Live and let live

This month Bayer agreed to pay $10 billion to people who’ve developed cancer after using Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. Bayer plans to continue selling Roundup and still insists that it’s safe to use. The record settlement suggests otherwise. And there’s a huge environmental drawback to Roundup that doesn’t get enough attention: loss of biodiversity.

    The active ingredient in Roundup is glyphosate, which blocks the action of an enzyme that allows plants to make a necessary amino acid. 

Roundup at Home Depot

Roundup has been around since 1974, but it became a huge moneymaker in 1996 after Monsanto introduced Roundup Ready crops. These are patented genetically modified plants in which the target enzyme isn’t affected by glyphosate. More than 90 percent of US soybeans are now grown from these genetically modified seeds. Roundup is so ubiquitous that super-weeds have developed resistance to glyphosate.

Soybean field, Pennsylvania-photo Jakec

    When my garden was young, I remember being taught that while other herbicides might be dangerous, Roundup was perfectly safe. The idea was that it breaks down so fast that residues in plants and soil wouldn’t be a problem (not true).

    The most important reason to avoid Roundup, I think, is that spraying weed-killer in yards or on agricultural fields eliminates a huge reservoir of native plants—the weeds—that native insects depend on. A good example is the loss of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) that monarch butterfly larvae depend on. With widespread Roundup spraying, monarch populations have plummeted. 

Monarch nectaring on common milkweed

     Full disclosure: I once tried spraying Roundup when I saw the notoriously aggressive groundcover goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria) spreading around plants I’d received from a friend’s garden. 

Goutweed can easily get out of control

I planned the Roundup application for a sunny fall day. It took me two hours, because I was so fearful. I put on old clothes and sneakers, disposable gloves, goggles and a mask. 

 

I wished I had this much protection when spraying Roundup

I covered the surrounding plants over a radius of at least a yard with rags, then I carefully sprayed Roundup, trying my best to wet only the goutweed foliage. Then I had to remove the rags and protective gear and throw my clothes into the washer.

     Was it worth it? Not at all. The goutweed never missed a beat. Perhaps I’d applied Roundup too late in the season when the plants had stopped growing. The next spring, I weeded the goutweed out of the bed, taking extra care to dig out its slender roots. It never reappeared.

     As nonnative invasive plants became a focus of concern, Roundup was touted as a solution. Painting Roundup on cut stems of bad actors like Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) is still recommended. That’s understandable, because the plants are virtually immortal. I tried it once with no effect. The knotweed sprouted again the next spring. For my purposes, the benefits of Roundup definitely don’t outweigh the risks. Now I prefer the idea of hiring a flock of goats to eat knotweed thickets.

A goat clearing invasive plants at Travis Air Force Base-U.S. Air Force Photo by Heide Couch

 
     If we had a functioning federal government, it would ban glyphosate as well as neonicotinoid insecticides. Us against them isn’t a sustainable way to think about natural systems.

Rising from bare roots

The bare root plants I bought this spring are thriving beyond my wildest expectations! These are native perennials and a native shrub that I ordered from Prairie Moon Nursery in Minnesota. 

I'm hoping for false aster flowers like these from a bare root specimen-photo David J. Stang

When I put them into the ground in late April, the idea was that they would send up stems and leaves rapidly. 

    Bare root plants are harvested earlier in the season than plants that have already leafed out. I’d seen bare root roses that arrived looking like dead sticks transform themselves into flourishing bushes covered with flowers. I’d never seen this happen with perennials, though, and I wasn’t sure how many of them would make it.

Would this become a 3-by-3-foot flowering  plant?

    I wanted to try this approach because it would serve two environmental goals. Roots are smaller and lighter than perennials in full leaf sitting in pots of moist growing medium. 

A plant in a pot takes more energy to ship

That means they carry a lower carbon cost for shipping. In addition, I’ve been looking for ways to use less plastic. The bare root plants were shipped inside plastic bags, true, but that was much less plastic than what I’d be getting with potted plants. I was glad to see that the nursery bagged all plants of one species together, rather than wrapping them individually.

    The little roots seemed delicate when I opened the bags. The garden was just coming into leaf as I carefully nestled them into the soil I’d prepared for them. Then we had a cool May, and the ground stayed moist. That was lucky, because the leaves and pine needles I covered the bare root plants with to hide them from digging animals fooled me too. I often forgot to water them.

