Park Seed Garden Journal

Today’s biggest story in agriculture suggests that this might be the most important year for commercial corn suppliers since the forties. The ever-growing buzz around alternative fuel sources has farmers all over the country hustling to meet the expected demand for corn to produce ethanol. [1]

Many are giving up valuable rice, cotton, and soy space to accommodate the new corn crops. Ethanol seems to be very trendy, and many auto makers have already designed and manufactured several vehicles that run on an ethanol/gas mixture.

There are many opponents of this particular bio-fuel who believe that it doesn’t solve any of the problems that bio-fuels are supposed to solve. Even Fidel Castro recently broke months of media silence to condemn President Bush and Brazil for their joint ethanol ventures [2]. The opponents believe that better options exist, and ethanol’s growing popularity is misguided. The top arguments center around the inefficiency of ethanol as a fuel source for automobiles (even the proponents estimate a 10% to 15% drop in mpg from regular unleaded gasoline [3]), the environmental impact of producing the fuel, and the costs and shortages created in the agricultural market. [4][5]

Beyond all of the politics, the immediate result for the rest of us will be a raise in the price of corn, and any of the other displaced crops. The price of corn is already well above previous years, and if the demand continues to grow we may start to notice prices of products from other crops starting to go up very soon.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’ll give you the Park Seed answer for avoiding all of this mess. Grow your own produce. They are safe, not chemically treated, cheaper than fresh produce, and you can grow exactly what you want instead of relying on the supermarket’s dismal selection. Park Seed’s Vegetable Seeds

1. Ethanol Deman Boosts Corn Planting from the Associated Press via Yahoo! News

2. Castro Emerges to Slam Bush on Ethanol From “Autopia” in the Wired magazine blog network

3. National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition- FAQs

4. The Limits of Ethanol from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via Bend Weekly

5. Ethanol- Burning Money and Oil iGreens.org

Thomas Andrews
Park Seed Company

This year, along with the peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini I started in my Bio Dome, I have started some onions, watermelons, and green beans in peat pots. I’m most excited about the greenbeans, because they perform so well right out of the seed. This isn’t very scientific, but I have a feeling that the bigger the seed, the easier it is to germinate. I only started them a few days ago, and they are taking over my window sill. They need to be moved outside very soon.

Being here at Park Seed, I have access to all of this useful knowledge and expertise, and I like to take advantage of it. Most of the basic information that we use if also available to everyone on the web at GardenerHelp.org. I have just looked up the culture file on beans, which I will share with you, but if you have any questions about anything else in your garden, check out Gardener Help. It answers most of my questions. It was created as a resource for the people in our call center to quickly answer questions, but anyone can access it.

If you are looking for some information about germination your seeds you should check out successwithseeds.org. This interactive site will allow you to search for info about unique seeds or discuss them with other gardeners on the forums.

So, here is what I learned from Gardener Help about my beans:

HABITAT: Native to North and South America. Zones 3-10.

HABIT: Annual bushy or climbing plants 20" to 10′ bearing tiny white, yellow, pink, red, or lavender Sweet Pea-like flowers followed by yellow, green, or purple pods filled with large edible seeds. 45-70 days to maturity.

SEED GERMINATION AND CULTURE: Sow outdoors after all danger of frost is past in good garden soil in sun and with excellent drainage. Sow bush varieties 1-1 1/2" deep and 2-3" apart in rows 18-24" apart, sowing every 2 weeks for a continuous crop. Sow pole beans or climbing varieties with 4-6 beans per "hill" 1 1/2" deep with the hills 3′ apart each way. Provide support with 3-7′ poles tied at the top in a tripod fashion. May also be supported by strings, trellises or fence. Prior to sowing, inoculate seed with a nitrogen-fixing bacteria such as Nature’s Aid.

Fertilize with 3 lbs. of a balanced garden fertilizer such as 8-8-8 per 100 sq. ft. before planting. Repeat fertilization as a side dressing when the plants are 6-8" tall at the rate of 1 cup per 10′ of row, placing the fertilizer 3" away from the stem and watering in well. Keep watered and cultivated shallow. Harvest when beans are young and succulent, or for dry beans, allow the pods to mature then shell. To prevent weevil damage, place the seed in a 130-145° oven for 1 hour.

