Zone 6 zone denial tip: standard hybrid gladioli are reliably hardy only to zone 9 - or 8b, maybe - but if you have well drained soil, plant them 5 or 6 inches deep and mulch heavily in fall (in this case before the ground freezes), there’s a good chance they’ll come back.

By now you’ve probably gotten the word: the long awaited, massively updated USDA Climate Zone map, the first revision since 1990, has finally arrived. And  – insert giant snarky “this is news?” – it shows large swaths of the country have moved up at least a half zone.

In 1991, when I got together with Bill and began gardening in the Hudson Valley, I could joke that my new life didn’t net me a single climate zone, even though the NY garden is about 300 miles southwest of the one in Maine. Until a couple of weeks ago, they were both in zone 5b. Now, while New York remains 5b – by the skin of its teeth, from the looks of things – Maine has been promoted to 6a.

Of course the difference between the two may well be less than the full 5 degrees between half zones. Same with the big chunk of Nebraska that’s now 5a instead of 4b. It’s also possible that Chicago, a heat island, may have remained exactly the same while getting a higher zone assignment because of better measurement.

But whatever the physical changes, most of the numbers did go up. The USDA, however, refuses to draw what appear to be obvious conclusions.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there has been a lot of flapdoodle* about how the zone changes are strong proof of global warming and the USDA is simply stonewalling. There has also been a fair amount of wishful thinking along the lines of “I thought it wouldn’t be hardy here, but now I know I can grow it. Yay!”

Well, yes and no. USDA representative Kim Kaplan doth perhaps protest too much when insisting that the new map differs so fundamentally from the old that the two cannot be compared. Given the unanimity of projections of increasing warmth in future, it could be quibbling to maintain that the 30 years of data behind the new map is weather, not climate, because climate measures brackets of at least 50 years. And when it comes to wishful thinking, no one with any gardening knowledge would deny that plant hardiness is indeed an increasingly mobile target.

But all that said, I don’t think it would hurt to calm down a little and stop making the poor map carry far more weight than it should. On the first count, there are a lot more robust proofs of global warming (check out this government sanctioned analysis of trends in the Southeast, for instance, if you really want to have your pants scared off.) On the second count, it pays to remember that average winter lows – the only thing measured on the map – are by no means the single factor influencing plant survival; and when it comes to climate change the challenges far outweigh the benefits, even at the home garden level.

Some Factors Other Than the Thermometer That Influence Winter Survival of Plants

Time to harden off. When cold comes gradually, plants have a chance to toughen up in preparation for winter. When cold comes suddenly, plants may be killed by temperatures they could otherwise sail through unscathed.

Duration of the coldest temperatures. A plant rated hardy to -10 is more likely to survive a few hours of -15 than ten straight days of -5.

Winter soil moisture. Dry climate plants from lavender to cactus care a lot more about drainage than they do about air temperature.

Yearly rainfall. Seattle and Tucson have the same zone number but are not otherwise similar. Moisture needers and drought needers alike will go into winter deeply stressed if grown in the wrong place, and that weakness can finish them off when deep cold is added.

Late summer and fall care. Nitrogen fertilizer spurs tender growth that’s vulnerable to winter kill. Late pruning does the same thing.

Snow cover. A deep fluffy blanket of snow that lasts all winter will protect plants (especially perennials) from cold that would kill them if the ground were bare.

Some Gardeners’ Problems Headed This Way As a Result of Climate Change

Rapid temperature swings. A long mild fall followed by a plunge into the deep freeze, and/or a very early spring, followed by a plunge into the deep freeze.

Extreme weather events. Extended droughts, torrential rains, hurricane force winds.

Shorter winters. Plants like apples, peonies and lilacs that must have a long winter sleep can languish with too little rest. Insects and diseases once kept in check by extended cold will have higher rates of survival.

Less reliable snow cover, more frequent ice storms. Snow protects; ice kills.

Hotter summers. Northerners will have better luck with heat-loving annuals from tomatoes to moonflowers. Southerners may well have less; too much heat prevents fruit set and pushes annual flowers into early graves. The region of happiness for plants that must have cool nights even in summer (peas, delphiniums, rhododendrons, sugar maples) is headed toward Canada.

A Few Coping Strategies may be found here.

* Some back story on the flap.

Whatever its limitations, the USDA hardiness zone map has long been a widely recognized metric. Breeders and nurseries use it to rate and label plants. Scientists use it (along with a lot else) when investigating things like the spread of invasive weeds. The USDA itself uses the map to set some crop insurance standards.

Not chopped liver; and by the time the century turned, it was clear to all that the 1990 map was both insufficient and inaccurate. The USDA commissioned a new one from the American Horticultural Society, which had produced zone maps before. Projected appearance date was 2003.

But then the map didn’t show up – or rather it didn’t show up for long. As I remember it, there was a new version on the AHS website, but only very briefly. The curious were told it went away because it was just a draft; the USDA was not satisfied, and revisions were under way.

This was the party line for quite a while. During this while, we were enjoying the G.W. Bush administration, increasingly notorious for its disinclination to confront man made climate change. People began to think dark thoughts.

