Don't be Afraid to Edit

Pictured above is a flower I’ve been excited to see this year - a Sherbet-toned Chantilly Mix snapdragon, from Floret Farms. They’ve just begun to bloom, and I anticipate a fabulous display. I am growing them in a container this year, and if they do well, I’ll collect the seed and scatter it elsewhere next year. I’ve never been particularly keen on snapdragons, but I think this mix is lovely and delicate, and adds to the cottage-y feel of the garden.

I’ve had several friends (the desire to make a beautiful and productive garden, during this time of shelter in place, is definitely widespread, and I’ve had more interest in my garden and my services then I’ve ever had before), express a recurrent theme that I want to discuss: Don’t be Afraid to Edit.

You may have an established garden that you planted yourself, or you may have a garden you’ve inherited; you may be new to gardening, or an experienced gardener; the advice is the same regardless. If something in your garden isn’t pleasing you, and you’ve had it there for a long time, and you’ve tried many times to make it look good by pruning or feeding, and it still bothers you - TAKE IT OUT and start again. You do not have any obligation to change your feelings about this particular plant. You may have loved it once, you may have always hated it. No one is going to come into your garden and say “Oh my God what did you DO?” or if someone does, just tell them you decided to make a change. It’s YOUR garden, after all.

Sometimes we’ve looked at the same things over and over again for years and we can’t imagine the space looking different. Maybe our eyes have always drifted past that place and settled on a more pleasing grouping. I would advise that you allow yourself to really look at that space. Ask yourself a few questions: What is it that isn’t working? Why does it bother you? or alternatively, why are you ignoring it? If you could dream up anything, what would it be? Is there something you’ve always wanted to add to your garden, but haven’t had room? Don’t edit your thoughts, just let yourself dream. You may just come up with an exciting new plan.

See, the thing is, right now (and conceivably in the future as well), if we’re fortunate enough to have any kind of outdoor space, be it a back patio, a front porch, a balcony, or a garden - it’s all we have. Along with our homes or apartments, this is our safe place. You may be, like me, taking a fresh look at the way the interior of the house works and looks, and thinking of things to make it more comfortable and efficient. Why would your garden be any different? In many seasons, your garden can be an extension of your living space, another room that is underutilized at the moment. And I’m not talking about enormous expensive changes, though if you have the money and desire, more power to you (although I’m a big fan of doing it yourself). I’m talking about making these spaces pleasant for those who want to dwell in them.

And if something bothers you, why live with it? If you have an old, woody lavender that barely blooms anymore, and you feel like you should leave it because the blooms are good for pollinators, and you like the smell, why not chop it back and see if it improves? Or maybe, take it out, increase the drainage in the soil by mixing in compost and grit, and plant three different kinds of lavenders in the same spot? Or maybe that’s the ideal place for several Mediterranean herbs like lavender, rosemary, and thyme, which can be beautiful AND useful, both for you and the pollinators?

After meeting with some clients who are new to a property and have no attachment to anything already there, I am feeling emboldened and ready to make a few changes of my own. I also recently read ‘Planting: A New Perspective’ by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury, and it inspired me to try this sort of ‘modern meadow’ somewhere in my own garden. I am thinking of replacing the largest pollinator garden with a planting of this nature. Something like this:

image credit: detroit.curbed.com

or this:

image credit: Town and Country Magazine

It won’t be able to look exactly like this in my California garden, but I can come close; I can mimic the ‘dune’ look with these mounded plantings and grasses and perennials, all of them adapted to my area. This will take less water overall than the planting scheme I have now, and decidedly less maintenance. It will require that I move some plants that I really like, and remove some others. It will require that I think highly about structure and form. It will require that I add a lot of amendments to improve the soil texture, as this kind of planting requires excellent drainage. In other words, it will require me to look at this space with fresh eyes and do the work required to make a change. Any of us can do this. Many plants can be started from seed, which keeps the cost down. The thing it will require more than anything else is a willingness to edit and change.

So I would encourage you to do the same. Don’t feel you have to live with something that isn’t working for you. It can absolutely stymie the creative flow of the gardener.

