Landscape Construction -- Followup: Interlocking pavers

Just to follow up on the interlocking pavers from last term. Photos were taken after some significant rains, as you will well see.

Plant Propagation -- Week 2

We had a week off from plant propagation because of the holiday but I did get some pictures during the second week.
This week we worked on stem cuttings for deciduous and evergreens.
Marty found a nice piece of Cornus sericea 'Flaviramea'.

Here is a close up of an internode of the Yellow Twig Dogwood.

We found a nice specimen of Thuja Plicata and I went inside to get some cuttings from the cone of juvenility.

So now I have some cuttings from two plants.

Here I have trimmed my cuttings into 5 sections each with a few inches of bare stem and a couple inches of foliage (for the evergreen Western Red Cedar).

On the evergreens, I wounded a small strip on each side.

I made angled cuts on the bottom end to indicate "this end goes down" and flat cuts on the tops to ensure that I could tell which end goes up.

We planted them up with the same planting medium mix as last week.

Here is the bench for our class. Starting to fill up some.

Plant Propagation -- Week 1

Class started up this week at PCC. In my first day of plant propagation we covered the definition of plant propagation, its history, the big picture organization of propagation methods, and a high level view of the 4 aspects of propagation -- STEP: Skills, Timing, Environment, and Plants. The definition the class came up with for the class is:

Plant propagation is the deliberate reproduction of plants through sexual or asexual means in a controlled environment with a desired outcome.

I now want to know more about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
We looked quickly at the anatomy of a terminal shoot and a leaf.

And then jumped in to three methods of propagation by leaf cutting: leaf petiole, leaf section, and split vein.

We cleaned the pots with water, then 10% bleach, then rinsed with water.

We got a tour of the greenhouses.

The growing medium was 2 parts perlite to 1 part peat moss.

We did cuttings from three different plants.

And placed them under the misters in the greenhouse.

Book review: Teaming with Microbes

I read Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis and published by Timber Press. The first part of the book is a fascinating overview of the biology of the various goodies living in a typical teaspoon of soil. It then goes on to investigate various ways in which this understanding applies to gardening.

I hadn't heard of the distinction between bacterially dominated soils (typical of annual gardens and grasslands) and fungal dominated soils (typical of perennial plantings and forests). I am also very interested to try the techniques for measuring soil life as a way to baseline and measure progress of the development of the soil food web. The section on composting enhanced my appreciation of the biological aspects of compost as a product for inoculating soil. I am also interested in trying AACT (actively aerated compost tea).

I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the magic stuff that is soil.

"Sustainable" vs. "Restorative"

There is an interesting point in a TED talk I just watched:
http://www.ted.com/talks/barton_seaver_sustainable_seafood_let_s_get_smart.html
of thinking about the difference between striving for restorative rather than merely sustainable. Still thinking through the implications....

Finals

I am wrapping up my first term of the Landscape Technology program at PCC Rock Creek Campus.

For the Deciduous Trees class we needed to put together a journal for the 101 plants covered in the course. I made a few different attempts at the format. I keep thinking that some sort of database would work better. I want something extensible and easy to update. I think I am getting a handle on all the names, and even the latin spellings are coming along with no small effort.

I have enjoyed the camaraderie of the students in the Landscape Construction class. It was fun being able to work on projects in small groups.

While I would have liked to spend more time exploring with the microscopic, the Basic Horticulture was a nice introduction to botany. I did my final paper on peach leaf curl which was a good exercise in considering the tradeoffs involved in growing peaches in this environment.

I still have a round of finals this week, but the bulk of the work is now behind me, which is a relief.

Eating

A well written post on killing things we eat: http://www.urbanscout.org/on-killing-animals-insects-plants