From sod to garden

Right now I'm devoting most of my time to pruning and mid-winter garden projects. But I came across a response I wrote a while ago to a question (not on this blog) about the best way to remove sod. If a January answer does not seem timely (you can't use a sod-cutter when the ground is frozen or sodden), it is not completely off topic either -- spreading cardboard and mulch in the winter in anticipation of spring is perfectly suitable. Thus, I am discussing it here and now. Originally I described three ways, each with its advantages and needs. There really are five, but four and five are half-way measures. The three main ways -- cardboard and mulch -- sod cutter -- rototiller -- requires some heavy lifting, literally. The lightweight ones -- killing sod, and over seeding -- are kind of just partial answers, with their own array of plusses and minuses.

While there are a number of compelling reasons to get rid of lawn, don't eliminate sod to eliminate work (like mowing, weeding, and edging). BEFORE you get rid of that lawn, have a plan in place for what you will install in place of the lawn that you remove. AND, be ready to carry it out almost immediately. Any untended patch of ground devoid of lawn becomes a patch of weeds, three times harder to maintain.

This is not to say that eliminating a lawn is a pointless task. Lamentably, a lawn never mows itself. Sometimes lawn IS a pest -- especially along the edges. But IMHO, the best reason to eliminate lawn is when its job as a placeholder is over and you are ready to expand the garden. If you malign your lawn because of the weeds growing with it, or only because you don't like to edge it, keep in mind that when the sod goes away the weeds may not, and then it is harder to control and contain. To read about one of my favorite lawn weeds to hate, and how I made peace with my lawn by controlling the weed, see my blog on eliminating hairy cat-ear, (Hypochaeris radicata).

Ok, thanks for reading.

1) Cardboard and mulch

With this you have to gather supplies, sometimes a lot. Usually this techniques is very effective if done deep enough. "Mulch" can be anything from leaves and grass clippings to garden soil to composted manure to wood chips, depending upon what you are planting. I have done this many times and, despite the following cautions, I like it a lot.

The greatest caution is that really bad weed roots -- bindweed or quackgrass -- may flourish under the cardboard. The lawn is the biggest weed in the garden, mostly an easily managed weed -- until it isn't.  I like to cut a trench along the cardboard edge so that the remaining lawn does not invade and become a weed. You can plant small things in it right away, but it takes half a year for the sod to break down and even longer before worms, moles, ants, etc start to naturally till the soil and merge the margins.

Planting small stuff and veg and annuals on top of cardboard is not a problem. But you do not want to plant larger plants on top of the cardboard, nor will you want to cut through the cardboard and sod after dumping all the mulch on it. Instead, dig a hole in the sod for the big plants, and then put down the cardboard and mulch everywhere else. The mulch eventually breaks down and settles.

How deep you plant is kind of tricky. If you plant too high, the shrubs can end up with their roots exposed as the mulch disappears. Along the native shrub edge we inherited, where this cardboard and mulch system was used, we have some shrubs standing high on their roots, looking like a miniature mangrove forest minus the salt water. If you plant too low, the crown can be buried under too much mulch.

2) Sod cutter

Sod cutters are a brute of a gas powered machine, with a vibrating sod-cutting blade.  Ahead of cutting the sod you need to have mowed the lawn.  Then you fire up the sod cutter, then walk behind the beast as it cuts free a perfect sod strip.  You can roll up the strips and move them elsewhere. The undersoil is unaffected, meaning it is ready for mulch -- but you still need to chop or till the underlying soil before planting.

A sod cutter is best where the lawn / sod is an even surface, with few tap-root weeds -- mostly turfgrass and turf-type running-roots such as clover.  It is not as suitable on a weak lawn with many tap toot weeds, and not workable in soft wet conditions.  It does reduce the amount of grass that resprouts as weeds, and leaves a very finished look.

I really like a sod cutter when extending an existing shrub bed where either mulch or tilling would look awkward / lumpy. After a bit of  practice it is kind of fun and easy. If the sod is in good shape you can give it away, maybe even sell it and recoup some (all) of your rental costs.

3) Tiller

There basically are two types of tillers, front and rear tine. Front end tillers are cheaper, lighter, and somewhat more maneuverable, but they bounce more (and you with them) and the end results are rougher. A rear tine produces results that are smoother, more "professional".  If the soil is rocky or with lots of big roots you  will still have a good work-out. Either way, you are chopping grass and weed roots into the ground that have the potential to resprout, and of all the techniques requires the most follow-up vigilance. The big advantages are that with  a tiller you have the least amount of materials that you either haul in or haul out, and as you till you can blend in various amendments.

After tilling the soil, one can plant a cover crop, discussed further in the next section on overseeding.

