FEEDING FRENZY
Watch Your (Plants’) Diet
You wouldn’t eat as much pie as you would bread, would you? So don’t ever feed your plants without considering how rich their food — fertilizer — is. Urea, for example, is the plant food equivalent of a chocolate bar, a very rich food, rich enough so that a whole cup could kill a rose bush. Near the other extreme might be bone meal, the unbuttered popcorn of fertilizers, providing nourishment but nothing to get fat on.
A well-nourished garden because . . .
THOSE OTHER PEONIES
I wouldn’t say that tree peonies — those “other peonies” — prepare you for the show of the herbaceous ones soon to come. No, with quivering golden stamens enveloped in dish-sized whorls of silky white, pink, red, lavender, or yellow petals, tree peony blossoms catapult you into peony-dom. Later, catch your breath with the herbaceous ones.
MELANCHOLY APPEARANCE?
The following is adapted from my book, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Lot Better Garden, available from the usual outlets or, signed, from me (www.leereich.com/books).
Growing Down
Why are these trees so sad — even with pink or white blossoms cheering up their branches? But of course: they’re not really sad, they’re just weeping.
So why are these trees weeping, then, even if they are not sad?
They weep because they want to grow down. Instead of young stems reaching for the sky, as is the case with most trees, young stems of weeping trees toy only briefly with skyward growth before arching gracefully down towards the earth. Some plants begin to weep in earnest only after they get some age to them. Read more
