In 1970, on the eastern end of Lake County, David Leach found a perfect thirty acres on which to hybridize rhododendrons. Only a short distance from Lake Erie, this lovely garden houses many of his hybrids plus the experiments and successes of the new team, headed by Stephen Krebs, who took over after Leach died in 1998. Krebs is trying to develop resistance to fungal root rot in his hybrids.
Leach initially became well known for his knowledge and hybridizing skill with the publication of his book, Rhododendrons of the World, in 1961. He was an avid art collector and went on trips for collectors to Europe and elsewhere. He also visited the ancestral homes of his favorite rhododendrons.
The process of hybridizing involves taking pollen from a plant of interest and transferring it to another plant which is then isolated from other pollen using a bag over its flower. It can take up to 25 years from germination until possible retail success. Leach developed 80 such hybrids many of which went to market.
The property is located off of Route 528 in Madison. It includes a scenic pond which comes to full eye -popping beauty with the blooming of the yellow iris. There are test fields and greenhouses, thousands of spring flowers, wonderful flowering trees and shrubs in a woodland setting in addition to the azaleas and rhodies.
Leach left his property to Holden Arboretum in 1987. Holden members are frequently given a day in which to visit the David G. Leach Rhododendron Research Station, as it is officially called. Tours are given by knowledgeable guides. Be on the lookout next May for a date. Garden Clubs can also arrange for tours.
If you are a camera buff and like rhododendrons or azaleas, this is nirvana.
People often ask why Lake County became such a mega-center for nurseries.
In the beginning, 1854, the first nursery resulted from the vision of one man, Jesse Storrs, who moved his family and nursery to Painesville from Cortland, New York. Four years later, he was joined by another visionary, JJ Harrison, an English immigrant, and they became partners in what would become the largest departmental nursery in the world. Transportation undoubtedly played a role in attracting Storrs to Northeastern Ohio. The railroads arrived in 1852 and connected local farmers, finally, to eastern markets. But there had to be more than transportation attracting these horticultural pioneers and the additional 200 nurseries that followed.
A study of the nursery locations in eastern Lake County reveals a ‘Nursery Belt’, three to seven miles from north to south beginning near the Lake Erie shoreline, and twenty miles wide, extending from County Line Road in Madison (a few historic nurseries were located to the east in Ashtabula County) and then westward through Mentor.
This modern member map for the local nursery association shows the concentration of nurseries in eastern Lake County.
To understand this Nursery Belt we need to look back over our geological history to the glaciers and the formation of three ancient lakes…four if we include present-day Lake Erie…from which we derive such gentle topography and such a diversity of unique productive soils.
During the most recent ‘ice age’ (known as the Wisconsin period extending from 11,000 to 100,000 years ago) Lake County was covered at least five times by glaciers, sometimes up to a mile high. Some glaciers extended well into Southern Ohio but the most recent reached only into southern Lake County. With each glacier came sand, gravel and rocks from the north. With each thawing and retreat, lakes were formed. The beaches from three of those ancient lakes gave rise to the ridges we recognize now.
Whittlesey was the highest ancient lake, 150’above current-day Lake Erie. Deposits of sand and gravel up to 20’ thick follow its irregular path from Unionville, through Madison, Perry, Painesville, and westward through Willoughby, conforming to a great extent with the current South Ridge Road (Rt 84). This ancient beach defines the southern edge of the Nursery Belt since soils beyond it generally become heavier and less hospitable. The nurseries of Wick Hathaway (1877) and Ed Wetzel (1917) were founded on South Ridge Road in Madison. Wetzel, like many others, began as a childhood worker at Storrs & Harrison Nursery at age 11. Gerard K Klyn Nursery began in 1921 on Center Street in Mentor, across from the current Mentor High School, but moved to Rt 84 in Perry in 1966. LCN began as Zampini Nursery and Champions Nursery in Perry Village but relocated to South Ridge Road in the 1980s on the site of the former Nick Mesman Nursery. These two operations continue to dominate the high ridge above the Nursery Belt.
Soils throughout the Nursery Belt were formed from glacial till then shaped and reshaped by waves and wind. Some contain abundant organic matter like the strip of black muck that runs just to the north of North Ridge. Some are more sandy, especially as they near the current lakeshore. Some have higher concentrations of clay rendering them ‘heavier’ like those in Mentor favored by the Rose Growers. The true story is this: Lake County is not just blessed with ‘good soil’…but with a unique diversity of fertile soils. A review of the soil map for the Nursery Belt reveals over 17 discrete types.
At 120’ above Lake Erie, the ancient shore of Lake Arkona defines the Middle Ridge, which follows a discontinuous line along ‘Middle Ridge Road’ in Madison and Perry, following ‘Narrows Road’ as it nears Painesville and joining with Johnnycake Ridge Road in Mentor. Early nurseries founded in Perry near ‘Middle Ridge’ included L. Green & Son (1865), Merriman Nursery (1868), Call’s Nursery (1874) Champions (1891), TB West Nursery (1893) which later became Champions, and Dugan Nurseries (1908). More recent nurseries include Maple Bend, Frank Square’s Nursery, Cottage Gardens, Don Stallard’sNursery and CM Browns(1970) in Perry; Crawfords, Turkenburg , Cass-Mill and Bluestone(1972) in Madison.
North Ridge, closest to modern Lake Erie and rising 100’ above it, conforms to Lake Warren as it winds, splits and reforms along North Ridge Road (Route 20), becoming Erie Street, Mentor Avenue and Euclid Avenue on its way to downtown Cleveland. Many still remember the Rt 20 of the 1950s prior to the interstate highway system. Trucks and cars lumbered by at all hours on their way from Buffalo to Chicago. Numerous small motels with guest cabins operated in every community along the way.
Interspersed in the traffic were tractors, farm wagons and stake-trucks, driven by Italians, Puerto Ricans, Hungarians and every other nationality as they attended to the daily demands and realities of The Nursery Capital of the World.
