h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gardening interests: Forest floor endemics (given beauty or utility);
generalized herbal and vegetable gardening.

Bonsai culture: (A few special pets.)

Plant hormones and their applications.

Biogas culture: (Useful for forcing cuttings and transplantings and supporting damaged plants.

Hello
Nice of you to drop by.

I love gardening, plants and everything associated with it. I'm also very interested in wildlife, which reflects the way i garden. I garden organically, preferring natural measures to feed my plants and encourage wildlife. I'm lucky enough to have some more unusual insects visit my garden, along with the more common ones

Do you have a big garden?
Where abouts in the world are you?

State of Georgia (USA) right at the moment.

Permanent home is in the Coachella Valley of California. (The northern extension of the Imperial Valley on the Riverside County side of the Imperial County line.)

I do most of my gardening in Perris Valley about a hundred miles from there.

Coachella Valley conditions are extremely harsh. When people tried plantings of non-native cactuses there, the wind blew them away.

The place is an eastern and northern extension of the Anza-Borrega Wilderness and has substantially the same range of wild flowers, which are only seen after exceptionally torrential winter rains or summer doldrum rains. This is the only place in California that gets an occasional hurricane, when a tropical storm front coming up the Gulf of California spills across the Imperial County crashing against the Santa
Rosa Mountains, the San Bernardino Mountains and Joshua Tree National Park which, from southwest to northeast, form the head of the pocket.

When that happens vehicles are blown off the freeway, the palm trees are visibly bowed over and green fronds are blown off of them and especially the face of Mount San Jacinto (Mt. St. Jack) becomes a waterfall. Unusual wild flowers include a dwarf California poppy which produces petite flowers only about 3/8 inch across; a parasitic orchid
which produces brown flowerheads (the only part of the plant to grow above ground) about the size and shape of a magnolia cone which depend on a common and inconspicuous desert shrub in the pigweed family for hosts, surviving as a root parasite on the host, which doesn't seem to suffer from the association; a diminuitive desert hibiscus with waxy white flowers about an inch and diameter and two inches long, unusual especially that it is not a perennial shrub like most of the hibiscus
family, but like the other two plants mentioned is a fast growing herbaceous plant (which puts up flower stalks from a basal rosette of leaves) that comes up only after a torrent.

Perris Valley conditions are more temperate, in the high end of the San Luis Rey watershed that extends to San Diego and in the shadow of the Santa Rosa Mountains which are at altitudes between 8 and 9 thousand feet. There I do most of my gardening in flowerpots (1, 2 1/2, 5, 15 and 20 gallon sizes) to defeat the common California pocket gopher, garden vegetables, wildflowers, especially forest floor endemics and landscaping shrubs in 1 30' x 60'
area and a 20' x 80' strip along with a little conventional yard area.

I find that the Mexican Amaranth and American Lamb's Quarters (or Poke Greens) recently introduced into cultivation along with miscellaneous
sunflowers provide excellent bird feed plus a little shade along margins. There is one thrush variety in particular we like to encourage on account of its habit of hovering mid air to pluck aphids and caterpillars from the leaves of plants. Also a small frog (I call them cocoa - mochas, from their cocoa brown under bellies and coffee brown backs) about two inches long and a leopard toad contribute to pest control. The cocoa - mochas typically hide in the damp interstices of banked flowerpots or under the leaf structure of plants growing in the ground and only come out when it rains. Then they'll be seen hanging from leaf tips.

I have to avoid most commercial organic fertilizer and soil preparations since they often harbor a water mold that is extremely destructive and seems to originate in unsterilized Canadian peat moss used as a cheap mixer. Instead I rely on mineral preparations buffered by means of being mixed into a suitable soil mix and allowed to age.

Tips, sources? (info esp.)

Hiya.
You will have to be patient waiting for replies, i'm in a different time zone to you.

What would you like to know?

I'm a self taught plantaholic, so i tend to explain things in 'simple' terms rather than technical.

