I came home from school and found our neighbor's pick up backed up to our garden. Daddy had told him he could have the corn stalks for fodder. I got in there and helped pull them out by the roots while he threw them into the truck bed. By the time we finished, the whole area looked like it had purposely been prepared for planting. I went and got a bag of peanuts that my grandmother had given me. They had given me such a bellyache that I had most of them left. I spaced them up and down the rows and ran out of peanuts right when I ran out of rows. Everything seemed perfect. When Dad came home, he had stopped by to purchase seed. I said nothing. After no time at all he came looking for me. He kept discovering peanuts. Daddy rarely whipped us, but that day he lost it. I have no idea what he planted, but in no time at all there was a lushness of peanuts. Daddy covered the blooms with dirt. I thought that was because he didn't want them to produce. Some time later, I remember an entire army cot piled high with peanuts to dry. Daddy acted so proud of himself. My mom, who never took my side said, "Any money you get off those peanuts is your son's. He already took a whipping for them." I don't know who he sold them to, but I got a new pump and filter for my aquarium.

I think there's some truth in that. It brings to mind a thought I had yesterday, that's it's a good thing that we can't grow everything that catches our eye, or else we'd all go mad with frustration and greed. I was looking at the dead shrimp plant and angel's trumpet in our cool greenhouse, victims of inadequate watering or too much darkness and chill in the course of the winter, or whatever the cause of death may be. Now I can forget about them and go on to more profitable plants. Of course, now that I think about it, I currently have a promising site, inexistent a few years ago, for a hardy ginger lily, a plant which was previously discarded after a trial. I love ginger lilies. Eventually, after lots of experimentation and a lot of dead plants, the gardener ends with a wonderful bunch of plants adapted to her/his growing conditions.

We all have our problems, different due to the variety of environments we garden in. I'm trying to create a garden in which the plants I like flourish while the weeds get discouraged. This may be a mad fantasy, of course. But, as I understand it, disturbed ground encourages weeds. So I don't dig more than I have to. I plant a lot of shrubs that will shade out sun-loving weeds in time, and lots of herbaceous plants to compete with the weeds. If I pull the weeds and leave the desirable plants, in time the desirables ought to prevail, always assuming they have decent growing conditions. In some beds that have been heavily mulched with hay we have a lot of annual grass: I'm trying to restrain myself and just cut the grass at ground level, leaving the roots as organic matter in the soil. I have a fuzzy notion that as the biological structure of the undisturbed soil changes, so will the ground become less receptive to weeds...think of ground near established shrubs. I'm relying on the dense shade of rosemary to help me deal with Bermuda grass and, to some extent, with bindweed. As ground becomes less receptive to herbaceous weeds, it becomes friendlier to tree seedlings. I don't have the problems with these that a lot of you seem to, whether because so much of our ground is still so heavy, or because we don't have that many trees to seed themselves around, or because our dry summers don't encourage heavy seeding. But when I begin to find the occasional oak or elm seedling in the beds, it's a sign of progress. That was very interesting about dodder! I don't know that I've ever seen it before. Melissa P.S. By the way, I still have plenty of weeds!

Like Tom I have had an interest in this subject for many years, and I agree with his conclusions. At one time one or two of the nurseries that produce pine and spruce seedlings advertized seedlings treated with mychorrizae. This is no longer available, which tells me that it did no good. At one time I collected spores from fruiting bodies of a fungus that was growing out of the roots of my Norway spruce trees and applied it to the roots of seedlings I was planting. I believe the fungus was a mychorrizal fungus, but I could detect no positive effect of my applications compared to trees not treated. I agree with the idea that these fungi are ubiquitous and trees link up with them very quickly on their own. I do have one speculation, however, and it is only a speculation. And that is that there are many different species of mychorrizal fungi and that some may produce a more strongly beneficial effect with some species of trees than others. In this regard, I have also speculated on the reason why I see so many Norway spruce trees seeming to look better and better in recent years in a fairly broad area of MD, VA, and WV where I frequently drive. I called professor Edwin White, Dean of Research at the School of Environmental Science and forestry at SUNY Syracuse and asked him if what I was seeing could possibly be the result of a mychorrizal fungus previously unavailable here. His response what that this was very unlikely, but also that he couldn't entirely rule out the possibility. I think that there is much we don't know about mychorrizal fungi, and one of the reason is that the kind of research needed can be very difficult, and to this point it is unclear how valuable it would really be. --Spruce