Leave the leaves? Not good gardening advice

TPP has seen three articles already (but failed to note their sources) that tell people to leave the leaves on their lawn rather than rake them.  This only works if you have very few leaves or want to transition your lawn to a woodland.  This is being done in our gardens in at least two places, purposely, and a lot of woodland plants occupy what passes for our lawn.  A thick layer of leaves, whole or chopped, would kill what little grass remains. The leaves in our lawns are confluent; they form a continuous layer inches deep, and more in some places.  So many leaves that a leaf gathering fence and a leaf capturing net are put up to keep tons of leaves out of our lily pond.  All the leaves are raked out of most of the gardens, and then vacuumed up and shredded, and reapplied if mulching is wanted.  This used to be done by yours truly with a machine called a Billy Goat; it was a beast, hard to pull start, and used about an 8 cubic foot bag, which was quite heavy.  And it was pricey to rent!  The right shoulder would complain the next day, and it was justified. Then Mrs. Phactor found a lawn service guy, who would do all that leaf work and it only cost $40-50 more than just the Billy Goat.  This did not take a lot of thought.  Except this year the leaves have been snowed on, and rained on, to keep them wet and matted down.  Fortunately the net was pulled off the pond and emptied of several cubic feet of water logged leaves before this latest wintery episode.  This takes the entire Phactor gardening squad, both of us, and then it was almost too heavy for the net.  But neither of us fell in, so that was good.  The next task will be to put fencing around all the young trees and shrubs to keep the rabbits from browsing on them.  Hopefully the weather will produce a couple of warmer days before the end of November.

Fall, where does it leave us?

2017 was a strange fall here in the upper Midwest of the USA.  September was cool, then hot and dry. A lot of trees showed stress & TPP hopes he watered enough trees and new plants well enough.  It was a $400 watering. It was a late fall staying warm until well into October, and a hard frost waiting until November.  Fall color was late to develop, and even then it was funny with some well colored trees framed against a green backdrop.  When a hard frost did come our sugar maples dropped their leaves literally overnight, covering our patios to at least a foot deep.  And then the leaf netting over the lily pond had to get dragged off for a second time, and it was heavy with leaves, walnut and hackberry mostly, and the pond doesn't want those.  
Nonetheless when some plants colored up they were  wonderful.  Foremost among those were the Japanese maples.  This image shows a pair that grow just beyond the lily pond.  The low-growing one in the foreground (Emerald lace) might develop more color if the chlorophyll fades a bit more, but the 'scolopendrifolium' behind turned a wonderful orangey hue.  So nice and bright.
Of course our lawn is a confluent carpet of leaves and the oaks are still hanging on to their leaves for later.  These will all get semi-shredded and piled on areas destined to become woodland gardens.

Strong wind brings strange leaves?

The late winter/early spring finds lots of leaves in the Phactors' various flower beds.  This is because that's where we put them and where they belong.  Sometimes you notice something unusual among the usual assortment of leaves and this morning was one of those times.  It has been quite windy once or twice in the past few weeks, but doubt very much this blew in from the tropics.  The leaf is quite unmistakable, it's a frond of a staghorn fern, a large tropical, epiphytic fern.  The university glass house has several, a couple of unusual massive size.  In this part of the world staghorn ferns are a difficult houseplant at best.  They would be happiest growing in your shower if you had a skylight to provide enough light.  Otherwise, forget it.  Suffice it to say, among the tropical plants in our possession, this isn't one. This was found in the front garden near the neighbor's driveway, but they are not really very much on plants outside, let alone inside, so it remains a mystery where it came from although clearly it has not been there all winter as it is still fairly fresh. It will still compost nicely.  

Lawn care - Don't rake your leaves?

