I was whiling away some time on our Twitter feed a few days ago when I came across a conversation between Annie’s Annuals and Fern from Life on the Balcony. Fern had written a “tulips vs poppies” post (referred to by Annie’s Annuals as a “smackdown”), and was wondering what other plants could square off with each other. One thing let to another, and then Gardenfix mentioned that it could be an Olympic event, and then… Well.

The Plantolympics, of course.

Commentator 1: “Welcome to the Plantolympics, folks, we’re in for a spectacular display of skill and foliage here.”

Commentator 2: “That’s right! Top plant athletes from all over the world have converged on this field to compete for a medal in sports like Curling for Vines, Best Display of Shade Foliage, and Leaf Dancing.”

C1: “Not to mention the Quadrathlon. This is a really tough event undertaken only by the sturdiest plants — in order to qualify they have to look good through all four seasons of the year!

C2: “Let’s go right to the Shade event now, where Hosta and Heuchera are neck and neck! Hosta was thought to have an advantage due to its ability to brighten dark spots with neon green foliage, but Heuchera have put on a tough fight with bright new cultivars, and Hosta still has to get through the Slug Resistance event. Hosta’s trainer has talked about Hosta’s struggles with slugs before — it’s still recovering from an injury at the last Plantolympics.”

C1: “Yes, slugs are bad news, and Heuchera might have an advantage there. But let’s move on to the Leaf Dancing event. Now, Quaking Aspen has won this event for the past 600,000 years, but this year there are some gorgeous Silver-Leaf Linden that are really pushing the boundaries of the sport of Leaf Dancing! It remains to be seen if Quaking Aspen will rise to the challenge and make this year its 600,001st win.”

C2: “Breaking news, folks!  Poppies have won the Flower Quadrathlon! The crowd is going wild!”

C1: “Very exciting news for Poppies!  Love-in-a-Mist gets the silver medal! They make a handsome pair standing there on the podium. An excellent combination!”

C2: “Well, that’s it for today’s events. Tune in tomorrow for the Most Pernicious Weed event! Kudzu and Garlic Mustard will go head-to-head!”

C1: “Mmmm, garlic mustard.”

C2: “Shhh! We’re still on the air!”

Would a sedum by any other name be so cute? Timber Press includes tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of plant names in our books every year. Plant names are constantly changing, being challenged, and being debunked; yet there is no real final authority on plant names like a Supreme Court. Plant names either survive or fade based on how convincing the argument of their sponsor when a plant is published (as for botanical names) or chosen by the breeder or selector (as for horticultural names). There are codes to govern how the names are published and promulgated but this only cuts down on the confusion a little bit. (I won’t even get into patent or trademark names, which would make you completely nuts.) If you’re convinced that California fuchsias are really from genus Zauschneria, you really can’t be called incorrect even though most people now accept inclusion in the genus Epilobium. As long as your name was published validly once, even if that were 100 years ago, you can’t really be wrong, although you can certainly look a little foolish and old fashioned.

This is all a way of saying that perfection is impossible, but we try our best. Our readers might enjoy one rabbit hole we chased down concerning the correct name of Sedum burrito, which is mentioned in Debra Lee Baldwin’s wonderful Succulent Container Gardens. Debra appealed to succulents-expert Fred Dortort, who also happens to be the author of an upcoming encyclopedia. If you’re not a plant geek, you can stop reading here, but if you’re like us, you’ll find his account gripping and edge-of-the-seat reading:

In regard to Sedum burrito, it’s a complex issue, but here’s probably more than you need to know about it. The plant was described formally in 1977 as Sedum burrito, a distinct species, by Reid Moran who was a noted authority on New World Crassulaceae. However, the description was based on plants that had been bought several years earlier, one at a nursery in Guadalajara, another in a little town near the purported habitat, so it’s true that no wild collection data exists.  It’s worth mentioning that Sedum morganianum the other ‘Donkey Tail’ sedum, was also described (in the 1930s) from cultivated material in the same town, wasn’t seen in the wild even anecdotally until the 1970s, and only found definitively in 2006 I believe. Lately some people have begun calling burrito a hybrid, but the big question is with what — one parent would have to be Sedum morganianum, but no satisfactory suggestions about the other parent as far as I know.  I’ve vacillated between calling it a variety of morganianum and a form, but variety without habitat data isn’t any more valid than species lacking data. It could be called cv. ‘Burrito’  but cultivars are supposed to refer to material selected out in cultivation, which is not the case either. Burrito, however, isn’t a horticultural name, it was published validly as such, just a sort of quirky name. If I were writing about it (I mention it briefly in passing), I would say it’s a plant of currently imprecisely determined taxonomic status, and go on calling it either Sedum burrito or Sedum morganianum cv. ‘Burrito’ and leave it at that. It’s surprising how many species floating around have never had their localities discovered; some have been in cultivation for so long that the info is just lost, others were described say 150 years ago and have never been rediscovered. Keeps things interesting.

So, feel free to throw the occasional egg at us when we flub a name, but have some pity. There were probably 1000 other plant names in the same book, and each certainly has its own story, too.

I love houseplants. Particularly the long draping ones that hang over bookshelves. I love the way houseplants can make a room feel more fresh and interesting, and add a nice touch of green.

Recently, I’ve been struggling to keep my plants alive and happy. My problems are threefold — here they come!

Rubber monsters add a touch of the wild to your domestic plant.

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

It’s time to get started on the vegetable garden for the coming season so you can grow your own healthy, organic food again this year. Many of us have already started seedlings indoors to transplant out to the garden or the cold frames as soon as weather permits. Kathryn and I have come up with a checklist of ten things to consider before you plant. Each item on the list helps to prevent pests and diseases in your vegetable garden. All ten of them acting in concert really gives you a leg up for a successful and productive year.

1. Sanitize. If you didn’t get around to cleaning up old left-over garden debris last autumn, do it now. Pay special attention to any dead plant material from diseased or infested plants and get it out of your garden. Fungal spores, insect eggs, and bacteria lurking on old infected dead leaves lying on the ground can quickly infect your new plants and ruin your produce all summer long.

2. Right plant, right place. Be sure and read the instructions on the seed pack or the vegetable start plant label and put your plants in the best location to meet those requirements. If your plants have the right amount of light and water, the correct temperature, and the proper soil they won’t be under stress. And stress, as we all know, predisposes our plants (as well as ourselves) to attack by pests and diseases.

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There are certain things we do for every new book. Sending out review copies to sales people and the media is one of these. But every so often we really want a book to make a splash and try to do something unique.

Tom Fischer is very special to us. He is our editor-in-chief, our resident foodie who eats at least once from every new food cart, and—as of today—one of our spring authors. His newest book, The Gardener’s Color Palette, releases today. And we obviously had to do something special for it.

The Gardener’s Color Palette is a pure celebration of color in the garden. Tom has taken ten color categories and picked the best ten flowers that represent them. Add to that his great wit and obvious passion for flowers and you have a winner. To celebrate, we decided to gussy up our samples with some colored tissue paper and ribbons.

Wrapping 110 books doesn’t sound like much fun if it is you alone in the office. But by inviting the whole office, adding a dose of red wine, pink champagne, and addictive white cheddar popcorn, a thankless task quickly become a party. And a competition. Olivia Dunn flexed her muscles, wrapped the most presents, and took home the crown (er, the chocolate bar).

Now all that is left is getting them into the mail. And something tells me the mail man won’t be able to rely on my awesome office mates for help.

We are giving away three copies of Macro Photography for Gardeners and Nature Lovers! See the end of this post for details.

I’m not what one would call a visual person. When it comes to taking pictures something always feels a bit off. I know what I want the picture to look like, but getting the camera to cooperate doesn’t always work.

When Timber published Macro Photography for Gardeners and Nature Lovers in 2008, I knew that I wanted to teach myself to be a better photographer. I bought myself a nice Digital SLR camera, and have been playing around with it with mixed results. I’m still learning the ins and outs of shutter speed and aperture, and am realizing that I should probably experiment with lenses beyond the ones that came with the camera when I bought it.