Well-drained soils on beach ridges and terraces throughout the area include Chenango, Chili, Conotton, Oshtemo, Otisville and Tyner, although the last four do not hold together well for digging, balling and burlapping. Poorly drained soils such as Fitchville, Stafford, Painesville and Red Hook offer better digging qualities once the fields are tiled and drained. Some areas such as Perry were originally covered with wetlands. ‘Elnora loamy fine sand’ to the north of Rt 20 in Perry is a productive nursery soil when artificially drained with tiles. The ‘Elnora’ soil is often interspersed with fast-drying ‘Colonie loamy fine sand.’ To the south of North Ridge Road local growers in Perry encounter ‘Tyner loamy sand’ on the post-glacial beach ridges. These soils are accessible to tractors and equipment early in the season but require irrigation for summer crops.
Productive ‘topsoils’ range from three to eighteen inches deep. Since topsoil can require 500 to 1000 years per inch to occur naturally, depletion of the surface levels over time is a serious concern. Fortunately, digging and shipping of balled and burlapped nursery stock depletes the topsoil very slowly over many decades. In addition, modern nurseries specializing in field-grown material employ aggressive soil re-building techniques, such as cover cropping and the introduction of fresh organic matter each season in the form of nursery compost, leaf compost from local residential neighborhoods and specially formulated ‘county compost’ from local sewage treatment plants. These materials are cultivated into the subsoil each year and provide a sustainable model for future nursery production.
Read Part 2 next week!
Sources:
White, George W., Glacial Geology of Lake County, Ohio, State of Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Geological Survey, Columbus, 1980.
Ritchie, A. and Reeder, N.E., Soil Survey of Lake County, Ohio, United States Department of Agriculture Soil Conservation Service, January 1979.
Edgar, Chad, Lake County Soil and Water Conservation District, April 2018, conversation with Mark Gilson.
George ‘Josh’ Haskell, local attorney and historian.
Bob Endebrock, Ohio Department of Agriculture Nursery Inspector (retired)
James Schroeder, Mentor Rose Growers.
Perry Historical Society.
Morley Library.
Thanks to various additional sources associated with Nursery Growers of Lake County Ohio, Inc.
Photos courtesy of Perry Historical Society, NGLCO File and Mark Gilson.
Mark Gilson is a third-generation nurseryman and past-president of Nursery Growers of Lake County, Ohio. Visit: http://gilsongardens.biz/category/marks-corner/
In a not so secluded section of the city lies an urban sanctuary maintained and nurtured by Rid-All Green Partnership. Rid-All, which stands for redemption, integrity, and determination for all mankind, is a dream come true for “soil brothers” Damien Forshe, Keymah Durden, and Randy McShepard. These three men, along with the talent and expertise of Dave “Dr. Greenhand” Hester (a 50-year vet in the agriculture industry), are the blood, sweat, and heartbeat of this green initiative, that is empowering the community. Their dedication and hard work has made Rid-All a success story worth sharing.
Rid-All’s mission, in a nutshell is to transform communities, one city at a time. “We are promoting peace, harmony, and solutions to people in the community, by people in the community” says co-founder Marc White also known as “The Urban Farm Doctor”. You can find him at the farm teaching and blending up something that’s good for the body and spirit – “inside-out beautification”, as he calls it.
All-natural drinks aren’t the only good-for-you products you can get at Rid-All Farm. Through Groupon, Amazon, or a quick visit to the farm, customers can purchase produce and tilapia; and you can be certain it’s all good for you. The produce which is grown in the best soil possible is picked at the time of purchase to keep its freshness and so the customer can get the maximum nutritional benefit. The tilapia which take about four to five months to mature are fed plant-based pellets and live in environments that reflect their natural habitat. In the symbiotic relationship between the plants and fish, the plants provide nutrients to the fish which in turn provide nutrients back to the plants.
Rid-All has several hoop houses: greenhouse #1 which serves as an office space and vendor space for special events such as weddings (the man-made treehouse was used for such an occasion); greenhouse #2 which is used for classroom teaching and lab training, aquaponics and a greeting station; the high-tunnel hoop house where winter crops such as kale, sorrel, garlic, and spring onions grow; the gothic “cathedral” hoop house where swiss chard, lettuce, and beets grow; the double gothic hoop house which is used for special events, training, and growing herbs, spices and flowering plants; and finally an additional hoop house where other super greens are grown.
Mike Parker, Rid-All’s Compost Manager, dedicates his time and energy to the Rid-All Project because it keeps him motivated, knowing that he is helping to heal [his] people. Parker, who grew up helping in his family garden, has traveled the world but always found his way back home to Cleveland. He believes that what Rid-All has done so far is a “cultural renaissance” and that “if you eat right, you will think right, and [then] you will do right.” These are the goals and desires of the soil brothers, for their community: to create a self-sustaining community, to see exponential growth, to promote community development economically and emotionally, and to show people another way of life through health and wellness.
For the beneficiaries of the shared knowledge that the Rid-All instructors provide, attending the Rid-All Training Program is “an opportunity to start your business, become your own boss, and learn [independence]”, says Hassan, a young man who was introduced to Rid-All and the program by his grandfather. Hassan is a student of the 5-month program that is offered to adults and youth. However, Rid-All has a 12-week program specifically for youth (ages 14-17) where they can learn the fundamentals of eating healthy, harvesting, and growing their own food. Through the program, the youth are equipped to start and assist with community gardens in their respective areas, says Dr. Greenhand who personally visits local schools to give classroom presentations.
Leah, a Rid-All Training Program participant describes the Rid-All farm as a “magical place” that takes a different approach to agriculture; Rid-All is all about “returning the soil to its original state” which is evident in its composting efforts. Rid-All has several large compost bins on site where the soil is made (combining a variation of natural ingredients) and sits for two to three months before it is ready to be sold or used in the farm. For sustainable and healthy produce, the solution is undoubtedly in the soil.
Rid-All Green Partnership is indeed a gem in the city of Cleveland, changing the lives of everyone who experiences the spirit of the farm. In addition to training programs, Rid-All sponsors workshops, Soul Vegan Saturdays, and community events such as the most recent MLK Community Awareness Day. To learn more about Rid-All visit their website at www.greennghetto.org.
