Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Tribune column: Lawn care, herb harvesting and prairie appreciation
A column I wrote in Sunday's paper.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The garden walk family reunion
I am now informed that a gentleman hired Rickshaw Rick to transport all the women who were attending a family reunion around on the Oak Park and River Forest garden Walk. He has apparently been holding a family reunion around the garden walk for 10 years or so. Is that a great idea for a family reunion, or what?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Some tips for enjoying a garden walk
Went on the Oak Park-River Forest Garden Club's garden walk today and last week I went on the Pullman Garden Walk. I've been on dozens of garden walks in my time, and I thought of some tips to pass along....
1. Take notes in the booklet or on the map sheet they hand out with most garden walk tickets. But back it up with a notebook, clearly labeled. You may discover that fabulous garden with a dozen cultivar names you just have to write down. Oh, and bring two or three pens; the first pen will inevitably give out on you.
2. Take a digital point-and-shoot and take lots of pictures (bring an extra memory card). After each garden, find its name and address in the booklet or the map and take a picture of it. That way, when you're looking through the pictures later, it will be easy to remember which ones are of which garden.
3. If you are taking pictures of a plant, look for a label. If it has one, take a picture of it. When you are editing the pictures, you'll have the information right there.
4. Wear sunscreen (guess who didn't). Have a hat and an umbrella in the car.
5. Most garden walks these days aren't really walkable, except for a few urban ones like the Dearborn Garden Walk or the Sheffield Garden Walk or the Bowmanville Garden Walk. But if circumstances permit, consider alternative transportation, such as a bicycle. Lots of cyclist/gardeners were out today in River Forest and Oak Park. And Rickshaw Rick's was running people around to the gardens by pedicab, which looked like the way to go, if only I'd thought of it.
6. Bring water. I was never so grateful to anybody as I was for the cups of ice water available in gardens No. 8 and 9. Should have brought my water bottle. In many of the farther-flung suburban garden walks that require a lot of driving, you never know where or if liquid refreshment or lunch is to be found. So it doesn't hurt to bring some provisions too. Hungry people can't enjoy gardens.
7. Available restrooms are rare; the homes aren't open. So take care of that before setting out.
8. Basic courtesy: Stay on paths and lawns, but don't block traffic; don't ask for cuttings and for God's sake don't swipe them; don't go into houses unless you've been told that's part of the tour. Don't double-park or block driveways.
9. If the gardener is there, feel free to ask questions within reason. But watch out for the garrulous gardener who may prevent you from making progress to the next garden.
10. The gardener may be around without wearing a name tag. So wait to mock the gardener's taste until you and your friends are safely out of the garden. Of course, you can feel free to say nice things any time.
11. Some of these walks, such as the Sheffield Garden Walk, have dozens of gardens open. Don't even dream of trying to see them all. Just pick a section of the map. Or chat up the ticket sellers or other volunteers; tell them what kind of garden you like and get recommendations. But also tell them you'd like to see two or three gardens that are different from what you know you like. If you know you like formal gardens, ask for an interesting naturalistic garden; if you know you like flowers, ask for a garden with great foliage. Part of the fun of a garden walk is discovering you like things that would never have occurred to you.
12. If you like a garden, stop and think about why. Many people can't get past the individual plants. But often a good garden has its effect because of its style or its design or its relationship to the house or to the site. So try to mentally step back and analyze what it is that appeals to you about the garden as a whole.Then think about how you might apply that idea in your own garden.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
1. Take notes in the booklet or on the map sheet they hand out with most garden walk tickets. But back it up with a notebook, clearly labeled. You may discover that fabulous garden with a dozen cultivar names you just have to write down. Oh, and bring two or three pens; the first pen will inevitably give out on you.
2. Take a digital point-and-shoot and take lots of pictures (bring an extra memory card). After each garden, find its name and address in the booklet or the map and take a picture of it. That way, when you're looking through the pictures later, it will be easy to remember which ones are of which garden.
3. If you are taking pictures of a plant, look for a label. If it has one, take a picture of it. When you are editing the pictures, you'll have the information right there.
4. Wear sunscreen (guess who didn't). Have a hat and an umbrella in the car.
5. Most garden walks these days aren't really walkable, except for a few urban ones like the Dearborn Garden Walk or the Sheffield Garden Walk or the Bowmanville Garden Walk. But if circumstances permit, consider alternative transportation, such as a bicycle. Lots of cyclist/gardeners were out today in River Forest and Oak Park. And Rickshaw Rick's was running people around to the gardens by pedicab, which looked like the way to go, if only I'd thought of it.
