Hothouse

On this episode, we’re tackling Phosphorus – an element, crucial to life on earth, which exists in both abundance and scarcity. We cover how humans got hooked on P fertilizers, the political and environmental impacts of mining and pollution, and what might be done about it. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

City of Austin Algae Mitigation;Toledo Junction Coalition Interview; Points North Podcast; US EPA explanation of phosphorus processing waste product storage; Florida Public Radio story about Florida mine disasters; Atlas Obscura podcast: “The Belt and Berm” Part 1 and Part 2; Atlas Obscura text: Moroccan Western Sahara Wall; Soil is Sexy

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On this episode, we’re gettin’ down and dirty with sheet mulch. Sheet mulching is a no-till, no-dig gardening practice of removing unwanted vegetation and building fertile soil by layering organic matter and letting it compost in place. While the layers suppress weeds by blocking sunlight, subterranean soil biology goes to work to break down the layers into new soil. The beauty of this simple practice is that you can do it at any time of year with materials you have on hand (like cardboard, shredded paper, and leaves) or can source for free from local sources (arborist wood chips, coffee grounds, and spent mushroom substrate).

We discuss the reasons for sheet mulching, when and how to do it, and what to use. Then we dive into the corrugated controversy around cardboard and ponder the role of science in gardening. 

Mentioned in this episode:

“Pocket Prairies with John Hart Asher” (Horticulturati podcast episode, 2022);

JHA pocket prairies ep of Horticulturati; Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway (2001); “Fungal Vision with Daniel Reyes” (Hothouse podcast episode, 2018); Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets (2005); Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis (2006); “Mulches: The Good, The Bad, and the Really, Really Ugly” by Dr. Linda Chalker Scott (presentation to the Clackamas County Master Gardeners, 2019); “The Cardboard Controversy” by Chalker-Scott (Garden Professors blog, 2015); “Permaculture - More Concerns” by Chalker-Scott (Garden Professors blog, 2010).

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"Fruit trees need hands-on care." That's the motto of our guest, Susan Poizner of OrchardPeople.com. Susan is an urban orchardist, teacher, journalist, and filmmaker. She is the author of Growing Urban Orchards (2014), cofounder of the Ben Nobelman Park Community Orchard in Toronto and the host of the Urban Forestry Radio podcast. She also teaches fruit tree classes on her website. Colleen was eager to interview Susan after taking her online courses. Susan gives us the basics on why fruit trees need human intervention to thrive; we also discuss urban orchards, heirloom species, food forests, and Susan's transition from journalism to horticulture. Then Colleen and Leah discuss the impact of Austin's recent ice storm on fruit trees.  

Mentioned in this episode: 

North American Scion Exchange (Facebook group).

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In this roundtable, we talk about drafting and drawing with Lisa Nunamaker, of Paper Garden Workshop, and Amy Fedele, of Pretty Purple Door, two fabulous garden educators who offer online courses in landscape graphics. Leah took courses from both instructors this year -- Lisa's Garden Graphics Toolkit and Amy's Great at Procreate. 

We discuss why the fundamentals of hand-drafting remain so valuable to the design process; the role of digital design programs like AutoCAD; and how tablet apps provide a new, hybrid avenue of digital hand-drafting. 

Then we turn to to the subject of emotional baggage: Why is drawing so scary for so many adults? How can we gain confidence as creatives and develop our own unique visual style? 

Mentioned in this episode: the tablet apps (Procreate, Adobe Fresco, Morpholio Trace, Concepts); The Creative Habit by Twila Tharp (2006).

The Horticulturati is brought to you by Leah Churner and Colleen Dieter.

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A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but some of the common names we use for plants downright stink! In this episode, we're diving into problematic colloquial names. Some common names are geographically misleading (“Jerusalem artichoke”); others are xenophobic, racist, or antisemitic ("wandering Jew"); while still others are an unfortunate combination of both (“Turk’s cap”). 

While it's probably too much to expect everyone to start using Latin names for plants, we can adapt new common names that are more culturally sensitive and accurate. Like the plants themselves, common names are organic, living things that need to evolve over time. 

First up, some armadillo drama and an update on Colleen's super-low-maintenance front yard renovation inspired by the writing of Roy Diblik (here's our original episode about that.)

Mentioned: 

Great at Procreate, an online digital drawing course from instructor Amy Fedele; "Problematic Common Names" (House Plant Hobbyist, 2021); How Plants Get Their Names by L.H. Bailey (Macmillian, 1933); Native Flora of Texas by the Texas Highway Department (undated, ca. 1960); The Better Common Names Project of the Entomological Society of America; and Potentially Problematic Common Names, a study by the American Public Gardens Association (2021). 

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Attention plant lovers! Central Texas Seed Savers is hosting a Seed Swap at the Austin Central Library (710 W. Cesar Chavez St) on Saturday, October 29 from 11-1pm. This event is free and open to the public.  Bring seeds to share! Or just come get some seeds! For more info, visit https://www.centexseedsavers.org and https://library.austintexas.libguides.com/seedsandsustainability

In this episode, Colleen unearths as much as she can about the largely unwritten history of plant pots.