These thoughts were not brightened when, in 2006,  the Arbor Day Foundation published an updated zone map of its own, using some (but not all) of the same data as the rejected AHS draft. The ADF website provides an animation of the old map morphing into the (ADF) new one. It is not reassuring.

More grumbling. More Bush administration. More delays, now routinely attributed to the difficulty of producing a sufficiently sophisticated, web friendly interactive map.

Not so fast forward to January 25th, 2012. The new map is introduced at the National Arboretum. Distant journalists are invited to attend via webinar. I attend.

Neato! The thing is terrific. It really IS a great leap forward – for doing what it’s supposed to do, anyway. One need only enter a zip code to get the corresponding zone assignment, and there is a lot of other information there for the drilling down.

The introduction ceremony concludes with a question period. Various reporters ask questions. The most vocal questioners do not appear to be gardeners and what they really, really want to know is why the long suffering Ms. Kaplan, who has been fielding these enquiries ever since the flap began, will not knuckle under and admit that the map proves global warming is undoubtedly here. She won’t do it. (Her reasons are detailed on the map site, under “what’s new?”)

So, official word is still that the map was not delayed  - perhaps by underfunding? –  during the previous administration, which may or may not be true. But in fairness, nobody’s trumpeting its appearance as the return of sanity, either. So at the very least the USDA is an equal opportunity sphinx.

None of this is news to long time plant people, but even as a very long time plant person I was amazed at the extent to which snow matters in the larger environment. If you wish to be amazed too, check out Colder Soils in a Warmer World: Snow Depth, Soil Freezing and Nitrogen losses in the Northern Hardwood Forest. We learned about it at Snow is Good, a lecture given by Dr. Peter  Groffman (last Friday, at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies), a lecture we were only able to attend because Bill thinks snow shoveling is good.

Bill, mover of tons (and tons) of snow. You will notice that he is smiling.

On shoveling snow: physics, efficiency, work and art.

by Bill Bakaitis

It is beautiful, as Leslie says, the soft whiteness of snow, the purity reducing all forms and structures to their most monochromatic essence. “Yes, agreed,” I say, and quietly open the door and pick up the shovel. But the novelty of this white on white world quickly disappears from my thoughts and view.

I hoist the shovel, put leg and back to the task ahead and invariably sink into the repetitive task and thoughts which come back as regularly as breaths, each pass of the shovel, push of the legs, flex of the back, hips, arms. I fall into the trance of physical labor and recall lessons of my teachers.

It was Mr. Lowery, my High School agriculture, physics, and shop teacher who years ago gave the lesson of the inclined plane, that most efficient of tools.  His examples were of the screw, the driver and plow.  But now with the task at hand they seem to me to be most elegantly expressed in the snow shovel, with its blade gradually inclined into a curve, a graceful turning into itself which gathers and compresses the loose and light snowflakes into a more and more compressed and manageable mass.

I think also of inertia, the laws of bodies in motion, as the mass of my 150 pounds moves easily at a steady pace toward the end of the pass. No need to tell myself it is more work to stop and restart midway than to keep going. Every muscle in my body has personal experience with this simple truth. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. My grandmother taught me this.  Stop and you are dead she once told me.  And so I push through to the end of this, the first of many such passes.

That first pass is important and requires some consideration for all others will follow and build upon its placement.

The snow may be light and fluffy now, but given the way it soaks up ambient moisture from air and soil, it soon will become heavy. With the daily rise and fall in temperature it becomes increasingly immobile.  Better to do too much than too little, said my Mother and her brother, echoing the lessons from their immigrant parents. I tell this to my neighbors who have never had to deal with shoveling snow.

The difference is expressed in being boxed in by mounds of ice or having room to maneuver. Do a little more than necessary and where ever possible let nature, in this case the sun, help you.

At the end of each pass comes the task of lifting and with it the lessons of countless lifts and throws in my life. Skipping flat stones over the surface of a pond, counting the number of skips before the stone sinks. Throwing a baseball into the glove of a catcher or bales of hay onto the truck or into the loft.  In each case one leg being worth at least two arms. In each case the inertial energy of the body’s mass redirecting and focusing that energy by a series of internal fulcrums to a specific point, the body moving gracefully through a series of curves not unlike the inclined plane of the screw, shovel, or plow.

The physics of lifting described: At the end of the pass I bend my knees, left leg forward pushing into the snow. As the knees bend, the left hand comes forward on the handle of the shovel and only then tightens its grip. With a single smooth motion I stand and the shovel with its load of snow comes up with my body, the legs doing almost all of the work.

Continuing the movement I step backwards and the shovel with its load of snow now falls downward, pulled by gravity, increasing in speed. Without a pause I shift my weight from the left to the right leg, then to the repositioned left, swinging the shovel at first downward then upward as I redirect the fall, moving this mass of snow perhaps ten or fifteen feet.

Towards the end of the lift the left hand loosens the grip while the right hand, holding the end of the handle, directs the load to where I want to place it and abruptly stops. The load slides off the shovel, continues its trajectory, and lands as easy as a cat just where it is meant to go.

