Author: Sandra Educate

What is the most mollycoddled plant in these United States? On which plant do we spend the most time and money encouraging it to grow, only to regularly whack it down? You’re getting warm. What plant do we allow to grow brown and ugly for months every year, and yet we keep it? You’re almost there. What plant covers more acreage in the U.S. than any agricultural crop?  Maybe all agricultural crops combined?

Most of y’all are probably too young to remember the comedian Red Skelton’s persona of the ‘mean widdle kid,’ who pondered, “If I dood it, I get a whippin’ . . .  I dood it!”

Whew! How did we ever make it through? I moved down here from the north because I didn’t want to spend 3 months of every year, stuck in the house not gardening because of the weather. Little did I realize I would be doing the same thing here . . . only the months would be different.

Well, of course it’s better to bee. Let’s start with honey bees. There’s a lot of conflicting information about whether or not honey bees are endangered. The honey bee is actually an immigrant from Europe, Africa and Asia; not native to this country at all, so honey bees are not on our Endangered Species List.

You know how when you live with someone for a long time, you really don’t see them anymore? As we age, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing! But this can happen with your garden, too, and that is a bad thing.  

Kenny Rogers isn’t the only one who knows about gambling. We gardeners know a thing or two as well. We do it all the time.    If we rely on plant labels to tell what will grow here, we’re gambling. If the label says good for Zone 8, don’t ante up yet. 

Ah, tomatoes. The delight and the bane of home gardeners everywhere. Especially here.  Down here in the Lowcountry, our soil is full of fungi, wilts and blights that decimate our ‘Brandywine’, ‘German Johnson’, ‘Mortgage Lifter’ and most other heirloom tomatoes.   

“Crape Murder.” Hmmm. I’m told it was Steve Bender, the Grumpy Gardener of Southern Living Magazine, who coined that phrase and he undoubtedly thought it was catchy and clever. Well, it was. Kind of. But overuse has made it really annoying, and it’s just wrong, wrong, wrong!

Christmas is weeks past and there are still a few reminders hanging around waiting to be put away, but like dust on my furniture, they’ve been around for so long I hardly notice them. After the holidays, I just had no oomph left to do anything about either. Sigh. I’m in the Doldrums.

There’s a great movie called “The Botany of Desire.” Pretty catchy title for a documentary about plants. Originally produced by PBS, you can usually find it on Netflix, Amazon or YouTube. It’s the story of how human intervention has affected four different plants, and how those plants have affected human behavior.