Figs: you say, what? These trees are mentioned in the Bible and grow abundantly in the Mediterranean area.
Yes, I grow figs in the ground, in Cleveland Heights, have for about twenty years. Before that I followed the local wisdom that they had to be brought indoors in large barrels each winter or they would not survive. I got tired of transporting them and getting almost nothing from the tree. So, I took a risk and planted it in the ground. And lo and behold, it grew and grew and produced a ton of fruit. That tree got so big that I had to move it, thereby gaining many small fig trees in the process. I have since accumulated about five different kinds of fig trees, all of which have their own personalities.
brown turkey, probably
Before the terrible polar vortex winters of 13-14 and 14- 15, I had been harvesting hundreds of figs every year—perhaps five hundred in the summer of 2013. I gave many away, made preserves, ate them every morning for breakfast, had a snack in the afternoon—you get the point. But that first winter knocked them down to the ground. They have been recovering ever since.
My figs get a special treatment in the late fall, around November, when all of the leaves fall off. The fruit remaining on the trees is removed. They are tied into bunches with heavy cord, then wrapped in large tarps (using grommets can be helpful), then bent to the ground and weighted with heavy lawn furniture or big stones and slabs. When very young and pliable, for example after the years they were killed to the roots, the new stems and branches could easily be bent down. Some people cut off the roots on one side and bend the trees into a prepared ditch on the other side. In Brooklyn it was traditional to build a cage around the fig tree, wrap it up and stuff the cage with leaves, and cover the top with tar paper. I have my own method which works most years—but not in those two terrible winters. We then had two very mild winters and the figs grew very nicely, producing about thirty fruit the first summer and last summer about 150. This winter was of course another bad one, and it is still coming. I never open my figs up until the weather is totally settled—in May usually. If you take them out too soon, even if they have small leaves already, the leaves could be killed by a late frost or freeze so I wait.
Some fig trees produce an early crop, called a breba crop, which can ripen in early summer. But the big crop for all of mine starts with tiny figs in the middle of the summer—last year a full month ahead of itself because of the very warm spring. By September, and into October, some fruit ripens every day. You are fighting other creatures for the figs of course—squirrels, birds, ants. Ants are perhaps the most insidious. You must wash them away with a strong stream of water or soak your figs in a pan of water to disgorge them. Even with the attrition, it is very gratifying to walk into the yard and find figs here and there hidden in the foliage, drooping over from their stems when they are ripe and ready for picking.
I have a white fig (Bianca), Chicago Hardy and Brown Turkey and two unidentified types. They are fairly easy to find from local nurseries. If you do not take the time and energy to cover them over the winter, however, you start from scratch each spring with nothing there except the roots. Some people do not mind doing this—that is, nothing. But they do not get a big crop needless to say.
Medlars: Most people do not know about this tree. Shakespeare wrote about the fruit in several of his plays—it has been around a long time, cultivated since Roman times. The fruit looks like a small brownish apple or pear, but the calyx end has a peculiar quality—in Shakespeare’s time it was referred to as a “dog’s ass”. (See Romeo andJuliet.)
The other peculiar thing about it is that it is not eaten from the tree when ripe because it will not ripen there. You must remove it before hard frost and place it in a cool and dark place, on sand or newspaper, protected from mice, for a few weeks while it blets, or ripens. When it is soft to the touch it can be eaten or made into jelly. It is something like a spicy applesauce in taste.
The tree itself is quite charming, with very large leaves and beautiful white flowers in the early summer.
It has gorgeous fall colors—reds, oranges, yellows-and grows slowly. Plant your medlar in well drained, fertile soil in a somewhat sheltered location in sun. They do not seem to be attractive to insects or diseases. My first and oldest tree was unfortunately deer rubbed early in its life, and then a few years ago when we had a November ice storm, it was severely damaged because the leaves were still there. Pruning in late winter, as you would a pear or apple tree, helps maintain a good shape, and encourages flowering. My three trees are all grafted. (Mespilusgermanica can be ordered from several good nurseries on the West Coast, like One Green World and Raintree.)
I hope I have not intimidated you with too much information. Try a little small fruit in your garden—perhaps you will get hooked as I have been.
Do not be alarmed. This is not going to be a technical and challenging article giving you too much information about how to grow your own fruiting plants at home.
I am going to attempt to tickle your interest in the subject and provide you with enough information to get you started on your own.
Some personal history: I happened to live for seven years in an old house on Bluestone Road near what used to be the quarry on Belvoir. Our honeymoon tiny house—650 square feet—had belonged to the parents of the quarry master and they had planted a lot of old fashioned fruit and flowers. The red currants formed a short hedge and were pretty much neglected to the point of never producing anything. I became interested in them and gradually coaxed them into production. When we moved from our little sanctuary into a larger property, I immediately wanted to plant currants, and raspberries. And figs. And then I added medlars and kiwis.
So, I will share with you some of what I have learned over the past 50 years of growing.
Currants: I grow four kinds of currants—red, black, pink and white. Red, pink and white are self-fertile. Red is the most commonly found, from which red currant jelly is made. Black currants are made into jelly but more importantly, in France, they become crème de cassis, a liqueur which was made popular near Dijon where the story goes that they had too many of the fruit and someone—the mayor? —devised a special drink called Kir—crème de cassis with white wine—and Kir Royale—crème de cassis with Champagne.
Making crème de cassis is one of the great pleasures and challenges of growing black currants. But that is for another day. (Jane Grigson’s Fruit book has a terrific recipe.)
Red currants (Ribes sativum) are easy to find at nurseries and come in many varieties. Black currants (Ribes nigrum) are more difficult to find and there is an added bugaboo—you cannot grow certain varieties in Ohio because the plant can carry the White Pine Blister Rust which can cause havoc if you are near a stand of White Pine. So, the state regulates what varieties can be brought in.
Personal History note: A Russian friend came for dinner in 1989 and after dinner we walked around the yard and he saw that I had red currants but not black ones. Why not he asked? I explained the difficulty of getting them in Ohio. He strongly advised me to try to find some that could be imported. I tried for a while and eventually found some that I was allowed to grow. Since then many other varieties that are resistant to the Rust have been put on the ok list and I grow quite a few of them. They are all far superior to the original plants that I planted in the 90’s. More about that later.
