Planning for Summer “Bulbs”

We are approaching the window for planting summer-blooming bulbs, so it’s time for planning

Summer-blooming bulbs might be called “spring-planted bulbs,” just to be confusing.

For clarity, geophytes, i.e., plants that have underground organs, are grouped in just two categories: spring-planted/summer-blooming, and fall-planted/spring-blooming.

Because plants often do not always follow our categories strictly, blooming seasons include early, mid and late bloomers. Good catalogs and labels will identify a plants bloom season, for reference in planning extended periods of color in the garden.

In the Monterey Bay area’s moderate climate, summer bulbs could be planted anytime between February and April. It’s now too late to plant spring-blooming bulbs.

Many gardeners call all geophytes “bulbs,” but they actually include several kinds of specialized storage organs:

  • True roots: tuberous roots (Dahlia) and storage taproots (carrot)
  • Modified stems: corm (Crocus), Stem tuber (potato), Rhizome (Iris), Pseudobulb (Pleione), Caudex (Adenium)
  • Storage hypocotyl or tuber (Cyclamen)
  • Bulb (Narcissus, onion)

Here is a sampling of popular summer-blooming “bulbs:”

  • African Lily (Agapanthus)
  • Amaryllis (Hippeastrum)
  • Canna
  • Cape Coast Lily (Crinum)
  • Dahlia
  • Ginger Lily (Hedychium)
  • Gladiolus
  • Lily – Asiatic, Oriental, Species, Hybrids (Lilium)
  • Montbretia (Crocosmia)
  • Peruvian Lily (Alstroemeria)
  • Windflower (Anemone coronaria)

Consider planting uncommon “bulbs,” to bring variety into the garden:

  • Chinese Summer Ground Orchid (Bletilla, a terrestrial orchid)
  • Glory Lily (Gloriosa superba)
  • Guernsey Lily (Nerine)
  • Indian Crocus (Pleione, another terrestrial orchid)
  • Pineapple Lily (Eucomis)
  • Rain Lily (Zephyranthes)

Planting guidelines for all geophytes: locate in full sun; select a well-drained bed (underground storage organs could rot in soggy soil); choose plants that are best for your climate; and amend with compost or aged manure for tallest, lushest and healthiest plants.

When selecting plants, check the storage organ for good health. This check can be done easily with dormant bulbs, which might be marketed in plastic baggies, and small potted plants can be lifted gently from their pots to examine their health. If the organ looks black, unusually soft, or otherwise troubled, leave it behind and consider shopping elsewhere.

Summer bulbs can be found now or in the next few weeks at local garden centers. As always, specialized mail order suppliers have online and printed catalogs with larger selections. Here are three to consider:

Brent and Becky’s ((877) 661-2852)

McClure & Zimmerman (800) 883-6998)

John Scheepers, Inc. ((860) 567-0838

Prepare now for color in the summer garden. As always, planting in odd numbers of three or more—if you have space—creates the most attractive displays.

Enjoy your garden!

The Future of Retail Garden Sales

We have seen the Internet’s impacts on many aspects of society, such as music distribution, newspaper printing, television and radio broadcasting, and too many other fields to list.

Retail marketing is among those other fields that have been disrupted by the Internet, and the marketing of plants for home gardening could be transformed by this technology on the future.

We might have fond recollections of shopping for plants as the experience of browsing through our favorite independent garden center, seeking inspiration and friendly advice. While that form of retail marketing of plants still exists for most gardeners, two major changes have already occurred.

First, is the emergence of mail order plant sales, which I have often mentioned. Local garden centers typically provide a valued service by offering regionally appropriate popular plant selections on a seasonal schedule. By comparison, their mail-order competitors offer dramatically wider selections and the convenience of home delivery. The downside of acquiring plants in this way is that the gardener doesn’t have an opportunity to see the plant before it shows up on the doorstep. With reputable suppliers, however, the delivery will be a well-grown, disease-free plant, exactly as ordered.

