If you can have only one of Jeff Gillman’s books, The Truth About Organic Gardening: Benefits, Drawbacks, and the Bottom Line is the one to get. Don’t get me wrong, The Truth About Garden Remedies is an interesting and informative read, but it mostly tells you what doesn’t work, or what only “sorta” works. The Truth About Organic Gardening makes you think about what you should be doing–and why.

Jeff encourages you to think critically from the first chapter. What exactly does organic mean? Why did we stop growing organically in the first place? Is there anyone around today who thinks growing things organically is a bad idea? You might think you know what it means to grow plants organically, and why that is a good thing, but after reading the first chapter, you’ll realize things are not as simple as you thought.

First, do no harm

And you’ll soon find out that this book is really about getting the best results while doing the least harm, regardless of whether the technique is labeled organic or synthetic. Jeff’s benchmark is the environmental impact quotient (EIQ), which he calls “the only way I know of to provide a single coherent value that summarizes the potential risk a chemical application poses to both the environment and us.” No matter what chapter–soil enrichment and fertilization, weed control, insect control, disease control, and so on, Jeff gives you the full range of commonly available choices–organic and synthetic–and evaluates them in light of scientific studies. For the most part, he sides with the organic solution, but not always. And he doesn’t hesitate to point out that sometimes, the best thing to do is nothing–or something that requires observation and diligence rather than buying something. What a concept!

Guilty of poor cultural practices

Thus I found myself tried and guilty as charged when I got to the chapter on disease control. My beloved peonies struggle with botrytis, a disease that Jeff doesn’t address. (I wish he had, just so I would know if the sample of GreenCure I sprayed on my plants was worth the time and effort.) Jeff tells us that the first principle of organic disease control is cleanliness:

Remove diseased plants and plant materials such as diseased leaves (whether or not they’ve fallen from the plant) . . . This will greatly diminish the need for other disease-control techniques. If a disease isn’t around, it can’t infect your plants.

I took care last fall to cut down and remove all the peony foliage, and I picked up all the fallen leaves as well. But last spring and summer I wasn’t out there every day trimming off any leaves with a hint of trouble.

Another good thing to try is polycultures and companion planting. “. . . In many cases diseases are host specific, meaning that they only infect some types of plants and not all.” So the idea is to mix it up, with a variety of species in the same area. By planting all my peonies together in one bed, they are more likely to get infected by each other. I happen to like the idea of a peony “hedge,” and am reluctant to consider alternatives. Let’s face it, massing one plant for dramatic effect is a pretty common ornamental landscape technique, but we have to face the fact that we are making it more difficult to control diseases by doing so.

As you might imagine, proper watering and fertilizing is another principle of good organic cultural practice. Here my sin was one of omission. Beyond preparing the soil well before planting, I don’t think I’ve ever fertilized those peonies, and I don’t think they need it. But I’ve never watered them after the first year they were planted, and in some of our dry years, I’m sure they would have appreciated it. With our shallow well it just wasn’t possible, though the stress of drought could be what made them vulnerable to fungus in the first place.

I never checked to see if any of my named peony cultivars were bred to be disease resistant. It never even crossed my mind. But here’s a thought: “It’s actually a good thing that some people choose to plant varieties that aren’t resistant to diseases; if we all planted the same resistant varieties of any plant, the disease the plant was resistant to would adapt to this resistance faster . . . and the resistance would be rapidly overcome.” So I guess I’m doing my part for the continued survival of the plant kingdom, even if it’s not helping my own particular peonies.

I can’t follow this advice

I confess to plugging my ears and squinting my eyes shut against the advice Jeff opens the chapter with: “The best thing you can do with a diseased plant is to remove it from your garden to prevent the spread of disease to other plants.” I fell in love with the peony ‘Bev’ over twenty years ago, spent several pre-internet years tracking down a source for her, paid a premium price to bring her home, and then lovingly prepared the soil before planting her. And you’re telling me I should just end it, dig her up and toss her in the trash (and not even the compost because she’s infected)? Dismantle the peony bed entirely? No, I’m not ready to hear this. I’ll just try to improve my cultural practices and hope for a good peony year, weather-wise.

What does organic really mean?