When did humans start growing plants in containers?

How did innovations in materials and technology lead to the domestication of plants, plant collecting, and the growth of the nursery industry?

Why are plant pots so overlooked as a facet of industrial design? (We can rattle off several iconic chair designs, but flowerpots? Not so much.)

Why don’t the standardized names of nursery pot sizes correspond to their actual volume in the US?

We have more questions than answers, folks. 

First up, Leah is practicing her drawings. And we need an alternative name for the tricky season that comes between summer and fall in Texas. 

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Mentioned in this episode:

Rain lilies (Cooperia drummondii); Paper Garden Workshop; “Elevation to Plan” technique; Plan to Elevation (Leah’s sketch); The Artist’s Way (1992) by Julia Cameron; Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979) by Betty Edwards; Willy Guhl designs on Artnet; a bio of Guhl; history of flowerpots from the Salem Maritime National Historic Site; “Plastic Pots and the Nursery Industry: Production, Use, Disposal, and Environmental Impacts” (2020) by the APLD; Eric Soderholtz.

We're back with a salute to Monty Don, beloved British gardening expert, author, and fashion icon, whose infectious passion for plants is boosting our spirits through this bummer summer. 

Though little known in the US, jaunty Monty is a big celebrity across the pond, as the host of the BBC's Gardener's World, Big Dreams, Small Spaces, and Around The World in 80 Gardens. With his soothing temperament and sharp insights, he's a bit like a cross between Anthony Bourdain and Mr Rogers. 

We discuss differing approaches to horticulture and land stewardship in the US and the UK and how Big Dreams, Small Spaces has informed our thinking about the role of the landscape designer as consultant. Then we follow Monty's 80 Gardens journey to Mexico City to visit perhaps the oldest perennial flowering gardens in the world: the floating chinampas of Xochimilco. 

(Where to watch these shows in the US? Gardener's World and Big Dreams are currently available on Amazon Prime. The full 80 Gardens series is on Youtube.)

Mentioned in this episode: 

Around The World in 80 Gardens (book) by Monty Don. 

The Horticulturati is cohosted by Leah Churner and Colleen Dieter. Want more? Please join our Patreon to hear our bonus podcast, "In the Weeds," and early access to episodes! 

On this episode, we dive into ecologist Douglas Tallamy's books Nature's Best Hope (2019) and The Living Landscape (2014, with Rick Darke). Tallamy's work takes native plant gardening and wildlife gardening to another level by focusing not just on species diversity, but on diversity of species interaction to promote ecological conservation. According to Tallamy, "native" plants are those which have "evolved in a given place over a period of time sufficient to develop complex and essential relationships with a diversity of animals." Native plants, then, are organisms that have interacted with insects, birds, and mammals for thousands, if not millions, of years. We discuss Tallamy's perspective and the how we might tackle the challenge of implementing a conservation design -- and convincing homeowners to think of themselves as land stewards.

Up first: It's hot here in Austin, so we are talking about what early triple-digit temps mean for gardeners. Leah is looking for her niche, taking inspiration from specialist insects. 

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Mentioned in this episode: National Wildlife Federation's Native Plant Finder web tool; The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden (2014) by Roy Diblik; Planting in a Post-Wild World (2015) by Claudia West and Thomas Rainer.

Also - after recording, we found this article from the NWF about yucca moths. (Their caterpillars eat the yucca seeds and flowers, not the leaves! Then the moths pollinate the yuccas in return!)

We sat down at the picnic table with John Hart Asher, host of Central Texas Gardener and Cofounder/Senior Environmental Designer at Blackland Collaborative to talk about pocket prairies. What’s a pocket prairie? It’s a very small prairie. What’s a prairie? It’s a community of native grasses and forbs wildflowers that have evolved along with microbes, plants, and animals over millennia. This "disturbance-driven ecology" historically relied on periodic fire and low-frequency, high-intensity grazing to function. John Hart sees the "millions-year-old technology" of the American prairie as a replicable system that we can borrow in our own yards to sequester carbon, manage stormwater runoff, and support the essential interconnections between life forms that make up the food-soil web. As Douglas Tallamy writes in his book Nature's Best Hope, "If each American landowner made it a goal to convert half of his or her lawn to native plant communities...[we] could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than twenty million acres of what is now ecological wasteland."   

We discuss the role of wildfires and buffalo grazing in Texas before European settlement, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center's research on prescribed burning, and how to prepare, install, and maintain a pocket prairie. 

John Hart insists that we must rethink our approach to landscape design, gardening, land ownership, and even our concept of "nature" if we are to sustain life on earth. He describes prairie restoration as "a trajectory, not an intervention" -- a process, rather than a product -- which can help us reconnect with the web of life, reduce climate anxiety, and make our homes more beautiful to boot. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy; the USDA Web Soil Survey; Black Owl Biochar; KR Bluestem.

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