The climate here in the UK, allows us to grow a wide range of plants. Tender perennials will get through a mild winter here, depending on which area you live in.
My own garden faces South, which is good as it gets the sun all day. I have a growing collection of unusual plants including Arisaema, Dracunculus and a couple of Sarracenia.
My prized plants are my 3 wild Orchids, which appeared in my lawn a few years ago. I lost one this past year but two baby ones have grown in it's place They are Bee Orchids (Ophrys apifera) which are classed as monocarpic, though they can go on for years. The other is a Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza)
Being winter here now, i'm not spending any time in the garden, though i do have a quick look round when i fill up the bird feeders.

On Time Zones: five hours of difference. Its now three minutes to 8:00pm here (Augusta, GA) and... oops time has elapsed while I'm composing... one minute to 1:00am in your time zone. (I was distracted for a moment fetching a soft drink from another table.)

Seriously, its something I have to deal with almost every day when I call home to CA. Three hours later for me here than it is there, meaning I have to be careful not to call before 9:00 or 10:00 am. I usually rise between 4:00 and 6:00 am which is there 1:00 - 3:00 am.
Not a very nice time to drag someone out of bed barring a real emergency. I find exteremely it irritating being dragged out of bed to answer a junk phone call originating in California sometime around midnight. Occasionlly one gets through the phone company's filter.

Most recent ms.: I saw a reference to mycorhyzal fungus in one of your articles on orchids. (I haven't read them all yet. Getting there.) I've also seen (very) limited material on it in PBS TV garden programs. I know it promotes absorption of water and nutrients and helps to prevent dehydration, besides making some soil nutrients more readily available to the plant being supported with it. There are even some plants that cannot survive without it at all, lacking the ability to make their own root hairs.

I know nothing at all about how the stuff is used in gardening. (Is it compatible with nitrogen fixing bacteria?) Which plants like it and which don't?

Climate concerns: I do most of my gardening with a north-west exposure which allows me (with the support of shade trees on the west corner of the garden) a range of conditions from full sun to full shade. Flower pot culture allows me to shift things around fairly painlessly if something seems to be getting too much or too little sun.

The crucifera (mustard, radish and cabbage family) are winter crops in southern CA conditions and barring exceptionally dry years usually produce on rainfall alone. Just about everything else is a spring or summer crop requiring irrigation.

One of the native plants I've been working with is the miner's lettuce (claytonia perfoliata), the plant which saved more 1849 CA gold rush miner's from scurvy than any other. It makes heads a foot in diameter of conical leaves 1 to 2 inches in diameter, on the ends of long petioles 6 to 9 inches in length, with a cluster of florets coming out of the center of the conical leaf, with a texture intermediate between lettuce and spinach and flavor more like spinach. (Its actually a cress, purslane family.) As a wild plant, it comes up after the winter solstice and climaxes around the time of the spring equinox. Its been responding exceptionally well to cultivation in a flowerpot culture and could be ideal for hydroponic production since it actually likes having its roots constantly wet.

Other special interests: parking lot endemics. I've gotten some of my best plants by means of collecting from populations coming up in the cracks in the pavement. My four o'clocks began that way and include a rather unusual 'vining' and 'climbing' variety (white flowered) that tops 8 feet. Four o'clocks are among the few plants I can trust directly to the ground, since the gophers won't eat them. My local gopher population has had over a hundred years to adapt to every pest control stategy modern technology can throw at them. I long since surrendered.

I don't know vast amounts about the micorhyzal fungi, it's only come onto the retail market in the last couple of years here, although nusery growers have been using it longer.
I use it when planting, just a scoop into the hole where the plant will go. It has to be touching the roots of the plants to work. You cant use it on any plants requiring 'acid' soil, like cammelias, rhododendrons and such. This is because their roots are specialised in drawing up nutrients from poor washed-out damp soils. I don't think it would make a difference to any nitrogen fixing bacteria as the micorhyzal is a naturally occuring funghi.
The Orchids are a different matter, you could'nt use the 'bought' micorhyzal for them as they require a 'specific' funghi, which must be present in the soil before they will even germinate.
There is a definate difference between plants that have had the funghi treatment and those that havent.
In the UK, it's forbidden to dig up any plant from the wild, no matter where they are growing. Having said that, i did remove a non-native plant that i saw growing on a grass verge, it's now living happily in my garden
Alot of our native wild flowers are under threat, some are so rare now, that they are only fond in one or two places Alot of it is due to loss of habitat, along with pollution and such

Reason I was asking has to do especially with special sensitivities. Some plants, for example the american chestnut and sensitive mimosa, respond badly to anything thrown at them except clean soil, fresh air, sunshine and water. The sensitive mimosa is in decline due to air pollution.