The chapter on disease control gave me a lot to think about, but the last two chapters of the book give us all a lot to ponder. Did you know that

. . . the requirements to test synthetic chemicals in order to insure safety are extremely stringent but the same requirements aren’t in place for natural compounds; . . . natural pesticides are exempt from some of the rigorous testing that synthetic chemicals must undergo, such as mandatory testing for pesticide residues.

Organically grown food that you purchase at a market is probably free from synthetic pesticides, but no one is testing it for residues from organic pesticides. Not much research has even been conducted in this area, but the studies that are available indicate that both rotenone and pyrethrin can remain on food longer than was formerly thought, up to two weeks in the case of rotenone and its byproducts. This is but one of several issues concerning organic food that Jeff raises.

Finally, and most importantly, he encourages us to rethink the whole organic vs. synthetic dichotomy:

If we start to divide pesticides by natural versus synthetic rather than by their safety and efficacy in controlling pests, we’re just fooling ourselves into thinking that we’re making rational decisions when in fact we’re making a meaningless and artificial separation that could well be to our detriment.

More thinking, more research, and less grandstanding, is his plea. If you want to let go of your prejudices and garden with your eyes open and your brain in gear, pick up this book and start reading.

‘Bev’ was planted in fall 2002 and has filled out substantially

Peonies remind me of my paternal grandmother. Whether it was an evening with her bridge group, Sunday Mass, or a family cookout, she always dressed fashionably, including fully applied makeup and perfume. To be called glamorous was a compliment she always appreciated. She also grew peonies in her yard, not that she was much of a gardener. I’m not sure whether it is their fragrance or their over-the-top kind of beauty that most calls my grandmother to mind. They just seem like the kind of flower she’d have in a vase on her vanity as she applied her makeup, even though I know there was no room in her modest bedroom for a vanity, and she applied all her cosmetics in front of the bathroom mirror.

‘Aimee’ looks fabulous in a vase

June is the month for peonies around here. There were some peonies growing here when we moved in, but they weren’t as fragrant as I remember my grandmother’s being. Just as with roses, lilies, lilacs, and almost every fragrant flower you can think of, not all peonies are fragrant. Not all peonies are floppers, either, as you can see from the photo at left. No matter how much she is pelted by rain or tossed by the wind, ‘Bev’ remains upright. And no matter how gentle the breezes and dry the weather, ‘Aimee’s Pink’ flops. I cut almost all of ‘Aimee’s’ blossoms for the vase. ‘Rozella’ is the third peony that I bought (as opposed to inherited or received as a passalong).

‘Rozella’ peony is shorter and later than ‘Bev’

‘Rozella’ blooms later than ‘Bev’ and is shorter but just as upright. Unfortunately, ‘Rozella’ is quite vulnerable to botrytis. I removed all the foliage last year and burned it, and I’ve been deadheading daily, but I still see signs of infection. I confess I didn’t spray faithfully last year. I was supposed to spray every two weeks but I couldn’t spray when it was raining, and then I forgot. And then my son used the spray on his squash plants and before I knew it my free sample was all gone.

All sorts of flowers bloom in June, and many have fragrance, but I just go ga-ga over peonies. Voluptuous, gorgeous, and, yes, glamorous–I think peonies appeal to an aspect of myself I’m too practical (or embarrassed) to indulge in.

Three good sources for peonies

• Reath’s Nursery
• La Pivoinerie d’Aoust
• Klehm’s Song Sparrow Farm and Nursery

Also blooming now

In no particular order:

• bearded irises
• Oriental poppies
• Johnny-jump-ups
• ‘Crater Lake Blue’ veronica
• ‘Six Hills Giant’ catmint
• double German catchfly
• feverfew
• coral bells
• mountain bluets
• mock orange
• Siberian irises
• ‘Black Stockings’ meadow rue
• ‘Concord Grape’ spiderwort
• ‘Beacon Silver’ lamium
• dames rocket
• columbine
• ‘Wanderin’ Wind’ rose
• valerian
• sweet William

Stop by at May Dreams Garden for all the other Bloom Day reports.

This spring, I had the most beautiful peonies in the world.

I was especially taken with the foliage of ‘Bev,’ the one on the far right. It was a smoky purple. The flowers were spectacular, too, but I never managed to get a photograph this year. You can see them, here, though.

