a typical two-stroke engine.

__The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that up to 17 million gallons of gasoline are spilled each year filling the tanks of lawn and garden equipment. That's more than all the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

__Lawn and garden equipment are responsible for approximately 5 percent of all the harmful ozone pollutants generated in the United States.

This is not to say that electric lawn mowers do not generate pollution. The mowers themselves do not pollute, but they draw electricity from power plants that do. But those amounts are only a fraction of the pollution created by gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws and the like.

And for those of you who can't use a push mower, there are now cordless electric mowers. Some jurisdictions even offer deep discounts on electric mowers if you trade in your gas-powered mower.

Efforts have been in the works for years to put federal rules in place restricting the amount of pollutants from small engines. Two years ago, proposed rules were held up in the U.S. Senate by Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), a powerful advocate for engine manufacturer Briggs & Stratton Corp., a major employer in Missouri. Bond had worked doggedly to block state and federal officials from requiring less polluting outdoor power equipment.

Bond and engine manufacturers argued that they would be required to install catalytic converters that could overheat and pose a hazard. Now the EPA again is proposing emission control rules that would go into effect in 2011.

Manufacturers, meanwhile, are racing to develop more efficient, cleaner four-stroke engines for lawn and garden equipment. Couldn't come soon enough...

--By Ed Bruske--