All of this is easier done than said.  Words, after all, mediate reality; they point to and arrest the dynamic process.  In this sense, as every good quarterback comes to know, the discursive, denotative nature of language can impede or get in the way of the process itself.  I once, and only once, took a Tai Chi lesson. The instructor looked amazed. “How did you learn these movements?” he asked.  “Pitching hay and ice skating” I replied.  “Ahh, yes”, he exhaled with a nod, a smile and a wink. I saw no need to come back.

There is something artful about physical labor, especially with those tasks which require repetition.  Not only does it become mindless, but the work becomes emotionless as well. There is no griping, complaining, no resentment.  As the body moves to the task it quickly pares away any excess. There is little room for superfluous movement, little space for anger or sorrow.  Unhinged from thought the body responds with a more and more elegant motion as physics and biology come into harness: the yoke of Vedic Script , explained Mr. Majumdar, my metaphysics instructor at The New School years ago. Practice this and the mind moves from the specific to the abstract, from the mundane towards the transcendent. Doggone if it doesn’t feel good to boot!

And to art.  The parallels to dance are obvious. When I see someone hard at work on a repetitive task I see dance. Trace the movements through time and space, say by a series of lights attached to hands, feet, and hips, and as the patterns become mediated they become drawing, painting, or sculpture. At times the texture of the snow I am moving captures the movement of my shoveling in a similar manner.

Call it work, dance, art, music. Not to get too dewy eyed or spiritual on you, but the doing and viewing of these all seem to collapse into a singularity. Call this the connotative or poetic aspect of language when we speak about it. Call it fun when we do it. For more about dance and language, see Douglass Dunn.

It is not incidental that these repetitive patterns are seen as art.  They are inherently pleasing to the senses. As a younger man I loved the way the tractor and plow laid down ordered furrows pitched uphill against erosion. I loved the way the cutter-bar laid down the timothy/alfalfa for the sun to cure, loved the way  the hay was pitched into rain-tight stacks or stacked under eaves as bales.

Today I love the way the arrows from my bow trace their way in arcs to find the target, love the way the line from my fly rod pulsates back and forth in graceful and efficient loops. Love the way the hoe moves the earth in the spring, the scythe removes the weeds in the summer, and in the winter the way the shovel moves the snow.

Practical points of shoveling snow:

1. Be careful of where you place the first load; all else follows.

2. Always work from a cleared place. Footprints compact the snow, making for jarring interrupted work later.  Machines are the worst. They compact the snow under tire and chain, chew up the paving and often require laborious hand removal of hard packed, crude machine placement.

3. Do more, not less than the minimum, and allow the sun to do its part.

4. Practicing on light snow cultivates good habits.

5. Never touch your tongue to a frozen shovel. Keep it firmly in cheek.

All photos except portrait by Bill Bakaits

greenhouse from the kitchen

When I posted this view of our little greenhouse, it was to emphasize how too-small it is for major seed starting. But sharp-eyed and perhaps hopeful Melinda asked about the brickwork; I passed the comment along to Bill (who built the whole thing) and he promised he’d describe building it, just as he has described building our  wood-burning clay oven.

greenhouse from the lower side yard

Short version: Adding this greenhouse was neither difficult nor expensive. For longer version, with instructions

BUILDING A GREENHOUSE  ADDITION

By Bill Bakaitis

Before this one, I had built another greenhouse at my previous home, following well established rules laid out in the happy hippie homebuilder sources I consulted at the time. I learned a lot building that one, perhaps the most important being that one can vary quite a bit from the perfect orientation and layout and still accomplish huge solar gains.

Construction of this greenhouse therefore represented a series of compromises and tradeoffs which all seem to have worked out wonderfully well.  It all began when Leslie decided to move the kitchen of this old house from the north side where it was situated in a cold dark entry room right off the blacktopped parking lot to the warm bright south side where a closed-in porch looked out over the greenery of a side yard.

THE FOUNDATION

The first compromise was the decision to keep the greenhouse small enough so that views of the side yard from the eventual kitchen would be preserved.  We decided upon the eastern corner of the south wall and here is where I laid the approximately 10 X 10 foot foundation. A modest adjustment in size was made when we followed the footprint of an existing garden foundation that was laid out by one of the previous owners.

The three eastern-most windows (on the right in this image) were removed, two to make way for a sliding glass door, and the third to become a storage cupboard for the kitchen.

The dirt inside the foundation was removed to fill and build up the soil line outside the foundation. Four specific things were accomplished by this. The built-up soil allowed a smooth landscaping transition around the perimeter of the greenhouse; added to the insulation of the foundation itself; allowed the introduction of bank-run and pea-gravel inside the greenhouse to increase the thermal mass and provide superior drainage;  and permitted the floor of the greenhouse to be well below that of the kitchen. More about this point later.

So the major trade-off at this point was to sacrifice a very large solar gain and greenhouse workspace (running the entire length of the south wall) for one that would be smaller , in order to preserve the views from the kitchen-to-be.

SETTING THE ANGLES OF THE SOUTH FACING WALLS

The next set of design decisions was to set the angles of three slanting south-facing surfaces. The lower two are transparent glazing, the lowest is set to the angle of the winter sun; the next to the angle of the spring and autumn sun.  The topmost surface is opaque, a standard, well insulated tin roof set to the angle of the strong, overhead summer sun.

