High Elevation Gardening Web Log "Blog"

There's lots of flim-flam in gardening, too, largely on television, all of them appealing to human sloth, that is, the avoidance of the time and effort to spade the soil. One of the most appealing is strips of bio-degradable material embedded with flower seeds and nutrients. The promise is that the slothful gardener will have a brilliant flower bed simply by laying down the strips and watering. The premise of the advertisement is that flowers don't have roots so that they won't need well-aerated soil rich with organic matter in which the roots can find a home. If a yard is clay, decomposed granite, limestone, sandstone, basalt, or volcanic rubble, the stuff of Flagstaff's dirt, the gardener will end up with weathered organic looking strips covered by wilted greens, sine flowers.

The promise of successful sloth applies as well to those advertisements for grass that will grow on concrete blocks as though there were a big market for concrete block lawns. Unbeknownst to television gardeners, grass for lawns needs soil into which the roots can penetrate or else they will peter-out. This means spading organic material, such as compost, into the soil to a depth of several inches in preparation for the grass seed. Without soil for its roots, like everything else, the grass will never thrive and will eventually die out. As in life, gardening requires depth.

Next in the flim-flam of television gardening are the Tomato Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Indeed, much of hydroponic gardening with tomatoes hangs the vines upside down. Tomato vines have to be propped up inside cages, so letting them hang down has merits, like getting a teenager out of bed. As vines, they need support. Also, hanging them upside down promises to avoid soil borne maladies and saves space. More than a portulaca, a tomato vine hanging down above the deck will help brighten conversations with otherwise dull visitors.

However, cues to the flim-flam of upside-down tomatoes are such phrases as "very little effort," "need almost no attention," and "easy way to grow tomatoes." Nothing about tomatoes is easy, requiring little effort or attention. More than money, a successful tomato garden requires a heavy investment in sweat equity. Hanging them upside down will take more work than growing them right side up if the gardener is the do-it-yourself kind, making upside down tomato containers out of old buckets. They can also be bought for a hefty price.

While upside down tomatoes save on space, they require lots of attention, more work than tomatoes growing right side up, and cost more. Also, tomato vines are fragile and pendulous and need support. Just hanging, the branches have been known to break off if they're bearing lots of heavy fruit, like big, fat, juicy beefsteaks.

Paraphrasing the late John Houseman, "We garden the old-fashioned way, we work for it."

Dana Prom Smith, a Master Gardener volunteer and coordinating editor of the Master Gardener Column for Coconino County Cooperative Extension, can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For gardening questions, call the Master Gardener Hotline, 774-1868, x19, or visit MG Web site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.