This article or another just like it provoked quite a bit of comment in the gardening blogging community recently. The idea is ecologically sound; leaves represent biomass and resources trees removed from the soil, so don't remove them, mulch them to retrieve the nutrients.  So far so good, but if TPP followed this advice for just two years he would have a young forest. If you only have one or two trees and a whole big lawn, well OK, mulch away. Do remember that if too much organic material accumulates grasses get shallow rooted and become easily damaged. Your lawn will be more easily damaged. The organic material may attract more root feeding grubs. Our 1.3 acres has about a dozen very large trees and the leaf accumulation is significant and heavy enough to quite bury lawn even if the leaves are mulched with a lawn mower.  In places leaf accumulation can reach 12", and when TPP tried mulching and bagging them he had to stop every few feet to empty the bag. Our city does pick up leaves and mulch them enmass allowing people to pick up organic mulch to return to  gardens for free so they are not going to a landfill (one argument used by don't rakers). Some local farmers also take the leaves for their soil improvement.  Our personal leaves are moved to more heavily wooded areas or mulched and used in garden beds.  Even here the battle with woody weeds is unrelenting, and if the seedlings are not removed annually, well, a dense thicket of saplings will quickly appear.  In particular the do-not-rake-leaves advice is suspect especially if you have sugar maples. Because they make both sun and shade leaves, their crowns are dense (they can intersect up to 95% of the incoming light that hits their crown).  Growing grass under these trees is nearly impossible, although ferns and low-light ground covers work fine, and they can often handle a considerable mulch of leaves. But again the point is, you don't have lawn by the ordinary definition. Such a mass of leaves landing in our pond would begin turning it into a bog, and netting the pond and leaf removal is a bit of a problem that must be dealt with to have a big water feature. So do give this advice some thought before yelling yahoo and selling your rake. It doesn't work everywhere or for everybody.

Spring cleaning

Spring garden cleanup is quite a chore no matter how well you prepare in the fall.  Where the hell do all the leaves come from? Shrubbery and the dead aerial portions of perennial plants are terrific leaf grabbers.  The high temp today will be in the upper 60s and the predicted rain looks to be heading more easterly while still south of us, so TPP will spend the day doing some garden cleanup. Gently removing the accumulated leaves from among the hellebores will be job number one. The flower buds have really begun to push up through the leaves, but things will look much better and the plants will flower better without the smothering covering of leaves. Before the cleanup is done, the Phactors will probably fill 10-12 of those large paper lawn waste bags for composted recycling by the city.  It was also windy yesterday, so today there will have to be some policing of the estate to pick up limbs also for city recycling as wood mulch. Buds on snow trillium (Trillium nivale), a very small native to local woodlands, but not common is showing color. As are the yellow flower buds of Cornus mas.  Such warm temps will push things along quite quickly, and some not so early flowering shrubs are showing swollen flower buds, e.g., pearl bushes.  So why with so much work to do, is TPP blogging instead of raking?  It requires some planning and at least one more cup of coffee.  All good gardeners know this.

Uncrowning trees

Oh, yes, it's that time of year when having lots of big trees makes for quite a bit of work because of their uncrowning (leaf fall).  Two really large sugar maples and two really large burr oaks are the primary leaf biomass producers, and today's image shows a sculptural bird bath that weighs a couple of tons catching the first of the maple leaves. The hardest part is to keep as many leaves as possible out of the lily pond. And still the drought persists, so some new trees and shrubs must be watered, and the bird bath filled, as the xeric conditions of winter approach. It also means that the fall color season will be brief because leaf fall should be fast given a bit of water stress all around. Good to see that some of the plants that were new last year handling this dry period pretty well meaning that they are now have well established root systems. If anything were still wilting before everything else it would indicate the opposite and be worrisome. Tomorrow will be the start of field work, so research will be competing with garden work, cut it is a nice time of year to be outside. Some graduate students are just now figuring out how much time they'll be spending during this data gathering stage. It'll eat their lunch. TPP will try to be a good guy and help out. 

Turning over a new artistic leaf

The Phactor likes botanical art a lot, and here's a nice example where the medium is botanical, in this case leaves, as best as can be determined, folded and packed into spaces to produce some great looking textures and patterns.  Unfortunately none of these art works look like they will have much lasting power based upon how long parsley lasts in the produce drawer of the fridge. At any rate this art has a certain herbal freshness to it. Enjoy. 

Leaf elves came but other things make for busy life

One day our yard is solid leaves so deep you can't see any lawn; the next day they're all gone.  Actually the leaves have been shredded and piled in places for spreading around.  With so many gardens the Phactors don't waste leaves; they all get mulched.  That left us free to finish other gardening chores: moving fences to protect shrubs from the bun-buns, clipping back some perennials, deleafing the pond (the one place the elves ignore), emptying rain barrels, planting more bulbs (species tulips in this case), pulling more redbud seedlings, and getting other outdoor stuff ready for winter.  Finished the main tasks just as some rain moved in.  Tropical low is colliding with the jet stream and the weather promises to be pretty bad.  So switched gears from gardening to cooking for two dinner parties, tonight and tomorrow night.  Makes up for eating out two nights in a row, an unusual event when not traveling.  Out of town guest arriving soon, and TPP is packing for a rainforest field trip to Costa Rica.  Where has the bloody semester gone? 