These angles do not have to be exact. In fact, I understand they can be off as much as 45 degrees without altering the efficiency to any appreciable degree.  We therefore set up a trio of 2X4′s, fit our topmost angle to the slope of the existing roof and moved the lower angles around a bit until we had a pleasing configuration and slope for all three surfaces.

This led to the innermost wall being about 9 feet in height, the break near the door about 8 feet, and the break at the lower knee wall about 5 feet.  If I could remember my high-school geometry I could calculate the inner volume, but suffice it to say there is plenty of elbow room inside. So the second trade-off was in adjusting the angles of the glass to allow for a more pleasing attachment to the existing structure.

Although it has a small footprint, this 10X10 floor plan balloons upward to enclose much usable space.

THE MATERIALS

Pressure treated wood used was for the 2×6 sill plate, but this is the only place where it was used.  All 4X4 exposed structural members are Cedar, as is the siding.

Two headers, one 2X10 bolted into the house and a 2X12 running along the major East-West axis through the center of the greenhouse are standard construction grade lumber.

All glass panels in the South, East and West facing walls were made to order. They are double walled insulated panels made from quarter inch tempered plate glass.  This was done to minimize the probability of having them broken by accident, say an errant stone thrown up by a lawn mower.

An important glazing consideration is to make sure the butyl seal of the double paned windows does not come into contact with any silicone sealant as this would degrade the butyl seal and allow the windows to leak.

We were fortunate enough to find commercially made doors which came with full length insulated glass panels.

THERMAL MASS CONSIDERATIONS

The below-grade cement block walls go down to footers below the frost line, capturing the ambient 50 degree temperature of the earth, and both the cinder blocks and interior space have been filled with bank-run and pea-gravel to promote good drainage and to increase thermal mass.

After the gravel floor was leveled, it was covered with recycled red clay bricks from remains of the Hudson River brick industry. A set of stairs into the house was also built from these bricks. They are not only attractive and authentic, but also capture and retain the sun’s heat for release in the nighttime.

AND A FINAL TRADE-OFF

A conscious decision was made to share the heat captured by the greenhouse with the living space of the house. As you can see the floor of the greenhouse lies below that of the kitchen floor. Consequently when the sliding glass door to the house is opened a natural thermal convection loop is established: Cool air flows along the kitchen floor and falls into the greenhouse while the warm/hot air from the greenhouse rises to come into the kitchen and is naturally distributed to the remainder of the house.

Heat gain is at its greatest during the clear cold days of February into the longer days of March and April.   This trade-off does require some extra heat at night for tender plants. If one wanted to have only cold-tolerant Geraniums, or heat-loving tropical plants, the amount of heat shared with the living space could easily be altered by adjusting the door opening.

so, what would a greenhouse be without cats?

Of course, the joys of working in this greenhouse make us yearn for a bigger one, but that is a wish akin to never being thin or rich enough. In such cases, “Modesty in all things” is a mantra worth repeating.

If we had it to do all over again, I think both of us agree that a larger entry door to the outside would allow the larger plants to be moved in and out with greater ease and with greater security to the plant itself.

Tashkent marigold ( from Southern Exposure). The foliage has a sweet fragrance, the plants grow bushy with minimal pinching and the flowers absolutely glow.

Here’s my roundup of favorite sources:

But first, a few words about heirlooms and hybrids

Heirloom and modern open pollinated varieties (hereafter referred to as OP’s) have great advantages for gardeners and great value as vectors of genetic preservation. Heirlooms also have a reputation for tasting better than hybrids, which isn’t always true. Not because the heirlooms have slipped but because some hybrids have made great strides in the right direction.

Over the last few decades, the small farm, specialty and home garden markets have grown enough to attract the attention of breeders who know that flavor is essential for success. They don’t always hit the mark (see the footnote on Celebrity tomatoes here), but continuing to lump all hybrids with the ones developed for commercial virtues like durability and ease of machine harvest is no longer appropriate.

That said, heirlooms generally do remain the flavor kings. Most of the vegetables Bill and I grow are heirlooms or, if you count the OP’s and the OP’s we save ourselves, heirlooms-in-the-making.

We also grow hybrids, however, a couple of them yearly essentials, and now that “heirloom” is not only a food-fashion buzzword but also a sort of moral bottom line I think it’s probably time to point out that in developed countries with no isolated areas of genetic purity*, hybrids are not inherently a threat to anything.

Think what you will of multinational chemical companies like Monsanto and their effect on the seed business – as darkly as possible is fine with me – plant breeders like Rob Johnston, of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Jim Baggett, of Oregon State University, and Brent Loy, of  the University of New Hampshire, people who have spent lifetimes creating (occasionally stellar) hybrids are not evil Frankensteins; the technology they use is based on the same one nature uses. Plants hybridize all the time without any aid from human beings; they just don’t do it with us in mind. If you’ve ever eaten a volunteer squash that grew in the compost pile you know it wasn’t thinking of you.

'Juliet', a hybrid tomato we love. Bigger than a cherry, smaller than a plum. Early, prolific, disease-resistant, absolutely delicious fresh and ideal for drying.