4 Overseed / plant

One can modify a lawn by overseeding it with different grasses and forbs.  It is not the most effective or efficient, but can be a simple, interesting solution if one has a certain level of tolerance.  One can choose a mix of flowers, or cover crops, or leafy greens.  Certain "ecology" lawn mixes include a mix of flowers and low herbs that tolerate occasional mowing. Mostly these are not techniques that eliminates the lawn, but they can alter it.  

A person can even plant winter wheat or other winter grain in the lawn; it will change the soil texture and possibly the plant make-up.  As a means to grow grain, it is amusing if perhaps not the most effective: the grain will mature in summer, by which time the lawn grasses will be probably also be quite tall and also germinating seed.  

One can experiment in what and when one plants.  After planting, consider tilling up the old sod several months later, or vice versa -- i.e. till first then plant a cover crop.

5 Chemical death

There are a number of herbicides available from fairly benign -- Acetic acid 20% (household vinegar is acetic acid diluted to 5%) -- to rather nasty.  For what it is worth, in my book Gyphosate (Roundup©) is somewhere in between nice and nasty, but rarely a first (or 2nd or 3rd) choice for sod elimination.  

In every case, herbicides are far safer when the instructions, such as application conditions and product dilution, are followed.  Of those who ignore the instructions, homeowners tend to be the worst in part because no applicator license and oversight is required.  Even if you do not need an applicator license, consider reviewing the pre-license applicator materials.

if you do kill the sod chemically, you still have not eliminated the sod, simply killed the plant growth.  Before planting you will still need to cut through or rototill the sod; if you simply are top-dressing the old sod with a mulch this step can be skipped.  

Pruning fruit trees

It is a long time ago that I pruned my first fruit tree.  To further my skills over the following years, I have attended classes and lectures, and read books and pamphlets, and asked many questions, and looked at many trees.  I return to trees I've pruned and look at how they have responded to my pruning.  At first I wasn't very good with fruit trees, but I have been determined to understand the trees and discern what to do to make the right cuts.  By now my skills and and knowledge (and confidence) have greatly improved.

To this blog I've added some fruit tree "static pages" which I hope you find helpful (I welcome your feedback).  They are on Why Fruit Trees Fail to Bear, on Helpful Terms (some terminology and concepts), and on Questions to Consider before making pruning decisions.

I've challenged myself to identify Ten Rules when Pruning Fruit Trees.  A number of years ago I wrote a brochure about Ten Rules for Success with Mason Bees and I still figure ten rules are enough.  At this point the "rules" are only a list, but a list is starting point none-the-less.  I have a different "list", made of quips and sage advice, that folk inevitably hear from me. The first 50 times are the hardest for any effort, and the problem with fruit trees is that you can only guess the tree's response, that will take three years of pruning, then watching, and then pruning again, before the tree has noticeably changed its form.

Please also look at the reading list at the bottom of the article, and also the static pages, above.

My (January 2017 version of) Ten Rules when Fruit Tree Pruning:

1. Trees grow vertically. Work with their natural growth.
2. Trees react to being pruned. Anticipate their reactions.
3. Use sharp and clean tools. Don’t hack and tear. Minimize damage.
4. Take enough time. You can’t glue it back afterwards.
5. Balance. Each scaffold needs enough branches (and leaves) to thrive.
6. Study from the ground up. Follow the main shape (scaffold).
7. Too few branches and too many branches are both mistakes.
8. Select for branches growing up and out, at about a 45° angle.
9. Leaves feed the branches and roots. They need light and air.
10. Roots hydrate and anchor the tree. They need water and nutrients.

Start with selecting what to prune and what to keep.  First:

1) Is it dead?
2) is it damaged?
3) Is it crowded / crossing?

Here is a simplified branch diagram to help decide what to keep and what to remove:

Gray lines are other main (scaffold) trunks -- with branches omitted.

1] Main Scaffold Branch: Important. Should be four to six scaffold branches. Each scaffold branch needs enough side branches (and leaves) to feed the main scaffold branch.
 
2] Downturned branch: Often removed — shaded, old, unfruitful. With good light, can be fruitful.

3] Tip of scaffold branch: Keep until it grows down and / or too big, then prune back to branch 4].

4] Fruitful replacement branch: Branches growing outward and 45° upward are ideal for fruit.

5] Potential replacement branch:
If the shoot is useful, tie or weight a vertical watershoot to a ~45° angle; more often, remove it.

6] Fruitful, but inward growing: May make tree crowded, so often they are removed.

This highly simplified drawing shows the diversity of branch patterns and some thoughts on which branches to keep and which to cut.   The tree itself is of course far more complicated.

GOING FURTHER -

There are some good on-line resources for pruning fruit trees.  One pub I recommend frequently is Training and Pruning Your Home Orchard, an Oregon - Washington State Extension publication.  Two other extension pubs of merit are Pruning to Restore an Old, Neglected Apple Tree, and Pruning Basics.  Each emphasizes different aspects of pruning fruit trees, and none will be a waste of time spent studying.

