Much Ado About Mulching

Did you know that the whole concept of the suburban lawn arises from Longue Agoe and Far Awaye in Merrie Olde England, when an upwardly mobile inhabitant of some stolidly immobile castle wished to impress the other gentry with his wealth? “Get ME! I have PASTURE and I don’t even have any flocks to feed! No WONDER I be merrie!”

So it has trickled down to the modern masses -- (that’s US, folks!) -- out there giving our “leisure” time to chasing a mower back and forth. (Why, my home town in New Jersey, is NAMED for the treasure: Fair Lawn!)

If you’re tired of mowing, fertilizing, struggling with bad-looking grass to feed nonexistent sheep, perhaps you should consider Mulching.

My mulchy mission started when we moved into our house some years ago. I became the proud owner (as opposed to the lowly humble renter) of a corner lot, edged by what seemed like a 90-degree slope into drainage ditches on two sides, - very common here in Venice. (Picture a horizontal version of the Grand Canyon.) You really can't tell by the picture.

The house was built up high, a good thing in the drenching rains, but a bad thing if you had anything against landing on your ear while wrestling with rapidly rotating blades meant to shear down whatever gets in their path. My two pre-teen daughters eagerly volunteered for the job. That did it. I had to hire a mowin’ guy and planned the eventual annihilation of the grass altogether.

Thus began my quest for free mulch. It didn’t take me long. The new house came with four Live Oak trees in the back yard which needed trimming. As was my pattern, I ended up blabbing into the dusk with David Moore, the Florida Tree Expert, and he said he’d bring me all the mulch I wanted. And he’d not bring me anything that might go to seed and become more of a nuisance than the grass. These are to mulch lessons to really consider when acquiring new mulch: Seeds of some really nasty stuff can come along for the ride and rise up and bite you places later. - AND free mulch can be scooped up through professional tree trimmers who might have to pay a fee to dump their stuff anyway - (doesn't hurt to ask…) and also communities also make free mulch available if you are willing to dig it. Dig? Use your noodle, your Google, yellow pages, whatever. They're called resources for a reason!

Anyway that first truckload delivered a load of ground-up Florida late in the day. I swear, during the night it began steaming, the fumes doing a cartoon hootchy-koo into my open bedroom window and into my dreams. That next morning, I was out there in my nighty and combat boots before I knew it. First time I had gotten to fondle a pitchfork since leaving my garden back in New Jersey too long ago. Garden Porn? Not so much - maybe with a different leading lady.

Then the Endless Forking - (again - NOT dirty) - began. First thing each morning before work I loaded and dragged at least one barrow-full. I'd dump on a fairly thick mound of mulch and spread it. I found the St. Augustine grass came right up through the recommended 3 or 4-inches of mulch. I needed to dump the woody mulch maybe a foot deep. And it took unbearably long to rot. It needed time to perform its murderous magic. I could usually restrain myself for a month or so before lifting and peeking. If I could get ahead of my impatience - (Note: First New Jersey reference - we/ I tend to be impatient, itchy, scratchy) - and leave the mulch in place for months, when raked back, Voila: Black gold, Texas tea. NO, that’s the Beverly Hillbillies. But there would be lovely no-grassed soil there (I hear). So I peeked and re-tucked and had to wait.

But the mulch kept the grass from seeing the light of day. And what grass did wend it’s way up through the mulch was easier to pull up, still freaked out by its mulchy predicament. If the grass was still alive, it was squishy-topped and white-rooted and more easily dug. Weeding became the random bend and tug as opposed to minutes/hours of knee-destroying work.

As I got patches mulched and softened, I’d realize where beds might go. My ideas of what I would plant formed. It seems that as soon as an area was mulched, I knew what I wanted to plant there. (I started with place-holders: Annuals mostly - they'd live one season and then be gone. By the time the annuals had come and gone, I'd have an idea of something more permanent). I advise not planting anything at first that you'll have trouble moving as you learn and if/when you change your mind later on.



Time passed, I learned. Things lived (or were composted.) There are beds now where once there was crappy lawn.


I could not imagine in those early days what I'd do with myself should I ever get to stop hauling the mulch (and myself) out there every morning. As it turned out, I never DID stop the mulching. Now it's with containers-full of my fabulous shredded newspaper mulch. But more on that at another time.

