I have a confession
to make. When it comes to home repairs I'm not very handy. In fact,
put me in a hardware store and I panic.
How's a guy supposed
to know what all that stuff is for? Just how many kinds of nails
do you need, anyway? Are there really left-handed screwdrivers?
Drop me off at the
local garden center or nursery, though, and it's like coming home.
Pallets of fertilizers, rows of plants, with difficult-to pronounce
names, mountains of bagged mulch and rock, and check those new
pruning saws. Is it that way for you, too?
I can provide a few
words and phrases that will help you converse in the same language
as the nursery salesperson.
Balled and burlapped:
"If I load this balled-and-burlapped red maple tree into
your trunk, you're going to need someone the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger
to unload if for you when you get home."
Balled-and-burlapped
plants - trees and shrubs-begin their life at the production nursery,
where they spend several years growing in the field.
When plants reach saleable
size, they are dug from the field so that the soil immediately
around their roots remains undisturbed. The ball of earth containing
the roots of the plant is held together with burlap, small nails,
twine and occasionally a metal cage.
Balled-and-burlapped
plants usually are quite heavy. They require special equipment
and careful handling.
Bare-root: "I
don't want to spend $200 on a shade tree. Do you have any less
expensive bare-root trees?"
Bare-root plants also
begin their life growing in a nursery field, but when they are
harvested (usually in the fall), all the soil is shaken from their
roots.
Because bare-root plants
do not have a soil ball, they are considerably lighter, less expensive
to ship and therefore cost less than balled and burlapped or container-grown
plants.
After harvest, bare-root
plants are stored in special climate-controlled buildings until
later winter whereupon they are shipped to retail nurseries and
garden centers.
Retailers may offer
these same plants "bare-root" to their customers, or
grow them in containers for sale later in the season. Because
bare-root plants are vulnerable to temperature and moisture extremes,
retailers prefer to sell them before they bud and produce leaves.
This means the season
for selling bare-root plants comes very early in the growing season,
March and April.
A new gravel bed technique
has expanded the bare-root season for retailers and their customers.
Researchers have shown bare-root plants "held" in raised
beds filled with pea gravel develop tremendous root systems and
are quite capable of being lifted from these beds and transplanted
to the landscape in the heat of summer.
Caliper: "If this
tree were a gift for my fiancée, I'd go with the 3-inch-caliper
tree instead of a measly 2-inch tree."
In the nursery and
landscape trade, caliper in the diameter of a tree, measured at
a point 6 inches above the ground line if the resulting measurements
is no more than 4 inches.
If the resulting measurement
is more than 4 inches, the measurement is made at a point 12 inches
above the ground line. More important, a 3-inch caliper tree will
be older, larger and more expensive than a 2-inch caliper tree.
Container-grown: "If
this lilac I bought from you was container-grown, then why did
all of the soil fall away from the roots when I removed it from
its pot?"
Many trees and shrubs
spend much of their young lives in the nursery growing in containers.
Some "container-grown plants" are offered for sale before
they have fully established themselves.
A true container-grown
plant will have a well-established root system that reaches the
sides of the container so that when the container is removed,
the soil and root system do not separate from one another.
Hardiness: "The
tag on this flowering dogwood says it's hardy to zone 5. Does
this mean I can grow it in Mason City?"
The terms hardy or
hardiness refer to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Plant Hardiness
Zone Map.
The map divides the
country into eleven zones and provides an estimate of the average
annual minimum temperature in each zone. Landscape plants "hardy"
to a zone will have the capability of withstanding the minimum
winter temperatures typical in that zone.
In our example, expected
minimum temperature in zone 5 range from 10 to 20 below zero.
Mason City is in zone 4, 20 to 30 below zero, so the chances of
flowering dogwood surviving a winter in northern Iowa are pretty
slim.
Heeled-in: "I
hope you don't mind walking, because the balled and burlapped
shade trees are heeled-in at the back of the nursery."
The technique of heeling-in
is the oldest and simplest method of plant storage.
Plants, frequently
balled and burlapped trees and shrubs, are placed upright on a
section of well-drained ground and their rootballs are covered
with a loose, damp medium such as year-old shredded bark or wood
chips. These heeling-in materials insulate rootballs from injurious
high and low temperatures and keep them from drying.
Trickle irrigation:
"I just tripped over one of your tickle irrigation lines
back in the balled and burlapped shade trees and I think I broke
my ankle."
Overhead irrigation
can be an inefficient and wasteful way of applying water to trees
and shrubs in the nursery.
Alternatively, trickle
irrigation systems apply water at low pressure directly over a
plant's root system. Water is delivered to each plant via a microtube
(a small plastic tube) attached to a main line. Unfortunately,
these small microtubes are difficult to see and can trip the unsuspecting
client or rookie employee.
That's it. Armed with
this vocabulary, you should be able to confidently stride into
any garden center in Iowa and command immediate respect from the
paid staff.
But be careful. If
you sound too professional, you might be mistaken for an employee.
Jeff Iles is a horticulturalist
with Iowa State
University Extension
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