On the Colorado Desert parasitic orchid I mentioned (I'm aware, by the by that many people mistakenly identify epiphytes as parasites. This one cannot possibly survive without the support of its host, which doesn't seem to suffer from the association and may derive some benefit.), I don't have the technical information on it in hand. I've emailed my sister, who's expressed an interest in it and when she recovers from her christmas sales ordeal will probably email me the info. I've always thought this one a considerable challenge to bring into cultivation. It is under study on account of its hybrid potential, 12 rows of 12 to 18 florets,7/8"-9/8" long, about 3/8" diameter, arranged like the scales of a cone. When I first saw it, I thought on account of the superficial resemblance to the magnolia cone that it might be in the ranunculus. When I first saw it maturing seed pods, though, about 5/8" long with the inside diameter of the flower, seeds and internal arrangements of the pod strikingly reminescent of vanilla, I had to concede it was an orchid. Though the overall color is brown, on close examination it has purple stripes and brown spots on pale beige petals fused to make a tubular flower. So, at any rate, besides suitable soil (the soil it grows in is over 90% muriatic acid soluable, compounded of crushed limestone, sea shells, gypsum crystals... what they call geologically a 'coraline sand' (though there's no actual coral in it)...), its host plant, it may and probably will need a specific mycorhyzal fungus. Hypothesis on life cycle: Making a draw on its host plant in conditions of high sap flow following flash floods, the plant puts up a flower stalk (about the size and shape of a magnolia cone, the only part of the plant of the plant to grow above ground). Wind distributed seed sifts between the grains of sand until it finds purchase on the roots of a suitable host, perhaps requiring a pre-existing growth of a specific mycorhyzal fungus, and may confer commensal benefits on the host plant (for example, possibly improved water retention on account of its own root and holdfast system). I might have to go twenty feet deep to find out for sure. Those desert plants are notable for often having extremely deep tap root structures.

California law strictly forbids picking wildflowers but allows collecting plants from private land with the permission of the owner and in State & National Parks and Forests with permission of the local Park or Forest Rangers. They'll usually steer you to good locations and away from anything considered genuinely environmentally sensitive if asked.

Leslie Rowntree made a living working as a seed collector in several of the areas I'm interested in for many years, as a matter of fact for a British seed and horticultural company. Her interest was primarily landscaping shrubs. You may be able to find her book in a public library.

Feral Plants: I got my Dame Shirley Sweet Peas from the site of the 1850s gold mining camp where she worked (hardy perennial coming back year after year on the same rootstock even in conditions of neglect in the semi-arid Perris Valley). Property belonged at the time to the local sheriff and his family and I did have permission to collect. Her indigo planting, which she cultivated to put the blue in blue jeans (white cotton denim canvas dungarees in the original Levi Strauss release) also still survives as a feral population on the site.

Other special considerations: Quarantine: The American Chestnut went extinct in its native range (the American southeast) on account of introduction of a southeast asian fungal pest. This was a disaster since the plant was an important staple food crop as well as the USA's
number one timber tree before the disaster and converted what was before one of the best fed regions of the USA to what became known as the hookworm and pelagra belt during the great depression. I understand that UK law is very strict on quarantine, and it ought to be.

I mentioned my own problem with an unsterilized Canadian peat.

You might also see my notes: "Tonsils" and "Cooking With Onions". Some Gardening notes there as well.

Do you grow plants as a living?

I really would'nt like to say if the Mimosa would do well with the micorhizal funghi, i only know how to treat plants in this country.

