Super Eco

Photo credit: ms.lume, flickr

It was Truman, my four-year-old, who first saw them. Ants, hundreds of 'em, and I'm pretty sure they were carrying away the alpine strawberry seeds I'd just planted. A few minutes later, I was discovering that they'd stripped the roots of my baby kale plants, the ones who days before had been so healthy I was considering putting out a sign. "Kale starts for sale!" What were the ants doing?

Strip farming aphid "honeydew," I soon discovered. And that was the weirdest thing I'd learned in my garden all week, part of an ever-growing list of strange facts about growing edibles:

1. Ants don't use sustainable farming practices. No. Ants love aphids, who in turn love brassicas (kale, broccoli, cabbage, beets, chard, and cauliflower are all in this family). Those crafty ants will "farm" their aphids on one healthy plant, and when that one's been destroyed, they'll move on to the next plant.
2. Figs live forever. Ok, not forever, but it never ceases to amaze me that you can stick a branch of a fig tree in the ground, water it well, and the next year you can harvest figs from it. We have several fig branches-cum-trees budding out little baby figs right now in our yard.
3. Plants like to caffeinate. Just as I do, plants love coffee. While it's better for the babies after going through the composting process, it's perfect for a mulch or for sprinkling around the roots as a pest deterrent (though as I've learned, its deterrent properties are largely the stuff of legend. See below).
   

1. You'd have to eat between 1/2 and two cups of apple seeds to die. Apple seeds contain a chemical called a cyanogenic glycoside, which is broken down to cyanide, lethal in large amounts. But in order to eat enough cyanide to kill you? Two cups of seeds according to John Kallas; 1/2 cup according to the internet. This should put you at ease next time you accidentally swallow a seed.
   
2. Butterfly bushes aren't that great for butterflies. While butterfly bush nectar is enjoyed by butterflies, they are infrequently used by butterflies as a host plant (in other words, caterpillars don't form cocoons in them) and, due to their aggressive self-seeding, they often choke out other plants that provide a better butterfly habitat. They've been classified as a noxious weed in Oregon, Washington and New Zealand.
   
3. Slugs can't have caffeine. Caffeine is a neurotoxin for slugs. And while, according to research in Hawaii, coffee grounds aren't really harmful to slugs (much though gardening lore says otherwise), a brew of 1-2% caffeine sprayed on lettuce leaves will kill slugs. However, that much caffeine will kill lettuces, too (a typical cup of coffee has 0.1% caffeine). Would that much caffeine (scaled appropriately) kill a human? Probably.
4. Vegetarian chickens (and cows) are a myth. Not only do chickens and other poultry love meat scraps, but their natural diet includes lots of worms and slugs and beetles. What's more, cows get their protein from the little bugs that cling to grass and other green chewables.
5. There's lobster under those rocks! Pill bugs, also known as roly-polies or potato bugs, are those little brown or black bugs that you find under stones or wooden logs in the garden, and roll up into a ball when you touch them. They're closely related to lobsters and crabs and are a crustacean, not an insect.

One of gardening's best features is this: I'm always learning something new (and maybe something I should have already known), like the many different ways plants can propagate, the resourceful ways birds and squirrels have of stealing your produce, the many interactions between bugs and plants and dirt. And every thing I learn increases my hunger for more knowledge; and has me wishing I could just find room for one more plant.