Finally fall color

Finally the first of our plants with good fall color have changed.  It wasn't that long ago that it still looked, felt, and sounded like summer.  However, it's October 31st!  And there are quite a few things still to turn color, but it will be a short color season because the leaves are falling fast and it won't last.  This Japanese maple really lights up an area near our garden pavilion and the peachy-pink color contrasts so nicely with it's very dark bark.  In general it seems as though spring started about 2 weeks early and fall is running 2 weeks late.  The good news is that almost 3" of rain has fallen in the past 24 hrs and it was really needed to recharge the soil moisture and get the trees well hydrated going into winter.  TPP is no fan of red maples; they don't do well in this region because it's too hot and too dry for them in the summer.  However this year they are striking with deep red foliage and all too many people will fall for them.  Have to run, some more Jedi knights have come to the door seeking treats, but their mind tricks won't work on TPP.

Leafy fun!

This isn't the best image.  These leaves are fresh from our glasshouse as of a couple of hours ago, and then scanned as opposed to photographed for this blog.  Naturally you wonder what plants have these leaves.  Now here's the challenge, one of these leaves is different from the other three in a very significant way.  One of these leaves comes from a basal lineage of flowering plants - star anise.  Two of them are from magnolialean families - nutmeg and eupomatia.  The other leaf is from a gymnosperm - Gnetum.  Isn't that something?  Did you ever figure it would be this tough to pick out a gymnosperm from a group of angiosperms?  Look how similar they all are in terms of shape; same apex, same base. They all have short "stumpy" (not a technical term) petioles. TPP will deliver an answer after we see if anybody out there is very perceptive.  BTW all four plants are dicots, but none of them are part of the "true dicot" clade of flowering plants.  How crazy is that? 

This week's lab - angiosperm leaf diversity

Not only do flowering plants have a tremendous diversity of leaf shapes and forms, they are adapted to many different habitats and they have specialized for many other purposes as well.  First all those floral parts are modified leaves. Then there are all the other funky things angiosperms have done with leaves: protection, coevolution, traps, succulent leaves, vestigial leaves, climbing aids (tendrils, grappling hooks), attraction, flotation, xerophytic leaves.  Why this will be just like a leaf scavenger hunt through the glasshouse, and that's good because the weather outside is appalling: wintery mix (April 23d) at just above freezing.  Here's a nice tropical leaf with adaptations for dealing with heavy rainfall: a drip tip and vein gutters.  Both help shed water quickly.  So what plant has this leaf? 

Leave us alone; we be gardenin'

Spring garden cleanup is no small chore. The primary salvation is that lots of pretty narcissi are in bloom everywhere.  Now that the bun-buns have tulips to eat, the various shrubs can be released from their cages.  By now swelling buds pretty well reveal where and what requires pruning.  An ancient Nanking cherry died and had to be removed. It's lacy white flowering was always so attractive. It was massive and now an area about 20 x 25 feet is in need of a new plant(s) that can deal with the semi-shade and a large black walnut's chemical warfare.  Perhaps a new magnolia, or an Asian lilac, or a magnolia, or the new Exochorda racemosa (image courtesy of Nadiatalent, Creative Commons) already ordered, or a magnolia, or a Pterostyrax.  What do you think?

 The perennial beds, the herb garden, and wind-row fences accumulate an amazing volume of leaves; the Phactors probably remove more leaves from just these places than most people in the burbs remove from their whole yards.  And you have to know which perennials need to be uncovered, de-mulched first, e.g., fern-leafed peony, clematis (bush and vine), species tulips.  Once you get the leaf situation under control, the lily pond can be cleaned out.  The fish show up and indicate they are hungry; it has been 5 months since they were fed, so no big surprise.  Friday marked the end of a taxing season for Mrs. Phactor, and thankfully for those who share the same state with her, this coincides with the beginning of the serious gardening season, and garden activity not only provides exercise, but a positive therapy to recover from the tax season.  TPP trusts his were filed, properly; now to find some compensation for his tax preparer.  Maybe a magnoia? 

Leaf fairies!