Do you know the name of this Orchid you speak about? I would like to know then i can read up on it myself. It sounds similar to the birds-nest Orchid we have here.
Orchids are notoriously difficult to cultivate, if they are moved from the wild into a garden or pot, you can guarantee they will die I would'nt fancy your chances on trying to cultivate a parasitic orchid, but i wish you luck if you do try.
The UK is very strict on the importation of any plant material. It has to go through special channels and be licenced before it is allowed in. We've had problems with imported plants in the past, the outcome was the accidental importation of a virus called 'Sudden Oak death' It has done alot of damage here in the past few years.

Nope, not for a living, though I do make occasional nursery and farmer's market sales. Instead a lifelong hobby.

On the sensitive mimosa, just the point, it almost invariably responds badly to any but the most minimal cultivation in a clean air environment.

Still waiting on a response on the orchid from my sister, who's apparently still recovering from her Christmas sales ordeal. Don't have any books or notes here. The host shrub is easy to cultivate, inconspicuous and inoffensive except that its seeds are burrs about 1/8" in diameter. I expect that I would want to cultivate it in a fifty or sixty gallon container. It would be a simple matter next to seed with the orchid seed, but with no guarantee of success. An alternative is a saprohytic growth medium, supply the plants nutrients artificially. I've succeeded in growing albino corn plants (zea mays)
with no clorophyll that way, in a hydroponic solution doped with cane sugar and vitamins. That one is tricky, since the plant absorbs sugar as it grows and the sugar solution will support microbial growth if the concentration drops below 10%. (I was going with a 12% solution.) I have succeeded in growing orchids from seed, germinating them on an agar-agar medium. I lost my most recent round of them to the water mold I mentioned, though.

"Sudden Oak Death". Sounds remarkably like the "Coastal Oak Blight" affecting the northern CA coastal oak populations. I've been there, I've seen it, its horrible to behold. The worst of it is actually on the inland side of the coastal forest, where very little else can grow except grasses and we've a new desert in the making. There's a strict quarantine in effect prohibiting transfers of vegetable material from the affected districts.

Past histories of similar disasters:

The Grape Blight of the latter part of the middle 19th century. It hit first in Europe, temporarily making California the world's premier wine producer, nearly extinguishing the European grape culture. Next it hit in California. Then it was discovered the grapes could be cultivated by means of using the American Conord grape as a rootstock and the world grape culture was saved.

The potato famine: Little known point, it was not restricted to Ireland and the British Isles. Region next hardest hit was Switzerland (high alpine conditions rather similar to potato's native range in Peru) which occasioned a mass exodus similar to that affecting Ireland, which is how my Swiss antecedants came to the USA.

Where their origins have been documented, for some reason, most of these blights seem to originate in Indonesia.

Sudden Oak death does'nt just affect oaks, it can affect quite a few of out native trees. I can't remember which ones now, but it is a serious problem.
The potato famine in Ireland was caused by potato blight. Last year was also a bad year for potato blight. In this area alone, whole allotments were affected Thats what comes of having a warm and wet summer
The only major problem i have in my garden during Spring & Summer is the Lily beetle. I spend alot of my garden time ridding my lily's of the little pest

There's a native California potato that does well in sandy soil on riverbanks in warm weather conditions. I don't currently have a culture, but I have had them in cultivation. Makes walnut sized white potatos otherwise indistinguishable from the standard market kinds.

Going back to the kinds of plants you grow, you mentiond four O'clocks, do you mean Mirablis? I've never heard of a climbing variety, it sounds very nice
I've found that different countries call plants by different names, which can be quite confusing at times.
When my friends came to visit me from Canada, they bought me a book on Canadian wild flowers. It was interesting to see that some of the plants they have there, we also have as wild flowers here, but their common names are different to ours.