    Almost two months later, the bare root plants are definitely doing what they were supposed to. In the bed next to the deck, wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) 

Wild strawberry

and wild geranium (Geranium maculatum) popped right up through the chicken wire I’d laid over them for protection. They’re now robust young plants that look ready to face the summer. 

Wild geranium

I sited the early meadow rue (Thalictrum dioicum) next to a bird bath so it could catch some extra irrigation when I slosh out dirty water to replace it with clean. This plant sent up a half dozen slender wiry stems topped with small fern-like leaves. I hope to see its pale yellow flowers next spring. 

Early meadow rue

False aster (Boltonia asteroides) got a sunny spot next to the fish pond. 

False aster

It’s not taking off like a potted New England blazing star (Liatris novae-angliae) has nearby. It’s alive, though, and presumably gathering its strength for a growth spurt later in the summer.

New England blazing star

    Truly impressive is the bare root coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) that I planted and mostly neglected on the slope leading down to the back fence. Left on its own, it sent out leaves and looks to be thriving. 

Coralberry

This shrub is reportedly a vigorous grower. I’m hoping that its somewhat adverse conditions in my yard will keep it to a reasonable size while it provides wildlife with welcome flowers and fruit.

Thinking without the box

In 1997, when my garden took on the bone structure it has today, I chose common box (Buxus sempervirens) as an evergreen presence in several spots. 

Common box in the garden

This popular shrub is not a North American native; it comes from Southern Europe, western Asia and northern Africa. We planted a line of boxwood shrubs parallel to the side of the house to hide the bulkhead that leads to the basement. We placed one in the front yard where the driveway meets the sidewalk. We dotted three others around the property. I’ve enjoyed the boxwoods over the years, but now I’m seeing their downside.

    It’s nice to have evergreens to look at in the winter. With their small shiny leaves, the boxwoods stand out against the conifers around the periphery of the yard. If I were designing the garden today, though, I’d skip common box and use inkberry (Ilex glabra), instead. Inkberry is a native evergreen holly. Like box, it has small leaves and a dense growth habit that makes a good visual barrier. 

This inkberry is thriving in a back corner

A couple of years ago I planted two inkberry shrubs at the back corner of the yard after we took down an adelgid-infested hemlock. I’m impressed with how well they’re doing with benign neglect.

    This spring I’m reminded again that box without pesticide spraying is not pest-free. This year’s new leaves are shiny and unmarked. The older foliage, though, is stippled with tiny dots from insect activity. The bugs don’t kill the shrubs, and maybe no one notices the leaf damage but me.

Boxwood psyllids at work

 
    I’m willing to wash off chewing insects occasionally with a blast from the hose, but I’m not willing to resume spraying dormant oil to smother these leaf-eaters. I gave that up when I realized it was sure to kill insect bystanders as well as the target pests. The collateral damage became too high a price to pay.

I'm not willing to sacrifice bumblebees to keep boxwood foliage perfect

    So shall I accept the less-than-clean-looking box foliage as a cost of avoiding pesticides? My perspective on boxwood and other key nonnative players in the yard has begun to shift. I value native plants and insects more now, and I’ve come to accept the possibility that these large boxwoods, more than 20 years old, may not stay forever. It would take a long time for inkberry bushes to reach the same height and bulk, but the sooner they start, the sooner they’ll get there.

    It’s been interesting to observe how giving priority to native plants for native insects has gradually shifted my gardening choices and goals. I inched into this new commitment in 2011 thinking that I’d keep all my nonnative plants, especially trees and shrubs, and just add natives when they seemed right to replace something that dwindled or died. 

Native tickseed shoehorned in under day lilies

As the seasons pass, I find I’m increasingly populating the garden with native plants.

Bounty from the tree canopy

This week a bewildered neighbor walking her dog saw me out raking the gutter across the street from home and asked whether I was cleaning up the neighborhood. “No,” I said, “It’s for compost. Biomass.” 

Why waste organic material?

     Oak blossoms, called catkins, had piled up on sidewalks and in the gutters. Just about every surface was sprinkled with those lacy brown chains of tiny flowers that had chosen the previous week to drop from the trees en masse. 

They're everywhere

To many, they looked like litter for the street sweeper to deal with. To me, they offered a great opportunity to add some organic material to the compost piles.

    Oaks, like many tall trees, depend on wind for pollination. That’s why they don’t bother making showy, colorful flowers and why they produce so much pollen. 

Strings of male oak flowers, like beads on a chain

The wind carries the yellow dust everywhere, to the chagrin of allergy sufferers and everyone who has to clear it from a windshield. Once their work is done, the catkins drop from the trees. I find the sheer mass of them awe-inspiring. What a vast amount of tree energy went into producing that huge volume of flowers!