One of the reasons I never got around to taking pictures was that we had an awful lot of rain, culminating in record-breaking flooding in our area. Which is a major factor in how my poor peonies look today:

Rozella is a mess. And this is after the first cutting back that I did in an effort to contain the problem. Her companions have a brown leaf here and there, but poor Rozella had whole stems brown down to ground level.

With some plants, when they look this bad, you cut them right down to the ground, water and fertilize, and, presto-change-o! the foliage grows back looking good. But not with peonies. The leaves that peonies unfurl in spring are the only leaves they will grow for the season. And it is the leaves, of course, that bring nutrition to the root, which will produce next year’s stems and flowers. So you don’t really want to cut down all of a peony’s leaves (or-ahem-mow them all down with a lawn mower).

I figured I’d already cut out a third of her stems in an attempt to forestall further infection–to no apparent avail. I really didn’t want to cut any more than I had to. So it was time to figure out how to treat the problem. I already knew that botrytis was a common ailment of peonies, but I always thought it looked furry, like mold, and this just looked brown. I searched on those keywords, however, and came up with several sources of information–but no pictures. So I decided to consult an expert–R. Scott Reath, of Reath’s peonies, where Rozella came from. He promptly emailed back, and said

Your peony has botrytis which is a common fungal disease. It starts from spores(sclerotia) that overwinter on last years old infected leaves/plant parts and also from spores blowing in from outside the garden. It starts and spreads during wet weather.

It can be controlled by:

Removal of old leaves in the fall after they freeze and remove from garden
Dead head the flowers when they are done blooming
Removing diseased leaves when they appear
Keep the leaves as dry as possible- water the ground not the leaves, do not overcrowd plants, etc.
Protective fungicide sprays are very good at preventing it from starting but will not make diseased lesions healthy. Use a spray approved for ornamentals that controls botrytis. start spraying early when plants first start to emerge and often. The Cooperative Extension Service can help with a list of fungicides that are currently available and can be used on peonies in your state(area).

Sprays may not be needed some years if the weather is dry. Most plants get some blight late in the season and are not bothered. Certainly Peonies have been around long before there where sprays for botrytis. Many people do not worry about blight but it can weaken plants if it hits early and several years in a row and is unsightly.

For your plant this year I would give it a protective spray to reduce the spreading as much as possible and this fall cut the stems and remove. Even a few green leaves going into winter is better than none.

It turns out I have been following his advice, but not consistently. Sure, I deadhead the blossoms–unless it’s been raining for three days straight. Yes, I clip the foliage and throw it in the garbage (not the compost pile) at the end of autumn–as long as we don’t get an early snowstorm. I’ve made even this half-hearted effort because I have noticed an occasional browned bud in the past, and suspected botrytis. The last few years have been dry, and probably that has kept the problem in check. But this year, when we haven’t been having rain, we’ve been having morning fog almost every day.

I’m going to try spraying the foliage with GreenCure, which is a potassium bicarbonate-based foliar fungicide. Potassium bicarbonate is supposed to work better than sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) as a fungicide, and, like baking soda, it is considered acceptable for organic food production. Also, it is produced by a local business, and I just happen to have a free sample. As a matter of fact, I called Peter Yeager, president of GreenCure, this morning, and he recommended I spray in the evening when it was cooler, so the solution wouldn’t dry off as fast. So after supper that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I’d like you to meet three special friends of mine:

Aimee

Bev

Rozella

I purchased ‘Aimee’ (actually ‘Aimee’s Pink’) from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs in autumn of 2000. It has taken her a while to build up strength, though I suspect if last year hadn’t been so bad for spring flowers (with temps in the nineties in April followed by hard freezes in May), she might have put on a show last year. ‘Bev’ and ‘Rozella,’ purchased from Reath’s, were planted last fall. For first year plants, they bloomed quite well, with more than four blossoms a piece. All three are fragrant, which can’t be taken for granted in peonies. The following image demonstrates why it pays to shop carefully for peonies.