A great and growing variety of mail-order suppliers has developed. Their advertisements and web addresses can be found in the pages of garden magazines. A useful directory of mail order plant suppliers is available online, in Cyndi’s Catalog of Garden Catalogs. To find sources of California native plants on this website, click on “Native Plants,” then search for “California.”

Anther strategy is to search for a specific botanical name

Wholesale growers have begun offering their plants by mail, sometimes at prices below those found at retail outlets. The retailers do not appreciate being bypassed in this manner, particularly since they provide gardeners with drop-in facilities and personalized attention.

In some cases, wholesalers collaborate with retailer garden centers through an arrangement called BOPUS (Buy Online Pick Up in Store). This works particularly well for after-hours orders.

Another alternative to the independent garden center includes the big-box stores, also called superstores. These are physically large retail establishments, usually part of a chain. Attractive prices can be found, while the care of plants can vary depending on the location. A report in the current issue of Nursery Management magazine indicates that big box stores have garners 83 percent of plant sales, with the remaining 17 percent going to independent garden centers.

The future of garden plant sales could involve a combination of the buying power of big-box stores, the efficiency of mail-order sales, and the marketing technologies of the Internet. As we order through e-commerce giants like Amazon, Netflix, and others, we see increasing applications of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, with which the seller uses our previous purchases and perhaps our profile information to suggest which plants to buy. We have already seen experiments with the seller’s use of FaceTime technology to help gardeners to decide where to plant and what to plant.

Another stage in this line of development is “Uber of Landscapers” concept, in which the seller uses Internet technology also connects the gardener with a local landscaper to install and maintain the plant being purchased. Amazon Services has already bought a company that uses a mobile app to send landscapers directly to users’ homes.

In the not-too-distant future, the home gardener might use a smartphone to show a neglected corner of his or her garden to remote plant supplier, and ask, “What would look good here?” After a bit of dialog, the supplier recommends one or more plants, the gardener orders one, and the supplier provides a referral to a local landscaper for the installation. If the gardener has ordered many plants, or perhaps a larger shrub or tree, he or she might add installation to the plant order, and negotiate the schedule.

As this brave new world of gardening arrives, I trust that we could order plants that have been certified as organically grown and pollinator-safe.

Charlie Keutmann atThe Garden Company

Charlie Keutmann at The Garden Company, in Santa Cruz

Photo by Dan Coyro, Santa Cruz County Sentinel

 

 

Gardening by keyboard has certain benefits, but it will not replace the direct experience of walking through one’s own garden or the local garden center to plan future additions.

Soil is the Solution

A crucially important trend in climate change news focuses on soil.

In the United States, the greatest contributors to climate change have been the energy and transportation sectors, so federal responses have focused on emissions that result from burning fossil fuels. The resistance to regulated changes has come from private interests with business models that depend on fossil fuels (and politicians that support them).

The U.S. priority on fossil fuels makes sense, and it engages a good fight, but it’s not the entire story.

For at least the past ten years, public interest organizations have been pointing to Nature’s plan for moderating climate change. That plan depends on forests and soils, both of which are very good at absorbing and storing (sequestering) carbon.

Climate change has been accelerated by cutting down vast areas of forest to free land for agriculture. The negative effects of deforestation have been recognized, and initiatives (never enough) have been launched to control this practice and let the trees do their work.

Nature’s plan also as been compromised by agricultural practices, beginning with deforestation and continuing with a variety of poorly conceived land-use and land-management practices.

The good news on this front is that almost all the countries that have joined in the Paris Climate Agreement have stated that they will improve agricultural practices in their efforts to curb climate change.

According to the World Resource Institute, agriculture contributes 13 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and, with land-use changes, 24 percent of net emissions.

Agriculture is not as important as a climate change factor in the U.S. as I developing countries, but it’s still a significant contributor. California, which has a huge role in agriculture, has recognized this reality and initiated the Healthy Soils Initiative, discussed in a recent column (see ongardening.com/?p=2680) .