Yesterday morning a huge leaf cleanup task filled the Phactors' lawns.  TPP use to rent a beast of a machine, the Billy Goat, to vacuum and chop leaves, but at times you could only clean an eight or ten foot long swath before the 8 cubic foot bag was full.  The problem was that each time you stopped the beast to empty the bag, no small task itself, you had to restart the monster and after a couple of hours my arm and shoulder felt like they would fall off.  The whole job would take the better part of two days and the beast rented for $80 a day!  Then Mrs. Phactor made a deal with some garden fairies that in return for  leaf cleanup, she'd do their tax returns.  So much to my total delight, TPP arrives home yesterday and the lawns are free of leaves!  This was magical and my right shoulder has stopped its anticipatory aching!  You should understand that TPP knowing quite well which side of the bread is buttered always, always gets Mrs. Phactor a compensatory gift just this side of extravagant for relieving her doltish husband of any tax return responsibilities.  This coming year her deal with the leaf fairies will have to be taken into account as well. 

Fall - When deciduous is a dirty word

Gardening is our exercise program, and this is not a complaint, but just about now deciduous becomes a very dirty word about this time of year. Big trees, and several in excess of 4 feet dbh grace our gardens, and big trees drop lots of leaves, so even for those of us who are not overly fussy about what constitutes a lawn have a simple choice, remove the leaves or watch your yard revert to a woodland, quickly. Actually in many parts of our yard, spring beauty, bluebells, trillium, and wild ginger grow willy-nilly here and there, and parts of our yard are dedicated to spring ephemerals and a woodland landscape, so you end up drawing a line somewhere. A garden service already removed a great many leaves when we were too busy to do so, and today the Phactors spent their day removing a second accumulation of no small proportions, and the oaks and hackberries (yes, more than one) have yet to give up the majority of their crowns, so another accumulation is in the offing. If left until all the leaves were down, the accumulation would be inches deep in many places, so perhaps letting it revert to woodland is not such a bad idea, but the gardens look so nice across a green sward. So we got our exercise today. Now leave us alone!

Deciduous trees

Here in the temperate zone most of our woody plants are deciduous; they drop their leaves seasonally. This poses a gardening challenge for those of us with large, shady yards because if the leaves are not removed from lawn areas and some garden areas the entire area begins converting back into a woodland. Without my intervention this would only take a few years, and in fact it was well on its way when team Phactor acquired this property. And so seasonally, with the aid of a very large leaf mulching vacuum, a rental bargain, leaf removal and relocation only takes a few weeks, or so it seems. Fortunately several gardens of woodland plants are ready to receive their annual mulching of leaves. This image shows a small section, about one-fourth, of the problem, with only a fraction of the leaf fall complete, and this is all behind a quite adequately large set of lawns and gardens surrounding our abode. This way the Phactor's scientific field work smoothly transitions into gardening field work, and not a moment is lost watching football or baseball. The sugar maple, a 110 foot tall giant, always looks a bit depressed this time of year.

Flushed with success

Regular visits to our teaching greenhouse are part of my job and mental health program. Although the facility is not physically impressive, the number and variety of plants contained therein is quite impressive. Interesting observations of exotic plants happen regularly.

Over 20 years ago I brought a small tropical tree seedling back from Queensland Australia. It’s the genus Maniltoa in the legume (bean) family and it now has nearly outgrown the greenhouse. If it were not pushing up against the greenhouse glass this tree’s limbs and leaves would show a graceful arching. But this plant has a most unusual and ornamental feature. It produces huge buds from which emerge whole branches bearing nearly full-sized leaves, but here’s the strange part, these branches and their leaves are pink and totally limp. They dangle down like rags, and since the tree tends to flush, a number of such pink branches emerge from buds all at once. Such flushes of new vegetation are thought to overwhelm herbivores that might attack the new foliage.

Slowly, over a couple of weeks, the pink pigments fade and chlorophyll slowly develops turning the leaves pale green. And then, over another few weeks, the branches and leaves slowly pull themselves up into a rather graceful arch. They accomplish this by having a specialized swollen zone called a pulvinus at the base of leaflets, leaves, and branches. Looking and acting a bit like a knuckle, the pulvinus (see close up on right) reorients the branches and leaves. The same structures close up and droop many legume leaves at night and account for the movement of leaves on the touch sensitive Mimosa pucida, another legume.

So our Maniltoa has provided us with a bit of colorful tropical cheer on a cold, late winter day. Enjoy.