“I have always felt on reading gardening books and articles in gardening magazines that I learned the most from the woman who said, ‘I planted this flower in this way,’ or ‘I planted the colors in this corner to produce this effect,’ or ‘This flower was beautiful but did not bloom long enough to be worth the trouble and money it cost.’ When I read this, I knew that I had learned something from the actual experience, though it was not my own, but the experience of another person.”

The above reflection came from the pen of Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of “The Secret Garden.” It is a fitting introduction to “Gardening: A Growing Addiction” (iUniverse, 2021) by Jo Ann Wiblin. The author takes us on her often humorous personal journey as a gardener in Ohio. Yes, I know Ohio is not California, but the principles of building a good soil, for example, are universal, and so are the successes and especially the failures to which the author readily admits, and from which all of us can learn.

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Her arguments for mulching are persuasive. “When we moved here, we found hard-packed clay and sandstone. . . After just a few years of constant mulch, this clay became the black, fluffy stuff that gardeners dream of. It’s so soft that I can put my hand completely in anywhere it has been mulched (slight exaggeration).

“The weeds are few because the seeds don’t reach the soil. The ones that do make it through are usually spindly and easy to pull out with roots intact.

“Mulch keeps my garden safe both during drought and torrential rains. It eliminates the need to turn the soil. The best soil is directly under the mulch, and turning it defeats the purpose. You probably won’t believe this, but we haven’t plowed or spaded our vegetable garden in years. We just add new mulch each year, and pull it back to plant.” And she does not fertilize either.

Wiblin’s statement that mulch keeps her garden safe during drought is especially pertinent to the seemingly endless drought in Southern California. It is essential to keep our soil mulched to prevent it from becoming hard and unworkable and dead. A continuous layer of mulch several inches thick encourages the proliferation of beneficial soil microorganisms that thrive beneath it. Aerobic bacteria in particular help to maintain soil structure/softness in building humus, a sweet-smelling deep brown or black material, under the mulch. Humus contributes significantly to plant health, protecting against pest attacks and diseases in addition to providing nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other essential elements that are absorbed by roots.

Wiblin reminds us that plants “eventually get past their prime. Plants continue to grow as long as they are alive, and sometimes they lose their shape, their vigor, and their attractiveness. At that point, get rid of them. Trees are exempt from this because of their lengthy lifespan, but few other plants are.”

This recommendation for apparent ruthlessness is worthy of note. It happens all too often that we stubbornly insist on keeping visual eyesores in vegetative form around for years. This may be due to penuriousness or sentimentality. Yet there are so many beautiful specimens that could take the place of our unfortunate-looking plants – whose presence we would question in anyone else’s garden.

Hybrid tea, floribunda, and David Austin roses are excellent examples of plants that we are reluctant to remove, although most of them lose their luster within a decade or two of being planted in the garden. In general, roses grown on their own roots (propagated from cuttings) are more durable than grafted roses. The roses you find in nurseries, garden centers, and on most mail-order websites are nearly always grafted. However, you can select from a vast array of roses grown on their own roots, from familiar to obscure varieties, at heirloomroses.com.

Wiblin extols the virtues of “rich, black, luxurious compost. Compost is easy to make and great for plants and general soil improvement. All you need is an out of the way spot and desire. Don’t be awed by the contraptions that are sold for hundreds of dollars. You can just pile your garden and kitchen waste in a corner outside somewhere – and wait. But stir while you wait. . . Just turn it with a pitchfork a couple of times a week and it progresses.” I would add that in our dry climate it is essential to irrigate the pile on a regular basis to keep it moist, like a wrung-out sponge. Decomposing bacteria need both air (which is why you continually turn over the pile) and moisture to thrive.

“Anything that was once a growing plant will work: potato peels, apple cores, used coffee grounds and tea bags, pea pods, leftover green beans, dead houseplants or chopped up fall leaves. You can also use eggshells and shredded newspapers. What you should not use are meat and dairy scraps” since they “attract every dog and rodent in the county. . . What you will have is a real, sweet-smelling earthworm factory that breaks down and digests garbage into a crumbly, rich new soil.” You may not necessarily have earthworms in your garden but can add red wrigglers (worms used for fishing bait and available at fishing supply stores) to speed up the decomposition process.

One drawback of the garden trend towards succulent and other slow-growing, drought-tolerant plants is the dearth of compostable material in the yard. Lawns provide a supply of grass clippings which heat up the compost pile and accelerate its decomposition in short order. Fallen leaves from trees could be mixed with the grass clippings or applied directly to the garden.

However, now that lawns have virtually disappeared and the tall trees whose leaves could be relied upon for compost bulk have given way to smaller, less-expensive-to-maintain ornamental trees, composting is more of a challenge. It’s yet another good argument not to cancel your newspaper subscription since, with a shredder on hand, you can repurpose its pages for composting. Red wrigglers do a great job at composting shredded paper products of every description, including the cardboard cartons in which products purchased online are shipped.

I should note that the “luxurious compost” to which Wiblin refers is humus, the end product of compost decomposition. The word “compost” actually means “something put together” so that compost is technically created the moment different compostable materials are mixed. Sheet composting, for example, refers to the practice of layering grass and leaves, or newspaper and manure directly in the garden where you want to plant once decomposition of the layered materials is complete. I have also seen sheet composting employed around trees in a backyard orchard.

Some of Wiblin’s “reflections as a gardener” are as follows: “Dogs and gardening don’t mix, but I won’t give up either; getting a plant from a friend makes it a living greeting card for many years; gardeners are nice people; everybody’s a gardener in April; in July, only real gardeners care about it; building up the soil is one way to leave the world a better place; working in the yard is great exercise; just do it every day and both you and your yard will look good.”

Wiblin offers sage advice regarding tool purchase. “My philosophy is to buy the best. I learned this after many years of replacing cheap ones. Good tools, well taken care of, last a lifetime.”

Tip of the Week: Wiblin is fanatic about propagating plants from cuttings. It seems that she takes a plastic bag containing a wet paper towel wherever she goes, so that she can preserve the cuttings she clips (after getting permission from the property owner to do so) until she returns home. “New cuttings . . . can be placed in vermiculite alone,” she writes. “Vermiculite is a light crumbly substance that holds moisture and is easily penetrated by roots. It drains well, so you don’t have to worry about over watering. When the cutting is ready to be potted up, you gently lift the plant by its leaves out of the tray or pot. It comes out easily, roots wrapped around a small ball of vermiculite, and can be planted directly into regular potting soil for growing on, without disturbing the roots.” Dipping cuttings in root hormone (available at nurseries) prior to insertion in rooting media is also advised.

She advocates placing a plastic bag loosely over potted cuttings as a means of preserving moisture until they root and minimizing watering. However, do not seal the bag as this will prevent air from circulating around the cuttings.  The bag produces a mini-greenhouse effect which will speed up the rooting process. Just make sure to place the propagation pots in indirect light since the cuttings will fry if exposed to direct sun.

Please send questions, comments, and photos to [email protected].

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