So, now of a Sunday, I loll on my porch swing, hidden by towering flowers. I listen to the whirring roar as my neighbors spend another lovely Florida weekend out there in the blazing sun, risking sunburn, dehydration, and amputation for the sake of impressing some long-dead, merry-no-more gentry and We are not amused.

The Banana Chronicles

I've always wandered aimlessly in the mornings in my gardens. These days, I have to concentrate on being aimless - which, although my chronic state - is a problem as my garden has set paths on a small lot. Anyway - during a'wandering this one day, I sense the presence of Something New. I feel IT: Red, pendulous, bigger than my head - and my head is nothing to sneeze at. I look up, and voila! (or more appropriately: AGH! (or OY?) I behold the glorious bud suspended, bursting mid-air: Floral fireworks. The Star Spangled Banana. Really more like Audrey II, the big-lipped nosher from Little Shop of Horrors ( must-see botanical rock musical.) Little banana plant of yore no-more. This, as the Jefferson Starship might say, is the Crown of Creation. This plant has realized its destiny.


It had gone unnoticed, starting out kind of sheathed, incognito, appearing to be another extraordinary leaf among many, but that day the spectacular banana flower surfaced through the (endless) pool of my oblivion, to my consciousness. Okay, I've gone all 60s on you. Now you know. Welcome, my Friends, to the show that never ends! But seriously - didn't some kind of prehistoric Something surface from the ooze to chow down on this plant's grandma's stem cells?

Anyway, over time, Seymour Banana Flower shot forward while it’s hind petals curled back revealing its hand: A jackpot of perfect fruit, playing peak-a-boo behind the curling red petals. They filled out, plumped, spiraling around the stem revealing Nature’s plan (see 60s note above) in each exquisite fruit.

I was invited up North at the end of October to visit a friend with a new house and wanted to bring some kind of “Floridy” gift. I was stumped up until the day of my departure when, during my morning ramble, I was halted in my tracks by the banana gang's cheerful (but admittedly silent) chorus bidding me “Top of the Morn!”(talking fruits?- Irish ones? - 60s again...)

Airport personnel realized my problems were clearly only of the horticultural variety and UP I FLEW, my carry-on bag alive with giant red banana flower, 3-foot long stalk and semi-ripened fruits. I worried about the rocking and the warmth of the over-head compartment. I wondered if I had unwittingly transported some evolving pudding.

But, no. The banana flower and progeny were sprung for presentation and were intact and suitably appreciated. Fruits still green, they were set on the fireplace mantle to be admired. I spent a day alone at Marcia’s house while she was at work. I lolled on the couch and literally watched those devils ripen over the course of my day. (Just throw in that aforementioned decade reference wherever you like - its always appropriate.)

That evening we stood in the shadows of the towering, autumn-painted maples in Marcia's yard and ate delicious Florida bananas. Bingo! Kumbaya. We are One.

I've since acquired a dwarf banana variety (Cavendish) which doesn't tower. I planted one little plant in the photo-op/children's garden. (bench, sand, then grandbabes, toys - talk about reaching your destiny!)


The other morning, there, right at eye level was the odd-looking sheath I had only imagined. Days went past, each unfurling the Awesome Truth. (Referencing should be happening.)

The babes and grandbabes are dragged out there just about hourly now to see where babies come from. In the sweetest way. (Better than the "doctor book" Emmalee and Taylor are so enthralled with.)

So, the fruits are fruiting, and this plant, with more energy than it knows what to do with, is sending out suckers (baby plants). We'll have to

wait months for the bananas to ripen, but I've been out there digging the extra plants and will be offering them for sale. It's Psychedelic BananaRama, Baby! Right from the ooze to youse. (I have not mentioned New Jersey once in this installment…) In time, I should have a few plants to mail out. Let me know if you want one.

How to Garden in Florida

I grow what I love - which is anything that is interesting, floriferous, edible, smelly - (in the good way.) If it gets flowers and won't hurt me, I want to grow it. I still grow some plants that were my dad's - and he stopped growing things a really really long time ago. It's kind of cosmic, really.

I moved from New Jersey (The Garden State) to Florida (Land of the Flowers) more than 15 years ago to be able to garden year-round. I rented houses for years, happily gardening in pots on patios. Eventually I bought a house, seeing in its ratty lawn the garden wishing to be set free. That garden now surrounds my house, the lawn mulched out of its miserable existence.

I became a Master Gardener, got my nursery license. I sold plants at regular plant sales from my home. I was always a gardener - Joni Mitchell’s “ Lady of the Canyon” who grew stuff. I've always tried to grow everything.