6. Bring water. I was never so grateful to anybody as I was for the cups of ice water available in gardens No. 8 and 9. Should have brought my water bottle. In many of the farther-flung suburban garden walks that require a lot of driving, you never know where or if liquid refreshment or lunch is to be found. So it doesn't hurt to bring some provisions too. Hungry people can't enjoy gardens.
7. Available restrooms are rare; the homes aren't open. So take care of that before setting out.
8. Basic courtesy: Stay on paths and lawns, but don't block traffic; don't ask for cuttings and for God's sake don't swipe them; don't go into houses unless you've been told that's part of the tour. Don't double-park or block driveways.
9. If the gardener is there, feel free to ask questions within reason. But watch out for the garrulous gardener who may prevent you from making progress to the next garden.
10. The gardener may be around without wearing a name tag. So wait to mock the gardener's taste until you and your friends are safely out of the garden. Of course, you can feel free to say nice things any time.
11. Some of these walks, such as the Sheffield Garden Walk, have dozens of gardens open. Don't even dream of trying to see them all. Just pick a section of the map. Or chat up the ticket sellers or other volunteers; tell them what kind of garden you like and get recommendations. But also tell them you'd like to see two or three gardens that are different from what you know you like. If you know you like formal gardens, ask for an interesting naturalistic garden; if you know you like flowers, ask for a garden with great foliage. Part of the fun of a garden walk is discovering you like things that would never have occurred to you.
12. If you like a garden, stop and think about why. Many people can't get past the individual plants. But often a good garden has its effect because of its style or its design or its relationship to the house or to the site. So try to mentally step back and analyze what it is that appeals to you about the garden as a whole.Then think about how you might apply that idea in your own garden.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sources for information on diseases and insects
If you have something untoward going on in your garden (not unlikely given all the rain and humidity), here are a couple of ways to keep track of pests and diseases that are or may soon be coming to a back yard near you: The University of Illinois Extension's Home, Yard & Garden Pest Newsletter and The Morton Arboretum's Plant Health Care Reports. The staff keeps a close eye out for trouble at the Lisle arboretum and they chronicle it all.
To identify an insect or disease problem for sure, turn to the old standbys: the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
Too often the first instinct is to ask "What do I spray?" But it's really important to figure out what the problem is first, or you may spray something that's completely ineffective.
And decide whether it's really worth bothering with. There's no need to spread more poison around the world than absolutely necessary. Remember, even "organic" pesticides are, by definition, poisons: If it's going to kill something, it's a poison.
Many plant problems are only cosmetic, and don't affect the real health of the plant. Or they are going to go away by themselves. Or they are an effect of weather, and the weather will change next week. Or by the time you notice the problem it's too late to do anything about it; many insecticides only work if they are applied at exactly the right time in the life cycle of an insect.
Often the best response, once you've determined the problem, is to live with it. Or at most, cut off the diseased foliage and get it out of the garden.
Ideally, you'd prevent it. You would use soaker hoses to water beds instead of sprinklers so the foliage wouldn't get wet to encourage fungus diseases. (Of course, that doesn't help when we've had nonstop rain. But in drier weather, it's an excellent preventative.)
If you had a plant that just was doomed to disease--such as a flowering crab apple tree that was susceptible to apple scab, as many older varieties are--you wouldn't spray it every year. You'd knock the thing down and plant a variety bred to resist the disease.
Replacement is not always practical. The hedge of ancient lilacs--varieties of Syringa vulgaris--that borders our front yard gets disfiguring powdery mildew every summer. One year long ago, I went to war and started spraying the plants with fungicide every week beginning in early spring. With all that work I succeeded in postponing the shriveling of the leaves from the last week in July to the first week in August.
That was enough fungicide for me. I decided to ignore the disfigurement and put replacing the hedge with something disease-resistant on the long list of someday projects, one of the things I felt vaguely guilty for not getting around to.
Then new neighbors moved in next door and, in preparation for some landscape work, had the yard surveyed. Turns out the lilacs are on their property. So I'm off the hook; I am entitled to entirely ignore the powdery mildew. Which will probably be bad this damp year. But hey, it's not my problem.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
To identify an insect or disease problem for sure, turn to the old standbys: the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
Too often the first instinct is to ask "What do I spray?" But it's really important to figure out what the problem is first, or you may spray something that's completely ineffective.