A brief note about pruning currants. Black currants need to be pruned in a very specific way, removing the fruited branches down to the base or to a side shoot which will take over as the new fruiting branch in the next season. I have a developed a system for doing this which is not usually listed but nevertheless I have used it for years. I cut the branch of the currant that is full of fruit down to a lower side shoot, then put the fruit laden branch aside until I have cut back all of the fruited branches on that bush. Then I remove the fruit from all of the cut branches rather than picking it off of the bush. I do not know if this is an entirely kosher method but I love it.
Red currants are pruned in a different way. The oldest canes should be removed after about three years, and weak and damaged wood can be removed as well. A mature shrub can have 9 to 12 canes. Fruit is produced on one, two and three-year-old wood so keeping some of each makes sense.
Site selection is a first step for growing all small fruit. Full sunlight is really best but partial shade can be tolerated by most. Well drained, moderately fertile soil is preferable. Good air circulation helps foliage dry faster, but too much wind is not an advantage. Avoiding the area where previously diseased plants grew is imperative.
Small fruits need a pH range of 5.5 to 7.5 except for blueberries which need much more acidic pH. (pH is a measure of acidity. Each number represents a ten-fold increase over the previous number—so 6 is ten times more acidic than 7.) A soil test will tell you pH values and help you to decide on amendments to bring the soil to the required level. (The University of Massachusetts soil test lab is a good site.)
Organic materials such as compost are helpful in improving the soil before planting.
Your fruit will need a water source, convenient and easy to use. Sprinklers, drip irrigation or soaker hoses are all possible water providers.
Raspberries are brambles, in the plant genus Rubus.
They have perennial roots and crowns, but their canes (branches) live for two summers only.
Most bear in the summer. In the first year, a new cane (primocane) grows leaves and enlarges its stem. It develops a brownish bark and becomes dormant over the winter. In its second season it is called a floricane which produces flowers and fruit in early or mid-summer and then dies. New canes are produced each year for continual fruit production. They are self-fertile, best pollinated by bees.
Numerous new canes develop from the base of the floricanes of red and yellow raspberries and from buds on the roots which become underground stems. These stems can spread in any direction and must be pruned to be kept in check.
Black and most purple raspberries produce primocanes only from buds at the base of the floricanes. They live in clumps or “hills” in the original location.
Everbearing red raspberries, called “fall bearing” or “primocane fruiting”, can produce flowers during the first year beginning in late May or early June. The fruit is produced at the tips of the primocanes. In the second year they may have a summer crop on the lower part of the same canes. Pruning can determine whether there will be a summer crop and a fall crop or just a fall crop. I cut my canes down in late winter and get a fall crop only.
I grow summer bearing raspberries, red and purple, as well. Their floricanes which have already fruited are pruned in the fall. Remove all of the pruned canes from the area to prevent disease or insect issues.
Purchase disease -free plants from a good nursery. Do not dig them from a neighbor or friend. Once a virus gets to your berry plants they are doomed.
guest post by Toni Stahl, Habitat Ambassador Volunteer, Backyard Habitat
Leaf Litter for Migrants
Canada Geese have chased me. They came back from the edge of extinction, but are now flourishing because of the perfect habitat we have inadvertently created for them in many residential areas. We created man-made, open-water ponds surrounded by lawn. If you landscape the pond with native plants (scroll down here), many of the Geese should move to grassy, open-water ponds. The native plants will clean the water so no chemicals need to be added, as well as create a habitat for other native water creatures. Add barley straw to limit algae growth. Canada Geese can be aggressive toward people and nest too closely to people when people feed them. Educate others not to feed them.
This video shows the shocking difference between forest floors with and without invasive, non-native (European or Asian) earthworms. The worms decompose leaf litter and roots too quickly, actually eating the rooting zone out and removing the habitat for seeds, plants and small animals. You can learn to identify non-native worms from the Great Lakes Worm Watch.
No worms should be in glaciated areas (e.g. around the Great Lakes), but worms are slowly invading. The ones to be concerned about are those non-native (all of which are invasive) worms we can control. You can help save forests. Compost without non-native worms (e.g red wiggler from Europe). Discard non-native worms (even fishing or compost worms that appear dead) in the trash. Don’t take anything that could contain non-native worms or their eggs into wooded areas, including dirt off your shoes, livestock hooves, vehicle tires, ATVs, and earth moving and snow removal equipment. Make sure there are no non-native worms in any plants you give away, whether they came from a nursery or your yard.
Good news: Students and parks joined together to create a pathway for migratory birds to go through Broward County, Florida.
Tips for Your Yard
Organic Lawn Care: Apply Corn Gluten (between 3/15 and & 4/10 in the Midwest) as a pre-emergent broadleaf weed killer
Leave the leaf litter to help migratory birds, like the Fox Sparrow in my yard above, which doesn’t reside in my area
Wait until a plant starts to green before cutting it back. As one example, swallowtail butterflies overwinter as a chrysalis attached to the stem of a perennial. They have adapted to look like the plant, so they are almost impossible to see on a stem
In the northern part of the country, put up clean, bird nesting box(es) before mid-March
If you feed birds and want to deter Grackles, switch from Sunflower to Safflower seeds, which Grackles dislike and the other birds eat
Flocks of Grackles and other blackbirds are likely to visit your bird feeder only a few times a year (spring migration before breaking into territories and during fall migration)
If you feed birds in winter, natural food is not available (insects, seeds, berries) when weather first warms. March and April are the toughest times for birds so continue to feed them until insects are flying.
Pick up plastic sacks, trash and other debris and throw them into your trash to keep this dangerous debris from harming wildlife and from going directly into our streams and rivers, polluting our drinking water
Nature News
Earth Hour, turn off lights 8:30pm-9:30pm local time on 3/24
Sometimes the things we view every day are relegated to a lesser role in our lives. They become commonplace, uninspiring, unimportant. That is why we must travel occasionally, even if just for a silent momentary reverie, from which we return and view our daily world anew. Asclepias in all its forms shouts to us from the roadsides and meadows each year with striking flowers, waving foliage and elongated seed pods (follicles). A durable, tenacious and adaptable family that does a lot of heavy lifting for our local ecologies, Asclepias deserves a closer look and greater appreciation!