There are some good fruit tree pruning videos on the web (and are some bad ones too), and I will look to add some to this list in the coming weeks.

Glen

Banishing Bitter Pit -- Kudos to Calcium

Before we moved into our current home I had plenty of experience with apple anthracnose and scab and wooly apple aphid and codling moth. In the seven years since our move I have become way too familiar with apple maggot and with bitter pit. Words cannot adequately express my disdain and frustration for the beastly little apple maggot, (at some point I might try), but up until this year equally venomous words were saved for bitter pit, the scourge of my apple crop.

I say "up until this year" because this summer I began to spray the apples with liquid calcium and now notice a remarkable improvement in fruit quality.

Bitter pit is a fruit development problem linked to calcium deficiency, possibly to soil moisture — as well as to fruit variety. I had barely even heard of it until we moved to our current home in 2008. Here our lone apple tree produced hundreds (hundreds!) of early yellow-green apples pockmarked by dozens of small brown spotty indentations. These “bitter pits”, where fruit cells have shriveled and died, affects both the fruit flavor and the storage.

Following recommendations, this past year I began spraying the fruit on my trees with liquid calcium. By now this tree supports seven different varieties (a different story) and some types seem more prone to bitter pit damage. Our 2016 season had a wetter than average spring after an excellent fruit set; I cannot say whether it was my several applications of liquid calcium or because the fruit was better hydrated, or how much the two are related. I just know that all the varieties of apples I am growing were far cleaner in this year of spraying calcium than in the past.

The One-tree Orchard

When we moved to our current address several years ago, in the back grew one apple tree. It was a misshapen, poorly pruned tree, (at least by my criteria). And though the tree was highly productive, the apples were terrible -- a poster child for bitter pit. I'll say more about bitter pit in another blog, but the poor apple quality drove me to finally stop being afraid of grafting. I determined that I could add another variety of apple to the tree that I'd prefer, replace the apple I didn't like, (couldn't eat) with one tasty and disease free.

About five years ago I finally took the plunge, buying scion wood from Michael Dolan of Burnt Ridge Nursery, a guru of tree and shrub edibles and an anchor of the Olympia Farmer's Market. I selected five apple varieties:

• Red Gravenstein
• Liberty
• Golden Russet
• Spitzenberg
• Tydeman's Early

After deciding how I'd partition the tree and how I'd mark the different varieties, (colored tape), I starting grafting, one variety per section. I tested several different techniques and achieved adequate success -- maybe 50% each. The next summer a friend asked if I could save some fruit wood from a tree likely to be cut down, and I was able to successfully bud graft a sixth variety -- we think it is "Burgundy" -- into the tree. Since then I've grafted more of each into the tree and appear to mostly have a good showing; my rate of success in improving.

I am determined to reduce further the original tree. I'll have to make several harsh stub cuts, and onto each stub I will graft more stock. While I will not fully transform the tree, I hope to make the original tree significantly less dominant. I want to add one more variety, one I found in an orchard that seems to ripen late and keep well; it will probably replace Tydeman's Early, which on my tree is not thriving. Watch for updates.

Return to Blogospere

What to say on a blog when I haven't written anything for a year and a half. It is just that when I am gardening I am gardening and when I'm on the computer I'm more likely to be working on stuff related to pollinators or something more fundamental like invoices and emails. But today amid weeds and drizzle I started considering what I could write about and came up with a list of possible topics. Here goes.

• Dead or alive (when to decide against a plant)
• Banishing bitter pit -- my new love affair with liquid calcium
• My tool belt (favorite tools that hang around me)
• Botanical Latin -- on not being a word wimp
• Hiding ones cuts
• Thinning, heading, shearing ... and hacking
• Fun with grafting
• Apical dominance, or why plants grow UP, and how to outguess them
• Good gardening books
• iPod companion -- some books I have "read" when gardening
• Going to seed  -- when to deadhead and when to leave it
• Biennials  --  valuable volunteers
• Vexing visitors -- Slugs, Deer, Raccoons, Moles, Cats
• Lawns, revisited
• Naps, candy, and other minor vices

Lots of topics, now I just need content and a photo or two.

Glen

Winter trees

As fall turns towards winter, trees drop their leaves and reveal their bones.  Their wooden skeletons please my eye, showing secrets only recently hidden from view.  Behind the leafy curtain are buds and bark with life and texture, painted with drab and vibrant ochres, rusts, umbers, tans, greens, grays.  Seeds and fruits still cling stubbornly, deaf to the call to disperse and drop.  Nests large and small are revealed, works of engineering and optimism tucked and suspended and piled amongst the branches. 