And decide whether it's really worth bothering with. There's no need to spread more poison around the world than absolutely necessary. Remember, even "organic" pesticides are, by definition, poisons: If it's going to kill something, it's a poison.
Many plant problems are only cosmetic, and don't affect the real health of the plant. Or they are going to go away by themselves. Or they are an effect of weather, and the weather will change next week. Or by the time you notice the problem it's too late to do anything about it; many insecticides only work if they are applied at exactly the right time in the life cycle of an insect.
Often the best response, once you've determined the problem, is to live with it. Or at most, cut off the diseased foliage and get it out of the garden.
Ideally, you'd prevent it. You would use soaker hoses to water beds instead of sprinklers so the foliage wouldn't get wet to encourage fungus diseases. (Of course, that doesn't help when we've had nonstop rain. But in drier weather, it's an excellent preventative.)
If you had a plant that just was doomed to disease--such as a flowering crab apple tree that was susceptible to apple scab, as many older varieties are--you wouldn't spray it every year. You'd knock the thing down and plant a variety bred to resist the disease.
Replacement is not always practical. The hedge of ancient lilacs--varieties of Syringa vulgaris--that borders our front yard gets disfiguring powdery mildew every summer. One year long ago, I went to war and started spraying the plants with fungicide every week beginning in early spring. With all that work I succeeded in postponing the shriveling of the leaves from the last week in July to the first week in August.
That was enough fungicide for me. I decided to ignore the disfigurement and put replacing the hedge with something disease-resistant on the long list of someday projects, one of the things I felt vaguely guilty for not getting around to.
Then new neighbors moved in next door and, in preparation for some landscape work, had the yard surveyed. Turns out the lilacs are on their property. So I'm off the hook; I am entitled to entirely ignore the powdery mildew. Which will probably be bad this damp year. But hey, it's not my problem.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
A Commmunity Gardening Toolkit
Monica David, statewide coordinator of the University of Illinois Extension Master Gardeners (of whom I am one), passed along a link for a Community Gardening Toolkit that you can view online or download as a .pdf. file. Developed by the University of Missouri Extension, it seems like it could be a big help to those who have ambitions but don't know how to get a garden started in the neighborhood.
It also provides some tools for the hard thinking that should go into a community gardening -- about questions like: Who's going to maintain it after the first burst of enthusiasm fades? Where's the water going to come from? Who owns the land? What's the purpose of the garden, really? Who belongs to the "community" the garden will serve?
Chicago has an active community gardening culture. Local help is available through GreenNet, a partnership between government agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide information to encourage community greening of open space. Their Web site has a map of community gardens (not sure how up-to-date it is) and links to member organizations that can help with advice and support. There are also some links about safety -- specifically, how to cope with high lead levels in urban soils. If you have been dreaming of greening your neighborhood, give it a look.
It also provides some tools for the hard thinking that should go into a community gardening -- about questions like: Who's going to maintain it after the first burst of enthusiasm fades? Where's the water going to come from? Who owns the land? What's the purpose of the garden, really? Who belongs to the "community" the garden will serve?
Chicago has an active community gardening culture. Local help is available through GreenNet, a partnership between government agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide information to encourage community greening of open space. Their Web site has a map of community gardens (not sure how up-to-date it is) and links to member organizations that can help with advice and support. There are also some links about safety -- specifically, how to cope with high lead levels in urban soils. If you have been dreaming of greening your neighborhood, give it a look.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Caring for containers of annual flowers and other topics
I'm still doing some freelancing for the Chicago Tribune. Here's a link to my latest column, with tips for caring for annual containers. Other recent columns: roses, lilac pruning, dividing daffodils.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Hints about next year's flower and garden show
I had a chat yesterday with folks from Special Events Management, which owns and operates the Chicago Flower & Garden Show. It wasn't really an on-the-record chat, so I have to be careful here, but here's what I think I can get away with saying:
There will be a show at Navy Pier, on March 6-10, 2010. After this year's highly successful experiment in partnering garden designers with cultural institutions, next year's show will partner designers and theaters. The floor plan is being redesigned to allow more flow between gardens.
Despite the economic recession, there is no shortage of ambition and ideas for this show, but I'm not sure how many of the ideas we discussed will gel, so I think I'd better stop here. Suffice it to say: I am confident this show will continue to thrive and grow toward being a real central event for the gardening community in Chicago.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
There will be a show at Navy Pier, on March 6-10, 2010. After this year's highly successful experiment in partnering garden designers with cultural institutions, next year's show will partner designers and theaters. The floor plan is being redesigned to allow more flow between gardens.