Credit: Mark Gilson
Asclepias tuberosa
Butterflyweed is a faithful herald of summer in Northeast Ohio, blooming bright orange along our roadways and meadows. A few years ago I noticed the flowers in late-June off Rt 2 in Painesville along the dry road-banks near the Grand River. Had they always been there? Two months later I donned my amateur-plant-explorer hat and set off in search of seeds. Parking on the freeway and climbing the fence would have been the most direct approach, but difficult to explain to Ohio Highway Patrol. Instead, I headed north of the city through a warren of curving streets, small homes and apartments, aiming for the utility wires that followed the highway. Undeterred, I crawled under a locked fence and hiked a quarter mile. A few pods waved among the weeds here and there, but not the multitude I had anticipated. Had the meadow been mowed? Were these truly A. tuberosa or were other species mixed in? Did E.H. Wilson run into these problems as he sought out cherries in Japan?
Above all, gardeners need to be patient.
Credit: Lois Rose
I waited a year, revisited the spot in June and attached orange tagging ribbon to dozens of butterflyweed. In the fall I returned and collected absurd amounts of seed pods from verifiable A. tuberosa.
My goal was to provide seed of ‘local genotype’. As a nurseryman this had never been a priority for me. Then I met the good folks from Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH) and life, horticulture, spirituality became science-based and complicated. I was starting over. Returning home with my bounty, I was visited by misgivings. How can I be certain these plants represent ‘local genotypes’ of native plants? After all, my secret spot was less than a mile from Storrs & Harrison Nursery, one of the world’s largest, which operated for almost a hundred years. Other nurseries and other perennial-growers had flourished all around. What if my ‘genotypes’ had originated in Mexico, Malta or Madagascar? Should I test for genetic markers and, if so, where would I find a reliable baseline reference? Ultimately, I decided to go ahead with my ‘local native plants’ and let Jim Bissell (Botanist/Maven for CMNH) worry about the consequences. Let the buyer beware.
Drought-tolerant and long-lived, aslepias tuberosa is a great candidate for rain-gardens and low maintenance areas with dry well-drained soil. Sometimes called Orange Milkweed or Butterfly Milkweed, this species has less of the milky sap than its cousins. At 12-24” in height the orange flower clusters (umbels), lance-shaped dark green leaves and sturdy stems provide support for taller companions. Favored by Monarch Butterfly caterpillars, hummingbirds and native pollinators, the plant responds to trimming and looks handsome in a well-tended garden. I’ve seen container-plants over at Klyn Nurseries that are so colorful and crowned they resemble a greenhouse pot plant. Native Americans chewed the tap root to treat pulmonary illness, leading to another of its names, Pleurisy Root. Combine it with yarrow, which blooms at the same time (my favorite is the tall, old-fashioned Achillea x ‘Coronation Gold’) for a colorful cut-flower combination. Some gardeners flame the base of the stem before placing it in a cut-flower vase in order to reduce the flow of sap. Color variations from yellow to red occur naturally; cultivars are available from specialty growers and other evil-doers.
Credit: Lois Rose
Be careful promising A. tuberosa to the Spring Plant Sales. It takes a while to wake up and sometimes does not like being forced in the greenhouse.
Aslepias incarnata
Swamp Milkweed, asclepias incarnata, is a comparative giant at 4-5’. With pale pink flowers appearing slightly later than Butterflyweed, this ecologically important native plant is best-known to many of us for the dried pods that explode with cottony bundles in Fall and Winter. Native to wet areas and river bottoms in Ohio, Swamp Milkweed also thrives in relatively dry conditions.
Credit: Laura Dempsey
All these Asclepias form tap roots when grown in the soil, rendering them difficult to transplant in the garden. Yet they grow happily in a container with a well-drained mix. I dug up an A. incarnata once and moved it to a native garden in our nursery. It suffered horribly the first season but later regenerated from roots and took off. Allan Armitage writes about the nightmare of weeding Milkweeds from nursery rows and gardens. Not only do the roots grow down, they grow sideways! One volunteer that I left alone in our nursery spread eight feet in sandy soil before I realized what it had going!
Credit: Laura Dempsey
Asclepias syriaca
Garrett Ormiston, one of those educated folks over at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, corrected my ID of a statuesque milkweed in our nursery. What I was calling Swamp Milkweed turned out to be Common Milkweed, aslepias syriaca. One of the best plants for providing food to butterflies and their larvae, says Garrett, its leaves are broader and it prefers drier areas than Swamp Milkweed. Also, the pale-pink flowers are round rather than flat. I think it provides a stunning although overlooked specimen for gardens and natural areas. If this was recently discovered or developed…it would be touted by Proven Winners!
Credit: Mark Gilson
I collected Common Milkweed seeds and left them in our tool room for over a year (it’s our only roof that doesn’t leak). Busting open the pods makes a mess with all the white fuzzies (a technical term), but after some experimentation I found I could pinch out the silks and find a bounty of round dark seeds beneath, clustered there like tiny coins. I scattered the seeds in late-winter in an open tray filled with regular potting soil. I provided a light covering of sand, although that was probably not necessary. I placed the trays under intermittent mist because it is generally more reliable than my intermittent watering. Alternatively, just moisten the soil and place the tray in a sealed clear plastic bag. A couple weeks later the seedlings began poking up through the sand and soon filled in like the proverbial hairs on a dog’s back. Usually we dibble the seedlings into two-inch cells and offer them that way or later shift them to larger containers. As far as cultural conditions in the nursery, let me just say I am amazed at how much abuse these durable plants can take.