15′ row of bush beans yields about 7 lbs. over a 2-3 week period; 15′ row of pole beans yields about 12 lbs. over a 6-8 week period; 15′ row of horticultural (shell) beans yields about 9 lbs. over 3 weeks; 15′ row of horticultural pole beans yields about 18 lbs. over 4 weeks. Beans grow best in a soil pH of 6.0-7.5.

To reduce risk of disease, it is best to rotate planting locations each year.

Beans may be started indoors in peat pots or pellets 3 weeks earlier and then set in the garden, pot and all, at the proper spacing.

Thomas Andrews
Park Seed Company

Spring might be pretty, with all of the new blooms on the trees, and those blooms might smell good, if you could smell them. If you remember my post “Pollen, Indestructible?,” consider this an update. This year is supposed to be one of the worst allergy seasons on record, especially in the southeastern region of the country.

I check Yahoo! News top stories for anything relevent to gardening, Park Seed, or South Carolina. Of course, they are going to use some gross picture from South Carolina of a duck swimming through some body of water in Columbia, SC, our lovely capital. My guess would be that the pollen laden body of water is either the Congaree River or the pond in Finlay Park. I bet the reflecting pool in front of the Thomas Cooper Library looks even worse, but ducks wouldn’t swim in it, pollen or not.

This Associated Press story about pollen has reached every major news provider on the internet. MSN, USA Today, Google, Yahoo– they are all talking about Columbia and Atlanta, and how the pollen counts are almost as high as they’ve ever been. They say cover your nose and stay indoors as much as possible. I just wish it would rain and rinse this disgusting, indestructible dust off everything. The dry weather is blamed for the high count. We are supposed to get some rain today– I hope that we do. The sight of that lime-green haze over everything is getting really old.

My favorite part of the article is the quote from the Car Wash guy, "Business has been good, very good."

Check out the AP article here: “The South has the Sniffles”

All four of the 2007 All-America Selection winners are varieties you can order from Park Seed. This year’s winners include three flowers and one vegetable. Each year, independent judges from trial gardens all over the country rate new garden plants based on their performance and quality. The AAS then designates the winners from the best of the best from all over. If you would like to learn more about these varieties you can read about them at the All-America Selections website.

Or if you would like to try them for yourself, just click on the pictures.

Pepper Holy Molé                                           Celosia Fresh Look Gold

Petunia Opera Supreme Pink Morn                    Vinca Pacific Burgundy Halo

The Park Seed Company is bustling with seasonal workers and garden center customers– the busy season is upon us. The shipping department and the call center remind me a little of those 1980′s movie depictions of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, so many people talking that not one intelligible word will float above the commotion. People work diligently, and follow strict routines, obviously, one method for maintaining some semblance of sanity.

I had to moonlight in the call center, where they take all of the telephone orders, one day last week. My task was simple enough, just light data entry to relieve some of the pressure for another department. I could barely think. Imagine about 100 conversations going on at once, you’re trying to enter numbers, but all these other people keep saying other numbers out loud, all around you. It was like some kind of white-collar torture session. Most of the data entry people are locked behind glass walls in very quiet parts of the building. This was the only open terminal that had all of the necessary software, lucky me.

I enjoyed being able to help, and doing something a little different– it gave me a better appreciation of what goes on up there. Those guys in the Park Seed call-center have a difficult job, working on very strict schedules and dealing with all of the commotion. Maybe, I will see if they will let me try a few other things for a day, then I can write about it. It will be like that television show, where that guy does all those different jobs, the one’s you can’t imagine anyone enjoying.

A Park Seed co-worker and I were discussing gardening the other night, at midnight, while we were wandering around in Walmart looking for curtains. He said to me, “You know, planting things because they are pretty is a fairly new practice. Until recently, if you had any available land, you planted something you could eat or something useful.”

That seemed logical enough to me. Apparently, he was watching something on television about the history of gardening, and that’s the tidbit he picked up. I can assume that before supermarkets and automobiles, it would be beneficial to grow things that would otherwise be hard to get.

But, I think the assertion that gardens for aesthetics purposes is a recent development is total nonsense. What about the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, or the Japanese. There are gardens in Japan that were designed and built hundreds of years ago that are still maintained. Over five thousand years ago, the Egyptians had walled gardens with shallow fish ponds.