Despite the economic recession, there is no shortage of ambition and ideas for this show, but I'm not sure how many of the ideas we discussed will gel, so I think I'd better stop here. Suffice it to say: I am confident this show will continue to thrive and grow toward being a real central event for the gardening community in Chicago.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
Wilting in the heat
It's well into the 90s in Chicago today, the hottest day of the year so far. This morning I passed a patch of impatiens in front of a church that were sadly wilting.
It's not like we're short on rain. But heat in itself is hard on plants. Physiological damage starts to set in at about 86 degrees, according to the American Horticultural Society. Plants that live in deserts have a variety of ways to survive hot, dry conditions, and we can recognize some of them in our garden plants: My lamb's ears and Salvia argentea, for example, have leaves covered with tiny hairs that reflect heat away from their tissue.
Such plants must have evolved in hot, dry places, so you know they aren't going to thrive in the same conditions that make ferns happy. I'm trying to keep some lamb's ears going in a part-shade place for the sake of their fuzzy contrasting texture. But I may end up transplanting them to the sunny bed at the rear.
Plants keep cool pretty much the same way humans do. In humans it's called sweating: we secrete water through our pores, which evaporates, reducing the temperature at the surface of our skin. In plants it's called transpiration. Plants let water out from the same openings in their leaves, called stoma, through which they take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. The water evaporates and cools the plant.
In some really hot, dry environments, water is precious, so plants have evolved to save up sunlight during the day and only open their stoma to collect CO2 at night, when it's cooler and less water will be lost.
Many plants have heat-beating strategies that involve conserving water. The fleshy leaves of succulents, with their waxy coating, are reservoirs. That's what makes sedums the favored choice for the blazing hot conditions of green roofs, where they soak up water in heavy rains and use it to keep themselves cool and operating through hot spells.
Chicago's type of heat is hard on a lot of plants for the same reason it's hard on me: The high humidity keeps water from evaporating readily. The combination of warmth and moisture also can encourage fungus diseases such as powdery mildew. That's why it's important to keep shrubs like lilacs pruned so air can circulate through them and give them a chance of drying off, and why it's a good idea to water only at the soil level and avoid getting water on leaves. (Not that watering is necessary so far this year.)
Impatiens walleriana, the brightly blooming annuals that are so popular in urban gardens and containers, are a forest-floor plant that originated in eastern Africa and are adapted to the shade. They don't have a highly efficient cooling mechanism, so they can't bear being out in the sun and they dry out fairly quickly. I regard them as an indicator plant: If I see impatiens starting to wilt I know it's time to water a lot of things that aren't yet stressed enough to wilt.
It's raining now, and it's supposed to cool off a bit tomorrow, which will bail out the impatiens by the church. But it's only June. Those impatiens are in a pretty sunny spot, and they're going to have a tough life in August.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
It's not like we're short on rain. But heat in itself is hard on plants. Physiological damage starts to set in at about 86 degrees, according to the American Horticultural Society. Plants that live in deserts have a variety of ways to survive hot, dry conditions, and we can recognize some of them in our garden plants: My lamb's ears and Salvia argentea, for example, have leaves covered with tiny hairs that reflect heat away from their tissue.
Such plants must have evolved in hot, dry places, so you know they aren't going to thrive in the same conditions that make ferns happy. I'm trying to keep some lamb's ears going in a part-shade place for the sake of their fuzzy contrasting texture. But I may end up transplanting them to the sunny bed at the rear.
Plants keep cool pretty much the same way humans do. In humans it's called sweating: we secrete water through our pores, which evaporates, reducing the temperature at the surface of our skin. In plants it's called transpiration. Plants let water out from the same openings in their leaves, called stoma, through which they take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. The water evaporates and cools the plant.
In some really hot, dry environments, water is precious, so plants have evolved to save up sunlight during the day and only open their stoma to collect CO2 at night, when it's cooler and less water will be lost.
Many plants have heat-beating strategies that involve conserving water. The fleshy leaves of succulents, with their waxy coating, are reservoirs. That's what makes sedums the favored choice for the blazing hot conditions of green roofs, where they soak up water in heavy rains and use it to keep themselves cool and operating through hot spells.