Credit: Mark Gilson
The tray in the photo was moved to a shade house from which it subsequently disappeared. An extensive investigation revealed that a student worker discarded it, remarking he thought it was a tray taken over by ‘weeds’. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Don’t believe the toxicity warnings by Euell Gibbons from 1962. Remember Euell Gibbons and ‘wild hickory nuts?’ Leaves of Common Milkweed have no bitterness when tasted raw and can be prepared like asparagus with no additional processing.
Something is Eating My Plant!
Milkweeds present a conundrum to the gardener and grower. When we say…’beneficial to local ecologies and pollinators’…we mean…’bugs will eat the heck out of them’. Here it is…should we apply pesticides to our native plants? Inspectors for Ohio Department of Agriculture frequent our nurseries and object to any commerce in bugs. They force us to use helicopters each year for gypsy moth control.
Credit: Mark Gilson
Last year the Asclepias in our garden center were visited by two giant voracious caterpillars. My wife, who loves monarch butterflies as much as a good cabernet, took this on as a learning opportunity for our customers. She raised butterflies on the counter in our store, brought in ladybugs, and watched our Asclepias disappear day by day. Once I saw her sell a denuded stem in a No. 2 container. The happy customer responded to her story…’I know…I know!’ The story is getting out. The foliage, after all, grows back pretty quickly, just in time for hordes of orange aphids. In our wholesale nursery, again, we’re not supposed to sell plants covered with orange aphids. Since I don’t like to apply pesticides (it’s one of my least favorite jobs), I decided to leave it up to the customer. Some took the plants along with the teeming hitchhikers.
Credit: Laura Dempsey
While the scientific debate regarding neonicotinoid pesticides, in particular, and their impact on pollinators rages on, we just read in a nursery industry newsletter: “Treating swamp milkweed with neonicotinoids, regardless of active ingredients, application timing and method, resulted in high concentrations of residue in nectar.” (Source: Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, Journal of Environmental Horticulture, Volume 35, page 24-34). While the effect of pesticide residues on pollinators remains a matter of scientific inquiry, and while it would be heresy for a nurseryman to object to all pesticides (and I don’t!), let’s rely on ladybugs and a judicious blast of water from a hose to control bugs, when we need to, on our Asclepias!
Asclepias…what a great story-plant for teaching the public about natives, nurseries, ecologies, pollinators and how it can all come together in our gardens!
Mark Gilson is a third-generation nurseryman and past-president of Nursery Growers of Lake County, Ohio. Visit: http://gilsongardens.biz/category/marks-corner/
A week ago I went to the Natural History Museum to listen to the speakers at the Ohio Natural History Conference — all of them good and interesting talks (confession; I was tired and slept through two of the afternoon talks; I hope I didn’t snore). They were all short and sweet (20 minutes each), about the relevance and importance of natural history and the natural world, and about the specifics of our changing world, the resilience of it — or not. All of this is just lead in to a lead in; I was much taken with gab-gifted naturalist Harvey Webster’s title for his lead-off talk: “Whither natural history?” and his confession that he had always wanted to use the word ‘whither’ – and now he had.
Whither. An interesting word, archaic sounding and poetical. Whither; meaning ‘where’, as in ‘where are we bound?’ That was the context of Harvey Webster’s question about natural history and the natural world. On a planet with a changing, volatile climate, in an age of extinctions and endangered species and at-risk environments, and I include our own built environment in that — whither are we bound?
There is another whither, spelled differently, but spoken the same; it is whither’s homo-phonic sibling, wither, meaning to become dry and shriveled, to decline or decay. Which seems to be one potential answer or result at the tail end of ‘whither are we bound.’ And when I go there, I am close to despair for what we have lost and must surely lose, and I grieve in premonition of the losses yet to come that I cannot even imagine. That’s when I write poems like this:
A Prayer from the Prayer Adverse
How close despair and prayer lie down in bed
born of the same love and through the same eyes
see both fore and aft : that squirrel offers sun
flowers to feathered gods : that locust sheds tears
as leaves : how mute swan swims in now murky
meres and the strangled oak dies gleaned Through
the same eyes — those hidden eyes — they see
Whither the wild crane and whippoorwill? seals
Sadness to silence and tightens the throat
Despair inarticulate ends all Yet
through those eyes those hidden eyes there may
still come a lightening : a prayer — un-glossed —
if an un-glossed prayer may hope For all
that I love some slight brightening
But that is not, actually, whither I am bound today, and so, having gotten both the w(h)ithers out of the way, time to refloat this raft.
These last mild days have drawn me out into the ‘wilds’ of Forest Hill Park, into the valley, especially the short section where the Dugway Brook flows free in its original channel of layered eroded shales. At the south end, its ‘source’, it pours out of an enormous pipe (large enough to drive a small car into), then flows north for perhaps a quarter of a mile, or less, where it disappears, again, into another monster maw. Here one might well ask of it, ‘whither are you bound?’– for it now disappears again, goes underground into an artificial, and killing, concrete channel, and stays buried thus until it reaches Lake Erie at the eastern edge of Bratenahl, where it at last flows free again, out into Lake Erie.
This short distance free to the air is not enough to restore the stream to life. Before it reaches this unfettered stretch it flows buried under Cain Park, emerges briefly by the swimming pool by Cumberland Park, then goes back underground by the Community Center to emerge again, briefly, for this short free stretch in Forest Hill Park. It is a dead stream. Nothing lives in it. But, in this short stretch of its freedom, it is still beautiful. And when I look at it as I walk by it, I wonder what this area was like when my mother and her father hiked these woods and brooks (the Doan and the Dugway) when they moved here in 1920. I like to think that someday, perhaps, the buried section in Forest Hill Park might be freed, re-aired, re-enlivened — and also, all that is now underground between East Cleveland and Lake Erie, providing again a living life-line for life, and the life of the spirit.
Lois Rose, Gardenopolis-Cleveland co-editor, writes of this little stretch of free flowing stream: “I remember the first time I ever walked the stream bed – I could not believe my eyes. It was like a fairy tale — you stepped out of the parking lot and you were in the country on a stream bed, hidden from view, alone. There is a sense of secrecy. You hardly ever see anyone on it. You do not even know this exists, even though you live a mile away. It’s by the Rec center – yet very far from it. I have a sense of pride in that stream. I appreciate how sad and less-than-it-could-be the stream is – but it has brought me a lot of pleasure over the years.”
