West coast peonies
Lee Poulsen (Wed, 07 Jun 2006 14:09:17 PDT)
On Jun 7, 2006, at 1:27 PM, Jim McKenney wrote:
Max Withers wrote "Where a local "Master Gardener" told me I should
grow
Pelargoniums instead of Peonies."
Max, I had to laugh when I read that. Long before anyone had dreamed
up the
"master gardener" idea to take the load off the county agents, I
visited my
then local county agent for some advice. I was having trouble with
fusarium
killing my larkspurs. When I asked him for suggestions, he told me to
grow
marigolds instead. And he evidently thought that was an eminently
professional and appropriate answer.
I left grumbling about the waste of taxpayer money.
Jim McKenney
You and me, too. Boy, do I have plenty of stories about the county
agricultural extension agents in Austin, Texas growing up when I was a
teenager and first started branching out into interesting, unusual, and
rare things to grow around my parents' house. I can't tell you how many
things they told me to forget about and stick to only those relatively
few things that had been grown in that area for the past 100 years or
so since those were the only things that would grow there. Many of the
things (mostly fruit trees at that time) they told me couldn't be grown
are now fairly large mature trees or bushes around my parents' house.
And they most likely didn't know about Thad Howard or Scott Ogden, who
lived close by, so they could only recommend pre-chilling in the fridge
for 6 weeks of Hyacinths and Tulips as the way to have some pretty
flowering bulbs in the garden. Maybe they've broadened their
recommendations more lately. But I still think someone like Cynthia
Mueller *grows* more than twice as many species, also near that area,
than they even know about. But I think I may be a little biased...
--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a