Chicago's type of heat is hard on a lot of plants for the same reason it's hard on me: The high humidity keeps water from evaporating readily. The combination of warmth and moisture also can encourage fungus diseases such as powdery mildew. That's why it's important to keep shrubs like lilacs pruned so air can circulate through them and give them a chance of drying off, and why it's a good idea to water only at the soil level and avoid getting water on leaves. (Not that watering is necessary so far this year.)
Impatiens walleriana, the brightly blooming annuals that are so popular in urban gardens and containers, are a forest-floor plant that originated in eastern Africa and are adapted to the shade. They don't have a highly efficient cooling mechanism, so they can't bear being out in the sun and they dry out fairly quickly. I regard them as an indicator plant: If I see impatiens starting to wilt I know it's time to water a lot of things that aren't yet stressed enough to wilt.
It's raining now, and it's supposed to cool off a bit tomorrow, which will bail out the impatiens by the church. But it's only June. Those impatiens are in a pretty sunny spot, and they're going to have a tough life in August.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The mushrooms that bloom in the rain
We've had a little rain in Chicago this year. In the last 90 days more than 17 inches of precipitation, 148 percent of normal, has fallen on northeastern Illinois, according to the Illinois State Climatologist's Office. That leads to all sorts of unpleasantness--flooding, leaky basements, mosquitoes, West Nile virus, bad rush hours, twice-a-week lawn mowing--but it gives us at least one good thing: mushrooms.
When I was a garden writer for the Chicago Tribune, heavy rains often brought phone calls and emails from readers complaining "I have all these mushrooms!" My usual response was "Congratulations! That means you probably have great soil!" Then I would try to convince people who were anywhere from repelled to terrified that the proper response was respect and tolerance, if not pride. In any case, not herbicides.
Mushrooms, after all, are merely the fruiting bodies of underground fungi, those empires of slender filaments that spread under the soil. They feed on plant matter, releasing its nutrients so they can be used by plants and other organisms. When the fungi are well-fed and they get the right amount of moisture they send up mushrooms to make more fungi.
If you have mushrooms in your lawn or garden, it's a sign that your soil has lots of decaying plant matter to be chewed over by all the members of the underground ecosystem that keeps plants happy. If a concentration of mushrooms keeps popping up in one area, it may be the spot where a tree was cut down but there is still a woody root system to be disposed of, supporting plenty of fungi.
When triggered by rain, those fungi propagate themselves by producing spores--not seeds, but something similar, the microscopic germ of life that can become another fungus. And spores are often delivered by mushrooms.
The typical mushroom, as my friend Greg Mueller once explained to me, is an elevator. Its purpose is to raise the spores high enough so that when released they can be caught and wafted away by the wind. It doesn't have to rise very high--spores are so tiny and light that just an inch of elevation may be enough to let them ride a breeze from beneath the mushroom's cap.
Some mushrooms are instead structured to distribute spores in rainwater. Other fungus fruiting bodies, which we don't call mushrooms because they don't have that iconic shape, cling to the sides of trees or logs that the fungi are digesting. Then there are puffballs, globes with spores inside, which dry out and wait for an animal (perhaps a human one) to step on them and distribute the spores in a dust cloud.
And for every spore, we should be grateful. Fungi form beneficial relationships with the roots of trees and break down vast quantities of plant matter. Without them, civilization would be buried in unrotted trees and lumber and mountains of leaves, every leaf that ever fell.
Though many people assume that all wild mushrooms are poisonous, most are not. I enjoy spotting mushrooms in my yard; I'm quite vain of them. I know they mean I've made the fungi underlying my lawn happy with plenty of compost and other organic matter and I haven't damaged them with pesticides or too much fertilizer. I like wondering how far the threads of my mushrooms' parent fungi extend under the soil--to the next block? to the railroad tracks? Fungi have been found that are thousands of years old and stretch for miles. I enjoy thinking about all the legends and mystery that the sudden, fleeting appearance of mushrooms (and the psychotropic properties of some) have provoked over thousands of years.
Greg was curator of fungi at the Field Museum in Chicago (which has a great exhibit for kids about all the things, including fungi, that live under the soil) and has studied mushrooms all over the world. Now he is vice president of science and academic programs at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. He is an ace mushroom hunter and mushroom epicure.
Hence the fun book he has written with Joe McFarland, "Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois & Surrounding States: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide." (Here's the companion web site.) From the book, you can learn to tell the difference between the poisonous Jack O'Lantern and the delicious Yellow Chanterelle. You can learn when and where to look for morels and how to use household cleaning products to make sure you've picked a lilac bolete. You will learn to identify some poisonous mushrooms so you can be even more careful only to eat safe ones. There are lots of luscious pictures of fungi, many of which will look familiar if you've ever taken a walk in the woods in spring or fall.