In other news, I tried making my own low-nutrient fertilizer from comfrey leaves. This is something that is recommended by one of my idols, Monty Don, and he makes and uses it every year in his own extensive and beautiful garden. I was and still am skeptical of this fertilizer because I don’t understand how it works and I would like a scientific study that tells me that information, but I have searched and searched and cannot find anything, so I decided I would just try it. It requires lots of comfrey leaves, which luckily I have in abundance, which you chop and cover with water, and then simply let sit and fester for three weeks. Strain, dilute, and apply.

This is a picture I took at the beginning of the process. I could not bear to take a picture at the end. The mass was slimy and brown, and the resulting ‘water’ was fetid, and the smell, oh my Lord the smell, like a manure lagoon at a concentrated animal feeding operation. Just simply terrible. Of course that dissipated as soon as I diluted it and added it to the soil around my tomatoes and peppers, thank goodness. It smells because it’s an anaerobic concoction, and it’s this that makes me skeptical: Compost works because it is aerobic. Oxygen is neccessary for the good microbes to live. This was the exact opposite and I’ve heard only bad things grow in anaerobic conditions. And yet Monty (and so many British gardeners) swear by it! So I am just befuddled. Of course I have no way of knowing if it is improving anything, and it’s all circumstantial anyway, as I haven’t done any kind of scientific trial.

Oh yeah, did I mention the smell? My family always complains about the stench of my usual fish and seaweed fertilizer, but that smell is positively pleasant compared to the comfrey feed, and methinks they will not complain in future.

One other item today, and that is those plastic clips that I got for the tomato vines.

As you know, I’m not a fan of plastic, but I needed these specially designed clips (which are normally used in greenhouse growing) to help my tomatoes grow ‘up’ their strings. And they work great for that, are easy to use, and can be reused next season. What I’m discovering is that these clips are quite handy for other purposes, like clipping cucumber vines to the trellis, and clipping raspberry vines to their stakes, and clipping squash vines to the strings on the teepees. I guess, basically, they are good for securing various vines to their supports.

I have found in the past that using string or twine can sometimes hurt the stems of plants - it can cut into them and damage them. These clips allow for smooth movement between the vegetation and the support. They are cheap, and reusable. They will just take a little more work at the end of the season, because I usually just cut down the vines with their strings and throw the whole lot into the compost.

Now that we are ‘at the doorstep of summer’ (as my pal Monty likes to say), how is your garden looking? Are there places that you’d like to make a change? Are their places that are really succeeding and you want to share your methods? Please feel free to add your comments! I love to know how your gardens are growing.

Sieves and Riddles

Yesterday I got an intriguing note from my dad, asking if I’d like to pick up some ‘screeds’ he had inherited from his grandfather. Having seen something like this in use on Gardener’s World (Monty Don always covers his newly sown seed over with sifted compost, using a tool that looks like these), I immediately answered yes! Today, I’ve been researching what these tools are called, what they were originally used for, when they were in use, and more. It’s been a fun project! Turns out there is a lot more to these tools than meets the eye. If you’re interested in history or craft, then continue with me in this deep dive.

My first idea was to look up the word ‘screed’ since that’s what my dad called them. Other than our usual use for this word (meaning a long speech or piece of writing), it is used in construction, when applying concrete or stucco. It’s a tool that flattens the wet concrete or stucco, like a board, moved back and forth to smooth it. The back and forth motion of the tool might be why dad (and possibly his grandfather) used this word to describe it, but the pictures of screeds did not match up with the tool in front of me. I knew I needed to continue looking.

I visited the website for The Heritage Crafts Association in Great Britain. This is a place dedicated to keeping craft alive, and I found this site when Dad made me the hurdles I use in the garden. It’s full of crafts that have gone extinct or are endangered. Scrolling through their ‘red list,’ I saw the words ‘sieves and riddles’ and this sounded likely, so I clicked through. Bingo! This is what these tools are called. The word ‘riddle’ comes from an old English word that meant ‘coarse sieve.’ One of my riddles is quite coarse, with 1/4” hardware mesh, and then other is finer. The HCA says that these are for use in “gardening, shellfish harvesting, pottery, and other activities.” The area where they were originally made was in Derbyshire, and there were many companies that made them, “producing beechwood and wire mesh sieves and riddles for mines, agriculture, fishing, and even on the railways, where they sifted ballast between the tracks.” They were made from strips of beech that were steamed in a steaming chest in order to be bent; they were rolled around cylinders and left to dry for several days. The ends were ‘chamfered’ (a symmetrical sloping edge) and tacked together, and then holes were drilled for the weaving of the mesh. The galvanized steel mesh was woven inside the rim. I believe that these from my great-grandad were made a bit differently, with a pre-made wire mesh instead of one woven in place, but I’m not totally sure about that.