I couldn’t have been more excited when the first of six podcasts that Alan Detrick did with Timber covered just that—lenses! He gave me some good suggestions on what to look out for in terms of price, lens quality, and how to get the family to help pay for them.

If you are looking for some pointers to help you take the most beautiful shots possible, listen to the Timber Press Podcast for the next six weeks. Alan covers everything a beginner like myself could hope to learn: equipment, lighting, how to handle windy photo shoots, how to find the best composition, and even how to photograph insects.

As spring beings to creep into the Northern hemisphere, any number of you will want to go out and take pictures of all the beauty. To support your efforts, Timber Press is hosting a blog/Twitter giveaway during the course of Alan’s podcasts. All you have to do is show us your favorite macro photograph.  You can email us (web@timberpress.com), or you can leave a link to one of your photos in the comments to this blog or on our Twitter feed.  (If you don’t already follow us on Twitter, please do!) We’ll post the photos we receive on our Flickr page as inspiration (with permission from the photographer.)

We are giving away three copies of Macro Photography for Gardeners and Nature Lovers . Winners will be chosen from the comments, photos, and tweets on March 8th.

Take out your camera, send us your own shots, and have fun!

This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

Well, we did it! Last week we held the first event of our book tour with a talk at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show. There may be no better place to get inspired for the road ahead.

Display gardens at big shows always have an idea or two that can be incorporated into small gardens and home landscaping. Vendors always have enough stuff to sink several container ships, yet they also make attractive displays, offering useful tools, lovely plants, and often, solid information. We visited with the folks at Seattle Tilth and the Northwest Horticultural Society. We admired some of the new, more ergonomic pruning and digging tools.

We particularly appreciated the well-executed designs of two displays: “A Family’s Little Farm in the City,” designed by Jessica and Noah Bloom (N.W. Bloom and Seattle Tilth collaborated on the installation); and “Crops for Clunkers,” designed by Colin McCrate, Brad Halm, and Noel Stout of the Seattle Urban Farm Company.

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February in Portland. Often really rainy, though dryer than January. Everything is on the edge of exploding in March.

A few bulbs are starting to come up. (I think these are my fritillaries! But maybe I’m delusional! My veins are all crossed in excitement!)

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

David and I have been having a great time teaching Master Gardener classes the last couple of weeks.  Recently we spent six hours covering some good answers to the question they’ll get every day in Plant Clinic: “What’s Wrong With My Plant?”

Sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether you are dealing with a disorder, a disease, or a pest. But 80% of the time the problem is a “disorder”, that is, a problem with the growing conditions.

Accurate diagnosis requires detective work. Like a forensic scientist, you need to collect evidence, examine the clues, and arrive at a diagnosis. The process involves asking questions designed to detect information that eliminates, one by one, all alternative causes and results in an accurate diagnosis.

Leaf symptoms can look remarkably similar, but have very different causes. By asking the right questions about the plants’ circumstances, you can come up with an accurate diagnosis.

The leaves at the tip of the branch, in other words, the young leaves, on this pachysandra (Pachysandra) turned completely yellow. Plants that require partial shade can suffer from this condition in a variety of circumstances.

Solutions include moving the plant to a shadier area, planting a larger plant nearby to give this ground cover more shade, or constructing a small trellis overhead to cast shadows below.

Yellow leaves on Pachysandra.

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People everywhere are starting seeds these days, and over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to be starting some seeds too. Hooray for seed starting season! Over the weekend I sorted through my seed collection to asses what I need to buy, what I should toss, and what I can keep.

You know how you’re supposed to throw away your spices every once in a while, because they don’t last forever? (Yeah, I don’t know anybody who does that either.) Seeds are the same way — they don’t last forever, and it’s really, really hard for me to accept that and move on.

Here are my seeds (do not be distracted by the butter dish, pineapple, and cake in the background.)

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