Pruning, Part 1

Here at the Plantations, I've learned a lot about pruning.  I'm going to loosely define "pruning" as "cutting off any part of a plant for any reason."  There are a lot of reasons one might want to prune a plant.  For instance:

Remember that Sweet Dani basil that I described planting a few posts ago?  Well, the tips of the shoots of each basil plant had been pinched off.  See how the stem ends in this picture?  That is not natural.  But, it was done for a good reason.

And now it's time for...
Biology of Plants!!!

Plants produce a hormone called Auxin.  This hormone helps them regulate their growth.  Auxin is produced by the tippy-top of the shoot of each plant, and travels downwards through the plant.  Auxin suppresses new growth along the stem of the plant, allowing the plant to focus on growing at the tip.  Growing at the tip is good:  it will help the plant be tall, which will help it reach the sunlight and not be shadowed by other plants.  But, we often want our plants to be tall and bushy, not just tall and spindly.  So, to get our plants to be bushy, they have to grow out, not just up.  To get our plants to grow out, we pinch off the tips of the shoots.  This removes the source of auxin, which allows the stem to send out new shoots.

In the case of the basil above, it will now send out shoots from its buds.  A plant has buds at the joint between each leaf and stem, and sometimes in other, secret places that can be a surprise.  :)

So, that's why you might want to pinch off the tips of your plants, such as basil.  But why else would you want to prune plants?

Well, one day I helped Phil cut back daffodil foliage.  You know, these guys:

Picture taken from Wikipedia

Once the flowers die, the foliage can start to look... well, ugly.  So, people tend to cut the foliage down to the ground after the flowers are done.  But Phil says: let the daffodils grow until the foliage actually collapses (i.e., is laying flat on the ground).

This is kind of hard to see because of the shadow from the tree.  But, the foliage here is collapsed on the ground.

If you wait until now to trim the foliage, the leaves can continue to photosynthesize, making sugar to store in the bulbs underground.  If you don't allow them to do this, the bulbs will use up more and more of their stored energy every year when they produce their flowers.  Soon, there won't be enough energy to make pretty flowers anymore.

In the picture above, I've actually trimmed about half of this bunch of daffodils to the ground already.  See the stumps left from my trimming in the lower left hand corner?

A third reason to prune or trim plants is to remove dead flower heads, or to "dead-head."  This is advantageous because it removes the ugly brown flower, and it prevents the plant from wasting energy creating seeds.  Irises are one plant that has to be dead-headed.  Pam walked me through the process.

Pam says: trim an iris stem all the way down to the first leaf.  Cut the stem at an angle.  This helps water to roll off the surface.  If water collected on the cut surface of the stem, this could make the stem rot.

This iris plant has some dead flowers.  I'm going to trim off this stem because it has three dead flowers on it.

See how I've trimmed down to the place where the leaf leaves the stem.  I've also cut the stem at an angle so that water won't collect there.

I'm going to leave it there for now.  I hope you've learned something about pruning!  Next time: heavy duty pruning of woody plants!

How to divide a plant

Has anyone ever said to you, "These plants are getting too big.  I should really divide them."  Well, my mom said that to me once.  She was talking about day lillies.  I didn't really know what she meant.  I got some idea that you would take the plant apart into different pieces, but how?

Well, now I know how.  It's really easy: just saw it in half!

The botanical interns, including me, divided plants for Missy, who runs the greenhouse.  We were dividing grasses.  Literally, we just took them out of their pots, and began sawing the root ball in half.  Here's Dani giving a demonstration.  (Sorry for the yellow color.)

And here's the grass after it's been divided:

 

After sawing the root ball in half, you just stick the two halves in the two different pots laying there, and voila!  You've divided your plants!

To do this job, you may want to use a gardener's saw:

Picture from Made-In-China.com

You can also just use a shovel.  While the plant's still in the ground, just stick the point of the shovel in the middle of the plant and shove it downwards.  With one chop, your plant has been divided!  Pretty cool, eh?

Root-bound Planting in the Herb Garden

At this time of year, a lot of planting happens in the herb garden.  Here we grow edible plants, edible flowers, herbs for cooking, tea herbs, dye herbs, and many other herbs.  I enjoy planting in the herb garden because everything smells so good!