I'll show you my clipping: I considered it a RAVE review for being a great gardener - under arrest, but a great gardener… (notice the askew ceiling segment and gigantic cop.)

I've mostly cleaned up my act, but am still pushing the green stuff. My customers are as varied as the plants we can grow here. My customers are retirees yearning for the peonies and irises of home, but dazzled by the possibilities of our glorious climate. My customers are young couples just getting started gardening. Some of my customers are garden club members visiting my garden to see what can be grown here and some come for one last spree before they travel back up north.

I encourage them all - and you - to try something new. Gardening in Florida, we can grow our houseplants in the ground, for heaven’s sake! Geraniums can thrive for years planted in the right spot.

We can’t grow peonies, but we’ve got the beautiful Angel Trumpets (Brugmansia and Datura,) and sages and jasmines galore. I’ve got some water irises blooming in my pond and walking irises (appropriately) by a path. They’re different from their northern cousins, but they’re wonderful just the same.

We’ve got pinks: begonias and Lisianthus. And blues: Plumbago and Blue Daze. We've got orchids blooming under our Oak trees. We've got sunlight on the sand and plenty o' nuthin' and so much more.

I encourage you all, whether gardening here in Florida or where-ever, to just keep an open mind. Be brave. Go for quantity and you’ll end up with quality. Plant everything you like. Move it if it isn’t thriving. Give it away if it’s still not suiting you or if you have extras. Compost it if its not fit for human consumption. (My garden looks great. You don't see the plants that didn't make it. )

Plant til the sweat runs down your legs and the fire ants run up. Run to the shower. Wait 'til its cooler and plant some more! You’ll end up with plants that fit your style and your location. You'll end up with a garden. Who could ask for anything more?

Selling Plants at the local Flea Market

I was in need of The Next Big Thing. You know how things get sometimes… I was too sad to lift my head up, brought to my knees (very bad posture.) But gardening saved me once again, to the point that I had loads of plants needing to get gone. I found my way to a local flea market here in Venice, putting money down to reserve a booth space. There was a brandy new one they had just bricked and awninged tucked outside next to a main entrance.




Pay attention to the innocent-looking air conditioner lurking shark-like at the rear of the picture.

My first weekend at the flea, I brought the houseplants and cuttings I had been planning to sell at an unfortunate business venture wherein friendship and faith took a dive. (Have I mentioned the Jersey Connection yet?) I did okay and made my booth fee back. I was so happy to be in my little booth. My January birthday happened that weekend. Life got good again.


Buddy, a retired nurseryman who spent all day every day at this (weekends-only) market, looking after things, saw the germ, the gem, the seeds contained in that first weekend. He knew how to make that tiny space WORK. And I knew enough to listen to good advice.


The following week Bud built up the booth. He brought in his own umbrella’d picnic tables. He hung lattice and shelves. We went and scoped out the competition: GIANT STORES (you know who they are). He told me what plants to order and from whom. When the plants came, he watered them and tried to teach me how to keep things flowering and looking good in the dusty, windy conditions at the flea market.

I added the unusual/weird plants I love so much: The odd succulents, the houseplants-gone-wild, I was now growing in the ground… I bought small ones and grew ‘em into great big ones. I had Coleus to fear! The new varieties grow in sun and shade. They do grow well in the ground here in Florida, but nurture one in a great big pot and Whoa Baby! As my daughter says, “It’s GI-NORMOUS!”

I stocked Australian tree ferns (Sphaeropteris cooperi) and Desert Rose, (Adenium obesa). I had the paddle plants (those flat-leaved succulent Kalanchoe thyrsifolia) that proved to be a best-seller.

As well as harboring our year-round residents, Venice and Englewood, Florida play host to escapees from the north from October through Easter. Buddy knew they’d want color for their winter homes. We stocked the little booth with hundreds of geraniums and hanging baskets. Like Kevin Costner, we built it and they came. And they could not resist trying to take a bit of heaven back home, packing plants up in luggage, trunks and campers to be watered nursed and prayed along until the danger of frost passed in New York, Michigan, Maryland.

I gave "pregnant onions" (Ornithogalum longibracteatum) away to kids who expressed any interest at all. I know those plants are pregnant with possibility (lots of baby bulblets growing under oniony skin) and the kids will have the beginnings of garden fever.