HCA went on to say that it is difficult to source the straight-grained beech required, and that affects the viability of the craft. A man named Mike Turnock was the last known maker of these tools, and he retired in 2010 unable to find someone willing to continue the craft. The craft went extinct. But it was recently revived by a man named Steve Overthrow, who consulted with Mike Turnock, and now has a robust business in Langport. His website is full of these sieves (he claims the sieve is the tool, the riddle is the mesh), in all kinds of sizes, meant for use in varied pursuits: Horticultural, Fishing, Kitchen, and Foundry.

So that told me a little history about sieves and riddles in the UK, but what about in America? How did this tool arrive here, and what was it used for? My research led me to the Shaker Museum in Mount Lebanon, New York. A 2018 blog post detailed their collection of sieves, which apparently is generous; “the smallest, under two inches in diameter, with a mesh of finely woven silk, was used to sift out impurities from medicinal powders. It is the largest sieve in the collection, however, that is the topic of this discussion. At nearly 40 inches in diameter and with a mesh of woven rawhide set at an average of an inch and a half apart, there are not a lot of things that wouldn’t fall through its holes.” The post goes on to detail that when they obtained the sieve from the Shakers in Canterbury, New Hampshire, it was explained that it had been “used for sifting corn husks which were used to stuff mattresses.” Along with straw, corn husks were used to fill bags of cotton ticking to be used as a mattress, and standard practice, once a year, was to “riddle” the contents of the mattress to sift out dirt and bugs.

In another post from the museum, they show a photo of another sieve on which is printed, “Seed Loft No 10.” Reading on, the post says “sieves of all sizes were made, sold, and used by the Shakers at Mount Lebanon beginning as early as 1810. They were made with bentwood rims of ash, elm, and maple. The rims were fitted with a woven mesh of horsehair, iron wire, or brass wire. The size of the sieve rim and how tightly the mesh was woven determined how the sieve was intended to be used… sieves should probably be seen…. as multi-purpose tools. For example, sieves intended to clean wheat, could have just as easily been used to screen the dust from charcoal at a blacksmith’s forge.” This got me thinking about how my great-grandfather would have used his riddles. So I called my dad for some more information.

My great-grandfather, Audley Heintzelman, was born in 1884 and lived his entire life near Youngstown, Ohio, in a small town called Hubbard. He was a railroad man, maybe a station agent, because Dad remembers him using Morse Code, and station agents were usually also the telegraph operators. He was also a farmer in the sense that everyone had a small farm in those days, to provide sustenance for the family. Dad writes, “He had quite a bit of property with a big barn, pond, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens. The only animals were chickens. I just remember him looking like a farmer, working around the property, always sawing logs for the fire, using the scythe for cutting the grass… their property also had coal. Hubbard was near Coalburg. As a kid I remember seeing coal at the surface. You didn’t have to dig for it.” Of course this time my dad was describing was when he was a kid visiting his grandpa there in the 1950’s. But in the early l900’s, when Audley was working for the railroad, the railroad would have been king, having taken over from the earlier canal system. The main railroad operating there was the B&O (which was first to cross the Appalachian mountains and connect Ohio to the East Coast). The steel and coal industries used the railroads to transport product.