Pam (the gardener in charge of this garden) used to be an art teacher.  So, she plants the garden with a strong eye for color, shape, and texture.
Pam Says:  If you're going for a more natural look when planting, try to plant plants in triangles and avoid straight lines of three or more plants.

In case you were wondering about the difference between an herb and a spice:
Pam Says: An herb is a 'soft' piece of a plant, like a leaf or a flower.  A spice is a 'hard' piece of a plant, like a seed or bark.

In the herb garden, we grow three types of plants: hardy perennials, tender perennials, and annuals.  Annuals are plants that only last one year.  They set seed, die back, and their seeds will sprout the next year as new plants.  Perennials are plants that can survive through the winter and live for a number of years.  We call a plant a hardy perennial if it can survive the winter in our area (in this case, New York state).  We call a plant a tender perennial if it can survive the winter in a different part of the world, but not here.  (Really, who can blame them?)  But, if you bring these tender perrenials inside during the winter, they can still grow for many years.

Now that you know some more plant vocabulary, here's some tips about how to grow root-bound plants!

Many plants that have grown in a pot for a long time will be root bound.  That is, their roots will have run out of space to grow and will have started to grow along the perimeter of the pot.  Here is a root-bound pineapple sage that I'm about to plant in the herb garden:

A root bound pineapple sage.

These roots are not healthy roots: they're stuck in funny positions, so they won't absorb nutrients well from the soil.  So, we want to give this sage a little help with its roots.  Pam showed me how to do this.

Step 1: using some garden clippers, cut a cross shape in the bottom of the roots.  The cut should be about 1 cm deep: pretty shallow.  Continue the cut all the way up the side of the pot.

The cross-shaped cut on the bottom of the roots

The cross-shaped cut continues all the way up the side of the pot.

Step 2: using your clippers or your fingers, scratch the roots until the whole root ball looks "fuzzy."

Now you're ready to plant!  But, when you plant, be sure to evaluate the angle of the stem.  Did the plant grow at a funny angle?  Plant it so that the stem sticks straight out of the ground:

This is the angle at which I planted this pineapple sage.  The soil isn't straight, but the stem is.

A bit of wisdom from Glenn, another gardener, about root-bound plants:
Glenn Says: If you're going to buy a tree, go ahead and buy a smaller tree that is not likely to be root bound.  Some of the bigger trees get very root bound and have a hard time establishing healthy roots once they're planted.  A small tree may overtake the growth of a larger, root bound tree in a few years time!

The Basics of Planting

How do you plant a plant?  I thought, before this internship, that you just dug a hole in the ground, stuck the plant in there,  patted the dirt back in around it, and sprinkled some fertilizer on top, if you wanted to.  But, it turns out I was wrong!

Turns out planting has technique, just like everything else.  I learned how to plant small plants from Pam, who takes care of the herb garden.

Oh, and one note:  gardeners do not call the brown stuff in the ground "dirt": they call it "soil."  "Dirt" is the stuff you find in the corners of your house.  So, I'm trying to be a real gardener here and say "soil."

Pam Says:
When planting, start by loosening the soil in a dinner plate-sized area around where you want to plant your plant.  Your plant may only be in a pot that's a four or five inches across, but dig up an area with a diameter of ten or twelve inches.  Why?  Well, if you don't do this, the plant will have a hard time putting roots out into the soil.  Think about it:  If you were a root, would you want to push through tough, packed clay-like soil?  Or would you opt to grow in the soft, fluffy soil that came in the plant's pot?

One day, my friend and fellow intern Dani and I planted basil in the Pounder Heritage Garden.  It was fun to plant this basil with Dani:

Here's how I loosened the soil.  You can see that the darker soil in the shadow of my head is loosened, and the lighter soil is not.  Compare the diameter of the loosened soil to the diameter of my pot.  The orange handle is the handle of my trowel sticking out of the ground.

Once the soil is loosened, add your fertilizer to the loosened soil and mix it together.  Only then may you dig a hole and plant your plant. 