It seems ridiculous to consider gardening for pleasurable or aesthetic purposes a recent event, unless you are speaking in the context that, in the history of earth’s existence, humanity is a recent occurrence. But, I don’t think that is what this statement means. The only way I can understand it, would be in context of the European expansion into the new world. The pioneers, heading west and blazing trails, had no time for frivolous rose gardens. They were struggling just to maintain some semblance of civilized life. So, until the last hundred years or so, most of North America would be hard pressed to tend to some plant that wasn’t going to give them food, clothing, or shelter. In that since, in recent American history, I can seed how growing a purely recreational garden might be a late development.

It doesn’t seem like a sacrifice, however. The American pioneers weren’t giving up a right or necessity, but taking on a much more important project. Maybe the continent-taming tendencies, the essence of technological advancement, humanity’s triumph over his environment is inherent. We can no longer surge into the wilds, muskets blaring and axes swinging, so we march onto or lawns with a rake and spade and tame what little flora we can fit onto our suburban lot. It may not tame wild territory for future generations, but we continue to blaze because we must.

Thomas
Park Seed Company

You’ve bought or built a new birdhouse, and you want to bring those singing lovelies into your garden. You might have bought the most expensive birdhouse, or maybe, you’ve built your aviating pals a top-o’-the-line birdie townhouse. For the birds, it’s just like the old real estate adage– the three most important things in selling real estate are, “location, location, location.”

Of course, timing matters too. The house is for a nest, the nest is for eggs, and eggs only happen in the springtime. The best time to place your birdhouse is late winter to early spring, before the birdies meet their mates. Don’t stress if you’re a little behind because there are plenty of reasons to go ahead and hang that house any time of the year. First of all, young males may take a little longer to find their first mate, so those couples will be nesting a little later. Also, some birds are going to have more than one nest of chicks, and even if they don’t, Mama Bird may just move her first one, if she likes your house better. Your birdhouse will also be a good shelter in the colder months for those birds that do not migrate.

The specifics of birdhouse placement depend on the species you are targeting, because some species are looking for a very particular arrangement. There are birders who know all of this information, but I prefer to generalize and maximize my potential of getting a visitor, because sometimes you can wait for a very long time before a new family decides to pick your house. Generally, place the birdhouse about 6-12 feet above the ground– hanging them on metal or PVC poles secured about 18” into the ground will the best way to defend against predators. If you are hanging your birdhouse on a tree, you may want to fix a piece of aluminum around the trunk below the birdhouse to deter potential egg-thieving villains. Never hang your nesting house near birdbaths or feeders because the patrons of those facilities may not be so friendly with your nesting family. Make sure there is a tree or shrub for Mama Bird to perch on near the nest. Point the birdhouse away from the winds of summer that might direct rain into the nest, and if you live in a warmer area, face the bird house north or east to avoid over-heating in the hot summer sunshine.

To attract birds to your yard and increase the chances that your birdhouse could become a birdhome there are a few ways to enhance your garden and make it more “bird-friendly.” Feed the birds with a bird feeder or with fruit trees and shrubs. Try to minimize your use of pesticides, which are not only dangerous for the birds, but also destroy a large part of their food supply. A bird bath or a pond with a waterfall will also be a plus for any bird scouting for a new home.

Butterflies, a universal symbol of springtime, one of the more popular pollinators, every gardener loves them. Wonderfully surprised, the most seasoned gardener grins like a toddler with a cookie when a butterfly voluntarily floats down to touch a shoulder or knee. The butterfly seemingly gaining nothing from this interaction, just stops by to say, “hello.”

Of course, some gardens are more butterfly friendly than others, as some gardeners know very well. You can even intentionally plant a butterfly garden, and make your little insect friends a little more comfortable. Butterflies, like all pollinating animals who love to drink nectar, are attracted by strong floral scents and bright colors.

Butterflies have three needs that need to be met for them to choose a place, and you’ll have to provide those if you want them in your yard. They need food, they need sunlight, and they need host plants to lay their eggs (of course, you could just provide the first two and let them put their nests in your neighbor’s tree).