Audley might have used these tools on the railroad or in his gardens. He may have even gotten them from the robust Shaker community in Ohio at the time. Wanting to know more about how they could be used in gardens, I found a book called ‘A History of the Garden in Fifty Tools’ by Bill Laws, who published in 2014 and lives in the UK. He explains that the sieve is closely connected to basketry, and that its principal use was to sift soil to remove stones. He tells of one example discovered in a burial barrow in Saxony which dated back 30 centuries. It was cast in bronze and had a handle embellished with the horns of a bull. Steam-bent wood containers would have been made since the Iron Age. Mr. Laws then talks about Mike Turnock, the sieve-maker in the Peak District who retired in 2010! He writes, “He cut and steamed rims of beech wood, bending them into perfectly circular frames and, as his father had done before him, weaving the metal screens, using a crook-shaped tool to thread the wire. In his father’s time, in the 1950’s, the railways had been his principal customer, using large sieves to screen the ballast that was laid between the tracks.” This leads me to believe that my great-grandpa took these screens from the railroad (were they no longer used? did he buy them? were they a retirement gift? who knows) to use in his home garden.

Which is exactly how I will use them, I imagine. Although, I found other uses for them as well. In a book called ‘History of Worcester, Massachusetts,’ I found this reference: “Wire-working as an industry in Worcester was contemporaneous with wire-making. In April, 1831, Jabez Bigelow manufactured “wire sieves, such as meal sieves, sand riddles… and baker’s riddles.” He apparently wove the wire on huge looms, just like thread! So there is evidence that riddles were used in baking and in mills. Truly, an all-purpose tool!

One more interesting item about sieves. In my research, I came across ‘The Sieve Portraits,’ a series painted of Elizabeth I in the 1500’s.

According to Robert Stephen Parry, who writes about the paintings, “A humble sieve is not something a Queen would be familiar with on a day-to-day basis. It is a practical piece of equipment used by gardeners and bakers to separate the finer elements of a substance from the coarse. Of soil or flour, for example. Separating that which is desirable and useful from that which is merely waste. Thus, around the rim of the sieve, we can read the inscription: A TERRA ILBEN/ AL DIMORA IN SELLA. Translated, this means “The good falls to the ground while the bad remains in the saddle.” So it is not just flour or soil we are considering here. It is a kind of sieve of human quality that we are being presented with. Elizabeth, we are urged to believe, is a creature of discernment and refined tastes. Especially where the good and the bad of human nature are concerned. Would-be suitors take note!”

This was a fun rabbit hole in which to fall. I love the idea that we are all keepers of a history, in craft and tools. This strings a thread (weaves a wire?) between me and my ancestors. I shall use the riddles and when I do, I will think about my great-grandfather, Audley Heintzelman.

Determining the Amount of Carbon Sequestered by your Trees

This past semester, I took an Arboriculture class, and it was great - I learned SO much. As part of the class, we had to pick a tree we felt had some structural or health issues and write a report on it. It was a cumulative project; we had to know how to measure the health of the tree, how to do risk assessments, how to calculate value if the tree was to be replaced, etc., all of which sounds fairly simple but each step sort of builds on the one before. It was fascinating. I chose the valley oak in the photo above, for my project. 

The benefits of trees, particularly in an urban setting, are obvious and numerous: Trees save energy because they provide shade, they intercept stormwater and hold it on the property, they increase property value, and they provide benefits for local wildlife. There are many studies, both recent and ongoing, that show trees can improve the actual physical health of humans. They can intercept allergens and filter air, for instance, helping with breathing and air quality. Mental health and trees is also being studied. It's hard to quantify, but they can improve mental outlook and provide a very real sense of solidity and peace. Trees are also beautiful, a value hard to measure, but one we wouldn't want to live without. 

Another unseen way trees improve our environments is by sequestering CO2, which they use for making food through photosynthesis. Then they take those foods and store them deep in their root systems, in the soil. This kind of storage of carbon, or sequestration, is very important to the health of our planet. I won't go into the 'why' here, but if you're interested, see this article by the USGS, which explains it nicely.

It's rather interesting to take the trees on your property and determine how much carbon they are sequestering every year. There are several ways to do this. The industry standard is a tool called CUFR, which is provided by the US Forest Service.  They have an excel spreadsheet which will do this calculation for you. I had a little trouble with this interface, so I went searching for another way. I found another online calculator which is good if you have a common (not unusual) tree, called National Tree Benefit Calculator. You simply enter your zip code, then choose the kind of tree you have, and enter the diameter of the tree. 