And so it has me, also.
Twenty years ago I visited a place in Ireland called Glendalough, a monastic site of some antiquity (6th century). We hiked up into the bracken covered hills there, following a little rollicking brook through its self-carved cloven bed in the rock. Somehow our poor diminished Dugway manages to remind me of that tannen-saturated jewel, both of them with their cascades and rills, and narrow congested places where the water runs fast — leading me to hope that in some future that I probably will not see, some future wisdom and largess will once again set the Dugway free.
I leave you with one more poem, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is a better one than my own, in the same way that the stream it describes, flowing into Lough Lomond in Scotland, is a far better brook than our loved but poor and limping Dugway.
Inversnaid
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
A windpuff-bonnet of fawn froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.
Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Mentor Marsh has been a National Park Service-designated National Natural Landmark since 1966 for being one of the most species-rich sites on the Great Lakes shoreline. The Marsh was named Ohio’s first State Nature Preserve in 1971 and is a National Audubon Society Important Birding Area. This unique wetland suffered dramatically in the 1960s when salt-mine tailings leached into Blackbrook Creek. By the early 1970s, most of the swamp forest trees and marsh plants had died. The 765-acre wetland basin was overtaken by reed grass (Phragmites australis), a 14-foot-tall nonnative invasive plant from Eurasia. Phragmites grew so densely within the nearly 4-mile-long former river channel that an estimated 1 billion plants were growing just a few inches apart. Partial abatement of the salt source in 1987 lowered salinity levels to borderline brackish conditions along one-third of the marsh and lowered the salinity to freshwater levels on two-thirds of the wetland.
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History began a large-scale restoration of Mentor Marsh in 2012. Guided by Museum restoration ecologists, the Phragmites is being sprayed with an aquatic-safe herbicide and then physically mashed flat to allow native plants to grow. The results thus far have been heartening. Dozens of native plant species are sprouting from the soil seed bank, and Leopard Frogs are expanding throughout. Rare marsh birds—such as American and Least Bitterns, Virginia, King and Sora Rails, and Common Gallinules and Wilson’s snipe—are now nesting. Fish, such as Northern Pike, are spawning, and Yellow Perch fingerlings are starting to use the Marsh as a nursery. Otter, beaver, wading birds, waterfowl and shorebird migrants are starting to use the restored Marsh as stopover habitat. While recent surveys have confirmed Blanding’s and Spotted turtles are no longer present, their recovery is possible.
As Ohio’s largest stand of Phragmites, the perennial roots of these tall invaders are well established. Results so far have eliminated 85% of the Phragmites basin-wide, with some older treatment units nearly in the clear while other newer units are experiencing an anticipated bounce back rallying from the massive network of root reserves, or emerging as seedlings from the seed bank. Follow-up on the remaining estimated 15% is critical, requiring an intense commitment of time to traverse the sticky Carlisle muck soil to cover a wetland basin with 12 miles of perimeter.
During the 2017 field season, in an effort to accelerate desired ground cover to outcompete other invasive species lurking nearby, Museum staff, partners, contractors, volunteers and inmates planted over 19,000 live plants of 23 native species in the Marsh. Some of the plants were grown from seeds collected onsite and propagated at a local prison as part of a horticultural job skills program. Other plugs and live stakes were purchased from restoration nurseries and conservation seed growers. We plan to redouble our efforts in 2018, with continued efforts to raise funds towards this worthwhile project.
We could not have undertaken this monumental task without the assistance of the many partners, grant funders, volunteers and donors who believed in what we are doing.
David Kriska, Ph.D., is a Restoration Ecologist in the Natural Areas Program of The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
What could possibly interest a driver through the landscape west of Toledo? Flat corn and soy bean fields stretch to the horizon—green in summer, gray-brown in winter. That’s the way it’s been for the nearly 25 years my wife and I have been traveling to Chicago to visit our daughter.
In the last three years, though, we’ve noticed a change. Instead of bare, tilled soil in winter, the majority of farmland we observe remains untilled and is filled with corn and other crop stubble. Although colors remain pretty much the same gray-brown, what we are seeing is revolutionary. Conventional farmers, who have been growing crops in the best agri-chemical, paint-by-numbers style—so many pounds of artificial nitrogen, phosphorous, etc. per acre–, are now consciously prioritizing growing life in their soil.
Tilled field and…No till. Still brown, but much more beautiful.
We’re not the only ones to notice this change. Two years ago it even made the New York Times.
Now a book has come out that puts the shift into a worldwide context. It’s called Growing A Revolution by David Montgomery. Montgomery is a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington; author of previous popular books, most notably “Dirt,” and a winner of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” award.
Montgomery’s thesis is that a consensus is emerging in all corners of agriculture and horticulture—from conventional to organic—that the only path toward resilient food production must include an interlocking trio of practices that fall under the rubric of “conservation agriculture.” These are: No till soil management, cover crops, and crop rotation.
As obvious as these three practices will sound to Gardenopolis Cleveland’s cutting edge gardeners, the abiding wonder of this book is how often humanity has gotten this apparently straightforward mix wrong. The Mesopotamians messed up the (once) Fertile Crescent. Thomas Jefferson experimented with cover crops and crop rotation, but also invented and promoted the mold-board plow—that great destroyer of mycorrhizal fungi and their nutrient-gathering capability– and thus managed to undo much of the good of his other innovations. In the 1970s, a young researcher named Rattan Lal, now one of Ohio State University’s most distinguished professors, vastly improved small farm productivity in African test plots with a version of conservation agriculture. But a few short years after his departure, all his good work had been overgrown with trees. Only the small-scale farmers of China and Japan appear to have been able maintain consistently healthy soil over centuries (aided enormously by their techniques for safely recycling both animal and human waste).
