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
IT’S A HARD, HARD WORLD
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).
Coddled Beginnings
Imagine that you hadn’t set foot outside all spring… better yet, that you had spent all spring in a warmed cave . . . then tomorrow you went out and stayed there. At the very least, you would have to put your hands to your eyes for a while to shield them from the sun. And if the night was very cool — not unusual this time of year — well, you would shiver. Fresh air and sunlight are great for the constitution, but you would have to first acclimate yourself to them.
The same goes, even more so, for vegetable and flower transplants. Indoors, where they get their start, they are, after all, coddled. Read more
FAMILY MATTERS
The following is adapted from my book The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden:
No Idle Gossip
You often hear talk about various plants being related to each other. There’s the sunny-faced members of the Daisy Family, for example, and the Pea Family, all with pods. Cole crops, such as cabbage, broccoli, and kale, are close kin, all in the same genus and species. What characteristics link these groups of plants as relatives?
Yes, goldenrod is in the Daisy Family!
Before you blurt out that all daisies have petal-rimmed flowers typified by sunflower and aster, picture the flowers of goldenrod, also a member of this family. And although all cole crops have waxy, bluish green leaves, just look how the plants vary in form. We eat the stalk of kohlrabi, the leaves of cabbage, and the flower buds of broccoli. Read more