***A word on diameter: This is a trunk measurement you take at breast height, about 4.5 feet up from the soil. It's called 'DBH' or 'diameter at breast height.' You'll see this in all the calculations; it's an important measurement and helps us to know the age of the tree. And remember (I needed a refresher course myself), diameter is the length across one side of the tree trunk; radius would be half that; circumference would be the length all the way around. (Hey you math people, stop giggling.) So for diameter, just take your tape measure or yardstick or ruler out to the tree and estimate about four and a half feet up from the soil, and then just put your ruler up to the trunk and see how wide it is. 

For those of you with multiple tree trunks at breast height, you'll need to do a different calculation (I'm thinking of your Coast Live Oak, Mom and Dad): please see this nifty explanation by the City of Portland. This also explains how to measure if your tree is on a slope.***

The Tree Calculator website is interesting, because it gives more data than just CO2. When you put in your info and it does the calculation, first you will see a pie chart overview; if you go to each tab above that, it will tell you more about each single factor. For instance, when I put in my oak tree, and I then hit the CO2 tab above the pie chart, it reminds me that "most car owners of an average car drive 12k miles generating about 11k pounds of CO2 every year." That's very helpful in context. According to them, my oak is sequestering 660 pounds of carbon per year, but I'm putting a much larger amount into the atmosphere by driving my car. I would need 20 oaks of this size to make up for the emissions from my car. 

So you start to see why trees can be very important even in unseen ways.

in full leaf, in September, a beautiful canopy

For my project, I wanted to actually DO my own calculation, so I found a research paper which explains how. For this calculation you will need to know the DBH and the approximate height of the tree, which can be difficult to estimate. I usually try to look at buildings near by, as one story is usually about 10 feet. I estimated my oak to be about 50 feet tall. 

Click on the box below to get a printable of how to do this calculation. It looks daunting but please don't let that dissuade you - I am the least mathematical person in the world and I was able to do it. It explains the 'why' of every step, but unless you really want to know that, you can just skip down to the bottom of each paragraph to learn how to do the next calculation.

With this process, I determined that my oak sequesters 488 pounds of carbon per year, a bit less than the online calculator said. I think this is because the physical calculation only takes into account the age and size of the tree, whereas the online calculator takes into account the type of species and where it grows, which is important for several reasons. Certain species sequester more carbon - generally trees that grow slower are the ones who store the most. (Side note - slow growing trees are also stronger and live longer.) Plus how the tree is adapted to your climate is important, hence the reason you put in your zip code for the online calculator. If the tree is native to your area, it's naturally going to grow better and store more carbon. For instance, you've already heard the details about my oak tree, which is native here and well-adapted to this climate. However I have a large southern magnolia on the property (Magnolia grandiflora) - it's not quite as large, but it is significantly older than the oak. When I put that tree into the online calculator, I find it's only storing 180 pounds of carbon per year. I would be willing to bet that a similarly sized magnolia in Georgia would be sequestering much more carbon than it is here in California. It's also interesting to see the difference between these two trees when looking at the other factors: the oak is intercepting and storing much more rainwater (very important here in our dry climate), it's doing a better job of cleaning my air, and it raises my property value quite a bit more than the magnolia. I didn't plant either one of these trees, but it sure helps me decide which one I'd rather have going into the future on this property.

This would be a fun exercise to do with kids, leading naturally into a conversation about how the trees on your property are improving it. It's also worthwhile to spend some time observing the tree and how the wild creatures use it (I spent so much time watching the songbirds in my oak that it made me realize what a value it is to them, not just to us). You can discuss how the tree increases habitat for many different creatures, providing food for some, shelter for others. You can discuss how the tree shades the house, decreasing the need for air conditioning. If the tree is native, you can read up on how the native peoples would have used it hundreds of years ago. You could take the leaves and make some art with them.  

But even if you don't have kids, it's worthwhile information to know and absorb. We often pay little mind to the trees on our property, unless there is a problem with them. This helps us appreciate what they are doing, in seen and unseen ways, to improve our immediate and greater environment, every day.