A note about peat pots:  when you're planting from a peat pot, a lot of people think you can just stick the peat pot in the ground.  This is not how we do it at the Plantations.  Here, we peel away the peat pot and plant the bare soil in the ground.  I think this way is far superior.  I've tried planting peat pots directly in the ground before, and the plant's roots never seemed to penetrate the peat pot.  Here's me peeling away the basil's peat pot to expose the little roots:

Those are my tips for today.  Now, I'll just let you enjoy some of the big, beautiful irises and other flowers that are blooming at the plantations now.  (Well, not now, really.  These were taken about a week ago.)

A confession...

So...

I've actually been working this job for two weeks already.  Which means I have already learned a lot!

I'll give a short summary of what we did the first week.

On the first day, all of the new interns had a nice breakfast with the other plantations staff.  Each staff member is in charge of a different area.  For instance, Phil is in charge of Comstock Knoll (a.k.a. the Rhododendron Collection) and Gymnosperm Slope.  Missy is in charge of the greenhouse.  Pam is in charge of the herb garden, one of the premier herb gardens in the country.

There area number of different kinds of interns.  I'm one of four interns assigned to the Botanical Gardens, which are traditional cultivated gardens.  There are also three Natural Areas interns that take care of the wild wooded areas.  There's also a Communications intern and two Education interns who help visitors and run camps for students.

In the afternoon, we took a walk with the Plantations' botanist, Robert.  He knows the names of many, many plants.  He told us the names of so many plants, I couldn't write them all down.  I focused on the wildflowers.  Here are a few that I learned.  Note: these pictures are all from Wikipedia, not me.  Pictures from me will come later.

This is columbine.  Note the deep "tails" on the back of each flower. (Note: language in quotes is not official plant language.)

This is Dame's Rocket.  It comes in this light purple color, and also in a white color.  It's an invasive species from Europe, but it's so pretty that most people don't care.  (Don't tell the Natural Areas people I said this.)  It attracts butterflies and moths, so it's fragrant in the evenings.  Right now, this is blooming next to trails, roads, and anywhere that weeds might grow.

This is Buttercup, from which, I assume, Princess Buttercup gets her name.  It has five yellow petals which are shiny.  A very pretty flower.

These are Forget-Me-Nots.  These flowers are tiny, but very pretty.  Note the yellow middle and the little "spokes" coming out from the center. (picture re-posted from Photography Blog)

This is Jack-In-The-Pulpit.  It's a small plant that grows in the forest floor.  The idea is that the flower like a pulpit, and the middle structure is like a little guy standing in there.  They're very short and inconspicuous, so you have to keep your eyes out for them.  The flap usually covers the flower, but in this picture they've drawn it back.

Here's a Jack-In-The-Pulpit plant.

I'll put more plant identification pictures up in later posts.  I learned a lot on that nature walk!

We had another gardens tour on the second day of our job.  On the third day, I and the other Botanical Gardens interns set to work on putting down compost in the entire herb garden.  We put down ten yards that day.  It was a hot, hard day's work.  Everything has seemed easy since that first work day.  :)

On the last day of our first week, I worked with Glenn.  He's an older gardener who knows a lot about plants.  He takes care of some of the gardens on campus, as well as the Pounder Garden, which contains a lot of vegetables.  I did a lot of weeding and watering with him.  He and I seem to get along really well.

That's the story of my first week!  Soon I'll write about the second.  Hopefully we can get around to some real gardening tips soon.

Introduction to the Summer

Hello!

My name is Marita.  I'm a grad student getting a Masters of Arts in Teaching at Cornell University.  And this summer, I got a job at the Cornell Plantations.  Which means I'll be gardening.  All day.  Every day.

What qualifies me for this job?  Well, just about nothing.  I've helped my family in the yard when I was in high school.  And I've taken one class on plant physiology.  But it wasn't even the hard class.  It was the easy class.  So, this summer I am a novice among experts.  A clean thumb among green thumbs, you might say.

I'm a pale person of Dutch origin, which means I wear a wide-brimmed hat and lots of sunscreen.  I'm also scared of bees.  And ticks.  And bed bugs, but I'm not likely to find those here.

As I learn things about gardening, I'll post tips and such.  So hopefully you can learn from my experience!

See you around.