The big knock on deliberately created F1 hybrids like ‘Juliet,’ offspring of two carefully bred parent lines that are usually more or less worthless by themselves, is that “you can’t save them.” True, if what you mean is that you can’t save the seeds from year one and have all of them produce roughly similar plants in year two.

But with a few exceptions like seedless watermelons, the seeds made by hybrid varieties are neither sterile nor deficient; you can plant them and they’ll grow just fine. All the original genetic material is still in there, just not in the same arrangement and not the same from seed to seed. The seeds you save from  F1 hybrids produce an assortment of plants, only a few worth saving.

If the parent lines of the F1 were similar, the assortment won’t be huge. By repeatedly selecting the best plants, then saving and planting their seeds, you might be able to get an OP substitute for the hybrid in as little as 6 to 10 generations.

On the other hand, if the parent lines of the F1 were not similar, the assortment will be staggering. Following generations will present so many unique plants to select from you’d have to have major financial resources and considerable skill to sort out a candidate for preservation.

But either way, it could be done – at least in theory. In practice, if you want the characteristics offered by the hybrid seed, you buy the hybrid seed each time you need more. Just the same way most of us buy flour, sugar and shoes.

As for the argument that all seed varieties, including those developed by professional breeders, should be common property that anybody can sell, we notice that most of those making this case have no trouble copywriting the words they use to make it.

Obviously (or maybe not so obviously but that’s a rant for another day) seeds that have been genetically engineered are another story. For those, I’m in full agreement with the precautionary principle and so are the seed sellers on this list, all of whom have officially taken the Safe Seed Pledge .

* Completely apart from cross-pollination problems, every hybrid seed planted means one less heirloom seed in the ground. This is a particular threat to diversity  in places where the native populations of whatever plant are various, numerous and little known, while the number of farmers who know how to plant them is small and getting smaller. Corn in Central America is perhaps the best known example.

OK, here they are, in alphabetical order:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Every year the ever-larger, ever more glossy catalog sets new standards for garden porn. Baker Creek offers an enormous array of vegetable varieties (and vegetables) many of them in my experience deservedly obscure. Much of this exotica is in short supply; order early if you want something truly unusual. It doesn’t hurt to notice that the catalog is innocent of cultural information and says essentially nothing about less glamorous parts of the seed business like trial fields and testing procedures.  Fun, though, and most of what I’ve gotten from them has been fine.

Fedco Seeds. “Very unique” is a locution that has always given me acute pain, but if it were possible for something to be even more only one than only one, Maine’s northern-grower-centric Fedco cooperative would certainly be it. The idiosyncratic catalog, written by founding cooperator CR Lawn, is wonderful bedside reading even if you don’t order anything. But he’s very persuasive; you almost surely will and then you’ll be glad you did.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds. (Full disclosure: founder and part owner Rob Johnston is a personal friend.) Johnny’s newly redesigned website has a completely retail front page, so it’s no longer instantly clear that small and mid-sized commercial growers are major Johnny’s customers and this outfit isn’t fooling around. Trialing is extensive; there’s a major breeding program;  many of the seeds are grown by Johnny’s or on contract for them and tech support is part of the package even when the package only weighs a couple of grams.

Pinetree Garden Seeds. What the newsprint catalog lacks in frills it makes up for in wide selection at low prices. This has long been the place to shop if you just want to try a little of something or find yourself always and forever throwing out ancient lettuce seed. The alphabetical listing in front is supplemented by small appendices of “Foreign Vegetables:” Asian, Continental – the European continent but not France or Italy which get their own couple of pages each – Latin American, etc.), an arrangement about which you may draw your own conclusions.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is located in Virginia and targeted to the mid-Atlantic and upper and mid South. Seed saving is a central theme and there is considerable  emphasis on heirlooms developed and preserved by home gardeners who have to contend with substantial heat and humidity. The well written catalog makes each variety come to life and the descriptions are honest about merits and liabilities.

Territorial Seed Company.  Large selection, detailed descriptions and useful growing information from a company firmly located in the Mountain West. Territorial also sells started seedlings for which I can’t vouch, never having ordered any.

Southwesterners! –There’s plenty for you in these catalogs, but there’s even more – and even better, from the locally adapted point of view – at Native Seeds SEARCH (Southwestern Endangered Species Resource Clearing House).

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Just a little reminder it’s not going to be winter forever.

First, though, present time. Here’s my perennial shopping list ( with source links) of  good gifts for gardeners.

Membership in The Garden Conservancy is on that list without further explanation and at this point none may be needed. But just for the record: after starting small and being exceedingly Northeast-centric, the Conservancy is now saving significant gardens all over the US and offering benefits almost everywhere. Just the ticket for garden-loving friends, regardless of skill level or actual possession of garden.

Like good causes too numerous to mention, the Conservancy raises money by offering garden tours. Unlike (most of) the rest of them, that’s “garden tour” as in one garden at a time.

Thanks to an Open Days plan modeled on the British version, it’s easy to visit (and pay for) only the gardens that interest you, and the goodies are ongoing. Open Days occur throughout the the growing season from early spring to late fall.

