08.13.09
Dirtea roots - sort of Part 1
posted by Jane Terjung | 13 comments
While I may be T Ching’s Resident Tea Heathen, allowed to grace its pages mostly because I drink the occasional cuppa and can spell - oh, and maybe also since I’ve known Erika, the managing editor, for 25 years - in The Real World I am also a Total Gardening Aficionado Ho.
I blame it entirely on my father, who fled post-war Germany as a teenager, not due to religious persecution, but because he couldn’t grow a decent tomato.
Worshipping the climate, he planted us all in Sunny California and the overgrown house I grew up in was dubbed “The Jungle” by the whole neighborhood. In my family, “deciduous” was a four-letter word and when my father retired to Hawaii (”…where stuff grows REALLY fast”), astronauts orbiting the Earth began to report a “large green warty thing” overtaking Hilo. Believe it or not, most global warming models show that without my father’s gardening, we’d be twenty years further down the hot hot hot road - we have a plaque from Al Gore to prove it. Not to let my mom totally off the hook, yet where she could appreciate simple flora - “doesn’t this gardenia smell NICE?” - my dad and I were channeling Johnny Appleseed on crack: “hey, didja hear? Miracle Gro’s on sale - let’s go buy a KILO!”
HIGH, BUT NOT DRY
My personal contribution to the California drought flourishes in the hills of Topanga. Despite Native Plant Nazis (“…touch a leaf on that oak sprout and DIE”), and fire-prevention zealots who want us to live on a pad of concrete (“…just for a 200 foot radius”), I grow TONS of flowers: roses and lavender and nasturtiums and sweet peas and geraniums and jasmine and rosemary (Yes, even herbs bloom for me)… And even The Occasional Decent Tomato.
My thumb is so green (and not just from the aphids that I lovingly squish with my bare hands) that free-range verbena spontaneously sprouts from the asphalt in our driveway. When I confessed to my favorite nurseryman that our potted roses had busted through the bottom of their plastic containers and worked their roots down through the macadam, he said that they had a name for folks like me and it rhymed with “fanatics” - still my credit card went through, just the same.
STEEPING AND STEMS
But enough about me and the roots of my gardening obsession - this is a TEA site, so let’s get to it! What role does tea play in the garden? Can you use it to poison snails? - NAH, that’s beer. Does it enrich the soil like coffee? I had no idea. So I did some research and in addition to the yucky, gross, organically disgusting topics of “worm tea” and “compost tea”, I discovered that used tea leaves make great soil, and it’s fun to get jiggy and put tea on your hydrangeas. Besides nurturing your garden, my web wandering also led me to topics like: how to grow your own herbal tea. An interesting challenge, except unless they sprout teabags - preferably packaged in easy-open boxes - it was way too exotic for me.
TEAED OFF
Still, I must confess that this *fascinating* piece about tea and gardening isn’t really what I set out to write. What’s really on my mind is the story of my next door neighbor and how close I have come to choking him this year with his obscenely overgrown zucchini. And of course how tea plays a role. Somehow.
I’d launch right into the exorcism now, but my Word Count Detector warns me that I have Hit The Wall and so I must defer the story of My Irritating Neighbor and his Equally Irritating Garden until my next post. At least you will think I am a Nice Person for one more month…
August 13th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I love the pictures of the pretty flowers on the walkway. Thanks for sharing. (: Margie
August 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Your flowers look beautiful, you sure do have a green thumb. Thanks for the tip of adding tea leaves to the soil. What helps get rid of the aphids and snails?
August 13th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Liz, well, if you want to spare the OTHER wildlife, like I do (bees, birds and frogs) you can’t use pesticides for the aphids, so I really do Hand Murder all my aphids. SOMETIMES, I confess, if there are too many to wipe out or they are too high to reach, I resort to some bug spray that I found at Home Depot: Triazicide. It doesn’t seem to hurt any of the fauna.
For snails, I Have A Sharp Eye, so I Search And Destroy. I find that they sail through the air, down to the street below, quite nicely. If my hands are full (bringing in the mail or bags of fertilizer, etc.) they also make a Very Satisfying Crunch when stepped upon. But don’t do it in house slippers. Especially fuzzy ones. ugh.
For slugs - which I had for the first time this spring - I had to resort to Snairol Or Snail Be Gone, or whatever it is named these days.
Hope that helps!
August 14th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Jane, can you put all your life experiences add some fiction and publish a book. whatever you write is so interesting to read. btw, the flowers were so good.
August 14th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Kannan, you are sweet, but I am so busy turning down interviews with Oprah, I’m not sure where I’d find the time!
But if I did, I wouldn’t have to add much fiction as The Real Events of my life seem pretty Over The Top as it is…..
August 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Thanks for the info. Have fun with your garden.
August 14th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Jane, Seeing the photo of your flowers made me realize that it’s been a month since you brought me sweet-smelling flowers from your garden. I guess the honeymoon is over
August 14th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Jane, your posts are clever and funny; a breath of fresh air. Tell the truth now . . . what do you do with the tonnage of zucchini? A saucer full of beer works great on slugs (they drink until they drown in the saucer,) I wonder if it works for snails?
August 14th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
LindaK, I guess there is no such thing as a Free Bunch of Roses… Bribe me into meeting for lunch by telling me you’ll reveal all the juicy details about the Folks Who Fell Into The Sewer… For THAT I’ll bring you a HUGE bouquet…
Regena, I can do NOTHING with the tonnage of obscenely large zucchini as it is grown by my neighbor and he Shareth Not. In fact he Harvesteth Not - but that is my Next Post….
–BEER IS FOR SLUGS?! At last something USEFUL to do with beer! I thought it was only for snails and I already murder them in person (slugs are TOO ICKY SQUISHY for this approach). What GREAT NEWS - as long as my husband is willing to sacrifice…
August 16th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Have you ever tried ladybugs to get rid of aphids? It’s worked for us a few times…and a few times they just seemed to fly off and leave the aphids. But it’s fun, and worth a try.
August 16th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Glen, ah yes, I recall our Lady Bug Days. I’d see them at Home Depot, like kittens in a box being sold on the street, and we’d usher them home and lovingly release them…. AND WATCH THEM FLY OFF TO THE NEIGHBOR’S, THUMBING THEIR NOSES AT US…
Oh Well.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Jane, your posts always brighten my day, I love your quirky and irreverent approach to life (and tea).
Beer is good for slugs and snails, but make sure it’s a sweet-ish one… they like the sugars, not low-carb or very bitter beers, as we discovered…
I have heard somewhere that planting onions or chives with your roses can protect them from aphids… the aphids prefer eating the onions, apparently. This may or may not be true, I’ve never tried it…
August 19th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Jane, you are one of a kind! It’s such a treat reading your witty column. Thanks for reminding us to find humor in the everyday (with a cup of tea in hand, of course). Your flowers are lovely. Every time I read you are in Topanga, it reminds me when I was in H.S. driving my 63 Chevy Nova through Topanga Canyon to get to the beach from the Valley. I’m sure my mom prayed for my brother and I hoping we’d make it back through the winding road and drop-offs along the way. I don’t know if it’s the same as “way back when” but my favorite part of the drive was the tunnels.
Thanks again for the fun read!!! Looking forward to the next one…