The main contributing factor to humanity’s soil-building failures has been a combination of population growth and an impatience with gradualism. As Europe’s much-plowed soils were running out of fertility, European colonialists replaced it with the Peruvian seabird waste known as guano. As guano supplies diminished, German chemists developed the Haber-Bosch process to produce artificial nitrogen fertilizer. Artificial fertilizers also became one of the pillars of the so-called “Green Revolution” of the 1960s, that temporarily rescued farmers worldwide from depleted soils and diminished harvests.
You know the rest of the story: monocultures, fertilizer runoff, Monsanto, glycosophate, herbicide-resistant “superweeds,” and a steady decrease in soil fertility that all of the ministrations of Big Ag have only made worse (requiring still more artificial inputs).
What Montgomery has discovered, however, is that we seem to have reached a genuine tipping point that is taking us back to soil and its neglected life-giving potential. One of my favorite moments in the book occurs when Montgomery, the bearded “Left Coast” professor is invited to speak to a group of Kansas farmers.
Did he look like this? More gardeners ought to wear overalls. They’re both comfortable and practical. Just be careful not to walk into the Stone Oven coffee house like this!
“As I ended my talk I looked out on a sea of baseball hats. One elderly fellow in the middle stood up, stuffed his hands down into his pockets, and said he’d taken one look at me and didn’t think I could possibly say anything worth listening to. I braced myself for what was to come. But then he surprised me. He said the more I talked, the more sense I had made. He’d seen what I was talking about on his farm. It no longer had the rich fertile topsoil his grandfather had plowed. Something needed to change if his own grandchildren were going to prosper working his land.”
What has also changed is soil science. Mycorrhizal fungi were only named and their function thoroughly described by German scientist A.B. Frank in 1885. Frank contended that mycorrhizal fungi and plants worked in a vital system of symbiosis, with plants trading sugars made via their unique process of photosynthesis for minerals which fungi’s chemical exudates were uniquely able to mine. Frank’s findings flew in the face of conventional wisdom and went through waves of acceptance and dismissal throughout the following century. Yet today we recognize the plant/fungal relationship as the most fundamental to life on land. Neither biological domain could exist on earth without the other (let alone us animals!).
Sara Wright in her lab.
The power of the plant/fungal relationship has only really come into focus in the last 20+ years. In 1996 Sara F. Wright, a U.S.D.A. scientist, first identified glomalin, the mycorrhizal exudate that gives good soil its crumbly texture and, at a micro-level, allows bacteria and fungi to perform their most soil-enhancing functions. (Why hasn’t Sara Wright won a Nobel Prize!)
At the same time, scientists’ recent ability to decode genomes has revealed a vast, previously unknown realm of microbiological life. To soil scientists the soil microbiome is still, literally, terra incognita. We know enough, however, to understand why the trio of conservation agriculture practices that Montgomery describes work so powerfully together.
No or minimal tillage allows mycorrhizal fungi to extend their appendages called hyphae. These hyphae, in turn, mine rock and other geological formations for otherwise inaccessible minerals. They also merge with other like fungi and thus create a vast underground network that, sensing some plant’s need for phosphorous, can both mine and deliver it.
Vetch fixes nitrogen and is a great cover crop.
Cover crops supply their own package of nutrients, including nitrogen (e.g. vetch) and phosphorous (e.g. buckwheat). Harvesting them off above the root, moreover, leaves carbon compounds in the soil to feed all the fungi and other microbiota.
Rotation of multiple crops, the third component of conservation agriculture, follows the lesson that almost every veteran tomato grower knows: One crop in place year after year eventually attracts more natural enemies than it can handle. The more varied crops, the safer they all become. Moreover, different crops access different mycorrhizal species and networks, as well different minerals. (E.g. sunflowers, which draw up zinc and make it available to the other crops around them).
The lesson: in diversity there is redundancy and strength. All three practices conserve carbon and build soil. In fact, Montgomery cites a 2014 Rodale Institute that estimates that complete worldwide conversion to conservation agriculture could offset almost three-quarters of then current global emissions. This might not be as pie-in-sky as a realist might imagine. Montgomery emphasizes throughout how profitable regenerative conservation agriculture can be for farmers (not, however, for suppliers of agri-chemicals!).
Montgomery has clearly written this book for the next potential generation of farmer converts to conservation agriculture and to their potential policymaker supporters. But the predominantly gardener readers of Gardenopolis Cleveland will find the book a useful mirror by which to judge their own practices and act as even more informed consumers. The book is accessible in a comfortable journalistic way, but the reader is always aware that, when required, Montgomery can draw on his deep scientific training to summarize, accept and/or dismiss scientific studies as appropriate.
Some other tidbits/insights:
–Montgomery notes that many “organic” farmers fall short—and their crops suffer- -when it comes to implementing conservation agriculture. The more enlightened seem to be adopting some of the techniques of conventional agriculture—like every once-in-while application of a fungicide—to get their conservation agriculture trio of practices into proper balance. Despite my description above, soil and circumstances vary, and there seems to be a emerging productive middle ground, albeit still with very low chemical inputs.
–The two biggest obstacles to widespread adoption of conservation agriculture in the U.S.? The first, predictably, is Big Ag, the complex of seed, agri-chemicals, equipment producers, and food distributors. These companies dominate U.S. agricultural research and educational funding not to mention the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. They are also the only entities to consistently profit off the current system. The second, more surprisingly, is crop insurance. The ability of make money even through crop failure keeps our present destructive system in place. Montgomery seems to take special pleasure in describing how well off financially the new conservation agriculture farmers—who pay exponentially less for chemical and other inputs—have become–to the point of fancy wine cellars!. Most are so profitable they don’t bother with crop insurance, even if it is federally subsidized.
–Smaller really is beautiful. Conservation agriculture with its multiplicity of crops tends to lend itself to much smaller farms than the as-far-as-the-eye-can-see, massive monoculture systems. Because the former are more profitable, they may also make room for more -farmers and more prosperous small towns to serve them. Check out this video to see what can happen.
Could a more prosperous rural America close our current rural/urban political divide?
–Finally, a special point of pride for Ohioans. Rattan Lal, whom I’ve mentioned on this blog before, and David Brandt, a farmer near Columbus, emerge as towering heroes of this book. After reading this book, you’ll appreciate these two state treasures even more.