The Hudson Valley is particularly rich in viewing options, which I’m usually too busy to exercise. But every year there are a few things too good to resist. Two years ago those things included the Hyland /Wente garden featured in the February issue of Fine Gardening magazine. Seeing that perfectly nice article helped inspire this one because being in good gardens rules; paper and screens are mighty poor substitutes for the real thing.

Not seen or mentioned in the story: The rill down the center axis has goldfish in it and a dark bottom that helps the water reflect the sky.

The trunk is of course a bit springy and must be held down until the leaf pile is big enough to act as a weight. The holder here is Bill’s ever-handy Italian rototiller, still on site after being used to dig the trench.

I have a number of garden tools to which I am mightily attached, but none so precious as the Italian rototiller, my husband Bill, who has written this guest post about his favorite tool.

The Italian Rototiller

By Bill Bakaitis

It may not be what T. S. Elliot meant when he referred to April as being the cruelest month, but around here the breaking of spring ground also means breaking the sweet silence of winter.  Motorcycles roar, dogs bark, the machinery of lawn maintenance springs into gear and out come the rototillers, churning and burning their way into the modern landscape. The ‘greening of exurbia’ is what they say.  Consumer doublespeak is more like it.

The Grape Hoe, Mattock or Italian Rototiller, all oiled up and ready to go!

When I break ground I use Grandfather’s tool. Anglo types who hang out at the Agway probably call it a Mattock, and it is often listed in specialty garden supply outlets as an Italian Grape Hoe. I once heard it referred to disparagingly as an “Italian Rototiller” and in honor of my Calabrese Grandfather, that’s what I call it. Were he alive today he would chuckle and cherish the approbation.  Leslie, of course, says it only works when used by an Italian (meaning me).

Why do I use and love it? Let me count the ways:

1. For starters it is INEXPENSIVE. The price of a brand spanking new one online at Easy Digging is about $27. EBay has several listings for the hoe w/o handle for $18, and I have seen used ones at yard sales for $3 to $5, a hundred  times cheaper than the cheapest rototiller you can find.

2. And they are DURABLE. Not to worry about purchasing a used one for unlike the motorized rototillers, these things don’t break down, and if they do they are easy to repair.  The one I own was used by my Grandfather in the 1930′s and ’40′s.  In 1956 he and I installed the current handle, cut from an oak branch and shaped by him with a drawknife.  Maintenance by me has included replacing the end wedge once and rubbing the handle with Tung or Linseed Oil once a year. It even sharpens itself as it is used.

This durable Grape Hoe has been in use since the 1930's. Its self sharpening edge cuts like a knife.

3. It is STRONG, I might even say MIGHTY, able to loose large clods with a single stroke, able to bounce off rocks, even Kryptonite, with impunity, and able to chomp roots as if they were linguine al dente.

A large clod.

removed.

with a single stroke.

4. And yet, it is also EXQUISITELY SENSITIVE. In use I can direct it to shave a little or a lot, to go deep or skim the surface, and to change the angle from aggressive to gentle all automatically in a dynamic nanosecond as the hoe falls to earth.

If this sounds implausible, think of the way your foot on the gas petal adjusts to the 80 miles per hour traffic on the highway speeding up and slowing down instantly gliding into a lane without so much as a conscious thought.

The angle of attack is easily adjusted as the hoe falls to earth.

On Easter Sunday as I was tilling a few rows in the garden, I uncovered a potted plant inadvertently left in the garden from last fall.  Underground, new tender red shoots were beginning their journey moving out of the pot up from the roots. A mechanized tiller would have lunched the plant in an instant but as the Grape Hoe transmitted the feel of the thin plastic pot to my hands it immediately fell limp, dead in mid-stroke, the plant saved for rescue and future identification.  So too with the adventitious asparagus and arugula that have taken up residence in another row; they too were saved by the feel of the fall of my grandfathers tool.

5. Perhaps the most noticeable attribute of the Italian Rototiller, however, is that it is QUIET and POLLUTION FREE. It uses no gasoline, no oil (save the yearly smear on the handle), produces no noxious fumes and no noise. I love its whispering whisk, whisk, whisk and occasional clink of stone to metal as it cuts through the earth. The melody rises softly joining the breath of air that stirs in the trees and the bright cheery, cheery, cheery of bird call that floats down in response.  Call me what you will, but in its serene, dignified simplicity this experience rivals all for its reverent, sensuous spirituality.

6. And, it is EFFICIENT. In High School I was fortunate to have majored in agriculture. Mr. Lowery, our one eyed Ag instructor (losing his other to a clutch assembly that fell from a tractor on which he was working) also taught Earth Science and Physics. He had it right when he spoke of efficiency.  To have an honest measure of efficiency, be it on the farm, in nature, or in the lab you have to account for all of the variables involved.

For the motorized rototiller some of these variables range from the energy costs of mining the ore, smelting, milling and machining the metal; exploring and drilling for oil, cracking, refining and delivering the gasoline; developing, assembling and maintaining the machine, along with the associated labor costs at every step along the line. No motorized machine can compete with the inclined plane for energy efficiency, he said.