In this regard, California has been well ahead of the federal pace: U.S. Department of Agriculture has recommended that farmers voluntarily adopt carbon-capturing practices, but has done little more in deference to policies on energy and transportation.

In more good news, the U.S. position is changing, In December of 2016, the National Science and Technology Council (NTSC) released the report, “The State and Future of U.S. Soils: Framework for a Federal Strategic Plan for Soil Science.” The NTSC is “is the principal means by which the Executive Branch coordinates science and technology policy across the diverse entities that make up the Federal research and development (R&D) enterprise.”

To see this report, visit www.whitehouse.gov and search for “soils.”

In related actions, on January 11th, Regeneration International, a coalition of consumer groups, launched its “Soil is the Solution” briefing for members of Congress. A team of experts will seek opportunities to talk to our elected policy-makers (or their staffs).

Also, on January 19th, Former Vice President Al Gore will unveil a sequel to “An Inconvenient Truth,” his 2006 climate-change documentary. The new film surely will emphasize the role of agriculture in climate change. The sequel will debut at the Sundance Film Festival, and will be released in theaters later in 2017.

Efforts to control climate change must begin with large-scale actions, but they are also appropriate for home gardeners. We all have a stake in the future!

Future Uncertainty

As the inauguration of Donald Trump approaches, we enter a historically extraordinary period in which a single political party controls the House, the Senate and the White House.

“Control” should be taken with a grain of salt, because little is absolute in our nation’s capital.

While absolute control doesn’t happen in Washington, the political arena does have constants. During the past several years, a great constant has been the confrontation between opposing perspectives.

Under the new administration, that confrontation focuses on the struggle over the separation of power written into the U.S. Constitution. The incoming political majorities seem determined to reduce the power of the executive branch of government, meaning to constrain the president’s ability to use executive orders and the authority of administrative offices to write and enforce regulations based on legislation.

The lobbyists are out in great numbers, speaking on behalf of either public or private interests.

There are many issues on the table. A recent report in the New York Times observed, “The most powerful and ambitious Republican-led Congress in 20 years…plans to leave its mark on virtually every facet of American life…”

With that in mind, we examined the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s December 2016 report, Free to Prosper: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 115th Congress. This 193–page report addresses many aspects of American life, and consistently calls for the reduction of federal regulation with the intention to “unleash America’s entrepreneurial, wealth-creating potential.”

In this column, we focus on issues related to gardening, a topic that easily includes food, so we will comment on only this report’s section, “Food Drugs, and Consumer Freedom.”

Due to space limits, we can only list the report’s food-related objectives:

  • Ensure consumer access to genetically engineered (GE) foods
  • Streamline (“fast-track”) regulation of (GE) plants and foods
  • Repeal the national standards for labeling GE foods
  • Oppose overregulation of food additives (particularly trans fats)
  • Oppose recommended limitation of sodium (salt) content of foods

This section also contains objectives to reduce or roll back federal regulation of (a) drugs, medical devices, and treatments, especially the new and experimental, (b) tobacco substitutes, (c) soft and pliable plastics (phthalates), (d) flame retardants (organohalogens), (e) online gambling, and (f) sports gambling.

Finally, this section recommends federal defunding of “activist research,” such as research on the safety hazards of BPA (bisphenol a) lining of metal food containers.

These are industry-sponsored objectives, not actual legislation. Their basic message is expressed in the report’s title, which translates to Make Money.

At the same time, consumer groups are vigorously organizing their defense of regulations that are intended to protect public health and safety. In California, the governor and attorney general are prepared to resist federal actions that would obstruct the state’s progress on several important issues.

The debate over the appropriate balance between public and private interests will continue during the coming four years, with an opportunity at the mid-point of this period to review the actions of some of our elected representatives.

Meanwhile, the political environment must be regarded as unsettled at best.