Alas, the enchantment is at times broken, when under the lifted veil is blunt evidence of pruning misdeads.  In place of full healthy branches are stubs and tears and hacks.  Little of their original nature remains in these mangled trees.  Sadly, trees all the time are blindly chopped by chain saws and impatience, victims of paid and unpaid laborers who follow confusing and bad instructions. 

Trees share with us their unique gifts: shade, nourishment, beauty, longevity.  When trees are hacked by Uncle Joe with a chain saw and good intentions, well, hopefully lesson learned and the next year the damaged tree receives either a proper pruning or a merciful conversion to mulch and firewood.  When some Acme Whackme entrepeneur is paid for plant butchery — growl! — that gets me into a boil.  People who make money this way are thieves and should not be in business. 

It takes practice to become good at pruning, and mistakes will be made, even by the well trained and informed.  But there are some rules to follow that will get you on a good start. 

• A good rule to start with:  Work with the tree (plant).  The less you fight how the tree wants to grow, the less work you will have.  You can not control it, only guide and direct it.  Every cut has a consequence. 

• Another good rule: Use good-quality hand tools.  If you have a chainsaw, use it sparingly and carefully — it is way too easy to cut too much, or in the wrong place.

One more rule:  Study, be patient.  There are good books and advice, and good professionals to work with.  You can’t reattach a branch once you have cut it off.

Well, enough for now.  Thanks for reading.

Hairy Cats-ear (Hypochaeris radicata) vs THE LAWN

A year later, no Hypochaeris

 I am not big on keeping a highly manicured lawn.  By summer, the only reason a lawn calls for mowing, (at least by my standards) is the presence of hairy cat-ear, (Hypochaeris radicata).  No cat-ear, no mowing.  July vacation plans last year pushed me into action.  Could I eliminate it and would it be worth the effort?  It seemed like doing so would be a good idea -- provided I could do it poison free. 

Hypochaeris (aka Hairy Cat-Ear) in summer bloom

Here is a report of that successful effort, preceded by a description of the rascal.
This plant has earned many names, including flatweed and false dandelion.  By my unimaginative eye its leaves do not seem very cat like, but hairy cats-ear has stuck and I will use it here.

In the spring when the lawn explodes with vigor, rosettes of sturdy cats-ear leaves pockmark the terrain -- flat green craters in an otherwise cooperative blend of grasses and mosses and other more civilized weeds.  Hugging the ground and able to escape the whirring mower blades, by June it begins to dominate casual lawnscapes.  With summer drought, green craters turn to green saucers on a now brown background, and from these green saucers push up wirey flower-stems.  Dozen upon dozen of small yellow flowers are instantly followed by charmless tufts of seeds ready to scatter on the wind like a bad rumor.

Healthy and happy Hypochaeris (for now)

Individually the plant is almost attractive with its wavy semi-glossy leaves and small bright yellow flowers; aside from the fuzzy prickliness of the leaves it is quite edible.  This plant flourishes with deficiency and neglect.  Curiously, it exudes plant chemicals that inhibit growth under its leaves, and it even discourages its own kind from cuddling too close; you never find Hypochaeris wall-to-wall. Whatever its (limited) private charms, in its typical display, a massed lawn takeover, it is unquestionably ugly.

Severed at the root, (no divots)

Defiant Hypochaeris in a scalped, moss-killed lawn

So early spring and vacation deadline looming, I began my assault, determined to get all the defiant Hypochaeris out of our lawn.  For years I have used “Grandpa’s Weeder” a weed popper unchanged in design for a hundred years.  As a tool it is effective but somewhat slow, requiring constant clearing of the weeding teeth, and leaves some unattractive divots. There had to be a better way.  After some tests, I settled on this: I plopped down onto the lawn with an asparagus knife (a curved serrated knife) and I cut each weed off just below the crown.  I made no effort to grub, just cut, cut, cut fast as I could, sometimes from my knees, sometimes from my posterior.  No divots, leave the taproot, and see what happens.

Over several weeks I cut probably over a thousand plants, one or two hours at a time, (and listened to a mix of recordings as I went).  By vacation time all the cats-ear had been cut out, with only some bald patches where The Weed had been!

Grass and moss thickly coexisting

While confident that this fix would last at least until fall, I was unsure of my long-term results.  What happened exceeded my wildest hopes.  Over the past year the hundreds of bald patches have become a mixed carpet of grasses and mosses and forbs in a pleasant disorder.  Almost no cat-ear has returned — a few small patches requiring attention — and, I remain on vigilant watch.  I don't worry about moss (it is green after all) or other forbs.  My lawn grows thick and mixed and healthy, and maybe 3 inches tall.  This green sward needs a few cuttings spring and fall, and from time to time I edge the lawn before it invades the flower beds.  This summer the lawn looked excellent.  Success!

Glen