This image was taken after a night of rain. ‘Bev’ is furthest back, and ‘Rozella’ is in the center. Notice how tall and straight they hold their blossoms? ‘Aimee’s Pink,’ closest to the viewer, is bent over from the weight of water. She almost appears to be bowing to the other two. This is typical of most older double peonies, and if I had never seen ‘Bev’ and ‘Rozella’ I would have thought it unavoidable without staking.

Now I know better. Peonies can be bred to have strong stems that will not bend over after a rain. This was a stated breeding goal of David Reath, who hybridized ‘Rozella.’ As I mentioned here, I fell in love with ‘Bev’ a long time ago. I just lucked out that she also has strong stems. If I had to do it over again, I would have passed ‘Aimee’s Pink’ by and gotten something similar from Reath’s with stronger stems. As it is, I don’t know if I can part with her.

These peonies gave me a lot of pleasure while they were blooming. They were vah-lyoop-tuous, dahling, and made wonderful bouquets for the house. Of course, they all finished blooming a while ago. I’m not that proficient at inserting images into the blog, so it’s taken me a while to get this posted. I wanted to make sure, before anyone ordered peonies for the fall, that you were aware of how differently various peonies performed in the garden. If you are anti-hoop where peonies are concerned, you owe it to yourself to do some research before you buy. Considering peonies are as long-lived as almost any shrub, the price you pay for a premium peony is actually rather reasonable.

The peonies from Reath’s came on Monday the 7th, but because of various commitments I couldn’t plant them until Thursday. They came wrapped in plastic with wood shavings to keep them damp, and then the whole shebang was packed in straw or hay–the first time I ever saw that used as a shipping material. I was anxious about leaving them go for so long, alternately fearing they would dry out or rot from too much moisture. I opened up the plastic bag and kept checking them to reassure myself. At night I would seal the bag back up.

I figured each plant would get a 3 ft. by 3 ft. space, which is what I gave all the other peonies in my “hedge” along the driveway. On Wednesday I asked my fifteen-year-old son Lachlan to dig a 3-foot by 6-foot hole for the peonies. Reath’s suggests “planting them in a site with good dark topsoil to a depth of 2 feet.” Lachlan managed to dig down about 15 inches using a mattock and a shovel. He put all the soil (which was, of course, for the most part, neither “good,” nor “dark,” nor “topsoil”) on a tarp. And then, it took me a whole day to plant two peonies. Since peonies can live for more than 50 years, and since ‘Bev’ was sixteen bucks and ‘Rozella’ was twenty-five bucks, and since Reath’s recommended it, I figured it behooved me to give them the royal treatment.

My first step was to take my trusty rock rake and remove as many stones as I could from the bottom of the hole. The rock rake is one tool I feel rather ambivalent about. We have so many stones in our soil it is usually not worth the bother to remove any smaller than the face of my hand, so the purchase of this tool was rather a self-indulgence. I found the catalog copy seductive; the idea of flinging rocks over the fence humorous. So it was difficult for my frugal nature to justify the purchase. And yet, I do use it–just not all the time. So, I was using it to prepare the royal treatment for my peonies.

After removing the rocks, it was time to get some compost. We only have lazy-man’s compost around here; we put it in a bin, and when the bin gets full, we move it to the next bin, and then the final bin. Consequently, compost in the final bin has lots of stuff still in it. That’s why I like to sift it. My son Rundy built a wooden frame sized to fit over our wheelbarrows and stapled hardware cloth to it. It works just fine, but it’s heavy. Rundy, who lifts weights, picks it up and shakes it to sift. I rest it on the wheelbarrow and shovel compost on top of the screen. Then, using a gloved hand, I push the compost around the screen until the good stuff has all fallen into the wheelbarrow. Then, saying a prayer for my back, I pick the frame off the wheelbarrow and dump the remains into bin #2 to compost some more. And I repeat the process until the wheelbarrow is full or I have as much compost as I need. That morning Justin (7), Owen (5), and Caleb (2 1/2) helped me sift. Fortunately, I had at least one child-sized glove for each of them. Unfortunately, the compost kept getting down the wrists of their gloves. We sifted until the compost came up to the level of the sifter. Then it was time to get a “big boy” to dump it for me.

