Signs of Spring

I saw crocus in someone's lovely flower beds as I jogged by yesterday morning. I can't help but long for my gardens at this time of year. Spring was truly magical. Here's a glimpse of what March looked like...

Crocus, usually the first burst of color in a flower garden.

Dwarf rock garden iris. These always made me squeal out loud... precious!

Violas mixed with early tulips and snowdrops (galanthus)

Early daffodils (narcissus)

Hyacinth... mmmm, I can almost smell them.

If you think that was impressive, just wait till I show you pictures of the gardens in their full spring glory! It will take your breath away.

Nitrogen Power

This has nothing to do with the post, but I love tulips. I bought some to cheer up my kitchen because I can't wait for them to grow in my front yard. They are on the arctic north side of the house and may never thaw.

I have been thinking a lot about nitrogen. Deep thoughts.

We need to fertilize our lawn soon. Last year we moved in in July and nobody had cared a whit for it... which showed. We vowed to have greener and lusher grass this year, all the better for bare feet and picnics and badminton and cloud watching. We need some fertilizer. Doris tells me she uses Scotts line of turf fertilizer: one with pre-emergent for crabgrass, one with more iron, one with insecticide, and one all-purpose. She promised to check her notes from last year and tell me when she applied them. I figure if I do just what she did we will be in business, 'cause hers is beyoootiful.

I am reading a very thought-provoking book right now called The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. It's about how humans as omnivores (who can eat just about anything) have to decide what out of everything nature has to offer is good to eat. What defines healthy and unhealthy? Do we eat fast food or organic? How has the industrial food chain changed our diets? It's all very interesting and eye-opening, but the part that really caught my attention is about nitrogen.

I went through years of classes on horticulture and yet I never learned about the history of this life defining nitrogen. All I was taught was that it was the first letter in fertilizer ratios (N-P-K) and vital for plants to grow. Oh how much I was missing.

An excerpt:

"The discovery of synthetic nitrogen changed everything--not just for the corn plant and the farm, not just for the food system, but also for the way life on earth is conducted. All life depends on nitrogen; it is the building block from which nature assembles amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids; the genetic information that orders and perpetuates life is written in nitrogen ink. But the supply of usable nitrogen on earth is limited. Although earth's atmosphere is about 80 percent nitrogen, all those atoms are tightly paired, non-reactive, and therefore useless... To be of any value to plants and animals, these self-involved nitrogen atoms must be split and then joined to atoms of hydrogen. Chemists call this process of taking atoms from the atmosphere and combining them into molecules useful to living things "fixing" that element. Until a German Jewish scientist named Fritz Haber figured out how to turn this trick in 1909, all the usable nitrogen on earth had at one time been fixed by soil bacteria living on the roots of leguminous plants (such as peas or alfalfa or locust trees) or, less commonly, by the shock of electrical lightning, which can break nitrogen bonds in the air, releasing a light rain of fertility.

"'There is no way to grow crops and human bodies without nitrogen.' Before Fritz Haber's invention the sheer amount of life earth could support--the size of crops and therefore the number of human bodies--was limited by the amount of nitrogen that bacteria and lightning could fix. By 1900, European scientists recognized that unless a way was found to augment this naturally occurring nitrogen, the growth of the human population would soon grind to a very painful halt.

"This is why is may not be [too outrageous] to claim that the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen is the most important invention of the twentieth century. [Vaclav Smil, author of Enriching the Earth] estimates that two of every five humans on earth today would not be alive if not for Fritz Haber's invention. We can easily imagine a world without computers or electricity, but without synthetic fertilizer billions of people would never have been born.

"When humankind acquired the power to fix nitrogen, the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel. For the Haber-Bosch process works by combining nitrogen and hydrogen gasses under immense heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The heat and pressure are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity, and the hydrogen is supplied by oil, coal, or natural gas. ... Fixing nitrogen allowed the food chain to turn from the logic of biology and embrace the logic of industry. Instead of eating exclusively from the sun, humanity now began to sip petroleum."

Wow. Talk about powerful stuff. It's an understatement that I took for granted I could run to the store and buy a bag of synthetic nitrogen. Food for thought. If you want more you'll just have read it. :)

Field Trip: BYU-I Greenhouses

I recently visited my sisters in Rexburg and got to see where Emily, another horticulture major, spends her time! The BYU Idaho horticulture department has a great program and I have heard so much about Emily's work, so it was awesome to see it in person. This coming weekend is the bridal show in which she will contribute an interpretive floral design and lots of bridal work. That's what I really wish I could see... but maybe she'll agree to be a guest blogger next week and tell us all about it! :) Good luck Em!

This is the "Jungle Room." It feels so exotic!

This is where the houseplants live. Em waters and cares for certain assigned plants that will go toward plant sales.

I love this picture of the propagation tables. It reminds me of my greenhouse classes back in the day.

I think the coolest part of the tour was the tomato hydroponic greenhouse! The guy that cares for them showed us around and answered all our questions. It is such a neat way to grow tomatoes! I thought it would be fun to share an overview of the process... didn't know you were going to get a lecture did ya? :) Well, keep reading, you might learn something.

"Hydroponics is the cultivation of plants in a liquid nutrient solution rather than in soil: soiless growth of plants. The plants are germinated in Rockwool cubes and when they reach 6 inches in height they are transplanted into the buckets which are filled with perlite. The perlite and rockwool have no nutritional value. They only aid in giving stability to the root system and retaining moisture.

The plants are then given the needed nutrients via the injection system in the greenhouse. This computer controlled nutrient injection system will turn on each half hour during day light and irrigate for approximately 2.2 minutes, giving the plants steady amounts of the liquid nutrient solution.

Fifteen 1000 watt grow lights are located above the plants. These turn on in the evening and run until midnight and then again in the early morning hours of the day. By increasing the photo period of the plants we hope to increase production." (from BYU-I info sheet)

I thought the system ingenious. After the vines grow horizontal for a few feet, they hook them up with ropes, pulleys, and cords and they grow vertically. It was quite a sight! The best part was we got to sample some vine-ripened, garden fresh tomatoes in the middle of January! The students who eat from campus food services probably don't even know the difference... but they're lucky.