City Gardener Sandbox

 On vacation…volunteering outside of my comfort zone All during my working years I thought I might like to do volunteer work in my retirement, even while traveling - but  especially  while traveling! I like to be active everyday, and the thought of just sitting around in retirement never seemed appealing. I’ve seen loved ones slump into their recliner chairs for the last twenty years of their lives, and I think they suffered for it.  If I’m going to spend weeks or months away from home, it be great to find some way to stay active but also give back something to my hosting community. It is hard for me to think of a place in the world that doesn’t have the need of volunteers for one thing or another. When I was working as a pathologist, I didn’t feel like I had time to volunteer for things in the community. It took so much time just to do my job reasonably well - I’d been working 10-12 hours per workday and often on weekends. And, I also had family responsibilities for...

 Urban tropical garden One of the joys of travel is the ability to visit special places where people have poured their hearts and life’s work. This year we took the opportunity visit a couple of Honolulu’s famous botanical gardens, the product of many visionary people over the span of more than a century. Foster Botanical Garden is arguably the jewel in the crown of five botanic gardens scattered across the island of Oahu, and all of them belonging to the Honolulu Botanical Gardens. Now occupying a combined  650 acres, this organization is a division of the County of Oahu which maintains the gardens. Foster Botanical Garden is situated in the heart of Honolulu, not far from the old Iolani Palace. Over the past 150 years of its existence it has grown in size from 4 to 14 precious acres. In 1850 Queen Kalama ceded the original land to Dr. William Hildebrand who was one of the physicians of the royal family. He was also a noted botanist, author, and plant collector. When he retur...

Raining in February   The morning began with a walk in the rain from my car to the Conservatory greenhouses - in the month of February. According to the calendar, we should be in the depths of winter. The precipitation today should be snow not rain. The storm system that we're experiencing is probably related to drenching rains moving inland from the west coast. I met Coordinator A... at the door of the Conservatory. His office desk faces one of the main doors to the building. He cannot escape observing everyone who enters...poor guy, it must be distracting for him. Anyway, as soon as I entered the building we started to discuss his plan for my activity of the morning. He offered me the project of rebuilding the support for vanilla vines which have been suffering from overexposure to sunlight and dry air. A bit of background The vanilla plant (Vanilla planifolia) is in the orchid family. It is native to Central America and Mexico. The seed pods were used by the Aztecs to flavor coc...

Although the January weather in Minnesota this year has been remarkably warm - well above freezing everyday for the past few weeks - still, it felt like a gift to spend 3 hours working with plants in the Conservatory's Diverse Desert room where the temperature was around 75 degrees F. Today, the task given to me was pruning and cleaning up a few of the plants in the Diverse Deserts display room. This room is open to the public. A similar climate controlled room exists on the Collection side of the Conservatory, is also open to the public but only by appointment. In the Desert Display room, the plants are in beds as they would be seen in the desert...on the ground. In the Collection room, the plants are all in pots. A small sidewalk path curves through the stony beds of the Desert Display room. Some of the plants have become overgrown, partly obstructing the concrete pathway. The goal of the morning's work was to clear the pathway without damaging of the plants. Desert begonia (...

Today's task was to tend to a sickly ficus (fig) tree located in the tropical rainforest room of the University of Minnesota's Conservatory. Ficus henneana is in the strangler fig family. The plant is native to Australia and nearby islands in the south pacific. It produces small fruits which are edible, but not very tasty to humans. The specimen in the Conservatory's collection has for months suffered an infestation of hard scale insects, and possibly mealybugs as well. The tree sits in a large pot measuring 24 inches diameter. The tree has grown to be about 4 meters high.  The leaves of this ficus are supposed to be dark green, but every leaf on the tree has been infested by several scale insects sucking out the sap and depositing sticky honeydew sap. Sooty black mold has thrived on the honeydew, turning the leaves black and blocking light from reaching the leaves.  Also, under the stress of the infestation the leaves have all acquired yellow spots, distributed in a unifor...

The outside temperature today was very cold and windy, two-degrees Fahrenheit with a windchill factor of -17 F. Walking to the University of Minnesota Conservatory Greenhouse from the parking lot - about a half mile away - was bracing to say the least. So today, it was an added pleasure to work in the relative warmth of the tropical rainforest room at the Conservatory.  Vanilla blossom I arrived at the greenhouse to find all of the staff busy and engaged in various activities. On the whiteboard were listed several tasks available for the choosing. I saw one of the tasks was to clean the aquatic plants in the tropical rainforest room. I thought it would complement similar work I did a couple weeks ago in one of the adjacent rooms. Aquatic plants in the tropical cloud forest room Many of the plants in the aquatic tank are currently dormant for the winter. They had wilted leaves and stems from last season's growth. The dead material is a source of rot and fungal overgrowth that might ...

Today I was scheduled to volunteer at the University's greenhouse, my shift was to run from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. However, early this morning the University sent out a general notice to students and staff that there was a credible threat of gun violence made by a 42 year-old man, specifically targeting the University campuses. The suspect's name was known to them but was being withheld pending apprehension. In response, the University was closed, except for certain personnel, to be behind secure doors. Rats! Rather than lose a day of garden work, I took the opportunity to make pesto using the microgreens I've been sprouting in my apartment. Pea shoot microgreens I've been growing - well, really it is sprouting - microgreens for about a decade now. I'm not a huge fan, but I do produce a tray or two every couple of months. Each harvest is more than I can use so I’ve been converting most of the it into pesto. I particularly like fresh pesto for all sorts of dishes from ...