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Nature’s Way Resources owner John Ferguson, “The Lazy Gardener” Brenda Beust Smith and Pablo Hernandez welcome your feedback and are so grateful to the many horticulturists who contribute their expertise
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Recognize all these as Gingers? They are! Find names at:Mercer’s March Mart ginger sale preview. More in Spotlight Article below!
“All gardening is landscape painting.” – Alexander Pope(1688-1744), English poet
NOT YARD-HAPPY? QUIT THINKING ABOUT ACTUAL PLANTS!
BY BRENDA BEUST SMITH
Is there a gardener anywhere who — no matter how happy with “most” of the yard — doesn’t secretly have a corner/other area that “tightens the jaw”? Now, while weather is zigzagging, is a good time for visual homework. Listen to pros – the internet is loaded with advice. They all start same way:
FORGET ABOUT ACTUAL PLANTS!
Instead look at your yard from every different perspective — street view, window views (upstairs & down), your car, your neighbors’ yards. Look up, all way around (we so seldom do this!). Front and down, etc.
Look PAST your own yard when you walk past, out the doors, getting out of the car for 1. sights you love and 2. sites to hide. Which off-sight do you hope visitors will see? Or, which do you hope hope they overlook?
Can you pull the eye to good (or away from dislikes) using spectacular flowers, distinctive greenery, decorative latticework (especially for eye-drawing blooms), etc. Remember, actual plants are a future decision. Decide first what TYPE of problem you’re solving.
Most folks look down more than they look up. Want your yard to look bigger? Plant to pull the eye upward, expanding perspective. Again, think shapes, not plants! Can an existing plant be pruned from sides to make it grow taller — maybe more narrow? Or pruned from the top (ok with shrubs, not trees) to take up more horizontal space (helps reduce weeds!). In our subtropical area, plants often grow more vigorously than described.
Tricks can help a small yard look bigger if that’s what you want:
- Pavers laid diagonally or winding make an area look bigger, especially if wider the far end.
- Another “enlarging” trick: warm colors (red, orange, vivid yellow) up close and cooler colors (pinks, purples, blues) farther back.
- Large leaf plants, especially at the far end, can create a sense of depth.
- Trellises not only provide vine support and to pull the eye upward, they can help create the illusion of changes of levels that make garden look bigger.
- Reflective and light-coloured materials and flowers at far end make a yard feel larger. Bright, hot colours and darker shades have a dwarfing effect so are best up close if making a yard look bigger is your goal.
- Once you collect all this info, you’re ready for your plant search!
THELMA’S PRIZE GINGERS PROVIDE SUMMER DELIGHTS!
By CEIL DOW
The Mercer Society Ginger Grower FriendsofMercer.com
Thelma & Charles Mercer grew a wide range of plants, some new to Houston gardens. A group of prized plants was their collection of gingers. March Mart is an excellent place to collect rare and hard to find butterfly gingers, torch & tulip gingers as well as the Dancing Ladies and Peacock gingers. Butterfly Gingers are popping up now, Spiral and Pine Cone Gingers will pop up in the next few weeks with the Tulip & Torch Gingers, Dancing Lady, & Peacock Gingers breaking dormancy in late May. (Ceil Dow photo)
- Curcuma ‘Giant’ (pictured) is a brand-new Tulip ginger! It is a robust, yet compact plant that produces bountiful stems topped with whorls of bright pink petals and pocket shaped bracts. These make an easy container plant or planted in groups in a border.
- Curcuma ‘Great Reign’ is the LARGEST inflorescence of all the tropical Torch Gingers! The bright pink inflorescence grows to a fat 5” wide and a tall 12” high! Blooms last for a month in the garden and then quickly grow another.
Curcuma ‘Lanna Snow’ creates the largest flowers for Tulip Ginger varieties! The inflorescence is topped with a whorl of pure white petals. Lower, pocket shaped bracts brim with petite purple & white flowers. - The Globbas or Dancing Ladies come in a deep rosy pink and a bright white. They are the longest lasting flower of all the gingers. In the garden, pendent flower scapes keep their color and vibrancy for 6 weeks. When used as a cut flower, they last for 4 weeks.
- Pictured ‘Globba Pink’ Dancing Lady Ginger
JOHN’S CORNER
NEWS FROM THE WONDERFULWORLD
OF SOIL AND PLANTS # 276
Subject: Red Cedar, Minerals, Silicon
There is one tree that I have a love-hate relationship with, and that is the Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) which grows all over most of North America.
This conifer is a beautiful evergreen, grows in almost any soil, drought, and heat tolerant as well as cold tolerant. Very few diseases or pests, provides good shade, helps prevent erosion, the thick canopy blocks wind, and chemicals from this tree are being studied for use in skin cancer and as an antibiotic.
The lumber is used for fencing, building posts, lining chest and closets to keep moths away, as well as furniture as the wood has a pleasing aroma and very rot resistant. Cedar mulch is often used to repel insects in greenhouse environments and it can be made into a biofuel. Many folks often use small cedars as Christmas trees as it has beautiful foliage that smells nice. The berries from some cedars are also use to make alcoholic beverages.
A paper in the journal of the Soil Science Society of America by researchers from the USDA has found another important property of this tree and that is in sequestering carbon. The scientists studied nine sites in the USA and found that the soil below these stands of cedar has significantly higher carbon (organic matter) 16.8% higher compared to its neighbors.
The negative is that many people are sensitive to the pollen and their reaction is often called Cedar Fever. Some studies have found the cedar is also a water hog that can deplete shallow aquifers.
