Bigger, Healthier, Stronger: Grafted Vegetables Are On the Way
Grafting. The term probably makes you think of roses, grapes, apples and nuts, which have long been grafted to improve disease resistance and productivity. But it won’t be long before grafting is also commonly associated with tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, watermelon and other vegetables that are highly susceptible to crop destroyers, such as bacterial wilt, nematodes and soil-borne diseases.
That’s because, over the last decade, researches experimenting with grafting at many U.S. universities have reported increasingly positive results with several types of vegetables. The three main benefits of grafting being: improved disease resistance, higher yields (and sometimes quality), and increased ability to adapt to harsh environmental conditions like temperature extremes, floods and drought.
While much of the research centers around the needs of commercial growers, new lines of grafted vegetables will be available to home gardeners, too. As an urban gardener with little space to grow edibles, I’m intrigued by the idea of trying grafted veggies, which might save me from the inevitable blight and pestilence my crops are likely to suffer since I can’t rotate them as often as I should. But before I plant, I want to understand more about how grafting works and, specifically, how it might affect the fruiting part of the plant. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
Read More»Why Do Our Noses Run In the Cold?
Ever wonder why your nose runs like crazy when it’s really cold outside? My husband Mike asked me if I knew why in the heck this happens just the other day. We were walking our dog, Lily, who was tired of being patient while we waited for temps to rise into at least the low teens. As expected, we were just a few steps down the sidewalk when our noses turned into leaking faucets. (Tip: always buy washable winter gloves.)
I had no idea why noses run in the cold, and I forgot to look it up to see if I could find out. But last night I was reading Do Sparrows Like Bach?: The Strange and Wonderful Things That Are Discovered When Scientists Break Free, and there was the answer. There is no answer. Scientists don’t quite know what causes “cold-induced rhinitis,” which is what doctors call faucet nose. According to the book, which was put out by New Scientist magazine, researchers suspect that the autonomic nervous system may be involved.
Here’s an interesting tidbit on how to stop the faucet from a chapter in the book called “The Yuck Factor”: “Nerves belonging to the autonomic nervous system, some of which connect to the nasal glands, use a neurotransmitter known as acetylcholine. Fortunately, there is a quick fix.” That fix, the book goes on to explain, is two squirts of ipratropium bromide, an inhibitor of acetylcholine, in each nostril 45 minutes before heading out into the cold or before eating spicy food.
Don’t look too closely at Mike’s mittens.
What is this miracle product? I wondered. So I did a quick Google search and found that doctors often prescribe ipratropium bromide inhalers for allergy sufferers and people with more serious issues like asthma, emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Inhalers, which are sold under a variety of trade names, can be purchased inexpensively as generics. But first, I’d be inclined to weigh the pro of not having snot on my mittens against the cons, which include this list of common side effects: dry mouth, cough, headache, nausea, dizziness and difficulty breathing.
Heck, snot’s not so bad, right?
The Truth About “Winter Interest”
Many, many thanks to everyone who took the time to send kind notes and words of wisdom after reading my last blog post about my broken teeth. I’ve already put some of your suggestions into practice and, I have to say, I’m feeling a little bit more relaxed already. In fact, I got the idea for this post the other day while sipping tea and looking out the window at the heaps of snow and ice in our backyard rather than running all around doing whatever it is I do all the time.
Yes, fellow gardeners, as the magazines tell us, tis the season for enjoying all that “winter interest” we’ve created by following advice to plant things like colorful red-twigged dogwoods and unusual evergreens in a landscape bedazzled with sturdy structures and planters overflowing with cute pinecones and twigs and whatnot. Everything looks so lovely in those glossy photo spreads. But we who garden in parts of the country where actual snow falls, not just a fairy dusting but, say, 10 inches or so, fairly often, followed by icy rain and slush, know the truth about winter interest. In the absence of photo stylists, props and camera crews, it simply doesn’t exist.
Don’t get me wrong; snowy gardens are beautiful, just not in the way magazines portray them. But let’s pretend for a minute that there is a magazine willing to run a winter story that tells it like it is. Articles could offer tips on things like how to spread fresh snow around the yard to obscure all those frozen yellow dog pee circles. A short sidebar might be: “3 Strategies For Chipping Frozen Poo From Snowbanks.” I’m sure a lot of us could submit photos that readers could relate to. Here are some of mine, and I’ve even written captions.
An empty cattle trough looks silly overflowing with snow while the nearly buried fireplace adds interest to the slippery pavement near the back door.
Arctic willow branches bend and break under the weight of snow and ice as the back gate only opens part way because it’s frozen.
Leave ornamental grasses standing to provide structure in winter gardens.
Bird feeders make attractive additions to any winter landscape
Evergreens offer a pop of color against the bright snow in winter gardens.
Have you got some “winter interest” photos to share? If so, please email them to me and I’ll post them!
Honey, I Broke My Teeth
- On December 07, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Annuals, Organic Gardening, Perennials
5
“You’ve got to be f-ing kidding me.” I can’t be sure because I was pretty shaken up, but I’m fairly certain that’s what I muttered under my breath as soon as I realized I’d broken off both of my front teeth in a fall down our basement stairs on Thanksgiving morning.