I had robust rosemary plants in one-gallon pots I was able to sell for $3. I told my customers about the two four-foot lollipop-shaped fragrant rosemary shrubs growing at the entrance to my house. (This sounds a little formal. Believe me, its not.)

My home garden was earning its keep. If anything self-seeded at home, I dug it, potted it, and eventually brought it in to my booth. One week it was sunflowers nodding under the umbrellas and Mexican blanket flower (Gaillardia) literally volunteered their way into pots and on out into the world. I noticed Cosmos had seeded itself in the really rough gravel of the parking lot adjacent to my booth. Florida, Baby!

But.
When summer came the owners of the market turned on the air conditioner in their office which was on the other side of the wall we shared. They were inside, air conditioned. The exhaust from their AC piped right into my booth outside making being in that booth a death-defying act. Then they began the paving of the new parking lot adjacent to said booth, the area roped off with yellow hazard ribbon. Couldn't get near the stinkin' booth. During my enforced retirement, my daughter was shopping there and heard them selling my plants, advertising the great bargains over the loudspeakers.
Leave us say, (yes, still from New Jersey), that the police were involved. They stood guard as my daughters and I reclaimed my plants. I'm banned from the flea market.

So, I'm working from home again. Insert picture of Mackauley Culken here - I type and watch the birds in the bird bath and the passion vine climbing at breakneck speed up a trellis (and a rose vine) outside my window.

I dash outside for breaks and get in some swing-time. On weekends I’m pushing the petals from my really fantastic home garden at occasional plant sales. I lay in wait, needing and wanting some company, writing here to all of my new imaginary friends. I'm spreading the word that gardening can get very exciting here in the Land of the Flowers. Oh, and call me if you wanna buy some plants!

The Butterfly Effect

I have spent some quality summer hours sitting with butterflies. I've occasionally been told I'm for the birds, but I've always loved the butterflies. What's not to like?

As a Master Gardener (now lapsed) I was "helping" Claire Herzog in her horticulture classes at Laurel Nokomis School. Unfortunately, I discovered the butterfly box in her classroom and I was a goner. While lessons went on over the weeks, I lingered near the box, watching as Monarch caterpillars munched on milkweed, climbed to the top of the box, spelled the letter "J" and eventually became chrysalises. (The word should be chrysalides, but lets let it die its awkward death.)

I've learned recently that the various stages of those creepy/too-beautiful caterpillars are called instars. How fabulous a word is that? Not awkward at all.
I was present at various "releases" of newly-hatched and properly- warmed butterflies as they were sent off (sometimes reluctantly) into the world.

One summer I was able to bear witness to a chrysalis being spun and a butterfly being born. The chrysalis - (I'd've called it a cocoon when I was a kid) - was a shimmering light green. The really magical markings were a tiny golden chain of metallic-seeming dots at its neck. The tiniest of Crown Jewels. (Grandbabe Taylor has provided me with the information that this is the "zipper".)(Forget about jewels, please!)

Weeks went by but the time came when the tiny green pouch gradually darkened, and somehow became transparent, the dark wings visible, but not quite. I was filled with awe at the IMMENSE struggle it seemed to take at either end of this cycle. Let me use the words "convulsing" and "great exertion." Being "in labor" might apply here. And it wasn't easy for the butterfly either!

I was surprised to see M. Butterfly emerge HEAD FIRST, doing some kind of Chubby - Checker-Twist, hanging-dangling on while the rest of her damp self kind of slipped out - followed by more hanging around and uncrumpling and eventual soaring into the day.

On a more recent summer day, I had a butterfly land on my knee. Another day, one flew by so closely that I could feel the "wind" and the warmth of its flight. Would it be too much of a leap to wonder if this was my same observed hatchling - or her heir?


So moving! How much more could I take? Rapture and passion are fine, but I'm exhausted. Eventually, I suppose, I will have to stop the weeping and sighing.

Johnny "Papaya" and the Lovely Natividad

originally in Florida Gardening Magazine. October/November 2000


Getting out of my car in John Bums' driveway, I had to squeeze past a grapefruit tree, heavy with fruit. I can always tell when I'm approaching John's house, his being the only garden on the block that comes out to the road to meet me. John is also there to meet me, a friendly welcome, and we're off on a tour of a little wedge of rain forest cut out of...NO!...restored or retrieved from the middle of an otherwise ordinary Florida neighborhood.