Years later, long after graduate school, reading sophisticated tracts on General Systems Theory I ran across input/output energy accounts of raising grain. For every calorie expended by a farmer with a bullock driven plow, the authors calculated, one could expect 10 calories from the sun in return. For every calorie extracted from the soil by modern machine methods, on the other hand, some 10 to 15 calories had to be expended. Hardly green are these technologies. They are economically efficient and viable only when major costs have been externalized. The authors concluded that it would be cheaper and more energy efficient to eat the oil than to convert it into tractors and fuel to plant, cultivate, harvest, process, distribute and market grain with the mechanized agribusiness technologies.  (These are important lessons and when understood reveal why grain ethanol is not green. But that’s a different story.)

For a graphic illustration, take these before and after shots of one row in my garden.

before,

during,

after

It took only 17 minutes to do this row from beginning to end, including the time necessary to stop and take four or five images, and to separate out the weeds. Not only did I end up with a clean weed free row, but I also have a barrow full of excellent organic matter fit for a compost pile or land improvement project at the edge of my property. Two for the price of one: now that is a good measure of efficiency in action.

7. Cultivation with my Grandfathers Grape Hoe has yielded a VANISHINGLY SMALL CARBON FOOTPRINT. Consider that this single Italian Rototiller has been in nearly constant use since the Great Depression when my grandparents bought their farm at the end of Dewy Avenue in Washington Pennsylvania.

They had a truck garden in the bottom land of their sixty four acre farm, and with his ‘mattock’ as he called it, my Grandfather scratched out smaller plots across the hillside. The farm prospered and the produce they grew was sold in their own store at the corner of Park Avenue and Main Street. The surplus was distributed to two or three other grocers in town.

As a teenager, I contracted with a local florist to grow his mums on a three acre hillside plot. I used my grandfather’s big hoe, and when he died, a few years later,  possession of the hoe was passed on to me. It has been used in every garden I have created ever since. I can’t begin to calculate how many acres, tons, mountains of soil have been moved with it.

Use of the Grape Hoe to turn the compost pile. With the exception of the initial tilling of sod with a machine, this garden has been maintained for the past 17 years exclusively with hand tools, chiefly with my Granddad's Rototiller

As for the amount of carbon based energy necessary to make the Grape Hoe? Well once for the 8″ blade, undoubtedly from the coal and steel industry based near Pittsburgh, once for a braze to repair what looks like a crack in the eye, and twice for oak handles. What does this add up to?  A bushel or so of coal?  A gallon or two of Gas?  An evening’s use of heat for the home? As I say, a vanishingly small carbon footprint!

8. Using this big hoe is HEALTHY and ECONOMICAL. Using it helps relieve me of the cost of joining and maintaining a membership in a Health Spa. It helps keep me reasonably trim, limber, calm and clear headed, and in good cardio-vascular health. The same cannot be said of some I see using the machine version.  One poor fellow I know can no longer see his knees. Another sits on his motorized lawn and garden machines, then gets into his faux luxury car to drive to the gym in order to work on his sculpted abs and pecs, muscles that are quite likely to turn thick and fat in a down economy. (Don’t get me wrong: I know some will need a bit of mechanized help to till their gardens, but most, I am willing to bet, would do well to avoid this consumer trap.)

9. COMPACT STORAGE. It takes only a few inches of wall space to store the Grape Hoe.

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Storing this rototiller is a cinch

10. Use of this inclined plane PROMOTES SOIL HEALTH. In the tilled row, there is virtually no soil compaction. One is left with a loose friable structure of the bed. Because the weeds are not chopped into the soil there are few, if any, to compete with the seedlings or sown seeds and therefore less cultivation and subsequent soil disturbance – with accompanying weed growth – is needed throughout the season.

A bed of deeply cultivated, friable soil ensures easy rooting and a healthy start for the seedlings that follow

Tilled in this manner, our New York beds will be able to maintain themselves with modest input throughout the summer. Leslie and I both operate on the assumption that if you build a healthy bed in the spring the seedlings get off to a great start, root deeply and given adequate mulching can be left to their own devices throughout the growing season. This is vitally important to us as we maintain both the New York and Maine gardens. And less time in the garden enables us to invest in those other activities we so much enjoy.

So, there you have it. A bountiful life, full of promise, produce, and vitality all made possible by my Italian Rototiller.  Who woulda thought?

Thanks, Grandpa!

Fred Cario, my granddad, tending his cattle, mid winter, in the mid '50's.

"seed of the Paulownia tree"

are just a microscopic part of  The Kew Millenium Seed Bank Project, a major player in the worldwide effort to save endangered plant species.

The  picture here was airily downloaded from a slide show of 18 gorgeous images  published by The Guardian; and the news that it was up there came from Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. 

pole beans on sapling trellis, woods left and straight ahead

In Maine, we use saplings from the surrounding woods – they’re handy, they’re free, and because they’re nothing more than little trees they tie the riotous, colorful garden to its wild environment.

string and sapling trellis (please ignore oak posts in foreground)

 This bean trellis was created by Kristi, who had evidently gotten bored with just running vertical lines. Beans would rather go up but will travel horizontally if encouraged. The spiderweb was completely covered about 2 weeks from this picture.