It was one of those slow-motion accidents, the kind in which you try to catch yourself numerous times to no avail. Hand grabs for non-existent railing. Head hits metal post thingy by stairs. Underside of forearm takes the brunt of the fall onto the concrete floor before knees slam down and then, face—SNAP! About three-quarters of one tooth broke off cleanly and the other sort of shattered, leaving a sharp, jagged, horizontal edge. I remember spitting out tiny bits of teeth, but we looked everywhere and only found one small piece to save in a glass jar, like our moms did with our baby teeth, and we did with our dog, Lily’s.
“Honey, you won’t believe what just happened,” I called to my husband Mike, who was outside putting our plastic Santa and reindeer on the roof. But he could believe it, and so could I. Just two days earlier my new doctor had just one piece of advice for me: “Relax; chill out,” she said, “try meditation or take up yoga, even if you do it just five minutes a day.” This was her prescription for my complaints about digestion troubles, food allergies and just a general sense of feeling alternately revved up and exhausted.
As you might imagine by now, I have heard this before. But propped on one elbow on the basement floor while running the fingertips of my other hand over my broken teeth, all I could think of was how I had fallen because I was once again trying to do too many things at one time. It also wasn’t lost on me that I could have been badly hurt. As it was, once our dentist answered his emergency line and assured me that I must not have hit nerves or there would be more pain, we scheduled an appointment with him for the next day and celebrated Thanksgiving with our friends as planned. (Though I’m sure it was not too appetizing watching me eat.)
What does all of this have to do with gardening? you ask. After all this is a gardening blog. Well, here’s the thing. I’ve tried to meditate many times and just ended up sitting in a leg-cramping position while making a mental grocery list. Yoga is fine, but that’s not going to cut it as a relaxation tool for me. So, aside from working hard to be mindful of what I am doing: “You are walking down the stairs right now, and that is all you are going to focus on for the moment,” I’m wondering what else I can do to bring more calmness into my life and less multi-tasking.
And that got me thinking about gardening. I always think of gardening as my stress relief, my way of relaxing. I’m outside hauling, digging and planting from the time weather permits until it doesn’t. And when all those people walk by saying some version of: “Gorgeous gardens, but that sure looks like a lot of work,” I cheerfully reply: “It’s not work to me.” But is it and I just don’t realize it? I am not one of those gardeners who will tell you that they rarely sit and enjoy their garden because they’re always working in them. But I am the sort of gardener who, in between sips of wine and bites of dinner, looks around her gardens to assess what should be done next.
How did I let that Joe Pye weed get so tall again this year? OMG! Is that aster yellows on the phlox? What’s up with those crappy-looking ornamental grasses? I really should add more compost to those back beds this fall. Am I pruning those hydrangeas wrong? This sort of “monkey mind,” as I call it, equals a never-ending list of gardening to-dos, and I’m not bothered by that. I like being out in the garden working on this or that. But does this mean that gardening isn’t relaxing in the way I think it is? Am I really getting the dose of peace and calm my doctor thinks I need—and I clearly do need since it’s gotten to the point of lost teeth.
What do you think? How does gardening make you feel when you really think about it? And is there a point where it adds to stress rather than easing it? I would love to hear your thoughts as I muddle my way through this process of figuring out how to just “chill.”
Grow the Good Life
I read a lot of gardening books, and though most have something to offer, many just cover the same old ground in one way or another. So I was happy to find a copy of Michele Owens’ book, Grow the Good Life: Why a Vegetable Garden Will Make You Happy, Wealthy, and Wise, at the library recently. It was a rainy, cold weekend and I’d heard good things about the book, so I planned on curling up on the couch with it, and a couple of others I picked out. As it turned out, those other books just lay there unopened on the coffee table because I couldn’t put Owens’ book down until I finished it.
If you’re not familiar with Michele Owens’ garden writing for Organic Gardening and other magazines, you can get a good understanding of who she is and what she believes in by checking out her blog posts on Garden Rant, which she founded a few years back with a handful of similarly smart, funny and straight-talking garden writers. As a former political speech writer and author of several best-selling business books, Owens is keenly aware of the need to do her research before writing and throughout the book she cites the work of many horticulturists, ecologists, microbiologists and others. But all these facts do not a snoozy tome make because she is adept at interweaving studies, facts and figures with her own passionate commentary as an experienced gardener who loves plants, nature and growing vegetables.
Salad greens growing in our backyard last summer.
Because she’s married to a journalist who covers climate change, Owens gets a dinnertime update on just how much stress our warming world is putting on agriculture all over the world. This understanding, coupled with a love of good, healthy food, drives her to motivate people, everyone, not just gardeners, to grow at least some food in their own backyards. Sure, that will help relieve some pressure on the world’s food supply, she writes. But growing things to eat is also just a joyful, uplifting thing to do; just ask anyone who has ever grown even one tomato plant in a pot on a balcony or back patio. There really is nothing like being able to walk outside and pick something you’ve grown yourself and pop it in your mouth, or serve it up for dinner.
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