QUESTION: Dear Coach Anne,

After losing plant after plant for a couple of seasons, I finally discovered that walnut trees are toxic to many plants (can you tell I'm a gardening newbie?). I'm looking for plants - preferably perennials - that can be planted near the tree and tolerate the toxin. I tried the link provided in your article on the topic (http://www.theplantcoach.org//content/view/351/5/) but it did not work. Can you provide further advice? The tree is in a border roughly 40-50 ft. long. The border gets about a half-day of sun for most of the season. I'm in zone 5. Thanks for your help!

ANSWER: I see that the link in the article is no longer valid. Here are some that are more recent:

http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/stateline/991028.html

http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/champaign/homeowners/050811.html

The following perennial plants are listed at the websites as tolerant of the Black Walnut juglone. The information is from the University of Illinois, so these plants should fit your zone 5 garden.

Astilbe, barrenwort, bergenia, bleeding heart, coralbells, daffodils, daylily, ferns, iris, phlox, Shasta daisy, and blue squill. Spring wildflowers include bloodroot, rue anemone, European and wild ginger, hepatica, Jack-in-the-pulpit, lungwort, Solomon's seal, trillium and violets.

Interestingly, Kentucky bluegrass, snap beans, corn, and onions also will tolerate the juglone and

hostas are also said to be resistant.

Thanks for visiting The Plant Coach!

Coach Anne

THINK GREEN (and yellow and red and…)

Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' PP#9,393

Choose from tough colorful shrubs and perennials. Use them for back of the border, punctuation in the middle, or anywhere you need color and low water use. As a bonus, the plants mentioned here are all inhospitable to deer. They are the last choices on deer menus.

Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' PP#9,393 is a spiky, yellow and gold punctuation mark that will take hot sun and bone-dry soil. Sand is even OK with yuccas.

Viburnum nudum 'Winterthur' is a multi-tasking shrub. It is a wonderful pollinator for all other viburnums in your garden, like the red-berried Cardinal Candy™, and Blue Muffin™ with, you know, blue berries. Winterthur also has deep blue berries. The foliage turns a bronzy red/purple in the fall. You don’t need a viburnum pollinator for other viburnums, but if you have scores of hungry birds, Winterthur will help set the maximum amount of berries on the other viburnum shrubs.

Here is a barberry (Berberis thunbergii) called Sunjoy Gold Pillar PP# 18082 which shows off in early spring with leaves of red and orange. The true dazzle comes in summer when the leaves turn sunny gold. This plant will zing up a border.

Wild-growing mullein (Verbascum) thrives in very dry conditions and almost pure sand in the wild. This gives you a clue as to how to treat them in the landscape. Any of the verbascums will reward overwatering by dying. Put Verbascum 'Caribbean Crush', V. 'Jackie in Pink' PP#15,735, and V. ‘Jackie' in your poorest sunny spot.

Don’t overlook native grasses such as Panicum virgatum 'Badlands,' a selection of our native switch grass. Grasses add the best movement to a flower border, dipping and bending with the slightest breeze.

Remember, too, to be earth friendly in your choice of fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers feed your plants and give them quick boosts to flower or fruit and even growth. However, they don’t help the soil. Compost and natural products help build up soil nutrients and tilth.

TerraCycle All-Purpose Plant Food was developed by Princeton University students. It is a liquid by-product of vermicomposting (making compost of worm castings). You can use this natural fertilizer on any of your plants. This product is even more earth-friendly. It is packaged in recycled soda bottles.

Sea Magic helps your plants take up minerals they need for proper growth. Another plus, it does not have that distinctive "fish emulsion" odor. Studies done by Dr. T.L. Senn, a Clemson University seaweed expert, show that this product makes plants more drought tolerant. If those attributes are not enough, Dr. Senn also notes that its use minimizes insect damage, crop production is much greater, and because of higher fruit sugar content, the Sea Magic treated fruits and vegetables taste better.

Gardeners relish the fresh air, sunshine, color, and food they grow. This is healthy living. Practice IPM (Integrated Pest Management) which is a philosophy of using the least toxic insect or disease control first, like a blast from a garden hose.

Poisons are non-discriminatory. They kill everything. Learn to tolerate damage in the garden. This is the only way you will allow the good bugs to move in and take over the bad bugs. You want to strike a balance of nature so you don’t have to weigh in with heavier methods.

Really, does your garden have to be "leaf perfect"? A damaged leaf might have been supper for a beautiful butterfly in its caterpillar form. We can be smug in our green worlds, pointing out the not so perfect leaf with a chewed hole as a badge of honor and courage. Think about the earth. Think Green.

---Written by Anne Moore January 14, 2009---

In my days as a wildlife rehabilitator, I became aware of the individuality and intelligence of birds of a feather. They are surprisingly observant and learn quickly. Some are gregarious and some are reticent. All learned to thrive and return to the wild with a minimum of human intervention. Much of this I attributed to instinct, also known as a fixed action pattern. This is something animals just "know". They are not taught it nor do they learn much of it from observation.

Timothy Q. Gentner, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, published a study in the April 27, 2006 issue of Nature. He had been experimenting with European starlings and found that they have the capacity to learn to include words and clauses within their birdsong. In other words, they could learn to use syntax in their own bird language.

This proves to Professor Gentner that the ability to form sentences this way is not only the realm of human language, as has been previously thought. "Our research is a refutation of the canonical position that what makes human language unique is a singular ability to comprehend these kinds of patterns," Gentner said. "If birds can learn these patterning rules, then their use does not explain the uniqueness of human language."

Bird Brain might someday become a compliment.

Could this information make backyard birdwatchers more tolerant? Might starlings be more welcome in your garden? If you find this information as interesting as I have, then click on http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060428151356.htm for the full article.

RESOURCES:

http://asci.uvm.edu/course/asci001/behavior.html

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syntax

---Coach Anne January 7, 2009---

QUESTION: Dear Coach Anne,

After seeds are started in the Park's Double Bio Dome Seed Starter System, can they be planted directly in the garden or do they need to be replanted into peat containers and hardened off (zone 6)? When hardening off can they be left outside during the day but brought into an unheated garage overnight? Are there any seeds that should/could be started in peat pots? i.e. corn,zuc,... thanks.

ANSWER: Easy to start seeds, which are most vegetables, can be (easily!) started in peat pots. The biggest boon to getting seeds to sprout is bottom heat and humidity. If you use peat pots, make sure they stay moist. The top of the refrigerator is often a good spot to find bottom heat for starting seeds. Cover them with plastic wrap until they come up. Then move them to bright light & remove the plastic.

I don't especially like peat pots for a couple of reasons. If they dry out, they wick moisture away from the seedlings, drying out and killing the roots. If you keep them too wet, you run the risk of damping off disease.

Also, when you plant the pot and all, be sure no piece of peat pot is above ground or it will dry out the plant roots.

Using a soilless mix in plastic pots is a better alternative to peat pots. This is also a better way to get the seedlings hardened off. They benefit from transplanting. Make sure the Bio Dome sponges are below the top of the soil. They should be hardened off before they are planted into the garden.

As long as the unheated garage doesn't freeze, you should be safe in putting your plants in there overnight. If it's attached to the house, put them near the house wall. If the temperatures were to be very low, then you would be safest taking them indoors.

Thanks for visiting The Plant Coach!