To provide incentive for study and hiking, you can wallow in recipes from restaurant chefs, such as Chile Oyster [Mushroom] Soup from Bao Cheng Lee of the Sao Asian Bistro in Marion. Whether you ever hope to gather enough mushrooms for soup or not, you can tote this book out to the woods or your own back 40 and see what fungal treasures are to be found.
My garden, sadly, yields no mushrooms that Greg and Joe consider worth eating. And I probably will not undertake a sufficiently dedicated study to learn to collect cookable quantities of delicious wild mushrooms. (In spring and fall, I will be too busy gardening.) So all I can do is butter Greg up (for example, by writing about his book) and hope he thinks of me some spring in morel season.
Book cover image from the University of Illinois Press
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
When I was a garden writer for the Chicago Tribune, heavy rains often brought phone calls and emails from readers complaining "I have all these mushrooms!" My usual response was "Congratulations! That means you probably have great soil!" Then I would try to convince people who were anywhere from repelled to terrified that the proper response was respect and tolerance, if not pride. In any case, not herbicides.
Mushrooms, after all, are merely the fruiting bodies of underground fungi, those empires of slender filaments that spread under the soil. They feed on plant matter, releasing its nutrients so they can be used by plants and other organisms. When the fungi are well-fed and they get the right amount of moisture they send up mushrooms to make more fungi.
If you have mushrooms in your lawn or garden, it's a sign that your soil has lots of decaying plant matter to be chewed over by all the members of the underground ecosystem that keeps plants happy. If a concentration of mushrooms keeps popping up in one area, it may be the spot where a tree was cut down but there is still a woody root system to be disposed of, supporting plenty of fungi.
When triggered by rain, those fungi propagate themselves by producing spores--not seeds, but something similar, the microscopic germ of life that can become another fungus. And spores are often delivered by mushrooms.
The typical mushroom, as my friend Greg Mueller once explained to me, is an elevator. Its purpose is to raise the spores high enough so that when released they can be caught and wafted away by the wind. It doesn't have to rise very high--spores are so tiny and light that just an inch of elevation may be enough to let them ride a breeze from beneath the mushroom's cap.
Some mushrooms are instead structured to distribute spores in rainwater. Other fungus fruiting bodies, which we don't call mushrooms because they don't have that iconic shape, cling to the sides of trees or logs that the fungi are digesting. Then there are puffballs, globes with spores inside, which dry out and wait for an animal (perhaps a human one) to step on them and distribute the spores in a dust cloud.
And for every spore, we should be grateful. Fungi form beneficial relationships with the roots of trees and break down vast quantities of plant matter. Without them, civilization would be buried in unrotted trees and lumber and mountains of leaves, every leaf that ever fell.
Though many people assume that all wild mushrooms are poisonous, most are not. I enjoy spotting mushrooms in my yard; I'm quite vain of them. I know they mean I've made the fungi underlying my lawn happy with plenty of compost and other organic matter and I haven't damaged them with pesticides or too much fertilizer. I like wondering how far the threads of my mushrooms' parent fungi extend under the soil--to the next block? to the railroad tracks? Fungi have been found that are thousands of years old and stretch for miles. I enjoy thinking about all the legends and mystery that the sudden, fleeting appearance of mushrooms (and the psychotropic properties of some) have provoked over thousands of years.
Greg was curator of fungi at the Field Museum in Chicago (which has a great exhibit for kids about all the things, including fungi, that live under the soil) and has studied mushrooms all over the world. Now he is vice president of science and academic programs at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. He is an ace mushroom hunter and mushroom epicure.
Hence the fun book he has written with Joe McFarland, "Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois & Surrounding States: A Field-to-Kitchen Guide." (Here's the companion web site.) From the book, you can learn to tell the difference between the poisonous Jack O'Lantern and the delicious Yellow Chanterelle. You can learn when and where to look for morels and how to use household cleaning products to make sure you've picked a lilac bolete. You will learn to identify some poisonous mushrooms so you can be even more careful only to eat safe ones. There are lots of luscious pictures of fungi, many of which will look familiar if you've ever taken a walk in the woods in spring or fall.
To provide incentive for study and hiking, you can wallow in recipes from restaurant chefs, such as Chile Oyster [Mushroom] Soup from Bao Cheng Lee of the Sao Asian Bistro in Marion. Whether you ever hope to gather enough mushrooms for soup or not, you can tote this book out to the woods or your own back 40 and see what fungal treasures are to be found.