Now, this wheelbarrow holds 6.5 cubic feet, but since we couldn’t fill it quite to the top, we’ll call it 6 cu. ft. So I figure, spread out over 18 sq. ft., that’s 4 inches of compost. (I didn’t figure it out until just now. And if somebody knows a good calculator on the web to figure out these kinds of things, I’d appreciate hearing about it.)

I shoveled soil from the tarp on top of the compost in the hole–what I eyeballed to be an amount equal to the compost. Then I pulled the rock rake through it again, to get the rocks from the soil out. I also turned up quite a few crocus corms, which had been planted in the lawn here before it became peony territory. The rock rake helped mix the soil and compost together, which was fortunate, as the hole was still too deep for me to turn it over with my garden fork without stepping into the hole, which I did not want to do, as it would compact everything I’d worked so hard for. Next came a load of composted goat manure. We don’t have goats anymore, and my son recently cleaned out the goat pen so we could use it for storage. The goats had hay for bedding, so the goat “berries” were liberally mixed with half rotted hay. I shoveled the most rotted stuff into the wheelbarrow, and wheeled it to the peony pit myself. It was a lot lighter than the compost.

I repeated the soil shoveling and rock-raking procedure. Then my “work crew” helped me sift another load of compost, and I added my final load of soil. After rock-raking I used the garden fork to thoroughly mix everything. Finally, it was time to plant.

Reath’s recommends planting the peony roots so that the eyes are 1 to 2 inches below the surface of the soil. This is standard advice. (The eyes are the buds that will be next years sprouts.) What they don’t tell you is that these eyes are on very irregularly shaped roots, and arranging the roots in the ground so that all of the sprouts are the same depth under the soil is something of a puzzle. To get all the eyes pointing up, I wound up planting the roots so that most of them were closer to parallel with the soil level instead of perpendicular to it. Digging, of course, was a piece of cake after all that soil preparation. I didn’t even use a shovel, I just scooped the soil with my hands. It is easier to gauge the distance from the sprouts to the soil level if you throw a tool handle or a board across the planting site to the firm ground on either side. Don’t use a shovel handle, though, because it has a bend in it that will throw things off. After covering the roots with soil, Reath’s recommends you cover the planting area with 1 1/2″ of bark mulch in cold climates. This is not standard advice. Most articles I have read tell you not to mulch at all. However, since Reath’s is located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where Zone 4 rules, I figure they know whereof they speak. I haven’t put the mulch down yet. I am not sure if it should go down before or after the ground freezes.

Rundy asked me why I sifted the compost. Why not just let it rot in place? I couldn’t give him an answer. I hadn’t thought it about. After some consideration, I think I understand my own motivations better. For one thing, they were expensive plants, and the more I have invested financially in a plant, the more I tend to baby it. But in all honesty, I can’t say that sifting the compost will help the peonies grow better. The motivation is more emotional. Between caring for my infant daughter, which cut into my gardening time, and our drought, which cut into my pleasure in the garden, I had been feeling “garden-deprived.” The day I planted the peonies, the soil texture was as good as our acid clay ever gets, and I just wanted the luxury of really well-prepared garden soil. It made me feel rich.

I bought my peonies at Reath’s. They definitely are not the cheapest, but I am hoping their quality will be worth the price. A long time ago I fell in love with a photo of the herbaceous peony ‘Bev’ (Fine Gardening May ’91) and Reath’s is one of the few places that carry it. And of course, once I got the catalog there were lots of other peonies to fall in love with. The other peony I am getting is called Rozella. Rozella is a hybrid of David Reath, who focused on breeding peonies with strong stems that won’t flop over.

There are hem[erocallis] nuts, hosta fanatics and iris devotees. I have decided to focus my horticultural collector’s instincts on the lowly colchicum. Colchicums are bulbous plants whose leaves emerge in spring and die back in summer. Then they bloom in pretty shades of purply-pink or white in the autumn, shades that go very well with the asters blooming at the same time. The catch is that spring foliage. It is far huger than the crocus-to-species-tulip-sized blossoms would lead you to believe, and as it becomes lax and flops over it can easily suffocate a less robust neighbor. So siting is important. I probably never would have started my collection if there hadn’t already been colchicums growing here when we moved in, but now I love walking around in autumn and discovering them all over again.

As for lilacs, I already sent the book back. You’ll have to get it out yourself