The reason I sometimes do not like it, is that it grows limbs very quickly into the roads and trails at my farm and it seems like I am constantly pruning them back. It also sprouts all over my fields and I am constantly having to remove it.
We often talk about the importance of re-mineralizing our soils in this newsletter. It is estimated that about 100 million people around the world do not have enough selenium (Se) in their diet. A selenium deficiency is associated with a weakened immune system, heart disease and increased risk of cancer.
Agriculture with its intensive toxics chemical rescue methods has depleted many of our soils of its selenium.
When broccoli is grown on soils with plenty of selenium it tends to accumulate it which we then get when we eat this vegetable. The selenium also extends the post-harvest shelve life of this highly perishable product.
Researchers found that foliar application of selenium on other crops increased the fresh weight of the produce and it increased the water use efficiency. Other research has found that sufficient selenium in the soil increased a plants resistance to pathogens, herbivory, salinity, nutrient toxicity or deficiency and water stress. Journal of Crop Science (2023)
This is an example of why I always use Re-mineralizer on everything I grow. We just do not know what plants or the microbes working with the plants require. It is just very inexpensive insurance to help have a beautiful and nutritious garden.
Another element we often do not think about when growing plant’s is silicon (Si). Soluble silicon helps plants deal with salt stress as it binds the sodium, helps plants resist disease and pests, helps give the plant structural strength and many other benefits.
Most soils have lots of silicon in them but it is chemically locked up and not available to plants. Most of the silicon in soils are found in quartz minerals and as we all know; quartz is hard tough stuff.
So how do plants get silicon? It is the fungi that live in the soil that break the silicon oxygen chemical bonds and release the silicon for the plant to absorb. Hence when one uses a fungicide, you kill the good fungi and a nutrient deficiency occurs and this case silicon.
For those whom want to learn more, a good book is Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease, by the American Phytopathological Society, 2007.
From the publisher: This comprehensive book examines how mineral nutrition affects plant disease. Minerals improve the overall quality and health of plants. Knowing how each individual mineral affects a plant is beneficial for efficiency in production and sustaining the ecosystem. From a plant pathology perspective, Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease brings the discussion of plant disease diagnosis and management to a new level. Mineral nutrients are important in production agriculture and horticulture because they can often be the first line of defense against plant diseases. It is an area of knowledge that can be misunderstood or overlooked in the study of diseases and their diagnosis. This reference succeeds in organizing what we know and explaining the interactions at work. Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease is the first book to successfully combine two important plant science disciplines, nutrition, and pathology, to provide current information on theoretical aspects of nutrition in disease physiology while contributing a wealth of basic practical information for obtaining immediate disease suppression with specific fertilizers.
Food for thought. From the 2023 September issue of Acres USA magazine, written by a couple doctors titled “Soil That Connects Us.”
I liked the statement they made: “But we are sick because the soil is sick.”
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ABOUT US
BRENDA BEUST SMITH WE KNOW HER BEST AS THE LAZY GARDENER . . . but Brenda Beust Smith is also:
- a national award-winning writer & editor
- a nationally-published writer & photographer
- a national horticultural speaker
- a former Houston Chronicle reporter
When the Chronicle discontinued Brenda’s 45-year-old Lazy Gardener” print column — started in the early ’70s as a fun side-project to reporting, it then ranked as the longestrunning, continuously-published local newspaper column in the Greater Houston area. The name, she says, is not just fun, it’s true. Brenda’s gradual sideways step from reporter into gardening writing led first to an 18-year series of when-to-do-what Lazy Gardener Calendars, then to her Lazy Gardener’s Guide book which morphed into her Lazy Gardener’s Guide on CD, which she now emails free upon request. Brenda became a Harris County Master Gardener and, over the years, served on theboards of many Greater Houston area horticulture organizations. She hosted local radio and TV shows, most notably a 10+-year Lazy Gardener specialty shows on HoustonPBS (Ch. 8) and her call-in “EcoGardening” show on KPFT-FM. For over three decades, Brenda served as Assistant Production Manager of the GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA’S “BULLETIN” magazine. Although still an active broad-based freelance writer, Brenda’s main focus now is THE LAZY GARDENER & FRIENDS HOUSTON GARDEN NEWSLETTER with John Ferguson and Pablo Hernandez of Nature’s Way Resources. A native of New Orleans and graduate of St. Agnes Academy and the University of Houston, Brenda lives in Humble, TX, and is married to the retired Aldine High School Coach Bill Smith. They have one son, Blake. Regarding this newsletter, Brenda is the lead writer, originator of it and the daily inspiration for it. We so appreciate the way she has made gardening such a fun way to celebrate life together for such a long time.
JOHN FERGUSON John is a native Houstonian and has over 27 years of business experience. He owns Nature’s Way Resources, a composting company that specializes in high quality compost, mulch, and soil mixes. He holds a MS degree in Physics and Geology and is a licensed Soil Scientist in Texas. John has won many awards in horticulture and environmental issues. He represents the composting industry on the Houston-Galveston Area Council for solid waste. His personal garden has been featured in several horticultural books and “Better Homes and Gardens” magazine. His business has been recognized in the Wall Street Journal for the quality and value of their products. He is a member of the Physics Honor Society and many other professional societies. John is is the co-author of the book Organic Management for the Professional. For this newsletter, John contributes articles regularly and is responsible for publishing it.
PABLO HERNANDEZ Pablo Hernandez is the special projects coordinator for Nature’s Way Resources. His realm of responsibilities include: serving as a webmaster, IT support, technical problem solving/troubleshooting, metrics management and quality control. Pablo helps this newsletter happen from a technical support standpoint.
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