In New York, where there’s no convenient sapling source and the garden is if not formal at least orderly, we use 8 foot oak 2×2’s.

(We use 2×2’s for tomatoes in Maine too, because we need so many of them.)

stakes for tomato trellis, in place at planting

The proto tomato trellis in New York. Note the tomatoes are between the uprights. The string is woven from stake to stake around them, behind one stake then in front of the next until the vines are about 5 feet tall. Then, since our tomatoes are unpruned except for the bottom 2 feet, all hell breaks loose and we just keep roping them into staying more or less upright.

Of course, the most important thing about any stake is how firmly it’s seated in the ground. New York wouldn’t be sapling territory even if there were an ample supply of them because that garden is right on top of a former railroad bed.

Twenty years of combined soil building and rock removal have hugely improved the top foot or so, but everything below still fights back every time you insert a shovel. The only way to firmly set tall supports there is to use a post driver and for that – at least for the manual kind – you need the even top on a rugged stake that 2×2′s provide.

Maine on the other hand was no more than naturally rocky when I got there, so thirty years of stone removal have left me with soil that’s if anything too soft. Kristi and I make holes for the saplings by digging straight down with trowels. A post hole digger would be more efficient if it didn’t take so much brute strength to use accurately.

That’s it.

More Trellis Details

* Once they get going, peas have no trouble climbing strings run lengthwise about 6 inches apart. But the baby vines need support right away and are not yet strong enough to reach for the string. Twiggy branches about a foot long get them started.

* Pole beans begin twining around the nearest narrow thing ( often the neighboring bean vine ) almost immediately and never stop. Unlike peas they can’t reach to bridge gaps, so you’ve got to provide lots of sturdy verticals. We usually weave a crude – very crude! – approximation of  6 inch square netting. Beans near the poles will prefer the poles no matter what else you do, but the rest of them will twine round the net if reminded from time to time.

* The saplings last 3 (alder) to 6 (oak) years, depending on diameter and rot-resistance. The 2×2’s last 5 to 7 if stored dry over winter and would last longer if pressure treated but not in the vegetable garden, thank you very much.

* Used pea, bean (and morning glory) string gets cut up a bit and buried in the compost. Used tomato string is burned to minimize the spread of blight.

* Painting used tomato stakes in spring with a strong bleach solution ( 1 part bleach to 8 parts water) also helps keep disease from spreading. Be sure to do it on a sunny day and lay the treated stakes out where they will dry as soon as possible.

* Sometimes the saplings decide they’ve had it – usually right at the base -  in midseason while covered with vines. We drive a 2×2 in beside the broken one, leaning slightly outward, then lash the two together. Not beautiful but it works.

* Bill uses saplings thinner than the stake kind to build decorative arches.

sapling arch in the white garden

By Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd, illustrated by Bobbi Angell (with the accuracy, sensitivity and elegance she always brought – full disclosure – to our collaboration at the New York Times Garden Q&A.)

This is the first page of the first chapter; you’ll be seeing the cover all over the place if you haven’t seen it already.

When Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd decided to call their third book Our Life in Gardens, they probably didn’t mean “our” to include everyone who ever fell for a plant. But that’s the way they made me feel.

No matter that my gardens will never be a patch on theirs, that they have taken zone defiance beyond art into legerdemain and amassed a collection of rare plants that puts most public gardens to shame, they share discoveries, admit obsessions and air plenty of strong opinions as though their readers were their equals on a level playing field of horticultural passion.

The chapters arrive alphabetically, so you know going in this will not be a straightforward march through  North Hill, the seven acre Vermont garden that the two have made (over more than 30 years) into one of the country’s most famous marriages of plantsmanship and design.

Instead the tour is elliptical and so is the history. You don’t learn how they found the property until you get to The Daffodil Meadow, 88 pages in. There’s an enchanting introduction, Setting Out, that really is an introduction. But right after that we’re honing in on  Agapanthus, one of the many (many many) tender beauties they simply can’t do without –  and neither can you when they get through with you.

Next up are Annuals, Arborvitae, Artichokes, Bananas, The Bay Tree … In other words, it’s a pointillist picture, an aggregation of bright bits that makes a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Telling details are tucked in as though by chance, like choice plants in a rock wall.  The step by step  description of their pea-staking technique, for instance, includes the “twine from hay bales fed to the cows all winter long.” Cows? By the time the bovines make their brief appearance you’re not surprised; a large assortment of other animals has already flashed by.

The love letters to leafier pets, from tiny species cyclamen and rare Himalayan blue poppies to the collection of (38!) magnolias are at the same time thank you celebrations of those who provided the plants. As the chapters roll by in flowers and vegetables, trees, shrubs and bulbs, a whole sub-plot’s worth of  eminent gardeners and nurserymen enter the story – most of them as friends. Wouldn’t hurt to make a list; it’s bound to come in handy.

There are also plenty of  plenty of useful tips on the choice, care and feeding of a good sized assortment of plants, but Our Life In Gardens doesn’t pretend to be a how-to book. I beg to differ. The authors aren’t didactic about it but if you read carefully there are instructions on almost every page about how to be a generous, patient and loving gardener.

all drawings by Bobbi Angell