My garden, sadly, yields no mushrooms that Greg and Joe consider worth eating. And I probably will not undertake a sufficiently dedicated study to learn to collect cookable quantities of delicious wild mushrooms. (In spring and fall, I will be too busy gardening.) So all I can do is butter Greg up (for example, by writing about his book) and hope he thinks of me some spring in morel season.
Book cover image from the University of Illinois Press
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Yes, I like to play in dirt
So, I was outside the other day snatching a couple of free hours to get some containers potted up. It's been amazingly hard to get any gardening done this spring with all the other things going on in my life.
And yes, I had potting mix sprinkled pretty liberally around the patio and sidewalk. That tends to happen when you are potting up a lot of large containers from a big bin of Scott's potting mix (I didn't make it to Pesche's this year for their good homemade stuff) combined with cotton bur compost. I had a bottle of Neptune's Harvest liquid fertilizer around to mix up in a watering can to douse each planted pot, heavy on the fish and kelp emulsion, and yes, it smells a little ripe.
And yes, I was wearing my gardening gear, consisting of jeans and T-shirt long ago irreparably dirt-stained and therefore condemned to be gardening clothes forever, and my grubby gardening sneaks, and a pair of thoroughly wet and mud-soaked gloves.
And yes, there was some water sloshed around. Didn't really make mud, because decent potting mix has too much organic matter to become serious mud. But there were some puddles of wet potting mix around. Tends to happen.
A neighbor came along, headed for the parking lot. She tiptoed around the potting mix, fretfully, with an annoyed expression. "I'm looking for a place to walk and I can't find any place to walk!" she complained, as if a little potting mix were sulfuric acid that would eat through the soles of her shoes. "I'm not like you! I don't like dirt!"
What did I say? I laughed, of course. Then--having been all too well brought up--I'm afraid I started to mutter "sorry" under my breath before I stifled the reflex. I did not offer to sweep the sidewalk, nor to strip off my T-shirt and spread it over the potting soil like Sir Walter Raleigh. So she minced her way to the gate and flounced off.
Hey, I do like dirt. I like the things that grow in dirt, including my food (and my neighbor's). I like the smell and I like the texture and I like knowing the difference between good dirt and lousy dirt.
I like the things that live in dirt and turn it into soil, like microbes and nematodes and roly-polys and springtails and earthworms. I like feeding them leaves and compost and other stuff to help them make soil from my dirt. I like digging in light, rich soil and knowing I helped make it happen.
I like the things I find in my dirt, such as old drainage tiles and square nails that remind me this was the site of an old Victorian house that was torn down to build our apartment building in 1924, and the flagstones that turn up to hint at the dreams and designs of gardeners long ago.
And I like filling pots with soil--not dirt--and stuffing them luxuriantly with the plants that will make the garden and the patio I share with my neighbors more attractive for us all. Sometimes that means creating some potting soil fallout for a few hours before I get it swept up. Sue me.
Or better yet, give me a T-shirt that says, "I love dirt and the things that live in it." I promise to get it irreparably dirty right away.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
And yes, I had potting mix sprinkled pretty liberally around the patio and sidewalk. That tends to happen when you are potting up a lot of large containers from a big bin of Scott's potting mix (I didn't make it to Pesche's this year for their good homemade stuff) combined with cotton bur compost. I had a bottle of Neptune's Harvest liquid fertilizer around to mix up in a watering can to douse each planted pot, heavy on the fish and kelp emulsion, and yes, it smells a little ripe.
And yes, I was wearing my gardening gear, consisting of jeans and T-shirt long ago irreparably dirt-stained and therefore condemned to be gardening clothes forever, and my grubby gardening sneaks, and a pair of thoroughly wet and mud-soaked gloves.
And yes, there was some water sloshed around. Didn't really make mud, because decent potting mix has too much organic matter to become serious mud. But there were some puddles of wet potting mix around. Tends to happen.
A neighbor came along, headed for the parking lot. She tiptoed around the potting mix, fretfully, with an annoyed expression. "I'm looking for a place to walk and I can't find any place to walk!" she complained, as if a little potting mix were sulfuric acid that would eat through the soles of her shoes. "I'm not like you! I don't like dirt!"