     If I swept the oak catkins up and threw them into the yard waste, I’d be interrupting the soil cycle. In the forest, leaves, branches, and tree flowers fall to the ground and decompose there, becoming part of the soil that in turn nourishes the trees. 

Every part of a tree is recycled in the forest

    If those oak catkins were carted off my property to the distant industrial composting site that receives the city’s yard waste, then what my big oak tree drew from the soil to make those flowers wouldn’t be replenished. I’d be sending away nutrients and photosynthetic energy that could be here powering the garden ecosystem. 

Headed for the yard waste composting site

    Of all the compostable materials I cart to the piles in the course of the year, these oak blossoms are a favorite. They’re light and easy to gather with a rake or broom. Loading them into the wheelbarrow is a cinch. And they decompose really fast.

    Bigger pieces of plant tissue that are defended against decomposition, such as tough, leathery oak leaves, take a full two years to decompose in my compost bins. I don’t even try to compost twigs, because it would take too long. I could speed up the process by turning the piles, but I’ve got other priorities for limited gardening time. Tiny, fluffy oak catkins break down much faster, because they’ve got lots of surface area relative to their size. If I dug through the piles this fall, I’d find that soil organisms had already blended the catkins into the half-made compost.

Oak catkins break down fast into usable compost

    Another thing I appreciate about oak flowers is that they don’t come with seeds. Maples drop a bounty of organic material in spring too, those winged samaras that twirl to the ground, each carrying two seeds. I don’t compost those because so many germinate in the piles. Acorns won’t be viable until fall, so I can compost oak catkins and not worry about inadvertently planting trees.

Maple seeds-best kept out of the compost

Native plants spreading good cheer

As we enter June with everything blooming, I feel like putting aside serious garden subjects to drink in the garden’s exuberance. So I thought I’d check on some of the native plants I’ve added in the past couple of years and show you how they’re doing.

    This week I was thrilled to see my cross vine (Bignonia capreolata) burst out with its coral, orange, and yellow trumpet-shaped flowers against the garage. I was expecting it to need more time to recover from transplantation and our northern winter. But no, it’s on the move and offering lots of opportunities for pollinators already.

Cross vine is a vigorous grower

    Nearby, a trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) is covered with flowers. It seems to bloom more generously every year, although its roots are in a dry patch under the house’s eaves and surrounded on three sides by bluestone pavers. The long narrow flowers are popular with hummingbirds as well as insect pollinators.

Trumpet honeysuckle: easy and gorgeous

    Among the native shrubs, Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus) is putting on an unexpectedly uninhibited show. I’d planted one in deep shade a few years ago. It flowers, but sparsely. A newcomer added last spring gets much more sun, and it’s responded accordingly. The weird dark red flowers are fascinating, and I know they’re drawing native insects to the yard.

Carolina allspice has distinctive flowers

    Next to it is a flame azalea (Rhododendron calendulaceum) that I moved from where it was languishing in the front yard, struggling to compete with the roots of the Norway maple towering in the curb strip. When I dug the azalea up, I found it had very little root mass, although it had been there for years. Now it’s got more room to expand in looser soil, and it’s already blooming despite the trauma of last year’s transplantation.

I hope this flame azalea will flourish in its new location

    In the same area, a volunteer black cherry tree (Prunus serotina) is growing by leaps and bounds. This spring it’s showing its first flowers. The challenge with this tree will be to keep it and its offspring from taking over, but I’m encouraging it because of its superior wildlife value.

Black cherry hosts many native insects

    Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) is technically a sub-shrub, although it’s only about an inch tall. I chose this woody plant as a groundcover in a new sunny bed in 2018. It didn’t do much for the first year, but now it’s expanding in all directions, sending out branching stems bearing shiny new leaves. I love seeing this plant growing wild on Cape Cod, and I hope it will spread out even more as a lovely background to taller perennials.

Bearberry likes sandy soil and sun

    In a shadier section of the same bed, a single young creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera) has emerged and flowered. I recently saw creeping phlox recommended as a groundcover in a Boston Globe story about lawn alternatives. My goal is to see this bed carpeted with a tapestry of groundcovers, so that no mulch is showing. That won’t happen soon, but the creeping phlox’s survival is a good sign.

Creeping phlox getting ready to creep

    Why are these plants doing so well this year? I don’t know, but I’m glad.