I saw a fat chickadee perched on the now leafless branches of a wild plum tree growing in a woodline today. Though its dropped its red autumn foliage, there are thousands of pea sized red fruits on it. When I first saw them I thought it might be an incredibly robust choke-cherry (This particular tree is about fifty feet in height. I've never seen a choke-cherry taller than about 14 feet, and that one is a giant compared to the typical 3 to 6 feet.) On closer examination they proved to be plums. We've been getting daytime freezes the last couple of days. (Georgia)

Yes, Mirabilis Jalapa. Though is a wild variety native to so. Cal., slighty fuzzy leafed with a magenta flower, my parking lot endemics are the domesticated variety, apparently escaped from an adjacent residential lot. The eight foot 'vine's parent was a stringy little thing lying recumbant and about 9 inches long coming up in a crack in the pavement. The progeny need a little help being trained to a trellis, but do some of the work themselves. An average height for the mirabilis jalapa is about 2 feet. Some of the other plants from the seed selection swept up from the pavement are also exceptionally robust but have a more typical habit and a complete range of colors (orange-red, blue-red, yellow and white with variations in the colors of stamens and pistils from the color of the flower) I've got some nice yellow and red streaked & white and red streaked specimens. Have been trying for years to combine the two to get three or four colors (or for that matter, white and yellow) in the same flower, so far without success . I'm not sure its possible. Got lousy seed production last year on account of drought. Conditions have been somewhat better this year.

Wildflowers in common: Fireweed, Epilobium angustifolium

Must be a story as to how that got its global distribution. Many varieties do have windborn seeds.

We grow Mirablis here as a half hardy perennial. In a sheltered spot, it will come back year after year. It's not one of my favourite flowers, but thats because i like the strange ones

There are thousands of common wild flowers here, and thousands more rare ones. Some of my favourites are Cowslips, Bluebells, wild Orchids, Primroses and the list goes on.....

I read somewhere, that the british Isles has so many different climate zones, that it's possible to grow more varieties of plants here, than anywhere else in the world. I'm not sure if that is the case though.

I've been out of the loop lately, computer trouble.

Things I lost to the water mold, my mayapple (podophylum pelatum) >http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu.botany< and goldenseal (hydrastis canadensis), the western skunk cabbage (lysichiton americanus)>see the google search articles by the Royal Horticultural Society and Wikipedia Encyclopedia articles for pictures<. The first two were thriving, wanting only more ...and more ...and more room to grow. The third, the skunk cabbage was struggling, but hanging on. I've seen them in the wild producing individual fronds as much as nine feet long, and as small as a foot. The latter specimen was in flower and had a flower a foot long, having come up in a bathtub full riparian silt washed up on otherwise bare bedrock. ...start all over again, when I have time.

The miner's lettuce (claytonia perfoliata) came through still thriving. >http://www.perspective.com/nature/plantae/purslane/html<

Thge dwarf bannana nearly succumbed, but I was able to pull it through by means of digging up the rhizomes, trimming away the infected parts and giving it a powerful Ortho fungicidal treatment and it is today thriving and bearing fruit in my sister's greenhouse at about twenty feet in height.

I'm familiar with Skunk Cabbage, an impressive plant. We don't grow it here often as it can be invasive.
I'm a member of the RHS and have access to their library, if i care to travel to London and spend a day looking through books. It also gives it's members special rates and first refusal on tickets to Chelsea flower show. Along with free entry to any RHS garden at certain times of the year.

There is little happening in my garden just now. The first bulbs are starting to poke their heads through the soil, but it will be a while before the Spring bulbs start flowering.
I've made it a point to have something in flower every month of the year. At this time of year, there are three types of Virburnum in flower, along with winter Honeysuckle and some hardy Cyclamen.

Back in the loop if only for a moment. The wild plum I remarked on was being visited today by a flock of larks, a couple of dozen of them taking turns, visiting the tree and gorging. After gorging they'd retire to one of the other trees and wait their turns to come back. The tree isn't yet quite half divested of its crop. We're having another cold snap and this is apparently where many of the local birds are going for their cold weather calorie fix. Occasionally they drop some of the (pea sized, 1/2
centimeter) plums. The (small) handful that hit the ground are going into my seed collection. They cannot grow where they fall in any event.

What kinds of wildlife do you get there? Most of our wildlife is harmless, with only one poisonous snake; which is becoming scarce now. I occasionally get badgers in my garden, they are a pain as they dig big holes all over the place I've seen foxes in the garden too, which are very pretty when in their prime