What did I say? I laughed, of course. Then--having been all too well brought up--I'm afraid I started to mutter "sorry" under my breath before I stifled the reflex. I did not offer to sweep the sidewalk, nor to strip off my T-shirt and spread it over the potting soil like Sir Walter Raleigh. So she minced her way to the gate and flounced off.
Hey, I do like dirt. I like the things that grow in dirt, including my food (and my neighbor's). I like the smell and I like the texture and I like knowing the difference between good dirt and lousy dirt.
I like the things that live in dirt and turn it into soil, like microbes and nematodes and roly-polys and springtails and earthworms. I like feeding them leaves and compost and other stuff to help them make soil from my dirt. I like digging in light, rich soil and knowing I helped make it happen.
I like the things I find in my dirt, such as old drainage tiles and square nails that remind me this was the site of an old Victorian house that was torn down to build our apartment building in 1924, and the flagstones that turn up to hint at the dreams and designs of gardeners long ago.
And I like filling pots with soil--not dirt--and stuffing them luxuriantly with the plants that will make the garden and the patio I share with my neighbors more attractive for us all. Sometimes that means creating some potting soil fallout for a few hours before I get it swept up. Sue me.
Or better yet, give me a T-shirt that says, "I love dirt and the things that live in it." I promise to get it irreparably dirty right away.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
New record for bulb catalogs
June 2, and already I have a bulb catalog in the mail. A new record! In years past, they started coming about the 4th of July.
It's shrewd of John Scheepers, though. Encourage me to think about my fall bulbs now, before all the tulip foliage has died back, while a few late daffodils still are hanging on in the shade, and I'll remember some spots that were bare of color or disappointing this spring. The catalog may inspire me to do some advance planning. Maybe I'll doodle my dreams in the margins of Scheepers' pages of colorful tulip pictures, and end up ordering from that catalog too. Maybe this year, for once, I'll get organized to order early and capture a discount. This is the year of coupon-clipping, after all.
Every garden retailer is working extra hard for a gardener's dollar this year, not just bulb companies. The nasty economy, combined with cold, rainy spring weather (it rained again today, and tomorrow they are predicting a high of 60), has been tough on garden centers. May is to garden centers what December is to department stores, and if the weekends in the month after Mother's Day aren't sunny, times are tough.
This recession is going to shake out some of the weaker garden businesses, just as it's shaking out weak auto companies and weak banks. A good garden center, with a well-trained staff and a well-informed selection of plants and tools, is invaluable to a gardener, but you can't count on it being there. Garden centers have to make money. So if you have a garden center (or a bulb company) where you really enjoy shopping and get good advice, spend a little there, even if you can't spend what you did in years past. We want to have places left to be delirious on Mother's Day weekend when happy days are here again.
OK, maybe not delirious; maybe our days of heedless spending are over in the garden center as they are in the department store. But there always will be a Saturday when the soil is finally warm, the sun finally breaks through after a long, gray winter and we are swept with an urge to fill the back seat with plants. We will need a place to get happy.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
It's shrewd of John Scheepers, though. Encourage me to think about my fall bulbs now, before all the tulip foliage has died back, while a few late daffodils still are hanging on in the shade, and I'll remember some spots that were bare of color or disappointing this spring. The catalog may inspire me to do some advance planning. Maybe I'll doodle my dreams in the margins of Scheepers' pages of colorful tulip pictures, and end up ordering from that catalog too. Maybe this year, for once, I'll get organized to order early and capture a discount. This is the year of coupon-clipping, after all.
Every garden retailer is working extra hard for a gardener's dollar this year, not just bulb companies. The nasty economy, combined with cold, rainy spring weather (it rained again today, and tomorrow they are predicting a high of 60), has been tough on garden centers. May is to garden centers what December is to department stores, and if the weekends in the month after Mother's Day aren't sunny, times are tough.
This recession is going to shake out some of the weaker garden businesses, just as it's shaking out weak auto companies and weak banks. A good garden center, with a well-trained staff and a well-informed selection of plants and tools, is invaluable to a gardener, but you can't count on it being there. Garden centers have to make money. So if you have a garden center (or a bulb company) where you really enjoy shopping and get good advice, spend a little there, even if you can't spend what you did in years past. We want to have places left to be delirious on Mother's Day weekend when happy days are here again.
OK, maybe not delirious; maybe our days of heedless spending are over in the garden center as they are in the department store. But there always will be a Saturday when the soil is finally warm, the sun finally breaks through after a long, gray winter and we are swept with an urge to fill the back seat with plants. We will need a place to get happy.
Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.
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