Dirt Divas

May 27, 2007

And the Divas are Three!

Brooke and I thought we'd celebrate our third year of ‘The Dirt Divas' by making us three. Watch out world!

Make no mistake, this new Diva is no garden pansy. She's been gardening in the Valley since the late 1970s, is an accomplished Master Gardener, an excellent plants woman, a maker of really neat twiggy things, has a horticultural education, has worked in the industry for a number of years and loves to take trips to the United Kingdom, just to look at plants.

Well, don't we wish!

Actually, I might as well confess, I'm going to join her this summer for one of these adventures, so tighten your belts. We'll come back with all sorts of crazy ideas sprung out of brains scrambled from days of driving on the wrong side of the road in a car that's designed backwards.

Well, anyway Š Hally Truelove is a welcome addition to our party, and we think that you'll be pleased. Unlike us, she's much more succinct and nearly always to the point.

I doubt very much if she'll have you clutching too many cold toilets in the night. It's more likely that she'll instruct you on the nuances of hardening off annuals during a cold spring or perhaps discuss the many varieties and growth habits of Primula.

But whatever she chooses to chat about, you're sure to be enlightened and your gardening heart renewed. And don't worry too much about inappropriate advice from across the ocean. We will most likely get stuck in a round-about in London and never leave town anyway.

Enough prattling.

Have you ever noticed the abundance of freshly planted spruce trees looking brown and dead the following spring? This year seems to especially favor them. They're everywhere, like nasty, prickly aliens come down to sabotage our gardening spirits, not to mention our pocket books.

Most of these trees were last year's imports from the lower states. They arrive balled and burlapped by the truck load each year.

This means they are dug out of their growing fields with a root ball at least two thirds the size it should be. (Done for ease of wrapping and transport.) Then the root ball is packed with a very wet, muddy soil. This ensures an immediate, long-lasting capture of moisture, but, ironically, it also ensures a lack of water later on.

Once dry, this packing becomes an adobe prison that is most unwilling to accept water, even if put into the ground.

Next, the root ball is wrapped in burlap with a lot of plastic twine and is ready to be shipped to parts unknown.

Finally, tags are attached to the trees telling us to plant them, wrapping and all, directly into the ground. The idea is that the burlap and twine will dissolve into compost in a matter of months and your tree will sprout wings (or perhaps roots) and soar.

Not in your lifetime!

The burlap may go away in a temperate, moist climate, but not here. And the twine is plastic for heavens sake! Remember that adobe prison with twine poised to girdle the base of the trunk? Not a pretty picture. Exactly the type of bad, regional advice we hope to avoid upon our return from the green byways of Britain.

I've dug up many of these dead spruce, only to find them still in their little prisons, just as the grower tag instructed. They are dry as a bone and thoroughly dead.

The buyer can't really be blamed, after all, we're doing what we're told.

So what should you do if you must have one of these aliens?

First, remove the twine and the burlap. Next, beat off all that nasty, hard clay stuff. Yes, I mean beat!

Sometimes it's a bugger to get rid of. This should leave you with a diminutive bunch of sad roots. Pull them apart, drop them in a nice big container of water for a few hours and plant the tree with the roots as wide spread as you can. Use a bit of 8-32-16 fertilizer, just to get it off to a good start, water it with at least 5 gallons of water a day for the first full growing season, and hope for the best.

Hally might tell you to feed it some wonderfully earthy concoction made of bunny poop and moose droppings, but you'll have to wait and see. Welcome Diva Three!

More ideas, more inspiration. It's going to be a good

season.

Sally Koppenberg is a garden and food designer and the owner of Stonehill Gardens, a nursery and catering company specializing in Alaska Grown foods, trees, shrubs, perennials and native plants. Contact her at stonehill@gci.net.