As a gardener, butterfly food is the part you will provide most readily. Butterflies have pretty good vision, but you still want to plant your flowers densely by variety to make sure they notice each of the bright colors. Plant fragrant bright flowers like hibiscus, day lilies, cone flowers, coreopsis, asters, and black-eyed susans– wild flowers like dandelions, goldenrod, and butterfly weed also work really well. Buddleia, or the ‘butterfly bush’ is a must have for a butterfly garden (big surprise) because it has a strong fragrance that butterflies love. A large range of plants will attract various species of butterfly. Of course, even the most beautiful creatures have their ugly side. If you really want to attract butterflies, you also have to provide some rotting fruit and maybe some fresh manure, but be careful these things also attract wasps.

Sunlight is very important. Butterflies are insects, cold-blooded like fish and reptiles, they need to sun themselves to keep warm. Make sure your butterfly garden is in an open place that is not too windy. They will prefer areas that get at least five hours of sunlight a day.

And finally, butterflies will love your yard if you give them a place to lay their eggs. If you are anything like my great grandfather used to be, you are out in the yard every spring, swinging a rake into your trees and cursing at the caterpillar nest. But, having host plants is crucial to getting plenty of butterfly visitors, but you may not want a visibly chewed on plant as part of your garden. You could plant your host tree a little bit away from your nectar plants. Host plants need to have food ready to eat for the newly hatching larvae. Many trees and shrubs native your area will work for your local butterflies, but here are a few examples: alder, cottonwood, dogwood, plum, live oak, paw paw, rose of sharon, and maple. This list continues for a while, and you have probably seen a nest of caterpillars in a tree before. They never seemed too picky to me.

Butterfly Friendly Selections from Park Seed

Yesterday evening, when I got home from work, I went to check on the zucchini in my Park Seed Bio Dome. These seedlings have grown very quickly, and most were promptly moved outdoors where they could stretch their legs. The last few needed a couple more days under the protection of the bio-dome, and I had one that, until yesterday, had shown very little activity. But, when I got home I found this…

I was very excited at how odd it looked, and knew immediately that I had inadvertently planted it upside down. I brought the picture to Park Seed to share with co-workers, and it was forwarded to a horticulturist. He thought it was pretty neat, and he gave a helpful explanation of what exactly was going on.

I’ve attached his emailed response below.

Ain’t Plants Fascinating?

The radicle (root) is the first thing to emerge from a germinating seed. On a squash seed. the radicle grows from the pointed end and, if the seed is placed in the growing medium with this point up, then the roots emerge in what we consider an upside down state. Plant roots respond to gravity by growing downward (positive geotropism) so if they come up this way they will just naturally respond by growling downward. At the same time, the shoots (cotyledons) are emerging underneath the growing medium and they respond to gravity in a negative manner (negative geotropism) and begin to grow upward.

Even if Thomas had not helped , the roots and shoots would have eventually reversed themselves. This condition may happen in the garden quite often but since the seed are covered we are not aware of it. It may just take a day or two longer for the seed to emerge and we never know the difference. It’s something that Nature has evolved over the years to ensure the roots grow down into the moist soil and that the shoots grow up and toward the sun (survival of the plant).

Thanks for sharing the photo.

To clarify what he meant when he said that I “helped,” I dug out the entire seedling, roots and all, with my finger, flipped it around and shoved it back into the Bio Dome growing sponge. In this context, the word “help” is fairly subjective as the ultimate fate of this young seedling is still undetermined. It was well-developed but slightly discolored– hopefully that will change now that it can get some light.

Thomas
Park Seed Company

Plant clematis with your taller shrub roses– it makes a wonderfully interesting feature for any garden. The clematis will climb and intertwine with the rose and beautiful blooms will peak out here and there among the roses. When you combine the two plants it creates a very natural look, as if the two plants might grow together like this in the wild.

This is a very easy project for anyone who grows clematis or roses. If you have a hardy, established shrub rose, just plant a new clematis at the bottom of it. While the clematis is still young you may want to train it at first, tying it to the rose in a few places, but as it grows it will start to climb the rose on its own.

Clematis will climb most shrubs and trees, but they just look really nice on roses. On a larger shrub or a small tree, you could try this same technique with mandevillas, which are a little heavier than clematic and wouldn’t work very well on delicate rose shrubs. If you want to go even larger, a wisteria will also climb, but only try this with a fairly large tree. The wisteria would overtake and eventually kill a smaller plant.

Thomas
Park Seed Company