You might be familiar with Johnny "Papaya" Bums, a contributor to Florida Gardening magazine and other periodicals, and a celebrated character in the Sarasota gardening scene. Originally from Alabama, John utilizes some colorful phrasing. At one point he tells me about a taste so good "your tongue will slap your brains out." Seriously into good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle, he says that sickness comes from malnutrition and mal- nutrition is a result of ignorance. John and Natividad have lived on this property for 23 years. A disabled WWII Navy veteran, John was a teacher of science and 6th grade. He has been in the Master Gardener program since 1989.

John and Naddie grow most of what they eat on this half-acre, wedge-shaped city lot. They boost the fertility of their part of the earth as well as the quality of their own health by growing with Fertrell, compost, and other organic additives. John is rightfully proud that they have no mower, no grass. He says he waits to be sued for nonsupport by his doctors.




We cut through the house before checking out the "papaya plantation" that wraps itself around the house: the beautiful to the pond, new bedroom John and Natividad recently added, the kitchen (2 or 3 juicing machines, bread maker, might as well be the rain forest. bowls of home-grown persimmons...), back to the enclosed pond, also a new addition. Fish glimmer by. John and Natividad raise everything for food, (eating the fish she doesn't name). These fish eat sweet potato leaves, bok choi, and just about anything else thrown to them. John tells me about his pair of foot-long Basilisk lizards, native to Costa Rica, that walk on their hind legs. This is not your typical ol' fishin' hole. During our tour, I keep finding my way to the pond, on the lookout for these miraculous critters.



Outside, we step into what might as well be the rain forest. There must be 100 papaya trees and dozens of varieties of banana trees in this rain forest. John sells the organically grown produce and soil amendments to neighbors, making his reputation over the years by word of mouth. Always concerned with the quality of the fruit he sells, John has "decorated" the papayas with rat traps baited with prunes to guard against those unsightly random bites.

There are winged beans and avocados. There is garlic growing in pots and shallots growing in a small plot, started from a grocery buy years ago. Bitter melon (Momordica charantia) twirls around a fence.


As I was getting into the car to leave, the grapefruit tree bid me farewell, letting loose a grapefruit -a little like the hurling apple trees in the Wizard of Oz, but more congenial, not so much telling me to be on my way, but to remember to eat what is here for the taking, unprocessed, ready to go. So I took the projectile home, ate it, and the bump on my head healed so much the faster.

Walking around this little bit of Eden, where most everything is grown in recognition that life can only be as good as the food we consume, I'm filled with reverence for the knowledge and concern of my fellow gardeners. There is so much to learn from you all, and I'm so much the better for knowing you. Thanks John and Naddie!

Rose Apples June 2, 2009

Rose Apples.

A nice stage name. And delicious. I've had the tree, bought from Kevin, the Master Gardener years ago as a babe. (Me AND the seedling). The plant which didn't do a whole lot of anything for YEARS, had occasional near-death experiences as I considered what else I could do with it's allotted plot. A decade went by and it finally grew to a tree. And it bloomed. Glorious mysterious fancy, fancy white blooms

Then the fruits. Indescribable. Let me describe them to you: (I know…) But here's what they're like: Apricot-sized. A bigger than you'd think hard round seed in the middle. At first, just to get familiar with this strange new fruit, cut it gingerly around the equator. Take out the seed. Sit down and rest from the ROSEY ROSEY smell. Taste it. Go ON. It's kind of appley in texture, or like honeydew melon when it's not quite ready. But, believe me, whether the fruit is a little greenish, or yellow, or blushing pinkish yellowish - it IS ready. If you could bite a rose without getting a mouthful of petals (or worse), it would taste like this. Your brain, nose and heart say you've eaten a rose. They must share some chemicals, these fruits and roses. Okay. I've revealed enough of my ignorance. But it's so other/this-wordly! It's so different but familiar.

I've announced my engagement to this tree. It's a perfect love. Start shopping for a dress. Gather them by the arm-full. (Better yet, carry a basket…) They can be sliced and eaten just plain, put in salads… I've had them cut up in my oatmeal. A gentleman came by the other day and recognized the tree, also called a Rose Apple in Jamaica. He said they make jelly out of it, or just eat them out of hand while playing by the rivers where the trees grow wild.

The Rose Apple seems to have been fruiting for about a month now. I'll try to notice when it stops. (I wrote this yesterday, went to get some today to bring to the vegetable stand, and there were only about 5 within reach. The season is over!) But next year, if you come by, and Rose Apple has fruit, you WILL be force-fed a piece of heaven.